Category Archives: Software

Hosting a Fedora network install using Mac OS X

Posted by Dustin on September 28, 2008 None comments

Sometimes it just seems that everything is out to get a guy, nothing goes right. This seems to be the case today when it comes to performing an upgrade on my Fedora Linux based file, web, email, XBMC and whatever else server. After burning three copies of the install media none of them work, despite correct SHA1 verification and burning with different drives. What’s a geek to do?

Do a network install!

I downloaded the full DVD hoping to do a local install from it so I could avoid the long downtime of doing an over the internet based network install. The problem however is that I either have two bad DVD burn drives or there is something goofy with the image I downloaded. Everything about the DVD iso checks out, the SHA1 is fine and I can loop back mount it without issue. Rather than give up I decided to do a network install by mounting the iso on my Mac mini and sharing the contents via web sharing. As it turns out, this is very easy to do.

This little mini howto assumes you have already downloaded the DVD install media for Fedora. If you haven’t, I suggest you do that first.

Enter System Preferences and choose sharing. Click on Web Sharing to enable your Mac’s web server. Be sure to note the IP address. Next, double click on the Fedora DVD install iso. OS X will mount it and make it available to you. Next, start terminal and type ‘cd /Library/WebServer/Documents’ without quotes and press enter. Type ‘ln -s /Volumes/Fed* fedora’ (*type Fed and then press tab to autocomplete) and press enter. On my system the complete command looks like ‘ln -s /Volumes/Fedora\ 9\ i386\ DV/ fedora’

Open finder and browse into your mounted DVD media. Look for a folder called images and copy out the boot.iso file. Burn this file to CD using OS X’s Disk Utility. Next, take that disk to your Linux machine and boot from it. Choose install or upgrade and then when asked where the install media is located choose URL. Enter http:///fedora where is the IP address from your Mac. That’s it, the install will then continue as if you were using a local CD/DVD.

The first real test of EyeTV and the HD Homerun

Posted by Dustin on September 22, 2008 None comments

Although I’ve had the hardware and software for a little while the setup had never been put to too much of test until tonight. Tonight was the start of the new season of Heroes but it also overlapped with an episode of Sarah Conner Chronicles. I am quite pleased to report that EyeTV handled the whole process very well. It managed to record both shows and deal the overlapping shows (it is configured to record 2 minutes before and after the show) by swapping which tuner it was recording from.

Sun’s VirtualBox

Posted by Dustin on September 13, 2008 None comments

Virtualization. Despite being around for years it has suddenly become a hot topic today and it seems that everyone is trying to get a piece of the action. Sun is no different.

Virtualization has been around since the mainframe days but virtualization as we usually see today started with VMware (to the best of my knowledge). VMware has had available for years a few different products that allowed you to dedicate and entire machine to hosting virtual machines or simply run other operating systems on your desktop PC. Today’s computers are more powerful than ever before and even the cheapest of computers today typically has some power to spare. With the abundance of computers with excess power continuing to grow, it is no wonder virtualization has gotten to popular.

About a year ago VMware noticed that virtualization was getting more popular and decided that then was the time to really hook people. They released a free virtualization product (and since then some more) allowing people to run virtual machines on their computer for free.

Soon other virtualization techniques came to market, many of them also free. VirtualBox is one of them and is a relatively new entry into the virtualization market but is already showing some great promise. Unlike some other virtualization products, VirtualBox is cross platform covering the usual suspects like Windows, Linux and Mac. Of course, being from Sun it also runs on Sun’s Solaris and OpenSolaris operating systems.

VirtualBox, while young, shows great promise and it is available for free (for personal using and testing). It brings together some of the things I love about VMware. Simple to manage, cross platform and easy migration from one host machine to another. Some of what VirtualBox adds is native iSCSI initiator support, Remote Desktop Protocol support for running virtual machines and the ability to run on Windows, Linux, Mac and Solaris. It even supports the seemless mode seen in VMware’s Fusion and Parallels.

If you’re looking for a free way to get into virtualization then give VirtualBox a shot. I think you’ll be impressed.

iSCSI in Leopard now a reality — Updated

Posted by Dustin on September 4, 2008 2 comments

In all my playing with OpenSolaris and iSCSI I decided to give iSCSI using Linux and OS X another shot. Turns out the GlobalSAN iSCSI client for OS X, available for free from Studio Network Solutions, works much better than it did just a couple of months ago. Lock ups, so far, seem to be a thing of the past.

