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Holiday development – a geeks way to unwind

By On · Leave a Comment · In Development, How To's

So as I was lucky enough to have a few days off over the break I felt it was time to haul my butt into gear and get some development work done. I have managed to get a good few productive days work in and have the following outputs to share with the world.

Firstly for you bloggers, if you have heard of bit.ly and other such URL shortening services, you might be curious to check out YOURLS, which is essentially a self hosted URL shortener. I will leave it to your own decision as to why that might tickle your fancy but I have written a plugin for YOURLS which provides a social toolbar on shortened URLS.

You can check out the YOURLS Social Bar page on my Technical Wiki for all the details, if you have any feature requests please let me know so that I can start working towards the next major release.

The second item I have been working on is how to get the Atlassian Crowd Authentication connector for Apache compiled on a CentOS System running cPanel. To be honest unless you use the Atlassian suite of products AND run a cPanel server this second one probably won’t interest any of you that much but hey, it is definitely an achievement that I am proud of. You can check the how-to out on my wiki –>  Compile Atlassian’s Crowd authenticator on CentOS server with cPanel.

So that has been my few days relaxation and enjoyment icon biggrin Holiday development a geeks way to unwind . Geeks and Open Source software FOR THE WIN icon biggrin Holiday development a geeks way to unwind .

Stuart

Posting a project to vWorker or Freelancer.com

By On · Leave a Comment · In How To's

After having a good handful of projects that I have put up on vWorker (formerly RentACoder.com) I thought it was time to put together some information on lessons that I have learned, some gotchas that could be useful for others to know and things that you should look out for.

The document was written with my experiences from vWorker in mind however the same processes and ideas could be applied to any such project site including sites such as Freelancer.com.

I look forward to feedback, if you have any other experiences, hints or tips please let me know and I will incorporate them into the document.

Guide to putting projects onto vWorker/RentACoder/Freelancer.com

Stuart icon smile Posting a project to vWorker or Freelancer.com

 

How do you uninstall the Apple Broadband Tuner

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Update:

Turns out that there *is* an uninstaller. No idea if it works or not but to access it, right click the installer package and select “Show Contents” then under the packages directory there is an uninstaller. This was apparent in the install program however when you selected to uninstall you could not select next. Thanks to @gwaterhouse for that one. so if you are still having issues the below will also work for you.

—————

If you took the silly plunge and installed the Apple OSX Broadband Tuner on your OSX Machine only to find that there in fact was no “optional uninstall” available for it fear not, read on to find out how to remove the changes.

Firstly, the requisite disclaimer. DO THIS AT YOUR OWN RISK using the sudo command can be dangerous in nooby hands.

Simple Steps:

  1. Open up a Terminal Prompt on OSX
  2. Run the command –> sudo nano -w /private/etc/sysctl.conf
  3. Delete the following lines of code:
    #
    # Tuning network for broadband
    #
    # START
    net.inet.tcp.sendspace: 131072
    net.inet.tcp.recvspace: 358400
    kern.ipc.maxsockbuf: 512000
    # END
  4. Save the file by pressing Ctrl + X (then press Y –> Enter to confirm save)
  5. Reboot your machine and you will be back to normal.

Lesson learned… don’t trust that an uninstall will work, I have to say Apple if you have something on your site that makes such intricate changes to the system PLEASE provide an uninstaller if you are going to put it up there.

——–

Update: A mate said that there is in fact an uninstaller in there. No idea how but this is the version I got and there ain’t be no uninstaller in there:

apple broadband tuner screenshot How do you uninstall the Apple Broadband Tuner

How to run two versions of Firefox on Mac OSX concurrently

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Running two versions of a browser on one machine is something that should be easy… but not always. Recently I needed to assist with deploying a fix to a slightly larger userbase than normal and provide the ability for Mac OSX users to concurrently run two versions of Firefox.

Therefore after researching this in my own time this weekend I have thrown together these simple launchers to make the process far more easy for everyone. If you follow the steps below you should be up and running in no time. Before we begin though PLEASE back up your existing Firefox Profile.

Firstly download the two versions of Firefox you want, for the latest build see the Latest Downloads page, or for the previous build see the Older Downloads page. Following that get your hands on the launchers I have created: Firefox Workaround Zip File.

The Easy Way:

Assumptions: You already have one version of Firefox installed on your machine and that you would like to run Firefox 3 and Firefox 4.

