Category: General

proftpd borked after portupgrade with mysql option

My gosh! Try to stay current but shoot yourself in the foot much?

portaudit does the wondrous job of letting me know port vulnerabilities each and every day … We like “0 problems found” to be returned in our daily email, yes? So when there is ports that need to be updated, I usually give it the ol’ portupgrade -aRr to cover everything.

In this last update, proftpd went and modularized everything. I noticed this because I have one server utilizing the MySQL version so as to easily handle virtual users and provide temporary accounts to transfer music files for the studio. So I figure how I have to update the conf file with the proper settings to get proftpd running. Finally when it is happy, logins are failing and I don’t know why. I find in /var/log/messages that there’s a chroot problem … Tracking this down shows that I need to update my FreeBSD version due to this security vulnerability that proftpd is detecting.

Now off to the make buildworld and some hours of compiling. Can’t just build the kernel. Blast!

Rails 3.2.6

~$ rvm install 1.9.3-head

No bison!

~$ rvm requirements

I was on XCode 3 (from Snow Leopard) – Need minimum 4.1 for Lion – NO 4.3!

XCode 4.3.3 from App Store June 12, 2012
XCode Command Line Tools (Pref->Downloads)

rvm says DOWNGRADE XCode 4.3! (If problems)

~$ rvm install 1.9.3-head

No autoreconf!

install homebrew (because of autoconf)
brew install automake

~$ rvm install 1.9.3-head – worked!

rvm use 1.9.3-head –default

gem install rails

Upgraded to Mac OS X Lion finally …

Mac OS X Lion Finally upgraded to Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 from the App Store. Conflicting reviews and horror stories. My main concern was that Pro Tools 10.1.2 would work with it and that’s sort of the reasons for the Pro Tools updates was Lion compatibility …

I found that I really wanted the ability to share iCal with my wife, computer and iPhone so I needed Lion’s iCloud integration for that to keep it simple … Right off the bat I found this to work flawlessly and I also haven’t had any problems with Lion to speak of until … now …

This is why I decided to update my bLog here since there hasn’t been an update in a while and that I am having this problem right now with Lion. Things do seem to have slowed down. It’s not completely clear as to why and there could be several theories … A plugin I used with Pro Tools called muteTone decided to hang Pro Tools when trying to remove the plugin … I only need it for tracking and then I can remove it … This is used for 3rd party interfaces and Pro Tools inability to control input monitoring via their software (which every other DAW has and always had).

To attempt to fix the muteTone issue, it’s possible that I messed with some MIDI settings that had been moved out to the “Incompatible Software” folder when Lion installed. I followed Avid’s advice to install the Pro Tools 9 drivers for all hardware … I have since removed it, but I also used the MIDI driver update from Avid, and I think that may not have been necessary … Regardless, all MIDI stuff works, just not muteTone … (I had been working with the author of the plugin to try to fix) … The current state is that muteTone can be removed if it’s deactivated first … He suggested I live with that until the AAX release. “AAX” is Avid’s new plugin format. muteTone is free …

Also, NeoOffice needs to be upgraded for Lion … The only upgrade for Lion requires that I pay … I don’t want to pay for NeoOffice … I have Pages … I use NeoOffice to open files sent to me by those that are not keen to Mac … I have been Microsoft Windows free since 2008 and have NEVER looked back … Simply the worst form of software ever ruined by many individuals … That poor guy that stopped when Bill Gates handed him $50K should have continued to develop his own system … Anyway, NeoOffice informs me that if I continue to use the current version that I should save often in anticipation of the program crashing … Since I don’t care if it crashes, I’m good … But, maybe loading it adversely affects my pleasantly running system? Only time can tell …

So in conclusion, it’s just like any other computer issue … The person running it has a lot to do with how well it runs … Decisions by the operator affect how system stability is maintained … I do think I need to get a beefier system … I’m typing this entry via the first Mac I bought … Running the latest software and chugging along just fine, but I think maybe I deserve a little zippier Pro Tools and graphics stuffs …

Apple iPhone 4 IOS5 Update failing and App Ugrades failing

Wednesday October 12th, 2011 marks the release of Apple’s IOS5 for the iPhone and iPad. Searches on the web show failing upgrades and I also am experiencing this failure.

