• Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  SQL,  Xsan

    Fix Table Corruption In MySQL

    Corruption happens. Sometimes, it’s little things that cause problems. With MySQL, the mysql command line tool has long held the answer for easy corruption issues. There are a number of tools to repair corruption, but the place to start is the REPAIR command within that trusty mysql command line tool. To start, let’s try a backup. In this case, I’m going to use a tool those of us who deal with Media Assets frequently tinker with, CatDV. I’m going to backup the databases with a simple mysqldump command, defining the user and then piping the data out to some backup file, which in this case is catdvbak on the desktop:…

  • Articles and Books,  iPhone,  Mac OS X

    Apple Style Guides

    Before you send me an email correcting something I’ve written, or more specifically how I’ve written it, check style guides. If it’s something Apple related, those are at https://help.apple.com/asg/mac/2013/ASG_2013.pdf. Thank you, The mgmt

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment,  Xsan

    MDSChannelPeerCreate and Shared Volumes

    These two errors: com.apple.AppleFileServer[8123] MDSChannelPeerCreate: (os/kern) invalid argument MDSChannelPeerRef MDSChannelPeerCreate(CFAllocatorRef, CFDictionaryRef): (os/kern) invalid argument I see them frequently when we’re using dynamic or shared storage (e.g. Xsan or removable media) to share volumes between multiple computers and then share those shared volumes to clients through a network sharing protocol (e.g. afp or smb). They usually mean that the system doesn’t have enough permissions to do those MDSChannelPeerCreate processes. Therefore, we need to open those permissions up a little and then let the file sharing services restart. I usually do it this way: serveradmin stop afp serveradmin stop smb chown -R root:staff /Volumes/VOLUMENAME/.fseventsd chmod -R 770 /Volumes/VOLUMENAME/.fseventsd chown -R root:staff /Volumes/VOLUMENAME/.Spotlight-V100…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Xsan

    Update the Promise Vtrak Firmware Using SSH

    Updating the firmware on Promise arrays is straight forward enough from the WebPAM. But what happens if a firmware update goes funky and you can’t get into the WebPAM any longer (ah, the joys of beta testing)? Well, you can always download an older firmware and reload it provided you can ssh or telnet into the host. Download from http://www.promise.com/support/download.aspx?m=93&region=en-global for your given model. Then, you need the firmware accessible to the Promise chassis via tftp. A simple tftp GUI tool is available at http://ww2.unime.it/flr/tftpserver. Once configured, log into the Promise array and then use the ptiflash command to update the firmware. In the following command we’ll use the -s option to identify…

  • iPhone,  Travel,  Wearable Technology

    10 Advances In Wearable Technology Available Today

    First came food, shelter and clothing. Then came technology, innovating all three for thousands of years. But innovation in clothing stalled at some point. Once upon a time man make thicker clothing out of animals with thicker hides, better shoes and then armor. These helped to expand where we could go, when we could go there and how safe we were once we got there. But mankind has long sought using technology that is worn to make life better, from false teeth to eyeglasses. Moving into the somewhat more modern era, let’s look at 10 advances that, while more recent than throwing the hide of an animal that might have…

  • iPhone,  Wearable Technology

    Set Silent Alarms On Fitbit Flex

    The Fitbit Flex can act as an alarm. When acting as an alarm, the Flex will vibrate at the time you set it to do so. The Flex supports up to 8 concurrent alarms, although the more alarms you run the more the alarm function drains the battery of the Flex. To set an alarm, log into the Fitbit portal and go to http://www.fitbit.com/settings/alarms. Once there, click on the Add Alarm button. From the Set an alarm screen, enter a time and then whether the event should repeat (which brings up a menu of checkboxes for each day of the week). If repeating, check the appropriate box for each day. Click…

  • cloud,  FileMaker,  Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mac Security,  Mass Deployment,  Network Infrastructure,  Time Machine,  Xsan

    Obtain Information From Watchman Monitoring Using a Script

    Watchman Monitoring is a tool used to monitor computers. I’ve noticed recently that there’s a lot of traffic on the Watchman Monitoring email list that shows people want a great little (and by little I mean inexpensive from a compute time standpoint) monitoring tool to become a RMM (Remote Management and Monitoring) tool. The difference here is in “Management.” Many of us actually don’t want a monitoring tool to become a management tool unless we are very deliberate about what we do with it. For example, that script that takes a machine name of ‘rm -Rf /’ that some ironic hipster of a user decided to name their hard drive…

  • Mac OS X,  Mac OS X Server,  Mass Deployment

    Is My Apple Computer Under Warranty?

    Apple has a site used to check the warranty agreement of Apple hardware. You will need your serial number. To obtain that, click on the Apple menu and then click on About this Mac. From there, click on the greyed Version line until you see the Serial Number. You could also click on the More Info… button to see the Serial Number. Once you have the serial number, navigate to: https://selfsolve.apple.com/agreementWarrantyDynamic.do?newid=y. From there, enter the serial number to see the warranty status as can be seen here. You can also build this type of functionality into scripts or other systems. To do so, just inject the serial number as a sn= in…