Hilfe! Ein Käfer?

Leider habe ich einen kleinen “Bug” oder sagen wir lieber “Schönheitsfehler” entdeckt: Kürzlich habe ich mein OS aktualisiert und somit sind viele neue Dateien vorhanden, die gesichert werden wollen. Das Backup ist mittendrin stehengeblieben und hat einfach nicht weitergemacht.

Wie funktioniert Time Machine?

Bevor ich mit der Lösung fortfahre will ich einmal kurz und knapp das Prinzip von Time Machine Backups erklären.

Time Machine muss zuerst ein volles Backup anfertigen, danach werden nur die Daten gesichert die neu sind oder sich verändert haben. Das bringt einen erheblichen Geschwindigkeitsvorteil und spart auch gleichzeitig jede Menge Plattenplatz.

Der erste Schritt ist das “Vorbereiten” in dem alle Daten zunächst ermittelt werden, die neu gesichert werden sollen. Je mehr Dateien, desto länger dauert dieser Vorgang. Danach beginnt die Datensicherung und letztendlich der Aufräumvorgang.

Warum bleibt das Backup stehen?

Sparen ist gut, aber zu viel Geiz eben nicht – und zwar mit Energie. In den Energiespar-Einstellungen ist festgelegt, dass die Festplatten frühstmöglich in den Ruhezustand gehen sollen.

In meinem Fall handelt es sich um eine externe Festplatte. Weil es eben relativ viele Daten sind, die gesichert werden hat die “Vorbereitung” länger gebraucht und die externe Platte einfach abgeschaltet. Geht man nun in die Engerie-Optionen und stellt das kurzfristig ab, so läuft die Datensicherung wieder an einem Stück durch.

Noch ein Extra-Tip

Mit dem Consolen-Log Programm in den Application Utilities kann man ebenfalls gute Analysen durchführen und nach Fehlern suchen. Mit der Eingabe von “backupd” sieht man alle Ausgaben von Time Machine.

Das klappt auch bei sämtlichen anderen Programme, die Ihre Machenschaften in Logdateien protokollieren.

Espacially, when you want to install something large which normally requires an expensive dual layer DVD or even when no DVD drive is available at all, it makes sense to use a USB device. On a Mac, this can be a standard USB stick or an iPod having the appropriate capacity.

Also using a USB device is really fast und produces less noise.

Ok, here is my short step-by-step guide for you how to make it work:

Note: Doing that will erase ALL data on your media!

Step 1: Open the Disk Utility from the Application / Utilities folder and select your destination USB device. Then go to the “Partition” tab and change the scheme from “Current” to “1 Partition”.

Step 2: Click the options to select the partition mode. To make it bootable on a Mac “GUID Partition Table” is required. Check this radio button and confirm with “ok”.

Step 3: “Apply” the settings and confirm to “Partition”.

Step 4: Finally, we need to select that image file to be placed on the USB device. This can be a DMG or ISO file. You can use the Disk Utility tool, to create such images from your DVDs. You can start the process by clicking on “Restore”.

Note: Do NOT copy discs or any other media you are not allowed to!

Drop me a comment, if that guide helped you out.

Many disc accesses are usually done with a Virtual Machine, so I put a blank Parallels Windows XP virtual machine image to the stick, hoping the speed would be fantastic.

But, the hope still remains a hope. The speed is just OK, and absolutely not faster than directly starting from a harddisk. The USB probing sais 480Mb/sec which is a maximum of 6 MB per second, but the average speed I could measure in fact is 5.2 MB per second.

That is absolutely too slow and the conclusion for me is, that flash memory is only really fast if it will provided over the S-ATA port.

With the help of my favourite remote application LogMeIn.com I connected to his windows computer with my Mac. Installation of mySQL was done in a few seconds and ActiveState perl, too.

So we copied my scripts to his machine and did the first run which stopped, because some perl modules are missing. Ok, that is normally no big deal and they can be easily installed with the package manager – I thought.

A big suprise came up when I typed in ppm and saw a GUI. Huh? A Interface for modules in perl? Nice done and easy to use, but DBD::mysql is missing.

The next step was to try to use it with the command cpan which gives me the classic command line interface shell of the origin ppm. Installation ran quickly thru, but the packages could not be compiled. So I tried to get the ppd file and that lost success, too.

