Department of Engineering

Macintosh

Getting help

• CUED -
  • Remote access to the Engineering Department machines
  • Wireless access with OS X10.5
  • Wireless access with OS X10.6
  • Installing X.509 Certificates on OSX 10.5 (for wireless access)
  • Installing X.509 Certificates on OSX 10.6 (for wireless access)
  • Accessing the Teaching System (mounting file-systems, etc)
  • Macs on the CUED network
  • Mac OS X is Unix, so you may find the unix shell script links of use.
  • Local users can get help by mailing mac-support
• Cambridge University -
  • TechLink Workshops
  • Mac Support
• Apple -
  • Apple Computer World Wide Technical Support

Getting Hardware, Software and Updates

• versiontracker
• Macintosh Software Update Service (Univ of Cambridge)
• General Hardware Purchase (from Computer Services)

Note that the Computing Service is now an official Apple Limited Service Provider. This means that Hardware Support can do warranty repairs on Apple desktops and portables, if the machine is owned either by the University of Cambridge and its associated institutions or by a current member of staff or student. To make use of this service, see the contact details

Popular Programs

• Anti-Virus software (Computing Service)
• Installing LaTeX
• GraphicConverter (Shareware), is able to open about 100 graphic formats, edit them, and save in about 40 of these formats including .gif, .tiff, .png, and .jpeg.
• Installing Octave on Macs
• Offsite access to CUED MATLAB License Server

Other Information

• Mac OS X (CUED information)
• Apple (UK)
• comp.sys.mac.hardware newsgroup
• comp.sys.mac.apps newsgroup
• comp.sys.mac.system newsgroup
• ucam.comp.mac newsgroup
• MacCentral

Accessing the Teaching System

To run graphics programs from the Unix Teaching System to your mac

• Run the X11 Windows system (it's in the Utilities)
• If you're not on the network, connect (using magpie for example)
• Start a Terminal window (the X11 one - its title bar will have an X in it) and type
  slogin -X abc123@gate.eng.cam.ac.uk
  (replace abc123 by your computer ID) then you can run xclock, matlab, etc. Note that some applications will run slowly when run this way.

More information is on our Remote Access page.

Macs on the CUED network

Mac OS X 10.5 machines can connect to other machines on the CUED network in several ways.

As a server

The Sharing panel of System Preferences has options that let other Macs access the machine's files, printer etc. The Windows sharing option starts a samba server so that the Mac's files can be accessed from Windows machines.

As a client

• NFS - To connect to NFS servers, click on "Connect to Server" from the Finder's "Go" menu and in the address field type the server's URL in this format:

        nfs://servername.com/path/
  

  An Apple site has details.
• Samba - To connect to a Samba server click on "Connect to Server" from the Finder's "Go" menu and in the address field type the server's URL in this format:

        smb://servername/sharename
  

  If your UID is abc123 you can connect to the Teaching System's server by typing

        smb://smb-serv/abc123
  

An Apple site has details.

Note that the network browser (available for instance when you "Connect to Server") will display some available services. The names of SMB computers appear, but only those on your subnet.

When troubleshooting a connection failure, you can ping the IP address of the other computer using the Mac OS X Network Utility. A successful ping verifies a TCP/IP connection between the two computers. When troubleshooting an SMB connection issue, try checking the Console, which is located in the Utilities folder. The Console log may help advanced users identify an issue.

Troubleshooting

• Press 'C' when turning the machine on to run the Operating System on the DVD
• Press the mouse button when turning the machine on to eject the CD/DVD

Frequently Asked Questions

• Can I use iPhone/iPodTouch with Lapwing? - See Connecting an iPhone or iPod Touch to the CUED Wireless network
• 10.7.0 cupsd is shipped broken, so that all attempts to use the web interface to the cupsd (via http://localhost:631/) fail with "Internal Server Error". To fix, run

  sudo cupsctl --debug-logging
  sudo cupsctl --no-debug-logging
  

  (Patrick Gosling, 9th May, 2012)