Category: How To

U3 Removal

How reclaim all the drive space on a U3 thumb drive so you can format it.

On Black Friday, I purchased a small handful of 1GB micro thumb drives from Staples for $7 each. These were SanDisk U3 Smart drives labeled Cruzer micro 1.0GB, model BB0609O3B, SDCZ6-1024. They got a retractable USB plug and illuminate when connected.

The idea behind U3 technology is to do what many geeks want: keep a small collection of useful applications like Firefox, a virus checker, and so forth on a portable device without having to go through the installation process. If they simply put the special version of the applications on your disk preloaded, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.

The problem, however, is that U3 is invasive. The thumb drive comes with two partitions on it. The second partition, while small, is marked as read-only, and includes an autorun file which starts the U3 program, putting it annoyingly in the system tray on XP. Meanwhile, on OS X, a second drive image also mounts. Again, annoying.

The problem is you can’t re-format the device on either platform using the standard tools. OS X gets close, being able to see the logicals drives, partitions, and images. But, in well behaving Apple fashion, it refuses to destroy data it doesn’t own in configurations right out of the box.

While I’m looking for a solution that zaps the USB drive at the raw bit level, the only solution I’ve found is a specific U3 removal tool (which toasts all the data on the drive, so be careful) at these URLs, which reclaim all the drive space:

I know some thumb drives have the ability to password-protect themselves, making them literally read-only. I suspect that may be what’s going on, and hence the reason for the removal tool: it unlocks the device.

Aside from that, the drives themselves work quite well.

Verison FiOS Install, TiVo Series 2, and the Motorola QIP2500-3T

Wondering what Verizon FiOS install looks like — I got screen captures. Wondering how to make Verizon’s QTP2500-3 Motorola receiver work with your TiVo Series 2 — I got answers.

I’m not sure whether it was the prior incident involving the State Corporation Commission or blind luck, but my Verizon FiOS install couldn’t have gone smoother. They sent two guys. One for internet, one for television.

Things working in my favor was an unfinished basement, CAT 5 wiring all throughout the residence, my desire to run wireless, a space set aside for a wall mounted battery with outlet, and separate internet (Adelphia) and satellite (DirectTV).

Basically they connected the fiber to the house and hooked it up in such a way that none of my copper wiring had to change, allowing me to keep my phone switch. Time to look into Asterisk seriously now.

We reused the existing coax for the FiOS TV. A new coax was strung into the basement and hooked to a router, and they happily allowed me access to my router’s username and password to twiddle all the information I wanted. I didn’t even have it share that with them. I could have as many machines behind the router that I wanted, which came with a default of four ethernet ports and wireless (802.11 “double g” ).

Now there’s been a lot of concern about what Verizon does shortly after. And I wasn’t all that thrilled when I was asked to go to their website. He saw the concern in my eyes and said, “don’t worry — it doesn’t install anything, and we can do it from my laptop if you’d like.” He then explained that we needed to activate the account (where he plugs in his order number), and that a side effect was it made an email address that I never had to use.

Knowing I had an image of my hard drive that I could instantly recover from, I used the Mac, which allowed me to take screen shots as we worked.

The first step was to go to http://activatemyfios.verizon.net/, which didn’t like Firefox, and insisted I use Safari! This downloaded a verzion.dmg disk image, to which I mounted it and ran a program that was nothing more than a config file. The installer had me go to custom installation and uncheck everything — this is how you avoid garbage getting installed on your machine.

The installer was surprised that there were only four things in my list. “Ghezz, with Windows, there’s a lot of stuff it wants to install.”

Anyhow, here’s screen shots of the whole procedure!

The real problem, however, was getting TiVo to work with Verizon’s Motorola QIP2500-3 receiver, which was beaming video just fine into my television. The Verizon guys were unfamiliar with TiVo, so TiVo owners have to go it alone for this one.

Only one guy on the TiVo forums was able to point me in the right direction with his post.

I was switching from a Huges DirectTV using the infrared (IR) method of changing channels. Turns out the QIP2500-3 needs to use the serial connector that came with TiVo. Lucky for me, I hadn’t thrown mine out. It looks like a stereo headphone jack with a serial connector on the other end. A note of warning, it does not plug into the IR jack, but has its own jack; be careful.

The hard part was figuring out how to tell TiVo to use a serial connector instead of the IR. I have a Series 2, and it turns out the only way to do that was to go to “Messages & Settings”, “Restart or Reset System”, and do a guided setup all over again.

I was happily surprised. TiVo recognized the Verizon FiOS TV service, recognized I had a Motorola box, recommended the serial connector (which didn’t require channel changing speed tests). The only tests it did ask me was a bit about what I saw on channel 48 (TV Guide) and channel 50 (USA Network). TiVo preserved all my recordings, and mapped all my season passes to their new channels. Wow.

So far, Walt is giving Verizon ViOS and its installation team a thumbs up.

UPDATE: Maybe my praise of Verizon is a little premature. Some time after everything was working, the serial connection stopped functioning. At first I thought it was TiVo. Now it appears that Verizon has turned off the serial interface. Sounds like something they’d do.

WordPress Tilde Hack for Home Directories

WordPress has a problem when it is run from a user’s home directory. Apache will honor a tilde (~) or a hex code (%7E) in a URL, getting to the correct directory, but that’s where things break down: WordPress sees those two strings as logically different. And that poses some serious problems for applications that are trying to do the safest course of action. HACK WORKAROUND PROVIDED.

While browsing through the preferences of NetNewsWire, I noticed in the preferences there was a way to blog a entry of an RSS feed. To do this, the application shelled out to another application to do the heavy lifting.

That application was MarsEdit, a tool that was supposed to make blogging as easy as writing an email.

Problem was, when I went to open my blog in MarsEdit, I ran into a bit of a problem. MarsEdit was inserting %7E in the url, which is obviously the safe hex representation for the tilde sign. (Note, it’s tilde, with an ‘e’, not tilda.)

Look at your web browser’s URL for just a second. You should see something that looks like this: http://www.wwco.com/~wls/blog/

The tilde is a short hand notation that says to use my home directory. The default install of Apache allows this, because user home pages are in physically separate locations from the actual site’s webpages.

MarsEdit was trying to do the safe thing, by encoding something that should always work. And, Apache did the right thing by going to the right web page. Problem is, WordPress does the wrong thing — it reads the URL as-is and doesn’t realize %7E is the same as ~.

MarsEdit is not the only application that does this, many others do: it is the correct behavior. Even links from Digg, will do this on occasion.

I failed to find a decent solution to fix the problem, too. Discussions on the WordNet site seemed to ignore the fact that this was a problem, pointing people to Apache’s pages. Solutions that worked for others, didn’t work for me. Remember, Apache was delivering content, specifically WordPress content, and WordPress couldn’t deduce the entry to show, so it showed it’s own 404. This further supports the problem being WordPress’s.

I tried some mod_rewrite tricks, and those didn’t work. I even tried muddling inside the functions of WordPress, but it seemed that no matter where I made my changes, they either didn’t take or something broke. The page selection code was happening far to upstream, and I was getting bitten by it.

So I resorted to the final hack I knew would work. All WordPress requests go to the index.php file to start with, and it is Apache’s REQUEST_URI which is correctly preserving the encoded string. So, I figured before any other script of function could get its hands on it, I’d change that string.

Inside the <?php … ?> tags, I added this one line:
$_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] = preg_replace( "/%7[Ee]/", "~", $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] );

This simply substitutes the %7E back into a tilde, so WordPress gets a familiar string to work with.

This solved my problem instantly. It’s ugly, but it works.

Please if you suffer from this problem because you’re using WordPress in your home directory, make a little notice to the authors, but while you’re at it, express some gratitude too at what a nice system they’ve made.

Steal the Check

How to pick up someone’s bill when they are too polite to let you.

This evening I went out to eat with a friend, but wanted to pick up his bill, and was pretty sure he wasn’t going to let me. So, I devised a clever way to get his bill out of his hands without lying — it just required deception.

I looked down at my own bill and got a confused look, then looked over at his.

“Uh, I think I have yours…” and started to hand him my unsigned bill.

Right as he went to hand his to me, I retracted my bill, took his, and handed both to the waitress. “Yup, I’ve got yours.” And with a nod, the waitress ran off.

Fixing Subversion (Permission Denied)

After installing Subversion from source on a new installation of Fedora Core 6, having it compile and install without complaint, I got this error message while trying to run it: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/local/lib/libsvn_ra_dav-1.so.0: cannot restore segment prot after reloc: Permission denied

Here’s how to fix it.

