QNAP and TimeMachine troubles

Both of my Mac laptops (running MacOS X 10.9.3 Mavericks) stopped recognizing my NAS – QNAP TS-219P+, firmware version 4.1.0 (yes, it's a beta) – for TimeMachine backup. After trying all the obvious troubleshooting steps – disabling and re-enabling TimeMachine in NAS interface, restarting everything, etc., I decided to call QNAP technical support. I was pleasantly surprised – no holding, polite technician on the line, asked to remotely connect to my Mac via TeamViewer. Here's what he did:

1. In the web interface of the NAS, disable AFP in Control Panel / Win/Mac/NFS
2. Disable TimeMachine in Backup Station
3. ssh into the NAS, and delete all TimeMachine files (yes, including the backups) by doing this: rm -r /share/MD0_DATA/.timemachine 
4. (He found the MD0_DATA directory by doing df -h)
5. Re-enable TimeMachine in Backup Station (enter your password there); AFP gets re-enabled automatically
6. Wait for a bit...

The Macs magically saw TimeMachine share! One laptop prompted me for username (TimeMachine) and password – I must have done something with its keychain, while the other happily started the backup as if nothing at all happened.

Moral of the story – in the question of QNAP vs. Synology, I still prefer QNAP. Oh, and once in a while, when you get really stuck, it's ok to call tech support. QNAP's is excellent.

Booting up instead of giving the boot

I am of a firm opinion that computers should not be allowed to die. Any computer, regardless of how old it is, should be functional. It doesn't matter if there is no reason to have it be functional. Who cares for a reason? It's a computer - it must run!

That is an easy tenet to abide by if your hardware is 2 years old. But how about a Windoze box I bought at a fire-sale price 10 years ago from an on-line dealer well known for low prices and just as well known for low quality hardware?



Whatever was on its poor little hard drive has stopped booting a long time ago. So, Ubuntu Linux it is, right? Right!

Download the installer image, burn the CD, try to boot the computer - no go! All sorts of errors on reading the disk - looks like CD-ROM reader is not doing all that well.

Create bootable USB stick with same image. Try to boot the computer from USB - no go.

Ok, where's BIOS screen? This thing has some ancient VIA motherboard and I can't remember which keyboard key will drop me into BIOS screen on boot! I tried everything - ESC, all the Function keys, everything! For days I did this! Finally, I got it! Do you know what key does the trick on this one? "Delete"! Not even "Backspace" - unbelievable!



Ok, so the usual weird lineup of USB-related devices, like "USB-ZIP" are listed in BIOS setup. You just know right away that this ain't going to work - this thing can't possibly support USB boot. Sure enough - no dice.

Give up? No way! There's one last resort (before breaking open the case and trying a a different hard drive, etc.) - Plop Boot Manager. This software claims to enable USB booting on hardware that does not support it. Magic! Download, burn the image to CD, and try to boot the computer with it. It works! I guess with this boot loader being so tiny, even this dying CD-ROM drive has enough oomph to read it. USB stick with Ubuntu installer goes in, I choose "USB" from Plop menu and - voila! - i'm in Ubuntu Installer.



So, "Delete" to get in BIOS; Plos Boot Manager on CD; and Ubuntu installer on a USB stick. Oneiric Ocelot, here I come!

Windows speaks your language, but only for a large fee

Microsoft, what is wrong with you? We had guests visiting this weekend from abroad and they wanted to buy a laptop here. We found a great deal on a refurbished HP Pavilion dm4 (i5, 4GB, 14", 500GB for $530) at MicroCenter. THe laptop came preloaded with Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit). Once we had the machine charged and running at home, the first thing the owner wanted to do is to change the localization to Russian. Not an unreasonable thing to do, in my opinion - the guy speaks Russian and prefers to have his computer be localized to his native language. They all do that, right? I mean, look at an activation sequence of any Apple product - first question is always about the language you prefer. Linux is same, for that matter. Windows - not so much...

Imagine our surprise when we found out that this particular flavor of Windows 7 can not be localized at all! Only Windows 7 Ultimate (and Enterprise editions) are capable of downloading and applying Language Packs. This is unbelievable! Do you know how much it costs to upgrade Home Premium to Ultimate? Take a guess... Keep in mind that Apple charged $0 for next to last major OS upgrade and only $29 for the latest one. Here comes the answer - Microsoft wants $155 for the upgrade!!! Again, this is Windows 7 to Windows 7 - just changing flavors! Seriously, guys? I mean, compare that to the overall cost of the laptop!!!

So what are the poor owners of this useless Home Premium edition to do? Return the laptop and pay the restocking fee? Shell out big bucks to Microsoft just to get something that should be (and is on other OSs) so commonplace as to not even occur to ask or wonder about? Well, not without hitting Google first.

First bit of information - we're clearly not the first people asking this question. Duh! Second - here and there folks talk about attempts at circumventing this ridiculous crippleware. They look scary - regedit is prominently featured in convoluted instructions. But what do we have to loose?

