Cannot Remove WD SmartWare. Disable It.

Here’s another way to keep the virtual CD volume from mounting (tested on Leopard):

1. Connect the new WD My Passport or other drive “infected” with this firmware

2. Open a Terminal and type something like:

diskutil info “/Volumes/WD SmartWare”

(this corresponds to the volume you want to get rid of)

3. Copy the large string of numbers that corresponds to “Volume UUID:” in the info.

4. Edit /etc/fstab as root using vifs:

EDITOR=nano sudo vifs

(if you want your usual editor, drop the “EDITOR=nano” part)

5. Add a line like the following, putting your UUID in from step 3:

UUID=that_big_number_from_step_3 none hfs ro,noauto 0 0

6. Save the file to quit out of vifs

7. Disconnect the My Passport and attempt to plug it back in and watch!

It’s a bit more involved than DSW, but you only have to do it once and the virtual CD volume won’t remount. WD really need to issue a firmware update that removes this virtual drive. At least give some of us the option of not having it!

Text mode in browser

Found an interesting service called viewtextmode.com. It is a bookmarklet based service which will strip out all images, embedded contents and others leaving only text on the page. Clean and clear. This makes easier to read blog post as well as follow up on news.

Here is the url:

http://viewtextmode.com

Need to register to start to use the service.

The terminal server has exceeded maximum number of allowed connection, mstsc

Open Command Prompt.

Type: "mstsc /admin".

Remote Desktop Connection will start. Type the computer name or IP address of the computer you want to connect to in the Computer box.

Configure any other desired options, and then click Connect.

MySQL & Rails in Windows

MySQL installation in Windows for Ruby on Rails usage can be problematic. With version 5.0, this seems to work. Upon installation, remember to execute:

gem install mysql

Following that, if you encounter error during rake db:migrate with the error indicating

Mysql::Error: query: not connected: SELECT version FROM schema_migrations.

you can try to solve it by copying the version 5.0 libmySQL.dll to your Ruby\bin folder.

libmySQL.dll is located in mysql\MySQL Server 5.0\bin directory.