Getting music from iTunes on a Mac onto an Android G2 smart phone was an easy task. Maybe it wasn't so easy with the first generation Android phones, but the G2 I purchased a couple of weeks ago came with everything I needed.
Connecting the phone to the Mac
My main Mac is a two year old MacBook. The G2 came with a USB sync cable and as soon as I attached it, it opened iPhoto to upload pictures just like a camera. But the G2 also displayed a screen to enable it as a USB disk drive. I enabled disk mode, then took a look at the mounted volume in Finder.
One of the icons on the Volume was DoubleTwist. When I double clicked it, it started downloading the latest Mac version of DoubleTwist. After installation, the DoubleTwist interface looked very much like iTunes. It allows you to automatically sync all music from iTunes or just selections.
Since I don't plan to listen to music often on the G2, I chose to only sync playlists. This only syncs the music required in each playlist. There are a lot of options in DoubleTwist and the integration was seamless.
Sunday, January 23, 2011
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Automating FTP
People frequently need to automate FTP sessions to upload or download files.
Most command line FTP clients, including the FTP client on the Mac, can automatically login to an FTP server by reading the .netrc file in the user home directory. Note that the FTP auto-login file starts with a dot in front of the name (dot netrc).
Syntax of the $HOME/.netrc
The .netrc file can contain more than one auto-login configuration. Each FTP server has a set of commands, the minimum being the login name and password. You can create as many machine sections as you need. Here is a generic example:
Very Important: .netrc permissions!
Since user IDs and passwords are stored in the .netrc file, the FTP client enforces permission checking on it. It must be set so that no groups and no other users can read or write to it. You can set the permissions on it with this command from the Terminal (from your home directory) once the file is created:
chmod 700 .netrc
Adding FTP commands in a BASH script
You can embed FTP commands in a BASH script to upload and download files.
For example, you could create a script file named ftpupload.sh:
In this example, I added the -i switch when running FTP to prevent it from prompting on multiple file uploads/downloads, even though it is only uploading one file in the example. I also use the BASH HERE document feature to send commands to FTP. When the script is run, it will auto-login using the information in the .netrc file, change to the right remote directory and upload the datafile.
Scheduling the script with Cron
The last step is to get the BASH script to run unattended, say every day at 5:00 am. The old school UNIX way is to use Cron, but the fancy new Apple way is to use a launchd XML configuration. As long as cron is supported in OS X, I'll stick to the old school way. I leave the launchd configuration as an exercise for the reader.
Add these lines with the command "crontab -e", then save:
Most command line FTP clients, including the FTP client on the Mac, can automatically login to an FTP server by reading the .netrc file in the user home directory. Note that the FTP auto-login file starts with a dot in front of the name (dot netrc).
Syntax of the $HOME/.netrc
The .netrc file can contain more than one auto-login configuration. Each FTP server has a set of commands, the minimum being the login name and password. You can create as many machine sections as you need. Here is a generic example:
machine ftp.server.com
login myuserID
password mypassword
Very Important: .netrc permissions!
Since user IDs and passwords are stored in the .netrc file, the FTP client enforces permission checking on it. It must be set so that no groups and no other users can read or write to it. You can set the permissions on it with this command from the Terminal (from your home directory) once the file is created:
chmod 700 .netrc
Adding FTP commands in a BASH script
You can embed FTP commands in a BASH script to upload and download files.
For example, you could create a script file named ftpupload.sh:
#!/bin/bash
# upload a file
/usr/bin/ftp -i ftp.server.com <<ENDOFCOMMANDS
cd backupdir
cd subdir
put datafile
quit
ENDOFCOMMANDS
In this example, I added the -i switch when running FTP to prevent it from prompting on multiple file uploads/downloads, even though it is only uploading one file in the example. I also use the BASH HERE document feature to send commands to FTP. When the script is run, it will auto-login using the information in the .netrc file, change to the right remote directory and upload the datafile.
Scheduling the script with Cron
The last step is to get the BASH script to run unattended, say every day at 5:00 am. The old school UNIX way is to use Cron, but the fancy new Apple way is to use a launchd XML configuration. As long as cron is supported in OS X, I'll stick to the old school way. I leave the launchd configuration as an exercise for the reader.
Add these lines with the command "crontab -e", then save:
# automated FTP upload
0 5 * * * /Users/username/ftpupload.sh
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