If you happen to have the rare case of having a hung MAC OS X application and you're coming from a Linux / Windows background you will be certainly wonderhing how to kill Mac OS X hung application.
In Mac OS the 3 golden buttons to kill crashed application are:
COMMAND + OPTION + ESCAPE
Command + Option + Escape
while pressed simultaneously is the Mac Computer equivalent of Windows CTRL + ALT + DEL
Holding together COMMAND + OPTION + ESCAPE on MAC OS brings up the Force Quit Window showing and letting you choose between the list of open applications. To close freezed MAC application, choose it and Press the Force Quit Button this will kill immediately that application.
To directly end application without invoking the choose Force Quit Window menu, to force a hanging app quit right click on its icon in Dock(CTRL + Click) and choose "Force Quit” from context menu.
A little bit more on why applications hung in MAC OS. Each application in MAC OS has its event queue. Event queue is created on initial application launch, event queue is buffer that accepts input from system (could be user input from kbd or mouse, messages passed from other programs etc.). Program is hanging when system detects queued events are not being used.
Other reasons for Mac OS hanging program is whether you're attaching detaching new hardware peripherals (i.e. problems caused by improper mount / unmounts), same hang issues are often observed on BSD and Linux. Sometimes just re-connecting (mouse, external hdd etc.) resolves it.
Program hungs due to buggy software are much rarer in Macs just like in IPhones and Ipads due to fact mac applications are very well tested until published in appstore.
Issues with program hungs in Mac sometimes happen after "sleep mode" during "system wake" function – closing, opening macbook. If a crashed program is of critical importance and you don't want to "Force Quit" with COMMAND + OPTION + ESC. Try send PC to sleep mode for a minute or 2 by pressing together OPTION + COMMAND + EJECT.
An alternative approach to solve hanging app issue is to Force-quit Finder and Dock to try that, launch Terminal
And type there:
# killall Dock
Other useful to know Mac OS keyboard combination is COMMAND + OPTION + POWER – Hold together Command and Option and after a while press Power – This is a shortcut to instruct your Mac PC to reboot.
For 5th time since I both my ZTE – Blade III Smartphone – Android OS powered mobile, my Phone Contacts disappear. This is pretty annoying and I'm more and more convinced Android is not yet really ready for the masses..
I've enabled on Phone Sync my contacts with Google but even though I can see all my mobile phones visible via – http://gmail.com/contacts/, my attempts to use Android's:
Settings -> Account & Sync -> Gmail -> (Sync Contacts and Sync people details
– to synchronize Gmail Phone and E-mail Contacts to Phone from Gmail did not produced a positive result.
To Solve the situation earlier I've used on multiple times Contacts Sync Fix – Tool to help fix some (not all) of the causes of "Sync is currently experiencing problems. It will be back shortly." message from Google contacts sync. However this time Contacts Sync Fix tool did not revert back my missing Phone Contacts.
I googled to see what kind of Phone Contacts recovery software is there and stumbled on Wondershare Dr. Fone – World’s 1st Andorid, iPhone, iPad and iPod touch data recovery software for personal users. Here is what Dr. Fone does:
Recover data from Andorid and iOS devices, iCloud backup and iTunes backup (including encrypted one).
Available to recover messages, contacts, photos, videos, notes, call history, calendars, voicemail, voice memos, reminders, bookmarks and other documents.
Recover App data like WhatsApp, Instagram, Flickr, iPhoto, iMovie, Kindle, etc.
Compatible with the latest iOS 7 and supports iPhone 5S/5C/5/4S/4/3GS, all iPads and iPod touch 5/4.
Regain lost data due to deletion, device crashed or broken, OS bugs, device loss, jailbreak, iOS upgrade and factory.
Dr. Fone is proprietary software and quite expensive costs a lot 50$ bucks! But Cracked versions are circulating the net on many torrents, there is a cracked version of Dr. Fone on http://ThePiratebay.se Dr. Fone is very easy to use, to recover my lost Android Phones data, I had to:
1. Connect my ZTE through USB cable to a Windows PC (where I have installed Dr. Fone
2. Scan the device for my lost data, through the program GUI interface (This make a lot of data be seen including all my Videos, Pictures, Contacts etc.) 3. Press the recover data button and choose a destination folder where found files to recover will be stored.
