Mac tips, iPhone applications, and the like
Feb 21
To help fight spam, I’ve disabled user account registration on this blog and deleted all subscribers. I apologize if anyone actually used that feature; if RSS isn’t enough for you, e-mail me and I’ll make you an account. Unless you try to sell me Viagra.
May 19
Miscellania AppleScript, bash, browsers, Chromium, Google, launchd, Mac OS X, open-source, scripting No Comments
I’ve been checking out the snapshots of Chromium recently, and they’re coming quicker than you can say “multithreaded web browser.” To facilitate always having the latest version, I wrote a quick LaunchAgent that takes care of it on Mac OS X. First, I have a script named ~/bin/chromiupdate:
#!/bin/bash
# Downloads the latest version of Chromium.
remove_working_dir()
{
rm -rf "${WORKING_DIR}"
exit 0
}
USER_DIR=$(dscl . -read /Users/$(whoami) NFSHomeDirectory | awk '{ print $2 }')
USER_APP_DIR="${USER_DIR}/Applications"
CHROMIUM_DIR="${USER_APP_DIR}/Chromium.app"
LATEST_URL="http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/sub-rel-mac/LATEST"
TMP_DIR="/private/tmp"
WORKING_DIR="${TMP_DIR}/.chromium_launchd"
URL_BEGIN="http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/sub-rel-mac"
if [ ! -d "${CHROMIUM_DIR}" ]; then
mkdir -p "${CHROMIUM_DIR}"
fi
INSTALLED_VERSION="$(defaults read "${CHROMIUM_DIR}/Contents/Info" SVNRevision)"
VERSION=$(curl "${LATEST_URL}")
if [ "${VERSION}" != "${INSTALLED_VERSION}" ]; then
logger Installed Chromium version \(${INSTALLED_VERSION}\) does not equal \
latest version \(${VERSION}\), updating now...
mkdir "${WORKING_DIR}" || exit 1
trap remove_working_dir 1 2 3 6 15
cd "${WORKING_DIR}" || exit 1
curl -O "${URL_BEGIN}/${VERSION}/chrome-mac.zip"
unzip chrome-mac.zip
rsync -HavP --exclude="Contents/MacOS/chrome_debug.log" \
"${WORKING_DIR}/chrome-mac/Chromium.app/" "${CHROMIUM_DIR}/"
if [ "$(ps -aef | grep -i chromium | grep -v grep)" != "" ]; then
open "${USER_DIR}/Library/Scripts/Chromium Update Dialog.app"
fi
logger "Chromium update complete. Version ${VERSION} installed."
remove_working_dir
else
logger Installed Chromium version \(${INSTALLED_VERSION}\) is up-to-date. \
No action needed.
fi
exit 0
Next, I have a property list named ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.slaunchaman.chromium.plist:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC -//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd >
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Label</key>
<string>com.slaunchaman.chromium</string>
<key>Program</key>
<string>/Users/slauncha/bin/chromiupdate</string>
<key>KeepAlive</key>
<false/>
<key>StartInterval</key>
<integer>3600</integer>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
<key>StandardOutPath</key>
<string>/dev/null</string>
<key>StandardErrorPath</key>
<string>/dev/null</string>
</dict>
</plist>
Finally, I have an AppleScript at ~/Library/Scripts/Chromium Update Dialog.app:
display dialog "Chromium was just updated. You should restart it."
The LaunchAgent runs once an hour, checking to see if the installed version of Chromium is older than the latest snapshot. If so, it downloads it and uses rsync to copy the changes. The script places Chromium in ~/Applications, but it shouldn’t be hard to modify to put it into /Applications.
Dec 11
Miscellania iPhone, news, Take Me Home No Comments
Apple rejected Take Me Home 1.0.1 for a small issue, so I’ll have to hurry up and finish 1.1 to get that issue fixed. Rest assured it’s being worked on.
Dec 11
Miscellania meta, WordPress Comments Off
I’ve updated this site to WordPress 2.7. Wahoo! I also cleaned up some old posts, re-did some tags, and cleaned out old tags. Posts are also now sorted into categories.
Dec 04
Miscellania Google, Google Earth, malware, security, spyware 12 Comments
The Mac blogs around the ‘net are all abuzz today about Google’s release of a Mac version of the Google Maps API, but I noticed something funny when I installed it. The plug-in is a standard Mac Internet Plug-In, meaning you can install it at either /Library/Internet Plug-Ins or ~/Library/Internet Plug-Ins. So why does the install package prompt you for administrator credentials when you choose to install it into your home folder? The answer lives at /Library/Google.
It turns out that when you install the plugin, the installer also installs a software update component, code-named “keystone.” It installs the following components:
/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/GoogleSoftwareUpdate.bundle/Library/Google/GoogleSoftwareUpdate/TicketStore/ — does anyone know what this does? I sure don’t./Library/LaunchDaemons/com.google.keystone.daemon.plist/Library/LaunchAgents/com.google.keystone.agent.plist) that runs when you’re logged in, presumably to fire up the daemon so you can receive updates without administrative privileges.Interestingly enough, this software component is never mentioned by Google. It isn’t an option you can deselect in the installer. Even worse, the plugin’s uninstall instructions don’t say a thing about it. This means that after you follow the plugin uninstall instructions, your computer is still checking in with Google’s servers to make sure that it’s up-to-date. I’m reluctant to call this malware, but it sure seems like spyware, doesn’t it? At the very least the installer ought to mention something.
