IT problems

VBRUN300.DLL problem with Wine application under Linux

2010-12-26T10:51:00.000+01:00

(Kubuntu 10.10 with Wine 1.3.10)

I have installed a Windows program under Wine, but it wasn't working. When I run the EXE from console, I got a message that VBRUN300.DLL is missing.

First thing to do here is to download winetricks. The complete guide is available on http://wiki.winehq.org/winetricks. The complete list of available Windows libraries is shown under Options. It includes vb3run - I have tried with lots of libraries, but I think that only this one is necessary to get VBRUN300.DLL. So:

download winetricks to your home folder with wget http://www.kegel.com/wine/winetricks,
then, download the library with sh winetricks vb3run.

After this, I still couldn't start my program. I did have the dll file (named Vbrun300.dll), so I made link to it in folder where is the EXE file of mine program (the link is named with all capital leters). After starting the program again, in console I got an error that some other files are missing (THREED.VBX and MCI.VBX). After making similar links to these files, the program worked.

Kristijan Mitrovic - Search Engine Optimization

2010-12-15T18:22:00.001+01:00

(SEO)

The problem I have is that my blog is near the top for the search on some keywords related to the posts, but when I look for my name (as most people do, also some HR staff) I do not see my blog well positioned.

This post would be the solution I hope. This is the reason why I do have my full name in the title.

Apache Archiva admin account locked

2010-11-26T16:07:00.000+01:00

(Archiva 1.1.3 with default Derby database)

Many times I have had this problem. It's time to note the solution here, so I would not waste any time in the future. I just forgot the admin password or locked it some way.
Here is a step by step solution:

Download and install some database client for Derby (I have SQuirreL SQL Client 3.2.0).
Create new account on Archiva's Web interface, and remember the password.
Stop Archiva on server.
Locate users database folder on the server (I have it in /usr/share/apache-archiva/data/databases/users/), make a backup and download it to your local machine, and then remove the content of this folder on server.
Connect to the database with your client (in SQuirreL, I'm using Apache Derby Embedded driver and jdbc:derby:C:/derby_home/databases/users/ as URL with user name sa).
If you get an error Error occured in IPlugin.sessionStarted() for Hibernate Plugin within SQuirreL, just ignore (close) it.
Find table JDOUSER within SA schema and open its content for editing (in SQuirreL: right click on content and then click Make Editable).
Set values for all or just for admin account:

COUNT_FAILED_LOGIN_ATTEMPTS = 0
ENCODED_PASSWORD - copy the encoded password value from the account created in the second step
LOCKED = N
PASSWORD_CHANGE_REQUIRED = N
PERMANENT = Y
VALIDATED = Y

Close the database session.
Copy all files from local database folder to server's database folder.
Run the Apache Archiva and log in as admin with password that you set for the new account in the step 2 of this guide.

Strange errors while using maven (dependency mess)

2010-11-22T17:50:00.003+01:00

(Java&Maven)

I have two projects built with maven. One of them includes the other.
The new requirement that I have done is working in the original (common) project, but, even the simplest call to this functionality from the upper project results with an error (in current case with ClassNotFoundException, but this can be any time of error).

Here is one of the thing that should be done when you don't have the clue - check dependencies. By using maven it is possible to have a mess with them if you do not use exclusions within dependency tags. This way you can get two versions of the same JAR downloaded, and the older version used - so you got the class not found exception.

Useful tool is within Eclipse Galileo: open pom.xml and check all items within Dependency Hierarchy. From there you can build a list with duplicated and conflicted versions of JARs, and a list of exclusions you need to set in same pom.xml file.
After altering pom.xml file, check the hierarchy again - you should have one position in the hierarchy for each resolved dependency (or at least positions within same library in the hierarchy without any conflicts).

phpMyAdmin shown bad data for same column names

2010-11-17T10:52:00.002+01:00

(phpMyAdmin 2.2.3)

I have run the SQL with some joins and as the result I had two columns named name:

SELECT
    competitor.*,
    club.name,
    class.name
FROM ...

As a result I got two columns with same name and same values (both had class.name values). This was not the case when I tried to run the same SQL on database directly.

The solution is simple - just set some different aliases for those columns:

SELECT
    competitor.*,
    club.name AS club_name,
    class.name AS class_name
FROM ...

Google only displays 10 results within Advanced Search

2010-11-11T15:37:00.002+01:00

I've tried to set number of results per page to 100 in Advanced Search, but I still was getting only 10 results on one page.

This was because Instant is on (one of the Google's newer options to show results live as you type).

To fix the previous problems, just turn off Instant property, and then use Advanced Search with customized number of results per page.

Sources:
- http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2010/09/google-features-no-longer-available-in.html
- https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/questions/756397#answer-107725 (as you can see, this is not bug in FireFox as stated in this report).