Apps: I upgraded iTunes to the latest and greatest and updated my OS X 10.6.8 with all the latest and greatest. Still, no joy. Before upgrading the iPhone’s OS I like to get all my apps up to date and have a successful Sync. Even when I try to upgrade the apps, I am stymied. I click on the Apps tab in iTunes with a 17 next to it to bring up the Apps screen. At the bottom it reports “17 Updates Available” I click on that and get to the next screen. The “Download all free updates” button is at the top and when I click on that I get a new “Terms and Conditions” that I guess is the result of the new version of iTunes. I click on the “I have read…” check box and click on the Agree button. Your request could not be completed. It says something about my clock being correct or something … and the resulting web help page refers me to Windows iTunes problems.

IOS5: So, maybe in order to upgrade these apps I need to have the new IOS5 software installed on my phone since these apps have surely been updated due to the new IOS5 release. I tried 3 times and each time I get the message that my iPhone cannot be restored at this time, there was an internal error.

Web searching, and I read others woes in the same boat as me. I’m also having intermittent iTunes password problems. I even went through the process of changing my password. Hassle.

I don’t waste any time and call AppleCare: I paid for it, I use it. After 10-15 minutes on hold, I get a guy that doesn’t handle this particular issue and he has to transfer me to the iTunes people. It’s announced that my wait time is now 5 minutes or less and after about a minute I get a guy. I explain the issues and basically I’m told that the Apple servers are overloaded and that if I wait 3 hours it should work fine. That isn’t stopping me from trying to upgrade the apps, but the IOS5 update is a long process that wants to backup the iPhone each time and that takes a long time to complete …

Here’s hoping that that’s all it is. Mass upgrading resulting in overloaded iTunes servers.

Current Events: Playing catch up …

Okay, I haven’t posted in a very very long time. (My English teacher said never to use “very very”, choose extremely or some other word).  Not that I haven’t wanted to, but I don’t always have the time and I am easily distracted.  I get a topic in my head and decide that’s what I’m going to post, but I forget about it when I get home or whatever, it just never gets done.  So!  Here are the current events and hopefully I don’t forget anything.

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (GTMO): I went to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba to do a New Year’s Eve show with Fosterchild.  This was to perform for the troops at GTMO, the world’s oldest Naval base …  It’s beautiful down there.  It was more like a vacation than a job.  What I bring back the most was snorkeling … I enjoyed that very much as I’d never done it before.  The water was so salty that it was effortless to float, but nearly impossible to dive.  Coral was very sharp, but I saw fishies!  We played two shows, one New Year’s Eve and another two days later … We toured the entire facility – yes, the entire facility and they were clear that they wanted the things we saw be shared with everyone when we came back.  They showed us “Camp X-ray” (which was only open for 70-90 days) where the detainees were held  in 2003 and all the media photographs depict when referring to GTMO.  This camp is grown over with grass and weeds and hasn’t been used since.  They showed us Camps 4, 5, and 6 which become more restrictive as you go.  We saw what the detainees were provided in the way of clothing and things to pass their time.  How theirs customs are respected and attended to.  It was certainly an experience all in itself.

Bo Bice: On a lighter note (whew!) … American Idol’s fourth season runner up to Carrie Underwood was also performing at Guantanamo Bay as well.  We even shared the 30 seat plane ride with him to the island.  There was a problem with his sound guy’s passport, so he was left at the airport in Florida.  Because of this fact, I performed double duty on New Year’s Eve day by sound checking Bo Bice at their venue and then going to the venue where Fosterchild was playing and complete that sound check.  Bo Bice played that night with Tony, the electrician who is assigned to setup and break down PA systems at GTMO and his crew.  I also had a monitor guy who worked with Tony’s department.  It was a Venue system, and the next day, New Year’s Day they moved that entire show to another part of the base that is their outdoor movie theater and I was able to sound check and come back and mix that show.  So, on New Year’s Day 2011 (1/1/11), I mixed Bo Bice in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba – and I got his autograph.

I better get this posted now, more later …

Problems Update

Regarding Verizon.Net :: A change on the PF firewall’s rule set.  Forever the bridge was never in the ruleset and everything seemed to work just fine.  Finally, because of the proper testing environment, found out it was my own problem all along.  Added rules to address the bridge interface directly.  Those rules never seemed to have been needed before … or were they?

Regarding the Wireless Router :: I gave up on it as the MBP17 acted flaky since I unplugged the hard wire …  The MBP15 seemed okay with it and remained logged in to IRC room on #pf (which is where I was seeking firewall help) and I guessed at the bridge rule … It happened to work … Anyway, I plugged the cables back in and I think I’m going to try the router that I originally bought that fixed all the problems before …  Last resort is to buy Apple’s wireless router.

