www.jezek.ch

Finally I installed iFolder on a Debian squeeze box.

Advantages over Dropbox:

• you can host your files
• only your server limits the amount of space
• You can have more the one root folder (no need to use sym- / hardlinks)

Disadvantages over Dropbox:

• it requires mono to run (only a problem on Linux and OSX)

You can read more about iFolder here.

I just hat the issues that my external WD drive showed no partition to mount.
It contained a timemachine backup.

Luckily I found testdisk which could restore the partition table.
Here are some screen shots:

I like dropbox and I use it to sync stuff around my different boxes.
Btw. If you don't have dropbox installed, please use me as a referral.

Today I found an open source project sponsored by Novell called iFolder.

There is also a howto install on debian.

Hope I will find some time to play with it, at it allows me to be my own host of my files and still have the ease of "Dropbox" alike behavior.

Yes it works and I had it working on my old MacBook.
To follow good habits, I share here, how I did it on my new MacBook Pro.
...crap why didn't I write it down last time ;-)...

0. why?

1. i can have a native IE6 and IE8 (with IE7 in simulated mode)
2. i can run demo's in native speed
3. you name it

1. Requirements

You have already installed OSX on a single Partion on your GUID enabled Volume.
I will use a Windows XP Professional 32bit and a Windows 7 Professional 64bit iso images from msdn.
This tutrial should work fine with retail builds.

2. Prepare installation media

Windows XP does not know about EFI so it will work out of the box.
Windows 7 knows EFI and tries to use it, but only supports Version 2 and will fail on the MacBook.

1. Mount your iso (on my machine it's mounted on drive x:)
2. download oscdimg (google for it)
3. open a cmd prompt and change to the folder where you have oscdimg
4. run this command: (you can change the target where the iso is created)
   

   oscdimg -n -m -bX:\boot\etfsboot.com X:\ I:\en_windows_7_professional_x64_dvd_slimed_efi.iso

   
5. burn the iso

3. make some space on your Mac

1. open Terminal.app and get root with:
   

   sudo su -

2. check how many space you have with:
   

   diskutil list

3. resize your disk and create two new partitions.

   pea-mbp:~ root# diskutil list
   /dev/disk0
      #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE
   IDENTIFIER
      0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *160.0 GB   disk0
      1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
      2:                  Apple_HFS OSX_SSD                 159.7 GB   disk0s2
   pea-mbp:~ root# diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 limits
   For device disk0s2 OSX_SSD:
           Current size:  159.7 GB (159697911808 Bytes)
           Minimum size:  75.6 GB (75631452160 Bytes)
           Maximum size:  159.7 GB (159697911808 Bytes)
   pea-mbp:~ root# diskutil resizeVolume disk0s2 100G "MS-DOS FAT32" Win7
   49G "MS-DOS FAT32" WinXP 10G
   Started partitioning on disk0s2 OSX_SSD
   Verifying disk
   Resizing
   Waiting for disks to reappear
   Formatting disk0s3 as MS-DOS (FAT32) with name Win7
   Formatting disk0s4 as MS-DOS (FAT32) with name WinXP
   Finished partitioning on disk0s2 OSX_SSD
   /dev/disk0
      #:                       TYPE NAME                    SIZE
   IDENTIFIER
      0:      GUID_partition_scheme                        *160.0 GB   disk0
      1:                        EFI                         209.7 MB   disk0s1
      2:                  Apple_HFS OSX_SSD                 100.0 GB   disk0s2
      3:       Microsoft Basic Data WIN7                    49.0 GB    disk0s3
      4:       Microsoft Basic Data WINXP                   10.7 GB    disk0s4
   

4. Format the partitions

You need this steps only if one of your windows partitions is bigger then 32GB.
The installer of Windows XP (even with SP3) can't format FAT32 bigger then 32GB.

1. download and burn sysrescd
2. Insert sysrescd and reboot your compouter holding down the c key.
3. On the bootprompt type:
   

   freedos

4. once at the freedos promt, format both c: and d: partitions with:
   

   format /S c:
   format /S d:
   

5. type reboot to reboot the machine:
   

   reboot

5. Install Windows XP

Insert your burned Windows XP image and reboot holding down C to boot the cd.

1. Install Windows XP on the last partition.
   Here it was labled E:. You can use the size of the partition to identify it.
2. Windows will reboot
3. Hold down alt key on the keyboard and choose "Windows" from the boot menu
4. The system will fail to boot, but that is ok (it's windows after all)

6. Install Windows 7

Insert your burned Windows 7 image and reboot holding down c to boot the dvd.

