Todd's notes

tab sweep, 2012.01.22 part 1

2012-01-22T14:16:00.002-05:00

I had the idea of doing a tab sweep before I ever heard it called that, but having found this name, I might as well use it. Sharing is better than not (unless it's crap(), links are the spider silk that holds the web together, and writing a one-line review will help me remember it better than simply adding it to another bookmark folder etc. And it may inspire some discussion and knowledge sharing, or at least serendipitous clicking...

http://www.codemaps.org/ -- apparently has been around for a couple years; there are some diagrams of open source packages like Lucene... okay, on closer look it appears this is mostly(?) advertisement for an eclipse plugin from Architexa that does UML diagramming for mostly java. Which is fine. But like other academic spin-offs, it is unclear how much backing and (business) drive behind, balanced against how much more useful it might be if it were given away, and how much more it might be adopted.
And the related business issues: "How do we make money if we give it away?" ".. but then N-times more people will use it, a small portion will result in sales/licensing/training/customization" etc.
There is some paper on something called 'codemaps' that might be a visual studio plugin..
As with mindmaps, UML diagrams seem to have a useful life only during part of the learning curve; after you are familiar enough with the terrain, the map is no longer useful. Or you need a different, showing different information, at different scales.
I am also interest in 'active' maps -- I'm not sure I've seen a UML diagram displaying runtime activity or stats, except maybe special purpose in some academic papers.
For UML diagramming while learning code / class relationships and similarities,
ArgoUML is pretty nice. Read in your source files and then you can drag-n-drop classes of interest and it automatically adds the relationships. Hmm.. how to handle updates?
UMLGraph is free and can be automated; there is an ant task that can add diagrams to your javadoc too, but since it's really a diagram specification, and GraphViz handles the drawing, it is not tied to any language or tools or formats..

I like the concept of being able to 'visualize software' but haven't seen the magic bullet yet..
Tracking the Trackers: Where Everybody Knows Your Username from Stanford Law School
not particularly new for me, because I have been at one of the top online ad companies, and took part in design of a project that would receive user info from the ISP (income, demographic profiles) and join it with other information providers than had credit scores, household buying info, etc.
There are a number of links and tools there to follow, and also a well-described methodology. I am somewhat inspired against to work on a rule-based rewriting proxy that can persist my browsing history or be use for spidering / heuristic search, and also answer / collect info on topics like
- how many sites use X (where X is some package, framework, software version, hosting provider, technology feature, etc.)
- what ad networks does this site use, and the reverse query
- what is this cookie format? how is it decoded? and, (if multiple users shared this) how does it vary per user? can it be hacked?
- how often is this (html) tag actually used? who uses it (a package, a tool generator, a design firm)?
- trend analysis (when did this term first appear / reach some threshold), latent semantic tools
- general IR capabilities, because information is easier to retrieve when you have information.

Something like muffin (a customizable proxy with plugin architecture), db storage, a simple rule base handles a lot of this..

.. that was only like 2.5 tabs I had; to be continued.

NeoOffice / OpenOffice "Error saving the document " -- Can't save file!

2011-03-23T13:54:00.001-04:00

You've been working on your document, maybe go away for a while, come back and realize you haven't saved it.  But when you try to save,
an error dialog comes up saying "Write Error", with no additional information...

You try changing the file name, saving to a different directory, checking disk space..  everything looks fine, but it won't save.  What to do?  Quit it, and have faith that the 'Recover files' dialog will bring it back?
Copy your document, or at least the changes (f you can), into textedit or another program?

To encounter this situation is disconcerting, to say the least.

After a little searching,
NeoOffice bug #
http://bugzilla.neooffice.org/bug.php?op=show&bugid=3293<br>

Easy solution:
from the existing document,
select all and copy
cmd-N (or on windows: ctrl-N) to make a new window.
paste -- you now have a copy of your document.
Save this new one.

For me, these errors happened after starting NeoOffice a few days ago (12) and then deciding to save some 'untitled' documents I had created and entered minor amounts of data/text into.  They hadn't been saved previously, and had been opened for several days.  The bug says this:

"The key thing to do to avoid this bug is to not keep and .od* document
open for more than a day or two. If you periodically save a file, close
it, and reopen it, you can avoid this bug."

Another note is "Update: in this instance, with Writer giving the error, I was able to Save As in ANY format EXCEPT .sxw, .stw, .odt, and .ott."

Another link mentions something about tmp files, which on the mac seem to be somewhere under a path like 
$ set | grep /var/folder
TMPDIR=/var/folders/GX/GXRi3TKjExSdAlvXgP45k++++TI/-Tmp-/
some OS cleanup process could be removing files from here.  
I've not tried tracing the process (ptrace/strace) since I have a workaround, but it seems plausible enough.

apparently this has been going onsince 2006:
http://openoffice.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=69993<br>

Selling your old electronics

2010-12-28T13:06:00.006-05:00

Image via CrunchBaseThis is something I really never consider, while I have some friends that do it regularly, always upgrading / buying new devices.

My reasons not to:

lazy
seems like too much trouble
it works now, why bother?
it's too much trouble to change
I guess I am content "enough" -- I don't have device lust, and seem to care less and less about new things coming out.
not spending money == good.

Sounds like good reasons to me. On the other hand, if you've "gotten your money's worth" (for some value of worth), and the device still has market value.

But enough about me.

I came across this (old) random article "Where to Sell Your iPhone 3G: ", which had like to a number of sites. Check out my iPhone 3G, now over 3 years old...

parameters: near perfect condition, no scratches, all accessories +

http://www.selliphoneforcash.com/ - $103
http://www.buybackworld.com/ - $104
http://cexchange.com/online/home/index.rails - $97 or $115 if I call it excellent..
http://takemymac.com/ -- too many questions.. ok, should get email in 48hours
http://www.techtwurl.com/ - $110
http://www.yourenew.com/ - 85$

Note that all of these (except for the first?) deal with other devices besides just iPhones.

For those that think trading in your old thing for something newer is green, or trading in your land boat for a Prius or other hybrid -- it's not. It takes a huge amount of energy to create those new devices. You won't get to the break-even point until you drive 100000 miles or so.

Of course, re-use is better than re-cycle, is better than throwing away,
but how do we get closer to understanding the true cost/value of a thing ?

.. testing zemanta..

Cygwin: Update your packages / Install a new one in less than 5 minutes

2010-10-14T13:28:00.006-04:00

[what is cygwin? like unix for windows. a better shell and command line.]
Actually, it's the same way you _install cygwin_ ..
Just faster because you don't have to download as much.

If you're installing cygwin for the first time, installing a single missing package,
or updating your install to the latest version, it's the same.

Run cygwin's setup.exe -- the same one you used to install cygwin.
This took me 2 minutes, because I couldn't remember where I put it.
Better: just go to cygwin.com and click the Install or update Cygwin now! link and you'll have the latest installer.
click, click, click, just click through, all your previous settings were saved.
List of mirrors is downloaded
..hang?
Pick a new mirror if you want. I used to think http: servers provided better downloads, but now I think they just hang more often. Use http: only if ftp: doesn't work for you (e.g. problems with ftp because you're behind a firewall).
The list of packages is downloaded. This should be pretty quick; if you don't see any activity within 15 seconds or so, cancel and go back to 1.
Select / search for the package(s) you want. Just type in the search area (e.g., cygrun) to find the package and select for install.
(? if you don't know the package name.. where is a search for files ?)
old ones are updated automatically ?
Click next to install. All the package(s) are downloaded and installed.
If it hangs, cancel and go back to 1. Maybe try a new mirror?
"Can't install
, file is in use" -- this can happen if
1. you are running the .exe; for example, bash.exe and you have a bash.exe window open
2. you are updating a .dll which is in use by your exe or service
3. service is running, such as sshd. Do this:
- open a cmd window
- find the service(s) with the following command:
  net start | findstr /i cyg
  the service(s) names are printed
- stop the service with
  net stop "CYGWIN sshd"
  replace with the name you have. (? other services besides CYGWIN ?)
- click Retry on the dialog warning box
- It should continue now. When you get to the end, remember to restart with
  net start "CYGWIN sshd"
  This is a generally useful way to stop/start services easily from the command line or from a script. If you prefer the slow way of clicking, you can run services.msc
Finished!
after updating my 1.5.x to 1.7.x, I get this for the cygrund package:
Postinstall script errors
Package: No package
passwd-grp.sh exit code 1
I got something like this when I first updated, but I haven't noticed any problem.

