steve on Sep 15th 2009 General
If you need to get in and edit some files on your xen domU instance, i.e. it isn’t booting up properly, etc, here’s how to mount it on dom0. In this case, we want to mount the second partion on the virtual disk (our root partition):
Print out the partition layout:
fdisk -l /path/to/img/file.img
Disk System.img: 0 MB, 0 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 0 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
System.img1 1 4 32098+ 83 Linux
System.img2 * 5 619 4939987+ 83 Linux
System.img3 620 750 1052257+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
create directory to mount image under: mkdir /mnt/tmp
mount the image using the offset from the fdisk output, the start block (in this case 5)
mount mount -o loop,offset=$((512*5) /path/to/img/file.img /mnt/tmp
Edit files as needed, and unmount when done.
steve on Sep 11th 2009 tech
On and off over the past few years, I’ve looked for a good way to synchronize 2 or more iTunes libraries, and until recently, never found a good solution. The main problem is synchronizing library metadata – syncing files isn’t that difficult, but things like ratings, play counts, etc. is.
My previous solution was simple – I considered one computer my “master”, and simply sync’ed all the files from it to my other computers. Since I do most of my itunes listening (and rating) at work, I used my iMac as the master and my macbook and home desktop were the slaves. This has its downfalls though, as anything I added or rated on my other systems never made its way back to the master system, and I had to make those changes manually.
I decided to search again a few days ago, and found two applications that do exactly what I want:
myTuneSync from SocketHead studios
Syncopation from Sonzea
I checked them both out, and they both work as advertised (both offer free time-limited trials). You install the application, point it at the other itunes library to keep in sync with, and set them up for automatic updates. Syncopation is the clear winner for me, with its cleaner interface, faster performance, and ability to synchronize file deletions as well. Syncopation works only on macs, so if you have a mix of mac and Windows (or only Windows), myTuneSync is for you.
Interestingly, I found these programs two days before the new iTunes 9 was released, and looking at the keynote, I wondered if I just wasted money on something that was now a standard feature of iTunes. (Unfortunately) It turns out that the syncing included with iTunes is limited to purchases from the iTunes store, and doesn’t include anything added by you. It also seems that the metadata does not get transferred over, only the purchased song files.
