While I won’t write at length about all the changes I’ve noticed, I did want to show one of the new features coming to a stable release due soon.

The ability to open and display Visio files… more reading about it:

• LibreOffice Visio Import filter: the goodness soon on your desktop
• libvisio | Derivative Zerio
• Support files in Visio LibreOffice: a success story

Download and test @: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/precise-desktop-i386.iso

After viewing the message source and seeing a base64 encoded block within the email, I wondered if it was Thunderbird doing something I didn’t expect. I checked it in Roundcube and other locations… worked fine elsewhere…

And then I downloaded: Show All Body Parts. Problem worked around for now. :-)

Here are some more links for further information:

• https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=674473
• http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=2352869
• https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/mozilla.dev.apps.thunderbird/wTD8BL9sDS4/WNVzSyAnuMsJ
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Thunderbird_6.0,_etc.#Images_and_related_content_in_HTML_messages

There are how-tos at: http://www.android-x86.org/

I finally got Denise to start working on Herrick Design. We’re enjoying playing with WordPress and sub-theming TwentyEleven.

Docs and more are available at the Developer Hub.

The first issue has to do with respecting the global JavasSript namespace (which I didn’t when it was created, as was common practice at the time), and the other with features being deprecated (in favor of better approaches). From the email:

This version didn’t pass full review because of the following issues:

1. In order to prevent conflicts with other add-ons that may be installed by users, you need to wrap your “loose” variables and functions within a JavaScript object. You can see examples on how to do this at the JavaScript Object Management tutorial.
2. The codebase_principal_support preference and enablePrivilege function are considered unsafe to use and support for them will be removed from Firefox very soon: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=546866.

Exch was and still is a pretty cool extension, but its task is better served via sites like Yahoo! Finance, Google Finance, or Bing Finance. Plus, with all of the cool things you can do with Google Search (as I have posted about before), or Yahoo having a slick currency conversion tool on their site, I feel I have run out of reasons to maintain it.

With all of that said, here’s the latest update: exch-1.5.0-fx. While it -should- work with Firefox 4 and 5, let’s call it “beta”. A beta perpetually stuck at version 1.5.0. ;-)

The Internet access is being provided via a business DSL modem in the lower level of the building with a red star on it. From there, a multi-purpose wireless router (RT-N16) is configured with DD-WRT and acts as the LAN’s gateway and firewall. Other common services it provides to the LAN include ones like local DNS, static DHCP, DynDNS client, SSH client/server, and OpenVPN client/server. It also has real time traffic monitoring, traffic graphs over time, QOS capabilities, and other exciting features. Nobody actually uses the wireless from the RT-N16 though, as it is being used only as a powerful, yet inexpensive wired appliance.

From there the only wired client connected is the main AP, a Bullet M2 HP. This little piece of equipment is quite exciting. A tough 600 mW self contained outdoor router built on Linux. It has already survived through the year long seasonal variations and is rated to operate at temperatures between -40C to 80C. Along with a 9dBi outdoor omnidirectional antenna mounted to it, they provide over 600,000 square ft. of network coverage through trees, hills and buildings with users reliably connecting in their homes over 250 feet away (though with the right antenna and conditions, the Bullet M2 HP is rated to perform at distances of over 50km away).

The 35.5m and 75.7m links act as “wireless repeater bridges” (http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Repeater_Bridge) while the 134.7m link doesn’t repeat any network traffic wirelessly. It acts as a wireless client bridge (http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Client_Bridged). The 35.5m and 75.7m links use Bufallo WHR-HP-G300N routers (with DD-WRT already installed at the time of purchase) and only required a few configuration changes to make them clients of the main SSID and re-broadcasters of another unique SSID (providing wireless to other clients). The 134.7m link on the other hand has a second Bullet M2 HP as a client bridge. This brings the wireless to the most remote location in the setup, where clients then receive signal from a WRT-54GL being utilized as an AP.

Can you spot the D-Link AP in the mix? Towards the end of the 75.7m link, people were unable to reliable reach the Bufallo WHR-HP-G300N signal (building materials) so one last inexpensive piece of equipment was thrown at the problem. Networks of this type are agile in nature. :-)

The setup was completed in the beginning of Q1 2011. Parts used were a variety of new and existing equipment with recent prices listed next to the items below:

• (1) ASUS RT-N16 wireless router: $87.99 @ Amazon
• (2) Bullet M2 HP wireless routers: $79.95 @ Microcom
• (2) Bufallo WHR-HP-G300N wireless routers: $49.99 each @ NewEgg
• (1) D-Link DI-524 wireless router: $57.99 @ Amazon
• (1) Linksys WRT54GL wireless router: $56.99 @ NewEgg
• (2) 2.4 GHz 9 dBi rubber duck antennas (RP-SMA): $18.99 @ L-Com
• (1) 2.4 GHz 9 dBi rubber duck antenna (RP-TNC): $18.99 @ L-Com
• (1) HG2409UDT-PRO 2.4 GHz 9 dBi omnidirectional antenna: $71.99 @ L-Com
• (1) SPFPG14 2.4GHz 14.2dBi HB directional antenna: $35.00 @ SuperPass Antenna Shop
• (5) shielded 8P8C (RJ45) plugs at around .90 cents each for approximately: $5.00 @ Anixter
• 200 ft of CAT5E STP at around .25 cents a foot for approximately: $50.00 @ Anixter
• 500 ft of CAT5E indoor cabling with connectors, crimp tool and tester: $84.99 @ TigerDirect
• 100 ft of heavy gauge wire at almost $1.00 a foot at a local shop for close to: $100

Total after shipping, taxes and a variety of screws and fasteners: around $900 – $1000 USD.

The fork of OpenOffice (LibreOffice) has been released in stable form and is ready for download. Some of the more exciting new features are listed below as seen on the “Featured Selection” portion from the New Features page on the LibreOffice site :

• Import SVG pictures into Draw and edit them interactively
• New easy-to-use dialog box for title pages
• Navigator lets you unfold one heading as usual in a tree view
• Easy-to-find “new sheet” tab button (colorable tabs)
• MS Works import filter
• Lotus Word Pro import filter
• Useful bundled extensions, such as Presenter View in Impress
• 1 million rows in a spreadsheet in Calc
• Improved slide layout handling in Impress
• Much improved wordperfect import

• RF remote, instead of the IR remote.
• Find the dock without fail (use RF, signal strength, and other associated homing technologies).
• A camera, why can’t I see what Roomba sees?
• Remote control via mobile (especially WIFI, see: AR Drone).
• I know the upper models have schedules, but why not the lower end… how about every day at 3am?
• I’m sure newer models don’t have as many problems, but come on… the lower end shouldn’t get stuck so often on raised areas, underneath desks and dressers, and refuse to start on black carpets…

Here the list I came up with:

Update (2010-08-13). I just found this article: Announcing the jQuery Mobile Project

Once they get up and running, I imagine it will be a serious contender with the others.

Update (2010-08-18). Here’s an article from Mashable about some of the frameworks and libraries talked about above (and others): HOW TO: Make Your Mobile Websites Act More Like Native Apps

To use this script, do the following:

• Right-click on the desktop and choose “Change Desktop Background“
• Look through the backgrounds, and make sure the ones listed are the ones you want to have the script randomly select
• Open up a text file using “gedit“, and add the contents of the script:

  #!/bin/bash
  installedDir=~/Pictures/backgrounds/random
  i=0
  while read line; do
     data=`echo "${line}" | grep -i filename`
     if [ "$data" != "" ]; then
        filenameCutLength=$((${#data}-11))
        filename=$(echo $data | cut -b11-$filenameCutLength)
        if [ "$filename" != "(none)" ] || [ "$filename" != 
        "random.img" ]; then
           extension=$(echo ${filename,,} | 
           cut -b$(expr ${#filename} - 2)-${#filename})
           if [ "$extension" == "jpg" ] || [ "$extension" 
           == "png" ] || [ "$extension" == "svg" ]; then
              fileArray[$i]=$(echo $filename)
              i=$(expr $i + 1)
           fi
        fi
     fi
  done << EOF
     $(grep deleted="false -A7 ~/.gnome2/backgrounds.xml)
  EOF
  fileArrayLength=`echo $[ ( $RANDOM % ${#fileArray[@]} ) ]`
  cp "${fileArray[$fileArrayLength]}"
  "$installedDir/random.img"

• Save the file as “gRandomBackground.sh” in a directory (this example uses: “/home/$USER/Pictures/backgrounds/random”, if you install it elsewhere, be sure to change the $installedDir variable in the script)
• Open “Terminal” and enter the command: crontab -e If you haven’t used crontab before, stick with the default, “nano“
• Paste the following as one line into the editor: 0 */3 * * * bash ~/Pictures/backgrounds/random/gRandomBackground.sh This will change the background every three hours, on the hour. “Ctrl+O, and then Ctrl+W” should get the crontab saved and also get you exited out of nano. For more information on how to use cron, see Google.
• Open up the “Appearance Preferences” dialog again, by right-clicking on the desktop and selecting “Change Desktop Background“
• Click the “Add…” button and browse to the directory that gRandomBackground.sh is installed to
• Select the “random.img” background, click the “Open” button, and then the “Close” button

Your background should change every three hours.

