Category: Software

QuickTime (Part 3)

stany

Background

I have an iBook G4, that has a 32 meg Radeon 9200 mobile video card, that is below the minimal requirements for CoreImage. Technically CoreImage is supposed to be scalable, and if it can’t do a particular efffect on the video card GPU, it should try doing it on AltiVec unit of the processor, and, in event that the system lacks an AltiVec unit, it should fall back to the CPU.

In reality lack of CoreImage support doesn’t cramp one’s style all that much. I miss some graphical features of the GUI, which is cosmetics. However, occasionally it interferes with productivity, and pisses me off.

Consider the following example:

QuickTime 7 Pro and video adjustments

QuickTime have been coming in “free” and “pro” variety for a long while. The features that 29.95 USD Pro version has are numerous, but amongst the most notorious are:

  • ability to save some of the streamed media to hard drive
  • ability to export files to different formats
  • ability to do some rudimentary merging of video tracks using cut and paste
  • ability to adjust brightness, tint, contrast and colors of the video
  • ability to correct audio balance, etc.

All of the above features work reasonably well under QuickTime Pro 6.5.2, although color corrections are rather clunky and are represented as a slider on screen. However you can see the adjustments as the movie plays. Here is what it looks like (220K).

Tiger came with QuickTime 7, and once I entered the QT7Pro license key, one of the things that didn’t work on my iBook was color corrections. Apple-K presented me with options to modify the audio settings, but not the video settings.

Technically you can get video adjustments to work by performing the following steps: Export -> Options -> Video Filter and doing a bunch of adjustments there, however there is no fun in waiting for a few minutes in order to see if your guesswork was correct.

This is Broken[TM].

So I did some digging. Inside QuickTime Player.app there are two files: AvControls.nib and AVcontrolsMinimal.nib. One gets used when the system detects CoreImage supported video card, and the other one when it doesn’t.

My hypothesis was that if I were to swap the two around, I’ll get access to video controls:

First I copied QuickTime Player to a different directory, and then dropped to command line:

stany@gilva:~[05:11 PM]$ cd /Applications/extras/QuickTime Player.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj/
stany@gilva:/Applications/extras/QuickTime Player.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj[05:11 PM]$ ls -dal AV*
drwxrwxr-x   5 root  admin  170 Jun  5 08:09 AVControls.nib
drwxrwxr-x   5 root  admin  170 Jun  5 08:09 AVControlsMinimal.nib
stany@gilva:/Applications/extras/QuickTime Player.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj[05:11 PM]$ 
stany@gilva:/Applications/extras/QuickTime Player.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj[05:14 PM]$ sudo /bin/bash
Password:
root@gilva:/Applications/QuickTime Player.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj[05:14 PM]#  
mv AVControls.nib AVControls.nib_ && mv AVControlsMinimal.nib AVControls.nib && mv 
AVControls.nib_ AVControlsMinimal.nib
root@gilva:/Applications/QuickTime Player.app/Contents/Resources/English.lproj[05:14 PM]#

After adjustment, on a non-CoreImage enabled system Apple-K menu looked like this.

Sadly, under Tiger the sliders for video correction still do not work, as they are dependent on CoreImage. However, I wonder if they do work on Panther (10.3). If they do, then likely this is the solution that would work for folks who haven’t upgraded yet. You see, there might be a reason to be a struggler. Comments, please.

Lastly, I wanted to give my modified version of QuickTime Player.app a different version string, so that I could see it when I ctrl-click on the movie, and select “Open with”. In order to do that, I ctrl-clicked on the QuickTime Player.app, and selected “show package contents”. Inside Contents folder, I’ve opened version.plist and Info.plist in Property List Editor. In Info.plist Root, I’ve changed CFBundleGetInfoString so that I know it was changed by me when I get info on the application, CFBundleShortVersionString and CFBundleVersion both to 7.0.1-stany and saved Info.plist. In version.plist I’ve modified CFBundleShortVersionString and CFBundleVersion to match the changes I did in Info.plist, leaving the rest of the properties the same.

Now, If I ctrl-click on a file QT recognizes, and scroll to “Open with”, it looks like this.

Last paragraph is the usual step needed to change a version of any application as recognized by the operating system. I should probably do something like this to all of those pesky Real Players, that I’ve been dealing with.

In closing, inside Info.plist it’s also possible to adjust the filename extensions and the icons that QuickTime is supposed to be able to handle. So you can rename your .mp3 files to, say, .jd, and associate just QT with these files (Barring presence of resource fork, etc, of course).

QuickTime (part 2)

stany

Another braindump.

Somehow I ended up at PBS Nova Science Now page. It had lots of shiny TV goodness that I wanted to watch. Of course there also was a warning on the page saying This program is not available for downloading due to rights reasons.. Rights. Right.

First restriction was trivially bypassed. Netblock I am using is registered in Eugine, Oregon (which has a funny side effect that some web sites insist on hooking me up with “hot girls in Eugine”), which is actually correct, as I lease this /24 from it’s american owner.

So as far as PBS was concerned, I were tax paying merkin, and thus can be permitted to watch their programming (produced by taxpayer money). I can’t verify it right now, however I believe that they out right don’t permit folks connecting from outside US to view videos. *sigh* By the way, BBC does the same thing to some of their on-line content.

