Thursday, December 20, 2012

Excel file open problem when iCloud 2.x is installed

Sometimes users get a error message when they try to open a .xlsx file with Excel 2007 oder 2010.
The error message is like
"Excel found unreadable content in 'xxxxxx.xlsx'. Do you want to restore the content of this file? ...."

or in german:

"Von Excel wurde unlesbarer Inhalt in 'xxx.xlsx' gefunden. Möchten Sie den Inhalt dieser Arbeitsmappe wiederherstellen?

The funny thing is:

- When you have excel closed and double click the .xlsx file in Explorer it opens without a problem
- Also when you open it via the recently used files

- But when you open it via the file menu of Excel then it shows that error
- And then all other open requests show the same problem, until you restart excel


The cause of this problem is Apple iCloud in Versions 2.x and up.
So you have to remove the iCloud 2.x stuff and the problem is solved.
You can use iCloud 1.x, this gives no problems, just make sure you disable autoupdate for that thing...

Just wondering what the hell apple is doing there at them moment I try to open a excel file....


Some references:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4508650?start=0&tstart=0
http://www.office-loesung.de/ftopic550332_0_0_asc.php


Wednesday, December 12, 2012

Starting SQL Anywhere 10.x on Ubuntu 12.04

Yes i know,

SQL Anyhwere 10 is out of the normal support cycle, so we won't get any new EBF for it.

Neverless we still have customers running SQL Anywhere on linux systems.
When you upgrade your Ubuntu 10.04 LTS to the 12.04 LTS version, then the database will no longer run.
On startup you will see a message telling you that there is not enough free memory available.

The cause is the switch from kernel 2.6.x to 3.x, which has some other memory handling.

You can find the original thread here in the sql aynwhere forum.

The simplest solution (beside upgrading to a new license of sql anywhere) is to start the database server with the architecture specified as kernel version 2.6.

Fortunally there is a tool which allows us to do this: setarch

So the command to start dbsrv10 looks like this:

setarch $(arch) --uname-2.6 /opt/sqlanywhere10/bin32/dbsrv10 @/opt/sqlanywhere10/databases.list

Tuesday, December 11, 2012

Linux and Bixolon BCD-1100

 A few years ago I posted a howto to enable a epson client display to be used with linux.


Now we wished to use bixolon client displays with out pos solution.
And as usually, they also don't know what anything beside windows is, so they don't offer drivers for linux.

The corresponding lsusb did show up this:

Bus 002 Device 004: ID 1504:0011

So the simple way to go is just use the same command as a few years back and enable the ftdi_sio module for the Bixolon displays too.
modprobe ftdi_sio vendor=0x1504 product=0x0011

Enables the bixolon display as the tty device in linux.

This did create a /dev/ttyUSB0 which we then could use to communicate with the device.
To automate the module loading on plug events, just create a new file in /etc/udev/rules.d

File: 50-udev-default.rules
ATTR{idVendor}=="1504", ATTR{idProduct}=="0011", RUN+="/sbin/modprobe -q ftdi_sio vendor=0x1504 product=0x0011"

For a solutions also working with 3.12 and newer kernels, please read on here.