Enable Mac OS X Leopard Remote Desktop for VNC via SSH

If you have SSH access to your Mac, you can remotely enable Remote Desktop. However, if you want to VNC into the Mac, you'll need to set a VNC password and turn VNC on. The following huge command turns on Remote Desktop, enables VNC, and sets the password to password.

sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart -activate -configure -access -on -restart -agent -privs -all -setvnclegacy -vnclegacy yes -setvncpw -vncpw password

However, the last part doesn't seem to work, so you can run:

sudo nano /Library/Preferences/com.apple.VNCSettings.txt

and put this as a single line:

6755221DFCC7B786FF1C39567390ADCA

which is the encoding of "password". Now use SSH tunnels, connect, and it should work. You can then change the password via system Preferences to a more secure one.

To turn off Remote Desktop run:

sudo /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Resources/kickstart -deactivate -configure -access -off

Remotely waking up a Mac

I had forgotten to change a cronjob on my Mac Book Pro at home, but by the time I got to work and sshed back in, it was asleep.

The server was on Gentoo, so I looked at the Gentoo wiki and found that "emerge wakeonlan" would get me the tool to wake up the Mac.

But now I needed the MAC address, and it was asleep! But I remembered dhcp, and looked in /var/lib/dhcp/dhcp.leases and sure enough, there was the MAC address of the Mac.

Running wakeonlan, waiting for it to come alive, and sshing in worked great.

Running the DOS TIE Fighter on a Mac

I was digging through my old files (some are almost 20 years old!) and I found my original copy of TIE Fighter for DOS.

A quick download of the latest DOSBox (in this case, 0.72) and I was on my way. I opened DOSBox directly from the disk image, and didn't bother copying it over, yet.

I mounted the directory where TIE Fighter was (in this case, on my network server):

mount C "/Volumes/programs/PC/Tie Fighter/dostie/"

C:

setmuse

tie

Those were the only commands I needed to run, and it was up and working. ALT+Enter made it full screen, and CTRL+F10 releases the mouse.

The only problem I ran into was that while I had my copy of the game, I no longer had the manual, and couldn't get past the copy protection. A quick Google search for "The Patcher v6.5" solved those problems - it ran directly in DOSBox with the greatest of ease.

Next step will be to find a joystick and see how well I still play. I also fired up Sim City 2000 and DOOM, all from a copy of a disk that hasn't been accessed in eight years or so.

Note, I have an Intel Mac, and I'm not certain DOSBox would run the same on a PPC Mac.