Anyhow, below I’ve created a simple guide on how to setup Netatalk 2.2 from source on most any Linux system. I am using Gentoo in this guide, but the basics should be the same on any other system. Currently Gentoo has not merged Netatalk 2.2 into portage, so we’ll have to download the source from Netatalk itself.

Download Netatalk 2.2 (Unstable): http://netatalk.sourceforge.net

Extract the contents of the file and cd to the directory:

# tar xvf ./netatalk-2.2-beta4.tar.bz2
# cd netatalk-2.2-beta4/

To build the binaries, first run the program ./configure in the source directory. This should automatically configure Netatalk for your operating system. If you have unusual needs, then you may wish to run:

# ./configure --help

to see what special options you can enable. The most used configure options are:
The most used configure options are:

• –enable-[redhat/suse/cobalt/netbsd/fhs]
  This option helps netatalk to determine where to install the start scripts.
• –with-bdb=/path/to/bdb/installation/
  In case you installed Berkeley DB in a non-standard location, you will have to give the install location to netatalk, using this switch.

Now run configure with any options you need. For Gentoo we’ll use the following configure options:

# ./configure --enable-gentoo --enable-zeroconf

The configure summary should look something like this:

Configure summary:
    Install style:
         gentoo
    AFP:
         AFP 3.x calls activated:
         Extended Attributes: ad | sys
    CNID:
         backends:  dbd last tdb
    UAMS:
         DHX     (PAM SHADOW)
         DHX2    (PAM SHADOW)
         RANDNUM (PAM SHADOW)
         passwd  (PAM SHADOW)
         guest
    Options:
         DDP (AppleTalk) support: no
         CUPS support:            no
         SLP support:             no
         Zeroconf support:        yes
         tcp wrapper support:     yes
         quota support:           yes
         admin group support:     yes
         valid shell check:       yes
         cracklib support:        no
         dropbox kludge:          no
         force volume uid/gid:    no
         Apple 2 boot support:    no
         ACL support:             yes

Now we couple and install Netatalk 2.2:

# make
# sudo make install

Edit the file to look something like my setup, but make sure to change YOUR_USERNAME to the name of the user on your system. The ~/.TimeMachine directory can be whatever you chose for your backup directory. It is important to add “tm” to the options section on  your Time Machine share, otherwise it will not work.

# vi /usr/local/etc/netatalk/AppleVolumes.default

# The line below sets some DEFAULT, starting with Netatalk 2.1.
:DEFAULT: options:upriv,usedots

# The "~" below indicates that Home directories are visible by default.
# If you do not wish to have people accessing their Home directories,
# please put a pound sign in front of the tilde or delete it.
~/ "$u" allow:YOUR_USERNAME cnidscheme:dbd options:usedots,upriv
~/.TimeMachine "$u Backup" allow:YOUR_USERNAME cnidscheme:dbd options:usedots,upriv,tm

# End of File

Now edit the general AFP service config file to look like this:

# vi /usr/local/etc/netatalk/afpd.conf

# default:
- -udp -noddp -uamlist uams_randnum.so,uams_dhx.so,uams_dhx2.so -nosavepassword

Finally, edit the general Netatalk config file to look like this:

# vi /usr/local/etc/netatalk/netatalk.conf
# Netatalk configuration

#########################################################################
# Global configuration
#########################################################################

#### machine's AFPserver/AppleTalk name.
ATALK_NAME=`echo ${HOSTNAME}|cut -d. -f1`

#### server (unix) and legacy client (<= Mac OS 9) charsets
ATALK_UNIX_CHARSET='LOCALE'
ATALK_MAC_CHARSET='MAC_ROMAN'

#### Don't Edit. export the charsets, read form ENV by apps
export ATALK_UNIX_CHARSET
export ATALK_MAC_CHARSET

#########################################################################
# AFP specific configuration
#########################################################################

#### Set which daemons to run.
#### If you use AFP file server, run both cnid_metad and afpd.
CNID_METAD_RUN=yes
AFPD_RUN=yes

#### maximum number of clients that can connect:
AFPD_MAX_CLIENTS=20

#### UAMs (User Authentication Modules)
#### available options: uams_dhx.so, uams_dhx2.so, uams_guest.so,
####                    uams_clrtxt.so(legacy), uams_randnum.so(legacy)
AFPD_UAMLIST="-U uams_dhx.so,uams_dhx2.so"

