sudo nano /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.dynamic_pager.plist
Phil at Warrimoo
Thoughts, ideas, research and how-to's - mostly rubbish
Wednesday, 13 April 2022
Howto make your OS X swap file on-demand
XML Stylesheet Pretty Printer for any XML File
xsltproc pcSimpleReformat.xsl someXMLFile.xmlThe output will be the easy-to-read version of the the XML file. A slightly more complicated version follows complete with comments so you can see how it works: This is the small version. It outputs will formatted text but it is a little verbose. To download, select the XML code, copy and paste it into a file called pcReformatSimple.xsl
Sending syslog messages to a mac
I have a router that is playing-up. It locks-up about once per day. The router is a DG834GV (v1). I recently changed ISPs and the router started to lock-up - it could just be a coincidence. My new ISP resells Telstra's ADSL(1) service so the DSLAM and probably the port are unchanged. Anyway, I thought it might be nice to see if there are any syslog messages being sent just before the router locks-up. I have a mac that runs OS-X (currently 10.5.5) that has a syslog server. So I thought I could use it to capture the syslog messages. The computer said no. The apple default configuration only logs local syslog messages. A quick google search showed that other people have re-configured it to work so I followed some instructions (which I have modified) I found here:
To enable your Leopard system to receive network syslog messages edit:/System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.syslogd.plist
Open the Terminal
application found in Applications/Utilities
.
Type sudo nano /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.syslogd.plist
Find this comment: "Un-comment the following lines to enable the network syslog protocol listener"
. If you can not find this comment, see my note below on my upgraded Tiger system.
Change the next <
!--
into <
!-- -->
and the following -->
into <
!-- -->
.
Now save the file by holding down the control
key and pressing o
to write-out the file and then you can hold control
and press x
to exit the editor.
To enable these changes you need to restart the syslog server:
sudo launchctl unload /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.syslogd.plist
sudo launchctl load /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.syslogd.plist
That should allow your external device to dump it’s log into the system log.
In my case I also needed to enable syslog packets through my manually configured firewall so I executed the following command:
sudo ipfw add 5 allow log udp from any to any syslog in
Note: This would need to be re-entered after a re-boot.
I can now see syslog messages from my router being logged to my mac using the Console
application found in Applications/Utilities
.
Here is an example of a syslog message from my router:
12/01/09 1:33:55 AM IP address is the same, and does not need to be updated!
Testing
From a terminal you can issue the following command to send a syslog message to your logger:
syslog -s -r yourMacsName.local "some message"
or you can use the IP address of your mac:
syslog -s -r 10.0.0.1 "some message"
See the man page for syslog for a full description of the message format.
Upgraded Tiger Systems
I also have a PowerBook G4 that has been upgraded from Tiger to Leopard and it has a slightly different /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/com.apple.syslogd.plist
file.
The main problem is that it does not appear to have the comment I referred to. So to enable it you need to un-comment the NetworkListener
key and following dict lines.
Unfortunately, I can not get this syslog server to work.
Light Wells
Simple Rolling Hash- Part 3
Now that there is a way to remove the first character and append a new last character in constant time to a string hash value, we can also use this hash function suite to perform substring searches in linear time.
To find a substring of length m in a string of length n you might proceed as follows:
start at the first character of the string
compare the substring to the string for m characters.
If same, then the substring is found.
else, repeat from the next character of the string (stop when there are less than m characters left in the string)
In practice this works well since it is unlikely that more than a few character will match each round so the effective time efficiency is much less than O(n**m). But for some strings, such as DNA which have small alphabets, the number of matches in each round could be large.
But by using a rolling hash this can be reduced to linear-time.
Calculate the hash of the substring we are searching for.
Start with a hash of the first m characters of the string
If the hash values match then the substring is found.
else remove the first character of the string from the hash and add the m+1 th character to the hash.
Now the hash is of m characters from the next character of the string.
This process is O(N).
