Boot Camp and Fedora

August 20, 2006 – 23:26

To celebrate the release of [Boot Camp 1.1 beta](http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/), I tried to install [Fedora Core](http://fedora.redhat.com) in the spare space on my drive. Boot Camp worked great to repartition the drive, shrink the Mac OS X partition, and create a 10 GB free space.

First, I tried Fedora Core 5 DVD. The installer got to a spot where it recognized that the drive was partitioned with GPT and asked if it could reformat it. I have the suspicion that this would have invovled erasing the whole drive including Mac OS X. This bug in anaconda was fixed in rawhide so that anaconda fully handles GPT drives. My guess is that Windows doesn’t know anything about EFI or GPT and goes into a compability mode where it writes the MBR partition.

Next, I tried Fedora Rawhide. It had a bug where every key entered was duplicated. This made it impossible to use the installer. I found a bugzilla entry and did some searching and it seems to be a recent kernel bug. Hopefully, it wll be fixed soon and I can try again. I wasn’t able to use the FC5 boot CD kernel to load the rawhide installer.

Then, I tried Ubuntu. The LiveCD booted great. And the installer’s gparted understood the GPT partitions. But it didn’t have any way to create an LVM partition. After I rebooted, the MacBook won’t boot because it couldn’t find a bootable partition. Luckily, booting with Option held gave to the boot selection menu with the Macintosh HD and that allowed booting to Mac OS X. And the Startup Disk pane in System Preferences allowed changing the default boot disk back to Mac OS X.

By Ian | Posted in Fedora, Linux, Mac, Technical | Comments Off on Boot Camp and Fedora

Weird Connections

August 19, 2006 – 20:04

I was reading a [blog entry](http://amygdalagf.blogspot.com/2006/08/ladies-and-gentleman-duke-cunningham.html) with quotes from [an TNR article about Nancy Cunningham](http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20060828&s=kelley082806&c=2), the wife of disgraced Congressman Duke Cunningham, when I read the following quote.

> Nancy showed little interest in defending her husband’s behavior, which, she said,
> was an embarrassment to her and her girls. “When I was going to retire and
> become director of the Rhoades School, I made him promise to stop gay-bashing in
> public, because it might upset parents at that private school,” she said.

I thought it was interesting because the [Rhoades School](http://www.rhoadesschool.com/) was my elementary school. It is a private school for gifted kids. Not that I have any connection with the school beyond some memories. I am not even sure I was there at the same time as the current director, Luanne Kittle, who has been there for 18 years. And they moved to a new location across Encinitas Blvd a few years after I graduated.

I was have been somewhat interested in the Duke Cunningham scandal because he was my local representative back home in San Diego. We were a liberal family in a mostly conserative area and my parents have been very happy about his downfall. What I didn’t realize is that the house he sold to a defense contractor for an inflated price was in Del Mar Heights. It is only a few blocks from my parents house. I doubt we ever drove past it since it was off Del Mar Heights Rd in the other direction.

By Ian | Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on Weird Connections

Typo and Mongrel

August 18, 2006 – 02:38

I got this blog working with [Mongrel](http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/), a web server written in Ruby designed from running Rails applications. The main Textdrive Apache process is proxying the blog to the mongrel_rails process. This replaces the Apache to Lighttpd to Rails over FastCGI setup I was using before. In the previous post, I talked about how I switched over to starting the Rails process independently. That kept the lighttpd server from being killed but the rails fastcgi process was still dying. With Mongrel, there is only one thing to keep up.

The command was pretty simple:

mongrel_rails start -e production -d -p $PORT -c $DIR

By Ian | Posted in Ruby, Technical | Comments Off on Typo and Mongrel

Typo on Textdrive

August 15, 2006 – 05:01

I have recently been having problems with running Typo on Textdrive. The cause seems to be that the ruby grows too big and is killed by FreeBSD. Why it isn’t being restarted automatically by lighttpd, I don’t know. The solution is supposed to be to start the rails fastcgi program separately from the lighttpd process. I just finished switching my lighttpd config to the new recommendation in the [Textdrive knowledge base](http://help.textdrive.com/index.php?pg=kb.chapter&id=71).

One thing which seems interesting for the future is [mongrel](http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/), a Ruby web server. It sounds like it could be proxied to and replace lighttpd.

By Ian | Posted in Ruby, Technical | Comments Off on Typo on Textdrive

Bridge Pedal

August 15, 2006 – 03:53

I did the Bridge Pedal for the third time yesterday. It is a signature Portland event where they open the bridges to bicyclist and 18,000 people come out for a mass ride. A big draw for me is that they close to the top decks of the two big freeway bridges which are normally not accessible to bikes or pedestrians. The views of the city and the bridges covered in people were great. It was a perfect day, sunny and not too hot.

I originally planned on doing the 6-bridge ride which is just the downtown bridges plus the ride to the downtown start. This year, the 10-bridge ride came down to the Sellwood Bridge and went right in front of my place. I couldn’t resist and joined the stream. We went down the Marquam Ave to the Hawthorne Bridge. Past that point, all the different rides sort of merged together. Then, we went over the Hawthorne, Ross Island, and Marquam bridges. Then, we went over the Burnside, Broadway, and then the Fremont Bridge. I thought it was less crowded than last year; I didn’t have to walk up the Marquam. There was some confusion with different groups of riders merging together and routes crossing but I didn’t have a problem.

