Gimpster & His Boring Blog

Part 1: Getting OSX 10.5.6 on my IBM T43 laptop

Over the next few posts I’m going to chronicle my struggles to get OSX 10.5.6 on my test laptop, this is just the first installment.

As I might have posted in the past, I do a bit of testing/development for OSX on a Hackintosh, more specifically using an IBM T43. I’m somewhat ashamed to say that, being that I’m an iPhone/iPod owner (and generally a fan of Apple products). I would love to own a real Apple branded machine, but they’re just not within my budget. Even used mini’s still seem to fetch near MSRP prices on eBay. So please, I really don’t need any lectures.

I started this journey with Kalyway 10.5.1 and over time used their comboupdates to get it to 10.5.3. I’ve been very content for a long time, but lately I needed to do some testing that required 10.5.6.

I imaged the laptop and unsuccessfully tried about 50 different methods to get it to 10.5.4, .5 and .6. Nothing really worked out for me 100%, so I decided to turn to the newer iDeneb releases.

First I acquired the iDeneb 1.4 (10.5.6) DVD ISO, and attempted to install. The DVD boots, installs about 3/4 the way and then dies with this error: pkgExtractor[162]: BomFileError 2: No such file or directory – ./usr/X11/share/doc/renderproto/renderproto.txt. I dicked with this thing for days and on about 7 different machines (not T43′s) and recieved the same results. Either I’m doing something TOTALLY wrong, or this ISO is bunk. I found a few other people who were having the same issues on the InsanelyMac forum, but no fix was ever posted.

Then I acquired the iDeneb 1.3 (10.5.5) DVD ISO, and likewise attempted to install … success! The winning combination to choose at install is:

• X11
• Patches 10.5.5 Ready -> Audio -> AppleAzailiaAudio
• Patches 10.5.5 Ready -> Chipset -> VIA-SB
• Patches 10.5.5 Ready -> Kernel -> Kernel 9.4.0 StageXNU
• Patches 10.5.5 Ready -> Network -> AppleBC5751 (more on this later)

If you’ve never installed OSX on this laptop before, make sure you disable SpeedStep in the BIOS or you’ll be hating life.

At this point you more/less have a working 10.5.5 machine, which is a step in the right direction. Still isn’t 10.5.6 though, so let’s continue on. You’ll notice your video isn’t quite right yet, and maybe some hardware you have isn’t working right either. My suggestion: get it to 10.5.6 and THEN worry about that stuff.

Lucky for us, iDeneb released a 10.5.6 upgrade kit. It can be found here: http://ideneb.net/en/homepage/63-ideneb-upgrade-kit-1056-rev1

Follow the instructions with it and voila, you’ll be at 10.5.6.

Now, to get all of my hardware devices hmmmmmmmmmmmm……….

Till next time…

Manually reactivate LVM’s in Linux

I’m not sure what the deal is, but often when you boot Linux up single user you only get the root volume group activated. This could be totally normal behavior, and no big deal. When you have /usr /var and other portions of the file system broken up … it becomes a big deal.

After looking around the lvm man page awhile, this worked for me.

Before:

# lvm lvscan
Failed to find sysfs mont point
inactive ‘/dev/var/var [7.99 GB] inherit
ACTIVE ‘/dev/system/root [7.80 GB] inherit
ACTIVE ‘/dev/system/swap [2.00 GB] inherit

Execute this:

# lvm vgsan
# lvm vgchange -ay

After:

# lvm lvscan
Failed to find sysfs mont point
ACTIVE ‘/dev/var/var [7.99 GB] inherit
ACTIVE ‘/dev/system/root [7.80 GB] inherit
ACTIVE ‘/dev/system/swap [2.00 GB] inherit

You may now mount volumes as normal for maintenance.

Lockdown Firefox updates on Microsoft Terminal Server

I had an interesting dilemma today.

Due to the way some of our internal applications and certain brands of network gear function, our NOC requires Mozilla Firefox on the terminal servers. Over the weekend an update must’ve come out for Firefox, and a user clicked OK.

The update crapped out halfway through since they didn’t have administrative rights. Firefox doesn’t appear to roll back in this situation, leaving you with a broken install. So broken that you can’t even uninstall it without getting the dreaded: “Your computer must be restarted to complete a previous upgrade of Firefox. Do you want to reboot now?” which is also what it says when a user tries to open it.

Sure would be nice if the developers of Firefox threw in a privileges sanity check.

We need a two phased approach to fix this fiasco.

Fix #1: Get rid of that obnoxious error.

Lucky for me, a co-worker of mine has ran into this before and has the fix documented on his blog here:

http://blog.acrile.com/2008/12/your-computer-must-be-restarted-to.html

Long story short: delete the *.moz-upgrade and *.moz-delete files from Firefox folder. Now that the error is gone, I went ahead and uninstalled/reinstalled Firefox just to make sure nothing dirty was left behind.

Fix #2: Disable the auto-update feature in Firefox.

