Heath Tech

Consolidated VMware VMDKs

2010-11-13T08:27:00.000-08:00

I just consolidated a 25GB VMware virtual machine into 10GB by consolidating unused snapshot virtual disks. This vmware faq explains how to do it extremely well.

Edited value not of required format!

2010-05-18T07:38:00.000-07:00

I'm using the xcode predicate editor to create a core data fetched property, and Apple's developer tools have proved inherently unusable yet again.

For a little back-story, I have some reference data, and my user can mark certain pieces of the reference data as favorites. I cannot store my favorites data in the same NSPersistentStore as my reference data. If I did, I couldn't updated my reference data file without migrating my favorites data out. Thus, I'm splitting my favorites data and reference data into separate NSPersistentStores. According to Apple's CoreData Programming Guide Cross-Store Relationships section I cannot have a relationship that spans two persistent stores. I need to use a fetched property.

Now you're caught up. When you create a fetched property, you have to create a predicate to use to find the entity the fetched property represents. This seems straightforward enough, but I kept getting this cryptic message "Edited value not of required format!" After some googling, I found the answer.

Basically, the editor defaults to expecting a constant value rather than a variable value. To switch to a variable, right-click in the empty space between the text field and the plus/minus buttons. Of course, a drop-down menu would be much better, but I never accused apple of having good tools.

Bootstrapping Buckminster & Subclipse with P2 Director

2010-04-26T15:08:00.000-07:00

On my current project at work, we are changing from using PDE-Build to create our Eclipse RCP product to using Buckminster. I found a very valuable tutorial to get me started, but I kept getting exceptions like these:


ERROR: Could not instantiate provider org.tigris.subversion.subclipse.core.svnnature for project com.foo.
org.eclipse.team.core.TeamException: Could not instantiate provider org.tigris.subversion.subclipse.core.svnnature for project com.asolutions.soaf.validation.ws.documentation.test.
at org.eclipse.team.core.RepositoryProvider.mapNewProvider(RepositoryProvider.java:165)
at org.eclipse.team.core.RepositoryProvider.mapExistingProvider(RepositoryProvider.java:235)
at org.eclipse.team.core.RepositoryProvider.getProvider(RepositoryProvider.java:507)
at org.eclipse.team.internal.core.TeamHookDispatcher.getProvider(TeamHookDispatcher.java:97)
at org.eclipse.team.internal.core.TeamHookDispatcher.getRuleFactory(TeamHookDispatcher.java:105)
at org.eclipse.core.internal.resources.Rules.factoryFor(Rules.java:92)
at org.eclipse.core.internal.resources.Rules.modifyRule(Rules.java:144)
at org.eclipse.core.internal.resources.Project.touch(Project.java:1191)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.core.SetContainerOperation.executeOperation(SetContainerOperation.java:115)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.core.JavaModelOperation.run(JavaModelOperation.java:728)
at org.eclipse.core.internal.resources.Workspace.run(Workspace.java:1975)
at org.eclipse.jdt.internal.core.JavaModelOperation.runOperation(JavaModelOperation.java:793)
at org.eclipse.jdt.core.JavaCore.setClasspathContainer(JavaCore.java:4842)
at org.eclipse.pde.internal.core.PluginModelManager$UpdateClasspathsJob.run(PluginModelManager.java:57)
at org.eclipse.core.internal.jobs.Worker.run(Worker.java:54)

The solution is to install subclipse, but doing so within Buckminster is painful because you can only specify a single repository location from the command line. Subclipse has a lot of dependencies that already exist in a default eclipse install, but are missing from buckminster-headless, so I needed to specify multiple repositories.

p2 director to the rescue!

In the tutorial, there is a section on bootstrapping buckminster with p2 director. The tutorial loads just the buckminster command-line application from p2 and then uses the buckminster command-line application to load more features into itself. This is convenient when all features and dependencies exist within a single repository, but as I said above, this is not my situation.

