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Category Archives: Ubuntu

·

Logging Notification Messages in Ubuntu

Ubuntu contains a nice notification system to talk to the user about noteworthy events. However when the message dissappears, by default, it is gone. Often I am busy with something else when the notification pops up and I pay little notice. Then somewhere in my brain, something gets triggered by a word, and by the time I focus on the message to really read it, the message disappears. Some of these appear after booting or logging in, so it is not trivial to redisplay them. Then I really need a system for logging notification messages for reading what I missed.

Ideally there was a scroll back buffer in the notification feature. Maybe there is, but I didn’t find it.

Standard Notification Logging

The developers provided a log in *~/.cache/notify-osd.log*. (see
[[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NotifyOSD][NotifyOSD page an the ubuntu wiki]]) for logging notification messages. So this used to be a moot point as
a quick

$ tail ~/.cache/notify-osd

gave me what I needed.

However somewhere between 12.04 and 13.04 the default behavior was
changed to no longer log to this file by default. My last entry was
from December 2012. It was considered as a developer feature and was
disabled for the general public, but controllable using an environment
variable : LOG=1.

To enable this globally, edit */etc/environment* and add

LOG=1

However, since this is such a vague variable, I guess that this will
enable logging in more than just *notify-osd*. I am fine with this
(at least until my disk runs out).

The wiki, which actually contains a design document rather than
documentation, makes no mention of it. It is also not very logical as
the file is reset when logging in, so it should never pose a threat
to the disk space. In any case, I dropped a small note in the wiki to
point users in the right direction.

Logging Notifications with an App

There is also an app for that. You can install the package
indicator-notifications which keeps track of notifcations that you
receive. You can install with the following

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:jconti/recent-notifications
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install indicator-notifications

You’ll have to log out and log back in. It shows up as a mailbox in
the top panel and turns green when you get new messages.

For more info about logging notifications see http://askubuntu.com/questions/288348/how-can-i-read-notifyosd-messages-after-they-are-displayed

 

·

Disable authentication for global proxy settings on Ubuntu

2011-07-22 Fri 16:33
Figure out proxy settings Linux

Ubuntu has a Network Proxy chooser which allows you to select a location (a la MacOSX). This works well enough except that the UI is a bit counter-intuitive (in my humble opinion)which causes me to regularly nuke some predefined setting inadvertently. This is not a big deal though.

However for update manager (and several other tools) to pick up the new proxy settings you need to push the settings down to the system level. This takes 2 times typing your password. Now, this IS a big deal.

When I go back and forth between work and home I have to change this at least 2 times per day. Also it irks me that a detail setting like the proxy is not auto-detected and I need to login to change this ‘system’ setting. My laptop is essentially a single user system and I do not see switching the proxy as a serious security issue, even with 3 kids running around the home.

To come back to auto-detection, while this works fine at work, it fails to figure out that at home that there is a direct connection to the Internet. I can probably fix this by replacing my aging wireless router with my Time Capsule as the Internet gateway router, but I prefer to have the Time Capsule close to my desk.

In any case the Network proxy shows 2 times the authentication dialog box. A particularly nice feature (Is this new in Natty?) is that the dialog shows for which DBUS setting access is being asked.

The first dialog asks access to com.ubuntu.systemservice.setProxy. This response is configured in the file /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/com.ubuntu.systemservice.policy. This is a very readable XML file which contains a section for the setProxy action. I feel no reservation in allowing unchecked access to the setProxy. Although this might make a man-in-the-middle attack easier someone with the sophistication to pull this off, does not need to doctor my PC to do it.

<action id="com.ubuntu.systemservice.setproxy">
  <description>Set current global proxy</description>
  <message>System policy prevents setting proxy settings</message>
  <defaults>
    <!-- PTI : original settings
    <allow_inactive>no</allow_inactive>
    <allow_active>auth_admin_keep</allow_active>
    -->
    <allow_inactive>yes</allow_inactive>
    <allow_active>yes</allow_active>
  </defaults>
</action>

Retrying, and indeed one of the authentication requests dropped.

Note that the action was configured with auth_admin_keep which according to the docs would mean we should be authenticated for some time,so I would not expect the second authentication I am getting. Must be a subtlety which escapes me at the moment.

