langui.sh » bash

Fixing GrowlMail in 10.6.4 (Mail 4.3)

Paul Kehrer — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 21:41:17 +0000

Another OS X release, another broken GrowlMail bundle. I did a post just like this for 10.6.2. Check it out if you want more background on why this occurs.

Easy Fix

Download a pre-patched GrowlMail.bundle and drop it in your ~/Library/Mail/Bundles/ directory¹. If you want it available to multiple users on your system, use /Library/Mail/Bundles/.

Download patched bundle

If you use this method you’re all set; no need to use the command line solution below.

Add New UUIDs to SupportedPluginCompatibilityUUIDs

If you have already had your plugins disabled by opening Mail.app you’ll need to look in ~/Library/Mail (or /Library/Mail if you installed globally) and move the files back to the active bundles directory. They’ll typically be in Bundles (Disabled), so quit Mail, find them, and move them back into the proper directory.

If you have a local installation:

defaults write ~/Library/Mail/Bundles/GrowlMail.mailbundle/Contents/Info SupportedPluginCompatibilityUUIDs -array-add "E71BD599-351A-42C5-9B63-EA5C47F7CE8E"
defaults write ~/Library/Mail/Bundles/GrowlMail.mailbundle/Contents/Info SupportedPluginCompatibilityUUIDs -array-add "B842F7D0-4D81-4DDF-A672-129CA5B32D57"

Global installation:

defaults write /Library/Mail/Bundles/GrowlMail.mailbundle/Contents/Info SupportedPluginCompatibilityUUIDs -array-add "E71BD599-351A-42C5-9B63-EA5C47F7CE8E"
defaults write /Library/Mail/Bundles/GrowlMail.mailbundle/Contents/Info SupportedPluginCompatibilityUUIDs -array-add "B842F7D0-4D81-4DDF-A672-129CA5B32D57"

~ means your home directory if you’re unfamiliar with the syntax. You can click the home icon on your Finder sidebar if you’re still confused ↩

Bash Productivity Enhancers

Paul Kehrer — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 17:35:20 +0000

Bash is an extremely powerful shell, but its shortcuts are not readily apparent. Here are a few shortcuts and tips that I’ve noticed many (already proficient) bash users are not aware of. You can also check out Improved Bash History and More Useful Bash/Terminal Settings for more ideas for improving your bash productivity.

Bash Navigation Shortcuts

When editing a long command, there are quite a few navigation and editing shortcuts. By default bash typically operates in emacs mode.

Ctrl-A to go to the beginning of the line
Ctrl-E to go to the end of a line.
Ctrl-W will cut the current word (searching backward)
Ctrl-U will cut everything before the cursor
Ctrl-K cuts everything after the cursor
Ctrl-Y pastes the last text that was cut
Ctrl-T swaps the order of the last two characters entered¹
Meta-B will move the cursor back one word
Meta-F will move the cursor forward one word

Meta keys are a bit tricky since they can differ based on your terminal application. On Windows/Linux it is typically Alt and on Mac OS X Terminal.app defaults to using Esc (but you can change it to option/alt in the preferences).

However, bash also has a vi/vim editing mode. To enable this type “set -o vi”. At this point all the typical vi shortcuts are available if you enter command mode (by hitting Esc). I don’t recommend using this unless you are very comfortable with vi already.

reverse-i-search

You can search through your history and rapidly find a command used previously with reverse-i-search. To invoke, press Ctrl-R and start typing. If you have multiple matches, hit Ctrl-R to cycle through them all. When coupled with an improved bash history this is an extraordinarily useful tool.

Controlling Tasks in Bash

Bash allows you to stop, background, and foreground tasks. To background a process before it starts simply add & to the end of your command.²

mycommand &
[1] 1922

If you have an already running task and you’d like to stop it press Ctrl-Z. This task will obtain a job number (the number in brackets).

[1]+  Stopped                 mycommand

You can then resume the task in the foreground with fg # or background it with bg #. To see a list of jobs that have been backgrounded or stopped type jobs.

Redirecting stderr/stdout in Bash

Bash has two main output buffers: stderr and stdout. Both of these, by default, output to your terminal window.

To redirect stdout to a file add > /path/to/output
To redirect stderr to a file add 2> /path/to/output
To redirect stderr into stdout add 2>&1

This shortcut is available in both emacs and vi mode, but I’ve placed it here since it uses the Control key. ↩
Output from stdout and stderr will continue to appear in your terminal, so consider redirecting them if needed. ↩

Fixing GrowlMail for Mail 4.2

Paul Kehrer — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:50:00 +0000

Update: Fix for 10.6.4 and Mail 4.3

Lately Apple has been revving the version number (and plugin compatibility UUID) of Mail.app with every version of 10.6. This breaks bundles like GrowlMail even when they are still compatible. The easy fix (although not necessarily the best if it turns out an update is required!) is to run a few commands in Terminal to add the new UUIDs¹ to the SupportedPluginCompatibilityUUID key in the Info.plist.²

Once you’ve gotten the files moved into the proper location use either the local installation or global installation commands below (depending on where you found your bundles). To run them, simply copy/paste them into a Terminal window.³

For GrowlMail (assuming local installation)

defaults write ~/Library/Mail/Bundles/GrowlMail.mailbundle/Contents/Info SupportedPluginCompatibilityUUIDs -array-add "2F0CF6F9-35BA-4812-9CB2-155C0FDB9B0F"
defaults write ~/Library/Mail/Bundles/GrowlMail.mailbundle/Contents/Info SupportedPluginCompatibilityUUIDs -array-add "0CB5F2A0-A173-4809-86E3-9317261F1745"

For GrowlMail (global installation)

defaults write /Library/Mail/Bundles/GrowlMail.mailbundle/Contents/Info SupportedPluginCompatibilityUUIDs -array-add "2F0CF6F9-35BA-4812-9CB2-155C0FDB9B0F"
defaults write /Library/Mail/Bundles/GrowlMail.mailbundle/Contents/Info SupportedPluginCompatibilityUUIDs -array-add "0CB5F2A0-A173-4809-86E3-9317261F1745"

Update: Letterbox has been updated, but the above instructions can be adapted for any future OS update that breaks compatibility.

