Chromium in Ubuntu and Mac OS X

Google Chrome is not yet available for either Linux or OS X (or anything other than Windows) but Unix users can use Chromium.
So, I tried this out on both Ubuntu (Mac) and OS X.
Very easy to install although it's a big install. Mac download was close to 50 MB and the final install took up about 124 MB. That's bit when you consider that the latest Opera is about 8 MB and Chromium is supposed to be a slimmed down browser.
For me, in both instances, it appeared identical to Google Chrome which I had used a few times in a VM Windows XP.
So, my comments are really no different than they had been before when I looked at the latter
Comparisons have to be made against Opera (I'm using either 9.52 or 9.60 Beta now) which I have used for almost two years and have very few complaints other than the fact that much new software is not Opera-compatible.
So, why do I like Opera?
1. It's noticeably faster than all other browsers I have tried
2. Speeddial is a wonderful productivity tool
3. I like its download manager and in-built torrent client
4. How it handles rss feeds suits me perfectly
5. I make major use of My Buttons

So, how does Chromium compare?
1. It's not slow but it doesn't seem to me to be at all as fast as Opera
2. Chromium's most visited sites is similar to, but not the same as speeddial. A major benefit of speeddial is that your chosen webpages are ALWAYS in the same location so you don't need to search around to find out where they are.
3. Chromium's bookmarks bar is just as good as Opera's My Buttons
4. When I Open in a New Tab, I expect that tab to open rather than just sit there waiting to be clicked. Chromium falls down there.

All in all, I'm going to continue checking out Chromium (and Google Chrome when it comes along) in Linux and OS X, but I honestly haven't seen anything that would make me even think of moving away from Opera.
On the other hand, Google is a large and very rich company and they are unlikely to settle for something that's, well, crap. So, I'll certainly keep an eye on it.

Menu.lst ready to offer all six Linux OSes from usb HDD

Well, this long-delayed task is finally complete and I can once again see all 10 Linux OSes in my Grub menu -- six of which are actually on my Seagate 250 GB usb drive.
In reality this wasn't really difficult but three of the externally-stored OSes referred to the usb drive as /dev/sdax rather than the expected /dev/sdbx.
The one problem I found in trying to install these six OSes was that wireless just doesn't work as cleanly in Linux as it does in OS X. In fact, the only OS that was able to see my wireless network was Sabayon.
Additionally, I had problems updating two of these; LinuxMint updated but ran into a last minute problem when it refused to commit the updates as either there was a download error or committing would break some packages.
No sure how to get around this and may have to re-install Mint.
Also, it seems that I just don't know how to do an update in Sabayon but here's an article that should help me.

Nevertheless, I now have once again a total of 10 Linux OSes that I can boot to from this simple menu. And they all boot cleanly.
So, to avoid losing this precious /boot/grub/menu.lst information, I'm going to print all the relevant parts here so it'll always be available:

splashimage (hd0,8)/boot/grub/splashimages/xyz.xpm.gz

title ********************Operating systems on Internal HDD****************************
root

title Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-19-generic
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=UUID=5b844c98-97e8-4cad-b051-32ddd40f02ad ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-19-generic
quiet

title Foresight Linux 2.6.26.3-1-fl.smp.gcc4.1.x86.i686.img
root (hd0,2)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26.3-1-fl.smp.gcc4.1.x86.i686 ro vga=0x317 root=LABEL=/
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.26.3-1-fl.smp.gcc4.1.x86.i686.img

title openSUSE 11.0 2.6.25.11-0.1-pae
root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.25.11-0.1-pae root=/dev/sda5 resume=/dev/sda11 #splash=silent showopts vga=0x314
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.25.11-0.1-pae


title Sidux 2008-2 Erebos, kernel 2.6.25-9.slh.1-sidux-686
root (hd0,6)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.25-9.slh.1-sidux-686 root=UUID=0adeb796-dd19-4af9-bad7-bcebfea68264 ro vga=791
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.25-9.slh.1-sidux-686

title ********************Operating systems on External HDD****************************
root