The second action is more problematic since the set-system om the system gconf settings is much less fine-grained than setProxy and can potentially cause more damage to the system.

<action id="org.gnome.gconf.defaults.set-system">
  <description gettext-domain="GConf2">Change GConf system values</description>
  <message gettext-domain="GConf2">Privileges are required to change GConf system values</message>
  <defaults>
    <allow_inactive>no</allow_inactive>
    <!-- PTI: Original setting
    <allow_active>auth_admin</allow_active>
    -->
    <allow_active>yes</allow_active>
  </defaults>
</action>

After relaxing this second method, I can finally easily switch proxies between Locations.

There are several things bugging me:

  1. The set-system method really is too wide in scope.
  2. There should be a more elegant way that modifying files under /usr/share
  3. My system should actually switch location unaided.

For the time being, I fixed a frustration and learned something in the process. The result is not yet fully satisfactory, but that will improve over time. **

Of course there is a more elegant solution than editing files under /usr/share folder.

Everything is explained in the man pages pklocalauthority and PolicyKit.conf (among others).

But that’s for another day…

·

Building debian packages in a cleanroom

Overview and Goals

We build our solutions mostly on Ubuntu Natty and we deploy to Debian (currently lenny). One problem we face is that Debian has a slow release cycle and the packages are dated. Before a new release is approved and deployed to our target servers it can still take many months causing us to have to use up to 3 year old technology.

So we are often faced to ‘backport’ packages or debianize existing packages if we want to use the current releases.

In the past we had different build servers for the target architectures. However this is a heavy solution and scales poorly. It also makes upgrading to the next release that much heavier.

So we need a system for building debian packages that is :

  1. Fully automated
  2. Target multiple distributions Debian (lenny,squeeze) and Ubuntu(natty, maverick)
  3. Build on development machines(a) and Jenkins/Hudson CI servers(b)
  4. easily configurable
  5. memorizable process

The goal is to make packages for internal consumption, and the process outlined here falls short of the community standards.

Enter pbuilder

Of course we are not the first or only one with this issue. In fact we are laggards and there are excellent articles on the ‘net to help us with these goals.

e.g.

The pbuilder program create a clean room environment of a freshly installed empty debian or ubuntu distro, chroot into it and starts building based on the project metadata, mostly from the debian/control file.

It does this by unpacking a preconfigured base image of the selectable target , installing the build dependencies, building the package in the cleanroom, moving the artifacts to the hosting machine and cleaning everything up again. And it does this actually surprisingly fast. This clearly satisfies goals 1 and 2 (and half of 3 if we assume a developer has full control over his laptop).

The pbuilder is configured through commandline options, which are clear and friendly enough but you end up with commandlines of several lines long which are impossible to type in a shell and are a maintenance nightmare in build scripts (clearly conflicts with point 5). Also in the ideal world we would be able to retarget a build without touching the checked out files, e.g. with environment variable (see goals 3 and 4).

Configuring pbuilder

On the Pbuilders Tricks page I found a big smart shell script to use as the pbuilder configuration file ~/.pbuilderrc.

# Codenames for Debian suites according to their alias. Update these when
# needed.
UNSTABLE_CODENAME="sid"
TESTING_CODENAME="wheezy"
STABLE_CODENAME="squeeze"
OLDSTABLE_CODENAME="lenny"
STABLE_BACKPORTS_SUITE="$STABLE_CODENAME-backports"

# List of Debian suites.
DEBIAN_SUITES=($UNSTABLE_CODENAME $TESTING_CODENAME $STABLE_CODENAME $OLDSTABLE_CODENAME
    "unstable" "testing" "stable" "oldstable")

# List of Ubuntu suites. Update these when needed.
UBUNTU_SUITES=("natty" "maverick" "jaunty" "intrepid" "hardy" "gutsy")

# Mirrors to use. Update these to your preferred mirror.
DEBIAN_MIRROR="ftp.be.debian.org"
UBUNTU_MIRROR="mirrors.kernel.org"