Actually, it could take more than 5 minutes, if there are slow downloads.
Once you get the hand of it though, it will probably only take two minutes to grab a missing package.

Because updating/adding a package is so easy, the first time you should click through and accept the defaults, then later adding missing features. I used to spend a lot of time going through all the packages, trying to decide if someday it might be useful. This just takes up more space, and more time later when upgrading.

OSX: Constant disk activity after attaching a disk to Mac

2010-10-05T17:57:00.004-04:00

Mac
(windows and linux, keep reading)

What it probably is: spotlight indexing.
If you're just hooking up a drive to copy some data or look for something, then this can be a hindrance to your work.

Verify that it is this process with:
sudo fs_usage

this will show all I/O activity, which will be a lot because it will include every line of text coming out to the terminal as well. Filter it with something like

sudo fs_usage | egrep -v 'screen|grep|head' | head -20

If you see mdworker, that's spotlight indexing going on.
If you see backupd, that's Time Machine (but you may have noticed the spinning icon in the menu bar).

Turn off indexing with:
mdutil -i off /Volumes/mountname

It may take 30 seconds or so (depending how busy it is) before you see
Indexing disabled.

You can turn it back on later by specifying 'on' instead of 'off'.

There are many other usages; you can use fs_usage to find what configuration or plist file(s) a program is using, where your data is going to on disk, etc.

Here's a MacWorld article: Watch file system activity in real time

Windows
On windows, get fsmon; it's one of the sysinternals tools.
regmon will do the same thing for registry accesses.

I've used fsmon to discover trojan processes before.
Windows == virus.

Linux
atop is supposed to come with ubuntu.
I don't think it gives specific paths in output, but once you have the pid you can connect with strace and just look at the IO syscalls, or use lsof to find which files are currently in use.

any other tools of note?

Websphere portal server and Lotus Web Content Management performance tuning tips

2010-09-17T15:39:00.005-04:00

Image via WikipediaIf you have had the pleasure to install and set up a WebSphere Portal environment, you know that sometimes it can be a big, fat bloated piece of something you'd expect from Redmond.

You will probably see the biggest increase from the Base portal tuning recommendations.
Give it as much memory as you can spare and increase the thread pool size -- you should see performance increase just from this. (If on Windows, you can't go above 1.5G, but for a server Windows should always be your last choice.)

After the base portal tuning, try again, then start to do some performance monitoring.
If you're a big WCM user, check the caches here and make them bigger.

Links:

a starting point is IBM doc#swg27007059,
IBM WebSphere Portal Performance Troubleshooting Guide,
it contains basic generic troubleshooting methodology. You may want a methodology like this for your manager or client.. Also a step-by-step guide to the PMI / Tivoli Performance Viewer -- these are definitely worth checking to get basic measurements of your server.

WebSphere Portal and Lotus Web Content Management 6.1.x Performance Tuning Guide
Broken out into portal, WCM, database, web, etc components. Has specific parameters to change, but you need to know what you're doing.
This document is also somewhere on the IBM side, but the lotus wiki versions allow for updates.
(I have even corrected some of their documents.. if only they would conform to the formatting conventions)
This looks good, but I only found it later, after I did my tuning..:
WebSphere tuning for the impatient: How to get 80% of the performance improvement with 20% of the effort

Patches (aka fixpacks) sometimes fix performance issues. I haven't encountered one specifically, but it has been known to happen.

...
Also testing Zemanta with this post.. the included image is totally unrelated.
Actually, I said 'pool' -- I think that's where it came from, and you have to admit it looks cooler than a 'websphere'.

Connect a device directly to your macbook with ethernet (for filesharing between computers or to configure for wireless)

2010-09-03T15:23:00.006-04:00

This is what I did specifically for my Brother HL-2170w laserprinter in order to get it configured for wireless use. I couldn't use the automatic configured because I have a key on my network.

If you are using wireless at home, and you want to configure something like a wireless printer, you will first have to hook it up 'wired'--that is, via Ethernet. You can connect it directly to your router, but in my case the router is in the basement and not where I want my printer to be--it's easier to move my laptop.

This can also be used to connect another laptop up to your system without a router or hub between them. You can connect directly with just an ethernet cable, because the Mac (at least newer ones) have auto-sensing ports. This can be used for faster/secure file transfer, as well as giving the other laptop access to the internet by sharing your connection in the following cases

other laptop doesn't have a wireless
you don't want to share the key/password for your network
you want to observe the traffic of the other computer for research or forensic purposes (make sure you have consent of the parties)
you have a 3G, cellular network, or other network connection that the user can't connect to
any other reason you want to share

It was fairly straightforward for me because I have plenty of past experience with dhcp servers, routers and TCP/IP routing. If you don't, it may seem like magic. Best of luck.

The key thing is starting the dhcp server; this allows the other machine to get an IP address allocated automatically from you (and routing information, if you are doing connection sharing). The alternative is manually configuring the IP address manually, often more trouble than it's worth, and not an option for many wireless devices like printers.

Open sharing settings in System Preferences
Highlight the Internet Sharing selection on the left but don't click the checkbox yet; this will show the options on the right.
Select the interface that has the connection you want to share (the one that you are using, e.g. wireless) from the pulldown
To computers using: Ethernet
Click on the 'internet sharing' check box and click Start in the ensuing dialog box.

(Here's a page with screenshots; it's from OS X 10.4, and some of the screens have changed.)

'Internet sharing' turns on a dhcp server and enables routing.
Note: that a 192.168.2.X network is used for sharing by default; you can find the rules that OSX uses in the 'man InternetSharing' entry (and you can change SharingNetworkNumberStart)--more info on this Mac OS X Hints page, be sure to read the comments.

This connection sharing can be used for more advanced scenarios as well.
Say you and a friend are on wireless, but different networks (they could be public and private, or wifi and tethered via cell phone).
You could send some traffic via one interface, and others via the other. This can be very useful to network professionals for troubleshooting.
(I usually use a squid proxy on a separate host, sometimes through an ssh tunnel, with a customized .pac proxy auto-config file; more on that later..)

Howto: enable gmail Priority Inbox

2010-08-31T15:08:00.003-04:00

... seems we'll just have to wait
When you see New! Priority Inbox in the top right corner of your inbox you'll be able to try it out.
If there is another way, I'll post directions/link here.
Supposedly 'is in beta and should be rolling out over the next week' so shouldn't be too long?

lifehacker link.

update 2010.09.03: It came today, although I did see it on a couple other accounts sooner.

I already have a number of filters for categorizing some of my incoming mail into shopping, technews, and junk labels, plus some Quick Links for filtering some of this out from my view when I want to focus on more important stuff.

However, with the filters/quick links, I have to manually add anything new..
Priority Inbox promises to do this automatically through machine learning and user training.

Add ogg support to iTunes on Mac OS X

2010-08-13T11:21:00.003-04:00

iTunes for Mac:
this was harder to find than I thought.
Not hard, just not trivial; this should be a one-click add-capability type action,
but the instructions were not as clear. (Ideally, iTunes would already have support for open formats.)

Quit iTunes
Download XiphQT QuickTime component.
This is a small 1M .dmg; double click to open it. You'll see some text files, but most importantly
XiphQT.component
Copy it in to /Library/QuickTime
[Optional] This is only necessary if you want to double-click an .ogg file and have it open in iTunes. You can still use the 'add to library' menu item or drag files from the Finder on to iTunes. I think.
Edit the info.plist file inside of iTunes;
see instructions here: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Using_iTunes/Ogg_in_iTunes

Go to dir.xiph.org and try an ogg stream.
Start up iTunes and play.
I did this on 10.6.4.

sql server: "User, group, or role XXXX already exists in the current database." even after deleting user and recreating

2010-06-19T10:38:00.004-04:00

A database user existed without an associated sql server login.
WebSphere wants login to match the schema name (up to now it seems okay...)

tried to create a user with this login -- failed because 'user or role' already exists. or principal, I forget the error.
delete that login. fail because its the owner of a schema.
edit that schema, assign ownership to another user
create login. failed because of user mapping, with a message similar to above.
but it was actually created! I saw it later after trying to see if I could find any reference to the user.
try to modify the user mapping again. okay for the default schema/database, and I could login okay, but trying to assign the user mapping for database 'master' failed, and I think those SqlJDBCXAUser role settings are necessary.

