Max Tech Tips

Creating a new Oracle DB?

2011-03-07T09:40:00.001-08:00

Use dbca.

Automatically start vncserver

2011-03-02T03:27:00.000-08:00

Assuming you have already set a VNC password for your users you can automatically start vncserver on linux by editing /etc/sysconfig/vncservers.

Uncomment the VNCSERVERS line and configure a list of display to user mappings:


VNCSERVERS="1:userA 2:userB"

You also need to make sure that vnc is starting automatically:


/sbin/chkconfig --list vncserver
vncserver       0:off 1:off 2:off 3:off 4:off 5:off 6:off
/sbin/chkconfig --level 5 vncserver on
/sbin/chkconfig --list vncserver
vncserver       0:off 1:off 2:off 3:off 4:off 5:on 6:off

A really good resource for configuring vnc on linux is http://www.walkernews.net/2008/06/20/configure-vnc-server-to-auto-start-up-in-red-hat-linux/.

"Device eth0 has different MAC address than expected, ignoring."

2011-03-02T02:30:00.000-08:00

I recently copied a VM from my mac to a linux server. The VM didn't work so I created a new one using the vmdk from the original VM. When started there was no network configuration and trying to start one using "/sbin/ifup eth0" resulted in the message "Device eth0 has different MAC address than expected, ignoring.".

To fix this I had to update the mac address for the eth0 device which was found here:
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

For reference view this thread

ATG publishing workflows

2010-10-20T08:05:00.000-07:00

To delete workflows:


delete epub_workflow_info;
delete epub_coll_workflow;
delete epub_ind_workflow;

To recreate the workflows you need to ensure that the process editor is set up for the server you're using in /atg/epub/workflow/process/workflowProcessManager.xml:


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" ?>
<process-manager-configuration>
  <process-editor-server>
    <server-name>HOSTNAME:DRP_PORT</server-name>
  </process-editor-server>
  <global-server>
    <server-name>HOSTNAME:DRP_PORT</server-name>
  </global-server>
</process-manager-configuration>

When specifying HOSTNAME it should match the name of the machine (localhost won't do).

Eclipse not picking up taglibs when using include-prelude

2010-10-18T02:32:00.000-07:00

I've always had an issue in Eclipse where it's never picked up the taglibs defined in the include-prelude in my web.xml. I recently found that eclipse has supported this way back since version 2 but that it doesn't process files included by the prelude.

The simple way to get around this is to move any taglibs directly into the include-prelude fragment.

Error: There is no installed ATG platform or application package containing an AppModule which matches J2EEAPI

2010-10-04T08:22:00.000-07:00

When using ATG and JBOSS on a mac you may well get this error. To resolve this create the dasEnv.sh file if it doesn't exist:
$ATG_HOME/home/localconfig/dasEnv.sh

and add this line to it:
JBOSS_HOME=<path to your jboss home dir>


[INFO] atg.applauncher.AppLauncherException: Error:  There is no installed ATG platform or application package containing an AppModule which matches J2EEAPI
[INFO]  at atg.applauncher.versioner.Versionator.createInitialRequirements(Versionator.java:277)
[INFO]  at atg.applauncher.versioner.Versionator.(Versionator.java:87)
[INFO]  at atg.applauncher.MultiInstallLocalAppModuleManager.expandSearchPath(MultiInstallLocalAppModuleManager.java:154)
[INFO]  at atg.applauncher.MultiInstallLocalAppModuleManager.(MultiInstallLocalAppModuleManager.java:131)
[INFO]  at atg.applauncher.dynamo.DynamoServerLauncher.main(DynamoServerLauncher.java:166)

ATG scenario tables

2010-10-04T08:16:00.000-07:00

While ATG scenarios are read from the filesystem they can also be loaded from the database.

For reference the tables where you'll find the scenarios that have been loaded are:

dss_scenario_info
dss_col_scenario

The table that scenarios are stored in is: epub_file_asset

Installing VMWare tools with a new kernel

2010-06-15T08:43:00.000-07:00

Odds are if you're using VMWare with a Linux VM and you update the kernel you'll need to reinstall VMWare tools and when you do you'll see messages like the following:


Trying to find a suitable vmmon module for your running kernel.

None of the pre-built vmmon modules for VMware Workstation is suitable for your
running kernel. Do you want this program to try to build the vmmon module for
your system (you need to have a C compiler installed on your system)? [yes] y

Using compiler "/usr/bin/gcc". Use environment variable CC to override.

