Using Drobo and Drobo Share with Time Machine

Recently I have bought a Drobo and a Drobo Share. One of the reasons for this purchase was to be able to easily expand disk storage capabilities and have a central location to store Time Machine backups for both my Macs.

When I had installed my Drobo and Drobo Share I soon noticed that by default Time Machine does not allow NAS systems to be used as Time Machine backup disks. After a bit of research on the net I found that it is possible but it needs a little bit of work.

This blog post details the step I performed to setup Time Machine for my Macs

1) Setup your Drobo and Drobo Share and make sure everything is in working order and you have enough free space available to store Time Machine Backup data onto your Drobo.

2) For every Mac to be backup-ed using time machine create a sparse bundle image. You can create this disk image by using Disk Utility

Normally a volume size of twice the actual size of the HDD installed in your Mac should be adequate to store multiple versions of your files into the Time Machine backup. If you have enough storage in your Drobo you can make the disk image larger. After the sparse bundle has been created make sure to eject the disk image.

2) Copy the disk image to the root folder of your Drobo

3) Open a Terminal session and execute the following command on every Mac to be backup-ed by Time Machine

defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1

4) Start Time Machine and select you Drobo as Time Machine Disk. For for Time Machine to start, moste likely it will fail or just stop the prepare action as soon as it starts. If you now look at the contect of the root folder of your Drobo you will notice that one additional file is created. This file is named something like this

Atum_001debec863e.temp.sparsebundle

Atum in my case is the name of my MacBook Pro, and 001debec863e is an identifier used by Time Machine to identify the machine.

Use the first part of the name (Atum_001debec863e) to rename the temp.sparsebundle into its proper name for Time Macine. In my case that would be

Atum_001debec863e.sparsebundle.

4) As soon as Time Machine is done working you can click on the ‘Change Disk…’-button in the Time Machine preference pane and select None from the list.

5) You can now delete the xxx.temp.sparsebundle from your Drobo.

6) Now again you select your Drobo as a Time Machine Disk. This time there should be no errors and Time Machine will start backing up your Mac.

I have used to following resources from macosxhints.com while figuring out how to setup Time Machine in combination with my Drobo and Drobo Share
[1] – Create a Time Machine size limit for networked disks
[2] – Set up Time Machine on a NAS in three easy steps

Google please do not redirect me just because I am traveling

I am traveling a lot for my current job taking me also outside of The Netherlands into Belgium and Germany from time to time. Lately I spent a lot of time around the Brussels in Belgium, which is the French speaking part of the country. As a result all the searches I perform using the Google search bar plugin within Firefox get redirected to a French version of the Google pages and the search result favor web pages written in French.

Since I can hardly speak or read French I find myself constantly typing in a URL for a (in my case) Dutch localized version of Google to do my searches. This totally defeats the purpose of Firefox’s search bar.

Look for a file named google.xml. On Windows systems this file is located at C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins. On Mac OS systems the file is inside the Firefox.app. You can get to the file by right (or control) clicking on Firefox.app and selecting ‘Show Package Contents’ from the menu. Within the new Finder window navigate to /Contents/MacOS/searchpulgins.

By default (Firefox 3.0.6) the file contains the following information (except for the Image tag, data for the image itself has been removed)

<SearchPlugin xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/">
<ShortName>Google</ShortName>
<Description>Google Search</Description>
<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
<Image width="16" height="16">data:image/x-icon;base64,...</Image>
<Url type="application/x-suggestions+json" method="GET" 
     template="http://suggestqueries.google.com/complete/search?output=firefox&client=firefox&hl={moz:locale}&q={searchTerms}"/>
<Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="http://www.google.com/search">
  <Param name="q" value="{searchTerms}"/>
  <Param name="ie" value="utf-8"/>
  <Param name="oe" value="utf-8"/>
  <Param name="aq" value="t"/>
  <!-- Dynamic parameters -->
  <Param name="rls" value="{moz:distributionID}:{moz:locale}:{moz:official}"/>
  <MozParam name="client" condition="defaultEngine" trueValue="firefox-a" falseValue="firefox"/>
</Url>
<SearchForm>http://www.google.com/firefox</SearchForm>
</SearchPlugin>

Edit the content of the file like below (bold text indicates the changes made to the file)

