Michael Brandonisio

Hello,

There are times when you want to create an archive of many files or even one large file but need the archive file to be smaller than some file size limitation. In my case, I needed to move 90GB of data literal over 1 million files over FTP. ( There is a story behind why it was done this way.) You do not want to move a million little files over FTP. You can get better performance by creating one large file or in my case about 26 TAR archives that were 3.5GB in size. The files were to be moved to a FAT-32 external hard drive prior to sending them via FTP. The Max file size for FAT-32 is 4GB. At least when I tried to create TAR files larger than that I would get an error. The 3.5GB files size worked well.

This works on Linux and Mac OS. Open a terminal window. Then run the following command:

# tar -cf – [source] | split -b 3584m – archive.tar

This will produce a series of TAR files from your [source] file/folder with the suffix of:

taraa, tarab, tarac … taraz, tarba, tarbb …

and so on. It will append the alpha series to the suffix of the archive. Then on the destination terminal run:

#cat archive.tara* | (tar x)

That will assemble the split files and extract the archive in to their source files.

Sincerely,
Mike

Hello,

I recently purchased a new 1TB external hard drive for a project. Now that the project is completed I wanted to re-purpose the hard drive for use as a backup drive with my Mac as a target for time machine.

I initially went to the ‘Disk Utility’ application in my utility folder to format the drive. However, each time I’d format it I received an error saying the format system failed when trying to format any of the Mac OS formats. It would format FAT-32 fine but not Mac specific formats.

It turns out that you have to select the parent drive in ‘Disk Utility’ then click on the Partition tab. There select 1 partition. Then click on the options button and select the first item GUID for Intel macs or second item Apple Partition for PPC Macs. Then click ‘OK’. Now click ‘Apply’ button (for Leopard) or ‘Partition’ button (for Tiger) .

You now have a Mac OS compatible external hard drive that can be set to boot your Mac if needed.

The issue is that most external hard drives come formatted as FAT-32 or NTFS with a windows partition. By changing the partition to GUID  or Apple Partition we can format the drive Mac Extended Journaled or any other Mac OS format.

Sinerely,
Mike

In November of 2007 I came to the conclusion that I needed a smart phone. I’m currently working on a Mac Mini and wanted to not only get email on my cell phone but also wanted to have my calendar, address book and task list. At the time when I asked the sales person in the Verizon store, I was told that they had 3 phones that were Mac compatible the BlackBerry Pearl 8130, BlackBerry 8830 and Palm Treo 755p. I previously owned a Palm tungsten E. It was nice but I opted for the BlackBerry Pearl 8130.

I was a little skeptical about just how compatible the phone would be with my Mac since it took some digging by the sales person to figure out that BlackBerry was Mac compatible. With that said I bought the BlackBerry Pearl 8130. It did not come with any software in the box I had to download it from the www.BlackBerry.com website. I downloaded PocketMac v4.0.20b. After installing it I was able to sync with iCal, Address Book and Mail. It supported other applications too, but those were the applications I was using.

Ireally like BlackBerry Pearl 8130. Some of the things I liked were the compact size and the way it guessed what I was typing. The keyboard was not a full QWERTY but a version with no more than 2 letters per button so typing was fairly easy and the BlackBerry Pearl 8130 seemed to learn from what you entered and got really good at guessing what you were going to type. The Map tool is pretty cool too. You can search for places and get directions. To be clear though it was not turn by turn GPS, though you could use Verizon’s VZ Navigator for that. I also liked the fact that the phone was smart enough to know when it saw a phone number in an email or when browsing the web. If you clicked on a phone number it would ask if you wanted to dial it. Very cool. It made www.yellowpages.com a very useful site on my phone.

I did run into 3 big issues that resulted in the return of my BlackBerry Pearl 8130.

The first issue was attempting to fix the calendar on the phone. Somehow the calendar on my BlackBerry Pearl 8130 was in triplicate. The Mac was fine. No one could figure out why it was in triplicate. What is worse no one from Verizon or BlackBerry could fix it. I was told by a BlackBerry tech if only I had a Windows computer they could correct the issue in minutes. I did not have a Windows computer. All I had was a Mac OS computer. Over a 2 day period I spoke with 2 BlackBerry technicians. After throwing many darts, the second tech I spoke with decided that a security erase was the only way to fix it. Then I would have to push the data from my computer down to the device. So I did.

That was in my first 30 days of owning the phone. I had to decide if I should keep it or return it to the store. I really liked the phone. When the sync was working it worked. The support for fixing issues was lacking but there was a solution. I kept the phone.

The second issue comes up in my 8th week of owning my BlackBerry Pearl 8130. I bought a new wireless keyboard and mouse from logitech, the Cordless wave. After installing the control console software on my Mac the PocketMac sync stopped working. It took 2.5 hours on the phone with support to trouble shoot this issue. Support had no idea what the issue was. Lucky me I was able to boot my Mac to a disk that did not have the keyboard control console installed on it. I tested PocketMac and it worked again. It looks like PocketMac is using the keyboard controller to make calls to helper applications to perform the sync of various items like calendar, address book and email.

All I can ask is, “Why would a programmer rely on something like the keyboard controller to communicate with other applications?” It makes no sense. I should be able to install a 3rd party keyboard and mouse without having it break my sync tool. I would not expect this kind of home grown programming from a commercial application like PocketMac. Ultimately I returned the logitech Cordless wave keyboard and mouse and bought a wired Mac keyboard and a Kensington wireless mouse. This combination of hardware worked fine.

Again I considered returning the BlackBerry Pearl 8130 but decided that the devil I knew was better than one I would have to get to know. Besides that the only other option from Verizon was a Palm Treo 755p. It just did not appeal to me. Once again I kept the phone knowing that there would always be this issue with 3rd party keyboards.

Since the first two issues could not sway me to return this phone a third issue came up to test my patients. I wanted to update the firmware on my phone. The updater would not run on my Mac OS computer. It required a Windows computer. This was my breaking point. After an hour on the phone with Verizon support I was told I can take my phone to any corporate store and they could update the firmware for me. So I did. I drove to the Verizon store near me. At first I was told no they could not update smart phones. They could only handsets. Then after another hour at the store they reluctantly offered to try something they have never done before. They would use one of their windows computers to run the firmware update for me. Then came the clincher, this operation would reset the phone to factory setting erasing my settings and possible some data. I knew I had my calendar and my address book on my Mac but I did not have my bookmarks and I was sure that I would loose something that was not backed up since PocketMac was only a sync tool it did not backup the entire phone and it’s settings. It only synced data. I did not allow them to update the firmware on the phone.

At this point it was painfully clear that this was not a Mac OS compatible smart phone. Yes it could sync but it was not fully compatible with the maintenance tools needed to own and operate the phone as a Mac user. Sure a firmware update works flawlessly on a windows computer, according a a Verizon support technician, even restoring all the correct settings, but not on a Mac. The following day I called customer service. They were very understanding allowing me to port my phone number to another provider and giving me a full refund.

I now have my eye on the 8GB iPhone. I’m thinking this should be compatible with my Mac OS computer … Right?

Additional Note:
The PocketMac installation does not install PocketMac for multiple users on a Mac that share the computer with separate logins. When PocketMac installs it places files that are meant for general use, like plugins, in the users library folder instead of the computers library folder. This means that PocketMac must be installed for each user with a login on the computer that will need to sync their phone. Now this gets even better. You cannot install PocketMac unless you are an admin user. So you need change all the user accounts to have admin privileges, install PocketMac, then change them back to simple users. This is completely stupid.

Sincerely,
Mike