For those who don’t like to read: the fix.
I upgraded to Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6) from Leopard (OS X 10.5) last week and everything seemed to go off without a hitch, until…
I have a bluetooth, wireless, keyboard that I use for work. At some point in the past week, not initially, my keyboard started acting up. At first I didn’t think anything of it because the lady’s computer is also paired with the same keyboard and when the problem first occurred it was because the keyboard was connected to her computer, also on Snow Leopard, rather than mine. I ended up removing the keyboard from her bluetooth setup and re-pairing (no pun intended) the keyboard to my computer. Everything worked fine and I went through my day.
The next day, I found that my keyboard would not pair up again. WTF!? So I go through the process again, thinking maybe Laura and I did a keyboard swap or something and that was the problem. Re-paired, everything’s cool. Whatever. If it happens again, I’ll deal with it.
Finally, today, day 3, I start up my computer and the keyboard won’t connect. Immediately I try to re-pair the keyboard and suddenly the computer tells me there must be some compatibility issue. Thanks Apple. I have an Apple keyboard I’m using with an Apple Macbook Pro and I have a f***ing compatibility issue. You’d think they would make sure that bluetooth continued to work between upgrading from Leopard to Snow Leopard. Oh well.
So I resort to Google. And basically what I find is that I have to reset my System Management Controller (SMC). Do I know what an SMC is? No. Do I care? Not really… okay, so I do a little. Apparently the SMC handles a lot of the lower level operations performed by the computer like “the power button”. Sweet Apple. Okay, so what to do. You have to reset the SMC. To do this follow the steps specified here. Be sure to read through the process and select the procedure that matches your computer. Different laptops, desktops, etc. will have a different method for resetting the SMC.
All in all, it’s disappointing that Apple overlooked this issue. Seems too often that companies can be aware of an issue be keep it quiet for the majority of users that don’t use (in this case) bluetooth, while those that due have to spend have their day in frustration.
Dear Apple,
Don’t pull Quit pulling a Microsoft.
Your Friend,
Mr. Customer
I just bought my first vinyl produced by Rhymesayers Entertainment of Minneapolis: US by Brother Ali.
Brother Ali, US
Upon opening the album I found a business card with a code to download the MP3 version of the album off of the Rhymesayers website. Awesome. I’m not sure if this if a regular practice of newer albums or not, but this is the way it should be. Pay for a hard copy and still get a digital version. The best of both worlds. Again, simply awesome. Thank you Rhymesayers and Brother Ali. Y’all Rock.
Today I finally upgraded to Snow Leopard from just plain ol’ Leopard. By doing this I found that my localhost configurations had gotten a little jacked up in the process. The first issue was that my /etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf file had been overwritten. Pain in the ass, but not too big of a deal to fix. The next issue though was that my MySQL database would not start.
Ashitaka: sudo /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM/MySQLCOM start
Password:
Could not find MySQL startup script!
With the help of this post on www.planet-geek.com I was able to get things up and running in no time.
The fix:
It appears the issue here is that Snow Leopard updates the path name to MySQL. I’m assuming to keep a 32-bit version from attempting to launch on the new 64-bit OS. To fix this, you’ll simply need to create a symbolic link to the new directory.
Ashitaka: cd /usr/local
Ashitaka: ls -ldt mysql*
drwxr-xr-x 17 root wheel 578 Sep 1 00:31 mysql-5.1.30-osx10.5-x86_64
Ashitaka: sudo ln -s mysql-5.1.37-osx10.5-x86_64/ mysql
Ashitaka: ls -ldt mysql*
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root wheel 28 Jan 12 17:07 mysql -> mysql-5.1.30-osx10.5-x86_64/
drwxr-xr-x 17 root wheel 578 Jan 12 13:05 mysql-5.1.30-osx10.5-x86_64
Keep in mind that you’ll need to double check the folder names. Mine was mysql-5.1.30-osx10.5-x86_64 while the author of the Planet Geek article had mysql-5.1.37-osx10.5-x86_64. This reflects the version of MySQL installed, so it’s quite possible this will vary.
