BeTips.net

In rare cases, it may happen that the BeOS detects your keyboard and even reports it as active, but no keystrokes come through. If this happens to you, check for these things:

1. Is your mouse connected to a COM port? Try putting it on the PS/2 connector.
2. Does your machine run on a Abit or QDI motherboard? Then it’s time to update the BIOS. With a QDI you should get at least with Version 1.03. For an Abit you should get the latest possible rev (i.e. higher than 5 or 6).
3. In some BIOSes you can change a setting called „Typematic Delay“ or „Keyboard Refresh Rate“ – those shouldn’t be higher than 6.

If none of these things help, contact Be’s customer support.

There’s a little easter egg hidden in the PNG Translator. Launch the Data Translations prefrences panel and select PNG Images. Now click on the text line that says

 Release 4.5.2 © 1991-1999 Be Incorporated

First it will say:

 by Matt Bogosian

Click on it again and it will go back to:

 Release 4.5.2 © 1991-1999 Be Incorporated

Click on it again and you’ll find out why this tip has such a strange title.

If you’re running a BeOS web server other than PoorMan (i.e., one that does CGI) and want to be able to extract attributes from BFS files, see the TrackerBase page on this site. What that page doesn’t tell you is how to create attributes from your perl scripts.
Once you’ve got Tom Spindler’s Be::Attribute perl module installed, use the syntax:

Be::Attribute::WriteAttr(node, attr, what, type, howbig);

For example, if you want to change the attribute of a certain email file called „emailfilename,“ your script might look something like this:

 use Be::Attribute; $MailNode = Be::Attribute::GetBNode("/boot/home/mail/in/emailfilename"); Be::Attribute::WriteAttr($MailNode, "MAIL:status", "New", "String", "50"); 

Be engineer Jon Wätte threw a cool utility into R4.5 at the last minute called „desklink,“ which lets you install a Replicant for any application or document into the deskbar from the command line or from your UserBootscript. The syntax is simple:

desklink /boot/beos/apps/NetPositive

will put a small NetPositive Replicant into the Deskbar’s status view. To remove it, use:

desklink remove=/boot/beos/apps/NetPositive

Of course, you can substitute the path to any application on your system. You can also pass in arguments to tell the Replicant exactly what to do when right-clicked. For example:

desklink "cmd=Open TipServer:/boot/beos/apps/NetPositive http://www.betips.net/ &" /boot/beos/apps/NetPositive

Now a left-click will launch a fresh NetPositive window, while a right-click will give you a context menu asking whether you want to „Open NetPositive“ or „Open TipServer.“ Cool, huh? Remember to include that ampersand; if you leave it out, the Deskbar might become temporarily unresponsive.
The desklink command doesn’t have to point to applications, either — it can point to any file or folder on your system.
If you prefer to do this graphically, download Wätte’s HotLink utility, but remember that you can’t use the graphical version to automate the creation of Replicants at boot time.
Also useful is Mike Crosland’s linker, a Tracker Add-on that places a link to any folder, file or application in the deskbar.

Secure shell is encrypted telnet, and is much safer to use than the version of telnet shipped with BeOS.
After downloading the source code, cd to the archive directory and type:

./configure

A lot of data will scroll by. When complete, you’ll be returned to the shell prompt. Now open up config.h in your favorite editor and delete lines containing the following strings:

HAVE_RUSAGE
HAVE_GETRUSAGE 1

Save and exit the file. Back at the prompt, type:

make

Compilation should proceed without problems. When you get the prompt back, type

make install

This will install the binary files in ~/config/bin – you can ignore the errors „make install“ gives you!
Now ..that’s it – type „ssh“ and see what happens 🙂
[Editor’s note: If you prefer to download a precompiled binary, you can get ssh and cvs together in one package here.]

