BeTips.net

If the Tracker hangs or kills itself off for some reason (the most common reason is a badly behaved Tracker add-on), you’ll probably want to make sure it’s all the way dead before restarting it.
To kill the Tracker all the way dead, hit Ctrl+Alt+Del to bring up the Team Monitor, then kill off the Tracker’s remaining threads. To restart the Tracker, bring up the Team Monitor again and you’ll see a new button labeled „Restart Desktop“. Clicking it re-launches the Tracker. If you prefer to do these things manually, open a Terminal and type:

/system/Tracker &

similarly, the Deskbar can be restarted by typing

/system/Deskbar &

Remember that you can manually kill the Tracker with the Vulcan Death Grip. The Deskbar must be killed manually, via the command line, Team Monitor, or with a 3rd party process controller / thread manager.

In order to run a system query, at least one of the attributes of the filetype being searched on must be indexed by the system. BeOS does not index every attribute of every filetype because that would result in an impact on performance. You can see which attributes are currently being indexed by opening a Terminal and typing

lsindex

If you want more details on the lsindex output, use

lsindex -l

If you want to search on an attribute that isn’t currently being indexed, you can create a new index by typing

mkindex [attribute_name]

For example, let’s say you’ve associated an attribute with an internal name of META:Author with your text/plain filetype, and you want to be able to search your system for text files authored by a certain person. Type:

mkindex META:Author

From now on, all new text files that you create will have their META:Author attribute added to the META:Author index.
The datatype of a new index is „string“ by default. If the attribute involves numbers and you want to do numerical searches on those numbers, you’ll need to make sure you create an index of type „int“. For example, if you’re creating a „year“ attribute and corresponding index, and you want to search on files with a year index between 1973 and 1977, use something like:

mkindex -t int TEXT:Year

There are, however, two things to note:
1) New indexes are not retroactive — if you have a ton of text files with Author attributes, they won’t be automatically added to the new index. To have old files added, just use the Tracker to copy (not move) them to a new location. The act of copying them will add their attributes to the new index.
2) A newly created attribute will not become immediately visible in the Find panel unless you give it a friendly name (a description) in the FileTypes panel, and restart the Tracker (or reboot).

Is your PPP connection not working properly? Is the BeOS cutting off your Standard-PPP after a few seconds? There may have several reasons for this. Try to solve those problems by:

• Using „Generic AT Commands, AT“ as modem
• Using „Manual“ as Server Type
• Checking „Use static IP address“, while leaving the IP address empty

„Generic AT Commands, AT“ works around fundamental errors in the init string.
The „Manual“ login seems to solve the kickout problem. Unfortunately, this leaves the user to enter name and password manually. After a successful login, just press the „Start PPP“ button and the connection is established.
The BeOS may have some difficulties with assigning dynamic IP addresses, so you should try to check the „static ip“ box. You’ll get a dynamic IP all the same.

If you need to generate pure tones on BeOS, one of the simplest ways to do it is to use sinus from BeWare. sinus is a command-line tool ported from Linux and some of its functions don’t work perfectly, but you can easily output perfect pitch .wav files like this:

sinus -n 400:400,3.0 -o 400.wav

This will generate a tone starting and ending at 400 Hz, duration 3 seconds, and output to a file called 400.wav. Build a collection of these files and drag them onto SoundPlay, PlaySound, whatever. You can also build tonal sweeps, like this:

sinus -n 100:1200,5.0 -o sweep.wav

This will build a file called sweep.wav starting at 100 Hz and ending at 1200 Hz, 5 seconds long. There are many, many more options. Type sinus with no arguments to get a complete list of options. Note that with the BeOS version, you must output to a file — you can’t dump straight to audio output.

Some of you may have experienced this bug: If you start the BeOS Demo CD after having already installed the full version of BeOS, the bootloader may be corrupted (this should be fixed in future versions of the Demo CD)
To remedy this, boot the full version with the Demo CD (press and hold the Spacebar while booting and choose the volume containing the full version from the menu). Open a Terminal and type:

 makebootable /boot 

The BeOS should now start again with its usual bootloader.

