Cheap Macbook Pro Docking Solution for about $30
I typically prefer developing on my desktop and large dual screen monitor setup as opposed to my Macbook. Recently, I’ve gotten into more PHP development and developing on the Mac is proving to be a more enjoyable experience only because Windows is still a second class citizen for most PHP libraries/tools. I still wanted a larger screen setup, so I considered buying a docking station to hook up to a larger monitor but I soon learned they feature the ‘Mac Penalty’ in that they cost more than they should just because it’s for Apple products.
I already have two large monitors and figured my Macbook could serve as third screen. Then I did some thinking and realized I could use one of the monitors for both computers. Assuming you have two HDMI screens already hooked up to your desktop, this would save you $150+ and still allow you to be more productive.
- Get a copy of Synergy (http://symless.com/) for $10. It’s open source and can be built if you have the time, but a one time fee of $10 saves me the hassle of doing so. With this, you can share your desktop keyboard across all your computers with the one license and it’s cross platform so Linux support is included too.
- Purchase an auto HDMI switcher. I purchased the PORTTA PET0301S 3×1 Port HDMI Switch/Switcher for about $9.
- Be sure to get 2 HDMI cables if you don’t already have them on hand. I don’t like the Amazon Basic brand for these as I’ve had problems with the Mac and those cables hooking up to larger screens.
- Install Synergy on the desktop as a server. Install on the Macbook as a client and it should autoconnect.
- Plug the HDMI cable from the computer into the HDMI switcher, and plug the spare into the Macbook pro. Plug the “Out” end into the monitor.
When you plug your HDMI cable into the Macbook, the HDMI switcher will automatically switch to it and project the Macbook. Synergy will auto-connect as long as it’s running on both and you can share the mouse and keyboard between both and work seamlessly.
If you have an iPad and want to turn that into an additional screen, grab a copy of Duet Display on your desktop/Macbook and install on your iPad for $15.99, and viola, instant portable second screen!
How to repair permissions on Linux Apache /var/www/html folder
I recently ran into an issue where I could no longer FTP files to my Linux droplet when multiple users were uploading to the server. The server kept the user as the owner despite me adding them to the www-data group. This fix comes from my ex-boss, James Tomasino who was kind enough to provide some help since I was stumped. I’m sharing in case anyone else runs into the same issue and finds it useful.
You’ll need to fire up terminal, ssh to the server, and then execute these commands:
cd /var/www sudo chmod 775 html sudo chgrp www-data html sudo chmod g+s html
+s makes permissions sticky so that all files will inherit from the parent directory. This was the setting I was missing.
Open up /etc/ssh/sshd_config. I use nano so:
sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
Hit CTRL+W and look for “subsystem” which is typically located near the bottom of the file. Change
subsystem sftp /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server
to
subsystem sftp /usr/lib/openssh/sftp-server -u 0002
If you already have files in the HTML folder, you’ll want to run these commands to reset the permissions:
cd /var/www/
sudo chgrp -R www-data html
find . -type f -exec chmod 664 {} \;
find . -type d -exec chmod 775 {} \;
Copy File Context to Clipboard via Command Line, Git Bash (Mingw64), or Terminal
I’ve been spending more time switching from SVN to Git and learning the command line options. I’m finding a lot of the Mac Git terminal commands I run aren’t the same in Git Bash (Mingw64). One of the commands I use is the pbcopy command to copy the ssh key to the clipboard to paste into Github and Bitbucket accounts. I’m starting to use it more as I am learning managing Linux servers and adding my key to login. I’m adding it here as a cheatsheet for myself but I thought others may find it useful.
On Windows, you can run this command to copy your ssh key to the clipboard:
clip < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pubOn Mac:
pbcopy < ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
or if you want to view it in the terminal window:
cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pubHow to Copy and Paste into the Digital Ocean VNC Console
I recently signed up for Digital Ocean to test droplets for my development and linux management testing. I was securing the server and setup fail2ban, disabled the root login, and created a user account but forgot to change the user name from root to the user name I selected in my SSH client profile. I ended up locking myself out of the server and had to resort to logging into the admin panel on Digital Ocean’s website and use their browser embedded VNC client to restore my access. I quickly discovered that one of the downsides of using this panel is that you can’t copy and paste commands. Luckily there’s a workaround and you can use the browser console to do sendkeys through Javascript.