So I searched google for "User, group, or role" "already exists in the current database." "user mapping" master, and found the following:

SQL Server Tip - Fixing Orphaned Users and ran the following as sa:

sp_change_users_login 'auto_fix', 'UserName'

where UserName is the name of your user.

The row for user 'customizationusr' will be fixed by updating its login link to a login already in existence.
The number of orphaned users fixed by updating users was 1.
The number of orphaned users fixed by adding new logins and then updating users was 0.

checked the login to see if I could make the master mapping... It was already there!
Success. am i certified ms sqlserver dba now?

Exception: WUPD0248E: Fix pack update failure: The processing of fix pack WP_PTF_6104, component wp.ptf.config failed.

2010-06-14T16:16:00.005-04:00

IBM says:

Completed processing extractor command line arguments.
Performing extraction.

Failed to perform extraction.
Exception: WUPD0248E: Fix pack update failure: The processing of fix pack WP_PTF_6101, component wp.ptf.config failed.

Cause

The fixpack installation was performed utilizing a non-root user. Reviewing permissions on the directory structures for the /tmp file indicated the non-root user did not have write permissions on that directory. Therefore, the extraction of the updated .jar files to the /tmp directory failed.

Environment

Any supported UNIX® or Linux™ operating system may be affected.
NOTE: Microsoft Windows operating systems should not be affected by this error message as the user ID used for Portal on Windows must be a member of the Administrators Group per the Portal 6.1 Information Center.

But, it happened to me on Windows.. the message in another log file was slightly different--it was making some changes of wkplc.properties which it said it couldn't write to. Odd, because I owned that directory, and am admin, and that's the only file I changed.. from a remote machine. Yes, it's usually more convenient to do something on a non-windows machine where you have real tools to work with. I am logged over the network as the same user, or should be, so why does writing over the next change it?

dir /Q will show owners..

C:\wps\WebSphere\wp_profile\ConfigEngine\properties>dir /q
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 3108-D2F9

Directory of C:\wps\WebSphere\wp_profile\ConfigEngine\properties

11/04/2009 11:32 AM 2,729 BUILTIN\Administrators db.config.properties
11/04/2009 11:32 AM 1,381 BUILTIN\Administrators empty.properties
06/14/2010 12:50 PM 87,670 ... test
06/14/2010 02:32 PM 87,670 BUILTIN\Administrators wkplc.properties
05/12/2010 11:48 AM 87,566 BUILTIN\Administrators wkplc.properties.standalone

Whatever '...' is, the administrator can't write to it.
Guess it's not surprising anymore when microsoft does things wrong.

Awareness works sometimes in Sametime, or for certain people, or I don't see myself as online

2010-06-10T12:31:00.004-04:00

Probably a case issue...
see

Upper/Lower case discrepancies in DN cause problems with Awareness in Common PIM and Domino portlets
Question You are using one or more of the Lotus® Domino® and Extended Products Portlets or Common PIM Portlets with IBM® WebSphere® Portal. You initially have trouble with Awareness working in the portlet(s), but after you follow the troubleshooting script, "Troubleshooting Sametime Awareness in WebSphere Portal" (#1163790), the STLinks applet loads correctly in your browser.
However, you then notice that either no Awareness functionality ever appears in your browser, or if your name appears multiple times on a page, some will show Awareness (for example, green icon to symbolize a person is logged into Sametime and available, etc.) while others do not.
...

.. though in addition to the stlink.js change listed there, the one I was sent also has this:

1748,1756d1747
<
< //fix for PMR 73450,SGC,724 -- stcl portlet fails to load mixed case awareness.
<
< if(!STlinksCaseSensitive) {
< linkId = linkId.toLowerCase();
< }
<

now why didn't they put that there?

Generally their support is okay (at least after you get off the web and get someone on the phone).. is this to require maintenance ?

.... okay, I thought that fixed it.
I swear I saw it work.
But I am still seeing issues.

Will update later....

possible copyright infringement involving your Verizon Online account.

2010-06-09T14:41:00.002-04:00

Valued Verizon Customer,

We have received a notification from a copyright owner of possible copyright infringement involving your Verizon Online account.

__

View details regarding this notification.

Thank You for choosing Verizon Online.

There are no details though, the system can never" access them at this time".

iTunes: The Disc Burner is Busy

2010-06-03T16:22:00.002-04:00

it was burning me up.

I didn't get the pop-up "this disc is blank; what do you want to do?"
and running Burn.app to check disc info I just got 'no disc'.

Someone said Parallels could prevent iTunes from getting access to the burner;
I was running VMware Fusion, and one of my vm's was connected to the cd.

Disconnected it and I could burn again...:

The Big Gundown : John Zorn plays the music of Ennio Morricone.
Probably one of the best Morricone albums out there.

Setup sshd on cygwin in 4 minutes

2010-04-24T18:46:00.005-04:00

4 steps, less than 4 minutes to do,
assuming: you have cygwin installed already, plus the requisite packages.
It took me less than twenty minutes (well, I had to perform some due diligence, even though I had done it before on another system. And the windows firewall issue).
All commands should be run in a bash shell unless directed otherwise.

Check that you have cygrunsrv. The brute force method:
$ cygrunsrv.exe -S sshd
cygrunsrv: Error starting a service: OpenService: Win32 error 1060:
The specified service does not exist as an installed service.
If you get 'command not found', then you'll need to install the package.
run ssh-host-config
seemed to take a minute or so before I got any output, but maybe that's because my virtual machine didn't have much entropy for key generation.
type 'yes' a couple times at the prompts, unless you don't want to.
now install as a service:
cygrunsrv.exe -S sshd
when asked for value of CYGWIN, you can give:
binmode tty ntsec
start the service.. run services.msc (from a cmd window) or use 'net start'

All set?
Test from bash with 'ssh -v username@localhost'.
Now, test externally with 'ssh -v username@cygwinSshHost' .. if you don't see any output, windows firewall or other form of bandaid is keeping you out.

After you're logged in, do 'ssh-add -L >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2' so you don't need to type passwords to log in anymore (maybe on the second login, agent forwarding doesn't happen on a new host ?).

More steps, with more detail: How to configure cygwin for sshd .

Websphere Network Deployment, cluster creation: "Check the add node log for details"

2010-04-19T10:12:00.003-04:00

[A search for "Check the add node log for details." returned very little, hence this entry..]

When adding the first node to a cluster,
all the configuration and applications are retrieved from it.
This may take a while. The output you see in the Node Deployment Manager console looks like this:

ADMU0001I: Begin federation of node node01 with Deployment Manager at mgrnode.company.org:8879.
ADMU0009I: Successfully connected to Deployment Manager Server: mgrnode.company.org:8879
ADMU0505I: Servers found in configuration:
ADMU0506I: Server name: server1
ADMU0506I: Server name: webserver01
ADMU0506I: Server name: WebSphere_Portal
ADMU2010I: Stopping all server processes for node node01
ADMU0510I: Server server1 is now STOPPED
ADMU0510I: Server WebSphere_Portal is now STOPPED
ADMU0024I: Deleting the old backup directory.
ADMU0015I: Backing up the original cell repository.
ADMU0012I: Creating Node Agent configuration for node: node01
ADMU0120I: isclite.ear will not be uploaded since it already exists in the target repository.
ADMU0120I: isclite.ear will not be uploaded since it already exists in the target repository.
ADMU0014I: Adding node node01 configuration to cell: mgrnodeCell01
The console has not received information on the add operation in a timely manner. The state of the operation is indeterminate. Check the add node log for details.

The addNode.log file is on the server you added to the cluster, in ...\WebSphere\wp_profile\logs\addNode.log.

