Tag Archives: snow leopard

Posted on
by

It doesn’t quite work :) , a little bit, but not really.

Often if the specifications of computers match with other Macs you can install an older OS X on it then what came pre-installed on the Mac. Like in this situation I discovered that the Macbook Pro Early 2011 (MacBookPro8,1) has a lot of specifications in common with the Mac Mini Mid 2011 (MacMini5,1)

Same CPU, GPU and ram type. Both have Thunderbolt, bluetooth, wifi, Sata 2 clocked at higher speeds etc.

The Macbook comes with Snow Leopard 10.6.6 and the Mac mini with Lion 10.7. In the old days that would mean that the Mac mini could also run 10.6.6 or newer (10.6.8). Because all drivers are available. Thus if Lion or Mountain Lion doesn’t work for you, you could downgrade to Snow Leopard.

I’ve tried this many times before with G5 macs, earlier Intel models and all kinds of hardware really.

But in this case it seems Apple used a different I/O chip in the Mac mini. Also the I/O for the thunderbolt seems different. Because of these tiny hardware differences it doesn’t work. Very sneaky.

I successfully installed Snow Leopard on the Mac Mini but quickly discovered that the Sata Bus had a throughput of maybe 10/20 kilobytes while using the system. Instead of the advertised 3 Gigabit. This basically means the Sata Bus functions in a sort of fallback mode called PIO. And this is something of the 80′s and with that is super slow. Copying data and writing to the disk will literally take hours.

Another thing that seems to happen is that when you use the Thunderbolt port on the Mac Mini and Snow Leopard loads, the screen goes black. This suggests the firmware or the thunderbolt chip has a slight difference with the Macbook version of it. The Thunderbolt port does, however, keep showing as connected in System information. But it has no output.

However, and this is the weird part. Sata and Thunderbolt worked fine throughout the installation of the setup. This suggests this can be resolved with a driver or modification in Snow Leopard somewhere but I couldn’t find anything constructive for this. I guess no-one has tried this before. Since such things are notoriously hard to find for OS X I didn’t go into that much further and simply upgraded to Mountain Lion.

Posted on
by

Nope! I’ve had it. For real this time.

Mac OS 10.4 Server worked fine. Mac OS 10.5 Server was a disaster. Mac OS 10.6 Server was only crashing and breaking every 6-9 months. Mac OS 10.7 Server was a complete screwup. Mac OS 10.8 Server is better but any serious networking is a no go!

 The fail!

DNS Server on Mountain Lion does *not* work. I’m not gonna wait for 10.8.1. It’s been rubbish since Lion came out last year. But it just got worse. It’s slow, unresponsive and sends things to the wrong IP’s. Generally DNS is now more of a hinderance than useful tool. Combining that with the glaring omission of DHCP in the core services, Apple finally managed to push me away from a product because it sucks so bad.

In 10.7 a very very big gripe was Access Control Lists conflicting on all kinds of things. Mountain Lion makes this a tad bit worse. The conflicting ACL’s are still there and now require me to give “everyone” read-only access even though the users are already in the ACL. This is a major security flaw if you ask me. Also FTP can only share one path not unlike in Snow Leopard (10.6) Where i could allow access to /Storage *and* /Library/WebServer/Sites/. It’s one or the other now. Terrible!

Not to mention the terrible idea of lock files and restricted access on every /Library and /System folder. Dammit Apple, I can take care of my own computer!

The road to victory

I’m going to phase out Mac OS Server for several things and be done with it. Ubuntu Server 12.04 seems really reliable and appealing and with it’s large community should be fairly easy to set up too. Plus I already have a Ubuntu jacket and some experience with Ubuntu Desktop.

In order to bring some order into the resulted chaos of upgrading my servers to 10.8 I’ve ordered a bunch of parts and am gonna build a PC server.

It’s small, cheap and has great reviews and good performance for small networks like mine. Many use them as Home Theater PC’s so certainly Network Services will perform even better on it!

I’ve ordered:

1x Antek ISK-300 mITX case
1x Asus AT5NM10T-I, Atom D525, 2xDDR3, mITX

I have suitable ram lying around and a bunch of harddisks that are new. And with that for just under 250 euros (including the already owned harddisk and ram) I have a “Mac Mini Grade” tiny PC.

This machine will be taking care of DHCP, DNS and when it’s all settled in and working I plan on moving some other things to it as well, VPN and perhaps even my File sharing.

Posted on
by

Today i finally pulled it off. Using Snow Leopards built in Apache and Dav modules.
Also built in is svnserve. A repository server for SubVersioning.

So, with no additional software i now have a Repository for internal use to work on some PHP and related. Woot!

That being said, i have implemented some new features in the AccessQontrol plugin. And perhaps if i keep up the coding spirit for a bit i will release an important update for it. Including many new restrictive features to even better control who or what gets on your site or not.

Among the new things is timezone support, Referer blocking (people coming from a certain site, or set of sites, are not allowed) and User-Agent blocking (a simple filter to block bots or users with a certain browser or OS).

Let’s just see how it goes…

Posted on
by

With Snow Leopard i was finally able to synchronize my address book to all my computers and devices. Or so i thought.

After putting it into motion i quickly found out that iTunes didn’t see the CardDAV account and thus couldn’t sync the address book to my iPhone. Leaving me without phone numbers on that device.
A little after that i found out that Adium lost all it’s couplings with the contact cards i had made over time. Defaulting in the ridiculous names people put on their MSN accounts.

What that has to do with CardDAV? It seems that Address Book, the app, doesn’t actually synchronize the address book but rather looks at it remotely. Unlike iCal Calendar which transmits events and calendars to every device. Address Book just looks at them on the server and is able to edit them via CardDAV. Thus, on none of my computers is an address book present. Just the app looking at a remote contact list.

I would much prefer them to actually synchronize the data so i can use it for the various apps that work with Address Book. Like iTunes, Adium, Mail and the like.
Now with this new service i can easily share my contacts, yay! But not after i make the changes locally, also do them remotely. Then again to the local address book on the other computer. It’s quite a lot of hassle and i might just not use Address Book Server. Since all the editing it involves to *actually* sync it has just increased to twice as much editing.

Apple really thought this one through… Not :(

Posted on
by

As many of us, i use Perian to extend Quicktime Player.
Since Snow Leopard it seems that a whole bunch of formats do not work anymore. On the Perian forums many blame it on the codecs not being 64bit. But when QT player runs in 32Bit the problem persists.
Also, some files DO work. Say XviD and Divx files… They work fine. Especially with audio streams using MP3 or the like. Some forms of AAC work too.

DTS, AC3 5.1 and h.264 do not seem to work anymore. Especially the higher resolutions. Which now seems to be a problem with Quicktime. I doubt that is the case. But i’m no expert. The guy (Gbooker) who said this, seems to be. Since he is on the Perian team and does support on the forum as well. I guess he knows what’s up… Or so i hope.

Anyway, i hope it will be fixed soon. I wanna watch my movies! YARR!

Now i know what many of you are gonna say “Use VLC”! Yes i’ve tried, also in the past. And VLC is still a piece of shit. It doesn’t play most of the files AT ALL. Or the sound is garbled up. Meaning the 5.1 or DTS is not downmixed properly or whatever is going wrong. It hurts my ears. Also VLC crashes a lot on me or does other crazy things that are not cool! So no VLC is NOT an option to me.