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Mac Book Pro initial thoughts

Well my new laptop, a Mac Book Pro 17" has arrived.

It's disturbing to compare it to the Powerbook 17" that I've been using for the last three years or more - it feels lighter and somehow smaller, even though there are very few external physical differences.

It does, however, feel fast. Parallels on here is even snappier than on the iMac (which admittedly has a slower CPU, but faster disk). I also opted for a glossy screen to make images clearer and the descriptions I've seen bear it out - for video, photo and high-image web browsing it is amazing, and yet somehow not reflective enough to bug you during use.

Uncategorized

Mac Book Pro initial thoughts

Well my new laptop, a Mac Book Pro 17" has arrived.

It's disturbing to compare it to the Powerbook 17" that I've been using for the last three years or more - it feels lighter and somehow smaller, even though there are very few external physical differences.

It does, however, feel fast. Parallels on here is even snappier than on the iMac (which admittedly has a slower CPU, but faster disk). I also opted for a glossy screen to make images clearer and the descriptions I've seen bear it out - for video, photo and high-image web browsing it is amazing, and yet somehow not reflective enough to bug you during use.

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Using bash by default

I much prefer to use bash as my main shell, but in Solaris, you are much better off using the default shell, particularly for root, just in case there is a problem and you cannot mount the /usr directory during a boot.

OK, it may not happen often (and in fact, the default install is now to have only one partition for the Solaris OS, one for user files and swap), but I figure it is best to err on the side of caution.

The best way to do this is to configure your .profile to exec /usr/bin/bash if it is available, but do nothing otherwise, like this: 

if [ -x /usr/bin/bash ]
then
    exec /usr/bin/bash
fi

Using exec means that the Bourne shell (sh) will be replaced by bash, so when you logout, you don’t have to logout from two shells.

Obviously you can continue to put whatever you like into the standard .profile according to your needs, while using the .bash* init scripts to do your custom bash operations.

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Copying multiple files with scp

I keep my .bash init scripts on one machine and copy them over to each machine on which I have a login. There’s various bits of logic in there to ensure that the right PATH and other values are set according to the host and/or platform.

I then have a simple line that updates the .ocal .bash scripts from the main box that holds the main copies, so that I can just run:

update-bash

To update everything. I use scp and, depending on the system, use a preset key or require a password.

For copying multiple files there are many solutions; I could just use .bash*, but I’d also get the history and backup files. The typical advice is separate entries: 

scp mc@narcissus:.bashrc mc@narcissus:.bash_aliases

This is less than optimal for a number of reasons - the first is that each location is treated individually, and that requires multiple connections and multiple password requirements. You can, though, use normal shell like expansion, just make sure you use quotes to ensure that it isn’t parsed and expanded by the local shell instead of the remote one: 

alias update-bash='scp mc@narcissus:".bash{rc,_path,_aliases,_vars}" ~;. ~/.bashrc'
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Comparing CPU power in the T1000, X2100 and iMac Intel Core Duo

My initial tests on the T1000 and X2100 continue. I've got some basic applications up and running on the two boxes, and I'll post some more detailed thoughts at some later stage, but for now I want to talk about one of the most arbitrary tests - running the distributed.net client.

The distributed.net client is part of a distributed computing project, with the intention of working out the necessary computer power required to achieve certain tasks. For my tests, I concentrated purely on the RC5-72 project, which is looking for the encrypted message through brute force - that is, trying every combination until the one that matches is found. The test is entirely CPU bound; there's hardly any disk activity and very little RAM requirement.

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