OS X only uses the traditional /etc/passwd and /etc/group files when running in single user mode so they are no help. Instead we need to do everything with dscl.
If you want to make a domain user part of the local admin group in OS X without needing them to login first you can use the following command.

sudo /usr/sbin/dseditgroup -o edit -a "DOMAIN\Domain Users" -t group admin

You can also set individual users as part of the admin group with

sudo /usr/sbin/dseditgroup -o edit -a "DOMAIN\user" -t user admin

Two important things to note is you need to use the full path to dseditgroup and the domain needs to be capitalized.

You can also view what users are part of a group with

sudo dscl . -read /Groups/admin GroupMembership

and you can list all group names with

dscl . -readall /Groups | grep RecordName

Let me know if this helps you in the comments.

The reason these flags have been brought to my attention is because the suspected infected clients use P2P to download a payload from a server. Our network flags the P2P traffic which is what alerted me to the abnormal traffic.

Clients
All of the clients have been either iOS (iPhones and iPads) or Apple laptops running OS X.
To my knowledge there haven’t been any Windows clients flagged for the same P2P traffic.

What’s in common
The main thing in common is all of the clients are initiating a P2P connection to the host update.alyac.co.kr:6969 or IP address 125.140.132.205 which both belong to a Korean antivirus company.
All of the clients show the agent to be libtorrent.
All users don’t seem particularly tech savvy and no common software was found between all of the computers/phones/tablets. In most cases the software installed seemed very minimal. I did not have the opportunity to gather browser history on the clients.

What else is weird
The requests happen in batches. The first week I noticed them there were 3-4 in that week. A little time passed and I had another 2 hits just days apart. Now I get smaller sporadic hits.

What I have found
I have wireshark dumps from the P2P traffic but I can’t decipher any meaningful information from them besides the actual connection being made. Email me if you want to have a look.
I also found that the Alyac servers were hacked back in 2011 but I can’t find much else about the company or domain.

So I am posting this for anyone with more information to help me track down what is happening. I find it too coincidental that P2P traffic is going to a random Korean website when the users don’t appear to have any P2P traffic installed. Please leave a comment if you’ve seen something similar or have any other information on what may be happening.

Computers and Mobile

1. The market will finally start to have tablet fatigue and the clear winners will be Apple’s iPad, Amazon’s Kindle, and Microsoft tablets. Android will still do well but no single company (besides Amazon) will be able to market and push a tablet like the tech giants. And cheap tablets will, in the end, have more market share than expensive ones. Which is also why Apple will probably come out with a cheaper tablet ($350-$400) to compete.
2. Ultrabooks are going to be everywhere this year. They will try to compete with tablets and the MacBook Air but will only gain traction when they drop to $500 or less. A lot of users won’t even care though because they can do most of their work on a $250 tablet.
3. Google will merge Android and Chrome OS in an attempt to compete with what Microsoft comes out with in Windows 8. It will work similarly to how Motorola’s splashtop works now, but accessories will be more universal and the lapdock OS will work better.
4. Apple’s iPhone 5 will set new records for sales, Android will remain in the lead (because of the volume of devices), Windows Phone 7 will eat away at iPhone market because of Windows users who are fed up with Apple’s ecosystem, and RIM/webOS/etc. will all be forgotten by the main stream.
5. Google will also come out with a dumb phone version of Android for developing countries, and non-smartphones. These phones will typically not have touch screens but will be able to run some Android apps.

Software and Web

1. Windows 8 will have versatile tablets and will serve multiple purposes as tablets/notebooks/desktops. Businesses will buy them by the boatload in an attempt to allow users to stay mobile and save some money. The tablets won’t be as functional as notebooks but will be the cool thing for at least another year. In order to use all of Windows 8′s cloud featuers you will have to start using Microsoft’s server backend which will sway even more users towards Apple computers. Consumers won’t really care about this functionality and there will be a small market for accessories and docks because the interfaces will not be universal like they will be for Android/Chrome OS.
2. Desktop applications will take a hit in sales as more users realize they can do what they need with web apps. Google Docs and Office Live will start to gain steam with the general public, but I think another app entirely will become the winner. Probably something that integrates with Facebook. This will also help propel Google even further with Chrome OS.
3. Streaming music will hit main stream and people will finally stop buying CDs. Spotify will probably be the winner because of it’s Facebook integration. We will also see other companies start their own music streaming services (Verizon, Comcast, etc.) and they will all be terrible.
4. Streaming video will still struggle throughout the year because content providers will not lower the prices for digital downloads and streaming. Netflix will have some major competition this year and will continue to lose market as other competition gets more content, and has cheaper prices.
5. Social network exhaustion will set in for many as options will continue to expand. By the end of 2012 Facebook will still be the clear winner in social but many users will just be worn out on trying to keep up with all of their online friends.
6. Voice control is going to have a huge push because of devices that don’t have keyboards. Siri will lead the way thanks to hacks, but Microsoft and Google will both have answers in 2012. Neither will be as consistant on devices because they cannot control the entire ecosystem. Google and Microsoft will try to be more open with their voice control and will start to persuade users off of Siri, but Apple will allow 3rd party plugins and accessories which will keep a lot of the voice control usefulness on their side.