I decided to do the longer ride to the St. John’s Bridge. I hadn’t been up north in previous years. That added probably 10 miles to the total. The climb to the top was struggle. I ended up walking most of the way. Unfortunately, my camera exhausted its battiers so I couldn’t take any pictures to document the achievement. After that, we came down Willamette Blvd and Interstate Ave to the Steel Bridge and the finish. Then, I had to ride back home down the Springwater Trail. I discovered that my legs give out after 35 miles. Unfortunately, the whole ride was 36 miles and the last mile was slow and painful. That is the longest I ever ridden, beating the previous Bridge Pedals of 20 miles. I spent the rest of the day sitting down because I could barely walk.

![Marquam Bridge](/blog/files/P8132743.jpg)

![Tram Tower and Ross Island](/blog/files/P8132749.jpg)

![Fremont Bridge](/blog/files/P8132763.jpg)

By Ian | Posted in Portland | Comments Off on Bridge Pedal

iTunes & Track Numbers

August 12, 2006 – 04:34

I was using iTunes today and turned on the display of the Track Number. And discovered that none of my Ogg files had any track numbers. Soon after I got the MacBook, I installed the [Quicktime Components](http://www.xiph.org/quicktime/) which allow playing Ogg and FLAC files because that it what nearly all my music is encoded in.

I went searching for “itunes”, “track number”, and “ogg”. [One of the pages](http://braeburn.amath.unc.edu/~nburrell/blog/track_numbers_for_ogg_files_in_itunes) I found looked familar. I had seen that color scheme before. I realized that it was [my brother’s blog](http://braeburn.amath.unc.edu/~nburrell/blog/). [The AppleScript](http://members.optusnet.com.au/thristian/Toys/iTunes%20Scripts/itunes%20vorbis%20metadata%20handler.scpt.zip) he mentioned is currently working its way through my collection.

By Ian | Posted in Mac, Personal | Comments Off on iTunes & Track Numbers

Virtualization on the Mac

August 3, 2006 – 05:20

[Parallels](http://www.parallels.com/) rocks. It is the first virtualization software for the Intel Macs. They also Windows and Linux but they aren’t well known compared to the big guys of Microsoft Virtual PC and VMware. The performance is pretty good since it makes use of the Intel VT extensions in the Core Duo processor which allows full virtualization.

It works quite well with the [Virtue Desktops](http://virtuedesktops.info/) desktop manager. Virtue has some cool animations when changing desktops, like flipping the screen, or rotating a cube. It is cool to flip over to a virtual Linux display.

There are a couple of problems. It doesn’t seem allow changing the VM definition while it is running which is a problem for changing devices, network configuration, or mounted CD images. VMware allows changing devices on the fly. Even the free [VMware Player](http://www.vmware.com/products/player/) allows enabling devices, including USB ones. It also only supports bridged networking. This is a problem at work since the wireless access point only allows a single IP address per login and bridged networking gives the VM a separate IP address. VMware supports NAT networking.

By Ian | Posted in Linux, Mac, Technical | Comments Off on Virtualization on the Mac

New Stuff

July 31, 2006 – 05:55

I answered the question of what laptop to get by buying an Apple MacBook. I got the simplest (and cheapest) model. I put 2 GB of RAM that I bought from Fry’s. One reason is that I could pick it up from an Apple Store. Another is that I liked the flexibility of the choosing what operating system to run and the chance to try out Mac OS X. I haven’t decided yet if I am going to run Linux or Mac OS X primarily and how to switch between them. I am going to give Mac OS X a try first and see if I can get everything done that I need.

I also got some wireless network gear to replace all my old equipment. I got a Linksys WRTP45G which is a wireless broadband router and Vonage phone adapter in one. I also got a Linksys WRT54GL to flash with Linux and turn into a wireless bridge. Fry’s isn’t selling wireless bridges any more and the modified router is cheaper in any case. I don’t understand why the wireless bridging isn’t more available. I finally got rid of the phoneline network I was using.

By Ian | Posted in Gadgets, Linux | Comments Off on New Stuff

Which Laptop?

July 30, 2006 – 03:04

I have been thinking about getting a laptop. Seeing all the laptops at OSCON made me want to get one now. The problem is, I am not sure which one to get. I want to get a small, light one. I have never gotten the point of the big laptops; the point is to carry them around. I would also like a Core Duo processor.

Unfortunately, the really light ultraportable tend to be underpowered, expensive, or both. I really like the [Samsung Q35](http://www.samsung.com/uk/products/mobilecomputing/ultramobile/np_q35t001suk.asp) with Core Duo, but it is expensive (and not available in the US). The [Gateway NX100X](http://www.gateway.com/products/gconfig/proddetails.asp?seg=hm&system_id=nx100x) and [Dell Latitude D420](http://www.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/latit_d420?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd) both look nice and are not too expensive but are only Core Solo. The [ThinkPad X60](http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/notebooks/thinkpad/x-series/index.html) is supposed to be great but is expensive.

