WD myCloud and slow backups again - the WD myCloud Mac App and the restsdk-serverd

I thought I had solved the slow backup problem with my WD myCloud, but of course (being technology) it became slow again. This time I found the restsdk-server process on my WD myCloud eating up almost all free memory of the WDmyCloud drive, which almost halted any file transfer. Solution was killing the daemon.

WD myCloud and TimeMachine - (finally) a fast backup

Fiddling around with many settings and being quite annoyed by the incredibly slow backups with MacOS 10.11 (often one day was not enough to do an incremental backup) on my WD myCloud, I finally found the solution accidentally. Thanks and kudos to StackExchange where I found the solution. Backup without emergency brake on. I post the necessary commands here just for sake of this blog being my external memory.

Running noipupdater.sh as service on MacOS

This entry is the corresponding one to the adaption of the noipupdate.sh Script, where the necessary changes for MacOS bash are filed.

Dynamic DNS: adapting noipupdater.sh for MacOS

I often use my MacOS 10.8 laptop as a test server. In order to do this and to have other people easily accessing test services, I use a free Dynamic DNS entry from noip.com.

The easy way to open a shell in the directory displayed by Finder on a Mac: Go2shell

Since I use the Terminal intensely but got annoyed of always doing cd in the directory I wanted to be in, I looked for a solution.
By googleing I found a nice app called Go2Shell, which you can find here.
Installation works nicely. After installation, drag the app into Finder's menu bar. Important, on MacOS 10.9 you need to hold down the cmd-key in order to drop the app into the menu bar. If you click on the symbol a terminal opens in the directory displayed by Finder. Nice and easy to work with. Kudos to the programmers.

Xubuntu 14.04 and removing desktop icons for partitions.

I had to install Xubuntu 14.04 on a rather old Lenovo Notebook for a friend of mine. Xubuntu, because of its lightweight Desktop management which rendered the notebook usable again.

Configuring JabRef on different computers for using a shared database including pdf files

Since I host my literature data base and the associated pdf files on a shared directory, I wanted to make JabRef use the same database and link the pdf files correctly on different machines (MacOS, Linux, Windows). Took me a litte bit of trial-and-error, but here's the recipe:

Reverting back - "Snow Lion"

Well, I normally consider myself not being a total computer noob, but reverting back from Lion to Snow Leopard somehow went entirely wrong:

The Lion roars tonight - MacOS 10.7 installation slightly different

Ok, so after the hipe around Lion, my nerdy heart talked me into getting a copy of it and install it.

Packages I recommend installing on a fresh Ubuntu system

The following list is more a reminder for myself when setting up a new system.

Fritz!Box 7050 as repeater with sipgate VoIP

This blog post is way off-topic but a reminder for myself how to create a functional setup.

Kubuntu 10.10 hangs on logout

Running Kubuntu in VMware player is nice, if you need to run Windows but work at the same time in some Linux applications. However, logging out from kde hung the Xserver in my VMware.

TeXShop and BibTeX for lazy guys - automatic call of bibtex

If you want to write a larger scientific document, like a diploma or doctoral thesis, you surely will use bibtex for creating your bibliography (and especially for the German guys: don't just copy and paste... but really use a good bibliography).

Functionalizing the "Scan-To"-button of Brother all-in-one printers for Ubuntu 10.10

This is a mere condensation of all the information given on the Brother website and my post on the partner blog. The procedure is valid for Ubuntu 10.04 and 10.10 with respect to at least the models DCP-7010, MFC-7420, MFC-7820N - connected via USB, probably for more. Please consult the Brother website if in doubt.

Update 2013-01-20: same works with a MFC-7360N.  (Use the packages appropriate for this model in the section below instead) The only change is, that the new scan-to-key tool has moved all its files to /opt/brother/scanner so put all scan scripts there and edit the appropriate .cfg file there.

Help for helpless copy cases - terminal for the Mac User

A friend of mine had big trouble in copying data from his harddrive to an external one. For whatever reason, Finder stopped with strange error warnings that a folder could not be created because it was already there - and there was no way to click "try again".

Samba 3.4, Webmin 1.510 and some trouble

For some odd reason, my webmin is not able to correctly create users in the samba module unsing smbpasswd.

FLEXlm license manager server on Ubuntu

This is not specifically for Ubuntu on a Mac, but rather a hint for myself getting the license manager for e.g. IDL running on an arbitrary Ubuntu Server.

Installing ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) on a Mac Book Pro 5,5

First (can't say it often enough): BACKUP ALL YOUR DATA. While you can use e.g. the free version of Superduper! to keep a bootable clone copy of your system on an external harddrive partition, you have TimeMachine as a very convenient program to keep your data backuped, so there is NO EXCUSE for you to not have backups, just in case you accidentally crash your system.

Installing rEFIt and opensuse 11.1

This post is actually just a copy of the post found here for the sake of completeness.