Fix iTunes + Windows 7 + iPhone

T&T
Mar 152009

Update: Using the latest iTunes 64bit with Windows 7 64bit, I had no more problems. Can’t vouch for 32 bit versions, though.

Problem:
After a first successful sync of my iPhone with iTunes on Windows 7, I rebooted my PC. Consequently, any attempt to start iTunes with my iPhone plugged in results in an error dialog:

“iTuness cannot connect to this iPhone because the required software is not installed. ….”
The message also suggests a fix – removing and re-installing iTunes using the iTunes setup package.

Real solution:

Obviously the method the error dialog suggests does not work. Instead, the following steps do:
1. Go to Control Panel > Programs > Uninstall a program
2. One by one remove the Apple Mobile Device, Bonjour and iTunes programs
3. Reboot the machine
4. Use the iTunes setup package to install again
5. Reboot your PC
6. Sync (finally)

Posted by cristi at 19:42 Tagged with: ,

Enable additional ENV variables on linux for non-interactive ssh logins

T&T
Mar 152009

Use-case: run Hadoop with localhost as your only master/slave and with a custom JVM:

echo JAVA_HOME=/home/user/jdk > ~/.bashrc
echo JAVA_HOME=/home/user/jdk > ~/.ssh/environment
sudo -i
echo PermitUserEnvironment yes >> /etc/ssh/sshd_config
service ssh restart
exit
ssh localhost ‘echo $JAVA_HOME’

Posted by cristi at 19:18 Tagged with: ,

OpenSuse 11 and WiFi

Open Source, T&T
May 262008

A week or so ago I shuffled computers around the house. As a result one of my desktops couldn’t be reached by wired Ethernet any more, so I thought of going wireless. Bought a cheap Asus PCI-Wireless card (WL-138G) which worked like a charm on Vista and XP. That’s the sunny side of the story.

In the spirit of weekly change, Thursday night I got my hands on OpenSuse’s latest and greatest – version 11, Beta 3. It installed fairly quickly, it looked nice, and it even seemed that it got all my cards – including the WiFi one. Oh joy. But my joy did not last too much – one click on the Firefox icon and doom came: there was no internet. So I tried changing the settings in the Network Settings menu of Yast2, using the Network Manager to shuffle even more seetings, but all in vain.

Back to the internet for a solution. Most links I found involved blacklisting the default driver and using ndiswrapper to extract the firmware from the Windows drivers. Which of course didn’t work. Late last night though I found a solution in a forum, somewhere. I had to tweak it a little, but it worked.

Technical data: the card uses a BroadCom 54G Air chipset, shown by a lspci command as BCM4318. I also had an ethernet port, which proved essential to get the wifi to work.

Steps:

  1. Open Yast and go to the Software management category.
  2. Search for and install most things that have to do with wireless. Especially the K WIFI NManager.
  3. Search for and install the b4xx_fwcutter and curl.
  4. Open a terminal and run ‘su’. Then enter the root password.
  5. Run install_bcm43xx_firmware. This will fetch two packages and install them.
  6. Reboot the machine. On the page I found this idea it said that it should work.
  7. However, when using the K Network Manager to setup my wireless there was nothing detected. Nor were any networks found using the K Wifi LAN Manager scan.
  8. In the K WiFi Manager, in the settings tab there is an instruction that allows you to change the signal strength thresholds. Once you click that, wifi will start poring in.

So this is it, guide to WiFi in OpenSuse 11 Beta 3 in 8 easy steps :)

Now if I could get libxine, mplayer and lirc to work with my specs I can get rid of Windows.

Posted by cristi at 08:10 Tagged with: , , , ,

Is your monitor set up right?

T&T
Jan 302008

Test it using the page here. I had to adjust both my contrast and brightness (my LCD was really bright). Btw, the tip they give, for setting the contrast high, at 100 and brightness at 25 is not very accurate, so make sure you pick your own.

Posted by cristi at 14:55 Tagged with: , ,

Setting up subversion on Windows

IT, Productivity, T&T
Jan 262008

svn logoToday I had something to test that required a svn repository. Since my home repository wasn’t answering my calls (well, pings actually) I decided to do a quick install of the svn server on my Windows XP box. From what I remembered it should have been simple enough.

After restarting all the process at one point, because I hadn’t paid attention to the warning about Apache 2.2, I found my Apache 2.0 refused to load the dav_svn module and couldn’t figure out why. A quick search on Google revealed the cause, but it still was annoying. Continue reading »

Posted by cristi at 15:10 Tagged with: , ,
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