EEE (Asus PC) in France

I didn’t notice the impact and “caffouillage” SFR did with the EEE in france : http://www.blogeee.net/ is worth reading some articles.

Looks like a nice way to introduce another OS to the masses.

By the way my new blog is in http://brunovernay.blogspot.com/

Fedora 8 and Java

Some more informations on Fedora 8 and Java. A new hard drive was a good excuse to do a fresh Fedora install. Even with a fresh install, I had to remove all the i386 package (I have a x86_64 : no need to duplicate all package, this is a known problem of Fedora) and legacy gcj stuff.

I installed Java 7 since it is the future. But since it doesn’t have the crypto features yet, and since they are required for Glassfish, I installed the SUN JDK 6 as well.

So informations are bit misleading on the topic. Here is what I like to do :

Install jpackage-utils, then SUN JDK 6 RPM, then JPackage -compat package for the SUN rpm : java-1.6.0-sun-compat-1.6.0.04-1jpp.i586.rpm.

Manage the Java 6 / 7 switch with galternatives or (command line alternatives)

Remember Java 7 IcedTea install tips :

Mauriat Miranda tips and added the JDK as well (-devel) : sudo yum install java-1.7.0-icedtea java-1.7.0-icedtea-devel java-1.7.0-icedtea-plugin

I tested as per Gregory Gulick’s tips and it was OK.

Remote access to Netbeans

Using Netbeans remotely with FreeNX, I had some trouble with the display not refreshing very well.
The solution is simply to uses sun.java2d.pmoffscreen, i.e.  add the option -J-Dsun.java2d.pmoffscreen=false in etc/netbeans.conf.

There should be a way to detect if the display is local or not reading the DISPLAY env variable :

…j2se/src/solaris/classes/sun/awt/X11GraphicsEnvironment.java , see _isDisplayLocal method …

I have to try with the J2D_PIXMAPS=shared/server env variable too.

Ref :
• performance.netbeans.org/howto/jvmswitches
• java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/guide/2d/flags.html#ix
• forums.java.net/jive/thread.jspa?messageID=237183
• java.sun.com/javase/6/webnotes/trouble/TSG-Desktop/html/gdhqt.html I admit I didn’t really understand his one.

Netbeans, Glassfish with JSF dev with FreeNX

So it works. OK I had to add 1Go RAM (1 Go wasn’t enough). I should have get 2Go from the beginning ! I had to install SUN JDK 6 because IcedTea didn’t work with Glassfish nor Netbeans, there is a strange security problem.

But now :

• I can remotely connect to my home with FreeNX
• Launch Netbeans 6, Glassfish, JavaDB and develop JSF
• Epiphany is configured as the web browser (lighter than Firefox)
• XFCE 4 as the desktop environment (again, lighter than Gnome or KDE)
• Fedora 8 x64 with some services (FTP, HTTP …) running

Fedora 8 upgrade and Java

I upgraded from fedora 7 to 8. (Via yum : wasn’t exactly smoove, but not too bad).

Now I installed Java 1.7 IcedTea as per Mauriat Miranda tips and added the JDK as well (-devel) : sudo yum install java-1.7.0-icedtea java-1.7.0-icedtea-devel java-1.7.0-icedtea-plugin

I tested as per Gregory Gulick’s tips and it was not OK.

So I launched galternatives and selected Java-1.7.0 for Java. Then it was OK.

Next I installed Eclipse (yum install eclipse), launched it, checked that it was using Java 1.7 : OK, then did a quick “Hello World” example and it went well. After some thinking I don’t see a real plus in having a RPM managed Eclipse. I can download it via the standard Eclipse way and I will be able to update it more conveniently.

