Releasing mouse pointer in virt-manager on macOs

If you are using virt-manager on macOs with XQuartz you might know the problem to release the mouse once you have entered a virtual machine. You can solve this issue by creating an additional file in your profile directory ~/.Xmodmap. This file must contain the necessary keyboard mappings to be able to release the mouse pointer.

clear Mod1
keycode 66 = Alt_L
keycode 69 = Alt_R
add Mod1 = Alt_L
add Mod1 = Alt_R

Save the file and execute chmod 700 .Xmodmap . Than restart XQuartz and open virt-manager again. Using your left Control and left Option key will now release the mousepointer.

Have fun!

M32 Version Widget for iOS devices

We just released a video to explain how to install Scritpable App TM on your iOS or iPadOS device and configure it to run the M32 Version widget we created for free.

If you are interested in:

https://youtu.be/3KePU20r6bY

Have a nice time! Become or stay healthy!

MacOS X High Sierra and X11 Forwarding using SSH

After installation of High Sierra we recognized that a ssh connection to other systems show up a warning:

Warning: untrusted X11 forwarding setup failed: xauth key data not generated.

This happens when you installed the latest release from XQuartz 2.7.11 during the last year or so. It seems that the installation of High Sierra replace a couple of files even if they are related and needed by other applications - like XQuartz. To solve this issue just reinstall XQuartz 2.7.11.

Off Topic: iTunes Migration from one USB HD to a new one

When I did my last backup of my HD containing all my iTunes sound and video files I recognized, that this hd will not live longer than two or three more days. So the first thing I did was to buy a new hd and copy all files from the old one to the new one. This leads into the first trouble because I was switching from one operating system to a different one. Starting point was Windows, new system was a Windows VM running on Ubuntu in a VMWare Workstation.

I did a couple of tests on how to implement this. The best way was the following:

1. Make a backup copy of your iTunes music folder.
2. Make a backup copy of your media files.
3. Switch to iTunes folder. In my was: C:\Users\knaepp\My Music\iTunes
4. Make backup copies of all files in this folder (eg create a zip-archive)
5. Edit file "iTunes Music Library.xml" with a real text editor (notepad++ or SCI TE TextEditor on Linux)
6. Search and replace all wrong foldernames in this file.
7. Move file iTunes Library.itl to a different folder.
8. Recreate this file by hand (eg copy con "iTunes Library.itl" - enter - F6 - enter)
9. Start iTunes.
10. iTunes recognizes that "iTunes Library.itl is not correct and will recreate this DB-file. (This will last a while..... be patient ... in my case - which meant 11000 media files - all about eight hours)
11. Your library will now point to the new directory.
12. Have a lot of fun (instead of waiting)

Updating the Searchindex in IBM Connections

If your company works with IBM Connections you might have recognized that searching is one of the big benefits using your social media network. A specialized task is responsible for the abilty to search. This task will update the searchindex frequently, eg every 15 Minutes.

From time to time you might need to rebuild the index for one or for all components of Connections. This process is a bit complicated, timeconsuming and boring because you might monitor this process during several DAYS to rebuild everything. Because of this it is a good idea to write some scripts to automatically rebuild the index.

Here is a checklist for rebuilding the index:

1. Deactivate regular index service
2. Start Jython script to rebuild the needed index