[nycbug-talk] Unkosher Mac file request

[Isaac Levy]

Hi JH,

On Jun 27, 2005, at 10:11 PM, jh wrote:
>
> I'm trying to get a friend's aging Mac (iMac w/ 10.3.7 on it)  
> working... but I've hit a wall. His OS disks are scratched;

Call apple and see if they'll replace them- they very well may do it  
cheap.

> his original hard drive crapped (recovered it via dd_rescue onto a  
> spare IDE drive I had), his Installer is corrupt. End of the line...
>
> Can anyone shoot me a copy of Installer that might work on this  
> box? He's rather cash strapped at the moment, and this seems to be  
> all that is sitting between him and a reconstituted Mac.


If it's a copy of OSX you'r looking for, you'll need to buy it.  It's  
cheap, and at the end of the day, it constitutes a relationship with  
Apple- on their terms- for how you get to use their OS.  If you like  
the OS, you need to pay to use it (around $100 every 20 months or so  
isn't so bad, really).
If you don't like the terms, you have plenty of other options, you  
can very well install the fledgling FreeBSD 6.0, (now, quietly/ 
ironically supporting PPC!), OpenBSD-ppc, or NetBSD-ppc, or straight  
Darwin (Straight Darwin will be able to mount the HFS+ volumes from  
the old mac):

http://openbsd.org/macppc.html
http://netbsd.org/Ports/macppc/
http://opendarwin.org/en/news/darwin801.html


On Jun 27, 2005, at 11:10 PM, jh wrote:

> George R. wrote:
>> Second, this list is focused on BSD Unix, and really only deals  
>> with OS X land tangentally. . .
>>
>
> Since a lot of folks using Macs on this list, and since I'm on this  
> list
> for FreeBSD stuffs, and since Apple allows you to download the
> Installer.app (in archived format), it didn't seem all that harmful.

I'm not too knowledgeable of the details, but Apple is VERY clear  
about the terms of their downloads, even their Open Source software,  
code under the Apple Public Source License (APSL) cannot be  
redistributed except from Apple without written permission to do so.

If what you are looking for is indeed distributed for free by Apple,  
you'll find it at:

http://developer.apple.com

Or- if it's Darwin related, you'll find it at:

http://opendarwin.org


> That being said, so as to be kosher, I can get what I want from  
> Apple -
> as disk image/.pkg file. So...
>
> Can someone here give me the correct command line to extract the
> contents of arbitrary cpio/pax archive (Apple uses BSD .pkg to
> distribute software, apparently). That'd probably get me what I need -
> and I think is BSD related, no? Went through the man page, didn't seem
> very clear to me.

pax is the utility you are looking for- but as Bob said, apple .pkg  
files, and BSD .pkg files are different altogether.

>
> Thanks.
>
> jh

Best,
.ike