Category Archives: Tech stuff

Resetting an Iomega iConnect to default settings.

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I recently tried some hacking of my Iomega iConnect.

The exercise was interesting but not very fruitful!

I presume that was the cause as the box died on me and transformed itself into a dead black box that was too light to even work as a doorstop.  Time to rebuild!

My first action was to download the Imager from the Iomega site.

Next, format a flash drive as FAT32.  Unzip the downloaded image file and copy the eight files onto the flash drive.

Now comes the fun part!

Disconnect all USB devices from the iConnect, and plug the flash drive into the rear USB port.

Holding down the little reset button on the back panel (I used a jeweller’s screwdriver), reset the power to the unit.,  The front indicator will burn blue for a short while and then turn red.  You can now release the reset button.  After a while all the front LEDS will burn solid blue.  At that point, remove the flash drive and repower the device.

The iConnect is now restored back to its factory settings which poses a problem – how do you access it?  It has reverted to a default IP address which will not be on your home network or home PC, therefore, even if you knew the address you still cannot access the device!

My solution –

First, to be on the safe side, I downloaded the Iomega Storage Manager and installed it (they do give a Linux version but it complains about missing libraries so I used the Windows version).  Select your OS here and then select the Iomega Storage Manager link under “Download Software & Drivers”.

Now connect your iConnect directly to your PC using a network cable.  If you have a wireless connection to your network, disable that.

You now need to change your PC’s network setting to the IP address 169.254.1.2, and a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0.  The Storage Manager should now indicate that it has found the iConnect.  In my case, each time the iConnect has an IP address of 169.254.1.211, but that may vary.

Now point your browser at the discovered IP address and you should have access to the iConnect.

Set the device’s IP to one on your own network and repower it.

At this point, you will need to reset your PC’s IP address to its normal values (or just enable wireless if applicable), disconnect the iConnect from your PC and connect it to the network.  You should now be able to access it from a browser using the IP address you allocated it.

Happy hunting!

Wireless scanner not visible in Mint

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A problem that crops up fairly regularly after a reinstall or upgrade of Mint is that I can’t access my scanner.

I have an HP Officejet J4680 multi-function device which operates via wireless.  Recently, after upgrading to Mint 14, the problem arose again.  I could print but Mint couldn’t see the scanner.

After a bit of research I discovered the simple solution which I am putting up here to remind myself for the next time.

Instead of the route Menu –> Preferences –> Printers, (which will add the printer but that’s all) it is preferable to use the Terminal command –

system-config-printer

This will pull up a different (and slightly more advanced) dialog section.  Once the device is added via this path, both printing and scanning work perfectly.

Firefox Nightly – tabs on top

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My browser of choice is Firefox Nightly which is currently V20.0a1.

I like to see the development process where the developers play around with various layouts and techniques, such as how they handle downloads and the general layout.

Lately they made a change which I found a little frustrating – they moved the tabs above the toolbars and removed the option to change this from the menu.  I am used to the old “tabs on bottom” layout so had to find a way around this.

The solution is, of course, simple….

In about:config just toggle the entry – browser.tabs.onTop to read “false”.

That’s all!

Installing Linux Mint 14 (Nadia)

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They haven’t officially announced it at the time of writing, but Linux Mint 14 (Nadia) was released a couple of days ago.

Naturally I had to download and install!  I used the MATE 64bit edition and for various reasons I installed Cinnamon on top.

I decided on a complete reinstall including formatting my Home partition, so I backed up everything and formatted.

As usual the process was painless.  Nadia installed without a glitch.  However the process was not without a couple of minor problems which led to a little frustration.

The first problem that I encountered was a strange one.  While running through the list of packages (listed on the Software page of this site) I installed Audacity.  When I ran a test I discovered the problem – Audacity had no menu-bar!  After trying the usual reinstall and the like with no success I resorted to the Internet.  As usual I had to wade trough a series of solutions that didn’t work, but eventually found one that did.

