01.30.07
Posted in Mac at 6:51 pm by Michael
My Macbook arrived back from Apple today. I’m disappointed to say that it is in the same condition as when I took it to the Apple Store. Broken. No repairs made, still the same parts from what I can tell. It doesn’t power on, and the battery is completely discharged. I’m a little depressed about the entire situation actually.
My impending move to Las Vegas is taking up most of my time right now. I’m going to collaborate with a friend of mine who works with video. Ralph Lopez and I have been friends for quite a while. He’s really good with video, and he’s also a Mac guy. Ralph thinks it will be fun and funny. We’re going to shoot the video on Thursday. I’m trying to line up a couple of cameras to get different angles of the destruction. I’m getting excited about going to Vegas, and I can’t let the loss of my laptop affect my mood right now. I’m going to get out all my anger and frustration at this situation with a good old sledging. The Macbook is useless to me in it’s current state, and I think it will be a smashing good time.
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01.29.07
Posted in Mac at 1:22 pm by Michael
Well, my macbook died last week. I woke up one morning and it just refused to boot at all. No startup chime, no fans, no sound at all. I took it to the Apple Store, and the Genius was quite efficient it creating a repair ticket and assuring me they’d ship it out and have it repaired. I checked the status of my repair today and it said “on hold - need information.” I called up Apple Care, and they slapped me with a repair bill over $700. Apparently, they are claiming that the reason my Mac stopped working is spill damage. I was completely floored about this. I didn’t spill anything on my Mac, it just stopped working. I asked for a supervisor, and was transferred to someone else. The supervisor refused to say anything other than “spill damage isn’t covered by the warranty.” I tried several times to explain that I didn’t spill anything on the mac, and that it just stopped working. She said something to the effect that the spill damage was a fact and that I was welcome to purchase another brand of laptop if I wasn’t happy with their policies.
Now, I loved my Mac very much. I tried to convert anyone and everyone who ever asked me about my mac. Now, though, I’m telling everyone not to buy a Mac, since they won’t warranty the product. To add insult to injury, a friend of mine who I was telling about this let me in on his story. He had a G4 tibook that he spilled and entire Dr. Pepper on. Apple happily replaced his entire laptop without even a question. How does that work? He actually spilled something on it, told them he did it, and they replaced it. I didn’t spill anything on mine, but they want over $700 to repair it because of “spill damage.”
If Apple doesn’t repair or replace my macbook, I will be making a video to put up on YouTube, and linking it to a post that details this incident. The video will be of me taking an 8 lb. sledgehammer to my useless macbook, and recommending anyone that wants a macbook to buy a cheaper pc laptop that can be replaced for less than the cost of a repair of a macbook. Don’t get me wrong, I love the product quite a bit, but if this is typical of Apple Care’s service, even if you buy the extended warranty, I don’t need it. I can buy 2 HP laptops for the price I spent for the single Macbook, and have a spare ready to go if and when my primary fails. I’d run linux on them for sure, since that’s as close as I’ll get to Mac OS X on a PC. I’m really rather disappointed and angry about this entire situation. Why did my friend get an entire new laptop, 2 years after he bought it, when he spilled soda on it, yet I can’t get a repair done for something that was beyond my control? I feel completely shafted right now, especially considering all the kind words I have given to Apple ever since I bought my Macbook.
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01.21.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 2:27 pm by Michael
This post is about an idea I had working for a dedicated server provider. Each server recycle took 1-3 hours depending on the OS the new customer requested. This seriously hurt our ability to step up production in response to increased demand. Using VMware server running on a stripped down Linux OS, it would be possible to reduce the provision time on a server to 30-45 minutes, no matter what OS the customer requests. You can dedicate all of the machine’s resources to the single virtual machine, as well as almost all of the hard drive space. This would make recycling a server a simple process of removing the “old” virtual machine and copying the “new” one into place, then booting it and doing post-install configuration.
