mac

Norwegian BankID (used by most banks in Norway) uses a java applet for login.

The current combination of java, mac osx 10.8.x, applets and BankID is a mess.

Things to note:

• Java 1.6 from Apple removed support for web applets - so you'll need Oracle java 7
• Java 7 from Oracle will work - but - not in Chrome (Chrome doesn't support 64 bit java - Oracle don't provide 32 bit)
• Most BankID pages test to see if java is enabled - and after installing java - it still gives the java not installed or enabled error. The issue seems to be that you have to activate the plugin by loading an applet that doesn't test for support - for example the one on http://www.java.com/en/download/testjava.jsp prior to trying to log in to the bank
• BankID state that there is an issue in Firefox where the OK button does not get enabled - you can get around this by holding the CMD key in for a few seconds until it enables. This is claimed to be due to a bug between Firefox and java. Note that in my testing this is exactly the same issue in Safari and the same workaround works.

So - install Oracle java, go visit a test page - log in with a workaround to get OK buttons to enable and you might just be allowed to login to your bank.

The BankID applet needs to die.

Sources:

• http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1572?viewlocale=en_US
• https://www.bankid.no/Presse-og-nyheter/Nyhetsarkiv/2012/Mac-og-Java/
• https://www.bankid.no/Presse-og-nyheter/Nyhetsarkiv/2013/Apples-Safari-h...
• https://www.bankid.no/Presse-og-nyheter/Nyhetsarkiv/2013/Mac-brukere-kan...

This turned up as an issue when developing webapps.

If you set a fixed hostname (local.foo.bar for example) via an /etc/hosts alias to 127.0.0.1 (perhaps you need to have access to .foo.bar cookies or similar) then you can browse localhost via the local.foo.bar name.

However - when starting tomcat under java this gave an error on hostname/url. I've had the issue running tomcat 6 under java 7 - have had reports of tomcat 7 under java 6 also being an issue.

It turns out that Mac OSX takes the hostname given by DHCP - and this can change often.

A list of things I need to remember when updating to Mountain Lion.

I always forget where this file is located - so just as a reminder ;)

To find the current JAVA_HOME for the current user (set by java preferences) run:

/usr/libexec/java_home

Details from http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#qa/qa1170/_index.html

Getting rvm rubies to compile with the rvm packages isn't turning out that easy.

First off - you need to get XCode for Lion installed from the App Store (even if you upgraded from Snow Leopard - Lion needs a newer version). In addition - the App Store downloads an XCode installer - you also have to run it to get it installed ;)

So I grabbed the latest rvm:

bash < <(curl -s https://rvm.beginrescueend.com/install/rvm)

This puts up the following message:

Updating mac homebrew from 0.7.1 to 0.8 removed the rsync formula that I use to update mac rsync from the supplied 2.x version to 3.x.

This is due to the fact that homebrew doesn't want duplicates of existing software.

However - these are still available from the homebrew-dupes repository.

iPhoto '11 from iLife '11 has a new set of e-mail templates for sending photos directly from the application.

However - each time it prompts for your e-mail password and doesn't seem to have a "remember" option.

To fix - open Keychain Access (/Applications/Utilities).

Select login (your login keychain) from the top left Keychains list and Passwords from the lower left (Category) list.

Adding hosts to /etc/hosts on Leopard/Snow Leopard is a little simpler than earlier versions (see /etc/hosts on Mac OS X)

• Edit /private/etc/hosts¹
• Run dscacheutil -flushcache

There are three steps to this:

1. Tunnel configuration
2. Firewall configuration
3. Client configuration

Tunnel configuration

Sign up for an account at http://tunnelbroker.net

Once signed up - choose "Create Regular Tunnel"

Enter the IPv4 address of the external interface of your firewall. Note - this must be able to receive and respond to ping from arc.he.net - the webpage will give you an IP address to allow ping for if it can't ping your firewall.

Steve Jobs Comments on Apple's Java Discontinuation on macrumors.com

A follow up on Java deprecated on Mac OS X?

From a response in this thread we can read:

Apps that use deprecated or optionally installed technologies (e.g., Java, [PowerPC code requiring] Rosetta) will be rejected.

There's an interesting paragraph in the latest Mac OS X Java update relasenotes New and Noteworthy - a paragraph called "Java Deprecation".¹

As of the release of Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 3, the version of Java that is ported by Apple, and that ships with Mac OS X, is deprecated.

For my own sites I use SSL certificates signed by my own CA.

