Fred Avolio's Musings

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Mon, 02 Oct 2006
Love, No Longer “Love and Hate”

As of a few weeks ago, I was still having the problem I mentioned in Still Love and Hate Mail. I had found that if I remembered to Go Offline, then Go Online again, all was well. If not, the Mail client and the IMAP server got confused about what my Inbox looked like. Clearly, the mailbox state wasn’t being updated until I disconnected.

I religiously read the Apple discussion groups (for example, this thread). And found the solution.

As I posted in the above-mentioned thread

RE: IMAP deleted mail won’t stay deleted…
Posted: Sep 12, 2006 9:39 AM

> The following is an example of such a thread, and it
> contains a more extensive discussion of what the
> issue really is and why manually taking the account
> offline/online might work:
>
> http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=586858

I looked at this before, but I looked at it again and here is what I did. This may be something you can try. I am trying it. So far, so good. You need to change your INBOX to .mbx format. (See http://www.washington.edu/imap/IMAP-FAQs/index.html#4.5 wherein we read,

If you create an mbx-format INBOX, by creating “#driver.mbx/INBOX” (note that “INBOX” must be all uppercase), then subsequent access to INBOX by any c-client based application will use the mbx-format INBOX. Any mail delivered to the traditional format mailbox in the spool directory (e.g. /var/spool/mail/$USER) will automatically be copied into the mbx-format INBOX and the spool directory copy removed.

Okay, cool How to create the INBOX. Conntect to your IMAP server using a telnet client and then issue the commands needed to create it. I saved my Inbox contents first, but this actually should not touch the spoolfile mailbox (On a UNIX system, this is something like /var/mail/fred for me and is in UNIX mailbox format.)

So, in terminal I did this (this is exactly what I typed except I typed in my real incomingmailserver name and my real password):

telnet incomingmailserver 143
a001 login fred mypassword
a001 create #driver.mbx/INBOX
a001 logout

See http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2060.txt for IMAP commands.

Seems to be working fine. (It created INBOX in ~fred on my server, by the way.)

Fred

It is still working exactly as it is supposed to and I am completely happy with Mail.

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Mon, 21 Aug 2006
Skype with Video for Mac, Beta Version

In my blog Time to try SightSpeed, I wrote, “When Skype comes out with video conferencing for Mac, I’ll try that also.” There is a Beta (test) version of Skype for Mac with video conferencing. I need (okay, want) people to test it with. My Skype id is fmavolio.

I’m still happy and willing to talk via SightSpeed, as I mention in the above cited blog entry. My SightSpeed id is fred@avolio.com. If you try either one and I do not respond, please leave a message or send me email.

Skype with Video for Mac, Beta Version is available as I type this at long URL www.skype.com/download/skype/macosx/videopreview.html?www.reghardware.co.uk, or TinyUrl http://tinyurl.com/h93j5

I had good success with my friend, Michael.

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Yet another reason I am still glad I switched to Mac

Dear Sir Bill Gates: invoice enclosed

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Tue, 25 Jul 2006
Samba Between Fedora Core and Mac OS X 10.4.5

Strange problem. I can smb-mount—via Finder— “shares” on MS Windows systems on my network as well as my older Linux system. But, when I try mount a share on on a newer server with Samba version 3, no joy. It hangs.

On the server, I see this: “api_pipe_bind_req: unable to unmarshall RPC_HDR_RB struct.” Searches of the net have not turned up a solution, except for upgrading Samba on the server. My wife has no problem in samba-mounting shares on the Linux server to her Window XP system. Putting off upgrading the Linux server (yum does no report any “official” Redhat package updates), I am NFS-mounting folders when I need them (backing up my Powerbook to my Linux server, for example).

I found that the problem in in mounting from Finder. I can issue a command from the command line, such as:

mount_smbfs //fred@linuxserver/fred
   fred-on-linuxserver/

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Thu, 06 Jul 2006
Do I need a docking station?

My cabling is a mess. I admit it. When at home, I use my PowerBook connected to a large monitor with the PowerBook screen as the secondary screen.

You can see the cabling, here.

The real problem for me is not plugging in seven (7) cables. The cables are, by the way

  • Power
  • Ethernet
  • Firewire for iSight
  • USB for keyboard and mouse
  • Other USB (camera, Palm computer, etc.)
  • miniDVI for CRT
  • audio/speaker output

Half the time when I fiddle with UCB cables, I bump the DVI which rests the video and I need to put it back in and “Detect Displays” again. The miniDVI really pulls out easily. The only solution I have found is this one by BookEndz. It would certainly be better if I did not have the PowerBook on that little shelf (given where the ports are and where the docking station would end up). I wonder if I would still have the miniDVI falling out of the back of BookEndz dock?

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