While trying to copy a large (10GB) file from a Windows XP machine today, via both the network and a FAT32 USB hard drive, I received this somewhat cryptic error: "The Finder can't complete the operation because some data in "myBigFile.avi" can't be read or written. (Error code -36)"

 

 

Error code -36?  Humph.  After some Googling around the Intertubes, nothing screamed "This is the problem!" as it is a somewhat common error message for OS X. So, I thought I'd try it out at the command line. Why? GUIs can be much less forthcoming about errors some times.

 manoa:LACIE stu$ cp myBigFile.avi ~/Desktop/ cp: myBigFile.avi: could not copy 
   extended attributes to /Users/stu/Desktop/myBigFile.avi: Argument list too long
 manoa:LACIE stu$ 

Well. That's interesting. A Google of "could not copy extended attributes" and "Argument list too long" turned up no hits, to my great surprise. What are these extend attributes on the file? Not much, apparently--just one. But a quick search of the man pages for the cp command indicated I could exclude these extended attributes from the copy with the -X switch.

 manoa:LACIE stu$ xattr myBigFile.avi
 TOC.WMV 
 manoa:LACIE stu$ cp -X myBigFile.avi ~/Desktop/
 manoa:LACIE stu$  

Yea! Success!

Shortly after upgrading to Snow Leopard, many of my toys broke, including x264.

manoa:x264-snapshot-20090913-2245 stu$ ./configure 
No working C compiler found.
manoa:x264-snapshot-20090913-2245 stu$  

Bummer. It took some goggling around and experimentation, but here is what worked for me:

manoa:x264-snapshot-20090913-2245 stu$ ./configure --host=x86_64-apple-darwin10 
./version.sh: line 2: git: command not found
Platform:   X86_64
System:     MACOSX
asm:        yes
avis input: no
mp4 output: no
pthread:    yes
debug:      no
gprof:      no
PIC:        no
shared:     no
visualize:  no

You can run 'make' or 'make fprofiled' now.
manoa:x264-snapshot-20090913-2245 stu$

Yea! I've already forgotten it once and panicked. So, it is here on the blog for myself and anyone else who stumbles across it.

So, I upgraded to Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard.  Umm...that's not worked out exactly like I had planned.  

• MySql 5.x server and preference pane (The Fix)
• Python's MySql libraries (The Fix)
• Wireshark
• qt-faststart.c v0.1 compile (v0.2 that comes with ffmpeg/tools works fine.)
• The PackageManager installation project for my xtendx Creator Server software (The behavior of "launchctl list" has changed; ./preinstall scripts do not work) (No Fix Yet)
  
• iStat, a menu bar resource (CPU, bandwidth, disk) meter (No Fix Yet)
• TrueCrypt (Cannot create new volumes, nor write to existing volumes) (The Fix)
  
• Some Eclipse 3.5 (Galileo) and 3.4 (Europa) fonts  ("Argh!  How did all my method modifies disappear!!!") (Fixed by tweaking font colors in preferences)
  
• CyberDuck (FTP/SCP/etc client) (The Fix)
• VLC (VideoLanClient) 0.8x blows up every now and then (Upgrade to 1.01)
• Encoding tools (fetch latest source and recompile)
  • faac
  • faad2
  • x264 (big time)
  • ffmpeg

I suspect I'll be updating this list as the week progresses.

Last spring, Robyn and I spend a weekend in St. Augustine Beach, Florida.  By chance, this coincided with the Launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery en route to the International Space Station. 


The evening of the launch, we went down to the beach.  I took pictures with my DSLR and Robyn took video with both her digital camera and my Nokia N95 8GB.  Immediately after the launch I posted the videos to my YouTube account.  The hits climbed very quickly into the hundreds but then tapered off to just a few every day.  As of yesterday, that number hit 1000! 


I am very pleased.  While our clip is not in the league of the Internet meme that "Groovy Dancing Girl", with over four million views, it is a respectable number.  More gratifying was this recent comment:

By far the best video I've ever seen of a shuttle launch- beautiful setting creates a perfect mixture of technology and nature. Nice camera work-no zooming in and out. You should have a lot more views.

There was some recent interest in the video because of the most recent Discovery launch. For better and worse, the space shuttle fleet is being retired.