The Unthingable

Setting up LDAP for the first time

The most humane walkthrough found so far: http://ralf.schaeftlein.de/2009/02/04/howto-setup-a-openldap-server-for-ubuntu-810/

Blank Java windows in Awesome

After updating to GWT 2.0.1 (official) and moving our project to a arch/vbox, I had a small adventure trying to get DevMode window to come up: it just wouldn't. The window just came up blank and nothing else happened.

It turns out you are running awesome, Java may not play nice. You need this:

http://tools.suckless.org/wmname

And remember to export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=true to make all your Eclipse buttons work correctly.

Thanks to selckin on ##gwt for wmname suggestion.

Pretty fonts in Linux

After two weeks of research and experimentation, finally arrived at the settings that stop Eclipse from making you want to gouge your eyes out.

This goes into ~/.Xdefaults:

Xft.dpi: 76 #84 for 27" iMac
Xft.antialias: true
Xft.hinting: true
Xft.hintstyle: hintslight
Xft.rgba: rgb

And this is what's installed (in that order):

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 15 11:26 pkgconfig-0.23-1
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 15 12:00 freetype2-ubuntu-2.3.11-2
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 15 12:02 fontconfig-ubuntu-2.6.0-8
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 15 12:29 libxft-ubuntu-2.1.14-2
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 15 13:05 cairo-ubuntu-1.8.8-1
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 18 10:13 ttf-inconsolata-20090215-1
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 18 10:15 ttf-bitstream-vera-1.10-6
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 25 22:06 ttf-dejavu-2.30-1

And this is why we like to use Macs.

By the way, the .Xdefaults bit above also helps with X11 on the Mac (yay for wireshark).

VirtualBox clipboard sharing in guest xterm

Per `default installations instructions`_ the clipboard integration does not work in guest xterm. The problem with xterm is that by default it uses a different internal clipboard.

To fix, add the following to ~/.Xdefaults:

XTerm*selectToClipboard:true
XTerm.vt100.translations: #override \n\
            Shift : ignore() \n\
            Shift   : insert-selection(CLIPBOARD,PRIMARY,CUT_BUFFER0)\n\

`original solution`_

instructions: http://unthingable.eat-up.org/?p=3 .. _original solution: http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&p=118929

Installing VirtualBox 3 (PUEL) on CentOS 5 (rackspace slicehost)

is impossible.

Followed the `rpm installation instructions`_. Installed "Development Libraries", " Development Tools", gcc-devel, etc.., and kernel headers from the repo:

# yum install kernel_headers
# export KERN_DIR=/usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-164.10.1.el5-x86_64
# /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup
    ...  [FAIL]
# uname -r
2.6.31-302-rs

Version mistmatch. Damn.

Ah, here we go: `proper headers`_ — yay! Wait, what? /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.31-302-ec2/scripts/mod/modpost requires GLIBC_2.8, and we can't mess with glibc or the kernel. Attempted building and installing glibc 2.8 on the side, no go. Damn.

Ok, it's been a day now, we get resourceful and desperate:

# cd /usr/src/linux
# rm srcipts/mod/modpost
# make scripts
# ldd scripts/mod/modpost
(no problem, yay)
# /etc/init.d/vboxdrv setup
    ... [ DONE! ]

Finally! OK, let's fire it up:

# VBoxHeadless

!!Assertion Failed!!
Expression: GipMapReq.u.Out.pGipR3->u32Magic == SUPGLOBALINFOPAGE_MAGIC
Location  : /home/vbox/vbox-3.0.12/src/VBox/HostDrivers/Support/SUPLib.cpp(321) int SUPR3Init(PSUPDRVSESSION*)
Trace/breakpoint trap

Fuck it. I give up.

So, to recap: after a full day of installing headers, installing hacked headers, building glibc 2.8 and a futile attempt to get vboxdrv to build with that, hacking modpost, trying two different PUEL versions (3.0 and 3.1) we still get nothing.

VBox OSE won't compile because of failing some version dependency checks and CentOS repo is hopelessly out of date. Tried with multiple different versions of vbox, ultimately it's too much pain.

Another possibility worth exploring is bringing up the image in vmware or xen.

instructions: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Linux_Downloads .. _proper headers: http://cloudservers.rackspacecloud.com/index.php/Installing_Kernel_Headers_for_2.6.31-302-rs