Todd Huss » Desktop

Moving to 64 bit Ubuntu

Todd Huss — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 20:45:51 +0000

After 3 Ubuntu upgrades on my primary workhorse (a Lenovo Thinkpad z61t) I decided it was time for a fresh install to remove all the cruft. In the past I’ve always used 32 bit Ubuntu (even though my laptop is a 64 bit Core 2 duo) because of issues with the Flash plugin, Java plugin, and Skype. After backing up my files I bit the bullet and did a fresh install of 64 bit Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex and in the process also decided to give XFS a shot instead of EXT3 as my primary filesystem.

I’m pleased to say that after 3 hours I had the install done and all of my software installed and working including Jetbrains IDEA, Netbeans, Skype, VirtualBox, Flash plugin, Java plugin, Web Developer Toolbar, and Firebug. Apparently things have gotten a little better for 64 bit Linux over the past year and a half! However, I’m still running into odd issues every now and again related to both Sun’s 64 bit Java (IDE ~~and Jetty~~ occasionally hangs) and the the Open JDK browser plugin which is still buggy. Hopefully future updates will help address these issues. Anyhow, I thought I’d throw out the links I used to get everything working:

Fonts
Howto: Install Mac Fonts on Ubuntu
Make Firefox in Ubuntu look much better

Skype
Add the Medibuntu repository
sudo apt-get install skype-static

Flash plugin
Install Flash 10 Under Ubuntu Linux 64 bit Edition

Java plugin
sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jre icedtea-gcjwebplugin

MySQL ODBC Driver issues and Excel

Todd Huss — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 18:59:52 +0000

Caveat: this post is probably only of interest if you’re running into this particular MySQL ODBC Driver problem. Hopefully other people running into this issue will find this useful or please add a comment if you find a better way!

Today I had to get an Excel document that was loaded with ODBC database queries that connect to multiple MySQL databases working on a new machine. The problem I ran into is that if there are any MySQL permission issues such as a missing grant, authentication problems, etc… you’ll always get the following completely meaningless error message:

[MySQL][ODBC 3.51 Driver]Could not find driver {MySQL ODBC 3.51 Driver} in system information.

For the life of me I couldn’t even figure out how to determine what host/database/user/password a particular query was trying to use in Excel because if you click on Edit Query it would tell you it can’t find the driver. It’s hard to troubleshoot when you don’t even know which machine a particular query is trying to connect and it won’t even show you the SQL for the query if it can’t connect!

So to finally figure out what ODBC connections this Excel document was using I scp’d it over to a Unix machine and used strings:

strings document.xls | grep DRIVER | sort | uniq

which will give you a list something like this:

DRIVER={MySQL ODBC 3.51 Driver};DESC=;DATABASE=dbname;SERVER=hostname;UID=user;PASSWORD=password;PORT=0;OPTION=0;STMT=;
DRIVER={MySQL ODBC 3.51 Driver};DESC=;DATABASE=dbname2;SERVER=hostname;UID=user;PASSWORD=password;PORT=0;OPTION=0;STMT=;
DRIVER={MySQL ODBC 3.51 Driver};DESC=;DATABASE=dbname3;SERVER=hostname;UID=user;PASSWORD=password;PORT=0;OPTION=0;STMT=;

That allowed me to see all of the database connections the Excel document was using so I could go in and fix the permission issues. If anyone knows an easier way, let me know.

Encrypting sensitive files on Mac OS X

Todd Huss — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 04:26:57 +0000

I was looking for a solution to keep my financial data (quickbooks, excel, important documents, etc…) encrypted on OS X so that if my laptop were stolen, lost, etc… I wouldn’t have to worry about it. I also like to backup my data to my colocated Linux server so in the event that that machine were compromised I wanted to be protected. As it turns out, Mac OS X has the perfect solution for this: read-write encrypted disk images. Here’s how you do it:

1. Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility
2. Click New Image and then enter a filename, select Encryption AES-128, read-write disk image, and pick a disk size large enough to hold your data. It’s too bad it can’t dynamically grow as needed but you can always create a new and larger image if you outgrow the current one.
3. Click Create and enter the password you want to secure your files with and uncheck Remember password (add to Keychain) and then click OK. If you add the password to the keychain and your laptop is stolen then your no better off.

Now you can click on the .dmg file it created, enter your password, and the volume will show up on your desktop. Add any files you’d like to it, modify them, do whatever, and then when you’re done eject the volume. Voila, you now have an encrypted virtual disk where you can store you sensitive data.

