Posted by Stephen Waits
Sun, 11 Jun 2006 09:11:28 GMT
This is pretty cool. Box.net offers a free 1GB of storage, making it easier for you to share files with friends, or move big files from home to work. What’s nice is it integrates nicely with OS X’s iDisk - which is a silly name for WebDAV/Finder integration. This allows you to mount your free 1GB box.net “disk” on your desktop.
To do this, you just choose “Go -> Connect To Server” in Finder. Enter “https://www.box.net/dav” for the server, and your username/email and password when prompted. That’s it!
The Windows XP equivalent is “My Network Places -> Add Network Place”.
To sign up for your free 1GB account, go here.
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Posted by Stephen Waits
Sat, 03 Jun 2006 23:02:30 GMT
Last weekend I all but bricked my OS X. Actually, I didn’t do anything. I’d just finished up some things and decided it was finally a good time to run that Restart Requiring Software Update that I’d wanted to install for about a week. This included The latest Security Update (2006, #3 IIRC), iWeb, iDVD, Quicktime 7.1, and that’s about all I remember.
So, I shut down all of my apps, ran Software Update. It did its thing and then prompted me to restart, which I did.
Now to install that Xcode update that I’d also wanted to install for some time. Installed it before even trying to run any of my other apps. Can’t remember if I rebooted at this point - probably not. But this is where all hell broke loose…
I started Mail. It started, but the instant it tried to render a message in the preview pane it crashed. Hmm.. Adium, similar behavior. Started fine, but as soon as I popped open an IM window, crash.
At this point I ran Repair Permissions and Verify Disk. Two things that you really don’t ever need to do, but Mac Lore ignorantly says they’re to be done, so I did. They were both fine.
I fired up Console.app to watch what was happening at some point, and could see the crash dumps happening. So, I ran all the crashing apps again, and compared all of the crash logs. Yep, they were all crashing on the exact same thing. Some code in JavascriptCore, which along with WebCore forms the WebKit framework (think shared library, like the IE component in Windows). I found some (apparently) non-WebKit apps that ran just fine. So now I know, my WebKit got hosed in the update.
Ahhh.. I just need to reinstall the latest updates. I’ll run Software Update.. wait, WTF!?!? Yes, Software Update uses WebKit too.
Ok ok.. I’ll download the updates myself and just install them manually by double-clicking on the mpkg files. Wait.. WTF?!?! That’s right, the Installer needs WebKit too.
Shit.. I asked a guy at work for some advice. He said maybe I could run the CLI installer. Ahh yes, that has to be it! I get home and anxiously give it a shot.. and wait.. WTF?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! You guessed it, even /usr/sbin/installer needs WebKit.
The moral of the story is that OS X is basically bricked without WebKit. I’ll say it: That’s fucking dumb! There’s no way apps like Software Update and installer should have such dependencies! Not in a sane world anyway.
The guy at work, and several on the Apple Support Forums, suggested that if I couldn’t get my WebKit fixed, I’d have to do Archive & Install. So, I took that task on today.
First, I backed up my critical stuff to a few network shares on my Windows box. Then stuck the DVD in. But wait.. my Mini rejects it. I’d noticed it was rejecting some DVDs lately, so I took out my DVR-K05 drive and replaced it with the original factory installed drive.
Ok, now it takes the disk. I stick it in, click on whatever, whatever, whatever, it detects I’m installing an old version and autoselects Archive and Install, and Save User Stuff, click go. And how’d that work? FUCKING BRILLIANTLY! Here I am, with basically all of my stuff still exactly in place and working great, minus a few installed things like the MS keyboard driver and subversion.
Shame on Apple for the wonky Software Update and Installer dependencies. Kudos to Apple on implementing Archive and Install!
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Posted by Stephen Waits
Sat, 22 Apr 2006 04:17:46 GMT
Wherever you look, idiots. I got sick of my nightly logs being full of sshd brute force attempts. I didn’t want to run sshd through inetd, which does provide connection throttling.
I wanted to blacklist the idiots in realtime - but i don’t believe in fscking with firewalls automagically. So, I rebuilt sshd with libwrap support, and hacked together this ruby script.
It’s been running fine for a few months now, so have at it!
Download it here.
Enjoy!
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Posted by Stephen Waits
Wed, 19 Apr 2006 15:43:09 GMT
FreeNAS is a branch of FreeBSD dedicated to NAS. This is really shaping up to be a nice system. I’m not quite ready to incorporate into my own network, but will certainly give it a shot in the future.
They just released version 0.66.
Via BSD News.
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Posted by Stephen Waits
Fri, 07 Apr 2006 16:43:00 GMT
Boot Camp, Boot Camp, Boot Camp. We’ve seen an awful lot of news in the last few days about Apple’s release of dual-boot support. While yes, that is good, even surprising news, it’s not the real story.
The real story is from a company other than Apple, that’s released a product (in Beta) which is far more useful than Boot Camp. What product is that? It’s Parallels.
What is it? It’s virtualization software, like VMWare. It let’s you run any number of Operating System installations, all at the SAME TIME, at near native speeds. That means that you’re not limited to just running XP, or whatever Apple decides to support with Boot Camp, but you can run Linux, FreeBSD, even OS/2 - again, at the same time!
Again, this is not emulation, so all of you old school Mac people who are unwittingly a bit technically challenged should not be comparing this to Virtual PC or whatever other emulation package you used in the past. This is virtualization. The OSes you run inside of Parallels will be running at near native speeds - in other words, at almost the same speed as if you were actually running that OS on its own!
So, the real story isn’t dual booting - it’s virtualization. If you have an Intel Mac, please go try Parallels today. At a minimum, go check out the screenshots!
No, I don’t work for them, I haven’t even tried it as I don’t have an Intel Mac – yet. But this is what I’ve been waiting for, and kudos to them for beating VMWare to the punch!
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Posted by Stephen Waits
Fri, 10 Mar 2006 20:43:08 GMT
You know how explorer.exe sometimes won’t let go of a file that you want to delete? So you have to fucking reboot and then delete it? Which then, of course, interrupts everything you’re working on.
Fucking Windows!
Well check out the Unlocker. I just installed and used on my system and it worked like a charm!
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Posted by Stephen Waits
Tue, 20 Dec 2005 15:50:00 GMT
This is a really cool hack, which allows you to use VMWare’s free player to install Other OSes on your PC. Basically, you can almost get the benefit of the Pay version of VMWare here, for free.
Via lifehacker.
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