I’ve put time into configuring routers and need to be able to quickly clone settings to new hardware. I was hoping to take a working router configuration, connect it to a PC (or device), and open a terminal session to use the following commands:

cd desktop

ssh  root@192.168.1.1

dd if=/dev/mtd4 of=/tmp/backup20160505.trx

scp root@192.168.1.1:/tmp/backup20160505.trx .
scp backup20160505.trx root@192.168.1.1:/tmp

mtd -r write backup20160505.trx art

But at the final step, my router throws up an error message that includes:

Could not open mtd device: art
Can't open device for writing! openwrt

If someone has a suggestion, I’m all for it. I’ll report back when I figure this out.

I’ve had a problem with the Bluetooth on my MacBook Pro where the menu bar icon is grayed out and it is crossed out and not functioning. Restarts and PRAM resets don’t seem to resolve the issue, but the following steps are pretty painless and fixed things for me:

1. Close System Preferences and/or any app that was trying to use or configure any Bluetooth device with the Mac
2. From the OS X Finder, hit Command+Shift+G to summon Go To Folder and enter the following path:  /Library/Preferences/
3. Locate the file named “com.apple.Bluetooth.plist” and delete it
4. (you may see a com.apple.Bluetooth.plist.lockfile too, if so delete that as well – this is a system folder so you will need to authenticate with an admin user)
5. Head to the Apple menu and choose “Shut Down” to power down the Mac
6. Wait a minute or so before booting the Mac again
7. Head to the Bluetooth menu or System Preference panel to resync your hardware

Thanks to Max108 for posting the fix.

If you’re running Adobe Illustrator CS5 on Mac OS X El Capitan, you may be plagued by the bug where Illustrator crashes hard when you try to normally quit it:

Perusing Adobe’s forums revealed this post with a workaround, which can be reduced to the following fix:

1. Quit Illustrator if it is open.
2. Open “Terminal.app”.
3. Paste the following command at the prompt:sudo mv /Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/CS5ServiceManager/lib /Library/Application\ Support/Adobe/CS5ServiceManager/lib.bak
4. Enter your password when prompted and then press “enter”.

Try launching Illustrator CS5 and then quit it. Hard crashes should be a thing of the past.

And for those not wanting to use Terminal, double click your hard drive icon on the desktop, and navigate to Library->Application Support->Adobe->CS5ServiceManager. Click on the folder named “lib” and rename it to “lib.bak”. You may be prompted for your password on your Mac. Feel free to launch Illustrator and it should quit like it should, peacefully.

We’ve had our trusty Bosch SHU 8805 (Stainless Steel) Dishwasher for over 15 years now, but recently several problems were apparent:

1. the dishes weren’t getting clean (the machine had become noticeably louder while trying to do so)
2. the detergent dispenser was no longer holding soap, and
3. the sump wasn’t properly discharging waste water.

I purchased replacement parts for all of these issues, even though I probably didn’t need all of them, more on that later.

To address the issues above, Bosch gave me this parts list over the phone and we purchased the following parts:

While running like a headless champion better than 99% of the time, I tried connecting a Mac mini (mid 2011) to an iPad 2 with Duet Display last night. After trying this, Duet Display didn’t project the display from the Mac mini to the iPad and, while viewing the connection over VNC, the Mac mini slowly became unresponsive and restarts didn’t help. Even after a couple restarts, the Mac mini was unreachable.

Putting the mini in Target Disk Mode and booting its system volume through a MacBook Pro allowed OS X to boot and I could view the screen, but when booting OS X on the mini alone, it failed to establish a network connection. Resetting the SMC and PRAM failed to help. After finding another display to attach (thanks, Mom and Dad!), the mini booted up and connected with AirPort, but the ethernet card wasn’t detected by OS X – as observed through About this Mac->System Report…->Ethernet Cards, the mini only said “This computer does not appear to have any pci ethernet cards installed”. Deleting the Ethernet port in Network Settings and rebooting only seemed to make things worse, as the Ethernet port couldn’t be added back through Network Settings.

