This little workflow and command line might help someone.

1. Create a separate collection for your webpage citations
2. Move all webpage citations into the new collection and delete them from you default bibliography collection
3. Mark all items of the webpage collection and go to File->Export…
4. Choose webpage_temp.bib as your export target in your LaTeX tree
5. Run the following command below
6. Edit the new file webpages.bib and check that all the “Last Accessed” descriptors are OK (Mendeley does not export the “Last Accessed” field into bibtex; therefore a fixed date is used in there…)
7. Use webpage.bib in your LaTeX file (example of how it looks below)

The command line is:

cat webpages_temp.bib | \
sed "s/url =/howpublished =/g" | \
sed "s/{http/{\\\url{http/g" | \
sed "s/howpublished.*}/& [Online. Last accessed: 2011-11-06]}/g" > webpages.bib

Here is an example of how it looks in the document (alpha style):

I use this little script in the make file for the LaTeX compilation. Works for me : )

The entry before the script (as it came from Mendeley):

@misc{Ishida2011,
author = {Ishida, Richard},
booktitle = {W3C},
keywords = {cultural name differences,name ambiguity,name structure},
title = {{Personal names around the world}},
url = {http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-personal-names},
year = {2011}
}

The same entry after the script:

@misc{Ishida2011,
author = {Ishida, Richard},
booktitle = {W3C},
keywords = {cultural name differences,name ambiguity,name structure},
title = {{Personal names around the world}},
howpublished = {\url{http://www.w3.org/International/questions/qa-personal-names} [Online. Last accessed: 2011-11-06]},
year = {2011}
}

Background story: If you have sufficient access rights to the MySQL server, you could easily drop database dbname; and create database dbname;

If circumstances don’t allow you to drop and create this way, here are two ways on how you could do it from the (Gnu/Linux) shell:

$ mysql -u<dbuser> -p<dbpass> -e “show tables” -N <dbname> | sed -e “s/.*/DROP TABLE IF EXISTS \`&\`;/” | mysql -u<dbuser> -p<dbpass> <dbname>

or

$ mysqldump -u<dbuser> -p<dbpass> –no-data –add-drop-table <dbname> | grep ^DROP | mysql -u<dbuser> -p<dbpass> <dbname>

Of course, you have to replace the following:

<dbuser>: Database user; e.g. “testuser” (without the quotes)
<dbpass>: Database password; e.g. “test1ng” (without the quotes)
<dbname>: Database name; e.g. “testdatabase” (without the quotes)

Cheers!

PS: [Compiled from post and comments under http://edwardawebb.com/linux/drop-tables-mysql-database-deletion]

At some point last year, I needed a solution for a problem in LaTeX, where I wanted to continue an enumeration over several paragraphs.

Read on and find out how I did it.

Cheers!

OK, I came across a problem, when trying to use something like the following:

\chapter{c1}
\section{s1}
\subsection{sub1}
Q1 - foo0
Q2 - bar0

\subsection{sub2}
Q3 - foo1
Q4 - bar1

\subsection{sub3}
Q5 - foo2
Q6 - bar2

So I tried. Hard. But could not get this to work. Finally, I used several counters to do the job. Not very nice but it works:

\chapter{c1}
% init new counters Rcount and Tcount
\newcounter{Rcount}
\newcounter{Tcount}

\subsection{subX}
%Tell the list to use counter Rcount, and use a custom label (RQ-arabicnumberOfCounter)
\begin{list}{Q-\arabic{Rcount}}{\usecounter{Rcount} \setlength{\rightmargin}{\leftmargin}}
%since the list environment sets the used counter to zero, we need to use the second counter and load it into Rcount.
  \setcounter{Rcount}{\value{Tcount}}
  \item fooX
  \item barX
\end{list}

%when the list is finished, write the value or Rcount back to the backup counter.
\addtocounter{Tcount}{\value{Rcount}}

That’s it. Hopefully it helps somebody. For any questions, just contact me.

Some installs later, I figured it was a Problem with the alternative keyboard layout I’m using. This particular layout has been put together by Jan & Nils [1] and puts the German Umlauts on some of the keys by utilizing the option key. The problem arose when the alternative German Umlaut keyboard Layout had been installed.

For a solution see the entire article.

