Category: Walt’s Desktop

Software that Walt runs on his desktop, whether that’s Windows, Macintosh, or Unix. The category also focuses on useful command line tricks and commands.

List iTunes Apps by Purchaser

I finally developed a way to list all your iTune applications by Purchaser, and even better, I can do it from the command line.

Last year I was helping a friend who has pretty poor internet connectivity upgrade his iPad to the latest version of iOS. To do this, I connected his iPad to my system, performed a backup in iTunes, then synchronized to update the operating system. This had the side effect of beaming some of his applications to my iTunes, which in order to continue, he authenticated against. His iPad updated great, and he was on his way.

Things on my machine seemed okay for a while, that was until some of the apps he purchased that I didn’t have wanted to update. Not having his password, I wasn’t able to update them, but even worse, Apple wasn’t announcing which apps needed updating with his account so I could simply delete them as I wanted to.

Instead, for over a year, I was greeted in iTunes by a numerical indicator saying I needed up update my apps, but when I went to do it, I was up to date. Every once in a while I’d recognize an app that I didn’t purchase (in a haystack of nearly 1,000 iPhone apps) and delete it. Only then did the number drop, but later rise again when some other app needed updating.

What I needed to do was list out all the apps by Purchaser.

One of things that really annoys me about Apple is that stuff that is trivial to implement, like putting an optional Purchaser column in iTunes, they don’t do. The feature is half heartedly there, though. Press Command-I for Info, and you can see the purchaser for an item.

Only now you have to click and inspect your whole app list. And with the number of applications I own, this doesn’t scale well at all.

Searching the web reveals that others are in a similar bind, and that Apple seems to really care less about the few handful of users with this problem. Like much on the Apple Support Site, it’s unhelpfully silent.

Frustrated, I decided to solve this problem once and for all.  Open Terminal and cut’n’paste the following in:

for f in ~/Music/iTunes/iTunes\ Media/Mobile\ Applications/*.ipa; \
 do (echo "$f" ; unzip -p "$f" "iTunesMetadata.plist" | \
 plutil -p - | egrep -i "\\"(itemName|artistName|AppleID)\\"" ) | \
 perl -e 'while (<>) { if (m!^/!) { chop; $fqn=$_; } if (m/"(.+)" => (".+")/) { $e{lc($1)}=$2; } } print "\\"${fqn}\\",$e{\\"itemname\\"},$e{\\"artistname\\"},$e{\\"appleid\\"}\n";'; \
done

Avoid Awesome Screenshot

I was getting some pretty bad web performance, with a little exploration I learned it was a Safari Extension that was doing things I did not like.

While doing some web page debugging, I noticed that a simple, static, html file was pulling in a ton of web resource. Most noticeably from a place called Superfish, and sucking in with it a good deal of JavaScript libraries. On. Every. Page. Load.

The culprit seems to be a Safari Extension called Awesome Screen Show 1.3.7 by Dilgo. However, the developer site isn’t coming up, and I’m not all that encouraged by what I see over at Superfish either.

Uninstall the extension, as here’s the overhead you’ll be saving:

Resetting MobileMe[ss]

Recently I noticed that my iPhone 4 started acting really, really badly. It wouldn’t unlock when a call was coming in, I couldn’t swipe between screens on the desktop, I couldn’t scroll within mail, clicks in the calendar weren’t working.

What was really strange is that it was Apple’s apps that weren’t working right, the regular store purchases were for the most part. And that’s when I noticed that things seemed to lock up hard when the phone was doing networking, even more so when going over AT&T’s instead of WiFi, though both did it.

What changed? MobileMe, specifically it’s calendars.

When I did the famous upgrade process on the MobileMe site, it never finished; I got the script is running too slow dialog. Later visits to the site threw up dialogs asking if I’d like to let Apple know there’s something wrong.

Eventually my calendar on the website came back, but there were dozens and dozens of repeating events that had happened years ago. I suspect this was a data log jam like no other, and worse, it wanted to push it all to my little phone. There appears to be no online web facility for bulk management. I tried on my laptop as well, but that too became borked as Apple synchronized its new calendar data to me.

