I have absolutely no idea why everyone is making a big deal out of Apple charging $5 for the new Xcode. Heck, if it saves me having to go to Apple’s developer site to download updates for Xcode it’s worth it! It looks like it brings a host of new features to the table that will help out a just-beginning Objective-C/iOS/Mac developer like myself. I’ve gotten very familiar programming and debugging in Java using Eclipse, and I’m hoping some of these new features save me some headaches. I can already tell I’m going to love the new Interface Builder integration; the old way was needlessly complex and wasn’t doing someone like me, that is used to designing GUIs in code with java’s swing, any favors.
If you aren’t planning on paying $99 for entry into the Mac or iOS developer programs (which would make the download free), $5 is a tiny price to pay for a wonderful IDE that will let you develop apps for the mac and deploy them yourself. And if for some reason $5 is too much (and yet you could somehow afford a mac and are serious about programming for it… a highly unlikely scenario to be honest), go download Xcode 3.2.6. It’s still free and works just fine.
*Update* Eeek, at 4.58GB for the App Store download (it downloads an installer to the Applications folder), Xcode sure seems to be getting bloated. They switched to a new custom installer interface for the app too, which moves the old Developer tools into an old folder and installs the new ones.
Recently I acquired an ‘old’ (circa 2006) desktop PC, with a dual core AMD 64 processor and ~6GB ram. I’ve been meaning to set up a somewhat serious server here, for my personal use, largely just to play with, and this fit the bill perfectly.
Because I like to play around with different operating systems, I decided to install vmware’s ESXi baremetal virtualization software. For my intended use, they offer a free license, which is super cool. You don’t get all the snazzy enterprise features that would be really handy for managing a rack or two of ESXi servers, but you do get their VSphere client, which, while it runs on Windows only, is really nice for managing the server.
So, I downloaded the latest 4.1 ESXi from vmware, burnt it to a disk, and installed it. I fired up VSphere client in my Windows 7 Parallels VM, connected, and installed a couple of VMs (Windows Vista, Ubuntu Server). After installing vmware tools, I couldn’t be happier with the results. Both guest OS’s run fast and well; I connect to the Vista VM via RDP and the ubuntu server vm via SSH/SFTP (and, via the web).
I currently have our old iMac G5 set up as my mac “server.” It doesn’t actually serve much, though I did use it as a VPN server for a couple of years. As an “apple” guru, I have this unexplainable desire to install OS X on every piece of hardware I own… I have an iPhone, and that runs OS X. My MacBook Pro runs OS X. And therefore, so too does my dell mini 9. I slapped an Apple sticker on the back for good measure. I’m like the people that install linux on everything, except I install OS X. (I made a monster “mac pro” hackintosh a few years back with an overclocked Dell desktop I bought). So, my AMD-processor wielding, ESXi-4 running server sitting on my desk would be no exception.
Back at school, I was used to being able to RDP into a windows server (which happened to running on ESXi virtualized servers), and having my own personal windows desktop pop up instantly (on my mac, or whatever else I was using acting as a thin client). I have always wondered if OS X could act as a Terminal Server in this fashion, allowing multiple users to share one machine concurrently. A quick googling brought me to TestPlant’s Vine Server (again, free!), which purported to do just this utilizing fast user switching. I came across tip here that made it even slicker. This feature reportedly will be coming standard in OS X 10.7 (Lion), but for now this works well enough!
Now.. I just had to figure out how to install Snow Leopard on my ESXi machine, a difficult feat if my host machine had an Intel processor, but a seemingly impossible one because it has an AMD… The key turned out to be nawcom’s beautifully written boot cd, which takes care of on the fly kernel patching and much, much more. Using his boot CD, I was able to install from my retail vanilla Snow Leopard Disk (10.6.0), no problem at all.
I created a new VM in VSphere, choosing “FreeBSD, 64bit” as the OS, and then put my Snow Leopard DVD in the host’s DVD drive. I then copied the latest nawcom BootCD iso (030611-045717.iso.zip) to the datastore, and selected it as the the CD device for my new VM. I booted, and once at the boot screen, disconnected from the BootCD image, connected to the real drive, and hit F5 (fn-f5 in my case on my MBP). To my delight, and surprise, it booted into the OS X installer! I opened disk utility, formatted my newly minted vmware thin provisioned drive space as HFS+/GUID, and proceded to install. (BootCD adds a special menu to the Snow Leopard Installer’s customize screen which lets you pick and choose any items to be installed. It auto-selects what it thinks is best based on your config, but just make sure to select the “legacy” kernel!).
After installation, I ran software update and got it updated to 10.6.6. BootCD installs the chameleon bootloader automatically, and therefore the system booted perfectly even after installing 10.6.6 (On the fly kernel patching works!). After rebooting, I installed Vine Server and enabled the system VNC server. I then made several test users and added Vine Server and my ‘fastswitch’ script to each user’s login items. This setup allows to access the login window using the system VNC server, enabling users to login and start their user vnc servers remotely without physical access to the machine.
I tried to get things running a bit smoother by installing the vmware tools from vmware fusion (I extracted the darwin.iso using Pacifist from their demo). While they install and seem to run fine, they don’t actually seem to do anything (with the guest set to FreeBSD 64 anyways). Manually editing the .vmx file and changing the guestOS entry to “darwin” could fix some of these issues, but my hardware doesn’t support it. (VSphere throws a “Mac OS X is not supported with software virtualization. To run Mac OS X you need a host on which VMware ESX supports hardware virtualization.” error for my setup when I do this and refuses to boot). In any case, it’s not perfect, but it works well enough as is! (For my purposes of idle tinkering anyways!). Here’s a look at it up and running!
Sorry Mom(s). Ben and I shared that sentiment after landing from a 60 second long free-fall from 15,000 feet high above the mountains and Lake Wanaka on the south island of New Zealand. It was a once in a lifetime experience, and boy oh boy was it epic. And yes, I made Ben do it. In his words:
Adam made me do it. Never ever did I think I would jump out of an airplane. Guess thats why I’m traveling with one of the biggest risk takers I know! What an epic experience- a 15,000 ft free fall through a raw canvas of unimaginable scenery with snow capped mountains and glaciers everywhere. Wow.
Well, what are you waiting for? Check out those videos and pictures!
Ben:
Adam:
You can download higher-quality versions here if you want: Ben, Adam.
You may notice a recent addition the blog: The current location widget on the right sidebar! For now this is a simple static map generated by Google Lattitude’s badge api, though I may upgrade this to a more complex interactive map (that shows history/where we’ve been!) if I can find some time to play with the Google Maps API and JSON/XML requests. For now though, enjoy knowing (roughly) where Ben and I are on our journey around New Zealand! The location will only update when we have data-enabled mobile service, which will very likely be pretty sparse, given that we’ll be on the western coast of New Zealand… So don’t be too alarmed if the location doesn’t update for a while!
For those that may not have heard, I’ve recently found my way to New Zealand to meet up with Adam. I literally closed my eyes Tuesday and woke up on Thursday– halfway around the world!?! Not quite sure why or how that happened, but somehow here I am. And in case you’re wondering how I skipped a day, I’m not quite sure either, but it was absolutely worth trading a Wednesday for the adventure of a lifetime.
Adam and I have been discussing some wild things, so stay tuned. And don’t worry Moms, we’ll be sure to keep safe. Love everyone back home!!
