Earlier we looked at using s3cmd to interact with the Amazon S3 storage cloud. Now we’re going to delve into using Another S3 Bash Interface. To get started, first download the scripts and then copy the hmac and s3 commands into the ec2 folder created in previous walkthroughs. To use the s3 script, you need to store your Amazon secret key in a text file and set two environment variables. The INSTALL file included with the package has all the details. The only tricky part I ran into, and from the comments on Amazon, other people ran into, is how to create the secret key text file. Now go into your…
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Amazon S3 from the Command Line
In a previous article we looked at how to upload Final Cut Server content to s3 using Jungle Disk. We also looked at how to upload ec2 images to s3. But now we’re going to take a deeper dive into using s3 from the command line. There are a number of tools that have been developed by the community to leverage Amazon’s S3 Storage Service. This isn’t as cut and dry as using ec2 due to the fact that the Amazon tools are written in Java, C#, Perl, PHP, Ruby and Python. However, I’m a shell kinda’ guy to a large degree and I was able to find a couple of places where people have written…
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Custom VMs using S3+EC2
I’m obviously enjoying using Amazon for a number of testing applications (in addition to of course buying books and light bulbs from them, and not one showed up broken). So far, I’ve done articles on getting started with Amazon ec2, using the command line with ec2, whitelisting an IP address, deploying ec2 en masse, and setting up a static IP for ec2. But the S3 articles have been sparse. So, now let’s look at using Amazon’s storage service (S3) from the command line. Funny enough, if you’re going to upload your own custom Amazon Machine Instances (AMIs) you’ll need to leverage S3. When you go to bundle an image, you will have a…
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Enable/Disable Root on Mac OS X
The dsenableroot command can be used to enable the root user and assign it a password. To enable root: dsenableroot You will then be prompted for a password to assign the root account and then to verify the password. On success you’ll see the following success code: dsenableroot:: ***Successfully enabled root user. To then disable the root account: dsenableroot -d You should now be able to look into the /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users directory on your system and see root.plist. You can then make any changes to the account using this file that you would like.
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Mimicing OS9
Anyone remember how back in OS 9 you could collapse a window into its own title bar? Well, that functionality can be had in Windows. Winroll is an application that allows you to obtain the same functionality that you used to have in OS 9. To quote the Winroll site: Make a window roll into its title bar, send it to the back or make it stay on top. Minimize, maximize or close all visible windows, including minimizing to the tray area. Make a window translucent on Windows 2000 or above. WinRoll is lovingly hand-crafted in 100% pure assembly language to give the fastest response and the smallest memory footprint.…
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Sync Bookmarks Between IE, Firefox & Safari
If you are a Safari user and you have a MobileMe account then you can already synchronize Safari bookmarks between multiple Macintosh computers. But what if you want to synchronize to that corporate sanctioned Windows XP machine in the office that runs only Internet Explorer? What if you also want to synchronize to Firefox, running on another machine? All three can synchronize together in one harmonious bookmarking ménage à trois. How is all of this made possible?Xmarks. Formerly Foxmarks, Xmarks now supports more browsers and runs on more platforms. You store a backup of your bookmarks in the Xmarks cloud (which, yes, means that you’ll need to create an account) and then you…
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Accessing MobileMe Public Folders
Public Folders in Mobile Me can be password protected. They can also be set as Read Only, using the iDisk tab of the MobileMe System Preference pane. Here, in a section called Your iDisk Public Folder you will see an option to Allow others to: and you will be able to set this to Read only or Read and Write. If you set it to Read only then while users will be able to see the files you store on your iDisk they will not be able to alter them. If you set it to Read and Write then other users will be able to upload to your Public Folder.…
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Pull Movies from YouTube
There are tons of ways to download movies from YouTube, but this is likely the easiest I’ve seen yet: http://keepvid.com/ Basically, open the site, paste in the URL from YouTube and then click on Download. KeepVid will then ask you if you want to download the video in flv or mp4. In this example click on mp4. When it’s done downloading go ahead by default you’ll find it in your ~/Downloads directory called simply video.mp4. From there, you can rename the file and move it into iTunes. Once there it can synchronize to whatever device you enjoy watching videos on and enjoy offline!
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Removing Old Replicas from OD
There are a number of instances when you cannot remove a replica from Open Directory using Server Admin. This can be due to a variety of reasons, but if you cannot remove the replica from Server Admin then try doing so using slapconfig. For example, if the replica has an IP of 10.10.10.10 then the command would be: slapconfig -removereplica 10.10.10.10
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Customizing the Final Cut Server Webstart on Xsanity
Xsanity just posted an article I did on customizing the Final Cut Server Webstart. This is the page that you go to in order to install the Final Cut Server client software from your server. The article starts with building links and customizing the URL and then touches on a little customization of the pages towards the end. Hope you find it helpful.