Reducing Fridge Energy Consumption
Australian Energy Use
SNMP to XML
snmpget -v2c -c$community -OXf $host $oid | ./pc-snmp2xml.sheg.
snmpget -v2c -cpublic -OXf 10.0.0.1 ifInOctets.1 | ./pc-snmp2xml.shSo,
snmpget -v2c -cpublic -OXf 10.0.0.1 ifInOctets.1might return
.iso.org.dod.internet.mgmt.mib-2.interfaces.ifTable.ifEntry.ifInOctets[1] = Counter32: 2606713050whereas this
snmpget -v2c -cpublic -OXf 10.0.0.1 ifInOctets.1 | ./pc-snmp2xml.shreturns
snmpbulkwalk works just as well to convert the whole MIB to XML. I have tested this script with Apple Time-Capsule, Nortel 425 switch, MacBook Pro, and a Billion 7404 ADSL router. I had to pre-process the MacBook Pro and Billion router output to remove newline characters and duplicate output respectively. I wrote the SNMP to XML script in AWK because I thought AWK's pattern matching and parsing would simplify the task. I'm not convinced, but it was a good learning exercise. This is the clean-up script.
#!awk # This converts snmp output like this: # .iso.org.dod.internet.mgmt.mib-2.host.hrSWRun.hrSWRunTable.hrSWRunEntry.hrSWRunName[4592] = Hex-STRING: 6A 61 76 61 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 # 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 # 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 # into this: # .iso.org.dod.internet.mgmt.mib-2.host.hrSWRun.hrSWRunTable.hrSWRunEntry.hrSWRunName[4592] = Hex-STRING: 6A 61 76 61 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 0 0 00 00 00 00 00 00 # where multiple lines of data are converted into a single line by eliminating the new-line characters # process expected OID lines that start with . /^(\.).*/{ if ( FNR > 1 ) printf "\n" # terminate last OID bu not the first line printf "%s", $0 # start this OID but don't write a new-line yet next } # process other lines that we assume are actually part of previous OID { printf "%s", $0 # continue previous line } # terminate the last OID END{ printf "\n" # terminate last OID }
Howto make Virtual Machines running in VirtualBox using Physical Partitions on OS-X
Whilst I can sort-of can run Linux, it is not really usable until all this new hardware is understood and drivers built to manage it.
So, next best is to run Linux in a VM. I like FOSS so I will use VirtualBox.
Unfortunately, this seems hard to do, so I have document my approach for others to improve upon.
Requirements
1. Run Linux in a VM using VirtualBox running on OS-X
2. Use real/physical disk partitions so that when this laptop is better supported, I will be able to boot into these physical partitions and drop my VirtualBox and OS-X layers
Procedure
I have re-partitioned my hard drive as follows:
rex:~ phil$ diskutil list
/dev/disk0
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: GUID_partition_scheme *500.1 GB disk0
1: EFI 209.7 MB disk0s1
2: Apple_HFS Macintosh HD 70.0 GB disk0s2
3: Apple_Boot Recovery HD 650.0 MB disk0s3
4: 21686148-6449-6E6F-744E-656564454649 200.0 MB disk0s4
5: Microsoft Basic Data 20.0 GB disk0s5
6: Microsoft Basic Data 20.0 GB disk0s6
7: Microsoft Basic Data 350.0 GB disk0s7
8: Linux Swap 19.8 GB disk0s8
Partition 1 is my EFI partition - I don't want to touch this.
Partition 2 is my shrunk OS-X partition - again, I'd like to keep this in good working order.
Partition 3 is OS-X recovery files - probably a CD/DVD image that I also need to keep safe.
Partition 4 is something that OS-X disk manager created - I'll leave that alone too.
Partition 5 already has a mostly-working Linux root file system - I don't want to mess with this.
Partition 6 will be my new Virtual Machine root file system (and possibly swap area).
Partition 7 already is formatted ext4 and has my /home file system - I want to keep this.
Partition 8 is a Linux swap area I will look at using a bit later.
