EDG System Administration

If, either when running a perl program or when trying to update cpan, you get an error like this:

Use of uninitialized value in concatenation (.) or string at /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.8/i386-linux-thread-multi/Scalar/Util.pm line 30.

You’ve probably screwed up the Scalar Util stuff. Reinstall a new one from source.

wget http://search.cpan.org/CPAN/authors/id/G/GB/GBARR/Scalar-List-Utils-1.19.tar.gz
tar xvzf Scalar-List-Utils-1.19.tar.gz
cd Scalar-List-Utils-1.19
perl Makefile.PL
make
make test
make install

That fixed things for me.

If, when attempting to start firefox, you get an error that says something like:

Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To open a new window, you must first close the existing Firefox process, or restart your system.

First, do a

ps -ef|grep firefox

command to make sure it isn’t. If it is, kill it with

kill -9 < pid > 

If it’s not running, there are probably some lock files that need to be deleted. Look in your ~/.mozilla directory and search for lock and .parentlock. Then delete these files.

hdiutil convert /path/to/.dmg -format UDTO -o /path/to/.iso

This sticks a .cdr extension on after the .iso, but I just deleted it.

or if creating from a disk, use Disk Utility and just change the Image Format to “DVD/CD Master”.