How to display the DHCP server in OS X

It has always frustrated me that I could never find a way to display the DHCP server on a Mac- something like ipconfig /all on a PC.  I finally discovered a way:

ipconfig getpacket en0 (en1 if you are on wi-fi)

Look for the line that says "server identifier" and that is the IP of your DHCP server

scutil to change host names

Apparently "changeip" isn't the recommended way to change DNS names in Snow Leopard so we must use "scutil" instead.

Take a look at the man page but mostly we will problem use it to change computer and host names:

sudo scutil --set ComputerName [new name]
sudo scutil --set HostName [new name]

 --set pref [newval]
       Updates the specified preference with the new value. 

       If the new value is not specified on the command 

       line then it will be read from standard input.

         Supported preferences include: 

         ComputerName LocalHostName HostName

         The --set option requires super-user access.

     --dns
         Reports the current DNS configuration.

Mac Disk Showing 0Kb. Disk totally full for no reason.

Several users were reporting a problem where their disks were showing 0 space free.  It turned out that Photoshop 5 was creating (and not deleting) massive log files.  Deleting the log files reclaimed the missing space.

The log files are in:

/var/log/asl

Windows 2008 server and ExtremeZIP: AFP Shares appearing as read-only to Mac users

After moving data from a Windows 2003 server to a Windows 2008 server via robocopy Mac users were unable to write to some folders.  The files and folders appeared to copy correctly, along with the permissions and Windows users could access the folders without a problem.

The Windows 2008 server is running ExtremeZIP and the problem only occurs if the clients connected via AFP- SMB connections were fine.  The problem affected both AD bound and unbound Macs.

FIX: it turned out that file permissions didn't fully copy (or perhaps robocopy doesn't have the flags that Windows 2008 Server requires).  Folders that the Mac users could only see as read-only were missing a tick in "Delete subfolders and files and folders" in the Advanced folder settings.

Go to the security properties of the folder and click on the "Advanced" tab

 Highlight the user/group that you want to check permissions on and click "Change Permissions"

Highlight the user/group again and click "Edit"

Make sure there is a tick in "Delete subfolders and files"

Make sure you propagate the permissions to all child objects.

Incorrect date/time in Outlook forward and reply messages

If your mail server is in a different time zone from your mail client, e-mail Replies and Forwards in Outlook display the time zone of the mail server, not the client.

To fix this open Outlook go to Preferences/Composing and under "Attribution of original message" set the "Custom attribution format" as it appears below: