Time Machine Preference Pane

http://timesoftware.free.fr/timemachineeditor/

Changing hostname in macos

Stop DHCP screwing up your Mac OS X hostname

I'v got Snow Leopard, but DHCP is screwing my hostname all the time to something very random. Another thing that /etc/hostconfig goes away, while System Preferences in the Sharing tab does not sets hostname as hostname. Thus all older recipes are not really applicable anymore, once you're on Snow Leopard (I love changes). The cure is how to setup your hostname to, e.g. "Zeus" (that's mine one) like this (terminal and sudo privileges are required):

sudo scutil --set ComputerName zeussudo
scutil --set HostName zeussudo
scutil --set LocalHostName zeus

Setting up a SVN Server

Edit the file /etc/apache2/mods-available/dav_svn.conf and add the following lines at the end.


DAV svn
SVNParentPath /var/svn
SVNListParentPath on
AuthType Basic
AuthName "Foosball SVN Repo"
AuthUserFile /etc/subversion/passwd
Require valid-user


Restart Apache.

Missing JavaHL when using Subclipse on MacOS

The easiest thing to do is download and install the OSX package that is provided on openCollabNet. This installs Subversion, including the JavaHL library, into /opt/subversion. It then makes a symlink for the JavaHL library into /Library/Java/Extensions. This is a global location that the OSX JVM looks in when loading libraries via JNI. So basically, if you install this package, there is nothing else you need to do. It is OK to install this after you have installed Subclipse.

WLAN AutoConfig Service Failed To Start

Just a quick one today, I had a client come to me this morning with their Lenovo R61 notebook with Vista as the OS, complaining that they couldn’t get their wireless connection working. After a clean reboot the Error Dialog box that cam up said “Error Code: 1747 WLAN AutoConfig service failed to start”. So I tried to open up Event Viewer to have a look and that failed to load as well stating that the Windows Event Log Service failed to start.

So I opened up the Services MMC and tried to manually start the Windows Event Log Service and no luck, didn’t start. SO I did a bit of hunting and found that it could be related to a corrupt Windows Vista TCP/IP Winsock Catalog. So I ran the following command in the command prompt with admin privileges.

netsh winsock reset

What this does is reset the Winsock Catalog to a clean state or default configuration. After a reboot everything was fine.

Using CURL with cookies and authentication

The script is as follows.... Just replace URL, user and password with the appropriate strings.

#!/bin/bash
# Acquire RAT Page cookie
curl \
--trace-ascii curl1.log \
-c cookies.txt \
URL
#
# Sleep 2 seconds for operation to complete
sleep 2
#
# Acquire actual RAT Home Page using cookie
curl \
--trace-ascii curl2.log \
-b cookies.txt \
-u username:password \
URL
#
echo "Done"

Dynamips start and stop scripts

Start Script

echo "Creating Loopback Interface tap 10"
sudo modprobe tun
sudo tunctl -t tap10
sudo ifconfig tap10 169.254.10.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up
echo "Created Loopback with IP Address 169.254.10.1"
echo "Starting Dynamips on Port 7300"
sudo nice -10 dynamips -H 7300 &
echo "Done"

Stop Script

echo "Shutting Down Loopback Interface tap 10"
sudo ifconfig tap10 down
echo "Killing Dynamips Processes"
sudo ps -ef | grep "dynamips -H 7300" | grep -v "grep" | awk '{print $2}' | xargs -l1 -i kill {}
echo "Done"

Using xargs to poll using SNMP

All SNMP OID's are present in snmp-packets file.

cat snmp-packets | grep -i "Object Name" | awk '{print $3}' | xargs -l1 -i snmpbulkget -Cn0 -Cr19 -c public -v 2c 172.16.153.140 {}

Clear Frequent Files from Start Menu - Windows Media Player

Windows 7 Start Menu is almost similar to Windows Vista however Windows 7 Taskbar aka superbar is way different from Vista & XP Taskbar. In Windows 7 Taskbar you have access to jump list and recently opened document list of Office word and for Windows Media Player you will get frequently played video list.

