Eric Covener’s Journal

Something odd in my 64-bit RHEL install left me without any of the 32-bit runtime. I had never used yum before, and always hand-resolved RPM dependencies when I needed to meet something like a WebSphere prerequisite.

• Mount your install media
• mkdir /tmp/repo
• cp -r /media/dvdrw/packages/*.rpm /tmp/repo
• (cd /tmp/repo && rpm -i createrepo* *deltarpm*
• createrepo .
• cat > /etc/yum.repos.d/local.repo
  [local]
  gpgcheck=0
  name=localrepo
  baseurl=file:///tmp/repo
  ^D

Now e.g. yum install libXp.i686 will grab up all the basic 32-bit low-level stuff for you.

IBM HTTP Server 8.0, IBM’s webserver based on Apache HTTP Server, is part of the WebSphere Application Server Beta: https://www14.software.ibm.com/iwm/web/cc/earlyprograms/websphere/wsasoa/.

A list of changes in this release is available herehttp://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/wasinfo/v8r0/index.jsp?topic=/com.ibm.websphere.ihs.doc/info/ihs/ihs/cihs_newfunction.html. Only the new installer and new architecture support are probably of interest in the beta, along with the added flexibility in the SSLCipherSpec directive.

http://packages.debian.org/sid/moreutils

This is a growing collection of the Unix tools that nobody thought to write long ago, when Unix was young.

So far, it includes the following utilities:

– combine: combine the lines in two files using boolean operations
– ifdata: get network interface info without parsing ifconfig output
– ifne: run a program if the standard input is not empty
– isutf8: check if a file or standard input is utf-8
– lckdo: execute a program with a lock held
– mispipe: pipe two commands, returning the exit status of the first
– parallel: run multiple jobs at once
– pee: tee standard input to pipes
– sponge: soak up standard input and write to a file
– ts: timestamp standard input
– vidir: edit a directory in your text editor
– vipe: insert a text editor into a pipe
– zrun: automatically uncompress arguments to command

somewhere along the line, it became common for linux/IA32 systems to have a /usr/bin/pstack that wasn’t just a scripted gdb session! Cool stuff.

Lots of people quickly realize that Lotus Notes has it’s own unusual take of the systems default web browser — the only option it provides other than some built-in mozilla-based browser that uses its own awful eclipse workbench.

http://biounix.blogspot.com/2010/03/setting-default-browser-for-lotus-notes.html finally clued me in to how to change this thing (it’s not in synch with gnome, kde, or any alternative in /usr/bin).

$ xdg-mime query default text/html
firefox.desktop
$ xdg-mime default google-chrome.desktop text/html
$ xdg-mime query default text/html
google-chrome.desktop


And Lotus Notes complies!

i miraculously was able to fix my jammed (all the way pushed up to the steering wheel, of course) electric drivers-side seat with my own two little hands. Electrical snafu aside, The honoroable engineers at toyota made each of the 4 14mm nuts in it’s own uniquely challenging orientation.

I felt like a combination of Andy Duphresne and a triumphant contestant on Ninja Warrior when I hoisted the seat out of the car, only to flop it over and stare at the electrical guts.

I was very surprised that neither FAQ for this failure was actually the problem, but there was a blatant disconnected line that did the trick.

You don’t have to do this yourself with LD_PRELOAD, although it doesn’t really save you much!

--wrap=symbol
Use a wrapper function for symbol. Any undefined reference to symbol will be resolved to "__wrap_symbol". Any undefined
reference to "__real_symbol" will be resolved to symbol.

This can be used to provide a wrapper for a system function. The wrapper function should be called "__wrap_symbol". If it
wishes to call the system function, it should call "__real_symbol".

Here is a trivial example:

void *
__wrap_malloc (size_t c)
{
printf ("malloc called with %zu\n", c);
return __real_malloc (c);
}

If you link other code with this file using --wrap malloc, then all calls to "malloc" will call the function "__wrap_malloc"
instead. The call to "__real_malloc" in "__wrap_malloc" will call the real "malloc" function.

You may wish to provide a "__real_malloc" function as well, so that links without the --wrap option will succeed. If you do
this, you should not put the definition of "__real_malloc" in the same file as "__wrap_malloc"; if you do, the assembler may
resolve the call before the linker has a chance to wrap it to "malloc".

at com.ibm.lex.lap.lapimport.LAPConstants.(LAPConstants.java:53)

.. means install libXp before using IBM JRE 1.4.2

http://www.collegian.psu.edu/archive/2010/01/20/president_ranks_within_top_10.aspx

Penn State President Graham Spanier is one of the highest paid public university presidents, according to a recent report — but rankings can be deceiving, officials said.

The ranking, published by The Chronicle of Higher Educa-tion, lists Spanier as receiving the sixth-highest base salary at $620,000 for the 2008-09 academic year. Ohio State University President E. Gordon Gee was ranked first, with a base salary of $802,125.

But Spanier’s name did not appear on the list of the top 10 public university presidents in terms of total compensation, as he does not receive many of the benefits included in extra incentive packages offered at other universities, Penn State spokeswoman Annemarie Mountz said.

..

“Look at all of the perks and incentives included in other peoples’ salaries,” Mountz said. “None of that is applicable to President Spanier. He has his salary, and then beyond that, he lives in a university house. He doesn’t get a housing allowance, and he drives a university-owned car.”

My DNS had been pretty laggy lately, on the order of seconds, and playing on he command line with /usr/bin/host it would always hang between grabbing the A record and all the MX info.

I told my router to ignore the DNS servers in the DHCP response, and instead uses googles 8.8.8.8, 8.8.4.4 servers. Zippy once again!

For some reason even my local dnsmasq didn’t get in the way of debugging, which it should have!