Computers & Tech posts page 11

ls colors for both linux and bsd

in

ls can have nice colors enabled to differentiate between file types easily, but the parameter is different between the BSD version (uses --color) and the GNU Linux version (uses -G). I have been setting up a “bash_profile”, among other things, to be shared between my users on all the POSIX computers I use. Some are Linux, some BSD based. I use Bash on both, and I wanted the colors from ls to be used on both with the shared “bash_profile” file. I couldn’t find anyone else’s solution for this, so I figured one out myself and will post it in case others want the same versatility. I simply test ls with one of the parameters and see if it throws an error. I then can set my aliases with the appropriate parameter. I do it like so:

ls --color > /dev/null 2>&1
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
    alias l="ls -F --color"
    alias ll="ls -lh --color"
else
    alias l="ls -FG"
    alias ll="ls -lhG"
fi

iBook Audio Issue

in

After running the utility Onyx on my computer to both clean it up a bit and change some settings, I suddenly found my computer having some troubles.  Dialog boxes would just beachball shortly after appearing, and the applications that created them would have to be force quit.  After trying to change my volume, I noticed that something was wrong with my audio, so I turned off the text-to-speech I had set up for dialog boxes.  After this, the beachball problem stopped.

But I had no audio at all.  On further investigation, I noticed the OS was not recognizing any audio devices, input or output.  I found a forum thread discussing this issue.  I couldn’t find the cause, but I did find a solution.  I simply had to download Quicktime from Apple and reinstall it over my current install.  Since then, I have full audio and no problems with it, and no unusual beachballing.

I’m not sure what happened that caused this problem, but it might have been related to the permissions check Onyx does on loading.  I hope to avoid it in the future.  I will be more careful using Onyx in the future anyway.

Disappearing iPhoto Library

in

Today, I noticed a strange thing while doing a bit of filesystem cleanup:  My entire iPhoto library, containing 8000+ images, had somehow turned into a 300k alias file pointing to nothing.  Concerned, I looked elsewhere to make sure I hadn’t just stored it in a different location for organization purposes and the alias had broken.  I hadn’t.  Then I remembered earlier today noticing that my hard drive seemed significantly roomier than normal.  I had just emptied the trash a couple days ago (usually don’t empty often, just in case), but there shouldn’t have been anything nearly that big in there.

Luckily, I use Apple’s Time Machine for backup, plus my own other methods.  In Time Machine, I went back about two weeks before the actual library was there.  Restored it of course.

I have no idea what happened there.  I hadn’t used iPhoto or been reorganizing anything around that area for a full month.  If I had somehow accidentally created an alias in the folder, there would be no reason it wouldn’t perform he normal action of appending alias to the name.

Continue reading post "Disappearing iPhoto Library"

iTunes CDDB info for the Yars

in

In January, my former band The Yars released their first full album (they were all shorts or live while I was there). I’ve had a copy of it since then, but haven’t imported it. I had heard the songs tons of times as Dwight was working on them, so was certainly burned out on them. I also don’t entirely like the sound direction the songs have taken, and it’s a little weird listening to another drummer play them. And it wasn’t in the iTunes store, so they had no CDDB data. I wanted to wait for that. So I never got around to importing it.

Today I decided to. It’s been in the iTunes store and other venues for months now. But still, there was no CDDB in the Gracenote database that iTunes uses. I could go to the store and see all the track info, but there was no way to get it to the album. But I found this article describing how you can copy store songs to a playlist, then use one of Doug’s scripts to copy them to another set of songs. So I went to the iTunes store to copy them to a playlist. Unfortunately, the new fancy iTunes song playlist doesn’t allow this to happen. The songs are like HTML elements on a page. And I had planned to boycott getting new versions of iTunes because they had cut off support for third party access. But just recently I think the very features that were now causing me trouble, plus the full new version number, had enticed me. I found the “Column Browser”, which does have a Cocoa style list of the songs, but I searched every possible genre with no luck at finding the Yars.