title PCLinuxOS 2.6.18.8.tex5
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/pclos/vmlinuz-2.6.18.8.tex5 BOOT_IMAGE=linux root=/dev/sda3 acpi=on resume=/dev/sdb1 splash=silent vga=788
initrd /boot/pclos/initrd-2.6.18.8.tex5.img

title Fedora (2.6.25-14.fc9.i686)
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/fedora/vmlinuz-2.6.25-14.fc9.i686 ro root=/dev/sda15 rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/fedora/initrd-2.6.25-14.fc9.i686.img


title MEPIS newest kernel
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/mepis/vmlinuz root=/dev/sdb7 nomce quiet splash vga=791 resume=/dev/sdb1
initrd /boot/mepis/initrd.img
boot

title Linux Mint 4.0 KDE CE, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/mint/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=/dev/sdb9 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/mint/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic
boot

title Mandriva desktop586 2.6.24.5-2mnb
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/mandriva/vmlinuz-2.6.24.5-desktop586-2mnb BOOT_IMAGE=desktop586_2.6.24.5-2mnb root=/dev/sda12 resume=/dev/sda1 splash=silent vga=788
initrd /boot/mandriva/initrd-2.6.24.5-desktop586-2mnb.img

title Sabayon Linux x86 3.4 Standard Edition
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/sabayon/kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.22-sabayon root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/sdb13 quiet init=/linuxrc splash=silent,theme:sabayon vga=791 CONSOLE=/dev/tty1 pci=nomsi
initrd /boot/sabayon/initramfs-genkernel-x86-2.6.22-sabayon

Advanced clipboards for OS X

I tried two of these today and both are still installed.
The intention is that, rather than just the single available clipboard slot, the advanced versions allow very many more items to be copied to, and pasted from, the clipboard.
Shadow seems by far the best of these two.
I've set Shadow up to open with the hot-key Alt-Space. Anything that I copy to the clipboard goes into Shadows list and it holds 20 items. Edit (18-09-2008): Actually, right now there are 32 items in one clipboard and two in another. So, the limit seems very much higher.
To paste one of the items in its list, you just have to highlight the one you want and return. Then paste it as usual (+V, paste from right-click menu).
Also, what you have in the clipboard survives a reboot which it doesn't in its usual incarnation.
Also, interesting is that you can, apparently, copy paste from one Mac on your network to another. However, as we only have one Mac I haven't been able to look at this.

The other is iClipLite which is a Dashboard Widget. It's just a little bit more complicated to use but it's all explained here. A problem with this is that the "bins" into which you copy stuff are really only suitable for images. One phrase or line of code looks just the same as another so, if you have 25 things in your iClipLite and are looking for a specific one, this could be a difficulty.
Additionally, while Shadow just works without having really to do anything extra, in iClipLite you need to consciously decide that you want to store something.

Definitely, Shadow is far superior.

Ext2fsx -- still struggling withthis

A day or two after I installed ext2fsx from here, two (of my eight) Linux OSes (all Ext3) showed up on my desktop and could be read (but not written to).
Then a day or two ago (after maybe a week) they disappeared for no apparent reason.
However, I decided I'd see if I could get them back. So, I went into ExtFSManager and tried to mount each of the two that had previously mounted (Ubuntu / and Ubuntu /home).
They errored on attempted mount and suggested trying disk repair.
So, over to Disk Utility and I tried to repair both and, surprisingly both repaired without errors. Back to ExtFSManager and I was able to mount both without problems. What's more they mounted at boot for at least two more boots.
Flushed with this success, I tried to repair a few (if not all) of the remaining, hitherto unmountable ext3 partitions but all gave the same errors.

Verify and Repair volume “UNTITLED”
e2fsck 1.39 (29-May-2006)
/usr/local/sbin/e2fsck: Resource busy while trying to open /dev/disk0s7
Filesystem mounted or opened exclusively by another program?
Error: Filesystem verify or repair failed.

Even afetr I unmounted the two mounted partitions, I got the same behaviour.
If I tried to mount, despite the repair not working, I got this

Command: Mount
Device: disk0s7
Message: Unknown Error (The filesystem may need repair. Please use Disk Utility to check the filesystem.)
Error: 0xC047

So, it really seems like there is something different about the other 6 unmountable partitions although I really have no idea what it could be.
I posted to the SourceForge forums about this and who knows if I might get the answer here.