So QuickTime video was happily streaming off their web page. Due to pecularities of my network setup, that lead me to believe that they use HTTP protocol for content delivery. I viewed source, and grabbed http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/video/nsn-wrap-new.mov (Feedback please. Does it play in your browser when you click this link?) , which when played in QT quickly sent me to http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/video/rights_restrictions.gif. Right. So it plays from inside the browser, streaming, but not from HD. Joy, PBS.

Eventually I gave up and sniffed traffic ( tcpdump -i en1 -s 0 -w cookie ; strings cookie ). Noticed the following insteresting file: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/video/3204-new.xml (Sorry, not a hyperlink, as I want you to copy/paste it, thus this post not ending up in referer field – it might raise questions, as it’s not meant to be accessed by a browser).

It refers to a bunch of .mov files, that the program consists of, plus the “captions” for each part of the main movie.

Groovy. 

wget --user-agent="QTS (qtver=7.0.1;cpu=PPC;os=Mac 10.4.1)" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/video/3204-new.xml

wget --user-agent="QTS (qtver=7.0.1;cpu=PPC;os=Mac 10.4.1)" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/video/3204-00-ref.mov

This one is another container file. I had to save it and strings on it, to figure out the main file name. It is available in two qualities: 3204-00-300.mov and 3204-00-56.mov

so 

wget --user-agent="QTS (qtver=7.0.1;cpu=PPC;os=Mac 10.4.1)" http://www.pbs.org/media/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/video/3204-00-300.mov

worked.

root@gilva:~/pbs[04:27 AM]# grep vidURL 3204-new.xml |sed 's/ref.mov/300.mov/g ; s/^.*http/wget --user-agent="QTS (qtver=6.5.2;cpu=PPC;os=Mac 10.4.1)" http/g ; s/< .*$//g ; s//video//g ; s/wgbh/media/wgbh/g' 
wget --user-agent="QTS (qtver=6.5.2;cpu=PPC;os=Mac 10.4.1)" http://www.pbs.org/media/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3204-00-300.mov
wget --user-agent="QTS (qtver=6.5.2;cpu=PPC;os=Mac 10.4.1)" http://www.pbs.org/media/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3204-01-300.mov
wget --user-agent="QTS (qtver=6.5.2;cpu=PPC;os=Mac 10.4.1)" http://www.pbs.org/media/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3204-02-300.mov
wget --user-agent="QTS (qtver=6.5.2;cpu=PPC;os=Mac 10.4.1)" http://www.pbs.org/media/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3204-03-300.mov
wget --user-agent="QTS (qtver=6.5.2;cpu=PPC;os=Mac 10.4.1)" http://www.pbs.org/media/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3204-04-300.mov
wget --user-agent="QTS (qtver=6.5.2;cpu=PPC;os=Mac 10.4.1)" http://www.pbs.org/media/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3204-05-300.mov
root@gilva:~/pbs[04:27 AM]#

Now, these don't play in stand-alone QT and refer you back to the "Rights" image. However VLC will happily play them.

*sigh*

I am going to bed now.

QuickTime (Part I)

stany

Note: This is just a quick braindump, so probably is inconclusive, and makes no sense

Situation

A few days ago LIVE8 concerts were held in major cities around the world. Most interesting (to me, YMMV, of course) was the reunion of Pink Floyd after over 10 years of not being around, with Roger Waters being on stage with the rest of the classic lineup for the first time in 24 years. Wow.

AOL has the license for the internet distribution of the videos, and has a reasonably nice site from which the clips can be streamed using QuckTime.

Clips are really good quality, where quality of the video was not sacrifised in favor of bandwidth. Thank you, AOL, you rock.

If one clicks on the little tab by the song name, a window pops up in which clip plays. One can view source, search for “mov”, and eventually find http URL to the actual file. So I grabbed the 4 Pink Floyd songs.

Problem

When I proceeded to play them in QuickTime, they played great. But every silver lining has a cloud – I wanted to build a playlist, where the songs would be played in sequence.

iTunes kind of helped – I am not a big iTunes user, but I imported .mov files into it, made a playlist, arranged them in sequence, and it kind of worked. There were two snags, however – there were ~2 second gaps between songs, and it was audio only. Grumble. I wanted something that could just play them all.

I could have used VLC.app, I guess. I just verified that it plays these tracks, and it has the concept of playlist down pat. But instead I fired up QT Pro 6.5.2, selected whole video, and wanted to paste it together with the next song, etc, to merge 4 songs into one 20 minute long video.

Of course nothing happened. QT had the copy and paste controls grayed out.

So I attempted to export it. It popped up a window telling me Couldn’t export “‘Breathe’ (LIVE 8)” because this movie doesn’t allow saving. Aaaarrrgggh!

Aimless wandering in the dark, searching for solution

So fater about half an hour of googling I learned that many others run into this problem. Seems like this “feature” of QuickTime got noticed when certain movie trailers (ST: Nemesis is one, apparently) were exported to QT with “do not allow modification” bit set. This had the added benefit of forbidding QT Pro to save the file to HD, and irked some folks to no end.

