Littletux's blog

Subversion plugin for Eclipse

After installing Eclipse 3.4 (from eclipse.org - the version in the intrepid repository is still 3.2.2), I also wanted to install the subversion plugin. However, after I installed the plugin through the eclipse software update manager, each subversion operation showed the message "unable to load default svn client". Searching google for this message gave some hints to add

-Djava.library.path=/usr/share/java/
-Djava.library.path=/usr/lib/jni/

to eclipse.ini. Still, this was not sufficient - it is of course also necessary to install the appropriate libraries. These are contained in the package libsvn-java. After also installing this package, the subversion plugin is now working.

New Linux installation

A couple of weeks ago, I installed kubuntu 8.10 as my primary operating system. My debian installation was quite outdated, because I did not change much in the last - well - two years or so. I really needed a stable system, but now it was time to update to a recent distribution. Even though I have a 64 bit CPU, I decided to install the 32 bit version of Kubuntu. The main reason was that in the past I often had issues with software which was not yet available for 64 bit Linux. The plan is to use a stable 32 bit system for daily usage, and create either chroot environments for other usage (like a debian unstable environment) or even use virtual machines when necessary. Installation of Kubuntu was quite straight forward, and I will talk about some of the less straight forward things in some upcoming posts.

First impression of upstart

Yesterday, I had a closer look at upstart, a replacement for the sysv init daemon. My goal is to speed up the boot process of my Debian desktop installations, and the two systems which could help with this are upstart and initng. There are packages for upstart in Debian experimental, and installing is quite simple, but besides the upstart package itself it is almost a must to also install the package upstart-compat-sysv, otherwise commands like reboot and shutdown are not available anymore. Also, this package provides a default configuration for the upstart jobs which simply emulates the sysv-init based rc mechanism.

Upstart uses the notation of jobs to define the services to start. Unfortunately the sysv-init emulation simply defines jobs like rc1, rc2 and so on, i.e. one job per run level; then, the old sysv-init scripts are still used to launch the services one after the other. The result is that the boot process still took 31 seconds, exactly the same time it took with the sysv-init system.

I then started to write some jobs to launch services like apache2 and sshd independently from the rc scripts, using upstart event definitions. Creating the scripts themselves is quite easy, but I did not manage to stop the services again through upstart's initctl command line interface: it seems that, since the processes fork, upstart assumes that they are stoped again after they have been launched.

Investigation is ongoing ...

Spam Wave

It already happened now and then that my blog was hit by spam. The mechanism seems to be brain dead: follow all available urls and scan the retreived document for forms; fill the input fields with stuff like "viagra", "casino" etc. and submitt the form. So far it was at least annoying, but since comments and trackbacks need to be approved I could remove the spam with a single mouse click.

Today, however, I received about 240 trackback notification mails in about four hours. So, I took the opportunity, upgraded to the latest serendipity version and also modified all available articles to not allow comments and trackbacks anymore. Thats it, spammers!

Debian work done lately

Last week, I fixed my first RC bug: it was caused by the removal of libapr0, which rendered my subcommander package uninstallable. Since there was also a new upstream version available, I combined this with the upload.

Since some weeks, my debian package overview looks messed up. All entries appear twice, and most of my (not yet so many ) packages are missing. It seems that this happened after the upload of libtest-unit-perl, the first package I co-maintain within a group. So, I spent some time today setting up a local qa.debian.org environment and tracking down what goes wrong. I have created a bug report with an attached patch which should fix the issue; I hope that it will be committed sometime soon so that the complete package overview is working again.

AMD64 burning issue (solved)

Since I upgraded to the AMD64 architecture some months ago, I always had the problem that burning CDs did not work anymore. I used a command line like

cdrecord -V gracetime=2 dev=3,0,0 speed=24 -dao -dummy driveropts=burnfree -eject -data test.iso

but burning failed some seconds after the write started.

Now, it seems that I found the solution: with kernel 2.6 and udev, it is not necessary to use the device numbers anymore. Instead, the device file can be used directly, like

cdrecord -V gracetime=2 dev=/dev/cdrw speed=24 -dao -dummy driveropts=burnfree -eject -data test.iso

This also seems to influence the way how cdrecord and the kernel interact, because the write process now does not abort anymore.

California Business trip, day 9

Meetings from morning to afternoon. Finished at about 4.30pm. We then went back to the hotel, starting to prepare our departure tomorrow. Then we went to a Mall nearby for Dinner. The plane starts at about 8.45 tomorrow, so we need to leave the hotel at about 6.00. Therefore I will end my California Business trip blog series now and go to bed

California Business trip, day 8

Again, only a very long meeting and presentation day. Nothing special to report.

California Business trip, day 7

Today we visited NUMMI, the New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. This is a joint venture of Toyota and General Motors which was founded over twenty years ago to implement Toyota's lean manufacturing process in a country outside of Japan. They produce the Toyota Corolla, Tacoma (a compact pickup) and Vibe. It was impressive to see the bodies being put together with the help of robots, and it was interesting to follow the Tacoma production line to see the car being completed piece by piece. Assembling of the vehicle only takes about 3.5 hours, and the complete process which starts with stamping the bodies from large coils of steel takes less then 24 hours (includes several hours of curing in an oven).

Then, after some meetings, we had the evening event which some of our colleagues who stayed back in Germany were obviously looking forward to: We had the chance to tabour the drum together with Drum Cafe. All in all it was quite nice, and we already have concrete ideas of how to integrate similar events in our daily work (one was to replace our email systems by drums, but this turned out to be too challenging). So, lets see what else we can do

California Business trip, day 6

Another easy day: Meetings. Came back a little earlier than the days before, so I had the chance to write the blog entries for Sunday and Monday.

