August 28, 2009 at 14:51 · Filed under Personal
Wanted to share a quick “how does it work” about PGP WDE for Mac.
http://www.pgp.com/mac/
This is the only solution that does pre-boot and true WDE for the Mac. The software is 189 for a yearly license or 239 for perpetual. The software itself is very “apple-ish” with great wizards and walk through for those not familiar with key based authentication and encryption. Some of the features are:
- WDE for Intel based Mac running 10.4/10.5, no SL due to the 64bit kernel from the debug trace on my Mac Pro :)
- Encryption integrates with Apple Mail or Entourage through scripts for PGP authentication on messages
- Integrates into iChat for encrypted chat – HORRIBLE compared to OTR and Adium IMO
- Encrypted ZIP – not winzip compatible
- Encrypted virtual volumes – think truecrypt
- Secure Wipe – Secure Empty Trash on a Mac doesn’t comply with NISPOM standards last time I checked. They include a Finder integrated tool that works against those standards. Much quicker too than secure erase on standard macs.
Now for QA:
- Why did you buy it?
- 2 main reasons are work and security. FileVault is a great tool, but due to the sparse volume approach it shares some technical limitations and issues that I am not willing to accept. Let alone the bugs that refuse to allow default settings within the OS saved for 10.5. In addition with WDE I can perform time machine backups to my WDE firewire drive for total protection
- What is the performance hit?
- Once the drive is encrypted it is little to no impact. If you have done cryptfs in Linux, the impact is about the same. Compared to the windows Boeing image the performance is phenomenal. Notice though I said once it was encrypted. My MacBook Pro with a 500GiB drive is still going. Screenshot attached to share my sadness at the speed.
- How well does it integrate?
- Very nicely! There is a little icon bar that sits up top near the airport indicator informing you of messages encryption and other status. It is not GROWL integrate (NIH) so that is a little annoying, but the interface overall feels like a full mac product
- Would you buy again?
- Since WinMagic STILL has not put SecureDoc out for Mac or Linux this is your only choice right now. I am a little peeved that the product is not FIPS 140-2lvl2 in this day and age, but the encryption suffices. I will say that having used both PGP and SecureDoc, PGP is what I would give to Mom for use.
- What about Bootcamp?
- Nope – bootcamp does not work with this product. I know that on the MacPro it wiped out my dual boot gentoo build in one swoop. That was using the EFI based boot (rEFIt), so I am not sure what PBA system they are using. Use Vmware or VirtualBox :)
September 12, 2008 at 16:00 · Filed under Techie
I compiled bin2iso from source for all the mac users out there. For some reason bin2iso is not in macports. Link below:
bin2iso
Unzip into a directory and chmod +x bin2iso
Recommend moving to /usr/local/bin
September 6, 2008 at 08:34 · Filed under Techie
I wanted to run MacOS 9 in my Ubuntu Intrepid dev box so I went ahead and grabbed CVS. Problem was the autogen script never dumped a config.sub. Instead I took the easy route and downloaded an RPM version and used alien to convert. The one extra step to get it running is to as root ln -s /var/lib/libreadline.so.5 /var/lib/libreadline.so.4
Have fun!
sheepshaver_23-13_i386.deb
August 3, 2008 at 17:28 · Filed under Techie
You took the bite, you bought two Macs. It is a dirty feeling that you can’t wash off as you had the fact you now I contemplating purchasing a Steve Jobs black turtleneck sweater. One thing ol’ Steve hasn’t given us Mac Geeks yet is a central server. We are disposed to store things in one mac and hope for the best. You, the reader, are in luck as this geek isn’t the garden bred Mac type, but rather a UNIX type. With a little command line voodoo we will centrally locate those libraries.
- If you plan on using a NAS (Network Attached Storage like TimeCapsule) then ensure AFP sharing is enabled. If you are using a SAN (Storage Area Storage like a Drobo hooked to a Mac via Firewire) ensure the machine is sharing the external drive.
- On the mac where the libraries are currently stored map to the share drive by going into Finder (home folder for example) and hitting Apple+K
- A dialog box will appear with a Connect to Server in the header. Type: afp://$ip/$share with IP and Share being your defined settings
- Once you are mapped open up the Terminal which can be found under Applications –> Utilities –> Terminal
- We are now ready to prepare for consolidation. Follow this article for consolidating your iTunes library before transferring: TMO Quick Tip
- Now lets head back to that terminal and sync the data to the share: sudo rsync -avEz ~/Music /Volumes/ShareDrive
- Go run a few miles, depending on the size of your library this will take awhile. After it is completed we are going to do the scary step of removing your current library. Yep, I said it. Drag that bad boy to the Trash and empty. Don’t delete the Music folder but rather all the contents. Be sure your data copied because if not you are going to hate me and start crying. Stop it, no one wants to see you cry.
- Now lets link that bad boy back so you can rock some tunes: sudo ln -s /Volumes/ShareDrive/Music/* ~/Music/
- Open iTunes and cross your fingers and toes it worked. At this point I expect you are river dancing or firing me an angry email.
- Now time for iPhoto! Same type of process: sudo rsync -avEz ~/Pictures /Volumes/ShareDrive
- Same as before, be careful and delete everything in the Pictures folder
- Let us now link again: sudo ln -s /Volumes/ShareDrive/Pictures/* ~/Pictures
- Open iPhoto — Nick FTW!
Why do it this way rather than the Apple Approved Method? This allows your machines to think that the data is there as long as the network is up. If you have a laptop when you are home iPhoto and iTunes work like a champ. Soon as you hit the road your computer acts like there never was a library. This gives you the ability to operate a few machines at once without either of them knowing the truth about your adultress libraries. The downside to this is being VERY VERY careful not to have 2 machines editing the iTunes or iPhoto libraries at once. It will suck, heads up.
July 31, 2008 at 13:33 · Filed under Techie
If you happen to have a G4 Cube or another system with a MCE upgraded superdrive, you have the issue of dealing with the Master/Slave mappings. You loose the capability to hold the “C” and boot cdrom. Why? Well Open Firmware detects cd as your hard drive. Here is how you can change that function:
- Hold Command+Option+O+F
- devalias
- See what is listed as hd and cd and write those down
- devalias cd device-path
- Replace device-path to what is listed after hd from the devalias command
- boot cd with a bootable CD to verify
This is great! Look at it go! How do we make it permanent:
- Hold Command+Option+O+F
- devalias
- See what is listed as hd and cd and write those down
- nvalias cd device-path
- mac-boot
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