Ian McShane » Software

VMWare Fusion – Network Bridge error finally solved

Ian — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 12:34:46 +0000

A couple of years back, I posted this thread about an annoying problem in VMWare Fusion which occasionally stopped me from being able to run an image as in bridge mode.

Well, looks like I’ve finally sorted this one out. I don’t know if it’s the inclusion of new functionality in v2 or v3 of VMF but after doing the below, I’ve not seen the problem occur for a couple of months now. I can still easily reproduce this issue so I’m guessing it’s some kind of defect in the adaptor autodetect code [or a problem with my config somewhere].

To reproduce the problem, firstly the environment:

My MBP is connected to a wireless network only, running WPA2.
I’m running VMWare Fusion 3.0.2 (232708) on OS X 10.6.2 (Although this occurred on VMF v1 and v2 as well as OS X 10.5).
The VM is Windows 7 Ultimate (although this occurred with Win XP also).

Here is a screenshot of the VM network settings that cause the error message “The network bridge on device /dev/vmnet0 is not running”:

Choosing auto-detect breaks bridge networking every single time.
Fortunately the workaround is very simple. Setting it to use a specific network adaptor fixes the problem immediately.

The down side to setting the specific adaptor is that when I’m in an environment without wireless and I need to use ethernet, I have to remember to change it in here. I know that’s not a serious problem but it is irritating when I realise my MSN client has been disconnected for hours.

There have been a bunch of people commenting on the older post and it’s actually now my ‘most hit’ entry (finally overtaking the Outlook 12 beta one) so hopefully this will be of use to some people.

//ian

[Update: March 12th 2010 17:00ish] Well, I got an @ from @VMWareFusion this afternoon saying “@ianmcshane BTW, we tried to repro this internally with your steps and it works just fine for us. There is something else missing here.”

So I guess YMMV but selecting the specific adaptor has certainly allowed my VM images to run in bridge mode.

Migrate iTunes to a new Mac

Ian — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 23:41:08 +0000

I couldn’t find anything, via Google nor the Apple support site, that explained in the simplest and quickest terms how to migrate a functioning iTunes library to a new Mac. I use a bunch of smart playlists to generate my own ‘radio station‘ playlist which relies on playcount, skip count, rating and other cool stuff. That means that I really don’t want to lose the meta-data stored in the iTunes DB file when moving my data to my shiny new Macbook Pro (courtesy of work).

The last time I migrated, from my Mac Mini to my Macbook, I lost all the meta-data and really didn’t fancy it again. It turns out it’s pretty simple and straightforward. The following steps assume a brand new install of iTunes.

1. Start up iTunes on the target device. Accept the license agreement and choose NOT to add anything to the library at this time. You should now find the iTunes folder and a blank database in your /%username%/Music folder.

2. Start up the Migration Assistant app (in Applications/Utilities), choose “From a Mac”.

3. Reboot your source device and hold down the ‘T’ key whilst it restarts. It should boot up to show a Firewire symbol.

4. Connect the source and target devices with a Firewire cable.

5. This should mount the source disk on your target device.

6. Copy the entire Music/iTunes folder from source to destination.

7. Once the copy is finished, open iTunes and you should see all your tracks preserved with the meta-data intact.

The cool thing about this is that any iPods or iPhones registered with the previous iTunes installation will continue to work on your new device. No need to format and re-sync.

Cisco VPN Client on OSX

Ian — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 12:06:54 +0000

I’ve had a few problems with the Cisco VPN Client for Mac OS X (release 4.9.01 (100) ) recently.
I’d get intermittent “Error 51: Unable to contact the VPN subsystem” when opening the VPNClient appliaction.
Some times a reboot would fix it, sometimes it wouldn’t.
I can’t reliably reproduce it either, sometimes coming out of sleep breaks it, sometimes restarting breaks it.

I think I’ve worked out how to resolve this now from a command line:

Firstly take the fw0 interface down and bring it up again:
Sudo ifconfig fw0 down
Sudo ifconfig fw0 up

Then restart the VPN SS:
Sudo /System/Library/StartupItems/CiscoVPN/CiscoVPN restart

That has resolved it for me the last 5 times it happened, without needing to reboot again.

Hope that helps someone else out.

Has OS X 10.5.2 reset some security settings?

Ian — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 05:39:24 +0000

I’m pretty sure it has, I certainly haven’t turned this off.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

The release notes for the update mentions “Improves stability and performance during log in.”.

Anyone else seen the same or worse?

VMWare Fusion and network bridging

Free Trac and SVN hosting

Ian — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 13:20:23 +0000

I’ve been getting really pissed off trying to install Trac to my Dreamhost shared server, to the extent that i’m contemplating moving hosts.

In the interim, DevJaVu have just started to offer free Personal accounts that include integrate Trac and SVN.
All you need to do is sign up using the referal code johnny5. I don’t know how long that code is valid for so get on it.

Versioning a web development project

VMWare Fusion and network bridging

Ian — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 23:09:05 +0000

** UPDATED MARCH 12 2010: I just posted my solution to this problem here **

I’ve had VMWare Fusion running an image of my work laptop, on my Macbook, for nearly three weeks now. I’ve had no problems at all, running over both NAT and via network bridge.

