Archive
Posts in macOS
Getting past ptrace()
Clay has an awesome writeup on getting around ptrace() when it's used as an anti-debugging feature. Nifty!
$ read more →Speeding up Safari
I recently got sick of the Safari spinning ball, and decided to conduct some research to speed up my favorite web browser. After reading numerous posts on the Apple discussion board, I made the following changes to significantly boost page rendering time: 1. Add Mike's Ad Blocking Hosts file to /etc/hosts and restart lookupd 2. Purge the Safari cache from Safari -> Clear Cache 3…
$ read more →Finding memory leaks with OS X
The UNIX standard library provides the malloc() and free() routines to dynamically allocate and free memory. These routines allow developers to increase and decrease memory (the programs heap) as needed, which allows the process to increase or decrease memory consumption as demand increases or decreases. This works great when care is taken to free memory that is no longer needed, but issues (e.g., memory leaks) can occur if memory is allocated and never free()'ed. If you are using OS X, you can use the leaks(1) command to check a program or process for memory leaks: I digs me some OS X!
$ read more →Monitoring OS X CPU, disk, network and memory resources
I recently came across Menu Meters while reading the OS X discussion forums on apple.com. This is a nifty addition to the OS X menu bar, and allows you to get CPU, disk, memory and network utilization metrics with a simple click of the mouse (or a quick squint of the eyes). I wish I would have found this sooner!
$ read more →What is this mDNSResponder process?
While reviewing the running processes on my Linux desktop, I noticed a process named mDNSResponder. I have seen this process numerous times on my OS X desktops, but have never taken the time to determine what function it served. Being the curious guy I am, I read through the mDNSResponder(1) manual page, and found the following description: "The mDNSResponder daemon publishes and browses available services on a link according to the IETF Zeronconf (aka "Rendezvous") draft standard. Only one instance of mDNSResponder needs to run on a host…
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