Hacker’s Guide to QuickTime (Which actually has lots of rather useless pointers, such as “open web page with QT component in browser, and then find the cached file in browser’s cache to save file to HD”, which doesn’t work as most of the time now browser just loads a small file (example) that in turn loads the rest of the content, if it feels like it, or folks actually deploy QuickTime Streaming Server, and browsers generally don’timplement RTSP protocol) mentions that:

Video editing programs like Cleaner allow authors to save movies in such a way that further changes to the movie are disallowed. When the author saves the movie, he simply enables the “disallow saving” check box. Some filmmakers chose to do this to prevent others from altering their work. Others chose this option to discourage users from making local copies of movies viewed online.

So this had a glimmer of hope: If I were to obtain the right software, I could make a small (2 – 3 seconds) source file, import it into video editing package, tell it to save once without disallowing saving, and once with, hexdump both files, and diff them. My stipulation is that it’s just a byte or two in the header, that QuickTime happily follows. If I were to know which ones, I potentially could just hexedit the restriction out, and solve my problem.

At this point for some reason I got diverted, and instead of investigating “Cleaner”, went and grabbed Sorenson Squeeze 4.1. Site e-mailed me confirmation and the above URL to the download package.

Sorensen Squeeze is VISE X packaged blob of data that has 30 day free trial, and that will watermark generated files (until you license it). I didn’t care about watermarking, as as long as it generates both protected and unprotected file identically, it’s not a big deal. I know save restriction doesn’t encrypt the file, as VLC.app happily plays them back.

After playing with Sorensen for a while, I realized that a) It does a rather poor job converting other QT files to requested form at(frame dropping. Gave it an 80K/sec mpeg4 inside QT container file (La Tortura from one of my earlier articles), and told it to generate 750K/sec result. Result had 8 frame/sec output, and was choppy as heck (source was 16 frames/sec). Maybe it’s another restriction of the 30 day demo) and b) I couldn’t find the menu to disable save in Squeeze’s features nor in documentation.

At this point I gave up in disgust, and uninstalled Sorensen Squeeze 4.1.

Another complaint about VISE X. Why the F*&^ does it demand that all other applications must be closed during uninstall of software? It demanded none such thing during install. I am not about to close Safari with 35 windows, nor X11 with 8 xterms. Aaargh, what a piece of crap. MS Media Player for Mac is also packaged with it, and in that case it actually demands admin password just to install an application into /Applications. WHY?

So this is as far I made it.

Questions

  • Is there a way to extract files from VISE installers, specifically out of Install.data, without running the installer? I always fear that it will spew files all over my system, and I’ll never find them.
  • Any advice about “Cleaner”? Admitedly I am reluctant to put this here, as I’m yet to google it.
  • Anyone has any experience dealing with QT restrictions?

CF and IO undefined symbols

stany

When building something probably written for Unix (I were fudging s10sh), you might eventually end up with undefined symbols such as:

gcc -O2 -Wall -g -I./libusb -o s10sh main.o crc.o usb.o serial.o common.o 
bar.o  -lreadline -ltermcap libusb/.libs/libusb.a
ld: Undefined symbols:
_CFRunLoopAddSource
_CFRunLoopGetCurrent
_CFRunLoopRun
_CFRunLoopStop
_CFUUIDGetConstantUUIDWithBytes
_CFUUIDGetUUIDBytes
_IOCreatePlugInInterfaceForService
_IOIteratorNext
_IOMasterPort
_IONotificationPortCreate
_IONotificationPortGetRunLoopSource
_IOObjectRelease
_IOServiceAddMatchingNotification
_IOServiceMatching
_kCFRunLoopDefaultMode
make: *** [s10sh] Error 1

The IOService errors can be fixed by -lIOKit thusly:

stany@gilva:~/src/s10sh-0.2.2[07:52 PM]$ gcc -O2 -Wall -g -I./libusb -o s10sh 
main.o crc.o usb.o serial.o common.o bar.o  -lreadline -ltermcap libusb/.libs/libusb.a -lIOKit
ld: Undefined symbols:
_CFRunLoopAddSource
_CFRunLoopGetCurrent
_CFRunLoopRun
_CFRunLoopStop
_CFUUIDGetConstantUUIDWithBytes
_CFUUIDGetUUIDBytes
_kCFRunLoopDefaultMode
stany@gilva:~/src/s10sh-0.2.2[07:53 PM]$

but the “proper” way to fix it is:

stany@gilva:~/src/s10sh-0.2.2[07:53 PM]$ gcc -O2 -Wall -g -I./libusb -o s10sh 
main.o crc.o usb.o serial.o common.o bar.o  -lreadline -ltermcap libusb/.libs/libusb.a  -framework IOKit -framework CoreFoundation
stany@gilva:~/src/s10sh-0.2.2[07:53 PM]$ 

stany@gilva:~/src/s10sh-0.2.2[07:54 PM]$ ./s10sh -u
USB mode enabled
S10sh -- version 0.2.2
Copyright (C) 2000-2001 by Salvatore Sanfilippo 
S10sh is FREE SOFTWARE under the terms of the GNU public license

[Canon PowerShot A75] > ls
ls error
[Canon PowerShot A75] >

*sigh*

Installing Roundup on Mac OS X

David Rostenne

I decided that I needed to install an issue-tracker for the support work I am doing, as jobs were trying to fall through the cracks.

This is the process I went through to install Roundup on Mac OS X 10.4.1 client, minus all the swearing, googling and reading the mailing list archives.

