Josh Highland’s Blog

If you have been following my blog, you an read that my PC died, and for a moment, I installed OS X Leopard on it. Well, my new drive from western digital arrived, and I am back working in Vista now (I’m not sure if that is a good thing or not!).

Parallels makes it easy to run Windows inside of Mac, but I haven’t found a good way to run Mac inside of windows. Previously, I used a project called “LEO4ALL” to install Leopard on my PC. A little bit of Googeling around after I installed Vista, I found “LEO4VMWARE”

LEO4VMWARE is a pre-packaged and running distribution of OS X Leopard for the vmware, a virtual machine software. You can download the vmware payer here http://vmware.com/download/player.

Side Note: I’m going to be honest here, you are going to want to get vmware workstation, so you can tweak the performance settings. If you are looking at virtually putting OS X on your pc, you have enough smarts to download vmware desktop for free, and then find a serial number.

What this all means is all you have to do is download LEO4VMWARE and install vmware and you are off and running!

I have gotten it to work (not well, but it worked) on a pentium 4 3 ghz windows xp computer with 3 gigs of ram. On my intel core 2 duo, 3ghz, 4 gigs of ram running vista to work great! Check out the picture below.

Getting networking can be tricky, so read the posts on how to do it here

Downloads for LEO4VMWARE can be found by going here http://www.mediafire.com/?ggkr1obgrft, downloading the zip and looking at the links inside. I personally suggest buying a month of rapid share and downloading for there. LEO4VMWARE is about 3 gigs, and rapidshare offers amazing download speeds.

In my last blog post I talked about how my computer had a system drive failure. I am waiting for Western Digital to send me a new 10,000 rpm drive to replace the broken one, so in the meantime, I thought I would screw around with trying to put Mac OS X on my desktop.

My friend Luis Majano is a great software developer and swears by his Mac Book Pro. At work I run Windows XP, at home it Windows Vista. I have Ubuntu on my laptop and run CentOS on my web servers, so I’m not a die hard about one OS or another, they all have their place.

I love Linux operating systems, so learning from Luis that Mac OS X sits on top of BSD made me more interested in switching (Apple don’t tell you that in their cute commercials). The price of Mac computers is insane though, and not something I’m blindly going to jump into.

So to the point… a broken PC a spare harddrive, and the want to try Mac OS X, whats a geek to do? A few google searches, and a torrent download later, I had in hand, Leo4All.

Leo4All is an awesome distribution of the hacked apple OS to run on none genuine apple hardware. They even have a great wiki (http://osx86leo4all.wikidot.com)

I dropped the DVD into my drive, booted up and a few minutes later I was in the OS X installer. Formatted the drive into an apple format, clicked install and 10 minutes later I was working inside of OS X! everything was there, even time machine! check out the screen shot below…

I had trouble with my network card, as OS X doesnt seem to like a lot of on-mother-board devices. I fixed that by powering down, and installing an old pci NIC. Booted back up and it was there!

I had no audio, but after a few minutes of googeling around, and following likes from the Leo4All wiki, I had it going.

I still havent had any luck getting my dual monitors to work. OS X doesnt seem to like nVidia cards with 512 megs of ram. Oh well, one monitor is fine with me for now.

The USB ports work, and recognize my iPod and iPhone just fine.

So it looks like I’m set. If the experience goes well, who knows, I just might become a switcher! If you know of some sweet mac software I need to try out, let me know.

This afternoon I upgraded my blog to the latest version of wordpress, 2.5. The install went great and it was simple to do. I didn’t realize that I had any problems until I went to make a blog post and upload an image. When I tried to upload, I was greeted with the following:

Something was for sure messed it. I tried it in several browsers, but had the same results. no luck. I started to go some searching online but since wordpress 2.5 is so new, there was little info to be found. After about an hour of stumbeling around I came across a post on a forum where someone said they got the image upload to work by adjusting their .htaccess file on thier site with the following code.

<IfModule mod_security.c>
<Files async-upload.php>
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</Files>
</IfModule>

I made the change to my .htaccess file, and like magic the image upload feature started to work again!

