Mike Ryan

Full filesystem in Finder/Time Machine

The Mac OS X Finder by default only shows stuff regular people need to see - it doesn't show the entire filesystem. Time Machine follows Finder - which means that, although Time Machine backs up everything, you can't see and restore... oh, let's say /usr/local/pgsql/data. To make the entire filesystem visible under Macintosh HD, you need to go to the shell and say

defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleShowAllFiles YES

Then, of course, reboot.

I'm going to have to find some time to track down what other neat things can be done with that defaults command. And, how to hide the extra stuff now showing on the desktop.

Disable .DS_Store files on network drives

Mac OS X drops little .DS_Store files in every folder you visit, including network drives. It can't be stopped locally, but to at least be more polite about other people's drives:

defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true