Video Games

1. Mobile gaming will die. The Vita and DS are doomed due to the fact that the consoles and games cost so much. People will keep using their phones, music players, and tablets as casual gaming consoles and won’t even bother to buy the more expensive consoles. Micro payments will be huge in 2012.
2. Nintendo will struggle to find a new market. Their Wii U will be mostly unsuccessful in the US because of its expensive accessories and the fact that there will be so much other competition in the casual gaming space with cheaper and more versatile devices.
3. Sony won’t have a clue what to do with the PS3 and how to integrate their services together in a fashion that is useful for people. This will cause more people to either move to the Xbox 360 or other casual gaming devices.
4. Microsoft will announce (Q2) and come out with a new console (Q4) which will finally have diskless games. Everything will be purchased and streamed from Xbox Live “the cloud” with an optional Blu-ray attachment to keep prices down.

Other

1. 3D TVs will still be pushed in retail but won’t have any compelling content. More TV manufacturers will begin to look for alternative content uses for 3D such as video gaming dual view and some things never seen before
2. Google TV and Apple TV will become casual video game consoles. Since Google and Apple don’t have any unique content, they will try to branch out into video games and apps. Apple will integrate their Apple TV with their iDevices, but Google will be too fragmented to do the same. Instead they will rely on accessories and controllers you buy in addition to the new Google TVs. Google will continue to allow manufacturers to embed Google TV software into their TVs and Apple will continue to keep things in house and come out with a better user experience. Apple will begin to build Apple TV functionality into their iMacs and displays and will make larger (32″-42″) displays that will function as TVs for some.

Let me know if you think I’m right, wrong, or crazy in the comments.

Computers

1. First of all 2011 will be the year of the tablet. That isn’t a prediction, it’s more of a fact. I think the big winner in the tablet world will eventually be Google with Android simply because they will have the cheapest and most devices. This has already been proven true with cell phones.
2. Even though the company with the cheapest and most devices will eventually win, advertising will win the tablet market in the short term. It doesn’t matter who has the best device or the best software. The company who has the most successful marketing campaign will win. This makes me think that the iPad will continue to sell well, the Blackberry Playbook will have a decent market, even though it will suck, and HP won’t have much traction unless they change their strategy. In the end, Android will still probably take the lead because they will have the most companies pushing Android tablets.
3. Because of tablets in the <$500 range I think laptops will begin to take a hit in sales. While this has already been reported with the iPad, it will actually be true in 2011. Oh and desktops don't have a chance. Even businesses will begin to go away from desktops and start offering more laptops, tablets, and thin clients.
4. Apple and Microsoft will begin to change their strategy for their computer operating systems. I think Microsoft will begin to rely heavily on "cloud computing" and try to offer some of their own services but mainly focus on always connected devices with instant on. Apple, on the other hand, still won't embrace 3rd party cloud services and will expand their own Mobile Me platform and continue to segregate their users. While this won't cause an Apple revolt in 2011, I think there may be an uprising in 2012.
5. Microsoft won't have a real answer to Windows on a tablet. While they will have lots of plans and still push out devices, they won't have something that is finger friendly until 2012. Even though what they should do is put Windows Phone 7 on tablets.

