Newton’s Lore

Well, a full Time Capsule backup in hand I upgraded to Mac OS X 10.5.3.

Unfortunately, after the install the machine seemed hung during the shutdown process.

After a forced shutdown and a restart, it seems that BOINC was running, but that BOINCManager wouldn’t work. Killed that.

Now it seems that CPU is being chewed up by

/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreServices.framework/Frameworks/Metadata.framework/Versions/A/Support/mdworker MDSSyncScanWorker com.apple.Spotlight.SyncScanWorker


man mdworker says:

mdworker is the metadata server worker process. It is used by mds to scan and index files as a volume is mounted or a file changes.

There are no configurations to mdworker, and users should not run manually.

Which isn’t particularly revealling. I guess I’ll wait and see if it finishes anytime in the near future. On the plus side, the Airport reception seems better.
 

Since installing the Time Capsule our wireless doorbell seems to be ringing randomly more than usual. I suspect RF interference.

So, the first Time Capsule backup over Gigabit Ethernet took about 8 hours to backup an 80 Gb drive. So, the 160Gb drive should take 16 hours? So far it’s  been over 24 hours and we’re stuck at 132.07 of 145.81Gb (There are 2,007,881 files to back up!),  and not  moving. The weird thing is that MenuMeters shows around 600KB/s of outgoing traffic, presumably to the Time Capsule as everything else  has  been quit. At that transfer rate I’m estimating 8 hours left (time for  bed!), but it’s hard to tell as the progress bar doesn’t seem to be moving. Edit- Something like 32-36 hours all up I think.

Picked up a 500Gb Time Capsule. Got home and was somewhat in a hurry. Power cable was a bit hard to get pushed in properly, although there was no visible evidence of why this would have been the case in either the plug or the socket.
Ignored the “Install this first” CDs, as usual, and fired up Airport Admin utility under Leopard on the wired LAN and it found the existing Airport Express. Did a “Save As…” to save the config of the existing Airport Express (including passwords). Then unplugged the Airport Express and plugged in the Time Capsule, attached to the network cable that used to be plugged into the airport express. Interestingly the assistant offered me the chance to use the Time Capsule to replace an existing wireless access point, but it wanted me to find it (and I’d just unplugged it :). So I plugged it back in to power and the LAN, but the Assistant couldn’t seem to find it. I gave up at this point, hit the Manual button and just imported the settings from the Airport Express (seemed like a safe bet) into the Time Capsule’s settings. This seemed to work. Changed security to WPA Personal and restarted the Time Capsule.
So, now turn on Time Machine on the Leopard box and get it started. That was at 18:30, and it’s now done 47.3 of 69.44Gb (1,396,130 items from my 80Gb drive) after some 5.75hrs (over Gigabit).
Meanwhile, every other machine had to have its Airport connection changed to WPA Personal, and even though I’m pretty sure I typed the password in several times, it took a while to register and stick (at least I hope it’s stuck now!).
Are network speeds faster? Hard to tell. I haven’t maxed out the speed as currently we need backward compatibility with 802.11g until the next round of upgrades. It offers 802.11n on 2.4 or 5GHz, and 802.11a compatibility as well as 802.11n/b/g.
Other noteworthy things are that the Airport Admin utility displays a set of warnings about the current Time Capsule configuration (ie no DNS, multiple DHCP, etc.).
The Time Capsule also offers to sync with a timeserver, and also flash its light if there’s a software update available. This is much less useful as it’s going to be stuck in a separate room where I’m unlikely to see its flashing light.
There’s also support to “Advertise configuration globally” via Bonjour, or so it seems to make it available globally over the internet. I don’t enable this.
I’d heard rumours of it running hot. Sure, it’s warm, but not really any warmer than my ADSL router, and it’s been doing a lot more work for the past 5 hours. Plus it’s got an internal power supply, so it’ll be warmer from that alone.
The other thing is now there’s an extra shared volume appearing in the Finder. Logging into it reveals a shared disk onto which I can put stuff. Cool. Checking in the Airport Admin shows it’s a guest read-writable volume, which is probably not good by default. Now locked down
So far, it seems to be behaving pretty much as expected. I could do setup in a hurry without too much pain. It claims to be backing up at a reasonable speed.
Now I just need to test recovery

From the Mac OS X 10.5.2 release notes, here are some of my observations: User Interface:

• Apple has added a Time Machine icon to the Menu bar (it can be turned on in the Time Machne control panel)
• The menus are less translucent (who would have thought with everyone complaining that that would have been a problem) and transparency can be turned off in the Desktop & Screen Saver preference pane
• List view is back in the Stacks (presumably they got a lot of complaints), and they have a new grid view background (presumably for better visibility)

It remains to be seen if they’ve added the Size column back to the Spotlight column view though.

