My Hacking Journal

Moving to wordpress

2009-06-07T16:14:00.002+09:00

This blog has moved to a new location: http://titan2x.wordpress.com/. Please update your links, thanks!

problems with getenv in Solaris

2009-04-23T14:54:00.001+09:00

Had a strange issue just now. Although the output of getenv was not NULL, any attempts to access the memory pointed to by the returned pointer resulted in segmentation fault. The cause was the missing #include line, which is pretty easy to spot if you look at the build output.

distrowatch

2009-03-13T09:00:00.001+09:00

Vyatta software is a complete, ready-to-use, Debian-based distribution that is designed to transform standard x86 hardware into an enterprise-class router / firewall. http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=vyatta

Weird errors in Windows

2009-02-02T10:50:00.003+09:00

When trying to uninstall an application (called FarPoint, a sleek spreadsheet development platform), I got an error that I need .NET framework 2.0 or higher to use this uninstaller. Which is weird, because I do have .NET 2.0, and the software would not work without it anyway in the first place. The solution was, I had to run the uninstaller as administrator. Even though the application was not

Interesting uses for a USB LED screen

2008-12-25T09:46:00.002+09:00

# Time since last paycheck # Time until next paycheck # Salary graph tracking COL index # Company stock price # Current project status (your own little twitter) # Sharon: Not that I'm asking for a date, but you're totally hot. Just so you know. # Yes, I'd like a donut, thank you # Anyone know where the specification has gotten off to? # Can I bring my cat to work? # The perfume level today is

Moving away from Ubuntu

2008-11-28T05:25:00.008+09:00

I stopped using Ubuntu/Gnome on my home desktop about half a year ago, to see how the other distros and KDE are doing, and to become skilled at using them too and reach a comfort level similar to that of Ubuntu/Gnome. Below is the summary of my experiences and impressions so far. But first, it is important to mention my basic expectations from a system. Responsive, snappy, doesn't crash Audio

Search and replace in all buffers in vim

2008-11-16T19:09:00.002+09:00

:bufdo %s/pattern/substitution/ge | update

flashcards

2008-10-24T23:33:00.003+09:00

Finally I released my flashcards project. Here it is: http://flashcards.titan2x.com/ The signup function is the only missing piece. By the time google finds the site, it should be ready. After that, I will optimize and enhance it gradually, and based on user growth. Get up your ass and go build your vocabulary!

dvd burning from the command line

2008-10-19T22:44:00.001+09:00

sudo apt-get install dvd+rw-tools growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/scd0 -R -J -pad path_to_dir

Converting-mounting daa files with wine

2008-10-17T18:28:00.003+09:00

Downloaded a bunch of c++ books but the files were in DAA. Found a neat utility called daa2iso developed by some dude, but it didn't work. The only alternative at the moment was PowerISO, a windows tool. I thought it's time to give wine a shot. And it worked brilliantly too. Installed wine (didn't have it yet) Ran: wine PowerISO38.exe. A window popped up, looking like a regular windows

My terabyte raid1

2008-10-15T18:41:00.005+09:00

My raid1 array with two 120G disks was getting filled up lately, so when usage reached 90% I decided it's time to upgrade. To my great surprise prices have gone much lower than I expected: I got two 1T disks for the same price as the old 120G disks -- $100 apiece. It's been a long time since I setup my raid1 array so I had to read up on man mdadm and mdadm --help. Created a full backup of the

Howto reset mediawiki password in mysql

2008-10-12T10:29:00.001+09:00

update user set user_password = md5(concat(user_id, '-', md5('kiew7eiT'))) where user_name = 'WikiSysop';

Installing Plone in hardy

2008-10-12T08:33:00.002+09:00

I've installed Plone in Ubuntu dozens of times. Ever since hoary (possibly even from warty), this was a matter of apt-get install plone-site. Something is broken in hardy because this step doesn't create a Zope instance (the container instance for Plone) but it should. That is, the directories /var/lib/zope2.9/instance/ and /var/lib/zope2.10/instance/ were both empty, so when starting zope, it