The best instructions we came across are from WinCert.net. The author(s) did a very nice job by providing download links to actual language packs and decent instructions for installation/configuration. We decided to go for it. I'll spare you the details, including sneaky behavior by Windows in trying to hide the .cab file from us, etc. Suffice it to say that with a silent prayer, crossing all fingers and toes and rebooting after a particularly alarming registry change, the laptop booted up with a greeting in Russian. Whew!

What can I say - this was yet another in a long series of experiences which reaffirmed my deepest antipathy for Windows. No, other OSs are not perfect, but at least they "speak" your language!

One day with Lion

Having upgraded to MacOS X 10.7 Lion the minute it became available (as one should), I collected some observations (in no particular order) during the first day with Lion. Here we go:

install from App Store - painless. Getting a semblance of an invoice from Apple - not so painless. Getting it reimbursed - we'll see about that...
natural scroll direction - first thing to get disabled (Trackpad preferences). The idea sounds good in principle, and makes sense on iPhone/iPad, but I am not feeling like going against 20 years worth of muscle memory.
new "scrollers" is the hallmark of Lion's GUI changes. While I do not miss old scrollbar arrows (good riddance!), the absence (until you begin to scroll) of an indicator of whether there's more stuff above or below the window edge is concerning...
"back" in browsers - another preference change to get back gesture-based "back" button activation. How come?
dashboard is better accessible now - that is a good thing
TimeMachine on 3rd party support broken. Awaiting a firmware update from QNAP.
Spotlight triggered a VERY long re-indexing of the drive
2GB of RAM minimum - my older Apple Mac mini "Core 2 Duo" 1.83 is out of luck
dock icon badges with white outline scale down very poorly. Apple, are you kidding me???
dropped Java Runtime (though available for download automatically)
no waking up from sleep on trackpad movement? need to either click (which is weird on new trackpads) or hit a key. ANother unnecessary annoyance.
Citrix "AGAdminService" was taking up >90% of CPU resources - uninstalled here.
TechTool Pro 5 seems to take too much CPU as well - disabled it
Adium's Skype plugin does not work - disabled. By the way, tried new iChat with Yahoo Messenger capability - nice, but I am too used to Twitter feed in my Adium, so will stick with that
new scrollbars do not always get well-positioned in older software - NetNewsWire's left-most panel
Finder preference - new windows default to "All My Files" - I do not think so!
so there is no more ~/Library? Yawza! My Mac is morphing into an iPad right in front of my eyes! Option+Go in Finder to get to ~/Library...
three candy widgets at top left are no longer candy. Too small - ever heard of Fitts's law? And .-+ edge-to-edge on mouseover look ugly! Will try going to Appearance = Blue to get the candy back.
New GrowlMail v1.3 is available.
Mail.app - letterbox is finally native! Nice organization of reply threads. Favorite bar - Microsoft Entourage idea?
dialog boxes pop up a bit too aggressively
WTF did they do with Address Book GUI? Apple, where is your legendary simplicity?
native whole-disk encryption

E-books: converting among common formats and generating Stanza catalogs

Today's post is about e-books - more specifically, getting them from my Mac into my iPhone to be read with Stanza. Here is how:

Download e-books from the Internet. If you like books in Russian, check out WebReading. Please note that books there are in a format called fb2 - these need to be converted into epub - a format recognized by many e-book readers, including iPhone's Stanza.

To organize the books on your Mac I suggest the popular Calibre - a free and open source e-book library management application. The interface is a bit unorthodox, but it does the job nicely. Calibre is capable of converting an e-book into a variety of formats, including PDF for reading right on your computer. For my purposes, I converted my e-books to epub.

Next, I wanted to store my e-book collection online so that I can access and download them into Stanza app on my iPhone. I found a free Java-based application that makes that very easy - calibre2opds. This utility scans the Calibre library and generates a catalog that Stanza requires. Resulting files are saved into the same directory as the Calibre library. All that is left to do is to upload the entire directory to a webserver.

Get Stanza app here.

Once your e-book library is online, launch Stanza on your iPhone, click on "Get Books" at the bottom, then "Shared" at the top and finally "Edit." Click "Add Book Source" and use the following URL format: http://www.your-web-server.com/your-calibre-library-directory/_catalog/catalog.xml

Enjoy your e-book collection on your iPhone!

Connect to Remote Desktop Services as Admin on a Mac

So there's an option to connect to a Windows box as administrator with

mstsc /admin

On a Mac using Remote Desktop Connect, type

host_name /console

in "Computer:" filed of new connection window to get the same effect.

Thanks to Remote Desktop Services - Frequently Asked Questions - Administration

VirtualBox Shared Folders with Ubuntu

Basically:

mkdir MOUNTED_FOLDER
id
sudo mount -t vboxsf -o uid=USER_ID SHARED_FOLDER_NAME MOUNTED_FOLDER

from: valibuk.net Accessing Mac OS X harddrive from Ubuntu in VirtualBox via shared folders