Hi everyone,

Sabr gave me this excellent idea of creating an OSx86 Tools Suite for simplifying and automating common tasks. So I am fresh out of ideas, so I would like the community to give me some suggestions. Of course if this suite gets made, my kernel installer will be one of the tools

What are those things that you find yourself mucking with the Terminal for or that you constantly do and need to be automated? As long as it is general, and not for a specific piece of hardware, any suggestions are accepted!

Suggestion booths are now open

Progress

gabe (Shutdown Restart Utility) - Done
pehy (Backup/Restore Utility) - Done
SticMAN - That is proving to be kind of hard, but I'm still working on it

1. A tool to setup a bootloader, on a disk with OS yet installed or not.

2. A tool to backup important directories (Extensions....) and to recover all or part of files of that directory.

3. Or a tool that detects changes in our files while applying a new patch.

Good idea.

Number 2 should be pretty easy, I'll work on it 1 and 3 might be somewhat harder but I'll look into them

It is my understanding that:


and



Will work to shutdown, and restart systems for people who are not fortunate enough to be able to do so via the GUI... If this is true, a simple shutdown / restart app could come in handy for those folks.

Well an app that I have found so usefull is Onyx and MacPilot

Onyx: http://www.titanium.free.fr/index_us.html

MacPilot: http://www.koingosw.com/products/macpilot.php

Onyx is free while MacPilot is not.

PCWiz,

No matter what you make, please put it in a place that is easy for everyone to attain it and find info about it. (i.e. a sticky, highlighted bold on the wiki, the very top and front of your website with a thread sticked to it).

Make sure you include documentation that will help even the newest OSx86 explorer know how to use it and more importantly why they are using it.

That is the biggest problem with the OSx86 project in my opinion. So much stuff gets worked on and abandoned in such a hectic pace that you pretty much have to do a research paper to get started. None of the information is centralized in one place (like the wiki). I mean, I still do not know what kernel is the latest, or netkas's efi stuff, or a ton of other things just because I felt it was too much work when I already have a great running OSx86 install.

Get what I mean???

Cody

keep on macKIN'

A kext installer!!
It must let one choose the target drive to install to! not just the current drive!

SticMAN

gabe_

I'll get working on that One question, what is the command to restart?

sdracer48,

I'll make sure to think about that when placing this

SticMAN,

I'll get working on it right now, should be easy!

EDIT: gabe, I'm making progress, its pretty easy SticMAN, its harder than I thought (with my very limited knowledge of programming).

EDIT2: gabe, finished your utility. I'm not going to release it in public yet but I'll send you a copy of it if you would like

EDIT3: pehy, I'm pretty much done your utility. Testing it now. What it does is it backs up the kernel and extensions from a specified driver into a specified folder. Then it also has a Restore wizard where you specify the drive to restore to and the location of the back up and it restores it! Just testing it out now, I'll send you a PM when its done

EDIT4: Its done pehy

it'd be cool if there was a way to restore those backups from single user mode command prompt in case you can't boot into the os installation. i guess if you specify the location of the backup then it would be pretty easy if you know the basic cp -R commands.

- Possibility to use the cached kexts from the install DVD that seem to be compatible with a whole wide array of systems.
Is it possible to extract those working kexts from the cached kexts of the install DVD for regular use?

- Possibility to introduce bootup/shutdown scripts a bit like login-window-manager does, for example remove the kext cache automatically upon shutdown if the cached version keeps on not loading all kexts properly at bootup.

A "Make it work NOW" button would be nice.

Staples has those:

thefinalprophecy,

That would be possible using a shell script I believe

WARK,

What do you mean by cached kexts?

I know there is the Disk Utility, but for some of the newer folk (and more lazy) I think a Permission fixer would be nice. One of those "One Button Fix All!" Applications, so newbies can just have it run and their permissions would all be fixed for them. If you think the Disk Util is easy enough, that is fine, but the repairing permissions was the only thing that I didn't understand in OS X. Just my thought!! Keep i up PCwiz, you're doing great.

That would be very very easy to do Wayfarer. One button app that:

- Repairs permissions
- Clears kext cache

I could do it. Anything else you want it to do?

Why not put all the apps into one big "OSx86 Remote"? Much like Onyx - it has all the features/tools in one app. Definitely will make it easier for everyone to find, use (as everything is in one place), and would probably generate more interest (because of the aforementioned points).

PC to elaborate a little on Wayfarer's idea, the ability to fix the permissions on maybe just one kext. For example you edit info.plist, then you just need to fix the perms on that 1 kext and empty the cache instead of having to fix all the kexts.

Sabr,

I would like to do it, but I believe the only way to do that would be to use Xcode and Interface Builder which I am not at all familiar with. I'll try anyway though.

NuhkaX,

I don't think I could do something like that with AppleScript, but there might be a way to sort of "scan" the contents of the Extensions folder and display them in a drop down list. I'll have a look at that too.

A tool that automatic repairs disk permission on restart.

Maurits,

That would be easy to do with a AppleScript. Make a AppleScript in script editor with the following contents:



And File >> Save As >> choose application bundle as the type and save. And then in System Preferences in the users panel set that application to run at startup, should work fine

How about a tool which is kind of... noticing whenever kernel has been replaced, to prevent unfortunate bricking hacked Mac install from Software Update???

You're still working on this?
It sounds very promising...

I haven't been active with it as of late, but its still alive no questions about that I'll get to your requests when I have time

Take your time. Was just wondering, and I'm sure we all appreciate your effort. Thank you!

Thanks man!

No problem It works, but it will slow down your boot.

pcwiz - still looking forward to a the shutdown/restart apps.

Can you please send/post that?

OK, I'll post it in a sec (Its done)

EDIT: OK its attached, I used Vista to zip it so I apologize if its messed but it should work fine

Unzips and works fine, thanks! Tested on a MBP, and a Dell Gx280.

When I saw your original post earlier today, I thought that this would be an opportunity to check out AS Studio (Never have used it). I cobbled together something similar to what you've done, with the addition of checkboxes to set the permissions on the Extensions folder and to force recreation of the Extensions cache on next boot.

I'll attach it if you like, just need to know it's ok to do so since it's your thread.

Thanks for the inspiration!

AIR.

Sure, go ahead Airr More the merrier