I accomplished this by first creating a file called mozilla.cfg in the C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox directory with the following contents:

// Disable Auto Updates
lockPref(”app.update.enabled”, false);
lockPref(”extensions.update.enabled”, false);

Those instruct Firefox to disable the auto update for the browser itself AND any add-in extensions.

Also you must edit C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\greprefs edit the file all.js and add this to the bottom:

// Process mozilla.cfg in FireFox root directory.
pref(”general.config.obscure_value”, 0);
pref(”general.config.filename”, “mozilla.cfg”);

Without that last piece, Firefox won’t process the mozilla.cfg you created.

No reboot needed, and hopefully you’ll never run into this again.

Later on I found a nice website that lists many other features an administrator might want to enforce in a terminal server environment. Check them out here:

http://www.pcc-services.com/kixtart/firefox-lockdown.html

Till next time…

Dynamically rescan LUN’s on SLES

I’m sure this is kids play to most people, but I’ve just not done much SAN work with Linux.

We bought a new EMC CLARiiON CX4-240, and I was just tossing it random LUN’s to do speed & HA tests. When I added a LUN I’d see it in powermt, and I didn’t know what the equivalent of devfsadm was in Linux … SLES to be specific. What can I say, I worked with Solaris way too long.

The first step is to run: powermt display

# powermt display
CLARiiON logical device count=3
==================================================================
—– Host Bus Adapters ——— —— I/O Paths —– —— Stats ——
### HW Path Summary Total Dead IO/Sec Q-IOs Errors
==================================================================
3 qla2xxx optimal 6 0 – 0 0
4 qla2xxx optimal 6 0 – 0 0

Note the 3/4 preceding the HBA’s.

Now, execute this:

# echo “- – -” > /sys/class/scsi_host/host3/scan
# echo “- – -” > /sys/class/scsi_host/host4/scan

Its my understand this also works on RHEL and others, but YMMV. This is all buried in the PowerPath manual too, but hopefully I’ve saved someone a bit of time.

Till next time…

Re-hiding hidden files on OSX

This I actually found the other day, but I better post it before I forget.

For whatever reason I somehow triggered all files to be displayed in Finder. Everywhere I went .DS_Store files (and anything else under the Sun) became visible.

The fix: Open Terminal -> defaults write com.Apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles NO

Then you need to bounce finder by executing: killall Finder

Till next time…

Hackintosh Xquartz / X11 color depth issue(s)

I’ve been diving into OSX a bit more lately, and I’d like to share any tips/tricks I find along the way. I should go ahead and mention that I’m running Leopard on an IBM T43 laptop. That being said, many of the tips I might share are related more to the use of a Hackintosh. Consider this the first post of many stupid workarounds.

Don’t get me wrong… I’d love to own a new MacBook Pro, but I’m a poor man. These T43′s are suprisingly close to the older MacBooks and pretty much everything works on it.

Xquartz/X11:

As most of you might know, Apple started including X11 on the Tiger media and as a download before that. Someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe its installed by default in Leopard. Either way I was having some issues getting it started on this ThinkPad. In /var/log/system.log I noticed this error:

Feb 20 00:52:13 FakeMac org.x.X11[438]: Fatal server error:
Feb 20 00:52:13 FakeMac org.x.X11[438]: Unsupported color depth -1

This T43 has an ATI Radeon X300, which is nativly supported by Leopard, but the Xserver can’t query the depth from the driver. I find it hard to believe that many other people arent running into this too. You could install the MacPorts X11, but even they reccomend using the native Xquartz.

Now this is in the man page for startx, but most Mac users are terrified of the CLI for whatever reason.

The Fix: Open Terminal -> defaults write org.x.X11 depth 24

This hard sets the color depth and viola X11 will now work. If you’re not scared, go ahead and man startx in Terminal and see all the other fun stuff you can do.

I really needed this to work so I could use the Gimp for OSX and MegaTunix to tune the MegaSquirt in my car

Till next time…

Adobe Flash Player on Microsoft Terminal Server

Adobe Flash can be a systems administrator’s nemesis on a Microsoft Terminal Server.

After installing the Adobe Flash ActiveX widget, you might notice that non-administrative users aren’t able to browse sites utilizing flash. They’ll be presented with a rather ambiguous message.

The error: “Hello, you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Adobe’s Flash Player. Get the latest Flash player. ”

I must admit that I do like polite error messages, butbutbutbutbut I already have the latest Flash Player!

This only happens in IE, Firefox is just fine. I’d tell my users to just browse in Firefox, but of course we have some applications (IE: SharePoint, CRM and others) where IE is pretty much required.

So, what’s the fix?

Open regedit and find these two keys:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\TypeLib\{D27CDB6B-AE6D-11CF-96B8-444553540000}
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{D27CDB6B-AE6D-11CF-96B8-444553540000}

Right click -> Permissions -> Click Everyone -> Check the “Read” box -> No reboot needed. Now, with any luck, your users can get Flash goodness. I tend to test the fix out by going to YouTube and rewarding myself with a video.

Till next time…