To make use of it I decided to pull the drive out of my external case and put it in my Linux system. I then exported it via the iSCSI Enterprise Target software (available here) already installed on the system. After installing the latest GlobalSAN iSCSI initiator software (available here)on my mini I was able to connect to the iSCSI Lun on my Linux machine.

So far I’m finding that I’m able to get nearly full speed out of the disk and am able to copy large files to the drive at around 44MB/s.

Update: One caveat I have found is it takes a lot longer for the Mac to enter sleep if it is connected to the iSCSI share.

Vista Woes

Posted by Dustin on August 29, 2008 None comments

I always thought it was just the tech crowd complaining about Vista but that isn’t so. Apparently “average users” are unimpressed with Vista and/or the machines it comes on or they’re having such a difficult time they need to buy a book.

Exhibit A) College student is upset with her junk laptop. Vista won’t access certain university resources and the battery is always dying.

Exhibit B) Book store worker says she has gotten a half dozen or so people in the last couple of weeks looking for books on using Vista. For an OS touted as being easier to use that doesn’t sound promising. One customer was a trained IT professional.

Exhibit C) My own experience. Windows explorer and the save dialogs are a complete cluster fu*&. Browsing for files is a royal pain because the explorer window shows three different views of the same crap, it is just overwhelming and even with all the information you still feel lost. Also, why does the entire machine hang off of the desktop? Doesn’t make sense.

Or how about the borked send to compressed file thing? If you right click on a file and choose send to compressed file the OS will dutifully compress the file and then highlight the part of the file name you want to rename. How convenient! Only problem however is that the highlight doesn’t have keyboard focus, you have to use your mouse anyway. Maybe it’s because I choose to show extensions but either way, pretty lame.

EyeTV and the HD Homerun

Posted by Dustin on August 25, 2008 None comments

A while back I posted about having ordered EyeTV and the HD Homerun. I promised a post once it all arrived and here it is.

If you didn’t visit any of the links I provided before then here is a quick over view of what I ordered. The HD Homerun is a network based dual ATSC/QAM tuner. ATSC is the new digital broadcast standard and QAM is the how many channels are distributed on the cable system. Chances are the cable TV provider in your area provides at least some QAM channels. The HD Homerun has two hook ups meaning I can record two shows at once or watch and record a show or even watch two shows at the same time. The HD Homerun will also allow you to use one of the ports for ATSC and the other for QAM if you so choose. The HD Homerun’s ethernet port runs at 100Mbit and easily supports watching a pair of channels. Based on some entirely unscientific google searching, I found that the highest bitrate available using ATSC is about 19Mb/s while QAM is around 56Mb/s. Like a wireless network, neither actually hit those rates often so the HD Homerun is quite capable of streaming two channels at the same time.

I went with the HD Homerun over any of the other tuner options because it doesn’t lock me into a tuner that works only on the Mac platform. As much as I love Mac and all I just didn’t want to drop cash on a solution that would tie me indefinitely to the Mac platform for watching and recording TV.

EyeTV is software for the Mac that can talk to the HD Homerun to watch a show or record (or both). It provides a some what confusing interface that lacks any sort of intuitive flow. This is really unlike most Mac apps. For example, when using the program guide you can click on a show to view details about the show such as a full description. Once on this screen, there is no clear indication of how to return to the program guide again. There is no back button of any sort and clicking on the Program guide button again doesn’t bring you back where you were. Instead, you are supposed just click anywhere on the detail screen to go back where you were.

Despite the interface EyeTV works rather well. One of my favorite things about EyeTV is how it works with the Mac to wake it when it is time to do a recording and the EyeTV helper app will launch EyeTV. While I have heard rumors of Windows Media Center being able to do this I’m not entirely sure that it can and can do it reliably.

Another thing EyeTV can do is re-encode and then share via HTTP any recordings that have via the network. The encoding is small enough to work with a 802.11g network yet of good quality. Best of all you’re not tied to just viewing the files on another Mac, Windows is welcome too.

If you looking for a way to watch and/or record TV the HD Homerun plus any DVR software package is a good bet. EyeTV for the Mac is definitely the way to go despite some interface shortcomings if you are a Mac user. If you like MythTV on Linux or Media Portal or Media Center on Windows the HD Homerun is a great choice.

