Scripting Sysadmin

Revisiting OS X

2012-03-12T05:59:00.000-05:00

Started using OS X again (Lion), and was a little happy to see that despite all the changes, dmesg still works.

This post is a good pointer to get write capabilities for ntfs on Lion.

On Two UI’s in one OS…

2011-09-14T04:27:00.001-05:00

As Microsoft took away the traditional Start menu from the legacy desktop, a click on the new Start button now inevitably invokes the Metro-styled Start screen. Run an app there, though, and you won’t find it running on the legacy desktop – and vice versa. Thanks to this, for example, you may start Internet Explorer on the desktop and then find that the instance of IE running under the Metro UI doesn’t talk to the other one, so that none of your tabs are transferred between the two. Try to explain that to your grandparents when they get a PC with Windows 8 preloaded.

via SiliconFilter

2011-07-29T11:12:00.002-05:00

Happy Sysadmin Day! :)

P.S, thanks to Tom Merrit for the reminder, does a great job at Tech News Today.

2011-05-29T07:17:00.000-05:00

In Gnome-3 you can Alt - Tab as normal through active applications.
But you can also Alt-~ to cycle through only active application windows.
For instance, firefox usually has two windows open for me, the browser window, and the download window.

First hour of Gnome 3 usage...

2011-05-24T19:59:00.002-05:00

Fedora 15 is out, and includes the brand spanking new Gnome 3. I thought I'd try it out. The idea is to make the interface simpler, cleaner and more modern. What I don't understand is how the changes in Gnome 3 do that? I've read all the justifications that are out there. I don't agree with them. Maybe these changes make sense given time. I'll try to use it for a few days and see.

Here are thoughts after the first hour or so of usage...

I downloaded the LiveCD which boots into a fully functional Fedora system. To install to the hard drive you start the installation application. Once the system is installed, the installation application exits and you are left with the Fedora system running of the LiveCD. I look for a way to reboot. I can't find a way to reboot or shutdown the system. On the top right hand side if you click on your user name, the only option is to suspend the machine. Ummm...

Turns out you have to press Alt - and click on the username and the suspend option will change to "Power Off". WTH!

Ok, I restart the system. First thing I want to do is to change the fonts. They are never right on any distro. How do I do that? Umm....

Turns out gnome-shell in Gnome 3 is a complete rewrite based on CSS and JS and you have to go edit:
/usr/share/gnome-shell/theme/gnome-shell.css.

Or you can install Gnome Tweak Tool:
in a terminal as root run the following command: yum install gnome-tweak-tool. Thats right, changing fonts so your eyes don't hurt means you have to install an obscure utility you didn't know about. How simple.

Want to minimize/maximize a window...

As can be seen in the screenshot, there is only one button on the window. Close.

If you want to maximize the window, you can double click on the title. The Gnome developers believe you don't need to minimize. You can still get those options if you right click on the title.

No wonder Ubuntu decided to go to Unity. These changes make no sense to me, it just seems to make things harder.

Chromebook fast boot doesn't seem that fast...

2011-05-15T20:34:00.002-05:00

Years ago, I saw BeOS boot up in 15 seconds. Lately I've installed an SSD on my Core i3 laptop and have Ubuntu Natty boot up in seconds. Each of these are full fledged OS's. Keeping that in mind the chromebook's boot up speed doesn't seem that fast to me. Anyone else feel that way? I think 7 seconds is 5 seconds too much!

Six Reasons Why Chromebooks Are a Bad Idea - Technology Review

2011-05-14T14:14:00.000-05:00

Reading this article Six Reasons Why Chromebooks Are a Bad Idea - Technology Review I ran into the following quote:

"People aren't ready to trust the cloud, claims InformationWeek:"

That makes it sound like its the peoples fault that they don't trust the cloud. It should be the other way round, you can't trust the cloud (networks go down, servers get hacked, etc.).

Links for 2011-03-28 [del.icio.us]

2011-03-29T00:00:00-07:00

Links for 2011-03-26 [del.icio.us]

2011-03-27T00:00:00-07:00

Links for 2011-03-16 [del.icio.us]

2011-03-17T00:00:00-07:00

Links for 2011-02-07 [del.icio.us]

2011-02-08T00:00:00-08:00

Links for 2011-01-27 [del.icio.us]

2011-01-28T00:00:00-08:00

DTerm: A command line anywhere and everywhere

Links for 2011-01-22 [del.icio.us]

2011-01-23T00:00:00-08:00

iTerm 2

Links for 2010-12-25 [del.icio.us]

2010-12-26T00:00:00-08:00

The Life Of A Radar » Blog Archive » Ubuntu, Ruby, RVM, Rails, and You

Bad advertising…

2010-12-17T20:42:00.001-06:00

I’m seeing this stupid ad, first in opera 11, and now on firefox:

How do I make it go away? There doesn’t seem to be a way to get it to go away!

