Category: technology

perl CPAN fails install DateTime::TimeZone

technology

doing a simple

perl -MCPAN -e shell
install DateTime::TimeZone

the screen starting throwing LOTS of errors at me. And they end along the lines of:

... skipped lots of output ...
t/10deprecated.t   (Wstat: 512 Tests: 0 Failed: 0)
  Non-zero exit status: 2
  Parse errors: No plan found in TAP output
Files=12, Tests=0,  0 wallclock secs ( 0.04 usr  0.03 sys +  0.26 cusr  0.05 csys =  0.38 CPU)
Result: FAIL
Failed 10/12 test programs. 0/0 subtests failed.
make: *** [test_dynamic] Error 255
  /usr/bin/make test -- NOT OK
Running make install
  make test had returned bad status, won't install without force

That does not look so promising – does it?

Actually the fix was easier than the output had let me to believe. Scrolling up I saw there were lots of errors starting like

Can't locate Params/Validate.pm in @INC ...

When I tried to do a

install Params::Validate

I got a similar error – just now Attribute/Handlers.pm

Much to my happiness

install Attribute::Handlers

actually worked. After that Params/Validate could be installed and finally I was back on track with installing the module that I actually wanted.

I do not know why my CPAN install is not having the right understanding of its proper pre requisites. Since this worked for me I probably will not find out …

learning vim

technology

First there is ‘vimtutor’ which covers the basics.

Drew Neil publishes insightful screen casts about vim.

Bram Moolar himself has a great commented page about books he recommends about vim. [A little bit as if Jesus would point out his favorite Bibles]

These vim keyboard maps might be handy. Not sure since I have not used those yet.

LSI megaraid write cache via CacheCade

technology

If you like to use the MegaRAID write cache feature make sure that you indeed have a version 2.0 key.

Version 2 keys have the part number LSI00292 while Version 1 keys have the part number LSI00248.

It is possible to get the Version 1 flavor, since both keys share a part number. If you use a Version 1 key
nothing will say this in the MegaRAID “WebBIOS” software or any of the command line tools that LSI offers.
The only indicator will be the part number on the packaging and the fact that write cache will not be enabled.

avoid enum suggestions in mysql procedure analyse()

technology

If you don’t want to see enum suggestions in a mysql procedure analyse() call on a table then you simply run it like:


select * from table_name procedure analyse(1,1) \G

The (1,1) will always show you non enum solutions for each column.

Firefox 22 . Mac OS X 10.6.8 and Quicktime 7.6

OSX technology

It seems that in any dying project the bureaucrats, middle managers and otherwise challenged people are the last to leave. They cling on to past greatness and try to re-evoke what is gone.

The last Firefox update 22 put the latest available Quicktime Version 7.6.8 on their blocklist. Clips will not longer play, but a warning will show up, requesting an update. Only problem is that Quicktime 7.6.6 is not out of date for OS X 10.6.8. FF has acknowledged this and it is fixed. But a download of FF still has the broken blocklist.xml.

If you want or need to fix this manually you can do:

1) locate blocklist.xml for instance via

mdfind blocklist.xml

2) remove the 3 lines:

<pluginitem blockID="p408">
<match name="filename" exp="QuickTime Plugin\.plugin" />                      <versionrange minVersion="0" maxVersion="7.7.0" severity="0" vulnerabilitystatus="1"></versionrange>
</pluginitem>

3) restart Firefox

infinite sar display – neat option

history linux technology

wanting watch sar run in a terminal in linux indefinitely one can start it with


sar 1 0

The first number indicates the sampling time in seconds. The second number is usually the number of samples you like ot see.

If this number is 0 then sar will not stop. And as another bonus will look at how large the terminal is and will display a new header
accordingly.

Command line can be user friendly. I really like those little gems that show up in all software: People spending their time to make something better. It is like a little gift to the world. With software the value of even a little detail can potentially be significant. Which is an awesome thing.

For all we know it might very well be that the feature described here will please people in a hundred years from now.

I don’t think that mankind will manage to drop unix at this point. Neither can it give up on the use of steel. Yes there might be new systems, much like there have been new materials.

The new gets all the attention. But in many cases the new will not replace the old entirely. Only journalists tend to think that way. In reality the findings of Mr Newton help Boeing and Airbus today to build tubes with wings that shuttle people around the globe close to the sound of speed.

I hate this guy

daily life technology

Working on some code which is from 1992. Amazing fact number one is that the bits did not rot. Still compiles like a charm. But I really really hate the guy who wrote it. I know that back in the day storage was an issue. Things needed to be a bit more optimized than today. But having it all come down to a line like:


pos1 = ((*(*(l+x)+y)));

feels a bit outdated. Sure, it still works. Couple of comments could have been nice. Those extra brackets barely make up for it. I think the best thing that the author of those lines did, was not to get under a bus or die in any other way: I would not be here in that case.

hover is awesome

internet marketing technology

Hover is just awesome.

With Godaddy and Network Solutions I have to battle through an ever increasing amount of screens that try to sell something when doing even the simplest things.

Yes, it’s as painful as that last sentence.

Hover is a wonderful. Even if the others were OK Hover would still stand out. It is really nice.

A domain would auto renew next week. I don’t need it anymore. So Hover sends an email asking me what I would like to do. The others just auto renew.

I really like that. Treating your customers right. Looking for what they could want. Instead of looking for upsell opportunities.

Very very nice.

Thermaltake BlacX seing 801.57 GB on a 3TB disk

technology

For time machine and other local data needs I really like a drop in design for an external disk. When drives were cheap it was so nice just to drop them into the ‘enclosure’ and go on.

I ended up buying and liking the BlacX ones from Thermaltake. Slight cheap electronic stench when you open them. 1 out 5 that I bought ended up not working. But the price was really right.

Unfortunately the love ends with larger than 2TB drives. It seems to say somewhere in the specs for the device. The model I have is old too.

But it is still a bit of a let down if a 3.0 Tb drive only shows you 801.57 GB in ‘Generic External Media’ in Disk Utility under OS X.

I remember having spent hours at a client in 1987 trying to get their whopping 30 Megabyte hard drive to work with the limitation of the initial FAT16 allocation table.

There have been countless problems caused by an “oh this kind of system will last for sooo long” engineering attitude since then. “Nobody will want to have so much space, speed, insert-thing-here.”

People seem to have a hard time estimating how long something will be around – and in what kind of world things might have to fit in.

Doing those underlying things ‘right’, making them easily extendable for instance, creates tremendous value.

If Amazon actually manages to continue to fully implement their SOA approach then we might be hearing from that for quiet a while. They are currently one of the few companies that positively surprise me when I interact with them.

We will see. And I wonder what kind of size limit the new drive enclosures have that I just ordered.

leap second – the buck stops over there …

economy technology

Skimming over the news (a bad thing in itself I must admit) it seems that the leap second addition – one might tempted to say – between June 30 and July 1st caused allot of Java based systems to fail.

While the headlines list who got affected and all that it is interesting that there was no reference to responsibility. Outages in general are news. Like the one on this recent Friday that took AMZN service and then some systems down.

In general it is all in a ‘oh well’ state. “shit happens”.

This attitude is awesome for technology providers: Not once saw I reference to who owns Java in those leap second bug reports. Sun did. Sun got bought by Oracle. Larry Ellison, principal and I guess at least part time owner of Oracle picked up a nice Hawaiian island the other day. How about he offers sys admins working late to work around HIS bugs a complimentary stay there?