California Business trip, day 5

Now, this turns out to be easy: started meetings at about 8am, came back to the hotel at about 11pm. Really nothing else ...

Therefore some tech talk : One thing which really bothers me is the fact that I have to login to the wireless network of the hotel once a day. Not only that I have to type in a pseudo-private password, they also ask me for my name and my companies name each time. Of course it does not matter at all what is actually typed in there, and it seems that they are also able to locate the room from which their hotspot is accessed, and at each login they tell me that it is a fixed flatrate "per stay". So the question remains: why is it necessary to relogin once a day?????

California Business trip, day 4

So, today we also had a free day since it was Sunday. The only constraint was dinner at about 6.00pm with our local colleagues. We decided to visit San Francisco, and to not waste time we met at 7.00 in the morning. Unfortunately the baggage of our two colleagues was still not delivered yet, so they decided to do another phone call. The baggage finally arrived at about 7.30, and we gave them a chance to change cloths. We then had breakfast at a coffee shop nearby (it must have been rather unusual for Americans to watch nine people walk across the street, but on the other hand not many other people were awake at that time, so probably no one really cared). After we had some croissants, coffee and juice we drove to San Francisco where we arrived at about 9am.

We decided (or were decided) to conquer the city by foot. It later turned out to be quite exhausting, but it had the advantage that we could get a better impression of the city than only driving through it by car. We found a parking lot nearby the Bay Bridge (not to be confused with the Golden Gate Bridge) from where we started our tour. After some time we reached chinatown, where we went into some of the shops. Actually some of us had some weird ideas on how to improve our work with the stuff they sell there, but fortunately they only choked [UPDATE: This word is meant to be written "joked". See comments.] We then continued to climb a hill where Coit Tower is located. We did not climb the tower itself, basically because it costs $5 per person. But there is a parking area in front of the tower, from where we had a great view towards San Francisco and the San Francisco Bay. It was even possible to see Alcatraz from there. Our next station was Fishermens Wharf where we went through several piers, most notably Pier 39 where we could see the widely known sea lions taking a bath in the sun. Then, we proceeded to Ghirardelli to buy some chocolate. Since we were now already quite some time on our feet, we took the Cable Car (the station is located next to Ghirardelli) back to our car. We had to wait approximately one hour for the Cable Car wagon, but it was worth it: its really interesting how the wagon climbs the steep hills of San Francisco and drives down on the other side. We shortly thought about what happens if the brakes fail, but immediately forgot about that again and enjoyed the ride. It was quite late already as we came back to our car, but of course we still drove across the Golden Gate Bridge. There is a parking area on the other side of the bridge with a great view to San Francisco and also the bridge itself. This was our last station before we drove back to San Jose.

California Business trip, day 3

Today was Saturday, so we did not have any meetings at all, in fact we had a free day. The only constraint for our planning was that we had to pick up our colleagues at about 3pm at the San Francisco airport. So, we decided to meet at 9am to have breakfast and plan for the remaining day. But, finally, I already had some fruits, and my colleagues said that they already have eaten something and that they not really need a full-grown breakfast. So, we started immediately and made a nice tour to the coast. We again drove over some "black forrest" like, really narrow (especially for American measures) streets, and finally made it to the pacific ocean. Although the weather became very warm in the last few days, the wind at the coast was quite cold. At least we could see some sea lions which were lying on a rock taking a bath in the sun.

Our next station was Half Moon Bay where we had some sandwiches for lunch. Then, it was time to head towards the airport. We met our colleagues who arrived almost in time. The interesting question now was, of course: will all baggage be there? United made this question even more exciting, directing us from baggage claim number four to baggage claim number five, when a voice finally sent us from baggage claim number five back to baggage claim number three. Short answer to the whole story: only four out of six baggages made it to their owners. So, same story for two of my colleagues as for myself last Wednesday: go to the "missing baggage" counter and learn that the baggage will be sent to the hotel at about 7pm (it came with a later flight this time). Of course, at 9pm, no baggage is here, so they also made a phone call to the baggage service.

At the evening, we made a shopping tour to a Mall nearby (at least six of us). We spent some time in a book store where I bought "Hibernate Quickly", a book about the hibernate persistence framework. Finally we went to a restaurant for Dinner. We ended the day with a short visit at "Albertsons" to buy some fruits and beverages.

California Business trip, day 2

Nothing special this day. Jetlag seems so have almost gone, so I could at least sleep quite well last night.

After another long meetingday, we were invited into a karaoke like bar. Fortunately we did not have to sing, so we could enjoy the beer :-), chatting about this, that and the world in general.

Now I am back at the hotel, thinking of our fellow colleagues who are probably on their way to Frankfurt Airport currently, and who will join us tomorrow afternoon.

California Business trip, day 1

My baggage finally arrived. It has been delivered last night as promised, so I got it this morning.

At the early morning, we had a slight earthquake. I was shaken awake, and at first did not know if it was a dream or not, but later others said that it was a real earthquake, approx. of strength 4,7.

After a long meetingday, we decided to visit a Sequoia Park nearby. It was quite amazing to see these large and old trees; some of them are as old as 2000 years. On the drive back to our hotel, we drove through forrests over serpentines which made us almost feel like being in the black forrest

Since it was already quite late, we decided to only have a fast dinner at "Jack In The Box" which is across from our hotel.