JadaSite shops without Payment Gateways

2010-11-11T12:45:00.003+01:00

(JadaSite 2.03)

I didn't set any Payment Gateway in my shops. While shopping, I go Null Pointer Exception:

2010-11-11 10:39:25,452 ERROR [http-8180-Processor24] (ContentLookupDispatchAction.java:165) - Exception encountered in null
2010-11-11 10:39:25,452 ERROR [http-8180-Processor24] (ContentLookupDispatchAction.java:166) - Exception
java.lang.NullPointerException
    at com.jada.content.checkout.ShoppingCartCancelCheckoutAction.cancel(ShoppingCartCancelCheckoutAction.java:48)

To fix this, add check for line 48 in ShoppingCartCancelCheckoutAction:

PaymentEngine paymentEngine = shoppingCart.getPaymentEngine();
if (paymentEngine != null) {
    paymentEngine.abort();
}

velocity.log Permission denied

2010-11-10T17:27:00.004+01:00

(within JadaSite 2.03 using Apache Valocity 1.5)

I got a lot of Permission denied stacktraces for velocity.log within my catalina.out. It is not big problem for now, but these messages could lead to large catalina.log file which will effect performances of Web application.

Velocity's log file is written into current folder (for me /etc/init.d) by default setup. If tomcat user does not have the right to create that file, you'll get Permission denied error. According to the Apache's documentation, Velocity's setup can be changed within Java. But, I didn't like the idea of changing Jada's code just for that.

Instead, I have overridden Velocity default properties:

I got the original velocity.properties file from
velocity-1.5.jar (in folder org/apache/velocity/runtime/defaults/)
I created new directories within Jada's WEB-INF/classes folder to have the same structure
I created a new file velocity.properties within just created folder
WEB-INF/classes/org/apache/velocity/runtime/defaults/
In that new file, I put the contents from the original file, and changed the value in the line 32 to
```
runtime.log = /tmp/velocity.log
```

Edit: Within this velocity log I got an error saying that class org.apache.log.format.Formatter is not found. The class can be found in avalon-logkit-2.2.1.jar (or any newer version I suppose). To fix this, download this jar and add it to the class path (I've put it in Jada's WEB-INF/lib/ folder).

JadaSite internationalization within JSON problem

2010-11-10T13:13:00.004+01:00

(JadaSite 2.03)

While opening Items for editing, I got error: Unexcepted Error: unable to show selected category.
I have Categories that include some Serbian UTF-8 characters.

The problem is that length of JSON data response is calculated as length of JSON string, and the same string is then transfered via HTTP as bytes. This results in missing characters at the end of JSON output, and therefore the unrecognized input on edit page.

For fix: JSON is heavily used in stated way within the code, and this problem can be solved only by large refactoring. The quick fix would be to change JSONEscapeObject class - method toHtmlString. Check the difference in length between string and byte array, and add the difference as spaces at the end of string afterwards:

// if this is less or equal to 0 it is ok; else, add this much spaces at the end
// so the length of string would represent the size of byte array from the string itself
// (without trailing spaces that would be added here)
public String toHtmlString() {
    String output = toString();
    output = output.replaceAll("'", "\\\\'");
    //---additional code
    int additionalByteSymbolsCount = output.getBytes().length - output.length();
    for (int i = 0; i < additionalByteSymbolsCount; i++) {
        output += ' ';
    }
    //---
    return output;
}

This also may (and will) fix some other problems (i.e. I could not select some categories from the list for the item because category names contained Serbian letters).

Currency Attributes problem when editing Items in JadaSite

2010-11-09T10:45:00.003+01:00

For the problem stated at:
http://www.jadasite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=112
the simple solution would be to use "User Input" as Attribut type for Currency Custom Attributes.

Before that I have used default "User selects from dropdown" as Attribute type for Currency - it is kind of strange to use it that way, isn't it? But there is no validation for this kind of error yet. So be carefull what you choose.

The logged error was:

javax.servlet.jsp.JspException
at com.jada.taglib.language.OptionsCollection.doEndTag(OptionsCollection.java:80)

Problems Connecting to MySQL Database on Server

2010-11-08T17:15:00.003+01:00

(MySQL 5.0.51a)

I have just installed MySQL on my test server (Debian). I have tried to connect to MySQL database from my laptop directly. This is not possible by default. To enable this you must:

- change setup in /etc/mysql/my.cnf - comment the line with bind-address variable (line 47)

- try to connect and check the error message - it should contain something like 'user_name'@'ip_address'

- check the table mysql.user for entry with user_name as value in User column

- insert new entry in that table with the same values except in column Host - add ip_address from the previous message in here

This is what helped me.

If you want to see complete reference for this kind of error, check: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/access-denied.html

Apache OFBiz problems with port 1099 on startup

2010-11-08T11:03:00.001+01:00

(Apache OFBiz 9.04 Stable Release)

During my first start of OFBiz, I got error message that port 1099 is busy. I got this after turning of GMail, also (found somewhere that it is using this port). Yet, I didn't so any process using this port in list from netstat.

Oddly enough, looks like OFBiz is using it. And so I find where to change this:
file: framework/base/config/ofbiz-containers.xml
replace: 1099 to 10990 (check if this port is not used with netstat - you can change this to any free port)
(I found 1099 in two places in the file - lines 40 and 47)

After saving the configuration file I could start OFBiz without any problems.

