Phytotron's stupid computer blog

[Phytotron]

I looked at the TV schedule for fencing coverage and realized there just wasn't any way I was going to be able to see it.

Have you looked at NBC's site? They have live streaming of every event, and I would assume you could also watch taped events on demand. I haven't looked, though—I didn't get around to it while I still had the Inspiron set up, and I'm not even going to attempt going to a media-heavy website like that with this old Mac. 'Course, I don't know if your PC could handle it, either.

Weird, I never noticed it. Must be because good design is transparent?

Fitts's Law, that's what it's called. (Related: Hick's Law.) The one argument against a global menu bar I have been seeing some people make lately is in the case of huge monitors with high resolutions and/or when using multiple monitors. I suppose where you have multiple windows open, with one or two way over to the right, and thus have to move your mouse way over to the left to access a menu, instead of just going to the top of the window you're on. That's not a situation I've ever experienced myself, though. I can swing from one edge of this 20" 1680x screen to the other with about two inches of mouse movement at the tip, which translates to very little at the wrist. Of course, tracking speed is related to that. I think it was probably about the same with the 23" 1920x screen I had. I'll check it out once I get a replacement.

Actually, I do recall something that bugged me about Ubuntu/Unity's menu is that it was a) too small, and b) tucked into the corner. Which is weird, made more puzzling because when it appears it also overlaps the application name that gets displayed on the left-hand side of the panel. It almost seems like a bug, like, surely the menu should always appear to the right of that name. That's not an argument against the principle, of course, just Ubuntu/Unity's implementation. By comparison, OSX's menu a) has a larger, more spaced-out font, and b) automatically adjusts to the length of the application name. And as widescreen monitors become more common, it would make sense to me to at least have an option to center the menu in the middle of the menu bar.

I don't think I've ever seen this HUD thing. Oh wait, I'm looking at a picture now. God that looks awful...

Are you sure you're looking at the right thing, or are getting how it works? Watch a video or something. What it does is allow you to do a search within an application's menus to quickly pull up a given action. So, for example, if you want to pull up or apply a filter in Pho...GIMP, you can just type "gau" and you'll get search results like your launcher, in this example for gaussian blur. Or you could use it to pull up something in your browser's history or bookmarks. (Yeah, most browsers do it in their location bar now, so that's redundant for someone like me. But for someone like you, you could just hit Alt to pull up the HUD and continue typing instead of having to select the location bar.) And there are other uses. As a keyboard fanatic whom I would assume doesn't like using the mouse to go through application menus, I'd think you'd dig something like that. Oh, here's a video. A couple of the examples aren't the greatest (e.g., "undo," there's already a key combo for that), but you should get the idea. I think their ultimate goal—rumored or stated, I can't recall—is to actually obsolete menu usage altogether, which is inconceivable to me, like, how are you going to know what's there in the first place? But, I dunno.

...don't you still have to peruse the menus for actions you don't frequently use?

No, not as long as I know the name of the program I want to launch. ...

No, I meant menus within an application. Actions, like filters and such in GIMP. That's why I followed that with the comment about the HUD.

Where key combos are concerned...

Strangely enough...[w]hen I finally switched to Linux my hands were all goofy.

Heh, well that sucks. But I reckon it's safe to say you're fairly unusual in that regard. So, take my previous comments and replace "you" with "most Windows users," I guess. ::shrug::

That's funny about Audacious and Arma. I take it, then, that the search has to be with the beginning of the name, so you couldn't just search for "ciou" or "expe?"


EDIT: Five of nine page breaks! Heh. Two each for Jonathan and Tank.

[sinewav]

[No, I meant menus within an application. Actions, like filters and such in GIMP. That's why I followed that with the comment about the HUD.

Meh, still no faster with the HUD. If I want to add Gaussian blur in GImp (for example) I can just type Alt+R,B,G. Also, there is more than one menu entry with the word Gaussian, which could lead to more typing. For someone as keyboard savy as I, the HUD wouldn't add much more to my computing experience, but might actually slow my machine down -- I don't take kindly to transparency/compositing effects on my weak, weak hardware and there is no guarantee the simple act of creating "instant search" results won't cause my computer to hang unnecessarily.

That's funny about Audacious and Arma. I take it, then, that the search has to be with the beginning of the name, so you couldn't just search for "ciou" or "expe?"

I could, but then I've have to press the tab and arrow keys a bunch more times to get where I want.

Let's hear it for minutia! This whole GUI conversation is borderline ridiculous, haha.

