codelaide software

Lighthouse is going international in version 1.2.5: It is now fully localizable. As a start, 1.2.5 contains a French and a German localization (many many thanks to Ronald Leroux for providing an excellent French localization).

Additionally, the help book (which is fully translated in the localizations as well!) has been updated to be more precise in some sections. It has also been given a new, modern, more mac-like look that I’m sure you’ll like!

On the technical side of things, Lighthouse 1.2.5 contains a few minor fixes pertaining to waking from sleep and automatically starting profiles.

Link: Lighthouse 1.2.5

Lighthouse 1.2.4 is a maintenance release that fixes a few minor issues reported by our users. First and foremost, it fixes a nasty hang that could happen in earlier versions during startup and would be triggered by the presence of certain old legacy apps that are not fully Leopard-compatible. This issue has been reported by a number of users, but should be fixed in 1.2.4.

Also, profiles that are not associated with applications will now be restarted properly when waking the Mac from sleep. This was a regression bug that has slipped into the 1.2 branch of Lighthouse, but is now fixed once and for all!

Additionally, 1.2.4 fixes a very rare crash that seems to have only been triggered by certain U.S. Robotics routers.

Go grab Lighthouse 1.2.4 while it’s still hot!

The latest Lighthouse release with the funky version number 1.2.3 brings a few Leopard-specific fixes and enhancements. It’s nothing major, but contains some important fixes related to Leopard as well as some minor bugfixes.

Most importantly, 1.2.3 fixes an issue with Leopard 10.5.1 where the trial period would unintentionally get cut down to a single day for some users. This happened because of a software piracy protection scheme built into Lighthouse that would get triggered by a certain new behavior of the underlying software libraries after the 10.5.1 update. This shouldn’t happen anymore, so all users (even those who have already had their full 14-day test-ride) will get (another) trial period. Please note that you can always contact us about a trial license, should you need another trial period after the built-in one!

Other than that, Lighthouse 1.2.3 fixes a few minor issues related to networking that are mostly encountered on Leopard only, including a very rare hang.

As a little bonus, Lighthouse 1.2.3 now comes with high resolution icons for both the application itself and the exported port mapping profiles, making it look really shiny when viewed in CoverFlow, for example!

If you are still using Tiger, fret not: Lighthouse 1.2.3 is still fully compatible with Tiger, so you are not missing out on any new features or bugfixes. Well, apart from the high resolution icons, that is, since only Leopard can display them. On Tiger, you won’t notice a difference with the new icons. However, Lighthouse is not going to become Leopard-only anytime soon, as we currently intend to keep it backwards-compatible with Tiger during Leopard’s lifecycle.

Lighthouse 1.2.3 is available here.

Since a few people have asked this over last couple of days: Yes, the current version of Lighthouse has been well-tested on Leopard and is Leopard-compatible.

That’s the reason why we did not release an update specifically addressing Leopard, since Lighthouse is already compatible with it. Just make sure that you are running the latest version of Lighthouse by clicking the “Check for updates…” item in the main menu.

However, some users had trouble getting Lighthouse to run on their Leopard installation, not caused by Lighthouse itself, but by third-party system modifications that were not Leopard-compatible yet. If you experience issues with Lighthouse on Leopard (specifically, the Lighthouse icon not appearing when you launch it), please make sure that you do not have any third-party system modifications installed (so-called “Input Manager” hacks) and that there is no legacy application auto-launched via your “Login Items” (You can access your “Login Items” by selecting your account in the “Accounts” view in “System Preferences” and clicking the “Login Items” tab. Just remove all items unless you are absolutely sure that they are Leopard-compatible). Once the problematic tool is removed, Lighthouse will run perfectly on your Leopard installation.

Lighthouse 1.2.2 finally delivers a workaround for the stability problems introduced by the 7.2.1 firmware upgrade for the 802.11n Apple Airport Extreme base station.

After quite a lot of research, we’ve found out that forwarding UDP ports always (and some other NAT/PMP requests sometimes under special circumstances) crashes the NAT/PMP server after the 7.2.1 firmware upgrade. Once it’s crashed, it will never restart, and Lighthouse will no longer be able to communicate with the router. Our workaround prevents Lighthouse from sending UDP port forwarding requests to the affected routers, making sure that the NAT/PMP server won’t crash. Instead, TCP port forwardings will be sent: The affected Airport Extremes seem to forward both the TCP and UDP port when sending a TCP forwarding request, so Lighthouse’s functionality should not be impaired by this workaround.

If you’re running the 7.2.1 firmware on your Airport Extreme, you should reboot your router before upgrading Lighthouse to 1.2.2, since it’s quite possible that the NAT/PMP server has already crashed before and is no longer running. After rebooting your router, Lighthouse 1.2.2 should work fine with the 7.2.1 firmware.

Obviously, this is not a clean workaround, but anything better is not possible due to the nature of the bug Apple introduced in the 7.2.1 firmware. We still recommend using an earlier firmware on your Airport Extreme (see our previous post on how to downgrade) until Apple releases a fix. Once Apple fixes the bug, we will release another update to Lighthouse, in which this workaround will be disabled again.