  1. If you have the older version of Firefox installed on your machine open the applications folder, click the existing Firefox Application and rename it to “Firefox 3″. Then install the new version of Firefox in the applications folder.
  2. If you have the newer version installed and want to install the older version along side, rather than dragging and dropping the old version to your applications folder to install. Drag it to your desktop first, rename it to Firefox 3 and then move it to the applications folder after it is renamed.
  3. Open Terminal and run “/Applications/Firefox\ 3.app/ContentsOS/firefox-bin -profilemanager -no-remote” this will load the Firefox 3 Profile Manager.
  4. You will have one profile already showing. If you wish to keep this for the latest version rename it to “Firefox-4″ then create a new profile along side this called “Firefox-3″ the names and case are important as the scripts use these to auto run the different versions. It should now look like this:
    firefox profiles How to run two versions of Firefox on Mac OSX concurrently
  5. Extract the Firefox Workaround Zip File to a location of your choosing. The two launchers can then be dragged onto your dock to use them for Launching the two versions of Firefox concurrently.

The Hard Way: so the assumptions above don’t apply?

OK so I am a realist, the above will only work for the aforementioned versions of Firefox and we would like to give you the ability to make some changes, or you want to name the folders differently (or whatever issues you may have).

  1. After you have downloaded the Firefox Workaround Zip File extract it to the Desktop
  2. Run Applications –> Automator
  3. Choose to open an existing workflow
  4. Open the Firefox 3 file extracted from the above zip
  5. In the script there are two things you can edit the ‘-a “Firefox 3″‘ defines the application name so if you wish to change the application name you can do so there, the ‘-P “Firefox-3″‘ defines the profile to use.
    automator firefox How to run two versions of Firefox on Mac OSX concurrently
  6. As an example if you wish to call the application Firefox Old with a profile name of Original Firefox you would write:
    automator example 2 How to run two versions of Firefox on Mac OSX concurrently
  7. Save the scripts and they can now be used.

Because I am nice – A generic version of the loaders:

I figured that it might be nice to have a version of the loaders that will load any version of Firefox, one old and one new. Therefore if you download the Firefox Workaround Generic you can use the following settings:

New Firefox:
Application Name: Firefox
Profile Name: Firefox Default

Old Firefox:
Application Name: Firefox Old
Profile Name: Firefox Old

This should allow you to not have to continuously overwrite the loaders if you wish to have this available as a permanent solution. Then when a new major version is released, before you upgrade just replace the application names.

Let me know if you have any feedback or ways of improving this.

Stuart

MacBook Pro 2011 graphics (GPU) crashing – Possible Workaround

By On · Leave a Comment · In How To's

Update: Well there is a moot point Apple has quite literally overnight just released an update to fix this –> http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1368

Like many other users of the brand new MacBook Pro 2011 model I have been experiencing issues with the GPU crashing, graphics freezing up and other stability issues since I first took delivery of my new MBP.

I have also been lucky enough to have the issue that overnight when my computer locks itself for some reason this causes the GPU to crash also therefore when I try to log on in the morning I find that I have to do a hard boot (which interestingly has caused data corruption on an external volume twice now *sigh*).

I digress, I have figured out a bit of a work around when the GPU crashes which I have only tested twice but I would love to hear feedback (please leave a comment here) on if this has worked for you as well.

  1. When the GPU Crashes, ensure you can still turn your caps lock on and off (this will confirm it is a GPU crash and not a full system crash)
  2. If you can turn the caps lock on and off, press the power button once on your Mac Book Pro (do not hold it down, just press it once).
  3. Wait for the system to hibernate/sleep etc
  4. Once the system has powered off, press the power button again
  5. Wait for the system to start back up again
  6. Disconnect an external display if you have one now, or reconnect it if you do not, then the graphics should come back on

Why does this work???? NFI I am new to the Mac Platform so will not even try to explain it. I have only used this to reset the GPU after a crash overnight but I am guessing it will work if you have a GPU crash during normal work as well.

Let us all just hope that Apple Fixes this ASAP.

Stuart

Vivid Wireless plus MyNetFone VOIP equals affordable phone calls

By On · 5 Comments · In How To's

Thinking of getting Vivid Wireless? If you would like to get your first month free please see my most recent Vivid Wireless post for how to earn yourself a free month and give me a free month at the same time (win/win).

vivid wireless mynetfone 219x300 Vivid Wireless plus MyNetFone VOIP equals affordable phone callsFor those of you that have the Vivid Wireless Home Gateway but have yet to make the plunge into the realm of VOIP or alternatively have the Vivid Wireless VOIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) but would like to change providers as the pricing is not competitive (a.k.a. expensive) this tutorial is for you.

