Thursday, 15 June 2023

macOS to macOS File Sharing - Don't work, try The IT Crowd

 I use File Sharing between two Macs on the same network, both running the latest macOS 13.4 Ventura.

For some strange reason I wasn't able to access one Mac - a Mini - from the other - a MacBook Pro.

As is always the case, the internet solved it for me: -

Fix File Sharing Not Working in MacOS Ventura

TL;DR; turn it off, and on again

Yes, The IT Crowd strikes again

Having said that, Dan Moren, he of Six Colours, acclaimed author AND MacBreak Weekly host, deserves full thanks for directing me to macOS' built-in firewall tool: -

/usr/libexec/ApplicationFirewall/socketfilterfw --listapps

Solving a file sharing mystery: Why one Mac can’t see another 

Whilst the TIOAOA trick worked this time, who knows what I'll need next time ...


Monday, 22 May 2023

On the subject of aliases ...

I'm a super-massive fan of time/labour saving devices, and that goes for command-line tips n' tricks to save me: -

(a) typing more stuff

(b) looking in my notes to remember what I need, in order to type more stuff

Therefore, I've finally got around to creating an alias to create a new branch in a GitHub repo that I've cloned to my Mac.

I've added this alias to ~/.zprofile: -

gitbranch='git fetch origin && git rebase origin/master && git checkout master; git checkout -b $1'

so now I just need to type: -

gitbranch foobar

or: -

gitbranch snafu

in order to create a new branch ...

Which is nice.

Using 1Password to store API keys ...

 Following on from my earlier post: -

Wow, why have I not been using 1Password for my SSH keys before today ? 

I've got a little further, with various API keys now stored in my 1Password vault

This is far simpler, in that the vault entry, of type API Credential, only needs to have a name/title e.g. IBM Cloud API Key and a credential, the actual API key itself.

With that in place, I've then setup an alias to retrieve/display the API key: -

apikey='export APIKEY=$(op item get "IBM Cloud" --field credential) && echo $APIKEY'

in ~/.zprofile, meaning that I just need to run the "command" apikey to ... see my API key.

I will, of course, be leveraging the same API keys in various other scripts/aliases, including things that login to IBM Cloud etc.


Saturday, 20 May 2023

Wow, why have I not been using 1Password for my SSH keys before today ?

 As an avid user of 1Password, I've only really just delved into the Command-Line Interface (CLI), including the ability to create AND use SSH keys.

I'm running on macOS 13.4 and, as per the documentation - Manage SSH Keys - I've installed the BETA version of the op command: -

2.18.0-beta.01

downloaded from here 

I'm also running 1Password for Mac 8.10.6 (81006027) and, having configured the SSH Agent and the Command-Line Interface (CLI) options via Settings > Developer : -

1Password Developer pane showing SSH Agent and CLI settings













and then generate a new SSH key: -

op ssh generate --title "SSH Key - 20 May 2023"


The key then appeared under a new 1Password category - SSH Keys - from where I could select the public key and add it to the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file on two of my target Ubuntu boxes

This has all made life much easier on the Mac, via iTerm etc. where my SSH config is WAY simpler: -

cat ~/.ssh/config

Host *
  IdentityAgent "~/Library/Group Containers/2BUA8C4S2C.com.1password/t/agent.sock"


Even better, I was able to quickly add the public key to GitHub's SSH Keys page via the New SSH Key button, which immediately prompted to retrieve the new key - SSH Key - 20 May 2023 - from the 1Password vault ...

Which is nice


Friday, 19 May 2023

Today I Learned - how to deal with Shell Check SC2086

So, technically I learned this yesterday but 🤷‍♀️

As part of our CI/CD testing, we run shellcheck  against our shell scripts, and saw the following: -

   ^----^ SC2086 (info): Double quote to prevent globbing and word splitting.

for a piece of code that referenced a variable e.g. : -

echo $FILES

The shellcheck Wiki covers this: -

SC2086 – ShellCheck Wiki

and suggests that $FILES be wrapped in double quotes e.g. : -

echo "$FILES"

So far, so good

However, the code in question was actually a variable containing more than one element e.g. : -

FILES="a.txt b.txt c.txt"

so the next line in the script which leveraged the values within the $FILES variable: -

ls "$FILES"

fails with: -

ls: a.txt b.txt c.txt: No such file or directory

Thinking more about this, this kinda made sense i.e. we're treating the values within the $FILES variable as elements within an array, but we're not actually treating the variable as an array, by incrementing through the elements by an index.

The Wiki does reference this: -





Using that as inspiration, I updated the script: -

read -ra files <<<"${FILES}"
ls "${files[@]}"

In essence, this is creating a "real" array from the $FILES variable, and then we're incrementing the index using [@] 

To be clear, I also took inspiration from: -

How to be explicit about intentional word splitting?

and this is my demo / test script: -

#! /bin/bash
# Set variable
FILES="a.txt b.txt c.txt"
echo "Works, but breaks shellcheck"
ls $FILES
echo "Fails, but passes shellcheck"
ls "$FILES"
echo "Works, and passes shellcheck"
read -ra files <<<"${FILES}"
ls "${files[@]}"

which, when I run it, does this: -

./test-sc.sh

Works, but breaks shellcheck

a.txt b.txt c.txt

Fails, but passes shellcheck

ls: a.txt b.txt c.txt: No such file or directory

Works, and passes shellcheck

a.txt b.txt c.txt

Finally, for now, there's a great shellcheck plugin for VS Code: -

ShellCheck for Visual Studio Code

and, for the record, the shellcheck project is available on GitHub

Thursday, 27 April 2023

Why oh why did I forget vimdiff ?

 Whilst trying to compare two branches of a GitHub repo on my Mac, I was using diff to compare/contrast specific files, and trying to parse the differences.

And then I remembered vimdiff


Source: Linux `Vimdiff` Command – How to Compare Two Files in the Command Line 

PS Using freeCodeCamp for the above image, as I don't want to reveal my sources ( i.e. source code )

Unix - redirecting output to /dev/null

In the past, I've used redirection to send output to /dev/null such as: -

foobar 2> /dev/null

where foobar is a non-existent command/binary, but I want the error output ( stderr ) such as: -

zsh: command not found: foobar

or: -

foobar: command not found

to be "hidden"

Similarly, I've used redirection to send "pukka" output ( stdout ) to also go to /dev/null e.g. : -

uptime 1> /dev/null

However, I'd not seen the simple way to do both in one fell swoop: -

foobar &> /dev/null

uptime &> /dev/null

where the ampersand ( & ) is used to send BOTH stdout and stderr to /dev/null

As ever, which is nice

macOS to macOS File Sharing - Don't work, try The IT Crowd

 I use File Sharing between two Macs on the same network, both running the latest macOS 13.4 Ventura. For some strange reason I wasn't a...