I speculate, simply because the GUI would not respond to any input at this time, that perhaps Apple’s own applications may violate the rule about doing updates on the GUI thread. Either that, or that the message pump got so backed up, the GUI just couldn’t respond. How I wish there was an “abort” other than a violent shutdown.

While I’ve reset MobileMe in the past for other reasons, I ended up having to do a bit more.

By pulling the plug on the Internet and rebooting, I was able to come up in an isolated environment where I could shutdown all MobileMe syching and preferences. That let me peek at what was going on.

My thought: if I could recover the calendar on my laptop, I could push the valid subset back onto the MobileMe server.

With Calendar shutdown, my trip began by going to ~/Library/Calendars. Insider there are a bunch of GUID based folders. I deleted anything that had Cache in the name, as well as Calendar Sync Changes.

Then, I went through each folder. The Info.plist files had a Title entry followed by the name of the calendar. If it wasn’t a calendar I wanted, or was suspicious of, I deleted the GUID-looking folder completely.

If it did warrant keeping, I then went into the Events subfolder and looked to see how many .ics files there were. Casual browsing with Apple’s built-in previewer showed what the events were.

In my case, I found one folder related to MobileMe with over two thousand entries. Sure enough there were repeats of the same event, like a synchronization gone wrong, rather than a single event marked for repeation. So, I nuked that GUID-folder as well.

Sometimes there’d be no Events folder, but the .plist file looked like it was going to some external server. Sometimes there’s be an addition subfolder with a GUID-looking name, and maybe even an Inbox subfolder, these seemed to be more associated to GMail. I kept those.

When I restarted iCal, it knew something changed; it announced it was doing an upgrade for the folder formats, and then it presented me with some empty calendars that I knew I had gotten rid of. I deleted those from the application.

Once I was sure I could start and stop iCal without it hanging or requiring a Force Quit, I reset MobileMe.

Some fast tips here on how to do this.

  1. Hold down OPTION which clicking the Sync icon in your toolbar. You can reset the Sync services that way. Apple tells how.
  2. There’s a python script you’ll want to run at the Terminal, it’s inside that “Apple Tells How” link above.
  3. Finally, you want to deregister all your machines from MobileMe via the System Preferences, the machine you’re using last. When you do, it will offer to let you delete all the data off their servers.
  4. Then, when you re-register, you put yourself in Manual mode first, and use the Advanced… button to push all your data at their server first.
  5. Then, and only then, can you start putting things back to normal.

Andrew Robulack has a wonderful write-up about how to reset MobileMe. It’s an excellent guide.

All that said, apparently when I re-synced, there was some cruft left when I let iCal resync with MobileMe.

Then I read these horrible words from Apple: Resetting Syncing or SyncServices will not impact the new MobileMe Calendar and should not be used as a troubleshooting step for the new MobileMe Calendar.

Some support articles, after winding through their Support Express Lane wizard:

Installing CS5.5 Master Collection on OS X Lion

Installing Adobe CS5.5 Master Collection on OS X Lion and having the Installer hang? Here’s the solution. It isn’t pretty, but it works.

I had a terrible time installing Adobe CS5.5 on OS X Lion 10.7.2; it was the kind that makes you string together colorful phrases and aim them at Adobe. In theory one should be able to install on top of a prior installation. Then again, in theory communism works.

In short, the installer ran, accepted the serial number, authenticated my adobe id account, and offered me a number of packages to install, however when the grand moment came to install the applications, the progress bar never turned into a progress meter. The estimated completion time remained at “Calculating.” And the percentage complete remained at 0%. The only way out was Force Quit.

I should point out if you’re seeing authentication errors, and not a hang error, make sure you have the Java Runtime installed on Lion. Java doesn’t come with Lion by default (thanks for that, Apple). It’s a known issue to Adobe, and it’s discussed on the Apple forums.