I am making this post in the hopes that other people with similar problems will stumble across this post and be able to fix their problem with out having to wade through all the pages of people trying to diagnose what the problem is when the solution is super easy.

In keeping in step with my new found love of StarCraft, I wanted to play it on my laptop. One problem… my laptop doesn’t run on windows or mac, its powered by UBUNTU!

I love running Ubuntu, and I have never found a reason why I would need windows on my laptop. Ubuntu does everything I need it to, that is until I wanted to play a PC based game on it.

I did a little google searching and I found out that WINE on Ubuntu will play StarCraft perfectly! I gave it a go, and was surprised at how easy it was, and how well it all worked together.

Here are the steps I took:

• Open a terminal and run sudo apt-get install wine to get wine.
• After that finishes, insert the StarCraft CD into the computer
• In the terminal cd to whatever cdrom drive you put the cd in (under the /media/ directory). Mine was /media/cdrom0
• Use Wine to setup StarCraft with wine setup.exe. You’ll get the install screen for SC - enter your CD key and install the software. StarCraft will be installed under the path of
  ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Starcraft/starcraft.exe.
• In the terminal, run winecfg and go to the Audio tab. Set Hardware Acceleration to Emulation.
• What is StarcCaft without the Broodwar expantion? I eject the Starcraft CD and insert the Broodwar expantion CD.
  cd to the appropriate /media/ directory and run wine setup.exe.
• To play StarCraft, run wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Starcraft/starcraft.exe.
  I was also able to find a link to it from the Applications menu in Ubuntu.
• Lastly, I downloaded the latest patch to BroodWar from blizzard.com, and ran that with no problem.

There it was, a fully patched and running copy of StarCraft on my Ubuntu laptop. Can life get sweeter? I submit that it can not!

A guy I know, “dave”, had an iPod that was acting up. On top of that, his warranty was was almost up, and he was worried that the iPod would live just long enough to go out of warranty before fully breaking, leaving him with out an iPod.

He was looking for a way help to speed up the failure process of his iPod, so he could make use of the warranty. Knowing that I have a back ground in working on the inside of iPods he hit me up for advice… advice that got him a new iPod

Based on the experiments and hundreds of comments I have received on my previous blog posts (here and here), its clear to see that when an iPod hard drive comes loose, the entire iPod goes nuts, and doesnt work (it cant read the music, so there is no music to play!).

1. I suggested to Dave that he take a guitar pick (This is an old photo I am reusing where I used a screw driver for my example.. DONT USE A SCREW DRIVER you will scratch the metal part of the case!), and force the pick between the metal and the plastic, being careful not to scratch either surface.

   

2. Once the guitar pick (NOT SCREWDRIVER) is in between the case halves, twist the pick and move it slowly along the seam to release the internal latches. Take your time, so you don’t mark up the case, or Apple will know you were up to something.

   

3. Once you get the case apart, be careful and move the case halves a part, keeping the plastic side down. Be sure not to break the ribbon cable joining the halves.

   
   

4. Next, find the hard drive, it should be easy to see. At the top, it is attached with a large ribbon connection. This is where the magic happens! We need to unplug this cable from the drive, but still leave it semi attached. Pull the cable straight out, unhooking it completely. gently push it back on. enough to hold it in place, but not make a complete connection.

   

   We are trying to simulate what happens when some ipods are dropped. In some cases, the hard drive shifts and the cable becomes unplugged, creating a messed up iPod.

   To test this, gently pick up the iPod and press the scroll wheel. If you can see your songs, you pushed the cable back in to far, unhook it and try again. If you get an error, you did everything just right!

5. To put it back together, flip the metal side over the top and gently squeeze it all together. The case will snap back into place.

   

6. Your iPod should not play, and it looks completely broken.

   

If you return it to Apple under warranty, they should give you a new one. If they wont replace it, open it back up, re attach the hard drive cable and enjoy the dying days of your old iPod.