Assuming you are using bash and have p2 director installed, here is the command:


director/director\
-r http://download.eclipse.org/tools/buckminster/headless-3.6,http://download.eclipse.org/releases/helios/,http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.6.x\
-d `pwd`/buckminster-headless-3.6/\
-p Buckminster\
-i org.eclipse.buckminster.cmdline.product\
-i org.eclipse.buckminster.core.headless.feature.feature.group\
-i org.eclipse.buckminster.pde.headless.feature.feature.group\
-i org.tigris.subversion.subclipse.feature.group\
-i org.tigris.subversion.clientadapter.svnkit.feature.feature.group

5 Questions Response

2010-02-04T19:44:00.000-08:00

In response to Ben Lee's Five Questions:

What are you currently hacking on?

What are you currently getting better at?

What do you do when your computer is asleep?

Describe that ‘big fish’ project that’s been stewing in your brain.

What are you gonna post about this coming week?

JAXB, JAX-RS, Google App Engine for a real-time rating app I'm building with Mike Gaffney.
C/Objective-C. At work, I'm building a locator iPhone app for a fortune 500 company, and I'm running into all kinds of low-level issues that Java abstracts away from me. I can't help but feel like a badass when I see registers in my debugger.
Hurling, play with my wife and son.
In conjunction with #1, I'm building a real-time rating web service in preparation for a hackfest for my local mobile development group.
Probably nothing. I usually just use this blog as a public place to store answers to annoying technical problems. Entries should probably be cross-posted on stackoverflow as questions/answers.

Disabling Firefox Preview in Aptana

2009-12-28T22:25:00.000-08:00

Eclipse uses xulrunner to embed mozilla firefox within SWT applications. Unfortunately, xulrunner does not work with 64 bit cocoa (cocoa-x64). I'm trying to do Palm Pre development, so I don't need to preview my html in firefox. In fact, previewing in Safari is probably better anyway since, like the pre browser, it is webkit-based.

To disable Firefox preview, and stop errors like this:

(Build 1.2.7.024747) [ERROR] Unable to create Firefox browser control
No more handles (java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError: Could not load SWT library. Reasons:
 no swt-xulrunner-cocoa-3624 in java.library.path
 no swt-xulrunner-cocoa in java.library.path
 Can't load library: /var/folders/Az/Az+0r2ubHtm3wMGMatRuQE+++TI/-Tmp-/swtlib-64/libswt-xulrunner-cocoa-3624.jnilib
 Can't load library: /var/folders/Az/Az+0r2ubHtm3wMGMatRuQE+++TI/-Tmp-/swtlib-64/libswt-xulrunner-cocoa.jnilib
)

and this:

(Build 1.2.7.024747) [ERROR] (Build 1.2.7.024747) [ERROR] Unable to create Firefox browser control
No more handles [Could not detect registered XULRunner to use]

Go to the Window->Preferences->Aptana->Editors->HTML->Preview preference page and uncheck Firefox.

If you want to use xulrunner with eclipse out of the box, you must use eclipse carbon 32-bit. If you want to be a little more adventurous, an aptana bug report claims that xulrunner is a universal binary and runs on carbon and cocoa 32-bit. I haven't tried to verify this.

XCode Beach Ball Lock Up While Running Unit Tests

2009-10-05T12:13:00.000-07:00

I downloaded the iphone unit test calculator example project, iPhoneUnitTests. I followed the included directions, and my XCode locked up with a beach ball. I'm running OS X 10.6 and XCode 3.2. According to this article, there is a problem with XCode's regex parsing of the test completion dates for GMT-5:00. Since I'm in Central Daylight time, I am affected. The simple solution is to switch your time zone to Pacific.

VmWare Fusion Shared folders in CentOS Guest

2009-04-09T21:30:00.001-07:00

I'm working on a personal project that requires RHEL, so I'm using CentOS as a free substitute. Using the default options for RHEL5 on fusion didn't work. Nothing was showing up in /mnt/hgfs, which is where shared host folders should show up. Within the steps of this tutorial, I found the trick. I needed to disable SELinux, which means I needed to manually install CentOS rather than using fusion's easy install option.

Mail stays in my Gmail inbox even after I trash it on iPhone

2009-03-29T23:33:00.000-07:00

Actually, on my 2nd generation iPod Touch, but its the same app as the iPhone. I had the most annoying problem: I followed all the Gmail instructions on setting up iPhone mail for gmail, yet when I would trash messages, they would remain in my inbox. After tons of research, I finally found an apple forums post that resolved my issue.

