Stefan Helander

TYPO3 cms installation fails in step 2

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If you are installing the TYPO3 content management system (CMS), after uploading the files to your web server and setting some directory permissions, you are supposed to point your browser to your web server’s root where you just have installed TYPO3 in order to continue the installation. A screen similar to this is displayed:

TYPO3 installation step 1

Click to enlarge

Enter database username, password and server (normally “localhost”) and click continue. If the following screen (as step 2) is displayed, you are in trouble:

TYPO3 installation step 2

Click to enlarge

This screen is supposed to show you the availible databases for selection. But as you can see it ends just below the word “Database”. No error message is displayed.

The reason for this is that PHP is running in Safe mode. By configuring your webserver/PHP to run with Safe mode off the installation will work.

This situation is actually described in the TYPO3 Wiki under troubleshooting saying “This could cause the Install Tool to display an error message”. In my case it didn’t and it took some time of head scratching to figure it out.

Stefan Helander

How to find out what Ubuntu version a system is running

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There are two ways:

# cat /etc/issue
Ubuntu 9.10 \n \l

or

# lsb_release -a
Distributor ID:    Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 9.10
Release:    9.10
Codename:    karmic

The latter is slower but gives more information.

Stefan Helander

Google streets – now in Sweden and Denmark

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Until recently Google streets has not been availible for Sweden and Denmark. There has been local sites with a similar function, like http://hitta.se/gatubild. But now you can also use Google streets for your virtual tour to Sweden and Denmark. Not only the large cities but also smaller villages and country roads can be seen in Google streets.

To use Google streets go to maps.google.com, find your place of interest, click and hold the little orange man that stands just above the zoom handle and put him down on the street you want to visit. Streets with photos will get blue borders when you lift the little man and you can of course only put him down on such streets.

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Stefan Helander

Minolta Dimage Scan Dual III AF-2840 in Windows Vista

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So, did you also try to get this negitive/slide scanner to work in Windows Vista?  No success? Thought so. Unfortunately I have found that Minolta scanners seems to have kind of a short life cycle in the eyes of the manufacturer. Like many other computer accessories that are not professional grade, drivers are availible for the current operating systems but when new arrives there just isn’t being any drivers developed. For this scanner I believe it was Windows 2000 and possibly Windows XP it had drivers for. But the arrival of Windows Vista was the death for this otherwise perfectly good scanner.

Minolta Dimage Scan Dual III AF-2840Like cameras, a good scanner do have a longer life cycle than normal computer accessories, which means that updated drivers are needed. Hopefully manufacturers will pick that up. Even though this scanner is not a professional grade scanner it has good performance and when sold it was not cheap, more in the price class of a good camera. I think as a consumer you should expect a bit longer life than that. Enough complaining.

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Stefan Helander

Pimp my router! Linksys WRT54GL on steroids… or at least on Tomato

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I while ago I got my hands on a Linksys WRT54GL broadband router. This little fellow runs on Linux. Nice, I thought. After fiddling around with it for a while I found that the firmware had bugs.

Linksys WRT54GLI added timed access restrictions (to cut off my teenagers Internet access automatically in the evening). This worked fine until I added another rule that had nothing to do with the first and suddenly my teenagers had Internet access all night long. I also want an incoming VPN connection (PPTP) that I forward by using port forward. This worked fine for a week and of course, it stopped working when I was abroad and needed it the most. Apart from that, there is no telnet or ssh login to the router (it is running on Linux you know).

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Stefan Helander

MySQL community protests against acquisition by Oracle

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The MySQL community around the world are getting worried about the possible acquistion of Sun Micosystems by Oracle. MySQL is community driven and often competes head to head with Sun Microsyftems commercial Oracle products. More than 14.000 MySQL users, developers and enthiusasts have signed a petition sent to regulators at the European Commission, Russia, China and other countries as a protest against the aqcuisition. According to eWeek it might be to late as the European Commission is expected to approve the deal within the next month.

You can sign the petition here to support the protest.

Stefan Helander

Windows XP users should immediately upgrade Adobe Flash plugin

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Microsoft has sent out an urgent message encouraging all Windows XP users to upgrade their Adobe Flash plugins immediately due to a security issue. This includes users of both 32 and 64 bit Windows XP and both SP2 and SP3. The current version of Adobe Flash plugin is version 10.0.42.34.

The latest version of Adobe Flash plugin can be downloaded here.

Stefan Helander

Google Wave – what is it all about?

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A while ago I recieved a Google Wave invite from a friend who had like 7 or 8 of them. Google Wave invites are not (yet) hard to get as the Spotify invites are. My first thought was that Google Wave was a service like Spotify where you can listen to music online. The word “wave”  made me think of  sound waves. How wrong could I be.

Google Wave preview

So what is Google Wave all about? I think Googles problem with Google Wave is that it not directly clear what it should be used for. The name is a bit confusing and when you’re in there it is not really obvious at a first glance. Maybe that is Read more

Stefan Helander

Windows won’t boot and you need the data on the harddisk?

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There is a nice solution to this little problem – called Active@ boot disk LiveCD. Download it as an ISO image (on another working computer of course), burn it to a CD and boot from the CD on your malfunctioning computer. The LiveCD is filled with utilities for you to get your valuable data off your crashed computer.

Even though there is a working free download I would encourage everyone that finds it valuable to pay the license so those guys at LiveCD can continue their good work on this product.