nuxx.net
Making, baking, and (un-)breaking things in Southeast Michigan.

‘diskutil repairVolume’ on boot?

November 4, 2005

[Cross posted to and …]

Does anyone here know how to have OS X (10.4.3) do the equivilent of a ‘diskutil repairVolume’ on reboot, before the OS is up? I’ve got a machine I don’t (currently) have physical access to which needs the root disk repaired so I can’t boot the install CD and run the check that way.

Also, anyone remember the issue with rsyncing to external volumes that I’ve been incessantly complaining about? I’m now thinking that I’ve got an issue with the source data, which was somehow manifesting itself in errors with rsync being unable to find destination files after they were written. There’s some weird inconsistancy here. Or maybe I was reading the rsync errors backwards? Hrm.

Anyway, any idea how to make diskutil do my bidding? I know how I’d do it under Windows, but OS X doesn’t seem to support this here…

computersmoved from livejournal

Backing Up OS X to OpenBSD

November 3, 2005

[Cross posted to and …]

Hey everyone, I just thought you’d want to know that it’s possible to compile the version of rsync that ships with 10.4.3 (found here) on OpenBSD 3.8 (x86) with the Apple patch that enables extended attributes.

To compile it, just grab the 2.6.3 version from Apple, apply the patch, do a ./configure –enable-ea-support, and compile it. I know it’s a bit behind the 2.3.6 version which ships with OpenBSD 3.8, but it does work.

With this I’m able to back up the HFS+ volumes on my Macs to an OpenBSD box and preserve resource forks. Woo!

Look:

$ ls -als
total 150696
    4 drwxr-xr-x  2 c0nsumer  c0nsumer       512 Nov  3 14:01 .
    4 drwx------  3 c0nsumer  c0nsumer       512 Nov  3 14:00 ..
   28 -rw-r--r--  1 c0nsumer  c0nsumer     12292 Sep 10 02:08 .DS_Store
    4 -r--------  1 c0nsumer  c0nsumer        82 Sep 10 02:08 ._.DS_Store
44416 -rw-r--r--  1 c0nsumer  c0nsumer  22710505 Aug 23 11:34 01_PolkaMegamix.m4a
[...]
$
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Watch and Camera

November 2, 2005

Well, that’s the watch I ended up getting. It was only a $28 at Target, so at least it didn’t really cost much. I’m still not quite sure what I think of it — although I do know that the compass band-like thing in the top of the frame needs to be removed — but it is only going to be use for this trip and possibly times when I’m in areas where there is no cell phone reception. It should work for now…

Also, when I swung Camera Mart in Pontiac to get some lens cleaning things today, I found out something interesting. First off, their single-lens Nikon D70s is $1189, which is just below the price Amazon and Adorama and such have it for. Second, on the weekend before Thanksgiving they are having some sort of promotional special where they will cover the sales tax of such a purchase. That means that I could get the camera for a decent price from a local high-end camera shop, tax free, and without paying shipping. Not a bad deal, I don’t think.

I’m wondering if this would be the time for me to get a DSLR finally. While I will be out of town that weekend, the person I spoke with said I could order by phone and get the same price, so maybe I could ask them to just hold it for me until I got back.

Hmm… It’d be really swell… Well, at least I’ve got the watch / alarm taken care of.

UPDATE: Or hell, maybe it’d be more worthwhile to just get the body and this 18mm – 200mm lens? That’s a 35mm equiv. of 27mm – 300mm (11x) which would be an ideal all-around lens. Couple that with a nice macro lens, and I’d probably be all set.

acquired thingsmoved from livejournaltravel

Complaints about 10.4.3

October 31, 2005

[Cross posted from for archival purposes…]

Well, I guess I’ll be the first to complain about 10.4.3 here.

#1 — The Mail.app problem I complained about before (and submitted a bug report to Apple on) has not been fixed.

#2 — Despite adding more RAW support, the Coolpix 5400’s RAW (NEF) files remain unsupported. This is supported by dcraw so Apple has no excuse for not making it work. This too has been submitted as a bug back in April or May.

