While programs like Remote Buddy and Mira allow you to get much more from your apple remote, there is one drawback: it has only 6 buttons. This may work well for many people, and for applications specifically designed for it, but I just like to have much more control. As a recent switcher from a Windows desktop/media pc and FreeBSD/Unix server to a one-Mac-Mini-fits-all setup, I had one of those MCE remotes lying around, so that’s the one I wanted to use.

However, an intensive search on google and all sorts of forums did not help: as far as I know, the thing just isn’t supported. Using Remote Buddy or Mira I can use the eHome receiver delivered with my MCE Remote, but only with an Apple Remote and not the MCE Remote itself. Even looking at the Linux community did not help: while a port of the LIRC software is available in MacPorts it does not have any hardware support, but can only connect to a remote host. Having some good experience with running Windows and Linux as a virtual machine in Parallels Desktop I came to the following “solution” for my problem:

• Take a small Linux distribution, and run it as a VM
• Install LIRC and the needed linux kernel modules in this VM
• Connect my USB eHome IR receiver to LIRC in this VM
• Also install LIRC on the Mac natively and connect it to LIRC in the Linux VM
• Convert the button presses on the Remote Control to keypresses on my Mac using a combination of LIRC software and AppleScript

It took quite a bit of digging, but in the end I got everything working and I am now controlling my VLC media player using an MCE remote control.

A few words of warning: this tutorial is not for people who:

• Expect ready to use software with a graphical installer, neat configuration screens etc. All of this is basically a clever workaround, and it works well for me, but if the only thing you want is a way to reconfigure some buttons from your Apple remote, then Remote Buddy or Mira is the way to go.
• Are afraid of using the Terminal. You do not need to be a UNIX guru to follow the steps in this tutorial, but if you do not know what the Terminal is within Mac OS X, you better look through some basic toturials first.

If you still want to proceed, read the following three articles for the nitty gritty instructions:
- Step 1: installing Finnix as a Parallels VM
- 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.

Installing on the virtual hard disk

First, let’s create a partition the disk and format the partition with the linux (ext2) filesystem.
# sfdisk /dev/hda << EOF
> 0,,L
> EOF
# mke2fs /dev/hda1
This instructs Finnix to create one big partition on the 1GB disk of the ‘L’ (=Linux) type and then create an Ext2 filesystem on it.

Next step: mount the disk and copy the files from the virtual cd to the hard drive.
# mount /dev/hda1
# cp -R /cdrom/* /mnt/hda1

Finally we need to install a grub boot menu so that it can actually boot into Linux:
# mkdir -o /mnt/hda1/boot/grub
# cat > /mnt/hda1/boot/grub/menu.lst << EOF
> timeout 5
> title Finnix
> root (hd0,0)
> kernel /isolinux/linux root=/dev/hda1 quiet
> initrd /isolinux/minirt
> EOF
# /usr/sbin/grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/hda1 /dev/hda

Now that’s all done, you could reboot from the local hard disk.

Screenshots