OSX

by wooter on Accessories, Apple, How-To, OSX

eID card reader on OS X 10.9 Mavericks

Up until OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, you could easily access your eID card reader. Then, suddenly in 10.9 Mavericks, this access was broken. You would try to install the card reader, and the software installation would prompt you to plug in the reader, but your computer would not recognise the card reader.

It looks like these drivers that came with the standard eID software are not compatible with 10.9 Mavericks.

If you take your eID card reader, and flip it upside down, you can find a label. On the label, you can make out the model number and the supplier brand.

Most Belgian eID card readers have a model number such as ACR38U. If you Google on this model number, you reach the website of acr38u.com, which is the site of the eID card reader supplier. If you follow the Drivers link, you can download there a driver for your Mac for OS X 10.9 Mavericks.

Download the driver, and double click on the file name acsccid_installer-1.x.x.dmg. This will mount the disk image. A Finder window opens with acsccid_isntaller.mpkg. Right-click on this file and choose Open.

Once the installation is finished, go back to the eID installer. Run the installer. You will notice the installation will now recognise the eID card reader and your eID card.

One note on performance: When the card reader is plugged in, a process called pcscd might peak at 99% in your Activity Monitor. This will happen while the card is plugged into an USB port, even if there is no eID card present. This can affect battery life and performance of your computer.

 
by wooter on OSX

A New Year, a new folder structure for my paperless office

Every year, I run into the same problem. I need to replicate the directory or folder structure of my previous’ year’s administration folder to use it for the new year.

If you remember my post on my paperless office (which has changed slightly, later more), I have a directory structure for my company administration to easily retrieve incoming and outgoing invoices and other paper mail which I want to keep available in a digital archive.

Anyway, what happens every year is that I forgot how I did it the year before, run to Google and type in “copy directory structure” and find always on top a purple link.

You can read all the options, but I always only need one of these in a Terminal window:

user@osx:~/from$ find . -type d -exec mkdir -p ~/to/{} \;

user@osx:~/from$ find . -type f -exec ln -s ~/from/{} ~/to/{} \;

or

user@osx:~/from$ find . -type f -exec touch ~/to/{} \;

All credits go to whitequark.

 
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