Desktop system monitor for Mac

I've put this on my MacBook and it looks good (once I found how to change the temperature units from F to C.)

Emacs on Mac ?

I had never used Emacs before but took a look at it today on my Mac.
It seems much more like nano or vim as it tends to always use something like Ctrl-X to do something.
Personally, I believe that TextEdit in OS X is much more like Gedit or Kwrite in Linux with a lot less unnecessary complications.
Perhaps it has the benefit (in Linux) that it can be used in single-user (recovery) mode which is often useful when your /etc/X11/xorg.conf is messed up.
For the moment I haven't seen too much in Emacs to excite me but it's good to know what it can or cannot do.

Disk Inventory X for Mac.

Running out of space on your Mac?
Here's a free tool that might help you to decide what is best to delete and here's a review.

Tutorials for Mac OS X

First here's a newcomer's video guide to Quicksilver. There are several later ones which I haven't yet linked to but they're very easy to find.
[Here's #2 and here's #3].

And here's a series of video tutorials on Mac OS X in general: first, second, third, fourth, fifth.

Messed up Sudo in OS X

It seems that when I installed MacPorts on Friday, I had, through a cut&paste error, actually also installed the MacPort sudo.
When I tried to use sudo in a terminal after this, I go this error:

sudo: can't stat /opt/local/etc/sudoers: No such file or directory

More detail is available in this post I made to MacRumors.
However, because of a combination of inexperience and impatience, I went ahead and uninstalled MacPorts rather than just the MacPorts sudo itself.
This latter could be achieved with this very short guide.
The reason for using /usr/bin/sudo rather than the usual sudo was that because of the error I mentioned in the post.
The eventual solution was to use a dv switch in the uninstall command

$ /usr/bin/sudo port -dv uninstall sudo

However, I have to confess that I don't fully understand why it worked but here's the reference I got the idea from.

Improvements in Amarok 2 in OS X

First, .wma files just started playing and have played without problem for more than 24 hours now. Really, I didn't do anything that I'm aware to induce this sudden, and very welcome, improvement.
Additionally, after unchecking and rechecking the Last.Fm box in Amarok Internet preferences, Last.Fm started to show up as one of the Internet options.
I posted to the Amarok forum on this improvement where a little more detail is provided.
Amarok 2 now looks very good on OS X and I really do prefer it to iTunes and Plex. I can't say, however, if this is just because I'm much more used to it.

Amarok 2 now operating in OS X

Yes, I finally got it working but not without some problems and some operational difficulties. Nevertheless, it is a huge step forward.
Yesterday, I had run into a problem with this guide as it asked for the xine-lib port file to be modified before installing. As a result it didn't install at all.
Today, I downloaded and installed Darwin ports and did the exact same
sudo port -d selfupdate # Didn't use the -d switch yesterday but this guide uses sudo.
Actually, it seems that Darwin ports and Macports are exactly the same.
In any event, without changing the port file at all, xine-lib compiled and installed without problem using

sudo port install xine-lib

I then ran into a problem with the Pre KDE requisites as neither Subversion, JPEG nor LIBMNG installed from ports.
I later got Subversion from here but despite several attempts I was unable to get either JPEG or LIBMNG installed so I went ahead without them.
So now I started compiling. It seemed to be going fine, but then after more than an hour, I got a message saying that I was about to run out of disk space. This is despite having had about 5 GB available at the start.
So, I ctrl-c'ed out, deleted iTunes Music (seems that iTunes actually copies the music which leads to a major duplication and unnecessary loss of disk space), KDE4 and Amarok stuff from the aborted install of Amarok 2.
Then I downloaded the Amarok2.dmg that I was pointed to in this thread and is available here.
This installed without problem and I was very quickly able to get Amarok 2 operating within OS X.
Importing my music collection was easy but two problems showed up:
1. Only .mp3 files play in Amarok 2 in OS X. No luck with .wma files despite the fact that Plex plays them without problem in OS X. So, I downloaded Flip4Mac from here but it made no difference. I posted in the same thread about this.
2. Other problem is that despite checking Last.FM in the Amarok Internet Preferences, no last.fm appears when I click the Internet tab (although everything else does). This really does sound like a bug.