So I scanned through the logs and found this essentially:

windowserver.log
------

Sep 11 17:27:47 H9s-MacBook-Pro SecurityAgent[709]: CFDictionarySetValue(): immutable collection 0x100114b40 given to mutating function
Sep 11 17:27:47 H9s-MacBook-Pro SecurityAgent[709]: NSExceptionHandler has recorded the following exception:\nNSUncaughtSystemExceptionException -- Uncaught system exception: signal 5\nStack trace: 0x7fff824482d3 0x7fff874850aa 0x158 0x7fff83b38ab7 0x7fff849f2d7c 0x7fff849cff0d 0x7fff849cf58b 0x7fff849cee79 0x7fff849d6db0 0x7fff849d6b28 0x7fff849c85a1 0x7fff849c805b 0x7fff849c7b31 0x7fff849c79b1 0x7fff849c790c 0x7fff82c19520 0x7fff82c18e89 0x7fff82bdea7d 0x1000020ae 0x100001f58 0x1
Sep 11 17:27:47 H9s-MacBook-Pro SecurityAgent[710]: CFDictionarySetValue(): immutable collection 0x100407b00 given to mutating function
Sep 11 17:27:47 H9s-MacBook-Pro SecurityAgent[710]: NSExceptionHandler has recorded the following exception:\nNSUncaughtSystemExceptionException -- Uncaught system exception: signal 5\nStack trace: 0x7fff824482d3 0x7fff874850aa 0x158 0x7fff83b38ab7 0x7fff849f2d7c 0x7fff849cff0d 0x7fff849cf58b 0x7fff849cee79 0x7fff849d6db0 0x7fff849d6b28 0x7fff849c85a1 0x7fff849c805b 0x7fff849c7b31 0x7fff849c79b1 0x7fff849c790c 0x7fff82c19520 0x7fff82c18e89 0x7fff82bdea7d 0x1000020ae 0x100001f58 0x1


Soo after that, I figured out this possible but very ugly Solution:


rm /Users/username/Library/Preferences/ByHost/com.apple.HIToolbox.SomeUUIDhere.plist


But now I found a better and finally working solution:

Put your alternative layout (in my case called roman.bundle) in /Library/Keyboard Layouts/ and not in /Users/username/Library/Keyboard Layouts/. Meaning: make the layout available to all users.

Hope this helps someone.

Cheers

[1] http://hci.rwth-aachen.de/USGermanKeyboard

[1] http://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Xen_mit_Routing_und_Bridge
[2] http://www.henningweiler.de/?p=85

1. Preparation

First, you copy ‘vif-route’ to ‘vif-virtual’ and ‘network-route’ to ‘network-virtual. Both are located in /etc/xen/scripts. The, you’ll have to patch the file ‘vif-virtual’ :


--- vif-route 2008-04-25 15:03:45.000000000 +0200
+++ vif-virtual 2008-05-02 14:29:22.725192247 +0200
@@ -47,6 +47,11 @@
done
fi

log debug "Successful vif-route $command for $vif."


The host (dom0) has to have a bridge on startup, which you can create in /etc/network/interfaces and give it an internal IP. Mine looks something like this:


auto xenintbr
iface xenintbr inet static
address 10.10.10.100
netmask 255.0.0.0
pre-up /usr/sbin/brctl addbr xenintbr
post-up /usr/sbin/tunctl -t tap0
post-up /usr/sbin/brctl addif xenintbr tap0
post-down /sbin/ifconfig xenintbr down
post-down /usr/sbin/brctl delbr xenintbr
post-down /usr/sbin/tunctl -d tap0
# bridge_maxwait 0
# bridge_fd 0
# bridge_hello 0
# bridge_stp off
post-up /sbin/ifconfig xenintbr 10.10.10.100 netmask 255.0.0.0


Now edit the file /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp and substitute the vif-route and network-route entries with the following entries:


(network-script network-virtual)
(vif-script vif-virtual)


2. DomU Configuration

The configuration for the virtual Network Interfaces for the corresponding DomU configuration file has to be setup in the following way:


vif = [ 'ip=xx.xx.xx.xx,mac=aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff,vifname=domUname-vif',
'mac=aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff,vifname=domUname-vif-br']


The first line describes the public IP(v4) address in your providers subnet. The second line describes the internal interface. Remember to change the MAC Adresses for both interfaces since those have to be different!

The extension ‘-vif’ or ‘-vif-br’ determines if the interface is connected to the external interface or to the internal bridge, whereby the ‘-vif-br’ resembles the bridge. With the configuration shown above, the domU will have two interfaces (eth0 and eth1) where eth0 points to the external interface and eth1 to the internal bridge.

3. Finishing Touches

To be able to use the network, the domU internal network configuration in /etc/network/interfaces has to be changed to hold an internal IP address on eth1 (which corresponds to an IP address in the subnet you specified in the bridge configuration).

in the ‘old days’ I’ve been using the Exim MTA and just found a few helpful commands, which I thought might help some people also. Here we go…

Count frozen messages in mail queue:
exim4 -bpr | grep frozen | wc -l

Remove all frozen messages from the mail queue:
mailq | awk '/frozen/ { print $3 }' | xargs exim4 -Mrm

Remove ALL messages from the mail queue:
mailq | awk '/<>/ {print $3}' | xargs exim4 -Mrm

That’s it…

Cheers!

in order to setup a new server, I had to deal with this more or less troublesome topic. I want to give everybody a hint who is facing trouble with this.