I grabbed the latest version, roundup-0.8.3.tar.gz, from Sourceforge and extracted it into a temporary directory. The README.txt led me to the Install Guide located in the doc folder.

From there I:

loki:~$ python run_tests.py

Which gave no errors..

Then I went back and followed the Basic Install steps:

loki:~$ sudo python setup.py install --install-scripts=/Users/davidr/bin

This installed everything as normal, except the administration scripts, which were installed in my bin/ directory.

I then created the storage space form my trackers:

loki:~$ mkdir ~/Documents/roundup/trackers

This is where the Support tracker will live, and any others in the future…

Then I installed the tracker:

loki:~$ roundup-admin install
Enter tracker home: /Users/davidr/Documents/roundup/trackers/support
Templates: classic-demo,minimal, classic
Select template [classic]: 
Back ends: anydbm
Select backend [anydbm]: 

 You should now edit the tracker configuration file:
   /Users/davidr/Documents/roundup/trackers/support/config.ini
 ... at a minimum, you must set following options:
   [mail]: domain, host
   [tracker]: web
loki:~$

This is where things got confusing, as the references in the Documentation are to “MAILHOST, TRACKER_WEB, MAIL_DOMAIN and ADMIN_EMAIL.” Which do not exist by these names in the config.ini file.

Since the tracker will only be used by me, I am putting it on localhost, and email will be disabled.

I opened /Users/davidr/Documents/roundup/trackers/support/config.ini and edited the following:

instant_registration = yes
# Avoids email confirmation for new users

web = http://localhost:8080/support/
# This is where I will access my tracker

In the section [mail] I also had to set these so the tracker would run, even though I will not use email;
domain = local
host = loki.local # my machine’s local name

Then in the [nosy] section I also changed:
messages_to_author = no
add_author = no
This is likely not needed as nosy gets disabled soon…

Now to initialise the tracker database:

loki:~$ roundup-admin initialise
Enter tracker home: /Users/davidr/Documents/roundup/trackers/support
Admin Password: (You need to create one!)
Confirm: (re-enter the same one from the previous line)

After that you need to get to the web interface, I decided to use the built in server and so all I did was to run:

loki:~$ roundup-server support=/Users/davidr/Documents/roundup/trackers/support/

and that notified me that it was running: “Roundup server started on :8080”, so I went to the page I defined in config.ini: http://localhost:8080/support/

Create a new user, and you are almost ready to use the system.

After that I needed to disable the email, and create a more automatic way to launch the server:

Disabled the use of ‘nosy’ ie. the email interface, see FAQ.

loki:~$ mv /Users/davidr/Documents/roundup/trackers/support/detectors/nosyreaction.py /Users/davidr/Documents/roundup/trackers/support/detectors/nosyreaction.py_disabled

I then created a double-clickable terminal file which will launch the Roundup server. Open a new terminal window, and then go File:Save as: and named it “Support Roundup Server” and set ‘Execute this command’ to

/Users/davidr/bin/roundup-server support=/Users/davidr/Documents/roundup/trackers/support/

I also checked the ‘Execute this command in a shell’. Now when I double click the file it launches the roundup server and I can watch the log as it goes by. Once I get tired of it and am convinced it works without me looking at it.. I will figure out a way to launch it when I login, and run it in the background and have errors go to a logfile.

Tiger: Differences between stock and Apple OpenSSH

stany 3 Comments

Adam asked me to look if my OpenSSH install also does SRV lookups when attempting to resolve hostnames.

Under Tiger (10.4.1, md5sum of the OpenSSH binary is b582a5b1da5999b6832dec6cb9477917 /usr/bin/ssh, OpenSSH_3.8.1p1, OpenSSL 0.9.7b 10 Apr 2003) it indeed behaves the same way as Adam describes.

Under Panther (10.3.9, md5sum of OpenSSH binary is 878ef654570e14c103a20b54afe3c417 /usr/bin/ssh OpenSSH_3.6.1p1+CAN-2004-0175, SSH protocols 1.5/2.0, OpenSSL 0x0090702f) I am not seeing any SRV lookups at all.

So I started investigating.

I’ve pulled own OpenSSH from Darwin 8.1 (corresponding to 10.4.1) from http://darwinsource.opendarwin.org/tarballs/other/OpenSSH-56.tar.gz, and the “correct” build from OpenSSH site

diff file was 940K in size, (vast majority of the differences were due to the fact that newer version of autoconf was run on Apple’s sources, and regenerated all the “configure” framework anew) and let me put it this way – OpenSSH as Apple ships it has a whole lot of differences compared to portable OpenSSH 3.8.1p1.

patches subdirectory of Apple tree has most of the patches, but something is telling me that possibly not all of them.

So how is SSH as shipped by Apple differs from SSH as shipped by the portable team of the OpenSSH project?

  • Support for BSM (Basic Security Module) framework, under Solaris, and under MacOS X.
    As an aside – what’s up with BSM and auditing under MacOS X? Solaris (OK, I looked at Solaris 8, maybe things changed in Sol 10) has /etc/security/* with things like audit_class, audit_event, tools to enable and disable auditing, etc. 104.1 has /var/audit that is empty (Obviously – Auditing is not enabled), and prints two lines during kernel boot-up: 

    Jun 24 04:13:15 localhost kernel[0]: Security auditing service present
Jun 24 04:13:15 localhost kernel[0]: BSM auditing present

    Anyone has any idea how to actually tweak what gets audited, etc? /usr/include/bsm/ exists, so technically one can attempt to build Solaris BSM tools, but what would Brian Costello^W^WApple do?