What is the location of the directory of C header files that match your running
kernel? [/usr/src/linux/include] /usr/include/linux/

The header files in /usr/include are generally for C libraries, not for the
running kernel. If you do not have kernel header files in your /usr/src
directory, you probably do not have the kernel-source package installed. Are yousure that /usr/include contains the header files associated with your running
kernel? [no]

What is the location of the directory of C header files that match your running
kernel? [/usr/src/linux/include] /usr/include/

The fix for this is posted by nickx on the ubuntu forums:

You need to install the headers for the release of the kernel you have installed. To find this out you can type

>> uname -r

to get the header you can apt-get install them,

>> sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`

or select the appropriate package in synaptic.

Note: you'll also need gcc etc which if you don't have already you can get with

>> sudo apt-get install build-essential

After installation the vmware installer should just pick up the right place and not require anything but the defaults.

If it's still being stupid, the path to include can be found in /lib/modules/{module release number}/build/include

50 New Useful CSS Techniques, Tools and Tutorials

2010-06-14T04:22:00.000-07:00

50 New Useful CSS Techniques, Tools and Tutorials from Smashing Magazine

Copying databases with mysql

2010-06-07T02:49:00.000-07:00

To copy the database use mysqldump:

mysqldump -u root <DATABASE_NAME> <DUMP_FILE>.sql;

To create the new database:

mysql
mysql>   create database <NEW_DATABASE_NAME>;
mysql>   use <NEW_DATABASE_NAME>;
mysql>   source <DUMP_FILE>.sql;

Out of resources for mysqldump - Server Fault

2010-06-07T02:29:00.000-07:00

Recently got the error "

mysqldump: Got error: 23: Out of resources when opening file './ref_ca/dsi_scenario_longs.MYD' (Errcode: 24) when using LOCK TABLES

" when doing a mysqldump on Mac OSX.

Easiest option for me was to use --single-transaction as mentioned at Out of resources for mysqldump - Server Fault.

@font-face gotchas

2010-06-02T08:08:00.000-07:00

Useful link on @font-face gotchas

Grails 1.3.1 and AppEngine causing java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: for hibernate classes

2010-05-21T14:59:00.000-07:00

I recently upgraded to grails 1.3.1 and suddenly got java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/hibernate/MappingException errors when trying to start up my stack locally using grails run-app. It seems that GrailsDomainConfigurationUtil includes this class in it's interface but the hibernate jar isn't being copied into the lib directory. To fix this I copied $GRAILS_HOME/lib/hibernate-core-3.3.1.GA.jar into my projects web-app/WEB-INF/lib directory manually.

I was seeing similar exceptions when I deployed to appengine which the above also resolved.

AppEngine example

org.springframework.beans.factory.access.BootstrapException: Error executing bootstraps; nested exception is java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/hibernate/mapping/SimpleValue

