fileXray has the ability to rapidly run all file system objects on an HFS+ volume through a piece of code called a “filter”. A filter can examine a file system object and use arbitrary criteria to either accept or reject it. fileXray comes with more than two dozen built-in filters and you can even write [...]

Does the idea of wielding power—a lot of power—intrigue you? Check out fileXray. Start with the ebook. If you are one of the target audiences, it will be worth your time.

“K64″ is what Apple refers to as the 64-bit version of the kernel beginning with Snow Leopard. As an end user, you really should not worry about the bitness of the kernel. If your Apple computer is not booting into K64 by default, you don’t need it—unless, of course, you know that you need it. [...]

The other day I came across this web page in which the author describes his experiment to create a tiny ELF executable that will run on Linux. The result: a 45-byte ELF executable that executes and returns a value. The executable is functionally equivalent to the one generated from compiling the following C program. /* [...]

Suppose you have a Macintosh without a TPM. This, of course, is highly likely because only the first few x86-based Macintosh models had TPMs. Now suppose you really want to experiment with Trusted Computing or features of the TPM in general. Your needs could be development-related or they could be purely academic. Well, you can [...]

The other day I needed to know within one of my experimental programs if the host x86 processor supports certain features. In many cases, the operating system provides interfaces that can answer such questions. Sometimes, the interfaces may not have the answer, or you may wish to avoid them for other reasons. (Say, you don’t [...]

The Apple Kernel Debug Kit comes with a kernel gdb macros file (kgmacros) that contains numerous macros useful during low-level development and analysis. One of the macros is showbootermemorymap, which dumps the physical memory map from EFI. The information in this map is very useful for certain types of development. Since I am often mobile—without [...]

XBinary is software that lets you add kernel-level support for executing arbitrary binary formats on Mac OS X. To read more about it and to download it, visit the XBinary page.

Here are some extended notes on understanding, compiling, and using AncientFS, the file system I talked about in the previous blog post.

There has been much buzz about new features and functionality in MacFUSE 2.0. Besides the MacFUSE 2.0 release, there are still more new and interesting things to be discussed in the realm of user-space file systems. As I described and briefly demonstrated during my recent talk at the Googleplex, I wrote several new user-space file [...]