Running a stripped-down-to-bare-essentials version of Linux is simple to either script, or just image using normal linux tools. You can use a reference machine, with Linux, and VMware Server installed and configured. Provisioning a server would be as simple as booting from a cdrom and running some commands. Using tools like dd, gzip, and netcat you could load the Linux partition onto the new server, ready to run. Rebooting into the OS, you could set a serial number for VMware server, and then copy a compressed virtual machine onto it, and boot it as normal. Once it’s booted you can configure the new virtual machine OS however you would normally on a new install. This process could mostly be scripted to almost completely automate the entire task.
The amount of time this process could save would more than make up for the initial labor of getting all the pieces into place for production. This process could be expanded, with tools written that would allow it to be generic enough to use for almost any sort of setup you’d like. For instance, you could include two nics with every server, but only give the virtual machine guest OS access to one nic. The second nic you could configure for an internal subnet, in the host OS, and allow VPN access to clients for remote administration if something happens to the network config on the guest OS. You can use virtual network cards to allow a customer to use 2 virtual machines to firewall the dedicated server without having to add any other hardware. The possibilities are really endless.
I actually tried to implement using Norton Ghost and partition images to speed up the recycle process. That was a huge mistake. Mainly because at the time I perfected this solution for production, our hardware moved from IDE to SATA. Ghost doesn’t do SATA at all from what I could determine. They may have fixed this issue in recent releases, but at the time I was using it, SATA was not an option. Because of this I spent some time thinking about this issue, and then VMware released Server for free. I had a bit of a flash of inspiration and pitched the idea to the boss. Being established with the policies and procedures that were in place, he wasn’t inclined to make this type of jump. I don’t blame him, but I needed more. I left my position once I figured out I would never be more than a glorified PC tech, doing reinstalls, and provisioning new servers.
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01.17.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:50 am by Michael
I had never even heard of VirtualBox before they went Open Source. I downloaded and installed the Windows version to have a look. It’s actually pretty nice. It’s a bit on the unpolished side, but it has some potential. The performance is actually close to VMware or Parallels. It lacks the bells and whistles that VMware and Parallels include with their product, but it’s free. I was very suprised to see the VM perform better without Vx-t enabled. This product has a lot of promise for the future, and I’ll be keeping tabs on their development.
Installation was fairly straightforward, as was creating and installing a new virtual machine. The list of supported guest OSes is a bit short but they have the basics covered. Manually creating an iso to mount to a Vista machine to install drivers for the NIC was a bit unorthodox, but I managed. They really should offer a mini-iso of the drivers from their page, rather than forcing you to create it yourself, but I can’t complain, it’s free. The guest OS runs very well, and I didn’t hit any major snags on Vista, XP, or Ubuntu. The interface is easy to use, and reminds me a bit of the VMware Server Console. VirtualBox isn’t quite up to my current standards yet, but I’m sure now that it’s Open Source, many more people will add to it. Being able to see the internal workings of the code as well as the finished product is going to accelerate virtualization across the board. This product could end up being a VMware killer if enough people decide to jump on board and make it truly great…
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01.11.07
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:46 pm by Michael
Microsoft Virtual Server actually works pretty well for a Windows based solution. I won’t go into too much detail here but we do run several virtual servers on this platform. Performance is acceptable for mid-sized loads. I learned the hard way today that MSVS will happily over allocate resources if you don’t configure it correctly. If you are running anything in production on this platform, I highly recommend you tune your configuration to avoid a problem we experienced. When setting your resource allocations, make sure you set every virtual server to use less than 100% of any particular resource. If you set it at 100% or more for any single server, that server can (and will) be a greedy little Windows pig and slurp it all up. This is a problem when the other virtual server is under any sort of load and can’t allocate the resources it needs. I recommend not setting any server over 90% of your cpu, and 80% of your ram. You’ll thank me when one client runs a cpu intensive batch job and your other client’s DON’T call you with complaints.
