Gordon's Tech

Thursday, December 31, 2009

LogMeIn Hamachi - Free for family networks

Hamachi is a shareware VPN application. LogMeIn is marketing a free version for non-commercial use.

Alas, I think it's Windows only.

Time Machine: Fail first, then flaw discovered

At the very end of attempting to restore a 40GB iPhoto Library named “Current” from a Time Machine / Time Capsule backup I got this message [1]:

The Library “looked” ok, so I tried to open it:

Since a backup is only as good as the restore, I pronounce Time Machine to be worthless [2].

Actually, worse than worthless. The inclusion of Time Machine with OS X has largely eliminated alternatives. It’s malign.

I’m not completely surprised. The chaotic state of Time Machine/Time Capsule documentation is a pretty good indicator that the product is troubled.

I’ll count myself lucky this time. I discovered that my main photo library backup, containing about 10,000 irreplaceable images, was worthless.

How am I lucky?

I have two other backups, including a straight file copy that I’ve verified works. So I learned I couldn’t rely on Time Machine at the cost of a couple of hours of lost time. It could have been much worse.

I’m going to next test a restore of this library from my Retrospect Professional/Windows backup.

[1] For Google: “You cannot copy “Current” to the destination because its name is the same as the name of an item on the destination, except for the case of some characters.

[2] This error message could mean anything. Don’t take these things at face value. The fact that it occurs at the very end of the restore is curious. I did try a reboot but I didn’t try rebuilding because even if that had seemed to work I wouldn’t be able to trust that my image library was truly intact

Update 12/31/09: Retrospect Professional did restore my iPhoto Library, so it won this contest. Nice to know one of my backups worked! It does, however, deserve its reputation as insanely difficult to use. It was also exquisitely slow, though it's running on an old XP box and my backups are huge.

I did, however, find a clue that might explain the Time Machine failure. After I did my restore I discovered my "Pictures" folder had incorrect permissions. My user account had read-only permissions for the folder (why? no clue.). So I wonder if Time Machine tried to write something to the containing folder when it finished its backup, that failed due to a permissions problem, and then produced a misleading error message. I may try an experiment to test that.

Update 1/1/2010: My experiment concluded; the Time Machine restore worked. The bug is that Time Machine fails to check permissions on the target folder prior to the restore. It will attempt a restore that almost works, then fails at some critical last step. This problem may only show up when a Package is being restored into a Folder for with the user (and Time Machine?) does not have write permissions.

I filed an Apple Developer bug report: 7504890.

--
My Google Reader Shared items (feed)

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

HoudahSpot fixes Spotlight -- for a steep price

HoudahSpot is, like the now defunct MoRU/FileSpot, a tool for extending Spotlight.

At $30 it's not cheap, most apps of this sort go for $10 to $20. On the other hand, it's not like there's much competition, and it's not like Spotlight is getting much better.

It's crazy, for example, that Spotlight doesn't have a "path" column (folder names). HoudahSpot does. HoudahSpot also plays nice with LaunchBar and PathFinder. On the other hand, HoudahSpot's Help file is pretty crummy.

I've started a two week trial. I'll update this post if I buy the app.

Monday, December 28, 2009

Google's Pages to Sites migration - train wreck

About a year ago Google announced it would sunset their old Page Creator platform in favor of Google Sites. This would have been better received if Sites were a better product, but it's been stuck on "the sick list" for years.

The migration was supposed to happen mid-2009, but our Minnesota Special Hockey site survived until this week.

So did Google use those six months to develop a brilliant migration tool coupled with extensions to Google Sites?

No. Of course not. The result of the migration is a train wreck.

For example, most of the attachment links are scrambled. I think some of our documents (attachments) may have been lost. A large collection seem to exist as "attachments" to the root directory -- but there's no mechanism to link to them.

Thanks Google. Merry Christmas to you too.

Update: When I first posted this I thought Google had merely messed up. The longer and deeper that I look into this the more the fiasco resembles staggering incompetence at a level rarely seen outside of high school and failing corporations. WTF is going on at Google?!