Skip to solution…

More Symptoms — Is this familiar?


A failed install can manifest with some of the product installed, just not the application. For instance PDApp, AAM Updated Notified, LogTransport2, Setup, AAM Register Notifier, adobe_licutil, all will appear in the dash board.

The Adobe Setup Error.log will have nothing in it beyond the text “Performing Bootstrapping…”

::START TIMER:: [Total Timer]
CHECK: Single instance running
CHECK : Credentials
Load Deployment File
Create Required Folders
Assuming install mode
::START TIMER:: [Bootstrap]
Perform Bootstrapping …

If one opens Console and looks at the System Log Queries / All Messages, you might see this:

1/25/12 8:05:39.637 PM PDApp: CFURLCreateWithString was passed this invalid URL string: ‘/System/Library/Frameworks/’ (a file system
path instead of an URL string). The URL created will not work with most file URL functions. CFURLCreateWithFileSystemPath or CFURLC
reateWithFileSystemPathRelativeToBase should be used instead.

1/25/12 8:05:39.637 PM [0x0-0x25025].com.adobe.PDApp.setup: 2012-01-25 20:05:39.636 PDApp[389:60b] CFURLCreateWithString was passed
this invalid URL string: ‘/System/Library/Frameworks/’ (a file system path instead of an URL string). The URL created will not work
with most file URL functions. CFURLCreateWithFileSystemPath or CFURLCreateWithFileSystemPathRelativeToBase should be used instead.

Looking at the .log files in /Library/Logs/Adobe/Installed, you might see an Error DW020 or Error DW050. In reading In reading http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/902/cpsid_90243.html, I see that it says if there are no additional errors types (there weren’t)
 to see http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/844/cpsid_84451.html, which didn’t help either.

HOWEVER, at the end of the article it makes this observation: “These errors occur when the version of Flash Player that on your syst
em is newer than the version installed by the CS5.5 installer.”

Someone thread on http://forums.adobe.com/thread/856962 suggested the problem is Adobe AIR, which I noted was installed the m
oment I installed the Adobe Support Advisor to decipher Adobe log files, expose error messages, and make recommendations of support articles. Of course, it wasn’t.

Sometimes cleaning a bit appears to help, only to falsely get your hopes up. The installer may appear to run and then issue this:


Exit Code: 24
————————————– Summary ————————————–
– 0 fatal error(s), 65 error(s), 0 warning(s)
ERROR: DW001: Set payload cancelled status

ERROR: DW049: Payload {007A2A28-D6A8-4D91-9A2B-568FF8052215} has an action “install” but no resultState
… repeats dozens of times with different GUIDs …
ERROR: DW049: Payload {FECCB1BF-038D-41C2-861B-4560E7667005} has an action “install” but no resultState
ERROR: DW050: The following payload errors were found during install:
ERROR: DW050: – Adobe Player for Embedding 3.1: User cancelled installation
ERROR: DW001: User cancelled the operation
—————————————- ———————————————

For the record, I did not cancel the operation.

Checked http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/834/cpsid_83481.html, but Exit Code 24 wasn’t listed.

In looking at http://blogs.adobe.com/oobe/2010/04/cs5_desktop_product_subscripti.html, there is a comment by By Isaac O. Nwuju – 9:5
7 PM on February 1, 2011 that writes Error Code 24 in a response to Adobe thinking an Adobe product is already installed.

Other Mostly Useless References


I have read http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/905/cpsid_90508.html.

  • I am able to get to my ~/Library folder with no problems, that’s not the issue.
  • I do have the Java runtime installed:$ java -version
    java version “1.6.0_29”
    Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_29-b11-402-11M3527)
    Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 20.4-b02-402, mixed mode)
  • I am not seeing Crash Reporter delays
  • I am not having issue with opposite scroll behavior
  • I have no need to use Rosetta
  • My issue is one of installation, not product features, so autosave/restore/versioning/fullscreen/multi-touch are all non-issues.
  • As I can’t get any software installed, I don’t have a product specific issue.

