Find folder differences

To compare two folders on your Mac, and find the files that differ:

diff -rq dirA/ dirB/ |grep -v -e '\.svn' -e '\.git'|sort

Remove the '-q' option to see line differences:

diff -r dirA/ dirB/ > diff.txt

Error 51: Unable to communicate with VPN subsystem

If you're hitting "Error 51: Unable to communicate with VPN subsystem" when trying to start the VPN Client on your Mac, the solution is:

shutdown the VPN Client

start a terminal window

restart the VPN via:

sudo /System/Library/StartupItems/CiscoVPN/CiscoVPN restart

Thanks to Anders for this one.

What I want from a Web Service Registry

Coming back to web services after a break has revealed the necessity for a good governance system, and the weaknesses of the one I have now. Mule Galaxy is just not up to it. It is clunky to use, and I randomly get some errors when updating. What I need is:

• A central repo where I can store all web service related metadata - the name, URL, purpose, dates, owners, version numbers, dependencies, etc.



• A one page list of the current web service URLs, what they do, and what their status is (live/dev/test etc). This is the one that I am sorely missing right now! One web service per line



• Keeping the WSDL in source control is useful, but there needs to be an easy way to get it in there, to compare differences, and to link the source code URL into the metadata repo; and there needs to be a clear process for when (at what stage in the dev process) the WSDL in source control gets updated



• I need to regularly test/ping these services to ensure they are still up and alert if they aren't. This could be done through something like Servers Alive. Ideally it should dynamically look-up my metadata repo and automatically test the services that are at the right status. Otherwise I'll just forget to add the test into Servers Alive. The repo can hold the names of the people to alert. It would be nice if it could update back into our repo the date/time of the last successful test, and the current test status (up/down)



• Most of all, it needs to flow well and be intuitive to use - buttons/links that lead me through high-level tasks. I don't do this everyday so I don't want to have to refer to a manual every time I want to do something (like upgrade a web service and deploy it).



• What I don't want is run-time web service look-ups!



• What I also don't want is some giant heavy-weight system that does all of this, plus 1,000 things more. Well actually, I don't mind if it does 1,000 things more, as long as they are hidden/unobtrusive and don't turn it into a click-coffee-click tool.

I can see why so many people end up writing their own registries!

Upgrading iPhone firmware with Pwnage

These are the steps I use to upgrade my firmware on my 2G iPhone:

1. Use Pwnage to build the custom IPSW file

2. Put the iPhone into recovery mode

• Disconnect iPhone


• Shutdown iPhone


• Hold down home button


• Plug iPhone in

3. Restore custom IPSW file

• In iTunes, hold down Alt and click restore

VMWare Fusion won't shutdown

I had a problem where I couldn't shutdown my Windows XP under VMWare Fusion - it started shutting down and then just locked up. There doesn't appear to be any way to force a shutdown via Fusion.

My solution, via Google, was:

1. Force quit VMWare Fusion and vmware-vmw (password required) via the Activity Monitor.

2. Goto to the Virtual Machine (eg. Documents/Virtual Machines/XP) and "Show Package Contents"

3. Find the file ending with ".vmem" and move it to the trash.

4. Restart the Virtual Machine and all should be good!

Edit:
Well, it turns out there is an easy way to do this from the VMWare application itself. In the comments below, Ben from VMWare mentions that holding down the "Option" key while the Virtual Machine menu is open will change the "Shut Down Guest" to "Power Off". Nice!!

"could not sync mail accounts to the iphone because the iphone cancelled the sync"

I got this problem after adding a new mail account to my Mac and then trying to sync it to the iPhone (by selecting it to Sync in iTunes).

If you have a JailBroken iPhone, you can fix this by:

ssh root@xxx.xxx.xx.xxx (default password is 'alpine')
cd /var/mobile/Library
chmod -R 777 Mail/

Some tricks when deploying your .Net COM Dll to the GAC

A little trick here:

Add the Dll manually to the GAC in the Setup project (as a file rather than as a "project Output"); then set the "register" property of the Dll to "vsdraCOM". If you use "Project Output" for the Dll project it seems to (a) register the COM object only sometimes, and (b) keeps trying to stick the TLB into the GAC and giving you an error.