I’ve also been running into a problem described by commenter Marcel, here. I’ve been getting a similar error under Windows for different extensions when I try to install them. Don’t know why, and what makes it worse is that these errors crop up in extensions that I’ve had no problems installing before on other computers (maybe I need to have Webrunner installed along side Prism?). I’ve also had problems with version 0.9 not installing and using the included icons for webapp files. I’m going to have to look into that one a bit further before I can comment more on it though.

At any rate, I’m going to list as much information in this post as I can find on Prism to refer back to, then I’m going to create a new post on how to install an extension for Prism manually. I’d also like to post a how-to on getting POW to work under Prism as well, but I don’t know whether or not I’ll get to that (maybe over Thanksgiving break). So, first some links.

LINKS:
Mozilla Labs’ Prism Page – A broad overview of the goals of the Mozilla Prism Project
Mozilla Developer Center’s Prism Page
MDC’s Prism Page on Extensions
Mozilla Labs’ Prism Forum
Mozilla Wiki Prism Page – Along with the Dev Center’s page, a good source for documentation on  Prism
Mark Finkle’s Blog (one of Prism’s developers – BTW – THANK YOU MARK!!!)
SVN for Prism’s source code
List of Prism Contributors on ohloh.net
Douglas Meyer’s Blog post on getting Google Gears to work with Prism
Commenter Manlo’s blog post on getting RTM working with Prism (does not appear to be working)
Wikipedia Entry

Next, here’s a list of all the files that Prism makes use of in the user’s profile directory on Windows and Mac OS X – Linux to come (I don’t have access to my Linux box at the moment).

Default Prisim Folders in User’s Home directory (Windows as of Prism v0.9):

Under C:\Documents and Settings\{user name}\Application Data\

Prism\
Prism\profiles.ini
Prism\Profiles\
Prism\Profiles\{random string}.default\
Prism\Profiles\{random string}.default\cert8.db
Prism\Profiles\{random string}.default\compatibility.ini
Prism\Profiles\{random string}.default\compreg.dat
Prism\Profiles\{random string}.default\cookies.sqlite
Prism\Profiles\{random string}.default\extensions
Prism\Profiles\{random string}.default\extensions.cache
Prism\Profiles\{random string}.default\extensions.ini
Prism\Profiles\{random string}.default\key3.db
Prism\Profiles\{random string}.default\localstore.rdf
Prism\Profiles\{random string}.default\mimeTypes.rdf
Prism\Profiles\{random string}.default\permissions.sqlite
Prism\Profiles\{random string}.default\places.sqlite
Prism\Profiles\{random string}.default\prefs.js
Prism\Profiles\{random string}.default\secmod.db
Prism\Profiles\{random string}.default\xpti.dat
Prism\Profiles\{random string}.default\extensions\

Under C:\Documents and Settings\{user name}\Local Settings\Application Data\

Prism\Prism\
Prism\Prism\updates\
Prism\Prism\updates\0\

For Each WebApp Prism creates (Windows as of Prism v0.9):

Under C:\Documents and Settings\{user name}\Application Data\Prism\

{webapp name}\
{webapp name}\profiles.ini
{webapp name}\Profiles\
{webapp name}\Profiles\{random string}.default\
{webapp name}\Profiles\{random string}.default\cert8.db
{webapp name}\Profiles\{random string}.default\compatibility.ini
{webapp name}\Profiles\{random string}.default\compreg.dat
{webapp name}\Profiles\{random string}.default\cookies.sqlite
{webapp name}\Profiles\{random string}.default\extensions
{webapp name}\Profiles\{random string}.default\extensions.cache
{webapp name}\Profiles\{random string}.default\extensions.ini
{webapp name}\Profiles\{random string}.default\extensions.rdf
{webapp name}\Profiles\{random string}.default\key3.db
{webapp name}\Profiles\{random string}.default\localstore.rdf
{webapp name}\Profiles\{random string}.default\mimeTypes.rdf
{webapp name}\Profiles\{random string}.default\permissions.sqlite
{webapp name}\Profiles\{random string}.default\places.sqlite
{webapp name}\Profiles\{random string}.default\pluginreg.dat
{webapp name}\Profiles\{random string}.default\prefs.js
{webapp name}\Profiles\{random string}.default\secmod.db
{webapp name}\Profiles\{random string}.default\signons3.txt
{webapp name}\Profiles\{random string}.default\xpti.dat
{webapp name}\Profiles\{random string}.default\extensions\