I have read http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/faq.html#lion-os and have downloaded and installed the latest Flash Player.


I have read http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/828/cpsid_82827.html and it was not helpful.

  • I am able to make it all the way past the Install Options screen.
  • The progress bar never computes an estimated time or disk space, and installation remains at 0%.
  • The installer does not report any conflicts, the cleaner tool does not report any other Adobe products, and the Support Advisor tool does not report any problems with the environment.
  • The hard disk has over 150GB of free space.
  • The OS meets the minimum requirements.
  • The Install _did_ initialize.
  • No other installer is running.
  • The file system is not case-sensitive, but is case-preserving.
  • I do have administrative rights.

I have read http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/844/cpsid_84451.html which was partially helpful…

Looking at PDApp.log, I see this error message:

Mon Jan 23 18:25:33 2012[WARN] LWANative – Error in mdbOpenSessionNoCreate 8

And also this later on:

Mon Jan 23 18:25:34 2012[INFO] LWANative – pwa_openSession Session key : 24A46193-DEC1-47E4-AE35-41B39D994CF7
Mon Jan 23 18:25:34 2012[ERROR] LWANative – OOBElib returned error: 34
1/23/2012 18:25:34.889 [INFO] DWA.Utils PWA closesession returned <result><session^gt;24A46193-DEC1-47E4-AE35-41B39D99 4CF7</session></r
esult>

Trial mode, as suggested by Adobe Tech Support, results in this:

1/23/2012 18:25:34.898 [INFO] DWA.StartWorkflow Appmanager size is 98285568 bytes after conversion
Mon Jan 23 18:25:34 2012[INFO] LWANative – pwa_openSession Session key : 655B1D34-154C-43DE-A070-52C639724FAE
Mon Jan 23 18:25:34 2012[ERROR] LWANative – OOBElib returned error: 47
1/23/2012 18:25:34.922 [WARN] DWA.Fetchserialnumber Fetch serial numbers returned nothing
1/23/2012 18:25:34.927 [INFO] DWA.Utils PWA closesession returned <result><session^gt;655B1D34-154C-43DE-A070-52C63972 4FAE></session></result>
Mon Jan 23 18:25:34 2012[ERROR] DWANative – Error in dwa_getInstalledPathOfPayload, pdbSession is NULL.

I can not find those error messages in the Installation launch log error table provided by Adobe at http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/834/cpsid_83481.html.

Based on any error from oobelib it appears the issue is the same – the serial number is not getting validated. This happens regardle
ss if I enter one or use trial mode. This may be because of the prior error that wasn’t able to create a session, which most likely
holds said serial number. That said, the installer does put a green check mark by the serial number when I type it in [correctly].

The article http://kb2.adobe.com/cps/828/cpsid_82828.html is useless, as I’m using the serial number off the box and the installer says it’s correct, taking me to the next screen.

The other error message appears in http://forums.adobe.com/message/4139645 — which suggests repairing disk permissions. I have, though no permission problems were found.

To summarize, I feel I’ve exhausted the online knowledge base looking for a solution.

Adobe Support


I ended up calling Adobe Support at 1-800-833-6687 and learned a few things.

They will try to spend no more than 10 minutes with you on the phone, opting to give you a time intensive task and call you back to check on things.

The initial call was frustrating and almost discouraged me from talking to them again. It boiled down to walking me through the novice steps, and then getting me to download the .dmg off their website in an attempt to blame the media.

When that didn’t work, coupled with sending them some log files and the level of detail above, I got someone who was willing to drag a supervisor into the call. I was told that because I had documented in my case file the details so well, that they were to be extra careful as there was a techie on the line. (This made me wonder if they watch out for “secret shoppers” who test technical support.)

When things really got bad, things escalated to level two support was conferenced in, which is apparently the last line of defense — but at that point I had developed the solution I’m sharing below.

Here’s how I solved it.