<SearchPlugin xmlns="http://www.mozilla.org/2006/browser/search/">
<ShortName>Google</ShortName>
<Description>Google Search</Description>
<InputEncoding>UTF-8</InputEncoding>
<Image width="16" height="16">data:image/x-icon;base64,...</Image>
<Url type="application/x-suggestions+json" method="GET" 
     template="http://suggestqueries.google.com/complete/search?output=firefox&client=firefox&hl={moz:locale}&q={searchTerms}"/>
<Url type="text/html" method="GET" template="http://www.google.com/search">
  <Param name="q" value="{searchTerms}"/>
  <Param name="ie" value="utf-8"/>
  <Param name="oe" value="utf-8"/>
  <Param name="aq" value="t"/>
  <Param name="hl" value="en"/>
  <!-- Dynamic parameters -->
  <Param name="rls" value="{moz:distributionID}:{moz:locale}:{moz:official}"/>
  <MozParam name="client" condition="defaultEngine" trueValue="firefox-a" falseValue="firefox"/>
</Url>
<SearchForm>http://www.google.com/firefox</SearchForm>
</SearchPlugin>

This little change ensures that you are still being addressed in English although you are still redirected to a localized Google page. If you totally want to prevent the redirect to happen you could, instead of using “http://www.google.com/search”, use something like “http://www.google.nl/search” or any other of Googles localized search pages.

Using Foxmarks to synch to iPhone/iPod Touch

For some time now I have been using Foxmarks to keep my bookmarks synchronized between several machines I am using. At first Foxmarks, as the name implies, was for Firefox only. About 3 months ago Foxmarks put out betas for both Internet Explorer (Windows only) and Safari (Mac only). The beta period is now over (February 2, 2009) and you can now download Foxmarks for the mentioned browsers from the Foxmarks site.

By just using the Foxmarks software you will be using the following synchronization setup



Since Foxmarks allows for synchronization with Safari, it is now also possible to synchronize your bookmarks with your iPhone or iPod Touch. For this you will need a MobileMe subscription. The synchronization setup will then look like this



On the Mac side you need to setup for Foxmarks and make sure the Foxmarks synching is running

and for MobileMe you have to enable the Bookmarks synchronization

On the iPhone/iPod Touch side you have to setup MobileMe synchronization (visit this page for detailed information on setting up MobileMe)

I have only had two issues with Foxmarks so far;

1. Dividers in Firefox sometimes get replaced with “———-”. Normally Foxmarks does a good job keeping dividers being dividers in Firefox
2. At some point in time I ended up with two ‘Unsorted Bookmarks’-folders

Both issues are easily solved and never resulted in loosing any of my bookmarks and I am almost certain it was caused due to me playing around with some settings (MobileMe and Foxmarks for Safari) on two machines.

I am only using the bookmark synchronization of Foxmarks, since I am using 1Password to keep my passwords save and secure.

Sharing a hotel WiFi connection over WiFi

For my daytime job I am spending a lot of time in hotels, which btw starts to suck big time. To be able to keep in touch with the rest of the family and do a bit of gaming I usually pay for 50 hours worth of WiFi access which last me through the whole month, well at least most of the time it does. Since I am also an avid iPhone user I turn on the roaming feature from time to time, which to no surprise results in a steep bill from T-Mobile.

So I started to think about this. So I am paying to have 50 hours of WiFi access and I pay T-Mobile for the roaming charges. I started to poke around in the System Preferences panel of my MacBook Pro. Like I suspected by default there is a possibility to share connections from one network card to another. Great.

Now I only needed to find me a nice little wifi router to become part of my standard traveling kit, which is starting to show more and more Apple logos. Quickly I laid my eyes on the AirPort Express. This little gadget was just what I was looking for, great form factor and the right price.

This sunday I was visiting the Media Markt in Rotterdam and I saw some of these beauties lying around. There were even some demo models at a discounted price (€80), so I just had to pick one up. And since my last to bills from T-Mobile both had around €80 of roaming charges, this was a no brainer. Since I had to go abroad the same day I could test the device almost immediately. Which is good since waiting to start playing with any gadget is not one of my strong points.

It turns out to extremely simple to create a private (or public) WiFi access point using the AirPort Express. It only took me two steps (excluding the normal setup of the AirPort Express, which to be honest I don’t for sure now is there is such a process, since mine had already been used to demo the unit). Anyways, here is what I had to do

1) Enable network sharing for your active network card. In my case I had to enable sharing from my built-in AirPort to the built-in ethernet card

    Enable ‘Internet Sharing’ and select the correct ‘From’ and ‘To’ network cards

2) Open up the AirPort Utility application and perform a manual setup for the AirPort Express to create a wireless network

    Press the ‘Manual Setup’ button

    Within the section ‘Wireless’ choose ‘Create a wireless network’, set a network name and provide security information

After these two simple steps I could whip out my iPhone and have it join the newly created wireless network.

