CheckPoint VPN-1 SecureClient on Snow Leopard

It turns out that the CheckPoint VPN-1 SecureClient for Leopard (OSX 10.5) doesn't work on Snow Leopard (OSX 10.6) due to differences between the two versions in the kernel and the way kextload works.Harald has a blog entry detailing how to fix the Leopard package so it installs on Snow Leopard and then fix the installed files so they properly run as well.  He alludes to a method to fix the package itself so you can install it on multiple Macs without manually making those changes.

I took it upon myself to modify the package and am providing it here.  Feel free to use it at your own risk.  You can verify the authenticity of the file by running the following command to get its checksum:

cksum SecureClient-VPN-1.zip


You should get the following output:


3505974925 22321216 SecureClient-VPN-1.zip

Boot Camp x64 is Unsupported on this Computer Model

Apple says that only certain models of Mac are x64 compatible when using Bootcamp 3.0 that comes with Snow Leopard and possibly Leopard.  Imagine my surprise when my 17" MacBook Pro wasn't one of them.  I'd hoped their flagship portable would be on the list.  I got the somewhat curt error message "Boot Camp x64 is Unsupported on this Computer Model" and the Bootcamp installer refused to continue.  The solution turned out to be simple.  I located the bootcamp64.msi file on the Snow Leopard disc and ran it in Vista compatibility mode.  Everything installed just fine.  So there, Apple!

OSX and /etc/resolv.conf

I recently went back to a Mac laptop and encountered an interesting issue.  I needed to make some changes to /etc/resolv.conf to reflect a modified search path and since /etc/resolv.conf is a symlink to /private/etc/resolv.conf I edited the latter file.  All was well until I connected to a different network.  Now my /private/etc/resolv.conf file, which clearly states that it's an auto-generated file, wasn't updated resulting in the "host" command (among other things) breaking.  After posting on Apple's forums I ended up answering my own question.

/private/etc/resolv.conf is itself a symlink to /var/run/resolv.conf which is the file that is auto-generated.  I ended up discovering that after looking at the /private/etc/resolv.conf file in my oldest Time Machine backup.  That'll learn me.

Accessing the KDE Wallet from the Cmdline

I needed to write a script that would contact my Exchange server at work via IMAP and list all the messages in the Calendar folder. The idea was to see if it was possible to perform a one-way sync from the Exchange server to a specific calendar in Kontact. I was going to embed my IMAP password in the script - security hole, I know - but we have a password policy that requires the password to change every 30 days. Since I didn't want to edit the script every month I decided to see if it was possible to use the password for kmail that's already stored in my KDE wallet.

I didn't have any luck finding a perl interface to the KDE wallet. However, thanks to the good folks at #kde on freenode, I found that the KDE wallet - and lots of other applications as well - expose their interfaces over D-Bus. This was the first time I'd dealt with D-Bus so it took some getting used to but I figured out how to read my kmail password from my KDE wallet. KDE comes with the handy qdbus program that allows command-line testing of the D-Bus interface.

What follows are step-by-step instructions on how to use qdbus to open your KDE wallet and read your kmail password. I'll incorporate this into my one-way sync experiment using the Net::DBus perl module but I wanted to put this out there in case someone else was looking at that.

Introduction to qdbus
A quick intro to qdbus before we get started so you can explore other options instead of just kwalletd:

The following command shows all applications exposing a DBus interface:

$ qdbus

:1.50
org.gtk.vfs.Daemon
:1.51
:1.52
:1.54
org.kde.kwalletd
:1.56
org.kde.printer-applet-3206
:1.57
net.update-notifier-kde-3203
:1.58

The numbers and strings refer to applications, however since most applications expose a recognizable string it's common to use just the strings and ignore the numbers.

The following command lists all the DBus paths exposed by the kwalletd application:

$ qdbus org.kde.kwalletd
/
/MainApplication
/modules
/modules/kwalletd

The /MainApplication path is mainly used when you want to interact with the application itself and you'll find many applications that expose a /MainApplication path. I haven't explored this much but it looks like it should be interesting.

With that introduction to qdbus you should have enough to explore further on your own.

Getting a Password from a KDE Wallet
The following steps will open your default KDE wallet and get your kmail password. Each step will have an explanation, the command issued and the output of that command.

We will use the /modules/kwalletd path in the DBus interface for org.kde.kwalletd for all our password-getting needs. You can get a list of all the methods and signals exposed in the /modules/kwalletd path by using the following command:

$ qdbus org.kde.kwalletd /modules/kwalletd

method bool org.kde.KWallet.isOpen(QString wallet)
method bool org.kde.KWallet.isOpen(int handle)
method bool org.kde.KWallet.keyDoesNotExist(QString wallet, QString folder, QString key)
method QString org.kde.KWallet.localWallet()
method QString org.kde.KWallet.networkWallet()
method int org.kde.KWallet.open(QString wallet, qlonglong wId, QString appid)
method int org.kde.KWallet.openAsync(QString wallet, qlonglong wId, QString appid, bool handleSession)
method int org.kde.KWallet.openPath(QString path, qlonglong wId, QString appid)

Formatting's a bit messed up going forward. Not sure why :-(

However, let's get to work obtaining the password. First, we will open the default KDE wallet - called kdewallet. We will call the org.kde.KWallet.open method which expects a wallet name string, what appears to be a wallet id (similar to a file handle it seems) and finally an application id string. We will use "kdewallet" as the wallet name since that's the name of the default wallet in KDE. We don't know the value of the wallet id so we'll just specify 0. The application id is interesting because KDE wallet prompts the currently logged in user with the application id of any applications that call the org.kde.KWallet.open method which we're abbreviating to just open since that uniquely identifies it in the method list for the /modules/kwalletd path. Specifying a meaningful id here goes a long way to helping the user click on "Allow", "Allow Once" or "Allow Never". With all that in mind, let's use the following command:

$ qdbus org.kde.kwalletd /modules/kwalletd org.kde.KWallet.open kdewallet 0 "KOrganizer-Exchange 1-way Sync"

470467109

This results in popping up a dialog box like so:


For the purpose of these experiments, I chose "Allow Once". Once I've allowed it, the qdbus call returns a wallet id - similar to a file handle - that we'll use in all our other method calls. I did see that if I waited too long the dialog box remains visible but qdbus times out. However, the next time you make the org.kde.KWallet.open call it returns a valid wallet id without prompting which means the permission grant is persistent. I'll have to deal with the timeouts in my perl code somehow. The next step is to see what's stored in my wallet. This isn't strictly necessary if you already know what you want but serves to walk through my own discovery process. Notice I'm passing in the newly given wallet id as well as the full application id as I sent earlier.