Why I don’t like web services…

2010-12-16T16:46:00.001-06:00

Is Yahoo Shutting Down Del.icio.us? [Update: Yes]

I’ve used Del.icio.us for years. I have tons of bookmarks in there. Thankfully I should be able to export the bookmarks. The ability to export your data is rare. In any case, I’d like to have software running on my own machine. If the company goes out of business, I can at least keep running the installed software.

Ubuntu moving to daily downloads…

2010-11-24T21:56:00.001-06:00

Ubuntu is moving away from its established six-month-cycle and potentially to a future where software updates land on a daily basis.

Jumpin' Meerkats! Ubuntu moving to daily downloads? • The Register

Wow! Compare that with the commercial OS cycles…

Is this a good idea? Won’t this create too much churn?

Update: Turns out this story might be wrong…

The stories have prompted a response from Engineering Director of Ubuntu Rick Spencer. Spencer says quite clearly in his blog yesterday that "Ubuntu is not changing to a rolling release". He goes on to say, "We are confident that our customers, partners, and the FLOSS ecosystem are well served by our current release cadence. What the article was probably referring to was the possibility of making it easier for developers to use cutting edge versions of certain software packages on Ubuntu. This is a wide-ranging project that we will continue to pursue through our normal planning processes".

Here is the techmeme thread.

Good and bad software

2010-11-18T22:36:00.001-06:00

Had some good and bad software experiences that I’d like to talk about.

1. I ran across this page regarding IE9 Javascript on twitter. Its in an Asian language, but there is a box on the side that gives you the option to translate.

Weird thing is, I can’t translate to English.

If you open this page in Google Chrome, the browser detects the difference in language, recognize which language is on the page (Japanese) and gives you the option to translate it automatically. And seems to do quite a good job at the translation too. That’s how software should be.

2. I’ve been running across some PDF files recently and had to install a PDF viewer on Windows. I haven’t found a good solution for this.

The Adobe install experience is horrible. I wanted to install Adobe Reader X, apparently the latest version is sandboxed on windows. The browser I’m using is firefox. I go to the link from the article and the first thing that Adobe wants to do is download and install the Adobe Download Manager, which requires you to install a firefox extension. Then restart the browser. Then wait for all your tabs to reload, and wait for the extension to launch the download manager which is now an extra piece of crapware on my system. Then the download manager pops up and tells me that it has first downloaded and installed McAffee Security scan. Wait… what?!

There is an option on the side when you first start the download that is by default checked. I missed it, I guess its my fault for not paying attention. Thanks Adobe for giving me that feeling. I guess I’ll have to look elsewhere for my PDF reading.

So next up, is Foxit Reader. Turns out the install package for Foxit also has crap like the McAffee stuff.

And once they finish installing they aren’t done messing with your system. A normal person might assume they are done and click finish.

If you look at the wizard, there is actually an option (checked by default) that will add ebay crap to your system.

Ok, so its back to ghostscript/gsview I guess. Its not as easy to navigate the document but at least it does only what I need it to do, that is display a PDF file.

I wish I could move to Linux. It has its own problems though. I live with laptops that I move around. I need a machine that can suspend/resume reliably, stays connected via wifi (my most recent install of Ubuntu would keep disconnecting from the router), and doesn’t reorder the systray icons on the taskbars everytime I reboot.

No wonder Apple/Google are doing so well. *Sigh*

</Rant>

Issues with Windows Live 2011

2010-10-14T22:09:00.001-05:00

I recently upgraded to Windows Live 2011 on my machine. Live Writer is the only application I’ve got to work. Most other applications crash at the Windows Live signing screen, and just stop responding. Too bad, Windows Live Writer looks great, and I wanted to try out some of the new stuff they have in the 2011 release.

User environment variables in windows

2010-09-19T19:14:00.001-05:00

I’ve been running as a normal user under windows which has required a change to my emacs setup. By default if you don’t have a HOME variable defined, windows looks under the root directory for .emacs.d and .emacs initialization files. As an administrator this isn’t an issue, but as a user those files are inaccessible. I needed to set the HOME variable to point to the user directory so emacs could read its initialization file.

The normal way to edit environment variables is to right click on “Computer” and click on “Advanced system settings”. Then click on “Environment Variables” under the Advanced tab. Unfortunately this requires administrative privileges and you can only set the administrators environment variables.

To set a users environment variable you have to do it via the command prompt. To set HOME you would do something like this:

setx HOME “Your value here”

or in my case:

setx HOME “%USERPROFILE%”

You’ll have to restart the command prompt for the value to take effect.

To access the variable on a command prompt:

echo %HOME%

And in powershell:

echo $env:HOME

On DNS Hijacking…

2010-09-13T21:39:00.001-05:00

Hijack my DNS and I’ll be annoyed. Blame me for it and I’ll go ballistic.

I haven’t run into this problem that often with road runner. Probably because I don’t use their DNS servers. I’ve got mine set to Google's DNS servers. I’m using Google Chrome, and when I try the URL it redirects to Bing just fine.