[Phytotron]

So, you've memorized all the keyboard shortcuts for every action within a program like GIMP? Or you just don't mind the mouse for those you haven't? Just curious, because I can't imagine memorizing all that. I pick up frequently used ones, but beyond that I tend to just brush it aside, especially those that involve more than two keys. Why bother, I figure. It would take me as long to sit there doing nothing while I access them in my brain as it would to just access them with a mouse, heh. Better at (visually) remembering locations in menus than obscure key combinations, I guess. It's like navigating when driving, cycling, walking, etc., maybe. I use a mental map, not a set of alphanumerical directions. Similarly when I'm playing a song from memory, or even cooking, or whatever.

Let's hear it for minutia! This whole GUI conversation is borderline ridiculous, haha.

Ah, it's just conversation. Besides, all that minutia can add up and make a real difference in the user experience. I think that's true for you, too, even if you see a GUI more in the negative. And look how many people straight bolted from Ubuntu just because, god help us, the developers deviated from a Windows 95-esque interface.

[sinewav]

So, you've memorized all the keyboard shortcuts for every action within a program like GIMP?

No, only the ones I use often. But I don't even have to memorize them because the key-path is laid out in front of you. Each menu item (most menu items) have an underscore at the letter used to navigate to it. So in the picture I've attached you can type Alt+R for "Filters," press B for "Blur," then S for "Selective Gaussian Blur." If there is no underscore, arrow keys get the job done.

Here is another reason why I'm big on the keyboard: I perpetually use underpowered machines. There have been many times at work or at home when my screen won't refresh fast enough for me to work efficiently on big, big files/projects. Using a mouse depends on the graphical elements being there. However, you can key several keystrokes while you computer is "thinking" and in most cases your commands will be completed before you even see what you did.

Besides, all that minutia can add up and make a real difference in the user experience. I think that's true for you, too, even if you see a GUI more in the negative. And look how many people straight bolted from Ubuntu just because, god help us, the developers deviated from a Windows 95-esque interface.

Yes, THAT is a very, very good point.

[Phytotron]

So in the picture I've attached you can type Alt+R for "Filters," press B for "Blur," then S for "Selective Gaussian Blur." If there is no underscore, arrow keys get the job done.

Ah, OK, I didn't even realise it worked like that. Doh. That erases a lot of the conversation about keyboard navigation. I was imagining memorizing keyboard shortcuts as they are in OSX, and without viewing or navigating the menus at all. To further demonstrate my cluelessness, I only just discovered how to navigate the menus in OSX with the keyboard (ctrl+F2...). And, just found that OSX has a HUD-like capability, too: Command+Shift+/ activates the Help menu search, which can call up anything within the menus, as well as things like bookmarks. You can also invoke the Dock with the keyboard (ctrl+F1), among many other things.

[sinewav]

In a bizarre twist, I have abandoned Linux and returned to... Windows XP?

Support ran out for my preferred distro and I had to upgrade. But I soon discovered that nearly all the audio apps I rely on had become broken and bugged as developers crammed in new features, rendering then useless for my purposes. This has been quite a shock. Linux is fantastic for all the other things I use it for. However, I actually make money doing audio, and Linux is total crap in the pro audio department. I don't have a computer fast enough for Win7, nor do I have money to buy it. So, I will ride out XP till its final day, April 8th, 2014.

I'm not sure what I'll do then, but if I'm still around here you can expect a "sinewav's stupid computer blog" thread, haha. I'll probably go back to Linux. Hopefully my needs will change and their audio apps will get better.

[Phytotron]

Support ran out for my preferred distro and I had to upgrade.

How's that?


On a separate note, I can now confirm first-hand that Ubuntu does indeed have built-in read support for journaled HFS+ drives. It recognized my now-external eMac drive, including displaying a bunch of *nix-style folders and files (e.g., bin, var, and dotfiles) that you don't normally see in the Finder (I'm sure there's a simple way to reveal them). One exception: It wouldn't read my home folders (plural—I transferred my iMac home folder over to this drive, too). According to what I've read, this is because Linux respects OSX's file permissions. Shared DNA and all. However, Linux and OSX use different user ID's or something, so that puts the OSX home folder off-limits, and you're unable to change its permissions via Linux.

So, I have a question for, I guess mainly Jonathan, or whomever else. Now that this eMac drive is effectively an external backup, would there be any disadvantage—and more importantly, danger—to loading that drive into a Mac and changing the file permissions on the home folders to "everybody" (or whatever it is)?