Local development stack trace


[java] INFO: [1274476930651000] javax.servlet.ServletContext log: Initializing Spring root WebApplicationContext
[java] 2010-05-21 21:22:19,825 [Thread-1] ERROR context.ContextLoader  - Context initialization failed
[java] org.springframework.beans.factory.access.BootstrapException: Error executing bootstraps; nested exception is java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/hibernate/MappingException
[java] May 21, 2010 9:22:19 PM com.google.apphosting.utils.jetty.JettyLogger warn
[java] WARNING: Failed startup of context com.google.apphosting.utils.jetty.DevAppEngineWebAppContext@4e0456{/,/Users/maxieduncan/Documents/workspace/maxieduncan/web-app}
[java] org.springframework.beans.factory.access.BootstrapException: Error executing bootstraps; nested exception is java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/hibernate/MappingException
[java]  at org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.context.GrailsContextLoader.createWebApplicationContext(GrailsContextLoader.java:83)
[java]  at org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoader.initWebApplicationContext(ContextLoader.java:197)
[java]  at org.springframework.web.context.ContextLoaderListener.contextInitialized(ContextLoaderListener.java:47)
[java]  at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.ContextHandler.startContext(ContextHandler.java:548)
[java]  at org.mortbay.jetty.servlet.Context.startContext(Context.java:136)
[java]  at org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext.startContext(WebAppContext.java:1250)
[java]  at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.ContextHandler.doStart(ContextHandler.java:517)
[java]  at org.mortbay.jetty.webapp.WebAppContext.doStart(WebAppContext.java:467)
[java]  at org.mortbay.component.AbstractLifeCycle.start(AbstractLifeCycle.java:50)
[java]  at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.HandlerWrapper.doStart(HandlerWrapper.java:130)
[java]  at org.mortbay.component.AbstractLifeCycle.start(AbstractLifeCycle.java:50)
[java]  at org.mortbay.jetty.handler.HandlerWrapper.doStart(HandlerWrapper.java:130)
[java]  at org.mortbay.jetty.Server.doStart(Server.java:224)
[java]  at org.mortbay.component.AbstractLifeCycle.start(AbstractLifeCycle.java:50)
[java]  at com.google.appengine.tools.development.JettyContainerService.startContainer(JettyContainerService.java:185)
[java]  at com.google.appengine.tools.development.AbstractContainerService.startup(AbstractContainerService.java:146)
[java]  at com.google.appengine.tools.development.DevAppServerImpl.start(DevAppServerImpl.java:222)
[java]  at com.google.appengine.tools.development.DevAppServerMain$StartAction.apply(DevAppServerMain.java:171)
[java]  at com.google.appengine.tools.util.Parser$ParseResult.applyArgs(Parser.java:48)
[java]  at com.google.appengine.tools.development.DevAppServerMain.(DevAppServerMain.java:120)
[java]  at com.google.appengine.tools.development.DevAppServerMain.main(DevAppServerMain.java:96)
[java] Caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/hibernate/MappingException
[java]  at org.codehaus.groovy.grails.commons.GrailsDomainConfigurationUtil.evaluateConstraints(GrailsDomainConfigurationUtil.java:358)
[java]  at org.codehaus.groovy.grails.commons.GrailsDomainConfigurationUtil.evaluateConstraints(GrailsDomainConfigurationUtil.java:426)
[java]  at org.codehaus.groovy.grails.commons.DefaultGrailsDomainClass.refreshConstraints(DefaultGrailsDomainClass.java:747)
[java]  at org.codehaus.groovy.grails.commons.DefaultGrailsApplication.refreshConstraints(DefaultGrailsApplication.java:468)
[java]  at org.codehaus.groovy.grails.commons.spring.GrailsRuntimeConfigurator.configure(GrailsRuntimeConfigurator.java:181)
[java]  at org.codehaus.groovy.grails.commons.spring.GrailsRuntimeConfigurator.configure(GrailsRuntimeConfigurator.java:129)
[java]  at org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.context.GrailsConfigUtils.configureWebApplicationContext(GrailsConfigUtils.java:114)
[java]  at org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.context.GrailsContextLoader.createWebApplicationContext(GrailsContextLoader.java:70)
[java]  ... 20 more

Using Gnome with vncserver

2010-05-21T08:48:00.000-07:00

Setting up vncserver on linux to use a different window manager than twm (the minimalistic default) is actually pretty straightforward if you know where to look and what to change.

If you just want to use your default desktop you can uncomment the lines at the start of ~/.vnc/xstartup

If you want to use a specific window manager the following steps should work:

Open ~/.vnc/xstartup
For KDE, replace "twm &" with "startkde &"
For Gnome, replace "twm &" with "gnome-session &"
restart vncserver if it's already running

Changing the Partition Map Scheme for a disk using a Mac

2010-05-15T15:36:00.000-07:00

There's a number of reasons why you might want to change the Partition Map Scheme of a disk but the most likely is that you're setting up the disk so that you boot a particular OS from it.

On the mac the default application supplied for changing this is Disk Utility. You can find this in the Utilities directory in the Applications directory.

You can use Disk Utility to both see what type of Partition Map Scheme is being used and to change it.

Checking the Partition Map Scheme

Go the USB disk in Disk Utility
At bottom right you can see the Partition Map Scheme that is currently being used, in this case it's Master Boot Record.

Changing the Partition Map Scheme

Following these instructions will result in all data on the disk being lost so be careful

Go the USB disk in Disk Utility and select the partition tab
In the Volume Scheme select the number of partitions that you want (if in doubt use 1 Partition)
Select the format (use MS-DOS (FAT) if you want to use the disk on other platforms)
Click the Options... button at the bottom and select the Partition Map Scheme you want to use
Click Apply to write the partition: this will erase any data on the disk

Archive Applications on the Mac

2010-05-14T05:33:00.000-07:00

I've always used StuffitExpander on the mac but it's not a great program to use with algorithms other than stuffit and recently I've had a couple of files where it just didn't work.

