Chronolisme.Com

When I first got my Mac, I wasn’t a keen user of the Terminal, so the user short name isn’t something that I would care, therefore it was all set up using the auto generated stuff when I first started my new Mac. Ever since I started working, stuff like bash and unix started popping up, and I started using the terminal and ssh became a daily routine. With the short and easy username I chose for all my unix needs, doing ssh from my mac became troublesome, because the auto generated short name is different, therefore I had to specify the username every time I had to login to somewhere.

To change the short name itself is relatively easy, and there’s even a guide in Apple’s knowledge base. The problem, however, is the trouble you’ll soon encounter after changing the short name, which is the reason I’m writing this post today. Before you start doing any modifications, I’d strongly suggest that you do a full backup of your Mac with Time Machine (or any other backup software of your choice). Lastly, follow this guide at your own risk. Although these are the exact steps I’ve taken and have not encountered any problems so far, I will not go as far as to guarantee your Mac’s safety.

Important: I strongly suggest that you backup your entire computer with Time Machine (or your favourite backup software) before proceeding.

Changing the short name (Steps from Apple’s knowledge base):

1. Enable root user:
   There are 2 ways to do this.
   • Follow this guide from Apple.
   • Or you could type this into your Terminal:

     username$ sudo passwd root

     Enter your user’s password if prompted and give your root account an extremely secure password.

2. Using Terminal, login as root:

   username$ su

3. Navigate to the /Users folder:

   username$ cd /Users

4. Select the Home folder with the short name you want to change, and rename it just like you would rename any folder. Keep in mind that the shortname must be all lowercase, with no spaces, and only contain letters (Replace “username” with your current short name and “newname” with the new short name):

   username$ mv username newname

5. Use the Accounts pane in System Preferences to create a new user with the short name that you used in the previous step.
6. Click OK when “A folder in the Users folder already has the name ‘short name’. Would you like to use that folder as the Home folder for this user account?” Note: This will correct the ownership of all files in the Home folder, and avoid permissions issues with the contents.
7. Choose Log Out from the Apple menu.
8. Log in as the newly created user. You should be able to access all of your original files (on the desktop, in Documents, and in the other folders of this Home).

Now that you’ve changed your user short name, everything seems fine. What you currently don’t see, is that all the files that’re not in your Home directory still belong to the previous user account. To change the owner of these files, follow the steps below.

Changing file owner:

1. Using the Accounts pane in System Preferences, right click on the old user and select Advanced Options. Take out a piece of paper and write down the number in the field User ID. You will need this later.
2. Open Terminal and navigate to the upper most level directory:

   newuser$ cd /

3. Run the following in Terminal (Replacing “501″ in the command below with the user id you wrote down earlier and “newuser” with your new short name):

   newuser$ sudo find / -user 501 -exec sudo chown -h newuser {} \;

   The command above searches all files (starting from the highest level directory) for files that are owned by the given user id (in this example: 501) and changes the owner to the given new user (in this example: newuser). Note: This step takes quite a while, depending on the amount of files you have.

4. After verifying that your data is as expected, you can delete the original user account via the Accounts pane of System Preferences.
5. Finally, disable root user.

Update: If you use Time Machine, it is recommended that you follow this guide to fix it. I have not tested it myself for I currently have no access to a Leopard installation disc. Will post an update on the status after I’m done with it.

Update 2: If you are using Snow Leopard, chances are you will not have ‘fsaclctl’ on your Mac. In order to obtain this, you will need a Leopard Installation DVD, and follow this guide to extract it from the DVD.

Update 3: I’ve tried and tested the method I posted above to fix Time Machine. It seems to be working just fine for me.

Recently I’ve been going a lot a lot a lot (*99) of research about laptops, both online and offline research. This is because I’m planning to get myself one soon if I actually get to move over to Australia to further my studies. I’ve been a real picky person when it comes to laptops, after all, I’m a person who can’t live without a computer so I have to choose one that really suits me.

First of all, there are a few things that a laptop must have to be considered a laptop (to me). It’s looks, performance, brand. Some people might not agree with me but, why do I care? This is MY laptop in the end, not theirs.

