This is a little Mac OS X Automator workflow that I created to help me consolidate files in two folders that may contain some duplicates. What it does is check the destination folder for the existance of each file in the source folder (and its sub-folders) copying any to the destination folder that aren’t already there.
The big trick was figuring out how to pass filenames containing one or more spaces to a bash script within Automator. The trick, it turns out, is ridiculously simple. Just put the built-in argument representing the filenames passed into the script ($@) in double quotes!
You can get the workflow as an application, and as a workflow and a copy of the GNU General Public License in a zipped archive here.
So I got this Sierra U508 wireless broadband card so that I can have internet wherever I go, even in the car on the highway. It has a self-install feature that runs automatically when it is plugged into a Windows or Mac PC that doesn’t already have the software on it. Well, that’s nice but what really attracted me to the Sierra modem was that it has a micro SD slot enabling it to be used (with the addition of a micro SD card) as a USB flash drive. It struck me that this would be perfect platform for a self-contained Linux-based forensic OS. Theoretically it should boot up on any x86 machine including my beloved Macs. I won’t reveal how many hours I spent trying to get Linux installed on the 4GB memory, but I haven’t succeeded yet. You’d think that the USB Install option in Ubuntu 8.10 would have made this task a simple one. Well after much trying both the USB install and manual installations with most if not all of the variations on partition sizes, formats, location, and flags I was getting nowhere. I was using two systems at one point and I noticed that when I plugged the U508 into the system that didn’t have the Sprint Smartview software installed, an icon of a CD appeared in my sidebar. This was in addition to the icons of the two partitions I had created on the microSD card, which I expected to be there. This got me to thinking that all of the I/O errors the gparted and the Linux installer encountered were most likely due to some sneaky way the modem’s memory was configured. It apparently has a hidden partition (or two) for the installers. It, being a read-only device, can’t be modified, and that means its parttion table can’t be either. Or something along those lines. At any rate, I satisfied myself by installing Ubuntu 8.10 on a 1GB flash drive only to find out that apparently Macs can’t boot from USB devices. If I’m wrong, and there’s some evidence on the web that I am, I’ll be happy to be enlightened.
There is a lot of helpful (and some not so helpful) information on the web now about how to configure an Intel Mac to boot up into Mac OS X, or Linux, or Windows. (Don’t ask me why, if you don’t know, then you’re one of the lucky ones!)
One problem that has plagued many people who have tried this, and for which I could not find a solution, is that when everything is done, Windows won’t boot past it’s initial logo screen. It gets there and after few seconds the system restarts. After a long fruitless search, which did yield some interesting clues, I took a look at the files on the Windows partition as it was mounted in Mac OS X. Now, I’m no Windows guru, but I do have a knack for understanding technologyies… if you can call Windows a technology. At any rate, the file “boot.ini” caught my eye. It looks something like this:
boot loader] timeout=30 default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS [operating systems] multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS="Microsoft Windows XP Professional" /noexecute=optin /fastdetect
So I opened it up in TextEdit and lo and noticed the lines that specify the partitions that the boot loader and operating system(s) are on. Well, I knew that Windows was on disk0s4 or in layman’s term, the main hard drive, fourth partition. I changed “multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(3)\WINDOWS=”Microsoft Windows XP…” to “”multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINDOWS=”Microsoft Windows XP…” but found that the Windows volume (or partition) was mounted read only. No problem, I just rebooted into Linux and mounted the Windows partition as read/write. The nano editor made quick work of making my change and lo and behold, Windows could boot. (By the way, I did make a backup of boot.ini and I used the -w option of nano to prevent it from adding a linebreak in an extra long lines (like the one I edited) that might be in the file.)
So, there you have it. A triple boot Mac Pro running Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), Ubuntu 8.0.4 and Windows XP SP3. Oh happy day!
