Zit Seng’s Superwall

I bought the Maxtor OneTouch 4 Plus from Comex last week. The 1TB model was selling at only $239 (was $309 the week before at Sim Lim Square). I had planned to get an external hard disk for my MacBook to put Time Machine backups on. Time Machine requires a separate disk to run on, and I’ve not had the chance to turn on Time Machine because I didn’t have a spare external hard disk available until now.

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The new school year at NUS has started. Many people are buying new computers. Some of them will be buying Macs, particularly since they have gotten quite popular in the last few years. Now, how do you get it working in NUS? Most official help resources are going to focus just on Windows XP or Windows Vista. So here you are, my concise guide to getting a couple of basic things setup to work in NUS.

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This is a little collection of information about using Mac computers in NUS (and SoC). The Macs work pretty well here, as long as you know how to get it configured correctly. There are four main configurations covered here:

1. Wireless Network
2. Exchange Email
3. Network Drives
4. Printing

That should be pretty much the main things you’ll need to know.

Wireless Network

There are two main wireless networks in NUS: One that goes by the NUS SSID and the other NUSOPEN SSID. This section is about configuring the wireless network with NUS SSID. This is a secure wireless network were your over-the-air traffic is encrypted. NUSOPEN works like Wireless@SG (login through a web-based captive portal), is insecure and trivial for anyone to sniff your private network traffic. Don’t use NUSOPEN.

1. Start System Preferences.
2. Click on Network (under Internet & Network).
3. On the left panel, click on AirPort.
4. Click on Advanced…
5. Click on the + sign.
6. For the Network Name, enter NUS.
7. For Security, select 802.1X WEP.
8. No need to enter the User Name and Password now. It doesn’t seem to be remembered anyway. Make sure 802.1X is set to Automatic.
9. Click Add.
10. The new NUS configuration will probably be listed at the bottom of the Preferred Networks list. Drag the NUS item to the top of the list.
11. Click OK.
12. Click Apply.
13. Your Mac should now automatically try connecting to the new NUS wireless network. If it does not, choose NUS in the Network Name selection box.
14. The 802.1X Authentication window appears. Enter your NUSNET account details.
15. You’re done. If you want to login automatically to the NUS wireless network, continue: Quit System Preferences completely. Restart it, click on Network, then click on Advanced.
16. Click on the 802.1X tab. On the left, click on User Profiles, then WPA: NUS.
17. For User Name and Password, enter your NUSNET account details.
18. For Authentication, deselect TTLS and EAP-FAST. These are not used in the NUS wireless network.
19. Click OK. Then click Apply. Quit System Preferences.

Ok, you’re done.

If you’ve a N95 or N95 8GB, configuration information is available here. The information will probably be useful for most modern Symbian based phones (Nokia, Sony Ericsson, etc). iPhone users can refer to Lester Chan’s guide.

For Linux Users, check SOC NOC and Linux & Open Source @ NUS.

Exchange Email

Here’s how to access your NUSNET Exchange email from Mac OS X’s Mail application.

1. Start the Mail application.
2. Press Command-comma.
3. Press the + sign.
4. Type in your Full Name and Email Address. The Password is not necessary at this point.
5. Click Continue.
6. For Account Type, choose Exchange.
7. For Description, enter NUSNET or anything you like to describe this account.
8. For Incoming Mail Server, enter imap.nus.edu.sg.
9. For User Name and Password, enter your NUSNET account details.
10. For Outlook Web Access Server, enter exchange.nus.edu.sg.
11. Click Continue.
12. For Description, enter NUSNET Outgoing or anything you like.
13. For Outgoing Mail Server, enter smtp.nus.edu.sg.
14. Check the Use Authentication checkbox.
15. For User Name and Password, enter your NUSNET account details.
16. Click Continue.
17. Your Account Summary window should look similar to this. Click Create.

You’re done. The Mail application should now connect to your Exchange account, grab the list of folders, synchronize email, etc.

Network Drives

NUSNET provides one network drive, often referred to as the H: drive in Windows. SoC users also get another network drive from their SoC UNIX account. To access these drives from your Mac:

1. Go to Finder, press Command-K.
2. For the Server Address, enter the following: smb://nts09.comp.nus.edu.sg/com/comlaizs. This is the format for SoC staff users. For students, this is something like smb://fs5.nus.edu.sg/stuhome/u0x/u0×0xxxx.
3. Just click Connect.
4. You will be prompted for authentication. Entier your NUSNET account username and password here.
5. Then click Connect.
6. You’ll see your network drive in Finder.

The Server Address for your NUSNET network drive tend to be varied, depending on whether you are staff or student, staff of which faculty, student undergrad or postgrad, etc. If you have more information to share, I’d be glad to update this page. You can also login to a Windows machine (and into your NUSNET account), and check how the H: drive is mapped using the NET USE command.

