HOWTO: Burn ISO image to DVD w/ linux commandline

When burning an ISO image to disc, I simply use this:

$ growisofs -dvd-compat -speed=1 -Z /dev/dvd=disc.iso

Using -speed=1 takes a little longer than the default "as fast as possible" mode, but guarantees the disc can be properly read in the pickiest of drives (eg., a Wii DVD drive). DVD-R (not DVD+R) is also recommended.

HOWTO: Be full of C.R.A.P.

In part 1 I rambled on at length about what I think needs to be done to prove yourself to a project team in order to become a committer on tht project.

So, what the crap's up with being full of C.R.A.P.? I'm not referring to the four principles of design (Contrast, Repetition, Alignment, Proximity), though there are some similarities here.

For me, being full of C.R.A.P is about the transition from one state to another:

Contributing Responsive Able Peer

to

Committed Responsible Active Participant

How do you move from one state to another?

Simple, right?

'Till next time...

HOWTO: Becoming an open source project committer

The Tweetosphere/blogosphere has been buzzing with discussions about what one needs to do to be a committer @ Eclipse.org.

I got my rights by working for IBM and being handed the keys to the Porsche when I started working at the Toronto Lab as a member of the EMF team, oh so many lunar eclipses ago. No longer with IBM, I'll retain my committerships until I manually ask to be removed, or they claw 'em from my cold dead hands. After all, what's a revised patch but a 2nd Amendment? (Aside: seriously, people, it's 2009. You don't need a gun. There's no Imperial Army coming to steal your land. LET IT GO.)

For most committers, however, you can't just be appointed to the job; you have to earn it. So, here are my tips for getting on *my* project, the Athena Common Build.

1. Easiest way to get on the project: be invited by someone already on the team by personal recommendation (see criteria below). Others can +1/-1 the suggestion based on the criteria below, but in my experience with other projects, no one ever vetoes a nomination. (I've seen it once, and it only delayed that person's committership by about a month.) So cozy up to the existing committers, and you're in. Why is this? Because it's OPEN source, and how can you be open if you exclude people who want to contribute?
2. The nominee must use the project at least weekly, if not daily. For Athena, this means you have to be actively writing Ant scripts, doing builds, or at least be active in PDE or p2 development. Why is this important?
   a) I don't want "dump and run" code which I'll then have to maintain, and
   b) if you're not a user, you can't intelligently decide what pains exist and which are important to solve
3. I'd like to see two accepted patches to prove you've got the technical skill, and that you're willing to thrown down and help with existing known issues - see 2 (b) above.
4. If you're not technical (or not *yet* technical), then you need demonstrated skills or commitment, or have worked in a related field with someone mutually known who can vouch for you.

So, what constitutes "commitment?" Lots of things...

• show up to meetings
• comment on or write bugs, blogs, wiki, articles, recipes, HOWTOs, newsgroup, mailing list, IRC
• submits patches or test cases
• help triage bugs
• mentor students (GSoc or other)
• runs contests, does viral marketing, etc.

Now, of course, these items are not all mesaurable, but if people know you're involved, and you'd like to be a committer, you'll likely be voted in. (Many people trying out Athena may have noticed I've offered them committer rights in exchange for code or doc contributions. So far, no takers, but the offer stands.)

Frankly, I'd rather have more people as committers who do little to the code base but who have the power to do so when needed. For example, (if the data is accurate) Kim's only committed 48 LOC in the past 9 months, compared to my 80,000 LOC (seriously, that can't be right) - but what she, Andrew and Andrew have done has been invaluable. And, often much more valuable, they've all helped out with with advice in bugs. Thanks!

Good planning trumps code any day.

Continued in part 2

Tracking Build Status With Hudson Data APIs

A number of people have been twittering recently about Hudson Helper, and the fact that it can't (yet) support http access to Hudson servers. (There's just no pleasing some people, eh David?)

UPDATE: David reports that Hudson Helper has worked with both http and https since day one. He invites direct feedback if you're having problems.

To help fill this gap, I'd like to detail some of the handy API features of Hudson I've discovered since I first started using it back in October, which cane be fetched via http (or https) in a browser or via a script.

Datum	Example
Latest Successful build number	buildNumber
Latest Successful zip (published artifact)	GEF-Update-*.zip
All checked out Project Set Files (Hudson workspace)	*.psf
XML Digest of Latest Stable Build	lastStableBuild/api/xml
SVN revision used for Latest Stable Build	//changeSet/revision/revision

For more on the APIs available to the Latest Successful, Stable, Failed, or in fact simply the Latest Build, see:

1. /lastSuccessfulBuild/api/
2. /lastStableBuild/api/
3. /lastFailedBuild/api/
4. /lastBuild/api/

Of course, should you want details on a specific build rather than the latest, you can replace the "last*Build" token with an actual build number.

