[solved] raspberry pi: A window manager is already running on screen

[solved] raspberry pi: A window manager is already running on screenA while ago I did a post about [using remote desktop with raspberry pi](https://techblog.willshouse.com/2012/07/18/remote-desktop-to-raspberry-pi-from-os-x/) – that was a fun, successful project. Now it’s been a while since I had to do the setup on a new raspberry pi machine and when I tried to remote desktop to my new pi I got this error:

> A window manager is already running on screen

Well that’s no good!

The problem turned out to be fairy easy to resolve:

I was `ssh`ing into the `pi` as the root user `ssh [email protected] -X` but I should have been connecting as the `pi` user (`ssh [email protected] -X`) – once I got that straightened out and ssh’ed in and ran `lxsession` the GUI / remote desktop for pi fired right up!

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How to Allow Applications Downloaded from Anywhere – OSX Mountain Lion

Follow these simple steps to allow applications downloaded from anywhere to run on your OS X Mac:

### Step 1:

Open System Preferences and then choose Security & Privacy

How to Allow Applications Downloaded from Anywhere – OSX Mountain Lion

### Step 2

Choose the first tab: “General”:

How to Allow Applications Downloaded from Anywhere – OSX Mountain Lion

The bottom section may be grayed out:

How to Allow Applications Downloaded from Anywhere – OSX Mountain Lion

If so choose the “Lock Icon” in the bottom left:

How to Allow Applications Downloaded from Anywhere – OSX Mountain Lion

Under “Allow Applications Downloaded From” click the button to set it as “Anywhere” instead of “Mac App Store” or “Mac App Store and Identified Developers”

Now try running your application and see if it works.

Posted in Mac, Security, Software, Tech Tips | Tagged | 1 Comment

Vim and Jailkit

Vim and JailkitRecently I installed Jailkit on `Ubuntu 12.04` and then tried to use the `vim` editor to edit files as the `jailed` user (specifically a user jailed with the `bash` shell) and `vim` was behaving oddly.

The colors on the terminal were just a gray (default color) and a bold white. After a little digging I found out this is how `vim` does syntax highlighting when it thinks that only two colors are available.

Also, I was having trouble with the arrow keys not working – I could move around with `HJKL` but there also seemed to be lag and `vim` was hanging or would hang sometimes and was not responsive.

I typed in `set terminal` and it told me `ansi` which is the default, “dumb” terminal. You can change `vim` to another terminal type, like `xterm` a few ways.

1. Inside `vim` type `:set term=xterm` and that should do it
2. Edit your `.vimrc` file (in your home directory) and add `set term=xterm`
3. Before launching `vim` type `export TERM=xterm` to set an environmental variable
4. Add that last command (`export TERM=xterm`) into one of your startup files like ‘~/.profile` or ‘~/.bashrc`

This fixed the issue with the arrow keys, the lag and hanging, but I still only had two colors. After many hours of digging I realized that with Jailkit on Ubuntu even if you do `jk_init -v /home/jail editors` to install `joe` and `vim` and `emacs` you still get this problem. I did a stack trace on `vim` and even turned on debugging and logging and still could not find the issue.

After realizing it was a terminal detection issue and looking though how Unix and Linux determine the terminal type I noticed, that at least on Ubuntu, the files it needs for that operation of terminal capability detection are in the `terminfo` directory at `/lib/terminfo/` – this may be a different directory on other distributions / flavors of linux – the directory should exist and have a lot of subdirectories and not be empty. Once you find the right directory you can copy it to inside the jail using the `jk_cp` command, so if your jail is in `/home/jail` you can use:

jk_cp -v -f /home/jail /lib/terminfo/

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Drupal Exposes Millions of Users’ Data

Dear community member,

We respect the privacy of your information, which is why, as a precautionary measure, we are writing to let you know about an incident that involves your personal information. The Drupal.org Security and Infrastructure Teams have discovered unauthorized access to account information on Drupal.org and groups.drupal.org. Information exposed includes usernames, email addresses, and country information, as well as hashed passwords. However, we are still investigating the incident and may learn about other types of information compromised, in which case we will notify you accordingly.

