Month: April 2013

Force Boot Camp into using an ISO image of Windows to create the USB flash drive (for Mountain Lion with updated Boot Camp)

Note: Check the comments section - there seems to be a very live Q&A discussion on the topic.

Boot Camp Assistant requires an Optical Drive with Windows installation in it so it can install Windows.

For Macbook Air and others it supports an ISO option and it creates an usb installer.

This is how you can force Boot Camp Assistant to support the latter option for Macbooks that are supposed to have optical drives but you don't or can't use it:

Get the following strings from System Information:

Screen Shot 2013-04-22 at 2.01.57 PM

 

Get the selected one and the second line also (MacBookPro8,2).

Save a backup:

sudo cp /Applications/Utilities/Boot\ Camp\ Assistant.app/Contents/Info.plist /Applications/Utilities/Boot\ Camp\ Assistant.app/Contents/Info.plist.bak

Edit with root permissions (either change the permissions of the file or sudo vi) the following file:

sudo nano /Applications/Utilities/Boot\ Camp\ Assistant.app/Contents/Info.plist

add your string (mine is MBP81.0047.B27):

        DARequiredROMVersions
 
                MBP81.0047.B27 
                IM41.0055.B08
                IM42.0071.B03
                IM51.0090.B03
                IM52.0090.B03
                IM61.0093.B01
                MP11.005C.B04
                MB11.0061.B03
                MBP11.0055.B08
                MBP12.0061.B03
                MM11.0055.B08

Then find the following:

        PreUSBBootSupportedModels
 
                MacBook7,1
                MacBookAir3,2
                MacBookPro8,3
                MacPro5,1
                Macmini4,1
                iMac12,2

REMOVE the "Pre" from the and add your computer as a string, mine is MacBookPro8,2:

        USBBootSupportedModels
 
                MacBookPro8,2
                MacBook7,1
                MacBookAir3,2
                MacBookPro8,3
                MacPro5,1
                Macmini4,1
                iMac12,2

Save and exit with <Ctrl+X>, Y, <Enter>

Change url file associations in OS X

There are many custom protocols where a command can be an URI.
For example ical://some_new_event or mailto:john@malkovich.com or magnet://
There are system wide associations in OS X, but there's no interface that can edit them. Only some applications can do that, but then the control is not in your hands. Here's how:

Download RCDefaultApp - this is a preference pane for System Preferences:

Screen Shot 2013-04-10 at 11.21.17 PM

The last one, when opened, looks like this:

Screen Shot 2013-04-10 at 11.21.46 PM

Change and save!

How to run ScanTool on Linux

ScanTool is an OBD data reader. Here's how you can run it on linux:

#!/bin/bash
#!/bin/bash
 
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/s/scantool/scantool_1.21+dfsg.orig.tar.bz2
tar xjf scantool_1.21+dfsg.orig.tar.bz2
cd scantool-1.21
wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/s/scantool/scantool_1.21+dfsg.orig-dzcomm.tar.bz2
tar xjf scantool_1.21+dfsg.orig-dzcomm.tar.bz2
mv dzcomm-0.9.9i/ dzcomm
wget http://patch-tracker.debian.org/patch/series/dl/scantool/1.21+dfsg-3/dzcomm-usb-serial.patch
wget http://patch-tracker.debian.org/patch/series/dl/scantool/1.21+dfsg-3/scantool-linux-build.patch
wget http://patch-tracker.debian.org/patch/series/dl/scantool/1.21+dfsg-3/logging-newlines.patch
wget http://patch-tracker.debian.org/patch/series/dl/scantool/1.21+dfsg-3/drop-listports.patch
wget http://patch-tracker.debian.org/patch/series/dl/scantool/1.21+dfsg-3/allow-elm327-clones.patch
wget http://patch-tracker.debian.org/patch/series/dl/scantool/1.21+dfsg-3/drop-report-request.patch
wget http://patch-tracker.debian.org/patch/series/dl/scantool/1.21+dfsg-3/build-flags.patch
sed s_/usr/share/scantool/__ -i scantool-linux-build.patch
patch -p1 -i dzcomm-usb-serial.patch
patch -p1 -i scantool-linux-build.patch
patch -p1 -i logging-newlines.patch
patch -p1 -i drop-listports.patch
patch -p1 -i allow-elm327-clones.patch
patch -p1 -i drop-report-request.patch
patch -p1 -i build-flags.patch
cd dzcomm && sh ./fixunix.sh && ./configure && make depend && make lib; cd ..
make CFLAGS="-Idzcomm/include -DDZCOMM_DJGPP=1" LDFLAGS="-Ldzcomm/lib/unix"
cd ..
cp scantool-1.21/scantool .
cp scantool-1.21/scantool.dat .
cp scantool-1.21/codes.dat .
rm -rf scantool-1.21
rm scantool_1.21+dfsg.orig.tar.bz2

Courtesy goes to PePe.