DISCLAIMER: Do not use file sharing to download copyrighted material.

Not much to say here. I installed μTorrent so that I would have a way to download media off bittorrent. Transmission was also a great choice for bittorrent client.

UPnP Server

The coolest thing I’ve did with this project was setup a UPnP media server. The concept was simple: music, pictures, and videos are stored on the server and shared over the UPnP network protocol. Devices, such as a PS3, can see the content on the server and play it without having to download and save locally. There are several commercial products available that allows you create a UPnP server including MediaLink, EyeConnect, and Twonky. Being the person who liked to take the hard route sometimes I decided to skip all of those and go straight to MediaTomb, the open source alternative.

1. Install the XCode Development tools from Apple
2. Download and install MacPorts
3. Open a Terminal window and run all of the following commands as either “su” or “sudo”
4. port selfupdate
5. port install mediatomb
6. Wait for MediaTomb and all of its dependencies to finish compiling
7. Once compiling is complete you can start MediaTomb by running the command “mediatomb” (no su/sudo required)
8. The output from the command will give you the web address to MediaTomb’s web interface. Using Safari or your browser of choice you can select what content you share with your media devices

For my setup I wanted to stream content to my PS3. To do that there was a change I had to make to MediaTomb’s config file that was located in ~/.mediatomb. All I had to do was uncomment the line that said <protocolInfo extend="yes"/>. I also decided to disable the ability of my PS3 to see every folder on the server. That required changing <pc-directory upnp-hide="no"/> to <pc-directory upnp-hide="yes"/>.

With MediaTomb I could also enable the use of on-the-fly media transcoding. In the event I had a file the PS3 could not play, a rule could be setup in the config file that would automatically convert the media to a more compatible format. Using this feature required a lot of testing to work out settings the PowerMac could handle. Also, because the media files are being transcoded in real time I lost the ability to pause, fast forward, and rewind on the PS3. In the end I decided to take a different approach and setup folder actions to convert only files I wanted.

MediaTomb Transcoding

I mentioned earlier that I had developed an alternative to MediaTomb’s built in transcoding feature for media files that didn’t play on the PS3. I stole the idea from Vuze, another bittorent client, which added its own UPnP server. In the event Vuze downloaded a file that wasn’t compatible with the PS3 it would re-encode the file completely and then share the new version instead of the non-compatible version.

I was able to accomplish almost the same functionality using FFMPEG, folder actions, and MediaTomb’s built-in directory scan feature. If I had a file that did not work then I moved it to a folder called “convert”. Attached to that folder was an Applescript action that would tell FFMPEG to covert the file to a new format and save it in another folder called “compatible”. I then configured MediaTomb to scan the “compatible” folder every hour for new files and make them available to the PS3. For everything to work I had to rebuild FFMPEG to include codecs for aac, mp3, x264, and xvid. Below is the commands for MacPortsid

port deactivate ffmpeg
port install -f ffmpeg +nonfree

Below are the applescripts I wrote for the folder actions. When a file dropped into a folder the action would initiate the script and start processing the file through FFMPEG. Based on testing I had done some video files only needed the audio re-encoded for the PS3. Others required a complete re-encode. I’ll admit the PowerMac didn’t have the power to re-encode at realtime speeds, but I normally let it take care of files during the night or while I was at work.

Re-encoding only audio of a video file example:

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving these_items
repeat with i in these_items
set {name:Nm} to (info for i)
set Nm to quoted form of Nm as string
set vFolder to quoted form of POSIX path of this_folder as string
set vSource to quoted form of POSIX path of i as string
try
do shell script "/opt/local/bin/ffmpeg -y -i " & vSource & " -vn -f mp3 -ab 192k -ac 2 -ar 44100 " & vFolder & "converted/" & Nm & ".mp3"
on error
display dialog "There was an error when re-encoding " & Nm
end try
end repeat
end adding folder items to


Re-encoding Audio and video example:

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving these_items
repeat with i in these_items
set {name:Nm} to (info for i)
set Nm to quoted form of Nm as string
set vFolder to quoted form of POSIX path of this_folder as string
set vSource to quoted form of POSIX path of i as string
try
do shell script "/opt/local/bin/ffmpeg -y -i " & vSource & " -vcodec libxvid -vb 1000k -acodec libmp3lame -ar 44100 -ab 128k -ac 2 " & vFolder & "converted/" & Nm & ".avi"
on error
display dialog "There was an error when re-encoding " & Nm
end try
end repeat
end adding folder items to


Starting Meidatomb during startup:

1. Created a plain text file with the command /opt/local/bin/mediatomb -d
2. Save the file as mediatomb.command
3. Open a terminal window
4. Run the command chmod +x _folder_location_/mediatomb.command
5. Open System Preferences and go to Accounts
6. Select the account that auto logs in and select Login Items
7. Add mediatomb.command

With enough time and patience I could create a start lauch daemon to take care of starting MediaTomb up as a service, but I took the lazy man’s approach.

Next time: Other odds and things

OS Configuration

I decided to keep the partition layout in OS X simple. The OS would live on the 320GB hard drive. The 2TB drives would not have any special RAID configuration. Just one partition on each drive. Ideally I would have used 3x 2TB hard drives and configured them into a hardware RAID 5 configuration. That would have gave me 4TB of total storage with redundancy in the event one of the hard drives failed. Sadly the FirmTek SATA controller didn’t support any kind of hardware RAID and OS X didn’t support software RAID 5.

Backup Server

Creating a backup server was the easiest part to setup. On the server all I had to do was open up the Sharing System Preferences and enable AFP/SMB file sharing. Now the drives were available to other systems in my network. To get my Mac and Windows systems to use the network storage for backup required configuration on their end.

OS X:
Open up a terminal window and enter the following command.
defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1
Using network shares other than an Apple Time Capsule is completely unsupported by Apple. Users previously reported issues when a drive filled up, which caused their entire Time Machine backup to become corrupt. I’m uncertain if the the issues were ever resolved in 10.6 but to test I followed the advice of some and added a disk quota for the backup’s sparse bundle. Right now I’ve yet to hit the limit so I don’t know what to expect when I do.

Windows 7:
Windows Vista/7 came with a built in backup utility that allowed for the use of network shares as a storage location. That is great if it wasn’t for the fact Vista/7 also broke authentication when connecting to Windows shares hosted on OS X 10.5. The problem was remedied by making an edit to the system with “gpedit.msc”. Information was found at the following link: http://www.windowsreference.com/windows-7/unable-to-access-network-share-on-macos-x-from-windows-7/. With the authentication issues sorted out it was possible to configure Windows 7 to perform a full backup of the system drive on a regular basis.

Next Post: Media Sharing

Friends,
Do you surf the web on a mobile phone?
Do you find that experience too rich and interactive?
Do you wish for a simpler Internet experience while on the go?
What if I told you there was a way? A way to surf the Internet anywhere there is a cellular signal?
And do it from a Newton?

Introducing: WiFi Tether 3.1 Beta 11. Now with WiFi Tether you can turn your mobile phone into a mobile wifi hotspot and allow any wireless device to connect on the go.

How much would you be willing to pay for a product like this? $20? $50? $100? Now for an unlimited time you can have Wifi Tether 3.1 Beta 11 for the low price of $0.00. To prove how easy this product it I’m going to demonstrate on an Apple Newton 2000 MessagePad. Just watch:

1. Download WiFi Tether from http://code.google.com/p/android-wifi-tether/
2. Launch “WiFi Tether” from the apps drawer
   
   
3. On the Newton open the wifi slip set the SSID to “AndroidTether”
   
4. Open your favorite Internet application to bring up the connection slip
5. Use a Internet setup configured for DHCP
   
6. And connect to your desired Internet website/service

Here you can see the Newton connected to Google’s PDA formatted homepage using the Newt’sCape web browser. Nothing special except I downloaded the site over Verizon 3G.

Here you can see WiFi Tether showing that a device has connected wirelessly. The MAC address prefix belongs to Lucent Technologies who made the WaveLAN Turbo card I have.

And there you have it. A connected Newton or computer anywhere you go. Couldn’t be simpler.