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01.05.07
Posted in VMware, Ubuntu at 2:19 pm by Michael
I had some issues making xrdp work correctly in my standard Ubuntu Server install. I figured other people might have the same problems I did so I’m writing this article to show you how to make this awesome software work in Ubuntu. I use the Ubuntu server install iso to install a linux server. It’s a good way to get a lightweight box that can handle VMware Server. I install fluxbox and xorg onto the server just in case we have network issues, we can still run the VMware Server console from the local machine to make any changes we need.
The first step to making xrdp work is to be sure you have xorg and a window manager installed (I use fluxbox since it’s very light on resources). From the command line type:
sudo aptitude install xorg fluxbox fluxconf vnc4server
This will install xorg, fluxbox, and the vnc server that xrdp uses for it’s magic. Once those are all installed, you need to install the development tools and a few library files, to compile xrdp. From the command line:
sudo aptitude install build-essential libpam0g-dev libssl-dev
That should take care of everything you need for compiling xrdp. I only actually do this step on one server, and then I just make a tarball of the final compiled program to distribute to the rest of the servers. I don’t need a compiler and all that devel stuff on all the servers, just the 1 I use to compile. There are a couple steps to making xrdp work correctly that I illustrate below.
Fix up the font directory. For some reason Xvnc is set to look for fonts in the wrong path, but this is easily fixed with this command:
sudo ln -s /usr/share/fonts/X11 /usr/share/X11/fonts
Also because the newest Ubuntu uses dash instead of bash as the default shell, the scripts included with xrdp give me errors. You have to edit the files with a text editor and set them to use bash instead of the default /bin/sh:
sudo nano /usr/local/xrdp/*.sh
In each file change the top line from:
#!/bin/sh
To:
#!/bin/bash
Save the first one and it should automagically open the second and third files you need to edit. Make the change in all the files and be sure to save them. Now there is one more change you need to make for things to work correctly. The startwm.sh script doesn’t have support for fluxbox in it. What I do is make a backup of the original file, then make a new file with just the commands I need for fluxbox, I couldn’t seem to get it working correctly until I did this. Commands:
cd /usr/local/xrdp
sudo mv startwm.sh startwm.sh.orig
sudo nano startwm.sh
Now make this file look like this:
#!/bin/bash
/usr/bin/startfluxbox
exit 0
That’s it, save the file and try starting xrdp:
sudo /usr/local/xrdp/xrdp_control.sh start
Once xrdp is started, try connecting with rdesktop or Remote Desktop Connection in windows. You should be able to login using your normal username and password and get an xdesktop. As long as that works, you can now link the xrdp_control.sh into your /etc/init.d directory and start it like any other service:
sudo ln -s /usr/local/xrdp/xrdp_control.sh /etc/init.d/xrdp
And to have it start up at boot you want to create the links in the proper places:
sudo update-rc.d xrdp start 98 2 3 4 5 .
That should do it. xrdp should load on boot and start fluxbox for you.
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01.03.07
Posted in Mac at 12:58 am by Michael
There has been quite a bit of hype about Microsoft’s Vista being compared to Apple MacOS 10.4 Tiger. Having used both I can safely say that Apple is far ahead of Microsoft in virtually every area. Putting aside the insane systems requirements for Vista to run well, MacOS is still a much better experience. MacOS has it’s quirks, and there are a few things Apple could learn simply by listening to the users more and the designers less. A couple quick things, the 1 button mouse/trackpad. Don’t want to argue this one, but c’mon Apple, get into the 21st century, the number one complaint I see is this issue. Listen to the users already and quit being arrogant, I want 2 buttons, without having to buy another damn mouse. That’s it. Nothing fancy, no other special stuff, just what I can get on every other computer except yours. Also, fix the keys. The delete button not working the way I have come to expect on every other computer is almost but not quite a deal breaker. It requires me to pay more attention to a delete operation that I would like, but that’s not necessarily the worst thing when you’re a bit absent-minded… Enough with the personal rants, on to the reasons to switch.