$ qdbus org.kde.kwalletd /modules/kwalletd folderList 470467109 "KOrganizer-Exchange 1-way Sync"

AdobeAIR
Amarok
Form Data
Network Management Passwords
bilbo
kblogger
kmail
mailtransports

Let's list the contents of the kmail folder:

$ qdbus org.kde.kwalletd /modules/kwalletd entryList 470467109 kmail "KOrganizer-Exchange 1-way Sync"

account-242017858
account-990222852

I know the account-242017858 account is the one I need the password from because the other account is older. So let's see how to retrieve that password:

$ qdbus org.kde.kwalletd /modules/kwalletd readPasswordList 470467109 kmail account-242017858 "KOrganizer-Exchange 1-way Sync"

account-242017858: [the password here]

There you go folks! That's all it takes. Please let me know if you found this helpful.

Mythbuntu 9.10 Diskless Frontend

With Mythbuntu 9.10 out (simultaneously with Ubuntu 9.10), apparently the "Diskless Server" plugin for the Mythbuntu Control Center is missing. According to this thread on the Ubuntu forums, it's because the developer who was working on that has had to step away from it for the moment. However, manually building the diskless client/server setup still works. That same thread has all the relevant information. Thanks blackoper!

Seagate FreeAgent USB Drives and Linux

I don't particularly like the Seagate FreeAgent line of drives. Ever since I tried the first one - a 500GB specimen - and it died on me while still connected to a machine running CentOS. One moment it was fine, the next it was gone or remounted read-only. I figured out it happened whenever the drive went idle. I've stayed away from them ever since.

Lately, however, I had to work with a FreeAgent drive again and this time I found this solution to the problem by trolav that uses the power of udev and sysfs to keep the drive working whether or not it's idle. While the solution is posted on an Ubuntu forum, it works well on CentOS 5 as well.

Determining 64-bitness of your CPU

It looks like /proc/cpuinfo isn't the only way to find out whether your CPU is 64bit capable. In an effort to determine the most reliable way to find out this information I came across this page. A quick summary:

If you see any output from the following command, you're running a 64-bit capable CPU.

grep ^flags /proc/cpuinfo | grep ' lm '

The following command, if it exists on your system, will tell you the width of your physical and logical CPUs:

lshw -C cpu | grep width

The lshw command is available natively on my Ubuntu 9.04 system and is available from rpmforge.org for RHEL5 and CentOS5 systems.

More Fun with PostgreSQL Date/Time

I got a number of comments from sasha2048 about the modulo, division and remainder operators for the interval data types in a previous blog entry. After playing with all the suggestions I figured it would be best to devote another blog post to the revised code for the functions and operators. The main quibble sasha2048 had with the functions was their precision - they were only good for intervals expressed in seconds and weren't able to handle more precise intervals e.g. in the millisecond range. Here, then, are the updated functions that have the following features:

1. The concept of a modulo operator for double precision numbers where a % b = (a - floor(a/b)*b)
2. Updated interval_divide and interval_modulo functions that store the extracted epoch from a timestamp into a double precision variable instead of an integer
3. Made all functions immutable and "return null on null input"
4. Added a default value for the "precision" argument in the round function - it's now set to 1 second so unless you specify a precision level, all round calls will round an interval to the nearest second.

-- Functions

create function interval_divide (interval, interval) returns double precision as $$

declare

firstEpoch constant double precision := extract(epoch from $1);

secondEpoch constant double precision := extract(epoch from $2);

begin

return firstEpoch / secondEpoch;

end

$$ language plpgsql immutable returns null on null input;

create function double_precision_modulo (double precision, double precision) returns integer as $$

begin

return ($1 - floor($1 / $2) * $2);

end

$$ language plpgsql immutable returns null on null input;

create function interval_modulo (interval, interval) returns interval as $$

declare

firstEpoch constant double precision := extract(epoch from $1);

secondEpoch constant double precision := extract(epoch from $2);

begin

return (firstEpoch % secondEpoch) * '1 second'::interval;

end

$$ language plpgsql immutable returns null on null input;

create function round (interval, interval default '1 second'::interval) returns interval as $$

declare

quantumNumber constant double precision := round($1 / $2);

begin

return $2 * quantumNumber;

end

$$ language plpgsql immutable returns null on null input;

-- Operators

create operator % (

leftarg = double precision,

rightarg = double precision,

procedure = double_precision_modulo

);

create operator / (

leftarg = interval,

rightarg = interval,

procedure = interval_divide

);

create operator % (

leftarg = interval,

rightarg = interval,

procedure = interval_modulo

);

NFS Error Messages

As part of a disaster-recovery exercise I needed to make available an NFS share to various machines that needed it. It turns out the Solaris machine designated to be the NFS server had the NFS service deleted from it for some reason. We ended up getting an error while mounting the NFS share that indicated we needed to restart /etc/init.d/nfs.server on the Solaris machine.

While looking for a concise guide to NFS error messages I found this guide. It's short and sweet and would make a great cheat-sheet when printed out.

International Talk Like a Pirate Day

Avast! It be that time of yearrrr when all me pirrate chums and I gatherr 'rround and celebrate our inner pirrates! Arrrr! Thank ye Cap'n Slappy and ol' Chumbucket for this rroisterous day! Enjoy!

The 5 A's


I'm a pirrate!


More from the Pirate Guys here.

CentOS 5.3 Upgrade Woes

I ran yum upgrade on a development box running CentOS 5.3 and came across this error message:

--> Processing Dependency: /usr/lib/python2.4 for package: gamin-python
--> Processing Dependency: /usr/lib/python2.4 for package: libxslt-python
--> Processing Dependency: /usr/lib/python2.4 for package: libxml2-python
--> Finished Dependency Resolution
gamin-python-0.1.7-8.el5.i386 from installed has depsolving problems
--> Missing Dependency: /usr/lib/python2.4 is needed by package gamin-python-0.1.7-8.el5.i386 (installed)
libxslt-python-1.1.17-2.el5_2.2.i386 from installed has depsolving problems
--> Missing Dependency: /usr/lib/python2.4 is needed by package libxslt-python-1.1.17-2.el5_2.2.i386 (installed)
libxml2-python-2.6.26-2.1.2.8.i386 from updates has depsolving problems
--> Missing Dependency: /usr/lib/python2.4 is needed by package libxml2-python-2.6.26-2.1.2.8.i386 (updates)
Error: Missing Dependency: /usr/lib/python2.4 is needed by package gamin-python-0.1.7-8.el5.i386 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: /usr/lib/python2.4 is needed by package libxslt-python-1.1.17-2.el5_2.2.i386 (installed)
Error: Missing Dependency: /usr/lib/python2.4 is needed by package libxml2-python-2.6.26-2.1.2.8.i386 (updates)

Some searching on Google resulted in this post from April 2009 which indicated a yum clean all would do the trick. All is well now :)

Partially extracting a tarball

I've never had to extract just a small part of a tarball before so it took a little bit of digging to determine how to do that. It's simple with other archivers e.g. zip, rar et al but tar requires just a couple of extra options to make it happen.

Let's say you have a gzipped tarball that contains all your logs from /var/log with fully qualified paths. One thing to remember is that tar will always remove any leading / from all paths it processes. This means if you ran the tar command as follows:

tar zcf /tmp/logs.tar.gz /var/log

you will have a gzipped tarball containing files such as:

var/log/httpd/access.log
var/log/httpd/error.log
var/log/messages
var/log/dmesg

With this in mind, if you want to extract just your web server log files located in var/log/httpd, you can use the following commandline:

tar zxf /tmp/logs.tar.gz --wildcards 'var/log/httpd/*'

The quotes are necessary so the wildcard doesn't get extrapolated. That command will result in the var/log/httpd directory structure being created in your current dir and you will find that directory populated with the access.log and error.log files.

Fun with PostgreSQL and Date/Time

I've been playing around with PostgreSQL 8.3.7 lately and while manipulating intervals realized a few key operators were missing. It turns out it's fairly easy to define operators in PostgreSQL as long as you have an existing function in the database. As a proof of concept I loaded up pl/PgSQL in a working database and created the following functions and operators:

• interval_divide (used to power the / operator for intervals): Divides one interval by another and returns a real. Its purpose is to tell you how many interval2-sized chunks of time exist in interval1.
• interval_modulo (used to power the % operator for intervals): Divides one interval by another and returns the remainder as an interval. Its purpose is to tell you how much time would be left over if you fit in as many interval2 sized chunks of time in interval1. You can also use it to determine whether interval1 can perfectly fit a whole number of interval2-size chunks of time.
• round: Rounds one interval to the nearest value that will fit a whole number of interval2-sized chunks of time.

The actual code is fairly simple but quite useful. I'm sure it'll perform better if written as a C function but that's a bridge I'll cross when I have to.

Code
Here's the code for the functions:

create function interval_divide (interval, interval) returns double precision as $$
        declare
                firstEpoch constant integer := extract(epoch from $1);
                secondEpoch constant integer := extract(epoch from $2);
        begin
                return firstEpoch::double precision / secondEpoch::double precision;
        end
$$ language plpgsql;

create function interval_modulo (interval, interval) returns interval as $$
        declare
                firstEpoch constant integer := extract(epoch from $1);
                secondEpoch constant integer := extract(epoch from $2);
        begin
                return (firstEpoch % secondEpoch) * '1 second'::interval;
        end
$$ language plpgsql;

create function round (interval, interval) returns interval as $$
        declare
                quantumNumber constant real := round($1 / $2);
        begin
                return $2 * quantumNumber;
        end
$$ language plpgsql;

Here's how to create the appropriate operators using these functions:

create operator / (
        leftarg = interval,
        rightarg = interval,
        procedure = interval_divide
);

create operator % (
        leftarg = interval,
        rightarg = interval,
        procedure = interval_modulo
);

Usage Examples

=> select '1 hour'::interval / '5 minutes'::interval;
?column?
----------
       12
(1 row)

=> select '1 hour'::interval / '7 minutes'::interval;
 ?column?
----------
  8.57143
(1 row)

=> select '1 hour'::interval % '7 minutes'::interval;
 ?column?
----------
 00:04:00
(1 row)

=> select '1 hour'::interval % '5 minutes'::interval;
 ?column?
----------
 00:00:00
(1 row)

=> select round('1 hour'::interval, '7 minutes'::interval);
  round
----------
 01:03:00
(1 row)

=> select '1 hour 3 minutes'::interval / '7 minutes'::interval;
 ?column?
----------
        9
(1 row)

Trac 0.12 brings support for multiple repositories

If you haven't tried trac for a quick but fairly extensive project management / ticketing system / wiki for your project then you really should. Chances are, however, if you've ever used it, you've been irked by the fact that you have to create a new trac instance for every project that you want to er... trac(k) :) It looks like version 0.12 (due out in July 2009) has planned support for multiple repositories in a single instance. This will allow me to e.g. have a separate framework repository and my application repository within the same instance and track changes made to both. I wonder how they'll handle access control to the two repositories.

Mobile Browser Compatibility Guide

John Resig blogged about the latest effort by Peter-Paul Koch (of Quirks Mode fame) in documenting as fully as possible the feature-set of mobile browsers and their compatibility with the standards we've come to accept in their desktop counterparts. Koch's work ranges from the DOM to HTML rendering and Javascript events and is bound to be useful to anyone who's considering targetting a mobile browser.

You can click through to John's blog entry on the matter or go directly to the source and look at Peter-Paul's work.

Autodesk Project Dragonfly

I just saw a very interesting tool for anyone who has wanted to use a CAD-type solution for interior decoration. It's called Project Dragonfly from Autodesk. I was able to whip up a model of one of the room in the house in a matter of minutes and was trying out different paint schemes. Very cool!

Mythbuntu 8.10 Scheduling Woes

This is the second time I've encountered this and I ended up going through a long charade before finding the solution again. The main problem is that my MythTV backend didn't record the episode of Heroes that aired earlier tonight. I figured I'd watch the episode using MythTV's Live TV viewing feature but that didn't work either. I had other work to take care of so I figured I'd get to it later in the night which happens to be 30 minutes ago.

