Computer: June 2006 Archives

I just read a great post on Tao of Mac where Rui Carmo explains how one may replace Yojimbo with something much simpler. Even though I have a Yojimbo licence, I decided to try it and it looks like a great idea.

The thing I really like about this approach is that data is now stored in some open format (maildir messages in my case), which can easily be synchronized (using IMAP) and tagged (but there is some work to do there).

Things stored in mail can be searched, and the nice "smart folder" feature of some mail reader would prove really handy. The one bit missing seems to find an open format way to store web pages, but Rui is working on it.

Finally, I also found newspipe, a RSS reader that mails the result of what it reads. As it can output its result to procmail, I don't even use it to send mail: feeds get stored immediately in a maildir folder. This means that I might stop using NetNewsWire...

Now I need to see if I want to sell my NetNewsWire and Yojimbo licences ;-)

You may safely ignore the following if you're not into OS X software (Tiger specific in this case). There is another BlogZot going on, this time about HoudaSpot. I just gave it a try, and here are my thoughts, in the MacZot given format.

My review of HoudahSpot as seen on MacZOT.com

HoudaSpot is a graphical tool that let you access the full power of the command line spotlight service (where you can specify complex queries, containing "and", "or", and "not" logical operators). Even though it's not as pretty as a Finder "Saved Search" (which I've just started using along with spotlight comments), being able to have any kind of boolean combination is very helpful. Searches can be saved (as templates, to be filled later, or as live searches), and one really nice thing is that they are documents that can be exchanged with other HoudaSpot users.

The search result window provides a lot of information and basically let you do things you would be able to do using the finder (move the file to trash, rename it, etc ...)

I would like to see a better Finder integration, for instance, by having HoudaSpot saved searches in the sidebar. But I see myself using this more and more as I'm starting to tag more files.

NOTE: If you’re seeing this on June 16, 2006 head over to MacZOT, you might be able to get a Free copy of HoudahSpot

Search easily in Tiger, Mac OS X, with HoudahSpot

I just thought my PowerMac had died on me because I did something stupid.

I run the dovecot IMAP server on this machine, and at one point I was getting into the limit of concurrently opened files. So looking up on the web, I saw that I could set it using "launchctl limit maxfiles 512 1024" ("launchctl limit maxfiles" was giving me "256 unlimited").

So I added to my /etc/launchd.conf a line "limit maxfiles 1024 unlimited". This was a bad idea.

At the next reboot, it would not boot. Looking at verbose output (command V at boot time), I saw a lot of "file: table full" right after the beginning of the boot. So I took a firewire cable, booted in target mode (T at boot time), and changed back the offending line.

My guess: "unlimited" is not understood in launchd.conf, so it's interpreted as 0: no file may be opened. This seriously compromised booting ;-)