Basically, I needed to set gmail to expunge my message immediately on the 'Settings -> Forwarding and POP/IMAP' menu. It seems that gmail thinks expunging a message means removing it from the inbox. I thought that expunging a message meant deleting it, and I don't want my messages to be deleted. It would be very helpful if the gmail team would include a note about these settings in their instructions.

Crapple Care

2009-03-09T19:41:00.000-07:00

Almost 2 years ago, I bought myself the nicest laptop possible for my birthday. I hadn't purchased any computer equipment for 5 years, and previously, I had constantly upgraded my desktop machines. I originally purchased a 17" Dell, but Vista had too many issues (mostly bluetooth), and Dell claimed my video card would have 256MB of RAM and I only got a 128MB card. I was tired of fighting Dell, and Apple had just released a new Macbook Pro with a 1920x1200 17" screen. I spent $3000 on the Macbook Pro and a 3 year AppleCare plan.

Today, I took my Macbook Pro to the Apple store in the St. Louis Galleria because the sound died on me. Up until I got to the Apple store, Apple had an experience that far surpassed Dell. When my bluetooth didn't work with the mouse I purchased from Dell, I had to spend almost 4 hours on the phone before I could talk with a native-english-speaking high level technical support person. When my sound died on my Macbook Pro, I waited about 5 minutes to talk to a native-english-speaker. He seemed more knowledgeable than the Dell tier-1 tech support. He had me wait another 10 minutes while he asked higher-level technical support about my issue, and when he came back he scheduled me for an appointment at the Apple Store's genius bar for the same night. So far, so good.

Once, I got to the Apple store, Apple began giving its lead in customer service back to Dell. I arrived 5 minutes early for my 8pm appointment and waited 20 minutes without explanation. If Apple is going to make appointments, they should at least explain when they are 15 minutes late. After a short diagnosis, they notified me that my audio board was probably dead and that it would need to be replaced, which was covered by my Apple Care plan. The Apple store clerk said it would take 1 week to replace the audio board. This is total crap. I could have almost purchased two Dell laptops for what I paid for my Macbook Pro, yet I have to wait almost 7 times as long to get my laptop back from Apple.

When I was dealing with my bluetooth and video card issues with Dell, I had terrific repair experiences. Even though Dell had terrible phone technical support, their repair service is second to none. Dell sent an independent contractor to my office and she repaired swapped my bluetooth card the very next day after I called technical support. It took only two days for Dell to swap out my video card the first time, and only one day the second time. I never had to leave my office. The work was all done in front of me, and the repair technician was on time for all her appointments.

Even though Apple makes a vastly superior product that I'm very happy to pay for, they have lost a repeat customer today. I'll probably buy Dells in the future and just dual-boot ubuntu.

Windows UAC rootkit

2009-03-08T22:09:00.000-07:00

Last week, my mother-in-law had me look at her laptop because she couldn't defrag her disk, and "Google wasn't working". I thought perhaps her google problems were related to her satellite internet, and I didn't think defragging really mattered anymore, so I thought perhaps nothing was wrong.

My gut was very wrong.

I was able to get google results, so I assumed google worked. Additionallly, her gmail came up fine in firefox and in outlook. However, her defrag didn't work. The defrag UI would start, but it wouldn't perform a defrag or analysis, so I tried googling for a diagnosis of these symptoms.

Then I discovered what my mother-in-law meant when she said "Google wasn't working."

Whenever I clicked on a google search result in firefox, I was redirected to spam sites like couponmountain.com. When I tried to navigate directly to some security sites, or microsoft update my browser would fail to connect to the site.

I noticed after initially clicking a google result, my status bar would show a link to windowsclick.com. I googled 'windowsclick.com' and found the following very helpful result:
http://www.antionline.com/showthread.php?t=278009

Unfortunately, my mother-in-law had gotten a rootkit somehow, and her AVG antivirus was unable to detect the rootkit, neither was spybot or adaware. Thankfully, the above link outlined a fix using combofix, malware removal software I'd never heard of, but it worked perfectly. I had to download the installer from another machine because the rootkit prevented me from connecting to the download site. After downloading, I changed the name of the executable so the rootkit wouldn't stop it from running. I followed all the recommendations of the combofix prompts and poof! no rootkit.