There's quite a few different options out there but the most useful ones I've come across are: The Unarchiver and
UnRarX for rar files.

Converting a String to Title case

2010-05-11T04:12:00.000-07:00

Turns out that CSS can do the work for you.


text-transform: capitalize

JDO Enhancer for Google App Engine with Grails

2010-04-10T07:30:00.000-07:00

I had a slightly annoying problem where I'm developing an application using Grails and the Google App Engine but kept getting JDO errors saying "Perhaps you need to run the enhancer on this class?".

The only solution to this if using grails appears to be run the ant task that google supply to enhance the classes; but this isn't initially obvious.

A bit of googling and the solution came up as being that if using Eclipse you needed to have the Google Plugin for Eclipse installed. This itself wasn't entirely helpful as the plugin was installed so why wasn't it working? Well since I'm using the grails app-engine plugin the project had been created outside Eclipse and wasn't linked to the plugin. Right clicking on the project and going:

Google -> App Engine Settings and selecting Use Google App Engine

Resulted in the output DataNucleus Enhancer starting to run.

DataNucleus Enhancer (version 1.1.4) : Enhancement of classes
DataNucleus Enhancer completed with success for 0 classes. Timings : input=43 ms, enhance=0 ms, total=43 ms. Consult the log for full details
DataNucleus Enhancer completed and no classes were enhanced. Consult the log for full details

So now that it was running why weren't any of the classes being enhanced? Well it seemed likely that this is due to the groovy files not being picked up by the google plugin and indeed there's a defect raised on googleappengine for the plugin not working on anything other than .java files.

Fortunately google provide another method in the ant task; not surprising it turns out that the Grails app-engine plugin makes use of this when you deploy the project. So what does this mean? Basically until the Google plugin picks up other source files than just .java you'll need to make sure that you use the grails app-engine plugin from the command line and not the Google Eclipse plugin.

For reference the exception that kept getting thrown was:

Error 500: javax.jdo.JDOFatalUserException: No meta data for com.maxieduncan.download.DownloadCount. Perhaps you need to run the enhancer on this class? NestedThrowables: org.datanucleus.exceptions.NucleusUserException: No meta data for com.maxieduncan.download.DownloadCount. Perhaps you need to run the enhancer on this class?
Servlet: grails
URI: /grails/software/download.dispatch
Exception Message: No meta data for com.maxieduncan.download.DownloadCount. Perhaps you need to run the enhancer on this class?
Caused by: javax.jdo.JDOFatalUserException: No meta data for com.maxieduncan.download.DownloadCount. Perhaps you need to run the enhancer on this class? NestedThrowables: org.datanucleus.exceptions.NucleusUserException: No meta data for com.maxieduncan.download.DownloadCount. Perhaps you need to run the enhancer on this class?

Using the Google Data APIs Java Client in Google App Engine

2010-04-10T07:18:00.000-07:00

Yay, Issue 122 has been fixed and you no longer have to disable the Cookie Handler (as I mentioned before) to use the Goole Data API in the Google App Engine.

If using the grails app-engine plugin make sure you do a clean after you've updated the Data API libs to ensure that the latest versions are deployed.

Creating bootable Linux USB sticks on the mac

2010-04-10T07:07:00.000-07:00

This post is primarily aimed at creating Ubuntu as that's what I've used lately.

From a disk image (.img)

Ubuntu originally provided the Ubuntu Netbook Remix as a .img that made creating a bootable USB as simple as the steps below.

Download the desired .img file
Open a Terminal (under Utilities)
Run diskutil list to get the current list of devices
Insert your flash media
Run diskutil list again and determine the device node assigned to your flash media (e.g. /dev/disk2)
Run diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskX where X is the number of disk determined above
Execute sudo dd if=/path/to/downloaded.img of=/dev/diskX bs=1m again using the disk number from the last step and the actual path to your img.
Run diskutil eject /dev/diskX and remove your flash media when the command completes

From a iso image (.iso)

Since Ubuntu 9.10, Canonical has only supplied iso image files and it's not possible to create a bootable USB drive from the Ubunto iso on a mac. If you follow the steps below you'll see the error Could not validate source - error 254. Mac OSX only supports restoring images in particular formats and the one that Ubuntu use (ISO 9660) isn't supported by Apple.