Under C:\Documents and Settings\{user name}\Application Data\WebApps\

{webapp name}@{webappaddr}\
{webapp name}@{webappaddr}\localstore.json
{webapp name}@{webappaddr}\override.ini
{webapp name}@{webappaddr}\webapp.ini
{webapp name}@{webappaddr}\webapp.js
{webapp name}@{webappaddr}\icons\
{webapp name}@{webappaddr}\icons\default\
{webapp name}@{webappaddr}\icons\default\{icons included in webapp bundle}

Under C:\Documents and Settings\{user name}\Local Settings\Application Data\Prism\

{webapp name}\
{webapp name}\Prism\
{webapp name}\Prism\updates\
{webapp name}\Prism\updates\0\
{webapp name}\Profiles\
{webapp name}\Profiles\l05apnbh.default\
{webapp name}\Profiles\l05apnbh.default\XPC.mfl
{webapp name}\Profiles\l05apnbh.default\XUL.mfl
{webapp name}\Profiles\l05apnbh.default\Cache\
{webapp name}\Profiles\l05apnbh.default\Cache\_CACHE_001_
{webapp name}\Profiles\l05apnbh.default\Cache\_CACHE_002_
{webapp name}\Profiles\l05apnbh.default\Cache\_CACHE_003_
{webapp name}\Profiles\l05apnbh.default\Cache\_CACHE_MAP_
{webapp name}\Profiles\l05apnbh.default\Cache\{other cache files}

Default Prisim Folders in User’s Home directory (Mac OS X as of Prism v0.9):
Under /Users/{user name}/Library/Application Support/Prism/

Profiles/
Profiles/profiles.ini
Profiles/{random string}.default/
Profiles/{random string}.default/cert8.db
Profiles/{random string}.default/compatibility.ini
Profiles/{random string}.default/compreg.dat
Profiles/{random string}.default/cookies.sqlite
Profiles/{random string}.default/extensions.cache
Profiles/{random string}.default/extensions.ini
Profiles/{random string}.default/key3.db
Profiles/{random string}.default/localstore.rdf
Profiles/{random string}.default/mimeTypes.rdf
Profiles/{random string}.default/permissions.sqlite
Profiles/{random string}.default/places.sqlite
Profiles/{random string}.default/pluginreg.dat
Profiles/{random string}.default/prefs.js
Profiles/{random string}.default/secmod.db
Profiles/{random string}.default/xpti.dat
Profiles/{random string}.default/extensions/

For Each WebApp Prism creates (Mac OS X as of Prism v0.9):

Under /Users/{user name}/Library/Application Support/{webapp name}/

Profiles/
Profiles/profiles.ini
Profiles/{random string}.default/
Profiles/{random string}.default/cert8.db
Profiles/{random string}.default/compatibility.ini
Profiles/{random string}.default/compreg.dat
Profiles/{random string}.default/cookies.sqlite
Profiles/{random string}.default/extensions.cache
Profiles/{random string}.default/extensions.ini
Profiles/{random string}.default/key3.db
Profiles/{random string}.default/localstore.rdf
Profiles/{random string}.default/mimeTypes.rdf
Profiles/{random string}.default/permissions.sqlite
Profiles/{random string}.default/places.sqlite
Profiles/{random string}.default/pluginreg.dat
Profiles/{random string}.default/prefs.js
Profiles/{random string}.default/secmod.db
Profiles/{random string}.default/xpti.dat
Profiles/{random string}.default/extensions/

Under /Users/{user name}/Library/WebApps/{webapp name}@{webappaddr}/

{webapp name}@{webappaddr}/localstore.json
{webapp name}@{webappaddr}/override.ini
{webapp name}@{webappaddr}/webapp.ini
{webapp name}@{webappaddr}/webapp.js
{webapp name}@{webappaddr}/icons/
{webapp name}@{webappaddr}/icons/default/
{webapp name}@{webappaddr}/icons/default/{icons included in webapp bundle}

