Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Selling your old electronics

Image representing iPhone as depicted in Crunc...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..
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Thursday, October 14, 2010

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

[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.
  1. 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.
  2. 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).
  3. 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.
  4. 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 ?
  5. 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?
  6. "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
  7. 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.

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Tuesday, October 5, 2010

OSX: Constant disk activity after attaching a disk to Mac

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?


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Friday, September 17, 2010

Websphere portal server and Lotus Web Content Management performance tuning tips

an illustration of a plunge poolImage 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.
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'.
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Friday, August 13, 2010

Add ogg support to iTunes on Mac OS X

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.)

  1. Quit iTunes
  2. 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
  3. Copy it in to /Library/QuickTime
  4. [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.

Saturday, June 19, 2010

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

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?

Monday, June 14, 2010

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

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.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

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

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....

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

possible copyright infringement involving your Verizon Online account.


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".

Thursday, June 3, 2010

iTunes: The Disc Burner is Busy

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.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Setup sshd on cygwin in 4 minutes

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.
  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. now install as a service:
    cygrunsrv.exe -S sshd
    when asked for value of CYGWIN, you can give:
    binmode tty ntsec

  4. 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 .

Monday, April 19, 2010

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

[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.

Friday, March 26, 2010

Spotlight notes, and indexing with FireFox

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:
  1. no plugins or addons, like sxipper or adblock
  2. 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.

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Restoring a Mac from Time Machine -- some tips

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.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Verizon FiOS Actiontec router firmware update

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?

Thursday, March 18, 2010

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

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.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

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

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.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

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

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.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Why does my battery charger flash ?

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):
  1. charger is wrong: does not sense voltage/charge consistently.
  2. device model of how batteries operation is not right: a charge of the battery may change its characteristic faster than expected
  3. one or more of the charging slots on the left have an issue.
  4. 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.