Frequently, say, one out of 10 times, when I try and log back into my Mac from the screensaver, or when I wake it from sleeping, I will get a spinning beachball and be unable to type my password. Other times I will be able to log in, but I am prompted to enter my password multiple times for various applications, and invariably one of them (usually gconsync) will get stuck after I enter my password with a spinning beach ball. I can still use most applications, but application that needs keychain authorization locks up.

I happen to be using a very handy tool called SSHKeychain, which turned out to be the culprit.

If you are using SSHKeychain, this post will walk you through fixing the unstable-wake-from-screensaver, and also solves the problem of having to type your keychain password 3-5 times when I returned to my computer.

The Solution

1. On your Mac’s menubar, near the clock, look for SSHKeychain, it looks like a keyring with three keys.
2. If you have that, click the keyring, and choose “Preferences…”
3. On the security tab, make sure “Use custom security settings” is checked.
4. Set all the drop downs to “No action”
5. Close the window and you are all set.

Note

This is a bit more insecure, since your keychain will be unlocked, but its protected by the password for your screensaver (you do have a password on your screensaver, right?). There may be a security hole if people gain shell access to your computer, I’m not sure if the keychain memory is encrypted, but overall I think your keychain information is still pretty safe.

After upgrading to Snow Leopard on my Mac, I noticed this was happening with email in my Dreamhost IMAP account.

I’ve been running with the ‘IDLE’ option turned off for a day, and it seems to be working correctly again.

This would effectively let me see my business meetings on my Android-based cell phone.

I had tried various tricks and tools before, but nothing ever quite worked. But today I tried BusySync, and it seems to work great.

All you need to do is setup iCal to access your Exchange server, then in BusySync’s Google tab, check the off the calendar you want to upload in the ‘Publish to Google’ list.

There are two problems with this solution however:

1. Changes made to the calendar on Google aren’t synced back to iCal, and worse, they seem to be lost from Google.
2. The calendar name shown in Google is pretty awkward, its currently ‘Calendar[<user@exchangeserver>]’.

2009-07-07 13:26:04.668 MozyBackup[7933:3603] WRN (updater) Error adding changes to scan cache: database is locked 2009-07-07 13:27:04.736 MozyBackup[7933:3603] WRN (updater) Error adding changes to scan cache: database is locked 2009-07-07 13:28:06.563 MozyBackup[7933:3603] WRN (updater) Error adding changes to scan cache: database is locked 2009-07-07 13:29:06.670 MozyBackup[7933:3603] WRN (updater) Error adding changes to scan cache: database is locked 2009-07-07 13:30:07.005 MozyBackup[7933:3603] WRN (updater) Error adding changes to scan cache: database is locked

I found this blog post, but I seem to have a slightly different issue, even though the errors listed are the same. I’m not using any backup sets at all, instead, I’m only having Mozy backup my home-directory (with specific exclusions setup, to avoid backing up a few virtual machines).

Granted, I have 300,000 files totaling over 100 gb to keep backed up, but I don’t modify many files on any given day. If this is too much data for Mozy to handle, the client should let the user know!

Anyway, luckily there is a workaround, so if you are a T-Mobile G1 (Android) early adopter like me, you don’t have to update your GMail Contact list from scratch.

You can read how to do it on Lifehacker, but the instructions are pretty simple if you are familiar with Mac property files:

1. If you don’t have the Property List Editor (it comes with XCode, which is free, but a very large download) installed, download the shareware PlistEdit Pro and install.
2. Open up ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.iPod.plist and save a backup copy of it. Then, expand the tree to reveal “Family ID.” Change that value to 10001. My 5th-gen IPod had the value 6 originally.
3. Save your changes. Launch Address Book and open the Preference pane. The Google contact sync option will be staring right at you.

After some searching, I’ve found this solution, which seems to be working:

1. First, got to the Terminal menu, and choose Preferences… Under the Settings section, choose the Advanced tab. Make sure Delete sends Ctrl-H is checked.
2. Then, in the same window, go to the Keyboard tab (right next to Advanced). Find the line for forward delete, and set it to this value:
   \033[3~
3. Lastly, you need to run the following line at the terminal. The trick with the line below though is that you need to type the ^H by pressing Control-V and then Control-H. You can not just cut and paste the line below, you need to type it:
   echo -e "stty erase ˆH" >> ~/.bash_profile

For further reading on this topic check out these two links:

• Linux Backspace/Delete mini-HOWTO
• Consistent BackSpace and Delete Configuration

This problem, and various solutions are documented all over the net, but I found and used this page most recently.

---> Building sqlite3 with target all Error: Target org.macports.build returned: shell command " cd "/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_databases_sqlite3/work/sqlite-3.6.2" && gnumake all " returned error 2 Command output: sort -n -b -k 3 opcodes.h | -f ./mkopcodec.awk >opcodes.c /bin/sh: -f: command not found gnumake: *** [opcodes.c] Error 127

It took a bit of searching, but it turns out the solution was pretty simple:

~$ sudo port clean sqlite3 ; sudo port install sqlite3 Password: ---> Cleaning sqlite3 ---> Fetching sqlite3 ---> Verifying checksum(s) for sqlite3 ---> Extracting sqlite3 ---> Configuring sqlite3 ---> Building sqlite3 with target all ---> Staging sqlite3 into destroot ---> Installing sqlite3 3.6.2_0 ---> Activating sqlite3 3.6.2_0 ---> Cleaning sqlite3

Once that was done, I was able to complete the subversion install without trouble.

Overall, MacPorts has been a huge asset, and worked so well that I haven’t really needed to learn much about it. If you need unix tools installed on your OS X Mac, I highly recommend it.

• Groups within groups are not synced to the phone.
• Only one iCal calendar is handled
• Todo entries are not synced to the phone. 

It look me a few days to realize the problem, but here are a few symptoms I noticed:

1. Images that were in the library BEFORE the move were not visible in iLife applications (iPhoto, the screen saver, etc). The projects appeared in the listings, but the images themselves were not visible. For example, the screen saver would always say “The selected folder contains no pictures. Please choose a new folder that contains pictures or add images to the folder.”
2. Managed RAW images would not display correctly. I would click on them and the image would appear with a ‘loading’ message, and then eventually I would see a solid red or maroon background with the text “Unsupported Image Format”.

Knowing that the Aperture Libary is just a special directory (called a bundle in Mac-speak), I started poking around inside, comparing a good project (one that I had imported on my new MacBook) to a bad project (one that has been around BEFORE the upgrade).

It turns out that there were directories within the Aperture project directories whose names must have gotten corrupted when I copied the project over from my old computer.

So I wrote a small program to repair the damage. If you have a similar problem, feel free to use this script to help recover your library.

Make sure you close Aperture and BACK UP your Aperture Library before you start!

Ok, now that you’ve backed up your library, download the fixApProject.sh script and save it to your home directory.

Open up Terminal.app (Application->Utilities) and cd INTO your Aperture Library.

If your library is in the default location, do it like this:
cd ~/Pictures/Aperture\ Library.aplibrary/

Now, assuming you’ve put fixApProjech.sh in your home directory, run the following commands:

chmod +x ~/fixApProject.sh

find . -name "*.approject" -type d -exec ~/fixApProject.sh \{\} \;

$ export TERM=linux

If this works, on a Mac you can set it in your .profile:

if [ "${TERM_PROGRAM}" == "iTerm.app" ]
then
export TERM=linux
fi

On Linux, you can do the same, but leave out the if and just do the export line.