neil in the land of smiles

I am back in Thailand, this time with my son. The weather looks good and we have a C172 booked for most of Saturday and Sunday. Hope to fly.

virtualbox and dns

I think that my problems with virtualbox networking have to do with both OS X and the way that VirtualBox handles NAT in the virtual machine. I seems that if the DNS entries on the host change then the DNS settings in the guest do not change. I often rotate through four different network connections during the day: home, 3G usb modem, cafe, work. Each will have different DNS settings.

The OS X Network Preferences - Advanced - DNS will show the current servers for an active connection.

I know that I could simply hand amend @/etc/resolv.conf@ to the current DNS.

My second solution saves copies of @/etc/resolv.conf@ for the connections that I use regularly and to use a shell script to save a copy of the current @/etc/resolv.conf@ and then copy over the current DNS settings. I therefore use a script for each connection.

Now that I know that this system works I intend to evolve the shell script to accept a variable for the connection name. One script will handle many connections.

virtual world

I've been playing with virtual machines in OS X and my experiences have not been at all good.

Parallels 3 works well for running my boot camp XP partition but I have learned to upgrade with care and not to use the upgrade from within Parallels itself: download the upgrade from the Parallels site, upgrade, reinstall tools, works best. Parallels however was one of the suspects for trashing my boot camp partition after an disk change: the evil Spotlight was the other suspect. I had backups so I was able to backtrack and repeat the installation again but this time avoiding running Parallels until after Spotlight had stopped doing what is does best - insisting on indexing and using up way too much CPU when I don't want it to run at all.

Parallels 4 was a release to far from all that I have read so I'm waiting a while before upgrading.

I have used VMWare to run BeOS Max - works reasonably well with a few issues: CivCTP upgrade will not run (blank screen), dodgy file manager in Max. Network works well. I have two instances running, one on the Macbook Pro and one on the Mac Pro.

VMWare is running instances of Debian 5 and Ubuntu 9 (both minimal installs) with tools installed. The tools allow me to resize the screen but the X fonts don't scale well for browsers - I get a big print edition. The Network works well as does USB.

Virtualbox 3 runs instances of Debian 5 and Ubuntu 9 (again minimal installs) with tools installed. The screens resize well without breaking the font sizes. USB does not work reliably so USB drives may or may not be recognized and if they are they may ar may not be write protected even if lacking write protect: broken. The network is not reliable: I switch between WiFi networks or USB 3G broadband and cannot be sure of the virtual machine continuing to have network access using NAT. Use the Intel network emulation - the default is worse and will fail mid net install of Ubuntu or Debian

My conclusion is that these products are not really ready for mainstream easy use. Running the nasty windows os may provide better experiences but I suspect that the main issue is OS X support for VMWare and Virtual Box.

I may try virtual linux in Parallels next - just for fun.

Twelve Years On

It has been a long time since my last post: and I have been busy.

I still work as an Air Traffic Controller at Hong Kong. It has been twelve years since I arrived in Hong Kong on 4 July, 1997.

I was out last night for a dinner and reunion of controllers. We started together in Hong Kong ATC at the same time. Only three of us still work in Hong Kong. The table was for five people: two significant others joined us.

I now fly a Seneca out of "Clark, Philippines":http://omniaviation.com/ as PIC. I hold a Philippine Validation on my Canadian CPL/MEP/IR.

I fly a Commander 114A out of "Bang Phra, Thailand":http://thaiflyingclub.com. I hold a Thailand Validation on my Canadian License.

I have completed the Canadian TC to FAA conversion process so I hold an FAA CPL/MEP/IR. In the USA I flew C172 and PA44 Seminole PIC. I was able to arrange insurance specifically for the PA44 through AOPA.

I still fiddle with programming and computers when I have the time between work, flying trips, etc.

I have used VMWare Fusion to bring BeOS to life again in the form or BeOS Max5 on my Macbook Pro and on my Mac Pro. BeOS seems quite stable and I have been playing Call To Power again in both installations. As I still have an interest in Linux I have just got Tinycore running in VirtualBox 3.0. All very pleasing.