A Note to make here is, Dr.Fone requieres that USB Debugging has to be Switched on from the Phone (on Android version 3.0 to 4.1) – "Settings" -> Click "Developer options" -> Check "USB debugging". On Android 4.2 and newer to activate USB Debugging – "Settings -> About Phone -> Developer Options -> (Check) USB Debugging"
Found Phone Contacts, are exported into .CSV file, HTML and VCard. So to import back my recovered contacts from my Mobile, I transferred VCard file extension (VCard.VCF) into my Mobile Phone via attached USB cable and from Phone's File Manager clicked on VCard.vcf to import my contacts.
So far so good, I had all my Phone Contacts recovered and again accessible from Android's PhoneBook app, however because of import for some reasons I had many of contacts Imported and visible now multiple times, as well as a lot of junk contacts like just Phone Numbers without names. To resolve that I first thought of manually reviewing and deleting only junk and duplicate addressbook contacts. As I didn't know how to select and delete multiple Phone Contacts? – using the phone default Phone Contacts app, I googled and found the Contact Remover app – a tiny program listing all your contacts letting you choose only those who would like to delete.
Though this program was working, Contact selection was lagging and was really irritating, so I googled further to see if there is no Application to delete duplicate phone contacts in Android, finding – Duplicate Contacts – Simple tool to see and delete duplicate contacts.
Once deleting the duplicate Phones (I had most of the phones occuring 5 times and there were number of email addresses wrongly parsed and imported into Contacts. I just had to delete a number of junky names but happily all my Phone Contacts were succesfully recovered! 🙂
Now because I already had a Contacts set to Sync with Google, once the Junky multiple duplicate contacts were stored on the Phone they started synchronizing with Google Contacts.
After synchronization was completed to clean my Google Account stored Phone number names and Contacts – since some time Google introduced a special functionality for that – Find and Merge Duplicates.
For future to Keep my contacts in Ordered and backupped to prevent such a complex future exercises, I was recommended MyPhoneExplorer by a colleague. MyPhoneExplorer supports backup (Export and Import) your Phone Contacts via USB, Bluetooth or even WI-FIon multiple devices, starting from Android Tablets, Android Mobile Phones and even old Nokia Symbian or other archaic Alcatel, LG etc. OS-ed mobile phones.
If you're using Debian GNU/Linux wheezy/sid, you have already figured out GNOME3 settings to start GNOME in Classic mode (like in GNOME 2), starts gnome in a mode where the desktop is not showing the usual Computer, Home, Trash etc.
Besides that in that strange back-compitability Classic GNOME mode its impossible to add any program as a link in desktop like in the good old GNOME 2.
Thanksfully this abusive behaviour of the backwards compitability mode is easily fixable by two simple steps, here they are:
1. Install gnome-tweak-tool – (Tool to adjust advanced configuration settings for GNOME
root@debian:~# apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool
2. Start gnome-tweak tool
Press ALT+F2 and run gnome-tweak-tool or run it via xterm / gnome-terminal:
moonman@Moon:~$ gnome-tweak-tool
Change in Desktop, Have file manager handle the desktop the settings to ON
Once the Screenshot Handle Desktop is set to ON, further drag and dropping any application to the Desktop will be working.
Something really irritating is that launching applications in GNOME 3 does not work properly if you just press ALT+F2 and type in lets say gnome-terminal , to work around this weirdity you will have to install gnome-shell package.
My sister, experience some programs running with wine (Windows Emulator) to crash on her Ubuntu 11.10.
As she is quite new with Linux, she has no idea about the existence of CTRL ALT BACKSPACE key combination to restart a hanged GNOME, KDE by directly killing the Xorg server.
I felt obliged to explain her it is better to use CTRL ALT BACKSPACE X kill switch instead of restarting the whole Linux kernel (which basiclly is working) and that it is just the display keeping blacnk.
