My MacTech January 2013 articles

1st article
Title: An introduction to MRTG
Graphing network traffic with MRTG

2nd article (coauthor: Dimitris Tsoukalos)
Title: Programming a Joomla! Extension
How to program a Joomla module

My new mouse

Καλά Χριστούγεννα

How to make a website

How to make a website from Seth Godin.
A very useful post -- read it!

Flash Player 11.5

VLC dock icon :)

Network problems (ADSL)

$ traceroute www.apple.com
traceroute to e3191.c.akamaiedge.net (92.123.233.15), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets
 1  cisco (192.168.1.1)  1.554 ms  1.141 ms  1.127 ms
 2  80.106.108.71 (80.106.108.71)  40.702 ms  38.989 ms  38.615 ms
 3  79.128.227.97 (79.128.227.97)  49.375 ms  50.929 ms
    79.128.226.117 (79.128.226.117)  45.725 ms
 4  xe-0-0-1-t1602.ath.oteglobe.net (62.75.3.217)  37.905 ms  39.135 ms  38.923 ms
 5  62.75.4.154 (62.75.4.154)  86.715 ms
    62.75.4.150 (62.75.4.150)  98.854 ms  99.827 ms
 6  dialup-212.162.19.109.frankfurt1.mik.net (212.162.19.109)  98.539 ms  129.272 ms  95.576 ms
 7  4.69.162.145 (4.69.162.145)  92.640 ms
    ae-1-60.edge4.frankfurt1.level3.net (4.69.154.8)  97.596 ms
    4.69.162.141 (4.69.162.141)  90.552 ms
 8  ae-2-52.edge4.amsterdam1.level3.net (4.69.139.170)  94.425 ms
    telia-level3-10g.frankfurt.level3.net (4.68.70.106)  96.456 ms
    ae-1-51.edge4.amsterdam1.level3.net (4.69.139.138)  91.781 ms
 9  ffm-bb2-link.telia.net (213.155.134.136)  96.628 ms
    telia-level3-xe.amsterdam1.level3.net (213.244.165.250)  94.803 ms
    4.68.70.26 (4.68.70.26)  94.514 ms
10  adm-bb3-link.telia.net (213.155.134.180)  94.917 ms
    adm-bb3-link.telia.net (80.91.253.162)  94.140 ms
    hbg-bb2-link.telia.net (80.91.245.116)  105.945 ms
11  adm-bb4-link.telia.net (80.91.245.140)  107.418 ms
    adm-bb4-link.telia.net (80.91.246.236)  106.121 ms
    adm-bb4-link.telia.net (80.91.246.200)  111.568 ms
12  adm-b5-link.telia.net (80.91.253.186)  109.870 ms

MacBook Air SuperDrive

Heavy load!

top - 15:00:28 up 74 days, 21:20,  1 user,  load average: 40.33, 36.73, 22.28
Tasks: 175 total,   1 running, 174 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie

Digital Camera RAW 4.02

My Linux For You December 2012 article

Title: Getting Started with WireShark

This article presents WireShark, a very capable and popular graphical network protocol analyser.

iTunes 11

Vision

IIS 7 default page :)

Although I like the welcome screen, I really do not like IIS!

My article for the MacTech Fall 2012 issue

Title: An introduction to Squid
Subtitle: The Squid proxy server

Aperture 3.4.3

adventure and routine

“If you think adventure is dangerous,

try routine.

It is lethal.”

-@paulocoelho

Troubles updating to Safari 6.0.2?

If you are having troubles updating to Safari 6.0.2 using "Software Update..." use the following link to get the update and install it manually:

http://swcdn.apple.com/content/downloads/53/02/041-8081/2jwp4wjrwygtm4lc608qy4h0 n4a9yyq37g/Safari6.0.2Mountain.pkg

November 2012 Linux for You article

I wrote an article for the November 2012 issue of Linux for You magazine.

Title: Getting Started with Tcpdump
This article is an introduction to a popular UNIX tool called tcpdump—a very capable command-line utility that allows you to capture network data.