Support for new things (ie you may want to try plugging some old stuff that didn’t work in again to see if it does now!):

• You can now iSync Samsung D600E and D900i phones
• Airports Express and Extreme now support more printers connected via USB
• New RAW camera formats supported:
  • Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III
  • Canon Powershot G9
  • Hasselblad CF-22
  • Hasselblad CF-39
  • Leaf Aptus 75s
  • Nikon D3
  • Nikon D300
  • Sony Alpha DSLR-A700
• Supports more 3rd party routers in iChat and Back To My Mac

Interesting bugs fixed:

• Fixed a problem when ejecting a CD could write to it! (presumably instead of just ejecting it)
• Fixed a problem where the Leopard Setup Assistant would re-appear (as noted in this TidBITs article by Glenn Fleishman)
• Mail now automatically disables the (unsupported) third-party plugin GrowlMail version 1.1.2 or earlier to avoid issues.
• Addresses “accuracy issues” with the web content filter (in Parental Controls) perhaps to now block unboxing porn?
• The computer will now shut down if an automatic disk repair does not succeed during startup. (Hopefully it tells you why it just shut down?)

Today Apple released “The World’s Thinnest Notebook”, the MacBook Air, positioned between the MacBook and MacBook Pro. 0.4 to 1.93 cm (0.16 to 0.76 inches). The thickest part of the MacBook Air is thinner than the Sony TZ. It fits in an envelope and has a 13.3″ widescreen display with an LED backlight, iSight built in, MacBook keyboard (with black keys) but with an ambient light sensor, multi-touch trackpad which uses multi-touch input (to pivot photos, zoom etc.).1.6GHz (US$1799) to 1.8GHz (+US$300) Intel Core 2 Duo Otellini CPU (60% reduced in size!), 1.8 inch 80Gb Hard drive with a 64Gb solid state disk as an option (+US$999). 45W MagSafe power adapter, 1 USB 2 port, Micro-DVI, Audio Out, 802.11n, BlueTooth 2.1/EDR. An external SuperDrive is available. “Remote Disc” software allows the MacBook Air to “borrow” optical drives on a Mac or PC. 5 hours of battery life and 2Gb of memory standard. Shipping in 2 weeks time.
From an environmental perspective the display is mercury and lead free, and the circuit boards are free of BFR (Brominated Fire Retardant), and the retail packaging is 56% smaller than the MacBook.

For the iPhone a free upgrade gives:

• Maps with location (based on nearby WiFi base stations)
• Webclips (Up to 9 web bookmarks on your phone’s home screen)
• Customised home screens
• SMS multiple people
• Chapter and language options in iPod mode, plus Lyrics

For the iPod Touch, a $20 upgrade gives: Mail, Stocks, Notes, Weather and Maps 

Steve Jobs has announced Time Capsule, an Airport Extreme with built in  500Gb (US$299) or 1Tb (US$499) hard drive

If you’ve got an old PowerBook that supports CardBus you can buy an nQuicky 802.11n card from QuickerTek for US$64.95 to talk to your Airport Extreme base station.

Recently I swapped out a 100Mb (annoyingly capitalised) NETGEAR FS108 switch for a 1Gb D-Link DGS-1008D switch. Unfortunately, after having done this the Airport Express that was plugged into the D-Link switch would repeatedly hang, dropping the wireless connection and requiring power cycling the Airport Express.
Unsurprisingly this didn’t take long to get annoying, so I did a quick trip to pick up a 1Gb NETGEAR GS108 switch. After removing the D-Link and putting the NETGEAR in place, the Airport Express hasn’t fallen over yet. Conveniently the NETGEAR “Prosafe” versions (more expensive but in a nice solid metal case rather than plastic) have their status lights above each port on the front of the box, which makes it easier to see which cable is doing what, despite it being a bit uglier with all the cables hanging out the front.
I’d previously heard about the dodginess of D-Link, I guess I was overdue for a reminder.