Bring up the console in the browser developer tools. Here’s a cheat sheet for keyboard shortcuts:
| Browser | Description | Windows | Mac |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chrome | Open Developer Tools and bring focus to the console | Ctrl + Shift + J | Cmd + Opt + J |
| Firefox | Open Console | Ctrl + Shift + K | Cmd + Opt + K |
| Internet Explorer | After hitting F12, you have to click the console tab. There’s no direct shortcut to the console tab. | F12 | N/A |
!function(){function t(){window.rfb.sendKey(e.shift().charCodeAt()),e.length>0&&setTimeout(t,10)}var e=prompt("Enter text to be sent to console").split("");t()}();
Update 9-21-16
Ruden and Sebastiaan’s pointed out there was a bug in the code above. This updated snippet has support for characters when using shift characters like !@#$%^&*()_+
!function(){function t(){function n(t,e){s=s.concat(RFB.messages.keyEvent(t,e))}var o=e.shift(),s=[],i=o.charCodeAt(),c=-1!=='!@#$%^&*()_+{}:"<>?~|'.indexOf(o),r=XK_Shift_L;c&&n(r,1),n(i,1),n(i,0),c&&n(r,0),rfb._sock.send(s),e.length>0&&setTimeout(t,10)}var e=prompt("Enter text to be sent to console").split("");t()}();You’ll receive a dialog prompt to enter the copy to paste in. Please note that you need to click on the VNC console and hit enter to execute the command.
If you need to enter more than one command, just hit the up arrow on your keyboard in the console to get the script again for easy reuse.
How to fix “hacked by Moroccanwolf” WordPress site
A client of mine had their wordpress hacked and when you would load the site, it would simply display a message that said “hacked by Moroccanwolf”. I did some digging and luckily it wasn’t a major hack and they didn’t mess with the posts or other settings as a lot of the hacks do.
Quick Fix
- To fix it, you’ll need to connect to your database using an editor of some sort, such as PHPmyadmin.
- Once logged in, expand your database on the left.
- Click on ‘wp_options’.
- On the top right, click the ‘Browse’ tab.
- Look for ‘widget_text’ in the option_name field. (For my client, it was at row 90). You should see something similar to this:
<script>document.documentElement.innerHTML = unescape(''%48%61%63%6b%65%64%20%62%79%20%4d%6f%72%6f%63%63%61%6e%77%6f%6c%66%20%26%26%20%61%62%64%65%6c%6c%61%68%20%45%6c%6d%61%67%68%72%69%62%69'');</script>
Delete the entire tag and this  should restore your website. Now remember to change your logins and update wordpress.
How I Figured it Out
Most of the hacks I’ve seen are done through injecting javascript into the database somewhere which either force a redirect or something along those lines. Here’s the steps I followed to find it:
- To fix it, you’ll need to connect to your database using an editor of some sort, such as PHPmyadmin.
- Once logged in, click on your database on the left. Ensure you’re on the database and not a table.
- Click Export.
- Leave it to quick and click go.
- You should now see a textbox with a mess of SQL commands.
- Copy and paste into your favorite editor,
- Search for <script> and you should find something that doesn’t belong. Â In this instance, that was the only thing I found of note.
- You’ll want to scan the rest of the database for things that don’t belong. Additionally, you’ll want to replace all the wordpress files and confirm no .htaccess files were created that give hackers write access.
Windows Server 2008/2012 Blue Screen after Login – No Desktop
One of my teammates was working on a Windows server and needed to access IIS to complete a Sitecore upgrade on the machine. After logging in, he was reporting that he only saw a blue screen with no user interface. I logged in under the administrator account and ran into the same thing. Here’s how I was able to reset:
- CTRL + ALT + END
- Start Task Manager
- Click processes tab and find all instances of “explorer.exe”
- Right click each process and selected “End process tree”
- Once all instances are gone, select the Applications tab
- Click new task button
- Type “explorer.exe” without the quotation marks
- Click OK.
