Spotlight notes, and indexing with FireFox

Spotlight is useful for indexing files on disk,
emails, calendar events, looking up words in dictionary,
people info from addressbook.

But it doesn't index web pages you've seen. Unless you use safari.
I like safari except for two things:

1. no plugins or addons, like sxipper or adblock
2. something else, don't remember. maybe I'll start using it again. for some things.

.. will edit more later. some link on this topic:

does index not even the cache?
do I need a proxy? eg, muffin, save to disk and do indexing on that.


some links:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&hs=dw&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=os+x+spotlight+firefox&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/stopspotlightindex.html
http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/index_files/spotlight-tips.html

forum discussion on ffox bookmarks:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050825165843574
http://web.archive.org/web/20051231031800/homepage.mac.com/mikemunson/firefox/

.. I will look in to this more later.

Restoring a Mac from Time Machine -- some tips

These are some old notes from March, when I upgrade to a 640G internal disk.

My second time restoring a system from Time Machine backups:

best practices:

• close everything possible. All your running apps, and as many things in the menu bar as possible. Run activity monitor and double check (eg, sometimes my firefox does not exit properly...)
  
• check what you have excluded in TM
  through gui, or in cmd line with
  defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine
  
• TM restore now
  
• ? reboot in safe mode
• ? TM again

Last two for the truly paranoid, or if you ever got burned by TM before. I didn't do it.

Things that (i thought) broke first time:

• java (plugin only?)
• usb kb modifier key settings--
  I use an external keyboard, and I have capslock mapped to control (both keyboards), and Alt mapped to command (with the 'windows' key being option).
  

But I think the first time was an earlier 10.6 release, so maybe it got fixed.
After the second time, I haven't noticed anything breaking (yet).

Speeding up the restore process.
Because when you first start it may say "19 hours remaining...":

• don't include archives/media you don't need right away
  (eg anything you could reproduce easily later: a dvd rip, etc; software downloads
  virtual machines (I exclude from time machine; any (good) reasons not to?)
  stuff you already backup on your own
• other excluded directories from time machine
  alternative: back these up to another disk now, delete locally, force a time machine backup.
  Or just move to a non-TM dir? After all, you can get them back from TM (just be sure to by the end of the day..).

Afterwards / testing:

• no problems with VMware.
  The first time I got questions asking "did you copy these? or move them from another machine"
  oh, that's right--the first TM restore I did was to a different laptop... some of my problems with because of host-specific settings.
  

Filevault interaction ?
I don't use filevault, so I don't know. I didn't know about it when I first started using my Mac. I later read about issues with Time Machine -- it only backs up your filevault files when you're logged out, and I'm never logged out.
But I just found a post somewhere how to do it: 10.6: Let Time Machine backup File Vault while logged in -- but I haven't tried it.

Verizon FiOS Actiontec router firmware update

I have had pretty much no trouble at all with FiOS--maybe the best ISP experience ever. I might have to reboot the router every month or two, and there may have been one outage for a couple hours in the past year--not memorable.

Logged in today for the first time in a few months, check the syslog (actually went back for 30 days), cut-n-pasted into emacs for easy filtering. After a couple minutes had it down to 45 from 1600.

I see these lines repeating every 3 days or so:
Mar 20 14:46:34 2010 System Log CWMP Periodic Inform 204 No Content
Mar 20 14:46:34 2010 System Log CWMP Periodic Inform challenge response with 200 OK from server
Mar 20 14:46:34 2010 System Log CWMP Periodic Inform initial 401 challenge

and a firmware upgrade recently:
Mar 3 18:52:55 2010 System Log WAN Coax WAN Coax Link Rate
Mar 3 18:48:40 2010 System Log WAN Coax WAN Coax Link Rate
Dec 14 19:00:04 2007 System Log WAN Coax WAN Coax Link Up
Mar 3 18:47:16 2010 System Log Reboot Reboot issued from TR69
Mar 3 18:47:16 2010 System Log CWMP Firmware Upgrade CWMP Transfer Complete from CPE
Mar 3 18:47:16 2010 System Log CWMP Firmware Upgrade CWMP Firmware Upgrade Success. New Version: 20.10.7
Mar 3 18:46:36 2010 System Log CWMP Periodic Inform 204 No Content
Mar 3 18:46:36 2010 System Log CWMP Periodic Inform challenge response with 200 OK from server
Mar 3 18:46:34 2010 System Log CWMP Periodic Inform initial 401 challenge
Mar 3 18:46:34 2010 System Log CWMP Firmware Upgrade CWMP Firmware Location:
Mar 3 18:46:33 2010 System Log CWMP Periodic Inform 204 No Content
Mar 3 18:46:33 2010 System Log CWMP Firmware Upgrade CWMP Firmware Download Response From CPE
Mar 3 18:46:33 2010 System Log CWMP Firmware Upgrade CWMP Firmware Download Command from CMS
Mar 3 18:46:33 2010 System Log CWMP Periodic Inform challenge response with 200 OK from server
Mar 3 18:46:32 2010 System Log CWMP Periodic Inform initial 401 challenge

I can't access the URL though; anyone have the password or the file?

Any information on the changes?

Citrix Web Interface fails after Websphere migration v6.0 -> v6.1

If you can actually get migration to work,
and you have this portlet, you might see this in your logs:

[3/17/10 11:35:55:867 EDT] 0000003c AdminLinkInfo W com.ibm.workplace.searchmenu.portal.taglib.AdminLinkInfoExtTag doStartTag The search menu tag is not supported in this version of WebSphere Portal. Please refer to the Information Center for details.
[3/17/10 11:35:55:960 EDT] 0000003c WebApp E [Servlet Error]-[/WEB-INF/jsp/View.jsp]: com.ibm.ws.jsp.translator.JspTranslationException: JSPG0227E: Exception caught while translating /WEB-INF/jsp/View.jsp:
/WEB-INF/jsp/View.jsp(14,1) --> JSPG0009E: Unable to load tag handler class org.apache.pluto.tags.DefineObjectsTag

Enterprise app name: PA_Citrix_WI
locally, my file was called NewCli3.war.

Solution:
unzip the file, edit View.jsp, jar it back up, update the app in websphere portal server, and the error should go away.

How to change JSP? see Changing JSP source
1. Change the tag library to use the standard tag library.
in some goddamned IBM documentation.