Now digging through all old email, etc and finding email addresses that I need to send an update to … It seems I haven’t sent a newsletter since 2007 .. Hmpf!  Well, no new is good news, right?

If you’re a Mac, you’re a PC …

A PC is defined literally as a Personal Computer.  If you’re using a Mac, you’re using a personal computer.  The Mac vs. PC commercials are obviously Microsoft vs. Apple commercials, and they’re spot on when put in that context.  But why confuse everyone thinking that “PC” is a bad thing?  Or “PC” is the derogatory term that has opposite connotations than “Mac” …  I mean, don’t get me wrong, as a computer professional since the mid eighties, I have found my place in the Mac world.  I find myself utterly and completely more productive and enjoying my environment and experience 100 times more.  I was in misery at the hands of Microsoft products.

Probably many people don’t know that before Microsoft, it was an IBM world and the PC had become known as an “IBM Compatible.”  At that time we also had the Commodore, Apple ][ and Franklin.  Franklin was an Apple ][ clone and were sued by Apple.  Result being, you don’t see any Franklins around, do you?

People also probably don’t know that the CPUs in the first IBM computers were AMDs.  Seems that AMD came late to the game to most people, but my IBM XT had a 4.77Mhz AMD chip installed in it, and I used the “Tiny Turbo” to up that baby to a whopping 8Mhz.  I imagine Intel struck a deal early on with IBM and that’s how they cornered the CPU market as well as Microsoft pushing IBM’s PC-DOS out of existence with MS-DOS.

But, is it just me?  Someone like me that knows all the history of the little boxes and where they all came from and how they started?  (Of course I skipped over the earlier Apples and Tandy’s attempt at PC greatness, the 5.25 floppies and 3.5s that don’t exist anymore, etc).  Is it just a simple fact that “PC” now means IBM Compatible running Microsoft Windows and “Mac” means awesome computer that puts PCs (in this context) to shame?

I write this post on my 800MHz PowerPC G4 iMac with 768MB SDRAM that I bought used off of eBay and received January 14th, 2004.  It’s running 10.4.11 Tiger Mac OS X … It shipped with Jaguar (10.2) but the previous owner gave me Panther (10.3) which I had also purchased separately.

I now run 2 MacBook Pros, a 17 and a 15 both with Snow Leopard (10.6) and a Dell Mini running Leopard (10.5).  I bought 10.5 for the Dell (Family version) and tried to install it on the G4 PPC and that was a no go for processors under 866MHz and Snow is Intel only.  It took the Intel version of the Mac (and OSX) before I was able to lose Microsoft completely.  Whatever the mixture of technologies came together, that’s the case for me.  The iMac didn’t get me there in 2004, it took the MacBook Pro in 2008, 4 and a half years later.

I don’t run any emulation software to run MS-Windows virtually, and I don’t utilize BootCamp.   There is absolutely nothing Microsoft on my Macs at all.  It’s wonderful.  The 15″ came with Microsoft Office and I figured I would check it out.  When I loaded Word, it said it wanted to update and I said sure.  The words “Running Microsoft Update” came up on my screen and I freaked, I blew away the HD and installed my purchased Leopard from DVD.  I wanted no remnant of a Microsoft product on my Mac.

So!  Once you go Mac, you never go back.  I think this is the case for anyone that seriously uses a computer for computing and not just web browsing and email.  What do you think?

I promise …

… if I ever get huge or I ever have any reason to have support people on staff, I will not out-source it to foreigners who take forever reciting their scripts over and over …  I don’t know if it’s by design or not to frustrate you into accepting the way it is or what, but I am happy just to be off the phone now …  Common sense?!  Be damned!

Snow Leopard Black Screen Fixed?

MacSnowLeopardBoxI ordered Snow Leopard from Amazon.Com and waited patiently for it to arrive.  I read up on some sites about things to watch for when I upgraded, etc., but nothing can prepare you for when you actually go and do it.

I opted to run Carbon Copy Cloner as suggested by one site found by Google to make a complete backup of the hard drive inside my MacBook Pro 17.  I tested by booting from the USB hard drive (hold down ALT at power up) to make sure I could “go back” if I had to by reversing the Carbon Copy Cloner step.