Later on (after restart I suppose), I changed previously mentioned ports back to 1099. There was no problems this time.
So, if you got the error message for the first time, before changing port try to restart first, and write a comment here if only the restart fixed this.

Uncompilable source code

2009-07-01T13:32:00.004+02:00

Got this at the very end of the java file.

I have solved this one only by removing and reentering new line sign after class definition in that file.
Many other strange errors can be solved this way.

Eclipse Tomcat in more than 45 seconds

2009-02-06T09:28:00.004+01:00

(Eclipse 3.3 - for Eclipse 3.4+ check comments on this post)

Do you have some web application that cannot be started in Eclipse's Tomcat in 45s, and you get that annoying time out message?

Go to Windows > Preferences in Eclipse
Search for Server
Set Server timeout delay at you're own will

Here is the list of values in drop down:

Preference    TimeOut
Shorter       11s
Short         22s
Normal        45s
Long          90s
Longer        180s
Unlimited     unlimited

Source: https://bugs.eclipse.org/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=151993

Debugging log4j itself

2009-01-16T10:15:00.003+01:00

Problem: You cannot find out which log4j.properties file is used.

Try running VM with parameter
-Dlog4j.debug

You'll get info about log4j properties in console.

See: http://logging.apache.org/log4j/1.2/manual.html

Window's hosts file

2008-11-29T21:18:00.007+01:00

For Vista it is: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts

Write in IP adress map it to some symbolic address of your choice. One IP can have many lines - so it can has many different symbolic adresses.

Or you can download HostsXpert from this page:
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm#Related

Install SVN on Debian

2008-11-21T14:47:00.004+01:00

adduser subversion
apt-get install subversion
mkdir /var/svn-repos
svnadmin create --fs-type fsfs /var/svn-repos/directory
chown -R www-data:subversion /var/svn-repos/*
chmod -R 770 /var/svn-repos/*

Then create users for SVN, and set their default group to subversion.

GWT under NetBeans memory problem

2008-10-25T19:31:00.003+02:00

To solve JavaHeapSpace when starting some GWT project under NetBeans, edit file
/nbproject/build-gwt.xml

under next path in this XML
project/target[name="-post-compile"]/java

add attribute/value pair inside java tag
maxmemory="128M"

Current directory in Java

2008-01-14T11:49:00.001+01:00

Here is something that I need all the time:

Current directory can be retrieved with:

System.getProperty("user.dir");

Some other properties from System are also very useful (here is the list of all properties)

Just for fun

2007-12-24T23:40:00.000+01:00

Do not try this at home :)

Problem: After some hard work, saving returns an error. WHAT TO DO???

Try this: http://pc-breakdown.freeonlinegames.com/

Subtitle Manager

2007-12-22T23:15:00.000+01:00

I had a problems with some movies and their subtitle synchronization.

Well, now I don't have them thanks to the Subtitle Workshop. ALL problems are gone.

String's methods with regular expressions

2007-12-22T15:05:00.019+01:00

The next example is for method replaceFirst(String regex, String replacement) which should find first substring that matches given regular expression and change it with replacement.

What if you want to replace only the first substring that is equal to "[sometnig]" - this represents regular expression that will match every single character from the word 'something', and, so

a.replaceFirst("[something]", "anything");

will return (bold substrings are match and replacement):

if a="this is a [something] test"
then "anythinghis is a [something] test"
if a="[something]"
then "[anythingomething]"

What we need here is static method Pattern.quote(String s) which will make regular expression that matches string s as is. Thus, call

a.replaceFirst(Pattern.quote("[something]"), "anything");

if a="this is a [something] test"
will return "this is a anything test".

BTW: This is just for replacing only the first substring matched. If you want to replace all substring that are matched, you should use String's method replace. Also, there is method replaceAll which, again, uses String parameter for regular expression pattern matching.

Reading Linux's ext2 and ext3 partitions under Windows

2007-12-22T14:37:00.000+01:00

After unsuccessful installation of Kubuntu, I decided to move some data I've downloaded from Kubuntu to my Windows.

After searching the Internet I found http://www.fs-driver.org/
It is very easy to install. You choose drive letters for partitions, and then use them as regular partitions (it has kernel mode and extend Windows so it can read ext2 or ext3 just as fat or ntfs).

Also, you will have to choose if you want to install support for larger files (above 4GBs). File with this size cannot be saved to Ext2 on Linux with kerver <=2.2 (read FAQ) - so, if you have older kernel choose not to install support for larger files.

Kubuntu 7.10 - Gutsy Gibbon instalation od Samsung X15

2007-12-22T14:24:00.000+01:00

I install Kubuntu 7.10 - Gutsy Gibbon (from CD) on my laptop (Samsung X15).

Installation was very simple.

Still, I have no sound under Kubuntu.

I didn't find a solution for this problem, yet. :(

Start

2007-12-21T19:21:00.000+01:00

Here is a start message:

So, this will be log for problems and their solutions - so I would remember them easier :)

And, of course, anyone who has the same problem can use the solution.

Enjoy.