The symptoms of the problem are that checking the schedule of upcoming recordings from the commandline returns nothing.

root@backend0:~# mythbackend --printsched
2009-04-20 23:23:55.207 Using runtime prefix = /usr
2009-04-20 23:23:55.208 Empty LocalHostName.
2009-04-20 23:23:55.208 Using localhost value of backend0
2009-04-20 23:23:55.806 Cannot find default UPnP backend
2009-04-20 23:23:55.811 New DB connection, total: 1
2009-04-20 23:23:55.814 Connected to database 'mythconverg' at host: localhost
2009-04-20 23:23:55.815 Closing DB connection named 'DBManager0'
2009-04-20 23:23:55.815 Deleting UPnP client...
2009-04-20 23:23:56.490 Connected to database 'mythconverg' at host: localhost
2009-04-20 23:23:56.491 New DB connection, total: 2
2009-04-20 23:23:56.491 Connected to database 'mythconverg' at host: localhost
2009-04-20 23:23:56.492 Current Schema Version: 1214
2009-04-20 23:23:56.493 New DB DataDirect connection
2009-04-20 23:23:56.494 Connected to database 'mythconverg' at host: localhost
2009-04-20 23:23:56.496 Connecting to backend server: 192.168.2.12:6543 (try 1 of 5)
2009-04-20 23:23:56.499 Using protocol version 40
Retrieving Schedule from Master backend.
--- print list start ---
Title - Subtitle Ch Station Day Start End S C I T N Pri
--- print list end ---

However, testing the scheduling functionality returns a list of all shows that would have been recorded.

root@backend0:~# mythbackend --testsched | more
2009-04-20 23:25:54.768 Using runtime prefix = /usr
2009-04-20 23:25:54.768 Empty LocalHostName.
2009-04-20 23:25:54.769 Using localhost value of backend0
2009-04-20 23:25:55.185 Cannot find default UPnP backend
2009-04-20 23:25:55.190 New DB connection, total: 1
2009-04-20 23:25:55.194 Connected to database 'mythconverg' at host: localhost
2009-04-20 23:25:55.195 Closing DB connection named 'DBManager0'
2009-04-20 23:25:55.195 Deleting UPnP client...
2009-04-20 23:25:56.247 Connected to database 'mythconverg' at host: localhost
2009-04-20 23:25:56.248 New DB connection, total: 2
2009-04-20 23:25:56.248 Connected to database 'mythconverg' at host: localhost
2009-04-20 23:25:56.249 Current Schema Version: 1214
2009-04-20 23:25:56.250 New DB DataDirect connection
2009-04-20 23:25:56.251 Connected to database 'mythconverg' at host: localhost
Calculating Schedule from database.
Inputs, Card IDs, and Conflict info may be invalid if you have multiple tuners.
2009-04-20 23:25:56.317 Speculative scheduled 45 items in 0.1 = 0.01 match + 0.06 place
--- print list start ---
Title - Subtitle Ch Station Day Start End S C I T N Pri
Sesame Street - "The Cookie To 67.1 MPTHD 21 09:30-10:30 1 5 5 w 5 -2/0
Charlie Rose 67.1 MPTHD 21 12:35-13:32 1 5 5 C 5 0/0
Two and a Half Men - "Best H.O 13.1 PN-2 21 20:30-21:00 1 5 5 C 5 0/0
Fringe - "Bad Dreams" 45.1 FOX45 H 21 21:01-22:00 1 5 5 C 5 0/0
The Mentalist - "Paint It Red" 13.1 PN-2 21 22:00-23:00 1 5 5 C 5 0/0
.
.
.
Dollhouse - "Briar Rose" 45.1 FOX45 H 01 21:01-22:00 1 5 5 C 5 0/0
Boston Legal - "Smile" 2.1 PN-7 02 23:35-00:35 1 5 5 C 5 0/0
Jericho - "Reconstruction" 54.1 WNUV HD 03 18:30-19:30 1 5 5 C 5 0/0
Desperate Housewives - "Bargai 2.1 PN-7 03 21:00-22:01 1 5 5 C 5 0/0
--- print list end ---

This puzzled me to no end. Lots of posts online talk about ensuring your mythbackend IP isn't set to 127.0.0.1 and to redo the entire setup of tuners and lineups for the backend. I checked the former and wasn't interested in the latter. I even ran mysqlrepair on the mythconverg database just in case - I found nothing.

It turns out there's a way to increase logging for specific aspects of the MythTV backend. I modified the /etc/default/mythtv-backend file by uncommenting the EXTRA_ARGS variable and setting it to:

EXTRA_ARGS="--verbose schedule"

I restarted the MythTV backend while tailing /var/log/mythtv/mythbackend.log and found this little nugget:

2009-04-20 23:41:39.464 Using runtime prefix = /usr
2009-04-20 23:41:39.465 Empty LocalHostName.
2009-04-20 23:41:39.465 Using localhost value of backend0
2009-04-20 23:41:39.472 New DB connection, total: 1
2009-04-20 23:41:39.476 Connected to database 'mythconverg' at host: localhost
2009-04-20 23:41:39.477 Closing DB connection named 'DBManager0'
2009-04-20 23:41:39.478 Connected to database 'mythconverg' at host: localhost
2009-04-20 23:41:39.479 New DB connection, total: 2
2009-04-20 23:41:39.480 Connected to database 'mythconverg' at host: localhost
2009-04-20 23:41:39.481 Current Schema Version: 1214
Starting up as the master server.
2009-04-20 23:41:40.494 HDHRChan(10114243/0), Error: device not found
2009-04-20 23:41:41.506 HDHRChan(10114243/1), Error: device not found
ERROR: no valid capture cards are defined in the database.
Perhaps you should read the installation instructions?
2009-04-20 23:41:41.513 New DB connection, total: 3
2009-04-20 23:41:41.514 Connected to database 'mythconverg' at host: localhost
2009-04-20 23:41:42.725 Main::Registering HttpStatus Extension
2009-04-20 23:41:42.725 mythbackend version: 0.21.20080304-1 www.mythtv.org
2009-04-20 23:41:42.727 Enabled verbose msgs: important general schedule
2009-04-20 23:41:42.728 AutoExpire: CalcParams(): Max required Free Space: 1.0 GB w/freq: 15 min
2009-04-20 23:41:51.927 UPnpMedia: BuildMediaMap VIDEO scan starting in :/var/lib/mythtv/videos:
2009-04-20 23:41:54.489 UPnpMedia: BuildMediaMap Done. Found 8257 objects
2009-04-20 23:43:01.513 AutoExpire: CalcParams(): Max required Free Space: 1.0 GB w/freq: 15 min

It turns out my HDHomerun wasn't being properly recognized. The lights seemed to indicate it was on the network but I power cycled it just in case. A restart of the MythTV backend revealed:

2009-04-20 23:43:18.272 Using runtime prefix = /usr
2009-04-20 23:43:18.273 Empty LocalHostName.
2009-04-20 23:43:18.273 Using localhost value of backend0
2009-04-20 23:43:18.279 New DB connection, total: 1
2009-04-20 23:43:18.283 Connected to database 'mythconverg' at host: localhost
2009-04-20 23:43:18.284 Closing DB connection named 'DBManager0'
2009-04-20 23:43:18.285 Connected to database 'mythconverg' at host: localhost
2009-04-20 23:43:18.286 New DB connection, total: 2
2009-04-20 23:43:18.286 Connected to database 'mythconverg' at host: localhost
2009-04-20 23:43:18.287 Current Schema Version: 1214
Starting up as the master server.
2009-04-20 23:43:18.293 HDHRChan(10114243/0): device found at address 192.168.2.13
2009-04-20 23:43:18.295 New DB connection, total: 3
2009-04-20 23:43:18.295 Connected to database 'mythconverg' at host: localhost
2009-04-20 23:43:18.366 HDHRChan(10114243/1): device found at address 192.168.2.13
2009-04-20 23:43:18.428 New DB scheduler connection
2009-04-20 23:43:18.428 Connected to database 'mythconverg' at host: localhost
2009-04-20 23:43:19.637 Main::Registering HttpStatus Extension
2009-04-20 23:43:19.637 mythbackend version: 0.21.20080304-1 www.mythtv.org
2009-04-20 23:43:19.637 Enabled verbose msgs: important general schedule
2009-04-20 23:43:19.638 AutoExpire: CalcParams(): Max required Free Space: 1.0 GB w/freq: 15 min
2009-04-20 23:43:21.431 Reschedule requested for id -1.
Query 0: /record.search = :NRST AND program.manualid = 0 AND program.title = record.title
2009-04-20 23:43:21.433 |-- Start DB Query 0...
2009-04-20 23:43:21.438 |-- -1 results in 0.004817 sec.
2009-04-20 23:43:21.438 +-- Done.
2009-04-20 23:43:21.440 BuildWorkList...
2009-04-20 23:43:21.440 AddNewRecords...
2009-04-20 23:43:21.451 |-- Start DB Query...
2009-04-20 23:43:21.478 |-- 160 results in 0.02642 sec. Processing...
2009-04-20 23:43:21.500 +-- Cleanup...
2009-04-20 23:43:21.501 AddNotListed...
2009-04-20 23:43:21.502 |-- Start DB Query...
2009-04-20 23:43:21.503 |-- 0 results in 0.000614 sec. Processing...
2009-04-20 23:43:21.503 Sort by time...
2009-04-20 23:43:21.503 PruneOverlaps...
2009-04-20 23:43:21.504 Sort by priority...
2009-04-20 23:43:21.504 BuildListMaps...
2009-04-20 23:43:21.505 SchedNewRecords...
2009-04-20 23:43:21.505 Scheduling:
+Charlie Rose 67.1 MPTHD 21 12:35-13:32 1 5 5 C 5 0/0
+Two and a Half Men - "Best H.O 13.1 PN-2 21 20:30-21:00 1 5 5 C 5 0/0
+Fringe - "Bad Dreams" 45.1 FOX45 H 21 21:01-22:00 1 5 5 C 5 0/0
+The Mentalist - "Paint It Red" 13.1 PN-2 21 22:00-23:00 1 5 5 C 5 0/0
+Charlie Rose 67.1 MPTHD 22 12:35-13:32 1 5 5 C 5 0/0
+Lie to Me - "Undercover" 45.1 FOX45 H 22 20:00-21:00 1 5 5 C 5 0/0
.
.
.
+Dollhouse - "Briar Rose" 45.1 FOX45 H 01 21:01-22:00 1 5 5 C 5 0/0
+Boston Legal - "Smile" 2.1 PN-7 02 23:35-00:35 1 5 5 C 5 0/0
+Jericho - "Reconstruction" 54.1 WNUV HD 03 18:30-19:30 1 5 5 C 5 0/0
+Desperate Housewives - "Bargai 2.1 PN-7 03 21:00-22:01 1 5 5 C 5 0/0
+The Big Comfy Couch - "Gimme G 67.1 MPTHD 27 05:00-05:30 1 5 5 C 5 -1/0
+Sesame Street - "The Cookie To 67.1 MPTHD 21 09:30-10:30 1 5 5 w 5 -2/0
+Sesame Street - "Firefly Show" 67.1 MPTHD 27 09:30-10:30 1 5 5 w 5 -2/0
2009-04-20 23:43:21.549 SchedPreserveLiveTV...
2009-04-20 23:43:21.549 ClearListMaps...
2009-04-20 23:43:21.550 Sort by time...
2009-04-20 23:43:21.550 PruneRedundants...
2009-04-20 23:43:21.551 Sort by time...
2009-04-20 23:43:21.552 ClearWorkList...
2009-04-20 23:43:21.554 Scheduler: Update next_record for 28
2009-04-20 23:43:21.554 Scheduler: Update next_record for 36
--- print list start ---
Title - Subtitle Ch Station Day Start End S C I T N Pri
Sesame Street - "The Cookie To 67.1 MPTHD 21 09:30-10:30 1 5 5 w 5 -2/0
Charlie Rose 67.1 MPTHD 21 12:35-13:32 1 5 5 C 5 0/0
Two and a Half Men - "Best H.O 13.1 PN-2 21 20:30-21:00 1 5 5 C 5 0/0
Fringe - "Bad Dreams" 45.1 FOX45 H 21 21:01-22:00 1 5 5 C 5 0/0
The Mentalist - "Paint It Red" 13.1 PN-2 21 22:00-23:00 1 5 5 C 5 0/0
.
.
.
Dollhouse - "Briar Rose" 45.1 FOX45 H 01 21:01-22:00 1 5 5 C 5 0/0
Boston Legal - "Smile" 2.1 PN-7 02 23:35-00:35 1 5 5 C 5 0/0
Jericho - "Reconstruction" 54.1 WNUV HD 03 18:30-19:30 1 5 5 C 5 0/0
Desperate Housewives - "Bargai 2.1 PN-7 03 21:00-22:01 1 5 5 C 5 0/0
--- print list end ---
2009-04-20 23:43:21.631 Scheduled 45 items in 0.1 = 0.01 match + 0.11 place
2009-04-20 23:43:21.634 Seem to be woken up by USER
2009-04-20 23:43:28.830 UPnpMedia: BuildMediaMap VIDEO scan starting in :/var/lib/mythtv/videos:
2009-04-20 23:43:31.404 UPnpMedia: BuildMediaMap Done. Found 8257 objects
2009-04-20 23:44:38.430 AutoExpire: CalcParams(): Max required Free Space: 1.0 GB w/freq: 15 min

