Vanishing HD Space on Popcorn Hour

Sometimes you think you're mind is playing tricks on you. I have that sometimes. E.g. I have a Popcorn Hour  (Networked Media Tank) which holds movies and series I watch. Bits and Bytes come and go on that machine. Thing you've seen are deleted, and replaced by new content. But over the 'years' it seemed to hold less and less content. Oke, movies have increased in size (10-20GB per movie is nothing nowadays). So I didn't really think much of it....

Until I started transporting the content with Transmit instead of FileZilla. Transmit was configured to show even the hidden files, and hidden files it showed. I found 4 hidden temporary pureftp-upload files of almost 32GB each. The timestamps on those files differed from late last year to a couple of months back

.pureftpd-upload-<some random string>

The problem was that I couldn't remove them from the Popcorn, but I really wanted my 120GD of free space back. Turned out that the FTP daemon on the Popcorn was locking these files. Reboot of the popcorn didn't help.

The way to remove them was to stop the FTP daemon on the Popcorn in the menu, and access the device through SMB (or another protocol you can use), and make sure that you can see hidden files.
Select the files and press delete, and they should be gone. After that you can re-enable the FTP service if you like.

Getting Around a Wide-Angle Lens

Going on holiday is fun, but it's also a time of concessions on several levels. Especially if you can't bring every lens you own or (in theory) might need. Since the awesome Nikon 5-500mm f/1.8G VR ED N (small, <€1000, <1kg) isn't widely available. This means deciding what to bring in your camera bag.

In my case, I wanted to experiment with primes during my holiday. this also means that you have to use the foot-zoom, and on several occasions that won't work because of certain limitation (walls, buildings, ravines, etc.). In those cases you have 3 options;

1. Don't make the photo
2. Make a photo, but know immediately that it will end in /dev/null when you get home (a just-for-the-record photo).
3. Improvise

So as you might have guessed, I ran into such a situation in Toledo, Spain. They have this great cathedral in the middle of an old town with narrow streets. You need a ultra-wide angle lens for almost anything there.

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Splunk> Making Sense of Logfiles

My area of expertise in the professional world is Network Security. This includes protecting network from intrusions, but also delivering reports about the network status. For the latter we use SIEM(like) environments like the Cisco CS-MARS and the Juniper STRM.
The 'problem' with these devices is that they are great in reporting incidents and creating awesome reports about everything, but they lack the functionality to do some serious investigating.

I have several customers with a SIEM, and most of them still use (Linux) commandline tools like awk, grep, etc. these tools work, but you need to scrape everything together yourself, and building queries can be quite challenging. This is where Splunk> comes in.

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Slow Open Directory on OS X Server

Ever since I've been playing with my Mac mini with OS X server 10.6.4 I have had on-and-off problems in the authentication/Open Directory area.

• Some accounts authenticate really quick, while others take minutes to authenticate.
• Accessing the Open Directory through the Workgroup Manager is as slow as a slow boat to China. Changing users (just by selecting them) takes another boat along the Pacific.

So it was time to start digging into the phenomenon called 'Open Directory'.

The manual from Apple isn't much help in troubleshooting a slow Open Directory, so it was time to search the interwebs and start experimenting. If it didn't work, I can always reinstall the entire server from scratch.

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The Problems with Apple OS X (10.6.4) Server

Updated on Monday, July 12, 2010 at 21:48 by Willem

It has finally been done. I've switched off the old Windows 2003 server at home and officially replaced it with an Apple Mac mini server. For now... And with 'for now' I really mean for now. It turns out that Apple OS X Server doesn't resemble its client counterpart at all. Where the client is stable and intuitive, the server edition lacks both.

I'll try to explain why I think there's lots of room for improvement. Mainly stuff I ran into while configuring the server/services.
Since the Windows fulfilled several functions, I needed these functions to be available on the OS X server as well. These were;

• Networking services like DNS and DHCP
• Webserver
• Mailserver
• MySQL Database
• SSH Server
• File sharing on the internal network
• Public Key Infrastructure for issuing certificates
• Download station

Evaluating these functions, one would think that this shouldn't be a problem. Well it actually is.... At least some of those features.