Default Prisim Folders in User’s Home directory (Linux as of Prism v0.9):

Under /home/{user name}/

.prism/prismdir.lin.txt
.prism/profiles.ini
.prism/{randomstring}.default/
.prism/{randomstring}.default/Cache/
.prism/{randomstring}.default/cert8.db
.prism/{randomstring}.default/compatibility.ini
.prism/{randomstring}.default/compreg.dat
.prism/{randomstring}.default/cookies.sqlite
.prism/{randomstring}.default/extensions/
.prism/{randomstring}.default/extensions.cache
.prism/{randomstring}.default/extensions.ini
.prism/{randomstring}.default/key3.db
.prism/{randomstring}.default/localstore.rdf
.prism/{randomstring}.default/mimeTypes.rdf
.prism/{randomstring}.default/.parentlock
.prism/{randomstring}.default/permissions.sqlite
.prism/{randomstring}.default/places.sqlite
.prism/{randomstring}.default/prefs.js
.prism/{randomstring}.default/secmod.db
.prism/{randomstring}.default/XPC.mfasl
.prism/{randomstring}.default/xpti.dat
.prism/{randomstring}.default/XUL.mfasl
.prism/{randomstring}.default/Cache/
.prism/{randomstring}.default/Cache/_CACHE_001_
.prism/{randomstring}.default/Cache/_CACHE_002_
.prism/{randomstring}.default/Cache/_CACHE_003_
.prism/{randomstring}.default/Cache/_CACHE_MAP_

For Each WebApp Prism creates (Linux as of Prism v0.9):

Under /home/{user name}/.prism/

{webapp name}/
{webapp name}/{randomstring}.default/
{webapp name}/{randomstring}.default/Cache/
{webapp name}/{randomstring}.default/Cache/_CACHE_001_
{webapp name}/{randomstring}.default/Cache/_CACHE_002_
{webapp name}/{randomstring}.default/Cache/_CACHE_003_
{webapp name}/{randomstring}.default/Cache/_CACHE_MAP_
{webapp name}/{randomstring}.default/cert8.db
{webapp name}/{randomstring}.default/compatibility.ini
{webapp name}/{randomstring}.default/compreg.dat
{webapp name}/{randomstring}.default/cookies.sqlite
{webapp name}/{randomstring}.default/extensions/
{webapp name}/{randomstring}.default/extensions.cache
{webapp name}/{randomstring}.default/extensions.ini
{webapp name}/{randomstring}.default/key3.db
{webapp name}/{randomstring}.default/localstore.rdf
{webapp name}/{randomstring}.default/mimeTypes.rdf
{webapp name}/{randomstring}.default/.parentlock
{webapp name}/{randomstring}.default/permissions.sqlite
{webapp name}/{randomstring}.default/places.sqlite
{webapp name}/{randomstring}.default/prefs.js
{webapp name}/{randomstring}.default/secmod.db
{webapp name}/{randomstring}.default/XPC.mfasl
{webapp name}/{randomstring}.default/xpti.dat
{webapp name}/{randomstring}.default/XUL.mfasl
{webapp name}/profiles.ini

From the above lists of file locations, it should be apparent (okay, if you really really look, hard) that there are two ways to go about installing an extension for Prism. The first is install that extension “globally”, which is to say that you install that extension for every webapp. For this method the extension gets installed into Prism’s extension directory. The second method is to install the extension “locally”, or on a per-webapp basis. In this case each extension is installed in the individual webapp’s extension directory.

The first method is more difficult because by default, installing an extension will be done when you have a webapp loaded, so it will install the extension into that webapp’s extension folder. In order to install a webapp globally, you’ll need to perform a manual installation or open a new webapp that loads the addon’s xul (chrome://global/content/config.xul). I should mention that this worked on Prism/Webrunner 0.8, but I have yet to test this on Prism 0.9, so this may no longer work.

…

So, why they heck would I list all the files and directories here? Well, I want a reference to point at when I start explaining which files to make changes to in order to install an extension manually.