---

Kristof Polleunis chimes in with the following:
In rare cases, the BeOS can spontaneously bork the bootloader on reboot, causing you to have to run makebootable quite a bit. To subvert this, and make sure nothing corrupts the bootloader on shut down, you can add the command makebootable /boot to your UserShutdownFinishScript.

If you have a need to read Photoshop’s native .PSD file format on BeOS, grab a copy of Digital Tierra’s PSD Translator and drop it in ~/config/add-ons/Translators. All of your Translator-savvy graphics applications will instantly gain the ability to read (but not write) Photoshop files.

This tip builds on the principles outlined in the tip Make playlists automatically, but rather than using the limited find command, you’re going to be using BeOS system queries to do far more powerful things, treating your system like a database to create customized playlists for use in SoundPlay or CL-Amp. In this example, we’ll create a playlist comprised of all songs written in 1971, no matter where on your hard drive they might be stored. In a flash.
First of all, you’ll need to use an ID3 tag manipulator that extracts tag info and writes it to attributes. Jonas Sundstrom’s Tag2Attr and Attr2Tag add- ons are excellent, as is his TagWorld editor. When you first install one of these, you’ll need to manually add Title, Artist, Album, Year, and Comment attributes to your MP3 file type. In this process, you will have given each attribute an internal name, such as Audio:Year. In order to run this query, the attributes you want to search on will need to be indexed by the system, so open a Terminal and type:

mkindex Audio:Year

for example. You only need to do this once. Remember that newly created indexes don’t index pre-existing data, so if you’ve already added a year attribute to tons of MP3 files, you’ll want to copy your MP3 folder to another location and then delete the original. This will cause all of your MP3 files‘ Audio:Year attributes to be added to the index. If you’ve only got a few of them, just add the year attributes anew.
To test whether you’ve done all of this properly, run a normal Attribute query to find all of your MP3 files that were made in 1971. If the query is successful, all you have to do is launch a blank playlist editor in your MP3 player, select all in the query results window, drag the selection to the playlist window, and save.
Of course, these principles can easily be extended to do just about anything. For example, you could find all Neil Sedaka songs anywhere on your system with a comment field including the phrase „delicious,“ or whatever you want.
Remember: If you store your MP3 volumes on a separate volume, you must index each volume you intend to query.

HTML is for the web, not for e-mail. If you find someone sending e-mail messages with HTML in them, chastise them up and down and tell them how to disable it. Nevertheless, there are plenty of jokers out there sending web pages around masquerading as e-mail messages, and you need a way to read them. Fortunately, Mail-It makes this easy.
If you get a message including HTML, just pull down File | Show As HTML, or click the Show as HTML button at the top right of the message (if you haven’t chosen to hide the Mail-It toolbar in the preferences) and the message will be launched directly into the default web browser, which is usually NetPositive.

To get extended European characters such as é è ù ß and Å to render properly in HTML, you need to represent them with extended HTML codes. Rather than relying on clunky look-up charts, create a simple sed script to do the hard work for you.
Save the two files below to /boot/home/config/bin. To use the system, assume you have a text document called MyFile. Open a Terminal window in that file’s directory and type:

convert MyFile

A second file will appear in the same directory, called MyFile.new. This second file will have all European extended characters replaced with their HTML equivalents. Now you can write J.L Gassée in an HTML page without mispelling. 🙂
Here are the two files you need to create:
Save this first one as /boot/home/config/bin/convert:
——————

file="$*"
sed -f "/boot/home/config/bin/convhtml.sed" $file > $file.new

——————
Save this second one as /boot/home/config/bin/convhtml.sed (note that
you must be using a font capable of handling all extended characters in order
for this to be displayed properly).
——————

