from the desk of stinkpot

my time machine backup is stored on a linux file server which i connect to wirelessly.  lately, my time machine backups have been extremely slow; my recent attempt to run disk utility on the drive failed with the error: “Disk Utility cannot repair Time Machine.”
here’s a solution that i found on jthon’s place, which i’m [...]

when trying to install emacs using macports on my new snow leopard install, i got the following error:
foo://opt/local/sudo port install emacs
—>  Computing dependencies for emacs
—>  Fetching emacs
—>  Verifying checksum(s) for emacs
—>  Extracting emacs
—>  Applying patches to emacs
—>  Configuring emacs
—>  Building emacs
Error: Target org.macports.build returned: shell command ” cd “/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_editors_emacs/work/emacs-22.3″ && /usr/bin/make -j2 all ” returned [...]

let’s say you’ve gone and done something rash and created a DIY time capsule. how do you restore from the backup if your hard drive goes belly up?

get a working hard drive and install a fresh copy of os x
create a new user (try and give that user a username different from your [...]

to sync ical with google calendar and have both update each other:

go to ical -> preferences -> accounts
enter your gmail account as your username
under address, fill in the following: https://www.google.com/calendar/dav/CALENDAR_ID/user, where CALENDAR_ID is your full gmail address.
hit ok, and voila, sync’ed calendars!

i recently installed some massive hard drives in my server box.  given all that space, i thought it’d be perfect to have the mac’s in my house all backup via time machine to those drives.  here’s how i got things working.

enable sharing on the macs by opening the terminal and entering the command:

> defaults write [...]

i tried starting matlab and got the following error in my console:
1/13/09 9:39:16 PM [0x0-0x1d01d].com.mathworks.matlab[139] dyld: Library not loaded: /private/var/automount/mathworks/BLR/devel/bat/Amake/build/3gp/install/5172124/maci/hdf5/lib/libhdf5.0.dylib

turns out that the problem was trying to start matlab by clicking on the “matlab” executable.  instead, try clicking on the “startmatlab” alias.

my console was full of the following errors, despite having internet sharing disabled on my mac:
12/30/08 6:32:37 AM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.InternetSharing) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds
the solution: simply activate, then deactivate all of various forms of internet sharing in the sharing preference pane.  not really sure why it worked, but it did.

let’s say you want to print all of the pdf files in a directory quickly.  printing from the command line in these situations can be handy.  here’s how to do it:
 >> lpstat -a 
 will give you a list of all of the installed printer names.
>> lp -d “my_printer_name” ~/my_folder/*.pdf 
will send out all of those pdf files to [...]

while trying to commit an omnigraffle file to an SVN repository, i received the following error message: 
A         bootstraps.graffle
A         bootstraps.graffle/data.plist
‘vn: Invalid control character ‘0×0d’ in path ‘bootstraps.graffle/Icon
 
 the solution: 
$ svn propedit svn:ignore Icon 
 try again to add the OmniGraffle files and things should be fine! 

it’s a bit of a pain to print to a CUPS print server from OS X.  here’s how i got it working (much cribbed from macosxhints).

open the printer setup utility and create a printer.  give it any old address; let’s call it 192.168.1.1.
Open a webbrowser and go to http://127.0.0.1:631/. This is a front end to [...]