In other words, sweet, sweet victory :) While the whole teardown/setup of the backend would probably have caught the tuner issue as well I find checking the tuners to be an easier solution with fewer hair pulls required :)

Implementing a Web Downloader in bash

While looking for a pure bash implementation of wget or curl I came across this post at LinuxQuestions.org. I haven't tried it yet but I'm trying to figure out if there's a more system-agnostic way of doing the same thing. Keen readers will notice the script uses the /dev/tcp/hostname/port "file" to make a connection to a remote host. Based on what I know that's a Solaris-specific way of connecting to a remote host. I'm thinking of something using telnet and the like that can download binary files as well. I have a couple of ideas and I'll update once I've either found a solution or given up and switched to perl.

The Digg Bar Bookmarklet

Digg just launched the "Digg Bar" as an interesting product that shortens URLs and allows users to digg or submit the current site right from the site itself. Seeing this, I decided to create a little bookmarklet that'll make this process easier. Bookmark this link as and when you're on a site you want to use the Digg bar on, click on the bookmark and there it shall be. I've only tested this out on Firefox under Linux so your mileage may vary.

Enjoy!

Sprint EVDO Mobile Broadband on Ubuntu

So I just got a Sprint EVDO USB stick to allow connectivity when there's no WiFi around. I did some quick Google searches and it looks like it's supported. Little did I know how well :) I plugged in the device to a USB port and the kernel started loading appropriate modules and gave me the /dev/ttyUSB0 through /dev/ttyUSB3 ports. At this point I thought I'd pick it up at home.

I couldn't resist one last Google search, however, and it was worth it :) While the box for the device (a Sierra Wireless 598U) doesn't mention Linux by name, Sprint provides a full installation guide for Ubuntu (Fedora and others are there too). I was very pleasantly surprised. Everything just works!

Multi-Column Database Indices in Sqlite3 and Ruby on Rails

In my previous post about database indices in Sqlite3 and Ruby on Rails, I'd observed that Sqlite didn't seem to support multi-column indices properly. It turns out that while Sqlite does support them, I was using syntax in my Rails model which had the effect of ensuring that both the columns in my index were checked separately for uniqueness. Assuming you have the category_id and name fields in a table such that the combination of those two fields has to be unique, the correct way to do multi-column indices is as follows:
In your database migration,

add_index :contests, [:category_id, :name], :unique => true

In your data model,

validates_uniqueness_of :name, :scope => :category_id

That last line in the model is key. Syntax similar to the add_index line above won't work when using the validates_uniqueness_of validator.

The Magic SysRq Key - Commandline Edition

So earlier today I was stuck trying to bounce a remote host that had a Software RAID volume. It turns out for some reason (I still suspect a faulty volume in the RAID1 volume) nothing was able to write to the mounted RAID volume. All processes kept getting hung and drove the load up to 25. Responsiveness was still good since this load was actually due to I/O waiting processes that kept getting some CPU time and not CPU-intensive processes trying to share a couple of processors.

In any case, after manually failing the partition that was causing problems with the RAID volume I still wasn't able to bounce the box since the RAID volume won't stop or sync and actually halted the shutdown process. I thought about the magic SysRq but realized I was ssh'ed in and that won't work. For some reason I didn't think of searching for a way too invoke the magic SysRq processes from the commandline. I looked for a way to force a shutdown and found this blog. It worked like a charm!

Intriguingly enough, when the host came back up the RAID volume remounted and both partitions that formed the RAID volume were fine as reported by mdadm. What's more all seemed well with the mounted volume and I was able to read/write to it just fine. I'll be keeping an eye on that for a bit.

A Scientific View on Database Indices

I've been playing with Ruby on Rails by seeing how easy (or difficult) it would be for me to re-write an existing mod_perl2 application within RoR. While the original application uses PostgreSQL as its backend database (numerous reasons but the top few are: timestamptz, multiple columns in a table that can default to now(), support for transactions - even nested ones), I decided to use sqlite3 for the initial prototype of the application before it grew beyond 2-3 models.

It seems that either sqlite3 or RoR 2.0.5 doesn't support multi-column indices on a table. One of those two converts a single two-column index into 2 one-column indices - not quite the behavior I wanted. I'll try to switch to PostgreSQL to see if the behavior re-surfaces.

While I was scouring Google for sqlite3's limitations, however, I came across this interesting article that details the kind of scientific analysis that should be conducted on your data to determine the order of columns in a multi-column index. Very informative.

libttf.so.2 for package: nagios

This was the ominous error I got every time I tried to upgrade nagios from what CentOS 5 provides in its base repository (2.12) to the more recent 3.0.6 provided in RPMForge's repository. I couldn't figure out what was going on and the Internet was full of accounts of the error that magically vanished the next day.

I don't know what they all had done wrong but I finally figured out what I'd done wrong to deserve this error :). I'd made the mistake of installing the rpmforge-release package meant for CentOS 4 instead of CentOS 5. This meant I was trying to install the el4 version of the nagios-3.0.6 package which apparently had this dependency. Before encountering this problem, however, I'd switched to the CentOS 5 repository so I didn't make the connection until I decided to read every letter of a yum install report:

[root@services ~]# yum install nagios
Loading "priorities" plugin
Loading "fastestmirror" plugin
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
* epel: mirror.hiwaay.net
* rpmforge: apt.sw.be
* base: mirror.trouble-free.net
* updates: centos.mirror.nac.net
* centosplus: centos.mirror.nac.net
* addons: mirror.nyi.net
* extras: centos.mirror.nac.net
0 packages excluded due to repository priority protections
Setting up Install Process
Parsing package install arguments
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package nagios.i386 0:3.0.6-1.el4.rf set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: libttf.so.2 for package: nagios
--> Finished Dependency Resolution
Error: Missing Dependency: libttf.so.2 is needed by package nagios

I then realized why this problem might've fixed itself the next day - the yum cache might've become stale enough to be rebuilt. At that time yum would realize the el4 repository no longer existed and would remove it from the cache and replace it with the information about the el5 repository. When running a yum install nagios against the el5 repository, we get much more pleasant output:

[root@services ~]# yum install nagios
Loading "priorities" plugin
Loading "fastestmirror" plugin
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
* epel: mirror.hiwaay.net
* rpmforge: apt.sw.be
* base: mirror.trouble-free.net
* updates: centos.mirror.nac.net
* centosplus: centos.mirror.nac.net
* addons: mirror.nyi.net
* extras: centos.mirror.nac.net
0 packages excluded due to repository priority protections
Setting up Install Process
Parsing package install arguments
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package nagios.i386 0:3.0.6-1.el5.rf set to be updated
--> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

=============================================================================
Package Arch Version Repository Size
=============================================================================
Installing:
nagios i386 3.0.6-1.el5.rf rpmforge 3.6 M

Transaction Summary
=============================================================================
Install 1 Package(s)
Update 0 Package(s)
Remove 0 Package(s)

Total download size: 3.6 M
Is this ok [y/N]: y

The moral of the story? After changing anything in your yum repositories, make sure to run:

yum clean all
yum makecache

Upgrading Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) to KDE 4.2

With KDE 4.2 officially released and in possession of quite a few positive reviews (unless I'm looking in the wrong places), I wanted to give it a shot but it hadn't been back-ported to Ubuntu 8.10 yet. I searched around and found that one can enable an experimental Ubuntu repository where one can install KDE 4.2 from.

Long story short, I ended up following this site on upgrading to 4.2. I ran the apt-get while I was away from my computer and when I returned, lo and behold, instead of finding a nice KDE 4.2 package install log I found an error with installing some packages. I did what anyone else would do - I didn't believe my eyes and re-ran the command hoping to brute force my way through this :) Here's what I saw:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Correcting dependencies... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
krita-data kword-data koshell kthesaurus kpresenter krita kugar kword ksysguardd kchart karbon compizconfig-backend-kconfig
kspread libpoppler-qt2 kplato libwv2-1c2 kexi libpqxx-2.6.9ldbl kpresenter-data
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
The following extra packages will be installed:
kde-window-manager kdebase-workspace-data libplasma3
The following packages will be REMOVED:
libplasma2
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libplasma3
The following packages will be upgraded:
kde-window-manager kdebase-workspace-data
2 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 1 to remove and 73 not upgraded.
6 not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B/10.0MB of archives.
After this operation, 12.3kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?
(Reading database ... 252512 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace kde-window-manager 4:4.1.3-0ubuntu1~intrepid1 (using .../kde-window-manager_4%3a4.2.0-0ubuntu1~intrepid1~ppa7_i386.deb) ...
Unpacking replacement kde-window-manager ...
dpkg: error processing /var/cache/apt/archives/kde-window-manager_4%3a4.2.0-0ubuntu1~intrepid1~ppa7_i386.deb (--unpack):
trying to overwrite `/usr/share/kde4/apps/kconf_update/plasma-add-shortcut-to-menu.upd', which is also in package kdebase-workspace-data
dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe)
Errors were encountered while processing:
/var/cache/apt/archives/kde-window-manager_4%3a4.2.0-0ubuntu1~intrepid1~ppa7_i386.deb
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)

After much searching and trying tools like synaptic and aptitude I went for the sniper rifle: dpkg. I removed the offending packages kde-window-manager and kdebase-workspace-data. Now my apt-get is running smoothly in the background. Let's hope it finished upgrading me to KDE 4.2 :)

KMail Integration with Microsoft Exchange

I found this interesting post on the kde-pim mailing list which is very to-the-point and informative on how to connect KMail to Exchange. You do need IMAP enabled on the Exchange server but once you get over that hurdle - and believe me, in a pure Microsoft shop it's a big hurdle - you're good to go.

I haven't gotten Calendar integration working just yet but I haven't put a lot of time into it yet. This page on the KDE Wiki explains how to use webdav to perform one-way syncs against an Exchange server using a plugin for KOrganizer.

Edit: Even brought it to my attention that the KDE Wiki link is no longer working.  It seems the KDE wiki has changed structure since I was last on it.  I found Jason Kasper's blog, however, where he's talking about a ruby-based solution to the 1-way sync between an Exchange OWA server and KOrganizer.

Net-SNMP and HP/UX B10.20

For some reason it took me a while to find pre-compiled binaries of Net-SNMP for HP/UX. This HOWTO is from Cacti but lists the locations of all Net-SNMP binary packages one could ever want. This includes AIX, Solaris and HP/UX. Enjoy!

Solaris 10 and Net-SNMP

So I re-learned something about SNMP on Solaris today. I say re-learned since this is one of those things I always have to Google for and is precisely the raison d'etre for this blog. I re-learned how to turn off Sun's default SNMP daemon on Solaris 10 so I could start up the Net-SNMP daemon compiled for Solaris. Here's how:

/etc/init.d/init.sma stop

This stops and disables the System Management Agent as per this section in the Solaris System Management Agent Administration Guide on Sun's site.

With the default SNMP daemon dead and disabled, you can start up the Net-SNMP daemon using its own init script.

Enjoy!

Comcast and the Battle of the SMTP

I got an email or three yesterday talking about how the new application I'd written wasn't sending out notification emails properly. Since I'd tested it out numerous times to ensure email wasn't going to be a problem from my end, I was a bit surprised. I figured it had something to do with bad data e.g. bad email addresses etc that was causing the problem.

After an email that I sent to my gmail account didn't show up even after 5 minutes, I decided to look at my mail server to see if it had recorded anything. I pulled up the admin console for my newly installed instance of Zimbra and saw about 400 deferred emails on the server status page. I was quite surprised that all those people hadn't complained. Regardless, I selected all the emails and re-queued them for delivery. Each and every one of them failed again. Errors ranged from connectivity errors to my ISP's mail relay (smtp.comcast.net) to other weird errors once my mail server connected to the relay host. Finally I tried my tried and true method - telnetting to port 25 on smtp.comcast.net and manually going through a mail session from helo to the final period. I couldn't even connect to port 25 on the mail relay server!

It turns out Comcast had recently removed access to port 25 on its mail relay server where "recently" refers to November 28th. I'm not entirely certain why I didn't see any issues even at the end of December and beginning of January when I launched the application. In any case, not only had they switched to using port 587 instead of 25, they were also requiring authentication using the username/password associated with your Comcast account to even send email via this relay.