Well… turns out, McAfee was the issue. I got an email from them that read in part like this: “Our initial investigation indicates that the error can result in moderate to significant performance issues on systems running Windows XP Service Pack 3.” Moderate to significant? One person affected couldn’t get on the network, had no taskbar, and their computer was auto rebooting… That sounds more like extreme systemic failure! :-)

For verification of the issue, see the following screenshot:

Here are some steps I took to fix it (taken mostly from the following website: http://brianseekford.com/index.php/2010/04/21/how-to-fix-the-mcafee-svchost-crash-from-the-virus-definition-update/)

• Boot workstation in safe mode and login as an administrative user
• Press the following keys: CTRL-ALT-DEL.
• Click the “File>Run” menu item, type in “cmd”, and press the “Enter” key
• Run the command: del “C:Program FilesCommon FilesMcAfeeEngineavvscan.dat”
• Next, we have to copy a replacement svchost.exe from the system if available. Some have found it in “c:windowssystem32dllcache” and I found it in “C:Windows$NtServicePackUninstall$” so I will go with the instructions for what I had on this particular system…
• within the “cmd” window type the following below:
• cd C:Windows$NtServicePackUninstall$”
• copy svchost.exe c:WindowsSystem32
• Next, restart the workstation, login, and update McAfee to the latest dat file. As of this writing they have replaced the broken 5958 dat with 5959.
• Once McAfee has been updated, I had to restarted the workstation again to get McAfee to report as being updated.

And more reading regarding the issue:

http://www.cnet.com.au/how-to-fix-your-mcafee-crippled-computer-339302608.htm

http://www.switched.com/2010/04/21/mcafee-update-sends-windows-xp-machines-into-endless-reboot/

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/04/21/1735211/McAfee-Kills-SVCHostexe-Sets-Off-Reboot-Loops-For-Win-XP-Win-2000

So I made a simple toggle script and created a launcher for the script on the desktop. Gonna watch video? Double-click the icon. Done watching video, double-click the icon.

#!/bin/bash
PID=`pidof gnome-screensaver`
 
if [ "$PID" != "" ]; then
	#gnome-screensaver is running shut it down
	killall -9 gnome-screensaver
else
	#gnome-screensaver is not running, start it up
	gnome-screensaver
fi

Voila. The post appeared when navigating to the .php file.

See: http://prex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wp_insert_post.

For more creativity, get into the database: http://prex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/wpdb_Class

Seems easier to use than Facebook too.

Here’s a method I frequently use (other examples I’ve seen out there make use of perl, xargs, grep, etc.):

user@host:~$ cd Directory_To_Start_From
user@host:~$ find . -type f -exec sed -i 's/Text_To_Find/Replacement_Text/g' {} ;

The find command will return a list of all the files in the directory tree and execute the sed command on each one it locates. In the example below, I added the “-name” option to the find command to allow for working only on files with the .js extension:

user@host:~$ cd website
user@host:~$ find . -type f -name "*.js" -exec sed -i 's/var pageName="example page";/var pageName="Final Page";/g' {} ;

In the next one, the text to find and replace has special characters (in this case the ‘/’ in the URL).

user@host:~$ cd website
user@host:~$ find . -type f -exec sed -i 's/http://www.example.com/old_directory//http://newsubdomain.example.com/new_directory//g' {} ;

See the following links to read more about escaping special characters:

• Bash Hackers Wiki – Quotes and escaping
• Unix / Linux Shell Scripting Tutorial – Escape Characters
• Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide

Today while checking out my own site, I noticed that all of the PHP files I tried browsing to returned “500 Internal Server Error” errors.

Now this has gone too far… so I called them up. At first the person I talked to explained that I needed to force PHP5 using a .htaccess file, and proceeded to tell me that they could make the change for me. Calmly, I responded by saying that I did not want a change, and that it had been working fine the way it was for months.

She put me on hold, and while I waited… it started working. She told me that the shared hosting server “had a glitch”.

Afterwards, I ssh’ed into my server. Look what I found:

(uiserver):uXXXXXXXX:~ > ls -al
total XX
-rw-r--r--  1 uXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXX   16 Feb  3 14:06 info.php

I thought, “weird, I didn’t put that there”.

(uiserver):uXXXXXXXX:~ > cat info.php 
<? phpinfo(); ?>

Shame on you 1and1, for not cleaning up after yourself. Well, I guess you get what you pay for.

