Technology Tales

What to do when Tuta Mail issues this message when logging into an account on macOS: Could not access Secret Storage

Two things changed before Tuta Mail stopped working as before: modifying Keychain Access settings and upgrading macOS from Sonoma to Sequoia. Either could have been a cause or none of them. The first of these was more likely a culprit than the other.

The result was the same: logging into Tuta Mail yielded an error like this: Could not access Secret Storage. The solution essentially is a two-step process: remove the app and delete its settings folder. Reinstallation then happens after these.

In Finder, go to Applications and move Tuta Mail to the Bin before clearing it from there. That uninstalls the app.

The next step needs you show hidden files and folders using the Command + Shift + . shortcut. Then, go to your home folder (this may need use of the Command + Shift + H shortcut). Open up the Library folder and find the folder called Application Support. Enter that and find the subfolder named tutanota-desktop. That needs to go to the Bin too before expunging it from there. Doing that provides the clean slate for restoration to commence.  After this, using the Command + Shift + . shortcut again hides the normally hidden files and folders once more.

Nothing is resolved with the removal of /Users/[username]/Library/Application Support/tutanota-desktop. Using the rm command from the command line interface will remove it faster than Finder, though that may be easier for many users.

Generating PNG files in SAS using ODS Graphics

Recently, I had someone ask me how to create PNG files in SAS using ODS Graphics, so I sought out the answer for them. Normally, the suggestion would have been to create RTF or PDF files instead, but there was a specific need that needed a different approach. Adding something like the following lines before an SGPLOT, SGPANEL or SGRENDER procedure should do the needful:

ods listing gpath='E:\';
ods graphics / imagename="test" imagefmt=png;

Here, the ODS LISTING statement declares the destination for the desired graphics file, while the ODS GRAPHICS statement defines the file name and type. In the above example, the file test.png would be created in the root of the E drive of a Windows machine. However, this also works with Linux or UNIX directory paths.

Copying a directory tree on a Windows system using XCOPY and ROBOCOPY

My usual method for copying a directory tree without any of the files in there involves the use of the Windows command line tool XCOPY and the command takes the following form:

xcopy /t /e <source> <destination>

The /t switch tells XCOPY to copy only the directory structure, while the /e one tells it to include empty directories too. Substituting /s for /e would ensure that only non-empty directories are copied. <source> and <destination> are the directory paths that you want to use and need to be enclosed in quotes if you have a space in a directory name.

There is one drawback to this approach that I have discovered. When you have long directory paths, messages about there being insufficient memory are issued and the command fails. The limitation has nothing to do with the machine that you are using, but is a limitation of XCOPY itself.

After discovering that, I got to check if ROBOCOPY can do the same thing without the same file path length limitation because I did not have the liberty of shortening folder names to get the whole path within the length expected by XCOPY. The following is the form of the command that I found did what I needed:

robocopy <source1> <destination1> /e /xf *.* /r:0 /w:0 /fft

Here, <source1> and <destination1> are the directory paths that you want to use and need to be enclosed in quotes if you have a space in a directory name. The /e switch copies all subdirectories and not just non-empty ones. Then, the xf *.* portion excludes all files from the copying process. The remaining options are added to help with getting around access issues and to try to copy only those directories that do not exist in the destination location. The /ftt switch was added to address the latter by causing ROBOCOPY to assume FAT file times. To get around the folder permission delays, the /r:0 switch was added to stop any operation being retried, with /w:0 setting wait times to 0 seconds. All this was enough to achieve what I wanted, and I am keeping it on file for my future reference, as well as sharing it with you.

Creating soft and hard symbolic links using the Windows command line

In the world of UNIX and Linux, symbolic links are shortcuts, but they do not work like normal Windows shortcuts because you do not jump from one location to another with the file manager's address bar changing what it shows. Instead, it is as if you see the contents of the directory at another quicker to access location in the file system, and the same sort of thinking applies to files too. In some ways, it is like giving files and directories alternative aliases. There are soft links that point to the name of a given directory or file, and hard links that point to actual files or directories.

For a long time, I was under the mistaken impression that such things did not exist on Windows until I came across the mklink command, which came with the launch of Windows Vista at the start of 2007. While this feature might not be widely known, it demonstrates that Windows did adopt some UNIX and Linux capability long before other UNIX-like features, such as virtual desktops, were introduced in Windows 10.

By default, the aforementioned command sets up symbolic links to files and the /D switch allows the same to be done for directories too. The /H switch makes a hard link instead of a soft link, so we get much of the functionality of the ln command in UNIX and Linux. Here is an example that creates a soft symbolic link for a directory:

mklink /D shortcut target_directory

Above, shortcut is the name of the symbolic link file and target_directory is the destination to which it links. In my experience, it works best for destinations beyond your home folder and, from what I have read, hard links may not be possible across different disks either.

Smarter file renaming using PowerShell

It appears that the Rename-Item commandlet in PowerShell is a very useful tool when it comes to smarter renaming of files. Even text substitution is a possibility, and what follows is an example that takes the output of the Dir command for listing the files in a directory and replaces hyphens with underscores in each one.

Dir | Rename-Item –NewName { $_.name –replace “-“,”_” }

The result is that something like the-file.txt becomes the_file.txt. This behaviour is reminiscent of the rename command found on Linux and UNIX systems, where regular expressions can be used, like in the following example that has the same result as the above:

rename 's/-/_/g' *

In both cases, you do need to be careful as to what files are in a directory for this, though the wildcard syntax on Linux or UNIX will be more familiar to anyone who has worked with files via almost any command line. Another thing to watch in the UNIX world is that * parses the whole directory structure, and that could be something that is not wanted for much of the time.