Fair enough. Now to configure Zimbra to support an authenticated mail relay. Luckily I got help from the Zimbra Wiki. Following the instructions to the letter (except for substituting hostnames, usernames and passwords appropriately) I was able to get mail working again.

Now I just have to wait for 400 emails to get delivered 3 at a time - or whatever the absurdly low limit is for the Comcast mail relay.

Paypal IPN and mc_fee

I encountered an interesting problem today with accepting payments for an online registration solution I wrote for a non-profit organization. The application accepts payments using Paypal's Instant Payment Notification feature. IPN works as follows:

1. You put a form (hidden or with bits visible) that POSTs data to Paypal
2. This brings the user to Paypal where they can pay using either a credit card or their Paypal account
3. As part of processing the user's payment, Paypal takes key information about the user's payment e.g. transaction id, amount, and other sundry details and POSTs them to a custom instant payment notification URL (as it happens to be called) on your site
4. This URL is hopefully hosts a script or other form of code that can pick up all the POSTed IPN variables and POSTs back the information with one extra variable to validate the information
5. Once this POST back to Paypal returns with a success status the application can record the user's payment and credit them appropriately.

The problem I'm facing is that I received an IPN POST to my application where the mc_fee variable is apparently null or undefined. This is a column that's specified as NOT NULL in my database schema as per many other examples from Paypal and others. I'm not sure what's going on. It's too late to mount a full investigation tonight but tomorrow is a new day.

Recovering Virtual Machine Templates after Re-Installing VMware Virtual Center

If you have ESX servers managed by VMware Virtual Center chances are you've created templates of standard types of machines so deploying a new one becomes simpler. These templates are such time-savers that I tend to keep tweaking them with every new requirement until I have the perfect pristine CentOS or Win2k3 or FreeBSD host. Deploying a new virtual machine from a template is a cinch and the deployed machines always look identical - at least until you start customizing them. This means you can create scripts that run against a truly standard configuration and know that it will work the same way every time but I digress. This post is about what happens when you have to re-install VMware Virtual Center. This is something that I found two solutions for which both work well. However, the second solution is far simpler and less time-consuming.

The Easy Way
The first solution relies on the ability of VMware Infrastructure Client to convert a Template into a Virtual Machine and back. Since all virtual machines stored on ESX servers managed by a new instance of Virtual Center are automatically recognized and properly populated in the Virtual Infrastrucure Client, make sure you name every template to reflect that it's a template by e.g. putting the word "Template" somewhere in its name, etc.

1. Switch your Virtual Infrastructure Client to display both virtual machines and templates by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Shift-V or by clicking on dropdown associated with the large "Inventory" drop down in the top toolbar and choosing "Virtual Machines and Templates".
2. Right-click on each template and choose "Convert to Virtual Machine".
3. Once you've converted all your templates to virtual machines you can re-install Virtual Center.
4. Now re-connect to the new instance of Virtual Center and you'll see all your templates as virtual machines.
5. Right-click on each virtual machine that used to be a template (see where the naming comes in?) and click on "Convert to Template"

Voila! You now have your templates back. It does take some time to convert a template to a VM and back but it works.

The Elegant Way
This method doesn't require you to convert your templates to virtual machines and back. Just re-install your instance of Virtual Center and you will notice all your templates disappear the next time you connect to the new Virtual Center using your Virtual Infrastructure Client. Follow these steps to bring them back:

1. Switch your Virtual Infrastructure Client to display your datastores by using the keyboard shortcut Ctrl-Shift-D or by clicking on dropdown associated with the large "Inventory" drop down in the top toolbar and choosing "Datastores".
2. Click on a group and then a datastore and in the right detail panel click on "Browse Datastore...". This should bring up a window that will allow you to browse that datastore. Each virtual machine and template will have its own directory in this datastore.
3. Click on a directory named after one of your templates. The right panel will change to show you all the files in that directory.
4. Right click on the only file of type "Template VM" and click on "Add to Inventory".
5. In the dialog box that pops up, give the template a name (presumably the same name as it currently has) and choose its location (presumably the same group it's in now).
6. In the next dialog box choose the host to store the template on. This should be the same ESX server whose datastore you're browsing.
7. After validating the template/vm it will present the last dialog of the wizard with the details of your "VM". Click "Finish" and you're done.
8. Close the data store browser and change your Virtual Infrastructure Client to "Virtual Machines and Templates" mode using Ctrl-Shift-V or by clicking on Inventory and choosing "Virtual Machines and Templates" and you'll see the template back in the inventory!

Enjoy!

Upgrading from Plone 2.0.4 to 3.1.6

So here's my dilemma. I have a site running on Zope 2.7 and Plone 2.0.4 that I need to migrate to Zope 2.10 and Plone 3.1.6. I'm replacing the server that the site is running on with a newer server and decided to go with CentOS 5 as the OS of choice instead of the Gentoo that was running on the original server. After adding a few repositories e.g. CentOS Plus, EPEL and RPMForge I had access to a Zope and Plone RPM. Normally I would either build the same version I had on the original server or find an RPM of the same version. However, this time I decided to just upgrade everything and hopefully start keeping up with newer versions as they come around .

It turns out that upgrading isn't as simple as copying your Data.fs file to a new Zope instance running the latest versions of Zope and Plone. Go figure :) After much trying then getting frustrated and searching I came across this blog where the author seems to have come to the same conclusion as I did: the only way to do the upgrade I desired was to upgrade Zope and Plone in lockstep. This means I'll have to upgrade Plone to 2.1, then Zope to 2.8, then Plone to 2.5, then Zope to 2.9, etc.

Luckily the Plone site has good documentation about the incremental upgrades and the whole process should be possible. Now all I have to do is go through the incremental upgrades on a virtual machine so I end up with a more-or-less pristine copy of the site for deployment on the new server.

About this blog

I've tried blogging before mainly using one as a daily diary of sorts. I have never followed through with it. However the idea of this blog is something that has been ruminating in my mind for a while and I'm finally doing something about it.

The idea is to have a semi-irregular (is that a word?) blog where I can record things I've learned in my profession of choice: IT, software engineering or "computers". I can then search my own blog to find solutions to problems I've encountered in the past. One possible side-effect of a blog such as this would also be that future employers can read through it to get a feeling for what I've done in the past; of course depending on the kinds of problems I've successfully solved that could be a bad thing too :)

In any case, I'm just kicking this blog off so I have some place for a brain dump when I need to. If you're not me, you're probably lost :) If you're not lost then welcome!