Finally, because no post about APIs should be complete with out some script showing how to exploit that interface, here's a quick example of how to fetch the latest successful, and as yet unreleased Drools 5.1 runtime library zip for use in our JBoss Tools 3.1.0.M2 builds. In this example, we fetch the build number for the last successful build and compare it to a cached version. We also fetch and cache the latest SVN revision number (in a build.properties file) so that we can later fetch Drools sources from the same point in time as the precompiled Drools binaries in the zip. This guarantees we're building from trunk, but only a good build in trunk, skipping over any failed builds or intermediate states (partial commits).

#!/bin/bash
droolsSNAPSHOTnum=drools-SNAPSHOT-num.txt
droolsSNAPSHOTrev=drools-SNAPSHOT-rev.txt
droolsSNAPSHOTzip=drools-SNAPSHOT-bin.zip
droolsSNAPSHOTurl=http://jboss-hudson-server/hudson/job/drools/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/trunk/target/drools-5.1.0.SNAPSHOT-bin.zip

buildNumOld=0; if [[ -f $droolsSNAPSHOTnum ]]; then buildNumOld=$(cat $droolsSNAPSHOTnum); fi
buildNumNew=$(wget -q --no-clobber -O - http://jboss-hudson-server/hudson/job/drools/lastSuccessfulBuild/buildNumber)

buildRevOld=0; if [[ -f $droolsSNAPSHOTrev ]]; then buildRevOld=$(cat $droolsSNAPSHOTrev); fi
buildRevNew=$(wget -q --no-clobber -O - http://jboss-hudson-server/hudson/job/drools/lastSuccessfulBuild/api/xml?xpath=//changeSet/revision/revision)

if [[ $buildNumNew -gt $buildNumOld ]]; then
 # get: 27013; must change to 27013 
 echo $buildRevNew > $droolsSNAPSHOTrev;
 sed -i "s#\|##g" $droolsSNAPSHOTrev 
 buildRevNew="$(cat $droolsSNAPSHOTrev)"; #echo "."$buildRevNew"."
 # replace "defaultTag=trunk:\d+" with defaultTag=trunk:${buildRevNew} in build.properties
 #  defaultSvnUrl=http://anonsvn.jboss.org/repos/labs/labs/jbossrules
 #  defaultTag=trunk:27013
 sed -i "s#defaultTag=trunk:\d\+#defaultTag=trunk:$buildRevNew#g" build.properties; # grep "defaultTag=trunk:" build.properties 

 echo $buildNumNew > $droolsSNAPSHOTnum; 
 echo "Download $droolsSNAPSHOTurl ..."
 wget -q --no-clobber -O $droolsSNAPSHOTzip $droolsSNAPSHOTurl 

 # ...

fi

Oh, and BTW, if you're ever looking for the latest hudson.war executable, it's always here.

Workin' For The Wiikend

After acquiring my first DriveKey-powered "try before you buy" Wii game via torrent (and having a little fun fighting the Joker's minions off while occasionally blowing Robin into his component bricks with a well-placed BatBomb), I decided tonight to do a little more hacking. Thanks, CanadaMods.ca!

So, with the wife out watching some chick-flick w/ a friend, I got to spend a few hours playing with the HomeBrew Channel on my Wii. Very cool stuff available, from game emulators & ports, to new games, media players, and utilities. Complete list here.

To set up the HomeBrew Channel, follow these steps, including installation of the DVDx application so your Wii can play video DVDs.

Then, install the HomeBrew Browser, and grab some more software. After numerous tests, crashes, and reboots, I found that the best three options for playing video are these, all available through the HomeBrew Browser or via manual download from wiibrew.org.

Here's what I tested:

App	2G SD card w/ .mp3	Bus-powered 2.5" 500G USB drive w/ .avi	DVD-R w/ .avi	DVD-R Video DVD (burned w/ growisofs from dl'd .avi torrent) [1]	Video DVD (original, possibly DVD-DL? or DVD+R)
GeeXboX (embedded linux)	Y	Y	N	N	N
MPlayer CE	Y	Y	Y	Y	N
MPlayer TT			Y	Y	N

So, while I have scripted the process for easily converting .avi to DVD, I now no longer need to do so -- I can just plug my USB drive directly into the Wii and watch it on the big screen w/o having to waste hours in format conversion. Wii!

E-Fail

It's taken a while, but I've managed to get some metrics for how much mail I actually process.

Here's my inbox 3 weeks ago before I went on vacation for a week, then went without VPN access for a few days. The xkcd strip is particularly appropos.

Here's that same inbox today, sporting a newer version of Thunderbird. Note the pileup of over 1,000 emails in three weeks, in just ONE of the mailing list filter/folders I monitor.

So, other than filtering by sender & subject, automatically marking my own mailing list replies read, colourizing emails to make the more important ones stand out, and using "Show Unread Threads" view filtering ... what else can one do to manage the deluge?