The solution involved a hack to the code using the following:

sudo mv /usr/bin/audacity /usr/bin/prog-audacity
gksudo pluma /usr/bin/audacity

In the above, you may want to change “pluma” to your own editor, such as “gedit”.

In the editor insert the following lines :

#! /bin/bash

export UBUNTU_MENUPROXY=0
prog-audacity

Save the file and then run

sudo chmod a+x /usr/bin/audacity

That sorted the problem and now Audacity runs as normal.

This may just be a temporary glitch such as a missing library, but my Internet searches gave no clues. 

As a footnote, I also ran into problems installing Google Earth.  I remembered seeing a mention of this on the Mint blog, so I tried Clem’s fix.  It worked, so it appears the bug hadn’t been fixed before full release!

–oOo–

Update

Almost immediately I found a major flaw in the fix above.

I use Audacity Nightly which was updated shortly after I posted this.  That of course overwrote my modification.

A bit of further research led to a permanent solution.Apparently it is a wxwidgets problem.

The solution.  Enter the following –

sudo apt-get purge appmenu-gtk appmenu-gtk3 appmenu-qt


That seems to have done the trick!

A new home for an old site

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There are two ways of moving a WordPress site from one server to another.

One is to create a database, and then copy all files to the new server, point wp-config at the new database and copy the contents of the database across.  This is the simplest way and ideal if, for example you are switching hosts.

The other method is trickier, but a lot more efficient, creating a leaner and faster site.  I have just completed a transfer of Head Rambles using this method.

The first thing is to create a new blank database on the new server, using a spare domain name for access.  Then upload a fresh copy of WordPress and using its built in features, create a new WordPress site.  The new site should be set up with the same Title and Subtitle as the old site, but using the new domain.

Next, copy across the theme files from the old server.  In my case I did a fresh install of Weaver II and then copied over the little backup files.  Any specific image files [such as the Banner and any images in the sidebar] should be copied across also.

At this point the new site should look identical to the old, but contain no posts or pages.

In my case, I then backed up the old database but did it one table at a time.  I then imported into the new database the following tables – Posts, Postmeta, Comments, Commentmeta, Terms, Term_relationships, Term_taxonomy and Links.  If the new database has been set up with a different prefix from the old [for example, if the old was WP_ and the new one is NEW_] then before uploading the files to the database, open them in a text editor and do a simple search and replace.

Don’t forget to copy over a copy of wp-content/uploads.

Now is the time to transfer plugins.  The ideal is to upload fresh copies of each plugin to the new site.  This is the time to decide which plugins are really necessary and which ones can be dumped.  Be ruthless!

At this point the site should be running smoothly and be identical in all respects to the old, apart from the domain name.  Now is the time to test that all the plugins are functioning correctly and that the site is behaving itself.

The next part is the tricky part.

Shut down the old site for changes [for example, disable comments]. Take another backup of the Comments database tables [and Posts if that has changed].  Upload these to the new database.

Now point the domain to the new server.  While that is propagating, open up the Options table in the new database and change every instance of the temporary domain to the permanent domain.

Once the domain has switched and is pointing at the new server the job is complete.  You should now have a much leaner faster site.

In the case of Head Rambles, the database dropped in size from 54Mb to 32Mb and from 34 to 17 tables.  Average page load time dropped from 1.48 seconds to 0.66 seconds which is quite impressive?  The main losses were database entries from redundant plugins and trimming the Options table from 16,225 records to 276 [a saving of 4.7Mb!].

The only problem I had was in switching the domain, where a couple of DNS servers got locked up for some reason.  It meant the whole domain was dead for a while, but the wait and the trouble was worth it.

To be safe, I have kept the old site running but with a different domain name.  It is blanked out for the general public but I can access it, for example if I need to cross check settings or retrieve any logs.  Once I am happy that it is redundant it, and its bloated database can be scrapped.