Amarok2 on OS X

I have used Amarok2 beta in KuruminNG basically because the deb made for Kubuntu was dead easy to install in KuruminNG.
However, for any OS that doesn't accept debs, you're out of luck and compiling is involved. I had tried to use this rather brief howto in openSUSE 11.0 but failed miserably.
Then I came across what looks to be a very well written and thorough guide to install Amarok 2 in OS X.
So, I tried this today. If nothing else I was going to learn something about compiling stuff in OS X.
First, I downloaded iPhone SDK from here and installed it. Note that this is a 1.4 GB download so you wouldn't want to be short on space (or time).
You can get MacPorts from here. This is less than 1 MB. However, for me, the "port selfupdate" command gave an rsync error without being run with sudo.
The other command (port sync) worked fine.
Note that neither of these command worked without FIRST running this command

echo 'export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:$PATH' >> ~/.profile
source ~/.profile

Now this is where it gets difficult.
To install xine-lib, you must first edit its port file and the guide says

Delete everything up to and including the '\' on that line. That should bring the first item on this line to be lib:libaa:aalib

However, in my case, the '\' was actually the last thing in that line. So running the subsequent command just led to errors.
I posted to the Amarok forum on this, where I provide more detail, but have as yet not received any replies.
I'm very interested to continue this install as I'm sure to learn a lot. Let's see what happens as I'm at a dead end now.

Problem opening iTunes

I had this problem before but even on my freshly installed Leopard it cropped up again today. When I clicked the iTunes icon in the dock, I got this error

The folder "ITunes" is on a locked disk or you do not have write permissions

This thread refers to the problem but doesn't really cleanly explain or resolve it.
In my case, the problem was that the folder /Users/paul/Music/iTunes had me as user but with only Read privileges. So, I changed this to R&W (and put the group owner and Others to the same. Now, iTunes opened fine.
Not sure why these privileges had changed.

Mount ext2/3 in OS X

Apparently, only NTFS file systems will automount in OS X and not at all ext2 or ext3 which is surprising given the Unix common denominator.
Nevertheless, a small package ext2fsx will apparently get over this reluctance. It can be downloaded from here.
As I had all my Music on an ext2 partition on an external drive, I installed ext2fsx on OS X. However, I still couldn't get the ext2 partition (or any of the ext3 partitions) on the usb drive to be recognised.
With that discovery, I gave up, copied the Music to a ntfs partition and used that to get it onto my Mac.
However, today when I booted into OS X, two additional volumes were on the Desktop. These turned out to be the Ubuntu / and /home that I had set up yesterday (both are ext3). Is this because of ext2fsx?
Later on I plugged in the external drive with quite a number of ext3 partitions and one ext2 partition. All of them showed up on the Desktop. This really sounds like ext2fsx is doing something but why the delayed reaction?
There is another mystery, however. On the Mac HD, I have 11 partitions in all. Eight of these are formatted to ext3. So, why are only two showing up on the desktop?

A big day in OS X troubles

I completely failed to make any progress with the permissions problems I had in the OS X partition on my Mac.
However, I was able to make just a little progress on getting sudo to work just a little better using post #4. Even then it gave some errors on use but did at least sometimes work.
No further progress was made. So, I called AppleCare.
They first advised me to use the install disk and go to DiskUtility from there. Now, erase just the OS X volume and re-install OS X which will not affect the Linux OSes already there.
I tried this for the whole day, trying to erase in various manners. But every time, it would delete the data but get stuck in the very last minute giving this error:

Disk Utility Internal Error
Disk utility has lost its connection with the Disk Management Tool and cannot continue. Please quit and relaunch Disk utility

I even tried this with the 7-pass erase which took four hours but failed in the last minute.
Even after four hours of erasing, the install was refused because of a Volume Check error.
A second AppleCare guy told me to expect this as it looked like the directory structure of the HDD is messed up and I will have to erase the whole disk and just re-install everything.
I started this about six hours ago and I don't think it'll be finished before Sunday.
What's most annoying is that there doesn't seem to be any explanation for what happened. Surely, just a minor change to the permissions on the HD aren't going to mean that you must erase everything and start over from scratch?
In any event, the HDD itself wasn't damaged. Whatever the problem was it was totally software.
Some further points are available in this thread that I started in Ubuntu Forums (Apple Users).