Continue reading post "iTunes CDDB info for the Yars"

Objective File System

in

This is a modification of part of a previous post.

each file is stored in two databases: the normal hierchical db and an objective db. The hierarchical db is used for speed and for compatibility with current file systems. The objective db is used for metadata and other information less critical to basic file operations.

The objective db contains much of the metadata (non file operation related stuff). Each file type is an object type in the database, inheriting from the basic file object or one of its children. Each file type will have its own attributes as well as actions related to it. The actions may consist only of OS functions related to it, may also include application calls, and could even include user/other created scripts and functions related to the file type. The actions would provide the data from the file to the system or other function that is necessary for it to operate (functions and applications would all have a defined standard interface to them).

Workshop Paradigm

in

apps + files organized by job/workshop

example: music making workshop has music creation apps + users personal (and other’s shared?) music files

different users have same apps (tools) but their own files (works)

different jobs/workshops may use same tools ie music making and music listening workshop may both need some listening tools

Leopard:Mac OS X.5 first impressions

***finder:
yay, finally can save default view settings, including column width and sort column, to be applied to all folders. this is huge for me
quickview thing awesome. been wanting something like that for a long time.
-plays movies and sounds
–movies pop up fairly small, must press full screen button to see big
-text documents readable, probably much better for just reading them than using textedit
-excel spreadsheets even viewable, though formatting severely messed up at times, sometimes unreadable, very slow to open
-ichat logs even viewable
-easy, just hit space to open, space to close again.
-can navigate to other images in same folder with arrow keys
-can put in full screen via button, no apparent keyboard method. in full screen, hit unintuitive tab or shift tab to move to next or previous items in same folder. arrow keys do nothing, why not use them just as they were used in regular quicklook
slideshows seem to have disappeared completely. can view images, one at a time only, in full screen
icon set nicer, easier on eyes
coverflow somewhat interesting for image folders, though probably won’t use it.
-makes windows bigger if smaller than certain minimum size
-movies get first frame view, sounds get nothing special
sidebar thing too wide, can’t go by just icons anymore.
-search thing seems interesting, but doesn’t provide very useful results, as they don’t appear in a normal find type dialog where you can refine the results or group items. crashed the finder once
feels a bit more solid and streamlined
trash – finally one can view items in the trash. they cannot be opened, but previewed by icon or in quickview
can turn off warning when changing file extension, a very annoying thing unalterable in previous versions
-also, finder highlights all of name but extension (except via second click) when editing name
***spotlight
must reindex upon install, index manages to miss some things such as iphotos
new search results windows finally part of an application, the finder, so they no longer get lost
new search results window not nearly as nice, no arrangements by kind whatsoever, results all bungled together in one of standard finder views (except columns). no simple buttons for limiting search either.
-image results not nearly as nice, must type “kind:image” after query to limit to images, then use standard finder view
***System
guest user accounts, been wanting that for a long time too. just concerned about it deleting the guest account every time, may limit its usefulness: if let people login as guest to create a project, they’ll need to put it somewhere special so it won’t get deleted, as I understand it.
can finally work with groups without downloading server utilities. is in accounts pane. seems quite easy to create a group and assign users (from GUI users only) to them
all preference panes more streamlined, often fitting on one screen now. except that a lot of the functionality for some things, like network settings, must be accessed in a seperate “advanced” screen
***Network
not sure about new placement of firewall settings, hopefully the appropriate firewall activates when related port opened in Networks
***Textedit
autosave feature nice, but defaults to every 30 seconds. Items on desktop then refresh their icon every 30 seconds.
search highlighting is nifty, caches eye quite well. should highlight all occurrences and keep highlight on for a while so you can see them while perusing document
***spotlight
must reindex everything
***install
takes forever, much longer than it should. the dvd media verification really took forever in itself, though I figured I should run it through for the first go. xcode install takes quite forever itself, not done through normal installer.
preserved many, though not all, of my preferences that have corresponding preferences in the new system
***Safari
so slow. pages take noticably longer to load. app itself slow. has improved greatly after several uses
some pages functionality broken. my online banking doesn’t work
bookmarks menu – submenu items pop into awful places, sometimes covering up the items below the parent so you can’t continue to the rest of menu, can’t access items it covers without closing entire menu and starting over
return doesn’t allow editing of bookmark names as it does items in finder, elsewhere
find much nicer, inline bar at top doesn’t open popup, highlights items brightly, highlights all occurrences, should highlight all brightly (only does one at a time)
javascript seems much faster, at least to select all comments for deletion in wordpress