Pressing the would kill Xorg and therefore all applicatins previously running on top of it will die. In Ubuntu Xorg is configured to run via gdm, so once killed it will automatically reload the GDM (Gnome Display Manager).
I was about to explain her that its better she use CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE instead of restarting the whole system but suddenly I realized this is not working.
In UBUNTU 11.10 and I guess in all UBUNTU's after 9.04 CTRL ALT BACKSPACE is substituted with the key switch combination ALT PRINTSCREEN K, I've explained her about that.
This change is actually a change implied by most Linux distributions nowdas and is some kind of change in Xorg newer versions…
To enable back the CTRL + ALT + BACKSPACE , I've issued cmd:
An alternative way to set setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp to run on Ubuntu user login is by setting it as a startup application using;
stanimira@ubuntu:~$ gnome-session-properties
Press the Add button and type in the box to appear; Name: setxkbmap
Command: setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp
Comment: setxkbmap
Reverting the Xserver kill switch back to the classical Ctrl+Alt+Backspace should also be running fine on older Ubuntu Linuces – 11.04, 10.10, 10.04 etc.
I've faced some issues with crappy sound in some of the games I'm playing on my Debian . Also I ometimes, have issues with sound while watching movies with VLC or Totem... Sound issues with Skype are also seldomly occuring during skype calls etc. etc.
Recently I've realized many of this crappy sound issues origins from PulseAudio – the sound server GNOME desktop env uses to manage all sound just before passing it through ALSA.
I've found on the internet many suggested ways on how to workaround these issues. Many of the things suggested as workarounds, however was outdated and referred to old versions of GNOME / Pulseaudio and therefore was unusable on my Debian 6 Squeeze….
What I found most helpful is fixes and workarounds for pulseaudio list compiled by people in the Fedora community on fedorasolved.org's website – http://fedorasolved.org/Members/fenris02/pulseaudio-fixes-and-workarounds
Some of the fixes and work arounds suggeted on the above link, I have already applied, others was not applicable for Debian.
Anyways the things which I found most important and I believe many people who runs Debian need to implement from the list to solve pulseaudio crappy sound issues is concluded in the below 5 steps.
4. Enable Simultaneous Output in PulseAudio preferences
Navigate to the GNOME menus:
System -> PulseAudio Preferences
Choose the "Simultaneous Output" tab and select:
Add virtual output device for simultaneous output on all local sound cards
5. Log Off Gnome and restart PulseAudio
To load the new changed settings in /etc/pulse/daemon.conf restart of pulseaudio server is required, right after a Logoff from the current opened gnome session;
To do so LogOff with the trivial:
System -> Log Out
Login as root in console;
Press CTRL+ALT+F1, login with root and issue:
debian:~# /etc/init.d/pulseaudio restart
...
N.B.; In some cases it might be necessery to do some adjustments are made in gstreamer properties , to change settings there launch:
Tampering with gstreamer-properties used to fix for me some problems with ALSA and PulseAudio in the past, so it might be worthy to check it out and experiment a bit with it as well.
debian:~$ gstreamer-properties
Now many of the crappy sound games or applications should start working just fine. Enjoy 😉
I'm on a way trying to install Free Mega Games Pack and I'm facing troubles in following the instructions to add a the latest development wine version described on http://www.winehq.org/download/ubuntu
The guys from WineHQ has to update the wine install instructions, since the instructions are targetting older versions of Ubuntu which are not compatible with newer Ubuntus which comes natively with Unity
In order to complete the step in adding the WineHQ Ubuntu PPA development repository my only way was to add it using command line.
Here is how:
root@ubuntu:~# apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-wine/ppa
You are about to add the following PPA to your system:
Latest official WineHQ releases
Welcome to the Wine Team PPA. Here you can get the latest available Wine betas for every supported version of Ubuntu. This PPA is managed by Scott Ritchie, and is a replacement for the WineHQ budgetdedicated.com repository used for Jaunty and earlier.
