Ever since the upgrade to Apple
OS X Mountain Lion (10.8) on my MacBook (v5.1) I encountered wireless
problems every now and then. These 'experiences' are documented in two
different blog posts here and here.
At
the time I was also running an 'old' version of Little Snitch (v2.x).
After installing v3.0.1 my problems seemed to have solved... Seemed,
until I upgraded Little Snitch to v3.0.2.
Posts filed under Annoying
Timetravel Made Possible With The Samsung Galaxy S2
And yes. Another rant from an Apple fan-boy (I guess).
As you can read here, I have a Samsung Galaxy S2 at home, and the device is still in the original box. I did open the box, just to check the device, and as you may have read; the device went straight back into the box. Since then, it has been out of the box about four times, and not more than an hour. The main reason (for getting it out of the box) is that there a software updates that should fix problems with the device. I guess not the problems I have with the device..... I want to give the device a chance. I really do, but they don't come close to the Apple iOS experience. The Android eco-system has still light years to go.
Backup Failure
Creating backups. Something everyone with a computer should do. Not only to preserve the items of (sentimental) value, but also to minimise the time and effort to recreate what went to the eternal data fields.
But even if you create backups, things can go wrong.
Many believe that storing the data on an external device is a backup. Well, it is, but only if you have the original data on another device. Backup means that you store the same thing (at least) in two places. If one of the devices (your computer with internal hard drive, or the external backup device) should fail, you have still one copy of the data, which you can restore or backup (depending which device went up in smoke).
MacBook Wireless Borked Again, Still, etc.
A while back I had regular issues with the wireless adapter on my MacBook after I had upgraded to OSX Mountain Lion, but after the removal of Little Snitch (I still ran the beta version) it seemed that times were a changing... Seemed that is.
This morning I was fiddling about with my photo website, and needed to see the results in several different browsers. One of them being Google Chrome.
Trying to launch the Chrome app, it crashed immediately. Reopening didn't help. So I tried to download a newer version, since I hadn't updated mine since the upgrade to Mountain Lion. The result; It still crashed. Even after removing all Chrome (and Google) references on the disk, it still crashed.
So, it became time to consult the book of knowledge, and see what the Internets had to say about my little ordeal.
Ziggo Internet, Juniper Firewalls and DHCP
At the house I have currently two ISP delivering broadband. Well, broadband isn't the correct word, since the the one of them is only a mere 256kbps (I think). The other is a 'whopping' 20Mbps.
The 20Mb connection is provided by XS4ALL, and the 256kbps is for free (if you have a phone subscription with Ziggo). The 256kbp is the minimum they provide to transport the phone calls, but if you're a masochist you can also browse the internet over that connection.
So, two ISP @ home. Combine that with a Juniper SRX firewall, and a dual ISP setup is born. The theory of that setup is that I connect both ISP's to the firewall, and use the 20Mb line as a default internet connection, but when that one dies, I automatically get switched to the backup line (256kbps).
Unable To Turn On Wireless In OS X Mountain Lion
Last night I was minding my own business on the couch, when the wireless connection on my MacBook (UniBody) decided to call it a day. According to the symptoms (no bars visible in the WiFi icon in the menu bar, no visible wireless networks in the vicinity), the WiFi adapter was turned off. Turning the WiFi back on was not possible though.
Junos Pulse, Apple iOS, and Split-Tunneling
When you create (SSL)VPN access for you employees, you might enable split-tunneling to save corporate bandwidth. No split-tunneling means that all traffic is forwarded into the VPN tunnel. So if you browse the internet with an active VPN, the traffic goes through the VPN, and accesses the Internet through the corporate Internet connection. This isn't a big problem with a couple of employees, but with hundreds on the road or working from home, this might frustrate the employees in the building.
Mozilla's Firefox Invalid, Yet Valid Certificate
In my line of work I get to work with a lot of security devices which run self-signed certificates. Those certificates are most of the time generated when the device / appliance is installed, or configured for the very first time. When you connect to one of those devices with a web browser, you tend to see the warnings displayed by the browser that the connection is not to be trusted.
;)
In Firefox, you can add an exception in the browser. When you've done that, the next time you go to the website, the browsers treats the website as trusted.
Screen Capture Can't Be Saved
After upgrading my iMac to OS X Lion (10.7) everything works (or at least seems to work), until I tried to do a screen capture with the built-in tools.
Things that worked:
- Capturing the entire desktop to file
- Capturing a selection (using the cross-hair) to file
- Capturing the entire desktop to the clipboard
- Capturing a selection (using the cross-hair) to the clipboard
Things that didn't work:
- Capturing entire windows to file or the clipboard (SHIFT-COMMAND-4 + SPACE / SHIFT-COMMAND-3 + SPACE)
All I got was a weird notification box with the message:
Screen capture can't be saved
The console application also showed an error message:
12/16/11 1:40:08.762 com.apple.SystemUIServer.agent: screencapture could not capture window 3c
Lurking around the Interwebs, I found this seem to occur after an upgrade of the OS, but real solutions are hard to come by.
This is what I did to solve my problem:
- Remove the screencapture PLIST (preferences) file (~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.screencapture.plist)
- Copy a com.apple.screencapture.plist file from a working OS X Lion environment and place it in the correct location on the troubled OS X installation.
That seemed to result in two com.apple.screencapture.plist files (one with an additional extension of .locked). I removed the .locked file, rebooted the iMac, and screen capture worked again.
I must mention that I didn't see the .locked file initially. Could be that it existed before. In which case I probably did more than was required to get things fixed....
Unable to Upgrade Firefox on OS X
Today I tried to upgrade Firefox 5.0.1 on my iMac to version Firefox 6, but it failed with some 'weird' error;
The operation can't be completed because the item libsmime3.dylib" is in use.
Weird because I didn't have FireFox running at the time. Removing Firefox didn't work either, since I couldn't remove it from the Trash (same error).
Turned out that I had the Cisco AnyConnect VPN installed on my system (process name: vpnagentd). To 'unload' this process enter the following in Terminal:
sudo launchctl unload /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.cisco.anyconnect.vpnagentd.plist
Install Firefox, and enable the vpnagent again by entering the following in Terminal:
sudo launchctl load /Library/LaunchDaemons/com.cisco.anyconnect.vpnagentd.plist
And all should be well.