Does anyone have any good, realistic strategies for dealing with 1000s of emails a month?

Simplified Win XP Pro EULA

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/eula/pro.mspx
-- Reminds me of the WTFPL license...

Mac OS X - VPN vs. LAN: DNS Royal Rumble

I've been "sharing the Mac experience" for the past day trying to get access to my local LAN and VPN concurrently. So far, it's only one or the other, but never both at the same time.

I've tried the Cisco client, the Shimo client, vpnc (compiled from scratch with and without openssl support), vpnc 0.5.3 from DarwinPorts, and even this custom bit of script I wrote based on some tips about using scutil.

#!/bin/bash
# goal here is to collect the DNS entries from the active services and merge them into the Global list

tmpfile=$(mktemp)

# get IPs from services using scutil
function getIPs ()
{
        return_IPs=""
        keys=$(echo "list State:/Network/"$1 | scutil | awk '{print $4}')
        for f in $keys; do
                echo "> show $f"
                printf "get "$f"\nshow "$f | scutil | grep "\."
                echo "show $f" | scutil 2>&1 | grep "\." 2>&1 | \
                  awk '{print $3}' 2>&1 >> $tmpfile
        done
        #cat $tmpfile
        IPlist=$(cat $tmpfile | sort -r 2>&1 | uniq 2>&1)
        for i in $IPlist; do
                return_IPs=$return_IPs" "$i
        done
        #echo $return_IPs
        rm -fr $tmpfile
}

function setIPs ()
{
        label="$1"
        IPs="$2"; # echo $IPs
        printf "get State:/Network/$label\nd.add ServerAddresses *$IPs\nset State:/Network/$label" | scutil
        echo "> show State:/Network/"$label
        printf "get State:/Network/"$label"\nshow State:/Network/"$label | \
          scutil | grep "\."
}

echo "--- BEFORE ---"
getIPs "Service/.+/DNS"
IPs=$return_IPs

echo ""; echo "--- AFTER ---"
setIPs "Service/com.cisco.VPN/DNS" "$IPs"
setIPs "Global/DNS" "$IPs"

mv /etc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf.bak
for i in $IPs; do echo "nameserver $i" >> /etc/resolv.conf; done

# ./dnsfix.sh 
--- BEFORE ---
> show State:/Network/Service/F1C45B82-45A1-4F44-89AC-82102F187F0B/DNS
    0 : 192.168.x.y
> show State:/Network/Service/com.cisco.VPN/DNS
    0 : a.b.c.d
    1 : e.f.g.h

--- AFTER ---
> show State:/Network/Service/com.cisco.VPN/DNS
    0 : 192.168.x.y
    1 : a.b.c.d
    2 : e.f.g.h
> show State:/Network/Global/DNS
    0 : 192.168.x.y
    1 : a.b.c.d
    2 : e.f.g.h

Obviously, since it's a Mac, there's got to be a dead-simple way for this to work. Anyone know how?

Learning to Love the Mac, Part 2: Mouse Tips & Desktop Management

I have an 8-button Logitech MX500 optical mouse, and this week is the first time I've ever successfully mapped functionality to all the buttons. Windows did a reasonable job with a few of the buttons; Linux doesn't support anything beyond the first three; Mac OS X Server just gets it done.

Out of the box, my third button (scroll wheel) is mapped to the seemingly pointless Dashboard, which is a huge pain when you're used to middle-clicking to open a link in a new tab or to copy/paste text in a console. To get that functionality back, go to Applications > System Preferences > Exposé & Spaces then remove Mouse Button 3 from the Dashboard's "Hide and Show" feature.

Next, I set Mouse buttons 5, 6, and 8 to All windows, Application windows, and Show Desktop.

But even cooler than these is Spaces, though as yet I can't find a way to replicate Gnome or XFCE's ability to move windows from from Space to Space which lets you drag open app windows from Space to Space which in the Spaces view (F8). Still, having up to 16 virtual desktops is very handy, particularly when you need to virtualize Windows and Linux. If you want to be able to have console windows on all Spaces rather than having them all collected on a single Space, uncheck the "When switching to an application, switch to a space with open windows for the application".

My love-hate with SVN, Part 5: Fedora 11 + Eclipse 3.5 + Subversion 1.6

Finally figured out how to make Eclipse 3.5 play nicely on Fedora 11 w/ Subversion, and I owe this bit of knowledge to our new MacPro. *sigh*

I also owe a great deal of gratitude to Cloudsmith for providing their Cloudsmith Galileo+ repository, which includes these features:

I still wish the version numbers would better align, in that I have to install the SVN Team Provider v0.7.8 with the SVN Connector v2.2.0 and the SVNKit 1.3.0 implementation v2.2.0 to make all this work with Subversion 1.6. Oof.