Ubuntu 10.04 static DNS server

Had to do a reverse drop-in replacement for a Ubuntu computer - reverse in the sense that I'm not dropping in any part - instead I got an identically configured computer and just dropped in the hard drive.  Pretty much everything just worked, except the network settings.  Ubuntu by default added a new interface (I'm using wired connection) since it saw a new MAC.  So I had to apply the static config from the old interface to the new one.  Again most of it just worked, but DNS didn't - I added the server address to the IPv4 config via Network Manager (editing resolve.conf actually gave the same result), but it still couldn't resolve names.  I tried networkng restart, which also did nothing.  So I just used the Network-manager applet to disconnect then reconnect, and DNS started working.  I wonder if there's a command line way to apply static DNS info?

Getting Started with Node.js on Heroku ...

... is not easy on Windows.  This Guide is a good one.  The steps are clear with right amount of details.  I just couldn't get through it on Windows 7.  First I couldn't verify my app with foreman.  I got "Bad file descriptor".  After tinkering with Foreman versions a bit to no avail, I decided to go ahead deploy it, thinking maybe it's just foreman.  That didn't go either.  I just kept getting "Permission denied (publickey)" with git push, even after checking and rechecking I have the keys and they're added to Heroku (key addition notification from it as proof).

So I did anyone reasonable would do under such circumstances.  I switched to Linux.  I was able to have the app running on a dyno within 20 minutes on a Precise (12.04.4), including the time needed to set up a build environment and make the Heroku client - it's a VM I don't usually use to build stuff.  What can I say?  Next year I'm building a Ubuntu laptop (or getting a Mac).

UPDATE: I had a chance to ask Jay Hurst from Salesforce about the troubles on Windows.  He mentioned that the problem with foreman may be related to the fact that the utility is looking for a particular kind of shell.  He suggested trying the bash installed by Git on Windows.  For the key troubles?  "You could have key problems on any platform. "  :-)

Symform on Linux

So the hard drive on one of my Symform devices died.  It was a laptop running Windows Vista, which is one of those undying-one-time-hack situations.  No point to rebuild it so I swapped in a hard drive, which already had Ubuntu 10.04 on it (don't remember when I did that).  After some minor reconfig I got it work properly and installed the Symform client.  The Web interface was pretty convenient - much better than the desktop app on Windows.  However even with port forwarding configured I still don't see a heartbeat from https://control.symform.com.  Here's where the UI starts to fall short: I really don't have a way to further troubleshoot it.  I had to drop into command and start going through the community forum.  Not really complaining about this when working on Linux, but if you have a GUI, why not put some quick indicators and info for troubleshooting?

Anyhow I eventually noticed the contribution service isn't staying on (/opt/symform/SymformNode.sh status).  A check through the exception stack in the log (/var/log/symformcontrib.log) made it clear that the process couldn't really access the contribution folder.  I had no problem selecting it from the UI, but the folder is on an USB drive that was used by the old Windows machine.  As auto-mounted the NTFS volume had no permission for the symform UID, which runs the needed process.  I remounted the volume with umask=0 and it started to work.

Force.com Migration Tool on Ubuntu (Lucid)

Since the tool is based on Ant, I apt-get the ant package. The Guide on the tool talked about putting the jar file into the lib directory of ANT_HOME. Well, I don't know where the ANT_HOME (not found in env), let alone locating its lib. Eventually I found the lib dir with some Googling. It's /usr/share/ant/lib - well, should be obvious enough to me... With the jar file in place and config files done (build.xml, build.properties, package.xml), the tool did run successfully to do the things I needed.

PC5750 on Lucid

I couldn't get the EVDO card to work under Jaunty on my Latitude E5400. Now I've upgraded to Lucid on E6510, and PC5750 is a piece of cake... well, almost.

After I inserted the card, I got a bunch of evbug.c messages in dmesg, and no ttyACM0 to use. A little search got me to blacklist evbug. I plugged in the card again, and noticed there's an option "Enable Mobile Broadband" in Network Manager. So I did it and chose Verizon as the provider That's it! IP address was set right away and I got online in no time, no pesky VZ Access Manager required. In fact, I'm writing this post with that connection. :)

Migrating Ubuntu ... no sweat

Here's how I moved a Jaunty installation from one computer to another. The old one is Core 2 Quad Q6600 on LANParty DK X38-T2R. The new one has Core 2 Quad Q9550 running on Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3P. Different memory and drive configuration. The only thing shared was a pair of HD4670. I just moved the drive containing the root partition to the new computer, booted Live CD, and did the following under grub:
root (hd2,1)
setup (hd2)

Done. Reboot, select the drive to boot from, and I was back in my old Jaunty desktop. Could it BE any easier? It actually could, if I hadn't install grub on another boot drive in the old computer. I wouldn't have even needed the grub reinstall. True plug-n-play.

Could anyone imagine the pain if I were to try moving a Win 7 installation?

By the way, the only thing that caused a bit trouble was the RAID volume (Intel Matrix Storage based) on the new computer. After the grub reinstall, one of the RAID drive got dropped so the volume became degraded. GRUB shouln't touch the drive or anything related to the volume, so what the heck? Luckily the Win7 installation on the volume did survive so I was able to rebuild it, but not without complications. I'll have another post on my frustration on this Intel fake RAID junk.

Thunderbird Browser association lost after installing FF 3.6 on Jaunty

Thunderbird 3 was working fine until the upgrade. Then clicking links in emails just stopped working. I click, nothing happens. Eventually I figured out that the easy way (or the only way) to change the dead browser association is to try the links without FF 3.6 open. When I did that, Thunderbird asked what it should use to open the link, then I got to point it to the right thing. Not sure why, since I verified the default browser setting already, and FF 3.6 was from the Launchpad repository, not a version I downloaded directly from Mozilla...

Live a Ubuntu life: SCIM

I needed to use SCIM for a number of applications on Jaunty, including Firefox and aMSN. The problem is with apps that weren't installed from Ubuntu repositories. The supplied Firefox 3.0 works fine, but not 3.5 or 3.6 I downloaded from Mozilla. There's no Ubuntu version of aMSN for that matter. The problem lies with QT it seems, which SCIM needs to run with and be compatible with the QT used to compile the target apps.

I solved the aMSN piece with help from this Ubuntu community documentation, but Firefox just wouldn't work. Eventually I installed FF 3.5 and 3.6 from Launchpad repositories, and that brought those apps in line with SCIM. BTW, that also solves my Java plug-in issue with them.

Easy as pie - Flash plugin for Firefox on Ubuntu

It already is, if you just want it on the standard Firefox on the system. But what I needed was to have it on FF3.5 on Jaunty, which doesn't come by default. I have FF3.5 installed in my home directory. Turned out all I needed was to download the .tar.gz from Adobe, and put the .so file inside to the plugins directory. I was trying to symlink from the standard /usr/lib location to no avail.