I haven’t tried doing this this, and I don’t really suggest doing it. I’m posting this for educational purposes, and because it is both an interesting hardware and social hack. I’m guessing that Apple might change their policy if they see a lot of this happening. You probably should just buy a new one. (I hope that covers me legally!)

While we are talking about iPods, subscribe to my podcast!

Last June, I got a new (used) Toshiba M55 laptop.

I got it for an awesome deal because the hard drive was broken, and the screen flickered a lot. I figured for the price it was worth the gamble, even if I had to replace the screen it was still a bargain price.

The hard drive was DOA, and was replaced immediately. I installed Ubuntu 7.04 Gusty as the main OS with windows as the second OS. Easy enough to do.

The screen flickered a bit, but if i messed with the lid enough, moving it back and forth, I could get a good picture. Over time the picture just got worse and worse. It was time to do something about it. I did a quick google search and found a Toshiba M55 LCD replacement guide.

I figured it had to be something with the connections on to the screen or board because when the screen was working, it was working good. The image was great, but it took a bit to get it there.

I followed the guide exactly. I powered it on when I had it torn apart and it worked! It seems that there was to much stress on the LCD cable connection, causing it to freak out when the lid was in specific positions.

I followed this guide to open up the keyboard. (steps 6 - 8 only). I was able to give the cable a bit more slack, and every thing started working like it should! I put it all together and it’s like I have a new laptop, and all it took was an hour of my time and the guts to do it. I should have cracked this thing open 6 months ago if i knew it was going to be this easy!

I hope this helps someone else with a similar problem.

I can’t spell. That no joke. If you have read my blog for any length of time, you will know this. One of my saving graces has been the built in spell checker in Firefox (I’ve already used it 5 times in this post!)

By default Firefox will only spell check large text areas. This is great for the bodies of forum and blog posts, but it doesn’t help when I am filling out a single line text box, like the subject of this blog, or a forum topic title.

There is a solution to this, so you can have Firefox’s spell check available to all fields in a browser:

In Firefox, do the following (ignore all quotes)

1. type this in the browser address bar “about:config”
2. look for “layout.spellcheckDefault”
3. change the value to “2″
4. restart firefox

Yesterday I logged into my server to back up my databases. I back up the mysql databases using a tool called “mysqlhotcoy”. It’s a handy perl application that copies the database files for easy restores, and it also works really quick when you run it.

I ran the mysqlhotcopy command as root, and was greeted with an error similar to this:
Invalid db.table name 'foo.foo`.`bar'

um, no…. this table exists

I have cpanel installed on my server, a lot of server do. cpanel does updates to many application, mysqlhotcopy is one of them. It looks like my version of mysqlhotcopy was updated to 1.22, and there is some major problems with mysqlhotcopy 1.22.

I did some googeling and I found some people talking about the problem. I even found a quick patch for the problem. The problem comes from a host adding the username and an underscore before a database name (example: “username_databasename.table“). mysqlhotcopy only looks for databasename.table

The following patch instructions will fix mysqlhotcopy 1.22

• Open the perl script for editing. It is located at /usr/bin/mysqlhotcopy
• find the following subroutine
  

  sub get_list_of_tables {
  my ( $db ) = @_;

  my $dbh = DBI->connect(”dbi:mysql:${db}${dsn};mysql_read_default_group=mysqlhotcopy”,
  $opt{user}, $opt{password},
  {
  RaiseError => 1,
  PrintError => 0,
  AutoCommit => 1,
  });

  my @dbh_tables = eval { $dbh->tables() };
  $dbh->disconnect();
  return @dbh_tables;
  }

• look for this line (mine was link 821):
  

  my @dbh_tables = eval { $dbh->tables() };

• immediately after that line add the following:
  

  map { s/^.*?\.//o } @dbh_tables

Here is my patched subroutine:

sub get_list_of_tables {
my ( $db ) = @_;

my $dbh = DBI->connect(”dbi:mysql:${db}${dsn};mysql_read_default_group=mysqlhotcopy”,
$opt{user}, $opt{password},
{
RaiseError => 1,
PrintError => 0,
AutoCommit => 1,
});

my @dbh_tables = eval { $dbh->tables() };
map { s/^.*?\.//o } @dbh_tables;
$dbh->disconnect();
return @dbh_tables;
}

After I applied the patch, everything was back to working order.