First, and I can not stress this enough, back up your machine. And by that, I don’t mean Time Machine only, but a bit-for-bit copy on an external drive using Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper!. Or, clone the drive with Drive Genius. I strongly recommend running Disk Utility after booting an OS X Lion disc and doing a Repair Disk and a Repair Disk Permission before you start. No sense in backing up a corrupted volume.

Second, validate that your backup worked by booting from it using the Option key. Because if your bork things up, you’re going to need to restore from it, and better to learn about that now, not later. If you’re gonna skip this step, at least go read the humorous Tao of Backup before proceeding.

Finally, what I’m about to share worked for me on my installation; your result may vary, and I’m not responsible if it doesn’t work, you mess it up, nor will I be offering support. Hopefully, with the timid gone the geeks remain.

If you’ve got Adobe already installed


Make a copy of your plug0in directory. You find it by opening /Applications, find an app like Adobe Photoshop, and inside the folder that contains it, you’ll see something called Plug-ins. Copy this to somewhere safe.

If you can use Help / Deactivate… so that you don’t burn up a silver bullet and have to call Adobe Support, whose number is 1-800-833-6687, by the way.

You should be able to uninstall the Creative Suite by going to “/Applications/Utilities/Adobe Installers”, and finding an uninstaller.

Uninstalling with the big guns


You’ll want to obtain a copy of the Adobe Create Suite Cleaner Tool. Run it, and clear out CS3, CS4, and CS5-CS5.5.

Going nuclear on Adobe


Create a file called wipeAdobe.sh, put the following in it, and give it execute permissions with chmod u+x wipeAdobe.sh.


open /Applications/Utilities/Adobe\ AIR\ Uninstaller.app

sudo "/Volumes/Adobe Creative Suite Cleaner Tool/Adobe Creative Suite Cleaner Tool.app/Contents/MacOS/Adobe Creative Suite Cleaner Tool" --removeAll=CS3
sudo "/Volumes/Adobe Creative Suite Cleaner Tool/Adobe Creative Suite Cleaner Tool.app/Contents/MacOS/Adobe Creative Suite Cleaner Tool" --removeAll=CS4
sudo "/Volumes/Adobe Creative Suite Cleaner Tool/Adobe Creative Suite Cleaner Tool.app/Contents/MacOS/Adobe Creative Suite Cleaner Tool" --removeAll=CS5-CS5.5 --removeFP=1

cat ~/Adobe*.log

rm -rf ~/Adobe*.log

rm -rf ~/Library/Application\ Support/Adobe
sudo rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/Adobe
sudo rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/AdobeSupportAdvisor.*
sudo rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.adobe.air*
sudo rm -rf ~/Library/Caches/com.Adobe.Installers*
rm -rf ~/Library/Preferences/AdobeSupportAdvisor*
rm -rf ~/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash\ Player
rm -rf ~/Library/Preferences/com.adobe*
sudo rm -rf ~/Library/Saved\ Application\ State/AdobeSupportAdvisor*
sudo rm -rf ~/Library/Saved\ Application\ State/com.adobe.*
sudo rm -rf ~/Library/Saved\ Application\ State/com.Adobe.*
rm -rf ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.adobe*
sudo rm -rf ~/Applications/Adobe*
sudo rm -rf /Users/wls/Library/Application\ Support/CrashReporter/Adobe*
sudo rm -rf /private/var/db/receipts/com.adobe.*
sudo rm -rf /Applications/Adobe*
sudo rm -rf /Applications/Utilities/Adobe*
sudo rm -rf /Library/LaunchAgents/com.adobe*
sudo rm -rf /Library/Application Support/Adobe
sudo rm -rf /Library/Application Support/regid.1986-12.com.adobe
sudo rm -rf /Library/Frameworks/Adobe AIR.framework
sudo rm -rf /Library/Logs/Adobe
sudo rm -rf /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/Adobe*
sudo rm -rf /private/var/root/Library/Saved\ Application\ State/com.Adobe.Installers.AdobeCreativeSuiteCleanerTool.savedState
sudo rm -rf /private/var/root/Library/Caches/com.Adobe*

echo "Searching...."
sudo find /Library ~/Libary /private -print | grep -i adobe

rm -rf /tmp/asu*

ls /tmp

echo "Please reboot and consider reinstalling a fresh copy of Adobe Flash and Adobe AIR"

Now run it from Terminal: $ ./wipeAdobe.sh

The prep before the install


Seriously, reboot after doing the above nuclear clean.

