CyberGuard / SnapGear - restoring http access

If you've got locked out of your CyberGuard / SnapGear firewall, as long as you still have SSH access you can regain access without doing a factory reset.

From the command prompt type "enableweb"

/> enableweb
The web interface has been enabled on ALL interfaces, for HTTP and HTTPS.
Please ensure you review the administration access control options.

As it says, this will re-enable access on ALL interfaces, including Internet, so you need to review the choices, FAST!

Google Sync on iPhone - only one instance allowed

Google Sync for Apps to iPhone, Blackberry, Android etc is very cool and useful, but has a limitation on the iPhone that you can only have one Active Sync connection.

If you try to create a second one you get the error message

"Account Already Exists

Only one Exchange Active Sync account can be configured"

Shame!

Synology Diskstation - share music to iTunes

My Synology DS-109+ is a great device. Fast and with a great feature set.

One of those features is the ability to publish music to your local network.

To do so, first enable the service - its off by default. Find the iTunes link on the left, and click.

Tick the box "Enable iTunes service to allow all iTunes clients in the same network subnet to browse and play music in the "music" shared folder" and give your Diskstation a name.

The playlist feature is cool, of course

OSX - bulk convert to PDF

OSX has a convert utility that you can use to bulk convert documents in PDF. IN essence if the OS support viewing and printing them, you can convert them.

To convert a single file you can use

/System/Library/Printers/Libraries/convert -f path/to/source.file -o destination.pdf

If you want to convert in bulk you can use AppleScript.

Open Script Editor from /Applications/AppleScript, then in a new script copy and paste

on open input_documents

repeat with this_document in input_documents

set this_document_path to POSIX path of this_document

--display dialog this_document_path

do shell script "/System/Library/Printers/Libraries/convert -f " & quoted form of this_document_path & " -o " & quoted form of this_document_path & ".pdf"

end repeat

end open

then from File Menu select Save As. In File Format select Application. Give it a name, and then you can drag and drop your files onto it, and hey presto converted to PDF.

MSI WInd - updating to 10.5.8 on msiwindosx86.iso

So my Wind needed to be updated to 10.5.8. There aren't many instructions around as to what will break, but something always does.

I used Carbon Cloner to clone the HD to another USB drive. Although it wasn't bootable, it was a complete copy including my user profile, apps etc. So if it went horribly wrong I had a backup.

This time, I removed the HD and put into a SATA / USB case. I booted from it, and it booted fine. Then I updated to 10.5.8. And then restarted.

Well it started OK, but, instead of showing the login screen, the screen went weird all scrambled.

So this is why the drive is in an external case!

Shutdown the Wind, connect the drive to another Mac, and remove some items from /system/library/extensions:

AppleIntelGMA950.kext

AppleIntelGMA950GA.plugin

AppleIntelGMA950GLDriver.bundle

AppleIntelGMA950VADriver.bundle

AppleIntelIntegratedFramebuffer.kext

rename extensions.kext, restart and off we go.

Checking it seems that Quartz Extreme is not working... don't remember if it was before!

Update: the fix for Quartz Extreme is to re-install CyberGreg's drivers. Google for "MSi OSX86 Upgrade Pack v1.5".

Update 2: I also had the sleep problem. Found "SleepEnabler.kext", installed via kext helper.

Super!

Vodafone 3g on OSX - now native Intel

Up to now, the Vodafone software for OSX has included PowerPC code ie not Universal Binary. This is an Activity Monitor snapshot

Step forward v3.04.06.00, which is now Universal, and even has a re-worked interface.

Download it from here

www.business.vodafone.com/site/bus/public/enuk/support/10_productsupport/laptop_connectivity/40_software/software/10_latest/p_mac.jsp

install and launch. It replaces the Vodafone folder, and all the PowerPC bits. But, this version does not work with 10.6 Snow Leopard.

It sports a new tabbed interface. The first tab shows the status of your network connections

the second tab allows managing your connections

the third has a very useful data useage summary

and the fourth tells you what devices are connected

I have just one complaint, other than the lack of Snow Leopard compatability..

Its uses a LOT of CPU, a real CPU hog!

Update: new version, Snow Leopard compatible, from the above link v3.04.07.00

Unable to install iPhoto

iPhoto 8 was supplied with my MacBook Pro 13". But at some point its got corrupted, and when I launch it I get an error.

So the obvious thing to do is re-install. After inserting the DVD and launching Install Bundled Software, I select to do a custom install, but iPhoto is greyed out, and not selectable.

Step forward Pacifist from www.charlessoft.com. After downloading and launching I open the Install Bundled Software package and after a few minutes it shows me the package list. Right click on iPhoto and select Install to Default Location. Every few minutes it would say that something already exists, and I would select 'replace'.

If you have, say, MacBook Air that doesn't have DVD, you can use Remote Disc to copy over the iPhoto package. The packages are in /Volumes/Applications Install Disc/System/Installation/Packages/.packages.

That path is invisible so either use Onyx to show invisibles, or copy from the above path and from the finder do 'apple+shift G' and paste in the path.

Or, after the DVD had mounted, using Remote Disc, you can open the disc from within Pacifist.