Please note that if you do not use an 802.11n enabled Airport Extreme base station with the 7.2.1 firmware (read: you’re using a non-Apple router, an “UFO” shaped Airport Extreme or an Airport Express), this workaround does not affect you at all. You won’t notice a difference. If you still want to disable the workaround in your copy of Lighthouse, you can do so by opening a Terminal window (Terminal is in the Utilities subfolder of your Applications folder) and typing the following line, then hitting enter:

defaults write com.codelaide.lighthouse AirportExtreme721Workaround 0

If you want to re-enable the workaround later, just use the same line, but replace the “0″ with a “1″.

Now, we didn’t want to release a new version without throwing in another goody! Lighthouse 1.2.2 implements a feature that many users have asked for: You can now copy either your router’s IP address or your external IP address to the clipboard, enabling you to easily get them into other applications, into emails, instants messages or where ever else you can paste a piece of text.

Of course, you will often want to copy a protocol identifier together with your IP address: If you’re running a web server, you will want the “http://”, if you are running a Secure Shell server, you might want the “ssh://”, and so on. We cannot possibly know which protocols you are using (There are rumors that some people still use “telnet://”, for example). That’s why Lighthouse lets you specify your own protocol identifiers! Just edit them in the preferences, and you can use whichever prefixes are relevant to you!

Other than that, Lighthouse 1.2.2 will now preserve the sort order when editing port mapping profiles (making sure that the profile or port list stays sorted by the column you have selected). Also, we’ve thrown in some minor performance fixes, including a fix for an issue that sometimes (rather rarely) causes a condition in which Lighthouse would “beachball” for a long time.

We’ve also reset the trial period again in order to give unregistered users that have played with an earlier version of Lighthouse another full, 14-day test ride!

While we’re still crossing our fingers that Apple will release a true fix for the buggy NAT/PMP support in 7.2.1 soon, we hope that Lighthouse 1.2.2 will shorten the wait a bit. Oh, and we also hope you like the “Copy IP address” feature, too!

Lighthouse 1.2.2 is available here.

Oh, and by the way, we’ve received a pretty good review from the editor over at Softpedia! Thanks!

We’re back from our vacation and have started investigating the issue that prevents Lighthouse from working on n-enabled Airport Extreme base stations after the recent 7.2.1 firmware upgrade. So far, we’ve installed the firmware on our own test router, but have also collected some diagnostic information from a few users that were kind enough to help us. Many thanks for this, by the way!

So far, we have been able to gather the following results:

• Both the Gigabit Ethernet as well as the slightly older Fast Ethernet versions of the Airport Extreme are affected.
• The bug manifests itself as Lighthouse timing out during the router association.
• We think that we’ve nailed down the steps to trigger the bug. A full workaround will not be possible, but a partial one. Details are below.
• For a clean and complete fix, we will have to wait for Apple to release another firmware update. The problem is clearly a firmware bug, not a Lighthouse bug.
• Last-generation “UFO” shaped Airport Extreme base stations are not affected as well, since no firmware upgrade has been released for them.
• Naturally, all other routers (i.e. non-Airport-Extreme) are also not affected.

Details
After the 7.2.1 upgrade (7.2, which only seems to be available for the Gigabit Ethernet version, is also affected), Lighthouse will time out while trying to associate with the router. This doesn’t always happen, though. We’ve traced the problem down to the NAT/PMP server running on the base station crashing when processing certain, albeit completely legal, NAT/PMP requests. Once the server is crashed, it will not restart. Thusly, all subsequent requests will fail with a timeout error.

Therefore, you might have noticed that Lighthouse sometimes manages to associate with an affected base station after it has been rebooted, but exhibits erroneous behavior later. All further association attempts will then time out.

The offending requests are port forwarding requests for UDP ports. Sending malformed packets also seems to crash the NAT/PMP server.

Thusly, we are currently testing a workaround in which forwarding requests for UDP ports will not be sent if Lighthouse is associated with an affected router. We think that this is a viable workaround until Apple fixes the problem. A patched version of Lighthouse will be released shortly.

Please let us reiterate that this is a bug in Apple’s router firmware, not in Lighthouse.

Implications
Even once the workaround is released, you have to be aware that software other than Lighthouse might be using NAT/PMP as well and thusly crash the NAT/PMP server by sending an offending request. In this case, Lighthouse will, again, not be able to associate with the base station. This is because the workaround will only prevent Lighthouse from crashing the NAT/PMP server, but any other application could still crash it.

If this happens, you will have to restart the base station (for example, by unplugging and replugging the power chord). There is no way to revive the NAT/PMP server once it’s crashed other than rebooting the whole base station.

Downgrading the firmware
Lighthouse is not the only application suffering from the breaking of NAT/PMP after the 7.2.1 update, though, as this thread on Apple’s own discussion board or this one suggest.

We hope that Apple will fix this problem in the next firmware upgrade. 7.2.1 generally seems to be riddled by bugs, as numerous threads on Apple’s discussion board are hinting at.

