UPDATE: It appears Parallels changes the group to accessibility and this procedure does NOT work.

Parallels 6 had been running great for quite a while but at some point, restarting Parallels would prompt me to re-enter the activation key; the key in the dialog was from the previous version. For whatever reason, it would not stick.

I realized today that the group permissions on the preferences files for Parallels was different than the others; the files had a group of “accessibility.” To fix it, I changed the group back to what was on most of the other files; your group name most likely will be different.

$ cd /Users/rick/Library/Preferences
$ ls -l com.parallels.*
-rw-------  1 rick  accessibility  21059 Dec 26 19:59 com.parallels.Parallels Desktop Statistics.plist
-rw-------  1 rick  accessibility  23972 Dec 26 19:59 com.parallels.Parallels Desktop.plist
-rw-------  1 rick  accessibility   5430 Dec 26 19:59 com.parallels.Parallels.plist
-rw-------  1 rick  accessibility   1642 Dec  7 16:36 com.parallels.desktop.console.plist
-rw-------  1 rick  rick             905 Feb 11  2009 com.parallels.desktop.plist
-rw-------  1 rick  rick             505 Feb 11  2009 com.parallels.imagetool.plist
$ chgrp rick com.parallels.*

I was successfully able to install MySQL 5.5 on OS X 10.6 according to the following steps.

Download MySQL Community Server 5.5.8 for Mac OS X. I chose to download Mac OS X ver. 10.6 (x86, 64-bit), DMG Archive. The DMG archive is nice as it has a startup package that installs a MySQL control panel (although it dosn’t work from the start without tweaking).

Open the DMG archive and execute the mysql-5.5.8-osx10.6-x86_64.pkg. I had no issues with installation although the ReadMe.txt file suggests that problems may occur.

After successful installation, execute the MySQLStartupItem.pkg. This will install the MySQL Startup startup items. This should complete successfully.

Next, install the MySQL preferences pane by double-clicking the MySQL.prefPane item in the mounted drive. This will install the MySQL preferences item, although MySQL cannot yet be started through it. First, the mysql.server file must be edited by hand to specify the location of the base directory.

At a terminal, cd to /usr/local/mysql/support-files and edit mysql.server (with root privileges, using sudo). Around line 46 locate the lines that read:

basedir=
datadir=

and change them to read

basedir=/usr/local/mysql
datadir=/usr/local/mysql/data

Save the file. MySQL can now be started from the preferences pane. Without it, you will see a message in the Console that reads:

mysql.server: line 256: my_print_defaults: command not found

To enable rails 3 to use mysql, install the mysql2 gem. Next, you’ll need to set the DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH to include the MySQL library directory. To do this, edit your ~/.bash_profile and include the following:

export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/mysql/lib:$DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH

The rails server will now successfully start. Without the inclusion of the directory in the DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH, a message about not finding the library would appear and the server would abort.

The error message, from the mysql2 gem, states (in part):

Library not loaded: libmysqlclient.16.dylib (LoadError)

Upon reboot, MySQL will fail to start with a dialog stating:

Insecure Startup Item disabled.
“/Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM” has not been started because it does not have the proper security settings.

The group permissions need to be changed to wheel on the MySQL directory by executing the following command in the terminal:

sudo chown -R root:wheel /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM

This will prevents the startup error dialog. Finally, ensure the Automatically Start MySQL Server on Startup is checked in the MySQL preferences window.

Good luck!

Soon after the five picture photo stream appeared as part of the new Facebook profile, people noticed you could customize it to give it a predefined appearance. It’s not very difficult to do and takes just a little bit of patience.

The trick is to create five (approximately) 3×2 images (a minimum of 97×68 pixels), upload them to your photos, and tag yourself in them in reverse order. The five images can also be made from a single image of 485×68 pixels split width-wise into five equal images of 97×68 pixels. To get them to appear, conveniently remove the photos in the stream by hovering over each (unwanted) one and clicking on the [x] button in the top right of the picture until the five you have chosen appear. Be careful not to delete all of them or make a mistake as it may delay the ability to upload and retag the photos to get into the stream. I had deleted all of the photos in the stream and then uploaded photos and could tag myself in them (but only once). When I realized I had tagged me in the photos in the wrong order and removed the tags again, I had to wait about two days before I could restart the process.

Send a message, or be creative. Create a mural or a five-pane image set from a panorama. Just remember it is quite easy to have it disrupted when someone tags you in a photo, shifting the others to the right. Ensure you have your email notifications set when you are tagged in a photo to keep the stream in tact.

Have fun!

TweetDeck runs on top of Adobe AIR, but unfortunately, Adobe AIR is currently only released for 32-bit Fedora platforms. Fortunately, it is possible to install the 32-bit version of AIR if the required 32-bit libraries and packages are installed.

I have gathered information from an Adobe KnowledgeBase article and updated it to work for Fedora 13.

Step 1

Install the following 32-bit libraries using yum. Note this will most likely install a number of dependencies.
$ sudo yum install ld-linux.so.2 gtk2-devel.i686 libdbus-glib-1.so.2 libdbus-glib-1.so.2 libhal.so.1
$ sudo yum install rpm-devel.i686 libXt.so.6 gnome-keyring-devel.i686 libDCOP.so.4

Step 2

According to Adobe, a conflict occurs with libnss and libxml2 as the 64-bit versions are installed by default; to resolve, install the 32-bit developer libraries.
$ sudo yum install libxml2-devel.i586 nss-devel.i586

Step 3

Additionally, install the 32-bit libxslt. In their instructions, it was requested to install version 1.1.26, which is the current version as of this article.
$ sudo yum install libxslt.i686

Step 4

Install Adobe AIR 2 using yum.
$ sudo yum install adobeair

Step 5

Restart your browser, if it is running. Install TweetDeck from the desktop installation page. I had to press Shift and hit Refresh to get it to work. Press the Download now button. If it works, an Application Install dialog should open with the option to Open. Click the Open button and let it install. It automatically starts TweetDeck but TweetDeck does not seem to work. I had success by closing the window and starting TweetDeck again.