This unauthorized access was made via third-party software installed on the Drupal.org server infrastructure, and was not the result of a vulnerability within the Drupal software itself. This notice applies specifically to user account data stored on Drupal.org and groups.drupal.org, and not to sites running Drupal generally.

We have implemented additional security measures designed to prevent the recurrence of such an attack, and to protect the privacy of our community members.

The next time you attempt to log into your account, you will be required to create a new password.

Below are steps you can take to further protect your personal information online. We encourage you to take preventative measures now to help prevent and detect the misuse of your information.

First, we recommend as a precaution that you change or reset passwords on other sites where you may use similar passwords, even though all passwords on Drupal.org are stored salted and hashed. All Drupal.org passwords are both hashed and salted, although some older passwords on groups.drupal.org were not salted. To make your password stronger:

* Do not use passwords that are simple words or phrases
* Never use the same password on multiple sites or services
* Use different types of characters in your password (uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols).

Second, be cautious if you receive emails asking for your personal information and be on the lookout for unwanted spam. It is not our practice to request personal information by email. Also, beware of emails that threaten to close your account if you do not take the “immediate action” of providing personal information.

For more information, please review the security announcement and FAQ at https://drupal.org/news/130529SecurityUpdate. If you find any reason to believe that your information has been accessed by someone other than yourself, please contact the Drupal Association immediately, by sending an email to [email protected].

We regret that this incident has occurred and want to assure you we are working hard to improve security.

Thank you,
Holly Ross
Drupal Association Executive Director

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Upgrade Chat to the new Hangouts experience for free

Upgrade Chat to the new Hangouts experience for free

Hangouts bring conversations to life with photos, emoji, and even group video calls for free. Connect with friends across computers, Android and Apple devices. Just like John Davies in the photo below.

Upgrade Chat to the new Hangouts experience for free

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Is Coinbase legal?

If you look on eBay there are no Bitcoins for sale inside the USA. And [according to Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitcoin):

> In the US, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) established regulatory guidelines for “decentralized virtual currencies” such as Bitcoin, classifying American “Bitcoin miners” who sell their generated bitcoins as Money Service Businesses (or MSBs), that may be subject to registration and other legal obligations.

So how is it that anyone can sign up for a Coinbase account and then they have the option: to link a bank account i.e. “Bank Accounts – used to buy and sell bitcoins, U.S. only right now” and purchase the bitcoin currency?

Is Coinbase legal?

Well, I posted a question in the help section of Coinbase asking:

> Is Coinbase legal? I read on Wikipedia that it is illegal to buy and sell bitcoins in the USA. Is that true?

Then I get a response via e-mail:

> A public question has been updated: Link to Question

The only problem is that when I click on the link it goes to the general help section – i.e. the question has been deleted.

So I suppose the question of whether or not Bitcoin sales in the USA is still a grey area, and it seems Coinbase has responded by ignoring the question and/or trying to make it go away. Very odd. I checked the rest of their FAQ section and also their legal pages without seeing any comment on this.

Posted in Marketing, Tech Opinion | Tagged | 1 Comment

Google Analytics: Remove Email Report (new version)

Click Admin.

Then click the profiles tab.

Then click “all website data”

Google Analytics: Remove Email Report (new version)

Next click “scheduled emails”

Google Analytics: Remove Email Report (new version)

Now click delete (or modify as you see fit)

Google Analytics: Remove Email Report (new version)

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brew install gnu-stat

The `stat` command on Ubuntu and OS X behave differently and I’d like to have the functionality of the GNU / Ubuntu version of `stat` available on OS X – if there is such a thing. I have already used `homebrew` to install `gnu-sed` and I see similarly that a lot of the GNU utilities are available from:

brew install coreutils findutils gnu-tar gnu-sed gawk gnutls gnu-indent gnu-getopt

I know `stat` on OS X might be very specialized because of the OS X file systems that may be present, but I’d ALSO like to have the linuxy version if it is available. As it turns out, it is.