The amount of visitors coming to karlherrick.com is fairly consistent, so I was surprised to see such a spike when I was in a car accident recently. There must be some correlation to draw here.

I am thinking of breaking my leg next week to drive the traffic back up. ;-)

Just kidding.

So after doing a bit of research on what others had done, I went about fixing the problem. Interestingly enough, 1and1 could have made some money in this situation if they would allow customers to simply purchase another database to add to their packages, but no, they want an entire upgrade to be purchased.

The first step was to backup the website and database. I ssh’ed into the web host:

username@localhostname:~$ ssh $username@example.com

Then I backed up the database. The command below will dump all of the databases on the host (in this case, only one MySQL 4.x database) into a dated bzip file, in the home directory.

username@remotehostname:~$ mysqldump -C -A -u $databaseUsername -h $databaseHostName -p$databasePassword | bzip2 -cq9 > ~/`date +%F-%I-%M-%p`-db-backup.sql.bz2

Now to backup the site itself (not only in case disaster struck, but this would get a local copy of the sql dump I just made as well). On a local OS X workstation (or Ubuntu, if that suits your tastes) I ran something similar to the following:

username@localhostname:~$ mkdir ~/website_backups
username@localhostname:~$ rsync -avz --exclude="logs" $username@example.com: ~/website_backups/

From there, I was able to log into the 1and1 control panel and delete the existing database. This allowed me to setup a new one, and in particular, choose MySQL 4 or 5 as the type.

Back to the 1and1 hosting account:

username@localhostname:~$ ssh $username@example.com

I uncompressed the sql dump:

username@remotehostname:~$ bunzip2 2010-01-14-01-59-PM-db-backup.sql.bz2

and was greeted with the raw sql in the file, “2010-01-14-01-59-PM-db-backup.sql”. From here it was only a hop skip and a jump away to restoration. It was necessary to edit the sql file in order to have it restore properly to the newly created database that was just created:

username@remotehostname:~$ nano -w 2010-01-14-01-59-PM-db-backup.sql

And I changed the $oldDatabaseName to $newDatabaseName.

--
-- Current Database: `$oldDatabaseName`
--

CREATE DATABASE /*!32312 IF NOT EXISTS*/ `$oldDatabaseName`;

USE `$oldDatabaseName`;

ctrl+o, enter, and ctrl+x, to save the file and exit nano. The sql dump was now ready to restore to the new database.

username@remotehostname:~$ mysql -u $databaseUsername -h $databaseHostName -p$databasePassword $databaseName < 2010-01-14-01-59-PM-db-backup.sql

The only other things to do were to update any existing applications that needed the new database name, username, hostname, and password.

As a note, if you are updating a WordPress install to point to a new database, this info can be changed in the file, wp-config.php.

The image above shows the main buildings that are being linked. The main router sits in an upstairs window and is a:

Linksys WRT300N

• Runs DD-WRT V24 – SP2 (Beta)
• Has original antennas
• Has the following properties set (among others, these are the interesting ones)
  • Wireless – Basic Settings
    • Mode: AP
    • Network Mode: BG-Mixed
    • Channel: 11 – 2.462 GHz
    • SSID Brodcast: Enable
  • Wireless – Advanced Settings
    • TX Power: 71
  • Wireless – Security
    • Security Mode: WEP (I haven’t tested WPA2 with WDS yet, and I understand that WEP can be cracked easily)
  • Wireless – WDS
    • The three router’s MAC addresses are filled in, and are set to “LAN”

The three client WDS routers are also sitting in windows, and are on the first level of the buildings that they are in. They repeat the same SSID, and run on channel 11.

Buffalo WLI-TX4-G54HP

• Originally purchased as an ethernet bridge, it is now running DD-WRT V24 – SP2 (Beta)
• Replaced the stock antenna with a 9 dBi omni-directional
• Is on the 72.6m link

(2) Belkin F5D7230-4 routers

• WDS on the stock firmware works with DD-WRT, sweet!
• These are unmodified, running with their tiny fixed (two) omni-directional antennas
• One is on the 35.4m link, and the other on the 88.5m link

This setup has been going for weeks without an issue, and has served upwards of six families, a two person office, a fifteen to twenty person office, and a classroom with sixteen students.

We have other areas on the same property that have wireless access between buildings, but are nowhere near as complete as this arrangement. If we do end up using wireless to unify the property’s networks, then I will start looking into site to site links, multiple gateways, OLSR, and other mesh technologies. I have my doubts as to how well WDS scales. Has anyone had positive results with professional mesh solutions built on DD-WRT and Linksys hardware?