Apple, thanks for making my life so easy!!

Tip: When you buy a demo model for any wireless device be sure to ask whether or not the store employees have specified a password for the device. In my case they did, luckily the password as written down in the instruction booklet of the AirPort Express.

Keeping my digital life in-sync (2)

Some months ago I wrote the post Keeping my digital life in-sync. At this moment I still haven’t found a good working solution to keep my bookmarks in-synch. This mainly concerns the bookmarks within (Mobile)Safari on my iPhone. FoxMarks does a pretty good job for anything bookmark related in Firefox, which is my preferred browser on all platforms (Windows, Mac and Linux).

When it comes to being able to access the same documents from different machines I started to use Apple’s MobileMe by using its iDisk functionality. But for whatever reason it didn’t really work well for me.

Since the time I started using Macs I have been listening to the The Mac Geek Gab Podcast by Dave Hamilton & John F. Braun. For some time now I heard them mention Dropbox. So after hearing about their good experience with Dropbox I decided to give it a try.

At the time of writing I have installed Dropbox on four machines (two Macs and two Windows machine) and I like it! It has a nice feel to it, just by looking at the Dropbox folder I can see what the status of my files are (All done or still folders/files to be synched).

One thing that I have found that does not work (not sure that it should) is when you use Dropbox for folders that also contain hidden files. I have some folders that also have files that start with a dot, making the files invisible on Unix based platforms (Mac, Linux, etc.). When these files got synched to the Windows machine the files and folders where created but where visible. When synching between two Windows machines these attributes are also lost. So it is my guess that file and folder attributes are just always lost.

For not a real big issue but I can imagine that for others it is a big deal, so let’s hope Dropbox will find a way of fixing this issue cross platform.

You can get Dropbox for free including free 2.0GB of storage, which if needed can be upgrade to 50GB for $9.99 per month or $99 yearly.

One important note when using the free version of Dropbox. If your account has been inactive for a period of 90 days Dropbox may delete any or all of your files. This is done without prior notice.
Just so you know…

Using the Blizzard Authenticator

For little over a week now I have been using my Blizzard Authenticator and it works nice and easy. Not as invasive I had anticipated, so that is great.

The process of linking the authenticator is easy, maybe a little too easy. When you link the authenticator to your account just only need to input the 10-digit code from the back of the authenticator and you are done. From that moment on you can only log into your account on the web or within the game using the authenticator.

I would have expected that I would be asked for a code from the authenticator so it can check if your are linking an authenticator currently in your possession. So make sure you double, or better yet triple, check the 10-digit code you enter on the webpage before hitting the submit button. Once linked without the proper code from the authenticator you will have to got through a lengthy process to get things undone.

Following are some (partial) screenshots on the process of linking the authenticator to your World of Warcraft account

Step 1) Login into you account page at Blizzard and choose ‘Blizzard Authenticator Security Token’

Step 2) Enter the 10-digit code of your authenticator

Step 3) Success message (hopefully)

After these steps your will be presented with the following entry form when logging into your account

World of Warcraft – webpage

World of Warcraft – Game client

Ordered my authenticator

Last night I finally ordered a Blizzard Authenticator, so I can finally more securely protect my World of Warcraft account.

Hopefully it will arrive some where at the end of this week or the beginning of next week.

To be continued…

Add news feeds to NewsGator from Firefox the easy way

When I am working on my Mac it is easy to add new news feeds to NewsGator since I have NewNewsWire installed, but when I am not working on my Mac, for instance when I am at my work doing some research I would still be able to add news feeds I come across to my NewsGator account.

I know that NewsGator provides toolbars for both Internet Explorer and Firefox, but I do not like to install additional pieces of software just to add a news feed. Also when I am working at clients using their hardware mist of the time you will not be able to install software anyway.

Firefox itself has support for adding news feed to some online services (Bloglines, My Yahoo and Google) as well as Firefox’s own bookmarking system (local to the browser itself).

Although Firefox by default has only three services defined, there is room for a total of six services (0 through 5). The settings for these services can be found within the ‘about:config’-page of Firefox. Staring from version 3 of Firefox when you try to open the ‘about:config’-page, Firefox warns you about the damage you could do to Firefox by changing settings using this page. So you have to confirm that you will play nice with Firefox by clicking on the button “I’ll be careful, I promise!”.

