Ran into this on Nicole’s new laptop.
The reason was because I had used cygwin rsync to copy over our documents from the old laptop and the iTunes Library.itl file ended up getting marked as read-only.
macosxhints.com has this page on the top: Recover from a ‘Library is locked’ iTunes error
However, all I had to was simply clear the read-only attribute on the iTunes Library.itl file and that seemed to do the trick.
Nicole has a new laptop with Windows Vista and it’s been a bit of an adjustment. One thing that has been a bit confusing is that Vista has changed some of the familiar folders like “Documents and Settings” (“Users” is the new preferred location and I have to say that I like the new name much better, since it’s intuitive, short, and doesn’t have spaces). Some of the old folders are still present in Vista but they’re not actually folders. Nor are they shortcuts or symlinks. They’re “junction points”, which are sort of the Windows analogue of Unix symlinks and they’ve been present for a while in Windows, but not used so much until Vista arrived.
Bob Kelley at realtime-vista.com has a nice little description of the junction points in Vista and how to use the dir /al command to see them.
I was using Cygwin rsync on our two Windows laptops to copy our files over from the old laptop to the new laptop. Invariably, the rsync would copy a handful of files and then hang. Restarting the rsync would copy a few more files and then hang again. Searching around on the Web, I found a lot of people complaining about Cygwin rsync hanging and not a ton of helpful information, but a few bits here and there that suggested that the problem was limited to using rsync over ssh and that rsync to a rsync daemon works better. Probably the most helpful page I came across was this page (which I actually found after I had fixed the problem, while looking for a good link for this post).
Well, I tried it and yes, running an rsync in daemon mode on the “server” completely solved the problem. You can set up an rsync daemon as a Windows service using a command like this:
cygrunsrv --install "rsyncd" --path /usr/bin/rsync --args "--daemon --no-detach" --desc "Starts a rsync daemon for accepting incoming rsync connections" --disp "Rsync Daemon" --type auto
You also need an rsyncd.conf file. I actually already had one because I had previously installed a modified Cygwin rsyncd package from the backuppc project. I did run into a problem with that though because the rsync.exe in that package conflicted with my installed Cygwin (cygwin1.dll versioning problems I suspect). So I ended up modifying the rsyncd.conf to use cygwin paths instead of Windows paths and then used the regular cygwin rsync.exe.
Interestingly, neither the rsync FAQ nor the Cygwin FAQ mention this problem.
I was trying to refill a prescription at Lucky’s using their automated phone system. It ended with this:
The first 4 letters of the last name on file are “Error – missing value”. Is this correct?
I changed my site’s domain a month ago so that my old site http://marc.abramowitz.info does a permanent (301) redirect to my new site: https://marc-abramowitz.com but the old site still has a PageRank of 6 (according to http://www.pagerank.net/pagerank-checker/) and the new one 0. I have a Google Sitemap and everything.
Do I just need to wait longer for everything to sort itself out? Or do I need do anything else to move the process along?
Just started using this at work for code reviews and it looks impressive and useful so far.
Incidentally, it’s written in Python, using Django.
Back in May, I read Hyperion, the first book in a renowned 4-part sci-fi series from Dan Simmons (official site).
This weekend, I finished The Fall of Hyperion. This book continues the story of the Shrike pilgrims from the first book and a few other characters, including the John Keats cybrid, as the interstellar war escalates and the universe goes to hell in a handbasket.
This book doesn’t have the pilgrim stories of the first; it’s more linear, if you can call it that. There are lots of parallel stories, farcasting, worlds within worlds, and time travel to make it plenty interesting. Most of the mysteries of the first book get explained though some of the explanations are so mind-bending, that you will probably have a bunch of new questions. Luckily, there are two more books…
Speaking of the other two books, not wanting to forget too much and lose momentum, I picked up the next book in the series, Endymion, at a book store in Santa Cruz today. I already have the fourth book, The Rise of Endymion, as a friend of mine dug his hardcover version out of his garage and lent it to me.
Interestingly, I noticed that Dan Simmons has a web site and he mentions that a movie is in the works:
Yes, Virginia, there is a Hyperion movie in the works. It has been optioned by a top-notch studio, is slated to be directed by a top-name director, and already has the involvement of a top-flight movie star. Screenwriters have been attached to the project and a first draft screenplay is expected soon.
I’m looking forward to that!