Update 1/6/10: Despite our support contract, Google never responded to an email inquiry. Most recently, I discovered that a bug in their update process deleted a significant page. Turns out that if you had an existing Sites page and a Page Creator page collection, the contents of an existing Site could be wiped out by the migration.

--
My Google Reader Shared items (feed)

Sunday, December 27, 2009

Surprises from an old zip archive

For years my personal data was distributed between DOS/Windows/XP and Mac Classic/OS X environments. It's really only moved to a single OS X share within the past six months, and I'm still sorting out the archives.

Which is why it was only today that I discovered that OS X couldn't open MS-DOS zip files from 1990. WinZip did open them, though it complained of an unspecified security risk each time I opened a file.

The funny bit is that unzipped files came out, total, to about 2MB. Zipped they were about 1MB. So I was zipping them in 1990 to to save 1MB.

No, not 1GB. 1MB, aka a millionth of a terabyte. In those days I guess that mattered.

I've expanded them all now. Most of the documents were written in WordPerfect. I can get the gist of them from a text editor, but Word 2003 opens them pretty well. (Since they go back to DOS they don't have standard file extensions -- back then I used ".LTR" for "letters" and ".TXT" for documents.)

The take home lesson, of course, is that compressed archives are very vulnerable to data loss. At least a WordPerfect file can be read in a text editor.

--
My Google Reader Shared items (feed)

Enabling use of a large external USB drive with an older BIOS: disable legacy USB support

This is a pretty exotic fix, but I'm not the only one to run into the problem so I'll pass on what I learned (I found the link after I fixed the issue).

I have a vintage 2003 XP box Intel motherboard with an Intel P4 motherboard. It's needed periodic brain surgery but I make as few changes as possible. This is geriatric computing -- don't mess with things that work.

The most persistent annoyance I've had came when I moved to 1TB external drives for backup:

Gordon's Tech: My review: LaCie 1 TB USB 2.0 External Drive 201304U

... I discovered I couldn't start the system with the USB drive on. I have to restart with the drive off, then leave it off until startup is done. I don't think this was a LaCie problem, I suspect other causes...

I don't restart often, so I've mostly ignored this. I does cause some pain however, so recently I spent a few minutes plumbing the BIOS.

Briefly, I had to disable "legacy USB" support. Once that was done the system starts normally. I spotted this by turning on the BIOS settings to show all startup messages and do a full (slow) startup -- I could see it was hanging at a USB step just after checking the keyboard.

Since I was in the BIOS I made a few other incidental changes. I no longer use Serial or Parallel ports (yeah, old machine) so I disabled those. I also told the BIOS to use PnP (which I see I also did in 2003 so it looks like I reset the BIOS back to defaults sometime in the past six years).

Using OS X Spaces, Expose, Minimize and Hide - best practices

I had to take another look at Expose and Spaces when a relative asked me to review their use.

I'm again struck by a perennial mystery. Why don't we have more "I'm an expert, here's how I manage X" type documentation? I'm sure the team that developed Expose and Spaces had clear ideas on how they were to be used. No, not a list of features, but rather an explanation of how an array of possible features are should be used -- and, more importantly, what should be avoided.

For example -- I can't figure out any use for minimizing windows to the Dock. Once you do that they can't be managed by Expose or Spaces, and they can't be closed as a group. Dock minimization feels like an obsolete function that now causes confusion. Likewise, how do the Mac Classic legacy operations application operations of "Hide App", "Hide All" or "Hide Others" mesh with Expose and Spaces?

Expose, Spaces, Hide and Minimize -- we really do need a true power user to explain what they use and what they carefully neglect.