Code Snippit for Prism Extensions’ install.rdf

<em:targetApplication>
  <!– Prism –>
  <Description>
    <em:id>prism@developer.mozilla.org</em:id>
    <em:minVersion>0.8</em:minVersion>
    <em:maxVersion>1.0.0.*</em:maxVersion>
   </Description>
</em:targetApplication>

Code Snippit for Prism Extensions’ extension.rdf (information is required from the **install.rdf**)

<RDF:Description
    RDF:about="urn:mozilla:item:{**extension id from install.rdf**}"
    NS1:installLocation="app-profile"
    NS1:version="**from install.rdf**"
    NS1:optionsURL="**from install.rdf**"
    NS1:iconURL="**from install.rdf**"
    NS1:name="**from install.rdf**"
    NS1:description="**from install.rdf**"
    NS1:creator="**from install.rdf**"
    NS1:homepageURL="http://**from install.rdf**"
    NS1:contributor="**from install.rdf**">

More to come…

I had read this morning that there was a new Ubuntu release and, as I was having problems with Debian and was about to reinstall Ubuntu 7.10, so I decided to give it a try. Well, it’s a Beta, but I’m not going to hold that against it! Compiz is installted by default (but just subtley enough you don’t know it till you’re seeing the tell tail fades and such), Firefox 3 Beta 4, wireless support includes WPA (which it has had built-in since the 7.10 release), improved dual screen support for laptops, hell – I didn’t even have to install 915resolution to setup my Intel display to 1440×900! I still had to install Amorok and vlc manually, but that’s cake compared to recompiling a kernel.

1. So far so good, performance is a bit sluggish (especially with the extra visual enhancements enabled), but I’m thoroughly tickled pink by the feature set and compatibility! THANK YOU UBUNTU COMMUNITY!!

Link:

Ubuntu Test Releases

Any-who, one of our labs has us using mount and umount (did I mention that RHA030 is a basic GNU/Linux skills class with a RedHat flavor?) with a floppy drive. There are a couple of problems with this, however. One, there’s no virtual floppy disk on the virtual machine that’s been configured for class. Two, VMware Workstation 6 has this weird quirk (at least the version we have) that won’t allow you to create floppy images in the img format. It adds flp to the end of whatever you put want to name your file, and then gives this error that the file already exists, which doesn’t make a lot of sense since the Workstation just created the file and should know that.

So, here’s a (mostly) graphical tutorial that allows you to create your own floppy image and use it with VMware Workstation 6.

Step 1. Open VMware Workstation and select the virtual machine you want to add a virtual floppy drive to.

Step 2. Select “Edit Virtual Machine Settings” from that virtual machine’s “Commands” menu.

Step 3. From the “Virtual Machine Settings” dialog’s “Hardware” tab, click the “Add…” button

Step 4. On the “Hardware Wizard” dialog, select the “Floppy Drive” hardware type and then click the “Next” button.

Step 5. On the “Hardware Wizard” dialog, choose the “Create a blank floppy image” radio button and then click the “Next” button.

Step 6. On the “Hardware Wizard” dialog, click the “Bowse” button to choose a location for your floppy image.

Step 7. Type in the name of the image file you want to create. Notice I tried to input an “.img” extension which is one of the types listed in the file type select box. Don’t bother trying that because Workstation will automatically tack on a “.flp” extension regardless of what you input.

Step 8. Check your file’s path and then click “Finish”. What’s supposed to happen is, Workstation creates an image file with the name in the text box.

Step 9. What happens is Workstation adds the “.flp” extension, creates the image file, then gives you this Alert box stating: “Unable to create floppy image. File exists.” Idiotic really. Just click the “OK” button and proceed as follows.

Step 10. You’ll now see that your file name has been appended with the “.flp” extension and that and further “Finish” clicking will merely give you to opportunity to view the Alert box again. But don’t worry, because even though you’re getting error a strange and magical thing has happened. Click “Cancel” to proceed to the next step.

Step 11. Click “OK” on the “Virtual Machine Settings” dialog.