Okay, lets talk about brand first, the reason that brand is an important factor to me is because: laptop is a complex piece of hardware, and not everyone can make reliable laptops, needless to say balancing between heat problems and performance. There are quite a few brands that are famed with their laptops, just to name a few:

• Hewlett – Packard
• DELL
• Fujitsu – Expensive also, but not as expensive as Sony.
• Sony VAIO – Too expensive, not very possible for me to get one.
• Toshiba

Next, is performance. Since I’m going to bring this laptop over to Australia and it’ll be my only computer there for n amount of years, it has to perform not only above average, but also must be a speed monster. Although I don’t play much games anymore but I don’t want to see myself lagging over Win Vista for no reason. For performance, there are a few things I’m aiming after:

• CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.0GHz 4MB L2 Cache or higher
• GPU: ATI Radeon HD2600 or Nvidia 8600m GT or Nvidia Quadro FX570 or higher
• RAM: 2GB DDR2 667MHz or higher

Lastly, it’s looks. Some people tell me that: “Looks not important la, not choosing girlfriend also.” but I don’t agree. To me, the looks of the laptop decides whether I will love my laptop or I will hate it, which also indirectly affects on how I take care of it too! So, to me, it’s important. There are a few brands that have looks that I really love, they’re Sony VAIO (famed for it), HP Compaq, Fujitsu and Dell Latitude line (Inspiron looks less favourable, seriously! The XPS is so so.).

Since Fujitsu and Sony VAIO are priced too high for just a mere laptop, I’ve decided that I can’t afford them. This makes my list of brands fall down to only HP Compaq, Dell and Toshiba. After a whole lot of research, I’ve come to a comclusion with these brands:

• HP Compaq – Blended with its beautiful looks, the HP Pavillion has scored 100% for it. However, HP Pavillion series comes with very limited technical specs with just an Nvidia 8400GS for its 15.4″. Priced at about RM5500 is not very expensive but could have given a better GPU.
• Dell – Dell makes me really mad, the Inspiron line has a less favourable design I refuse to take it. The Lattitude line is beautiful, but the specifications given are either too high it’s very expensive (aka More Profit), or the specs are too low it doesn’t meet my minimum requirements (Low manufacturing cost).
• Toshiba – Too little information available, both online and offline. However some models have reasonable specifications with a price tag slightly higher than it should be. Conclusion is, not enough information to decide.

Currently, I would most probably be sacrificing a bit of “looks” for the laptop and get a HP Business class laptop. Still a long way to go before I can really decide on one, none seems to offer something that suits me perfectly.

Tweaks and Extensions

One of the most famous features offered by Mozilla are the extensions.
Extensions are additional features programmed by the users of the software to improve or personalize certain functions of the Firefox/Thunderbird.

Here in this article, I’ll introduce you 2 extensions that’ll help us achieve our goal.
First, I’ll introduce you the “Minimize to Tray” extension.
(Download instructions are further down, don’t rush into it )
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/2110

The purpose of this extension is to help us Minimize Thunderbird into the System Tray instead of the taskbar so that it will not take up space in the taskbar while keeping it wokring to check our mail all the time.

To download the extension:
For Internet Explorer users, all you need to do is click on the “Install now for Windows” and you’ll be asked to Save it. Click Save and select a location that you can easily find the file. (Example: Desktop)

For Firefox users, right click on “Install now for Windows” and choose “Save Link As…”. Save it to somewhere you’ll remember because you’ll have to use it later. (Example: Desktop)

After downloading it (Which will take less that 30 seconds), I’ll introduce you a second extension, called the “Minimize to Tray Enhancer”. Yes I know it sounds so much like the previous one, but this provide us with a few useful features that the previous one doesn’t.
So, here it is:
(Download this one using that same procedure I gave earlier.)
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/2831

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Now that you have both Extensions downloaded, it’s time to install them.
Start up your Thunderbird, head over to Tools > Extensions:

Click on image for high resolution

After clicking on “Extensions”, a small Window will appear:

Click on “Install” that is located on the lower left side of the window, open the file that we’ve downloaded earlier. Select “Minimize to Tray” first because “Minimize to Tray Enhancer” would require that to be installed first to work:

Click on “Install” when the next window appears (You’ll have to wait for its countdown to complete before you can click “Install”):

After this is done, do the same for the other extension to install it.