So, I only want to work with Partition 6 and 7.
rex:phys phil$ ls -la /dev/disk0*
brw-r----- 1 root operator 14, 0 22 Jul 19:47 /dev/disk0
brw-r----- 1 root operator 14, 2 22 Jul 19:47 /dev/disk0s1
brw-r----- 1 root operator 14, 1 22 Jul 19:47 /dev/disk0s2
brw-r----- 1 root operator 14, 3 22 Jul 19:47 /dev/disk0s3
brw-r----- 1 root operator 14, 4 22 Jul 19:47 /dev/disk0s4
brw-r----- 1 root operator 14, 5 22 Jul 19:47 /dev/disk0s5
brw-rw-rw- 1 root operator 14, 6 26 Jul 22:37 /dev/disk0s6
brw-rw-rw- 1 root operator 14, 7 26 Jul 21:51 /dev/disk0s7
brw-r----- 1 root operator 14, 8 22 Jul 19:47 /dev/disk0s8
So that VirtualBox can access these partitions, I ran these commands to give everyone read and write access:
sudo chmod a+rw /dev/disk0s6
sudo chmod a+rw /dev/disk0s7
Create a new VM in VirtualBox.
I called mine phys, and told VB it will hold a 64-bit version of Ubuntu.
I gave it 2048 MB RAM, and told it not to worry about a start-up disk.
I now have a ~/VirtualBox/phys folder for this VM.
cd ~/VirtualBox/phys
VirtualBox needs a VMDK file to tell it how to manage each of these partitions.
sudo VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -rawdisk /dev/disk0s6 -filename d0s6.vmdk
sudo VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -rawdisk /dev/disk0s7 -filename d0s7.vmdk
Since these new files are owned by root, I ran chown to fix this - you would use your own account name here:
sudo chown phil:staff d0s6.vmdk
sudo chown phil:staff d0s7.vmdk
This makes 2 VMDK files in my current VM directory.
rex:phys phil$ ls -la
total 56
drwxr-xr-x 8 phil staff 272 26 Jul 21:31 .
drwxr-xr-x 7 phil staff 238 26 Jul 22:44 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 phil staff 153 23 Jul 01:21 HOWTO.txt
drwx------ 6 phil staff 204 26 Jul 21:32 Logs
-rw------- 1 phil staff 633 26 Jul 22:47 d0s6.vmdk
-rw------- 1 phil staff 634 26 Jul 21:50 d0s7.vmdk
-rw------- 1 phil staff 7524 26 Jul 21:31 phys.vbox
-rw------- 1 phil staff 7524 26 Jul 21:28 phys.vbox-prev
Now I added these two physical disk descriptions to my VM.
You do this in Settings - Storage, select SATA, click 'Add Attachment' icon, select Hard Disk, and select your VMDK file. I did this for each VMDK file.
You will also need to add your Linux distribution ISO either using a real CD/DVD or using an ISO stored on your file system somewhere.
Don't forget to make your VM boot from CD/DVD first.
I have been terse here since those actions should be known by anyone who is experienced at creating VMs in VirtualBox.
You can make other changes to your VM if you like, or you can do it later.
You can now boot your VM.
This is where I ran into problems: I could not get Ubuntu to format my d0s6.vmdk partition during install. Instead, I ran Ubuntu's live CD and launched Ubuntu's Disk Utility. It showed 2 disks as expected. I added a GUID partition table to d0s6.vmdk, created a 4000 MB swap partition and a 16 GB ext4 root file system. I then formatted the file system.
Now I installed Ubuntu: I told it to use the swap partition, and to use my 16 GB partition for root. To do this I told Ubuntu NOT to format it again since I formatted it earlier.
I also told Ubuntu to use my existing home drive and again, to NOT format it since I want to keep its data.
My install took hours, so be patient.
Blue-Green Water - Follow up
Note: Although the two samples should have started with the same pH I suspect the smaller sample had already absorbed significant CO2 before I measured it. I delayed measurement for 15 minutes.