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.

Browser inconsistencies: Safari, Firefox, Chrome (Mac OS X)

this is kinda in draft form right now; post comments with dis/agreements and links to similar lists or maybe solutions.

I use all of these browsers on the Mac, and used them all before on Windows (though Safari coming in later, not as much).

Primary reasons for use:

• Firefox: plugins make it easier check multiple accounts (gmail manager), manage passwords / identity2.0 (sxipper)
  
• Chrome: seems a little faster, responsive, lower system footprint.
  
• Safari: has spotlight indexing for web pages
• IE: just kidding, I avoid this generally. There are a couple sites I have to use IE, but I have windows in a vm, but usually rdp to a server (avoids local bloat).

There are downsides to using multiple browsers, besides the inconsistencies listed below, and the main one is being able find where something is, if you are a big user of browser history (I am) and bookmarks (not so much--mostly bookmarks are write-only. Except for important work/project related items)

Can you get spotlight to index other pages? I am considering a local caching proxy for this..

Here is a working list.

• cmd-arrows for begin/end of line. Sometimes up/down in a text field will go to the beginning or end, and sometimes this appears to be (web-)application specific; e.g., up in a google spreadsheet cell takes you to beginning of line.
• Home/end keys. Why can't these go to beginning/end of line?
  On a page, top and bottom of page are fine.
• Select/drag text
  When one-handed, or lazy, select and drag of text is faster than select/menu-ut/click/menu-paste
• drag-n-drop URLs into rich editor fields
  Two variants: drag of a bookmark or location URL, and drag of a link from the HTML.
  Useful for inserting into (G)mail, or with google notebook.
  And what's up with focus of the element? E.g., gdoc spreadsheet needs to have focus/input entry to drop it in, otherwise the page loads with new URL ?

If the behavior is not consistent, then I have to remember which works where, and this increases cognitive load and slows me down. I want to just transfer this to muscle memory and not have to think about it.

I've started a page in my notebook, but probably a table (spreadsheet) would be better, if embeddable here.

The main inconsistency bugging me right now: begin/end of line. It would be nice if ctrl-a/e worked like emacs. They do--yay! .. at least in blogger. But if not other sites, I will be annoyed.

"ERROR: transport error 202: connect failed: Operation timed out"

This is a problem that can be encountered on NetBeans platform when trying to debug a project.

In another post someone said

...
deps-jar:

compile:

Shared archive: sharing disabled for server vm

ERROR: transport error 202: gethostbyname: unknown host ["transport.c",L41]

FATAL ERROR in native method: JDWP No transports initialized, jvmtiError=JVMTI_ERROR_INTERNAL(113)

ERROR: JDWP Transport dt_socket failed to initialize, TRANSPORT_INIT(510) ["debugInit.c",L500]

JDWP exit error JVMTI_ERROR_INTERNAL(113): No transports initialized

JDWP exit error JVMTI_ERROR_INTERNAL(113): No transports initializedJava Result: 134

debug:

BUILD SUCCESSFUL (total time: 6 seconds)

This worked for me on OS X:

# sudo su -
# echo 127.0.0.1 `/bin/hostname` >> /etc/hosts

Of course, there are many other commands that can be used to achieve the same thing.

After this, the debugger connected right away, instead of a lengthy timeout and then failure.

The problem occurred in my case because a VPN connection (Cisco AnyConnect) change my hostname / dns servers.