Have fun.

This year I thought it was time to finally build a physical media server and move all of my music, videos, and old documents off my PCs. The original plan was to build a server using a mini-ITX motherboard with 4 SATA ports, and 3x 2 terabyte hard drives in a RAID 5 configuration, stuffed inside the smallest case possible. The system, in theory, would sit behind my TV and share everything out using FreeNAS.

Unfortunately, those plans have not worked out so now I’m falling back on an alternative. Why not take an old computer I already have and turn it into the storage I want?

The Base System:

What I’m starting with is my 2001 Quicksilver PowerMac G4. It is by no means a fast computer by today’s standards, but all I need it to do is store/share files. For that the system should do fine. If you are looking at the photos and thinking that doesn’t look stock then you are correct. Over the years I replaced many of the components so let me get you up to speed.

• 2001 Quicksilver PowerMac G4
• 2x 1.8 GHz PowerPC 7447 processor from GigaDesigns
• 3x 512MB PC133 SDRAM
• ATi Radeon 9800 Pro video card w/ Artic Cooling ATi Silencer 1 NVIDIA Geforce 2MX
• Pioneer 111D DVD burner
• Generic USB 2.0 PCI card from CompUSA
• Silenx iXtrema Pro fans

So that is the base system I’m starting with. To get the PowerMac ready I need a little bit more hardware. Namely a PCI hard drive controller. If anyone has upgraded G4 PowerMacs then you may know that every system before the 2002 Quicksilver PowerMac does not have 48-bit LBA on the PATA interfaces. In simple terms it means the motherboard cannot read hard drive beyond 137GB. To get around that a PCI hard drive controller is required. My choice is the FirmTek SeriTek/1V4 SATA controller from OWC. It adds four SATA ports that operate at 1.5Gb/s with ability to boot from a SATA drive. The 1.5Gb/s throughput may create another bottleneck, but I want to get off of booting from a PATA drive since that will be even slower. If I didn’t care about the ability to boot from a SATA drive then an alternative would be the Rosewill RC-217 controller that had 3Gb/s support. The Rosewill controller is built off of a Silicon Image 3124 SATA controller, which has OS X drivers.

The Parts:

• FirmTek SeriTek/1V4 SATA PCI-X controller
• 2x 2TB Western Digital Caviar Green 3.5” hard drives (3Gb/s)
• 1x 320GB Western Digital Scorpio 2.5” hard drive
• Molex to SATA power adapters
• SATA data cables (2 provided with FirmTek controller)

The Installation:

The installation of all the new hardware isn’t very difficult. I did rearrange the hard drive trays so that everything was as low in the case as possible. I went with a laptop hard drive for the boot drive mainly because I wanted something with low power and not very large capacity wise. Ideally I should have bought a drive bay adapter, but this computer shouldn’t move from its current location. The SATA controller plugs into an empty PCI slot and the hard drives connect through regular SATA cables. Power comes from using some adapters that convert Molex connectors to SATA.

Finally the last thing to do is install OS X, in this case 10.5. I had contemplated running a variant of GNU/Linux, but most major distributions have dropped PPC support. There are still ways to get the most up to date versions of OSes like Ubuntu and Fedora, but that is more work then I wanted to put into this build. Yes, I have installed GNU/Linux on both my PowerMac and PowerBook before, but there were issues (especially getting booted up from the install media).

In the next post I will go into detail about the software I’m running.

Note: You may see the strike through above for my PowerMac’s video card. In initial testing I plugged a Kill A Watt up to see the power draw of the system. I was surprised to find the computer was drawing 200 watts of power both during idle and peak usage. That told me that 1. the computer’s power management isn’t very good with all the upgrades I’ve performed and 2. over the course of the year I would pay an extra $125 to power it. For fun I replaced the ATi Radeon 9800 Pro with the OEM NVIDIA Geforce 2 MX. The Kill A Watt said the computer was using 160 watts after the downgrade and equaled $25 in savings.

