All the Special Key Combinations that Change Your Mac's Startup

From http://lifehacker.com/all-the-special-key-combinations-that-change-your-macs-1761327018

• Shift: Starts your Mac in safe mode. This helps you troubleshoot because it only loads the minimum necessary kernel extensions at boot then disables startup items, user-installed fonts, font caches, kernel caches, and other system cache files. Safe mode also runs a file system check automatically, which should help with troubleshooting. 
• Option: This loads up the startup manager where you can pick between different hard drives or discs to boot into. If you need to boot from a hard drive different than your primary one, or you’re booting into Boot Camp, this is the key you push. 
•  C: Boots from a bootable CD, DVD, or USB. This is useful when you’re installing a new operating system. 
• D or Option+D: Starts the Apple Hardware Test on pre-2013 Macs or Apple Diagnostics on newer Macs. Both are meant to help troubleshoot hardware issues. N or 
• Option+N: Starts up from a Netboot server. Most average users will never need to use this as it’s meant for running OS X off a network instead of a hard drive or disc drive. 
• Command+R: Starts up in Recovery mode. If you have problems with your hard drive, OS X Recovery allows you to restore your Mac from a backup, verify and repair your disc, check your internet connection, or reinstall OS X. 
• Command+Option+R: Starts up the internet version of Recovery mode, which works the same as regular Recovery mode, but is online. 
• Command+Option+P+R: This resets the NVRAM. NVRAM stores information about speaker volume, screen resolution, startup disk selection, and recent kernel panic information. If you’re having issues with sound or video, it’s usually a good idea to reset the NVRAM before panicking. 
• Command+S: Starts up in single-user mode. This is meant mostly for developers and IT as a means to troubleshoot startup issues and basically drops you into the command line where you can run tests without worrying about the GUI in OS X. 
•  Command+V: Starts up in verbose mode. Verbose mode is similar to single-user mode but is meant more as a way to watch what a computer is doing to help with troubleshooting. 
• T: Starts your Mac in target disk mode. This is a useful way to share files between two Macs when one of them is broken or the display isn’t working. 
• Eject button, F12, mouse button, or trackpad button: Force eject an optical disk.

Edit site permissions in Firefox

It used to be simple to edit site permission sin Firefox, you only needed to click the icons on the left of the awesome bar and you would see the connection security (encrypted/unsecured) and the permissions pane with the switches to allow as default, permit or deny.
Currently in Firefox 44.0.2, the Permissions pane only shows you the current permission of the site, not allowing you to edit them. To edit the permissions of the current site you have to:

1. Click on the icons in the left of the awesome bar, 
2. Click on the arrow of the panel describing the connections security



3. Click on the Button "More Information"



4. Click on the tab "Permissions"

5. Now you can edit the website permissions

To See and edit permissions to all websites, including the default permissions, you can type
about:permissions in the awesome bar.

Reaching google.com instead of google.fr

Visit the URL: http://www.google.com/ncr

Check http://www.labnol.org/internet/prevent-blogger-country-redirection/21031/ for instructions on blogspot.

Dump Table date to SQL using Microsoft SQL Server

You can export the data in a table or DB into a SQL query using Microsoft SQL server Management studio by doing:
right click on the DB -> Tasks -> Generate Scripts. On the wizard step titled "Set Scripting Options" choose "Advanced" and modify the "Types of data to script" option to "Data"

This question was answered in http://serverfault.com/questions/147638/dump-microsoft-sql-server-database-to-an-sql-script

Install Disk cleanup in windows 2008 r2

The site basics.net have the instructions how to install the disk cleanup nicely (the default Microsoft way is crap because you end up withi loads of stuff installed in the system), the article with the instructions is http://www.basics.net/2013/02/25/win-server-2008-r2-how-to-enable-the-disk-cleanup-utility/

Copy 2 files to specific system folders and you can immediately use the tool:

Copy Cleanmgr.exe to %systemroot%\System32.
Copy Cleanmgr.exe.mui to %systemroot%\System32\en-US.
The 2 files are located in
- C:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-cleanmgr_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_none_c9392808773cd7da\cleanmgr.exe
- C:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-cleanmgr.resources_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_en-us_b9cb6194b257cc63\cleanmgr.exe.mui

You can simply run this as administrator:

copy C:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-cleanmgr_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_none_c9392808773cd7da\cleanmgr.exe %systemroot%\System32
copy C:\Windows\winsxs\amd64_microsoft-windows-cleanmgr.resources_31bf3856ad364e35_6.1.7600.16385_en-us_b9cb6194b257cc63\cleanmgr.exe.mui %systemroot%\System32\en-US

Enable unsigned plugins in firefox

The latest version of Firefox (43.0.1) disables all unsigned plugins, to be able to allow unsigned plugins to run edit the setting:
xpinstall.signatures.required
Set it it false.
The suggestion was found in the forum https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1078339

Last pass refereal

https://lastpass.com/f?7285826

Chose user used by samba

Problem:
I wanted to have a samba share with guest access, and the user used by samba to write on the server to be a specific user account, so that I could also manipulate the files placed in the share.

By default the user used was nobody, and the I was having problems using the local linux account in the server to manipulated files, as it did not have the correct access rights.
The option that solved my problems was:

[Share]
path = 
writeable = Yes
force user =  # this was the line that fixed the nobody user
guest only = Yes 
guest ok = yes
browseable = Yes
public = yes
hide dot files = no

Keyboard shortcut to lock macos

⌃ + ⇧ + ⏏ (Control + Shift + Eject)

Virtual box and ubuntu

I was trying to install Ubuntu 15.04 (ubuntu-15.04-desktop-amd64.iso) as a guest system on Virtual box 5.0.0 running on a macOS host system.
The problem I was facing was the install crashing and not able to finish. Looking I found a blog, the solution that worked for me was :
Disabling "Nested Paging" in Setting->System->Acceleration allows to start the system.

