MacOS

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No ZFS in Snow Leopard ?

August 24, 2009 in MacOS, OpenSolaris by jc | No comments

Now that the shipping date for Snow Leopard is approaching, I came to the realization that I will not get rid of my Solaris based NAS. It’s been running flawlessly for the past 2 or 3 years (well, I lost several disks and a controller, but never lost any data), but I was hopping to consolidate everything on a Mac Pro with 8 cores.
Since ZFS is not going to be there, and this apparently until the next major release, I will likely upgrade my PC to a better setup in order to keep running ZFS. Even the open source effort on Mac OS Forge  seems to be going nowhere …

In the mean time, I just upgraded my box to opensolaris 2009.06 and spent some time compiling the tools that I needed on the box, more on that later.

Parallels acquired by SWsoft

January 22, 2007 in MacOS, Virtualization by jc | No comments

According to this article, Parallels was acquired 3 years ago by SWsoft:

The tectonics of virtualization are shifting. It turns out that Parallels is not such a little company after all. About three years ago it was quietly purchased by an enterprise-focused virtualization company called SWsoft, a fact that has never been publicly disclosed until now.

SWsoft is providing Plesk, HSPcomplete, PEM and Virtuozzo, which seems to be the only virtualization related technology. It will be interesting to see if SWsoft applies its expertise in Self Service, Accounting and Billing to the VM Management space.

VMWare for Mac Beta has opened

December 22, 2006 in MacOS, Virtualization by jc | No comments

Today, the VMWare Fusion Beta program opened :

The new VMware desktop product for the Mac, codenamed Fusion, allows Intel-based Macs to run x86 operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, NetWare and Solaris, in virtual machines at the same time as Mac OS X. It is built on VMware’s rock-solid and advanced desktop virtualization platform that is used by over four million users today.

I’ve tried to start a windows 2003 VM Image that was created on a PC, without any problem.

fusion

Running Solaris 10 in Parallels on Macbook

December 17, 2006 in MacOS, Virtualization by jc | 1 comment

I have been trying for the past few days to run Solaris 10/11 in parallels on a new macbook. The main issue I had was the JDS/gnome resolution adaptation with the 1280×800 resolution of the macbook.

Here are my steps :

  • I installed the new parallels beta (build 3036)
  • downloaded the free Solaris 10 update 3 from Sun’s web site. Download the DVD since it can be directly mounted in parallels.
  • create a new VM with the Solaris 10 type, but, before to finish, un-select the option to start the Solaris installation and edit the VM configuration to add a custom screen resolution of 1280×800.
  • start the VM to launch the install
  • log in an create a /etc/X11/xorg.conf with something like the one attached here (xorg.conf). Basically you need to add the Modeline lines (generated with /usr/X11/bin/gtf) and put 1280×800 in the appropriate Display subsections.

It should work. However, I’m still experiencing some duplicate keystrokes and garbled screen after VM resume (I have solved the later issue by switching multiple times between full screen and os window).

If anyone has any solution for these two problems, let me know.

Fast input/output sound device switch for OSX

July 12, 2006 in MacOS by jc | No comments

I you have an USB headphone,used on a laptop, you end up having to switch back to your USB headphone after reconnecting your headphone. This is king of annoying since you have to go in the preference/sound panel to do the operation.

_freebies_images_ssourcelogo-1I found SoundSource from RogueAmoeba. It’s really cool, install in your Apple bar and let you switch with a single click :

SoundSource is a tiny tool for OS X enabling you to switch your audio input and output sources with a single click. And with the System setting, you can transfer system beeps to a secondary audio source so you won’t be disturbed.

Highly recommended small application.

What are the motion sensors in Macbooks Pro for ?

May 29, 2006 in MacOS, Technology by jc | No comments

You may not know, but all MacBook Pro have a motion sensor that is used to save your hard drive in case of a fall. It seems that it can be used also :

Very cool. Any other usage I might have missed ?