Sleep works perfectly fine but after wake my machine has no internet connection anymore, at least it looks like this. It’s only domains that aren’t resolved anymore. It also affects wired and wifi networks. There are a lot of threads in the Apple forums that blame USB drives, Optical drives and the like but this sounds a bit like voodoo.

I found the following working solution:

Edit “/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist” like so:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>Label</key>
	<string>com.apple.mDNSResponder</string>
	<key>OnDemand</key>
	<false/>
	<key>UserName</key>
	<string>_mdnsresponder</string>
	<key>GroupName</key>
	<string>_mdnsresponder</string>
	<key>ProgramArguments</key>
	<array>
		<string>/usr/sbin/mDNSResponder</string>
		<string>-launchd</string>
		<string>-AlwaysAppendSearchDomains</string>
		<string>-DisableSleepProxyClient</string>		
	</array>
	<key>MachServices</key>
	<dict>
		<key>com.apple.mDNSResponder</key>
		<true/>
	</dict>
	<key>Sockets</key>
	<dict>
		<key>Listeners</key>
		<dict>
			<key>SockFamily</key>
			<string>Unix</string>
			<key>SockPathName</key>
			<string>/var/run/mDNSResponder</string>
			<key>SockPathMode</key>
			<integer>438</integer>
		</dict>
	</dict>
	<key>EnableTransactions</key>
	<true/>
</dict>
</plist>

and relaunch the mDNSResponder like so:

sudo launchctl unload -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist 
sudo launchctl load -w /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.mDNSResponder.plist

This fixes to things: The domain resolution described here and the 2 hourly automatic wake from sleep described here.

Update:

It seems that fixed the problem just for that one time. To fix it every wake i use “SleepWatcher” by . Installed as said in the read me, save this file somewhere as restart_mDNSResponder

#!/bin/bash
killall -HUP mDNSResponder

and copy this

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>de.bernhard-baehr.sleepwatcher</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
                <string>/usr/local/sbin/sleepwatcher</string>
                <string>-V</string>
                <string>-w /path/to/restart_mDNSResponder</string>
        </array>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key>
        <true/>
        <key>KeepAlive</key>
        <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

to /Library/LaunchDaemons/de.bernhard-baehr.sleepwatcher-20compatibility.plist.

and execute

sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/de.bernhard-baehr.sleepwatcher-20compatibility.plist

This did the trick for me.

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OS X includes libxml which comes with xmllint.

To validate a xml file against a schema:

xmllint --noout --schema sitemap.xsd sitemap.xml

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The choice of hardware was kinda stupid. I thought, well this thing is not a special thingy but plain standard. Well, seems, it isn’t.

The first setback was, that the Debian installer booted from CD-Rom but didn’t recognize it afterwards. Yippie… I had to change the SATA Bios settings from IDE to RAID which means in reality, to AHCI. 2 things changed: Debian can be installed from CD-Rom and the dualboot Windows went nuts, i.e. crashed with a BSOD, even in safe mode. Solution to that was first switching back to IDE mode, installing some Intel driver for RAID thingies (really, there’s no raid in the machine… *sigh*), switch back et voila.

Next thing: The ethernet controller was to new. It’s kinda e1000 but not yet supported in the current testing kernel. The driver can be downloaded at intels site. I’ve chosen to skip network while installation and downloaded a full image. If you want to install from a netinstall image and have no 2nd nic at hand, here you’ll find a precompiled module. The blogs seems well written, but i wouldn’t call the Vostro a bunch of crap. The thing is very low noise, with Windows XP rock solid (at least at my workplace {i actually have two of them, at work and now at home}) and i appreciate the Dell pickup service. Another great howto is presented at the Ubuntu forums.

The next closed source thing i installed where the ATI drivers from here without a problem.

The things that lead to multiple reinstalls where the decision between KDE and GNOME. I just wanted to test them and didn’t want to purge every single package afterwards. In the end i went for GNOME.

So now i have a Desktop with the preinstalled Vista on a one partition and my new all day Debian system on a fully encrypted LVM partition. The later one was really no big deal to create with the Debian installer. The whole filesystem is encrypted except a boot partition and a relatively big space which i wanna spent on virtual machines.

prego stated that i should spent some energy into compiz. I already are accustomed to continuous zoom in the whole desktop, some nice effects and semi transparent windows through Mac OS X, for that to say, but i didn’t want to add non “official” repositories. In the end, i give it a try and followed the instructions here and used the instructions for the xorg.conf from here without that Xgl thingies. What can i say: It works and looks great. The wobbling windows are hilarious

For my photo collection i already installed digiKam, which is a great tool.

