Travis Johnson bashtheshell

Updating expired GPG keys and their backup 🔑🔐💻

I use a GPG key to sign my git commits.

An error like this one might be a sign of an expired GPG key.

error: gpg failed to sign the data fatal: failed to write commit object

It is the year 2020 and replicating APFS containers still sucks. One would expect it would be a simple copy and paste in the Disk Utility app but this is still far from reality.

Last year I wrote how I managed to clone my macOS system under Catalina. The main trick was to create a DMG file with multiple volumes, mount it on target machine and drop to command-line to do asr restore from synthetised disk while avoiding possible pitfalls.

The good news is that Apple devs definitely worked on improving this under Big Sur and added some documentation (see man asr). But I didn't understand it fully on first read. Maybe someone could explain how is this supposed to work?

Today I wanted to move existing APFS-resident macOS Catalina installation to a new disk. I upgraded my late 2014 Mac Mini with a shiny new 1TB SSD. This took way too many hours of my life I will never get back. Hope this saves some time to you.

Good news:

it is possible to create a DMG image from existing APFS container with macOS Catalina installation including metadata needed for complete restore (the DMG contains OS, OS Data, Preboot, Recovery and VM volumes)
it is possible to restore this DMG image into empty APFS container and get a bootable copy of the original system

This information is relevant for Catalina (I'm currently running macOS 10.15.1).

How to use VFIO to assign a device to nested VM

Here the vfio-pci device is passed in into the L1 VM
The L1 VM is setup with kernel_irqchip=split
The L0 exposes a virtual IOMMU to the L1 VM

qemu-system-x86_64 \
    -machine q35,accel=kvm,kernel_irqchip=split \
    -enable-kvm \

Open in Atom

Open Automator
Create a new Service
Set “Service receives selected” to files or folders in any application
Add a Run Shell Script action
Set the script action to /usr/local/bin/atom -n "$@"
Set “Pass input” to as arguments
Save as Open in Atom

	#!/bin/bash

	# Reference guides:
	# https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/PCI_passthrough_via_OVMF
	# https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Pci_passthrough
	# https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Nested_Virtualization

	# Remember to turn on SVM in BIOS and disable CSM

	# Update packages

	#!/bin/bash

	if [ $# -lt 1 ]; then
	echo "Usage: $0 [enable\|disable]"
	exit 1
	fi

	plistLoc="/private/var/root/Library/Preferences/com.apple.CoreBrightness.plist"

	currentUserUID=$(dscl . -read /Users/$(whoami)/ GeneratedUID) # Get the GeneratedUID for the current user

	# Install QEMU OSX port with ARM support
	sudo port install qemu +target_arm
	export QEMU=$(which qemu-system-arm)

	# Dowload kernel and export location
	curl -OL \
	https://github.com/dhruvvyas90/qemu-rpi-kernel/blob/master/kernel-qemu-4.1.7-jessie
	export RPI_KERNEL=./kernel-qemu-4.1.7-jessie

	# Download filesystem and export location

	onLogout() {
	# Insert whatever script you need to run at logout
	exit
	}

	echo "INFO - Watching ${HOME}" >> /var/log/org.my.log

	trap 'onLogout' SIGINT SIGHUP SIGTERM

	while true; do

	<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
	<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
	<plist version="1.0">
	<dict>
	<key>Label</key>
	<string>org.my.logoutwatcher</string>
	<key>ProgramArguments</key>
	<array>
	<string>/usr/local/myorg/logoutwatcher.sh</string>
	</array>