It has been a while after my last post, been very busy with a few big projects. But I found the time to buy a Asus EEEpc. It’s a real small laptop running Xandros Linux. I’ve reinstalled the little machine with Ubuntu. There is a dedicated Ubuntu distro for the eee. You can find it on http://www.ubuntu-eee.com. The first attemt to install it, I used a USB stick, but it crashed after a vew seconds… The USB stick was corrupt. After a view tries I thrown the stick in the trash an got a SD card. Now the installer did his work without any errors! Now I’ve got a real distro! Apt-getted quanta, apache, php, mysql and now I can develop anywhere!

It’s only easy with this Adobe Photoshop plugin. It’s a free and open source plugin available for Adobe Photoshop CS2 and CS3 for MacOSX and Windows. Also it works on PaintShop Pro.
To make a transparent favicon, just design your icon (32 x 32 pixels) with a transparent background. Resize your image to 16 x 16 pixels and choose ‘Save for the web’ and save the image as a GIF, with transparency on (duh!). Now reopen the GIF file and choose ‘Save as…’ and save it as a Windows Icon (.ico) file. And your done.
For an other way to do it on MacOSX with the free app ‘Graphic Converter’, check my older post ‘how-to-make-a-faviconico-on-macos-x‘.

Finally, I’ve got it working… There is so many documentation on the net on how to config your avahi-daemon under Debian, so it’s working under MacOSX Leopard. But what ever I did, the server showed up in my Finder, but when I tried to connect by clicking the server icon, it didn’t work… Googled around, but never a solution. I could not connect to my Netatalk daemon. After I added a configuration so I could click the server to connect to my sFTP server in Cyberduck, (same box as the Netatalk and Avahi daemon) and it worked?!

Now I know why… What I had in my Avahi configuration for my Netatalk daemon, was in my afpd.service file a host-name definition. But in my sftp.service file no <host-name> line.
So what I did, was simply remove the line, restarted Avahi and there it was!

So my working config file: /etc/avahi/services/afpd.service

<?xml version="1.0" standalone='no'?><!--*-nxml-*-->
<!DOCTYPE service-group SYSTEM "avahi-service.dtd">
<service-group>
<name replace-wildcards="yes">%h</name>
<service>
<type>_afpovertcp._tcp</type>
<port>548</port>
</service>
</service-group>

More usefull documentation:
Netatalk 2.03 with encryption support for Debian 4.0
http://www.disgruntled-dutch.com/2007/general/howtodownload-netatalk-encryption-support-debian-4/

How to use OS X Leopard screen sharing with a Linux machine
http://www.sanityinc.com/articles/mac-screen-sharing-with-linux

IE6 is an hell, I’ve posted this more than ones, but now there is a new online campaign, that tries to move the current IE6 users to upgrade there browser. savethedevelopers.org I’ve added the little simple javascript line to my site, to help all MSIE 6 users to upgrade to a better browser. IE6 is a hell for developers, so more and more developers are skipping the ie6 compatibility. I do! I just leave the non working features out for IE6 browsers… When you have a IE7, Firefox, Safari or Opera, the features will work fine. So please, help to save the developers and upgrade your IE6!

Okay, after some googeling I’ve found two options for a free GPS and navigation solution. The first one is a multi-OS GPS software ‘Roadnav’ http://roadnav.sourceforge.net/ This GPL-ed software is build for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Also source packages are available. Maps are available and downloadable for free!
The second is for smart phones, ‘Nav4all’ http://www.nav4all.com/ I’ve tested it on my Nokia 9300i and it works like a charm. Only thing is that you’ll need a working internet connection. Trough GPRS or WiFi. I have a flat-fee GPRS account, so I have no worries. It is real fast. More info coming later. Will test the two packages now! ;)

I had this problem after a new installation of Debian Etch on one of my machines at home. Fetchmail, Exim, Freshclam and all other mail related software could not connect to the ClamAV socket. The file /var/run/clamav/clamd.ctl was missing. Touching the file and changing rights and ownership didn’t do the trick. The trick is this under Etch;

Unofficial packages for sarge and etch are available through the Debian volatile project (AMD64 arch is also supported). They are usually more recent than official ones and they are maintained by Stephen Gran too, so they follow the same layout as the official ones.

Edit /etc/apt/sources.list and add a line like this to it:
deb http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile etch/volatile main contrib non-free

Than do an apt-get update;apt-get upgrade to upgrade the ClamAV and all related software ;-) The only thing you need to do is add the user clamav to the Debian-exim group, restart exim and clamd and open a bottle of that nice cold beer! All is okay now!

Okay, I’ve got Leopard on my machine now for a few weeks. I really love it! But stumbled on a few bugs and problems.

3com OfficeConnect have “Incompatible security.”
The first annoying problem is that I can not connect to one of my wifi access points. A 3com OfficeConnect 11Mbps Wireless Access Point, with firmware 1.01 and WEP encryption enabled. I always get “Incompatible security.” when I try to connect to it. I’ve got two more access points, one Thomson and one Senao, those work fine.

Time Machine Rules!
Time Machine is one of the best features in Leopard. It’s a backup app with the best interface known for backup software! Now even my grandma understands how she has to recover an old (edited, lost or deleted) file.

Problem 10.5.1 update via “Software Update”.
But after installing the last update (10.5.1) trough the “Software Update” app, my 74.5 GB Laci USB harddrive (HTS54108 0G9AT00 Media) could not be detected by the OS. And that disk I use for Time Machine! The solution is crazy but simple. Download the update from Apple.com. That update is 110Mb, a lot bigger than the update provided by the Software Update app. Maybe just because it’s universal, but the fact stays; my Laci works again ;) The 3com connection problem stayed.

Wow, so much frustrations, just don’t know how windows works… This here is just for me, cause I keep forgetting!

On client machine:

• right click on My Computer
• Properties
• Machine name
• Change domain button
• Add to workgroup
• Restart…
• right click on My Computer
• Properties
• Machine name
• Change domain button
• Add to domain
• Join with login and pass
• Restart…

Done…

Then sync time with domain controler…

• Login with administrator account.
• Open command prompt.
• Type following:
  
w32tm /config /syncfromflags:domhier /update
net stop w32time
net start w32time


Done…

For my father in law I had to install on his iPaq 3970 with TomTom 5, cause he could not get his BT GPS module to work. After searching the web I found the solution. Pear the GPS device (mouse) as you normally do, start the connection to the GPS . Now fire up the TomTom application. Instead of selecting the normal BT device/mouse, you choose: Other cable-NMEA-GPS (Andere Kabel-nmea-gps), select 9600 as the baud rate. Then select the Bluetooth port 5, and confirm your configuration. Now it all should work! The problem is that the bluetooth driver in the new TomTom 5 does not connect at 9600, but the BT mouse can only do that speed…