sizzo.org » OSX

mount bind on osx?

screen — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 04:01:36 +0000

I’ve been using Connect360 to stream video to my Xbox but it does not allow me to choose more than one video directory to share and it will not follow links onto my external drive. This is a typical problem with a simple solution on Linux, mount --bind. I couldn’t find mount_bind for osx but a simple alternative that really shows off the utility of user filesystems saved the day.

Enter bindfs, a directory mirroring user filesystem that works with macfuse. Running bindfs /path/to/dest /path/to/link provides the same experience. Delving into the man page shows that you have tons of control over permissions of the directory mount as well.

If you plan to use bindfs on osx be sure to install macfuse from macports and save yourself the configure failure when building bindfs from source because you downloaded the dmg and ran the installer.

We’ve been running all of our services here on sizzo in linux chroots that rely heavily on bind mounted directories to share data. It wasn’t until the 2.6.26 kernel that read only bind mounts were working, which provide an extra level of data protection within the chroot. Alternatively using bindfs/fuse on linux seems like it would be another great solution, especially when more fine grained control of permissions is necessary.

Dvorak+Leopard 10.5.6 BEWARE!

screen — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 09:42:28 +0000

Warning: If you are a dvorak user do not, I repeat, DO NOT upgrade OSX to Leopard 10.5.6. In fact if you use any keyboard layout other than US English you should probably wait as well. After upgrading you may find that you are unable to type using dvorak in some applications, or use some application shortcuts.

I got bitten pretty badly in ATOK, a third party Japanese IME, which was rendered completely useless. It wouldn’t recognize any input keyboard layout other than US English. Input layouts in Kotoeri did work fine however.

Now I’ve just finished reverting back to 10.5.5 from a backup. A quick web search turned up similar problems using Epclipse keyboard shortcuts, WOW commands and others.

Update 5/13/09: 10.5.7 is safe, apple has fixed this issue.

A Windows Terminal-like font in OSX

screen — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:53:19 +0000

If you’ve used terminals since the early 90’s then you might be pretty used to an old style DOS like font like me. After running windows for so long one of the hardest things about switching to OSX was finding a good font that looks something like what I was used to. This was a must have condition for making the switch two years ago.

There’s just something about the new fonts that just doesn’t work for me after spending hundreds of thousands of hours either in a text editor or at the command prompt. Of course the actual Terminal Font on windows isn’t a TTF so that’s a dead end.

What I eventually found was a True Type Font called Video Terminal Screen. This is what it looks like in iTerm on Leopard at 16pt. Text and code look great with it, well to me.