Then Netbeans 6 and Glassfish have a problem related to keytool and keystore :

[2007-11-16 12:50:43.772]: executing command: /home/brunox/bin/glassfish-v2/bin/asadmin create-domain –interactive=false –adminport 4848 –user admin –passwordfile /home/brunox/bin/glassfish-v2/nbi-14359.tmp –instanceport 8080 –domainproperties http.ssl.port=8181 –savemasterpassword=true domain1, in directory: /home/brunox/bin/glassfish-v2
[2007-11-16 12:50:45.519]: [stdout]: Using port 4848 for Admin.
[2007-11-16 12:50:45.519]: [stdout]: Using port 8080 for HTTP Instance.
[2007-11-16 12:50:45.519]: [stdout]: Using default port 7676 for JMS.
[2007-11-16 12:50:45.519]: [stdout]: Using default port 3700 for IIOP.
[2007-11-16 12:50:45.520]: [stdout]: Using port 8181 for HTTP_SSL.
[2007-11-16 12:50:45.520]: [stdout]: Using default port 3820 for IIOP_SSL.
[2007-11-16 12:50:45.520]: [stdout]: Using default port 3920 for IIOP_MUTUALAUTH.
[2007-11-16 12:50:45.520]: [stdout]: Using default port 8686 for JMX_ADMIN.
[2007-11-16 12:50:45.520]: [stdout]: Domain being created with profile:developer, as specified by variable AS_ADMIN_PROFILE in configuration file.
[2007-11-16 12:50:47.275]: [stdout]: Security Store uses: JKS
[2007-11-16 12:50:59.504]: [stdout]: keytool error: java.io.IOException: Invalid keystore format
[2007-11-16 12:50:59.504]: [stdout]:
[2007-11-16 12:50:59.504]: [stderr]: CLI130 Could not create domain, domain1
[2007-11-16 12:50:59.555]: [return]: 1
[2007-11-16 12:50:59.555]: … command execution finished
[2007-11-16 12:50:59.557]: org.netbeans.installer.utils.exceptions.InstallationException: Failed to create the default domain
[2007-11-16 12:50:59.557]: at org.netbeans.installer.products.glassfish.ConfigurationLogic.install(ConfigurationLogic.java:373)
[2007-11-16 12:50:59.557]: at org.netbeans.installer.product.components.Product.install(Product.java:329)
[2007-11-16 12:50:59.557]: at org.netbeans.installer.wizard.components.actions.InstallAction.execute(InstallAction.java:151)
[2007-11-16 12:50:59.558]: at org.netbeans.installer.wizard.components.WizardAction$1.run(WizardAction.java:120)
[2007-11-16 12:50:59.558]: Caused by: org.netbeans.installer.utils.applications.GlassFishUtils$DomainCreationException: “Could not create domain - error CLI130 occurred.
[2007-11-16 12:50:59.558]: at org.netbeans.installer.utils.applications.GlassFishUtils.createDomain(GlassFishUtils.java:117)
[2007-11-16 12:50:59.558]: at org.netbeans.installer.utils.applications.GlassFishUtils.createDomain(GlassFishUtils.java:87)
[2007-11-16 12:50:59.558]: at org.netbeans.installer.products.glassfish.ConfigurationLogic.install(ConfigurationLogic.java:364)
[2007-11-16 12:50:59.558]: … 3 more


http://wiki.glassfish.java.net/attach/GlassFishAdministrationPages/admincreds.html

http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/technotes/tools/solaris/keytool.html#KeyStore

I guess  that I will simply install Sun Java 6.

All this through a FreeNX remote access.

Could your PC participate to Open Source ?

I feel frustrated not to participate enough in Open Source. But my PC is running 24/24 …

Would it be possible to use that power to fuel OpenSource ? Currently I run Folding@home, bittorrent, hesitated about TOR, but would it be possible to be part of a cluster of some kind ? To share some CPU or HD ?

I guess that at some point Linux PC will get a critical mass of participating potential that should be given back.

Would it be possible to give Open Source Project the same distributed system that
Google & IBM giving students a distributed systems lab using Hadoop.

Konsole session save and restore

It is possible to save and restore a “Profile” with multiple “Sessions” via Konsole Help (XTerm emulator).

A Session is a console, a shell, whatever is opened in a new tab. The Profile is a group of Sessions.