Safari 6.0.2

Xcode 4.5.2 is available

iOS 6.0.1 is available

Every achiever

"Every achiever I have ever met says,

'My life turned around when

I began to believe in me.' "

R. Schuller

TUAW Origin Stories: Neil Ticktin, MacTech

Camera RAW 4.01

iBooks Author 2.0

Apple store is down

VLC 2.0.4

Java update 2012-006 1.0

Apple event 23 October

HP Printer Software Update 2.12

Inside a MacBook Pro 13''

Mac OS X 10.8.2 Supplemental Update 1.0

Xcode 4.5.1

Too many mounted disks

iPhone 5 (parody)

The Go programming language

Just installed the Go programming language on my iMac.


$ sudo port install go
--->  Computing dependencies for go
--->  Fetching archive for go
--->  Attempting to fetch go-1.0.2_0.darwin_12.x86_64.tbz2 from http://mse.uk.packages.macports.org/sites/packages.macports.org/go
--->  Attempting to fetch go-1.0.2_0.darwin_12.x86_64.tbz2 from http://lil.fr.packages.macports.org/go
--->  Attempting to fetch go-1.0.2_0.darwin_12.x86_64.tbz2 from http://packages.macports.org/go
--->  Fetching distfiles for go
--->  Attempting to fetch go1.0.2.src.tar.gz from http://her.gr.distfiles.macports.org/mirrors/macports/mpdistfiles/go
--->  Verifying checksum(s) for go
--->  Extracting go
--->  Configuring go
--->  Building go
--->  Staging go into destroot
Warning: go installs files outside the common directory structure.
--->  Installing go @1.0.2_0
--->  Activating go @1.0.2_0
--->  Cleaning go
--->  Updating database of binaries: 100.0%
--->  Scanning binaries for linking errors: 100.0%
--->  No broken files found.
$ go version
go version go1.0.2

Xcode 4.5 is available

Mac OS X 10.8.2

If someone want professional work

"It's true, if someone wants professional work, then he will need to hire professionals. But it's also true that as amateurs are happy to do the work that professionals used to charge for, the best (and only) path to getting paid is to redefine the very nature of professional work."

Read the rest here.

My articles for the August 2012 MacTech issue

1st article
Title: An introduction to gdb
Subtitle: How to use the GNU debugger

2nd article
Title: The tcpdump network utility
Subtitle: How to capture network data using tcpdump

and yes, there is a 3rd article! (co-author: Christos Karidis)
Title: Installating an SSD drive on an iMac
Subtitle: Replacing the HD of a late 2009 27-inch iMac with a SSD

You can imagine how happy I am :)

(personal) iPhone 5 FAQ

1. Will you buy the new iPhone 5?
Yes!

2. When?
As soon as it comes in Greece.

3. Why?
It is my job. I write software for iOS, I write articles for iOS and I want both a bigger screen and a faster CPU.

4. Which iPhone are you currently have?
I have an iPhone 4.

5. Thanks.
Thank you too!

Pain vs Quitting

Cases

Old binary format

$ file test
test: Mach-O executable ppc
$ ./test 
-bash: ./test: Bad CPU type in executable

Different business model

By Kenny Hemphill

funny "iPhone 5" promo video

It is almost here :)

Changing bash shell history size

In order to change the bash shell history size and history file size, I added the following two lines inside .bash_profile file.


HISTSIZE=10000
HISTFILESIZE=10000

Mac OS X 10.8.1

One good test

"One good test is worth a thousand expert opinions."

Wernher von Braun 
(Rocket scientist)

CDE screen

Two of my articles published in the MacTech July 2012 issue!

First article
Title: An introduction to Moodle
Subtitle: Installing and using Moodle on a Mac running Lion

Second article
Title: Running a cache DNS server on Lion
Subtitle: How to use BIND to run a cache DNS server

Xcode 4.4.1

As you think...

As you think, so shall you become."

—Bruce Lee

Tips for success

Programming in Objective-C (5th ed.)

