Sun, 02 Dec 2007

Parallels + Leopard + Sleeping == NO WORKY!

I spent some time tonight hunting around the blago-tubes tonight trying to track down information on a fun bug I've found when using Parallels. (Yes, I put blago-tubes in there so I can fill in that checkbox on my own personal copy of the chart).

The symptoms are: I boot my MBP and use Parallels and everything is fine. My VM is NAT'ed and works well. I put the MBP to sleep and when I wake it up I have no route to the NAT'ed network on my host, causing all traffic to be dumped out onto my Wireless network. Poking further I found I could bring the interfaces (en2 and en3, though I don't recall which was NAT and which was Host-Only) down and back up and all was fine again. I can't say with 100% certainty but I seem to recall outbound connections from my VM were fine though during all this.

So, the question becomes: is this a bug in Leopard for not dealing with the wake-up event on those interfaces, or is it a bug in Parallels because their code is getting the wake-up event but not handling it well?

The information on this is a bit weird since apparently not many smart people are talking about it. I'm finding really crappy information on forums, parallels support site (which is not easy to read at all, all the posts get intertwined), or random other sites. The other bizarre thing is I'm seeing people saying it's fixed in build 5570 or 5580 (both beta) though I'm running 5540 (also beta) and their "find new updates" is telling me I'm at the latest version already.

For now I'll just have to remember to bounce the interfaces before using a VM after my laptop has been put to sleep.

I also forgot about this comic but it is true for me. I'm really vulgar when playing MarioKart. I can't wait for the new MarioKart to come out for Wii and all the insane combinations of vulgarities I will come up with.

posted at: 23:20 | tags: , | path: /entries/apple | permanent link to this entry

Wed, 21 Nov 2007

Disappearing Window With Expose?

I just installed the 10.5.1 update tonight. This update requires a reboot. The window to do the reboot popped up and I wanted to finish what I was working on so I brought a terminal back into focus and kept working (exhibit A). After getting to a decent spot in my work I figured a reboot was a good thing to do while I stretched my legs. I used expose to quickly find the reboot window, only it had disappeared (exhibit B). Gee, thanks Apple - that was really helpful of you.

posted at: 21:07 | tags: , | path: /entries/apple | permanent link to this entry

Sat, 27 Oct 2007

NFS Mounts on Leopard

I have some of my large zpool exported via NFS. I use it for all kinds of things. It's nice. It worked wonderfully under Tiger.

This morning I did a format and reinstall of Leopard (I hate how Apple ships with HFS+ WITHOUT extended attributes). Since I'm in the process of getting everything back how I want it I figured I should connect to my NFS share and play some music (Portishead to be exact). My standard method of apple+k in finder and entering the necessary information wasn't working. The error message was something along the lines of "invalid username or password" - which is about as helpful as I can expect from Apple.

Nothing changed on the server and it was working perfectly before the install of Leopard so I was quick to blame Leopard. I'm not up to date on the NFS protocol(s) so I wasn't sure what version of NFS the server was using and what version the client was using (which was my first thought). I was able to mount the share using the command line so I knew that was at least working. Maybe apple+k method uses a different version of NFS than mount -t nfs. In the process of debugging it I ended up at the "Directory" application. I went to the Directory application preferences and changed the Authentication method to "Password" and now I can NFS mount things from my zpool. Why I had to make that change for an NFS SHARE is entirely beyond me.

If any Apple fan boys want to tell me it's because I'm using as the underlying filesystem, I only have one thing to say: NFS abstracts the underlying FS away so clients don't have to care. I get really annoyed hunting for information on Apple forums when the majority of people there have NO CLUE what is going on but are spewing false information all over the place.

posted at: 16:07 | tags: , | path: /entries/apple | permanent link to this entry

Mon, 23 Jul 2007

Apple Panics when on Battery + WPA2 Known?

A loyal reader (WTF? I have (a) reader(s)?) sent me an email with this link. If you make it past the complete lack of information and ungodly number of "me too" posts you will at least see that I'm not the only one who is having these problems. I suppose I should sit down and read all of that page just to see if there is any kind of official response or if it's being quietly ignored. Luckily I spend most of my time hacking in my office attached to a power cable.