# Optionally use the changelog of a package to determine the suite to use if
# none set.
if [ -z "${DIST}" ] && [ -r "debian/changelog" ]; then
    DIST=$(dpkg-parsechangelog | awk '/^Distribution: / {print $2}')
    # Use the unstable suite for Debian experimental packages.
    if [ "${DIST}" == "experimental" ]; then
        DIST="unstable"
    fi
fi

# Optionally set a default distribution if none is used. Note that you can set
# your own default (i.e. ${DIST:="unstable"}).
: ${DIST:="$(lsb_release --short --codename)"}

# Optionally set the architecture to the host architecture if none set. Note
# that you can set your own default (i.e. ${ARCH:="i386"}).
: ${ARCH:="$(dpkg --print-architecture)"}

NAME="$DIST"
if [ -n "${ARCH}" ]; then
    NAME="$NAME-$ARCH"
    DEBOOTSTRAPOPTS=("--arch" "$ARCH" "${DEBOOTSTRAPOPTS[@]}")
fi

BASETGZ="/var/cache/pbuilder/$NAME-base.tgz"
DISTRIBUTION="$DIST"
BUILDRESULT="/var/cache/pbuilder/$NAME/result/"
APTCACHE="/var/cache/pbuilder/$NAME/aptcache/"
BUILDPLACE="/var/cache/pbuilder/build/"

# make sure folders exist
mkdir -p $BUILDRESULT
mkdir -p $APTCACHE

echo "Target : $BUILDRESULT" >>/tmp/dist

if $(echo ${DEBIAN_SUITES[@]} | grep -q $DIST); then

    OTHERMIRROR="deb file:///var/cache/pbuilder/$NAME/result ./"
    BINDMOUNTS="/var/cache/pbuilder/$NAME/result"
    HOOKDIR="/var/cache/pbuilder/$NAME/hooks"
    EXTRAPACKAGES="apt-utils"
    # Debian configuration
    MIRRORSITE="http://$DEBIAN_MIRROR/debian/"
    COMPONENTS="main contrib non-free"
    DEBOOTSTRAPOPTS=("${DEBOOTSTRAPOPTS[@]}" "--keyring=/usr/share/keyrings/debian-archive-keyring.gpg")
    if $(echo "$STABLE_CODENAME stable" | grep -q $DIST); then
        EXTRAPACKAGES="$EXTRAPACKAGES debian-backports-keyring"
        OTHERMIRROR="$OTHERMIRROR | deb http://www.backports.org/debian $STABLE_BACKPORTS_SUITE $COMPONENTS"
    fi
elif $(echo ${UBUNTU_SUITES[@]} | grep -q $DIST); then
    # Ubuntu configuration
    MIRRORSITE="http://$UBUNTU_MIRROR/ubuntu/"
    COMPONENTS="main restricted universe multiverse"
    DEBOOTSTRAPOPTS=("${DEBOOTSTRAPOPTS[@]}" "--keyring=/usr/share/keyrings/ubuntu-archive-keyring.gpg")
else
    echo "Unknown distribution: $DIST"
    exit 1
fi

I just updated the distribution names to the current situation and added the directory where the packages are collected as a repository so subsequent builds can use these packages as dependencies. I also specified the keyrings to use for Debian and Ubuntu and made sure the expected folders are created to mount them in the clean room.

I created this in my account on my development laptop and added a symbolic link in ~root/.pbuilderrc to this file so I can update it from my desktop environment and do not have to get my brain all twisted up to try to remember with which configuration I am busy in my shell, sudo, su –, …

THe way the script works is that the configuration adapts itself to the content of the DIST and ARCH environment variables. So to configure lenny-amd64 as target is sufficient to do

~ > export DIST=lenny
~ > export ARCH=amd64

This approach is also perfect Jenkins or Hudson to determine the target build from checked out sources, since it can be specified in the build recipe. (satisfies goals 3b, 4 and 5)

Since we have to run these programs using sudo we must make sure the environment variables are passed by sudo. We can do this in the Defaults line of the /etc/sudoers file with the envkeep instruction.

