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I upgraded to VirtualBox 3 and then my windows guest went wrong.

First of all, you have make sure the latest version of compiz installed.

Go to CompizConfigs Settings Manager and look for “Windows Rules” under Windows Management category. Enable “Windows Rules” and go to “No ARGB visuals” use Window Class, click Grab and then click in virtualbox window.

The following command will generate several passwords with the following properties:

• Length of 10 characters
• Contain a mixture of upper and lowercase characters
• Contain at least 1 number
• Completely random most likely not in the dictionary (expect by random luck)
• Pronounceable

This makes these passwords easier to remember but very difficult to brute force. They are ideal as passwords for logging in to machines, servers, routers, etc.


$ apg -m 10 -x 10 -a 0 -M NCL -t


I use SSHFS to mount remote drives locally. The remote computers don’t have Bzr installed, and it’s difficult to get them up to date enough to install the latest Bzr. Therefore, I execute Bzr on my local computer on the mounted filesystem. Using default mount options for SSHFS leads to errors in both Git and Bzr, this is because (I believe) SSHFS doesn’t directly support file renaming. It is possible to avoid these problems by using the -oworkaround=rename switch with the mount command.

As an example my mount command looks similar to this:
sshfs -oworkaround=rename user@computer1:/var/www /media/computer1

If you develop multiple sites and you need virtual hosting functionality, scroll down to the end of the /private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf file and uncomment the following:

# Include /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

Next, you’ll need to setup whatever virtual hosts you have in the virtual hosts file /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf

You need to make an entry in the httpd-vhosts.conf file like so:

<virtualhost *:80>
   ServerName beta-site-1.com
   ServerAlias www.beta-site-1.com
   ServerAdmin webmaster@beta-site-1.com
   ErrorLog "/private/var/log/apache2/dummy-host2.example.com-error_log"
   CustomLog "/private/var/log/apache2/dummy-host2.example.com-access_log" common

   DocumentRoot "/Library/WebServer/beta-site-1"
   ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/Library/WebServer/beta-site-1/cgi-bin"
   
     Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews Includes
     AllowOverride All
     Order allow,deny
     Allow from all
   
</virtualhost>

The examples provided by Apple in the vhosts file are slightly incorrect and if you use the CustomLog lines as is you will get errors the following errors if you run: apachectl -t -D DUMP_VHOSTS:
Syntax error on line 40 of /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf:
CustomLog takes two or three arguments, a file name, a custom log format string or format name, and an optional "env=" clause (see docs)

This is because
CustomLog "/private/var/log/apache2/dummy-host.example.com-access_log common

Should actually read:
CustomLog "/private/var/log/apache2/dummy-host.example.com-access_log" common

Installing MySQL on OS X has become infinately easier since you can now download an Apple DMG from the MySQL website which takes care of the fine detail.

However, one thing that changed with Leopard is the socket for Mysql. It moved to /private/tmp, so you may need to configure your php.ini file to point it to the new location.

To do so, open the file /private/etc/php.ini, (if no such file exists, then make a copy of /private/etc/php.ini.default and rename it to php.ini) and edit that.

You have two lines to modify:

mysql.default_socket =

becomes:

mysql.default_socket = /private/tmp/mysql.sock

and mysqli.default_socket =

becomes:

mysqli.default_socket = /private/tmp/mysql.sock

Go to terminal and type:
vim ~/.profile

Assuming you want to add the path /usr/local/bin make .profile look like this:
PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin

Separating each item with a colon.

Change default password:
$ mysqladmin -u root password NEWPASSWORD

Change existing password:
$ mysqladmin -u root -p'oldpassword' password newpass

Ensure that you have the package sun-java6-jre installed and then run the following command from a terminal:
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/plugin/i386/ns7/libjavaplugin_oji.so /usr/lib/firefox-3.0.10/plugins/

You will need to restart FireFox after this and Java should be working for FireFox now.

A few weeks back I tried out the Gnome sessions. Gnome should automatically restore the programs you were last using when you log back in. However, it did not work well at all and I turned it off. This is when the problem began - everytime I logged back a whole bunch of the same applications automatically launched causing all sorts of mischief. No matter what I tried I could not get Gnome to turn sessions off again.

In the beginning I clicked on System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications and then selected the Options tab. Here, you may check a box labelled “Automatically remember running applications when logging out”. This will activate Gnome sessions. In my case, however, deselecting this did not turn Gnome sessions off.

After much hunting around, with no help from the Internet, I finally found the files that needed deleting to stop Gnome launching various apps at startup. You need to open your home folder in Nautilus and press CTRL+H - this lets you view hidden files and folders (hidden files/folders begin with a dot “.”). Navigate the following path .config/gnome-session/saved-session and delete all the files there. You can move them to the trash can for safety. Having done this, the next time you login you should just get a blank desktop.

I’ve taken the time to write this in the hope that anyone else suffering from the same bug can solve it more quickly than I. This should be reported as a bug on launchpad.net if it isn’t already there.

I am making a note of this for ease of future reference. I can never quite remember whether a medium blob is 16MB or whatever it is, the capabilities are on the MySQL site but I am going to write it in plain english here so I don’t have to keep getting my calculator out to remind me what 2^24 is in terms I am more familiar with…

TinyInt: -128 to 127 (0 to 255 if unsigned).
SmallInt: -32768 to 32767 (0 to 65535 if unsigned).
MediumInt: -8588608 to 8388607 (0 to 16777215 if unsigned).
Int: -2147483648 to 2147483647 (0 to 4294967295 if unsigned).
BigInt: -9223372936854775808 to 9223372036854775807 (0 to18446744073709551615).

Float: 0 and +-1.175494351E-38 to +-3.402823466E+38.
Double: 0 and +-2.2250738585072014-308 to +-1.7976931348623157E+38.
Decimal[(M,D)]: As for DOUBLE but constrained by M and D.

Char(M): M may take any integer value from 0 to 255, with a CHAR(0) column able to store only two values: NULL and ” (empty string), which occupy a single bit.
VarChar(M): 1 to 255 (number of characters to store). Trailing spaces are stripped before storage.

Text type columns do case insensitive comparisons and sorts, whereas blobs are case sensitive.
TinyBlob/TinyText: Max. length 255 characters. Very similar to VarChar but trailing spaces are not stripped before storage.
Text/Blob: Max. length 65535 characters (65KB).
MediumBlob/MediumText: Max. length 6777215 characters (16.8MB).
LongBlob/LongText: Max. length 4294967295 characters (4.3GB).

Enum: One value chosen from up to 65535 possibilities.
Set: Up to 64 values in a given set column.

Date: ‘1000-01-01′ to ‘9999-12-31′, and ‘0000-00-00′.
Time: ‘-838:59:59′ to ‘838:59:59′.
DateTime: ‘1000-01-01 00:00:00′ to ‘9999-12-31 23:59:59′.
Year: 1901 to 2155, and 0000.
TimeStamp: 19700101000000 to sometime in 2037 on current systems.