Never fear… I google’d a bunch and found that if you run the following command on the Mac doing the backups:

defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine MaxSize 209715200

It doesn’t appear to do anything (or may possibly do something else that isn’t related to what I was after). :-)

So, I went about it in a different manner. If I clicked on the Time Machine icon (rotating clock) in the menu bar, and clicked “Enter Time Machine”… exited the GUI of Time Machine, and then opened terminal, I could do the following:

1. Become root:

   sudo -s

2. Goto the /Volumes directory, and look for which folder is mounted for Time Machine backups:

   cd /Volumes && ls -l

3. Enter the folder that is mounted for Time Machine backups:

   cd $Mount_Point_For_Backups

4. Look for the .sparsebundle file that is being used for backing up the workstation:

   ls -l

5. Resize the sparsebundle file:

   hdiutil resize -size 200g $hostname.sparsebundle

The sparse image is then resized, and Time Machine will report that there is only around 200 gigabytes total available space rather than around a terabyte (which is the original size of the drive). :-)

• Login to the MBWE’s “Network Storage Manager” by typing the unit’s IP address into a web browser and then authenticating with a valid username and password
• Click the “Advanced Mode” link
• Click the “Advanced” icon
• Check the “Enable” checkbox under the “SSH Access” area
• Click the “Submit” button

Now SSH into the MBWE using the username, “root”, with the default password, “welc0me”. After logging in, be sure to change passwords for the root user by issuing the command, “passwd”.

A few other things I noticed were necessary, if you want ssh access via public key authentication:

• Copy the contents of the public key file from the client (usually ~/.ssh/id_dsa.pub) to the MBWE on a new line under /root/.ssh/authorized_keys
• Login as root to the MBWE and issue the following command in the terminal:

  chmod go-w ~/

  This was neccessary as when I tried to authenticate via public key, I was getting the following in /var/log/messages if I didn’t, “Authentication refused: bad ownership or modes for directory /root“

Here’s how you can make the two play a little nicer…

OpenOffice

• Already reads and writes .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx (admittedly the .pptx support isn’t near as developed as the previous two formats mentioned, from my experiences at least)
• Download and install the following: Excel Viewer, Word Viewer, and PowerPoint Viewer 2007
• Download and install the following: Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats

Users with older versions of Microsoft Office Products, including Word 2000/2002/2003, Excel 2000/2002/2003, PowerPoint 2000/2002/2003)

• Make sure your office products are updated with the latest service packs if any are available (check Microsoft Update)
• Download and install the following: Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint 2007 File Formats
• Download and install the following: Sun ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office

Users of Microsoft Office 2007

• Download and install the following: Sun ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office

While there are a ton of ways to script this, using Bash, cut, ls, find, grep, sed, awk, perl, etc… In this particular instance, I find myself with a directory of about fifty files, each named in the following manner…

1. 01 Song Title.mp3
2. 02 Another Song Title.mp3
3. 02 Same Number Song Title.mp3
4. 03 Author – Title.mp3

Bash and cut to the rescue. The following code provides for each file in the current directory to have the number stripped off of the front, even it has spaces in the filename.

#!/bin/bash
SAVEIFS=$IFS
IFS=$(echo -en "nb")
for f in *; do
    mv "$f" "$(echo $f | cut -c 4-)"
done
IFS=$SAVEIFS

Google don’t fail me now!

That kind of reminds me when I used to try to call my brother in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan… the phone would beep this funny tone indicating that they were over capacity and the call could not go through.

Read about it:

• 10 Sweet GIMP Photo Editing Tricks to Wean You Off Photoshop
• GIMP – Tutorials
• GIMP – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Download it:

• GIMP for Windows
• GIMP for Mac OS X (a little odd with X11… have to click once to select windows, and then click to select tools)
• There is also the source and Linux builds… but must Linux distros come with GIMP already.

See it at the following url: http://karlherrick.com/demo/pub/mooflow/

• Desktops:
  • Pentium III-800 MHz with 256 MB RAM and two 300 GB PATA hard disks (currently running Apache/WebDAV as well as network backups)
  • Pentium III-850 MHz with 256 MB RAM and one 100 GB PATA hard disk (currently running a MythTV backend on the basic cable TV channels)
  • Pentium IV-2.4 GHz with 2 GB RAM and two 80 GB SATA hard disks (currently running Ubuntu 8.04, MythTV frontend, development station, etc)
  • Intel Core 2 Quad – 2.33 GHz and one 600 GB SATA hard disk (currently running Kubuntu 9.04, MythTV frontend, VirtualBox w/Windows XP, taking the place of the previous MythTV frontend and the XP install on the Compaq Presario)
• Laptops:
  • Compaq Presario X1000 – Pentium M – 1.4 GHz with 1.5 GB RAM (this has been mainly used for presentations, wireless development, web development and our cordless Linksys/Skype phone)
  • MacBook Pro – Intel Core 2 Duo – 2.53 GHz with 4 GB RAM (this will be the successor to the Compaq laptop)