If you were successful, you should see:

[4/19/10 7:41:10:166 EDT] 0000000b NodeSyncTask A ADMS0003I: The configuration synchronization completed successfully.
[4/19/10 7:41:10:368 EDT] 0000000a AdminTool A ADMU0018I: Launching Node Agent process for node: node01
[4/19/10 7:41:33:410 EDT] 0000000a AdminTool A ADMU0505I: Servers found in configuration:
[4/19/10 7:41:33:410 EDT] 0000000a AdminTool A ADMU0506I: Server name: nodeagent
[4/19/10 7:41:33:425 EDT] 0000000a AdminTool A ADMU0506I: Server name: server1
[4/19/10 7:41:33:441 EDT] 0000000a AdminTool A ADMU0506I: Server name: webserver01
[4/19/10 7:41:33:457 EDT] 0000000a AdminTool A ADMU0506I: Server name: WebSphere_Portal
[4/19/10 7:41:36:561 EDT] 0000000a AdminTool A ADMU9990I:
[4/19/10 7:41:36:655 EDT] 0000000a AdminTool A ADMU0308I: The node node01 and associated applications were successfully added to the mgrnodeCell01 cell.
[4/19/10 7:41:36:670 EDT] 0000000a AdminTool A ADMU9990I:
[4/19/10 7:41:36:686 EDT] 0000000a AdminTool A ADMU0306I: Note:
[4/19/10 7:41:36:701 EDT] 0000000a AdminTool A ADMU0302I: Any cell-level documents from the standalone mgrnodeCell01 configuration have not been migrated to the new cell\
.
[4/19/10 7:41:36:733 EDT] 0000000a AdminTool A ADMU0307I: You might want to:
[4/19/10 7:41:36:733 EDT] 0000000a AdminTool A ADMU0303I: Update the configuration on the mgrnodeCell01 Deployment Manager with values from the old cell-level documents.
[4/19/10 7:41:36:748 EDT] 0000000a AdminTool A ADMU9990I:
[4/19/10 7:41:36:764 EDT] 0000000a AdminTool A ADMU0003I: Node node01 has been successfully federated.

For me, with not a large amount of custom deployment, this occurred about 10 minutes after start.

The portal will not necessarily start up successfully after this, however... I got the error
com.ibm.wps.ac.DomainAdministratorNotFoundException: EJPSB0107E: Exception occurred while retrieving the identity of the domain admin ...
and only got 404 errors when trying to access the portal.
Problem: I missed a step.
[PDF] A Step-By-Step Guide to Configuring a WebSphere Portal v6.1.0.3 (WPv615ClusterGuide.pdf) -- wish I had found this document earlier.

Spotlight notes, and indexing with FireFox

2010-03-26T12:14:00.005-04:00

Spotlight is useful for indexing files on disk,
emails, calendar events, looking up words in dictionary,
people info from addressbook.

But it doesn't index web pages you've seen. Unless you use safari.
I like safari except for two things:

no plugins or addons, like sxipper or adblock
something else, don't remember. maybe I'll start using it again. for some things.

.. will edit more later. some link on this topic:

does index not even the cache?
do I need a proxy? eg, muffin, save to disk and do indexing on that.

some links:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&hs=dw&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=os+x+spotlight+firefox&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/stopspotlightindex.html
http://www.macosxtips.co.uk/index_files/spotlight-tips.html

forum discussion on ffox bookmarks:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20050825165843574
http://web.archive.org/web/20051231031800/homepage.mac.com/mikemunson/firefox/

.. I will look in to this more later.

Restoring a Mac from Time Machine -- some tips

2010-03-25T13:18:00.007-04:00

These are some old notes from March, when I upgrade to a 640G internal disk.

My second time restoring a system from Time Machine backups:

best practices:

close everything possible. All your running apps, and as many things in the menu bar as possible. Run activity monitor and double check (eg, sometimes my firefox does not exit properly...)
check what you have excluded in TM
through gui, or in cmd line with
defaults read /Library/Preferences/com.apple.TimeMachine
TM restore now
? reboot in safe mode
? TM again

Last two for the truly paranoid, or if you ever got burned by TM before. I didn't do it.

Things that (i thought) broke first time:

java (plugin only?)
usb kb modifier key settings--
I use an external keyboard, and I have capslock mapped to control (both keyboards), and Alt mapped to command (with the 'windows' key being option).

But I think the first time was an earlier 10.6 release, so maybe it got fixed.
After the second time, I haven't noticed anything breaking (yet).

Speeding up the restore process.
Because when you first start it may say "19 hours remaining...":

don't include archives/media you don't need right away
(eg anything you could reproduce easily later: a dvd rip, etc; software downloads
virtual machines (I exclude from time machine; any (good) reasons not to?)
stuff you already backup on your own
other excluded directories from time machine
alternative: back these up to another disk now, delete locally, force a time machine backup.
Or just move to a non-TM dir? After all, you can get them back from TM (just be sure to by the end of the day..).

Afterwards / testing:

no problems with VMware.
The first time I got questions asking "did you copy these? or move them from another machine"
oh, that's right--the first TM restore I did was to a different laptop... some of my problems with because of host-specific settings.

Filevault interaction ?
I don't use filevault, so I don't know. I didn't know about it when I first started using my Mac. I later read about issues with Time Machine -- it only backs up your filevault files when you're logged out, and I'm never logged out.
But I just found a post somewhere how to do it: 10.6: Let Time Machine backup File Vault while logged in -- but I haven't tried it.

Verizon FiOS Actiontec router firmware update

2010-03-23T11:32:00.003-04:00

I have had pretty much no trouble at all with FiOS--maybe the best ISP experience ever. I might have to reboot the router every month or two, and there may have been one outage for a couple hours in the past year--not memorable.

Logged in today for the first time in a few months, check the syslog (actually went back for 30 days), cut-n-pasted into emacs for easy filtering. After a couple minutes had it down to 45 from 1600.

I see these lines repeating every 3 days or so:
Mar 20 14:46:34 2010 System Log CWMP Periodic Inform 204 No Content
Mar 20 14:46:34 2010 System Log CWMP Periodic Inform challenge response with 200 OK from server
Mar 20 14:46:34 2010 System Log CWMP Periodic Inform initial 401 challenge

and a firmware upgrade recently:
Mar 3 18:52:55 2010 System Log WAN Coax WAN Coax Link Rate
Mar 3 18:48:40 2010 System Log WAN Coax WAN Coax Link Rate
Dec 14 19:00:04 2007 System Log WAN Coax WAN Coax Link Up
Mar 3 18:47:16 2010 System Log Reboot Reboot issued from TR69
Mar 3 18:47:16 2010 System Log CWMP Firmware Upgrade CWMP Transfer Complete from CPE
Mar 3 18:47:16 2010 System Log CWMP Firmware Upgrade CWMP Firmware Upgrade Success. New Version: 20.10.7
Mar 3 18:46:36 2010 System Log CWMP Periodic Inform 204 No Content
Mar 3 18:46:36 2010 System Log CWMP Periodic Inform challenge response with 200 OK from server
Mar 3 18:46:34 2010 System Log CWMP Periodic Inform initial 401 challenge
Mar 3 18:46:34 2010 System Log CWMP Firmware Upgrade CWMP Firmware Location:
Mar 3 18:46:33 2010 System Log CWMP Periodic Inform 204 No Content
Mar 3 18:46:33 2010 System Log CWMP Firmware Upgrade CWMP Firmware Download Response From CPE
Mar 3 18:46:33 2010 System Log CWMP Firmware Upgrade CWMP Firmware Download Command from CMS
Mar 3 18:46:33 2010 System Log CWMP Periodic Inform challenge response with 200 OK from server
Mar 3 18:46:32 2010 System Log CWMP Periodic Inform initial 401 challenge

I can't access the URL though; anyone have the password or the file?

Any information on the changes?

Citrix Web Interface fails after Websphere migration v6.0 -> v6.1

2010-03-18T11:20:00.002-04:00

If you can actually get migration to work,
and you have this portlet, you might see this in your logs:

[3/17/10 11:35:55:867 EDT] 0000003c AdminLinkInfo W com.ibm.workplace.searchmenu.portal.taglib.AdminLinkInfoExtTag doStartTag The search menu tag is not supported in this version of WebSphere Portal. Please refer to the Information Center for details.
[3/17/10 11:35:55:960 EDT] 0000003c WebApp E [Servlet Error]-[/WEB-INF/jsp/View.jsp]: com.ibm.ws.jsp.translator.JspTranslationException: JSPG0227E: Exception caught while translating /WEB-INF/jsp/View.jsp:
/WEB-INF/jsp/View.jsp(14,1) --> JSPG0009E: Unable to load tag handler class org.apache.pluto.tags.DefineObjectsTag

Enterprise app name: PA_Citrix_WI
locally, my file was called NewCli3.war.

Solution:
unzip the file, edit View.jsp, jar it back up, update the app in websphere portal server, and the error should go away.

How to change JSP? see Changing JSP source
1. Change the tag library to use the standard tag library.
in some goddamned IBM documentation.

Browser inconsistencies: Safari, Firefox, Chrome (Mac OS X)

2010-02-23T09:16:00.004-05:00

this is kinda in draft form right now; post comments with dis/agreements and links to similar lists or maybe solutions.

