Tag: technology

Dear loyal readers,

Have you perceived any performance issues when using my web site? I ask because the spiffy graphics on the right (have you clicked one lately?) inflate the size of the front page considerably.

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/

This is very exciting news. As I previously mentioned, we just knew this had to be coming. In the meantime, all the current iPhone hackers are doing a great job of identifying weaknesses in the current security model.

You’ve probably heard it from me, and if you follow Mac news at all, you’ve probably heard it from Gruber and now you can hear it from another that a Mac is the best PC to run Windows. I couldn’t agree more.

I have used Windows under emulation almost as long as Windows has been shipping. I ran Windows on SGI hardware first and then later on Mac OS. I wrote the Kysor Fan Program for Windows, using Visual Basic. The notable part of that is that Kysor bought me a license for SoftWindows and I wrote the vast majority of the KFP on my personal Mac, because it was so much more stable than Windows on bare iron.

Since then emulation moved from software to hardware and now Windows can run natively on my Mac via Boot Camp or virtually under Parallels Desktop or VMware Fusion. As I’ve blogged about before, getting a clean and happy install of Windows has never been easier than when installing it on a Mac.

Introduction: I am beefing up security by requiring password protected SSH keys (two factor) for authentication. With this change, the use of ssh-agent is quite important. Because I use ssh frequently, it’s worth making its use as transparent as possible.

The Problem: Ssh-agent lacks an easy way to use it for multiple shell/terminal sessions. This is best explained by example. I log onto my Mac OS X/FreeBSD machine at the console. I needs to administrate a server so I open a terminal window. Now I must launch ssh-agent followed by ssh-add and then type in my passphrase to set up my ssh key(s). Now my ssh key is authenticated and ready for use during the rest of this session. So far, so good.

While I’m working on that first server, I needs to connect to another machine to see how I configured something there. This is where ssh-agent becomes onerous. I open another terminal window and must once again launch ssh-agent, and then ssh-add, type in my passphrase, and finally connect. But now I have two instances of ssh-agent running.

Having multiple ssh-agents is the default behavior because ssh-agent has no built-in mechanism for detecting and reusing an existing ssh-agent process. To do so, one must determine the correct path to the socket file and set SSH_AUTH_SOCK accordingly.

Research: I researched the options available for solving this issue on my Mac. I found Xander Schrijen’s SSH Agent for Mac OS X but had several issues that prevented me from falling into love with it. There is also SSHKeychain but it didn’t work at all on my Intel macs (it has since been fixed).

The Solution: After giving up on a easy point-and-click solution, I decided the best solution is one that works equally well on all the UNIX-like systems I use regularly: Mac OS 10.4, 10.5, Linux, and FreeBSD. I wrote a simple shell script, then a more complex one, then a perl script, and finally another shell script that I think is just about perfect. Its only requirement (beyond openssh) is bash.

Documentation is contained in the script. It has been tested on Mac OS X and FreeBSD. It should run without modification on any UNIX-like OS and requires the [ba]sh shell. I attempted a script that worked with both bash and tcsh but it simply wouldn’t work. Tcsh is a perfectly adequate shell but a miserable programming environment.

Demonstration: Opening a new Terminal window:

Last login: Sat Jul 28 20:41:10 on ttys001
cleaning up stale ssh agent
starting ssh-agent -a /Users/matt/.ssh/agent.sock
ssh agent for matt found at pid 30268.
adding ssh key(s) to agent
Identity added: /Users/matt/.ssh/id_rsa (/Users/matt/.ssh/id_rsa)
Identity added: /Users/matt/.ssh/id_dsa (/Users/matt/.ssh/id_dsa)
[matt@IntelliBigMac] ~ %

Opening a second Terminal window:

Last login: Sat Jul 28 20:52:54 on ttys002
ssh agent for matt found at pid 30268.
[matt@IntelliBigMac] ~ %

Enjoy
http://www.tnpi.net/computing/mac/agent.sh.txt

It’s all too common that customer service leaves much to be desired. Today I was quite surprised when I received excellent customer service from my telephone provider, VoicePulse. I was able to call out, but people weren’t able to call me.