Adding a user to Zope

2008-10-12T08:12:00.001+09:00

/var/lib/zope2.9/instance/plone-site/bin/zopectl adduser user password

archive and restore with cpio

2008-10-04T00:25:00.002+09:00

Create archive: 1. cd to the directory that you want to archive 2. find . -xdev -print0 | cpio -oa0V | gzip > path_to_save.cpio.gz Restore from archive: 1. cd to the directory into which you want to restore the files 2. gzip -cd path_to_save.cpio.gz | cpio -imV See? Easy as abc ;-)

Mouse wheel in vmware

2008-10-03T16:07:00.003+09:00

I used to have these lines saved back in the days when mice with wheel were new and did not work out of the box. In the past 5+ years the notes became perfectly unnecessary so I even deleted them. Now the issue is back! In vmware, mouse wheel sometimes doesn't work. The good old fix in /etc/X11/xorg.conf is: Option "Protocol" "IMPS/2" Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"

Fun stuff from today's slashdot assortment

2008-09-25T10:46:00.002+09:00

cd /usr/src/linux && grep -Eri 'fuck|shit' 404 error page. I'm going to change the http error pages to this on my websites.

Bazaar 1.6

2008-08-29T14:57:00.002+09:00

The Bazaar for windows is uber-cool. It includes TortoiseBZR, with nicer folder icons than all the other Tortoise***. Come to think of it, I should write an article Version Control with Bazaar for one of the linux magazines.

bzr-xmloutput install problems

2008-08-28T17:00:00.002+09:00

I needed a newer version of the xmloutput plugin for the Eclipse Bazaar plugin. I installed Bazaar 1.6 with the standalone installer, which has a bug and the bzr.exe in it doesn't include some required files. There are two workarounds. 1. Re-install Bazaar with the python installer, that is, download the source, untar, and python setup.py install 2. Copy [python]/lib/SimpleXMLRPCServer.py to

ImageMagick tips

2008-08-26T13:37:00.007+09:00

Recently I started playing around with WordPress. http://tokyodinner.titan2x.com/ The free WordPress themes are absolutely cool. I picked modmat for the above blog. Although the theme was pretty cool by itself, it was not perfect for my purposes. Mainly, I wanted to change the 2-column sidebar into 1-column. Soon it became clear that css tweaking won't be enough, I need to slice and dice the

Ubuntu upgrade hell

2008-07-06T12:35:00.003+09:00

I'm deeply disappointed. My GF booted into her feisty system after a fairly long time. It was expected that there would be a lot of package upgrades, there were 80. Nothing wrong with that so far, though it took more than an hour, while I've seen several of my other ubuntu systems dist-upgrade over 100 packages in a matter of minutes, but whatever. After the package upgrades a reboot was

Force gmail in English

2008-07-05T10:57:00.002+09:00

Recently Gmail shows up in Japanese. (Because I'm in Japan.) To force English language append to the URL &hl=en

Updating files in /dev after partition manipulations

2008-07-01T18:04:00.004+09:00

After editing the partition table, to have the proper device files created under /dev, run: partprobe. (It is in parted package.) After creating filesystems, to have the proper files created under /dev/disk/by-uuid, run: /etc/init.d/udev restart. To find the uuid of filesystems, run: blkid. (In ubuntu.)

2008-07-01T13:27:00.002+09:00

bMighty.com Cloud Computing's Strengths Play To Smaller Companies' Needs June 24, 2008 If cloud computing offers significant benefits to IT departments in the enterprise, it's an absolute godsend to small and midsize companies. Instead of making do with a small, under-resourced IT staff trying to emulate the productivity of billion-dollar IT outfits, smaller companies can now access

Set the default JRE in Ubuntu

2008-06-28T08:49:00.001+09:00

sudo update-alternatives --config java (And in case you forgot, java packages are called like sun-java6-jdk.)