On the mac the default application supplied for changing this is Disk Utility. You can find this in the Utilities directory in the Applications directory.

To create the USB disk do the following:

First make sure that the disk is bootable and that the Partition Map Scheme used is Master Boot Record
After that it's simply a matter of using the Disk Utility Restore functionality to write the iso image to the USB disk
- Drag the iso image into Source from the Finder
- Drag the USB disk into Destination from the list in Disk Utility

Changing server names

2010-04-10T07:04:00.000-07:00

Live:
truncate table dss_server_id;

CA:
truncate table dss_server_id;
truncate table dsi_server_id;
truncate table epub_wf_server_id;

Google App Engine Virtual File System

2010-04-10T01:24:00.000-07:00

One of the limitations of the Google App Engine is that there isn't a file system that you can write to. There is however a project that provides a Virtual File System in Java for those that really need it: GaeVFS.

Tweaking Google Notifier for Mac

2009-11-06T10:38:00.001-08:00

Google Notifier for Mac has some basic settings available in the Preferences menu but the useful ones are hidden.

To be able to change these settings you need to hold down the Option and Command buttons when clicking on the Preferences... option in the Notifier menu. This brings up a key/value dialog that you can use to set the options below. The keys are case sensitive

Check Interval
By default the Notifier only checks for emails every 10 minutes, this setting lets you change that.

Key:	AutocheckInterval
Value:	The interval in minutes, e.g. 2

Secure Login
You can make sure that Notifier always encrypts your password when in it logs in.

Key:	SecureAlways
Value:	1

2009-10-29T10:07:00.001-07:00

Nice presentation on how to hook up javascript without hardcoding it into the html. This is important as it means that if done correctly there will be non javascript support.

Javacio.us - Finding java source code and dependencies

2009-10-27T04:18:00.000-07:00

Javacio.us is a great extension to google search that makes finding java source code, jars and maven dependencies really easy. Once you subscribe results will show up inline when you do a google search that it thinks is relevant which is typically when you search for a jar or java class.

Displaying monitoring data in the Mac OSX toolbar

2009-10-25T08:03:00.001-07:00

MenuMeters is a cool app for monitoring your Mac's performance in the toolbar. A simple preferences pane allows you to choose what is displayed and how often it is updated.

SQLServer desc

2009-10-25T08:02:00.001-07:00

To describe a table in SQLServer you can use sp_help <table_name>

Showing hidden files in the Finder

2009-10-25T08:01:00.000-07:00

This tip is taken from MacWorld

On the command line enter:

defaults write com.apple.Finder AppleShowAllFiles YES

You then need to restart the Finder. To do this hold down the option key then click and hold down on the Finder icon in the Dock and when the menu displays click relaunch.

Using locate command on Mac OSX

2009-10-25T08:00:00.000-07:00

When you try using locate on Mac OSX you'll typically get the error:

/var/db/locate.database: No such file or directory

To resolve this simply run:

sudo /usr/libexec/locate.updatedb

Thanks to Neil Ang for having found where this command lived.

Backup script using rsync and crontab

2009-10-25T07:57:00.000-07:00

Below is a very simple script that I've used to back up data from a remote machine with rsync. I've also scheduled it to be run daily using crontab.

#!/bin/bash
# Simple script to back up the contents of my website
#

host=HOSTNAME
user=USERNAME
dest=BACKUP_DESTINATION

#SSH_AUTH_SOCK need to declare for rsync to work via a cronjob, you may need to use a different value
export SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/launch-LaeM5h/Listeners

echo "Starting Website Backup" `date`;

function sync() {
 if [ ! -e $2 ]
 then
  mkdir $2;
 fi
 echo "Backing up $host:$1 to $2";
 rsync -raz -e "ssh -i $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa" $user@$host:$1 $2;
}

sync "/home/$user" "$dest";

dir=ZIP_DESTINATION/`date "+Backup_%d_%m_%y"`;
echo "Copying files to " $dir;

tar -czf $dir.tar.gz $dest

echo "Finished Website Backup" `date`;

Crontab setup

The first thing you need to do is setup up Passwordless ssh with NO passphrase.

You then need to set up a cronjob to run the script daily.