Then, download the latest copy of Adobe Flash and install it.

Download the latest copy of Adobe AIR and install it.

And, just in case you need to analyze the log files, snag a copy of the Adobe Support Advisor, which will help you analyze the logs that appear at ~/Library/Logs/Adobe and /Library/Logs/Adobe.

Boot in Safe Mode


Finally, reboot the system, holding down Shift to boot into Safe Mode.

Login with an account that has Administrator rights. Note you do not need to make a new account, though it’s a last resort.

Because safe mode is not loading kernel extensions and clearing caches, you’ll going to find the system running rather slow. This is normal. Lauchpad is going to look abysmal.

Install the software

Now using your Disks, or a downloaded copy of the Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Master Collection, install the software.

Enter the serial number, provide your Adobe ID, select your products, and press Next.

After everything installed, open an application like Photoshop, go to Help / Updates…

Quit the application.

Restoring the Plug-ins


Open up the application Plug-in directory as well as your saved Plug-in Copy. Copy over anything that’s not in the application’s Plug-in, making sure they end up in the same folders. Check them all. Do not over write any files or directories.

Restart the software and validate the plug-ins work. If they do, restart and log back in.

You’re done. Had you used Pixelmator or The Gimp, you’d have been photo editing rather than following this blog.

Hidden Preference File

Check your ~/Libarary/Preferences directory, do you have this hidden file?

I’m not keen on applications that leave cruft or secret files on my system when there’s no need to do so.

I ran into a file on my laptop called ~/Library/Preferences/.bridge01.dat as well as .bridge3_01.dat — why a preference file is hidden, I don’t know.

Suspecting the file might be part of Adobe Bridge (it wasn’t), I copied it to the desktop, and looked at the file with less from the command console. It was clearly a binary preference file.

I renamed the file to bridge01.plist and started to open it with Xcode, although seeing BBEdit could open it, thought I’d give that a shot and was nightly impressed it detected the file type and presented it as a regular XML file.

Inside was slightly cryptic, but I recognized a sequence of text starting with ESC- and it looked like a serial number. Using Spotlight I was able to find another file that had a matching string, my purchase notes for Flux 3, by The Escapers.

Again, I’m not thrilled about hidden .dat files that ought to be public .plist files in my user’s preferences directory. But at least it was a mystery solved.

CoffeeScript Bundle for TextMate (FIX for Command Not Found)

Installed HomeBrew to get Node.js, used the node package manager to get CoffeeScript, added a TextMate Bundle for CoffeeScript and got a “coffee: command not found” when doing a Command-B. WTF? Here’s how I fixed it.

I installed CoffeeScript on OS X using HomeBrew.

Got this error while using the CoffeeScript bundle for TextMate with the Command-B to Compile and Display JS.

/tmp/temp_textmate.CZvit9: line 12: coffee: command not found

In a new document, typing the word coffee and pressing Control-R to run it, didn’t work.

However, running coffee from the command line worked.
$ coffee -v
CoffeeScript version 1.1.2

Solution: Add /usr/local/bin to the TextMate path.

Files Gone on Drobo FS with OS X Lion? Get ’em back!

Using DroboFS and OSX Lion only to discover that your Drobo shares have no content!? Yikes! But fret not, you merely have a small corruption problem brought on by the firmware, and in moments you can force a rebuild of that database and all your files will be back safe, happy, and sound with no data loss. Here’s how.

I recently updated my DroboFS to firmware 1.2.0 and dashboard 2.0.3 when I switched to Lion, and while my volume mounted there was no data in it although the Drobo lights showed there was capacity, as did the Drobo Dashboard, and the health reports indicated everything was just fine.