On the ‘about:config’-page type the string ‘browser.contentHandlers’ into the Filter-field, this will make sure only the relevant settings are displayed.

The settings for a unused entry (most likely this will be the one numbered 3) are

Preference Name	Status	Type	Value
browser.contentHandlers.types.3.title	default	string	chrome://browser-region/locale/region.properties
browser.contentHandlers.types.3.type	default	string	application/vnd.mozilla.maybe.feed
browser.contentHandlers.types.3.uri	default	string	chrome://browser-region/locale/region.properties

To add NewsGator as a content handler for news feeds we will change the settings for the first available unused entry

Preference Name	Status	Type	Value
browser.contentHandlers.types.3.title	user set	string	NewsGator
browser.contentHandlers.types.3.type	default	string	application/vnd.mozilla.maybe.feed
browser.contentHandlers.types.3.uri	user set	string	http://www.newsgator.com/ngs/subscriber/subext.aspx?url=%s

Now it is time to restart Firefox to let these changes take effect.

From now on every time you click on a RSS feed, Firefox will give you the possibility to add the news feed to your NewsGator account.

Keeping my digital life in-sync

In the wake of my new iPhone I am working on making the efforts needed to keep information synced between the several devices I am using easier. Currently I am using at least 4 devices, being;

• an iPod, soon to be replaced with an iPhone depending on the speed of both Apple and T-Mobile
• an iMac
• a MacBook Pro
• a regular laptop running the Windows OS for work

The information I am currently most concerned about keeping in sync are;

• Contact information
• Calendar information
• Bookmarks
• News feeds

Contact and Calendar information
This one I have solved by buying myself a MobileMe subscription from Apple. Despite all of the negative responses revolving around the Push not being a real push and numerous outages around the world, I find myself among the lucky ones. So far I have no real issues when using MobileMe. I had however some issues with the iPod Touch initially, it would sync over the complete calendar down to the iPod regardless of what settings I was using. After some fiddling with the settings I found what was working for me

• Set the iPod Touch up for manually syncing
• Turn ‘Fetch New Data’ to off
• Fetch mode to ‘Manually’
• Open the Calendar application and wait for it to (first clear and then) receive all of your data
• Set the iPod Touch up for Push
• Turn ‘Fetch New Data’ to On
• Fetch mode to ‘Every 15 minutes’

Bookmarks
Since I mainly use Firefox for my internet browsing, keeping my bookmarks in-sync could be easily achieved by using the brilliant addon named Foxmarks (see also one of my earlier posts). The only downside is that Firefox is not running on the iPod Touch or iPhone. This means that I don’t have direct access to my bookmarks when I am on the road. I could be using Foxmarks website to access my bookmarks, but I would much rather have a way of syncing my Firefox bookmarks into Safari.

This is something I still need to figure out.

News feeds
For getting the latest news from several web sites around the world I have been using NewsFire on my Mac OS X based machines. This has always worked fine for me, but since the introduction of the new software version for both the iPod Touch and iPhone combined with the introduction of the iTunes App Store a whole new world of abilities has been opened for these two devices (unless you had jail broken your device, then you had access to third-party apps for quite some time already).

On the iTunes App Store I found the application NetNewsWire (the link will take you to the iTunes App Store), which is a RSS news feed reader. I already knew this application as a regular Mac OS X application, but I had never really looked at it since I liked NewsFire and was not looking for a replacement for it.
With the possibility of running NetNewsWire on the iPod Touch this has totally changed. So yesterday NetNewsWire has replaced NewsFire on both my Macs and has been installed on my iPod Touch.
The synching of the RSS feeds is handled by using the services of NewsGator. Just sign up for a free account and your are pretty much set.

NewsGator also provides toolbar applications for both Internet Explorer and Firefox, but since these are provided as a downloadable executable, these are unusable on a Mac. I have found another way which allows you to add news feeds to your NewsGator account without the need of an addon or applications. I will describe this in a separate post.

iPhone 16GB

After some fighting with myself I decided to go for it. Wow, I managed to delay my urge to order it for a full 4 days, partially achieved by being out of the country since Friday but still, I resisted the urge to line-up at midnight.

So far for trying to make me feel a bit better of chunking out a decent amount of cash to satisfy my need to new technologies.

Since T-Mobile is currently out of stock on iPhone 3Gs it could take up to 6 weeks before I can hold that little gem in my hands. So for now I have update my iPod Touch to firmware version 2.0 so I can enjoy the new applications, already found some nice ones that are now on my list to be tested as soon I get my iPhone.