For example create a file crontab.txt with the following content:

0 12 * * * /PATH_TO_SCRIPT/backup.sh > /PATH_TO_LOG/backup.log 2>&1

Next load this file into crontab (this will delete other cronjobs if they exist but aren't included).

crontab crontab.txt

To check that your cronjob has been loaded run:

crontab -l

Passwordless ssh

2009-10-25T07:46:00.000-07:00

Setting up passwordless ssh is fairly straight forward and plenty of documentation on it can be found.

Firstly you need to need to generate a key on your local machine:

ssh-keygen -t dsa

You most likely want to accept the default location when asked, i.e. $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa

For a passphrase it is recommended to choose something other than the ssh login password.

Two files will have been generated, id_dsa and id_dsa.pub. You want to copy the second of these, or at least it contents to the remote machine.

e.g. scp $HOME/.ssh/id_dsa.pub <login>@<remote>:.

On the remote machine open $HOME/.ssh/authorised_keys (create it if it doesn't exist) and add the contents of the id_dsa.pub from your local machine.

e.g. cat id_dsa.pub >> $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys

Now you should be able to ssh and scp to the remote machine without supplying the login password. You will instead be asked for your passphrase but once you enter it your OS should provide you with the option of remembering it and you shouldn't have to enter it again.

Setting up an XA datasource for SQL Server Express on JBoss

2009-10-25T07:43:00.000-07:00

JBoss Configuration

Download the sql server jdbc driver from microsoft. You will need to put this into the appropriate lib directory in jboss. The driver also contains documentation on how to configure sql server for xa connections and it can also be on microsoft.com.

Copy the default example config:

cp <JBOSS_HOME>/docs/examples/jca/mssql-xa-ds.xml <JBOSS_HOME>/server/default/deploy

Next update the config with your settings:

<datasources>
  <xa-datasource>
    <jndi-name>JNDINAME</jndi-name>
    <track-connection-by-tx   />
    <isSameRM-override-value>false</isSameRM-override-value>
    <xa-datasource-class>com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerXADataSource</xa-datasource-class>
    <xa-datasource-property name="ServerName">HOSTNAME</xa-datasource-property>
    <xa-datasource-property name="DatabaseName">DBNAME</xa-datasource-property>
    <xa-datasource-property name="SelectMethod">cursor</xa-datasource-property>
     <xa-datasource-property name="User">USERNAME</xa-datasource-property>
    <xa-datasource-property name="Password">PASSWORD</xa-datasource-property>
    <xa-datasource-property name="URL">jdbc:sqlserver://HOSTNAME:1433</xa-datasource-property>
      <!-- corresponding type-mapping in the standardjbosscmp-jdbc.xml (optional) -->
      <metadata>
         <type-mapping>MS SQLSERVER2000</type-mapping>
      </metadata>
  </xa-datasource>
</datasources>

Connecting via TCP

Configure SQL Server to enable TCP connections on a fixed port, instructions here. When installing SQL Server make sure that select MIxed Mode for authentication.

You also need to make sure that your windows environment is setup to support transactions from a remote source, details for Vista are here.

Connecting via Parallels

If you are using a mac and running SQL Server via Parallels you need to use Bridged hosting for your VM

The installed macFUSE version is too new for the operating system.

2009-10-25T07:36:00.000-07:00

When using parallels on Mac OSX Leopard you may get the following warning:

Operating System too old

The installed macFUSE version is too new for the operating system.

Please downgrade your macFUSE installation to one that is compatible with current running operating system.

All you need to do here is install the latest version of MacFuse from google. More details can be found on the Parallels Forum.

Installing ATG with JBoss on Mac OSX

2009-10-25T07:34:00.000-07:00

Installing ATG on Mac OSX is very straight forward even if it isn't officially supported. This assumes that you are already comfortable with installing ATG on other platforms. A more detailed description can be found here if you are not. The below method has worked with ATG 2007.1, 9 and 9.1

Unpack the jboss archive into the location where you want to use it.
Run the unix version of the ATG installer using the following values:
- For JBOSS_HOME, the path to where you installed jboss
- For JAVA_HOME, /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5/Home (or whatever version you are using)
Update the $ATG_HOME/home/installconfig/config.xml so that other ATG applications such as Merch can be installed.

And that's it, ATG should be installed.

None of the solid scripts will work on Mac OSX so you'll need to set up a MySQL database if you want to run the demos.

