Unduly Noted

What a great upgrade. Ubuntu just keeps getting easier and easier for the everyday user. This is from a clean install onto a 2.4ghz 17″ Macbook Pro with Nvidia8600M GT.

VIDEO:
After intalling you will notice you can’t enable visual effects (compiz-fusion). Just go to System on the top menu, Administration, Hardware Drivers. It will search for drivers. If it doesn’t list your Nvidia Card reboot and try again. Make sure you have an active internet connection. Repeat the above process and it should now list 2 drivers. I chose the top one (version 180) by clicking the radio button to the left of it (turns it green). It will now install. It will then tell you to reboot.

SOUND/AUDIO:
Sound doesn’t work out of te box.
type the following into the terminal:
sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf

copy the line below and paste it at the bottom of the document that opens. (the end of the following code can change depending on your laptop, just Google the term)
options snd_hda_intel model=mbp3

Hit the save button and reboot

INTERNET/WIRELESS
Very flaky, disconnects all the time. Makes updating take forever. Easy Fix

Before you do the below make sure you type the following in the terminal:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
Open terminal and type the following 2 lines hitting return after each. (Credit to Alex for this one)

sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-jaunty
sudo apt-get install wicd

You will get an error saying you are missing something at the end of the install (this is normal).
Reboot and you will now see a new Wifi config tool in the upper right. Give it a go. To get this working on the iphone with pdanet or iphone modem shoot me an email, i’m too tired to explain it in this post. Open the wifi utility by clicking on it in the upper left. Go to preferences and then uncheck the box that says “Automatically reconnect on connection lost”. (You may not need to but since I am running an Ad-Hoc network it was really messing it up).

VLC and Encrypted DVD playback:
Just go to http://videolan.org and download/install the .deb package. You will notice that it still won’t play commercial DVD’s.
for other codecs you may as well run the following in the terminal:
sudo apt-get install ubuntu-restricted-extras
Open the terminal and type the following and hit return.
##OLD###  —>sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2
New Edit: follow instructions here

DONE. reboot if it is flaky.
Also, the latest .deb of handbrake (0.9.3) works great with 9.04. Just head on over and download it.

DISPLAY BACKLIGHT:
Go to System, Preferences, Power Management. Now click on the far right tab General. Uncheck ‘Use ambient light to adjust LCD brightness’.

HFS+ READ WRITE:
In 9.04 you can read some of the stuff but not all of it. This is because Ubuntu does not look for users below 1000, and your mac is probably 501. Right click on your mounted OS X drive on the desktop and click properties, now click the far right tab (I think its volume). Look for that number on top (should be 501). Now open the terminal and type the following hitting return after each. (thanks to changuito)

sudo groupmod -g 501 youruserid
sudo usermod -g 501 youruserid
sudo usermod -u 501 youruserid

Warning, You will no longer see your user listed at login and will have to manually type your user name/pass to login. This is a temp fix that I will update soon. If you want read write acces to the HFS+ partition  you ned to disable journaling on the mac side. Reboot into OSX and type the following into the terminal and hit enter (case sensetive):
sudo disableJournal /

I personally only need read acccess and don’t like the thought of disableing journaling. Mac OSX may take awhile to boot the next time after disableing. You can ways reneable by doing the following in the terminal in mac os X.
sudo enableJournal /

NOTES:
I need to find a better trackpad driver. I always have “Ignore Accidental Input” turned off in Mac OS 10.5 and it feels like it is on in Ubuntu. Just not as senstive.

FYI: My laptop is a MBP 3,1 . To determine yours type this into the terminal in ubuntu:
sudo dmidecode -s system-product-name

I will add to this post as I continue to run Ubuntu 9.04 on my MBP.

Don’t throw that old 802.11b router out. If you have the ability to run a long ethernet cable to or near the end of your house that has a poor signal, you can extend your network without purchasing a branded “wireless access point”
How To:
Run a 25 or 50ft cable from one of the ports (labeled 1-4 if it is a 4 port router) of your main router towards or as close to the problem area.
Do not plug it into the old router yet.
Plug your laptop into the old router (port 1)
Check your documentation on how to logon to the routers configuration page. (Typically 192.168.1.1 or 192.168.2.1 are the most common, type either one into your web browsers address bar. Common default passwords can be found here)
Once logged in check to make sure this routers IP isn’t the same as your main routers IP. If it is, change the last number in the series (pick something in the 50’s should be fine)
Now still in this old router find the DHCP setting and turn it OFF. Your router will reboot (again if you had to change the IP above)
Still in the old router go to wireless settings and change the wireless name (the name of your wireless network) to the exact same name of your main routers wireless network.
ALSO: change the channel of this wireless network to something different from your main router. Typically 11 is the default so you should be safe changing it to 6 ot 7.
Now plug that long cord from the main router into one of the 1-4 ports of the old router.