Since most of my real work is done in corporate XP I'm not a true OS X power user - but I can take a whack at the problem. This is what I do at the moment:

The application-specific Hide functions: I no longer use them. I feel as though they've been replaced by Spaces and Expose.
Expose: I use "All Windows" and "Desktop". I've mapped Ctrl-D to Desktop because I'm used to Windows-D on XP to show the Desktop (Cmd-D is a shortcut that works in many file menus to set the focus to the Desktop so I used Ctrl rather than Cmd). I want to start using F10 to show all Application windows, but on the newest Apple laptop-everywhere keyboards there are no dedicated Function keys. I think Apple is deprecating Expose:Application Windows.
Minimize to Dock: I avoid this like the plague. I do find "Close All" (option click on close menubar icon) very useful to clean up a mess of browser windows.
Spaces: This is useful on my MacBook display, less useful on a my desktop (27" i5 + 21" LCD). I'm trying to get used to using it everywhere however. I'm experimenting with using only 2 screens, and mapping the Finder to one. So one screen has my file manipulation stuff, everything else is in the other screen.

I find typing "exp" or "spa" in LaunchBar is the fastest way to invoke Expose or Spaces; it's more convenient than using a mouse or a kb shortcut.

Anyone have alternative approaches to suggest?

Update 12/30/09: Azendel, writing in comments, tells us that Apple fixed "Minimize" in 10.6. Minimized windows now appear in Expose. That's a relief since "Minimize" is fairly prominent in the OS X user interface; the Leopard Minimize/Expose incompatibility has been a frequent irritant.

Update 1/3/2011: I made a very good stab at using Spaces over the past year. I like giving Aperture its own Space for example, so it could use the secondary monitor without messing up other apps. Over time, however, I ran into more issues with app windows being split between Spaces. I also suspect, but cannot prove, that some App crashes are related to windows being split between Spaces. I now think Spaces is not quite ready for primetime. Since "Leo" (10.7) has a different Finder/Spacers model, and since Apple's newer kbs have "Expose" keys but not "Spaces" keys I think Apple knows this too. I'm going to return to using Expose (improved in 10.6) and experiment with Minimize and Hide.

Update 1/29/11: See Using OS X Spaces, Expose, Minimize and Hide - best practices 2.0

--
My Google Reader Shared items (feed)

Friday, December 25, 2009

Skype - video conferencing

I'm still looking for a reasonably reliable video conferencing solution that my mother can use.

It has to run on OS X, the UI should work well for a low vision user, and it must "auto-answer" when I call.

I've tried iChat. Enough said. Apple would make me happy if they pulled iChat from the OS and sold it separately. Maybe they'd be motivated to make it work, and they'd encourage competition.

I really like the quality of Google Video Chat when it works. Alas, it fails far too often, the interface is a case study in UI sadism and the plugin didn't work on my 10.6 64 bit machine.

That leaves Skype, with video auto-answer. The quality isn't as good as GV, and it does crash, but I think it's more reliable than GV. More importantly, auto-answer is build it. The install was very easy.

I'll report more as I get additional experience.

--
My Google Reader Shared items (feed)

LogMeIn OS X - 32 bit only

For several weeks I was frustrated that LogMeIn didn't work on my iMac i5 running 10.6.2. I couldn't find any explanation. I made do with the almost inert Java applet or used my MacBook (10.5) to maintain my mother's Mini.

Turns out LogMeIn is not fully compatible with Snow Leopard. It only works if Safari runs in 32 bit mode.

It did work for me in 32 bit mode, but it was flaky. I switched to Firefox which is still 32 bit (the 64 bit version is in beta I think). It worked there.

Obviously LogMeIn.com isn't exactly dying to please OS X customers. This should have shown up in blazing red letters for every OS X user who logs in to the service. Practically speaking, LogMeIn is not compatible with any of Apple's newer machines.

I don't mind them not having a fix, I do mind the time I wasted trying to make their product work.

Anyone know a better (please, no VNC) remote control solution? I don't mind paying! (Yes, I know about Apple's remote control solution. It's almost as crummy as iChat.)

OS X Mail.app supports multiple sending aliases

If you want to use aliases when you send an email ...