Hosting Bazaar projects on Launchpad 3

2008-06-28T08:43:00.003+09:00

Adding to the previous posts... Earlier I pushed one of my repositories to my Bazaar account like this: bzr push lp:~janos-gyerik/scripts/software-cache As a result of that, the following page got created too: https://code.launchpad.net/scripts At first I thought that's a little creepy. But well, it's good public exposure, I guess...

Hosting Bazaar projects on Launchpad 2

2008-06-15T17:23:00.003+09:00

Wow. Actually, you don't need to go through all that stuff I wrote in the last post. If you have a Launchpad account, and configured SSH public keys, you can simply push to Launchpad, anywhere! Like this: bzr push lp:~janos-gyerik/scripts/software-cache It takes a while for Launchpad to pick up the changes. So wait a little, and then you can fill in project details.

Hosting Bazaar projects on Launchpad

2008-06-15T08:38:00.003+09:00

What is Launchpad? Launchpad is a free software hosting and development website. We make it easy to collaborate across multiple projects. You can use it to Develop your custom Ubuntu packages. Host your projects in the Bazaar VCS. Of course, all the projects you host there will be public. Write operations are accomplished using SSH public keys. Setup steps: Login to Launchpad, go to the

BzrEclipse/Installation

2008-06-04T17:12:00.004+09:00

The instructions on Launchpad are excellent, of course. http://bazaar-vcs.org/BzrEclipse/Installation To check out a Bazaar project and make an Eclipse project from it: In Eclipse create a blank Java projectCheckout the Bazaar project in the Eclipse project directoryIn Eclipse refresh the project tree display with F5

rm -fr equivalent in dos

2008-06-04T17:02:00.000+09:00

rmdir /s/q

How to wget in the right language

2008-05-21T11:27:00.005+09:00

Some websites are smart and depending on your location they make assumption on the interface language. For example I'm in Japan and so when I go to google for the first time the page will be in Japanese. The same thing happens with this command: wget http://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/index.html?year=2008&country=26 -O calendar.html The output will be in Japanese, which is really wonderful

Lilo configuration when root on lvm in Sabayon

2008-05-20T11:30:00.002+09:00

image=/boot/kernel-genkernel-x86-2.6.22-sabayon label=gentoo read-only root=/dev/ram0 append="dolvm2 root=/dev/ram0 ramdisk=8192 real_root=/dev/lvg/sabayon quiet init=/linuxrc splash=silent,theme:sabayon CONSOLE=/dev/tty1 pci=nomsi" initrd=/boot/initramfs-genkernel-x86-2.6.22-sabayon

Installing VMware Server 1.0.x in hardy

2008-05-15T17:52:00.008+09:00

Of course you need the usual requirements: linux-headers-FLAVOR where FLAVOR is for example generic, server, etc. Instead of flavor it can be the exact kernel version (uname -r). gcc and g++ and inetd or xinetd On 64-bit platforms ia32-libs too, as this version of VMware is a 32-bit app. With the above and the vmware server tarball you usually would be able to build the vmware modules.

Installing bzr-svn in gutsy

2008-05-12T14:09:00.006+09:00

I already added the gutsy repository for bzr, but since the latest version of bzr-svn lives only in gutsy-backports for now, I had to add that as well, so I had these extra lines in /etc/apt/sources.list for these two packages: deb http://jp.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy-backports main restricted universe multiverse deb-src http://jp.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ gutsy-backports main restricted

grep in windows

2008-05-08T13:30:00.002+09:00

findstr in windows works similarly to grep in unix. For example you can do this: netstat -a | findstr 8000

VMware Server NAT nameserver

2008-05-05T11:11:00.002+09:00

Occasionally VMs configured with NAT interface in VMware server lose connectivity to the name server. The fix is to restart the "VMware NAT Service", after that DNS requests are forwarded correctly to the nameserver.

python, wow

2008-04-23T14:13:00.003+09:00

I'm learning Python now. Beautiful syntax. Powerfully expressive, and that in an intuitive way. Being a seasoned programmer well-versed in a score of languages I looked down at the idea of reading tutorials, but the Python tutorial turned out to be a very interesting reading, and definitely the best starting point. Check it out! Python Tutorial Python:notes in my wiki

