Mac on Technical Notes

Home PBX

Sat, 13 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Asterisk is a free software program (under GPL license) that provides PBX (Private Branch Exchange) functionality. You can connect phones to make calls between them within your home (or office) and even access external communications, to the PSTN (like Movistar) or by connecting to a VoIP provider or ISDN links (basic or primary).

Software KVM

Thu, 13 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In environments where you need to operate multiple computers simultaneously, efficiency is key. There are several products that mimic the functionality of a KVM switch (Keyboard, Video, Mouse), which historically allowed you to use a single keyboard and mouse to control multiple computers by physically turning a dial. In this post I describe how I install and use Barrier, a software KVM solution, without the need for additional hardware.

My use case involves controlling three computers with a single keyboard and mouse. Two of them are desktops – a Mac and a Windows PC. The third is a Windows/Linux laptop. The difficulty lies with the Mac, where I encountered a curious and nearly insurmountable challenge.

Terminals with tmux

Thu, 25 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

tmux is a terminal multiplexer that allows you to have multiple sessions (shells) in a single window. From your Mac, Linux, or even Windows (with WSL) terminal, in a single window you can have multiple active sessions, switch between them, view them simultaneously, enter one and disconnect (they keep running in the background), and reconnect to it in the future.

Mac Users from CLI

Fri, 16 Feb 2024 00:00:00 +0000

To find all available users on a macOS system from the command line, you can use a Bash script. The macOS operating system, like other Unix-like systems, stores user information in various system files, primarily in /etc/passwd. macOS uses Open Directory for user management, so you can use commands like dscl to query this information.

Rclone and Mac

Mon, 13 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In this post I explain how I manage my data on a Mac. My goal is to work at full speed from anywhere with the most frequently used data, have extra storage for less accessed data, and of course have multiple backups.

The source data lives on the Mac’s internal SSD and a couple of external drives. The replicas and backups are on iCloud, a remote Linux server, and Google Drive. Multiple locations, different technologies, speeds, and needs. The rclone tool is perfect for helping me maintain multiple synchronized backups.

Linux on MacBook Air 2015

Sun, 06 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0000

In this post I describe how to repurpose an old MacBook Air (2015) by installing Linux on it and extending its useful life. Over time, these Macs become nearly useless machines, painfully slow and with insufficient memory.

Why not take advantage of them with Linux? A 2015 MacBook Air with 8GB of RAM and a 128GB drive can become a very useful machine.

Linux Router for Movistar

Sun, 05 Oct 2014 00:00:00 +0000

This post describes what’s behind (at a technical level) the IP service offered by Movistar Fusion FTTH (Fiber) and how to replace the router they install with a GNU/Linux-based machine that will act as a Router (along with an Ethernet Switch) to provide the same Data, Television (IPTV), and Voice (VoIP) services.

After reading this post, I recommend continuing with video on demand for Movistar and the lab to extend your local network to a remote site with an Ethernet Bridge.

Rsync on MacOS

Mon, 13 Nov 2006 00:00:00 +0000

The rsync program comes bundled with Mac OSX, but if you need a more recent version with additional features – such as metadata preservation, extended character support, or cross-platform character handling – you’ll need to install one of the latest versions.