Fixing missing iMovie 08 Files

Posted by Dustin on August 9, 2008 1 comments

A while back I wrote about how I lost my file server. On my file server were a number of video files that I was editing in iMovie 08. While I had managed to transfer the files from tape again, my project file still showed the files as missing. Recently I finally decided to get back to fixing the project and here is how I did it.

I headed over to Apple’s discussions area and searched a bit. After a while I found a thread that discussed my exact issue and it mentioned editing the project’s project file. Well, that was for an older version of iMovie. iMovie 08′s project file is a binary file rather than a straight text file making it much more difficult to edit.

So, rather than edit the file I thought I’d take a look at the contents of the file and make sure my files were in all the same spots iMovie was expecting them to be in. Using terminal, I browsed to my iMovie project file location of ~ruedu/Movies/iMovie Projects/Big Production. In this directory is a file called Project. On this file I used a command called strings. Strings will search for and display any strings that are present in a binary file. Using strings, this is what I saw.


X/Volumes/RAID/iMovie Events.localized/Video/clip-2007-11-03 14
;08;26.dv
X/Volumes/RAID/iMovie Events.localized/Video/clip-2007-11-03 14
;10;25.dv
X/Volumes/RAID/iMovie Events.localized/Video/clip-2007-11-03 14
;1

I then compared this to what was really present on my RAID volume. Sure enough, the file names didn’t match. It was


X/Volumes/RAID/iMovie Events.localized/Import/clip-2007-11-03 14
;08;26.dv
X/Volumes/RAID/iMovie Events.localized/Import/clip-2007-11-03 14
;10;25.dv
X/Volumes/RAID/iMovie Events.localized/Import/clip-2007-11-03 14
;1

I renamed Import to Video and restarted iMovie. My project was now correct!

HD Homerun and EyeTV on its way

Posted by Dustin on August 5, 2008 1 comments

In getting ready for the coming TV season I wanted to get my recording capabilities up to snuff. I’ve grown tired of trying to get MythTV working and decided to bite the bullet and buy a solution. I decided on a HD Homerun with some EyeTV software for mac.

The great thing about the HD Homerun is that I’m not tied to the Mac for watching or recording TV, I can use just about anything I want including MythTV (despite giving up on it for now), Windows Media Center and even just VLC. I post some more about it as soon as it gets here.

Great add on for Spaces

Posted by Dustin on July 3, 2008 None comments

Another nice new feature of Leopard is Spaces. For anyone who has used Linux at all you’ll recognize that Spaces is nothing more than virtual desktops. The problem with Spaces is that it isn’t enough like virtual desktops to really make me feel at home with it. A preferences panel add on called Warp fixes this.

http://www.ksuther.com/warp/

Using Warp I can now drag a window from once space to the next or go to the next space by pushing my mouse against an edge.

My Favorite Mac Software

Posted by Dustin on March 6, 2008 1 comments

I’ve been using my Mac Mini as what I’d call my “primary computer” almost from the moment I received it. While I have a laptop that I can use around the house or travel with, I use the Mac because it is so quiet, it’s hooked up to a 22″ screen and because I enjoy the OS X experience. Over the months I’ve managed to find a few software titles that help me get things done.

  • iTerm – Nice terminal app that more closely resembles my favorite Windows SSH client, putty. Has tabs, etc
  • Firefox – Who doesn’t know what Firefox is?
  • Thunderbird – Mail just can’t compete with the speed of Thunderbird for IMAP accounts
  • Gamepedia – I play games and I like to track them. There are other software options available, even some more generic but I just like this one
  • Adium – Adium is a multi-protocol chat client using the same libraries as Pidgin
  • Vienna – Great RSS reader
  • Things – Simple way to track…things
  • Mythfrontend – MythTV is my DVR of choice and I need a way to access it on the Mac, this it!
  • Integrity – This is a simple link checker for OS X, similar to Xenu’s Link Sleuth. Xenu’s Link Sleuth is superior however.
  • MacTheRipper – Best DVD ripping tool I’ve found for the Mac
  • NeoOffice – This is currently the only way to run OpenOffice “natively” on the Mac. It’s slow but gets the job done
  • Remote Desktop Connection – Sometimes you need to access a Windows machine. I use this primarily to connect to my XP VMWare guest running on my Linux server for web site testing
  • Macfuse/SSHFS – Nearly identical to fuse and sshfs for Linux
  • Transmission and Azureus – One bittorrent client just isn’t enough
  • VLC – Great multi-platform video player. Perian is able to install many of the same codecs VLC will play but I have soft spot for VLC