When I first signed up to Vivid Wireless I decided to give their VOIP a go (which happens to be provided by Engin whom I have used before), however while I found the service to be of a good quality, the price per month was exorbitant in comparison to what else I knew was out there. After managing to find on the web what might as well be considered the “real” admin password to the Vivid Wireless Home gateway I was able to “tweak” the settings so that I could use a provider other than Vivid Wireless for my Voice over IP. While I chose to go with MyNetFone (as is described in this tutorial) the steps could be used to guide through the setup any VOIP provider on the Vivid Wireless Home Gateway.

To begin I have this little gem from MyNetFone, if you want some wicked deals head over to https://www.mynetfone.com.au/whirlpool/VoIP/Plans. I am personally using the NeoSaver yearly plan which (at the time of writing) costs less than $60 per year and gives you:

  • 1 Included DID (i.e. local phone number so people can call you)
  • 60 local, national and certain international calls per month included
  • 10c un-timed local and national calls after the included calls
  • Up to two lines (so yes, in theory you could have both ports activated on the Vivid Wireless gateway although I have not tried this myself).

Now, before I continue below I would like to say that if you proceed you will be unable to get Vivid to support any VOIP problems because obviously when you log in as the Vivid Wireless engineer you are going outside of what was originally intended for the average Joe. If you ever have any problems you can always do a factory reset and get your original settings. I would like to stress however that logging in as the Vivid Wireless engineer you do so ***at your own risk***.

Now on to the fun stuff. After you have signed up with MyNetPhone (or really any other provider to be honest) follow the steps below to set up the VOIP port.

  1. Go to 192.168.1.1 in a web browser and log in with the username “vividwireless” and password “engineer2009″
    [rokbox thumb="http://www.technicalnotebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/vividwireless1-300x205.png" title="Vivid Wireless Home Gateway Login Screen" album="vivid"]http://www.technicalnotebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/vividwireless1.png[/rokbox] 
  2. In the top right hand corner click on the “Networking” icon
    [rokbox thumb="http://www.technicalnotebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/vividwireless2-300x166.png" title="Vivid Wireless Home Gateway Administration Panel" album="vivid"]http://www.technicalnotebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/vividwireless2.png[/rokbox] 
  3. In the Sip Server-Registrar Server, SIP Server-Outbound Server and Sup Server-Proxy Server fill out the IP address to be the SIP server of your provider in the case of MyNetFone it would “sip00.mynetfone.com.au” for all three.
    [rokbox thumb="http://www.technicalnotebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/vividwireless3a-300x181.png" title="Vivid Wireless VOIP SIP Settings" album="vivid"]http://www.technicalnotebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/vividwireless3a.png[/rokbox] 
  4. Scroll further down the VOIP settings page to where it says “Line 1 Basic Setting”. Change the User Domain, Number and Authentication Name to be the username for your VOIP line (different to your MyNetPhone login check your line activation email for the line username and password, in the case of MyNetFone the username here will be a number like 1234567). Also enter the password for your VOIP line.
    [rokbox thumb="http://www.technicalnotebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/vividwireless3-300x181.png" title="Vivid Wireless VOIP Registrar Line Settings" album="vivid"]http://www.technicalnotebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/vividwireless3.png[/rokbox] 
  5. Scroll further down the page again to “Line 1 Codec Setting”. If you have good signal strength I recommend starting with G.711 muLaw then G.711 aLaw, then G.729. If you have signal strength issues or a slower connection I would try G.729 as the first option.
    [rokbox thumb="http://www.technicalnotebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/vividwireless4-300x181.png" title="Vivid Wireless VOIP Codec Settings" album="vivid"]http://www.technicalnotebook.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/vividwireless4.png[/rokbox] 
  6. Finally click Apply and you are all done, your phone should now register and you should be able to receive incoming calls and make outgoing calls.
  7. ***Please Note*** If a firmware update ever happens you will need to re-input these settings again as the firmware updates to the Vivid Wireless Home Gateway will change these settings back to their default.

Let me know how you go or if you have any issues I have the “Contact the Author” button on the top left here so you can chat to me when I am online.

Stuart

R1Soft is not discovering partitions or file systems

By On · Leave a Comment · In How To's

Today I managed to fix an issue that I had been struggling with for quite a few days. I have been running a new VPS which uses Xen and had been struggling with getting R1Soft to detect the filesystems. The R1Soft client was detecting the partitions however was not picking up the filesystems on the partitions.

After quite literally a week of searching and hunting I found the answer on R1Soft’s site and it has to do with a quirk of the way Xen works. If you find you have run into this issue pop over to “Running the CDP Agent on Xen” and you should be right as rain in no time.