All of the FUD on the Internet was crap.  Everything just worked.  Until …

I had been working on my MacBook Pro 15 and the Snow Leopard blanked out (as my MBP17 normally does after about 20-30 minutes).  Working on another MacBook Pro is a suggested method for passing the time.  Yes, I suggest you have more than one Mac (if you’re cool enough).  As I do sometimes, I swipe my finger across the trackpad to bring back whatever is on the screen.  When I did this, the keyboard illuminated, but nothing shown on the screens (I have a 24″ external).  The screen was black!  I thought maybe the brightness went out of range and pressed the “f2″ key to bring it up.  I see the dialog for the brightness level, but there’s nothing on the screen.  I see the backlight getting brighter, but the screen is black … nothing there.  I try the volume and that shows on the 24” (which is set as the main display).  I Google on the MBP15 and find that people close their cover and open to a working Mac.  After I wake from sleep, moving the mouse I see it as the spinning beach ball that it is.  I hold down the power button to power off the Mac, there is no other choice.

Turn the MacBook Pro 17 on again and I have a working Snow Leopard.  All the things that “they” said didn’t work work for me.  I installed the 10.6.1 update and iTunes 9.  So everything is up to date.  It happens again, same symptoms.  Black screens, can see volume and brightness dialogs when keys are hit, no mouse until after I sleep and wake to spinning beach ball mouse with black screens.

Google searching brings up black screen during the install, and some similar to my problem, but not all the same.  Some blame just on the install blanking and they can see images on their screen with no backlight.  I guess they’re fine after they upgrade cause I see no follow ups.  I see more and more people blaming things having to do with the video or their video card.  Some it’s playing games and some it’s running VLC …  So I decided, mine “hangs” when the computer screen sleeps (that’s SCREEN, my MacBook Pro never sleeps), so I think *screen saver!*

While the computer is running, I click on the Apple, go to System Preferences… into Desktop & Screen Saver.  Immediately, spinning beach ball.  Aha!  I can Force Quit System Preferences until I can get in there and click on the first screen saver I can click on to change it.  What was selected when it hung was a directory “Screen Savers” … I don’t know where it came from – only thing I can think of was a shareware copy of that Aqua Marine fish tank-like screen saver that I never ended up buying.  I’ve been using Flurry forever (and that was my first thought when I thought it might be OpenGL or something, which never worked on my KDE installs on cheap PC hardware) and thought that might have been hanging the computer’s video card or something.

So far so good, I will update if the longer the screen sleep gives different results.  Here’s hoping this helped someone.

Going Mac, one person at a time …

imacSo my brother Tom calls me one night frustrated as heck because he can’t make a copy of a DVD.  A simple thing, pop a DVD into the computer and click “Copy”.  It’s of his performance at a show, and he wants to make copies for himself and the rest of the members of the band.  He’s been trying Windows machines and utilizing Nero.  I think he had purchased a copy of Nero, but it wasn’t cooperating.  He then tried using a trial version from their web site that would be fully functional, just slow (write @ 1X or something).  It may be that he purchased Nero, and that was on his old PC which was in storage and he thought he might go get that to get the job done.  Regardless, no matter how far he got, the copy was not happening.

I told him to stop over, and I would make the copy no problem.  I have a Macbook Pro and a Windows PC where I was, so no matter what, we’d make a copy.  I ended up using a trial version of Toast I got with Cubase 5.  But even so, I would have tried the FREE Mac software Burn if Toast hadn’t stepped up.  It was a click, “Copy” and it asked how many copies you wanted.

While we waited for the process to complete, Tom reiterated his DVD copying experience and frustrations.  He was to the point where he was going to go out and buy a new computer to make this work!  He thought maybe his PC was too old for such a task as copying a DVD.  I said, “If you’re going to buy a new computer, you should buy a Mac.”  I think that was Monday, August 17th.  I saw Tom a week later, Monday, August 24th and he told me he bought an iMac.  He was going back to the store to have a one on one session with someone who knows Logic.  I told him Cubase 5 or Digital Performer 6 were good choices as well … and you can always play with GarageBand.

I hardly ever touch a Microsoft Windows machine anymore unless I have to.  All my servers are FreeBSD and the Mac software (OS X) is FreeBSD based.  The interface is so much more intuitive and I venture to say “cleaner” …  It’s much more of a pleasure to develop web sites and programs on and mix music as well … Come on Windows people, once you go Mac, you never go back!  Or so they say … but who are “they” actually?  Probably a bunch of satisfied Mac users! =)