Now if your laptops are set to get an IP automatically you will be all set to go, just give it a bit to establish that initial connection and get an IP (it takes a little longer than normal)
If you are having trouble resolving an IP feel free to manually set your IP address on your computer with the main router’s IP in the router/gateway box.

Your computer should now automatically switch to whichever signal is better without you having to do anything.

Im not saying these are the best, but they are pretty dang good and ones I use all the time. Best of all they are FREE and recognize a ton of cd/dvd burners.

MAC:
Burn (website) features Data, Audio, Video and Disc copy with a single drive. It can burn Mac only, PC (Joliet ), Mac and PC Combo Data discs. Audio recording is straight forward with a drag and drop interface like the rest of the program. Video recording supports VCD, SVCD, DVD, DivX. And don’t worry about file conversions, this uses ffmpeg, which can pretty much convert any video file for you on the fly (to MPEG-2 in this instance) before burning the dvd. The disc copy feature is fairly self evident. Just pop it in a disc and hit copy, or drag and drop an image to burn it to disc.

WINDOWS:
CDBurnerXP (site) is pretty loaded with features even it were a paid app. Create images, music, dvd’ even blu-ray. It runs on almost all flavors of windows that are still relevant including the windows 7. Fairly simple interface and works with a ton of burners. Check out the features list.

EDIT: This is also working ok on the final beta build of 10.6 snow leopard. Will keep you posted about the release.

This is an oldie but the software has gotten better from back when I first used it. So the problem exists that you want to swap a drive between mac and windows. Naturally you think Fat32, and you would be correct. But you have a DVD.iso image that is greater than the 4 gig file size limit of Fat32. If only the mac could write to NTFS.

3 Step install process.

Install MacFUSE (from google)
Install NTFS-3G (If the link is broken just do a search for it)
If this post is older than a few months check out the official blog for the links to the latest packages (macntfs-3g)
Reboot the machine.

All your NTFS drives will be full read/write capable in mac os x.
WARNING:
Sometimes if you force reboot windows on your mac or it shuts down improperly (bootcamp) the NTFS drive will not mount on the Mac OS X side anymore. An easy fix to this is to just reboot into windows and make sure it shuts down properly.

BONUS:
This also gives you the ability to format a disk from mac os x to NTFS-3G that works in windows of course. Just open disk utility, click on the disk on the left hand pane (the disk not the partition) you want to partition, select the partition tab and choose how many partitions you would like from the drop down. Pull down the “Format” drop down and click “Windows NT Filesystem (NTFS-3G). If you plan to make this bootable make sure you click the options button at the bottom of the page and choose “Master Boot Record”. Done.

If you are running windows and want to read mac drives (HFS) the best solution I know of is mediafour’s Macdrive7 (mac drive 7). Cost is $49 as of this posting and it really works well. Gives you several options for filename compatibility when transferring, plus many more.

hello pirates!

So you found yourself with a huge .iso or .dmg of Mac OS 10.5 (or earlier). Maybe you made it yourself and lost the disc, maybe you downloaded it, maybe your DVD-Drive is broken (as every singe one of my macs turns out to be sooner than later). On a mac: Open up disk utility, click on your usb or firewire drive and then go to the partition tab. Name your disc, in this instance we will call it Mac OS X Install. Choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as the format. Next make sure you click the options button and choose GUID (intel mac) or Apple Partition Map (PPC). Click Apply. Now comes the fun part. Now in the left hand pane click on your newly named disk Mac OS X Install (After formatting is complete of course). Click the Restore tab on the far right. Click the Image button next to the source field and choose your .iso or .dmg. Next drag your newly formated Mac OS X Install icon (from the left pane or from your desktop to the restore field) and click restore. If I remember correctly it will ask you for your admin user/pass. If you get a failure at this step try to mount the image and restore from that. If that doesn’t work unmount it and try the original again. It has been flaky for me sometimes. A sure fire fix is to go to image in the menu and click “scan image for restore”. Takes a bit but lets you continue. After it has completed eject the usb/firewire drive and take it to the mac you want to instal OS X on. Plug in the usb/firewire drive and startup the mac. Right after hitting the power button hold down the “option” key. You will see a boot menu with your usb/firewire drive listed as a boot option. Click it and hit return. Install…

Reminder that PPC’s can’t boot from usb so you will have to use a firewire drive for this. Although I swear I have booted a Power Mac G5 from usb, its been too long to remember though.

Want to make a fully bootable usb or firewire drive of your current system that you can take with you? Or just for backup. Try:
Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper. Both great backup tools that are so easy to use they don’t need a post. Make sure you follow the formatting instructions at the top of this post if you want to make the drives bootable with these 2 programs.