The Setup:
- Debian Lenny (Kernel 2.6.26-2-xen-amd64) 64 Bit host and 64 Bit guests
- xen-hypervisor 3.2-1

The Goal:
I. have a directly routed interface for the public IPs
II. create a virtual LAN between the domUs
III. let the hosts on the virtual LAN talk to the outside world (those are mostly the domUs, which do not have a public IP)

First, for I. and II. go ahead and apply the tutorial in [1]

In addition to that, I had to perform the following operations:
edit /etc/xen/scripts/vif-common.sh and add the two lines indicated

vifname=$(xenstore_read_default "$XENBUS_PATH/vifname" "")
if [ "$vifname" ]
then
if [ "$command" == "online" ] && ! ip link show "$vifname" >&/dev/null
then
do_or_die ip link set "$vif" down ### ADD THIS LINE
do_or_die ip link set "$vif" name "$vifname"
do_or_die ip link set "$vifname" up ### ADD THIS LINE
fi
vif="$vifname"
fi

Ok, now there is something you should keep in mind:
While editing your domU config be sure to keep the vifname parameter SHORT!! I called it ‘mysql-mirror-vif-br’ which was way too long, which then resulted in a non-starting script. The script did not tell me anything. Not on stdout not in the logs. Now it’s ‘mymirr-vif-br’ which is fine.

For III. do the following for every IP you want to have internet access from the inside of the respective domU:

iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -s virtualLanIP/32 -j MASQUERADE

Hope this helps someone.

Cheers!

[1] Hetzner Dokuwiki: http://wiki.hetzner.de/index.php/Xen_mit_Routing_und_Bridge

Did you know? (YouTube)

Epic 2015 in German (YouTube)

Tell me what you think.

This shall be a little how-to for all those people who discover the same trouble!

The setup I had to deal with:
- Ubuntu (x64 Server)
- CUPS 1.2.8
- 2x Kyocera Mita FS-1030D attached via USB

The problem:
If you connect both printers, they both get the same ID:

# lsusb
Bus 004 Device 093: ID 0482:0015 Kyocera Corp.
Bus 004 Device 092: ID 0482:0015 Kyocera Corp.


AND (even worse) are both mapped to usb://Kyocera/FS-1030D

An auto-installation on the cups web interface will result in a success, BUT you’ll only be able to print on the first of the two USB devices. So not a good solution.

OK, this is where you want to go:

1. Set up the printer(s) using the web interface.
2. Fire up your console and goto /dev/
3. Find the files usblp0 and usblp1 (depending on your system, there might be a sub folder named ‘usb’. If so, see if there are two files named ‘lp0′ and ‘lp1′ in existance) and pad yourself on the back ;)
4. Edit /etc/cups/printers.conf with your favourite editor.
5. You’ll find the first printer which looks like this:

<Printer Kyocera_FS-1030D_USB_1>
Info Kyocera FS-1030D
Location Local Printer
DeviceURI usb://Kyocera/FS-1030D
State Idle
StateTime 1231879830
Accepting Yes
Shared Yes
JobSheets none none
QuotaPeriod 0
PageLimit 0
KLimit 0
OpPolicy default
ErrorPolicy retry-job


Leave it like this!! (Otherwise, CUPS web interface will harass you with newly found printers.)

6. Right under the first printer you’ll find the second printer (and the third, the fourth, [...]) named <Printer Kyocera_FS-1030D_USB_2> for example. THERE (and on possibly other following identical printers) change the following line

DeviceURI usb://Kyocera/FS-1030D

to

DeviceURI file:/dev/usblp1

The other printers below need their equivalent usb device link. You could to a

# echo usblp1 > /dev/usblp1

which will actually print the word ‘usblp1′ on the printer. If you do so with all of your printers, you’ll know the device link ;)

Ok, we are not quite there, yet. I found a strange behaviour of CUPS, when you switch the printers off over night and turn them on again the next morning. Somehow, having this configuration, CUPS simply quits without following any shutdown procedures. No log entries, no good bye letter, nothing.

In order to detect and overcome this situation, this little script monitors the cups daemon and restarts it if necessary:


#!/bin/bash
#
# cupsMon.sh -- A Monitor for CUPS
#
# @author Henning Weiler
# @version 1.0
#

if ps --pid $CUPSPID | grep "cupsd" >/dev/null; then
exit 0
else
rm -f /var/run/cups/cupsd.pid /var/run/cups/cups.sock
/etc/init.d/cupsys start
fi
else
/etc/init.d/cupsys start
fi

I put it in my root home directory and gave it a little ‘chmod +x’.

In your /etc/crontab add the following line:

9 * * * * root /root/cupsMon.sh >> /dev/null

This will run the monitor every 9 minutes. I did not want to run it every minute, since switching on multiple printers may take a while.

If you have any questions or concerns, please comment.