Paul's Time Sink

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X11 though ssh in Tiger

Paul Westbrook | 29 September, 2005 19:52

Today, I had ssh'd into a a server and I tried to launch a X11 program, and I got this error message:

X Error of failed request: BadAtom (invalid Atom parameter)

It looks like that Mac OS X 10.4 includes version 3.8 of OpenSSH. This new version defaults to using untrusted cookies for X11-Forarding. This can be worked around by using 'ssh -Y' instead of 'ssh -X'.

[via macosxhints Forums]

Technorati Tags: X11, ssh

New print server

Paul Westbrook | 29 September, 2005 19:34

Last night I was very frustrated. I just realized that I wasn't able to print. I had this working before, where I had cups installed and was able to print to two printers connected to my server.

This was working until I upgraded to cups version 1.1.23. The packages were built for Fedora Core 4 on the 9th of August. This is very frustration since other software doesn't have this compatibility problem when upgrading. For example, my configuration has not broken when I update my apache http server versions.

I decided that I didn't want to do deal with the configuration issues with running cups on my server, so I decided to get a consumer print server. I bought the Linksys PSUS4, as it also has a 4 port switch. The only problem with this is that Mac compatible right out of the box.
(More)

fixing problems with Cisco VPN client

Paul Westbrook | 26 September, 2005 21:26

Sometimes when I switch networks, the Cisco VPN client doesn't initialize properly. The only way that I had gotten this to work, was to disable and renable my network ports.

These commands were sent around a while ago, so I wanted to post them here.

sudo /System/Library/StartupItems/CiscoVPN/CiscoVPN restart

This has fixed all of the problems that I have had since.

Technorati Tags: VPN

Workaround for problem installing Firefox extension

Paul Westbrook | 26 September, 2005 20:14

I have been having a problem installing some Firefox extensions. When I attempt to install a new extension, I get the following message:

Firefox could not download the file at <url, including extension.xpi> because: Download error

I finally found this page that has a solution. All that you need to do is download the plugin to the disk. Then you can drag the file into a browser window. Then Firefox will offer to install it from the disk.

Technorati Tags: Firefox

Google Video

Paul Westbrook | 23 September, 2005 20:04

Now this is cool. Google Video now makes the videos available in flash, instead of the modified VLC video player.

Technorati Tags: Google Video

problem transcoding AAC files to mp3

Paul Westbrook | 22 September, 2005 18:51

I am having a problem getting AAC files to work with Jinzora. By default, Jinzora attempts to transcode all AAC files into MP3 files. (Which I think is reasonable, as not many players can support AAC.

The command that it attempts to use to transcode the file is:

/usr/bin/mplayer -ao pcm:file=/dev/stdout "/data/music/Daft Punk/Discovery/Daft Punk-Discovery-10 - Voyager.m4a" | /usr/local/bin/lame -S --silent --quiet -h -m j -b 128 -f - > /tmp/test.mp3

This puts noise in the resulting mp3 file. Here is the first 100KB of the file that has the noise in it.

But if I do the two commands seperately, the resulting sound file sounds great. These commands work great:

/usr/bin/mplayer -ao pcm:file=/dev/stdout "/data/music/Daft Punk/Discovery/Daft Punk-Discovery-10 - Voyager.m4a" > /tmp/test.wav
/usr/local/bin/lame -S --silent --quiet -h -m j -b 128 -f /tmp/test.wav > /tmp/test.mp3

Here a sample of the transcode that worked perfectly

I haven't been able to find a solution for this, but I will keep looking

Technorati Tags: lame, mplayer

syntax for exec with find

Paul Westbrook | 21 September, 2005 09:17

I can never remeber the syntax for exectuing a command when running find, so I am writing it here.

find . -name "._*.mp3" -exec rm -f {} \;

Delicious Library plugin for Backup 3

Paul Westbrook | 20 September, 2005 17:25

This is pretty cool. Delicious has released a Backup 3 plugin for Delicious Library. This allows users to automatically backup the files that are created by Library, without having to know the fill paths to the files.

[via TUAW]

Technorati Tags: .Mac, Backup, Mac OS X

Bug with new .Mac iDisk

Paul Westbrook | 20 September, 2005 17:18

I have paid for 1Gb of space on my iDisk before the upgrade of everyone to have 1GB of space. I was a little worried that I would be credited for the extra money that I paid for the space. When I checked the .Mac preference pane, It said that I only had 1GB of space available.