Cellphones

1. Smartphones will continue to expand their market and the Verizon iPhone will finally come out. The iPhone market share won’t go up as much as some people expect because most people that want a smartphone are already entrenched in the platform they are on now. And 2011 will have so many good phone operating systems that the iPhone won’t be “the best” anymore. iPhone market will still go up, but it won’t catch Android.
2. AT&T will be forced to stop riding the iPhone success wave and either slash their prices or finally get some decent devices. My theory is they will reach out to HP and Blackberry for exclusive devices rather than lowering prices to Sprint and T-Mobile level.
3. Network will be the big marketing push for carriers at first but that will die down near the end of the year because most of the networks will begin to share the same coverage and network technology. Also phones will become less exclusive because quad-band and penta-band phones will become the norm. Although 2011 will still see very few LTE voice devices.
4. Customers will start adding devices to their contracts because more devices will have cellular radios and the wireless data will finally became fast enough to use. I think there may even be a push for people to ditch their traditional internet provider and just tether their phone/buy a modem because it will be cheaper for them.

Video Games

1. Nintendo will finally have to announce a new console. The Wii sales will drop so much that Nintendo will updated it to a Wii HD that has Blu-ray, HD graphics, and 3D capabilities. They will also incorporate the Wii Motion Plus controller into the standard remote and probably have a standard webcam with a high focus on video chatting and video integration into games. I am hopeful that people will finally become tired of the same thing and Nintendo’s success will plummet until they are innovative again.
2. Microsoft won’t announce a new console at E3 but will probably hint at something coming in 2012. They will continue to update the Xbox 360 to add value to the system, but developers will need more processing power and more storage space to push the envelope. And they won’t get that from the 360 because of the fragmentation of the console install base.
3. Sony won’t come out with a new console but will finally create better online services that will allow developers to easily take advantage of cross game chat, universal lobby rooms, and video chat without having to program it from scratch.
4. A new company, or possibly existing company, will come out with a “console” with the main focus of bringing PC games to the TV. It will be similar to OnLive but will have a better library and subscription model that will actually be successful. They will also include support for iOS and Android if they truly want to “make it”.

Other

1. There will be a decline in major technology breakthroughs because the economy will finally level out and companies will realize that they can’t just keep pushing new products because people aren’t buying them. This won’t stop companies from coming out with new things, but big breakthroughs won’t happen as often as they did in 2009 because people don’t have the money to buy it and companies don’t have the money to develop it.
2. Streaming services will continue to try and eat away at the cable TV market but it will take big companies like Google, Microsoft, or Apple to make it truly successful. I am hopeful that Microsoft will finally make a all-you-can-eat video service, a la Zune pass, that will work on the 360 and Windows that might compete. No matter what, a pay-per-view model will not work, and content providers will be stubborn to allow this type of model.

That is all I got for this year. Let me know if you have any predictions in the comments or if you agree/disagree. Either way I hope everyones 2011 is great and I am looking forward to all the announcements to come.

Just like with the manual way in Vista set up two user accounts, your local admin and a template user. Change all the settings you want for the template user and then restart and log in as admin. To copy the files to the default user you will need to open the terminal and follow the commands below.

Local admin isn’t enough, you will need to actually be using the terminal as the root user. If you don’t have root enabled you can find out how to enable it here.

sudo su

The English.lproj is the default user directory for any user that uses the English language. All we are doing here is copying the English.lproj folder and its contents to English.lproj.bak. For these important files ditto is better than cp because ditto will preserve the “resource fork” using the –rsrc option. It is also a good idea to keep a copy of this default user somewhere else besides just this computer in case something happens. I would recommend zipping up the English.lproj folder and storing it on a backup drive somewhere.

cd /System/Library/User Template/
ditto –rsrc English.lproj/* English.lproj.bak

Now that we copied a backup we can remove all the files/settings in the old English.lporj directory. If you accidentally delete the English.lproj folder (instead of just its contents) you can create it again with mkdir.

rm -rf English.lproj/*

Here we are just copying everything from our user we set up to the user template folder. Replace “rothgar” in the below command with the username you gave your template user.

cp -R /Users/rothgar/* English.lproj/

This final step will change the owner and group of the files and folders inside the user template to what they should be. All of the default user files should be owned by root and the group wheel.

chown -Rv root:wheel English.lproj

Those are all the steps needed to modify the default user. It would also be a good idea to reboot the computer, log in as admin, and check/repair disk permissions on the drive just to make sure everything is correct before you take an image of the computer. If everything is correct you can test out your settings with a new user and if everything checks out delete your template user.

Let me know if you have any questions, comments, or problems with the process in the comments.

defaults write com.apple.finder _FXShowPosixPathInTitle -bool YES

And you have your location at the top of the window. I don’t even have a Apple anymore but this still may be useful in the future. Only works in OSX 10.5.5+

The main problem I had was dealing with the small/slow hard drive. So I wanted to upgrade that but here are some of the things I ran into.

