TheNitai

SELinux is a good thing, but it also requires you to watch out on some libraries. Sometimes, something just fails, because SELinux does not allow it to run. This so happens when you have SELinux installed and want to run FFMpeg.

I just run into this when I tried to run FFMpeg and got this error message:

“error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libavcodec.so.52: cannot restore segment prot after reloc: Permission denied”

In order to run FFMpeg without problems I had to add the remove the restrictions for SELinux with:

chcon -t textrel_shlib_t ‘/usr/lib/libavutil.so.49.15.0′
chcon -t textrel_shlib_t ‘/usr/lib/libavcodec.so.52.20.0′
chcon -t textrel_shlib_t ‘/usr/lib/libavformat.so.52.31.0′
chcon -t textrel_shlib_t ‘/usr/lib/libavformat.so.52.31.0′
chcon -t textrel_shlib_t ‘/usr/lib/libswscale.so.0.7.1′

Like many others I installed Snow Leopard on my Mac and like many I’m most of the time very happy with it. But there are some things that still don’t work as expected. Especially troublesome is when working Hardware can not be used anymore.

Unfortunately, I had one of those experiences today. As a owner of the Late 2008 MacBook Pro series, I don’t have a Smart Card Reader built in, thus I bought myself a Griffin eSata Express Card, which I use to read/write to Smart Cards. But as I found out today, after wanting to use it for the first time since upgrading to Snow Leopard, the Smart Card could not be read. As a fact, the Card Reader is not even recognized by the System itself.

Apparently, Apple disables some drivers during the installation as stated in the Technote called “About incompatible Software”. One of those drivers is the one from Sillicon Image which enables the Smart Card Reader. After some searching I found the same driver again over at the Sillicon Image download page and installed the latest driver (from 2007) again. Low and behold the card works again.

Not sure, how long this will work, but for now this will hopefully help anybody else.

Update:
After some more searching I found that updated Snow Leopard ExpressCard drivers are available from FirmTek. So far, I can report successful installation working with this driver as well.

If you are moving on the web and are surrounded by many little gadgets or simply want to be informed where the society is heading you own it to yourself to watch the Fall Edition of the famous “Shift Happens” series. This one is called “Did you know 4.0″.

I just found the below Video over at the PresentationZen Blog. Since I have a total urge to go to Japan (don’t know why, just feels like the right thing) I thought this video to be a nice introduction to Japan/Tokyo. For all those who feel the same, enjoy!

This is another interesting talk over at the TED website entitled “How to read each other’s mind”. Thought I think the title is a bit misleading, the talk goes into how our minds and perception over time changes as we grow up.

After 10 minutes of her talk you get to a very interesting passage where they stimulate a different answer from their test with giving people small electromagnetic impulses to their brain. Now, just think a minute what this could mean and you see the bigger picture behind this. Guess there are many more things going on behind at MIT…

I had the need to retrieve mails from one Google App account to another Google App account over POP. Like this you can actually “swap” from one primary domain to another primary domain (since Google does not allow it to be exchanged you need to create a new account and do all the needed steps as outlined in their document called “Swap primary domains“).

Since this is going from one Google App account to another I thought it would be very easy to do so. But as it turned out it wasn’t. Mainly because there is almost no documentation out there. The process itself is quite simple, all you have to do is to go to the “Settings” page within your account. Then go to “Accounts” and under “Get mail from other accounts” you add your other eMail account.

But the problem is that, even this is from Google to Google account, the wizard does not configure correctly. By default you might get filled in information like:

User: yourname
Mail Server: mail.domain.com
Port: 110

But to be able to retrieve mails over POP from another Google App account you will need the following settings:

User: name@domain.com
Mail Server: pop.gmail.com
Port: 995

Figuring out this setting took some valuable time. Hope someone else benefits from it.