Some people have other approaches that would work also, like downgrading mysqlhotcopy all together.

Personally, I think adding one line of code wasn’t that big of a deal to fix the program

Its no secret, I like to install Linux on things that should be running Linux, like my iPod.

My friend at work, Stephen, recently told me about installing Linux on a linksys router. To be honest, I looked into my router in the past, but it was years ago, and required soldering wires and things inside of it. I don’t have the best luck when it comes to hardware mods, so I didn’t do it.

Stephen turned me on to a new Linux based firmware for older linksys routers called “Tomato”.

Tomato is a 3rd party firmware that voids the warranty on your router, but lets you do some awesome stuff you weren’t able to do with the original firmware.

It took all of about 5 minutes to download the firmware and reflash my router with it. You can get a copy of it at http://www.polarcloud.com/tomato

The interface is ajax based and really clean. Because its all powered with ajax, there is some really cool monitoring features, like real time bandwidth monitoring (flash movie)

If you have a weak wifi signal from your router, you can use the tomato firmware to crank up the output of the signal.

All in all you turn your $50 router into a $500 router with this open source firmware.

You have to have a Linksys WRT54G, version v1-v4. Newer ones are v5, so before upgrading be sure to check yours.

If you aren’t a big geek, this mod is kind of useless, but how awesome is it to say that you are running Linux in your router.

Last Saturday, Massive mat and I stood inline with a bunch of other geeks to get Nintendo Wiis. I will write a blog post about that, and about how fun the Wii is to play, but for now, im going to bitch about it for a minute…

One of the big reasons that I wanted to get a Wii was the fact that you are able to play EVERY nintendo game format on it. NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, and now Wii games! To play the old games you have to join their version of XBox Live, and buy them.

The Wii is so futuristic, that it doesnt have an ethernet port on it, no no, wifi is the way nintendo wii rolls!

I wanted to buy some of these old games and play them, but you have to connect to a wifi connection first. Not a problem, I have a Linksys WRT54GL router upstairs serving out some 802.11g love.

The Wii would see the access point, I would enter the WPA password, then the Wii would think about connecting then spit back and error, "ERROR 52230 contact support.nintendo.com". SUCK!

Ok, so I go to the nintendo site, search forever and then find a place to enter my error code. It returns something stupid about trying changing the channel that the router broadcasts on. Weird, but I try it… no LUCK.

I searched up and down the web seeing people with similar problems to mine. I couldnt figure it out for the life of me. All my other wifi gear worked fine.

I did a little research on what was actually inside the Wii as far as a wireless card. Thats when I found this site,
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=677908&seqNum=2&rl=1 where they actually took a Wii apart.
I found my answer there in the form of a simple statement "The 802.11 card only operates in the 2412-2462GHz range. In 802.11b mode"

802.11b MODE! WTF!

I dont own any 802.11b equipment, only 802.11g. 802.11b is shitty and slow compared to G. NO WHERE IN THE NINTENDO MANUALS OR ON THE NINTENTDO SITE DOES IT SAY THAT IT ONLY OPERATES AT 802.11b.

Why would nintendo do such a stupid thing? B is 5 times slower then G! Who the hell rund 802.11b equipment? My Damn cell phone has 802.11G support in it! Im more pissed that they didnt print it anywhere in the manual. They talk about WEP and WPA, but not the fucking protocol they use for the connection!

So I logged into my router and put it on Mixed (B/G) Mode, and what do you know, the Wii was able to connect to the nintendo server and get the updates that I needed to connect to their store.

So if you are having problems connecting your Wii to some WiFi. make sure that the router is set to mixed mode.

Nintendo, thank you for a great machine. Screw you for putting in a slow wifi card and not telling people more details about it.

I hope someone else can finally get their Wii online after reading this post.