The Complete Guide to Mac/Windows Interoperability

You’ve got a household full of PC’s and you’ve stopped yourself from getting a Mac because you don’t want to deal with incompatibilities. Eight years ago that would’ve been understandable, but today Mac OS and Windows can work together in harmony on the same home network. Here’s a primer on how the two systems inter-operate.

I have been using Macs now for 5 years, and the compatibility issues that one would have been there are practically gone. Check out the article at LifeHacker for the full details.

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Rational Clearcase appreciation

I’m coming to appreciate IBM’s Rational Clearcase, aside from the price point of course. But work have a license for it, and I have to use it. Don’t get me wrong, CVS is fantastic for tracking your small projects or larger ones with average complexity. I still use CVS for my own code, BUT clearcase has these features built in that you just start to take for granted. Here is a list of the ones I think make it a cut above CVS on a time intensive and complex project:

• Editing commit comments from the GUI or cmd line
• Triggers – including haveing pre and post operation triggers – some of mine are in perl!
• Labels vs CVS tags
• Element based branching based upon a view configspec
• Clear Merge Manager – This one is a lifesaver!
• renaming elements, specifically directories from GUI or cmd line

You can see from my short list that there are some things there that are powerful and make life very easy in a multi stream multi branch project management environment.
A case in point: I spent the last 3 hours baselining our Development, and testing branches – being 3 branches. We have started a new release cycle after our product has gone live in production, but there are still release fixes and defects being resolved that will get applied to production at a later date (2nd drop).
By baselining and labelling my code in these branches, I can easily track code changes across both the new development cycles and the concurrent release fixes.

On the whole, after half a year using Rational Clearcase, I can say the experience – despite the initial VERY LARGE learning curve – has been positive.

chpasswd in an OpenBSD apache chroot jail

I’ve recently re-installed OpenBSD and had to set-up my squid intranet password changing tool again. The app I use is chpasswd Version 2.2.3.

I had some trouble with getting it working in the default apache chroot jail, and found very little information out there on this app in a chroot jail. Here are my notes I recorded and and steps I took. Hope it helps someone else, but YMMV:

Download chpasswd to /tmp

cd /tmp
tar -zxvf chpasswd-2.2.3.tar.gz
cd chpasswd-2.2.3
./configure --enable-cgidir=/var/www/cgi-bin/ --prefix=/etc
make && make install
make clean

Setup apache for CGI running in the chroot jail

mkdir /var/www/etc
mkdir /var/www/tmp
mkdir -p /var/www/var/tmp
chmod 777 /var/www/tmp
chmod 777 /var/www/var/tmp
mv /etc/chpasswd* /var/www/etc/

Check which libs are compiled against chpasswd

ldd /var/www/cgi-bin/chpasswd.cgi

Output should be similar to the following:

/var/www/cgi-bin/chpasswd.cgi:
	Start    End      Type Ref Name
	00000000 00000000 exe   1  /var/www/cgi-bin/chpasswd.cgi
	03d1e000 23d4f000 rlib  1  /usr/lib/libc.so.38.2
	09e55000 09e55000 rtld  1  /usr/libexec/ld.so

Copy the libs that chpasswd.cgi uses, shown from the ldd output, to the jail

mkdir -p /var/www/usr/lib
mkdir -p /var/www/usr/libexec
cp /usr/lib/libc.so.38.2 /var/www/usr/lib/
cp /usr/libexec/ld.so /var/www/usr/libexec/

Update chpasswd configuration:

cd /var/www/etc
vi chpasswd.conf
vi ipauth

Create squid passwd file for chpasswd to update in chroot jail

mkdir /var/www/etc/squid
touch /var/www/etc/squid/passwd
chown root:www /var/www/etc/squid/passwd
chmod 660 /var/www/etc/squid/passwd

Update/Modify the auth_param section of squid.conf to use new passwd file and basic authentication (must already have ncsa_auth in place and working)

vi /etc/squid/squid.conf

auth_param basic program /usr/local/squid/libexec/ncsa_auth /var/www/etc/squid/passwd
auth_param basic children 5
auth_param basic realm Home Localnet to Internet access
auth_param basic credentialsttl 2 hours


Restart squid

squid -k reconfigure

Your app should now be usable at http://<your.squidserver>/cgi-bin/chpasswd.cgi

iTMS corrupted songs

An album I purchased on iTMS recently had a nasty clicking sound in one of the songs. Its was part of the intro track to an Opera, and really hits you in the ear each time you hear it unexpectedly.

I had only just got around to reporting the issue, but iTMS staff rejected the issue due to the timeliness of my report – about 3 months after the purchase. I wrote back advising that this was a “premium cost” iTunes Plus track, and there is still an issue with the track they are selling, no matter the time frame. The response:

Apple takes the quality of the items offered on the iTunes Store seriously and will investigate the issue with this item, but please keep in mind that the iTunes Store does not own the content that we sell and does not have the right to alter the files, even to repair them. The most we can do is contact the content owner and request a repaired replacement, so I can’t say when or if the issue will be resolved. Please try again in a few weeks.

This equates to the fact that they can’t fix the song they are selling. They did give me a song credit, with the advice:

I have also issued a replacement song credit to your account … Please note that song credits are not able to be used for purchasing songs that are listed as Album Only.

And wouldn’t you know it! The bad song is Album only, so IF they fix it, i would have to buy the track again.

Time to look elsewhere? Amazon is not an option as it is US only. A big Duh to the other major online emusic retailers.

Keep your beliefs to yourself

Some guy was on the train today reading his “Face to Face with God” book, an he kept glancing over my way. No doubt noticing my copy of Morning of the Magicians that I was reading. As he got off the train, he starts saying a bunch of Jesus stuff and handing out these cards – and as he passes me I say NO THANKS! But he forces it on me. It has a tired cliché “Know Jesus No Hell, No Jesus Know Hell”.

He shows himself as some crazy evangelical feeling he has to save everyone to be saved himself, which shows him as being in the final moment only concerned with his own welfare. The thing I hate is that my own background and parental teachings (Hi Mum!) about religion gave me, at that moment, a gut wrenching nagging feeling. Its the polarisation of these issues – Heaven/Hell that get on my goat. I won’t do this guy the justice of linking to his website shown on his card, as it’s full of religious ideology.

Keep your beliefs to yourself people, and I will do the same (unless you ask).