howto

Okay I'll let the cat out of the bag: I bought a MacBook. I've had it for a month and it's awesome. I'll leave the review of it for another day (I've been working on a post but can never find the time to finish it).

When I first got the MacBook my plan was to install Boot Camp on it so I could boot into Windows XP every now and then for some Windows Mobile development I've been working on. Boot Camp worked really well but has a major problem: You own a mac to run OS X and all your OS X applications. I have all my productivity applications and data setup in OS X. I don't want to have to install windows equivalents and set them up so I can have access to my mail, IM, word processor, etc. I'd rather use those applications in OS X and be able to work in Windows....enter Parallels.

Parallels is a virtual machine that runs on OS X that will let you virtualize your x86 hardware. This allows you to run other operating systems at the same time as your main operating system at near native speed (provided you have LOTS of RAM). This type of technology is amazing for software testers and application developers who work in one environment but test/develop for another. No rebooting madness or computer switching. Plus if your buggy software pulls down the operating system...just kill the virtual machine and restart it all while still being able to work on your machine (great time to check your email).

Note: To date I believe Parallels is the only virtualization software that takes advantage of Intel Virtualization technology

So back on point. I started with Boot Camp and it worked well but rebooting all the time was annoying and not having access to my data and applications was even more annoying. Parallels was the way BUT I spent a bit of time installing Boot Camp and getting it all configured for my work. I didn't want to waste lots of time starting from scratch and rebuilding yet another work environment. Wouldn't it be cool if you could take your Boot Camp install and transform it into a Parallels install?

That's exactly what I did, but I can't take credit for this amazing feat. I give big props to Colddiver (whoever he is) for posting this set of instructions to migrate Boot Camp to Parallels. Well done.

How did it work out? Really well. The speed of Parallels is really great. I'm running Windows XP in a virtual machine and then running an Pocket PC emulator inside that and it's not slowed to a crawl. I do have 2 gig of RAM though which helps greatly. The only major snag I found was that the switch over invalidated my Windows XP install and I had to call Microsoft to get a new activation key. No biggie. It takes all of 5 minutes to get a new one.

If you are in a similar situation my advice would be to start from scratch and install Windows fresh in the virtual machine if it's reasonable to do so but if you don't have the time these instructions work pretty well. Also note you will need a good amount of hard drive space to perform these steps. I had an external firewire drive that did the trick.

Good Luck!

Oh and if you use Parallels go and use it along with Virtue Desktop. I'll let this video speak for itself. Heck use Virtue Desktop even if you don't use Parallels. It's wicked cool. Amaze your friends.

Now that my Fedora install is upgraded to FC4 I decided to give iFolder a shot. It's actually "fairly" easy to install, but I ran into a couple of snags trying to get it configured and running.

Installation on Fedora is simplest if you use Yum. To do this you need to add repositories for mono and iFolder. Here is a super fast way to get the repositories setup:

For Mono:

wget http://www.go-mono.com/download/fedora-4-i386/mono.repo
cp mono.repo /etc/yum.repos.d/

For iFolder:

wget http://forgeftp.novell.com/ifolder/server/3.5/iFolderServer-Fedora.repo
cp iFolderServer-Fedora.repo /etc/yum.repos.d/

Now the repositories are setup, you should execute yum upgrade to update your repository lists.

To install now is a piece of cake:

yum install ifolder3-server

Yum rules! If you are familiar with Apt-Get you will appreciate Yum. It will download and install all the dependencies...no messing around with tar balls for me!

So now iFolder is installed but it needs to be configured. I read through this wiki page to get some details on configuring iFolder...

To test out iFolder I had to upgrade my Fedora Linux install to FC4. I contemplated FC5 but read somewhere about an issue with iFolder and FC5 so I decided against it. Best not to leap frog from FC3 to FC5 anyways...baby steps.

Rather than clean install or download the installer CD and attempt an upgrade I decided to tempt fate and see how well a live update using Yum would work. Note: first I backed up everything. I may be adventurous but I'm not crazy. This upgrade path is not recommended by the Fedora Project, however many people have had good success with it.

Key points:

• Disable third party repositories first
• Backup everything important!
• Make note of any third party software you may have installed (it may be broken after the upgrade)
• Disable SELinux and reboot
• Some config files may have changed. The upgrade will not overwrite your existing config files but will create a version with a .rpmnew extension so you can merge the changes into your existing config.
• FC3 uses PHP 4 and FC4 uses PHP 5 so you will have to update your php.ini file after the upgrade. You pretty much can just mv php.ini php.ini.bak and mv php.ini.rpmnew php.ini to get it working.

This is a quick list of steps on what to do.  For more information on what's going on etc, read through the links at the bottom.  Particularly if you have a 64 bit system, there are some additional steps that I omitted here.

Step 1: yum -y update yum
Step 2: wget http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/4/i386/os/Fedora/RPMS/fedora-release-4-2.noarch.rpm
Step 3: rpm -Uvh /path/to/fedora-release-4-2.noarch.rpm
Step 4: Disable third party repositories. I just renamed them from .repo to .bak
Step 5: yum -y upgrade mkinitrd
Step 6: yum -y update kernel
Step 7: Disable SELinux: nano /etc/sysconfig/selinux and set SELINUX=disabled
Step 8: Reboot and load FC4 Kernel
Step 9: yum remove kernel-2.6.\*FC3\* and yum remove kernel-smp\*FC3\*
Step 10: yum -y upgrade
Step 11: Go get a coffee this will take some time...
Step 12: yum groupinstall "GNOME Desktop Environment"
Step 13: Re-enable SELinux if you use it
Step 14: Reboot
Step 15: Look over system logs and see if any problems occurred at bootup.
Step 16: Re-enable third party repositories and perform yum update

I didn't come up with this whole step process. I used the following two resources to come up with a strategy:

YumUpgradeFaq

Upgrading Red Hat Linux with Yum

So far it's been a big success. My only snag was php being broken, but after updating my php.ini file it worked fine. Now I should be able to give iFolder a go and see how well it works...

I've had a string of bad luck with my aging iBook lately. First the screen went dead with the infamous Logic Board problem. Fortunately Apple replaced the logic board free of charge with what I would describe as one of the best support experiences I have ever had. However, shortly after getting my iBook back from support the hard drive started making creaking noises and the machine would grind to a halt - a sure sign of a dying hard drive. My iBook is no longer on warranty so it would cost me $250 to have Apple replace the hard drive and they would only replace the factory default drive which was 30 gig. Considering I can find deals on the Internet for an 80 gig drive for close to $100 - no thanks. Not to mention the drive that came with my iBook was a 4200 RPM drive (slow). So after a bit of research, some advice from friends, I decided to attempt to install a new Toshiba 80 gig 5400 RPM drive.

If you have ever searched around to see how to replace a hard drive in an Apple iBook you will understand when I say it's a "tad bit tricky". These things are built like Fort Knox. When I first saw what was required I ran away with my tail between my legs..but after a bit more encouragement and research I decided it wasn't so bad as long as you are diligent. The worst part is all the little screws you need to keep track of. If you have a screw chart it's a piece of cakeâ„¢.

I found this excellent Mac laptop repair guide that gave detailed instructions on how to replace a 12" iBook G3 hard drive. The guides list equipment needed to perform the repair, provides a screw chart, pictures of each step, etc. I highly recommend it. The instructions were pretty accurate and fairly easy to follow.