BeTips.net

In R4.5, the icon for broken symlinks reverts to the icon used in days of yore, i.e. the bluish-purple fish. The problem is that the Tracker is overriding its own icon for some reason.If you prefer to see the more handsome R4 icon for broken symlinks (not that you should be seeing this very often anyway), do this:
Activate the FileType add-on on /boot/beos/system/Tracker (Ctrl+Alt+F), and scroll down to ‚Symbolic Link.‘ Then open the system’s FileTypes preferences panel and open application/Symbolic Link. Drag the icon from it’s icon well to the Tracker’s confused one to fix the fishiness.
Beware The Fish.

Similar to the way you can add access to mounted disk volumes to the Be menu, you can also add quick access to Be’s provided documentation by typing:
ln -s /boot/beos/documentation ~/config/be
But this means you also get all the empty files, pictures, and other cruft that lives under /boot/beos/documentation. Here’s a script that will create appropriate documentation links, preserve the directory structure, and display only HTML documentation files in the Be menu.

DOC="Documentation"
IFS="
"
cd ~/config/be
[ -d ${DOC} ] && rm -rf ${DOC}
mkdir ${DOC}
cd ${DOC}
for x in `find /boot/beos/documentation ( -name "*html" -o -type d ) -print |
 sort -f | sed -e s/"/boot/beos/documentation/"//g`
do
echo "linking to ${x}"
[ -d /boot/beos/documentation/${x} ] && mkdir -p ${x}
[ -f /boot/beos/documentation/${x} ] && ln -s "/boot/beos/documentation/${x}"
 "./${x}"
done
rmdir `find . -type d -empty -print`

Hope this helps somebody out there. If you can tell me how to do this with a query, that would be great.

If you’re working with a PCMCIA modem or network card under R4.5, you’ve seen the alert boxes that pop up telling you that „Device X is online.“ If you get tired of seeing these, try this:
1) Make a backup copy of /etc/pcmcia/net and/or /etc/pcmcia/serial
2) Edit the files and place a # in front of each line containing „alert.“
Note: only do this once you’re sure your card(s) are fully functional.

If you’re running the SETI@Home client for BeOS, you can get much faster crunch rates than you do on the same machine under Windows. However, pay attention to the screen saver you’re running at the same time, as some savers are very CPU-intensive. To maximize your SETI rate, run a low-impact screen saver like „Message“ (built into R4.5). Do some tests of your own against „busy“ screen savers — the difference in SETI rates is dramatic. Of course, you can always just disable your screen saver entirely, but that’s no fun…

At long last, R4.5 brings auto-dial features to the BeOS PPP landscape. This means you don’t have to initiate a connection with your POP before attempting to click a web link or send out a ping request. Auto-dial isn’t enabled by default, however; you’ll need to select the Auto-dial checkbox in the DUN preferences panel.

This tip is based on the tip Title your Terminal.
When you launch a console application in a Terminal window, the window will generally be closed after execution, which means you can’t read the results (note that this is not true when you simply type the name of a command into a Terminal window, but when you launch a new Terminal and a command all at once). To get around the situation, try this:
1) Launch the terminal with the -t flag, passing it a title and a script file. For example:

Terminal -t "Compiling..." /bin/sh -c /boot/home/scriptfile

2) Include in the scriptfile the following commands (for example):

	# call the GNU C++ compiler
	gcc
	# send a message to User after execution
	printf "return to continue
"
	#read the keystroke and close the Terminal application
	read -e response

The final read command will cause the window to stay open until you press a key. This lets you launch the GNU C++ compiler in a new Terminal window and read the compiler output without closing the Terminal window automatically.

If you’re creating custom filetypes and and want to be able to edit their attributes in the Tracker, be sure to establish them with a datatype of „String.“ Don’t be tempted to use the „ASCII“ datatype.
If you do, you won’t be able to edit them even if you’ve set the „editable“ flag. The ASCII datatype is being deprecated and will not be present in future versions of BeOS.

If you use BeatWare products such as Mail-It or e-Picture, take a look in their installation subdirectories for an app called FreeStyleConfig. This will let you customize the colors and background bitmaps for virtually every aspect of your BeatWare applications. Since they all share the same configuration directory, you only need to tweak once to affect all of your BeatWare apps simultaneously.

If you decide you no longer need WON and would like to get its icon off your Desktop, enter WONSetup and uncheck all of the options. When you restart your machine, WON will no longer be visible.
If this does not work for some reason, edit /boot/beos/system/boot/Netscript and comment out the following lines:

start  beos/bin/ksocketd
start beos/system/servers/da_hood

The first method should work fine, but hey, WON is still experimental….

If you want a shared volume accessible via WON to appear mounted on your Desktop, edit the file ~/config/settings/Tracker/TrackerSettings and change the line:

MountSharedVolumesOntoDesktop off

to

MountSharedVolumesOntoDesktop on

Everything you mount with ezmount or cifsmount will now have an icon on your Desktop for easy access.