I use all of these browsers on the Mac, and used them all before on Windows (though Safari coming in later, not as much).

Primary reasons for use:

Firefox: plugins make it easier check multiple accounts (gmail manager), manage passwords / identity2.0 (sxipper)
Chrome: seems a little faster, responsive, lower system footprint.
Safari: has spotlight indexing for web pages
IE: just kidding, I avoid this generally. There are a couple sites I have to use IE, but I have windows in a vm, but usually rdp to a server (avoids local bloat).

There are downsides to using multiple browsers, besides the inconsistencies listed below, and the main one is being able find where something is, if you are a big user of browser history (I am) and bookmarks (not so much--mostly bookmarks are write-only. Except for important work/project related items)

Can you get spotlight to index other pages? I am considering a local caching proxy for this..

Here is a working list.

cmd-arrows for begin/end of line. Sometimes up/down in a text field will go to the beginning or end, and sometimes this appears to be (web-)application specific; e.g., up in a google spreadsheet cell takes you to beginning of line.
Home/end keys. Why can't these go to beginning/end of line?
On a page, top and bottom of page are fine.
Select/drag text
When one-handed, or lazy, select and drag of text is faster than select/menu-ut/click/menu-paste
drag-n-drop URLs into rich editor fields
Two variants: drag of a bookmark or location URL, and drag of a link from the HTML.
Useful for inserting into (G)mail, or with google notebook.
And what's up with focus of the element? E.g., gdoc spreadsheet needs to have focus/input entry to drop it in, otherwise the page loads with new URL ?

If the behavior is not consistent, then I have to remember which works where, and this increases cognitive load and slows me down. I want to just transfer this to muscle memory and not have to think about it.

I've started a page in my notebook, but probably a table (spreadsheet) would be better, if embeddable here.

The main inconsistency bugging me right now: begin/end of line. It would be nice if ctrl-a/e worked like emacs. They do--yay! .. at least in blogger. But if not other sites, I will be annoyed.

"ERROR: transport error 202: connect failed: Operation timed out"

2010-02-17T16:04:00.003-05:00

This is a problem that can be encountered on NetBeans platform when trying to debug a project.

In another post someone said

...
deps-jar:

compile:

Shared archive: sharing disabled for server vm

ERROR: transport error 202: gethostbyname: unknown host ["transport.c",L41]

FATAL ERROR in native method: JDWP No transports initialized, jvmtiError=JVMTI_ERROR_INTERNAL(113)

ERROR: JDWP Transport dt_socket failed to initialize, TRANSPORT_INIT(510) ["debugInit.c",L500]

JDWP exit error JVMTI_ERROR_INTERNAL(113): No transports initialized

JDWP exit error JVMTI_ERROR_INTERNAL(113): No transports initializedJava Result: 134

debug:

BUILD SUCCESSFUL (total time: 6 seconds)

This worked for me on OS X:

# sudo su -
# echo 127.0.0.1 `/bin/hostname` >> /etc/hosts

Of course, there are many other commands that can be used to achieve the same thing.

After this, the debugger connected right away, instead of a lengthy timeout and then failure.

The problem occurred in my case because a VPN connection (Cisco AnyConnect) change my hostname / dns servers.

Why does my battery charger flash ?

2010-01-19T14:37:00.006-05:00

Recording this for other users, as well as smarter computers that can read.

Item (object, device, appliance):

Energizer 15 min AA - AAA battery charger.

(includes AC adapter as well as car adapter, and usually sold with a set of decent NiMH rechargeable batteries.

[In 2009, decent energy storage amounts for the AA package is 2000mAH to 2400mAH.]

Car charger is convenient when you are going somewhere with e.g. your camera and realize you don't have extra charged batteries.)

Usual action:

Put from 1-4 batteries in,

plug in charger,

LED displays as red while charging.

If there is a problem (battery won't hold charge, bad voltage, inserted wrong, etc), LED will flash red and charger turns off.

When batteries are hot (this includes during charging), the fan runs.

When charging is finished, LED turns green. The fan usually continues running an additional 8-10 minutes.

If LED is flashing, the usual strategy is to remove one or more batteries so a smaller set can be tested, then attempt to charge again and determine by isolation whether there is indeed a problem with one or more of the batteries.

However, it has been empirically determined that this often results charging being successful (i.e.: without flashing red LED).

Action in this episode:

Put two batteries on the left side, after a minute or two, the LED starts flashing.

These were the batteries I had in my mouse, and discharged over a period of a couple weeks.

Unplug AC adapter, remove batteries, insert batteries in two right slots, plug back in.

Result: batteries charge to completion.

Explanation(s):

charger is wrong: does not sense voltage/charge consistently.
device model of how batteries operation is not right: a charge of the battery may change its characteristic faster than expected
one or more of the charging slots on the left have an issue.
each slot may have different operating characteristics.

Further tests to be conducted.

The ideal charger would be able to supply more info about batteries (display charge curve, etc), be transparent in operation (what is your charge strategy?), sense/display battery type (and perhaps even recognize specific ones, or let you assign), do deep charging, download updates / upload recorded data.

Are there any specific app/lets that provide more info?

Send me your stories and battery links.

2010.01.30: Two batteries in the left slots did not cause the charging.

These two batteries were Energizer brand. I now notice they are different; 2450 and 1700mAh. Maybe that's why they didn't last so long in the Magic Mouse.

Convert bin/cue files to .iso on OS X

2009-12-21T20:03:00.002-05:00

This is documented a couple places in much detail.

I just needed a CD image convert to ISO format (that's ISO9660)

so I could mount it in VMware Fusion.

Warning: command lines follow.

Get BinChunker (bchunk) to convert bin/cue to iso. If you don't have a compiler, you can get it prebuilt here: BinChunker for OS X. I was trusting.. it works.
(If you have macports installed, then you can just do 'sudo port install bchunk').
run bchunk. I will assume you specify full path here or have it on your path:
bchunk -v image.bin image.cue isoFileName
Done. Mount it in vmware, Virtualbox, or just open the iso file if you want to look at the files (double-click in Finder).

Above is all I need to remember.

Credit to these posts, which go into more depth and alternatives.

Convert .bin/.cue to .iso on Mac OSX
How to burn ISO disc images (MacOSXHints.com)
(more about ISO than bin/cue)

Along the way I found some other things.

'drutil burn' says it can burn bin/cue files; see the man page.
Burn can also burn bin/cue files, ISO's, mp3's or audios with CD-Text, and more.
Selectable compression for conversion of videos to DVD format (mp2)--this might let me get more video on a disc?

Mercurial error-- hg ... "abort: cannot follow nonexistent file: "

2009-12-16T00:10:00.004-05:00

There is a simple solution near the end..

I don't know much about Mercurial, except that it's a free revision control system and included with NetBeans. I was playing with the GUI builder and didn't want to pollute a subversion-controlled project, but did want to be able to revert back if necessary, and somewhere saw that Mercurial didn't need a server.

Anyway, it was working fine, then I went away from my work for a week or so,
had some more stuff that needed to be checked in before I could test moving part of a module to another project.

.. but on trying to commit my changes in NetBeans, I got an error dialog with instructions to see the output window, which contained the arguments to hg plus the message
abort: cannot follow nonexistent file: src/com/foo/frop/ickyGui.java
followed by one of the project files I was trying to check in.

I knew hg put its stuff in a tree somewhere, found it in NetBeansProjects/MyProject/.hg.
There is a file here for every src file in my project (filenames minorly encoded), plus a couple metadata files per directory. When I looked for the file hg complained about, it wasn't there.
Yet hg though it was checked in. How to convince it otherwise?

I didn't see any commands in the menus that looked promising,
google's first page of results were just statements that 'Mercurial is unfriendly'.
I really didn't want to spend a lot of time on this. Worst case I could create a new project and check it all in again. But I know how to mess with things which is generally the first step in reverse-engineering, so..

SOLUTION
I moved the files out of the way,
and then Mercurial said they were gone.
I committed this change.
I moved the files back,
Mercurial said they were new.
I added them.

And I remembered something I might have done--I restored a MacBook from TimeMachine backup as a way to migrate to another machine. Possibly that Mercurial file was one of the last, or somehow that file feel in the cracks one of the times I aborted backups.

Ideally, hg or netbeans would provide some graceful recovery.

Microsoft Genius: An error occurred while Windows was synchronizing with time.windows.com

2009-11-25T11:50:00.009-05:00

.. or time.nist.gov, etc.