Same list of frequently played videos is also available in Windows 7 Start Menu if you have pinned Windows Media Player 12 (WMP 12) to start menu. Many users do not want others to see what videos they were playing. Here is guide on how to clear and stop displaying WMP 12 Recent/Frequent List for those who don’t know how to clear frequently player video list of Windows Media Player.

Follow below steps to clear and disable Windows Media Player Frequent/Recent list from Start Menu and Taskbar Jump list of Windows 7.

How to Clear & Stop Displaying Windows Media Player 12 Frequent List in Windows 7

1. Open Windows Media Player 12 (wmp 12) from start Menu

2. Now click on Organize and go to Options

3. Under Options, Select Privacy tab

4. Now under Privacy tab look at History Section

Click on “Clear History” to clear Frequent/Recent List of Windows Media Player 12

Uncheck Music, Pictures, Videos & Playlist to stop displaying Windows Media Player 12 Frequent/Recent List.

Firefox on Mac OS X tab problem

An unexpected behaviour of Firefox on OS X is that when tabbing through web pages, especially forms, certain elements are skipped. This is quite annoying when form filling since you cannot tab to the “submit” button (or use the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button on Google without resorting to the mouse).

Correcting this is in fact very simple!

Tabbing problems in Firefox in Mac OS X

The solution I found to the problem was somewhat unexpected. How to address this is that the end user have to turn on Full keyboard access > All controls in System Preferences for it to work as expected. Like this:

1. Open System Preferences

2. Go to Keyboard & Mouse

3. Select All controls for Full keyboard access

Alternatively you can add / change the accessibility.tabfocus Firefox option via about:config to one of the following:

3 to be able to tab to form controls or
7 to be able to tab to everything

Installing Windows 7 from a External Drive

Follow the Steps below to get it working.

1. Format the drive to make sure it has enough space to extract the Windows 7 ISO.

2. Extract the Windows 7 ISO on the external drive.

3. Make the partition active, so the drive can boot from it.

4. Make the drive bootable by using the commands below as the administrator

1. Change directory to the DVD’s boot directory where bootsect lives:
   d:
   cd d:\boot
2. Use bootsect to set the USB as a bootable NTFS drive prepared for a Vista/7 image. I’m assuming that your USB flash drive has been labeled disk G:\ by the computer:
   bootsect /nt60 g:
3. You can now close the command prompt window, we’re done here.

5. Boot from the USB device.

Password reset for Mediawiki

The easiest way to avoid this problem is to set an e-mail address in your account, so you can use the “Mail me a new password” feature. However, if you find that you’ve forgotten the password to an account on your wiki, and you don’t have an e-mail address set for it, you can reset its password as follows:

1. Log in to phpMyAdmin with your SQL password.
2. From the menu on the left, select the database corresponding to your wiki, and select the “user” table within it.
3. Click “Browse” at the top, and note down the user ID for the account whose password you want to reset. (This will be 1 for the first account.)
4. Click “SQL” at the top, and run the following command, replacing “uid” with the user ID and “newpassword” with the new password for the account:
• UPDATE user SET user_password = MD5(CONCAT(user_id, ‘-’, MD5(’newpassword‘))) WHERE user_id = uid

Mediawiki Upgrade

After a mediawiki upgrade, it is recommended to run the update script.

cd /var/lib/mediawiki/maintenance
php update.php

This will clean up the database.

More about Mediawiki Maintenance Scripts - http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Category:Maintenance_scripts

FTP Commands

In order to have the number of bytes transferred printed when using FTP, use the 'TICK' command

Make Safari open targeted links in new tabs instead of new windows

One of the things I find most annoying when browsing the web is when a link opens a new window. It completely disrupts my workflow when a new window pops up, especially when it does so without warning.

If you’re using Firefox this isn’t such a big problem anymore since it will open targeted links in a new tab instead, which is much more manageable and less intrusive.

For Safari, however, there is no such setting to be found when you look through its preferences window. But the setting does exist (at least in the Mac OS X version), though you have to use Terminal.app to enable it:

1. Quit Safari
2. Open Terminal.app
3. Enter defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true and press enter
4. Open Safari
5. Notice that links that used to open in a new window will now open in a new tab

Much better.