  • HEIMDAL support
  • CCAPI – Credentials Caching
  • Fix for Mindrot bug 874 – Swapped parameters of SSH_FXP_SYMLINK packet of SFTP protocol 
    +/*
+ * "Blind" conversation function for password authentication.  Assumes that
+ * echo-off prompts are for the password and stores messages for later
+ * display.
+ */
  • PAM support for password authentication.
  • Under MacOS X uses Security/AuthSession.h AuthSession – APIs for managing login, authorization, and security Sessions.
    from sshd.c:

    +#ifdef USE_SECURITY_SESSION_API
+        /*
+         * Create a new security session for use by the new user login if
+         * the current session is the root session or we are not launched
+         * by inetd (eg: debugging mode or server mode).  We do not
+         * necessarily need to create a session if we are launched from
+         * inetd because Panther xinetd will create a session for us.
+         *
+         * The only case where this logic will fail is if there is an
+         * inetd running in a non-root session which is not creating
+         * new sessions for us.  Then all the users will end up in the
+         * same session (bad).
+         *
+         * When the client exits, the session will be destroyed for us
+         * automatically.
+         *
+         * We must create the session before any credentials are stored
+         * (including AFS pags, which happens a few lines below).
+         */
  • functional GSSAPI tie-in – tied into PAM and BSM, and HEIMDAL – part of making OpenSSH in 10.4.x kerberized. By default is turned on (refer to sshd_config man page under Tiger, applies to Protocol 2 ONLY) Supports lack of hostkey, reverts to “null” method of keying (from sshd.c) 
    +#ifndef GSSAPI
+       /* The GSSAPI key exchange can run without a host key */
        if ((options.protocol & SSH_PROTO_2) && !sensitive_data.have_ssh2_key) {
                logit("Disabling protocol version 2. Could not load host key");
                options.protocol &= ~SSH_PROTO_2;
        }
+#endif
  • Support for using memberd for resolving group memberships and to see if Serivce ACLs permit user to use ssh
  • Capabilities support. in sshd_config: 
    +# SACL options
+#SACLSupport yes
  • Extended attributes and resource fork support when copying between two 10.4.x systems – option -E for scp, implementation in copyfile.h and scp.c. Seems like metadata gets collected into an additional file, that gets transfered same way as a file would be, at gets re-applied on the other end.

    • Note: openssh/compat.c contains a list of all the “known” implementations of SSH clients, and what bugs they have. Quite an interesting read.

That’s about all I’ve noticed.

Now, regarding SRV lookups…. I’ve not noticed anything magic in the source that causes that to happen. Maybe that’s part of GSSAPI stuff – I frankly weren’t looking too closely. Maybe it’s something that libSystem.B.dylib does on behalf of ssh. Further investigation is needed, as it didn’t jump out at me. Sorry, Adam.

Update: I guess I should have been clearer. I did compile stock OpenSSH 3.8.1p1, and saw what kind of DNS queries it attempted. If the system in question is in /etc/hosts, it does no DNS quieries. If the system is not in /etc/hosts, all it looks at is 

17:28:37.287350 IP 10.9.15.194.51980 > 10.9.15.1.domain:  52104+ A? www.epals.com. (31)
17:28:37.593401 IP 10.9.15.1.domain > 10.9.15.194.51980:  52104 1/2/2 A www.epals.com (128)
17:28:38.211709 IP 10.9.15.194.51981 > 10.9.15.1.domain:  55591+ PTR? 1.15.9.10.in-addr.arpa. (40)
17:28:38.212701 IP 10.9.15.1.domain > 10.9.15.194.51981:  55591 NXDomain 0/1/0 (117)
17:28:38.217308 IP 10.9.15.194.51982 > 10.9.15.1.domain:  6539+ PTR? 116.141.26.64.in-addr.arpa. (44)
17:28:38.333627 IP 10.9.15.1.domain > 10.9.15.194.51982:  6539 2/2/2 CNAME 116.96-127.141.26.64.in-addr.arpa., PTR www.epals.com. (190)

(Yes, I enjoy attempting to ssh to epals.com, as most assuredly it would not be an IP address in my /etc/hosts)

On the other hand, Apple’s implementation of OpenSSH does these regardless if the system in question is in /etc/hosts or not:

17:30:25.107046 IP 10.9.15.194.51989 > 10.9.15.1.domain:  50351+ SRV? _telnet._tcp.iskra.ottix.net. (46)
17:30:25.108158 IP 10.9.15.1.domain > 10.9.15.194.51989:  50351 NXDomain 0/1/0 (86)
17:30:25.108981 IP 10.9.15.194.51990 > 10.9.15.1.domain:  3246+ SRV? _telnet._tcp.iskra.ottix.net. (46)
17:30:25.109571 IP 10.9.15.194.51991 > 10.9.15.1.domain:  3821+ SRV? _telnet._tcp.iskra.ottix.net.bhwireless.com. (61)
17:30:25.110614 IP 10.9.15.1.domain > 10.9.15.194.51990:  3246 NXDomain 0/1/0 (86)
17:30:25.110937 IP 10.9.15.1.domain > 10.9.15.194.51991:  3821 NXDomain 0/1/0 (134)
17:30:25.111186 IP 10.9.15.194.51992 > 10.9.15.1.domain:  7928+ SRV? _telnet._tcp.iskra.ottix.net.bhwireless.com. (61)
17:30:25.112891 IP 10.9.15.1.domain > 10.9.15.194.51992:  7928 NXDomain 0/1/0 (134)
[...]
stany@gilva:~/src/ssh/openssh-3.8.1p1[05:30 PM]$ grep ottix /etc/hosts 
192.231.228.2   iskra.ottix.net www.ottix.net
stany@gilva:~/src/ssh/openssh-3.8.1p1[05:30 PM]$ uname -a
Darwin gilva.local 8.1.0 Darwin Kernel Version 8.1.0: Tue May 10 18:16:08 PDT 2005; root:xnu-792.1.5.obj~4/RELEASE_PPC Power Macintosh powerpc
stany@gilva:~/src/ssh/openssh-3.8.1p1[05:30 PM]$

Another interesting side effect: Usually Apple’s sshd (enabled in control panels -> sharing -> Remote Login) registers itself with Rendez-Vous/ZeroConf. I have a piece of software called Rawr-Endezvous (0.6.b3, with my modifications to Growl framework 0.7. Newer versions of it just keep on dieing for me whenever I change location or enable/disable service,so I keep on waiting when Jereme Knope will fix it), that throws up a pop-up on my screen whenever new service is discovered. If one is to disable Remote Login in Sharing control panel, and start Apple’s ssh by hand, it registers the service as ZeroConf. If one starts up a stock OpenSSHD compiled from source, it doesn’t. I wonder if part of the problem is Apple’s patch to enable zeroconf in OpenSSH. 

stany@gilva:~/src/ssh/openssh-3.8.1p1[05:38 PM]$ sudo ./sshd -f /etc/sshd_config -h /etc/ssh_host_key -h /etc/ssh_host_rsa_key -h /etc/ssh_host_dsa_key -d
debug1: sshd version OpenSSH_3.8.1p1
debug1: private host key: #0 type 0 RSA1
debug1: read PEM private key done: type RSA
debug1: private host key: #1 type 1 RSA
debug1: read PEM private key done: type DSA
debug1: private host key: #2 type 2 DSA
debug1: Bind to port 22 on ::.
Server listening on :: port 22.
debug1: Bind to port 22 on 0.0.0.0.
Server listening on 0.0.0.0 port 22.
Generating 768 bit RSA key.
RSA key generation complete.

(Remove -d if you want sshd to run in daemon mode).

MacOSX: Upgrading firmware for Pioneer DVD drives

stany

I did a large and opinionated post earlier about benefits of using cheap DVD drives over things like Pioneer. There is a benefit of paying for Pioneer drive too – ability to flash the firmware under MacOS X.

The software one needs for it is DVRflash compiled for Mac OS X, and a firmware image containing the kernel code necessary to get the drive into kernel mode (that permits flashing) and the (patched) firmware. Kernel code from any version of the firmware would do, as it is only used during the flashing to get the drive into receptive state. Firmware, on the other hand, should probably be either newer then the one you have already, or at the very least same version but with different features.

For the firmware for your particular model of the drive, you should probably look at RPC1.org web site. Also worth looking at are Pioneerdvd and Gradius’s web pages.

Here is the actual flashing session. 

#include <stddisclaimer.h> /* Not responsible for anything! */

I’ve put the Pioneer DVR-105 drive into an external USB/FW enclosure connected over FW. Operating system is MacOS X 10.4.1 (Still PPC, not yet mactel :-), drive is connected over firewire.

First I determine that the software sees the drive (as root):

root@gilva:~/Desktop/DVRFlash_2.0/DVR-105 v1.33 - RPC-1 + 2xDVD-R + 12xRip[05:16 PM]# ./DVRFlash

DVRFlash v2.0 : Pioneer DVR firmware flasher
by Agent Smith et al.,  July 2004

Commandline:
  ./DVRFlash 

Device parameter was not given, detecting all DVR drives:

     Device : B:
     Vendor : PIONEER 
      Model : DVD-RW  DVR-105 
   Revision : 1.00

Now run DVRFlash again, from the command prompt, using
one of the device(s) listed above as first parameter

Press the Return key to exit

root@gilva:~/Desktop/DVRFlash_2.0/DVR-105 v1.33 - RPC-1 + 2xDVD-R + 12xRip[05:19 PM]#

At this point I know that drive B: is the drive I want (Drive A is presumably the built in Matsushita combo), so I run the software again, this time with the right arguments:

root@gilva:~/Desktop/DVRFlash_2.0/DVR-105 v1.33 - RPC-1 + 2xDVD-R + 12xRip[05:19 PM]# ./DVRFlash 
-f PIONEER  R5100004.133 R5100104.133 

DVRFlash v2.0 : Pioneer DVR firmware flasher
by Agent Smith et al.,  July 2004

                       DISCLAIMER

THIS PROGRAM IS PROVIDED "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO,
THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE ABILITY OF THIS PROGRAM TO FLASH A
PIONEER OR COMPATIBLE DVR DRIVE IS WITH YOU. SHOULD THE
PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE, YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY
SERVICING, REPAIR OR CORRECTION.