Apple is just as proprietary as Microsoft

Todd Huss — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 23:43:19 +0000

People love to complain about how Microsoft is too proprietary, and rightfully so. Linux/FreeBSD users can make that claim freely but when Apple users make it I cringe. Microsoft has done some “bad” things with API’s and interoperability and is a worse offender than Apple, however, Apple is by no means a saint of openness and isn’t shy about locking users in to their equally proprietary products and services. Here are just a couple of examples that come to mind:

1. I can run Windows on just about any PC hardware whereas I can only run OSX on Apple hardware and they intentionally make it so that I can’t run it on a regular PC without hacking the OS. Is this evil? Not necessarily, they are a business after all. Does it make their OS proprietary? Absolutely!
2. Not only do you have to buy their hardware to run OS X, you also have to pay for OS upgrades just like Microsoft.
3. My MacBook Pro has something called an ExpressCard/34 slot (which as I’ve learned is the latest PCMCIA standard). Regardless it is about as useful to me (with all of my older PCMCIA cards) as an old toenail clipping. That’s more of an aside gripe though and doesn’t make them proprietary so moving on…
4. While people have emulated the .Mac service to make it work with their own servers, Apple tries to lock users in with their .Mac subscription services.
5. iTunes music store and iPod lock-in: if you want to use the iTunes music store and then listen to the music on the go there’s only one MP3 player you can use.

If Apple is really going to stand above Microsoft then in my opinion they need to allow you to run OS X on any PC hardware and have people choose to run it on Apple hardware because it’s the best, not because they have to. They would also need to allow other vendors to hook their MP3 players in with the iTunes music store instead of their current monopolistic approach.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love Apple hardware, software, and related products, they are some of the best on the market. However, I’m under no illusion that just like Microsoft, they are in business to make money, and they too resort to Redmond like lock-in tactics. So before you put an Apple sticker on your bumper, ask yourself if it’s really Apple the company that you so adore and want to express your support of, or if it’s just that it’s cool and cutting edge again to be a Mac user?

Now a Linux, FreeBSD, or OpenBSD bumper sticker is something I can get behind, but an Apple or Microsoft bumber sticker? No thanks!

Hibernate with the MacBook Pro

Todd Huss — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 03:25:37 +0000

Thanks to Dion for pointing out how to get your MacBook to hibernate! When I wrote about switching to the MacBook Pro one of my complaints was that upon shutting the lid the laptop doesn’t hibernate, it sleeps, and they offer you no easy way to switch it via the GUI.

I don’t mind waiting a for my laptop to start when I open the lid and the little white sleeping light drives me nuts, especially if I forget and leave it in our bedroom before going to bed. That sucker lights up the room at night!

So I added the two aliases that Dion suggest, sourced my bashrc, ran hibernateon, shut the lid, and off goes the light… amen!

alias hibernateon='sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 1'
alias hibernateoff='sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0'

Disassembling the MacBook Pro

Todd Huss — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 16:19:39 +0000

I had quite a scare today when my new MacBook Pro wouldn’t boot. It would turn on, the screen would go white, and after about 20 seconds it flashed a question mark in a box on the screen. I thought it might have been related to a very minor drink spill incident (which resulted in my purchase of an iCurve stand) but it worked after the spill so I was a bit perplexed. I was not looking forward to going to the Apple store and parting with the laptop and getting charged a bundle so I opted for a little DIY troubleshooting.

I didn’t have the Apple install DVD with me (they were at the office) so I dropped in an XP install CD (I’m running the latest firmware which can boot those), booted that, and it told me it couldn’t find a hard drive. Then I went looking on how to disassemble the MacBook so I could pull the hard drive and test it. Thank god for ifixit.com’s complete MacBook Pro disassembly instructions, I followed those to remove the 20 or so necessary screws and open it up to get to the hard drive. I didn’t have the requisite T6 Torx screwdriver required by 2 of the screws but I managed to get by with a small allen wrench which fit well enough.

With the MacBook totally open I was able to remove the hard drive. My plan was to test it in my PC laptop to see if the BIOS would recognize it but before doing that I just reinstalled the hard drive to make sure no connectors were loose. Low and behold just disconnecting and reconnecting it did the trick.

I followed the instructions in reverse order to reassemble it and after about 45 minutes I’m back working on it now. Phew!

Ruby on Rails Mac OS X Intel Binary

Todd Huss — Sun, 26 Mar 2006 00:03:10 +0000

Update 8/13/06: Upgraded to Rails 1.1.6
Update 5/10/06: Upgraded to Rails 1.1.2 and built Ruby with the ri docs per Duncan McGregor’s comment
Update 4/7/06: Upgraded to Rails 1.1.1
Update 3/28/06: Now that Rails 1.1 has arrived I’ve upgraded this package to include it.