Stuart

Getting thermal information on Dell Precision Mobile Workstations

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If you have ever experienced thermal issues, other heat issues or general slowness on a Dell Precision Laptop then this little gem might be right up your alley. I can confirm that this works on a Dell M4400 laptop but I suspect it will work on a variety of other Dell laptops or mobile workstations as well. This may be useful if you are suffering suspected CPU Throttling, suspected heat issues, or anything else that may be related to the speed/heat/health of your laptop CPU.

WARNING: This should only be done if you are a savvy with IT and have knowledge surrouding the precice inner workings of the system. In other words if you are not an IT Professional/Expert you should NOT be doing this I guarantee it will not make any sense.

On your laptop keyboard (not an attached keyboard it must be on the laptop itself):

  1. Press and hold Fn (function key) and Shift
  2. While holding the above two keys press the following numerical sequence “15324″
  3. Let go of the Fn and Shift Keys
  4. The lights at the top of the keyboard should now be flashing or at least responding differently than they would normally
  5. Then you can press Fn and the letter R to get a wealth of information relating to the thermal health of the laptop.

I know that Fn + T will also work with some additional information I am not sure what other little gems are hidden under this mode.

PLEASE NOTE: I put this here purely for educational purposes, you go into such engineer modes at your own risk and I can not be held responsible for what you may break if you do.

Otherwise icon wink Getting thermal information on Dell Precision Mobile Workstations Enjoy

Stuart

The iPad + Numbers with Microsoft Windows + Excel

By On · 2 Comments · In How To's, Learn From My Mistakes

iStock 000000485937Xcutdown The iPad + Numbers with Microsoft Windows + ExcelHave you ever wondered how on earth you can export spreadsheets from Numbers on the iPad to Microsoft Excel? I have and much to my dismay I found the above combination of software may as well be known as a royal pain in the proverbial rear end. Recently I decided as part of my studies in photography I would use Apple’s Numbers application for the iPad to capture a series of information for each of the shots I was taking on a roll of film (yes that is correct, film… not digital LOL).

Much to my dismay I found that once I had filled out the spreadsheet, the only formats that I could export from the Numbers application were either to Apple Numbers, or PDF. However as my main computer is a PC I obviously don’t have Numbers as the iWork suite is only available for Apple OSX.

Therefore I found myself in the difficult situation of how to get the file across to my computer so that I could convert it and continue work on it in Microsoft Excel. In the end I figured out the only way was to do the following:

  1. In the Numbers application on the iPad select the cells you wish to copy and copy them by tapping on the selected cells once and select copy
  2. Open up a word processing application on the iPad, in this case I chose DocsToGo
  3. Create a new word document and paste the text in
  4. Email this to yourself and open it on your PC
  5. Copy the text by selecting it all and clicking Ctrl + C
  6. Paste this into a new excel workbook. Obviously you lose any formatting however you get the data over and it will correctly place it into rows and colums.

Until such a time as Apple enables the ability to export to a competitors format I would strongly recommend that you use a different app (such as DocsToGo) that natively supports the Microsoft Office formats so that you do not run into these issues.

If anyone has any other ideas I would welcome hearing how you get around this frustrating issue.
Stuart

Fix: VMWare vSphere Host Update Utility for ESXi

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Recently I ran into an issue with the VMWare vSphere Host Update Utility that was causing it to report that my ESXi server was up to date when I was well aware that several newer builds were available. After much poking around on the web and coming up trumps I had to set to work to attempt to resolve the issue myself. Therefore I managed to devise this procedure which should hopefully resolve issues when the vSphere Host Update Utility is ignoring updates or in other words simply not detecting that updates were available.

I found a relatively simple procedure which should clear the cache out and cause the vSphere Host Update Utility to do a complete rescan of the host and correctly detect that there are updates available. Due to the newest release of vSphere 4.1 which no longer uses the Host Update Utility this affects only versions 4.0 and earlier (though I was experiencing it with ESXi 4.0 U1 myself)

To resolve the issue follow these steps:

  1. Load up the Host Update Utility and remove the host causing issues from the list
  2. Uninstall both the VMWare vSphere Host Update utility and the VMWare vSphere Client
  3. Reboot your computer
  4. Install the vSphere client and Host Update Utility Again (for good measure I put these in a different folder to the original)
  5. Load up the Host Update Utility, add back the ESXi Host and scan for the patches (You should now see any new patches available).

I hope that this can help someone else out as I have to say it drove me up the wall for some time.

If anyone has any simpler way of this I would certainly welcome it.

Stuart