To see the error, double the clock in the systray, select the third tab which is labeled 'Internet Time', and try the 'Update Now' tab.

You will get the "An error occurred while Windows was synchronizing with time.windows.com" message. Try a different server, then 'update now'. Still get the error?

I did a little research, and found this long forum post about how this is broken everywhere --

FYI To Microsoft: Windows Time Synchronization Completely Broken (Vista, 2003, XP are all broken), which contained these instructions, which worked for me:

We simply instruct them "to click on the time icon on the desktop,

then click the Internet Time tab,

and then copy the following blue text only - tick.usno.navy.mil -

and next paste it in the Server: Field,

then click on Apply,

then Update Now

and finally OK. Done, no more error messages.

Ok, isn't that what I did? No. (blogger fonts are whack when you paste text in from a webkit browser... I'm going with it).

What's missing? What did I do differently?

APPLY.

This is genius!

After you change the value, you have to click apply to tell microsoft windows you changed it. What should be a obvious intuitive interface is subtly subverted. You change the value to X, and click update now. Doesn't it use that value? It says, "error connecting to X" but it doesn't use that value? Not til you click Apply!

Why don't that have another button that says "ok, I clicked that button" ?

This is a cash cow for microsoft! How many people have called and been charged $59 for this? Whoever thought it up surely got a lot of stock options and probably a promotion to VP, or a special position where they can apply this feature to other parts of the system (send in your examples). An MBA student could do a thesis on this...

Well, I tested on 3 2003 Servers which had this problem,

but the XP system actually worked [but that was probably a bug].

I couldn't test on Vista, because the police took that computer.

... I guess I only read about a third of that post -- it looks like there could be multiple issues, or there are different types of voodoo that can cure it...

I only read about halfway, but I'm tired.

Good thing I have a Mac now.

Mount filesystems over ssh, ftp, etc on OSX with MacFUSE, Macfusion, and a fix for snow leopard

2009-11-20T19:41:00.004-05:00

OS X can already mount folders shared by windows machines with smbfs (Finder - Connect to server), or WebDAV natively. With a little more software, you can mount any (*nix) filesystem over ssh or ftp, with macFuse/Fusion.

'FUSE' is something like Filesystem in User SpacE.. that means it doesn't have to be part of the OS directly, most importantly making easy for developers to try something, test it, fix it, and try again really quick, instead of maybe having to compile a whole OS, rebooting, etc. This has been around for a long time on Linux, and a while for Macs too. Just a whole lot easier on a Mac because there's some nice interfaces.

MacFUSE allows you to extend Mac OS X’s native file handling capabilities via 3rd-party file systems. Visit the MacFUSE website for more information.
install, you will need to reboot.
Get Macfusion from http://www.macfusionapp.org/ and install it.
Run it and mount some drives. After it's mounted, you can exit Macfusion.

One problem, it didn't work for me.. because I have the newer 10.6 (snow leopard). The error I got (see the macfusion log viewer) was:

(macfusionAgent, SSHServerFS, norad, 11/20/09 7:35 PM) dyld: could not load inserted library: /Applications/Utilities/Macfusion.app/Contents/PlugIns/sshfs.mfplugin/Contents/Resources/sshnodelay.so

I put mine in Utilities, but you might also see the path

/Applications/Macfusion.app/Contents/PlugIns/sshfs.mfplugin/Contents/Resources/sshnodelay.so

Follow the fix here: http://derekneely.com/2009/08/macfuse-fix-for-snow-leopard/ --

tell it to look for beta versions, check for update, remove an old module, and then it works..

I see my password in the macfusion log viewer -- how to I get rid of that?

This PTF WP_PTF_6102 can not be installed/uninstalled because PortalAdminPwd, W asPassword have not been entered in wkplc.properties.

2009-11-13T20:38:00.003-05:00

Full message:

E:\IBM\WebSphere\PortalServer\update>UpdatePortal -fixpack -installDir "E:\

IBM\WebSphere\PortalServer" -fixpackDir "E:\IBM\WebSphere\PortalServer\updat

e\fixpacks" -install -fixpackID WP_PTF_6102 -fixpackDetails

Start of [ UpdatePortal ]

Build 20090714_0130

Verifying installer jar:

[ PortalUpdateInstaller.jar ]

Setting permissions on E:\IBM\WEBSPH~1\PORTAL~1\version

Set encoding: console

Fix pack update specified

Fix pack directory: E:\IBM\WebSphere\PortalServer\update\fixpacks

Installation specified

Fix pack: WP_PTF_6102

Target product directory: E:\IBM\WebSphere\PortalServer

WebSphere Portal Version 6.1

Update Installer Version 1.6.1, Dated 5/1/08

UpdateInstallerArgs.isThisUninstall 0

UpdateInstallerArgs.isThisUninstallforFixpack 1

UpdateInstallerArgs.thisIsFixpackID WP_PTF_6102

WPConfig:findWkplcProperties

what is profileDirectory? e:/IBM/WebSphere/wp_profile

wp_install_root is e:/IBM/WebSphere

WP_PTF_6102Checking for Passwords ...

PortalAdminPwd has not been entered

WasPassword has not been entered

This PTF WP_PTF_6102 can not be installed/uninstalled because PortalAdminPwd, W

asPassword have not been entered in wkplc.properties.

UpdateInstaller.puiReturnCode is 8

End of [ UpdatePortal ]

----------------------------------------

Well, I set the passwords... got a little farther:

UpdateInstallerArgs.isThisUninstall 0

UpdateInstallerArgs.isThisUninstallforFixpack 1

UpdateInstallerArgs.thisIsFixpackID WP_PTF_6102

WPConfig:findWkplcProperties

what is profileDirectory? e:/IBM/WebSphere/wp_profile

wp_install_root is e:/IBM/WebSphere

WP_PTF_6102Checking for Passwords ...

log file in configtrace checking e:/IBM/WebSphere/wp_profile\ConfigEngine\log\Co

nfigTrace.log

Checking the status of all Application Servers

Checking status of server server1

Checking status of server WebSphere_Portal

Checking product features:

[No fix pack detail]

The specified fix pack does not exist

WP_PTF_6102

UpdateInstaller.puiReturnCode is 9

End of [ UpdatePortal ]

.............................................................

okay, maybe i didn't have the file(s) in fixpacks, but a subdirectory

There seemed to be a problem before, so I moved them..

start at 8:50pm ...

Because I ran Tor, the police took all my computers.

2009-11-11T19:24:00.006-05:00

What is Tor?

"Tor is a network of virtual tunnels that allows people and groups to improve their privacy and security on the Internet."

-- torproject

Tor has been used by people in China to avoid censorship, access news sites, and get around the Great Firewall of China.

People in Iran used Tor during the recent elections to get their word out to the world.

Normal people use Tor, for various reasons. You might want to help the Tor network grow.
(In fact, the very easy-to-use Tor Bundle means you can also run it and/or use it, without understanding anything about how it works.)

Anyway, I had been running a Tor relay node for a few months.

Friday, I was waiting for a package to arrive. I heard a knock on the door, much louder than you would expect from a delivery person. I went down steps (still in my pajamas, as I was working from home), and saw four Men in Blue at my door. I opened it and was told they had a search warrant for my house. They put their battering ram down, and my girlfriend and I were asked to wait outside while they did a preliminary search of the premises.

The search warrant contained as evidence of probable cause one hour-long IRC chat session (showing origination from my IP address) with an undercover NY state trooper and a perp who claimed to have a boy kidnapped and locked up, along with pictures and videos.

From this evidence, they took three of our digital cameras, my two laptops, two desktop computers, and two external harddrives. They could have taken more, but I think it was pretty clear to the six officers that searched our house that we were not involved.

They said they would get to it as soon as possible and return our property, but sometimes the forensics office has a backlog (of up to six months!).

I guess this is what they mean by "Freedom isn't free."

Cisco VPN fails with "Reason 442: Failed to enable Virtual Adapter."

2009-11-03T11:45:00.004-05:00

Detailed instructions (and feedback with alternatives) here:

Solution to Reason 442: Failed to Enable Virtual Adapter with Cisco VPN Client on Vista x86

that page says

Update: This problem has been fixed in Cisco VPN Client 5.0.03.0530. Please speak to your Cisco supplier to obtain this new version. When disconnecting from a VPN connection it appears the new client performs these actions for you automatically (it takes around 60 - 90 seconds now to disconnect from the VPN session). I am unable to redistribute the client from this site - please speak to your Cisco supplier / IT Team.

but I am using 5.0.05.0290 and encountered the same.