I went to install the latest Subversion 1.4.0 from scratch on a pristine Fedora Core 6 installation by building directly from source, an activity I’ve done many times in the past.

The code build and installed fun, but running svn, produced this mysterious error message:
error while loading shared libraries: /usr/local/lib/libsvn_ra_dav-1.so.0: cannot restore segment prot after reloc: Permission denied

Here’s how to fix the problem.

The message appears to be related to permission problems involving protections after relocation. What specifically this is all about, I’m not sure. However.

Fedora Core ships by default with something called SELinux, a security enhanced extension that introduces additional access control policies that confine user programs to the minimum amount of privileges required to do their jobs, which in turn improves security if a compromised program tries to extend its reach beyond what it’s suppose to touch. [See the Fedora Wiki page on SELinux]

Most people, however, don’t need it and find that it often gets in the way. Web masters encounter this as existing files in a web directory can be served, but new ones created can not be served — although all permissions and httpd.conf settings look right. When weird messages about permissions crop up, suspect SELinux.

Turning off SELinux, however, is quite simple. As root, edit /etc/selinux/config, find the line that says SELINUX= and set its value to disabled. I always find rebooting at this point is a good thing.

Anyhow, that fixed my subversion installation and running problem.

Update: If you think you may want SELinux, try permissive instead of disabled. This will let the access happen, but log the problem.

Fedora Core 6 on MS Virtual Server 2005 RC2

Got Fedora Core 6 (i386) working under Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 RC2. Hints follow.

Just wanting to report success using Fedora Core 6 on Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 RC2.

Naturally, there were some hiccups.

First, when one installs MS Virtual Server 2005 RC2, it is very important to install the Admin web pages. Seems that there is no admin application executable, so you’re basically stuck using a web interface.

This creates the obvious problem that a new Dell box doesn’t come with IIS installed. You’re gonna need to mess with the Windows components to do that.

Second, I couldn’t for the life of me get the Virtual Machine to boot from the DVD drive. Yes, I know you use the admin screen to attach it to the physical drive. Yes, I know the virtual machine has to be off in order for changes to take place. Yes, I know media must be in the drive when starting the virtual machine. It simply did not work.

The solution was to beam the FC-6-i386-DVD.iso over to the host operating and attach the virtual CD/DVD drive to that. This solution does work, and quick expeditiously I might add.

Third, Fedora Core’s installation in graphical mode seriously confused the remote viewer application. It did not handle the graphic mode well at all. So instead, I installed via text mode, and this worked beautifully.

Torrents: FC-6-i386-DVD.iso (torrent portal), FC-6-i386-DVD.iso (torrent reactor), FC-6-i386-DVD.iso (mini nova)

Selecting a Marriage Date

Getting married? A little forethought and you can save yourself a lot of money.

Here’s a new tip for men that you’ve never heard of before.

Decide what you like to do for a romantic get-away vacation, say the beach. Scan the beach property rental costs and find the off-season, say like November. Plan your proposal so that your wedding ends up happening during that discounted time frame.

From now on, when your wedding anniversary comes up, you won’t have to stomach a painful rental, and instead can take the amount you save and make the day even more splendid without breaking the budget.

Works for cruises, ski trips, hiking, bed and breakfasts, amusement parks, Vegas, basically anything that has seasonal rates.

Insensitive or ingenious?

Tired of Windows Bubbles in XP?

I hate the annoying pop up bubbles that say “click here to fix me.” Here’s how to get rid of them.

Tired of Windows bubbles that tell you that you have updates waiting, that tell you that your firewall may be wrong, or that your antivirus isn’t up to snuff? You are if you know what you’re doing, and you hate these little pop-ups that appear in the bottom right of your screen.

Here’s how to turn them off.

Start / Programs / Accessories / System Tools / Security Center — then select “Change the way Security Center alerts me” (it’s in the text on the left). Uncheck the boxes you don’t want, and click OK until the dialog boxes are gone.

Note, if you don’t find Security Center there, it sometimes appears under Start / Settings / Control Panel / Security Settings.

Apple Mail Won’t Quit

Apple’s Mail program… does it just hang on you for no reason when you quit? Or, could it be it really does have a good reason for being busy and you don’t know how to lift the hood… Learn how to see what’s going on when mail is busy and how to tell it to stop quickly with a simple, gentle request on your part, never needing to Force Quit again.

