Auxiliary Memory

KeeFox is a plugin for Firefox that communicates with the KeePass2 password manager. I like KeePass2 because I can maintain a local secure password database without involving a server. It works great under Windows, and runs with Mono on Linux. However, KeeFox was complaining that the KeePassRPC.plgx plugin (in ~/.keepass/plugins) was incompatible. To fix it, I had to install the mono-complete package.

While coding recently in C++ on a project that uses CMake, I needed to build my code with Debug settings in Eclipse.  It’s Eclipse, so there are probably many ways to do it.  I followed this approach.

I ran into one small problem.  I was modifying a project that I had already been working with.  So when I tried running the cmake commands to generate the Release and Debug makefiles

mkdir Release Debug
cmake -E chdir Debug/ cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" ../ -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE:STRING=Debug
cmake -E chdir Release/ cmake -G "Unix Makefiles" ../ -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE:STRING=Release

nothing was written to the Release or Debug folder.  To fix this, I had to first delete the CMakeCache.txt file from my project folder.

rm CMakeCache.txt

This error occurs on Windows (Win7 64-bit in my case) after an iTunes update.  I have had to fix this two or three times now.  I do the install, but on the next reboot I get a popup titled AppleSyncNotifier.exe – Entry Point Not Found.  The message in the popup is:

The procedure entry point sqlite3_clear_bindings
could not be located in the dynamic link
library SQLite3.dll.

To fix it, copy SQLite3.dll from

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Apple\Apple Application Support

to

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Apple\Mobile Device Support

It looks like other people might get slightly different errors, so you may need to copy other DLLs also.

My guess as to what is happening here is that putting a copy of the DLLs with the Apple software causes the Apple software to use that copy.  Otherwise it gets whichever  version of the DLL comes up first in the system search path.  Since many tools use some of these support libraries, it’s a bit of a crap shoot.

The last time I had to fix this problem, The How-To Geeg blog article here helped me remember what to do.

We have some Toshiba USB drives whose power-saving feature puts them to sleep at inconvenient times. The spinning down and spinning up can make some long-running jobs take a lot longer. Fortunately, Toshiba has a utility that will turn off the sleep function. You can download it here.

I’ve spent so much time reciting this sequence to myself while putting connectors onto network cables that I will probably never forget it.

But just in case: the order of the color-coded conductors (from left to right when inserted up into the RJ45 connector with the contacts facing you) is:

• Orange Stripe
• Orange
• Green Stripe
• Blue
• Blue Stripe
• Green
• Brown Stripe
• Brown

…and crimp!

 Tips:  Remember to push the wires all the way up into the connector so the wires go under the contacts.  Then, push the cable’s outer insulation up into the connector, too, so that the connector’s plastic wedge will grab and hold the insulation when crimped.

Sadly, this describes me: CSH Programming Considered Harmful

I’ll try to be better.

I found the article referenced above while trying to solve something that was turning out convoluted in my csh script (redirect just stderr to /dev/null). It was trivial in sh.

It is a definite trade-off, though, when it’s something you don’t use daily, where maintainability is a concern, and where you work with people who pull their hair out even at the csh syntax.

Here’s what to do if your Folder Pane disappears. The Folder Pane is the left one that shows the tree of mail folders: Inbox, Sent, Drafts, etc. If there is no space there (the other panes extend to the left side of the window) it is probably just not displayed, and you can drag its resize bar from the left, or display it with the View menu.

But if the Folder Pane just comes up as a blank space, it could be due to a previous crash of Thunderbird, or corruption of some auxiliary files that need to be rebuilt. Here’s how to fix it:

• Exit Thunderbird
• Find your profile folder.  In Windows, you can navigate directly to your profile folder at the following path:
     C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\<profile>\
• In Linux, look for it here:
     ~/.thunderbird/<profile>/
• or here:
     ~/.mozilla_thunderbird/<profile>/
• The AppData folder might be hidden: to show hidden folders, open a Windows Explorer window and choose
  “Organize → Folder and Search Options → Folder Options → View (tab) → Show hidden files and folders”
• You can (should) make a backup copy of your profile folder now, in case something goes wrong
• In the profile folder, rename the session.json and foldertree.json
  files (to session.json.bad and foldertree.json.bad)
• Restart Thunderbird

If something goes wrong, you can restore your old session.json and foldertree.json files, then go searching for a different solution.

I finally went looking for one of my pet peeves with the Thunderbird email tool, and the Internet did not disappoint.

I like seeing my message list with the newest items at the top of the list, yet I normally read them oldest to newest.  When I finish reading a message and delete it, Thunderbird’s default behavior is to select and display the message below the previous selection in the list.  My newest-at-the-top sort order causes the next older message to be displayed, which is probably the one I looked at just prior to the one I deleted.  I want it to select the next newer message.

Turns out there is an option for this in Thunderbird’s config options.

Go to Tools->Options…, Advanced tab, Config Editor….
Change the option mail.delete_matches_sort_order to true.

Now if only someone would add the Reply/Reply All toggle that I’ve been pining for….

Recently I needed a Python fix, Monty Python that is. I tried to watch the Spanish Inquisition on Netflix. Firefox (3.6) kept saying the Silverlight plug-in has crashed. Reinstalling Silverlight did not help. Luckily, someone else had already solved this one.  Silverlight would not run because the Windows Tablet PC Input Service was disabled.  I figured I did not have a tablet PC and was not using pen input.  Silly me.

I re-enabled the service and started it.  Silverlight ran fine after that.

I just learned this one: to get the text of cross references in your MS Word document to update (say you inserted another table and it changed the numbering of your Table captions), do a Print Preview… then close the preview window. Sigh. And that after a lot of time spent looking for an Update Cross References button. Also, searching in the Word help for “update cross references” turned up nothing.

This trick was part of number 6 of Ten things every Microsoft Word user should know.  Users shouldn’t have to know this.

Follow-up:  Others report that you can Ctrl-A to select the whole document, then press F9 to update the references.