The Server Address format for SoC UNIX users take the following format: smb://sunfire.comp.nus.edu.sg/<userid> (for students) and smb://suna.comp.nus.edu.sg/<userid> (for staff).

Printing

Here’s how to configure printing to the printers/print queues in SoC.

1. Start System Preferences.
2. Click on Print & Fax.
3. Click the + sign.
4. If there is no Advanced button in the toolbar, you may have to add it there before continuing. Right-click the toolbar (or Control-Click), then drag and drop the Advanced button to the toolbar.
5. For Type, select Windows.
6. The URL is the complicated bit. Make sure you get this right. The URL has the following format: smb://<nusnetid>:<password>@nusstu/nts27.comp.nus.edu.sg/<printername>
   • where <nusnetid> is your NUSNET account name
   • <password> is your NUSNET account password
   • change nts27 to nts09 for staff users
   • <printername> is the queue name of the printer which you can find listed at SoC Printers or Print Queues.
7. For Name, enter anything you fancy to help you remember what print queue this is.
8. Same for Location, whatever you fancy.
9. For Print Using box, choose either the Generic PostScript Printer driver, or select the specific printer driver for the print queue. You can find the list of printer types at SoC Printers or Print Queues.
10. Click Add.
11. Usually fine to leave the option settings unchanged.
12. Click Continue.

That’s it.

Other Stuffs

Here’s a bunch of other miscellaneous information that you may find useful.

• NUS Dialup (still on dialup?!):
  • 6557-1070 for students
  • 6657-1090 for staff
• SoC Dialup:
  • 1800-7761022 toll-free for both SoC staff and students
• NUS VPN:
  • The older Cisco VPN based on IPSEC protocol is deprecated. Best not to use it.
  • The newer Web VPN: http://webvpn.nus.edu.sg/
• SoC-VPN:
  • Head over to https://noc.comp.nus.edu.sg/vpn for more info.

That’s it.

Apple recently released a new version of their Safari browser, version 3.1. Apple describes the new Safari as blazingly fast, and significantly outperforms the other popular browsers (Firefox 2, Internet Explorer 7 and Opera 9). Okay, cool. I’m ready to try. Particularly since it runs on both Mac and Windows. I regularly use both operating systems, it would be nice to have the same browsing experience.

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This page is about configuring the Mac OS X to use the N95 HSDPA to access the Internet. In particuar, what I have is Mac OS X, a N95 8GB, and a 3G data plan with SingTel.

Windows users are helped by Nokia’s PC Suite that will figure out all the configuration. Mac users are not so lucky. I had spent some time previously mucking around until I got my Mac to talk to my N73. The N95 is apparently different enough that many of the old things I learnt for the N73 weren’t quite correct anymore.

1. The first thing you need to do is to grab the Modem Scripts applicable for the N95. Head over to Ross Barkman’s Home Page, scroll down to the section on Scripts for Nokia 3.5G (HSDPA) phones. Grab the Nokia 3.5G Scripts. (I avoid linking directly here so that I won’t point you to outdated files.) Follow the instructions to “install” the modem scripts. Basically, you need to dump the scripts into your /Library/Modem Scripts directory.
2. Next, pair your N95 with your Mac. Make sure that your N95’s bluetooth is set to visible, since you will initiate the pairing from your Mac and your phone must be discoverable by your Mac. The pairing process itself is probably quite straight-forward. Just note that on the page to configure your Internet access, make sure that you choose “Nokia HSDPA CID1″ for the Modem Script. The Username, Pasword and GPRS CID String tend to vary from operator to operator. See below resources for help if you don’t know what is right for your operator. Look at the screenshots to follow through the setup pages.
3. Basically you’re already done at this point. To connect to the Internet, just start Internet Connect, click Bluetooth, then click Connect.

If you want iSync support, then you need some plugins to enable iSync to recognize your N95 or N95 8GB. Nokia has provided the N95 plugin. Just go to www.nokia.com/mac and search. For the N95 8GB, you have to get some 3rd party plugins such as the one from Paul Reames (it was free previously but it appears to cost £3 now). Install the plugin, then start iSync, then add the N95.

The above worked great. Until I upgraded my N95 8GB from its original version 10.0.021 firmware to version 11.0.026. I think, the N95 8GB was previously identified as an N95-2, and that was what the plugin expected. It is now identified as an N95 8GB. So, short of waiting for the plugin to be updated (or Nokia to release their official plugin), I just edited the MetaClasses.plist file to include this new description. Just seach for N95-2 in the file, you should be able to figure out what to do from there.

Some related resources:

• Ross Barkman’s GPRS Info Page lists useful GPRS configuration information for many telco operators around the world. For Singapore users: The SingTel info is not quite right (Username and Password should be blank). The M1 info is correct. I have no idea about StarHub.

<Work still in progress… will update this when I have time…>