PS: Hi skel.

PPS: My personal favorite is the person who though panics were bad for hardware.

posted at: 20:27 | tags: , | path: /entries/apple | permanent link to this entry

Tue, 17 Jul 2007

Consistently Kernel Panic on my OS X Laptop

Sorry for the lack of posts but $JOB has kept me pretty busy lately. Hell, I even got up before the sun rise on Saturday to get to work for a special presentation to some important people. It looks like I'll have to do the same this upcoming Sunday. It doesn't bother me because it gives me a chance to get things done when I'm done in the morning. Also, there was an accident with one of my cats tail and a door resulting in some stitches and not a lot of fun (for the cat or my fiancee and me).

I've kept myself busy with various small bits of ports work. I'm putting the finishing touches on an update to ntop which I will hopefully send-pr in a day or so. I just need to give it one more round of testing to make myself comfortable enough that I did it right. I've had a lot of patches floating around for this one so I want to make sure I get the right one working and tested properly. Other than that I've got a lot of things on my plate at work and at home to keep me busy on weekends and weeknights.

The real point to posting (since I tend to hate when people apologize for not posting lately) is that I've managed to find a consistent way to kernel panic my OS X box. It's wireless related and for some reason only works when I'm not plugged into a power outlet. This is weird since I mostly use my laptop on my lap or on my desk at work and it almost always has power. The few times it's without power my fiancee is using it on the couch and she hasn't complained about it yet. I have also not been able to kernel panic it when not on my wireless network at home. I don't have any technical symptoms and the backtraces provided are less than useful. I'll keep hunting and see if I can find a repeatable pattern that clearly causes my machine to kernel panic.

posted at: 20:06 | tags: , | path: /entries/apple | permanent link to this entry

Sat, 14 Apr 2007

And This is Useful How?

Something which has been bugging me a lot lately is the fact that OS X does something really stupid with regards to showing you free space on a drive. I have one drive in my MBP (I'm going to format it and partition it sanely when leopard comes out, but that's another story for another day) and I happen to do a lot of things which take up a fair amount of disk space. Most of these things are VMs and I would like to quickly be able to know when I am running low on disk space. Ideally I should just be able to take a quick glance at my desktop and see the value listed under my hard drive icon.

Click anywhere on the desktop. Go to the view menu. Click on "show view options." Check the "Show item info" box. The result is some nice information about the various icons on your desktop. The downside is that the free space on your drive is only calculated at the time that finder starts - I haven't ever seen it update in weeks of checking on it.

Can someone explain to me how it's useful to know my free drive space at the time the finder process started. Seeing as how this machine stays up for months on end and I've barely been able to crash finder, I simply can't see how this "show item info" is useful. Of course, I can always cmd+click on finder in the dock and restart it, but that's about the grossest hack I have ever seen. In fact, that reminds me of something I would do on a crappy OS. I guess I'll add another line into my "stupid things about OS X" book...

posted at: 22:51 | tags: , | path: /entries/apple | permanent link to this entry

Fri, 12 Jan 2007

Moving things around?

I just learned this and thought it was a nice touch. Try the following: 

wxs@stupid Desktop # mkdir foo bar
wxs@stupid Desktop # ls -ld foo bar
drwxr-xr-x   2 wxs  wxs  68 Jan 12 20:25 bar/
drwxr-xr-x   2 wxs  wxs  68 Jan 12 20:25 foo/
wxs@stupid Desktop # echo "hello world" > foo/file
wxs@stupid Desktop #

Then cd foo && vi file and add some text. Before you hit :wq drag foo into bar using finder then save the file in vi. After you save it notice your working directory has changed to bar/foo and file was properly updated. 

wxs@stupid foo # pwd
/Users/wxs/Desktop/bar/foo
wxs@stupid foo # cat file
hello world
goodbye world
wxs@stupid foo #

I wonder if FreeBSD handles this...

posted at: 20:25 | tags: , | path: /entries/apple | permanent link to this entry

Thu, 04 Jan 2007

Apple Support Still Sucks (Except for One Guy)

I went to the Apple store today after waking up this morning and making an appointment to see a genius. I sit down for my appointment and pull the broken key out of my pocket, slide it across the table and say "I have an easy one for you - my tab key is broken." I show him the broken prong and he says he will be right back. No more than 20 seconds later he comes back with a brand new tab key and snaps it into place for me. I tell him that he has no idea how good it is to find someone with a clue and is willing to do the 20 seconds worth of work to solve a problem rather than give me some line of BS. I then proceed to tell him that for the past 3 days I have been told that there is no spare keyboards at the store. He tells me that it's true they have no keyboards for Macbook Pros, but that the Powerbooks have the same keys so he grabbed one from a spare Powerbook keyboard.