Adding a persistent static route in Linux - RHEL

If you know there is always going to be a permanent route for a destination then a static route can be a viable option.To add a persistent static route in Redhat Enterprise Linux create a file called route-X in the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ directory

where is the interface number and X is the interface number. As you would expect, these are specified in seperate file for each of the available interface.

Example:

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/route-eth0
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/route-eth1

Every entry or a route has three entities as follows:

GATEWAY=xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
NETMASK=yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy
ADDRESS=zzz.zzz.zzz.zzz

As the names implies, they are the gateway IP, Netmask and the IP/Network Address

Note the next to each of the three entities. This number defines the route entry number and should be the same on all the entities.

Example:

GATEWAY0=192.168.1.1
NETMASK0=255.255.255.0
ADDRESS0=10.10.10.0

GATEWAY1=192.168.1.1
NETMASK1=255.255.255.0
ADDRESS1=20.20.20.2

A sample file /etc/sysconfig/static-routes is available for your reference.

Once the file is created, restart the network service as follows:

# service network restart

To view the routes type

# route
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.1.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
192.168.2.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth1
10.10.10.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
20.20.20.2 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
169.254.0.0 * 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth1
default 192.168.1.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0

or

# ip route show
192.168.1.0/24 dev eth0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.1.1
192.168.2.0/24 dev eth1 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.2.1
10.10.10.0/24 via 192.168.1.1 dev eth0
20.20.20.2/24 via 192.168.1.1 dev eth0
default via 192.168.1.1 dev eth0

To dynamically add a route, try the folowing:

Syntax:
# ip route add / via dev X

Example:

# ip route add 10.10.10.0/24 via 192.168.1.1 dev eth0

or

Syntax:

# route add [-net|-host] netmask gw dev X

Example:

# route add -net 10.10.10.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 gw 192.168.1.1 dev eth0

This should help.

Turn off System Beep in Windows XP

When you spend a lot of time in front of your computer, the annoying beeps start to drive you mad after a while. I really don’t need to be told that I hit the wrong key anymore, so I’ve compiled a list of how to turn off all the system beeps in Windows XP.

One of the most irritating beeps happens when you use the Volume control… but there are other beeps, such as on error dialogs or when you hit the wrong key.

Disable Beep in Device Manager

Open up Device Manager by right-clicking on Computer and choosing Properties, then on the Hardware tab you’ll find the button for Device Manager.

Select View \ Show hidden devices from the menu.

Find Non-Plug and Play Drivers in the list, and then right-click on “Beep” and disable it:

When it prompts you to reboot, select no, and then right-click again and choose Properties this time. On the Driver tab, change the Startup type to “Disabled” and then click the “Stop” button if you are able to.

This should disable the system beep speaker, but it probably won’t change the volume control beep, so continue on.

Disabling Beep in Registry

Open up regedit.exe through the run box, and then navigate down to the following key:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Sound

Find the “Beep” key on the right-hand side and change the value to “no”.

Disable Beep in Sounds Panel

Open up Control Panel and find the Sounds and Audio Devices panel, choose the Sounds tab and then find “Default Beep” in the list.

Change the sound drop-down on the bottom to “None” and then click Apply. This should disable the volume control beep.

You’ll want to also change Critical Stop to “None” as well, and should probably also turn off some of the other items.

You can also use TweakUI to get rid of some of the beeps, but if you follow the items on this page you shouldn’t need that.

Original Source: http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/windows/turn-off-the-annoying-windows-xp-system-beeps/

Gtalk Scroll Bar

To see all your friends instead of just the one page default, Login to gtalk, at the bottom of the gtalk window you will see a button "View". Click on this button and unclick 'show in one page' (you will need to click that option), that’s it you will see a scrollbar.

Check all IMAP folder for new email on Thudnerbird

Thunderbird can download mail from all accounts when you start the program. Just open the Config Editor from Preferences --> Advanced --> Config Editor, search for the preference mail.check_all_imap_folders_for_new, and change its value to true.

Using Certs for Authentication with Putty

This guide is based on PuTTY and PuTTYgen release versions .58, and assumes some knowledge of SSH and working with files on the server and your computer.

