Firefox Startup Issues on Mac OS X

I am running Firefox 3.6.8 on Mac Snow Leopard, and twice in the past two weeks, I’ve been hit with the following message upon launching Firefox:

Could not initialize the browser’s security component. The most likely cause is problems with files in your browser’s profile directory. Please check that this directory has no read/write restrictions and your hard disk is not full or close to full. It is recommended that you exit the browser and fix the problem. If you continue to use this browser session, you might see incorrect browser behavior when accessing security features.

Firefox will start up, but is unable to access any SSL encrypted sites.  Not good.

The issue for me (both times) has been a corrupt cert8.db file in my profile folder.  Fixing it is a simple matter of deleting the offending file.  Shut down Firefox, navigate to your profiles folder (if you are running 3.6, go to Help –> Troubleshooting Information, then click “Show in Finder” next to the Profile Directory entry), and delete cert8.db.  Restart Firefox and you should be all set.

My question is… why is this happening in the first place?

The Mozilla KB article is here.

Hezbollah Vacation Spot

Want something a little different for your next vacation?  How about a Hezbollah tourist site in the mountains of Lebanon?

Hezbollah Opens Terrorist Tourist Trap (via Danger Room)

I wish the video embed had some useful audio, but still…  Personally, I’m going to wait until the swimming pool and spa are operational.

Worst Cast Scenario

Worst Case Scenario

Yes, I know I repost a lot of XKCD. It’s good stuff, what can I say?

How Not to Design an Exercise

I’ve seen several stories lately about poorly designed/executed exercises, but this one may take the cake.

http://securitydebrief.adfero.com/2010/06/02/an-exercise-in-idiocy/

Wow.  A no notice active shooter exercise, where no one had adequate control of the exercise area.  Hell, we make law enforcement unload/secure weapons during *functional* exercises (which are strictly communications/policy based – no ‘boots on the ground’), the fact that there could have been an unaware armed person witnessing this is simply inexcusable.

Not to mention what were the objectives being exercised here?  Safety atrocities aside, I’d like to see the Target Capabilities they were looking to test – and the After Action Report on how those TC’s stacked up to the ‘exercise’.   A good exercise is a lot more than cheesy scenario – in fact, scenario is usually secondary to the capabilities being tested.   We aren’t making movies, we are *training*.

Mura Plugins // Installing and Configuring

I have to admit, the deceptively simple task of installing plugins in Mura stumped me for a bit this evening.

I had four plugins I needed to install and learn some more about:  Soundings, MuraMediaPlayer, MeldForums, and Contributor Tools.  The last two are commercial software the Center bought, and Soundings was developed by Ray Camden, so I had figured things would go rather smoothly.   Oops.

Let’s back up slightly.

I recently switched to a MacBook Pro from Windows (and am still loving it), and that process created a few… bumps… in my normal workflow.  The biggest transition is from running my development environment from a VM located on the internal hard drive from a VM running on an encrypted external USB drive.  (NTFS driver issues, more on that here).  As a result, I only have on VM to play with, not the usual array of linked clones that are all configured in different ways.  As a result, I was back to figuring out a way to get Mura running on my XP VM without disrupting my other dev sites.  Microsoft IIS, under XP, will only allow you to configure one web site (“Default Web Site”) and Mura does not want to play nice when coexisting with other application on a singe IIS site.  I toyed with a couple of ideas – Apache, a registry hack, etc. – before setting on the KISS method.  I created a new dir for the Mura files, then pointed the default IIS site to that dir rather than wwwroot (the typical location).  That let me install and configure Mura without an issue, though of course I can’t access any of my other projects.  When I need to, I’ll just edit the IIS site config again to point it back.

