OS X Odds & Ends: FixSharing; Backitup; more

FixSharing Apple Knowledge Base article 106599 (Mac OS X: Selecting Sharing Pane Causes System Preferences to Quit Unexpectedly) notes: "If the /etc/inetd.conf file is missing or removed, then selecting the Sharing pane causes System Preferences to unexpectedly quit." The solution is to run the FixSharing application, available for download from the article. Apple makes no mention of exactly why the potential removal of this file is sufficiently likely to warrant this special solution.

Backitup This Mac FAQs & Tips page describes a procedure for making a bootable backup (clone) of a Mac OS X volume. It requires using Terminal. However, the author has also posted an AppleScript, called Backitup, that automates the procedure.

Terminal tips item updated We added two updates to yesterday's item on Terminal tips.

Cumulus bug and fix Chris Ross found a bug with Cumulus 5 for OS10 server. He writes: "I installed a new Network card this week to use one for web and one for our internal network. Well as soon as I did, Cumulus 5 went back into demo mode. Turns out it saw the new NIC and decided to attach it self to that one. Even though I had told the network settings to use the built in first. After hours of troubleshooting, we called Cumulus and they had never had a person install two NIC cards in a OS X box running Cumulus Workgroup. So this was a new one.... The fix was to uninstall Cumulus and reinstall it again then enter all the serial ad activation codes."