i summon one kim

Mac OS X comes with Perl installed — that’s good. But it doesn’t come with all the modules you may want. On Ubuntu this is no problem: most modules can be found with aptitude as packaged by Ubuntu and their friends. I was trying to think how to manage Perl modules on my Mac in a similar way, so I could track what is installed. What I didn’t think of was the fact that no software is tracked on the Mac anyway, so why should I care.

Thus I should happily use CPAN to add any modules I might need. Maybe not the most secure thing in the world to run as root, but that’s the expected way to do it…

Turns out there is still a hiccup, but apparently just with Xcode 4: there is no ppc assembler on the system, but Perl is configured to expect one. Fortunately others have already figured this out — the full problem and a fix are presented in Perl and Xcode 4.

I guess I should be backing up the list of installed Perl modules somehow.

I was researching what people do about keyboard mappings when using virtual machines or remote desktop connections from their Macs, especially when the other system is running Windows. Different software packages map the keyboard differently and some even have different modes that provide different mappings. Now whenever I see a Windows desktop, I have no idea what keys to press anymore.

My research led me to KeyRemap4MacBook. It comes with a kernel driver that lets you map any key presses you like, in one or more applications, on one or more keyboards. All this power is configurable in XML and selectable through a preference panel applet.

I haven’t fixed my Windows keys yet (partially because I realized I might want to keep Alt as Alt, instead of using Cmd), but I have added a binding to switch keyboard layouts using a combination similar to the one used on Windows: Command + Left Shift (or Shift + Left Command, if you prefer). As far as your muscle memory is concerned, this maps to Alt + Left Shift on a PC keyboard.

I switch between the Finnish and US English layouts, so I also needed to add support for the Finnish input mode. This is why I added the bindings in checkbox.xml instead of private.xml (see patch) — you could add similar entries in the latter file for the input modes you need.

Update: My patch has been merged upstream and is included in version 7.2.47 and later.

Windows tries to use 6to4 and Teredo automatically, not always resulting in a good IPv6 experience. To disable both, execute these commands:

netsh interface ipv6 6to4 set state disabled
netsh interface teredo set state disabled

On Windows XP teredo isn’t a context inside interface, but rather a setting in ipv6:

netsh interface ipv6 set teredo disabled

Sources and more information:

• IPv6 Customer Problems
• Overview of the Advanced Networking Pack for Windows XP

Hitting Alt Left Shift is second nature to me by now — that’s how you switch keyboard layouts in Windows. I use the U.S. keyboard layout for most things: not just writing in English but also at the Unix command prompt or when writing code. But when chatting in Finnish, the Finnish keyboard layout is a must (for “ääkköset”).

On Mac OS X it is possible to implement something similar, but different. (more…)

Okay, you can use an iPod or iPad with more than one computer, which is good news for me. Just set the device to Manually manage music and videos on its home iTunes computer first.

Unfortunately there are exceptions to this rule: the only iPod that can be freely connected to both Mac OS and Windows computers is the iPod Touch. The iPad allows for this as well.

For more information: Using iPhone, iPad, or iPod with multiple computers

Direct connections from PuTTY to Cisco routers kept dying on this error, so I finally ran a search. The workaround is to disable re-key on the SSH session. In the PuTTY settings dialogue, goto

Connection > SSH > Kex

Change the following values to zero:

Max minutes before rekey: 0
Max data before rekey: 0

Source: https://supportforums.cisco.com/thread/2013927

I just had a moment of contentment for being able to copy files using UNC paths across the Internet between different sites. This is thanks to having spent too many hours figuring out limitations and quirks in the routers, access points, firewalls and servers in the picture. Last night I finally moved all IPv4 traffic to my new DMVPN tunnels.

As a result I have realized what the minimum IT hardware requirements are for comfortable living. (more…)

I just patched a couple of ESXi hosts to 4.0.0 build 256968 and found that VMware Tools were no longer loading after upgrading them. After some digging everything is more or less back to normal. (more…)

Ekiga has a problem talking from behind a firewall, or maybe the problem is that both the firewall and Ekiga are trying to be too clever. I’m running siproxd on the firewall to transparently handle SIP connections. All the hardware phones and ATAs as well as X-Lite work well, but Ekiga fails to register.

The fix is controversial: I’m disabling STUN.

gconftool-2 -s /apps/ekiga/general/nat/stun_server --type=string

However, this means Ekiga won’t work from less “intelligent” networks anymore. Since I’m considering Ekiga for my laptop, this might be a problem. Maybe I should try X-Lite under Wine.