If it’s a user account and you can login to the administrator account and see the UI, you can load remote desktop as admin.
- Start -> Run
- Type “mstsc /v:servername /console /admin” in order to access the server.
- In “Windows Taks Manager”, go to the Users tab and proceed to do a right click over the account that you want to “Log Off”, select log off.
This should free the locked session used by that account and bring the UI back.
Steam is having trouble connecting to the Steam servers.
If you use Steam and  suddenly find yourself unable to connect receiving the error “Steam is having trouble connecting to the Steam servers.”, check and see if you have Peerblock installed and running. I wasted a lot of time trying to figure out why the connections wouldn’t go through and finally went through apps running in the background one by one, until I closed Peerblock and discovered Steam suddenly started working. If you would like to continue to use Steam while Peerblock is open, follow these instructions for a workaround:
1. Start PeerBlock
2. Click List Manager
3. Click Add
4. Put something in the description like steam-allow
5. click add url and paste this: “http://list.iblocklist.com/?list=steam” (no quotes)
6. Choose type: allow
7. Click Ok then close the List Manager.
This will download a list that adds exceptions for Steam and should let you connect with no issues.
Visual Studio 2013 package did not load correctly
Today I loaded up Visual Studio to continue work on a project and created by a random bunch of errors. All were complaints that various packages could not be loaded. The one I captured was:
[alert color=”gray”]The ‘JavascriptWebExtensionsPackage’ did not load correctly.’ The problem may have been caused by a configuration change or by the installation of another extension.[/alert]
I had just installed SyncFusion’s Essential Studio which apparently screwed something up. I tried doing a repair on Visual Studio which unfortunately did not work.
I was able to fix it by following these steps:
- Close Visual Studio Open the *Users*\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\12.0\ folder
- Rename the ComponentModelCache folder
- Restart Visual Studio.
Visual Studio should now rebuild the cache and no longer display the error messages.
ASP.NET MVC Model Generator
In making the switch to ASP.NET MVC, I’ve moved away from using my old Data Access Layer that I’ve used for years and have opted to use Dapper as my ORM of choice in the quest for optimal performance. My DAL was actually pretty optimized for WinForms and WebForms (using straight SQL Queries and SQL parameters) but mapping it to models wasn’t something I had in mind when I created it. I’m finding Dapper takes some getting used too but it is still pretty fast. The downside is that writing the code for Models to wire it up is proving to be a little tedious.
To that effect, I wrote a little application that has helped me generate the models from a database dynamically. It’s in it’s infancy stages and something I cobbled together in less than 8 hours but it works. I’ll add more features too as time goes on if there’s enough interest or to satisfy my own needs. In the meantime, I’m open sourcing the project as it may help others and I’d love to see it become something grander if others are willing to contribute to it. There’s also some useful bits of code that others may find useful to reference like dynamically reading fields from a database, pluralization/singularization of words, amongst others.
You can find the repository on Github: https://github.com/gregvarghese/MVCModelGenerator
SourceTree Crashes on Load
I’ve recently started using Git for development and while I am getting used to the command line tools on Windows, I have been using Atlassian’s free tool, SourceTree to help manage my code. Recently I’ve run into an issue where SourceTree crashes on start up.”Oh dear. We’re sorry, but SourceTree just crashed. How terribly embarrassing.”
I submitted an issue (https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/SRCTREEWIN-3011) and received a response that didn’t solve the issue. I submitted a follow up but never heard back so I did some further digging and found that SourceTree was crashing because it corrupted a repo and was still trying to load it back up on start up. The application does not exit gracefully or even give you the option to start in a safe mode which loads nothing.
To prevent it from opening the repo on start up:
Open %localappdata%/Atlassian/SourceTree/opentabs.xml in notepad or another editor.
Delete the problem repo.
Viola! No more SourceTree crashes on start up.