Mac 101: Dashboard


 
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Old 11-11-2008
Mac 101: Dashboard

Not everything you do on your Mac requires a heavy-duty application. For those smaller tasks, Mac OS X features Dashboard, a semi-transparent layer that floats above your desktop at the press of a key, and provides access to several fun and functional, mini applications called widgets. Dashboard even includes widgets for some of your Mac applications, including Address Book and iTunes, which allow you to access your contacts and music, respectively, without having to switch over to the full application. But it doesn't end there, you can add more widgets to Dashboard and, if you're feeling really ambitious, you can even create your own widgets.By default, Dashboard starts up when you first turn on your Mac, but you won't actually see it until you open it by either clicking its icon in the Dock, pressing the F12 key or the Dashboard key (F4 on the aluminum keyboards). To hide Dashboard, click on any Dashboard area that doesn't contain a widget or press the F12 key again. Here's a quick start guide to Dashboard and the included widgets.

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PCAP_GET_SELECTABLE_FD(3PCAP)											     PCAP_GET_SELECTABLE_FD(3PCAP)

NAME
pcap_get_selectable_fd - get a file descriptor on which a select() can be done for a live capture SYNOPSIS
#include <pcap/pcap.h> int pcap_get_selectable_fd(pcap_t *p); DESCRIPTION
pcap_get_selectable_fd() returns, on UNIX, a file descriptor number for a file descriptor on which one can do a select() or poll() to wait for it to be possible to read packets without blocking, if such a descriptor exists, or -1, if no such descriptor exists. Some network devices opened with pcap_create() and pcap_activate(), or with pcap_open_live(), do not support select() or poll() (for example, regular network devices on FreeBSD 4.3 and 4.4, and Endace DAG devices), so -1 is returned for those devices. Note that in: FreeBSD prior to FreeBSD 4.6; NetBSD prior to NetBSD 3.0; OpenBSD prior to OpenBSD 2.4; Mac OS X prior to Mac OS X 10.7; select() and poll() do not work correctly on BPF devices; pcap_get_selectable_fd() will return a file descriptor on most of those versions (the exceptions being FreeBSD 4.3 and 4.4), but a simple select() or poll() will not indicate that the descriptor is readable until a full buffer's worth of packets is received, even if the read timeout expires before then. To work around this, an application that uses select() or poll() to wait for packets to arrive must put the pcap_t in non-blocking mode, and must arrange that the select() or poll() have a timeout less than or equal to the read timeout, and must try to read packets after that timeout expires, regardless of whether select() or poll() indicated that the file descriptor for the pcap_t is ready to be read or not. (That workaround will not work in FreeBSD 4.3 and later; however, in FreeBSD 4.6 and later, select() and poll() work correctly on BPF devices, so the workaround isn't necessary, although it does no harm.) Note also that poll() doesn't work on character special files, including BPF devices, in Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5, so, while select() can be used on the descriptor returned by pcap_get_selectable_fd(), poll() cannot be used on it those versions of Mac OS X. Kqueues also don't work on that descriptor. poll(), but not kqueues, work on that descriptor in Mac OS X releases prior to 10.4; poll() and kqueues work on that descriptor in Mac OS X 10.6 and later. pcap_get_selectable_fd() is not available on Windows. RETURN VALUE
A selectable file descriptor is returned if one exists; otherwise, -1 is returned. SEE ALSO
pcap(3PCAP), select(2), poll(2) 5 April 2008 PCAP_GET_SELECTABLE_FD(3PCAP)