So I called and inquired. Matt, in Newark, NJ answered my call. I explained the problem. He looked into briefly. Then, wonder of wonders, he explained exactly what the problem was. It turns out it was an issue they already knew about but the extent was greater than they realized. He demonstrated that he actually understood exactly the problem because he asked for another number where he could reach me. No more than an hour later, he actually called back to let me know the problem was fixed!

That’s what I call service. Thank you Matt @ VoicePulse, for surpassing my expectations.

Hey Jay, this post is for you. 🙂

First, let me be perfectly clear. The iPhone is an extraordinarily wonderful technical achievement. iLust. What was unusual about this years Macworld keynote is that my wife started watching the keynote as well. And she was interested.

The truly striking part was watching Jobs actually use the iPhone. There were very different aspects about the phone that wowed her and others that wowed me. The ease of using all the devices is likely the phones most endearing feature, but I’m not in love. Yet. First, my list of pros, cons, and questions:

Pros:
Ease of use.
Multi-touch
Wide screen iPod!
Switch between portrait and landscape via accelerometer
Sync contacts from Mac or PC
Fully functional web browser (yes, I have Opera on my mobile)
Text message context bubbles (ala iChat)
WiFi

Cons:
Painfully slow data access (EDGE).
Cingular only
No tethering (with a PDA / laptop)
Expensive.

Concerns:
SSH client (this is a must have)
Does email support multiple IMAP accounts?
Is there support for IMAP SSL/TLS encryption?
The Google Maps did not have traffic info in the demo, but is a claimed feature.

I will not be buying a v1.0 iPhone for two reasons. The first is past bad experiences with Cingular, and the second is lack of useful data plans. One of the “killer apps” for me and my mobile phone is being able to tether with my laptop and have the ability to manage my internet based business anywhere, anytime. Until Cingular has HSPDA rolled out to the degree that Sprint and Verizon have EVDO available, Cingular is not even a consideration.

When the 2nd generation of iPhones hit the market and include 3G mobile networking, I will consider the iPhone if Apple adds tethering support. I care little about the visual voice mail (its my mobile, I normally answer it) and the push IMAP. I’d much rather have an unlocked 3G phone I can use on the carrier of my choice (Sprint).

For myself, the iPhone is not quite “there” yet. But, that only accounts for me. The iPhone might just be the perfect phone for my wife.

Scot Finnie, a “Windows Expert” wrote an article for Computerworld in which he describes his 3 month experiment using only a MacBook Pro. One of the comments he makes is,

I haven’t had a spontaneous reboot since the moment I pulled the [bad] RAM SIMM, the second day I had the machine. It’s been about six weeks. Apple computers are picky about RAM.

What surprised our dear friend Scot is that Apple hardware seems to care about the quality of RAM it is given. He is of course, correct. However, what he fails to note is that EVERY computer is quite finicky about RAM. Bad RAM will cause any Operating System running on any hardware to behave in undesirable ways.

During the legacy Mac OS days, when stability on Mac or Windows was not a thing to be depended upon, I remember joining a mailing list specific to BSD UNIX, which I was getting acquainted with. Another list member described a type of crash his system was experiencing. I thought it a bit presumptive when others pointed out his problem was almost certainly bad RAM. It was as if they were saying, “the problem is not our OS, it’s your hardware that is junk!” That scenario played out dozens more times during the years, as guys with only PC experience ventured into the land of UNIX where servers run for years and hardly ever crash.

The difference is one of perspective and requires a paradigm shift. Scot’s experience is one where frequent crashes are still commonplace. Now Scot has tasted a computing environment where six weeks, or six months without a reboot is common. It’s not that Apple computers are more picky about RAM. It is that you tend to notice when your system goes from rock solid dependable to sporadically crashing, which it had never done before. Scot, we welcome you to a brave new world.

PS: NewEgg has great prices, great service, and ample options for buying RAM for any computer.