More info: https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-wine/+archive/ppa
Press [ENTER] to continue or ctrl-c to cancel adding it
Executing: gpg --ignore-time-conflict --no-options --no-default-keyring --secret-keyring /tmp/tmp.bvo21sFWKG --trustdb-name /etc/apt/trustdb.gpg --keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg --primary-keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80/ --recv 883E8688397576B6C509DF495A9A06AEF9CB8DB0
gpg: requesting key F9CB8DB0 from hkp server keyserver.ubuntu.com
gpg: key F9CB8DB0: public key "Launchpad PPA for Ubuntu Wine Team" imported
gpg: no ultimately trusted keys found
gpg: Total number processed: 1
gpg: imported: 1 (RSA: 1)
Similarly adding a PPA repository on Debian is also possible by using a little shell script add-apt-repository.sh . add-apt-repository.sh simulates what ubuntu's apt-add-repositry python script does.
It is educative to mention PPA stands for (Personal package Archive) and the difference between normal repository and PPA is mainly in the fact that PPA repositories makes a package distributed by the repository like the native Ubuntu packages issued by Canonical.
Once for example a new version of a file is placed in PPA deb package repository, the newer package will be automatically installed to the system using it.
Every now and then I have to screenshot particular windows positioned on the screen on my GNOME Desktop envronment
Recently I was happy to find there is a very easy way to do this with the default Screenshotting program that is bundled with gnome gnome-screenshot
To screenshot a particular window using gnome-screenshot , its quite easy all one has to do is point the mouse cursor to the window he wants to snapshot and press:
Alt + PrtScr (Print Screen)
Here is a screenshot, I’ve taken of my gnome-terminal using the above command:
One can do it also via the command line using the /usr/bin/gnome-screenshot , by pressing Alt + F2 to invoke the run application and type in:
/usr/bin/gnome-screenshot -w
I was quite happy to find out that this is possible on Linux inside gnome without bothering to run GIMP or use any external programs for the cause. Hope this helps someone 😉
I needed to add to a wordpress based website Google maps location pictures with Google Maps Zoom In / Out controls.
I've seen plenty of plugins available that said to to this but none of them really worked fine for me. Either the plugins I checked in wordperss.org was too complex to set up and required a Google API registration or was marked as Broken (not working).
Finally to add the geographic locations taken from maps.google.com I used the embed code generated directly from maps.google.com.
But that was not the end of my WordPress Google Maps struggles. What followed was rather ridiculous, it seems since some time Google removed the pinning of a location searched for. Moreover the easy old way to simply pin a location on the map is also, gone.
Hence here is what I had to do to pinpoint location on the Google map of my searched country destination:
1. To be able to pinpoint the location, I had to login to my gmail
2. Go to http://maps.google.com in browser
3. Press on My Places button
4. Click on Create map and fill in the Title and Description dialogs
5. The Privacy and Sharing radio button should be selected
6. Click on Done and Save buttons
7. From the left top corner inside the Google map image to select the baloon picture (Add a Placemark) 8. Choose the exact desired placemark type and color from the next appearing dialog
9. Choose the location I want to pin on the map
I've created also a small Video tutorial just for fun for all those who want to see the pin a location with a baloon 😉 on the google map tutorial, here is the video as well:
For all people who can't properly see the .mov video here is link to the video created with recordmydesktop on my Linux showing how the baloon pinning inside a map can be done.
As I’m manually configuring a Xserver via xorg.conf I have noticed a block of code in:
Section "Monitor"
Identified "Generic Monitor"
Option "DPMS"
EndSectionThat triggered my curiousity to research further what is DPMS . A very quick google search revealed that DPMS’s purpose is to communicate to communicate between the monitor and the computer, to make the computer turn off the (CRT or LED) based monitor if the computer is not used
Thus in short to rephrase DPMS is a power saving handy Xorg feature. I many custom configured xorg.conf like the mine I’m building right now does not include DPMS as many people doesn’t have idea what DPMS is and how to enable it.
DPMS is also an interface to the Energy start power-saving capability if not all, most of the modern day monitor screens.
DPMS enables the Xserver to control automatically the computer screen and thus reduces the overall computer power consumption.