I also have some other miscellaneous parts/systems that can be used as needed. My thought was to have one MythTV backend, that will also serve as a file share, and backups. This may present some problems with the bandwidth and disk speeds on the Pentium IV box, but that remains to be seen. I am hoping the newest desktop will continue to run some form of Linux, and XP Home virtualized to provide the cordless telephone service. And then finally the two laptops, for all their mobility as well as using XBMC for additional MythTV frontends.

I suppose after a few more revisions and hopeful changes, it will be all that I had hoped it would. Things I would like to see added in the near term are, easier streaming media and playlist manipulation, as well as being able to save equalizer settings.

Check out some of the screenshots I took:

• Fixed issue with OS X preferences dialog.
• Changed keyboard shortcut to “ctrl-shift-e” on Windows and Linux and “command-shift-e” on OS X.
• Added German (de-DE) localization.

Unfortunately, something between the preferences dialog change and the new German localization needed a few more tweaks to be considered stable, and I didn’t test it out as good as I could have (downloading the German version of Firefox, etc.). So, anyone who has a German build of Firefox found their Exch broken. Fortunately, that has been fixed, and version 1.4.4 has been submitted to Mozilla Addons. It is still pending review in the sandbox, but I expect it to be released within a week or two.

With that said, you can download it directly from here, and then install it to Firefox for the fix… This really only affects German users of the extension.

Download / Install: Exch 1.4.4

Windows 7 gets virtual ‘XP mode’

Windows 7 Release Candidate 1′s Best Surprise New Features

Google News

I tried calling two places:

• www.ipodjuice.com
• missionrepair.com

www.ipodjuice.com (Milliamp LTD) didn’t answer their phone… I emailed. We’ll see if they return information… Missionrepair.com says, $115.00 for the glass and digitizer repair. Turn around was explained that “they ship it back within 24 hours of receiving it.” Next day shipping from them is $9.00. Not bad!

These warnings are appearing on all of my searches, and I have independently verified these odd issues at two workstations running different os’es with different browsers at one location, and one workstation at another location.

**Update**, it looks like it’s fixed… I was getting tired of copying and pasting the url’s to get to the sites I wanted to go to. It’s certainly an interesting reminder on how dependent I am on Google. I keep telling myself… I can quit Google whenever I want! ;-)

• Set up a routine for dumping the rolodex into a flat xml file monthly
• Coded the searching of the the data using PHP and SimpleXML
• Coded the cookie management (sessions) and most important, a “remember me” feature (because Safari doesn’t remember passwords on the iPhone)
• Found this lovely library for creating iPhone compatible user intarfaces via the web (read, looks like a native app): iUI (User Interface Library for Safari development on iPhone)

Checkout the screenshots:

It’s pretty cool, because if the contact in the rolodex has a telephone number, address, email address, or webpage associated with them, the data will be displayed and linked to iPhone friendly functions… For example, the telephone number, when clicked on will provide a call button. An address clicked on will link to the built in maps app. Email links open up directly in the built in mail app. Finally, of course, webpages openup in Safari.

So here’s for getting the world more connected… one app at at time.

1. Download and boot from a live Linux distro
2. Become “root” within a shell
3. Run “fdisk -l” (“mac-fdisk -l” I know works on SystemRescueCD 0.2.0 (PPC) for PPC/Macs (what about Intel Macs?)) and note the internal hard disk partition to backup (ex: ‘/dev/hda’)

The rest assumes that (in short, you will probably have to substitute some numbers or devices and you have ssh access somewhere):

1. You have network access
2. You have access to an SSH server
3. Your network is configured with private addresses and you are not assigning one that conflicts with another local IP address
4. Your netmask is the same as the one supplied in the following commands

Give an IP address to the workstation you have just booted the live Linux disc on, set the netmask, and bring the network interface up:

ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.50 netmask 255.255.255.0 up

Set the default gateway (if you need to reach outside of the LAN that is… normally this is your router’s IP address):

route add default gw 192.168.1.1

Set a DNS server (if you are in the habit of not strictly using IP addresses):

echo "nameserver 192.168.1.1" > /etc/resolv.conf

Execute the backup command:

dd if=/dev/hda | ssh username@backupserver.fqdn
"dd of=/directory_of_backups_on_ssh_server/backupfile.iso"