Step 12. Ok, this is less of a step than just a view of the results. Remember that “strange and magical” thing I mentioned? Well, as it turns out Workstation has added the floppy drive to your virtual hardware and created and added the floppy image to your floppy drive just fine even with those errors. Weird, weird, weird, but I’m not really complaining, now I can do my lab!

Hope this helps anyone still having problems with this.

Project Background

Anyway, the back story for this project is; about 3 years ago, my daughter (around 6 at the time) accidentally spilled a cup of coffee (no she wasn’t drinking it!) onto a brand new Seagate 5GB USB 2.0 Pocket Hard Drive. I had set a cup of coffee down next to the new drive on the coffee table, and needed to go back into the kitchen for something. I specifically warned her to be careful not to bump the coffee or the table because I didn’t want my coffee spilled. Well, that must have triggered some inborn child-instinct that says “be extremely reckless when told to be careful.”

At any rate, the coffee got spilled and I got a chance to get a look at the internals of my new drive while I was drying it out. While doing this, I got to thinking about how small the microdrive was and how it could fit into a lot of different casings. Of course, I was also thinking of how to better protect it from liquid damage and how I had so many – now less useful, smaller capacity – thumb drives laying around.

I thought that if I could get a small enough USB hub that I could fit that inside a piece of PVC or other sealable container and plug the thumb drives into it. With my new drive back together, dry and ready to go, that’s just what I did! After all I had to figure something out to do with all those old thumb drives!

Materials and Build

I got a USB hub and some other pieces and started to work. Of course, all these parts took quite some time to gather. I managed to get a few left over parts from work (sealable caps from network connectors) and ordered a USB-B jack for plugging in a USB-A to USB-B cable into. I could have easily gotten a smaller, mini-USB connector and cable assembly, but my soldering skills are not that hot.

I ordered a 4-port USB hub (to give you some idea of how old this project is, I bought the hub on ThinkGeek and they no longer carry the hub I bought) which had two stacked 2-port USB-A jacks. I also needed some plastic resin to seal the USB jack. I used a 2″ PVC compression coupling as a housing and a couple of 2″ long PVC pipe sections as end pieces.

I removed most of the housing and USB cable from the hub and replaced the USB plug on the cable with the jack I’d gotten. Then I sealed the jack inside the PVC pipe with the plastic resin. Before I did that however, I needed to close the back of the USB jack with a glue stick gun to keep the resin from filling the jack and making it useless. I still ended up getting some inside, but it wasn’t much as I can still insert the USB plug into it.

In order to get all the thumb drives into the tube, I had to strip the housings from them. I used a thin piece of plastic to separate the drives and keep them from performing their own circuit bending operations on any of my data. I had to scrape some tracks into the inside of the compression fitting in order to get the hub’s circuit board in all the way. The other end of the tube was going to hold another USB-A jack, to be used as a kind of feed through USB port, but as it turns out, I didn’t fill the back of that connector correctly and the resin filled the jack. In any event I don’t think the cable connecting the 4th USB port to that jack would have allowed the hub to fit in far enough to fit along with all the drives. So it’s probably better that I just used it for a 4th thumb drive anyway.

The Cable

I also used a piece of conduit as a cable keeper, so that my USB cable doesn’t get tangled with other cables when in transit. I use this trick, albeit with a shorter section of larger diameter conduit, with my laptop cords too. I slit the conduit or take a ¼” strip longitudinally out of the center (depending on rigidity), neatly bundle the cables (folding in half 3 – 4 times), insert into conduit, and viola – instant portable cable minder.

Software

Well all this is well and good, but there’s a problem I didn’t foresee. That would be what a pain in the but this is to unmount all these devices on Windows. With a GNU/Linux system, you simply right a script to unmount the drives all at once (and presumably put that on one of the USB drives), Windows on the other hand, sucks for this kind of functionality. But there is a half-assed solution to the half-assed situation I’ve put myself in. The command:

mountvol X: /d

Where “X” = your thumb drives’ drive letter, works to safely unmount the volume under Windows (thanks and attribution to Joel on Software), but doesn’t solve disconnecting Windows from the device (you still have the little “Safely Remove Hardware” icon on your system tray). So you need the DevCon tool available here. Now you can use the mountvol command and:

devcon remove @usb\*

Conclusion

Hot, no? Actually yes, this set up does get pretty hot after a while. I guess that’s a drawback of having this in a sealed container. Another drawback, I’ll never be able to take this on an airplane… :(

If you’re looking for something to do with all those old USB drives that are getting exponentially smaller with every passing day, then this might be a solution for what to do with your old drives. But I think the next time I do this, I’ll use the left over clear resin and do something a little more slick, like Russell Jones, and encase the whole shebang in a clear plastic block.

