Doug Diego

I’ve recently been using iTerm on the Mac. I was happily using it, until it started crashing on launch. After searching around on the internet, I finally figure out what is wrong. The issue occurred because I was using an external display. When not connected to the external display the app would crash.

I found details in this bug here: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=2889711&group_id=67789&atid=518973

There are 2 easy ways to solve this problem.

1. In the normal terminal type:

defaults delete net.sourceforge.iTerm "NSWindow Frame iTerm Window 0"

2. Open ~/Library/Preferences/net.sourceforge.iTerm.plist and removed the following entry:
NSWindow Frame iTerm Window 0:

I recently bought at Western Digital My Book 1 TB Hard Drive for my MacBook Pro. I wanted to use it for Time Machine backups, which meant that I needed for format it as Mac OS Extended. It came pre-formatted as FAT.

I used Disk Utility to partition it and got an error a few seconds into it.

The error window said: “Partition failed. Partition failed with error: File system formatter failed”.

After pulling my hair out for a while, I finally figured it out…

I’m not exactly sure the reason why, but Mac OX has an issue with a “Master Boot Record” bigger than 512mb. Luckily the solution is easy.

1. Open up Disk Utility.

2. Select your drive on the left hand side.

3. Then click on the “Partition” tab.

4. Choose Volume Scheme: “1 Partition” and select the format: “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”

5. Then click on the “Options” button.

6. Here is the important part. Choose “GUID Partition Table” instead of “Master Boot Record”. Then click “OK”.

7. Now click “Apply” to start the partition process. That’s it!

Occasionally I see the following error when starting the Cisco VPN client on my mac.

The error message reads:
Error 51: Unable to communicate with VPN subsystem.
Please make sure that you have at least one network interface that is currently active and has an IP address and start this application again.

To fix this problem, simply run the following command from the Terminal:
sudo /System/Library/StartupItems/CiscoVPN/CiscoVPN restart

Running a command with sudo, means you’ll need to be an administrator and it will prompt you for your password.

The other day, I opened my MacBook Pro a few hours after closing the lid and putting it to sleep.  It wouldn’t wake from sleep.  I tried several things to get it to try and wake up, but had no success.  This has happened a couple times in the past, and I usually just hold down the power key to restart it.  So that is what I did.

When it started back up and loaded the login page, I noticed something strange, my user was missing.  I have 4 user’s registered on my computer and now only 3 of them were showing.  So I logged in as one of the other users who an admin.

Upon login, I could see that my user’s account still existed on disk:  /Users/doug  When I went to the System Preferences, I did not list my user.  I wasn’t sure what was wrong.

I began searching through the file system and found there is a file for each user in /var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/  Example:

/var/db/dslocal/nodes/Default/users/doug.plist

I opened up doug.plist and found that it was a binary file.  I could read some of the text in there and saw some mention of “Kernel” and other thing that suggested a stacktrace or dump.  I opened up the plist for another user and found that it was standard XML.  

So I copied the doug.plist from my Time Machine backup and replaced it with the one on my laptop.  I rebooted and my account was restored.

I’m not exactly sure what happened, but the moral of the store is:

1. Create a Time Machine Backup
2. Have at least one other Admin user on your computer you can login to if all fails.