Obviously, most of the previous is getting the network up… try running “dhclient” if the live Linux disc has it installed, and your network has DHCP setup. ;-)

UPDATE (2010-02-09): I just thought I would mention, that Clonezilla Live is a fantastic piece of software that makes this all a little more automated. Their site says, “For [supported] file systems, only used blocks in partition are saved and restored. For unsupported file system, sector-to-sector copy is done by dd in Clonezilla.” Essentially, this translates into much smaller image sizes for the majority of files systems that people work with. See a basic how-to at http://www.howtoforge.com/back-up-restore-hard-drives-and-partitions-with-clonezilla-live.

I suppose it can be accomplished via a variety of ways, however I was able to reproduce this particular issue via generating one of these tasty spam mails via the following (all internally of course… I am not a spammer):

telnet smtp.example.com 25

and then issuing these commands:

ehlo workstation.example.com
mail from:
rcpt to:
data
From: 
To: 
Subject: testing a loop
Message text
.
quit

Notice the mail is being sent to the user… and from the user…

1. The server would receive the email addressed to emailuser@example.com
2. goldfish would parse the message and notice it needed to respond to… emailuser@example.com
3. The mail was delivered
4. Rinse, wash, repeat

The source of the message looked something like this:

root@server:/var/local/vmail/example.com/emailuser# cat new/1220557062.P6882Q0M652544.server,S=1082
Return-Path: 
Delivered-To: emailuser@example.com
Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by server.example.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id 923E9185F7 for ; Thu, 4 Sep 2008 15:37:42 -0400 (EDT)
X-Virus-Scanned: Debian amavisd-new at server.example.com
Received: from server.example.com ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (server.example.com [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id q3tScOaitRoS for ; Thu, 4 Sep 2008 15:37:42 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from workstation.example.com (workstation.example.com [xx.xxx.xxx.xx]) by server.example.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id B89E1185EB for ; Thu, 4 Sep 2008 15:37:25 -0400 (EDT)
From: 
To: 
Subject: testing a loop
Message-Id: 
Date: Thu, 4 Sep 2008 15:37:25 -0400 (EDT)
Message text

and to prevent goldfish from causing havoc on the particular inbox (or mitigating what was already done… and preventing future issues), I added the following PHP:

//strip the line break from $address for checks
$addressCheck = substr($address,0,strlen($address)-1);
if ($addressCheck==$email)
{
	$log->addLine("Email address from autoresponder table  
	is the same as the intended recipient! Not sending the 
	mail!");
	break;
}

just before letting the mail being sent…

mail($address, $subject, $message, $headers);

I love goldfish. It’s like a do it yourself autoresponder! Keep in mind, this code works on Version 002, patch level 1, but could very well not work on any future releases (there have been indications that a newer version is in the works). Maybe I will post a few more tweaks in upcoming posts if the latest stable stays around for much longer.

Sitting at my administrative workstation I:

• looked at Apple Remote Desktop and noticed that the troubled laptop on the network had an odd status and I could not connect graphically (not that it would help if I could)
• tried opening a terminal and ping‘ing. It responded.
• was able to ssh into the laptop. Running ‘top‘ showed that CrashReporter kept running.

I wondered if rebooting it would have any different effect, so I issued a quick “reboot” over ssh and gave it another shot. This boot had the same behavior… So I tried the standard recovery procedures when things act odd:

• Restart into single user mode and fsck
• Repair permissions

Still no change. The only other “best idea” I had was to try and install the update again… but since I couldn’t login graphically I had to go through the command line (Mac’s seem so much cooler since being built on top of Unix).

• Download Security Update 2008-005 (PPC) on the administrative workstation (target was a 700 MHz, PowerPC, iBook).
• scp SecUpd2008-005PPC.dmg adminUser@host.fqdn:
• ssh adminUser@host.fqdn
• hdiutil attach ./SecUpd2008-005PPC.dmg
• sudo install -pkg “SecUpd2008-005PPC.pkg” -target /
• sudo reboot

The laptop rebooted, went past the animated progress circle and auto logged in to the user account it had so many times previously. That made me happy. ;-)

My main issue was that I needed to remotely adjust my OS X workstation’s sound, and I figured a control would be easier than opening a shell and running a script. Basically this will give you a small gtk.VScale widget (a vertical slider widget used to select a value from a range) in a resizable window. When everything is all setup I also run it using AllTray so that it can be docked into the system tray.