Andreas F. Bobak adds:
There are two ways to get to a working copy of ssh for PowerPC machines:
Version 1 („The lazy way“)
Download and use the compiled binary.
Version 2 („I want to do it myself“)

1. Download the source code
2. Download the patch file
3. Extract the source code and cd into the directory (tar xvzf ssh-1.2.16-3_src.tgz)
4. Apply the patch:
   patch -p0 < path-to-patch-file/ssh-beosppc-patch
5. ./configure --prefix=/boot/home/config
6. make
7. make install
8. use „ssh“

If you use the Workspaces panel frequently rather than just relying on the hotkeys, you’re probably frustrated by the fact that Workspaces (like the vast majority of BeOS apps) takes one click to get focus and then another to actually do what you tried to do with the first click.
To change this behavior, download a copy of hey and install it in ~/config/bin. Then type into a Terminal window:

hey Workspaces set Flags of Window Workspaces to 32912

If you like the way this works, add it to your UserBootscript. If you do, be sure that you’ve started the Workspaces preferences before calling that line. Since it takes some time for the Workspaces app to start, you may have to put a sleep 2 before the hey line. This waits for 2 seconds, making sure Workspaces is running and ready to respond to a hey command. Depending on your system’s speed you can tweak that value, of course.
Another little app that provides the first-click behavior and additionally strips off the window’s border and title tab is WorkMeister. The above UserBootscript information applies here as well.
Want to know where we got the number 32912? See the tip Control window look, feel, or behavior with „hey“.

If you find yourself frequently needing to get to a specific directory location in the shell and you’re already looking at it in the Tracker, download a copy of Sander Stok’s Summon add-on. Install it in ~/config/add-ons/Tracker and rename it with the letter of the hotkey you want. If you name to be able to launch a Terminal in the current folder with Opt+Alt+S, for instance, name it Summon-S.

Remember: „Opt“ on a standard Windows keyboard is Right-Ctrl or Left-Win. Alt is the same on both sides of the keyboard.

Have you ever wanted to open a Tracker window from a Terminal? You can do it using built-in Tracker features, with the following aliases added to your .profile to save time :

alias t="/boot/beos/system/Tracker"
alias th="t ."

Now if you type th, it will open a Tracker window in the current directory of your Terminal application. If you type t, it will put all Tracker windows in the front. If you type t foo.cpp, it will open this file in the BeIDE, since the MIME database will be automatically queried to locate the default application association for this file’s filetype.
Here’s another approach to the same goal: Paste this function into your .profile and you’ll be able to launch files by their MIME types, or launch a folder by simply typing start Foldername or start .

function start {
	/system/Tracker $* &
}

By default, open application windows sit on top of the Deskbar. If you need to access the Deskbar, you have to move the windows out of the way first, or click in a remaining visible portion of the Deskbar. To change this behavior, download a copy of hey and install it in ~/config/bin. Then type into a Terminal window:

hey Deskbar set Feel of Window Deskbar to 6

Of course, this now means that the Deskbar will sometimes obscure parts of your windows… you can’t have it both ways. If you like the way this works, add it to your UserBootscript.

To save an entire creation you’ve made in SoundRecorder to disk, click the floppy icon or left-drag from the display window to the Tracker or Desktop. This creates an AIFF file. If you want to save in another file format, Ctrl-drag or right-drag the clip. When you release the mouse button, you’ll be prompted to select an audio file format from among your installed writers (see /boot/beos/system/add-ons/media/writers).
If you want to save only a segment of a track, drag the semi-circular endpieces of the progress indicator left and right to cordon off the selection you want first.

Use the semi-circular draggers to create selections in SoundRecorder.

If you accidentally delete the attributes on your email files (by using tar rather than zip, for example, or by copying them to a non-BFS file system), you’ll find that it’s no longer possible to do queries on your email, or to enjoy the drag-and-drop access to attachments that BeOS provides. It also becomes very difficult to find a specific email message without opening up all messages, as the default naming scheme for mail messages on BeOS isn’t very descriptive. [Editor’s note: that’s what grep is for. 🙂 ]
However, there is a solution. You can pass the messages through BeOS‘ mail parser and it will recover all of the attributes, including the ones that allow you to drag-and-drop attachments. I recovered about a hundred otherwise-munged email messages this way.
Just launch a Terminal, navigate to the directory containing the messages, and type:

mail_parser *

Two caveats: first, the mail_parser opens up the newly-parsed message when it is finished, so if you have BeMail as your default mail program, hundreds of messages to parse mean hundreds of BeMail windows; and second, the mail_parser may mark directories with ‚New‘ status attributes, which will cause the Deskbar’s mail Replicant to report the presence of unread mail even when all of your mail is read. To fix this, you’ll need to delete the unwanted attribute from the command line, with the rmattr command.