I just got connection to work (after just getting the lient and the necessary group VPN), so haven't had a chance to see if it recurs, and if the solution works again.

If problem persists, I may try the registry hack too.

Those instructions worked for me,

but I had to reboot as in step 7 of this shortened version of the above instructions.

Others say you have reboot the interface more than once, so perhaps doing that is what fixed it, and not the reboot... no way to tell.

Samsung Syncmaster - 'auto adjustment locked'

2009-10-26T20:01:00.004-04:00

When your workplace accumulates random hardware over the years, there aren't always people who know/remember how it works around (or manuals). Someone got this LCD monitor on their desk today, but the mouse would go off the screen, and a few people standing around it couldn't figure out why. So, they replaced her monitor.

The symptom: everything in the menu was locked (except for brightness and contrast), so we couldn't tell which value was the problem.

(probably the Horiz-pos or Vert-pos setting..)

Trying to change anything just said " auto adjustment locked"

The LCD monitor that had been on my desk disappeared... so I took the problematic one,

did a little research, and found the answer

Hold down the menu button for more than 5 seconds with the monitor switched on.

This action enables / disables this feature.

Maybe it's 10 seconds.

It's probably in the manual.

If I put a post-it that says 'Broken' on it, no one will take it...

Vista tweaks

2009-10-06T10:19:00.015-04:00

I got a new laptop a couple months ago (Acer Aspire 5515), and it has Vista installed. Although a number of people have reported 'downgrading' to XP, I decided to give it a try.

(Acer has a download sight for drivers, Vista and XP. Don't know if it's complete, but looks like it. Is ATI South Bridge included?)

(Aspire 5515 might be tricky with SATA AHCI drivers -- see here.

The slipstreaming method: Integrate Driver into Windows Installation CD using nLite - Step by step Tutorial looks intriguing.)

Vista's not so bad; some days it doesn't even bother me. My computer would probably run faster with XP; if I get enough frustration and time I might try it...

Some things I have to change in windows:

CapsLock is control.. this is where the control key should be, and how it was before IBM decided to make a 'PC'.
(set in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout)
focus follows mouse -- I don't need the window to be on top to type in it.
"correct entry should be 9F for the first hexidecimal number. That should activate the x-mouse without bringing them to the forefront"
(does this explain the registry flag bits ?)
You have to open registry Editor then Navigate to following location [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop] For full X-Mouse, add +1h to the first number stored in binary key "UserPreferencesMask".
For me, this was 9E, changed it to 9F.

This page has a big collection of Vista tweaks.

another BartPE boot CD will work? (DVD?)

Ubuntu seems to work okay, haven't tried much..

What is the equivalent of BartPE for Vista? I did some research on this and found something that looks promising, but can't recall the name. I have it bookmark'd somewhere...

Still looking for problems with cygwin "file name too long" (using find/updatedb), stupid permissions problems (like from an external HD after copying files from another machine).

Maybe here: UTF-8 Cygwin

A cygwin package tool (like urpmi on mandriva--I like to just say "download and install the package that has curl" or netcat or gcc or whatever...).

random vista stuff: powercfg, scripting with jscript.. would like to be able to control e.g. windows media player with a javascript. What's the debugger/interpreter for playing with jscript on windows?

I should get a MacBook, then just install Linux here....

possible topics I

2009-09-11T10:42:00.000-04:00

stuff i know, or want to learn, but might write about in some capacity:

data annotation
java: spring
process migration
complex event processing
spreading activation network
software estimation
cloud topics
augmented reality platform
open video
RDF / RDFa, dublin core, OWL, protege, topic maps, hyTime
rewriting proxies, debugging proxies
GIS, ArcGIS, ArcSDE with Oracle, flash interface
spatial data infrastructure
ajax, xmlHttpRequest, json
ALM - application life-cycle management
uml, model-driven development
IOC, dependency injection, guice
infosec, security patterns
CMMI level-2
reputation and recommender engines / systems, trust networks
WebEOC, board building and communication to other systems
NIMS resource definitions, resource database, iBatis
websphere portal development
java application servers, servlet development, enterprise applications, web services,
SOA: some overhyped acronym
datamodels, database engineering, reverse engineering, roundtrip
tomcat, axis2, pojo
situational awareness
edxl
knowledge management
victim tracking, patient tracking systems
sbeocs - strategic bio-defense emergency operations and communications system, preplink
the symbol grounding problem
nims resource typing
revision control, configuration management, RCS, CVS, VSS, SVN
bespin, code in the cloud
semantic web
using synergy2 (aka synergy) to share mouse and keyboard, via software

these items came to mind while cleaning my desk and going through some old notes.

How to play SWF files

2009-09-04T10:06:00.004-04:00

This is so simple I don't even know why I was asked... google: how to play swf file

Just double-click and view it in your browser

(you may need to choose the program to use).

Or drag the swf file over and drop it on your browser icon (Chrome, Firefox, Safari.. even IE).

On windows, you can find some files in

C:\WINNT\Help\Tours\mmTour (or maybe C:\WINDOWS\Help\Tours\mmTour)

Where are some example .swf files on a mac?

The google search link above will give you more ways.

Hit #4 comes from Adobe, so is the 'official' answer, but there are a number of third-party utilities out there that may make playing more convenient.. or save videos to disk, etc.

In many cases, you can't just save a swf file from a website because they may have supplementary files, or allowing playing or website connected only when the swf comes from the website.

"Windows can't stop your Generic volume device because it is in use..."

2009-07-30T19:42:00.005-04:00

You've closed everything that could have it open, and you still get this message when trying to remove it.

Easiest solution:

From task manager (or process explorer), kill explorer.exe.

Your systray and start menu will go away..

From task manager (or process explorer), run explorer.exe.

It should come back, plus all the little widgets in the systray.

Or most of them.. most of the important ones.

Now selecting the 'safely remove device' should work.

If it doesn't... more solutions after I encounter this next.

update September 2010:
This is one of my most popular posts. Since I am now using a Mac, I haven't had this problem. (Sure, a Mac costs more, but consider how much time you spend annoyed, or dealing with windows popups, virus, malware, and trojan removal... windows really costs more of your time and is less productive.)

Did the above 'kill explorer' trick work for you?
Is Windows 7 better about this?
If so (or not), leave a comment... thx.

Synaptics touchpad suddenly stopped working (Vista laptop)

2009-07-25T15:52:00.002-04:00

I thought it was after I had unplugged an external USB mouse from it, after hitting the power key to suspend it. A couple days ago the synt_whatever.dll had crashed, so I lost the scroll features on the touchpad, but regular mouse movement and clicking were fine. I expected they would resume after a reboot. Also this day I had plugged into a projector (external video: Fn-F5), and at one point also hit mute (Fn-F8).

I tried rebooting a couple times--it's the Windows way--but that didn't make a difference.

Looked in the synaptics utility that shows in the systray--thought I saw something there about enabling touchpad/usb mouse simultaneously, and maybe a toggle would fix that. Nothing.

The device manager said everything was running fine. I figured I would probably have to uninstall and re-install drivers, because Windows just breaks, and this is something you have to accept.

Well, after a little search, seeing people had problems installing the driver, or the ALPS driver worked for them, I saw one that said 'try Fn-F7.'

Fn-F7 toggles the touchpad. Problem solved.

JAX-WS classes not generating in Eclipse

2009-07-22T16:38:00.004-04:00

I have a project that uses annotation processing + jaxws to generate WS interfaces,

but Eclipse (Flexbuilder) will forget about them.

I have to go in, toggle the 'use annotation processing' flag,

restart IDE,

toggle and hopefully it builds them this time so I can export a war file.

Server-side symptom:

Jul 22, 2009 3:45:24 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext listenerStart

SEVERE: Exception sending context initialized event to listener instance of class com.sun.xml.ws.transport.http.servlet.WSServletContextListener

com.sun.xml.ws.transport.http.servlet.WSServletException: WSSERVLET11: failed to parse runtime descriptor: runtime modeler error: Wrapper class com.blah.blah.jaxws.MyClass is not found. Have you run APT to generate them?

at com.sun.xml.ws.transport.http.servlet.WSServletContextListener.contextInitialized(WSServletContextListener.java:118)

at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.listenerStart(StandardContext.java:3764)

...

It seemed like I tried both combinations...

I check in windows explorer just to make sure the .apt_generated isn't there and not showing up.

