Eric Covener’s Journal

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.

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 accepted an invitation to join the Apache HTTPD Project Management Committee (PMC)

http://www.apache.org/foundation/how-it-works.html#structure

PMC member is a developer or a committer that was elected due to merit for the evolution of the project and demonstration of commitment. They have write access to the code repository, an apache.org mail address, the right to vote for the community-related decisions and the right to propose an active user for committership. The PMC as a whole is the entity that controls the project, nobody else.

RoadRunner seems to have setup some crap to return the address of their search engine for invalid DNS lookups — unfortunately my resolver config is a little involved at home and _relies_ on a failure for address like ‘foo.bar’.

Somehow, opting out of their redirector service in their search engine page almost immediately changed the behavior of their DNS servers.

A pair of important LDAP authentication reliability issues are finally seeing the light of day with the release of 2.2.8. Good news to admins who need to piggyback on $bigco Active Directory or LDAP infrastructure for their webservers.

Apparently telling Wine to emulate win98 in $WINEPREFIX/config no longer cuts it for .9 beta — you have to set WINEPREFIX and launch winecfg. Setting this value (and DLL Overrides) via this UI changes registry files that actually have a bearing on runtime.

With winxp instead of win98, I get a crash on one of my systems when I open any file chooser (Save Attachment) in Notes. Without adding usp10.dll as a native library (i.e. use the DLL in my fake_windows install instead of the WINE version) I get an abend at startup.

Did you know that hitting CONTROL+BREAK actually can rescue you when notes is hanging due to an unresponsive domino server.

It’s a fact

To use the IBM VPN (MTS — managed tunnel service) under linux, you’re required to run some binary code from AT&T that also requires a very tiny patch to the linux kernel to operate (the patch allows for heartbeat replies to come back to the attvpnctl daemon and not get dropped by the kernel).

If you try to use the VPN under a vanilla kernel, you are quickly booted for missing a heartbeat. Apparently it’s only the client-side daemon that cares about the heartbeat!

A fine hacker at work has replaced some of the ASM instructions in the binary to fool the (poorly-supported by ATT) vpn client, so that people can now use stock kernels! Wahoo!.