Hacking on the Mac

Terminal or Terminal.app

Background Image -- How to set a background image on Leopard. Something possible on Tiger but for some reason no longer supported on Leopard.

The new Leopard terminal doesn't allow setting the background image.

This feature was supported in Tiger.

The hack is to copy a .term file created on Tiger and use this on Leopard.

Any customized terminal configuration created on Tiger should be found in "/Users/<userid>/Library/Application\ Support/Terminal/<filename>.term"

If a minimal .term file is used the other values will revert to defaults.

Try this. Using a text editor such as vi, create the file new.txt with the following contents. Then double-click on the file in finder. A new terminal window should open using a background image.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>WindowSettings</key>
	<array>
		<dict>
			<key>BackgroundImagePath</key>
			<string>/Library/Desktop Pictures/Ripples Blue.jpg</string>
			<key>Columns</key>
			<string>80</string>
			<key>Rows</key>
			<string>25</string>
		</dict>
	</array>
</dict>
</plist>

VMware Fusion

Nonpersistent Disks -- Users of VMware Workstation are used to having images that discard all changes when they are shut down. But this feature isn't available with Fusion.

VMware Workstation for Windows and Linux support non-persistent disks.

A non-persistent disk will discard all changes when the VM is shut down. This is good for testing new software or experimenting with settings.

While VMware Fusion does not provide the option to create non-persistent disks, it will support this option.

Either create a VM on Windows or Linux and setup persistent disks, or add the appropriate line to an existing *.vmx file. The correct line to use depends on which disk is the boot partition. Typically this will be one of the following:

ide0:0.mode = "independent-nonpersistent"

or

scsi0:0.mode = "independent-nonpersistent"

To enable persistence change this line to:

ide0:0.mode = "independent-persistent"

To confirm this is working compare the MD5 sum of the *.vmdk file before and after running the VM in non-persistent mode.