Be cautious when installing this plugin onto any computer where security is essential. Any software component that runs as root, such as the updater this installer installs, is another attack vector for intruders trying to get at your data.
For what it’s worth, the API plugin does work if you only copy the stuff in /Library/Internet Plug-Ins to a computer or to your user account, so it appears that you can still use the plugin in a secure environment, you’ll just have to update it yourself and not have Google do it for you.
I’ve also mentioned this on the official Google Group.
Nov 17
Miscellania meta Comments Off
I’ve been busy, between wedding planning, work, and moving, but I’m back on the blogosphere!
Jul 18
Miscellania gross, scripting 1 Comment
I recently wrote a script to automatically install firmware updates for our Macs. The problem with them is that for some, you have to hold down the power button to finish the installation after the machine has turned itself off. Now I don’t know about you, but I sure as hell don’t want to go around to 900 or so Macs and hold down their power button after installing an update. This script, while it can’t hold down the button for me, does allow student staff to automate the proces up to that point. I don’t have to give them a password they could use to break the system, they can do the update for me, everybody wins. It’s a beautiful system.
Well, today, I was testing the script out. The problem with testing it is that you can only test a given computer once; once the firmware update is installed, it won’t show up as needing to be installed anymore. So, I packed up my stuff and went to our biggest computer lab to do some testing. My test subjects were some “CyberStations,” computers we have with basic web-browsing and e-mail loadsets. They’re relatively unused during the summer, so if I broke any it wouldn’t be a big deal. I went up to one, ran the update, and waited. That’s when smoke came out of the back of the computer as the update ran. Oh shit, I thought, this thing is on fire!
Let’s go back a minute to my description of CyberStations. Their loadset consists of a vanilla Mac OS X Leopard install with some applications taken out, Firefox, Thunderbird, and Adium. Basically, it has the Apple-provided web browser, e-mail client, and IM program, as well as the leading open-source alternative for each. Nothing on these computers is too taxing. As a consequence, the fans never need to run too heavily, as the computer never really gets too hot.
Back to the smoking machine. I was sure it was on fire—where there’s smoke, there’s fire, right? Well, the student employee to whom I was demonstrating the script wasn’t too sure. He placed his hand on the back of the computer (an iMac G5, not that it matters) and didn’t feel any heat. So, if it wasn’t smoke, what was it? That’s when I realized what had happened. The fans, never having been run too hard, hadn’t been blowing a whole lot of dust around. When they ran full speed during the firmware update, dust had come flying out of the computer’s vents. A white, puffy cloud composed largely of the dead skin cells that had fallen off of our users’ skin for years. It was coming out of the bottom, out of the back, and even where the screen met the case. I quickly held my breath and stepped back.
I’m really glad that we have student staff to do the rest of this.
Jun 29
Miscellania blogging, Dreamhost, WordPress 2 Comments
Wordpress.com is, don’t get me wrong, a great service. They offer no-hassle blog hosting for free using WordPress, my blogging platform of choice. At a certain point in a young blogger’s life, however, it’s time to move on to using WordPress’ more advanced features; uploading new themes, hand-editing theme components, and maybe even throwing Google AdSense on there. Wordpress is always free from WordPress.org, is easy to set up, and very easy to customize and administer. So, with a little help from blog-well, I was ready to go. This blog post is a derivation of blog-well’s work (click that link over there to see it), but I’ll be focusing on DreamHost where they focused on GoDaddy.
blog 14400 IN CNAME yourblog.wordpress.com
Once that change propagates (which can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours, and you may need to reboot your computer), visitors to blog.yourdomain.com will be redirected to yourblog.wordpress.com. For DreamHost, follow these pictures:
Jun 27
Miscellania blogging, Dreamhost, meta, WordPress Comments Off
I’ve moved this blog over to Dreamhost, which means a couple of things: first, I’m managing my own WordPress installation now, which is pretty cool. Don’t get me wrong, WordPress.com is great—and I’m still technically using it to forward traffic to my old address here—but managing your own server is pretty cool. I can install whatever themes I want and edit them as I see fit, without paying money to do so. Sure, I’m paying money for hosting, the domain name, and the domain name forwarding from WordPress.com, but at least now the blog is here on my own terms.
Moving the blog here was a long and arduous process, one that required patience on my part and that gave me a crash course in DNS for web servers. I was able to do it mostly off of a post at blog-well.com, and since the attached PDF has rights to edit it built in, I think I’ll work on some instructions for this process to help others along. Keep your eyes peeled!
Jun 27
Miscellania meta Comments Off
This blog may be temporarily unavailable as I switch it to blog.slaunchaman.com. Be patient — it’ll soon be back up and all of your old links (including RSS subscriptions) will still work.
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