Connecting to a wireless network from OS X command line.

Connecting to a wireless network from OS X command line.

The 'networksetup' utility is very powerful for making network changes to an OS X workstation. Below is the syntax for connecting a machine to a wireless network from the command line.

$networksetup -setairportnetwork Airport [router SSID] [password]



Additional Resources:
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference/ManPages/man8/networksetup.8.html

Take photos with FaceTime Camera from command line in OS X

Take photos with FaceTime Camera from command line in OS X


Have you ever wanted to snap a photo with your FaceTime camera from the command line in OS X? Now with the help of a small program called ImageSnap you can.

1. Download ImageSnap LINK
2. unzip the file using tar -xvf imagesnap.tar
3. run the imagesnap 
4. It will create a file called snapshot.jpg

Hide or UnHide files or folders from OS X Finder

Hide or UnHide files or folders from OS X Finder


You can use the chflags command to make a file or folder invisible to the OS X GUI


To hide a file:
$ chflags hidden file.txt


To unhide a file
$ chflags nohidden file.txt

Use caffeinate to prevent OS X from sleeping

Use caffeinate to prevent OS X from sleeping

OS X Mountain Lion includes a new tool called Caffeinate to allow you to to prevent a machine from going to sleep.

To temporarily disable sleep:
 $caffeinate

To prevent the machine from sleeping for 4 hours
$caffeinate -t 144000


Additional Resources:
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Darwin/Reference/Manpages/man8/caffeinate.8.html

Managing OS X from Command Line

Below are some useful commands for managing OS X from the command line.

softwareupdate	Can be used to apply or check for updates
systemsetup	configuration tool for certain machine settings in System Preferences
screencapture	Screen Capture application
Say	Text to audio program. "say hello"
shutdown	shutdown or reboot workstation from command line

Additional Resources listed below:

http://ss64.com/osx/

PGP WDE Bootguard Password not synchronized with Active Directory Account

PGP Whole Disk Encryption does not support single sign-on functionality on Linux  and Mac OS X workstations. What this means for the user is that when you enroll in PGP the first time it will sync with your current password.  However whenever you change your Active Directory password your PGP bootguard password will not automatically be refreshed. To refresh the boot guard password follow the steps below.



1. Open the terminal
2. Run the following command.

pgpwde --change-passphrase --disk 0 --user username --domain 'domainname' --passphrase 'yourpassphrase' --new-passphrase 'yournewpassphrase' 

Reference:
http://www.symantec.com/business/support/index?page=content&id=TECH194688