Next steps are migrating my email from Apple Mail.app to a local IMAP server. Anyone suggestions which email client to use?

A friend tried to convince me several times to reinstall my Macbook for good but i don’t want to. Things used to work and broke with an OS update. And no, i’m not using *any* of the OS X system hacks. I used to be able to upgrade from release to release (hell, the iMac made it from 10.3.8 to 10.5.1 without a problem) and all of sudden i’m back in windows times: Upgrade and you’re doomed. Suck my dick… I don’t wanna go this path ever again. And then there the recent developments with Apple. I’ve been wearing a t with “Think different” know for about 5 years, i always like their products, the integration of Unix and eyecandy. But the apps are getting worse with every new release the last months. Apples behaviour to make you pay for a simple software upgrade (sarbane oxley my ass…, i’m expecting the first bugfix to be payed because the OS is no abo related model). OS Xs unablity to encrypt the whole volume (it can encrypt your home folder in some silly image file) without external tools (recently, Truecrypt can do this.

Stop. Must… breath… again.

In the end, i think three days without much sleep were well spend.

As before, i’ll keep you updated, if you like

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Recently Dell had some very convenient offers on their PowerEdge machines and i could barely resist to buy one, but finally, i managed to: cut the crap, i don’t want to have even more boxes standing around at home.

But i was thinking again: Whats better than one backup? Redundant backups

So i downloaded a copy of Parallels Workstation to install it on my PC at work. Equipt with a DVD and my image file from Parallels Desktop, i fired up the PC Version and after fiddling around with some pathes i can confirm that the Parallels Desktop 3.x vms are compatible with Parallels Workstation 2.x vms, at least a vm with a Debian OS inside.

But to me, performance was poor. My mac is a 2Ghz Core2Duo Mac Book with 3GB Ram, my Pc is a 2.66 Core2Duo Dell with 2GB Ram and Parallels Workstation was way slower on the PC than unter OS X. In addition: I didn’t want to spend another 50$ for Parallels (i already bought versions 2 and 3 for Mac, should be enough), so i thought about alternatives on my PC running Windows XP as host.

I already knew about QEMU which in contrast to Parallels and VMWare is a processor emulator and not a virtualization tool and therefore must be slower. I recommend the QEMU Manager for Windows Users, as this thingy already contains the kqemu virtualization extension.

Installation is dead simple and to my surprise, it was enough to convert my Parallels extending image with the Parallels Image Tool to a plain disk which i could use without further changes with QEMU.

Debian is very stable against the few “hardware” changes. The only problem i had that Debian wouldn’t find my eth0 device although the Realtek 8139too module was loaded. Solutions: The ethxxx devices are bound to the hardware (mac) address. I could look up the mac address in the Parallels configuration file, add this number in the QEMU config and voila, everything was up and running.

Somewhat complicated is bridged networking with QEMU. First you need the TAP-Win32 driver which is brought to you by the great OpenVPN project. The most simple way to install is through OpenVPN Gui for Windows.

After install add a new TAP device through the startmenu entry and then, the clou: There are some howtos which recommend enable bridged networking through the Internet Connection Sharing facilities of windows but it’s much simpler than that: Under network connections, select your default LAN Connection, the tap device, right click and choose bridge networks.

After that, change the network mode in your QEMU vm from user networking to tap networking and you’re ready to go.

Performance was quite good (at least at Parallels speed) but i guessed, there was room for more so i look for VMWare. Unfortunately, the QEMU image tool qemu-img.exe repeatedly crashed while converting my Parallels Image to the vmdk format so this was a dead end for me.

Although the Parallels image worked fine with QEMU and later on also in our Oracle VM Server as a hw virtualized XEN machine, i was not content and i looked out for VirtualBox which is available under a GPL license without USB support which i don’t need, but is able to use Intel VT-x and AMD-V technology.

I needed to convert the Parallels image from a raw disk format to innoteks vdi format, following the steps explained here.