- Vista is not proven in the wild.
That’s right. Vista is brand new and quite probably filled with thousands of bugs. Once it filters out to the real end users, and they get done kicking it around, there will be a large amount of “workarounds” that get found. This is classic Microsoft, release a barely tested product to end users, and then patch the hell out of it. I realize that almost all software gets revised and updated and patched, but truly Microsoft seems to have the worst track record for what I consider an “enterprise class” piece of software. Apple has a huge edge here since their OS has been out in the while for over a year now, and they’ve patched most of the worst flaws already. That means if you get a Mac, you are at least year ahead of anyone getting a new PC with Vista installed. When it comes to getting things done, being ahead of everyone else by such a large margin will pay of huge dividends quite quickly. I’m talking about productivity here, not money.
This is not surprising, it has been a benefit and feature of MacOS for a very long time. I can’t begin to explain the difference this one thing has on my productivity. When you plug a peripheral into your Mac, most of the time, it just works. With Windows, you never know if it will just work or whether you’ll have to spend valuable time getting it to work before you can use it. Not having to track down errors and drivers and such on a new peripheral saves huge amounts of time. While those Vista users are searching around madly for drivers and chasing down vague errors, you’ll be using your peripheral, happily getting things done. As a side benefit to users, this reduces stress in a big way. When things just work, you don’t get stressed out about it. When things don’t just work, you get stress, and you spend (too much) time getting to the point where you can use your peripheral, much less get your actual work done.
- Virtualization means you can run Windows apps on your Mac
Everyone that I’ve shown Parallels Desktop for Mac to has been very impressed. When I show them the coherency mode, and run Excel or Outlook on my mac desktop, I see a lot of smiles, and nods. This bodes well for the Mac’s future. One of the main things that stops people from switching is losing all their windows software. With Parallels they can use just about any Windows software they like and not worry about compatibility. You can easily drag and drop files between the Mac and Windows with Parallels, as well as just use a shared folder so the data is accessible to either OS. Being able to run Windows only apps on a Mac without having to reboot into Windows via BootCamp is simply the best mix of OSes I have seen to date.
- The Mac Laptops are Simply the Best You Can Get Right Now
The MacBook and MacBook Pro laptops are the best of the best. Stylish, user-friendly, high performance, and a highly portable. Apple now has the standard that other laptop manufacturers are going to be held to in the future. Owning my own Macbook, I can say without a doubt it has been the best laptop I have owned to date. The laptops I’ve had in the past from other manufacturer’s like Toshiba, Compaq, IBM, and HP pale in comparison to the experience I’ve had with my Macbook. The price is reasonable, and competitive to other similar laptops, with the added bonus of MacOS X. News reports abound of analysts claiming Apple’s market share is once again slowly climbing upwards after a long plateau, and I’m betting a growing number of those people will be buying laptops with the Apple logo on them.
Yeah, that’s right, I said it. They are sleek and stylish and look great. They are designed to not only perform well, but also to be pleasing to look at. I know many hardcore geeks will disagree with me, that form should follow function and the utter flexibility of the PC form factor appeals to a real geek more than some pretty little piece of plastic. I say they just haven’t had a computer that was useful and pleasant to the eyes. It is a small benefit to be sure, but I enjoy that my computer finally doesn’t have to be ugly to be a powerhouse. Apple pays at least as much attention to how the computer looks as they do to the performance of the machine, and I think it adds something to an Apple that I find severely lacking in virtually every other manufacturer out there. Apple products are simple and elegant in form as well as function.
And there you have it, 5 reasons to move to a Mac. Nothing too fancy or technical, just some good solid reasons to make the move to Mac now instead of later. Obviously this is all my opinion, but I’d argue it over a couple beers any day.
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