We solved the problem by recognizing that in perl 5.8+ the drivers are not available at all. Using the GUI ppm and adding the repository

http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/ppms/

made it. Then we just searched for DBD-mysql and it went thru without any further problems.

To verify it does not depend on my firewall configuration I have tried doing the same on Windows using Total Commander as FTP client. That has worked instantly without any issues and delays. From my former times on the glassy operating system I remembered on the free available cross platform FTP client FileZilla, so I decided to test it on my Mac. And the result is very positive.

FileZilla

FileZilla‘s user interface is very well designed and gives many quick information of all the data I need. The feel of speed is awesome. It supports all today neccessary transfer standards and the preferences provide tons of settings in a tree organized view.

The most important thing for me of course is, that it does the thing what the Cyberduck still does not do the job even with comparing all combination of settings.

One primary functionality I do expect from a FTP client is to be able to use a custom editor to directly edit a remote file. I am very lucky that FileZilla does me that favour using my prefered programming and text editor (currently Smultron).

But when saving a remote file you need to go back to FileZilla to get it uploaded. That is no big deal, but an annoying message box is coming up recognizing that a file has changed. Of course it changed, and I want it to be uploaded. On no account I do not want to confirm that box, so I searched through the preferences. There is nothing and the official FileZilla forum does confirm that!

It has been filed, that there should be option for beeing able to auto-confirm that. The only way until now to get rid off it is to compile the source code with modification. So I did! That was quite horrible, because lot of errors occured during the makefile, but I hit the ground running.

Download the modified FileZilla client 3.2.4 without that always nerving message box compiled on OSX 10.5.6. I would be pleased, when you leave a short comment when downloading to appreciate all the time on spending getting it work. Just unzip after download and move to your Application folder. Thank you!

Step 1: Open your favourite flashvideo – let’s say on Youtube. Then open the Activity Window using the menubar.

Activity Window

Step 2: Now you see the activity window which shows every data file transfer from the current open tab. When the video is playing, then you will notice that the download is still in progress and the transfered size is increasing. But, if the video is already stopped, then it will be line with the largest file size. Just do a doubleclick and watch the flashvideo downloading.

File List

Step 3: That’s it! Once downloaded you can play the flv-file with Quicktime.

Downloading flv

Hint:

When you are not able to watch and listen to flv files, then you need the codecs! You may download Perian to have your Mac enabled playing those and AVI videos.

A very good helper is the PathFinder application, because it can count all directory size contents even recursively and you can sort by size or any other properties. So you will find large files very quick. But this can take much time and needs a lot of attention not to remove files, which should not be removed.

When surfing I found a free application called GrandPerspective which scans a folder or drive you have specified for sizes and then displays a graphical block view.

Grand Perspective

You can point with the mouse over the blocks and you see details like file size, file name and which directory it is. Files and directories are grouped by colors, so that you see at the first glance what belongs together. With the context menu you even can reveal the directory in the finder, so that you can delete the files or directories from every level. A rescan function is also included, so that you can compare the before and after version. Scanning is really fast, so that you even could scan the root of any mass storage device.

Speedport’s original firmware has some bad properties. After login it resizes the browsers window, the interface is ugly and some items seem to be misplaced in my opinion. But, all in one it is ok.

Due to I am having T-Home, I am forced to use the Speedport router because of the built in Modem. I just wanted to use my TimeCapsule only, but that did not work, because I do not get any internet connection then.

In former times I already a had FritzBox and was impressed how far it succeeded with useful options. It was even possible in those days to connect a USB capable printer and to print wireless via WLAN. But now, AVM has implemented state of the art features which are really useful for home users or small networks. It provides now USB-support for harddrives and memory sticks and even sharing them with FTP and SMB, VPN tunneling, call answer machine, fax sending/receiving and many more.

Refering to that article mentioned above, I began some research and found some solutions how to get the AVM firmware to the Speedport.

It is not working by just uploading it the normal way! You need to somewhat compile your own thing out of both firmwares. See my steps, and it will work really easy.

Here is my installation guide for Mac users, but with some fantasy you may adapt it for your own purpose:

Disclaimer! YOU ARE DOING ALL THAT AT YOUR OWN RISK! YOUR HARDWARE MAY GET DAMAGED. Read carefully and make sure to understand before doing anything.

First of all, get the Debian businesscard edition (36 MB). The compiling scripts do require some apt libraries which are not available on OS X by default. The stable CD/DVD of Debian 5 crashed during my installation within Parallels Desktop 4.