THIS PROGRAM IS NOT ENDORSED BY PIONEER CORPORATION OR ANY
COMPANY RESELLING PIONEER EQUIPMENT AS THEIR OWN BRAND

IF YOU UNDERSTAND THE RISKS ASSOCIATED WITH THIS PROGRAM AND
DISCHARGE BOTH THE AUTHOR AND PIONEER CORPORATION FROM ANY
DAMAGE OCCURING AS THE RESULT OF ITS USE, PLEASE INDICATE SO
BY ANSWERING THE FOLLOWING QUESTION:

Do you understand and agree to the statement above (y/n)?
y

Commandline:
  ./DVRFlash -f PIONEER R5100004.133 R5100104.133 


Drive Information:
  Description    - PIONEER DVD-RW  DVR-105 
  Firmware Rev.  - 1.00
  Firmware Date  - 02/10/10
  Manufacturer   - PIONEER  
Drive is in normal mode.

Are you sure you want to flash this drive (y/n)?
y

Switching drive to Kernel mode:
  Description    - PIONEER DVD-RW  DVR-105 
  Firmware Rev.  - 0000
  Firmware Date  - 00/00/00
  Manufacturer   - PIONEER  
Drive is now in Kernel mode

Now sending the Kernel part...
Now internal Kernel reflashing. Please wait... OK.

Now sending the Normal part:
0%          25%          50%          75%         100%
|============|============|============|============|
Please hold your breath for about 30 seconds...

Now internal reflashing. Please wait... OK.

Updated Information:
  Description    - PIONEER DVD-RW  DVR-105 
  Firmware Rev.  - 1.33
  Firmware Date  - 03/05/26
  Manufacturer   - PIONEER  
Flashing operation successful ;)

root@gilva:~/Desktop/DVRFlash_2.0/DVR-105 v1.33 - RPC-1 + 2xDVD-R + 12xRip[05:20 PM]#

So after holding my breath for about 30 seconds, it finished. I went ahead and verified that firmware got updated:

root@gilva:~/Desktop/DVRFlash_2.0/DVR-105 v1.33 - RPC-1 + 2xDVD-R + 12xRip[05:20 PM]# ./DVRFlash 

DVRFlash v2.0 : Pioneer DVR firmware flasher
by Agent Smith et al.,  July 2004

Commandline:
  ./DVRFlash 

Device parameter was not given, detecting all DVR drives:

     Device : B:
     Vendor : PIONEER 
      Model : DVD-RW  DVR-105 
   Revision : 1.33

Now run DVRFlash again, from the command prompt, using
one of the device(s) listed above as first parameter

Press the Return key to exit

root@gilva:~/Desktop/DVRFlash_2.0/DVR-105 v1.33 - RPC-1 + 2xDVD-R + 12xRip[05:21 PM]#

Merging a bunch of PDFs together

stany

A couple of days ago one of the questions I asked was for an easy (and preferably command line scriptable) way to merge a bunch of PDF files together. Well, I think I found a way.

MonkeyBread Software makes RealBasic plugins and extensions. I’ll be the first one to say that I don’t know jack about RealBasic, however one of the freely downloadable tools that they provice is Combine PDFs (They even include RealBasic source). It’s a tiny carbon app, that basically does what I want it to do.

It has an interesting “feature” – it seems to get rid of the “Image Unavailable for Copyright Reasons” watermark when dealing with PDF files generated by NPG. So I just get white blocks with occasional capture under the text. But hey, it’s free, so who am I to complain?

One of the tricks I use while using Merge PDFs is to rename a bunch of PDFs into numerically ordered list, something like: 

$ grep pdf index.html| sed regular expression or three go here to result in file list 
 | nl -v100 | awk '{print "mv "$2" "$1".pdf"}' | sh

where I basically use nl(1) to start labeling the lines with 100 and counting onwards.

Then inside Combine PDFs I can just tell it to order files in alphabetical order, and off I go.

Here is what a real run would look like: 

stany@gilva:~/nature/www.nature.com/nature/journal/v435/n7043[06:56 PM]$ 
cat index.html | grep  pdf | sed 's/^.*href.................................//g' | 
sed 's/......$//g' | nl -v100  | head
   100  435713a.pdf
   101  435713b.pdf
   102  435714a.pdf
   103  435716a.pdf
   104  435718a.pdf
   105  435718b.pdf
   106  435720a.pdf
   107  435720b.pdf
   108  435723a.pdf
   109  435723b.pdf
stany@gilva:~/nature/www.nature.com/nature/journal/v435/n7043[06:56 PM]$ 
cat index.html | grep  pdf |  sed 's/^.*href.................................//g' | 
sed 's/......$//g' | nl -v100 | awk '{print "mv pdf/"$2" pdf/"$1".pdf"}' | head
mv pdf/435713a.pdf pdf/100.pdf
mv pdf/435713b.pdf pdf/101.pdf
mv pdf/435714a.pdf pdf/102.pdf
mv pdf/435716a.pdf pdf/103.pdf
mv pdf/435718a.pdf pdf/104.pdf
mv pdf/435718b.pdf pdf/105.pdf
mv pdf/435720a.pdf pdf/106.pdf
mv pdf/435720b.pdf pdf/107.pdf
mv pdf/435723a.pdf pdf/108.pdf
mv pdf/435723b.pdf pdf/109.pdf
stany@gilva:~/nature/www.nature.com/nature/journal/v435/n7043[06:57 PM]$

You get the idea.