I like the [Apple MacBook](http://www.apple.com/macbook/macbook.html). The keyboard is usable, the screen is good. The extras, like the camera, are nice. And it looks nice; the black one is really nice but the premium is too much. The low cost is also nice. The only problem could be the weight. It weighs 5 lbs, which is at least a half-pound heavier than the competitors. I am not sure if lugging that around will be a problem. I will likely install Linux, either dual-booting or using virtualization.

There are a few contenders at four pounds. The [Lenovo 3000 V100](http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/notebooks/3000/v-series/) is heavier and cheaper than its ThinkPad cousin. Unfortunately, it only comes in two configurations either cheap and more limited, or expensive and more powerful than I wanted. The [Dell XPS M1210](http://www.dell.com/content/products/productdetails.aspx/xpsnb_m1210?c=us&l=en&s=dhs&cs=19) also sounds like a good compromise between power and cost. Dell and Lenovo also have 14″ models, the [Latitiude D620](http://www.dell.com/content/products/features.aspx/latit_d620?c=us&cs=04&l=en&s=bsd) and [ThinkPad T60](http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/notebooks/thinkpad/t-series/index.html) and Z60t.

By Ian | Posted in Gadgets, Mac | Comments Off on Which Laptop?

OSCON 2006, Day 1

July 30, 2006 – 02:47

This year, I only went to the sessions for OSCON. This is the sessions on Wednesday.

### [Big Bad PostgreSQL: A Case Study](http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2006/view/e_sess/8379), [Theo Schlossnagle](http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2006/view/e_spkr/1788)

This talk was about migrating some data warehouse systems from Oracle to PostgreSQL and the issues they ran into. Some of the issues were ones we had run into at work, about vacuuming being a hassle, no ability the upgrade between versions, no support for Oracle statistic functions like RANK OVER(), more limited partitioning support, and less evoled replication. The big advantage of PostgreSQL for them is that it could handle the complicated queries. And the Pl/PgSQL and Pl/Perl allowed them to do complicated stuff in the database.

### [Current State of the Linux Kernel](http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2006/view/e_sess/8387), [Greg Kroah-Hartman](http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2006/view/e_spkr/1644)

He talked about the Linux kernel. His talk had many points that I had read online. I found it impressive how much change the kernel undergoes and how well the development process holds together. The kernel is the poster child for distributed, evolving open source project producing something that works.

He also talked about the issues with external patches (like OpenAFS, Xen) and closed-source kernel modules. I think the new consensus that proprietary drivers are wrong and won’t be included in distros is a good thing. He pointed out that the common closed-source drivers, like VMware, NVIDIA, and ATI are operating in a gray area. They force people to compile the code. Anyone who distributes the resulting binaries is violating the GPL. Hopefully, this will force them to open source their drivers; I can’t see why VMware does not open-source their drivers. The graphics drivers will likely move into user space; there is no problem with proprietary X drivers.

### [The Atom Publishing Protocol as Universal Web Glue](http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2006/view/e_sess/9568), [Tim Bray](http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2006/view/e_spkr/814)

He described the new [Atom Publishing Protocol](http://bitworking.org/projects/atom/), showed some examples, and described a little bit how it is being used. The protocol is quite simple, basically a REST protocol for posting Atom entries and media files. Simple enough that I am now thinking about implementing a client for Palm, and a server for Typo.

I wish he had gone into more detail about the spec. Some history about other publishing protocols would have been nice. So would have some discusion about the design choices in the protocol.

### [Plagger: Pluggable RSS/Atom Aggregation](http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2006/view/e_sess/8993), [Tatsuhiko Miyagawa](http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2006/view/e_spkr/2734)

He described [Plagger](http://plagger.org/trac), a Perl framework for RSS/Atom aggregation. It has lots of plugins for pulling feeds, filtering them, and publishing to different formats.

I have been thinking that it would be interesting to do a personal feed aggregator web site. I have also been thinking about how to get my daily dose of news to my Palm.

### [Puppet: An Operating System Abstraction and Automation Framework](http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2006/view/e_spkr/2947), [Luke Kanies](http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2006/view/e_spkr/2947)

I was disappointed about this talk. I had investigated [Puppet](http://reductivelabs.com/projects/puppet/) at work and thought it was a great tool for doing system administration automation. He spent too much time talking about the purpose of the tool and the field with very little details. Technical details don’t work in a short talk but I got the impression that the audience wasn’t clear on what puppet is for and what it can do. Or why it is better than the competitors in this space like cfengine.

I think some concrete examples would have been better. Showing both the problem and the solution. A good example would have been setting up dozens of servers. First, the manual method. Second, the distributed scripts. Third, imaging. Finally, puppet can setup lots of machines in an automated way. Puppet can even take existing machines and change them to look like the declarated state.

### [Perl Lightning Talks](http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/os2006/view/e_sess/9222)

Luckily, I got to see Schwern’s play about module building. Very entertaining.

The rest of the talks were interesting with a few good ideas.

By Ian | Posted in Linux, Technical | Comments Off on OSCON 2006, Day 1