James' Engineering Journal

jianshi.org planned updates

2008-10-20T05:13:00.000-07:00

- continuous integration for openmbp (currently rails, java client or native client in the future)
- gitorious setup
- moving this blog to jianshi.org (so i don't waste that domain name)

wtf am i doing. so much to do.

Random Annoyance (VLC on OS X)

2008-10-14T04:59:00.001-07:00

Fix random crashes -

- Quit the application if it is running
- Delete the VLC folder in /Users/USERNAME/Library/Preferences
- Delete org.videolan.vlc.plist in /Users/USERNAME/Library/Preferences
- Delete org.videolan.vlc.plist in /DRIVENAME/Library/Preferences

Quicker Rails Setup (Ubuntu)

2008-10-11T16:43:00.000-07:00

Install Rails

sudo apt-get install ruby-full
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/43985/rubygems-1.3.0.tgz
tar xvzf rubygems-1.3.0.tgz
cd rubygems-1.3.0
sudo ruby setup.rb
sudo ln -s /usr/bin/gem1.8 /usr/bin/gem
gem install rails

Install SQLite3
sudo apt-get install sqlite3 libsqlite3-dev
sudo gem install sqlite3-ruby

Lightbot

2008-09-24T22:34:00.001-07:00

196 commands first try all 12 levels.

Cisco VPN From Ubuntu

2008-09-24T03:10:00.000-07:00

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get build-dep vpnc
sudo apt-get install libssl-dev fakeroot
mkdir ~/src/vpnc -p
cd ~/src/vpnc
apt-get source vpnc
cd vpnc-*

Edit the Makefile and uncomment 2 lines that have "OPENSSL" in the beginning of the line

dpkg-buildpackage
sudo dpkg -i ../vpnc*.deb

Edit /etc/vpnc/default.conf

IPSec gateway 10.10.10.10
IPSec ID GROUPNAME
IPSec secret ########
IKE Authmode psk
Xauth username johndoe
Xauth password ########

Type "sudo vpnc"

To add foo.com to search path:

sudo echo "foo.com" >> /etc/resolvconf/head

VPS Updates

2008-09-22T22:07:00.000-07:00

- rails with passenger
- openmbp deployment space up
- capistrano support for the git code base
- continuous integration with cruisecontrol.rb

Power APT-GET

2008-09-22T15:17:00.001-07:00

Compile custom package newer than repos version? No problem. Check this out

git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/git/git.git

Gets git source.

Git's package in ubuntu is called git-core

This command gets you all the dependencies to BUILD git-core -- sudo apt-get build-dep git-core

Dopeness.

VPS

2008-09-19T21:02:00.000-07:00

Sites:

- icsalumni.org running moinmoin 1.72
- jianshi.org in migration
- community domain
- local gitorious hosting

Software
- Apache2 with php, fastcgi, modwsgi, Passenger Phusion
- Ruby latest stable (1.87), Rails 2.1, Postgres, Mysql
- Git

Whew... More to come soon guys!

Holy Grail

2008-09-02T20:02:00.001-07:00

Brah... LOLOLOLOL good stuff

find . -type d -name '.svn' -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rdf

Phusion Passenger (Modrails) on Ubuntu

2008-08-22T22:19:00.000-07:00

Follow instructions from modrails.com

but at the end don't forget this.

cd /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/sqlite3-ruby-1.2.2
sudo find . -perm 0662 -exec chmod 664 {} \;

Some people messed up with permissions.

Ruby/Rails from Source

2008-08-22T20:56:00.000-07:00

wget ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/ruby-1.8.6.tar.gz
wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/20989/rubygems-0.9.4.tgz

sudo cp -r ~/ruby-1.8.6 /usr/local/src/
sudo cp -r ~/rubygems-0.9.4 /usr/local/src/

# Ubuntu
sudo apt-get install zlib*

cd /usr/local/src/ruby-1.8.6/ext/zlib/

ruby extconf.rb --with-zlib-include=/usr/include --with-zlib-lib=/usr/lib
make
sudo make install

cd /usr/local/src/rubygems-0.9.4/
sudo ruby setup.rb config
sudo ruby setup.rb setup
sudo ruby setup.rb install

cd
sudo gem install rails --with-dependencies

Git on Rails

2008-07-29T12:34:00.001-07:00

Rails project setup with Git.

rails project
cd project

# commands
git init
git status
git add .
git commit -a
touch tmp/.gitignore log/.gitignore vendor/.gitignore

# .gitignore
.DS_Store
log/*.log
tmp/**/*
config/database.yml
db/*.sqlite3

Jackson JSON Consumption

2008-07-21T11:55:00.001-07:00

Jackson is a Java based JSON consumption and emission library. It is now a Codehaus project that is currently considered the fastest JSON parser for Java. I'm writing a project module at work that consumes JSON from a REST interface and populates a Java user interface in SWT. Pretty sweet stuff!

PostgreSQL Server Installation from Source (Mac OS X 10.5)

2008-06-20T11:39:00.000-07:00

Compilation and installation is straight forward for the most part.
Get the source 8.3.3 (Current latest): http://www.postgresql.org/ftp/source/v8.3.3/

1. Un-tar and Un-bzip: tar xvjf postgresql-8.3.3.tar.bz2
2. Change into uncompressed directory: cd postgresql-8.3.3
3. Configure script: ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/pgsql (Default prefix options)
4. Compille: make
5. Install: make install
6. Add /usr/local/pgsql/bin to your path.

You are finished if you need this just for development.

Role to run the server.
$ sudo dscl . -create /Users/
$ sudo dscl . -create /Users/ UniqueID
$ sudo dscl . -create /Users/ PrimaryGroupID
$ sudo dscl . -create /Users/ UserShell
$ sudo dscl . -create /Users/ NFSHomeDirectory
$ sudo dscl . -create /Groups/
$ sudo dscl . -create /Groups/ PrimaryGroupID

and should be postgres. However you can customize this.

Useful Commands

pg_ctl: Controls server operation.
PGDATA: Environment variable that points to your path to store data.
initdb: Initializes database path. Uses PGDATA

More to come later. Yes you can use an automated installer. No you won't have the latest version.

Moving Engineering Blog Here

2008-06-20T11:28:00.000-07:00

Check for updates here. I don't want to deal with maintaining Wordpress anymore. Plus the whole open-id thing is cool, but I'd like my stuff in one place. Since people I know are already using Blogspot, I'll move here too.

Upcoming post topics (in no particular order) -- Rails, Java, DVCS, PostgreSQL, etc...


puts "Hello Blogger!"