If it would be a problem, another workaround I figure should probably work would be to just move all the contents of my home folder to another location on the drive, like at the same level as the Applications folder. I say this because I was, with Ubuntu, able to get into that folder's contents, and that includes all my Armagetron data (textures, screenshots, avatars, etc.). I'd kinda rather keep everything in the same spot, though, for organizational purposes, at least for now until I make a proper backup drive.

[There's also some hacky-ish methods I read about, having to do with either creating a new user account in Ubuntu with the same ID as Macs, or changing the IDs on one or both, but I'm not going there.]

[epsy]

If it's simply a permissions issue, being root will get you around it and you'll be able to see and copy the files.

[Jonathan]

If you want to use the disk itself to access what used to be on your Mac, it should be safe to change ownership by mounting it on a Mac. First, run id on Linux and note your UID and GID. Then, while the volume is mounted on the Mac, run sudo chown -R UID:GID path in a terminal. You can just drag and drop the volume or one of its folders onto the terminal after typing the space after GID. To use sudo you must be an administrator and enter your password when prompted (it won't show up — less likely to leak than *** or ••• — but every character you type is still accepted). Be very sure you've entered the right path, especially when using sudo! The entire command should look like sudo chown -R 123:456 /Volumes/wherever.

If you do it this way you can read directly from the disk on Linux, without having to copy the data elsewhere or be root all the time. Note that you do indeed wreck the ability to boot from it, should you ever want to again.

(Yes, I do imply you should change the IDs associated with the files, unless you have a very serious objection. On a Mac, you can use the Ignore ownership on this volume option in the get info window to access everything.)

[epsy]

(... On a Mac, you can use the Ignore ownership on this volume option in the get info window to access everything.)

Well actually, why not do this on the linux host? mount should accept uid= and gid= options. How to set it up depends on how the drive is currently mounted though. Is it present in /etc/fstab or is some gnome process doing the work instead?

[Jonathan]

uid=n, gid=n
Specifies the user/group that owns all files on the filesystem
that have uninitialized permissions structures.
Default: user/group id of the mounting process.

I don't believe they're uninitialized.

[Phytotron]

Alright, forget all that. Since youse didn't indicate any danger, I went ahead and tried, and it turns out it's enough simply to 'get info' on a folder and change the permissions for 'everybody' to read&write. No need to change the owner ID(s). However, I found that I had an apparently random mix of folders within my User folders that were set to different permissions. For example, I have a bunch of ~/Music/<various bands names>/ folders. Some folders were read&write, while others were 'no access'. Needless to say, it would've been a PITA to change all those manually. So, a quick search on the web and I found the following command:

Code: Select all

sudo chmod -R 777 

...and then drag the relevant folder to the end of that. Viola, all the folders and files within the User directory became read&write for 'everybody'. My assumption is that this method wouldn't be smart if you had Linux on a Mac and were trying to share between partitions, or if, as you noted, you wanted to boot from the formerly-internal-now-external drive in the future. But as far as my case is concerned, with no anticipation of doing the latter, this seems to be a satisfactory solution. (Unless I'm missing something. You tell me.)

Of course, as far as Linux/Ubuntu is concerned it's still read-only. I'm thinking as a common backup I may reformat my other formerly-internal-now-external drive to either FAT32, as Tank suggested, or maybe HFS+ non-journaled. Supposedly, Linux/Ubuntu can write to HFS+ so long as it's non-journaled. FAT32 doesn't allow for certain filenames and has other limitations, right? So HFS+ might be preferable. Anyhoo, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

[Jonathan]

Alright, forget all that. Since youse didn't indicate any danger, I went ahead and tried, and it turns out it's enough simply to 'get info' on a folder and change the permissions for 'everybody' to read&write. No need to change the owner ID(s). However, I found that I had an apparently random mix of folders within my User folders that were set to different permissions. For example, I have a bunch of ~/Music/<various bands names>/ folders. Some folders were read&write, while others were 'no access'. Needless to say, it would've been a PITA to change all those manually. So, a quick search on the web and I found the following command:

Code: Select all

sudo chmod -R 777 

...and then drag the relevant folder to the end of that. Viola,

Non sequitur!

all the folders and files within the User directory became read&write for 'everybody'. My assumption is that this method wouldn't be smart if you had Linux on a Mac and were trying to share between partitions, or if, as you noted, you wanted to boot from the formerly-internal-now-external drive in the future. But as far as my case is concerned, with no anticipation of doing the latter, this seems to be a satisfactory solution. (Unless I'm missing something. You tell me.)

