The Problem

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.

It turns out that ever since the IPhone came out, IPhone users have been able to sync their Mac Address Books with GMail. But that privilege isn’t extended to anyone else. Why every user can sync with Exchange and Yahoo!, but only IPhone users can sync to Google is beyond me.

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.

I’m constantly having trouble with getting the backspace and delete keys to work properly in OS X. Whenever it works right on the Mac, one or the other key is broken when I  SSH to a Linux or FreeBSD box.

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.

This morning I decided to upgrade my Mac to Subversion 1.5 using MacPorts. But during the install process, one of the dependencies, sqlite, failed with the following error:

---> 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.

When I upgraded from a PowerBook to a new MacBook Pro, I used Windows File Sharing (also known as Samba or SMB sharing) to transfer all of my files from one computer to the other via a network, and it looks like that corrupted my Aperture Library.

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 \{\} \;

I’ve had this problem sporadically with iTerm on my Mac, and I seem to remember this happening recently on my Linux machines as well. If you have this problem, try this:

$ 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.