To enable the use of DPMS on my Linux, all I had to do is place a couple of configuration directives in my xorg.conf .:
Here is how I enabled DPMS in my Xorg server:
1. Edit with a text editor /etc/X11/xorg.conf
2. Find the Monitor Section , e.g.:
Section "Monitor"
....
EndSection
3. Add inside the Monitor SectionOptions "DPMS" "true"
4. Lookup for the ServeryLayout section , e.g.:
Section "ServerLayout"
...
EndSection
5. Place inside the ServerLayout section For instance the following options:
Just wanted to say that I'm quite satisfied with Godaddy's SSL certificate generation.
SSL certs generation with Godaddy is dramatically more easy and intuitive than with certs bought from Enom.com.
To generate a new certificate with Godaddy, login to your godaddy account, press My Account -> SSL Certificates
Godaddy does grant you new credits whenever you have purchased a new ssl certificate for them, 1 credit is equal to one certificate.
You later use this credit to get your SSL certificate which will appear in the list of ssl certificates.
To manage the new certificate I had to press over Manage Certificate
Next over 3 steps it's necessery to place a newly generated CSR file to generate the CSR file I issued:
/usr/bin/openssl genrsa -des3 -out www.domain.com.key 2048
Enter pass phrase for www.domain.com.key:
There is a field which requires you to paste in the newly generates csr file with the above command in Godaddy's SSL generation step 2.
Step 3 does not require anything special.
After this steps if the domain for which an SSL cert is generated doesn't contain some specific banned words which prohibits automatic approval of a certificate an email is received in the email set for the godaddy account.
After Godaddy approves the generation of the respective ssl cert it starts appearing in the menu: Manage Certificates -> Certificates tick over to choose the common name of your certificate and a button a bit above with a green down arrow will turn green.
Press over it and you will be offered a menu whether you can choose the version of the webserver for which you will need the newly generated SSL certificate to install on.
In my case it was Apache so I choose Apache, gt the certificate put it and install it to apache and restart Apache and you're done.
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How to enable Ctrl+Alt+Backspace in Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot) Linux
Monday, January 16th, 2012My sister, experience some programs running with wine (Windows Emulator) to crash on her Ubuntu 11.10.
As she is quite new with Linux, she has no idea about the existence of CTRL ALT BACKSPACE key combination to restart a hanged GNOME, KDE by directly killing the Xorg server.
I felt obliged to explain her it is better to use CTRL ALT BACKSPACE X kill switch instead of restarting the whole Linux kernel (which basiclly is working) and that it is just the display keeping blacnk.
Pressing the would kill Xorg and therefore all applicatins previously running on top of it will die. In Ubuntu Xorg is configured to run via gdm, so once killed it will automatically reload the GDM (Gnome Display Manager).
I was about to explain her that its better she use CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE instead of restarting the whole system but suddenly I realized this is not working.
In UBUNTU 11.10 and I guess in all UBUNTU's after 9.04 CTRL ALT BACKSPACE is substituted with the key switch combination ALT PRINTSCREEN K, I've explained her about that.
This change is actually a change implied by most Linux distributions nowdas and is some kind of change in Xorg newer versions…
To enable back the CTRL + ALT + BACKSPACE , I've issued cmd:
stanimira@ubuntu~:$ echo' setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp' >> ~/.xinitrc
An alternative way to set setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp to run on Ubuntu user login is by setting it as a startup application using;
stanimira@ubuntu:~$ gnome-session-properties
Press the Add button and type in the box to appear;
Name: setxkbmap
Command: setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp
Comment: setxkbmap
Reverting the Xserver kill switch back to the classical Ctrl+Alt+Backspace should also be running fine on older Ubuntu Linuces – 11.04, 10.10, 10.04 etc.
Tags: add button, Alt, Auto, backspace, Button, change, Comment, Ctrl, Display, Draft, existence, GDM, Gnome, kde, key switch, kill, kill switch, Linux, linux kernel, login, most linux distributions, ocelot, option, Press, printscreen, Reverting, session properties, setxkbmapCommand, startup, startup application, switch combination, type, Ubuntu, wine, wine windows, xinitrcAn, Xorg, xserver
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