I had the opportunity to use Apple Mail from a hotel room that had a rather slow ethernet connection. When I went to quit Apple Mail, the application appeared to hang.

Under normal situations, I’d blame the server or the connection, perform a Force Quit by either right clicking the Mail icon or perhaps using Command-Option-Escape and blasting it that way, resorting to the good old Unix kill command if that didn’t work, followed by a reboot.

Turns out this isn’t necessary at all. Apple was smart enough to include a way to watch what mail is doing.

When Mail is up, select Window / Activity Viewer (also Command-Zero wll open it). I now run with this window open all the time.

When Mail shuts down, it tries to do so cleanly. This means that it sychronizes what’s on your system with what’s on the server. And, if you’re like me, you got a lot of folders sitting in your IMAP account. Sometimes a sychronization takes a while.

Seeing mail show you that it’s really trying to do something before it completes your Quit request invokes a good feeling that things are really busy for good reason, and not just hung.

Additionally, Apple has put big red stop buttons next to each of those tasks. You are more than welcome to click on them, telling the Mac to skip that step and do it later. This has helped me shutdown mail really quickly without screwing up my mailbox.

Violent shutdowns of mail can result in your local cache getting out of sync, giving the appearance that some messages don’t go with the right header.

If you are ever in doubt as to the integrity of your mailbox, Apple has thought of tweak for this too: Mailbox / Rebuild. Naturally, you’ll want the Activity Window open so you can watch as it downloads your mail again.

Mac Address Book: Fixing My Picture

New phone, new software, and new problems with Mac Addressbook. Easily fixed, though I didn’t find anywhere online that told how. Here’s the steps.

The other day my original T-Mobile color Sidekick gave up the ghost from many years of beloved use. I depressed the wheel button, and it sank into the device, as if the little axle it spun on had broken. No amount of twiddling was able to fix it, and I had to admit to myself that it was finally time for a new phone. As it was, the backlight had pretty much all but given out anyhow.

I picked up the T-Mobile Sidekick 3 and transfering my SIMM and account could not have been easier. The process took about 5 minutes from phone selection to leaving the store.

I was not happy with the fact that I lost my applications such as the SSH Terminal. I guess I couldn’t complain, given that I got in when those applications were free. Now that I’m working for a company that thinks having Internet access is a good thing, I really haven’t had need for it anyhow. Sigh; I’ll still miss it.

I was surprised to learn that my phone also served as a camera. The old Sidekick had this little camera device you plugged into the side. This one was built in. And it was better. And the phone has a memory stick, so you can store your photos there. Neat. The phone also has the ability to hook up to the computer, act as a hard drive, and store MP3s there as well. Nifty!

This more than made up for the fact the keyboard layout had changed and it felt like typing inside of a deeply recessed box. I’ll get used to it.

But my real excitement perked up when I saw the phone was BlueTooth enabled, and I was even more happier when the Mac was able to pair up with the phone with virtually no effort and certainly no problems. My hopes, however, were dashed as I saw the phone offered no services my computer could take care of.

Turns out the solution was The Missing Sync, which takes the Mac OS X calendar, address books, and to do lists and beams them to the T-Mobile server, making my phone match my address book …and my address book match my phone.

The first problem I had there was that the Sync failed with a really obscure and useless error message. A little research showed that T-Mobil’s server gets really unhappy if the First and Last names are both blank. At least one has to be filled in, and this is not necessarily the case with any Company records. So I munged my Address Book on my Mac into conformance.

The sync worked. But it also brought in “duplicate” records from my phone, which was expected.

So, I spent a while combining records so that I had the superset of all information, trying to get everything with the most recent information. A second sync worked great.

But that’s when I noticed that my icon for my record in the address book had changed. It defaulted to one of the standard OS X icons, instead of my photo.

I tried to change it back by taking my picture with the built-in iSight. Nope, though it did update my login account picture. Then I tried dragging an image file to it. Again, it changed my login image under Preferences, but it did not change my address book picture. I tried changing my image from the login preferences screen, and that didn’t work either.

Eventually I stumbled on the solution, after finding relatively little on Apple’s support site.

Click the picture, press Delete, and it will disappear. Then use any of the methods above to put a new picture in that spot. Worked great.