First of all, the Mac Mini had almost everything I wanted (and some things I didn’t care about) built in. I wouldn’t need to add any features to the device unlike other small computers I was looking at. Most other small computers came with almost everything I needed except one or two thing, built in IR for a remote or firewire. These were requirements for me. I know I could have used a USB -> IR adapter but I wanted this computer to look a little less DIY than my last MythTV. And not having firewire seemed too complicated to try and add my own through expensive adapters.

My goal for the Mac Mini was to upgrade the internal hard drive and use an external 1 TB drive. The reason for this was storage and speed. The internal hard drive in the Mac Mini is only 5400 rpm and while that works fine for web pages and word documents, when reading and writing large media files all day it just would not be fast enough for the task. One option was to install the OS on the internal hard drive and use a external hard drive just for storage over USB but the CPU overhead of USB and the read/write speeds would just not cut it (internal SATA II is over 6 times faster than USB 2.0/Firewire 400). There also is no firewire 800 port so that wouldn’t work either. I tried following a walk through that someone else already did with a mini hard drive upgrade but apparently Apple has updated their device since this was done and adding a hard drive the same way is no longer possible. If this worked for you on a post Nov 2007 Mac Mini please let me know in the comments. The problem I had was the Mac Mini would never detect any hard drive outside of the chassis. I tried with multiple cables, hard drives (2.5″ and 3.5″) but never once was able to get OSX or Ubuntu installed on the bigger hard drive.

To break it down, the reasons the Mac Mini actually sucks for building your own PVR are these.
1. Slow (low storage) hard drive
2. Expensive features that are not needed but you don’t have a option but pay for. (OSX, iLife, Apple tax, etc.)
3. Hard to upgrade processor and memory

And these are the reasons I picked the AOpen over the Mac Mini.
Mac Mini uses a older 945GM chipset with 667 Mhz vs. GM45 chipset with 1066 Mhz, it uses a more power hungry 65nm (T5600/T7200) processor vs. 45nm (T8100 or any socket p processor you want), and GMA950 GPU vs. GMA X3100. Not really big deals considering both should have the ability to play back most 1080p content. But having updated specs just make things a little easier, and the ability to upgrade helps make the PVR future proof…well almost.

For anyone interested, here are some pictures of the steps I took to make the Mac Mini NOT work with an external eSATA 1 TB hard drive.

	Sata to eSATA adapter. I was sent the wrong adapter and Microbarn would not accept the fact that this was a female SATA to male eSATA cable when I needed male to male. Even after sending them this picture. P.S. don’t order this, order this.
	Adapter plugged into the Mac Mini SATA riser card with a male to male sata adapter I had to buy extra thanks to Microbarn. Maybe I just don’t understand male and female connectors.
	SATA cable run inside the case. This wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. See the picture above for what it looked like coming out of a slightly modified Kensington lock hole.

Let me know how a Mac Mini is working out for you as a PVR or what other machine you bought as a substitute in the comments.

1. Tweak your default account including setting dock, clearing cache, recent items, etc.

2. Restart and login to the machine as admin.

3. Issue the following commands in the terminal:

:~root# cd /System/Library/User Template/
:~root# sudo ditto -rsrcFork English.lproj/* English.lproj.bak
:~root# sudo rm -rf /System/Library/User Template/English.lproj/*
:~root# sudo cp -R /Users//* /System/Library/User Template/English.lproj/
:~root# sudo chown -R root English.lproj
:~root# sudo chgrp -R wheel English.lproj

4. Restart, log in as admin and repair permissions before creating a new account to see if it worked.

Now all your new users that log into the machine (including mobile users) will have these same settings as your template user.

The second is as easy as deleting one folder and two files.

All you have to do is boot the mac into single user mode (command+s at start up) and enter the following commands at the terminal you are presented with.

mount -uw /
rm -rf /Users/ /var/db/netinfo/local.nidb /var/db/.AppleSetupDone
reboot (or shutdown -h now if you don't want the machine to turn back on)
Replace with whatever username you set up on the computer.

This isn’t exactly the same as a fresh install but it is close enough. It removes all of the users and has the person go through the steps of naming the computer and registering with Apple.

Let me know if you have any other tips for restoring a Apple computer to true factory defaults.