Example config.xml


<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<config xmlns="*">
    <<install xmlns="">
        <product name="ATG Adaptive Scenario Engine" version="9.1">
            <configure>false</configure>
        </product>
        <product name="ATG Consumer Commerce" version="9.1">
            <configure>false</configure>
        </product>
        <product name="ATG Content Administration" version="9.1">
            <configure>false</configure>
        </product>
        <product name="ATG Portal" version="9.1">
            <configure>false</configure>
        </product>
        <product name="ATG Business Commerce" version="9.1">
            <configure>false</configure>
        </product>
    </install>
    <systemEnv xmlns="">
        <locale>en</locale>
        <rootDir>/Applications/ATG/ATG9.1</rootDir>
        <jBossListenPort>8080</jBossListenPort>
        <docRoot>/Applications/ATG/ATG9.1/home/doc</docRoot>
        <platform>SunOS</platform>
        <rmiPort>8860</rmiPort>
        <programFolder>/Applications/ATG/ATG9.1</programFolder>
        <appServer>JBoss</appServer>
        <baseLevel>ATG9.1_249</baseLevel>
        <jBossHome>/Applications/jboss-4.2.1.GA</jBossHome>
        <jBossVersion>4.2.1</jBossVersion>
        <ATGJRE>/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5/Home/bin/java</ATGJRE>
        <patchLevel>9.1</patchLevel>
    </systemEnv>
</config>

Changing user passwords in mysql

2009-10-25T07:22:00.000-07:00

Again this is taken directly from mysql.com

You need to login into mysql and run the following sql:

UPDATE mysql.user SET Password=PASSWORD("<NEW_PASSWORD>") where user="<USER_NAME>"

You have to connect to do this and easiest is to connect as the root user:

mysql --user=root

Starting MySQL on Mac OSX

2009-10-25T07:18:00.000-07:00

The documentation for this can be found mysql.com

The command to start mysql if the startup item is installed is:

sudo /Library/StartupItems/MySQLCOM/MySQLCOM start

Otherwise use:

/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqld_safe and then bg to background the process.

Eclipse plugins

2009-10-25T07:14:00.000-07:00

Below are a few plugins that I've found useful when using Eclipse:

AmaterasIDE - greate plugin for editing jsp/hml pages.
JadClipse - useful for when you don't have the source code but want to see what's going on.
Subclipse - eclipse has CVS integration by default, this adds SVN.
QuantumDB - plugin for connecting to databases.

Creating swap files

2009-10-25T07:12:00.000-07:00

In addition to a swap partition you can add a swap file

dd if=/dev/zero of=/swap_file bs=1M count=FILE_SIZE_IN_MB
chown root:root /swap_file
chmod 600 /swap_file
mkswap /swap_file
swapon /swap_file

To enable at start up open /etc/fstab and add:

/swap_file       none            swap    sw              0       0

Unfortunately this doesn't seem to be supported on all virtualised servers

Import MySQL text dump

2009-10-25T07:09:00.000-07:00

Importing a mysql text dump is pretty staright forward:

mysql table_name < mysql_dump_file.sql

In addition the following options may be of use:

--user=YOUR_USER_NAME, login as the specified user, if not specified it will user the default
-p, prompt for password, if not specified it will use the default
-h YOUR_HOST_NAME, the name of the host the database is on, this is often localhost which is usually the default

Put together this is used in the following way:

mysql --user=YOUR_USER_NAME -p -h localhost table_name < mysql_dump_file.sql

Backing up MySQL databases

2009-10-25T07:04:00.000-07:00

This is a simple script to back up a MySQL database by creating a text dump of all the tables. It is based on a script I found on the The PHP Cult.

#!/bin/bash

user=USERNAME;
password=PASSWORD;
tmp=BACKUP_DIRECTORY;
dblist=$tmp/dblist.txt

mkdir $tmp

/usr/bin/mysql -e "show databases" -u $user --password=$password | sed s/^Database//g | sed s/\|//g | sed s/\ //g  > $dblist 

for i in `cat $dblist`
do
  export FILENAME1="$i.sql"
  echo "Backing up $i to $FILENAME1 ...."
  /usr/bin/mysqldump -u $user --opt --password=$password $i > $tmp/$FILENAME1
done

Creating elements with rounded corners in HTML

2009-10-25T06:54:00.000-07:00

There are a number of ways that you can add curved corners to elements. I list two here, the first is the way that I now prefer to do it while the second is an older, but currently more supported method (it's a lot messier though).

