BeTips.net

If you’re having issues with the BeOS keymap for your particular language, you may be able to edit it to better suit your needs. To load any keymap, type:
keymap -l mapname.map
There are a number of alternate keymaps downloadable from BeWare and BeBits.
Because keymapping can be a complex issue, there’s a dedicated mailing list set up for people with keymap issues. To subscribe, send a message to listserv@listserv.snakelegs.com with the following in the body of the message:
subscribe BEOS-KEYMAPS Your Name
Replace ‚Your Name‘, of course, with your name.
To subscribe via web-browser, visit: http://listserv.snakelegs.com – main page, or, http://listserv.snakeleg s.com/beos-keymaps.html – BeOS-Keymaps Page

What follows are the original contents of this tip.In the „Keymap“ app, you can, besides picking a keymap, change the mapping yourself. You can either drag a key onto another with the second mouse button, and hence copy it there, or you can drag a text clipping (max one character long!**) onto a key. Holding down a modifier-key while dragging, you can reach all possible positions. The only things you can’t change with this is the modifier-key locations, the „dead“ key flag (I couldn’t anyways), and maybe some other obscure keys (my „|< >“ keys for example:(). There is a german keymap on beware though that puts alt_gr right and puts |, < and > on the „correct“ positions.If you are adventurous, you can dump the current keymap with „keymap -d>filename“, and edit it, it’s actually readable. After you have applied your feared physical-key-to-hex skills (it gives clues for most keys), you just do „keymap -l<filename“, and you have a home-made keymap!
Also, „keymap -r“ restores the keymap to default, but I fail to see the usefulness of this, since if you need to use it, you probably can’t type it in:).
** I assigned „lala“ to my ‚q‘ key, and when I pressed it, it actually printed „lala“, but it seemed to corrupt the keymap and mouse. However, I’ve been unable to reproduce this behaviour, so it may be safe assigning strings > 1 character in length to keys.

On occassion, you may find it useful to be able to change all the filenames in a directory from UPPERCASE to lowercase, or vice versa. This will be particularly true if you’re copying over file from a Windows 95/98 partition, since Windows is so inconsistent with its case handling. Here’s a shell script you can use to automate the process. Type or copy the following lines into Terminal, one at a time:

for i in * ; do
  j=`echo $i|tr 'A-Z' 'a-z'`
  mv "$i" "$j"
done

To change from lowercase to uppercase, reverse the order of ‚A-Z‘ ‚a-z‘. The script requires that the tr utility be in your /bin/ directory, which it should be by default. If you think you’ll use this often, make a script out of it for later use. Paste the above into a text file, but add the line
to the top, as the first line. Save it with the name „lowercase.“ Then make it executable by typing chmod 755 lowercase into Terminal. Edit the file again to do the uppercasing trick, and save the new file as „uppercase.“ Run chmod on that too. Move both of these files to your /boot/home/config/bin/ directory, and they’ll always be available to you from the command line.
If you’d rather download these scripts, ready to run, you can get them here.

If you’ve got a dual-processor motherboard but only one CPU, you may have trouble booting BeOS. If this happens to you, look around in your BIOS for a setting called „MPS for single processor“ and turn it off. This should get you up and running. If you’re running NT on the same machine, NT will no longer boot properly and you’ll have to toggle the setting each time you switch OSs.
Another solution is to enter into the Safe-Mode menu by pressing space during bootup. Here you can also disable multiprocessing. Although you’ll have to do this for every BeOS bootup, this is definitely more convenient if you have to work most of the time with NT.
Probably best to just get a second CPU!

When you’re using the Tracker in Mini Icon or Large Icon mode, it’s easy for the arrangement of icons in the window to become messy. Some icons may even end up partially obscured by the window edges or by other icons. To clean up a Tracker view quickly, tap Alt+K, which will cause all icons to snap to the nearest point on an invisible grid.
Note, however, that this will not „squish out the white space“ — to do that, use Shift+Alt+K, or hold down the Shift key when accessing the Window menu and the „Clean Up“ option will change to „Clean Up All.“
After cleaning up, tap Alt+Y to cause the Tracker window to resize itself optimally.
If you’d like to arrange icons one at a time, just hold down the Alt key while dragging. When you release, the mouse button, that icon will snap to its nearest grid point. Note that all of these clean-up feature works on the Desktop too!

If you have a Kensington trackball (Expert Mouse, for instance) that locks up when plugged into the PS/2 port, try plugging it into a serial port instead. Of course, this applies only to those trackballs that come with a serial/PS2 adapter.

Update: In BeOS 5, Alt+PrintScrn no longer drops you into the debugger, so this tip isn’t much of a warning anymore. If you do want to drop into the debugger, hit Alt+PrntScrn+D.
If you’re coming from the Windows world, you may be accustomed to using the Alt+PrintScreen key to limit your screenshots to the active object. Don’t try this in BeOS! This key combination drops you into the kernel debugger (the PrintScreen key doubles as the SysReq key). However, if you don’t have serial debugging enabled and aren’t watching the output on another screen, it will appear that your system has just locked up. For all intents and purposes, it has.
So: A) this is a feature, not a bug. Don’t bother reporting it. B) Don’t try it unless you’ve saved all your work and you’re ready to lock up your system.

When messing around with different video refresh rates, you could end up with a garbled screen full of unreadable junk. To bring the video_server back to a sane state, hit Ctrl+Alt+Shift+F12. BeOS will reset the video to 640x480x8bpp.
In extreme cases, you can also fix things manually by moving drivers around. This should seldom be necessary as the above should always work, but just in case, here’s the scoop:
Reboot into the fail-safe graphics mode and delete the appropriate graphics-card driver in /boot/beos/system/add-ons/app_server, and the corresponding accelerant in /boot/beos/system/add-ons/accelerants. Reboot, and the resolution will be the default 640×480 8bpp. You should now be able to reset your resolution and color depth from the Screen preferences panel.

If you type a command into Terminal, where does it look for the program you’ve specified? The system looks in a set of directories established in your PATH statement. A number of directories are specified in the default path as soon as you boot BeOS. But what if you want to add to that list?
To see a list of directories comprising your current path, type $PATH . To add to that list, type export PATH=/boot/NewDirectoryName:$PATH. Now check your path again, and you’ll see that the new directory has been added to the list.
Want to make the change permanent? Just add the export line to your /boot/ home/.profile or /boot/home/config/boot/UserSetupEnvironment (preferably the latter).
After first editing either of these, you’ll need to have them read back into memory:

source ~/.profile
source ~/config/boot/UserSetupEnvironment

Don’t be fooled: the SerialConnect application has nothing whatsoever to do with PPP or establishing Internet connections — it’s just for dialing into BBSes, programming your modem or terminal adapter, or for trapping kernel debug information.
To make an Internet connection, just establish your TCP/IP settings in the Dial-Up Networking panel and start a service — check your mail, click a link, or start an FTP session… your default PPP connection will be initiated automatically. Note that dial-on-demand services were absent in the R4.0 release, but are restored in R4.1 and later; in R4.0, you’ll need to establish PPP connections via DUN’s Deskbar replicant or from the DUN application itself.

Even though the contents of /boot/home are yours and aren’t touched by BeOS during installation, it’s important that you don’t remove this folder entirely. For instance, if you have BeOS installed on multiple volumes and just want to keep your home folder on one of them, you might be tempted to replace the main one with a link to the folder on the other volume. Don’t do this. BeOS will boot strangely, your desktop will be empty, and lots of things will go screwy.

original post by Anon, converted to new Websidelayout by shacker.