Mail’s Email Aliases, and Complexity Hidden - Release Candidate One

... all my outgoing email appeared to come from the One True Email Address ... I looked around Mail’s account preferences for a hint as to where outgoing email aliases could be set up. Nowhere, it seemed. Could they have left that feature out? Do they want strict one-to-one mappings between incoming and outgoing addresses, and didn’t account for aliases? Surely not.

A Google search later, it turns out you can list multiple addresses separated by commas, and later those addresses will appear on a menu in the New Message window. Your selection will determine from whence that message appears to be delivered, and everybody’s happy.

This is a typical Apple move. Provide the functionality, but make it invisible and documentation free. No promises.
--
My Google Reader Shared items (feed)

Retrospect 8 - no user guide?

I have two backup systems at the moment: Time Capsule/Time Machine and Retrospect Professional (Windows). Neither is fabulous, but there aren't a lot of good choices. Somewhat to my surprise EMC fixed quite a few Retrospect Pro bugs; it's extremely complex to configure but my version works.

Problem is, I want to sunset my XP box. So I need an OS X only solution. Fortunately EMC has invested in creating a new version of the original Retrospect product. It now runs on 10.6 Intel.

I downloaded a trial version and, as a veteran user, I was able to get a hard drive backup going in minutes. Configuring the clients is a bit trickier than it used to be, but that should only take a few minutes with the User Guide ...

User Guide?

Where the @#%& is my Retrospect 8 User's Guide (Aug 2009)?!

Yes, the documentation for a SOHO backup system has been missing since March 2009 because EMC won't pay for a tech writer.

Who the #$!#$#! is going to use a backup system when the vendor won't even invest in a manual? (*cough* Time Machine *cough).

What kind of company would bring a product like this to market, then be unable to pay a tech writer to put a manual together - back in the peak of the great recession when contract writers were begging for work?

What a waste.

Update 1/2/10: Joe Kissell wrote a cautious review of Retrospect 8 in Sept 2009. He didn't mention the missing manual.

Update 3/13/2010: Still no user guide. The EMC forum responses from product support are very sad.

--
My Google Reader Shared items (feed)

When Google Voice goes bad - report here

Google Voice (VOIP with local switched connections) saves me about $1,000 a year in mobile long distance charges, so I'm a grateful fan.

The quality used to be pretty iffy, but these days it's good to Canada -- except when it's awful. Two weeks ago an echo problem forced me to revert to the higher quality but costly AT&T alternative.

I reported my problem and a few days later it resolved. Coincidence? Probably. All the same, be sure to report if you run into GV quality issues.
--
My Google Reader Shared items (feed)

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Notes from the new world of video cable confusion and iMac target display mode

Once upon a time I had to know about hercules graphics cards and RGB cards and about half a dozen forgotten video standards from the dawn of the PC.

Mercifully we've more or less sorted out screen resolutions (albeit without our long promised resolution independence). Video cables though, not so much. DRM, mega-screens, and licensing struggles have blown through a half-dozen cable standards. Here's what I deal with in my own home with our new flickering 27" i5 iMac.

MacBook: Apple Mini DVI. I have adapters to VGA and DVI.
iBook: mini-VGA port, I have a mini-VGA to VGA adapter.
Dell 2007WFP (1680x1050) display: DVI and VGA
Ancient XP box: VGA
iMac G5: mini-VGA (amazingly, same as iBook)
iMac i5 27" as computer: mini-DisplayPort
iMac i5 27" as display (1560x1440): mini-DisplayPort
Dell Laptop (corporate): standard VGA and (full size) DisplayPort

Prior to the i5 I had the following adapter cables

mini-VGA to VGA
mini-VGA to DVI
mini-DVI to DVI
mini-DVI to VGA

Recently I've added these cables/adapters

mini-DisplayPort to (male) DisplayPort 3 foot cable (from CircuitAssembly, $13)
mini-DisplayPort to (female) DVI adapter (from eForcity via Amazon, $7)

They were both relatively inexpensive, even with shipping (which was reasonably priced in both cases). So far both of them work. I was surprised how useful using the i5 as an external display is.