Until Apple releases a fix, we strongly recommend downgrading to a previous, more stable version of the firmware. Many users are reporting good results when using 7.1.1. Here’s a quick rundown of how to install a previous version of the firmware on your Airport Extreme.

1. Open “AirPort Utility”. It is located in the “Utilities” subfolder of your main “Applications” folder.
2. Select the affected base station from the list.
3. Click on the button labeled “Manual Setup”.
4. In “AirPort Utility”’s menu bar, select “Upload Firmware…” from the “Base Station” menu.
5. In the dialog that appears, there’s a drop-down menu labeled “Upload Version”. Select a previous version of the firmware from the menu. For example, you could select “7.1.1″.
6. Click the “OK” button.

Note that if you are using a firmware version earlier than 7.2, Lighthouse will work without a hitch.

Again, please accept our sincere apologies for this inconvenience, but please also understand that this problem is entirely beyond our control, as it is a problem with the firmware, not with our application. We are crossing our thumbs that Apple will resolve this issue quickly. In the meantime, we hope that the limited workaround we’re currently working on can alleviate the problem.

If you have any additional questions, feel free to contact us.

Many thanks for your understanding!

Several users have reported that the Airport Extreme firmware upgrade (7.2.1) released today breaks Lighthouse’s NAT/PMP support so that it can’t associate with the router anymore or start any profiles.

Unfortunately, this is extremely bad timing since we’re currently on a vacation until mid-September, away from our test routers. Therefore, we most likely won’t be able to resolve the issue until we’re back home.

In the mean time, it’s recommended not to install the latest Airport Extreme firmware upgrade (7.2.1) until we can release a fix.

Other routers (including the older “UFO” Airport Extreme base station and Airport Express base stations) are not affected.

If you’re affected by the problem, we’d recommend installing a previous firmware version.

We apologize for this inconvenience. As already said, it’s extremely bad timing since the firmware upgrade coincides with our vacation, but we promise to work on the issue quickly as soon as we’re back home and have access to our test routers again.

Thanks for your understanding!

It’s always good if you don’t have too push out bugfix releases all too often, but once in a while it becomes necessary.

This time, we’re fixing two very rare hangs that could happen when stopping a profile or when heavy traffic is flowing over the router. Additionally, we’ve further reduced Lighthouse’s CPU and memory footprint while increasing its overall snappiness.

On the UPnP front, we no longer require routers to support the retrieval of the external IP address in order for Lighthouse to associate. If the router doesn’t support this, but port forwardings work fine, Lighthouse will happily associate with such routers now and simply report the external IP address as “Unknown”. This should increase Lighthouse’s overall UPnP compatibility and make it work on some previously unsupported models.

Also, we’ve found a weird bug in some recent Netgear firmware that prevented Lighthouse from associating with the affected models. However, we were able to come up with a workaround that solves the problem until Netgear releases a fix. If you have a Netgear router with the latest firmware, but couldn’t get Lighthouse to run, we suggest that you retry with 1.2.1.

Another thing: We realize that some of you might want to get another trial period after the initial one, especially if you are buying a new router etc… It sucks if you want to test Lighthouse again, but find out that you can’t because your trial period has expired.

That’s why we’ve implemented limited registration keys that are only valid for a certain amount of time. In case you want another trial period, just drop us an email at [email protected] and we’ll happily send you a license that’s good for another 2 weeks of free trial.

Lighthouse 1.2.1 can be downloaded here: Lighthouse 1.2.1 product page

By the way: Be sure to check out the Get more profiles page, as we’re periodically adding some new port mapping profiles to it. Just recently, we’ve added a profile for the freeware program Telekinesis that enables you to access your home Mac via your iPhone: Cool!

Lighthouse is on MacZot! today! You’ve still got about 18 hours left to get Lighthouse for a special discount price of $8.99 instead of the usual $12.99.

It’s one of the rare occasions where you just buy the Light and get the House for free!

Lighthouse’s MacZOT! page is here.

Lighthouse 1.2 has landed and brings a nice slew of new features!

For example, you can now temporarily disable Lighthouse if you do not need it at the moment. The icon will turn grey, and Lighthouse won’t access your network in any way until you choose to enable it again. This is a great feature if you happen to frequently connect to networks where you do not (or cannot) use Lighthouse, such as public wireless internet hotspots.

Other nice changes are additional preferences to switch into a newly developed “compatibility” mode in which Lighthouse will fall back to a very simple way of communicating with your UPnP-enabled router. When running in this mode, Lighthouse may exhibit better performance with your router. It’s even possible that the new compatibility mode works with routers that were completely unsupported previously as well!

Also, you can now change the frequency at which Lighthouse will refresh its port mappings, allowing you to find the sweet spot between mapping reliability and minimizing the load on your network and your router.

Of course, we’ve also thrown in some substantial internal improvements and a slew of minor bug-fixes for a bit of extra-flavor!

Last, but not least, we’ve reset the trial period again, giving all unregistered users a new, full 14-day evaluation period. No strings attached!

Lighthouse 1.2 can be downloaded here.

One more thing: We’ll promise we’ll stop with the funky version number word-play headlines for the next release…