Mac OS 10.7: Hidden Wifi Diagnostics Utility

Mr_Kitty — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 17:08:01 +0000

As referenced in Mac OS X Hints, Lion comes with a built-in wireless diagnostics application that will show you clear Signal & Noise level graphs as well as allowing you to capture raw packet data. Pretty cool (and somehow, not included in Lion’s feature list)!

/System/Library/Core Services/Wi-Fi Diagnostics.app

How to get the Out-Of-Box experience on OS X 10.5.x Leopard

Mr_Kitty — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 04:51:19 +0000

This is in response to TAUW article: Get the “out of the box” experience with an older Mac.

The above article is good, but the steps are limited to regenerating the Setup Assistant. The steps in the comments for deleting the user account are for Tiger (10.4.x) and do not work on Leopard (10.5.x), since Apple deprecated the NetInfo db.

Most people will never have to do this, but if you are selling/giving away your old machine (or like me, frequently set up new machines for new users), these are handy steps to create a nice, fresh out of the box new user experience, while still having updated and installed all the third party software requested.

Note: These steps assume that you have already installed the operating system and third party software, and run any software updates. These steps will not only reset the Setup Assistant, but will also delete the user accounts for any users you specify. This will, obviously, erase any data in those user accounts. Do not proceed unless you understand and want this.

First, restart in Single User mode and enable changes to the system.

1. Restart the computer holding down the Command and S keys during startup.
2. At the prompt type the following, then press enter/return:

mount -uw /

Next, reset the Setup Assistant.

3. Type the following, then press enter:

rm /private/var/db/.AppleSetupDone

Now, remove the user accounts from Directory Services.

4. Type the following, then press enter:

launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.DirectoryServices.plist

5. Type the following, then press enter:

ls /Users

6. Note the short name (username) of the user account(s). In these following steps we will be deleting all the users, one at a time, from Directory Services.
7. Type the following, then press enter (substitute the short name above for the username below):

dscl . -delete /Users/

8. Repeat the above step for each user account.

Finally, delete the home folders for each user account

9. Type the following, then press enter:

rm -rf /Users/

10. Repeat the above step for each user account.
11. Type the following, then press enter:

shutdown -h now