...
Defaults  env_reset,env_keep="DIST ARCH http_proxy ftp_proxy 
 https_proxy no_proxy"
... snip ...
# Cmnd alias specification
Cmnd_Alias PBUILDER=/usr/sbin/pbuilder, /usr/bin/pdebuild
... snip to end of file ...
# Allow members of group sudo to execute any command
%sudo   ALL=(ALL:ALL) ALL

pti     ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: PBUILDER
jenkins ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: PBUILDER
#includedir /etc/sudoers.d

You add the DIST and ARCH variables there. I also included the environment variables for proxying so I can easily switch between environment on my laptop and these changes propagate to sudo (which is also useful for plain apt-get, by the way).

I also added a line to show how to make the tools available for a user without having to give their password. This is not needed for interactive work, but very much so for the user as which the CI server is running (in our case jenkins). Note that the definition should be after the group definitions, otherwise these take precedence and jenkins has to provide his password (read: is hanging during the build).

Creating the target base images

The heavy lifting is now done. Let’s create an base.tgz for lenny-amd64.

~ > export DIST=lenny
~ > export ARCH=amd64
~ > sudo pbuilder create

Now go and have a cup of coffee (or read some emails).

Rinse and repeat for the other target platforms.

Backporting existing packages

In theory backporting would be as simple as

~  ᐅ cd tmp
~/tmp  ᐅ apt-get source mongodb
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Need to get 1,316 kB of source archives.
Get:1 http://be.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty/universe mongodb 1:1.6.3-1ubuntu2 (dsc) [2,276 B]
Get:2 http://be.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty/universe mongodb 1:1.6.3-1ubuntu2 (tar) [1,285 kB]
Get:3 http://be.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty/universe mongodb 1:1.6.3-1ubuntu2 (diff) [29.0 kB]
Fetched 1,316 kB in 1s (679 kB/s)
gpgv: Signature made Thu 17 Mar 2011 11:49:37 PM CET using RSA key ID D5946E0F
gpgv: Can't check signature: public key not found
dpkg-source: warning: failed to verify signature on ./mongodb_1.6.3-1ubuntu2.dsc
dpkg-source: info: extracting mongodb in mongodb-1.6.3
dpkg-source: info: unpacking mongodb_1.6.3.orig.tar.gz
dpkg-source: info: unpacking mongodb_1.6.3-1ubuntu2.debian.tar.gz
dpkg-source: info: applying debian-changes-1:1.6.3-1
dpkg-source: info: applying build-process-remove-rpath
dpkg-source: info: applying mozjs185
~/tmp  ᐅ DIST=lenny ARCH=amd64 sudo pbuilder build mongodb_1.6.3-1ubuntu2.dsc
I: using fakeroot in build.
I: Current time: Thu Jul 14 14:28:17 CEST 2011
I: pbuilder-time-stamp: 1310646497
I: Building the build Environment
I: extracting base tarball [/var/cache/pbuilder/lenny-amd64-base.tgz]
...

and you should get a nice set of debian packages in */var/cache/pbuilder/lenny-amd64.

In practice you will often end up with errors like :

... snip ...
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  pbuilder-satisfydepends-dummy: Depends: xulrunner-dev (>= 2.0~) but it is not installable
The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

Remove the following packages:
pbuilder-satisfydepends-dummy

Score is -9850

Writing extended state information... Done
... snip ...
I: cleaning the build env
I: removing directory /var/cache/pbuilder/build//6279 and its subdirectories

In these case you have to walk the dependency tree till you find the leafs, and walk back up the branches to the trunk. Note also that chances are that unless you target machines which only serve a very specific purpose, you might end up with packages which are uninstallable since you pull out the rug from other installed packages. However we have the principle to use 1 virtual host to deliver 1 service, hence there are very little packages deployed to them and nothing complicated like desktop environments.

Simple leaf packages often build without a hitch:

~/tmp  ᐅ DIST=lenny sudo pbuilder build libevent_1.4.13-stable-1.dsc
I: using fakeroot in build.
I: Current time: Thu Jul 14 14:44:00 CEST 2011
I: pbuilder-time-stamp: 1310647440
I: Building the build Environment
I: extracting base tarball [/var/cache/pbuilder/lenny-amd64-base.tgz]
I: creating local configuration
I: copying local configuration
I: mounting /proc filesystem
I: mounting /dev/pts filesystem
I: Mounting /var/cache/pbuilder/ccache
... snip ...
dpkg-genchanges: including full source code in upload
dpkg-buildpackage: full upload (original source is included)
W: no hooks of type B found -- ignoring
I: Copying back the cached apt archive contents
I: unmounting /var/cache/pbuilder/lenny-amd64/result filesystem
I: unmounting /var/cache/pbuilder/ccache filesystem
I: unmounting dev/pts filesystem
I: unmounting proc filesystem
I: cleaning the build env
I: removing directory /var/cache/pbuilder/build//15214 and its subdirectories
I: Current time: Thu Jul 14 14:49:57 CEST 2011
I: pbuilder-time-stamp: 1310647797
~/tmp  ᐅ ls -al /var/cache/pbuilder/lenny-amd64/result
total 5260
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root    4096 2011-07-13 19:47 .
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root    4096 2011-07-13 19:13 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 pti  pti     2853 2011-07-14 14:49 libevent_1.4.13-stable-1_amd64.changes
-rw-r--r-- 1 pti  pti     9129 2011-07-14 14:49 libevent_1.4.13-stable-1.diff.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 pti  pti      907 2011-07-14 14:49 libevent_1.4.13-stable-1.dsc
-rw-r--r-- 1 pti  pti   499603 2009-12-05 23:04 libevent_1.4.13-stable.orig.tar.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 pti  pti    61956 2011-07-14 14:49 libevent-1.4-2_1.4.13-stable-1_amd64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 pti  pti    31262 2011-07-14 14:49 libevent-core-1.4-2_1.4.13-stable-1_amd64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 pti  pti   172950 2011-07-14 14:49 libevent-dev_1.4.13-stable-1_amd64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 pti  pti    51588 2011-07-14 14:49 libevent-extra-1.4-2_1.4.13-stable-1_amd64.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    9051 2011-07-14 14:48 Packages
~/tmp  ᐅ

Using pdebuild for building packages

Many of our packages are debianized and can be build using debuild.

I use here the Ubuntu sources of tokyocabinet as an example (which uses the libevent package we just built, btw):

~/tmp/tokyocabinet-1.4.37  ᐅ DIST=lenny ARCH=amd64 pdebuild
...snip...
 dpkg-genchanges  >../tokyocabinet_1.4.37-6ubuntu1_amd64.changes
dpkg-genchanges: not including original source code in upload
dpkg-buildpackage: binary and diff upload (original source NOT included)
W: no hooks of type B found -- ignoring
I: Copying back the cached apt archive contents
I: unmounting /var/cache/pbuilder/lenny-amd64/result filesystem
I: unmounting /var/cache/pbuilder/ccache filesystem
I: unmounting dev/pts filesystem
I: unmounting proc filesystem
I: cleaning the build env
I: removing directory /var/cache/pbuilder/build//4199 and its subdirectories
I: Current time: Thu Jul 14 15:05:27 CEST 2011
I: pbuilder-time-stamp: 1310648727
~/tmp/tokyocabinet-1.4.37  ᐅ ls /var/cache/pbuilder/lenny-amd64/result
...snip...
tokyocabinet_1.4.37-6ubuntu1_amd64.changes
tokyocabinet_1.4.37-6ubuntu1.debian.tar.gz
tokyocabinet_1.4.37-6ubuntu1.dsc
tokyocabinet_1.4.37.orig.tar.gz
tokyocabinet-bin_1.4.37-6ubuntu1_amd64.deb
tokyocabinet-doc_1.4.37-6ubuntu1_all.deb

Sometimes the dependencies break on the version of debhelpers. This version is added conservatively by the dh* scripts and often is overly conservative. Many packages build just fine with older versions of the debhelpers. ** *

Setting up automated build

To set this up on the build server we have to replicate the steps above

  1. Create the ~/.pbuilderrc file
  2. Symbolic link to this file in ~root/.pbuilderrc
  3. Allow jenkins to use sudo for building packages
  4. Create a jenkins job to (re)build the packages
  5. Create jobs to build the packages

* *

·

Organizing Windows using the Keyboard with Compiz Grid

The Mac has a great utility called Divvy to easily map windows to loacation on the screen using the keyboard. Fiddling with the mouse to get multiple windows in the right location is a productivity killer and a pain in the neck (or shoulder, or elbow, or …)

Ubuntu (and of course any other Linux distro with compiz) has a similar feature built in as a plugin for compiz. Type Alt-F2 and enter ccsm + Return in the command prompt to launch the CompizConfig Settings manager. Select the Window Management from the left menu and enable the Grid plugin. Click on it so you can look at the key bindings in the Bindings tab.