Bazaar VS Subversion

2008-04-23T11:11:00.003+09:00

A Bazaar repository check-out contains the complete revision history. This has the advantage that the check-out itself can act as a repository and the disadvantage of more network data transfer during initial check-out. In Bazaar you cannot check-out subtrees of a repository. You always have to check-out the entire tree. This implies that Bazaar operations are more atomic than in Subversion. An

Set locale when running java programs

2008-04-09T10:55:00.000+09:00

java -Duser.language=ja MyClass

cifs

2008-04-02T13:39:00.002+09:00

Recently we installed a network drive. I mounted it as smbfs from a Linux system, but strangely after about an hour the mount fell apart and started to give me IO errors. An umount/mount temporarily fixed the problem but only for another hour. Then I got this tip to mount it as cifs. Worked fantastic hurray!

rsync - copy with progress monitor

2008-04-01T15:21:00.003+09:00

I always wanted to see the progress of a cp command. For example it can be quite frustrating when you copy huge files like VMware machines and the screen doesn't show anything for long minutes or hours. I really should get my ass up and learn how to use rsync, but for the time being simply copying files with progress monitor is good enough. These are two equivalent ways of recursively copying a

Ubuntu crapping out on me (crypt on raid)

2008-03-19T13:23:00.003+09:00

Shocker. Installing Gutsy 64-bit now to replace Windows 2003 Server. The installer looked pretty good. I was impressed by the option to create software raid partitions and encrypted partitions. I thought to myself: it can't be this easy. Yeap, sadly, it wasn't. Upon first boot, gutsy crapped out on me and dumped me into the rescue shell. The issue: fsck.ext3: No such file or directory while

Installing java and setting JAVA_HOME in Ubuntu

2008-03-18T22:46:00.005+09:00

Install Java 6 like this: (Note: the package is in multiverse) sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk Edit /etc/jvm, add this line to the top of the list: /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun Thanks to the above step, the java executable will find the right version of java. You can confirm this with java -version. However, setting JAVA_HOME is a completely different matter. These commands will detect set and

bazaar

2008-03-18T22:30:00.002+09:00

What is Bazaar? Bazaar is a distributed version control system that Just Works and adapts to the workflows you want to use. I read about this a few months back, but I quickly dismissed the idea. I simply didn't think it was feasible. Or useful to me. Until I read this on the Bazaar homepage: The purpose of decentralized revision control systems is to break the chain between the developer and

fping

2008-03-17T09:59:00.001+09:00

Flood ping. You specify the list of addresses on the command line. To generate the list of IP adresses you can use the -g flag and targets with netmask or significant bits like this. fping -g 192.168.11.0/24

Synchronize subversion repositories with svnsync

2008-03-06T02:41:00.005+09:00

I backup my svn repositories using svnadmin dump. From a dump like that a repository can be fully restored at any location via svnadmin load. I'm playing with the idea of hosting some of my repositories on Google, but then I won't be able to use svnadmin dump, my trusty backup method. However, snvsync looks promising as a suitable replacement. 1. Create a target repository with svnadmin create

Firefox in Gutsy

2008-03-05T10:20:00.003+09:00

In previous Ubuntu releases you could open different firefox profiles withfirefox -P your_other_profile_name As of Gutsy Gibbon, you accomplish the same by firefox -P your_other_profile_name -no-remote

Productivity tips...