So, to the one guy at the Apple store who should not be fired: thank you. You haven't restored my faith in Apple's perception and treatment of it's customers but you made my night by doing the 20 seconds worth of work I've been fighting to get done for 3 days now.

And if anyone from Apple support reads this: go sit on a cactus you bastards. I've solved the saga of the broken tab key without your "help" (if you can call your complete lack of support help).

posted at: 22:49 | tags: , | path: /entries/apple | permanent link to this entry

Wed, 03 Jan 2007

An Open, Long, and Probably Profanity-Riddled Letter to Apple

This is a long one, so take your time and enjoy it. I almost never give non-technical rants here (I do rant from occasion but it's usually about how a piece of software sucks). And I'm sorry for the language but some of it just needs to be said to get it off ym chest. If you've ever dealt with some of the worst support representatives you will know my pain. This one goes out to all the Apple fan-boys who want to tell me that Apple can do no wrong. I now present to you The Saga of the Tab Key...

I received my brand new shiny 15" Macbook Pro about 5 weeks ago, and all was well with the world. I got used to the differences between my favorite OS and those other OS' that I use on a daily basis. I was learning how to get pretty productive in my new environment and was starting to like it, and then I had a revelation.

My tab key broke. Yes, it's that simple; the tab key just popped off the keyboard and one of the prongs on the back of the key (NOT THE KEYBOARD ITSELF) broke off. This happened on New Years eve while I was watching TV with my fiancée and her family (we were visiting). Not a big deal, shit happens, etc. I'll drive back to Northern Virginia on Monday and be at the Apple Store in Tyson's Corner on Tuesday after work to have it fixed. I figure I'll be back to my normal hacking routine on Tuesday night. I apparently could not be more wrong.

I go to the Apple Store on Tuesday at roughly 5:15. I have my laptop in my bag and my broken tab key in my pocket. I walk up to the counter and wait in line (it was busy after all). When it comes my turn to state my case I walk up to the counter and politely say "my tab key broke off" as I'm pulling it out of my pocket. Before I can get any further she stops me and says "oh, the two white prongs on the keyboard broke." I counter with "actually, no - the keyboard is fine; it's just a single prong on the back of the key itself." She takes the key from me and goes away (I assume to the back though I wasn't paying much attention). After less than 3 minutes she comes back and states that they have no spare tab keys. She asks that I make an appointment to see a "genius" and they will look into it. I ask how I do that and I'm handed a business card and told to go to the URL printed on the bottom and click on "meet with a genius" to setup an appointment. This is mistake number one on their part - never leave a user to take the next step in making an appointment. You have the user right there just make the appointment for them; they will appreciate it.

So I leave the store and get back in my car. I'm driving to the nearest Metro stop to drop my friend off so he can get home to DC and I decide to call the support number listed on the bottom of the business card I was given. After being on hold for 10 minutes and fighting my way through an obnoxious menu system (mistake number two - get me to a smart human right away. I deal with machines all day and when things go wrong the last thing I want is another machine or a stupid person. I want a smart human on the phone with me as soon as possible.) I manage to get a person on the phone. My friend reads the serial number of my laptop off and I begin to describe my problem to the lady. I ask her to ship me a tab key and I'll snap it in place myself. She states that they do not have single keys to ship. OK, I can accept that. I ask if she can ship me a keyboard and I'll pop the key off myself and do the replacement. She states that keyboards are not "user-serviceable" parts so she can not ship one. I try to explain that I'm not servicing my keyboard at all; I just want a SINGLE key off of the spare. She won't do it and suggests I ship them the laptop to fix it (this is mistake number three - be flexible in your rules. It's a 5 minute job to ship me a spare keyboard and let me grab the tab key or to ship me a tab key if you have them laying around. The amount of my time that was wasted was obnoxious. Your job is to make customers happy while solving their problems. For a simple problem like mine asking me to ship my laptop in for a fix is not going to make me happy).