When you’re done installing, exit Thunderbird and start it up again, the extensions should be working by now.

Go back to the Tools > Extensions window again, this time, select “Minimize to Tray”, then click “Options”:

In the Options window, check all 3 of them (My suggestion, you may decide this for yourself):

Click OK after you have completed.

Next, we’ll set the “Options” for “Minimize to Tray Enhancer”. Follow the same instructions given above to open the Options window.

Check both “Minimize on open” and “Start with windows”.
According to what I’ve tried, “Start with windows” did not work for me, you may test it out first if you like but if doesn’t work for you as well, I have a solution that I will include later in this post.

Now that you have set up the options, click OK to close the window and close the extension window. Now try to minimize your Thunderbird, do you see what I see?

Isn’t Thunderbird cute down there?

Now that Thunderbird can be Minimized down to the System Tray, try double clicking it and it’ll reappear on your screen.

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In the last part of this entire “Don’t check your Email. Let Thunderbird do it for you!” guide, I’ll be showing you some simple tweaks that you can do to your Thunderbird.
Head over to Tools > Account Settings (You should be familiar with this already). Click on the account that you want to set, then choose “Server Settings”:

You will be able to see this on the right side. First, check the first 3 like I did to ensure that Thunderbird would check the emails for you on its own. As for the time interval, set it to any number you like, the shorter, the more updated you will be but this might slow down your connection so make your choice wisely.
You may check out the other options down there but try not to meddle with the “Advanced” if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Whenever an unread/new email is downloaded, you will be notified by a notifier that looks like this:

And if you’re not around to see the notify, a new system tray icon will appear to notify you that you have an email waiting for you, like this:

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EXTRAS!!

If your Thunderbird does not start with Windows even if you’ve set the “Minimize to Tray enhancer” to do so, there is one more way that you can try.

Head over the Start > All Programs, look up for the folder called “Startup”. Right click on the folder, and click “Open”. Once you’ve done this, head over to Start > All Programs again, this time look for Mozilla Thunderbird, then again the file named “Mozilla Thunderbird” which is under the folder named “Mozilla Thunderbird”, right click on it and click “Copy”. Head over to the “Startup” folder that you have just opened, paste it inside the folder by right clicking on any part of the folder than click “paste”. After this is done, your Thunderbird should now start together with your Windows.

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So here it is, the end of the entire guide. It sure has been a long way.

In conclusion, what we’ve been doing up till, was to make Get Mozilla Thunderbird to check our e-mail and download them by itself at every (insert time interval) minutes. A few tweak has been made to make Thunderbird start up together with the computer so the user would not have to start it manually and also make it minimize to the tray so it will not take up space in the taskbar while keeping it on.

Thank you for reading up till here, you may post comments or msn me if there is anything you don’t understand or need help. I hope this guide helped you, see ya!

Adding Outgoing Servers

If you have tried to add more than an account, you will realize that the procedure is slightly different. You can’t add an outgoing address anymore right? Well, you’ll have to add it by yourself this time and I’ll show you how.

Head for Account Settings like you did before:

For high resolution, click on the picture.

This time, head over to the left side, select “Outgoing Server (SMTP)”, then click “Add” on the right side of the window.

A window asking for certain information would appear.
For description, it is for your own reference, so you can put anything that you can easily understand. For me, I’ll put the email address, if you don’t know what to do, I suggest you put the email address too.
As for server name, it is the SMTP address that I explain in the previous article, as for my case, I’ll put mail.chronolisme.com.
Check “Use username and password” because most emails need them, enter your email address as your username and choose the secure connection used by your email domain. If you don’t know about it, check with your domain administrator. For my case, it’ll be “TLS if available”.