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Billingham 225 Review (part 2)

Updated on Wednesday, August 31, 2011 at 22:07 by Willem

As promised, the second part of the Billingham 225 Camera Bag review. This part will be more on the experiences I had during my 2.5 week driving around in Spain (~5500km in total).

The bag is roomier than expected. There were roughly two configurations that I carries around;

• Nikon D300, Nikon 17-55 f/2.8 and a Nikon 85 f/1.8, Panasonic Lumix LX-3
  This was the 'easy-way-out' configuration.
• Nikon D300, Voigtlander 20mm, Nikon 35mm f/2, Nikon 50mm f/1.8, Nikon, Nikon 85mm f/1.8 and a Lensbaby Composer
  I used this configuration about 80% of the time, since those primes force you to think about composition etc. There's not always room to change lenses. The best example of this is an 'almost' Gigapixel creation I made of the cathedral in Toledo with my 35mm lens. To completely capture the cathedral I had to take 72 photos (result can soon be found in the Panoramas section of my website).

The bag is pretty safe in regards to pick-pockets, and prying fingers. All the zippers etc. protect your gear very well. Downside is that you need to open a lot of things before you get to your gear (every advantage has its disadvantage....)

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My iPhone 3GS and iOS 4

Apple released the latest Operating System/software/firmware for the iPhone. This new OS (iOS) adds several new features and lots of enhancements (which I wont be going into).

I upgraded my iPhone earlier this week. No problems with that. The only real hick-up I ran into was the Voicemail number. The phone had forgotten the Voicemail, MMS and Tethering settings, so I needed to add it again. Even tethering was still available on the SIM-lock free iPhone with the KPN carrier.

There's one thing that's not 'Apple' about this update. With the regular Apple operating systems there's always the experience that an upgrade to a new release (10.4 -> 10.5 -> 10.6) leaves you with a faster/snappier OS. Even if the hardware is relatively old. Don't know how they do it, but it's something that Microsoft hasn't accomplished yet since MS-DOS 3.

Anyway, the OS upgrade on the iPhone is completely different. The device is less snappy. It looks like the device goes into some sort of suspended animation and when you need to use it it takes a couple of milliseconds (it's not much, but it's noticeable) for the phone to react. After a couple of seconds it seems to be gone.

For me, the new/improved features are more important than the snappy-ness of the device, so I'll stick to the new iOS for the moment.

Installing Adobe Coldfusion 9 on OSX Server 10.6.4

Updated on Tuesday, July 20, 2010 at 11:08 by Willem

Updated on Friday, July 30, 2010 at 7:53 by Willem

After Apple updated the Mac mini to it's current form (mid 2010), I decided that it was time to start replacing my 'faithful' Windows 2003 server with something a bit less power consuming. The original Mac Mini was basically a consumer device, but a while back, Apple released a server version of the device. The main differences are:

• Only 1 CPU model available (2.66GHz at this moment)
• No DVD drive
• 2 * 500GB internal disks
• OSX 10.6.4 Server edition (unlimited clients)

Basically everything you could ever need for a server with a very small footprint.

The installation of Coldfusion is not straight forward. Not that I expected it to be [1], [2], [3], but one keeps hoping on an installer that actually installs the complete package, and where you don't have to edit files yourself to get it to work. It's not that it's the very first version of the scripting engine......

Anyway, the installer guides you through everything needed to INSTALL the software. Getting it to work comes next....

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Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 Released

Adobe released Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 3 into the wild. The application can be downloaded from the Adobe website. The trail can be upgraded to a fully functioning version when you enter a valid serial number.

New features are;

• Flickr integration
  Really nice feature. I do wonder how (and if) it works across multiple computers.
• Easy sharing
• Lens correction
• Support for DSLR video's
• Image watermarking
• Tethered shooting
  For Nikon and Canon Cameras
• etc.

After I downloaded the new version I installed it on my MacBook. The 'old' Lightroom v2.x can be used besides the new version.

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Billingham 225 Review (part 1)

Billingham 225As some of you might have noticed, I was looking for a new camera bag. Yesterday, the mailman delivered the Billingham 225 (Black/Tan version) I ordered at Kamera Express.
The reason for me getting this bag is that it holds more space, pockets, zippers etc. than my Crumpler Daily M. It's also safer in regards to prying fingers. Additional advantages are that the bag is less conspicuous, and looks way better than the Crumpler (I know... taste....).

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