All the tools mentioned there are also available under a Windows installation of QEMU and Virtualbox. Commands as follow:

qemu-img.exe convert foobar.hdd foobar.bin
VBoxManage.exe convertdd foobar.bin foobar.vdi

For bridged networking unter VirtualBox the same applies as to QEMU without the need for OpenVPN, you can add a TAP device right from within VirtualBox . If you already have the bridged described above, you can add the VirtualBox interface with a right click to that bridge. Also, to have Debian not change the eth number, add the same mac address in the network tap of VirtualBox.

All this said and done, booting the system was blazing fast and also the backup of my Daily Fratze project which is pulled via rsync from my server, runs extremly smooth and i have absolutely no hassle setting up Ruby on Rails, RMagick and MySQL under the Windows “Operating System” but can use Debian or any other distro with a sane environment.

After fiddling around with both VMWare and VirtualBox, i’d prefer VirtualBox over VMWare Server (which is also available for free {i.e. for giving VMWare your personal data}). VirtualBox has less overhead then VMWare Server, is simple to configure and as i said, amazingly fast.

When the OS X version leaves beta, i’ll switch from Parallels on my Mac to VirtualBox, at least for my server live backup, so i can make it redundant with the one some kilometres away (call me paranoid if you like) at my workplaces PC.

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Despite all the naysayers who warn you “don’t upgrade, make a clean install”, i’ve updated two Intel Macs to today without much hassle.

In both cases, the famous “Welcome Movie Thingy” crashed Hurray, good first impression.

In a nutshell: Leopard boosts Apache finally to Apache 2 which forced me to reconfigure my development webserver. Timemachine sucks bigtime as it doesn’t work over samba shares at all and over afp shares only with an intermediate disk image which is dead slow.

Parallels works fine, my Pureftpd Manager doesn’t. Share Points is no longer needed as the sharing tab has an option to choose the folders that are shared via samba or afp. Also, all input managers have stopped working (like the great InquisitorX). I guess hacks exists, but i don’t wanna run into trouble the next system upgrade.

I need to adjust myself to the new look and feel. It’s nice, that brushed metal is gone and the widgets are somewhat consistent, but I don’t like the colors: Inactive is too white, active to dark. The new front row app is odd. I like the old one better. The effects in photo booth and iChat feel like an “aaah, nice” and then never use it again feature to me. Muhaha, how funny, standing in a fishbowl.

Some things are nice and handy, spaces for instance and the pimped, system wide dictionary, that lets you search wikipedia. OS X comes bundled with rails now, which is nice. Also very cool is the new screen sharing core service, that lets you remote control other macs. I used Chicken of the VNC before, but that tool didn’t like german chars and right mouse clicks at all. The screen sharing thing is way better.

I’m no benchmarker, but the system feels fast and smooth on a Core Solo Mac Mini and a Core 2 Duo Mac Book, haven’t run it on a G5 yet.

I’m curious, if and when something bad happens to the new system… I did some extensive testing the last 2 days but until now, everything works as it used, it just looks different. I’m wondering if that was money well spent, i’m not sure after all.

The new firewall settings are a joke, aren’t they? I have the terrible impression of a Zone Alarm clone… So now then, it’s time for me to write the ipfw rules per hand, once again. Also the new front row isn’t just odd, it’s crap. iTunes store everywhere… But the funniest thing is, it shows me the top 10 french songs bought on the very day. Not that i was interessted in the german ones, but thats just stupid commercials within a product i already payed for.

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Und ich dachte, wenigstens Mac OS X wurde und wird von der Seuche AOL verschont. Na, so kann man sich täuschen.

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Just use Wake550.

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Today i took some relativly small external firewire drives (250 GB each), attached them to my “always on” serving Mac Mini and it took less than 5 minutes to build a RAID on two external drive.

I’ve choosen a RAID 1 configuration as i want to use the drives for backup purpose. Mainly for my music collection and for the forthcoming Time Machine with Mac OS X Leopard.

As there is no possibility in OS X to share external drives (wtf, i know…) i recommend Sharepoints for greater flexibility with AFP and SMB shares.

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HTML Entity Character Lookup

Best of all: the widget doesn’t need a online connection. The whole thing works like a charm, great!

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All you need to do is describe in detail here.

Not all apps are cocoa, so is Firefox. But there’s a light at the end of the tunnel: It’s all Text! is a firefox plugin that enables Firefox to use any editor of your choice to edit textareas.

A little “hacking” is required for this to work under os x as explained here.

Happy editing!

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