Ok, now that you have an SMTP server, you will need to associate it with your Account in order to use it.
Still in account settings, look for your account on the left side and click on it, then on the lower right side, select the SMTP server that you just added:

Ok, now that the Incoming and Outgoing are all setup, it’s time to test it out…
First I’ll head over to YahooMail, send an e-mail over to khloke@chronolisme.com to test the Incoming then reply back to YahooMail to test the Outgoing.

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So it seems that my Incoming is working well, now lets test my Outgoing.
I’ll do so by replying the email I just got…

And it seems that everything is working just well!

In my next article, I’ll be showing you some extensions and tweaks that can help Thunderbird do its work more efficiently, like making it Minimize to the System Tray instead of your Taskbar and making it check your email and download them for you.

OK OK, I know and understand that what we’ve done so far are stuff that you already know, it’s only the download and installation anyway, but like I said earlier, I wanted to make this guide useful even for the newbies, which is why I made it so detailed, trust me, there are people out there who needed help like this.

Let us continue with where we stopped. In the part of Part 1, we successfully installed Thunderbird, check Launch Mozilla Thunderbird Now and click finish and we’ll be welcomed by the main screen:

Yes I know my drawing sucks is very ugly.

There are 3 important parts that you must know, you can play around with the rest to learn about them but becareful not to kill your Thunderbird..
(Numbering according to picture)
1)Your folders, there is where your E-mails are kept. Saved messages are kept in “Drafts”, unsent messages are obviously kept in “Unsent”, sent messages are also very obviously kept in “Sent”, and finally deleted e-mails and rubbish are all kept in “Trash”.

2)This is where you E-mails are displayed to you, choose an e-mail from here to read it.

3)And this is where the contents of your selected e-mail will displayed.

The circle I drew on the top left corner is the button where you click to Check and Download your e-mails. It won’t bring you any e-mails now because you have not configured it yet, which is what I’m gonna show you next.

Adding Accounts

To have Thunderbird to check your e-mails for you, you first have to tell the bird where to find your e-mails. Thunderbird also has the ability to get mails from more than one e-mail account and gather them here at one place for you.

To start adding an account, select “Tools” from the Menu Bar then select “Account Settings”:
Click on the picture for larger resolution.

On the following screen, you will see “Add Account” on the lower left side of the window, click it.

Select “Email Account” in the new window and click Next:

Here, enter your Name and e-mail address. The Name here is not your Username, this name would appear as “From” when you an e-mail with this account, so if the email you’re configuring is a company email address, you may put your Company Name. As for e-mail, put the e-mail’s address as it is, don’t change it.

In this window, you’ll need to enter 2 things: POP3 & SMTP. You might not understand these are but don’t worry, you don’t have to. If you have a domain, and your e-mail address is under that certain domain, your POP3 and SMTP will most probably be mail.domain.com (For example, mine is mail.chronolisme.com). My screenshot will look a bit different from yours because I already had previous settings. In my case, I’ll enter mail.chronolisme.com for both POP and SMTP. If you have trouble using mail.domain.com as your POP and SMTP, contact your domain administrator for more help.
For GMail and Yahoo!Mail users, your POP3 and SMTP details can be found here:
Gmail
Yahoo

As for Hotmail users, I’m sorry to say that Hotmail uses HTTP protocol which is not supported by Thunderbird. But who wants to use hotmail anyway, they’re way behind GMail and Yahoo! :p

If you would like all your emails to be gathered in your Local Inbox, check Use Global Inbox.
If you would not like all your emails to be gathered in your Local Inbox, uncheck Use Global Inbox.
If you don’t know what is happening, I suggest you uncheck it.

Next, we’ll have the set the incoming username and the outgoing username for your account. The username, is commonly your entire e-mail address and is most of the time same for both incoming and outgoing. For my case, I’ll enter khloke@chronolisme.com in both. (Screenshot may look different from yours.)

Finally, the final window will show you all the details you have entered so far, check and see if there are any mistakes before finishing.
Don’t try to compare yours to mine because mine is slightly different.
Just for your viewing pleasure, this is what I get:

In my next article, I’ll show you how to add SMTP servers if you have more than an account.