Here are the Installation Instructions and here is the all-inclusive ~9MB file to download: RubyOnRailsMacIntel-1.1.6.tar.bz2. If you would prefer to build from source here is my updated version of Geoffrey’s do it all ru-ra-lim.sh script that now works on Mac Intel too.

I’ve created a Mac Intel binary distribution of Ruby on Rails with Lighttpd based on the work of Geoffrey and Dan. It includes:

Ruby 1.8.4, Readline 5.0, RubyGems 0.8.11, Rails 1.1.2, FastCGI 2.4.0, RubyFastCGIBindings 0.8.6, PCRE 6.6, and Lighttpd 1.4.11.

I did not include MySQL because I didn’t want to presume if you prefer MySQL 5 or 4.1 and MySQL offers Intel binaries for the Mac.

I created this binary distribution for 3 reasons:

1. I don’t believe your average user should be required to build from source to get up and running.
2. The previous mentioned solutions installed into /usr/local/. I prefer to install in a dedicated application directory I can simply delete when I want to uninstall. So I’ve got it all going under /usr/local/ror. Want to uninstall? Just delete /usr/local/ror.
3. I couldn’t find a Mac OSX Intel binary of Ruby on Rails with Lighty anywhere.

Let me know if you find this useful or if you have problems!

Modal windows with Javascript and CSS

Todd Huss — Wed, 08 Mar 2006 16:10:41 +0000

One of the side projects I spent a little time on today was researching the use of on-page modal dialog boxes using Javascript and CSS that shade or darken the rest of the page while they are open. It looks like it will be an easy job thanks to these two solutions that are made freely available:

Lightbox Gone Wild: this is a nice solution based on Lightbox and Prototype but a bit heavy weight due to the inclusion of prototype.js. If you haven’t seen the original lightbox effect check it out!
SubModal: looks like it was started from scratch and is lightweight.

I’m leaning towards subModal right now since Lightbox uses prototype.js which adds 48K to the first page view. We serve around 150,000 unique visitors per day so adding prototype would result in an additional 150 * 48K = 7GB of bandwidth usage per day (we’re not currently running mod_gzip).

Update: here are some other solutions including a draggable one, DHTML Window (draggable but no shading), draggable with shading or fixed position, and Popup Window 4.5

Five aspects of OS X and the MacBook in need of improvement

Todd Huss — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 22:49:32 +0000

I’ve gotten through my first week of work on a MacBook Pro after switching from Windows and before I go further let me say that overall it’s been a very positive experience, see my previous post on why I switched from Windows to the Mac. After a week there are still 5 things that I feel were poorly executed on the Mac and they are:

Window maximize is inconsistent… I’d like my window to take up the whole screen when I hit the plus/maximize button, not some arbitrary width that varies from application to application.
Home and end deceive… I’m editing a line of text and want to jump to the beginning of the line… you hit Apple – Left error…. OK… then you want to page up, by the same logic do you hit Apple – Up Arrow? No… you hit Fn – Up Arrow. I still have to stop and think every time I want to page up/down or home/end as to whether I should be hitting Apple or Fn. Like all of my PC laptops to date, the Mac really needs dedicated keys for home/end/page-up/page-down that work consistently across applications.
Right click… if they can do the wheel on the iPod they can certainly design a single button that detects if I’m right clicking or left clicking. I know you have control click and trackpad corners that can give you right click but it’s all a hack. Obviously it’s a needed feature, otherwise they wouldn’t have put it in the mightymouse.
Having the application menu separate from the window works fine with one display but when I have my laptop hooked up to my flat panel running both displays it’s quite strange to have Firefox on my flat panel and then have to move the mouse pointer back to the laptop display to select a bookmark from the application menu.
I can’t reproduce this at the moment but I’ve encountered dialog boxes that don’t seem to respond to any keyboard input. Tabs, enter, etc… don’t work and I end up having to revert to the mouse.

Migrating from Outlook to iCal

Todd Huss — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 04:09:47 +0000

Part of my switch from Windows to OSX involved figuring out how to get my Outlook Calendar data from Windows/Outlook to MacOSX/iCal. I was really dreading having to manually reenter the whole thing.

Thanks to Norm Jones and Mike Baas who wrote the Outlook Calendar to iCal Macros the migration was a snap. I installed the macros in Outlook, exported to an iCal file, imported it into iCal and I was off and running. Everything came over including recurring meetings. The only thing that didn’t transfer was whether a reminder is supposed to go off before a meeting. In any case, it saved me a lot of time, thanks Norm and Mike!

Here’s the sourceforge page for the Outlook to iCal converter!