I know a lot of people don't like Apple stuff, but I do. It has all the Unixy bits I need, a nice GUI, and Just Works (tm). I upgraded my late 2009 Mac mini from its original Snow Leopard installation (untouched since I bought it apart from security updates and it still worked fine, I just needed to install some newer software that only worked with 10.9+) to Mavericks and it's given the Mac a new lease on life.
But ...
The optical drive is dead and I need to install some software from the original applications DVD that came with the Mac.
I tried to insert the disc many times in the Mac mini, to no avail. it span a few times and spat the disc out.
So I tried to mount it on Linux. I tried all sorts of filesystem options. I installed extra HFS+ packages to try to mount it. I looked at logs. I tried to look at the disc structure. Nothing worked. I even found a bug report for the kernel or something that prevents HFS+ volumes from mounting.
Then I tried DVD sharing with my Windows PC. Install the necessary software, open the firewall and insert the disc. Back to the Mac, open a new Finder window, and nothing. No "Shared DVD" icon.
So I applied a couple of hacks to enable this feature, as it is apparently disabled by default on Macs with a built-in optical drive. Restarted the Mac. Still no icon.
I disabled the Windows firewall completely, just in case, and restarted the Mac again. Still no icon.
I tried sharing the DVD drive via Windows, and the Mac eventually saw it, but couldn't see any files on it.
I turned the Windows PC off.
Then realised I left the DVD in the drive, so I turned it back on, took the disc out, and turned it off again.
Bleah.
Now I'll have to get one of the old Power Macs I have and see if it still works, if it still boots, if the optical drive still works, if it can read this much newer DVD, and if it can still connect to the network and copy the installation files somewhere I can pick them up from the Mac mini.
Heck, I don't even know that sort of files are on the DVD.
So that's about 2 hours wasted, and at least another hour to go to fsck around the the old Power Mac. I don't have that much spare time on the weekends to fritter away on fruitless exercises like this.
And then to top it all off, I gave up for tonight, checked my emails, and found this:

Thanks guys. I needed that