How to change default application in a website in IIS

The solution to set one application as the default for when you hit a website is to change the website Physical folder, to match the application root folder. As explained in a Server fault post.
Another hack-around is to put a index.html page in the root of the site performing the re-direct.
Using the redirect feature of ISS can cause trouble with you application, I recommend against it.

The best answer form me is:

Turns out you can edit the physical path of the Default Web Site (right click, Manage Web Site, Advanced Settings). Change that to the physical path of the app you want to be default, make sure other settings match (in my case the App Pool had to be changed), and there you go.

Direct link to best reply

Raspberry pi timemachine

I recently followed this post to install the timemachine in my raspberry pi:
http://blog.lobraun.de/2015/05/10/create-a-timemachine-backup-storage-on-the-raspberry-pi/
Before I had used this one:
http://www.andadapt.com/raspberry-pi-raspbian-hfs-afp-and-time-machine/
But the hfs kept corrupting in a unrecoverable way.

blogspot: how to insert code

To insert code nicely formatted in blogspot use the following code:

<pre><code>
my code goes here...
</code></pre>

emacs: saves all the backup into a single folder

A nice settings suggested in http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/BackupDirectory to get all your backup files created by emacs in a single folder, to do this I setup the following settings:

;; Put all backups in a folder
(setq
 backup-by-copying t
 backup-directory-alist `(("." . "~/.emacs_saves"))
 delete-old-versions t
 kept-new-versions 6
 kept-old-versions 2
 version-control t)

Firefox about pages

Here is a list of the firefox about pages (from: http://lifehacker.com/232995/inside-firefoxs-about-pages)

• about:config
• about:cache
• about:config
• about:blank
• about:newtab
• about:home
• about:healthreport
• about:permissions
• about:plugins
• about:telemetry

The Mozilla documentation is found in http://kb.mozillazine.org/About_protocol_links

Check also my personal Firefox options here.

My Firefox tunning

There are a few Firefox option I like, unfortunately sometimes is hard to find what are the knobs to touch to get it set as I like it. Here are the settings that I prefer:

Make search open in new tab:

browser.search.openintab with value true

Keep window when closing last tab:

browser.tabs.closeWindowWithLastTab with value false

Single close button for all tabs:

browser.tabs.closebuttons with value 3 (0- Active tab only, 1 - all tabs, 2 - no close buttons, 3- single at the end of the tab bar)

Ask before quitting:

browser.showQuitWarning with value true

Hide default "Inspect Element" when Firebug is installed:

extensions.firebug.hideDefaultInspector set to true. (The option devtools.inspector.enabled does the same thing)

Disable message "This site has requested that you identify yourself with a certificate:" in Thunderbird

Thunderbird as one(not the only one) annoying feature that it keeps asking you to chose a certificate to identify yourself. The text in the box is: "This site has requested that you identify yourself with a certificate:", then there is a drop-down menu to chose among your certificates, then there is a checkbox that says "Remember this decision", then the buttons "OK" and "Cancel".

Very nice, too bad it asks you for input every single time it needs to authenticate... this is real annoying, it seems the checkbox is there to taunt, because it feels Thunderbird cannot remember your decision...

The solution is simple, but you need to open the config editor "about:config":

• Linux: Edit/Options -> "Advanced" section -> "General" tab -> "Config editor" button.
• Windows: Tools/Options -> "Advanced" section -> "General" tab -> "Config editor" button.
• Mac: Thunderbird->Preferences...->"Advanced" section -> "General" tab -> "Config editor" button.

Search for the entry "security.default_personal_cert" and change it to "Select Automatically" (default value is "Ask Every Time").

This information was collected from mozillazine forum http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=652927

Extend LVM volume

To extend a LVM volume, you need to add a physical volume. If you don't have the partition create, you need to create one using, the partition should be type Linux LVM (8E): cfdisk /dev/sda
After create the partition (you might need to reboot to see it.), create e physical volume
pvcreate /dev/sda3
Now you have to add physical volumes to a volume group:
vgextend VolGroup /dev/sda3
(you can figure out the name of you volume group run vgdisplay)
Now you need to extend your logical Volume to use the new space(you need to know how much will be the total size):
lvextend -L 8.5G /dev/mapper/VolGroup-lv_root
Now finally you can extend the filesystem, simply run:
resize2fs /dev/VolGroup/lv_root

Disable screen blanking during XBMC

I'm having a problem: the screen saver starts during the playing of movies in XBMC. Only XBMC is running and the screen blanks after 10min. I found the commands that disable it, but I still lack a way to do it permanently:

export DISPLAY=localhost:0.0
xset dpms 0 0 0
xset -dpms
xset dpms force on
xset -q

To make the changes permanent I added the following lines in the file

~/.xbmc/scripts/autoexec.sh

xset dpms 0 0 0
xset dpms force on
echo $(date) '~/.xbmc/scripts/autoexec.sh: Touching xset' >> ~/myxbmc_log.txt
xset -q >> ~/myxbmc_log.txt
echo $(date) '~/.xbmc/scripts/autoexec.sh: Checking screensaver:' >> ~/myxbmc_log.txt
gnome-screensaver-command --query >> ~/myxbmc_log.txt

Missing feature in MacOS mail: Archive

Thunderbird has a very nice feature, the archive button, that will send the selected emails into an archive folder.
So I created a service that does that, it will go through the selected emails, and it will archive them in "[Gmail]/All Mail" if the account server contains the string gmail, and Archive/<year> if not. 

The workflow can be found here.
 TODO: is still error handling if the destination mailbox does not exist.

To Install unzip to the folder ~/Library/Services.