FEBRUARY 28TH, 2011
By ADMIN
Deploying applications is not my favorite task. I don’t do it often and every time I’m not really sure what the bloody command was. So, here I go, taking down notes on what I need to do to get my application up and running from scratch.
First off, I decided to use a Turnkey Linux Tomcat on Apache appliance as it contains all I need and provides some nifty and easy to use tools. Not to forget, it’s the minimal configuration and configured to check for updates automatically to keep security risks to a minimum. But the main point for Turnkey Linux is the ability to deploy their appliances onto Amazons Web Services. Sweet, that will allow me to familiarize with just one installation and simply follow these steps on an EC2 instance. It even gives me the ability to backup and restore from local to cloud instances.
The specific steps involved to get it working locally:
- Download from http://www.turnkeylinux.org/tomcat-apache. In my case it came as version 11.1
- Unzip and run using VMWare Player or Workstation (or use one of the other formats)
- Follow the initial steps to set passwords for the different accounts used
- Call up the manager at https://[SERVERIP]/manager
- Deploy a WAR file (created for example by using “mvn package”) using the “WAR file to deploy” Form. A new application will be created from that WAR and deployed automatically
- The one and only tricky part was the mapping configuration. Since Apache is running in front of Tomcat, it will answer all incoming requests. To have it forward these requests to your application, the Apache-Tomcat-Connector has to know about that. Edit the configuration as follows:On your console (of the VM): nano /etc/tomcat6/mod_jk.confAdd the following to lines to the configuration:
JkMount /yourapplication ajp13_worker
JkMount /yourapplication/* ajp13_worker
Note: Yourapplication is the path your application is listed under in the Tomcat Manager.
Save and close the file with CTL-X and answering YES to the question whether to save the changes
- Restart apache with /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
- Voila, that’s it, you can find your application running now under https://[SERVERIP]/yourapplication
FEBRUARY 24TH, 2011
By ADMIN
I really like that sight when calling up the Apple Store to buy a MacBook Pro as it says
We are busy updating the store for you and will be back shortly.
Why is that so great, another Fanboy waiting to get his toy? Nope, not in my case, but still were looking at getting at least one Mac to be able to build iOS software. Unlike other products you have to have MacOS to be able to to do so. Second point my beloved Dell XPS M1330 is now getting a little to slow for all my work, so instead of investing money into upgrading it I decided to get a new one. Boys and their toys. Was about time… 
So, soon I’ll be able to compare current Mac and OS X to my previous experiences with Windows (from NT till 7), Ubuntu, Debian and earlier versions of OS X. Maybe it’s interesting enough to post here about experiences from a relative neutral point of view.
Anyway, I’m looking forward to having a new toy at hands soon. By the looks of it, just a couple of minutes away.
JANUARY 26TH, 2009
By ADMIN
Seriously, this is pretty annoying. All the sudden I found Norton Security Scan on my Notebook (Vista Business 32Bit) and am able to deinstall it. It does come back after each reboot. That is no Antivirus Software anymore and deletes Norton of my list of trusted Software vendors. This is truly annoying as well as concerning. I am afraid this could be some kind of virus hidden in these files.
But I won’t stand that and therefore hope to find a way to get rid of it. And I gonna record the steps here that lead to success. Let’s get started with looking at Nortons Homepage. Nothing on the homepage about this misterious behaviour. Support? Nope. Search? Nope. Ok, so they are doing this on purpose? Seems so. Well, let’s google for a solution. First post search for “norton security scan vista can’t deinstall” looks promising: Unable to Uninstall Norton Security Scan – Something’s Broken.
Well, that’s exactly my problem. And some links to solutions. Let’s start with getting rid of the job that does reinstall at each boot. Go to C:\Windows\Tasks. I found a file “Norton Security Scan for daniel.job”. Delete it. And then deinstall Norton again. And restart to see if we were successful.
Not too shabby for just a quick guess it might only be this bloody job. Restarted an no Norton Security Scan on the Desktop. Well, let’s hope that really was it. But seems so. Still, where did it come from and was it supposed to work that way? Don’t like it…
Update: Bugger that. It’s back. So, gonna have to follow one of the other posts. Will get back with hopefully better news soon.
Update #2: Fixed it. Following the instructions in the above linked Google Groups discussion I was able to get rid of it without touching the registry by deleting the Norton files and folder in USERNAME/AppData/Local/Temp. Additionally disable the Task “Norton Security Scan for daniel” via “Control Panel – Administrative Tools – Task Scheduler”. I did set it to disabled. Voila!
OCTOBER 26TH, 2008
By ADMIN
Ok, we’ve done it before with a Thinkpad and it worked out pretty well. So, why not do it again, especially on this really neat little laptop with plenty of disk space and the previous issues with Vista booting up into a loop of blue screens due to driver issues for the hard disk.