#### Set the id of the guest user when using uams_guest.so
AFPD_GUEST=nobody

#### config for cnid_metad. Default log config:
CNID_CONFIG="-l log_note"

#########################################################################
# AppleTalk specific configuration (legacy)
#########################################################################

#### Set which legacy daemons to run.
#### If you need AppleTalk, run atalkd.
#### papd, timelord and a2boot are dependent upon atalkd.
ATALKD_RUN=no
PAPD_RUN=no
TIMELORD_RUN=no
A2BOOT_RUN=no

#### Control whether the daemons are started in the background.
#### If it is dissatisfied that legacy atalkd starts slowly, set "yes".
ATALK_BGROUND=no

#### Set the AppleTalk Zone name.
#### NOTE: if your zone has spaces in it, you're better off specifying
####       it in afpd.conf
ATALK_ZONE=@AFP

Now you should be able to get Netatalk up and running and start your backup (note: init.d may be rc.d on some systems).

# /etc/init.d/netatalk start

Also, on Gentoo systems, we will want to have this service start automatically at startup.

# rc-update add netatalk default

Now your formerly incompatible Netatalk installation should work with OS X 10.7 Lion’s Time Machine backup. However, if you’ve never setup your system for using Netatalk as a Time Machine backup server, you may want to follow these additional instructions.

OPTIONAL: If you have not setup a sparse disk image for time machine backups, follow these instructions.

On your OS X 10.7 machine, mount the Time Machine Share. It should show up in the “Shared” section of the sidebar in Finder. However, if it does not show up, you can manually mount the share by pressing COMMAND+K in the finder and entering your server details as follows:

Now open up Terminal.app and cd to the newly mounted volume.

# cd /Volumes/myBackup/

Now we’ll create a new sparse disk image for the Time Machine backup and enable support for network volumes in Time Machine. All of complicated stuff after “Time Machine” is just a script to automatically extract your machine’s local host name and ethernet MAC address.

# hdiutil create -size 512g -fs HFS+J -volname "Time Machine" `grep -A1 LocalHostName /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/preferences.plist | tail -n1 | awk 'BEGIN { FS = "|" } ; { print $2 }'`_`ifconfig en0 | grep ether | awk 'BEGIN { FS = ":" } ; {print $1$2$3$4$5$6}' | awk {'print $2'}`.sparsebundle

# defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

Now configure Time Machine to use the mounted volume for backup and everything should work beautifully!

I’ve been working on an Android charting application for an assignment and ran into a bit of an issue when it came to presenting the chart in a nicely scaled format. I spent a some time trying to create this algorithm on my own and came awfully close, but in the end I found a pseudo-code example in a book called “Graphics Gems, Volume 1” by Andrew S. Glassner. An excellent description of the problem is given in the chapter on “Nice Numbers for Graph Labels“:

When creating a graph by computer, it is desirable to label the x and y axes with “nice” numbers: simple decimal numbers. For example, if the data range is 105 to 543, we’d probably want to plot the range from 100 to 600 and put tick marks every 100 units. Or if the data range is 2.04 to 2.16, we’d probably plot a range from 2.00 to 2.20 with a tick spacing of 0.05. Humans are good at choosing such “nice” numbers, but simplistic algorithms are not. The naïve label-selection algorithm takes the data range and divides it into n equal intervals, but this usually results in ugly tick labels. We here describe a simple method for generating nice graph labels.

The primary observation is that the “nicest” numbers in decimal are 1, 2, and 5, and all power-of-ten multiples of these numbers. We will use only such numbers for the tick spacing, and place tick marks at multiples of the tick spacing…

I used the pseudo-code example in this book to create the following class in Java:

public class NiceScale {

	private double minPoint;
	private double maxPoint;
	private double maxTicks = 10;
	private double tickSpacing;
	private double range;
	private double niceMin;
	private double niceMax;

	/**
	 * Instantiates a new instance of the NiceScale class.
	 *
	 * @param min the minimum data point on the axis
	 * @param max the maximum data point on the axis
	 */
	public NiceScale(double min, double max) {
		this.minPoint = min;
		this.maxPoint = max;
		calculate();
	}