I thought I was all set, and Mura was working great.  I then began to install the Meld Forums plugin.  The install worked, but when I went to configure the plugin, I got an error message.  Long story short(er), nothing seemed to fix the issue.  I finally actually *READ* the error message, and realized that ColdFusion wasn’t seeing a certain component properly.  That quickly led me to the realization that there was an incorrect mapping in the CF administrator.  Sure enough I needed to point the root mapping (“/”) to the new physical path, since it was still referencing wwwroot.  So I edited that, then tried again – same error.  After a bit of cussing, more tweaking, and general flailing about the CF admin, I thought…  ”Do I have to restart the CF service?”  Sure enough, two minutes later MeldForums were running.

After that painful experience, the other three plugins installed in about thirty seconds each, and I’m very happy to say that they seem to work perfectly.

So here’s the takeaway…  Mura may run with incorrect path settings, but plugins probably won’t… and you have to restart the CF service when you edit the mappings. Simple.

More on a couple of the plugins later.

NTFS Read/Write on Mac OS X

One of the first things I discovered while using my new MacBook Pro…  you can’t do much with NTFS formatted drives out of the box.  That can really be inconvenient when trying to use USB disk drives to move files and such back and forth.

Mac OS X will mount the NTFS volumes, but only as read-only.   Some quick searching found two good solutions for this problem.

NTFS-3G is a free NTFS driver that allows Mac OS X (and Linux and other OSes) to read/write Microsoft NTFS volumes.  After some use, it appears solid and easy to install, though it’s performance in a bit lacking.  That won’t be an issue if you are mounting and working with a small USB drive or a few files, but if you are trying to manipulate large chunks of data, you will see some slowdowns.

Lucky of us, Tuxera also makes a commercial driver, Tuxera NTFS for Mac.  This product is an extension of NTFS-3G, and adds some advanced caching abilities that really speed up performance.   This driver makes the NTFS volumes works nearly as fast as on a Windows system.

Remember, this limitation only applies to physical (or virtual) volumes mounted on your Mac.  File manipulation down over the network (to SMB shares) are not affected, and you will be able to read/write out of the gate.

Either of these NTFS driver solutions are good fixes for a potentially annoying issue.

Ghost Story

Campfire story for the digital age... (via xkcd.com)

On the bright side, it didn’t originate from 127.0.0.1.

Turbulent Tide Exercise Series… Arcadia Edition

It’s a freezing Thursday morning in Arcadia, Florida.  Freezing because apparently the air conditioner in my hotel room works really, really well.  I’m in Arcadia today to be a controller for the Center’s exercise series with the Department of Health.  We are in Region 6, located in southwest Florida, and so far things are looking pretty good.

The Turbulent Tide exercise is a multi-discipline full-scale exercise testing various regional Strike Teams in DOH.  It’s not the most complex thing we’ve done, by far, but it does require a good amount of coordination to make sure all the players have what they need to succeed.   I’m very pleased with what our team has put together in such a short period of time.

I will be working the Environmental Health side of the exercise today, which means I will supply scenario information to the EH Strike Teams that are out and about the county.   Sounds a lot more exciting that it really is.  And yes, I know it doesn’t sound that exciting.

Another three days away from home is mostly a pain, and I’m already ready to get back, even though it means a seven hour drive.  On the plus side, Avis gave me a shiny new Ford Mustang as my rental, so I’m not complaining about that.

This is the fourth iteration of the exercise, which means there is still plenty of opportunity for it to go pear-shaped on us.  That’s my primary job today – to keep things as close to the plan as possible.  In some exercises, it’s pretty simple, in others it gets all sideways despite all your efforts.  I’m hoping (wishing, praying) for a smooth day today.  With money and reputation on the line, I prefer boring and predictable every time.

My largest concern today is on of the EH simulation locations.  It was arranged to be at a citrus processing facility, but the security folks at their gate, a) didn’t know anything about it yesterday, and b) weren’t inclined to just let me drive around to check things out.  Perhaps, in that instance, the Mustang looked less than ‘professional’.  Oh, well.  We’ll sort it out at the EOC this morning.

Next week we will be back south for the Region 7 version.  Too early to even predict what the challenges will be there, we’ll have to discover them once we get on the ground.