Ripping a Wii Disc with a Mac

Like Chris says, "This will only work with backup copies of Wii Games, there is currently no support for the internal DVD drives that come standard in any Mac for reading original Wii discs."

John the Ripper

Article: How can I reset the password?
Article: How to crack Mac OS X passwords
Article: Cracking Unix password files for beginners
Article: How Mac OS X Implements Password Authentication, Part 2
(Forum: Leopard Password Hash Files, semi-repeat of above)
Article: Mac OS X Single User Mode Root Access

Terminal to copy files

I was trying to copy an invisible file and found a link to FileBuddy, but I wasn't sure it was Leopard compatible. So, rather than installing another application to my pristine upgrade, I figured I'd look for an option using terminal.

MacDevCenter.com had a nice explanation.

I also found a nice reference on navigating directories in terminal.

Network update

Server anomaly
I had a strange problem emerge this past weekend where my server couldn't connect to the web via Firefox. I couldn't even use Server Admin to connect to the server. I restarted a bunch of times and even precariously used changeip to try changing the IP address of the server, stupid in hind sight. I ended up changing the DNS servers to ones that were listed from my router and changed the server listing from Server Admin to its IP address. Whatever I did, it worked. I don't like the powerlessness of not knowing where to look for solutions. I don't know how to read the logs beyond a superficial level, so I don't really know where to go to fix the problems.

WPA TKIP
I don't know why I didn't do this earlier, but I changed my router from WEP encryption to 120 bit WPA TKIP encryption. I wasn't able to enter in my 503? bit passkey, so I had to choose a 20-digit key instead. I'll limit the MAC addresses next ensure that no one will be able to access my IP address.

FTP admin
I just tried to access my net2ftp admin page and was twarted by the login. I have no idea what the password is! I'll have to change that this evening.

eDrive
I installed a TechTools eDrive on my PowerBook so I don't have to rely on my newly created iPod "toolbox" for maintenance. I had troubles installing iDefrag though since I wasn't able to resolve permissions on the eDrive to allow the license key to be copied into the /Library/Application Support folder.

Buffalo 80GB Protogo Drive
Since I made an eDrive for my PowerBook, I thought I'd do the same for my MacBook. Well technically I can't make an eDrive since I have Bootcamp installed, but I have a Buffalo external USB 2.0 drive that wasn't doing anything, so it's now a portable Intel-only toolbox with lots of storage space on it (about 73 GB).

Localize.rsrc file won't delete!

And then I found my answer...

Every partition has its own trash folder. This is necessary because it means you can delete stuff without the system copying files to one main trash directory. On external drives, this folder is in the root folder called .Trashes (note not .Trash).

You may need admin permissions to see it. If you type this into terminal, it will list the trash contents on a drive:

sudo ls -al /Volumes//.Trashes

It will ask for you password.

Normally, the trashes folder has a list of folders named by user ID. I think 502 is the default admin ID so inside .Trashes there should be a folder called 502. To see what's in there, you would just do this:

sudo ls -al /Volumes//.Trashes/502

to empty it, you would type

sudo rm -rf /Volumes//.Trashes/502/*

Again to save typing the name, you can drag the volume to the terminal but don't drag it from the Finder sidebar. This will just remove the drive from the sidebar. If you don't mount volumes on the desktop, add the computer to your Finder sidebar (or go menu>computer) and access it there.

You can also use tab as an autofill so if you type /V (for /Volumes... above) and then tab, it will fill in the rest of the name.

In general, it's not a good idea to use sudo rm. Save it for those times when it's absolutely necessary. You can actually erase important stuff that way. This is why it's good to drag stuff to the terminal too because if you accidentally left a space out between the first / and what came after it, you'd erase your entire partition.