	/**
	 * Calculate and update values for tick spacing and nice
	 * minimum and maximum data points on the axis.
	 */
	private void calculate() {
		this.range = niceNum(maxPoint - minPoint, false);
		this.tickSpacing = niceNum(range / (maxTicks - 1), true);
		this.niceMin =
			Math.floor(minPoint / tickSpacing) * tickSpacing;
		this.niceMax =
			Math.ceil(maxPoint / tickSpacing) * tickSpacing;
	}

	/**
	 * Returns a "nice" number approximately equal to range Rounds
	 * the number if round = true Takes the ceiling if round = false.
	 *
	 * @param range the data range
	 * @param round whether to round the result
	 * @return a "nice" number to be used for the data range
	 */
	private double niceNum(double range, boolean round) {
		double exponent; /** exponent of range */
		double fraction; /** fractional part of range */
		double niceFraction; /** nice, rounded fraction */

		exponent = Math.floor(Math.log10(range));
		fraction = range / Math.pow(10, exponent);

		if (round) {
				if (fraction < 1.5)
					niceFraction = 1;
				else if (fraction < 3)
					niceFraction = 2;
				else if (fraction < 7)
					niceFraction = 5;
				else
					niceFraction = 10;
		} else {
				if (fraction <= 1)
					niceFraction = 1;
				else if (fraction <= 2)
					niceFraction = 2;
				else if (fraction <= 5)
					niceFraction = 5;
				else
					niceFraction = 10;
		}

		return niceFraction * Math.pow(10, exponent);
	}

	/**
	 * Sets the minimum and maximum data points for the axis.
	 *
	 * @param minPoint the minimum data point on the axis
	 * @param maxPoint the maximum data point on the axis
	 */
	public void setMinMaxPoints(double minPoint, double maxPoint) {
		this.minPoint = minPoint;
		this.maxPoint = maxPoint;
		calculate();
	}

	/**
	 * Sets maximum number of tick marks we're comfortable with
	 *
	 * @param maxTicks the maximum number of tick marks for the axis
	 */
	public void setMaxTicks(double maxTicks) {
		this.maxTicks = maxTicks;
		calculate();
	}

	/**
	 * Gets the tick spacing.
	 *
	 * @return the tick spacing
	 */
	public double getTickSpacing() {
		return tickSpacing;
	}

	/**
	 * Gets the "nice" minimum data point.
	 *
	 * @return the new minimum data point for the axis scale
	 */
	public double getNiceMin() {
		return niceMin;
	}

	/**
	 * Gets the "nice" maximum data point.
	 *
	 * @return the new maximum data point for the axis scale
	 */
	public double getNiceMax() {
		return niceMax;
	}
}

We can then make use of the above code like this:

NiceScale numScale = new NiceScale(-0.085, 0.173);

System.out.println("Tick Spacing:\t" + numScale.getTickSpacing());
System.out.println("Nice Minimum:\t" + numScale.getNiceMin());
System.out.println("Nice Maximum:\t" + numScale.getNiceMax());

Which will then output nicely formatted numbers for use in whatever application for which you need to create pretty scales. =D

Tick Spacing: 0.05
Nice Minimum: -0.1
Nice Maximum: 0.2

The certificate for this server is invalid. (NSURLErrorDomain:-1202)

Fortunately, there is a way to force Safari 5.1 to accept self-signed certificates. Now I know one could dump the certificate via openssl and the command line, but this method did not work for me since I am accessing my sites on an internal network and it would always dump the certificate for my default Apache virtual host. As such, the instructions below use a sort of round about method to import these certificates, but it works.

Basically these instructions show you how to use Firefox to export a self-signed SSL certificate and import it into Keychain Access. Hopefully it helps a few people out.

1. Open Firefox and navigate to the offending site. You will be greeted with the following error unless you’ve already added an exception in Firefox. If you have already added an exception, go into your settings and remove the exception for now.

   

2. Click on “Add Exception” and you’ll be greeted with the following dialog.

   

3. Click on “View…” and then the “Details” tab in order to view the details of the certificate.

   

4. Click on “Export…” and save the certificate to somewhere convenient. Make sure to add “.crt” to the end of the file name in order to allow for easy import.

   

5. Open the file and it’ll bring up Keychain Access. Select “Aways Trust”, but I don’t think it really matters since you’ll need to modify the trust settings later anyhow.

   

6. Double-click on the newly imported certificate and expand the “trust” section. From the “When using this certificate” drop down list, select “Always Trust”.