Until this week.

Now, when I try to use the image over network bridge I get the error “The network bridge on device /dev/vmnet0 is not running”. It still works over NAT but i’m perplexed as to where this problem has come from. No software updates, no network config changes, nothing that I can think would affect this at all.

I started to wonder if it was something to do with being assigned a bridged DHCP on my home lan (10.0.0.X), suspending and being brought up on the work lan under a different subnet completely. Maybe something was going majorly wrong with the bridge device.

I couldn’t/can’t find anything logged anywhere other than the error message above in the vmware.log within the VM image folder.

Running the following command restarts all the vmnet related services:

/Library/Application\ Support/VMWare\ Fusion/boot.sh –restart

You’ll need to sudo that command.

I haven’t found anything on the VMWare community forums to indicate that this has been bugged for fix in a later release so i’m still not entirely sure of the cause…

Quicksilver roadmap at the end

Ian — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 01:28:43 +0000

In an earlier post, I mentioned how i’d been an admirer of the Quicksilver application and its workflow. Having finally picked up a Mac for full time use (work & play), it was I think the 2nd application I installed. It’s definately a great productivity tool. I’m not keen on the way OS X has all of it’s apps in one folder – I hate scrolling using a track pad, even with Apples two finger “gesture” method – and the Stacks feature of OS X Leopard doesn’t cut it for me.

So, with all that, I was gutted to read today that it is almost certainly in it’s final state – certainly from the developers POV according to this interview on Lifehacker.
Hopefully there is a community out there that will pick up the Open Source project and take it on.
I’m still looking for a decent Dictionary plug-in that works with Leopard…

Reasons to Jailbreak #1

Ian — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 03:00:41 +0000

My foray into the world of jailbroken iPhones was due to one very simple app – MobileScrobbler.

It simply hooks into the iPod functionalit and submits the Artist, Track and Album information to my Last.FM profile. Having been an avid, subscribing scrobbler for nigh on three years now, I can’t bear to listen to anything that doesn’t get posted to my profile. I’m very OCD about it; no CDs in the car (my HU has a ‘Made for iPod’ interface), no radio, no net streaming (except for the last.fm client).
It’s therefore been a bit of a struggle moving away from my iPod to _just_ the iPhone.

The current last.fm client isn’t able to scrobble iPhone plays in the same conventional manner that it does for iTunes or iPod plays. Apparently the way an iPhone syncs is completely different to iPod classic.

Anyhow, MobileScrobbler not only does this for you, it also does it over Edge/GPRS so it’ll scrobble in real time, on the move. Network permitting of course. (If it can’t scrobble it keeps the tracks in a cache until it can).

Simply brilliant, I can’t wait to get time to see what other goodness is available through Installer.

[EDIT] I just checked out the dev guys blog, he’s almost got the whole Last.fm client functionality down including the streaming and last.fm wiki integration.

Here are the the first couple of tracks I put through MSc.

Uploaded with Skitch!

[tags]iphone, last.fm, scrobble, MobileScrobbler, music, Stereophonics, Paramore[/tags]

RadRails – Unable to detect ruby install on OS X Leopard

Ian — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 00:34:18 +0000

I installed the RadRails plugin for Eclipse and Aptana today.
On first start, it complains that it is “Unable to detect ruby install” on my Leopard macbook.

Now, I know ruby is installed and working so had to try and figure out the path to the ruby installation.

Took me a while to work it out, I thought it would be under /usr/.. but it’s actually here:

/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr

After adding a new RubyVM with this path everything was good again.

Incidentally, although Aptana is available on it’s own as an IDE (built with the Eclipse framework), I decided to use it as a plugin for a native Eclipse IDE. That way I just have one IDE for Java, C++ as well as RoR. Made sense to me.

I’ve only had a quick play with it but it already beats the bejesus out of my Notepad and command line setup on XP.

[tags]OS X, Mac, Eclipse, RadRails, Aptana, Ruby on Rails[/tags]

Skitch

Ian — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 02:52:58 +0000

Taking screenshots on XP was always a bit of a pain in the ass. ALT+PrtSc, paste into MS Paint (I don’t get Photoshop at work and I never really got to grips with GiMP), crop, resize, save as jpg (unless XP had gone up the spout in which case it was a bmp), email to QA/Dev or add to the defect tracking system…

A good few months ago, I read about a startup called Skitch. At the time I was a 99% XP user and they haven’t got a Windows version just yet.

I installed this to my Macbook a couple of days ago, it’s fricken ace. Not only is it quick and easy to grab screens, you can overlay text or other simple graphics (arrows, boxs etc..), export to pretty much any filetype and even upload to your own space hosted on their site. It’s brilliantly productive, infinitely better than anything i’ve used before.

Here’s a video that explains it all in less than 3 mins. I don’t know if the beta is public yet but my account says I have some invites if anyone wants to give it a test drive.

[tags]Skitch, OS X, Productivity, Switch To Mac[/tags]