Getting closer to the final product on my Long Hauler Trucker. I’d say I’m about two thirds of the way through the project. A good while after getting my headset pressed, I was able to get a moving version of the bike working using scrap parts from other bikes. Then recently I got a new rear derailleur and cassette for the rear wheel, along with a nice set of Shimano bar end shifters, a Ritchey handlebar, Dimension Stem, and Thompson seatpost. More recently I was able to get a rear rack, fenders (Thanks Dad), and a new Brooks saddle. Below is the progress thus far. It’s mostly done, but I still want to revamp the front half of my drivetrain; new cranks, bottom bracket and derailleur. I’m also planning on building a new set of wheels myself, which will be a bit of an interesting venture — my first wheel building experience. Finally I’ll need to get my front rack, a few more panniers and water bottle cages. Feels so close! I’m also starting to look more at frames to start building up Laura’s future touring ride. Very exciting.
Getting ready for the Long Haul
Shimano XTR "Shadow" Rear Derailleur
Ortlieb Backroller Classic Pannier, Planet Bike Hardcore Fenders
Tektro CR720 Brakes, Crank Brothers SL Headset, Planet Bike Hardcore Fenders
Brooks B17 Standard Saddle, Thomson Seatpost
Ritchey Handlebars, Dimension Adjustable Stem, Shimano Dura-Ace Bar End Shifter
I’ve had a Wacom Bamboo Pen Tablet for the past year or so and love it. It’s hard to imagine going through my workday using a mouse now. However, I’ve found that from time to time the driver for my Wacom will fail when I login to my user account on OS X 10.5. Usually OS X asks if I’d like to relaunch the driver and everything is dandy, so I haven’t had to really do much anything about it; that is until today.
Today, I booted up my computer and my tablet driver failed and “relaunching” the driver didn’t help at all. I figured Apple must have made an update that conflicted with the Wacom driver, leaving me to reinstall the latest driver, which I downloaded from Wacom here. Unfortunately I found reinstalling the driver did no good. I restarted. Uninstalled the driver. Reinstalled the driver. Restarted. Nothing. Same problem over and over; once I login the driver fails and when I go to my preferences pane it tells me that it is unable to find my USB tablet. Unplug USB. Reboot. Plug in USB. Nothing.
Eventually I was able to discover that while the new driver did not seem to work for my user account, it worked fine on my login screen and for my “admin” account. So at least I knew the problem was specific to my user configuration. Now, armed with this information and Google I was really able to get to the root of the problem with the help of this post by someone going by the handle rausch over a year ago.
Quick Answer
When uninstalling (which should be done before reinstalling) the pen tablet driver, the Wacom uninstall script fails to remove a few key files located in the ~/Library/Preferences/ directory:
com.wacom.pentablet.p.TMP
com.wacom.pentablet.prefs
com.wacom.tabletpreferences
com.wacom.wacomtablet.prefs
To fix the driver from failing, uninstall the driver — do this by holding down open-apple and clicking on the icon in the preferences pane. Then delete any of the above files that still exist in your ~/Library/Preferences directory — where “~” is your user directory (OS X recognizes this syntax). In my case I only need to delete two of the above files as they were the only two of the four still present in my ~/Library/Preferences directory. Reinstall the driver and with any luck, your tablet will function properly again. Keep in mind, this will reset your tablet preferences back to the default settings.
Thank you rausch, whoever you are. And I hope that by republishing these instructions, some else will be able find a solution to their problem fast that I did.
Today I was messing around with the built in Apache server on my Mac. What I was doing seemed simple enough; start my apache server with Web Sharing turned off in my system preferences. So I turned off Web Sharing and went for my Terminal, entering:
apachectl graceful
Expecting Apache to restart/start I was surprised to get this error:
launchctl: CFURLWriteDataAndPropertiesToResource( /System/Library/LaunchDaemons/org.apache.httpd.plist) failed: -10
After searching around online for a bit I realized that my problem was I failed to enter the command as root (or I forgot to put sudo in front of my command.
With a second attempt I entered:
sudo apachectl graceful
And vuala, apache is on. No errors. However, now when I enter:
sudo apachectl status
I get this error:
/usr/sbin/apachectl: line 106: lynx: command not found
Not sure what that’s about. If anyone’s got any ideas, I’d appreciate it.