Chaos Server

A good carpenter isn’t in love with his hammer. It’s a tool to do the job he loves. - Bill Atkinson It was pretty cool to see a security alert fly in from Github that one of my projects has a security flaw. Like, that's awesome that Github is scanning through POM files (and probably NPM dependencies and other goodies) to detect libraries with known security vulnerabilities. Since reformatting the home computers onto Mojave, I didn't have a home development environment setup, so I tried tackling this in a different way. I did all the updates on the iPad using Screen/Prompt back to the home server. It was a little wonky at times, but overall worked like a charm.  And now, I'm living in a patched world.

Finally got the kid's iPads upgraded to the latest and greatest iOS which puts ScreenTime onto the devices and it's a pretty slick little tool. All the kiddos are too young to have iPad time where they are not being observed by their parents - so I don't need ScreenTime to tell me what they are doing - I KNOW. The kiddos use their iPads while I'm cooking dinner because it gives me enough peace that I make sure not to burn everything and cook a decent meal for everybody. When cooking time is over, it's time to put down the screens and eat as a family. I'm the adult, and I win every time, but some nights it is frustrating for everyone. "Turn it off or I'm going to turn it off for you- and if I have to turn it off and you fuss you go to your room." Ugh... not fun, right? Because the times they aren't going to do it are the times they are tired, hungry, etc. and it just escalates. ScreenTime gives me the +1 for high ground advantage. It's n...

I had a semi-annual tradition of buying a new iPhone and selling my previous one on eBay. The past year I bought an iPhoneX outright and my wife bought an iPhoneX on the Apple upgrade plan and I thought to myself, “I am really excited to see how the numbers work out in a year when we upgrade.” The problem is - it’s complicated. Mr. Chaos - iPhoneX = $1,238.05 Mrs. Chaos - iPhoneX + AppleCare+ = $56.16✖️24 = $1,347.84 Right off the bat it’s not Apples to Apples, because AppleCare+ for the iPhoneX is $249 which is part of Mrs.Chaos’ upgrade package but I didn’t purchase. So one year later, as I sell my phone back, how do I calculate the true cost? Here’s my best attempt. Mrs.Chaos’ phone can either be looked at as the phone for 1-year or as the phone minus the accessories (charger, lightning cable, EarPods) - which are not returned to Apple: iPhoneX Upgrade 1 Year: $619 iPhoneX Accessories: Lightening Cable ($19) + USB Charger ($19) + EarPods ($29) + Dongle ($9) = $76 I tried to sel...

I remember that first US Robotics Palm Pilot and how much I loved it - and that awesome collapsible keyboard that I bought. In the before time, in the long long ago, it was the most portable computing device out there and it boggled everyone’s mind. Fast forward 20ish years and my iPhone XS Max is the most powerful computing device in my household and I keep wishing I had a keyboard for it. I did consider pairing an Apple Magic Keyboard with a nice canvas, but then I saw this amazing Zagg and like, I just couldn’t stop myself. Well, I put it on my wishlist, because I had a birthday coming, and then it appeared, because Mrs.Chaos knows me well. It makes me a little giddy to type on it.

Ever since my second iPhone (3G), I’ve sold my phones on eBay when I bought the new one and had a great track record. Sadly tonight was the exception to my great streak. I end my auctions at 5pm PST on Sundays, as the statistically best time. What happened today? 3pm mediocre bid comes in. 4pm significantly higher (overpriced?) bid comes in. 4:59pm higher bid is cancelled and the drops back to the mediocre bid and closes. So, I earned from eBay less than I would have gotten selling direct to Apple. Sadly, it seems like a scam to me.  The person who cancelled their bid has all purchases from a single buyer over the past couple of years - puppet account. I canceled the sale, which will probably hurt my seller rating. The other problem is that I have a listing limit, and the iPhoneX is expensive, so I can’t list it again until the next month.  I gave in and I’m selling it to Apple instead - now I need to do a full price break down of everything. On a positive note, my Apple W...

I never did get ChaosServer to boot off my external High Sierra install drive, but I was able to get it working. I booted into Internet Recovery Mode and from there was able to wipe clean my internal drive and install macOS High Sierra onto it. I had this plan that I wouldn’t use any of the built-in macOS Server utilities, but I just couldn’t help myself - they are too easy! So I installed macOS Server and enabled the VPN and the DNS services. I use the DNS so that when I’m trying to access ChaosServer inside my network I can use the standard hostname and then it will use the internal IP address (rather than doing a loopback through the Eero). I’ve never had VPN before, but as I’ve been shifting more and more toward the iPad lifestyle, I had this idea. On my iPhone / iPad setup the VPN and I installed the FileBrowser app which remotely mounts SMB drives in the iOS Files App. So now, while I’m out and about from the house, I can use VPN+FileBrowser on iOS to use my home system as m...

I’ve run a home server since the dawn of computing networking. In the earlier days, it was connected via modem 24x7 to the internet and shared that connection to the other computers around my apartment. It started as a Pentium with MMX, became a PowerBook G4 and these days ChaosServer is running on MacBook Air (13-inch, Mid 2011). This version started under Mavericks, and it’s time to clean install it to Mojave and get all my services up and running. The first step is to trigger a SuperDuper bootable backup of the system, just in case. I have this super-cheap silicone case external drive case I use with bare drives to do all this stuff. Once that backup is complete, it’s Mojave time. Except I hit my first problem, a Mid 2011 MacBook Air isn’t supported with Mojave. Well, let’s just go crazy! I’ll use MacOS Mojave Patcher to install it on an unsupported computer. Well, I tried to anyway, but it didn’t work. Still, High Sierra does have the killer feature I wanted - AN EXC...