Month: July 2002

samba tips for OS X

I had to figure out to make samba work on OS X today, and rather than spend any time looking for existing documents, I worked out my own solution.

I installed the fink package and got version 2.2.5 installed. As usual there was some fumbling around with smbpasswd (doesn’t exist on OS X and the fink package doesn’t create it for you). So I had to pull a make_smbpasswd script from another working samba installation to get that working.

See the MORE link below for details on all the changes.

Then I had to add some stuff to inetd.conf and services, the latter being a stanza in the netinfo database. My love for netinfo being well-documented, I made the changes my own way.

Finally, I had to add 3 lines to inetd.conf (I wonder when Apple will switch to xinetd? and if I switched, what would it wreck?).

I have more fun working with OS X than the other OSes I have worked with, even on the command line. Gotta get that iBook . . . .
Continue reading “samba tips for OS X”

simplicity as the mother of innovation

A confluence of events has me thinking about data storage. A friend dropped me a note containing a proposal I can’t talk much about other than to say it was about storage; I have also been following a thread on the Open Darwin discussion list about mounting ftp-based stores as filesystems; and last of all I somehow wiped out this laptop’s disk layout and partitioning scheme, meaning I may never be able to reboot: backing up what I have became important.

Anyway, in the course of this, as I found myself making backups of my home directory and realizing that I have appletalk/IP, samba/cifs, and nfs all running here, I was reminded that they all require different incantations to make them work. In some case they’re unidirectional: UNIX, including OS X, can share appletalk but only OS X can mount appletalk volumes, while all of them can share and mount NFS filesystems. I haven’t tested samba, though I have mounted and written to samba shares from UNIX and Windows here.

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Avail Capacity Mounted on
/dev/ad0s2a 128990 42774 75898 36% /
/dev/ad0s2f 257998 532 236828 0% /tmp
/dev/ad0s2g 7179502 3322530 3282612 50% /usr
/dev/ad0s2e 257998 228222 9138 96% /var
procfs 4 4 0 100% /proc
pink:/Network/iso 11642580 7373720 4268860 63% /mnt/tmp < - NFS mount from OS X //PAUL@BLUE/PAUL 5853056 2595712 3257344 44% /mnt/smb <- samba mount from FreeBSD //PAUL@RED/PAUL 7302272 5239424 2062848 72% /mnt/red <- samba mount from FreeBSD
Wouldn't it be easier if there was a super-command (like attach?) that could automagically determine what protocols were available between host A and B and just handle the mounting of the filesystem? You could prioritize it, of course: hosts connecting from some networks might connect with appletalk or samba, while others might be offered ftp only.

OS X 10.2 (Jaguar) offers this as a feature: "Mount ftp servers directly in Finder", and here is a mention of mount_ftp and ftp.fs possibly being present in Jaguar. Get your advance orders in now . . .

KDE offers something like this but I've never used it. I may try it now to see how close I am to what they have.

a sobering sight

a house near mine was demolished today: it was old and rundown, and likely had not been lived in for years.

It took two men with an excavator less than a day to destroy the whole house and put the pieces in dumpsters (only three were needed, as far as I could tell). They were halfway through it by 12:30 and there was nothing left but a pile of bricks that had been the chimney stack and a few chunks of concrete foundation by 4 PM.

A fire would take longer and leave more remains . . . .

ouch. even website access will be down?

The Seattle Public Library – Press Release –

All Seattle Public Libraries, excluding the *Washington Talking Book & Braille Library, will close Monday, Aug. 26 through Sunday, Sept. 1 due to citywide budget cuts.
[ . . . . ]
The entire Web site will be shut down – www.spl.org will not be available. That means on-line computer sign-ups, Libraries for All information, the on-line reference service, and other features, will not be available.

Now that hurts. I’m not sure why the website needs to be down, unless they’re trying to make a point. I don’t completely disagree, but I hope it doesn’t undermine the popularity of the online web services.

the Altamont of blogging

Just Another Cultural Co-Op? / Blogging hits the mainstream, for better or worse

Blogging “punctures the self-importance of gatekeepers, ombudsmen, media critics, J-school profs and everybody else who is institutionally biased toward defending the values of monopolist daily newspapers,” says Matt Welch. “It has allowed many people to realize that the weird retired guy down the street is a better and more interesting writer than anyone on the local op-ed page.”

If this keeps up, perhaps we’ll see more and more of the trade schools that have insinuated their way into higher education wither and die.

If a broad, humanities-based education or solid life experience were good enough for the founders of this country, it should be good enough for the rest of us.

It is odd how we have moved over the past 200-300 years from producers of our own entertainment to consumers. How many people today play music or sing or write for the pleasure of it and to share with others? I’m not talking about journals and novels in progress but stuff to share after dinner. This wasn’t uncommon years ago, but with the advent of commercial media, particularly broadcast media, we have looked to others to do that for us.

Perhaps the weblog ethic will spread and more people will do their thing.
from John

one of the best things in OS X

Quartz.

Now that some browsers support it (IE, OmniWeb, Chimera), you can really appreciate the crisp text rendering it does. Everything looks like a high-quality PDF or other typeset document. Just a joy to behold.

today’s pet peeve

I just rode my bike to run some errands: to the library to exchange some books, to the grocery for supplies for the school, and to the bank. Not far, 2 ½ miles tops.

Last errand of the trip, I roll up to the ATM, do my business, and as I’m mounting the bike, a guy drives up with his A/C on, gets out of the car with the engine still running and the A/C still blowing, to do his banking.

I’m not riding to save the earth or anything, just to get some exercise, but that still annoys me. I never did that in Atlanta, after all, and it’s a damn sight hotter there than it ever gets here. They have hotter nights than we have summer days.

It’s not the first time I’ve seen it, but the fact I was on the bike made it just a little more galling.

the provenance of books

I checked out “Sailing Fundamentals” [ISBN 0 671 60598 4] from the library and noticed inside, partly covered by a piece of paper, a dedication:

“from the woman in the treehouse
to the man living out on a limb

/signed/ S

17-i-95”

From there, the book went to the Seattle Sailing Club, and then on to the library.

What would induce someone to part with a book inscribed to them? Perhaps they forgot or parted on bad terms . . . .

See a scan of the flyleaf.
Continue reading “the provenance of books”