If you are on a desktop or a big laptop with a separate numeric keyboard you are set. As you can see the locations for the windows are by default mapped in a logical fashion like the arrow keys on the numeric keypad.

However my laptop does not have a separate numeric keyboard and enabling it before typing the key code is a pain. Remapping them is easy by clicking on the button with the key code. A window appears with a Grab key code button. Click it and type the new keycode you want to assign it to. If there is a conflict, you will get a window explaingin the conflict and asking how to resolve it.

My first attempt was to remap the laptop numeric keys using the super keys. This conflicted with the unity launcher since the top row 7-8-9 map to the apps in the launcher.

To avoid conflicts I use now Control-Super with the keys around the j-key (which is the home key for the right hand)

Also autokey (a text macro expander) is mapped to Super-K

  • Control-Super-j : 100% (maximize)
  • Control-Super-h : 50% left
  • Control-Super-k : 50% right
  • Control-Super-u : 50% top
  • Control-Super-m : 50% bottom
  • Control-Super-y : 25% top-left
  • Control-Super-i : 25% top-right
  • Control-Super-n : 25% bottom-left
  • Control-Super-, : 25% bottom-right

If Control-Super-j is used to maximize a window, clicking on one of the other keys will first restore it to the original size and position and only map it to its place on the second click. I consider this a feature, but you are free to interprete it as a bug.

Result, this is now super practical way to divide my windows on my screen.

·

Java is a First Class Citizen on Ubuntu Hardy Linux

Lately I hear a lot of Java bashing from a very vocal part of the Linux community. I do a lot of Java, I use Linux on my main laptop and I like this just fine. I use daily freemind (Java mindmapper) and openoffice (which is Java enabled).

I was doing this for the past years since Windows XP ate my C-drive for the N-th time (and now it did the same on my gaming rig at home, grrr… ). I keep a ‘Tools’ directory in my home drive and place there the Java tools and libraries I get from the net. Creating a little bash script in ~/bin which calls the startup script from the java tools almost always does the right thing, so I was contented.

Well, I need to do some LDAP hacking. Last times I did that in perl, python, ruby and Java so it was groovy’s turn.

On a whim I type :

pti@pti-laptop:~/workspace/salesforce$ sudo apt-get install groovy

and to my big surprise I get :

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  antlr junit4 libasm2-java libbcel-java libbsf-java libclassworlds-java  libcommons-cli-java
libcommons-collections3-java libcommons-lang-java libcommons-logging-java liblog4j1.2-java
libmockobjects-java libmx4j-java  libregexp-java libservlet2.3-java libxpp3-java libxstream-java
Suggested packages:
  groovy-doc libbcel-java-doc jython rhino libclassworlds-java-doc
  libcommons-collections3-java-doc liblogkit-java libavalon-framework-java
  libgnumail-java
Recommended packages:
  liblog4j1.2-java-gcj
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  antlr groovy junit4 libasm2-java libbcel-java libbsf-java
  libclassworlds-java libcommons-cli-java libcommons-collections3-java
  libcommons-lang-java libcommons-logging-java liblog4j1.2-java
  libmockobjects-java libmx4j-java libregexp-java libservlet2.3-java
  libxpp3-java libxstream-java
0 upgraded, 18 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 7025kB of archives.
After this operation, 14.7MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]?

Ok, this was not what I expected… Of course I type ‘Y’ and let it rip.