All of that is great if you are using a Mac with an ADC video card or even an ADC adapter (the brightness controls are controlled through the USB connection), but there is no way to control the monitor from a Windows PC natively. Luckily there is the Internet and the great world of open source software. A few years ago a guy by the name of Laurent Morichetti wrote an application called WinACD. The function of the program was simple; give Windows XP users the same control over their ACD monitors as Mac users have.

The installation process is simple.

1. Download WinACD from http://sourceforge.net/projects/winacd/.
2. With the monitor’s USB cable disconnected, run the WinACD installer.
3. If any popups appear saying the drivers are not signed click “Continue Anyway”.
4. Once the installation is finished plug in the USB cable from the monitor.

Controlling the monitor settings is as simple on XP as they are on a Mac now. When looking at the advanced display settings a new tab is available. Under it there are controls for the brightness and monitor buttons. There is also an option to control the monitor’s brightness using shortcut keys.

There are a few issues with WinACD. There has been no development on the program since 2006 so it does not support any of the new LED Cinema Displays. WinACD doesn’t work on any 64-bit version of Windows. Also, as you can see my screenshots I cannot change any of the settings for the monitor buttons. That is probably just specific to monitor I am using. If you can over look those issues then WinACD is a great application for anybody using an Apple Cinema Display.

For what it is, GIMP is a great application: a complete image editing program with the ability to rival Adobe Photoshop. On top of that GIMP is free, open source, and available for many different operating systems. Personally, I have one issue with the current version of GIMP. Because I use OS X on my PowerBook GIMP has to be rendered in X11. That wouldn’t be a big problem if it wasn’t for the fact GIMP breaks the toolbox, image window, and layers/channel/paths into individual windows. The File, Edit, View menus also exist within the main window, which breaks the OS X GUI standards for having a unified menu bar at the stop of the screen. See the example of what I’m talking about below.

Some would argue that OS X is the primary problem because its interface does not follow conventions used by other operating systems. While that may be true I do not want to get into the debate of the reasoning behind interface design. That’s something like the people at Ubuntu are thinking about as they decide which corner of a window the Exit button is placed. Rather, I would like to look at the three options available for Mac users who want to use GIMP and help with a few of the annoyances.

1. GIMP 2.6 + X11 hack

The simplest way to use GIMP is to download the binary package available from http://gimp.lisanet.de/Website/Download.html. This is the latest stable version of GIMP and is a self-contained application with all of the library and support files bundled. All the user has to do is download the correct version of GIMP for their OS and install. As I mentioned earlier GIMP separates everything into separate windows. Because of the design of X11 for OSX when a user wants to change the tool in use they must first click on the toolbox window to activate it and then click the tool they want to use. So that’s an extra click for every tool change, layer change, etc. The solution is to enable a preference setting for X11 that follows the focus of the mouse. So if the user moves their mouse pointer over the toolbox window, that window will become active and they can choose the desired tool. Here are the steps
1. Open Terminal
2. Copy, paste the following setting into the Terminal window

a. Tiger: defaults write com.apple.x11 wm_ffm -bool true
b. Leopard/Snow Leopard: defaults write org.x.X11 wm_ffm -bool true

3. Press Enter

2. GIMP 2.6 with Quartz Rendering

An alternative to the standard version of GIMP is to build custom version and have Quartz support. Quartz is the built in screen renderer of OS X. Everything you see on the Mac desktop, from the icons and text, to the menu bar and windows, are all drawn using Quartz. So if GIMP uses Quartz then many of the GUI problems should go away. There is one problem though. Getting GIMP to use OS X’s built in Quartz renderer instead of X11 is no easy feat. There is no precompiled binary or bundle of this “variant” so the only option is to compile the software yourself. Back in the day before there were installation managers for OS X and GNU/Linux distros, a user would need to find out what libraries and programs were needed to compile a specific application. Today that is automated with tools like MacPorts of OS X. The result is a version of GIMP that uses the menu bar of OS X and the tools on any window are one click away. Here are the steps for building GIMP with quartz support