Installation of Ubuntu
And the process itself is really easy as Ubuntu 8.10 does it all by itself.
- Insert disk and boot up into Live distribution
- Doubleclick the INSTALL shortcut and follow the instructions.
In that process Ubuntu even asks you to import your Vista settings (documents and some applicable settings), reorganizes your partitions to free space for its own required partitions (though I did not like that a hundred percent). After the first start you follow some of the guides and install restricted hardware drivers, codecs and of course the software you need. And that was it. It did works just fine. MediaDirect works fine and under Ubuntu the Media direct button starts my Music program (Rythmbox by default).
Share Thunderbird Mail and Profile between Ubuntu and Vista
And to save some space I of course did not import all my files, but link to them from the regarding folders. To make it even more efficent I share my Thunderbird profile between these two OS. I love Evolution, but Thunderbird caught up a lot especially with improved Lightning (the calendar plugin).
All you really need is the Mozilla wiki page on Thunderbird profiles. Here are the steps to execute to share the profiles:
- Locate the position of your profil
e in Vista:
%AppData%\Thunderbird\Profiles\xxxxxxxx.default\
resolves for me to
C:\Users\dell\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\cyprt14e.default
- The profile in Ubuntu is located in
~/.thunderbird/xxxxxxxx.default/
- Go to the folder ~/.thunderbird and edit the profile.ini
- Replace the path to the local Thunderbird profile with the Vista one located on the mounted C-Drive
Path=/media/disk/Users/dell/AppData/Roaming/Thunderbird/Profiles/cyprt14e.default
- Last but not least, set the isRelative to false by placing a 0 instead of the 1
My profile.ini does now look like that:
[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1
[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=0
Path=/media/disk/Users/dell/AppData/Roaming/Thunderbird/Profiles/cyprt14e.default
And that is it. Start Thunderbird and all your account and plugin settings should work just fine and out of the box.
AUGUST 29TH, 2008
By ADMIN
UPDATE: I ended up replacing the original harddisk with a Samsung model of the same size. The original disk though just works perfectly now as a backup medium in an external case.
Just got my new Laptop (the Thinkpad got stolen), a really nice DELL XPS M1330. It looks awesome, has really good performance and is the most leightweight laptop I ever possessed. My first experiences were discouraging as the pre-installed Vista automatically updated itself. So far so good (yes, we like up-to-date systems), unfortunately after reboot a bluescreen kept it from starting. But luckily I found a way around that by changing two small settings in the BIOS. Specifically the way the Harddisk is configured. Changed it from AHCI to ATA mode for SATA. Not sure how this afffects performance, but hey, rather less than 100% from something than 100% of nothing.
Two steps are required to change settings, first disable the cache, second change from AHCI to ATA. Save and happy working again.
AUGUST 13TH, 2008
By ADMIN
That kinda sucks. Someone broke into our flat and stole my two laptops (working and private one) and my camera. Bastards! And of course no backups from the last 7 month and no insurance either. Well, lesson learned and as soon as I got the money I will go and think hard over my new laptop. So probably in a couple of years. And it will be probably a Mac coz that will allow me to do all the funky Linux stuff along with using my favorite Adobe products. But different story. Read more »
AUGUST 1ST, 2008
By ADMIN
I was installing Eclipse via Synaptic Package Manager and loaded the PHPEclipse extension afterwards. Unfortunately there was a bug that prevented the PHP Editor from working. And as I saw there was an Eclipse 3.4 (codename: ganymede) release, I thought it is about time to upgrade. But how to do without the help of our beloved package manager? Too easy, really.
Read more »
Finally fixed that issue today. A major pain as after an update (as usual the update manager gives a hint for new updates which I as usual followed) all my panels disappeared and I therefore could not acess any programs nor knew what to do. Read more »
Pidgin is a multi-protocol chat client that I use basically for my MSN contacts only. It did its job pretty well so far. Until some weeks ago after an update it stopped working. I never really figured out what the problem is as I merely use Skype, but now needed to contact some people using the MSN protocol. So I started a little investigation and found a work around.
UPDATE 16/07/2008: There are two solutions described here, the second one comes from a comment and is actually – if it works – the much nicer Read more »
Since upgrading to Ubuntu 8.04 I am running Firefox in its latest version 3. At the beginning it was the beta 5, in between RC2 and now the final version. At the beginning I found some issues with some websites, for example the typo3 backend and simply ignored it and used Opera instead. But it seems there is more behind it than just initial hickups as I found more and more sites apparently incompatible to the new Javascript engine.
Read more »