Now my curiosity take the upper hand and I try some more :

pti@pti-laptop:~/workspace/salesforce$ sudo apt-get install maven
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
E: Couldn't find package maven

Tough luck. But wait, there are 2 mavens, let’s try :

pti@pti-laptop:~/workspace/salesforce$ sudo apt-get install maven2
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  ant libcommons-codec-java libcommons-collections-java
  libcommons-httpclient-java libcommons-net-java libcommons-openpgp-java
  libdoxia-java libganymed-ssh2-java libjdom0-java libjsch-java libjtidy-java
  liblogkit-java liboro-java libplexus-classworlds-java
  libplexus-component-api-java libplexus-container-default-java
  libplexus-interactivity-api-java libplexus-utils-java
  libplexus-velocity-java libslide-webdavclient-java libwagon-java
  libwerken.xpath-java velocity
Suggested packages:
  ant-doc libcommons-httpclient-java-doc libcommons-openpgp-java-doc
  libdoxia-java-doc libjtidy-java-doc libgnumail-java
  libplexus-classworlds-java-doc libplexus-component-api-java-doc
  libplexus-container-default-java-doc libplexus-interactivity-api-java-doc
  libplexus-utils-java-doc libplexus-velocity-java-doc libwagon-java-doc
  velocity-doc
Recommended packages:
  ant-optional ant-gcj
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  ant libcommons-codec-java libcommons-collections-java
  libcommons-httpclient-java libcommons-net-java libcommons-openpgp-java
  libdoxia-java libganymed-ssh2-java libjdom0-java libjsch-java libjtidy-java
  liblogkit-java liboro-java libplexus-classworlds-java
  libplexus-component-api-java libplexus-container-default-java
  libplexus-interactivity-api-java libplexus-utils-java
  libplexus-velocity-java libslide-webdavclient-java libwagon-java 
  libwerken.xpath-java maven2 velocity
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Hmmmmm……. This is better…. There is some refence to ant..

Yep, that too…

Jedit, jython, jruby, scala (I did not do LDAP with scala yet…) follow in quick succession…

Well, time to fire up synaptic and search for Java. A seemingly endless list of packages appears.

App Servers :

  • glassfish
  • tomcat (actually I knew that from before)
  • jetty

Dev Tools:

  • Emma
  • Junit
  • Junit4
  • JMock
  • …

A bunch of the commons libraries, …

Half a dozen of jdk’s.

Java bindings for all the windowing toolkits out there : Gtk, Qt-jambi, …

I also finally found the jdbc driver for postgresql which I was frantically looking for a couple of weeks ago and finally downloaded from the postgres site.

There is an old eclipse version, but actually this is a tool which I prefer to live in my Tools directory for updating the plugins.

The only thing I did not find was findbugs. Well there is probably a lot more missing, but my inspiration dried up.

I could clear out half of my tools folders because they are replaced with ubuntu version.

I am now even more contented than I was. I just love to type ‘apt-get install <something>’ when I want something, and now I found more of what I want.

·

Eclipse Ganymede crashes on 64-bit Ubuntu Hardy Herron

In java6 there is a bug in the 64-bit linux version of the jvm which causes eclipse to crash when opening projects with some aditional plugins installed. Both the openjdk as the sun versions are affected.

for more info see :


In the mean time this has been fixed in openjdk7, but this might take a while before this shows up in the repositories.

In the mean time the jdk5 does not have this problem and works perfectly well with eclipse.

So a quick 

sudo aptitude install sun-java5-jdk


installs the needed software. However if the java6 is still installed, chances are it will be preferred over the java5 version of the programs. There are 2 ways to make sure eclipse uses java5

Use java5 for ALL programs.

To change the preference tell the alternatives system to use the java5 version.

pti@pti-laptop:~$ sudo update-alternatives --config java
[sudo] password for pti: 
There are 3 alternatives which provide `java'.
  Selection    Alternative
-----------------------------------------------
          1    /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre/bin/java
          2    /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/bin/java
*+        3    /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-openjdk/jre/bin/java
Press enter to keep the default[*], or type selection number: 2
Using '/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/bin/java' to provide 'java'.

To choose the alternatives with a GUI it is a good idea to install galternatives.

Tell only eclipse to use java5.

Since the bug only shows up on my system (so far) in eclipse, I prefer the speedier java6 as default. Luckiliy we can tell eclipse to use a specific jvm in the eclipse.ini file.

Open eclipse.ini in your eclipse home with your favorite editor and add the following 2 lines to the beginning of the file

    -vm
    /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-sun/jre/bin/java

This will tell the eclipse launcher to use java5 to launch eclipse.