Category Archives: mac

arch linux, backup, linux, mac

Attaching and backing up the iphone

I have an iPhone 11. From time to time it would be nice to be able to attach it to my network. Always a struggle.

The old Macbook Pro can only run High Sierra, and then only with some special jiggery-pokery. I can sometimes get iTunes on the Macbook to connect to the iPhone, and can usually figure out how to get data into some app using that, or to do a backup, but it is a hassle. The Windows 10 box with iTunes won’t connect to it at all, and (typical of Windows) won’t explain why. I really just want to mount it without all the fuss.

I found a guy on the net who claimed to be able to mount his iPhone on Arch, so I tried following his instructions, which basically involved installing a few libraries usbmuxd, libplist, libimobiledevice and ifuse, the last of which I had to install from AUR. That was easy enough.

Then reboot, plug in the iphone, and voila. It is detected.

I created a directory /ginger, and mounted it with ifuse /ginger, and Bob’s your uncle, I have access to its disk on Arch.

Then I checked on a whim whether I could do a backup. Sure enough libimobiledevice comes with idevicebackup2 which, supposedly, will do a backup of the device. Alas, it doesn’t work, complaining of a protocol mismatch, which according to the net means that the version 1.3.0-3 available on Arch is not the latest, and I need 1.3.1. The option is to download from git and compile from source.

This is low priority for me. I still can do an occasional backup on the Macbook, when I think of it, either locally or to iCloud, via iTunes. The local backup is stored in /Users/dee/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/backup and can be copied elsewhere by root. I don’t actually have much on the iPhone that needs a backup. Many people have their contacts and calendar exclusively on the phone, but I keep both my contacts and calendar in radicale on my server and connect to them from everywhere.

I may eventually do this if there comes a time the backups become important. For now I’ll just wait till a later version shows up in Arch.

arch linux, gateways, ipv6, linux, mac, networking, openssh, postfix, raspberry pi, raspbian, security, ubuntu, vpn

IPv6 Re-implementation

This is a follow up to the activities in IPv6 implementation, which was published on March 2nd and revised up through March 19th, as new challenges were addressed. Since March 19th a great deal of what I wrote has been revised, as I have learned a lot more.

The main issue was that there remained a number of problems with the implementation of IPv6 in my residence.

  • The biggest was the question how to handle the delegated prefix, particularly in renumbering. Over the course of the last several months I have to note that Comcast has never changed my prefix, except early on, when I forced it to do so by changing my DUID. And I don’t think it likely that my prefix would change unless some great catastrophe befalls which results in my being down for a very extended period – like 30 days; or more likely there is some change in my service (a change in ISP, or perhaps fiber arriving in my area).
  • The first implementation required that I make patches to the code of my router. This meant that I would have to figure out how to carry those patches forward in the event of firmware updates from Ubiquiti, the maker of the Edgerouter-X that I am using.
  • The implementation was pretty fragile, with a lot of unrelated bits in different places. In particular there was a lot of hand-waving in trying to assign and maintain a separate network for the virtual machines on one of the interior boxes.
Continue reading IPv6 Re-implementation →
linux, mac, Python, ubuntu, virtualization

Installing Mac OS on KVM

Background

I first tried to install Mac OS onto a VM back in 2010 or 2011 I think. I’ve come back to the task from time to time and have never been successful, but truthfully until recently all the virtual machines I’ve created on Cinnamon had been too slow to be useful anyway. Now that I have Cinnamon doing virtual machines well, I came back to the Mac – at the same time I was doing other VMs, and I didn’t keep careful track of what I did to get it up. This document is meant to record what I remember of what I did the first time, and then to do it again and keep better records.

Continue reading Installing Mac OS on KVM →
backup, gateways, mac, networking, openssh, raspberry pi, raspbian

Timemachine on Gateway pi

Some people for whom I provide some kinds of support with gateway pis, use Macs. For the pc folk – at least for those on Windows 10, I’ve been seting up to do the filehistory thing, and putting the filehistory onto the /backup drive on the gateway pi. Then it gets sent here overnight. I wanted to do the same for the folks who have Macs, of which there are several.

Continue reading Timemachine on Gateway pi →
mac

Another self inflicted wound

Shot off my foot.

I was working on some scripts which I will use on some other people’s macs (my wife has a new macbook air, and there is another friend I need to do this for also). These are bash scripts to be run from the terminal, and are supposed to set them up so I can help them from afar. One of the things the script does is create a user for me to use. I guess I was kinda “practicing” the transfer of the script via email, and I thoughtlessly ran the script on my macbook. Oops.

It tried to create a user dee with command line tools, and there was already a user dee. This was in El Capitan (the latest my ancient macbook will run), and there seemed to be no safeguards against idiocy. It seemed to foul things up. I rebooted, user dee was hidden — it was partly the new one, partly the old one, it wanted to “repair” the keychain, but couldn’t. There were a bunch of question marks in the dock. It couldn’t run anything. It was a mess. I was able to get up under a different username, and I was able to make a good backup. But I couldn’t recover. So then, from this hole I was in, I started to dig myself in farther, aiming (so it seems) for the center of the earth.

Continue reading Another self inflicted wound →
backup, mac, mail, networking, postfix, security, Uncategorized

Setting up a mac remotely

I want to be able to get to my wife’s mac, in another city. She is an unsophisticated user, and I’d like to be able to help her when she needs help, but I can’t ask her to do very much setup. I also want to be able to provide backup for her files.

The first step was to outfit her with one of the little gateway pis previously described. Once that was done, we managed, together, to enable me to get to her mac with ssh, by way of the pi tunnel. And we managed to set up an account on her mac under my name.