1. Go to http://www.macports.org
2. Follow the instructions for installing MacPorts, and Xcode tools
3. Follow the instructions for updating MacPorts
4. Run the following command: sudo port install gimp2 –x11 +quartz +no_x11
5. Wait for the next 12-48 hours for MacPorts to download and compile the 194 support applications/libraries required to build GIMP
6. Once the compilation and installation is complete, execute the following command to start GIMP: gimp

*Note: If you have trouble compiling or starting GIMP, see the appendix below

3. GIMP 2.7

The final option, and probably the best long term solution, for making GIMP work better on OS X is actually being integrated directly into the application by the developers. In the current development build of GIMP there is an option to make exist inside one single window. With one window the issues currently plagued by the GUI implementation for OS X should go away. The Toolbox and Layers window should be easily accessible without the currently required workarounds. Again, there is no precompiled, ready to use package of GIMP 2.7 for Mac. The software will have to be compiled using MacPorts using the steps below. GIMP 2.7 coupled with being compiled to use Quartz instead of X11 would be a very combination. Sure it won’t unseat Photoshop as the king of photo manipulation applications, but would give Mac users, like myself, a free alternative.

1. Go to http://www.macports.org
2. Follow the instructions for installing MacPorts, and Xcode tools
3. Follow the instructions for updating MacPorts
4. Run the following command: sudo port install gimp2-devel
5. Wait for the next 12-48 hours for MacPorts to download and compile the 195 support applications/libraries required to compile GIMP
6. Once the compilation and installation is complete, execute the following command to start GIMP: gimp

Arstechnica has a good article discussing the new single window interface available for GIMP as well as screenshots http://arstechnica.com/open-source/reviews/2010/02/hands-on-new-single-window-mode-makes-gimp-less-gimpy.ars.

*Note: I have been able to compile GIMP 2.7 on my PowerMac G4, but not start the. I am plagued with a “segmentation fault” error message.

Appendix

After I compiled GIMP I ran into the following error message, “Dynamic session lookup supported but failed. launchd did not provide a socket path, verify that org.freedesktop.dbus-session.plist is loaded”. Based on the comments made in the MacPorts bug tracker the solution is to restart the computer. If that doesn’t work then running the following command should resolve the problem

sudo launchctl load –w /Library/LaunchAgents/org.freedesktop.dbus-session.plist

While buildng GIMP 2.7 I also ran into an issue with compiling the support program ATLAS. The problem was caused by the fact my PowerMac G4 has an aftermarket processor and sometimes is mis-identified by applications. When ATLAS tried to configure the following error message was the result.

It appears you have CPU throttling enabled, which makes timings unreliable and an ATLAS install nonsensical. Aborting. See ATLAS/INSTALL.txt for further information

With the processor I have, the GigaDesigns PowerPC 7447 dual 1.8GHz CPU, there is no option to turn off CPU throttling. I doubt there is even a way to enable it. So instead I had to force ATLAS to ignore the error message, go ahead, and compile. This was the first time I ever had to do a custom build of MacPorts package. Here is what I did.

1. Created a new folder on my computer and named it “MacPortsFiles”
2. Found the portfile and custom files used to compile ATLAS from Macports: http://svn.macports.org/repository/macports/trunk/dports/math/atlas/
3. Downloaded all of the files and folder structure to the MacPortsFiles folder (example: /MacPortsFiles/math/atlas)
4. Edited the file /opt/local/etc/macports/sources.conf

a. Added the following line about the source list: file:///MacPortsFiles/

5. Ran the following command. touch /MacPortsFiles/math/atlas/portfile
6. Ran the following command. portindex
7. Edited the file /MacPortsFiles/math/atalas/portfile

a. Found the following block of text and added the flag -Si cputhrchk 0
Before:

if {[string equal "${os.arch}" "powerpc"]} {
configure.args-append -D c -DWALL
} else {
configure.args-append -D c -DPentiumCPS=${cpufreq}
}

After:

if {[string equal "${os.arch}" "powerpc"]} {
configure.args-append -D c -DWALL -Si cputhrchk 0
} else {
configure.args-append -D c -DPentiumCPS=${cpufreq} -Si cputhrchk 0
}

8. Compile GIMP again. It will pickup where the error occurred.

Have fun.