Gone but not forgotten, here's Heath Ledger signing his heart out in '10 Things I Hate About You'. You're the best Heath!
Installing SVN via MacPorts
Posted by John
on Wednesday, 23 January 2008
Following on from my previous article concerning using MacPorts to install system software easily on your Mac, in this article I'll guide you thru install Subversion and all it's dependencies under Apple's Leopard O/S.
Update MacPorts
First off you don't have to install MacPorts with Leopard as it comes pre-installed, but you do need to update it.
So in Terminal run...
sudo port -v selfupdate
Perfect that should update the stock 1.5 build to the latest 1.6 release.
SVN Dependencies
Now to installing Subversion's dependencies, without these Subversion will not build. So in Terminal run...
sudo port install sqlite3
sudo port install apr-util
sudo port install neon
Excellent, you should now be ready to install Subversion 1.4.6 from source via MacPorts
Finally Subversion
Just run...
sudo port install subversion
Should install ok leaving you with the latest binary build of Subversion on your Apple machine.
What about a GUI ?
Ok, as most people don't really like using SVN from the command-line, you can download a mac gui interface to it at...
More MacPorts are available at...
Handy Tip
Before I go you can find out the location of a piece of software via the 'which' command.
which svn
Should return the path where it's installed.
Heath Ledger has gone
Posted by John
on Wednesday, 23 January 2008
Incredible professional and such a nice guy, you will be missed.
My thoughts are with his family and friends in these difficult times.
Sincerely,
John Griffiths
Using ZFS with Leopard
Posted by John
on Monday, 21 January 2008
With the inception of Sun OS 11 has come the much hoped 'dream' file system, the Zettabyte File System.
This wonder offers the ability to self-heal files, repair file corruption transparently, resize partitions on-the-fly, hot-swappable, RAID built-in and dynamic encryption. A real swiss army knife for file storage.
It also protected the files of billions when the Joyent service StrongSpace went down (now back up), thankfully data was kept under ZFS so it was all safely protected and restored without loss.
Apple are saying they'll have the ZFS file-system available with a future update (maybe 10.5.2) but if you're not scared of delving into the terminal then try installing it for yourself.
Remember this is all Alpha so not fully finalized but workable to use.
Installing the Binaries
first off, get these from...
once downloaded, go into the Terminal and navigate to the unzipped directory, you should see a 'build' directory in there.
Now to add them to your O/S, run...
sudo cp build/Release/zfs /usr/sbin/zfs
sudo cp build/Release/zpool /usr/sbin/zpool
sudo cp build/Release/libzfs.dylib /usr/lib/libzfs.dylib
Now we need to destroy any existing builds of ZFS on your machine, if existing...
sudo /bin/rm -rf /System/Library/Filesystems/zfs.fs /System/Library/Extensions/zfs.kext
sudo cp -R build/Release/zfs.fs /System/Library/Filesystems/zfs.fs
sudo cp -R build/Release/zfs.kext /System/Library/Extensions/zfs.kext
Great, now navigate to the copied files locations and make sure they have ROOT WHEEL access via...
ls -la [dir / filename]
ls -la zpool
You should see in there a column for 'ROOT WHEEL', if it's the case with all six areas your set.
Reboot and you'll be ready to start.
Building a ZFS Memory Stick
Now for this experiment I'll convert my memory stick over to using the ZFS file system.
So first off, fire up Terminal again and type...
diskutil list
This will list all disks available to the system, so in this case my 8gb stick has it's disk called : /dev/disk1
So I partition it with ZFS doing...
diskutil partitiondisk /dev/disk1 GPTFormat ZFS %noformat% 100%
Then create a simple spool for it..
zpool create stick /dev/disk1s2
...note the previous command will list the disks within this ZFS drive, one of them will be our 8GB partition, hence /dev/disk1s2.
...and stick will be the name of our new ZFS disk drive.
Next up we'll need to upgrade the ZFS spool, as by default the current build will create using version 6 for backwards compatibility of the ZFS structure so we'll upgrade it to 8 doing...
zpool upgrade
Excellent, now before you start dragging and dropping into the new stick drive on your desktop let's set some permissions so you don't have to authorise every file action.
So in the desktop, select the stick drive and press Option+J to see it's disk options.
On the bottom of the popup you'll see 'Permissions', click the padlock icon to unlock these, type in your system password and set the System and Wheel to both have R/W access.
Excellent, now you can drag & drop, delete files from the ZFS disk as if it was a normal disk drive.
Ejecting the ZFS Stick
Before you pull your USB stick out of your computer and cause a panic error, make sure to run this command to eject the drive.
sudo zpool export -f stick
Replace 'stick' with the name of your ZTS spool drive.
Deleting Trash from my Stick
There's bug in the current build so clearing your trash on a ZFS drive isn't exactly easy, so back in Terminal...
cd /volumes/stick
And now find the .Trashes directory with..
ls -la
Now delete the .Trashes directory to clear your trash,
rm -rf .Trashes
Bingo, job done.
Closing Points
Because of how the way our simple ZFS drive is structured, it performs lazy writes much like a usb drive in Windows; the user gets told the file has been commited but really it's waiting around to action.
By forcing a zpool export you are essentially telling the ZFS spool to finish any pending operations and eject the drive safely.
Some time in the future this'll be a much simpler process but for now it's pretty decent having this file system available to keep your files safe.
Looking forward to the final release.
Moveme.com - We Won!
Posted by John
on Wednesday, 16 January 2008
Moveme.com - Winners of the People's Choice Award 2007
Move Me, this year's People's Choice winner, beat competition from far and wide to take the number one prize, proving that moving doesn't have to be as stressful as we may think.
In addition to taking the People's Choice crown, it also proved a popular site with the expert panel of judges, winning the Innovative category award announced earlier in January.
Move Me aims to take away the stress of moving house with its free Move Planner. The planner takes everything into account from finding reputable removal firms to who you need to notify of your change of address.
Enjoy!
Looking forward to the award arriving this week ;-)