PuTTYgen can be used to generate a key pair which will allow you to log in via SSH using public key authentication.

PuTTY and PuTTYgen can be downloaded from:
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html

Let's get started.

Open PuTTYgen and under Parameters you should see the defaults of SSH-2 RSA and 1024 for number of bits in generated key. These settings are fine, and you can just leave them.

Click the "Generate" button and a progress bar will appear. PuTTYgen will ask you to move the mouse around to "generate randomness"...just move the mouse around in the blank space using random motions while it processes...

When it's finished, you will need to enter some information for your key file. The key comment field is basically another way of saying "name" of the key file... It tells you which key file it is... The default "key comment" will be in the form of key type and date. If you have more than one key, you will probably want to name them accordingly to tell them apart. For example: mysite-rsa-key-20050504

Your key passphrase, if you choose to use one, is what you will have to type when connecting to the server (you can use Pageant to automatically do this for you...for a guide on Pageant, visit http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/0.58/htmldoc/Chapter9.html#pageant...Pageant can also be downloaded from the location referenced above for PuTTY and PuTTYgen). If you do not wish to use a passphrase, then do not type a passphrase at this point and the key will be saved unencrypted. Not using a passphrase will allow you or anyone using the key file to automatically connect to your account, without requiring a passphrase to be entered when connecting. To set a passphrase, you'll need to type it and confirm it where asked. If you use a passphrase, just make sure that you DO NOT FORGET IT as you cannot recover it.

Next, you will need to save your private key file.

Click "Save private key". The save box will come up and you'll need to select a directory on your computer to save it to and type in a filename for it (be sure to leave the file type as .ppk).

Now you'll need to upload the public key contents to your account on the server.

You can do this process using the CNC or via SSH using the Unix shell. Brief instructions for both follow.

Installing the public key using the CNC:
Navigate to your /big/dom/xDOMAIN/USERNAME (replace xDOMAIN with your xdomain and USERNAME with your account username) directory and create a directory within it named .ssh. Set the permissions on the .ssh directory to 700 (see How do I change file permissions? (chmod) if you need help with changing file permissions.)

Within the .ssh directory, create a file named authorized_keys. Copy the entire contents of the box where it says "Public key for pasting into OpenSSH authorized_keys file" (starting at ssh-rsa) and paste them into the authorized_keys file (be sure to copy it exactly as it is and include no leading or trailing spaces or line breaks). Set the permissions on this file to 600 (see How do I change file permissions? (chmod) if you need help with changing file permissions.)

Installing the public key from the Unix shell:
Log in to your account using SSH and while in the $HOME directory (/big/dom/xDOMAIN/USERNAME), do the following:
$ mkdir .ssh
$ echo "paste public key contents here" >> .ssh/authorized_keys
$ chmod 600 .ssh/authorized_keys
$ chmod 700 .ssh

Now that you have created your key files and installed your public key on the server, it's time to start up PuTTY.

In PuTTY, under Session, enter your Host Name - this is simply your domain name (no www or http) - ex: example.com

Select SSH for the protocol. (You should now see 22 for the port.)

Under SSH, choose 2 from Preferred SSH Protocol Version. (shown below)

Under SSH -> Auth in PuTTY, you will need to specify where your private key can be found. Remember this is where you saved the private key on your local computer. Click Browse to locate the file on your computer. (It will be the file with the .ppk extension.)

If you wish to have your username automatically sent to the server when connecting, under Connection -> Data in PuTTY, you will see a field for "Auto-login username". Type your account username there.

Save your settings to be used in future sessions - Under Sessions, type a name (such as "my site") in the Saved Sessions box and click Save.

Now, select that session name by clicking on it and click Open.

If you did not set PuTTY to automatically enter your username, you will need to do so when prompted. After the username has been given, if you used a passphrase when creating your key file, you should see a message that says something like:

Authenticating with public key "keyfilename"
Passphrase for key "keyfilename":

Enter your passphrase if prompted. You should now be successfully logged in.

Source: http://www.aota.net/Telnet/puttykeyauth.php4