***iCal
noticeable problem, info pane seems to have been removed. get info by double clicking which brings up small popup near item. not as readable.
-not nearly as quick for people like me who leave the info pane open.I have virtually no reason to click on an item unless I want info on it.
-opens in view mode first, must click edit button to edit or Command E
-is somewhat more concise though, leaving out extra info for items without it
must now hit return to edit name instead of double clicking. more consistent with finder behavior, but slower
***Terminal
ls: colors no longer automatically provided with color output
>console: still works, font seems weirder, perhaps harder to read
-often has some error messages near top when first entering
-still no multiple screens
less: new less much slower, does weirrd scrolling thing
***etc
quicksilver dock icon appears now
drop shadow seems more significant, makes things look further behind current window
computer runs hotter it seems
computer runs noticably slower overall.
inconsistencies continue in command keys used in different applications, often unintuitive and arbitrary. Command L in AddressBook and Command E in iCal edit entries.

back on mac os x

in

I guess I forgot to mention it, but my server is back to running the mac os, and it has been for a good while now. My brother had sent the install DVD finally. I erased the old partition and installed the OS cleanly, then copied over my files from backup, which I’m glad I’ve finally been doing. Of course, I could have backed them all up before wiping the drive in this instance, but it could have been worse, and there may have been some file corruption of some sort.

Unfortunately, I forgot to backup some of the files that weren’t in my home folder. Mainly game related stuff. I lost nearly my entire collection of video game ROMs, which I’ve been having trouble finding now. I also lost some game saves, including some EVN ones that I had spent some time setting up. This has led me to start doing an occasional backup of the entire boot drive. This was made possible by my purchase of a 120GB drive.

I have recently purchased a new computer for use for myself. This one will become server only. I may take it back to linux once again for less overhead and what not. The new computer is just an updated version of my iBook G3, an iBook G4. It will be nice to again be able to take my computer elsewhere without taking down the server.

mac drive troubles; now using ubuntu

in

A few weeks ago, I came home and my iBook crashed. One app after another gave me the spinning beachball of death, until I could do nothing but move the beachball. I restarted, and no startup disk was recognized. I restarted several times to no avail. Finally I shut down and then started it up. It booted, but then all the apps quickly started crashing again.

I booted using a Techtool 4.0.1 disk. It was ridiculously slow. The volume structes test took 8 hours, and told me I had a problem and needed to rebuild the structures. I told it to do its thing. It took another 8 hours. Rebooting after that, my disk was no longer found again. I gave up on the problem then, and decided to install linux so I could get my server up and running as quickly as possible (see below).

Later, I got a new version of Techtool from my mom that was on a thumb drive. It allowed me to do much more, such as run disk utility and a terminal window. Disk utility could not fix the disk though and I couldn’t access it with terminal. I ran its test of the volume structures. It was crazily faster than the other one, taking perhaps 10 minutes for the test. It went so fast I felt hopeful it could fix it. It said there was a problem. I fixed it and ran the test again, but unfortunately it said there was the same problem as before, a directory node missing or something like that. I tried fixing and retesting a couple more times, but it gave the same problem every time.

I can access the files from linux, but have had no luck writing to the drive. I imagine the old version of Techtool, as it was from the early days of OS X, did not know how to properly handle the current volume structures, so it messed them up. I think I will need to reformat the drive and reinstall everything. Luckily, after my previous drive problems, I have been backing up most everything weekly. I shouldn’t lose anything, though I do want to look through the drive before I erase it just to make sure. I also want to try to find a way to only reformat the partition affected, so I don’t lose my linux setup or any of its data. I’m not sure how to do that for HFS+ without buying another utility.