Using the mini-DisplayPort to DVI (from eForcity via Amazon, $7) adapter I can connect the i5 to the lower-pixel density Dell 2007WFP. I use the Dell for easy-on-the-eyes reading and the i5 for photo, video and as a work space. It's not a bad combination.

Using the mini-DisplayPort to (male) DisplayPort 3 foot cable I can connect my Dell laptop and use the iMac as an external display (Target display mode). This is a wee bit tricky. When I first tried it my Dell blue screened, but after rebooting it was ok. This didn't surprise me, it's always been fragile about external displays. When it worked it drove the i5 at full resolution, which impressed me. The i5 went into target display mode when I plugged in the DisplayPort cable -- but it didn't return to normal mode when I pulled it. The almost-undocumented secret is to use Command+F2 to toggle display modes.

Some other tips about using the iMac as a really big monitor (from Apple, except mine didn't leave target mode when I pulled the cable ...) ...

Applications running on the 27-inch iMac computer remain open and running while it is in Target Display mode.
Use the keyboard of the 27-inch iMac to adjust display brightness and sound volume and to control media playback of applications running on the 27-inch iMac in Target Display mode. Other keyboard and mouse input is disabled on the 27-inch iMac while it is in Target Display mode.
The 27-inch iMac works like any other external display while it is in Target Display mode, except that you cannot access its built-in iSight or USB and FireWire ports. To change display settings, open System Preferences on the external source computer and choose Display from the View menu.
Mac OS X on the 27-inch iMac ignores some sleep requests while it is in Target Display mode, but forced sleep, restart, and shutdown commands will still work. If the external source goes into idle display sleep, the 27-inch iMac in Target Display mode will go dark until activity resumes on the external source.
If you shut down, sleep, or detach the external source while In Target Display mode, the 27-inch iMac will leave Target Display mode.
The Mini DisplayPort in the 27-inch iMac can receive only DisplayPort compliant video and audio signals. Converters not made by Apple may provide options to convert other electrical, video, and audio protocols to Mini DisplayPort compliant signals.

Incidentally, I can't use the MacBook to drive the i5 display, but I can use it with the smaller Dell display.

Phew. I hope things settle down to using mini-DisplayPort and/or DisplayPort for a while.

--
My Google Reader Shared items (feed)

Monday, December 21, 2009

Freeing up Time Capsule space – and documentation for Time Machine and Time Capsule

[See Update for the bottom line -- my original impressions were a bit off]

I bought my 500 GB Time Capsule a few weeks before Apple upgraded performance and doubled drive capacity (they probably fixed the original’s flaky power supply too).

Sniff.

In any case adding a new iMac means the TC is blinking amber – it’s short of space. I could replace the 500 with a 1.5 or 2.0 TB Western Digital Green Power drive but the upgrade looks like a pain and it would void my original warrantee (which I might need thanks to that flaky power supply).

In reality 500GB is enough for what I truly need to backup – at this time*. I just need to free up space by excluding the System and Application folders from backup. (You can’t specify which folders to include, only which to exclude.)

This being the modern era it’s quite a chore to find Apple documentation on the Time Capsule (Google is less help than one would expect). Here’s the current list I have:

Specific references on removing backups and freeing up TC storage:

Erase and reformat an Apple Time Capsule- Dave Taylor: Use AirPort Time Capsule UI to reformat the drive. It works, but see Update for a 10.5 bug that might impact restarting your backups. It means all backups need to be redone, see update for removing just one machine backup.
Removing backups from Apple’s Time Machine: This is more intriguing than I first thought, but it's somewhat different from what I've read elsewhere. Proceed with caution: I'd try other methods first. Note that TM doesn't always free up space immediately - the sparse bundle doesn't auto-compact. This article and others suggest use the "hdiutil compact" command to force sparse bundle compression.
Removing backups by deleting the sparse image bunde: Joe Kissell, author of the superb Take Control of Mac OS X Backups wrote to me about this (see Update). I purchased the eBook and he responded very quickly to this specific question.

