Newsletter # 12 - Understanding Disk Images by building a macOS Catalina ISO image for VirtualBox [macOS] Dec 7 2019
Hello,
Sorry for the delay this week with the newsletter, I got stuck in an airport for longer than I expected. So this week's newsletter is going to be quick.
When I'm travelling, I always enjoy the time off in the airports. I enjoy visiting bookstores, getting some coffee and listening to podcasts. There are some podcasts that I enjoy for the storytelling and some for their content. Twenty thousand Hertz is the perfect example of storytelling and content. It's a podcast about "The stories behind the world's most recognisable and interesting sounds". I'm not much of a graphics type of person, as you can tell I prefer to design beautiful command-line tools than beautiful GUI's. But one thing I enjoy is sounds. For example, the sounds of different accents. Or the sounds on video games and even the sound when my computer boots up. Anyways, If you like to hear about the history of some of the sounds you know, you'll probably enjoy the Twenty thousand hertz Podcast. Give it a go and let me know what you think.
Also, if you have any podcast/Audiobook recommendation, I would appreciate it.
This week's article was about building an ISO image of macOS Catalina so we can build a VM using VirtualBox. The article went deeper into how to use Disk Images that are a big part of Apple's ecosystem. You'll probably know Disk Images by the extension dmg, that's how some people still choose to distribute their applications. Understanding Disk Images is useful, so if you want to read more about it here is the link:
https://rderik.com/blog/understanding-disk-images-by-building-a-macos-catalina-iso-image/
And also, it is useful to have your own macOS VM where you can test configurations, and or analyse the Kernel or even malware if you are into security. Well, let me know what you think, and I hope you find it useful.
That's it for this week, and I'm going to try to get some rest.
Derik
Tip of the week
Have you ever ran a command and wondered if it was stuck or if it was doing something? Well, wonder no more! If the script is well written (meaning if it supports the trap for SIGINFO), it'll show you the status of the command.
For example:
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$ tail -f Some.log
#nothing is happening but you press `Ctrl+t`
load: 4.82 cmd: tail 23103 waiting 0.00u 0.00s
You'll get a useful message with information on the status of the process. Try it out with other commands. For example, when you are creating an empty file (from /dev/zero using dd), you'll be able to see how has been copied. Ctrl+t works on *BSD and macOS, I think Linux doesn't support it but I haven't tried, you could try and let me know.