• a file archiver – my favorite is 7-zip, but you can just as easily use any archiving program that is compatible with zip files
• a text plain text editor

For more advanced webapps, a more advanced context highlighting text editor can be helpful for coding custom style sheets or adding javascript customizations. And don’t forget icons! I use a combination of Paint.Net and @icon sushi (which covers everything but MacOS, which is because I can’t seem to find software for Linux or Windows to accommodate icons for it – recommendations anyone?).

The No “.webapp” WebApp

There are several ways to open webpages with Prism or WebRunner. The first and easiest is to install Prism, then create a link to it on your desktop. Then change that link adding the option “-uri” and the url of the page you want to open. Here are two examples:

Windows:
c:\your\path\to_prism\prism.exe -uri http://web_url_of_site c:\your\path\to_prism\prism.exe -uri c:\location\of\local_file

GNU/Linux:
/your/path/to_prism/prism -uri http://web_url_of_site /your/path/to_prism/prism -uri /location/of/local_file

This method does not require a webapp file, it just launches the website or file you specify. This means, no icons are required, but you also don’t get to add any custom themes or js files. This would be a really good method to use with applications like Wiki on a Stick (woas).

WebApp Bundles

The second method is also pretty straight forward (until you make it complex by adding more functionality). For the most basic webApp bundle you only need to create one file; the webapp.ini. Here’s the content from the example webapp.ini on the Prism wiki:

[Parameters] id=unique-app-id@unique-author-id.whatever uri=http://[the-url-what-you-want-to-connect-to]/ status=yes location=no sidebar=no navigation=no

The “id” parameter is required to be unique. I’ve been using my website’s url (as most others have done as well) preceded by the name of the site, but any unique identifier will work. The “uri” parameter is required and will accept both url of the target website as well as local file paths. Everything after that appears to be optional and the values show are the defaults. These remaining parameters are options to tell Prism whether or not to show certain GUI elements (“status” = status bar;”location” = address bar;”sidebar” = sidebar;”navigation” = well, quite frankly, I have no idea – maybe navigation buttons that haven’t been implemented yet?).

The next step after saving your changes to this document, is to use your archiving program to zip up this file creating, as an example, “your_webapp.zip”. Replace the “zip” extension with “webapp” and you’re ready to roll! Now either double click the webapp file or you can launch the webapp from the command line thusly:

Windows:
c:\your\path\to_prism\prism.exe -webapp your_webapp_bundle

GNU/Linux:
/your/path/to_prism/prism -webapp your_webapp_bundle

For more advanced webapps you can add icons, scripting and style sheet support (see the Prism page for more details).

Happy coding!

Prism
Prism/WebApp Bundle
Prism/Scripting
Prism/Styling
7-Zip
Paint.Net
@icon sushi
Wiki on a Stick

link

Plenty of GNU/Linux resources from people all over the world on the internet. And that’s where this post comes in! IBM is dedicated to GNU/Linux, and not just by pouring millions into development and patenting! They have this huge database of how-tos, articles, download links and so forth available from their Linux developerWorks website. Like this nice little walk-through on how to use linux scripts to build your own wireless ISP. Now, you’d expect IBM to promote IBM Linux products (do they have those?), well, they don’t. This site’s instructions, recommendations and walk-throughs are all based around software that can be downloaded freely from other sources on the internet (checkout their downloads page if you don’t believe me!).

Links:
IBM developerWorks – Linux
IBM developerWorks – New to Linux
IBM developerWorks – Technical Library (be sure to checkout their LPI certification prep series!)