The simple method

.curved { 
  -moz-border-radius:10px; /* Firefox */ 
  -webkit-border-radius:10px; /* Safari and chrome */ 
  -khtml-border-radius:10px; /* Linux browsers */ 
  border-radius:10px; /* CSS3 */ 
}

The obvious drawback to this approach is that IE isn't supported as it doesn't provide a CSS method as the other browsers do. There is however a project that provides a htc for IE that will allow you to add just one more line of CSS to support IE.

A cross browser method

This is a way to create elements (such as the labels on the left) with rounded corners.

The first thing to do is to generate the images that are going to be used on the corners. Google provides a nice image generator and it's use is described on Zach's Journal.

Once you have the images for all four corners you can set up some divs and use css to render them as you'd like.

Example of the div structure:

<div class="tech_tip_label">
  <div>
    <div>
      <div>
        <div>
          ExampleC ontent
        </div>
      </div>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

And the CSS:

div.tech_tip_label {   
  background-repeat:no-repeat; 
  background-color:#AAAAAA; 
  color:white; 
  margin:2px; 
  width:100%; 
  text-align:center; 
}

div.tech_tip_label div {   
  background: url("/images/grey_bl.png") 0 100%; 
  background-repeat:no-repeat; 
}

div.tech_tip_label div div {   
  background: url("/images/grey_br.png") 100% 100%; 
  background-repeat:no-repeat; 
}

div.tech_tip_label div div div {   
  background: url("/images/grey_tl.png") 0 0; 
  background-repeat:no-repeat; 
}

div.tech_tip_label div div div div {   
  background: url("/images/grey_tr.png") 100% 0; 
  background-repeat:no-repeat; padding:10px; 
}

Weird characters showing up occasionally when using ATG DAS and UTF-8

2009-10-25T06:33:00.000-07:00

I came across an interesting problem the other day when working on an ATG project that was using DAS (Dynamo Application Server). They'd recently updated their site to use UTF-8 as the encoding and this had appeared to work fine until it was noticed that occasionally some characters had been replaced by two unkown characters. The interesting thing here was that inserting a space or some other character earlier in the page so that a Latin1 character fell into the same spot resulted in the page rendering as expected.

Looking into the DAS code it became apparent that when DAS was creating the Java servlets it was defaulting the encoding to Latin1 (ISO-8859-1) as defined in the JPS specification, if it wasn't explicitly defined. This in itself wasn't a problem as when the servlet was executed it used the encoding that was defined in the response to process the output stream. However it also used this encoding to determine if it should use a ByteBuffer or a CharBuffer in the servlet. If the encoding was Latin1, which is was as we weren't explicitly setting it, then it was using a ByteBuffer. The result was that any UTF-8 characters that were larger than a Latin1 byte were getting split in two if they fell over the buffer and getting displayed as the two illegal UTF-8 characters.

The solution to this is to either set the encoding explicitly on each page using:

<%@page pageEncoding="UTF-8"%>

Or else to hack DAS to default to an encoding other than ISO-8859-1.

Using the Google Data API on the Google App Engine

2009-10-25T06:20:00.000-07:00

Disabling the Cookie Handler is no longer required
Issue 122 has been fixed and you no longer have to disable the Cookie Handler (as I mentioned before) to use the Goole Data API in the Google App Engine.

Google Data API on the Google App Engine

Enabling support for the Google Data API on the Google App Engine is really straight forward and is covered by google in their documentation:

Add the following to your appengine-web.xml file:

<system-properties>
  <property name="com.google.gdata.DisableCookieHandler" value="true"/>
<system-properties>

If the following is not included, you may see the following exception:

java.security.AccessControlException: access denied (java.net.NetPermission getCookieHandler)

In my case the exception that I noticed was a java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: Could not initialize class com.google.gdata.client.http.GoogleGDataRequest but this had been preceded by the java.security.AccessControlException.

Grail AppEngine plugin

As I'm using Grails and the Grail AppEngine plugin things got a little more complicated however. The plugin automatically generates the appengine-web.xml file and their is currently no way specify system properties to be included (there is an Improvement request that would add this support).

In order to add the system property I had to edit the _Events.groovy file in ~/.grails//projects//plugins/app-engine-0.8.5/scripts/_Events.groovy and manually paste in the change that I required. While this works, an update to the plugin will obviously wipe the changes that I've made and they would have to be applied again.

Restarting Apache on Mac OSX

2009-06-05T08:39:00.000-07:00

To restart Apache on Mac OSX run the following command:

sudo apachectl restart