   

And voilà! You should now be able to access the site that uses a self-signed certificate. It should be noted that Mac OS X 10.7 Lion is still in beta and this annoyance may simply be a relic from their switchover from WebKit to WebKit2.

After some Googling, I discovered a quick fix to the problem. Basically, if you haven’t updated your Netatalk config file for some time, you wouldn’t have UAMS DHX2 enabled by default. To enable UAMS DHX2 support, do the following:

Edit afpd.conf:

# vi /etc/netatalk/afpd.conf

Make sure “uams_dhx2.so” is in the “-uamlist” options at the end of the file. For instance, mine looks like this:

- -noddp -transall -uamlist uams_randnum.so,uams_dhx.so,uams_dhx2.so -nosavepassword -advertise_ssh -udp

Then restart the Netatalk server. Please note that the init script may be different depending on your distribution.

# /etc/init.d/atalk restart

Now you should be able to connect your OS X 10.7 Lion installation to a Linux AFP server. It should be noted, however, that despite AFP working in this setup, I have been unable to get Time Machine to work with these settings. If you’ve managed to get Time Machine to work with Netatalk, post a comment!

(Via Criggo.)

Conformity is Good! =D

I also sent this to Noam Chomsky and he responded with “Stalin would have loved it.”

After some searching on the net, it seems that Apple has somewhat broken the way that it deals with Linux CUPS shares. Apparently it only searches for printers via Bounjour. In any case, I found a fix that works perfectly. Alessandro Dellavedova posted a fix for the problem over on the Apple support forums. Below is a slightly more detailed version of what he did.

WARNING: You will need administrator privileges to proceed with this fix.

1. Open System Preferences.
2. Open Print & Fax.
3. Right-click in the printer’s pane and select “Reset printing system…”
4. Open Terminal and type the following:sudo nano /etc/cups/cupsd.conf
5. Modify the first few lines such that they look similar to the following:Browsing On
   BrowseOrder allow,deny
   BrowseAllow all
   BrowseProtocols all
   BrowseRemoteProtocols all
   BrowsePoll <Your CUPS Server domain or IP>:631
   BrowsePort 631
6. Save the file
7. Restart the printing subsystem by typing in the following:sudo killall -HUP cupsd

Now you should be able to see and add the printers on your Linux share.

Here’s what they had to say:

It is intended to solve the user list window being empty after connecting when running OSX 10.5. This is the only change. The same problem also occurred in a few other windows as well.

If you are not running OSX 10.5 then don’t waste your time downloading it as there is no advantage.

This is an interim update until we release the next major upgrade here soon.

FYI,
Flag

__________________
Flagship Industries, Inc.
www.ventrilo.com

Certainly doesn’t sound like he was very happy about making this fix. In any case, if you would like to download their new version, you can find it here.

Otherwise, if you want the fully patched version, you can still access it from my site.

After Typo decided to explode at me after using a quotation mark in tag for a new post, I decided I would go back to WordPress, my first blogging engine. WordPress has a long and well supported history and I will likely have fewer headaches for a blog that I barely touch in the first place.

Unfortunately, since there are no up-to-date utilities to migrate the database from Typo to WordPress, I ended up having to copy/paste all of the articles that I felt were worth saving. The problem was that I couldn’t copy over any of the comments made to any of my posts.

I apologize to anyone who left helpful/supportive comments over the years, but I couldn’t save you all!

There is a known issue with the Ventrilo Mac client 2.3.2.Prototype.15 that prevents the main user list window from displaying the channels and connected users.

While we have this fixed in our soon to be released major upgrade we did not perform the changes to the 2.3 series of programs only because we had hoped to release the major upgrade before Apple was able to release 10.5. Sadly this did not happen due to a few problems found during the beta testing.

While the delay would only have been a few weeks this seems to be a problem for some people. *sigh*

I will see about producing an proto.16 that fixes this problem, but not until I have an official copy of 10.5 in my hands to test with. Assuming BestBuy has it on their shelves tonight.

Any and all (or should I say more) hateful and mean spirited posts from the Mac community on this subject will be promptly deleted. If you can’t control your temper then don’t even bother posting.

Now I wonder how many years it’ll take them to get this build out. >:D

UPDATE: It seems that the developer at Ventrilo decided that this post sounded just a tad too bitter and decided to delete it. Luckily I quoted him for posterity!