#3 — While Safari has gained the ability to render the ACID2 browser test I have been able to make it break. I visit the ACID2 test page itself, then after the rendering is complete I spin the ball on my mouse (a Mighty Mouse, in this case) and the face breaks and scrolls even though there is no scroll bar. Here is a screenshot of the problem.

#4 — The out-of-the-blue failing of my attempt to rsync lots of data to an external drive continues to fail as follows:

Documents/iChats/Erika Alpert on 2005-09-09 at 23.57.ichat
        3500 100%   18.99kB/s    0:00:00  (6610, 10.0% of 185201)
rsync: fstat failed: No such file or directory (2)
❚

Then after being sent a break:

^Crsync error: received SIGUSR1 or SIGINT (code 20) at /SourceCache/rsync/rsync-20/rsync/rsync.c(231)
rsync: writefd_unbuffered failed to write 103 bytes: phase "unknown" [generator]: Broken pipe (32)
rsync error: error in rsync protocol data stream (code 12) at /SourceCache/rsync/rsync-20/rsync/io.c(909)
mercury:~ c0nsumer$

This hasn’t yet been reported to Apple as an official bug report yet because I don’t have a standard test case for it yet. However, it worked under 10.3.9 just fine. Unfortunately this is the bug I can’t work around, because even copying data to the external drives with Finder fails in the same manner.

So, Apple… Drop the ball much?

computersmoved from livejournal

Mail Hold

October 31, 2005

Well, this is quite nice… One can now request that a hold be placed on their mail delivery online. No more having to dig up a form, fill it out, and mail it in a few days ahead of time.

found thingsmoved from livejournal

New Fridge

October 29, 2005


Click for more…

Well, the new fridge is here and installed. The delivery people called at 9:50 and said that I should expect them between 10 and 1. They got here just before 11, and everything went great. Interestingly, they didn’t use any hand trucks, so the cardboard I put down in order to protect the threshold wasn’t needed. Ah well. I did have to flip the plug around before hooking it all up, but it seems to have gone well. There is plenty of room inside, and I think everything will fit well.

The old fridge claims to cost ~$75 year to operate back when it was made in 1990 / 1991. This new fridge claims $40/year. Figuring for increased energy costs and inflation, I’d imagine that old fridge would have just cost a whole bunch to run even if it was working in ideal conditions. I’m figuring the cost of the new fridge will be offset by saved electrical costs over the next three years or so, so this should be good. And it looks nice to boot.

Anyway, if you want to see photos of the new fridge and the things I did in order to connect it, click on the picture above or this link right here (photo gallery retired).

acquired thingsaround the housemoved from livejournal

Mokomoko Cocoa Chiffon

October 26, 2005


Click for more…

Continuing with my interest in odd or different foods, I picked up a box of Mokomoko Cocoa Chiffon when I was at Tsai Grocery. Well, tonight I made it, and I must say, it’s really quite good.

To put it simply, it is a sponge cake dessert which is made by mixing a powder in with an egg in a mug, then microwaving it for a minute or so. As mentioned before, it’s quite good. Pretty much like a light chocolate angel food cake, but in a mug,

If you click the picture above or on this link (photo gallery retired) you can see some pictures of the product itself, along with step by step of making it, and some close-ups of the final product itself.

So, yeah. If you get a chance to try this, go for it. It really is good… I think the pictures came out well too.

Mmm… Mokomoko Cocoa Chiffon (photo gallery retired). Hrm, no. That doesn’t go as well as mmmmmmeat! Ah well.

UPDATE: Yes, I did change the photo. This one is more enticing. Click on the current photo to see the gallery itself, then you’ll get to see all the photos.

foodmoved from livejournal

Mozilla!

October 26, 2005

Okay, a moment for me to bitch about the Mozilla people:

Who the hell makes an application which supports SOCKS as a proxy type, but doesn’t provide the option for name lookups to be done via the proxy? Both Thunderbird and Firefox have been this way forever, and only a Mozilla nightly properly presents this option.

Maybe the only people who use SOCKS these days are kiddies bouncing through open proxies? Or maybe the only users of SOCKS are on weirdly configured networks which will resolve any name, but only provide connections out through a single box?

Dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb.

computersmoved from livejournal