Rev’s Thought Dump

WARNING: Doing this with FileVault on will lock you out of the files in the user directory.  Pretty much for ever.  Double check.  It’s not on by default.  But you never know.  And access to the key chain can be a littel fowled up.  Just nuke it and start over.

I recently picked up a PowerBook from a friend.  Oh how long I have lusted after the PowerBook.  And let me tell you.  It’s SO sexy. I mean, I have a BlackBook, technically a superior machine.  But this… this is like race car sexy….aaaany who.  That’s not the point.  Point is he gave it to me and didn’t give me the password.  After some googling around I found the answer, as follows:

• Reboot the system and hold down Command(Apple key) - S
• At the prompt type: /sbin/fsck -y
• and then: /sbin/mount -uw /
• and finally: passwd <username>

What this does is reboot into single user mode (Oh Noes!  Command Line!  Text!!!).  Then the next two commands (Listed above the prompt in Leopard) will mount in read/write mode the file system (You really don’t need to know this) and lastly typing passwd followed by the user whose password you want to change will prompt you for a new password and ask you to verify it.

Reboot and you’re done!

I’ve been using MacFusion for a few months now since most of the machines in the cloud of the computer world are linux boxes. Recently I finally got around to changing a password on one of the systems and MacFusion started refusing to mount it (stop laughing).

In MacFusion there’s no place to set the password for the system you’re connecting to. If you’re running into this problem bring up the “Keychain Access” application and find the address of the target system under Passwords -> Application and change it there. That should get you back on track.

My father, on my recommendation of course, finally ordered himself a Mac Book Pro. After months of building and rebuilding the system in his shopping cart he finally clicked through to the finish when I gave him the high sign. He’s got a new Santa Rosa chipset MBP with the 17″ glossy high res screen and all the bells and whistles.

While he waited for his new machine to arrive he ran out and grabbed all sorts of accessories. One of which was this sweet bit of mousieness, the Logitech VX. He already had is new camera and he was ready to jump into the Apple world and Aperture.

So the MBP finally arrives we get everything setup… Firefox, adium, skype, etc etc etc. And then… Kernel Panic. Within the first 24 hours the system grays out on him and prompts him to reboot.

Now, my father isn’t the most patient. So needless to say he’s upset. But he reboots and keeps using it. Then it happens 2 more times over the next couple hours. ACK! Gives a call to Support and they tell him to just send it in.

(Time to shorten this up a bit)

So he packages up his new $3.5k machine and sends it back. He gets a new one. Sets it up and BAM! Kernel Panics again.

Drives it to the apple store… many miles away… to take it back and get his money… pissed now… They of course tell him they can’t take back an online order. But the manager offers him $200 to package it back up and send it back for another one. To keep the order alive. He’s pissed… says no.

After much hemming and hawing he comes around… sends the machine back with the thought that.. hell.. how could it happen 3 times?!

Gets the new machine… sets it up and…. (say it with me) Kernel Panic!!

At this point he’s achieved that kind of Zen.. that calm quiet that happens just before said zen master makes someones head explode with shear rage. Of course I’m scampering thing.. Jesus.. how is this possible? Gotta fix this.

This is awfully long perhaps I should just get to the point…. The mouse… it was the logitech drivers. For what ever reason… the drivers give OS X fits. Just google it and see.

So we removed the drivers - he went so far as restoring it to make sure they were completely gone - and he’s been running perfectly ever since. Still using the mouse. But without the drivers from Logitech. Phew…

In a way.. I’m glad this happened. Considering I’d been thinking about the same mouse. But anywho… if your Mac is freaking out and you have a logitech mouse, try removing the drivers and see if that takes care of the problem.

I’m not sure how deep the install goes. Not sure if the reimage/restore is needed or not.

I was having problems getting iTerm to work well with irssi.. specifically.. using the alt/option key to swap between tabs in irssi. Alt wasn’t doing it..even when set to Meta or +esc. So I dug around and found this in some comments to someones post about needing a new term app.

If you’re on a MacbookPro laptop, and using irssi with screen on a remote machine via ssh; heres what works (for me)

To switch between irssi windows (normally alt+1 etc.) - use;
Press Esc, let go - then press number, 1, 2 whatever

To pageup/pagedown - use this keyboard sequence (must be in this order)

Press (and hold) Shift-key, now Press and hold fn-key, now with these keys pressed (in that order) - press the pageup (arrow up) or pagedown (arrow down) keys to pageup/down

If your backspace key is acting as a ‘delete’-key in irssi in screen, Hit command+I, in terminal to bring up your window preferences, under the Keyboard settings, tick ‘Delete key sends backspace’ - that should fix that.

So, slightly more tricky on the laptop, but achievable none-the-less

Matt

Thanks, Matt

Who ever you are.

I meant to blog this when rtyler and I found it the other night. He come into #Mono complaining that NAnt - delivered with Mono - wasn’t working at ALL on OS X. We spent a lot of time looking around and it came down to pkg-config.

The pkg-config shipped with mono isn’t the one being run by default. So it can’t find the .pc files in a relative path. It took a bit longer than it should’ve to find the solution, partly because I wasn’t overly verbose about the man page referencing PKG_CONFIG_PATH and I wasn’t setting it properly.

Anywho, it’s all over on his blog here.