1. Accept the license and choose custom (advanced) install method.
2. Choose the second last partition (should be Disk 0 Partition 3).
   Here it was labled WIN7, the name I used when I formated the partition with freedos.
   You can again use the size as a reference.
   And hit "Format" as we need NTFS for windows 7.
3. Hit "next" to start the installation
4. On reboot hold alt key to show the boot menu
5. choose Windows to finish the installation of Windows 7.
6. repeat step 4 and 5 a second time
7. finish the installation

7. Bootloader

Back on OSX install install rEFIt.

1. Double-click on the “rEFIt.mpkg” package from the downloaded dmg
2. I had also to run enable.sh
   

   cd /efi/refit
   ./enable.sh
   

7. Make Window XP bootable

1. Boot Windows 7 installation CD
2. Choose "Repair your Computer"
3. It will find some issues, let it "Repair and restart"
4. repeat step 1 and 2
5. This time select "Use recovery tools ..." and click next
6. Choose "Command Promt"
7. verify that Windows XP is on drive C:
   

   dir c:

   
   (it outputs only one folder: windows)
8. fix the boot sector with:
   

   bootsect /nt52 c: /mbr

9. type exit to quit the command promt
   

   exit

10. Choose "reboot" and boot windows 7

8. Fix needed boot files

1. boot Windows 7 and insert the Windows XP cd.
2. open a command promt and copy over the needed boot fiels

copy e:\i386\NTLDR d:\
copy e:\i386\NTDETECT.COM d:\

3. create the needed boot.ini file
   

   notepad d:\boot.ini

4. paste in the following
   

   [boot loader]
   timeout=0
   default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINDOWS
   [operating systems]
   multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(4)\WINDOWS="Win XP" /fastdetect
   

5. change the needed file attributes for boot.ini (again im command prompt)
   

   attrib +R boot.ini
   attrib +S boot.ini
   attrib +H boot.ini
   

9. Finish the installation of windows XP

Reboot your machine and choose the third boot item

1. finish the installation

10. Final steps

If you need drivers for your Mac, insert the snowleopard dvd.
I removed the "bootcamp services" as I don't use bootcamp in my setup
Now it's time to install all updates and the programs you need.

list of references:

[1] base for this tutorial
[2] hint about oscdimg
[3] refit
[4] easy boot cd (ebcd): fixing legacy boot blocks
[5] my howto costomize Windows XP
[6] sysresccd

As I run out of disk space on my previous setup on my MacBook Pro, I decided that on my new Book I will try to save some more Bytes.

Lucklily I found a interesting tutorial to slim down Windows 7 to below 4GB [1].

In short it is about using vlite [2] to remove unwanted components or divers.

I followed that tutorial with Windows 7 Professional but with the 64bit version.
I quickly checked the slimmed down version in VMWare and it worked.
The result was promissing: it just needed 5.5GB.
I guess that the difference to the orignial tutorial is due my usage of the 64bit version.
 
If you are interesting in my config file you can have it [3].

Compared to a vanilla install which took about 7GB I decided to use the slimmed version.
Another improvement is compared to the ultimate version which took around 20GB (without the optimizations mentioned below).

The most diskspace savings are due:
- vlite removed TabletPC and speech support
- disabling the pagefile
- disabling hibernation
- shrinking the trash can to 256MB

[1] Installing Windows 7 To Use 3GB Of SSD/HDD Space
[2] vlite
[3] my ini file

With an update of a not so often used virtual machine I got this:

You can open the webpage directly if you don't have windows as your operating system.
Choose from 11 browsers ;-) and enjoy the internet.

Here are some windows benchmark of the new intel SSD:
old benchmark:
(same machine with a 7200k disk, no nvidia driver)

new benchmark with the SSD installad:

benchmark with nvida's gpu driver:

so from 5.9 up to 6.8 (not bad?)
will add a blog post as soon I finished reinstalling windows.

WTF: where is ccc for windows? Restoring an image to a resized partion failed. Booting my old OSX from from external case is no problem.

Just installed a windows 7 RC on my macbook.

Here is the rating after I installed latest nvidia drivers for windows 7 64bit.

When I installed, I followed this tutorial.
Unfortunately my mbp has no official support from apple to run any windows in 64bit.
Installing boot camp drivers where more pain as installing windows 7 itself.

OK at least I can test now if some of my software packages run on windows 7.

My first impression: WTF, now I know how vista should be ;-)

this is a 12 liner in c#:

(left and right clicking not counted)

Sometimes I like to use cygwin on windows. (Currently needed because of e)

But the it's default bash shell in a console window hast some drawbacks:
- can't be resized
- copy and paste works strange

C:\Programme\Comm\puttycyg\putty.exe  -cygterm -