Thanks combofix!

Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex on Dell Dimension 2400

2009-02-01T20:43:00.000-08:00

I just installed Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex server on my Dell Dimension 2400. It was locking up after I would log in. I found the problem and workaround on Ubuntu's forums:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=970037

and here on Ubuntu's bug tracker:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/259385

I applied the workaround and the login proceeded normally. Yay.

dojo.require omitModuleCheck

2009-01-12T13:57:00.000-08:00

http://api.dojotoolkit.org/jsdoc/dojo/1.2/dojo.require

I don't get why the omitModuleCheck option exists in dojo.require. I can't think of a situation where you would require a javascript library to be present yet not care whether loading of said library fails.

Also, setting omitModuleCheck to true causes problems for debugAtAllCosts in firefox 3.

I can tag in stackoverflow.com

2008-10-07T18:10:00.001-07:00

I have now massed 500 points and can tag questions in stackoverflow. Soon I'll have infinite power!

Restrict Time Machine Backup Size

2008-07-07T20:30:00.000-07:00

Mac OSX 10.5 (Leopard) has a great backup facility called Time Machine. You simply specify a disk to hold your backups, and it takes care of everything else. The only problem is that Time Machine will eat all available space on disk. Luckily, I found a very simple solution that limits the size of my Time Machine backups, and preserves my backup history. Check it out!

http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20071108020121567

Extending an Airport Extreme Base Station Network with a WRT54G

2008-07-06T18:31:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, I purchased 7" iMate digital picture frame off of woot for about $75. I got it connected to a shared photo library on Windows Media Player 11 on my Windows XP Pro SP3 box. However, the downside was that it didn't connect to my Airport Extreme Base Station in N/G compatibility mode. The only way to get it to work was in 802.11b mode. (This can be done by holding down the 'option' key before selecting the 'modes' combo in the Airport Utility).

This annoyed me fiercely because my MacBook Pro then had very slow network access to my Time Machine backup drive on my AEBS. So, I purchased a Linksys WRT54G because I assumed iMate would have ensured they could connect to one of the most popular home wifi hubs. Luckily, I assumed correctly. However, now I had a problem: how do I hook up my Airport Extreme Base Station and my Linksys WRT54G so that all computers connected to them could see each other? This meant that I could not run the WRT54G as a NAT like I had always done in the past. Instead, I needed to use it as an ethernet bridge.

I did a lot of googling last night, and most people are daisy-chaining their WRT54G with one as a wifi client so it could extend their existing network. This is not what I wanted to do. I want separate 802.11N and 802.11B/G segments for maximum speed for my MacBook Pro.

I tried and failed to get the WRT54G to work as a router using the advnaced routing tab. Then, I found suggestions to simply attach the AEBS to the WRT54G's LAN port instead of its WAN port, and then disable DHCP in the WRT54G. This worked like a charm! Now, all my devices can see each other, and I have two separate wireless segments. My MacBook Pro's network is now screaming fast.

The downside is that I can't seem to access the WRT54G's admin page unless its connected to the AEBS through its WAN port. This is really annoying, and I hope someone can tell me how best to fix it.

Problems with Erlang R12B-1 on Leopard

2008-02-29T22:10:00.000-08:00

I've recently been trying to set up tsung on my Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro running Leopard 10.5.2.

I tried the generic ./configure, but precept failed because I was missing libgd and ODBC. So, I downloaded libgd, and tried ./configure, but it was missing libjpeg. Of course, it hasn't been updated since 1998, which is of course will not ./configure on my super-sweet macbook pro.

Luckily, I found steps to get libjpeg to compile. They worked like a charm. Once I built libjpeg, libgd built just fine. Of course, this only took care of half my erlang problem. ODBC still didn't work. I found an email thread explaining steps to try and resolve the problem, but when I did:

./configure --enable-darwin-64bit --with-gd=/usr/local

My install did have the lib/orber/c_src/i386-apple-darwin9.1.0 directory. It had a lib/orber/c_src/i386-apple-darwin9.2.0 directory instead. At this point I just gave up and used R12B-0 instead since I found some working directions to build it. I had to modify the configure parameters slightly since I manually installed libgd:

./configure --with-gd=/usr/local