2008-02-29T13:39:00.005+09:00

You can actually have Subversion repositories hosted on google for free... One thing to note though is that you cannot disable anonymous access. Suitable for open source projects though. I've been looking for a hassle-free way of giving anonymous access to some of my private repositories, this might be it! You can get started here: http://code.google.com/ While at it, also found some super

Desktop cube in Compiz-Fusion on Ubuntu

2008-02-03T01:11:00.001+09:00

I've been using Beryl for some time now, until Feisty, to be exact. To my surprise Gutsy no longer had packages for Beryl. Luckily it has Compiz. To access advanced settings such as the wonderful desktop cube, apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager. This will enable the menu option: System | Preferences | Advanced Desktop Effects Settings. Also notable that after enabling the desktop

Postfix+Amavis+ClamAV+SpamAssassin setup in FreeBSD

2007-11-12T10:16:00.001+09:00

A friend's sysadmin went missing so was left with a broken mail server that did not deliver anything. There are plenty of articles on doing this in Linux, the challenge was doing it in FreeBSD 5.4, when the latest stable version is 6.2. An excellent first reading: Linux Journal - Adding Clam Antivirus to Your Postfix Server Although an article for Linux, it explains well the setup steps that

Acrobat crashes a few seconds after opening a PDF...

2007-06-14T09:52:00.001+09:00

Scenario Acrobat crashes a few seconds after opening a PDF. Cause the acrobat updater... Resolution cd to acrobat plug-in directory (c:\program files\adobe\acrobat 8.0\acrobat\plug_ins) and rename updater.api to something else.

svn+ssh:// in windows revisited

2007-06-07T10:40:00.001+09:00

Oh well, SVN_SSH="c:/program files/putty/plink.exe" didn't work very well for me for two reasons: Every time a console window would pop up, that's kind of ugly. After some time it simply stopped working, somehow it could not connect to the repository server anymore, no idea why. So i downloaded TortoiseSVN for its tortoiseplink.exe file. The reason why I didn't start with this step is that I

svn+ssh:// in windows

2007-05-18T17:31:00.002+09:00

Whether I tried from a client like RapidSVN or from the command line, this is the error I got: svn: Can't create tunnel: The system cannot find the file specified. It would have been helpful if the message mentioned what file it was looking for, but whatever... ...even more surprisingly, google-ing didn't turn up a solution either... Luckily I remembered something about plink.exe ... The

Oracle Tips

2007-02-27T14:27:00.002+09:00

Environmental variables Essential ORACLE_HOME ORACLE_SID How to set them? If you don't know what these are supposed to be, take a look at /etc/oratab. A line like this: orcl:/opt/oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1:N means ORACLE_SID=orcl ORACLE_HOME=/opt/oracle/product/10.2.0/db_1

Installing Oracle in RHEL4

2006-10-19T00:27:00.000+09:00

Note: If you get stuck at any point, see bottom for troubleshooting tips! 1. up2date xorg-x11-deprecated-libs : libXp.so.6 is required by the installer 2. up2date gcc gcc-c++ libaio libstdc++-devel compat-libstdc++-33 sysstat : required by Oracle Create the oracle groups and user account: groupadd oinstall groupadd dba useradd -m -g oinstall -G dba oracle mkdir /opt/oracle chown

Installing RHEL4 in vmware

2006-10-17T07:56:00.000+09:00

The catch was that the RHEL4 installer needs two CDs and i wanted to use the downloaded images without burning them to physical CDs. So i created the virtual machine with two CDROMs linked to the two ISO images. It worked! The installer successfully found the second CD!

Replacing the hard drive of a G4 iBook and recovering user data

2006-10-17T02:01:00.000+09:00

It was my friend Joe's iBook. He kept it running all the time. But one day it just froze. (Btw, this happened shortly after he upgraded to iTunes7... Coincidence?) After restarting, the system wouldn't come up. So he took it to Mac. They said the hard drive is busted. They can replace it for $500. You would think it's natural that they either recover your data or return your busted hard drive,

etch -> dapper

2006-06-25T01:03:00.000+09:00

At last i decided it was time to migrate my thinkpad x31 from breezy badger to crazy crapper, err, dapper drake. Rather than doing a simple apt-get dist-upgrade, i chose a somewhat more difficult way. Since i don't have a cdrom, and since ubuntu stopped including a netboot folder in dapper's installer, i opted for an etch/debian netinstall and from there a apt-get dist-upgrade to dapper. Here's