I spoke with Drobo Tech Support that indicated this was a known problem they are actively addressing as high priority; the problem is with Lion and their firmware, and we can expect an updated firmware release.

What’s curious about this is that if one uses the Finder and mounts the Drobo drive with SMB, using smb://Drobo-FS/, the files are there. However afp://Drobo-FS.local/ and cifs://Drobo-FS.local/ mount but reveal nothing.

A detailed description of the problem is at the article entitled: “Missing” Data (AFP) and/or CNID DB Errors. This article then leads to a second one, but is only for the brave.

Using Dropbear (SSH) with Drobo FS to regenerate the AppleDB (CNID DB) has detailed steps for regenerating the apple database.

Walt’s More Verbose Directions

  1. Using the Drobo Dashboard login to your Drobo as Administrator.
  2. Unmount all shares.
  3. Under All Devices / Settings / Admin you’ll want to check the Enable DroboApps setting, which will mount a volume entitled DroboApps on your system.
  4. Download a copy of DropBear from the Drobo Apps page.
  5. Unzip this .zip file, resulting in instructions and a compressed dropbear.tgz file . Move the dropbear.tgz file to the root of the DroboApps directory.
  6. Restart the DroboFS by going to Capacity and Tools in the Dashboard, and selecting the Tools drop down on the right side, and selecting Restart. Or, just power off the unit physically for 20 seconds and then turn it back on.
  7. When Drobo restarts, go to the Dashboard and select All Devices / Settings… / Network. Note the IP address given to the device somewhere.
  8. From OS X’s Terminal enter the command ssh root@theIPaddressAbove
  9. The default password is root, unless you’ve used Dropbear before and followed the instructions within it.
  10. Enter the command ls /mnt/DroboFS/Shares to view a list of shares on the drive.
  11. Tech Support promises the following will not cause any data loss, but anytime you’re doing reconstruction you should always have a backup (if you don’t, question your backup policy), and double check before hitting return. For each share of yours listed above, enter the command: rm -r /mnt/DroboFS/Shares/yourShareNameHere/.AppleDB and press return. Note the period indicating it’s a hidden directory.
  12. Exit Terminal by entering exit.
  13. Using the Drobo Dashboard unmount all your shares, which should be just the DroboApps share at this point; this is under the All Devices / Shares and you just uncheck all the boxes.
  14. Restart the Drobo again (see above if you’ve already forgot how).
  15. And just as important restart any Macs connected to the Drobo.
  16. When the Drobo comes up, start the Dashboard, and test the mounts. They should be working.

Firefox got real slow

One day Firefox just came to a crawl when running web pages with JavaScript. Then I found out what was causing it and how to fix it. Here’s how.

I was using the Firefox 3.6.16 web browser and it got really slow.  Unbearably so.

When I went to look at the console, it was filled with all kinds detailed of JavaScript warnings, the kind one might expect out of JSLint.  It was spending so much time checking the JavaScript code that it was barely spending time executing it.

The “culprit” was the Web Developer add-on.

Normally, the Disable / Disable JavaScript / Strict Warnings menu item is checked.  Unchecking it gives some fantastic diagnostic messages when writing code.  Forget to re-check it and regular web usage may come to a crawl.

Aside from the console being a clue, you may also see a caution sign or a red circle with a white ‘x’ in it on the Web Developer toolbar.

For normal speeds when regularly browsing, just disable strict checking.

Thick Menu Separators in ExtJS

Do your menu separators on Ext web applications suddenly appear as thick bars instead of thin lines? Here’s how to fix it.

I ran across a problem in Firefox 3.6.16 where my JavaScript applications produced with ExtJS were producing menu separators that were extra thick.

Even Ext demo pages did this: Menu Separator

Here’s how I solved it.

The problem can be addressed with the Web Developer add on.

Normally its Disable / Disable Minimum Font Size is checked. If it gets unchecked, Ext behaves very badly.

Check it and then reload the page; menu separators will be back to normal.