Ballmer (and Microsoft) still doesn't get the iPad

2010-08-01T09:54:00.000-05:00

Ballmer (and Microsoft) still doesn't get the iPad: "Windows, and Windows applications, are not designed for tablets. Windows is designed for a pixel-perfect pointer (be it mouse, trackpad, or TrackPoint), and a keyboard. Band-aid fixes to give a thin veneer of touch-friendliness are not good or deep enough. To make Windows a touch operating system requires every single aspect of its user interface to be overhauled. The same is true of every application."

Visual studio 2008 TS uninstall

2010-04-17T12:56:00.001-05:00

Visual Studio 2010 was released recently. I wanted to uninstall 2008 and install 2010, but my installation of Visual Studio 2008 TS (full install) will not uninstall. Setup complains about components missing when I try to launch the uninstaller. The only solution so far has been for me to do a clean install of the OS on the system, and install Visual Studio 2010. Lots of hours wasted and I’m still not done yet. *Sigh*

Todays xkcd...

2010-02-22T09:18:00.000-06:00

4k Sector drives...

2010-02-14T10:47:00.000-06:00

Here are some articles on new HD's with 4K sector size:
Linux Not Fully Prepared for 4096-Byte Sector Hard Drives
Linux and 4K disk sectors
Western Digital’s Advanced Format: The 4K Sector Transition Begins

Changing desktop background in Windows 7 Home Basic...

2010-02-11T19:52:00.000-06:00

I thought Windows 7 starter was the version where you couldn't change the desktop background. Turns out the usual way of changing the desktop background is not present in Windows 7 Home Basic as well. If you right click on the desktop in Windows 7 Home Basic the option to personalize the appearance of the desktop is not present. However, unlike Windows 7 Starter you can change the desktop background, its just harder to get to then Windows 7 Home Premium.

According to this article, the way to change the desktop background is to go to the start menu and type "Change desktop background".

VIrtualbox 3.1.2 and Guest Windows 7 64bit

2010-01-23T23:12:00.001-06:00

Windows 7 64bit running as a guest in a virtualbox will not have audio enabled. The problem is the lack of drivers for the audio options, and thanks to this thread the solution is to download the driver and install it yourself. Works for me.

Windows SDK installation

2009-12-06T18:47:00.001-06:00

I needed to install windows 7 SDK on my machine. The installation works by downloading various pieces and installing them. Somewhere along the line, the download stalled. Its been that way for hours. Cancelling the installation brings up the dialog above asking me to wait while the operation completes. But that's the problem, the operation is stuck and won’t complete. Plus the dialog remains on top of all windows and won’t go away. Bad design.

Guide: Enable native NTFS Read/Write in Snow Leopard - Mac Forums

2009-11-17T21:20:00.001-06:00

Guide: Enable native NTFS Read/Write in Snow Leopard - Mac Forums:

"I am sure many of you heard that Snow Leopard was supposed to have native read/write for NTFS partitions. Apple supported NTFS R/W in older SL builds but I guess decided to not to go with it for some reason, however support is still present.
For this, you need to modify your /etc/fstab file to mount NTFS partitions for read and write.

First, uninstall NTFS-3G/Paragon if installed.
Open Terminal.app (/Applications/Utilities/Terminal)
Type 'diskutil info /Volumes/volume_name' and copy the Volume UUID (bunch of numbers).
Backup /etc/fstab if you have it, shouldn't be there in a default install.
Type 'sudo nano /etc/fstab'.
Type in 'UUID=paste_the_uuid_here none ntfs rw' or 'LABEL=volume_name none ntfs rw' (if you don't have UUID for the disk).
Repeat for other NTFS partitions.
Save the file (ctrl-x then y) and restart your system.

After reboot, NTFS partitions should natively have read and write support. This works in both 32 and 64-bit kernels. Support is quite good and fast, it even recognizes file attributes such as hidden files."

This worked for me.

Groklaw - Microsoft Patents Sudo?!!

2009-11-12T08:01:00.001-06:00

Lordy, lordy, lordy. They have no shame. It appears that Microsoft has just patented sudo, a personalized version of it.

Here it is, patent number7617530. Thanks, USPTO, for giving Microsoft, which is already a monopoly, a monopoly on something that's been in use since 1980 and wasn't invented by Microsoft. Here's Wikipedia's description of sudo, which you can meaningfully compare to Microsoft's description of its "invention".

Groklaw - Microsoft Patents Sudo?!!

KS2009: How Google uses Linux [LWN.net]

2009-11-11T20:02:00.001-06:00

There may be no single organization which runs more Linux systems than Google. But the kernel development community knows little about how Google uses Linux and what sort of problems are encountered there. Google's Mike Waychison traveled to Tokyo to help shed some light on this situation; the result was an interesting view on what it takes to run Linux in this extremely demanding setting.

KS2009: How Google uses Linux [LWN.net]

If you're looking for the win7 usb download tool, as I was earlier today…

2009-11-10T11:51:00.001-06:00

Microsoft has pulled an update tool for Windows 7 from the Microsoft Store site after a report indicating that the tool incorporated open-source code in a way that violated the GNU General Public License.

Did Microsoft Windows 7 download tool violate the GPL? | All about Microsoft | ZDNet.com