Information About:

What I call the ">console" trick.
Secret screen capture hints.
DeskTop and Login wallpaper tips..

The ">console" trick.

• So now if you want to get down and dirty,
  login via the user called  >console  with no password as seen below.
  
  
• And yes, you need to put the  >  symbol in front of the word console.
  
  
  
  
• Once in full screen mode, login and logout as you normally would.
  - You may have to hit the enter key once to see your login prompt.
  

  ---

• If you boot into a normal GUI login screen,
  you need to to use the secret keys below to get to this dual login pane.
  
  - Hold down the ALT key,
  - then the DOWN ARROW,
  - and last hit the ENTER (return)
  - You may have to play with this on a few times to get it right.
  
  - If a user name is already highlighted,
  just hold down the ALT key (option) and then hit the ENTER (return) key.
  

Why is this handy ?

1. You will have a very nice full screen terminal window.
2. You will save about 100 megs of ram.
3. You will reduce a lot of running items, which is especially useful when combined with a SAFE BOOT.
4. All primary hardware devices like wireless WiFi work just fine on laptops, not on desktops!
5. Other "users" exist too, like ">sleep" and ">shutdown".

Screen Capture Hints.

• How did I get all the nifty screen dumps of the loginwindow as seen above, you ask ?
  - When you remotley login via ssh, screencapture will NOT work the way it did in Tiger.
  - To change the DEFAULT image type of PNG to another, see the man page.
  
  
• You now must find the pid of the loginwindow for the users screen you wish to capture,
  ps -axj | grep loginwindow | grep -v grep | cut -c 1-14
  - And then tell launchctl to pass the pid to the screencapture program using the same namespace,
  sudo launchctl bsexec insert-pid-here screencapture -o ~/Desktop/file-name.PNG
  

  ---

• And for you Terminal people who want to manage your GUI Screen Dumps:
  
  - Make ascii,
  plutil -convert xml1 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.screencapture.plist
  - Add changes,
  nano ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.screencapture.plist
  
  EXAMPLE: <key>location</key> <string>/Users/Shared/put-user-name-HERE/put-nice-dir-HERE</string> <key>type</key> <string>pdf</string> - Now HUP the demon killall SystemUIServer
  
  
• Now all you may want to do is change F11 to start the capture or dump .
  - I set F11 to capture a area of the screen, and F12 to dump the entire screen.

  ---

• I have made some scripts to help you get started.
  - Download it in my FREE TOOLS ScreenCapture area.
  
• Do not use any of the normal screen capture tricks while you are in console mode.
  - loginwindow is not running, and it will core you big time !
  => Now that I think of it, this is a nice DEV tool to force a CORE DUMP, eh ?

DeskTop and Login WallPaper Tips.

Below work for 10.5.x
# #################################################### #
LOGIN WallPaper:

/usr/bin/open /System/Library/CoreServices/DefaultDesktop.jpg
or
sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.loginwindow DesktopPicture "Path-To-Your-Image.jpg"
# #################################################### #

Below work for 10.5.x and 10.6.x
# #################################################### #
USERs WallPaper:

/usr/bin/open ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.desktop.plist
or
/usr/bin/plutil -convert xml1 ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.desktop.plist
/usr/bin/nano ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.desktop.plist
# #################################################### #
Search for the key called: NewImageFilePath
and change the string
/full-path-to-my-new-image.xxx
# #################################################### #
Search for the key called: Placement
The Placement string can be one of:
Centered
or
Tiled
Centered
FillScreen (streched)
Crop (fill screen)
SizeToFit (fit to screen)
# #################################################### #
Now HUP your finder,
killall Finder
# #################################################### #