s/¡/\¡/g
s/¢/\¢/g
s/£/\£/g
s/¤/\¤/g
s/¥/\¥/g
s/¦/\¦/g
s/§/\§/g
s/¨/\¨/g
s/©/\©/g
s/ª/\ª/g
s/«/\«/g
s/¬/\¬/g
s/®/\®/g
s/¯/\¯/g
s/°/\°/g
s/±/\±/g
s/²/\²/g
s/³/\³/g
s/´/\´/g
s/µ/\µ/g
s/¶/\¶/g
s/·/\·/g
s/¸/\¸/g
s/¹/\¹/g
s/º/\º/g
s/»/\»/g
s/¼/\¼/g
s/½/\½/g
s/¾/\¾/g
s/¿/\¿/g
s/À/\À/g
s/Á/\Á/g
s/Â/\Â/g
s/Ã/\Ã/g
s/Ä/\Ä/g
s/Å/\Å/g
s/Æ/\Æ/g
s/Ç/\Ç/g
s/È/\È/g
s/É/\É/g
s/Ê/\Ê/g
s/Ë/\Ë/g
s/Ì/\Ì/g
s/Í/\Í/g
s/Î/\Î/g
s/Ï/\Ï/g
s/Ð/\Ð/g
s/Ñ/\Ñ/g
s/Ò/\Ò/g
s/Ó/\Ó/g
s/Ô/\Ô/g
s/Õ/\Õ/g
s/Ö/\Ö/g
s/×/\×/g
s/Ø/\Ø/g
s/Ù/\Ù/g
s/Ú/\Ú/g
s/Û/\Û/g
s/Ü/\Ü/g
s/Ý/\Ý/g
s/Þ/\Þ/g
s/ß/\ß/g
s/à/\à/g
s/á/\á/g
s/â/\â/g
s/ã/\ã/g
s/ä/\ä/g
s/å/\å/g
s/æ/\æ/g
s/ç/\ç/g
s/è/\è/g
s/é/\é/g
s/ê/\ê/g
s/ë/\ë/g
s/ì/\ì/g
s/í/\í/g
s/î/\î/g
s/ï/\ï/g
s/ð/\ð/g
s/ñ/\ñ/g
s/ò/\ò/g
s/ó/\ó/g
s/ô/\ô/g
s/õ/\õ/g
s/ö/\ö/g
s/÷/\÷/g
s/ø/\ø/g
s/ù/\ù/g
s/ú/\ú/g
s/û/\û/g
s/ü/\ü/g
s/ý/\ý/g
s/þ/\þ/g
s/ÿ/\ÿ/g

——————

If you’re trying to decide between SCSI and IDE, or if you’re having trouble getting your IDE drive chain to work properly, this background info on IDE may help.
IDE problems, such as reports from the BeOS install routine that certain files may be corrupt, can arise from several sources. It could be dodgy devices or BIOSes claiming they can do something (like UDMA), when they in fact botch it. However, I think that the real problem might be related to the cable length and quality.
You might want to disable DMA on ATAPI devices (either in the BIOS or in BeOS‘ safe mode) while installing. However, that’s not as good as solving the underlying problem that results in data corruption. It is possible that the BeOS pushes the system harder than other operating systems, and that is why you see cable related corruption. According to the IDE spec cables should be 40cm or less in length. Be cautious, because many machines come with longer cables by default. Other operating systems work around this violation of the spec — BeOS may not.
One of the design differences between SCSI and IDE is the fact that SCSI has opted for reliability, performance and expandability from day one. On the other hand, IDE has been about low cost and ease of use, performance is only a recent after thought.
Both systems are subject to the same fundamental physical limitations when it comes to interconnecting cables. The cable has to handle high frequency signals over certain physical distances without distorting them too much. The signals are subject to the capacitance and inductance of the cable as well as the resistance inherent in any conductor. These values can vary quite a lot, depending on the quality of the cable construction and the materials used. Believe it or not, the length of the cable can make a big difference at high speeds.
Furthermore, the cable ends suffer from signal reflections unless they are correctly terminated. One of the differences between SCSI and IDE is the fact that SCSI requires cables to be terminated to absorb the reflections at the end of the cable and prevent them from affecting the signal. IDE has no such requirement and to counteract the problem of reflection, it limits the length of the cable and the number of devices attached to the IDE bus.
Bottom line? If you can’t go with SCSI, use the shortest possible, good quality IDE cables. Connect devices to ends of cable. If you have a second device put it in the middle of the cable only if a first device is already attached to the end of the cable. If it still craps up, decrease the bus frequency by lowering the maximum burst transfer rate over your IDE bus. The easiest way to do that is to disable DMA.