A day of major OS X errors

I just happened to notice today that Macintosh HD was owned by Unknown and Group owned also by Unknown (obviously, these are leftovers from the fact that that bloody repair guy set an incorrect username for me when he reinstalled Leopard in May)
So, I took out the Unknown user and put in myself as owner. then I set Admin as group owner.
Next, I applied these changes to all underlying folders and files.
That's when the trouble started.
First, neither the dropdown terminal nor a normal terminal worked.
Both had this on the terminal where nothing at all else worked or moved -- completely dead -- can't even type one letter:

login: PAM Error (line 396): System error
login: Could not determine audit condition

Luckily this was easy to resolve based on this fix which just meant eliminating the file /usr/bin/login
After that both terminal worked fine, even after a reboot.
The next problem was that Verify Disk Permissions and Repair disk Permissions both gave this errors whether I ran this from the installed OS X or from the install disk.

The underlying task reported failure on exit

From what I read, this seems to be a trivial error but it is annoying and I would like to get rid of it.
Next, I can't use sudo anymore in a terminal. Trying sudo gives this error

sudo: must be setuid root

From what I can see, resolving this means changing the ownership of /usr/bin/sudo from root:wheel which it is now to root:admin. However, I don't have permission to do this without sudo.

Finally, I am unable to make any changes whatsoever to Sharing&Permissions in the getInfo for Macinstosh HD despite me being a member of the admin group.

I posted to the MacRumors forum on this but, as yet have got no useful replies.

Remote login OS X

This enables logging into the Mac from a remote computer.
The steps are:
On the Mac (as server):
1. System Preferences >> Sharing : Here check the box Remote Login and select who you want to use this facility in the "Allow access for" box. Note the remote login command. In my case it's

ssh paul@192.168.1.5

In my case, this didn't work unless I used

sudo ssh paul@192.168.1.5

Without sudo I got a lot of stuff about unknown keys after which it went back to the command prompt.
With sudo, on the other hand, I was given the option to accept, or not, the authenticity of the host. After typing "yes", the connection was made.
Now I could delve into whatever directory on the Mac from Ubuntu on the Dell and use scp (without sudo) a file to the Desktop of the Dell with

scp file.ext 192.168.1.12:~/Desktop

This caused me to be asked again to accept or not the authenticity of the host (this time the Dell was the server or host).

OS X tips and tricks.

Some very useful small tips here in this thread. This is all small stuff, for shallow-minded, work-shy people like me but it's nevertheless enjoyable.
Examples re:
1. Spotlight as a calculator: Just key in your equation and hit enter (you get the answer and a calculator pops up)
2. Use Spotlight as an English dictionary (dictionary with word definition pops up)
3. Use Shift to get a nice effect when hitting F9 or clicking on stacks.
4. Use Ctrl-Shift to select multiple files (as icons). Use Option key to move all of them together.

Lots more.

Special characters in OS X

I have the keyboard layout option icon in my menu bar to enable me to switch between English and Portuguese keyboards (actually I wanted Brazilian Portuguese which although it is actually available has no Portuguese characters).
Nevertheless, there are some interesting additional tools in this menu bar item. First, there's Show Character Palette which brings up a huge range of different characters that can be inserted into a document as you type.
Second there's the Keyboard Viewer that lets you see what characters are actually available on your chosen layout and I'm not just talking about the ones that are printed on the keys but the additional ones you get by pressing the Option and ctrl keys. Even dead-keys are included.
This is very useful as you don't have to trial-and-error till you're blue in the face to find a special character.
I even found out that I can get ALL of the Portuguese characters I need from the normal English layout.

Highlight to copy in OS X?

One thing I have a problem with in OS X is the absence of this great Linux feature where you just have to hightlight something (word, URL or anything highlightable) for it to be copied to the clipboard.
Then you can easy paste it just by middle clicking.
I posted to ask about this in the MacRumors forums but it appears it just isn't available.
Nevetheless, what was suggested about using about using cmd-C and cmd-V to copy/paste sounds good. I'll start using that.