So once you have opened many shells, connected to distant SSH servers, named your tabs and typed some command like tail -f /var/log/... | grep -v boring …

What if you crash or reboot your machine? Redoo all this work ? No ! Because you would have save your Konsole Menu : Settings ... / Save Sessions Profile ... You just type a name MySessions and Konsole will create the file in /home/username/.kde/share/apps/konsole/profiles/.

You can easily restore the Sessions with konsole --profile MySessions You can see the profile list with konsole --profiles.

Even better, you can edit the file vi /home/username/.kde/share/apps/konsole/profiles/MySessions , this way, you can type in the commands like tail -f ...

Sadly there is no menu to restore the session, so you have to launch konsole to launch konsole --profile MySession and then close the first konsole …

References :

• Tech Per
• Rob’s KDE Blog

urldecode for mysql

It is possible to get the urldecode() or urlencode function in MySql, the same way it exist in PHP as url_decode and url_encode.

You just have to install the User Defined Function : UDF collection for MySQL created by Michael Wallner from IWorks.

There are just a few points to help the installation :

• Decompress the sources : tar xf libmysqludf-0.3.tar.gz
• Go into the directory cd libmysqludf-0.3 and read the INSTALL file !
• If you don’t have them get MySql sources as well : yum install mysql-devel
• On a RPM style MySql install do a ./configure --prefix=/usr/lib/mysql --includedir=/usr/include/mysql --libdir=/usr/lib (not sure if it is all really needed but it worked on a Fedora Core 5).
• make
• sudo make install
• sudo /etc/init.d/mysqld restart (maybe not needed)
• Open a mysql client as root if you don’t have the INSERT privilege for the mysql database (CREATE FUNCTION Syntax) : mysql -u root -p
• There is the trick : CREATE FUNCTION urldecode RETURNS STRING SONAME 'libmysqludf_urldecode.so'; Notice the function name is lower case !!!
• If you want to remove the function use DROP and then sudo make uninstall

Then you are free to url decode or url encode right in you SQL query ! It is very helpfull when you work on Apache log files !
I search for a Linux command line tool to urldecode, but I couldn’t find one. Still here are some good ressources :

• DeveloperWorks Linux technical library
• GNU Coreutils
• Text Processing Commands from the Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide.

Maybe a solution would be (from Perl FAQ ) :

The best source of detailed information on URI encoding is RFC 2396. Basically, the following substitutions do it :

    s/([^\w()'*~!.-])/sprintf '%%%02x', ord $1/eg;   # encode

    s/%([A-Fa-f\d]{2})/chr hex $1/eg;                # decode
	s/%([[:xdigit:]]{2})/chr hex $1/eg;          # same thing

java 6 on Linux and JPackage

I wanted a clean install that use alternatives. So I go to JPackage … the point is that they are a bit outdated on a few points :

• The recommended method “Rebuild the package” doesn’t fit anymore with Java 6. There is only a sun-compat packaeg and no “no-src” package.
• The repository for Fedora “ready for use” is using mirrors pointing to the 1.6 JPackage version that doesn’t features Java 6. You have to manually write the yum.d/jpackage.repo to use JPackage 1.7.
• The RPM for java-1.6.0-sun-compat is in the non-free section of 1.7 beta. (Note : there is a 5.0 that is supposed to match Java 5, but no 6.0 so far.

Anyway, I installed the JDK 6.0 for AMD64 from Sun and then the java-1.6.0-sun-compat and it went well. Installed Eclipse 3.2 with yum to try out. It seems OK so far.

Shortcuts and useful tricks

Don’t loose time with your mouse :

• Switch tabs on Firefox : Ctrl + Page up or Page Down
• Switch tabs on Konsole : Shift + Left or Right

Useful on Linux :

• Let say that you would like all file created in a directory dev to belong to group “users” instead of your personal group :

1. Change the dev group  to “users” chgrp users dev
2. Give him the set gid bit : chmod g+s dev
3. Check if it is OK : ll should show drwxrwsr-x …