System Utilities

Revised: 2006-06-15 devin

Table Of Contents
    "Cacti is a complete network graphing solution designed to harness the power of RRDTool's data storage and graphing functionality. Cacti provides a fast poller, advanced graph templating, multiple data acquisition methods, and user management features out of the box. All of this is wrapped in an intuitive, easy to use interface that makes sense for LAN-sized installations up to complex networks with hundreds of devices."

    CanOpener 4.0 can extract text, pictures, and sounds contained in files you can't open because you don't have the appropriate application or the file is corrupted or damaged. Just drop a file onto CanOpener and the file appears (or is played, if it's a sound file) along with the file's directory and resource information. You can save text and sounds to use in other programs, and you can convert images into one of 22 different formats. New in version 4.0 are filters for cleaning up files and finding text, a Web link, and a separate utility for filtering files in batches.

    AJ Boldan & Dan Hutten from Pathology reviewed how they use Carbon Copy Cloner and how it compares to SuperDuper!.

    Data Resue is known as the bes data recovery software for the Mac platform. It can recover data from faulty, unmountable or corrupted hard drives, deleted or trashed files. Recovers icons, dates and even folder hierarchy and allows you to select a safe location to save your recovered files to (including FireWire, SCSI, ATA, USB, or Network volumes). Also comes with a bootable CD for emergency use.

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    DiskWarrior is the safest, the most technologically advanced, and the most powerful utility to prevent and eliminate directory damage available for any computer. It is now Mac OS X native! Scott will provide an overview and demonstraton of the latest version of DiskWarrior.

    An overview of "the first and final disk utility for Mac OS X."

    "Cacti is a complete network graphing solution designed to harness the power of RRDTool's data storage and graphing functionality. Cacti provides a fast poller, advanced graph templating, multiple data acquisition methods, and user management features out of the box. All of this is wrapped in an intuitive, easy to use interface that makes sense for LAN-sized installations up to complex networks with hundreds of devices."

    MacFUSE implements a mechanism that makes it possible to implement a fully functional file system in a user-space program on Mac OS X (10.4 and above). It aims to be API-compliant with the FUSE (File-system in USErspace) mechanism that originated on Linux.

    SoftRAID 3 is a backup solution that takes a users existing hard disks and groups them together to give them more speed, capacity and/or instantaneous backup. With it, users do not need a hardware solution to get RAID (Redundant Array of Independent Disks) protection. Scott will discuss the features and benefits of using SoftRAID 3 to mirror volumes, as an alternative to Apple RAID.

    Tim Standing, of SoftRAID, LLC, will present SoftRAID 3, a software RAID solution for Mac users, OS X Servers and any mission critical environment. Mr. Standing has recently published an article on using RAID for backup in MacTech magazine.

    SuperDuper is a flexible disk copying utility that goes well beyond mere duplication. Its unique "Safety Clone" feature lets you install potentially risky drivers or system updates without fear of creating an unbootable or unworkable system. It can make a straight copy, or "clone" - useful when you want to move all your data from one machine to another, or to do a simple backup. Dan Hutten of Fine Arts will give an overview of his department's use of SuperDuper to clone, backup and migrate machines.

    This script repairs the clone target volume with Disk Utility and email output from it & the SuperDuper log.

    Dan Hutten reviewed the new System Image Utility (V10.5) which "leverages the power of Automator" and can be used for creating NetBoot and NetInstall disk images. Dan also compared & contrasted NetInstall to other imaging methods such as ASR, NetRestore and NetBoot-ASR-Automator.

    Built from the ground up in Cocoa, TechTool Pro 4 is designed for stable and efficient use with Mac OS X. In addition to its existing suite of repair and diagnostic features, Version 4 features disk optimization, emergency volume creation, and S.M.A.R.T. tools. Scott will provide an overview of TechTool Pro.