When a value is selected using the widget it passes the value off to rsh, which in turn sends the command to a remote workstation (the command I have prefilled into the script works on OS X’s main volume):

rsh -l remote_username mac_workstation.fqdn 
"osascript -e 'set Volume 4.6'"

The following, in the intended deployment requires password-less key based ssh connections between the workstation intended to remotely adjust the sound (any platform that supports PyGTK) and the Macintosh workstation:

#!/usr/bin/env python
#pyLiMaSound.py
 
import os
import gtk
import pygtk
 
pygtk.require("2.0")
 
user="remote_username"
host="mac_workstation.fqdn"
 
def scale_set_default_values(scale):
    scale.set_update_policy(gtk.UPDATE_DELAYED)
    scale.set_digits(1)
    scale.set_value_pos(gtk.POS_BOTTOM)
    scale.set_draw_value(True)
 
class pyLiMaSound:
    def delete_event(self, widget, event, data=None):
        print "delete event occurred"
        return False
 
    def destroy(self, widget, data=None):
        print "destroy signal occurred"
        gtk.main_quit()
 
    def rsh_vol_cmd(self, data):
        payload = "rsh -l " + user + " " + host 
            + " "osascript -e 'set Volume " + 
            str(data.value) + "'""
	print payload
        os.system(payload);
 
    def __init__(self):
        self.window = gtk.Window(gtk.WINDOW_TOPLEVEL)
        self.window.set_default_size(50, 200)
        self.window.connect("delete_event", self.delete_event)
        self.window.connect("destroy", self.destroy)
        self.window.set_border_width(10)
 
        adj1 = gtk.Adjustment(0.0, 0.0, 10.1, 0.1, 0.1, 0.1)
	adj1.connect("value_changed", self.rsh_vol_cmd)
 
        self.vscale = gtk.VScale(adj1)
        scale_set_default_values(self.vscale)
        self.window.add(self.vscale)
        self.vscale.show()
        self.window.show()
 
    def main(self):
        gtk.main()
 
if __name__ == "__main__":
    control = pyLiMaSound()
    control.main()

The situation went something like this:

• I had a ticket in RT that I wanted to resolve.
• I set the form to cc the comment to a group of users who were interested in the details of the resolution.
• I applied the ticket in RT.
• RT cc’ed the users about the resolution.
• One of the users had an autoresponder setup using goldfish, so it emailed back to RT about the user’s absence.
• RT opened a ticket with the content of the email from the autoresponder, faithfully attaching the subject explaining the user’s absence.
• RT then responded to the user’s email account about the new ticket’s creation.
• Again goldfish autoresponds to a message from RT, creating a loop.

Every five minutes a new ticket was being created in RT because of goldfish’s configuration and cron job being set to run that often. I caught the cycle happening when the incoming queue of tickets had three or four created with their subjects typical of those created by an autoresponder.

Hopefully it can get approved soon. I tested functionality on Ubuntu 8.04/Firefox 3 and on Windows XP Home/Firefox 3. It works as expected.

Changelog:

Minor update for 3.0 compatibility.

#!/bin/bash
for file in `ls -d *.png` ; do
	convert -crop 1280X985+0+24 $file 
	$(basename $file .png).jpg;
done

Basically this does the following:

• Makes a listing of all .png files in the current directory
• Runs the “convert” command (part of ImageMagick) on each .png file in that listing
  • Crops the image specified by the geometry arguments
  • Saves each image as a .jpg

Here’s the short source:

<div style=”font-size: 9px;”>
<pre>
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=utf-8″ />
<meta name=”generator” content=”Aspose.Words for .NET 4.4.2.0″ />
<title>An on-line document… with</title>
</head>
<body>
<div class=”Section1″>
<p style=”margin-left:0pt; margin-right:0pt; margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; “><span style=”font-family:’Times New Roman’; font-size:12pt; “>An on-line document… with Buzzword… An online document… with Buzzword… An online document… with Buzzword… An online document… with Buzzword… An online document… with Buzzword… An online document… with Buzzword… An online document… with Buzzword… An online document… with Buzzword… An online document… with Buzzword… An online document… with Buzzword… An online document… with Buzzword… An online document… with Buzzword… An online document… with Buzzword… An online document… with Buzzword… An online document… with Buzzword… An </span><span style=”font-family:’Times New Roman’; font-size:12pt; font-weight:bold; color:#ffb300; background-color:#303030; “>online document… with Buzzword… An online document… with Buzzword… An online document… with Buzzword… An online document… with Buzzword… An online document… with Buzzword…
</div>
</body>
</html>
</pre>
</div>