The CA certificate needs to be imported to the machines where I use the websites and for Mac OSX it needs to go into the system keychain - not the users keychain.

Importing via Keychain Access sometimes fails with cryptic error codes.

Here's how to do it via the command line:

sudo security import  -k /Library/Keychains/System.keychain

Thursday the 11th February - the router from my ISP (NextGenTel) suddenly entered a constant restart loop. Start, find DSL, find settings, connect, 2 sec or so uptime, reboot and off we go again.

We've been investigating and now have found what starts the cycle but have no idea how or why - it just seems really odd ;)

The Pro series of NAS from ReadyNAS (Netgear) support iSCSI out of the box. But the NV+ 4disk unit does not. However - a third party plugin is available. Let's look at what is needed to get iSCSI connections between the ReadyNAS NV+ and an iMac running Snow Leopard.

Just a short reminder - the list of paths that path_helper (/usr/libexec/path_helper is called from /etc/profile) is stored in /etc/paths. Just add /usr/local/bin at the top of the file.

Having a very large external disk I wanted to limit Time Machine to use only part of it.

To do so - you can use the same technology as time capsule does - sparseimages.

In the following:

HOSTNAME is the result of:

hostname -s

MAC is the mac address of the network adapter:

ifconfig en0 | grep ether | sed -e "s/.*ether //" | sed -e "s/://g"

Utilities

Time Tamer:

This is based on the information on http://developers.sugarcrm.com/wordpress/2008/11/25/enabling-xdebug-under-os-x-leopard/. Download xdebug 2.0.4 (or later - but this is based on the 2.0.4 build) - extract it.

Listening to the digital story this morning prompted me to think about my Aperture setup.

Aperture has its "vault" functionality - but this only works to the local hard drive or to USB/firewire drives directly attached to the box.

I have a RAID5 based NAS (network attached storage) device which I would  far prefer to have my backups on - since I've had USB disks die on me before.

How to get the vault onto the network device?

The latest update to Mac OSX 10.5.3 now includes inbuilt google/address book synchronization.

However - after updating and adding my login details for gmail to addressbook it just seemed to hang with:

Can't connect to the sync server: NSInvalidReceivePortException: connection went invalid
while waiting for a reply ((null))

The solution was to remove the contents of

~/Library/Application Support/SyncServices/Local

and try again.

Note that for account name it needed the full e-mail address complete with googlemail.com domain.

Update

Folllowing issues after update (updated 8:55 wed 19th dec)

Nearly all you need to know is available here:

http://www.geisterstunde.org/drupal/?q=osx_routing

All I found is that $BUNDLE refers to /System/Library/SystemConfiguration/Kicker.bundle/ and the script should go in $BUNDLE/Contents/Resources - not $BUNDLE/Resources (the paths are a little mixed in the original article).

http://metaquark.de/homezone/

A really cool little app that can do things when you move in/out of range with your bluetooth phone.

It can also trigger based on your IP or airport availability :)

With a couple of bits of free software you can simply geotag (add longitude/latitude to a photos EXIF data) your pictures. These can then be shown on flickr's map, google maps etc.

GPSBabel and GPSBabel+

A really handy command line utility and graphic GUI for translating GPS formats. It can grab from file or from various devices and can convert between many different formats.

GPSPhotoLinker

The n95 from nokia is not directly supported by mac osx. However - there are two additions that will help.

iSync

Nokia themselves provide an iSync plugin that will give you full syncing of iCal and Address Book. More info available from Nokia

Address Book pairing

The menu on a mac is always shown on the primary display - something which is awkward when you have dual monitors and are working on the secondary display.

While it isn't perfect - this app allows you to have a keypress which will bring up the menu as a context menu by the mouse - and seems to be the best solution currently available.

http://homepage.mac.com/khsu/DejaMenu/DejaMenu.html

[img_assist|nid=221|title=iSync detect of P990i|desc=|link=none|align=left|width=640|height=206]Somewhat as expected - the iSync update in the update to Mac OSX 10.4.9 still gives that it is not supported. Oh well.

fink update was failing with the following error about head missing a -n option:

I finally managed to get consistent colour right from the screen through to the printer. Here's what I needed to do.

First step was to calibrate the screen (Macbook Pro in this case). To do this I used the Spyder2 calibration device from ColorVision.

Second step was to get the Epson papers onto the Macbook Pro (they were not originally present - since the printer is connected to a Mac Mini and used over the network - but I grabbed them from the mini and stuck them in the same location.