Then it’s just drag and drop.

I’ve still not found a free way to delete duplicate pages, however PDFpen looks reasonably good (It has a problem with inability to preview the large page and the thumbnails of the rest of the pages in the file at the same time, and the interface for deleting pages is not obvious, but maybe I should contact the authors). It is 50$ USD for the basic version (And I don’t need form creation either), which is much better then fill Acrobat from Adobe.

I should contact the authors, and see if they will add the features I would like, and if they do, register the software. Hrm….

As my Spanish teacher used to say: necesito ganar dinero.

Dual Layer DVD burners in PowerMac G5s

stany

Andy called my “employer” today, and asked us to find out for him what dual layer burners are in PM G5s. So of course the question percolated down to me, without the associated name attached to the question.

Apple ships different burners in different batches of systems, depending on which manufacturer gives Apple a better deal. So new PM G5s can come with either SONY DW-Q28A or Pioneer DVR-A09 (Which is just an Apple branded version of Pioneer DVR-109, and has no functional or firmware differences).

While I can understand why someone might want an Apple Shipped/Apple Supported DVD burner, the benefts of such support are in reality rather slim. Apple will support CD burning on either Apple Shipped or Unsupported DVD burner, as licensing is limited to DVD support. Ditto with booting (Booting is actually something that starts regardless of the OS, as it’s triggered by OpenFirmware. Thus as long as device supports standard ATAPI command set, it can be used for booting). So in reality all one loses is lack of DVD burning from Disk Utility, iTunes and things like iDVD.

What I recommend is buying whatever is the cheapest dual layer burner you can find that has patched firmware available from download from rpc1.org, and then using Patchburn to install a profile, turning the device into “Vendor Supported”, and reenabling burning from iTunes, Disk Utility and iDVD. That coupled with RPC1 firmware and ripping lock removal (That removes the restriction built into most new DVD drives to slow down reading of disks to 2x if a directory VIDEO_TS is detected on disk) makes the drive into a rather useful piece of equipment that OWNER controls.

So you might think that something free, like Patchburn would be slow to release updates for Tiger. You’d be wrong, however, as support for Tiger existed on the day Tiger was released. We will of course see what happens when Leopard comes out.

Patchburn might sound like an inconvinience. One has to go to a germanweb site, download software, click… So let me ask you a question: how often do you burn DVDs using Apple Disk Utility, while waiting for it to create 8.5 gig dmg file? Right. You burn your DVDs using Roxio Toast, aren’t you? And your Roxio Toast supports “Unsupported” drives as well as it does “Apple Shipped”, right? So I don’t see a problem, but please leave a comment and let me know if you don’t agree.

Here is some basic economics: I bought an LG HL-DT-ST GSA-4160b dual layer DVD burner at Best Buy on boxing day 2004 for 120 CAD, with 40 mail in rebate (that I recieved). So in reality after taxes I spent 98 CAD on it. At that time a Pioneer DVR-A09 was selling for 150-170 CAD plus taxes. On the saved money I bought an external enclosure for it, making it mobile.

Don’t get me wrong, Pioneer DVR-109 is a great drive, and I see that Compunation is listing it for just a shade over 100CAD at the time of this writing, but then again, LG burners are ~65CAD now too. Lasers in CD/DVD burners burn out after about the same number of writes, so is paying 40$ extra worth it?

Lastly, I have a DVR-105 at work. I’ve upgraded it to the latest firmware, and tried burning with it. It chokes on cheap silver only DVD-R media (No idea what kind, probably rebranded ritek, or something equally cheap), creating corrupted burns in all tries (I learned the lesson after 3rd attempt to burn). A cheap LG and BenQ burners I have here don’t have an issue with media at all, writing on it at 8x, and passing all the verifications afterwards (Generally it’s a good idea to do verification, just to prevent frustration later). So go figure, cheaper drive reliably burns on cheap media too, so you don’t need to buy expensive Apple branded blanks. I wonder…..

BTW, I am still wondering how to turn MATSHITA CD-RW CW-8123 (Combo drive that shipped with iBook G4) into a region-free drive – I don’t believe that firmware updates for it exist.

OpenSolaris: Sun releases Solaris 10 source

stany

Sun released Solaris source code as part of their OpenSolaris initiative today.

Seems like some things are still binary only (Although fewer then last time Sun showed outsiders their source code, back with Solaris 8), and I didn’t notice the X drivers, but with the source for basic OS (which is what Sun made available), gcc, OpenMotif and X.org‘s drivers it’s probably possible to roll your own Solaris, and the only bit that will be missing with be CDE (Ok, OpenLook would be missing too. But is there anyone out there who actually likes OpenLook, especially since it was depreciated starting with Solaris 9?). Oh, and Display PostScript extension for X would be missing.

*sigh* As weird as it sounds, I miss CDE.

P.S. A mirror of the source code is at: http://www.genunix.org/mirror/index.html plus torrents are available at http://dlc.sun.com/torrents/