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  • Urban 23:39 on 31 Jul. 2011 Permalink |  

    Skip Trash in Lion 

    One of the things that bothers me in Mac OS X is that you cannot delete files without skipping the trash (apart from using the console). This means that to free the disk space of, say, a 2GB file, you have to empty the trash; if you delete large files often, your trash either grows very large or you empty it so often, that it defeats the very purpose of having one.

    Until now I’ve used a handy script/droplet Permanently shred, but it broke in Lion. So here’s how you make your own “Skip Trash” dock app using Automator.

    1. Start Automator
    2. Choose “Application”

     

    3. Search for “Ask for confirmation” and drag it to the right pane
    4. Enter a confirmation message, e.g. “Are you sure?”

    5. Search for “Run shell script” and drag it to the right pane
    6. Select “Pass input: as arguments”
    7. Replace “echo” with “rm -rf”

    8. Save application (e.g. as SkipTrash.app)
    9. drag it to the dock and select “Options -> keep in dock”

    If you want the app to play a Poof sound when finished, add “afplay /Library/poof.aif” at the end of the shell script and unzip and copy this file to your /Library/ (or any other location you want, but update the path accordingly): poof.aif.zip

    So now whenever you want to skip the trash, drop files or folders onto the newly created SkipTrash.app instead of the regular Trash icon.

     
    • Taoiste 02:41 on 9 Sep. 2011 Permalink

      Works great, thanks, but with only one file at a time.
      I’m trying to figure out how to prevent Lion from asking “Run anyway, because it’s from internet…”

    • Urban 17:25 on 9 Sep. 2011 Permalink

      It should work for more than one file.. make sure you’ve selected “pass input as arguments” and put the rm -rf inside the *for loop*.
      If the soundfile’s giving you problems, you can just omit it. Otherwise, try something like this to disable warnings: 
      https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3216314?start=0&tstart=0 

    • Urban 17:26 on 9 Sep. 2011 Permalink

      It should work for more than one file.. make sure you’ve selected “pass input as arguments” and put the rm -rf inside the *for loop*.

      If the soundfile’s giving you problems, you can just omit it. Otherwise, try something like this to disable warnings: 
      https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3216314?start=0&tstart=0 

    • Taoiste 18:17 on 9 Sep. 2011 Permalink

      Typed in terminal: defaults write com.apple.LaunchServices LSQuarantine -bool NO
      Now it works now with more than one file. Thanks alot!

    • robotwholearned 17:18 on 8 Jun. 2012 Permalink

      Thank you, this works great!

  • Urban 02:10 on 19 Jul. 2011 Permalink |  

    O knjigarnah 

    Ko smo se potikali po ZDA, sem večkrat zataval v knjigarno Borders, ki je s svojim umirjenim ambientom, bolj podobnim knjižnici, kot pa knjigarni, predstavljala oazo sredi hektičnega mesta. Klima, zastonj internet in vse knjige, ki jih je poželelo srce, tako da sploh nisem vedel kaj bi prej vzel v roke; večkrat sem se zalotil pri tuhtanju, kako bi domov odvlekel večji kup knjig, pa sem se hitro streznil, češ da take kupe doma že imam, pa jih sploh še nisem prebral.

    Borders je že februarja oznanil bankrot, ker pa do zdaj niso našli kupca, dokončno zapirajo vrata. In ne morem reči, da nisem tudi sam pomagal pri njihovem propadu. Par dobrih knjig sem našel tam, pa sem jih kar sproti kupil v Amazonovem Kindle Storu, preko iPhona in Bordersovega brezplačnega WiFi-ja. Pa še malo počíl in se lahkih rok podal naprej. Dvomim da sem bil edini.

    Čeprav vem, da se pol tisočletja stari tehnologiji tiska počasi bliža konec, ter so mi znane prednosti prenosne knjižnice, pa se mi takih kotičkov vseeno zdi škoda. Pasovna širina interakcije™ je v knjigarni mnogo večja kot na spletu. Uporabiš lahko roke, noge, ter se prebiješ čez celo knjigarno v nekaj minutah. Najdeš zanimiv oddelek, kjer se lahko ustaviš, pri tem pa s pogledom oplaziš na stotine knjig1.