I drop my buddy off at the Metro stop and make my way home. I reheat some leftover Cheesecake Factory food and pick up my cell phone again. I call the support number a second time, hoping to get someone a little more willing to help me. While I'm on the phone I go to the Tyson's Corner store's website to check out what this "genius" thing is all about. I am going through their crappy interface to try and schedule an appointment and I'm told to check back tomorrow because they are all out of appointments for today (mistake number four - that's nice can I make an appointment for some other time besides today?). WTF does that mean? Why can't I schedule an appointment for tomorrow or the next day? Isn't that the point of making appointments is to do it for more than 24 hours in advance? If I have to go to the dentist I don't wake up that morning and call for an appointment, I make them for weeks in advance. My laptop's broken tab key is not life threatening so I can wait a day or so to get an open 30 second spot on the calendar. What I will not do is wait on pins and needles to know if I have an appointment or not for that day.

Back at my phone I go through the obnoxious menu system again and get some guy on the phone who is not exactly helpful. I explain to him how all I need is a single key, not the whole keyboard. He won't ship me a single key (no shocker there, I was expecting that). I ask if he will ship me a keyboard and since I'm not servicing the keyboard itself (only a single key) that I can make the swap and ship him back the keyboard and broken tab key. He won't do it so I ask to speak to a supervisor. He gets a product specialist on the phone (I want to say his name was Brad but by this point I might as well be calling them "unhelpful jackass number N") who attempts to explain to me that they can not ship a keyboard because it's not user-serviceable. I go through the whole ordeal about how all I want is a single tab key and he cuts me off with "on the back of your laptop is a lot of screws and you would have to take all of them out and remove other parts to get to the keyboard." At this point I'm in complete shock at how thick this guy's skull is. I counter his stupid statement with "OK, I have ZERO intention of swapping out the whole keyboard. I want to replace the tab key which does not require a screw driver or any special tools. I can probably do it with my bare hands or a butter knife at the minimum." He refuses to ship me the parts I need and asks if I will mail the laptop in for repair (mistake number five which is actually a repeat of mistake number four). I resign to letting him finish rambling on about the repair while I make plans in my head to go back to the Apple store in Tyson's the next day to have it repaired there. I refuse to believe the store does not have spare keyboards in the back; it's more like they just did not want to help a customer out in 30 seconds (mistake number six - if it's truly a 30 second fix then do it in 30 seconds. This results in a happy customer and we all know happy customers mean more money). So the douchebag on the phone starts to verify my address so he can mail me a box to ship my laptop in. After this he asks for my administrator username and password (mistake number seven - why the hell do you need that for a tab key replacement? And where the hell are you storing my username and password? How secure is that storage, who has access to them? There are a whole series of questions I need answered before I give anyone root on my machines). I am so shocked I have no clue what to say so I stumble for a second and finally tell him that there is no way in hell he is ever going to get that information out of me when all he needs to do is attach a new tab key. The day I give that important information to someone doing a tab key replacement is the day I quit my job as an Information Security Researcher. The next move the jackass on the phone makes simply takes the cake as far as I'm concerned. He tells me that my Applecare (that my fiancée payed an extra $300 for) will not cover any normal wear-and-tear problems (mistake number eight - one month of usage resulting in a broken tab key is not normal wear-and-tear, ever. You want to tell me otherwise and I'll be finding a lawyer to prove so in a court and make me lots of money). At this point I probably would have punched him in the throat if he had been in front of me, and I think he sensed that because when I responded with "then why did I pay an extra $300?" he quickly cut me off to say "but just this one time we'll cover it." You are god damn right you are going to cover it because if you don't you are looking at way more than an irate but somewhat polite customer. You would have had a full blown incident on your hands. At this point I just want to get off the phone and get back to talking to someone with a clue at the Apple Store the next day.

