Slow DNS lookups

I started experiencing slow DNS lookups at the beginning of July (I mostly use Mac with Comcast). This post helped me. I added these two Open DNS servers to my DNS resolution for the mac and things seem to be speedy again:

208.67.220.220
208.67.222.222

Plus this for flushing the cache:

dscacheutil -flushcache

General

• Less well known Mac OS X command line tools

Automating a Startup Script

• Use the nifty Automator tool (standard on any Mac)
• Once your script is ready, you can run it at login by adding the Automator script to the Login Items for your account (System Preferences -> Accounts -> You -> Login Items

SSH keep alive

To keep the ssh cvs tunnel alive, edit $HOME/.ssh/config and add:

ServerAliveInterval 60

Building Installers

• Excellent post on creating custom icons/background images/layouts for disk images

Image Manipulation

• sips examples

Snow Leopard / Adobe issue

Was getting weird 'osascript' issues when starting my bash shell (didn't track down which particular command was causing the issue). However, this fixes it:

http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/516/cpsid_51615.html

Basically, you have to replace the Adobe Unit Types.osax in /Library/ScriptingAdditions with the download new 64 bit version.

Java 1.6.0_17 update on Mac 10.6.2 (snow leopard)

Arg. More Apple/Java issues. DD Poker and IntelliJ don't work after the update. When Snow Leopard came out, Java 1.5 was no longer included so I had to manually install it. The update seems to have reset the 1.5 and 1.5.0 links, so resetting them worked for me.

• IntelliJ note on this issue
• How to re-install Java 1.5

Adding another port for ssh

Comcast is blocking port 22 for ssh, so I had to add another to access my box.

Added this below the "Listeners" section in /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/ssh.plist:

                <!-- JDD added alternate listener on 22022 since Comcast blocking port 22 -->
                <key>Alternate Listeners</key>
                <dict>
                        <key>SockServiceName</key>
                        <string>22022</string>
                </dict>

And then turned on/off Remote Login under Preferences -> Sharing to restart.

Also changed router port forwarding to use 22022 instead of 22.