Archive for category Computers
Shhh! You’ll Wake Someone
If you’re wondering, I haven’t stopped writing stuff online. It’s just that most of it is now being contributed elsewhere.
Mostly, now, I’m writing over at MacTalk. Have a look at my work there.
Sysprep for Mac OS X
I admit it, for the last fifteen years or so I’ve been almost exclusively Windows-centric. I’m sure there’s a Mac-specific term for this but I haven’t found it yet. So, I’ll use sysprep for now.
What do I mean? In Windows there’s a set of tools available that lets you build a reference computer with all the latest updates, pre-installed drivers and software and your own configurations. Then you strip out all the bits that make it a unique computer such as user profiles and their associated passwords, unique computer identifiers and so on. At the end of this you have a reference install of Windows that you can take an image of and deploy to other computers. The first time you boot on a new computer it goes through some basic setup stuff and away you go.
Because I run a computer business that sells (and services) Apple computers I’ve been looking for a way to achieve the same sort of thing. What follows in this article is the results of a some in-depth research and putting together bits and pieces from various sources.
My result is a disk image (.dmg) file that I can use to restore on any current version of Mac hardware (laptop and desktop – although untested on a Mac Pro) that will have a user environment I’ve already configured and with additional software that I’d like available. It hasn’t got any pre-existing users created but runs the standard Apple welcome/setup process when first booted up instead – that way you get to create a new user profile for the new owner of the computer. Read the rest of this entry »
Geek Porn
All geeks drool over various bits of kit and, knowing full well they are totally impractical for their own particular circumstances, still wish it was theirs.
Here are a couple of my recent geek porn moments. Yes, I fully understand that they’re completely impractical for my requirements. I also understand that they’d be wasted in any role I could find for them. But, that doesn’t change the fact that they’re seriously cool bits of kit and if someone wanted to give me one I wouldn’t turn them down.
First up, how about a super computer in your own home (or office)? Enter the Silicon Graphics Octane III. Look a bit blade-like? Yep, it is. Chunky? Apparently dimensions are roughly 1ft x 2ft x 2ft so, yes, a little bit. But check the specs:
- Up to 20 Xeon Quad Core Processors
- Up to 960GB (yes, that’s a G) of Memory
- Up to 10 SATA hard drives
- Graphics with your choice of NVIDIA® Quadro® FX1800, FX3800, FX4800, FX5800. NVIDIA® TeslaTM C1060
- Up to 4 1000W power supplies
…and yes, it’ll run Vista and Windows 7.
In reality it looks to be set for three distinct roles with each role having different capabilities based on the way the slots are used – as a “deskside cluster” based around either Xeon or Atom processors and as a “graphics workstation” with fewer CPU cores but having graphics capabilities and other features. I couldn’t see any mention of pricing but I’d hazard a guess this is in the category of “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it”.
For my second item of drool today, here’s a nice little number in red. Stuff-all processing power but if you really need some storage for your warez and torrent downloads, this might just suit your requirements:
Yep, serious drive storage and what is apparently a not so serious price. It’s a full 4RU rack case storage unit designed to be stacked in a standard 19″ rack and provide OMG levels of storage space. What’s really great in this case is that the guys who created it (BackBlaze) have released a complete how-to as open source hardware. They include parts lists and instructions on how to put it all together.
What have they done? Basically, they put a relatively standard computer (motherboard, cpu, etc) in a case together with up to fourty five 1.5TB hard drives and some software to tie it all together. Seriously nice bit of kit, and, IT’S RED!!!
Snow Leopard – Five Nice New Finds
It’s almost a month since the release of Snow Leopard, Apple’s latest release of it’s Mac OS X operating system. Allowing for shipping, I didn’t get my copy until a few days later. Not wanting to tempt fate, I waited for the weekend when I had a chance to do a full image backup as well as my normal Time Machine hourly backups.
The actual upgrade went off fine. I upgraded over the top of my current install and didn’t see any “deal breaker” problems resulting.
There’s already a significant tonnage of stuff about Snow Leopard so I’m not going to go into general reviews or benchmarks. I’d expect my experience to be much the same as already reported anyway. Instead, I wanted to touch on five small, new, features that I really like.
Windows Home Server – Read Only Permissions
My SBS server developed a hardware fault recently. While I diagnose the fault I needed to move data from the SBS box to my Windows Home Server box. I wanted this to happen fairly quickly and didn’t want to copy via network (network being part of the fault) so I used an external hard drive. Copied the data from SBS to external drive and then from external drive to WHS.
This is where I ran into a problem. Just copied directly to the DATA drive on WHS and then found that permissions on everything I copied was stuffed up – mostly, files were read-only or restricted. WHS seems to lock out most of the permissions controls you’d normally use on SBS to fix this sort of problem and I was at a loss as to how to fix it without access to this mechanism.
Don't copy from external drive straight to the "DATA" drive
Copious Google searching didn’t really find a solution but I picked up enough hints from various sources to try some things. What worked? Use the WHS console to create the share you want. Set permissions in the WHS console. Then, instead of copying directly to “DATAsharesyour new share” you need to copy to the network share name (e.g. \serveryour new share).
Copy to the network share (even though you're on the local computer)
There you go. Hope that saves someone else out there some time and trouble.