    Na spletu smo še vedno v kameni dobi. Page 1 of 145. Next.

    Seveda knjigarne iz opeke in malte ne bodo odšle čez noč. Borders ni bila niti največja ameriška veriga (Barnes&Noble je še večji). Ampak posel ne bo iz dneva v dan lažji, občutki pa ne povsem različni od čakanja pred strelskim vodom.

    1. Pri nas recimo mi je izredno všeč ValeNovak, kjer lahko najdeš tudi tako sodobne naslove kot so XKCD, Dilbert in zbrane objave z blogov Setha Godina. []
     
    • Metatronbozo 08:19 on 19 Jul. 2011 Permalink

      a Vale Novak še obstaja? A ni vse njegove knigarne prevzela Mladinska knjiga… sem neki o tem slišal, ko so ljudje sedaj čisto razočarani, ker ne morejo več naročevat kakšne posebne knjige al pa revije (kar jim je VN prej omogočal)

    • Urban 10:56 on 19 Jul. 2011 Permalink

      pa res, cist sm spregledal. zdej pa vidm da se tud oni mel fajn izgubo.. RIP

  • Urban 23:54 on 11 Jul. 2011 Permalink |  

    Server status via SMS 

    Stormy weather makes me worried about my electronic equipment, especially servers. A summer storm can take out power, corrupt a HDD in the process, or in the worst case, fry absolutely everything by a strategically placed lightning strike.

    But even on a quiet winter day, hard disk can quietly fill with logs, one byte at a time, finally causing a bunch of services to die (I’m looking at you, Mysql).

    The point is, anything can happen and you have to check often to prevent an unplanned downtime, which can sometimes extend significantly because no-one checked1. And checking gets more tedious the more stuff you have. So this post describes a quick&dirty method, tailored to my needs, on the cheap.

    A quick disclaimer: I do know about Pingdom and similar services, as well as Nagios. However, I wanted a simple lightweight script, which runs on my home server behind a firewall, and queries my public servers over HTTP. Then it sends me a text, once daily.

    This is how it works:

    • my home server acts as an agent and tries to contact all the public servers
    • each server performs a quick and dirty on-demand self-test, responding with a message that reports the available disk space, mysql status, etc.
    • python script on the home server aggregates all the responses into a concise form, suitable for texting
    • and sends it, once a day.

    To test the public servers, I created a simple PHP script which performs some basic tasks a healthy server should be able to do, and returns a response. This is the version 1:

    
    A<?php
        /*A stands for Apache.
          If only "A" gets served,
          the web server is alive, but PHP doesn't work. */
     
        /*print P (short for PHP OK),
          followed by GBs of free disk space */
        echo "P[" . floor(disk_free_space("/") / 1024 / 1024 / 1024) . "G]";
    
    
        /*try connecting to MySQL */
        mysql_connect("server", "user", "pass")
            or die("db_down");
        mysql_select_db("mysql")
            or die("db_err");
      
        /*Print a short string ("My") through the
          database to prove it works.*/
        $res = mysql_query("select 'My' as my from user");
        $row = mysql_fetch_assoc($res);
        echo $row["my"];
    
    
        /*if everything works ok, this should
          return something like AP[10G]My
          which simply means apache works ok,
          php interpreter is fine,
          there's 10G of free disk
          and mysql is fine. */
    ?>
    
    

    I wanted to get this summary delivered as a SMS notification. Twillio looked promising, but in the end wouldn’t take my CC, so I used this awesome hack to send free text in the form of a Google Calendar reminder.

    I extended the provided Python script to also get the free disk space of my home server and wrap everything up as a single SMS. The result looks something like this:

    Reminder: srv1_ok! c:1018M d:709054M srv2:AP[10G]My srv3:AP[2G]My

    This was at first meant to be just a form of “infrastructure unit test”, returning true if everything checks out OK, and false otherwise. But since there was room for additional info, I added more to fill the message.

    I’ve been somewhat reluctant to set up different notifications in the past, because that basically means more spam. But since I did it once at work (via e-mail), it’s been quite satisfying. An e-mail with the subject “Everything ok!” makes my day, and that’s what I get most of the time anyway.

    1. It’s just recently happened to me 🙂 []
     
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