More about the book here.
(expected) Release date: 10 Nov 2012

Updating Drupal using Drush :)

The following two commands update Drupal from version 7.14 to the latest version (7.15):

$ sudo drush up
$ sudo drush updb

Notice: Do not try it on a live site without backing up first!

My article for the MacTech June 2012 issue

Title: Selecting photos in iOS
Subtitle: How to select a photo from the Photo Library in an iOS Application

Mountain Lion: Page Outs

This is the output of the iStat Pro Dashboard Widget.
What it shows is the there are ZERO Page Outs on my iMac running Mountain Lion after 3.1 mil Page Ins!
This for me means that Mountain Lion has better memory management than Lion (and the other Mac OS X versions)!

iPhone 5? (rumors)

I really like its design!

Wireshark and Mountain Lion

$ wireshark 
(process:28125): Gtk-WARNING **: Locale not supported by C library.
Using the fallback 'C' locale.
(wireshark:28125): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display: 


The Wireshark Macports version does not work on Mountain Lion so I downloaded WireShark from http://www.wireshark.org/download.html.


The problem was X11. The solution can be found at: http://xquartz.macosforge.org/landing/.

Installing (MacPorts) MySQL on Mountain Lion

$ sudo port install mysql55 mysql55-server

The following command makes MySQL use a "normal" MySQL configuration file because the default is not good at all:


$ sudo cp -av /opt/local/share/mysql55/support-files/my-small.cnf /opt/local/etc/mysql55/my.cnf


$ sudo /opt/local/share/mysql55/support-files/mysql.server start
$ sudo -u _mysql /opt/local/lib/mysql55/bin/mysql_install_db
$ sudo /opt/local/lib/mysql55/bin/mysql_secure_installation


And you are done!

Twitter is down...

http://status.twitter.com

Before leaving Lion

I will wait for the following things to completely go to Mountain Lion:

• MacPorts compatibility
• LaTeX compatibility
• Finish a MacTech article I am writing :)
• Check if my HP OfficeJet 8500 printer is supported

All of them are very important to me and I want to make sure that they will be fine.

I think of doing a clean install.

Mountain Lion officially released!

Mountain Lion will be officially released on Wednesday 25 July 2012!
I may try to do a clean installation – it takes more time but generally I think it is better.

My twitter account

I created a Twitter account: @mactsouk
It will be a low volume account.

Why I like my Cisco

I really like my Cisco 877W ADSL router. Although its setup is relatively difficult, its capabilities are a huge time saver.
In order to reboot it, I just execute the following command:

$ ssh cisco reload
Password: 


Proceed with reload? [confirm]y
Connection to cisco closed by remote host.


If I had a cheaper ADSL router with a Web interface, it would take much longer!

Adobe Flash Player 11.3

SetFile command

If for some reason you cannot see a HD as an icon on your Desktop, run the following command (replace the <Drive Name> with the actual name):


$ SetFile -a v /Volumes/<Drive Name>/

Mac OS X 10.8

Mountain Lion

Being a Developer has its advantages. One of them is that I will try Mountain Lion before its official release :)

Steve Jobs on programming

"I think everyone should learn how to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think. I view computer science as a liberal art, something everyone should learn to do."

Steve Jobs

Angry Birds Seasons free!

It is free for today -- the only Angry Birds game I did not have!

A simple dd test (SSD vs HD)

This is a simple and not scientific benchmark, using the dd UNIX command, that will give you an idea of how faster an SSD than a usual hard disk is.

1TB SATA hard disk

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=bigfile1 bs=10000000 count=512

512+0 records in

512+0 records out

5120000000 bytes transferred in 59.423885 secs (86160640 bytes/sec)

256Gb SATA SSD

$ dd if=/dev/zero of=bigfile1 bs=10000000 count=512

512+0 records in

512+0 records out

5120000000 bytes transferred in 22.594125 secs (226607583 bytes/sec)

The results are impressive!

Aperture 3.3.1

Unibrain Hard Disk enclosure

This is my enclosure of choice (from Unibrain) and I will put my 1TB hard disk in it.