Paint the Tiger, Carve the Swan

I use an AppleScript to implement “Open Terminal Here” functionality on my Macs, and just now I noticed on the Intel machine it had stopped working properly if Terminal wasn’t already running. For some reason, on PPC it still sends the message through, but on x86 it doesn’t.

So, I had to use the following code to get it to work if Terminal wasn’t already running, which can be generalised to any application:

repeat while "Terminal" is not in name of processes
    delay 0.5
end repeat
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I am a registered user of Missing Sync for PalmOS, but it wouldn’t install on my Dell running OS X.

Easy to fix: copy the installer package somewhere writable, and then open the package, find the file Contents/Resources/InstallationCheck. Edit this file in a text editor (luckily, they made it a bash script!), and before the final line (exit $RETVAL), insert:

exit 0

Crude hack, but it gets it installed. Now to reboot and see if it will actually run!

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Here I go, reinstalling WinXP for the umpteenth time this week. I seem to have some corrupted files which prevents me from running all but the most simple of applications. Including IE, and Firefox, btw.

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I have all of my Music, Movies and TV shows stored digitally on a server, located just below my feet at the moment, but soon to be shifted to another location. This server just runs SMB file sharing, and provides access to the same files, as well as a heap of other data, to all of the machines in my network. It also provides easy access to media and installers for guest users, too.

The one thing I like about Windows1 over OS X is that you can have shares set to auto-mount on bootup. I used to use an AppleScript to do this, which was okay, except OS X still disconnects when you sleep. Not that I sleep my machine much, anyway.

Then today, I read a great hint on MacOSXHints: Make sure iTunes mounts a networked music library. Basically, instead of running iTunes from the location it is installed in, you create an alias on the music server volume, and run it (via another alias back into the dock) from there.

Then, before loading iTunes, it mounts the volume, if it can find it. Otherwise, iTunes will not run. Which is fine by me, since all of my music is on that server!

1. Mind you, Windows does have some other crappiness in conjunction with this. Lately, I’ve been finding that it won’t always mount all of the shares, even though I chose automatically mount after rebooting, and it sometimes forgets my passwords. Similarly, you cannot connect more than once to a server with different credentials. I mean, seriously?

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I’ve used Pacifist to extract data from MacOS X Installer Packages before, but I just noticed something that might be a bug. It was on my Dell/Hackintosh, and I haven’t had time to try the same thing on the iMac G4, but I will.

I was about to update the OS X x86 system to 10.4.9, and after reading Method to Update hackintosh 10.4.8 to 10.4.9 (Intel SSE2/3), I had backed up the files referenced, and was backing up the whole partition to a disk image. I thought I’d extract a couple of the files listed, and see if I could figure out the differences between them. So I extracted a file using Pacifist to the Desktop, ready to examine it.

Okay, the file isn’t there. Go into Terminal, and list the Desktop.

Poof. Finder is gone.

When it reloads, the file is there.

What I suspect is happening (and I haven’t tried it again, just yet), is that the file is copied, and the Finder isn’t notified. When something else tries to access the file, the Finder panics, or something.

I will try to reproduce this on the same system, and my PPC setup.

Until then, here I go to update…

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Ooh, scary stuff this afternoon. I was preparing to back up my OS x86 installation, and make a bootable version on another partition, but at some stage I must have repartitioned the whole hard drive. Which included the 75GB NTFS partition with Windows XP, and a heap of data on it.

I originally had thought it was the NTFS-3G (read/write FileSystem driver for Mac), but, alas, it wasn’t.

So, I spent the next few hours downloading repairers, trying in vain to undelete, before I happened across one CD ISO that did the trick - restored the partition information from a backup. I then had to repair the windows installation (fix the MBR and something else, FIXMBR and FIXBOOT), and everything is back to normal.

Man, I’m feeling a whole lot happier than I did a couple of hours ago…

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Well, I had installed OS X on an unsupported machine, and had virtually everything I wanted working. With two exceptions. Finder wasn’t able to connect to any file sharing servers, but I was able to manually create mounts, using:

$ mount_smbfs //user:pass@machine/mount /mnt

I was also able to do something similar with AFS shares. Which, by the by, are much nicer - they actually allow me to copy icons from my iMac to my Dell.

Then, I happened across this forum post: Personal File Sharing & Samba, JaS 10.4.7

Basically, it seems that some of the files from the Hackintosh installation aren’t perfect. So, the following needs to be done:

$ cd /usr/sbin
$ sudo rm AppleFileServer
$ sudo ln -s /System/Library/CoreServices/AppleFileServer.app/Contents/MacOS/AppleFileServer AppleFileServer
$ sudo unlink /System/Library/Filesystems/afpfs.fs

I’m not sure about the last one, but I did it anyway. And then I was able to use the Finder “Connect to Server…” tool. And have shortcuts on my desktop to servers.

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Well, after two days of trying, I finally got OS X to install on my Dell Dimension 4600.

In the end, it seems my installation DVD was slightly corrupted, enough to fail on trying to install a particular package. Which, it turned out, was the one that stops kernel panics on boot. Kinda handy. The way I got around it was to use Pacifist to unpack the package on the iMac, and copy the files across using my iPod. This was after countless reboots. I wish I’d thought of it earlier. Like yesterday morning.

So, now I’m typing this from the lovely place that is OS X.

I managed to get Sound working, just by changing the plug location. Only in-built AC97 sound works, but that’s mainly what I’ve been using anyway. I had been using the PCI soundcard for TeamSpeak, but not for actual system sounds. At the worst, I can just build a cable double adaptor and leave it plugged into both locations.

Networking required the download of an extension - AppleIntel8255x.kext, and that worked fine too. In the short term, I just plugged in a Firewire cable to the iMac, and used Internet Sharing to build the network. But this is better, and it even picks up the same IP address (and hostname) from my DHCP server.

Graphics still isn’t perfect, but I’m only a few minutes away from downloading a potential driver. In fact, it’s just finished now.

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I was trying to do something earlier, where instead of creating a Command, I just used a macro that executed a command, but I wasn’t really able to.

Then, I happened to record a macro where, instead of having made the command earlier, I ran it while recording.  The following JavaScript is the macro:

Now, I just need to see if I can use python macros to get the same effect.

Tonight May Have To Last Me All My Life • The Avalanches • Since I Left You ★½

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I’ve been working on a few little macros for Komodo. I’m planning to build a more cohesive set as I use the editor more.
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