All of this is a far cry from the capabilities of the ren or rename command used in the days of MS-DOS and what has become the legacy Windows command line. Apart from simple renaming, any attempt at tweaking a filename through substitution ended up with the extra string getting appended to filenames when I tried it. Thus, the PowerShell option looks better in comparison.

Changing the working directory in a SAS session

It appears that PROC SGPLOT along with other statistical graphics procedures creates image files, even if you are creating RTF or PDF files. By default, these are PNG files, but there are other possibilities. When working with PC SAS, I have seen them written to the current working directory and that could clutter up your folder structure, especially if they are unwanted.

Being unable to track down a setting that controls this behaviour, I resolved to find a way around it by sending the files to the SAS work directory so they are removed when a SAS session is ended. One option is to set the session's working directory to be the SAS work one, which can be done in SAS code without needing to use the user interface. As a result, you get some automation.

The method is implicit, though, in that you need to use an X statement to tell the operating system to change the folder for you. Here is the line of code that I have used:

x "cd %sysfunc(pathname(work))";

The X statement passes commands to an operating system's command line, and they are enclosed in quotes. %sysfunc then is a macro command that allows certain data step functions or call routines as well as some SCL functions to be executed. An example of the latter is pathname and this resolves library or file references, and it is interrogating the location of the SAS work library here so it can be passed to the operating systems cd (change directory) command for processing. Since this method works on Windows and UNIX, Linux should be covered too, offering a certain amount of automation since you don't have to specify the location of the SAS work library in every session due to the folder name changing all the while.

Of course, if someone were to tell me of another way to declare the location of the generated PNG files that works with RTF and PDF ODS destinations, then I would be all ears. Even direct output without image file creation would be even better. Until then, though, the above will do nicely.

Smoother use of more than one SAS DMS session at a time

Unless you have access to SAS Enterprise Guide, being able to work on one project at a time can be a little inconvenient. It is possible to open up more than one Display Manager System (DMS, the traditional SAS programming interface) session at a time only to get a pop-up window for SAS documentation for the second and subsequent sessions. You don't get your settings shared across them, either, while also losing any changes to session options after shutdown.

The cause of both of the above is the locking of the SASUSER directory files by the first SAS session. However, it is possible to set up a number of directories and set the -sasuser option to point at different ones for different sessions.

On Windows, the command in the SAS shortcut becomes:

C:\Program Files\SAS\SAS 9.1\sas.exe -sasuser "c:\sasuser\session 1\"

On UNIX or Linux, it would look similar to this:

sas -sasuser "~/sasuser/session1/"

Since the "session1" in the folder paths above can be replaced with whatever you need, you can have as many as you want too. It might not seem much of a need but synchronising the SASUSER folders every now and again can give you a more consistent set of settings across each session, all without intrusive pop up boxes or extra messages in the log too.

/sbin/mount.vboxsf: mounting failed with the error: Protocol error

These days, my virtualisation needs are being well served by VirtualBox 2.2. Though it may be the closed source variant, I have no complaints about it. Along with a number of Windows VM's, I also have one running Ubuntu 9.04 and, for the first time, I seem to have VirtualBox's Guest Additions playing with a Linux guest as they should. Even the Shared Folders functionality is working.

However, I did get one problem when I tried out the last feature for the first time. The procedure is to issue a command like the following in a terminal session after creating the requisite directory in the file system and adding a host directory as a shared folder:

sudo mount -t vboxsf Music /mnt/host_music/

Above, Music is the name of the folder in the VirtualBox manager and /mnt/host_music in the directory in the guest file system. However, this returned the message at the head of this post at that first attempt:

/sbin/mount.vboxsf: mounting failed with the error: Protocol error

The solution thankfully turns out to be an easy one: reinstalling the Guest Additions, which certainly did the trick for me. The cause would appear to have been an update to Ubuntu, and 9.04 is understandably in a state of flux at the moment (I suspect kernel upgrades because of my previous experiences). Regardless of this, it is good to know that it's a problem with a simple fix, and I am seeing the niceties of a larger virtual screen system together with automatic grabbing and releasing of the mouse cursor too. While there may be a chance to explore the availability of these sorts of features to other Linux guests, I have other things that I should be doing and there's sunshine outside to be enjoyed.

UNIX Process Management

Here are a few UNIX commands that I have recently encountered that help with process management and are particularly useful when jobs are running in the background. Here they are:

nohup

It's short for no hang up and stops termination of a job when a user logs off. Another result is that all console messages being directed to a file called nohup.out in the directory current to the job being run, or in the user's home directory, where write access to the current working directory is unavailable.

ps

This returns a list of processes, their ID's and their statuses. By default, this is for your own processes, but you can look beyond this with the myriad of options that can be passed. For instance, the -U switch allows you to look at a job for other users while the -f one shows more information than the standard call and this even includes the commands submitted to start the ongoing processes.

kill

The name says it all, and it's far quicker than the rigmarole that you have to endure with the Windows task manager; I wonder if there is a command line approach to process termination on Windows.

Uses for symbolic links

UNIX (and Linux) does a wonderful trick with its file and folder shortcuts; it effectively treats them as file and folder transporters that transfer associate a file or folder that exists in one folder hierarchy with another, and it is treated as if it exists in that hierarchy too. For example, the folder named images under /www/htdocs/blog can have a link under /www/htdocs/ that makes it appear that its contents exist in both places without any file duplication. For instance, the pwd command cannot tell a folder from a folder shortcut. To achieve this, I use what are called symbolic links and the following command achieves the outcome in the example:

ln -s /www/htdocs/blog/images /www/htdocs/images

The first file path is the destination for the link, while the second one is that for the link itself. Once, I had a problem with Google Reader not showing up images in its feed displays, so symbolic links rode to the rescue as they did for resolving a similar conundrum that I was encountering when editing posts in my hillwalking blog.