Convert RHEL5 to CentOS5

I bet everyone will be wanting to know this.

OK,  start with downloading the following from CentOS

RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-5

centos-release

centos-release-notes

yum

yum-updatesd

Un-install the following:

rpm -e --nodeps redhat-release

rpm -e --nodeps yum-rhn-plugin

Add the CentOS key:

rpm --import RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-5

Then add all the rpm's you downloadedL

rpm -Uhv *rpm

The system is ready, run:

yum -y upgrade

Done.

Windows at Work

Unfortunately, I have to use Windows at work. What do I work on? Solaris and Linux. This makes sense. Oh well, it is paying the mortgage.

How do I cope? With these:

RocketDock, this gives me the wonderful Mac OS X dock application. I moved the Windows bar to the top, and have it auto-hide. Much better.

VMware Server gives me a free virtualisation environment, where I have CentOS 5 and Solaris 10 installed, both running in headless mode (no GUI).

Xming gives me a fast and light Xwindow environment. Better than eXceed I think, also free.

putty, the wonderful ssh client also allows X tunneling over ssh, which is then picked up by Xming.

Looks good, huh? None of the Windows GUI nastiness, all of the Linux/Solaris/Mac OS X goodness I need, with the Windows connectivity that corporate demands.

Command Line Disk Cloning

I have my two paint scrapers ready, so you know that I am about to upgrade my mac mini. Picked up a 250 GB disk last time I was in Dallas at Fry's. Since the Hackintosh came into my life, a Quad-Core Q6600 4GB box running Mac OS X 10.5.5, I have moved the mini to the TV room, as was intended. The mini came originally came with 2 x 512 MB DIMMs and a 60 GB disk. Ages ago, I upgraded the memory to 2 x 1024 MB DIMMs and a 100 GB disk. At that time I just reloaded the OS, and took the opportunity to go to 10.5. As the mini is also at 10.5.5, and with lots of codecs and applications installed, this would be a pain. I was looking at SuperDuper!, but they want actual money for their product. Checking the 'net, I came across this nice and easy command line method.

So, lets get started.

First off, I put my new drive into a USB box and connected to the mini.

Next, in Disk Utility, I partitioned and formatted the drive to one partition, and added the Mac OS X partition table. The New disk has the label, Mac OS X

Now, in a terminal window (my favourite place), I ran the following:

Become root

sudo -s

Copy all the disk contents to the new disk, mounted on /Volumes/Mac OS X

rsync -Eavx / /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X

Now, it needs to be bootable,

bless -folder /Volumes/Mac\ OS\ X/System/Library/CoreServices –bootinfo –bootefi

Bob's your uncle.