Feed on
Posts
Comments

OS X LionJuniper Network Connect is Juniper’s cross-platform VPN client coming with many Juniper appliances. The OS X client installs itself using a browser Java plugin when connecting to the company’s VPN portal. In the first Lion beta the Java browser plugin is not available so you cannot install the client. Its also not possible to just drag and drop the client from an existing Snow Leopard installation as the Network Connect installer installs some files in other directories than /Applications.

You can, however, use the installer DMG from the Juniper appliance itself when you have administrative access to it. If not, ask your company’s administrator.

Just mount the DMG and launch the .pkg installation file. It installs and runs just fine on Lion

Tags: , , ,

OS X LionApple just released the first beta version of its upcoming OS X 10.7 “Lion” operating system to subscribed developers. Its meant for developers to port and test their software on the new version. However, even testing and developing needs a comfortable environment and that can be achieved by installing your daily used software. Most of my software installs and works quite well, which is remarkable considered that this is the very first beta.

However, three little tools needed some “help” to make them install: Xmarks, Dropbox and MenuMeters. Continue Reading »

Tags: , , , ,

Defrag OS X files

Whats the problem?

You may think you don’t have to deal with disk defragmentation on OS X as OS X does it all for you. In most cases you are right, as OS X automatically tries to avoid fragmentation on files < 20MB. However, larger files are sometimes heavily affected. I noticed it when playing one of Valve’s Steam games like Portal or Half-Life 2. These titles use large game cache files (*.gcf) and everytime I started one of these games I heard my harddrive scratching which is not very common on an iMac.

How to find fragmented files?

The best way to find fragmented files on a Mac is a little command line tool Continue Reading »

Tags: , , , , ,

Starting with Safari 5, Apple has included extensions support which makes Safari a real Firefox alternative for me. As a long time Firefox user I’ve saved many passwords in its keystore. For bookmarks, the exchange between the two browsers is easy as both support exporting and importing them as flat html files.

Passwords are stored in a Firefox specific database and Safari uses OS X’s keychain so we need to import our passwords into keychain. There is a commercial solution called 1password but I was looking for a smaller and free solution. Continue Reading »

Tags: , , , ,

In Deutschland kann man das aktuelle iPhone 4 offiziell nur in Verbindung mit einem Telekom Mobilfunkvertrag kaufen. Importeure bieten Simlock-freie Geräte zwar an, verlangen aber auch sehr hohe Preise.

Umgehen kann man das Problem, wenn man selbst im europäischen Umland kauft. So kann man es z.B. online direkt im Apple Store Frankreich oder UK kaufen. Dort kann man mit sich mit seinem deutschen iTunes-Account anmelden und ist dann auch mit der deutschen Adresse Rechnungsempfänger. Der einzige Haken ist, dass man eine Adresse im jeweiligen Land haben muss, an die dann das iPhone geschickt wird. Aber irgendjemand im Bekanntenkreis kann sicher aushelfen…

Update:

In Großbritannien kann man das Adressenproblem sehr elegant umgehen. Borderlinx bietet einen Weiterleitungsdienst an, der alle eingehen Sendungen direkt an eine angegebene Adresse in Deutschland weiterleitet. Die Gebühr rechnet sich, da das iPhone durch den Pfund / Euro Umrechnungskurs dort eh sehr günstig zu beziehen ist. Ich selbst konnte diesen Weg mit zwei Geräten verifizieren (Ende August ’10)! Bedenken sollte man aber bei Geräten aus Großbritannien, dass ein Netzteil mit UK-Stecker beiliegt.

Update 2:

Nun kann man ein Simlock-freies iPhone auch in Deutschland einfach direkt im AppleStore oder bei O2 kaufen.

Tags: , , , ,

Auf der Seacon 2010 am 29.06.10 im Atlantic-Hotel in Hamburg wird das Internal IT Admin-Team der XING AG eine Live-Retrospektive vor Publikum halten! Das ist die ideale Chance, ein Admin-Team, das nach Kanban arbeitet, kennenzulernen und zu befragen!

Tags: ,

The bad news is that you may lose your tethering option after updating to iOS 4 from your previous iPhone OS 3.1.3 installation. The good news is that my 3.1.3 solution still works with iOS 4, so just follow http://www.kaisblog.de/2010/02/19/reenable-iphone-tethering-313/ to re-enable tethering on iOS 4. Good luck.

Tags: , , , , , ,

Yesterday we had a little brainstorming session in our admin team where our IT documentation was one thing to discuss. The result was, that we need to change our documentation tool to something faster and easier to use. And my team developed some incredible ideas which we implemented and I want to share them with you now.

What we had

  • Mediawiki wiki system
  • customizable but uncomfortable
  • slow, because we had to login, go to the correct page, edit this page and then save it. Continue Reading »

Tags: , , ,

DELL BIOS screenToday I spent half of my day trying to flash the BIOS of my homeserver which is a DELL Vostro 200 running Linux. The Vostro 200 system is not eqipped with a floppy drive. The problem is that DELL ships new BIOS files as a DOS/Windows hybrid which cannot be executed by Linux systems.

By following these steps you’ll get a bootable USB stick running FreeDOS capable of running DELL’s flash tool (Windows required):

  1. Download ODIN, which is a FreeDOS distribution: http://odin.fdos.org/odin2005/odin2880.img Continue Reading »

Tags: , , , , , , ,

During my CeBIT 2010 visit I stumbled upon a new offer from Strato: HiDrive. That’s an online storage solution starting with 100GB without traffic limitations. Supported protocols are WEBDAV(S), CIFS/SMB (even via openvpn!), FTP, SCP and rsync. As a special bonus to CeBIT visitors they offered the 100GB entry package for 1€ in the first year.

I use this storage as a backup solution of my home file server. As a benefit I can mount this storage from anywhere and access my files faster than using a VPN to my home server. Continue Reading »

Tags: , , , ,

Older Posts »