Continue reading Setting up a mac remotely →
fedora, kodi, linux, mac, ubuntu, xbmc

Correcting Corrupted Kodi Database

I’ve had several cases where one of the Kodi sqlite3 databases becomes corrupted on Coriander. It has happened to Textures, Addons and EPG at different times.  The error that manifests in the Kodi log is The Database Disk Image is Malformed, and once it happens the log is full of this and transactions in the affected database don’t take place.

Did some reading, and discovered that usually you can dump the database, and the dump will be ok.  Try this:

echo '.dump' | sqlite3 fred | sqlite3 new_fred
mv fred bad_fred
mv new_fred fred
asterisk, fedora, kodi, linux, mac, ubuntu, xbmc

Caller Id in Kodi – Redux

I posted in this post about how I arranged to get caller-Id to show up in Kodi. At that time I was still using POTS, but since then I have switched to VoIP and set up Asterisk.

I did find another plugin that would connect to Asterisk and obtain information about incoming calls. But until now it was only half way working. I finally got around to paying attention to it. It was originally provided by “hmronline” and I found it at code.google.com. It was last worked on with Dharma, and I had to do some things to get it ready for Jarvis.

The source code is now in the tarragon svn repository, under the name KodiAsterisk. On coriander, where the production Kodi lives, there is a checked out directory under /Users/wmb called kodiasterisk. For Kodi to install it it has to be zipped, so the sequence is to svn update the directory, then zip the directory as script.service.dee-kodi-asterisk.zip. Then install it within Kodi.

It attaches to asterisk on cinnamon using the Asterisk manager interface.  Authentication on the manager interface uses files in /etc/asterisk/manager.d which has one file per authorized user, containing credentials.

The code has features to

  • give a notification of the caller id
  • put up a picture of the caller
  • pause a video if one is playing
  • redirect the call (within asterisk) if a video is playing
  • indicate whether there are voice mails

I have the notification running, the picture coming up, and the video being paused. I don’t use the redirect feature. Also, since my voice mail is not on Asterisk the features of voice mail aren’t being used.

I did put pictures into a folder within /Storage/Pictures/KodiPictures. The pictures here are named with the phone number, and contain a snapshot of the caller, in jpeg. If there is no picture in the folder for a particular number nothing is put up, but the notification and pausing still occur.

 

kodi, mac, xbmc

Kodi Keymap Files

Kodi control with the Harmony 1100

I have a Harmony 1100 Remote Control which I bought when I had nearly a dozen different devices that I wanted to control (cable boxes and several tivos, as well as tv, receiver, dvd player, vcr, etc). I don’t have most of this stuff anymore, since I dumped the cable and started using Kodi. So I could probably live without the Harmony Remote, but I paid a lot of money for it, so I want it to work correctly. A big part of this project, therefore, was figuring out how to get that remote to control Kodi properly. I also wanted to improve the handling of keyboards, and understand better how I could use the configuration capabilities in Kodi to get better control.

The Harmony remote software for the Harmony 1100 permits assigning to each hard button or touchscreen button, a “command”, and a “device” to which the command applies.

When a “device” is set up for control by the Harmony remote, one selects what type of device it is from the Harmony database. The database has various device types (tv, dvd player etc), including one called Media Center PC. Within each device type there are a number of specific “devices” with manufacturer (Sony, Samsung) and model number. For the device type Media Center PC, there is a manufacturer “Plex” and model “Plex Player”. There are other “manufacturers” in the database that look promising (like “kodi”), but they turn out not to have anything useful in them. The only one that has been useful for me is the one called “Plex”.

The database for a device, in this case “Plex”, has a set of what it calls “commands”, which to the user look like “Play”, “Pause”, “F3”, “Channel Up”, etc. When configuring the buttons on the remote, one can choose from that offered set of commands, and no others. For other devices with manufacturer supplied remote controls, one can create ones own “commands” by having the harmony app learn from the remote, but since there is no manufacturer supplied physical remote control for Kodi, the commands in the database are the only ones which can be assigned. One has to make do with the set of commands which are provided.
Continue reading Kodi Keymap Files →

kodi, linux, mac, ubuntu, video, xbmc

Notes on setup of HDHomeRun, tvheadend, kodi live tv

HDHomeRun provides a source of tv in htsp format. They provide an app for windows/linux/mac which enables watching the tv stream directly, and changing channels. They also provide a Kodi Add-on which allows watching the streamed material directly from there. However, this is just watching, and doesn’t enable the guide, PVR etc.

To use the built in features in Kodi for “live tv”, you have to have another piece of software, which Kodi calls the “backend”. There are apparently different backends supporting different hardware, but one of the backends is called “tvheadend”, and it supports HDHomeRun, and is supported by Kodi.

The tvheadend software has to be installed. apt-cache search tvheadend shows:
tvheadend – Tvheadend
tvheadend-dbg – Debug symbols for Tvheadend
kodi-pvr-tvheadend-hts – Kodi PVR Addon TvHeadend Hts – PVR API:1.9.2
kodi-pvr-hts – TVHeadEnd PVR for Kodi
kodi-pvr-hts-dbg – debugging symbols for TVHeadEnd PVR for Kodi

The “kodi-pvr” bits are kodi add-ons that have to be added to kodi (in linux only) in order to provide the api between kodi and the backend. Kodi for mac and windows has the pvr bits included, but they have to be added in linux.After the apt install, add-ons->my add-ons->PVR clients,  select TVHeadend HTSP Client and configure it, then Activate it.

Since the kodi I watch is on coriander (the mac mini), the pvr stuff is already installed with kodi. I only needed to install the tvheadend piece somewhere, and I put it on cinnamon where the large file media array is, so that PVR recorded material can be stored there too.
Continue reading Notes on setup of HDHomeRun, tvheadend, kodi live tv →