Some additional non-Apple references …

Apple - Support - Discussions - Time Machine -- Frequently Asked Questions (the best overall reference from any source)
Apple - Support - Discussions - Restoring Your Entire System / Time ...
Apple - Support - Discussions - Time Machine - TROUBLESHOOTING ...
Apple - Support - Discussions - User Contributed Tips in the Mac OS X ...
MacTech: Networked Backups Using Time Machine (detailed – to understand how this works)
TimeMachineScheduler - set the backup interval of Time Machine: free app
Dashboard app that shows Time Machine messages

Among other tidbits it’s useful to know that …

When using Time Machine, the little “gear” icon in the Finder view is not what you think it is. It’s a control element for the Time Capsule interface. Nobody has ever figured this out on their own. (See the FAQ for how to restore this if you don’t see it. World’s most inane UI decision.
If you control-click the Time Machine Dock icon (better make sure you add one to your dock!) you can “browser other backups”.
For ease of cleaning out Time Machine backups, it’s best to use an external drive that you can reformat. If you want an external drive to do more that TM, you should partition it.
If you back up more than one machine to a TM drive (which is what Time Capsule does) you should ideally have a separate partition for each machine. Otherwise the backup pruning algorithms have suboptimal behavior (this is what I’m seeing with my Time Capsule). The user-compiled FA
There’s a free dashboard app that shows Time Machine messages.
If you want to use the TC as a file share, one good approach is to create a disk image on the TC that will handle your file share files - keeps them separate from the backup sparse bundle images.

The best reference is the user-compiled FAQ.

* I have a completely separate redundant Retrospect Professional backup system with larger capacity. Yes, I have two automated backup systems, one of which has offsite rotation. Yes, I’m berserk on backups. Incidentally, the more I study this, the more I think it will make more sense to add an external 2TB drive to my primary iMac and network server than to revise my Time Capsule.

Update 1/1/2010: I find a bug in TM that caused a restore to fail. There's a workaround.

Update 1/22/2010: I finally did the clean-up and restore, and discovered a 10.5 bug that hits when you erase a Time Capsule.

Update 1/25/2010: Next time I'll remove just the problematic sparse image per the advice of Joe Kissell, author of an eBook I bought: Take Control of Mac OS X Backups

First, in the Time Machine preference pane for the Mac in question, click Select Disk and then click Stop Backing Up.
Next, if you back up to a Time Capsule or other network drive (as I'm guessing you do), you must mount that volume in the Finder. For example, select your Time Capsule in the Finder sidebar, and if its volume doesn't appear automatically in a few seconds, click Connect As and enter your credentials. On that volume you'll see a disk image for each computer you back up. Drag the one in question to the Trash and click Delete.
Or, if you back up to a locally connected drive, instead of disk images at the top level of the drive, you'll see a top-level folder called Backups.backupdb, and inside that should be a folder for each Mac. Drag the appropriate Mac's folder to the Trash and empty the Trash. Note that emptying the Trash could take a *very* long time!

Sunday, December 20, 2009

CD won't mount - a fix (10.5)

My 10.5.8 MacBook wouldn't mount a blank CD. I'd insert it, but it didn't appear on the desktop or in the Finder (Finder preferences were set to show CD, DVD.)

I could eject using Disk Utility. In DU the disk showed as though it already had data, but could not be erased.

Here's how I fixed it:

Demonstrated the disk would indeed mount in another account (so the problem was my user account).
In my user account the CDs & DVDs preference pane was set to "When you insert a blank CD: Ignore". I changed it to "Open Finder" (which shouldn't be necessary, but when I changed it back to "Ignore" the blank CD didn't mount).

After the change the Preference Pane the problem resolved.

--
My Google Reader Shared items (feed)