Linux

I had burned a Gentoo and Ubuntu CD a couple of years back to mess around with. I never got either installed then, but this time it was more necessary. I tried installing the Gentoo. The installation is not directly guided at all; I had to open up a webpage (luckily the internet was no problem to get working) in one terminal window (no gui) and carry out the steps from the instructions in another. I was going along alright, but some of the choices were a little confusing. I came to the point where I had to compile my kernel, and decided I was spending too much time with Gentoo. Ubuntu was supposed to be quick and easy to install, and this was only to be temporary anyway.

Ubuntu provided a guided, GUI install that was fairly easy. The only problem I had was choosing the (prebuilt) kernel, as the default one didn’t work. I got that up and running, and it started up easily with a GUI and the internet working just fine. It was the desktop version, though, so no server stuff was installed. I was able to install apache2 with the package manager, but could not find php 5. I had converted all of my site stuff to mysqli, so I needed php 5: I certainly wasn’t going to go through my files and change all the pertinent lines for a temporary server. Searching the web, I found php 5 available for the Edgy and some other versions of Ubuntu. I was confused as to what those different versions were, at first thinking each one was of a progressively more unstable branch. I changed my repositories that I was getting packages from to one that had php 5, after figuring out how to do that. It wouldn’t let me install because it said there were some dependency problems. By this time I figured the different word versions of the OS were actually newer and newer revisions, like Jaguar and Tiger for OS X. So I figured if I installed the entire new version with the package manager, then all the dependencies should be met. It took quite some time to download and install all those files, and it gave some errors before completing. At that point, things like the GUI started breaking. I tried hard to fix the problem, including manually removing some package files, but it kept giving me errors.

I got the GUI back up and running just so I could burn another CD of a new version of the OS. I figured that then all the dependencies should be met no problem. I downloaded not quite the newest version though, as the newest couple of versions didn’t seem to mention the need mysqli in their depository (I now think mysqli is installed automatically with the mysql php extension in these versions). I downloaded the server version so that I could hopefully have a server running right from install. It took me some time to find a program that would let me burn a CD, but I finally got it burned.

Installing was about as easy as with the Desktop version, save for one screen where I had to manually select to install the web server, which I skipped the first two times through. To my delight, after the install, not only was an apache 2 server up and running, but so was a MySQL server, and PHP 5 with mysqli was already installed. After figuring out how to mount UFS (that took some time as well), I copied my site files over to the linux partition and easily got my site running.

Unfortunately, the server version wasn’t set up out of the box for my own regular use. It had no GUI at all. I used the package manager to install KDE, as KDE seems to have more applications that come with it. It took a good bit of time to set that up so it would actually work. It didn’t just work like it had when the desktop version was installed; it took some messing around with configuration files. When I finally got that working, it still was not working fully properly; I still have a desktop that is bigger than my actual screen, so I have to drag the mouse to the sides and move it to see the rest. This is very annoying to work with. I also have no sound. Other than that, though, it works just fine.

Linux seems to work quite nicely. It has plenty of good applications available, of course for free. I was able to work with all my important Excel files in OpenOffice with the only problem being that if I made changes, I had to save them in the OpenOffice format. I was surprised that the Control-enter functions worked. After downloading several extensions, I’ve been able to get firefox to work mostly the way I want for browsing. Safari still works better in some ways as I had it set up, but there are a lot of cool things that can be done with firefox extensions that can’t be done in Safari. Kate is a very nice text editor, though unfortunately I’ve not been able to find anything with live PHP previews like Taco Edit. It of course has desktop paging, which I never got working nicely in OS X. App launching has been a problem though. I’m used to Butler. Linux has Katapult, but it is not nearly as good and is very slow. File browsing is quite nice for the most part. The image browsing capabilities of Konquerer far exceed those of the Finder. I miss the Next-like columns view though.