TrueCrypt for Mac OS X

I made an interesting discovery today regarding the cross-platform use of the TrueCrypt software package. I created an encrypted partition on a thumb drive on a Windows box. This partition used the NTFS file system. But when I mounted this partition in Mac OS X as a non-root user I didn't have write privileges. However, if I created a partition under Windows using the FAT32 file system then I would have write permissions under Mac OS X. My guess is that because FAT32 lacks the extended file attributes needed for per-user permissions.

Tech Help for iTunes

I was recently experiencing a problem with iTunes for Windows where I would start ripping a CD and after two or three songs the CD would just disappear. Eventually it would reappear and the same thing would repeat over and over.

The solution was making sure that AutoRun for the CD drive was turned on. VMWare Server turned that off and apparently iTunes didn't like that so much...

Domain to Ya'll's

I've been dabbling with the idea of setting up my own Windows domain at home. The benefits of a roaming profile are that you could have multiple users on the same machine (not simultaneously) with their own files, and that you can take your files to any machine that is a part of the domain.

Now, the downside to all of this is that the you need either Windows 2000 Server (Professional won't do) or Windows 2003 Server. Both of those are hundreds of dollars. That's hundreds of dollars more than I want to spend. So its Samba to the rescue! In case you don't know, Samba is an open source, reverse engineered implementation of the SMB protocol on which Microsoft built their domain system. Samba's free, and it lets you do fancy things like domain and roaming profiles. I've actually just gotten the domain part working after several tries. It sure ain't simple. Next I'll implement the roaming profiles. Maybe I'll even have time to post a tutorial. But for now: it works!