It would work. The main problem with chmod 777 is that it marks all of your files as executable. chmod ugo+rwX would be better.

Of course, as far as Linux/Ubuntu is concerned it's still read-only. I'm thinking as a common backup I may reformat my other formerly-internal-now-external drive to either FAT32, as Tank suggested, or maybe HFS+ non-journaled. Supposedly, Linux/Ubuntu can write to HFS+ so long as it's non-journaled. FAT32 doesn't allow for certain filenames and has other limitations, right? So HFS+ might be preferable. Anyhoo, I'll cross that bridge when I get to it.

Traditionally I wouldn't consider HFS+ for interchange, but it seems it would work here. Just keep in mind that new files won't automatically be 666/777.

[Phytotron]

The main problem with chmod 777 is that it marks all of your files as executable. chmod ugo+rwX would be better.

Oops. If it wasn't clear, I already had done it before I made that post. So, what does it mean that they're executable—and in what way would it be a problem, both in Ubuntu and on another Mac? Did I just screw up ~/Library/Application Support/ files?

Could I still run that chmod ugo+rwX command to fix that (and what is it)? What about just chmod 666? (I'm only just learning what these numbers even mean, mind you.) How would changing the ownership ID have impacted any of this?

Or are you only referring to those other cases I described (partition, bootable drive)?

Traditionally I wouldn't consider HFS+ for interchange...

Why? Just for knowledge's sake.

Just keep in mind that new files won't automatically be 666/777.

New files?

So, say I take all the data I want to save from the eMac drive, copy it over to this computer. I then reformat either that or the old iMac drive (or a new one, whatever) as non-journaled HFS+. Then I use that as my main external/backup drive for Ubuntu. I copy all that old Mac data from this computer onto that drive, and continue to use it to back up any new stuff that I put on this computer (animated gifs, all that important stuff).

What happens with permissions through all that? Are permissions retained by the files themselves, even as they move between different computer drives and OS's?

All I want to do is have a drive that both Mac and Linux can easily and safely read and write to so I can use it as common storage. What's the best method?

Enough questions? And that's leaving several out. Stupid computers.

[Jonathan]

The main problem with chmod 777 is that it marks all of your files as executable. chmod ugo+rwX would be better.

Oops. If it wasn't clear, I already had done it before I made that post. So, what does it mean that they're executable—and in what way would it be a problem, both in Ubuntu and on another Mac? Did I just screw up ~/Library/Application Support/ files?

Could I still run that chmod ugo+rwX command to fix that (and what is it)? What about just chmod 666? (I'm only just learning what these numbers even mean, mind you.) How would changing the ownership ID have impacted any of this?

It isn't dangerous, but you might find your documents trying to execute themselves instead of being opened in the appropriate application. If that happens, you can still open them by using the open menu of the application or using "open with" or the like.

Dropping everything to 666 is no good: the same bit that makes files executable makes directories searchable. And directories that can't be searched won't do anything for you. You could try sudo chmod -R a-x path followed by sudo chmod -R a+X path. That should drop everything to 666, then upgrade directories to 777 again. Permissions should be largely normal at that point, but executables won't be executable anymore. You've removed the distinction by marking everything as executable, so there's no straightforward way to fix that. So if you drop files to 666 and mount the disk on a Mac again, applications stored on it won't run.

If 777 doesn't seem to cause problems, I would recommend that you leave it as is.

Traditionally I wouldn't consider HFS+ for interchange...

Why? Just for knowledge's sake.

It used to be the oddball that only works on Mac OS.

So, say I take all the data I want to save from the eMac drive, copy it over to this computer. I then reformat either that or the old iMac drive (or a new one, whatever) as non-journaled HFS+. Then I use that as my main external/backup drive for Ubuntu. I copy all that old Mac data from this computer onto that drive, and continue to use it to back up any new stuff that I put on this computer (animated gifs, all that important stuff).

That should work. Note that if you have old stuff using resource forks (mostly pre-OS X), Linux will destroy those.

What happens with permissions through all that? Are permissions retained by the files themselves, even as they move between different computer drives and OS's?

Permissions are as much part of the file as its name and contents, and will generally follow it around. But any files you create — including those you copy, or 'move' from one partition to another — must have your UID and GID. There's also the umask and higher bits like setuid. Only the superuser can get around that.

All I want to do is have a drive that both Mac and Linux can easily and safely read and write to so I can use it as common storage. What's the best method?

Share as little data as possible. If you must, ignore permissions on the Mac side. Do some more chmod a+rwX if needed.

Ughhhh.