When I went on to the .Mac page, and viewed my Storage settings, it had additional options to allow up to 2GB of space available. (Unfortunately, the current selection was on the option that gave the greatest space to my iDisk.) I easily fixed that problem, by selecting a different setting, and then reselecting the largest setting.

Now it appears that I have the whole 2GB available. There a small cosmetic bug though. In the .Mac Preference Pane, it shows the maximum space as 1GB, even though the middle of the bar represents 1016 MB.

Technorati Tags: .Mac, Mac OS X

Bad domain advertising

Paul Westbrook | 20 September, 2005 15:38

I use GoDaddy to register my domains. I got an email from them stating that they are having a sale on .name domains, for $5.95 per year. In their form email, they state:

Now you can put www.westbrook.name On the ‛Net

I thought that it would be cool to get that domain, so I went on their site to attempt to register it. When I tried, I got a message stating that the domain is already been taken.
(More)

Backup 3

Paul Westbrook | 20 September, 2005 11:15

Apple just updated the .Mac, as well as the version of Backup. I have just run the new version of Backup, and I like the the changes that they made.

Now Backup 3, has backup plans for more types of files, like purchased music, and other iLife files. Also now when you backup files to your iDisk, Backup creates a local disk image, and then it copies the files to this mounted disk image. Then it compresses the image, and uploads this to your iDisk.

This improves the time that backup takes, as it only has to copy one compressed file, instead of tons of uncompressed files. The one downside of this mechanism is that if the disk image gets corrupt on the iDisk, most likely all of the files will be unrecoverable.

Technorati Tags: .Mac, Backup, Mac OS X

Portable Firefox

Paul Westbrook | 19 September, 2005 19:32

This is pretty cool. This page has a post for a Mac & PC Cross-platform Portable Firefox. I have installed this on my iPod Shuffle. And I am able to launch Firefox on my PowerBook and my Windows PC, with the same settings.

I do wonder about a couple of things:

How will upgrades of Firefox work? Will it be possible to install just the binary, and not loose the settings?
I need to find a way that I can sync my settings from my Firefox install on my PowerBook. I do not want to always run Firefox from a thumb drive, when I wouldn't need to .

[via MacSlash, TUAW]

Technorati Tags: Firefox

Bug with Auto-Locking keychain

Paul Westbrook | 19 September, 2005 15:48

I think that there is a bug with auto-locking my keychain in Mac OS X 10.4. I wanted to automatically lock my keychain, so my laptop would ask for my authorization in order to get a password out of the keychain. This is in addition to my current setting where I get asked for my password when the screen saver dismisses.

When I enable it, I do get asked for my authorization when an application wants to get a password from the keychain. The problem is when the screen saver is activated on my laptop. When I try to wake my computer up from the screen saver, the password dialog doesn't appear. I have to restart the computer in order to use it.

This problem goes away when I disable the auto-locking of my keychain.

Technorati Tags: Mac OS X

script to upgrade clamAV

Paul Westbrook | 19 September, 2005 11:54

I wrote this script to automatically upgrade my ClamAV installation. I have to run some hoops, as I run clamAV though amavisd-new.

#!/bin/bash
 
tar -zxvf clamav-*.tar.gz
rm clamav-*.tar.gz
cd clamav-*
./configure
make
make check
sudo /etc/init.d/amavisd stop
sudo make install
sudo chown -R amavisd:amavisd /usr/local/share/clamav
sudo /usr/local/bin/freshclam -l /var/log/clam-update.log
sudo /etc/init.d/amavisd start
rm -rf clamav-*

Technorati Tags: ClamAV

Bluetooth headset

Paul Westbrook | 18 September, 2005 21:00

Now that I have the Motorola E815, I wanted to get a Bluetooth headset, so I don't have to use a wired headset when I drive. I got the Logitech Mobile Freedom Bluetooth Headset. The main reasons that I got this one was because it had good reviews, and it looked like it would be pretty comfortable.

It took me a while to get used to it. I hadn't used a headset before that attached to outside of my ear, but I had used the Jabra Classic EarSet in-ear headsets. Once I got used to it, I don't mind it at all. Also the sound quality is pretty good, even when I got out of the car. (This was something that the Jabra headset didn't hadn't that well.)

Technorati Tags: Bluetooth

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X11 though ssh in Tiger

New print server

fixing problems with Cisco VPN client

Workaround for problem installing Firefox extension

Google Video

problem transcoding AAC files to mp3

syntax for exec with find

Delicious Library plugin for Backup 3

Bug with new .Mac iDisk

Bad domain advertising

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