Begin to create a virtual machine with Parallels by running the assistant. Set the just downloaded Debian 5 ISO file as the CD/DVD drive. Parallels will automatically detect everything what is needed. When the machine starts for the first time and asks you for the installation method, I recommend you to go to the options and select the graphical unattended one. The installation will download everything what is required.

When done, log in as a normal user, because no root access is required. Use the browser icon from the menu bar to download the master script doing all the nasty work for you. For the ease of use, I have created a short URL to type less. You can use the samehttp://kURL.de/opupiin your address bar. If you get a hint, that you have no internet, have a look at the top right corner of your menubar left next to the clock and calendar. There should be a tiny icon and if you click it, you can select a cable network connection. Then reload the script and you should see it’s source text. Store it with menu file, save as. Change the download folder to Desktop!

Open a root terminal window via the menu bar applications, then tools. Go the Desktop directory where the downloaded shell script is located by typingcd DesktopPay attention to the letter case on unix systems! Start the script by typing sh ./download_speed-to-fritz.shThis will do some downloads and may take some time. Now, we change to the new files and run the first script, which will install some needed libraries to continue.cd trunk/speed-to-fritzsh ./install-start

Follow the instructions and read carefully. If everything is done it will start the module configurator which has a nice interface where you can use the cursor keys to change options. Then it downloads the needed firmwares and will re-image them. When you are prompted to reset the router, turn it off! Wait 10 seconds and power it on again. Then the firmware will be installed. Do not interrupt until it is complete!

Then you can access the router over same IP as before or just with http://fritz.boxAll the settings are still kept.

If you made a mistake, you can re-run the last script and restore to the original firmware or just customize other things.

Now I am so happy beeing able to receive faxes and missed calls running on my answering machine by mail to my iPhone!

Split and Concat

Recently I really had to split a large 1,5 GB archive file from a friend, because I did not have a DVD available, only CD-R media.

With the freeware Split & Concat application, I splitted it down into to two slices. One 800 MB file and one 700 MB file. This could be burned and fitted perfectly on the CD-R.

Afterwards at home, I used the same application to glue that two pieces together.

Quick access Desktop in Finder

In any file dialog box of the OS X you have all your favourites in left pane. They are really useful to quick access favourite places on your computer.

The current things I am working on, are organized on my desktop. So inside a file dialog box, I just click the sidebar and click on desktop to go to there.

But, mostly I am using the keyboard, especially when I am working on the MacBook and using the trackpad. Also, keyboard strokes are still quicker for a fast typer than pushing the mouse around.

Just hit Command+D when a file dialog box is open and the desktop folder will become the active directory.

PGP encryption

PGP stands for pretty good privacy and is used for encryption. It helps you to encypt your emails and files, so that only people you want to see the content can view it.

Of course, you can create a ZIP file and use a password, but that is not that secure as PGP supports.

To make that better, PGP works with two keys. One public key, you can give away and one private key which is secret and should only stay with you! The private key is additionaly secured by a passphrase, only you know.

To have it easy in all ways, you can use the free and Mac OS X ready compiled applications at the Mac GPG site.

To manage the keys use Keychain Access. This tool is also used to create your public and private key, if you do not have one, already.

If you want to send me a text or a file, that can be read only by me, you need to have my public key added to your keychains. For files use the FileTool, for messages use the DropThing.

For emails, you may use the GPGMail plugin in the OS X Mail application. Under the subject field you will find the PGP options for signing, encryption and decryption. Here please take a short look for the installation. You need to copy the file GPGMail.mailbundle to “~/Library/Mail/Bundles/” (Macintosh HD) manually.

Create MP3 with iTunes

For instance the kids do not have an iPod. They own a Creative Muvo V100 who just knows to handle the common MP3 format.

In my humble opinion I do like the AAC much more than MP3 and most of my audio files are compressed with that codec.

To make it available for the portables I need to convert them to MP3. And that it so easy with iTunes itself.

iTunes is really great to use it as an audio converter. It supports different formats like AIFF, WAV, MP3 and AAC.

All formats are using their specified codecs with several advantages (small file size) and some disadvantages (loss of quality).

You can select the different options with the menubar going to “Preferences”, “General”, “Import Settings”. There just choose your favourite output format from the entire dropdown list and set the resulting quality.

Encode with iTunes