The GNU version of stat can be accessed on OS X by installing a package / keg called `coreutils` which includes the following utilities:

base64 env mknod runcon touch
basename expand mktemp seq tr
cat expr mv sha1sum true
chcon factor nice sha224sum truncate
chgrp false nl sha256sum tsort
chmod fmt nohup sha384sum tty
chown fold nproc sha512sum uname
chroot groups numfmt shred unexpand
cksum head od shuf uniq
comm hostid paste sleep unlink
cp id pathchk sort uptime
csplit install pinky split users
cut join pr stat vdir
date kill printenv stty wc
dd link printf sum who
df ln ptx sync whoami
dir logname pwd tac yes
dircolors ls readlink tail
dirname md5sum realpath tee
du mkdir rm test
echo mkfifo rmdir timeout

These GNU utilities are available on Mac OS X but the one caveat is that they are all prefixed by the letter `g` as you can see from brew info:

$ brew info coreutils
coreutils: stable 8.21
http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils
Depends on: xz
/usr/local/Cellar/coreutils/8.21 (210 files, 9.6M) *
Built from source
https://github.com/mxcl/homebrew/commits/master/Library/Formula/coreutils.rb
==> Caveats
All commands have been installed with the prefix ‘g’.

If you really need to use these commands with their normal names, you
can add a “gnubin” directory to your PATH from your bashrc like:

PATH=”/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnubin:$PATH”

Additionally, you can access their man pages with normal names if you add
the “gnuman” directory to your MANPATH from your bashrc as well:

MANPATH=”/usr/local/opt/coreutils/libexec/gnuman:$MANPATH”

The utilities with the g prefix are named:

g[ gecho gmkfifo grmdir gtimeout
gbase64 genv gmknod gruncon gtouch
gbasename gexpand gmktemp gseq gtr
gcat gexpr gmv gsha1sum gtrue
gchcon gfactor gnice gsha224sum gtruncate
gchgrp gfalse gnl gsha256sum gtsort
gchmod gfmt gnohup gsha384sum gtty
gchown gfold gnproc gsha512sum guname
gchroot ggroups gnumfmt gshred gunexpand
gcksum ghead god gshuf guniq
gcomm ghostid gpaste gsleep gunlink
gcp gid gpathchk gsort guptime
gcsplit ginstall gpinky gsplit gusers
gcut gjoin gpr gstat gvdir
gdate gkill gprintenv gstty gwc
gdd glink gprintf gsum gwho
gdf gln gptx gsync gwhoami
gdir glogname gpwd gtac gyes
gdircolors gls greadlink gtail
gdirname gmd5sum grealpath gtee
gdu gmkdir grm gtest

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HM-27 Nightlight

This is the HM27 Nightlight, made made in China. It is a great, low-light, white night light. It also comes in a polished silver / chrome decorative version.

HM-27 Nightlight

The nightlight was sold at WalMart stores during the year 2011 but is no longer carried, nor is it available online. This is unfortunate because it is a very good nightlight. See below for most similar night lights.

HM-27 Nightlight

China Patent No: 200930132069.X

120VAC60Hz0.4W

E307003 UL Listed NIGHTLIGHT 33Z6 A385538D9

HM-27 Nightlight

The closets night lights I have found so far include:

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Rackspace: Exit Rescue Mode

The Rackspace documentation says on exiting rescue server mode:

> Once you are done troubleshooting your system, you can exit Rescue Mode by clicking the link labeled Exit Rescue Mode in the Rackspace Cloud Control Panel under your Server Details page.

I couldn’t seem to find the link.

The solution?

Rackspace: Exit Rescue Mode

Visit the list of servers. Click the server name to go to the details page. And the most important key? Wait. It may take a few seconds (~10) before the “Exist Rescue Mode” box pops up with an option to quit recovery mode and reboot into normal server operations.

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