iPod Touch firmware upgrade with VMWare

With the recent OS 3.1.1 release it was really only a matter of time before I got around to upgrading again.  My previous firmware upgrade was not very smooth.  As I’ve mentioned previously, I run iTunes on a VMWare image of Windows XP – hosted on my Ubuntu desktop.

During the firmware upgrade process the iPod changes the type of USB device it is – this causes problems for Linux/VMWare.  I had previously thought there was no way to get around these issues, making VMWare based firmware upgrades impossible.  I’m happy to report that I was wrong.

Motivated by the OS 3.1.1 upgrade being free of charge (to suckers users who had purchased 3.0, and only $5 otherwise), I figured I’d take another run at making this work under Ubuntu / VMWare.  I found a post that discussed upgrading the iPhone under VMWare, and it turns out that this was pretty much the magic sauce to make things work.  The steps are shamelessly reproduced here, I cannot take the credit:

Create a file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-usb containing:

blacklist snd_usb_audio
blacklist usbhid

Reload udev to refresh the configuration we just changed:

sudo /etc/init.d/udev reload

Forcefully remove the kernel modules:

sudo /sbin/modprobe -r snd_usb_audio
sudo /sbin/modprobe -r usbhid

Perform the upgrade under VMWare.

Reverse these steps after the upgrade to restore your Ubuntu machine to normal:
sudo rm /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-usb
sudo /etc/init.d/udev reload

Read on for gory details on what I actually did..

Continue reading “iPod Touch firmware upgrade with VMWare”

Growing a WindowsXP VMWare GuestOS in Ubuntu

vmware_ubuntuMy desktop at home is based on Ubuntu and generally its a good end user experience.  The bonus to running Linux is it gives me a unix system to hack around with and I avoid some of the malware nonsense the plagues the much more popular Windows operating system.  Of course, Linux is a poor second cousin and there is a lot of software that is only for Windows.  The suite of work-alike applications under Linux is improving, but most people can’t quite get away from Windows entirely.

For my part, one of the key applications is iTunes.  Sure you can sort of get by with pure Linux, buts its still pretty messy.  Running the real application is much easier.  There are a few other less frequently used applications that require me to have a Windows install around too.

Quite some time ago, I took a physical install of WindowsXP Home and virtualized it to run under VMWare Player (you can also choose to use VMWare Server).  I’ve lost track of the specific steps I did, but the following how to seems to cover basically what I did.  One footnote to this process is that it appears to Windows as if you’ve changed the hardware significantly enough to require revalidation of your license – this shouldn’t be a big deal if you’ve got a legitimate copy.

Now back then, I figured that a 14Gb disk would be plenty of space for Windows.  (Ok, stop laughing now).  So this worked fine for a couple of years, but the cruft has built up to the point where I’m getting regular low disk warnings in my WindowsXP image.  Time to fix it.

You’ll need to get a copy of VMWare Server.  This is a free download, but requires a registration that gives you a free key to run it.  You actually don’t need the key – as we only need one utility out of the archive:  vmware-vdiskmanager.  This will allow us to resize the .vmdk file – which will take a little while.


./vmware-vdiskmanager -x 36Gb WindowsXP.vmdk

The vmware server archive also contains another very useful tool: vmware-mount.  This allows you to mount your vmware disk and access the NTFS partitions under Linux.  Very nice for moving data in or out of your virtualized Windows machine.

I need to credit the blog post which pointed me at the vmware-vdiskmanager, but it goes on to talk about using the Windows administration tools to change the type of the disk from basic to dynamic.  This is a feature not available in XP Home.

The .vmdk file represents the raw disk, so we’ve now got more drive space avilable but the Windows partition is still stuck at 14Gb.  No problem, the Ubuntu live CD contains a copy of GParted which can resize NTFS for us.  We need to edit the .vmx file to add the .iso file and boot from it.

ide0:0.present = "TRUE"
ide0:0.fileName = "/MyData/ISOs/ubuntu-9.04-desktop-i386.iso"
ide0:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"

I did also have to fiddle with the VMWare BIOS (F2 on boot) to enable booting from the CDRom.  You may or may not need to do this step.

Once you have the Ubuntu Live CD running, run the partition editor under System->Adminstration->Partition Editor.  This is GParted and its got a pretty friendly graphical UI.  It may take some time to apply the change.

WindowsXP_Growing

Once you are done, you need to re-edit your .vmx file to remove the .iso and boot Windows once again.  Don’t Panic.  Windows will detect that there is something amiss on your file system and want to run a check / repair on it.  This is normal.  Let it run through this process, it is a one time fix up and you’ll boot clean afterwards.

WindowsXP-Chkdsk

Start to end it takes a couple of hours, but most of that is waiting for longish disk operations.  Worth it to now have plenty of drive space available for my Windows VMware image.

Mounting a Wheelbarrow Wheel

We left our wheelbarrow out in a corner of the backyard all winter.  In the spring the tire had completely deflated, and as it is a tubeless tire (similar to car tires) it had come off the rim as well.  Simply sticking an airpump on the valve did nothing as the tire no longer touched the rim in a number of places letting all of the air out.

One solution img_1396would have been to simply buy a new tire.  I thought that being like a car tire, I could probably take it by a local garage and have them do it for me.  However, I had a nagging feeling there was some way to DIY so I finally got to searching for a solution.

It was very easy to find some good advice on the net (this is as you know, not always true).  So the value of this post is probably limited, but I learned something today so I thought I’d share.

Tools you need: rope, air pump, long screwdriver or sturdy stick, soapy water.

  1. Use the soapy water (1/2 water, 1/2 dish soap) to coat the beads of the tire (both sides) and the rim where it will mate up.
  2. Tie the rope snugly around the circumference of the tire.
  3. Stick the screwdriver through the rope and twist, causing the rope to tighten.  This should help you get the bead onto the rim on both sides [in my case, it was not quite there – but close enough to seal the gaps]
  4. Pump the tire.  This should cause the bead to set onto the rim.  Slowly release the twist while you pump.

That’s it – easy to fix with stuff you should be able to find around the workshop.