Many reports on the web indicate that the NetworkInterfaces.plist and other files should be trashed, but I was worried that possibly other files were corrupted too. Rather than play roulette with plist files, I took the easy way out – I allowed OS X to reinstall itself while I slept. After doing this and revisiting “System information”, the Ethernet port shows it is in now recognized:

Fixed!

I’m trying to use Duet Display on a restored iPad 2 and a Mac mini. When I plug the iPad into the Mac mini and launch Duet Display on both devices, the Mac mini seems to acknowledge that the iPad is plugged in, but Duet Display freezes the iPad’s display and it looks like this:

What are my options to fix this?

The above-referenced apps are now running on my OS X Server. To get PHP 7 running, check out my previous post:

https://www.schwie.com/brad/?p=325

To get owncloud running, I downloaded the tar’d files from download.owncloud.org, moved them to the following directory:

/Library/Server/Web/Data/Sites/owncloud

And then changed the permissions so that Apache can run the show:

sudo chown -Rv _www /Library/Server/Web/Data/Sites/owncloud

From there, everything installs as it should and despite the warnings about Mac OS X not being supported, owncloud 7 and 8 have been running fine for me.

I thought I needed PHP version 7 for our machine running OS X Server and used the following steps successfully:

1. Launch Terminal.app and execute the following commands:

curl -s http://php-osx.liip.ch/install.sh | bash -s 7.0
sudo pico /Library/Server/Web/Config/apache2/httpd_server_app.conf

2. Search (control-w) for “php5_module” (for my system, it was line 184 – press control-c to see the line number in pico) and make these changes:

#Comment out the PHP5 module
#LoadModule php5_module libexec/apache2/libphp5.so

#Enable PHP 7 module
LoadModule php7_module /usr/local/php5-7.0.0RC8-20151127-210333/libphp7.so

LoadModule php7_module /usr/local/php5-7.0.10-20160831-102733/libphp7.so

Search (control-w) for “FilesMatch” (for my system, it was line 292) and paste in:
SetHandler application/x-httpd-php

3. Execute the following commands in Terminal.app to see your changes live:

sudo apachectl restart
php -version

So far PHP 7 seems to be compatible with other services that rely on PHP, so that’s good…

** UPDATE 6-12-2020 **
php 7.0.10 ran on my macOS Server, now running High Sierra, until today when WordPress reminded me this version of php is out of date. For those updating to php 7.3.8, check out my updated post.

If you’re looking to gain IP address information for a Mitel 5312 IP Phone on your network, from the handset, try the following gleaned info:

Hold down the up and down buttons together and then release just the down button. While still pressing the up key dial 234 on the dial pad and then release the up key. Select Yes for Network Parameters, and select Yes to View current values.

Disaster struck about a year ago. I’d been saving iMovie projects to a Western Digital WD3200BEVT 2.5-inch drive of mine when suddenly none of my Macs would recognize the drive anymore. The iMovie files on the drive were collected over several years, with each year representing a fundraising project for my kids’ school. Not wanting to give up on the data, I shelved the drive until this weekend.

A few symptoms I noticed… When a USB to SATA cable was attached to the drive, the drive would spin up, but it was never recognized by the system (System Profiler showed nothing). When a FireWire to SATA cable was attached to the drive, the drive would spin up, but then it would make a clicking noise, spin down, and repeat, all without my Macs recognizing it.

Looking for an easy way out, I contacted Kroll Ontrack, a data recovery specialist here in town. I was quoted $700-1,300 to recover the drive’s contents. I thanked them for their courteous and prompt response, but I decided the data wasn’t worth that much to recover. After reading some information on the web, it appeared this type of drive cannot be repaired by swapping the PCB, so since it was pretty much a lost cause, I decided to take the PCB off the drive and have a look.

On the underside of the PCB, I was able to identify tarnished leads, circled in the photo below. Using my trusty Pentel Clic Eraser (i.e. white eraser), I gently rubbed the tarnished areas. The tarnish came right off and the board was once again shiny.

After reattaching the PCB and plugging the drive in with the USB to SATA cable, the drive mounted with all my data. $1k saved. Sorry Ontrack.