I check the properties -- the folder is read-only (probably due to the VSS checkout); I turn this off.

Excellent... I don't see the .apt_generated folder there; perhaps its existence is fleeting.

But I do see generated classes in the build directory.

Oh, now I see .apt_generated at the project toplevel (not in src)...

so, it works.. probably was the folder permissions, there's definitely some bugginess here.

Capslock to control

2009-07-13T21:52:00.007-04:00

Back before IBM had a PC, most computer keyboards had the CTRL key to the left of the 'A', in the home row.

ADM3a keyboard, Hazeltine.. my TRS-80 didn't have it (I modded the keyboard, and wrote my own keyboard driver in assembly)

the way a keyboard was meant to be:

See wikipedia: Control key for more info and some history.. anyway, one of the first things I do on a computer to make it usable is fix it so the key to the left of 'A' functions as control.

For windows xp and since (maybe going back to win95 ?), a registry entry can fix this.

The following in a .reg is sufficient:

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layout]

"Scancode Map"=hex:00,00,00,00,00,00,00,00,02,00,00,00,1d,00,3a,00,00,00,00,00

A collection of .reg files for quick setting and resetting is here: howto geek windows key mappings.

And after you set it, you have to reboot for it to take effect, because this is windows. (I discovered going to the 'switch user' screen and coming back works.)

For X11, a small file for input to xmodmap(1) can do this; specific settings are included in the man page.

Flex Builder cannot locate the required debugger version of Flash Player

2009-07-13T18:36:00.003-04:00

It used to work, honest..

then after a couple weeks I try debugging my app from Flex Builder, and this dialog pops up:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\Macromed\Flash\Flash10b.ocx

Flex Builder cannot locate the required debugger version of Flash Player. You might need to install the debugger version of Flash Player 9 or reinstall Flex Builder.

Do you want to try to debug with the current version?

Uninstall and re-install? Maybe I just need a good reboot?

...

Well, the dialog box had a URL to adobe site. I think.

Anyway, go to Adobe Flash Player Support Center and look for

Adobe Flash Player 10 — Debugger Versions (aka debug players or content debuggers)

you may need to restart your browser, but it works right after that.

Did this help you?

Organization tools (a lazyweb request)

2009-05-12T13:57:00.007-04:00

this may read as incomplete / incoherent / stream of consciousness... it makes sense to me at the moment, I'll explain it later (or sooner, if you write, I'll clarify..).

a description of (certain aspects of) a tool that I think would be useful.

A tool to organize information.

Actually, different organizations: temporal, alphabetic, linked, conceptual, mindmap, spatial, geographical, geospatial.

but, also allow these organizations to be changed.

incremental refinement: I maybe tag a bunch of stuff as t01; later, i decide these can be either t02a or t02b. but, maybe i don't want to tag it all at once, i'd like to save my workflow (after being able to define it) to refine it... and visualize it, in various ways, various metrics.

info i create, info automatically crawled (searches, feeds, etc)

occasionally cull ("forgetting") this.

other large tasks in organization require some kind of workflow.

example: organize my digital pictures.

this includes:

- make a complete list (also: note any large gaps in numbering which may indicate an incompleteness; search dvd/cd backups for these

- i want to tag all my pictures, just for completeness. things like people, things, bugs, flowers, plants, fungi, etc. eventually i expect the computer to be able to do this to a large extent, similar to the face recognition that goole does wiht picasa(web)

- i want to geotag all my pictures. oh, assemble my gps .gpx files and sync those up (gpicsynch is good for this)

I should do this incrementally; eg, as I import each set of pictures, do tagging then... some of this would be easier if so. However, I also see how large-batch processing can be more consistent because you have in mind what the rules are (the tag dog v canine, the 'which one did i use before rule'). this implies some sort of meta-tools too that can organize your tags, give some historical perspective ("the tag 'canine' was used 42 times from mar-jun .."), renaming rules (everything tagged t03, ask whether it should be t03a or t03b).

you might tag your tags, create your own ontology or folksonomy for a task.

where are standard lists of tags? this is where taxonomical rules would be ideal.

data extraction, template filling for generation of facts.

so you're not just doing a google search and looking at results and clicking on documents,

but creating a knowledge base that you can come back to later.

instead of closing the tab or 'going back', rate in some way what interest it was

- worthless / unrelated

- good stuff

- not related, but interesting (sever / de-weigh from current interest, add to something else)

- worth further looking

- watch for changes

I think there is a set of tasks that can be done as part of the incremental workflow, and another set that may be better suited to large batch style works. This may vary by person, or by mood, and may change over time. You process a large batch and decidee "it would have been easier if I added that info at the time I created it" and at other times you may feel "I'm not going to do this now; I'll wait until I get a big batch and do everything later."

ways to select items of interest--search via any of the above organizations;

selected items are now 'in the workspace' associated with my particular 'task focus'.

tomorrow i may reuse this; a few weeks now i wouldn't mind being able to come back to this particular view. items in the particular view can be operated on, made more important, weighted, throw them together in a page with other attributes and put it out somewhere so google can find it...

links as first order types?

also while working, weighting/strength of the link.

spreading activation, associative memory--what is the query language?

these weights have a temporality, if i renew an interest from the past, then probably related items should also have a fairly high ranking.

what kind of learning can take place?

while i'm learning the computer can note and learn something about what i'm doing,

ask me some questions ("is this link similar? which is more X, A or B?").

maybe learn some rules about how to help me (the tripod links are pretty dumb, don't show me parked domain link farm pages even though it's in the top results, etc).

now,

some of these tools exist in some rudimentary fashion.

there are simple mindmaps.

there are the more advanced "semantic desktop" tools, for either viewing or authoring semantic web 'pages'.

i am interested in tool-building, but not necessarily tool-building for it's own use.

again, this needs to be incrementally easy so i can build a piece at a time,

or somewhat self-learning / taught / trained.

i am tired of being frustrated by machines that slow me down.

whatever happened to the mathematica-style notebooks that have dynamic info,

where you can have active formulae in them?

what happened to the memex?

I guess I will go off and look at what tools exist:

- JENA

- mozilla ubiquity

- piggybank and other firefox plug-ins for the semantic web

- stuff at w3c

- OWL and protege-related tools; kqml ?

- dublin core and related tools

I will try to post some links to these, if I find good summary pages,

or a new post. If you have something, please link.

I am posting this to the lazyweb.

lazyweb is the concept that if you wait long enough (or do enough searching)

someone will have built the thing that you need.

maybe someone will read this post and be inspired.

New cygwin install: "cannot create directory" for mountpoint

2008-12-15T12:01:00.000-05:00

I installed cygwin on a 'new' machine (well, a fresh disk, after Encryption Anywhere made my old one unsalvagable). After the install (and a reboot, I believe) a new bash window gave me this message:

cygwin mkdir: cannot create directory `/cygdrive/m': No such file or directory

where M: is the (network) path to my home directory (aka %HOMEDRIVE% in windows). M: was available, but I couldn't get to it from cygwin. Also, I couldn't manually mount it.

After doing some research, I didn't find a solution. People who weren't logged in to their domain at the time seemed to have the problem occasionally, but I was logged in. Maybe rebuilding the passwd/group files? It wasn't affecting me at the time; I had other things to do, so I put it on hold.

At some point, I rebooted, and the problem was fixed... kind of annoying for a problem to fix itself like that, but that's Windows for you--good enough that you sometimes forget it's a substandard operation system.

Maybe this will help someone else from wasting time on a problem that might be fixed by rebooting Microsoft Windows. Remember when you had to reboot after any change?

Accessing non-selectable text

2008-12-02T13:41:00.000-05:00

When installing new software, or signing up for a new service, I actually read the license. Sometimes. For services, especially financial ones (such as credit cards) it can pay to read the fine print. I usually save a copy of the text in a file so can refer to it in the future, in case I need to.

When installing programs, there is usually a window with a scrollbar and a whole lot of text. I find it easier to copy and paste it to another (bigger) window.

Problem: sometimes you can't copy the text out of the box.
I remember a few years ago some tool or tweak on Windows that would let you copy the text from arbitrary dialog boxes (this was useful for getting error messages). Does that tool still exist/work? Something to dig deeper into the objects on the screen.

Unified mashup convergent dashboards

2008-10-23T12:37:00.002-04:00

I had an idea, but I forget what it was.

Oh well, I have plenty of other ideas still.

Ubiquity

related ffox plugins

blogrovr doesn't work

what is the point of glide?