Before hanging up with the worthless sack of flesh on the other end of the phone I ask how long the repair will take. He states that I should have the box in 36 hours (it was already 8:30 at night so I would have received it in 2 mornings, that's acceptable to me) and ship the box back. According to him the normal turnaround for repairs is 7 to 10 business days. WTF? You expect me to be out of business for at least 7 to 10 days (not including shipping AFAIK) while you snap a single tab key into my keyboard? I've even tried to state to the various people that I'm going out of town this weekend and need my laptop to do work but his level of caring was clearly indirectly proportionate to the level of hatred I had for him and Apple at that time. The only thing that's going through my head at this point in time is "fine you worthless son of a bitch, ship me the box but I'll have the thing fixed when I go back to the Apple store when it's less busy tomorrow and they will easily fix it." Oops, I assumed they would be more helpful when less busy; this was mistake number one on my part (I assumed that Apple actually cares about it's customers).

So I make a quick run over to the Apple Store at the mall today and am pointed at one of their "genius" people who can probably help me. I show the guy my tab key and ask if he can give me a new one. I even offer to show him the laptop so he can see that they keyboard itself is not busted (I had the laptop in a bag on my shoulder). The conversation went like this: 

Me: I have a broken tab key, can you give me a new one or snap the new in place for me?
Tard: We have no keyboards to swap it out with.
Me: It's just a tab key, not a whole keyboard replacement.
Tard: We have no tab keys.
Me: You do service at this store correct?
Tard: Yes.
Me: So you have laptops laying around that you use for debugging other people's laptops.  (As I say this I'm pointing to the 3 or so laptops sitting on the counter that the techs are using for debugging other people's machines, and I know damn well they have more of those in the back).
Tard: Yes.
Me: So give me a tab key off one of those.  It's a 10 second thing and you will have a happy customer.
Tard: We have no spare laptops or keyboards.  You will have to make an appointment.
Me: OK.  I'll make an appointment.
Tard: Well, you have to do that online.
Me: But I'm right here, you can make one for me.  You're an Apple employee, I'm sure you have some way of getting me in touch with someone who can make an appointment for me if you can't do it.
Tard: No, see... you have to wake up and make the appointment early in the morning for the same day.
Me: OK.  So if I wake up tomorrow at 7:00 and make an appointment for 10:00 you will magically have a keyboard here to use as a replacement?
Tard: ...
Me: Either you are a liar and you have spare keyboards here to do the key replacement at my appointment tomorrow or you will not have a keyboard tomorrow and you are simply wasting my time.
Tard: But you can make an appointment a couple of days in advance if you have Procare.
Me: My fiancée paid $300 for Applecare and now you want me to pay more money to be able to make an appointment in advance?
Tard: ...
Me: Is there a manager I can speak to?
Tard: uh...
Me: I mean, you guys are supposed to be helpful not jerking me around like some moron.
Tard: ...
Me: Fuck it.

For the record the look in his eyes as his happy little world came crashing down was worth it. You are not a god damn genius. You are a worthless little tech support guy who could care less about helping someone for 10 seconds while you take a break from filing some paperwork. People like him are a dime a dozen and every person I have dealt with up until this point should be fired on the spot and replaced with people who care about solving problems quickly and keeping the customer happy.

At this point I walked over to the display units and eyed the tab keys. I could have EASILY stolen one and been out the door before trendy genius boy had the chance to pick his inflated ego up off the floor and do something.

So that's the saga of the busted tab key. If this is the only bad thing that happens to my Apple hardware over the course of it's lifetime (and rest assured I plan on getting 4 or 5 years of service out of this thing) then maybe, just maybe, I'll pick up another Apple laptop when this one dies. I'm willing to chalk a defective tab key up to a simple mistake in QA but I'm not willing to tolerate being treated like a moron and given the run around when the only thing I wanted was a single tab key. Hell, I'll be super nice and even snap it into place on my own. It's quite literally a 30 second fix to walk into the back of the shop, grab a tab key off a spare debugging laptop, and give it to me. But the Apple store jackasses failed at that. The Apple service people on the phone were about as helpful as a blind seeing-eye dog. And now the bottom line is I'm going to be without my main development machine for 7 to 10 business days starting Friday morning when I ship the laptop out for a single tab key replacement.