Update 2: You can download a pre-patched copy if you don’t want to follow the above instructions. Just unzip it and drop it in your bundles directory.

Update 3: GrowlMail 1.2.1 has been released, which fixes 10.6.2 compatibility. This issue will likely occur again with 10.6.3 though!

2F0CF6F9-35BA-4812-9CB2-155C0FDB9B0F for Mail.app v4.2 and 0CB5F2A0-A173-4809-86E3-9317261F1745 for the Message framework. These were released with OS X 10.6.2. ↩
These UUIDs can be found in /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/Info.plist and /System/Library/Frameworks/Message.framework/Resources/Info.plist for when they inevitably change again. ↩
Terminal is found in /Applications/Utilities if you’ve never used it before. You’ll see a prompt and you can paste the commands in and hit enter. ↩

Find A Matching Certificate And Key Pair

Paul Kehrer — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 02:49:21 +0000

If you have a list of keys and SSL certs and don’t know which cert belongs with which key, here’s a script for you. It’s not efficient (nested for loop!), but it gets the job done quickly.¹

#!/bin/bash
for i in `ls *.key` 
do
key_mod=`openssl rsa -noout -in $i -modulus`
for j in `ls *.cer`
do
x509_mod=`openssl x509 -noout -in $j -modulus`
if [ "$x509_mod" == "$key_mod" ]; then
echo "$j matches $i"
fi 
done
done

If bash allowed multidimensional or associative arrays this would be trivial to optimize. ↩

More Useful Bash/Terminal Settings

Paul Kehrer — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:28:20 +0000

A few more tricks to make your bash environment better. As always, add them to your ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile to enable.

Disable the pagination of long lists when ambiguously tab completing.

bind 'set page-completions off'

Increase max returned items before being prompted. (ie, “Display all 380 possibilities? (y or n”). You can set the number to whatever you’d like.

bind 'set completion-query-items 300'

Show the list of autocompletion options after the first tab. This prevents the beep + second tab behavior.

bind 'set show-all-if-ambiguous on'

When autocompleting for cd or rmdir, list only directories as choices.

complete -d cd rmdir

Autocompletion for ssh known_hosts. Add this to your ~/.ssh/config (if the file doesn’t exist, create it)

Host *
HashKnownHosts no

Make grep highlight the matching terms in its output.

export GREP_OPTIONS='--color=auto'

Ignore case for case preserving but insensitive filesystems (like HFS+). I don’t personally use this, but perhaps some people will like it.

bind 'set completion-ignore-case on'

Don’t show hidden files when listing. Another option I don’t personally use.

bind 'set match-hidden-files off'

Improved Bash History

Paul Kehrer — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 19:45:12 +0000

If you use multiple shells simultaneously (in my case with Terminal.app on OS X) you’ve undoubtedly noticed that the history of the last closed shell clobbers any commands you might have executed in others. This makes it difficult to use reverse-i-search to find commands you recall using. However, with a few modifications to your bash history you can greatly increase its utility.

export HISTCONTROL=erasedups
export HISTSIZE=10000
export HISTTIMEFORMAT="%D %T "
export HISTIGNORE="&:ls:exit"
shopt -s histappend

Save the above lines to your home directory’s .profile (or .bash_profile) and your shell history will now prevent duplicates, have a maximum of 10,000 items, append a timestamp to all new commands, exclude a list of commands, and append history between shells.

RAM Disks in OS X

Paul Kehrer — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 02:50:22 +0000

If you’ve ever wanted to set up a ramdisk in Mac OS X, here’s a quick script you can use. Simply invoke it with a size in MB and the name for your volume and it will create and automount it for you. It also won’t leave any dangling directories in your /Volumes/ when you eject it! Be sure to chmod the file you place the script in to make it executable (755 or likewise).

#!/bin/bash
if [ -n "$3" ]; then NUM_ARG=ERR; fi
if [ -z "$1" ]; then NUM_ARG=ERR; fi
 
if [ -n "$NUM_ARG" ];
then
echo 'Usage: ./ramdisk  '
exit
fi
SIZE=$1
NAME='my_ramdisk'
let "SIZE *= 2048"
if [ -n "$2" ]; then NAME=$2; fi
diskutil erasevolume HFS+ "$NAME" `hdiutil attach -nomount ram://${SIZE}`
echo 'Done'

Color Terminal in OS X

Paul Kehrer — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 05:56:09 +0000

Apple ships OS X without ls set to use colors (and sans the useful ll alias). For those of us who have grown to love the instant delineation between directories, symlinks, and files this is an inconvenience. Luckily, adding this is quite simple. Place the following into your ~/.profile and you’re all set. To change this setting for all users edit /etc/bashrc as a superuser, but be aware that future OS X updates could potentially erase your modifications.

export CLICOLOR=1
alias ll='ls -l'

If you’d like to alter the ls defaults for coloration you can add one more line:

export LSCOLORS=ExFxCxDxBxegedabagacad

The incomprehensible value is a custom color setting defined by these rules.

For those who are new to the command line, ~/.profile means a file named “.profile” in your home directory. You can create the text file in TextEdit, save as plain text, then rename it to .profile, but be sure to move it into your home directory first as the Finder hides files prefixed with “.” by default.