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This is part 2 in a series on using an MCE Remote Control with a Mac. See the:
- Main article
- Step 1: installing Finnix as a Parallels VM
- Step 3: configuring LIRC in OS X

Configure and Reboot the VM

First we need to attach our IR receiver permanently to the Finnix VM.

1. In the ‘Parallels Desktop’ menu, select the ‘Preferences’ option
2. On the ‘USB’ page, click the ‘+’-sign at the bottom and select the ‘eHome Infrared Transceiver’ to connect to the ‘Finnix IR’ virtual machine. [screenshot]

Now here comes the tricky part: while you installed Finnix on the virtual hard disk, you need to reboot it from the original virtual CD. This is because the hard disk is read-only when you boot from it, thus you cannot make any configuration changes. You can boot from the LiveCD using the following instructions:

1. In the configuration for the Finnix VM, select the ‘Boot Order’ page and check the ‘Select boot device on startup’ option. [screenshot]
2. Then go to the ‘CD/DVD-ROM 1′ page, check the ‘Connected’ option and make sure the .iso file is still selected. [screenshot]
3. Boot the VM and press the ‘Esc’ key. Then select option ‘3′ to boot from the live CD. [screenshot]
4. To prevent the VM from booting from the hard disk (the livecd finds the installation in the hard disk before it’s own), select the first option and press the ‘Tab’ key. Add ‘root=/dev/hdb’ to the line and press ‘Enter’. [screenshot]

To check if you have correctly booted from the Live CD instead of the hard disk, use the following command:
mount -l | grep ramdisk
If the result starts with /ramdisk/dev/hdb then you were succesful. On the other hand if the result starts with /ramdisk/dev/hda1 then try again!

Read on for the gory details of LIRC installation.
read more »

This is part 1 in a series on using an MCE Remote Control with a Mac. See the:
- Main article
- Step 2: installing LIRC in the Finnix VM
- Step 3: configuring LIRC in OS X

Installation instructions

This part is about installing the Finnix Linux distribution so that it runs in a virtual machine (VM) on your Mac. This instruction assumes you have a copy of Parallels Desktop for Mac 4.0 installed (it should work fine with their 14 day evaluation version). Potentially a similar procedure can also be applied with VMware Fusion, or (if you want a free solution) with VirtualBox, but I have not tried it. Let me know if you succeed!

Now here are the instructions. Install Finnix in Parallels Desktop using the following 12 steps:

1. Open the “File” menu for Parallels Desktop and choose the “New Virtual Machine…” option. A wizard will appear. Click “Continue” in the first screen.
2. Select the .iso image file you downloaded from the Finnix site.
3. Parallels cannot auto-detect the operating system type. Finnix is a Debian derivative, so let’s enter that.
4. Choose a “Custom” virtual machine type.
5. Leave the number of CPU’s to 1. Set the memory requirement to 512 MB, if it’s not already set to that value. Later on we’ll decrease this value much further (48 MB is enough), but for lirc installation a big ramdisk is needed.
6. We’ll need a new image for the hard disk.
7. A mere 1 gigabyte should be enough. Using the “Expanding disk” option saves even more space.
8. Use “Share Networking”. Later on networking can be confined to “Host-Only Networking”, but for now we need the connectivity to install software.
9. We do not want the VM to drain too much resources, so we optimize the performance for the Mac
10. Use any name you like. I use “Finnix IR”.
11. Click “Start” to boot the Finnix Live CD.
12. Choose the first line (x86) instead of the default (AMD64). You could boot in AMD64 mode just fine, but there are some problems with the lirc kernel modules in 64 bit mode.

After a little while you’ll be presented with a booted up Finnix. Congratulations!

Read on for the screenshots and for installation on the virtual hard disk.
read more »