How to Fix MacOS Big Sur / Apple Silicon SSH issue – client_loop: send disconnect: Broken pipe

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There appears to be an issue with connecting via SSH to remote clients on MacOS Big Sur running on Apple M1 (Apple Silicon) chips. This might also affect Catalina users (Intel x86 chips) as well.

The symptom is that when you attempt to open an SSH session to a remote host, the terminal window just hangs for a long time then finally spits out this:

client_loop: send disconnect: Broken pipe

Luckily, the fix is simple. Add the -o flag with IPQoS=throughput set like so:

ssh -o IPQoS=throughput username@somehost.com

Replace “username” and “somehost.com” as appropriate, and that should do the trick!

You can also create a .ssh/config file or add to an existing if you have already have one, and put this in so that you can skip the -o flag option entirely:

Host *
IPQoS=throughput

How to Fix “There is no connected camera” Error on OSX Mac FaceTime or PhotoBooth

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For the first time ever today after using various Macs for 10+years, I was suddenly met with this screen upon launching FaceTime:

there-is-no-connected-camera-osx-mac-warning

How to fix this?

A restart (as with most things) sorted it out for a short while, but the issue returned again after the next time that the system re-awoke from sleep mode. A little Googling suggested running the following commands in turn from a Terminal window:

sudo killall VDCAssistant

and then after that, this:

sudo killall AppleCameraAssistant

And that’s seems to do the trick!

 

How to extract data between parentheses in MS Excel

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Super handy tip here: how to extract data from between parentheses “( )” in Microsoft Excel. Just create a new column, and in the first cell of that column, enter this formula:

=MID(A1,FIND(“(“,A1)+1,FIND(“)”,A1)-FIND(“(“,A1)-1)

Note: The formula above assumes that your “target” column that has the parentheses is column “A” and the first row 1 has a value with a parentheses in it. If either of these are not the case, just change “A1” everywhere in the formula to match your first target cell that does have parentheses you want to extract from.

And that’s it! Just copy that formula over to the rest of the rows in your new column and you are all set!

2 Handy MS Excel Data Manipulation Tips – Extract & Remove Text in Parentheses

DaveLeave a comment

To Extract text from parentheses, use this formula in a new column, assuming the target column is column “A”:

=MID(A1,FIND(“(“,A1)+1,FIND(“)”,A1)-FIND(“(“,A1)-1)

Note: Change “A1” accordingly to match the column and specific cell that you are targeting, then copy that formula to all other cells in your new column. Done!

And then to remove the text and the parentheses from all values in a column:

  1. Select the entire column
  2. Do a Find and Replace
  3. In the “Find what” box, enter this: (*)
  4. Click “Replace All”. Done!

 

Pro Tip for Mac OSX Finder – Open new Finder Window in Same Dir

DaveLeave a comment

A handy little pro tip for Mac OSX users – scenario: you have a Finder window open to a certain directory and you want to open another Finder window to the same directory, perhaps to put side by side with the current Finder window.

Just do this:

Press cmd + ctrl + o in Finder without any folders or files selected in that window.

Or if you do have a folder selected, cmd + ctrl + o will open a new Finder window into that selected folder.

Neat!

 

Pro Tip: Quickly locate apache config errors on Mac OSX

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If Apache is refusing connections entirely on Mac OSX (i.e. “Unable to connect” message shows in the browser when trying to load websites hosted on your machine), there’s a good chance there are errors in the Apache config files. This will prevent Apache from starting normally and as a result there will be nothing in the Apache error log itself, as Apache can’t start up.

So to locate where the errors lie, from a terminal window,  run this:

sudo apachectl configtest

That will reveal whether there are syntax errors in the config files (e.g. in httpd.conf or perhaps in the virtual host config file if you are using virtual hosts).