EGOPOLY

Brandon Wirtz is so totally the greatest living american.

I’m always willing to help out in the the dreams of fellow nerds.

I have a Mac mini at home with Leopard Server installed. I do this for two reasons:

1. So I can do something with my very old, slow mac mini besides using it as a paper weight.

2. To have a local copy of software update so the other three Macs in the house can quickly download big software updates.

It was working great until recently, when it stopped. I would run Software Update on my iMac, and it would always say “no updates.” But I know there were a lot of updates, because if I switched the config to point back to Apple, it found lots.

The key was looking in /var/log/install.log, which showed the errors. Essentially, the problem was that the mini with Leopard Server was redirecting the client machine to it’s fully qualified domain name, which the client machine didn’t know. (At home I use a simple /etc/hosts file that I copy to all the machines. This isn’t a big deal, since I only have 4 computers to worry about.)

Here’s the error line:

May 14 10:27:47 black Software Update[12270]: *** Failed to load distribution file at http://hermione.we.billo.com:8088/content/downloads/49/20/zzz061-6429/NkvT6g3JwLP7HcR75wTVKqQjkFTbNj3mSx/061-6429.English.dist ***

Adding an entry to the client /etc/hosts (the FQDN for the server) solved the problem.

http://pycon.blip.tv/file/1949416/
by Bob Ippolito at PyCon 2009

My friend Steve just asked me about /var/folders on Mac OS X. I had never heard of it. But guess what? It’s a freaking caches of all kinds of shit, including screen shots of every web page you’ve ever been to in Safari.

It’s outside your home directory. Even if you have FileVault turned on. If you turn private browsing on, it seems like stuff is NOT written there, but I’m not 100% sure of that yet.

What the hell, Apple? That’s Microsoft-style security. ALL USER SHIT GOES IN THE USER HOME DIRECTORY. Dammit.

Guess what I’m adding to my boot script?

rm -rf /var/folders/*

on a network card:

kstat -p ‘nge:0:nge0:*rbytes64′ 1

http://➡.ws/

Make awesome links like this:

http://➡.ws/gp

Or this:

http://➡.ws/fly

(Thanks to DF http://➡.ws/ for pointer)

More:

http://›.ws/billo

The iMac is available with 8GB pre-installed. The upgrade, from 2×2GB 1066 DDR3 SO-DIMMs to 2×4GB SO-DIMMS costs $1000.

One thousand dollars.

I may well be mistaken, but 4GB 1066 DDR3 SO-DIMMS are available for about $65. Ignoring the fact that is an upgrade, it’s nearly a 2000% markup. I don’t get it.

To mount a DVD or CD iso image:


lofiadm -a /full/path/imagename.iso /dev/lofi/1
mount -F hsfs -o ro /dev/lofi/1 /mnt


How to install packages:


cd /mnt/Solaris_Software_Companion/Solaris_i386/Packages
pkgadd -d `pwd` SFWxaw3d


Where the hell is sudoers?


emacs /opt/sfw/etc/sudoers


No setuid? WTF?


chmod +s /opt/sfw/bin/sudo


To restart a service (like autofs, ssh):


svcadm restart /system/filesystem/autofs:default


Prepare plist file to load:

sudo chown root /Library/LaunchDaemons/whatever.plist
sudo chgrp wheel /Library/LaunchDaemons/whatever.plist
sudo chmod 644 /Library/LaunchDaemons/wharever.plist

load it up:

sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/whatever.plist

use this driver to get port to appear

http://osx-pl2303.sourceforge.net/

Use screen to connect:

screen /dev/tty.PL2303-0000101D 9600

cf http://www.nerdlogger.com/2007/12/usb-to-serial-console-for-mac-osx.html