A coworker summed this story up very nicely. I'm paraphrasing but I'm sure he won't mind. "Apple built OS 9 and prior for complete morons. They flat out assumed the user was stupid and made everything as simple as possible. Then when they built OS X they are getting this influx of people who are not the morons they built the UI for. So now they have this influx of people who know what the hell is going on but their support and the company as a whole tends to treat everyone as the same morons they were used to dealing with in their earlier days." I couldn't agree with him more.

In conclusion, Apple laptops are nothing fancy from a hardware standpoint. You can get almost all the features of an Apple laptop that anyone cares about in any other vendor's (near) top of the line stuff for cheaper. So what else makes an Apple laptop worth the money if it isn't the hardware? It's got to be the software or the company. As you can see by this story the people that users deal with on a daily basis should all be fired and replaced with people who actually care about helping the user replace a broken tab key rather than try to sell me your latest iPod accessory while I'm waiting at the Apple store. And for the record I don't even own an iPod because I think they suck more balls than Peter North in his early gay porn films. So it's got to be the software. By and large I like OS X. It's got annoying quirks that bother me but you can turn them off or just learn to deal with them like you can on other OS' (Windows is just as bad in a lot of areas). The upside to OS X is that when I want to do something as simple as burn a bunch of MP3s to an audio CD it's as easy as dragging them into the Burn application that I downloaded and clicking burn. When I want to actually do things useful to me like development, debugging of problems or even simply poking around at the internals of the OS I have all the UNIX tools that I have come to love over the years. And to top it all off the display I am given is not that bad to look at visually while I'm doing all this.

Your hardware is nothing special. Your OS is good enough to please me. Your support is some of the worst I have ever seen, and I've been doing technical things my entire life. I've received better support from Dell and they are notorious for bad support. A lot of my feelings towards the Apple support people are not even fit to say in public, but suffice to say it involves all kinds of mean things and ways I wish death upon them.

On an interesting side note the best support I ever got was from IBM when I kicked a drive down a flight of stairs while moving in college. It was my only drive I had for that machine and I needed to get something back up and running soon. I called up IBM and told them that I kicked it down a flight of stairs by mistake and that I was a poor college student and needed to get the machine back up and running to make sure I could get work done. The guy on the phone had me a hard drive shipped and in my hands within 24 hours without a single question. It is for that reason that I will always buy IBM drives (not to mention they are pretty damn good drives except for the Deathstar stories I've heard, even if I've owned one for 10 years and it never actually died despite some serious clicking). So Apple... If you ever want anymore of my or my fiancée's money you will learn to treat your customer with the respect that they deserve. When someone wants a 10 second fix train your staff to fix it in 10 seconds because that it what makes for happy customers, and happy customers means repeat money. Forcing me to ship my laptop back for 7 to 10 business days is only going to piss me off and make me never buy your stuff again. If you are still stupid enough to force OS X to only run on your hardware (ignore the hacks for right now) in 4 to 5 years you can bet I will be buying a new top of the line Thinkpad (or something else which doesn't suck at the time) and installing my pirated copy of OS X or my free copy of FreeBSD on it. If you are smart enough to open OS X to other x86 hardware you can rest assured that I will never pay a single dime for your stuff again as I can get the same hardware with infinitely better support elsewhere.

I really hope someone with some power at Apple reads this and contacts me. If I can't punch people in the face over TCP/IP I will reach through the phone and do it via DTMF/PSTN/whatever other crazy phone acronyms there are that are analogous to TCP/IP.

And to all the Apple fan-boys out there who think Apple can do no wrong: feel free to contact me but I'll probably just delete your mail because I don't care about your opinion.

posted at: 18:52 | tags: , | path: /entries/apple | permanent link to this entry

Mon, 04 Dec 2006

Bug submitted.

The previously mentioned bug has been submitted here. I really hope it is not a duplicate but hunting through their bug reports was not high on my TODO list tonight. I've also created a new category for entires, and this is the first one in that category.

posted at: 22:17 | tags: , | path: /entries/apple | permanent link to this entry