Installing Sun Java 6

Ensure the non-free section is enabled for the APT repository configuration in /etc/apt/sources.list, e.g. “deb http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free”

apt-get update
apt-get install sun-java6-jdk
echo 'JAVA_HOME="/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun"' >> /etc/environment
echo 'JRE_HOME="/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre"' >> /etc/environment

Installing Tomcat 6

apt-get install tomcat6 tomcat6-admin
/etc/init.d/tomcat6 stop

Creating standard Tomcat directory layout

mkdir /opt/tomcat
cd /opt/tomcat
ln -s /etc/tomcat6/ conf
ln -s /usr/share/tomcat6/bin/ bin
ln -s /usr/share/tomcat6/lib/ lib
ln -s /var/lib/tomcat6/webapps webapps
ln -s /var/log/tomcat6/ logs

Creating a Tomcat admin user

In /opt/tomcat/conf/tomcat-users.xml add an entry like:

<user name="ADMIN_USERNAME" password="ADMIN_PASSWORD" roles="admin,manager" />

Setting up virtual hosts

For each virtual host execute the following command. Replace “mydomain.com” with the desired virtual host name, but omit the “www.” part.

mkdir -p /opt/tomcat/webapps.mydomain.com/ROOT

In the <Engine> tag of “/opt/tomcat/conf/server.xml” add one host entry for each virtual host.

<Host name="mydomain.com" appBase="/opt/tomcat/webapps.mydomain.com">
    <Alias>www.mydomain.com>/Alias>
    <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve" prefix="mydomain_access_log." suffix=".txt" pattern="common"/>
</Host>

The <Alias> tag tells Tomcat to redirect from www.mydomain.com to mydomain.com.
The <Valve> tag enables access logging in the standard logging format.

Using xinetd to configure port 80 for Tomcat

Binding a service on port 80 requires root permissions. Thus we use port forwarding to “bind” Tomcat to port 80. My VPS does not support the use of “iptables -j REDIRECT” therefore I am using xinetd as a web proxy.
Ensure that no other service is listening on port 80/443:

netstat -pan | grep ":80\|:443"

Register the required xinetd services:

echo echo "
service www
{
        socket_type     = stream
        protocol        = tcp
        user            = root
        wait            = no
        bind            = 88.80.198.181
        port            = 80
        redirect        = localhost 8080
        disable         = no
        flags           = REUSE
        log_type        = FILE /var/log/wwwaccess.log
        log_on_success  -= PID HOST DURATION EXIT

        per_source      = UNLIMITED
        instances       = UNLIMITED
}

service https
{
        socket_type     = stream
        protocol        = tcp
        user            = root
        wait            = no
        bind            = 88.80.198.181
        port            = 443
        redirect        = localhost 8443
        disable         = no
        flags           = REUSE
        log_type        = FILE /var/log/httpsaccess.log
        log_on_success  -= PID HOST DURATION EXIT

        per_source      = UNLIMITED
        instances       = UNLIMITED
}
" > /etc/init.d/tomcat
/etc/init.d/xinetd restart

If you want to use a different service name, e.g. “tomcat” instead of “www” you must add this service to /var/services, e.g. “tomcat 80/tcp”
In /opt/tomcat/conf/server.xml modify the <Connector> as follows:

<Connector port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1"
               connectionTimeout="20000"
               redirectPort="8443" proxyPort="80" address="127.0.0.1" />

This binds Tomcat to localhost. It also tells Tomcat that port 80 is the proxy port which is necessary for correct URL generation.
From now on the Tomcat admin applications are only accessible via localhost. You can use SSH port forwarding to still access the applications from your workstation’s web browser. E.g. if you are using PuTTY you can use this command line option “-L 8080:localhost:8080″ to forward the server’s local 8080 port to your workstation’s local 8080 port. On your workstation’s browser you then simply enter http://localhost:8080/manager/html and are connected to the server’s Tomcat admin application.

Enabling PHP support (optional)

Download Quercus.

mkdir -p /opt/downloads
wget -o /opt/downloads/quercus-4.0.3.war http://caucho.com/download/quercus-4.0.3.war

Install Quercus as a shared library.

unzip -j /opt/downloads/quercus-4.0.3.war \*.jar -d /opt/tomcat/lib

Enable PHP support for the virtual hosts by installing the quercus web.xml. For each virtual host execute:

unzip /opt/downloads/quercus-4.0.3.war *web.xml -d /opt/tomcat/webapps.mydomain.com/ROOT

Starting Tomcat

/etc/init.d/tomcat start

References

• Securing Linux for Java services: The port dilemma
• Redirect HTTP and HTTPS traffic to Tomcat’s ports
• Tomcat 6: Virtual Hosting How To
• Tomcat 6: Classloader How To
• Virtual Hosting with Tomcat
• Quercus: Tomcat
• How to install Tomcat 6 on Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty)

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Post tags: Java, PHP, port 80, port forwarding, quercus, tomcat, vhost, virtual servers, VPS, xinetd

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By default, PyDev has no problems in presenting you the possible object attributes and methods on a variable if that variable gets a new object instance assigned directly in the code.

For example, when you first type …

mybook = Book()

… and in the next line you enter …

mybook.

… PyDev will dutifully present you the statically declared features for the Book class in a popup.

If you however get that Book instance as the result of another method, e.g. …

mybook = bookstore.findBook("foobar")

… PyDev currently seems to be helpless.

Because of Python’s dynamic nature it is of course a bit harder for an IDE to figure out what kind of objects may a method. But PyDev could for example honor the @return / @rtype PyDoc annotations (which you can add to the findBook’s method declaration) but currently it just does not.

To still have autocompletion you have two options:

1. Temporarily instantiate a Book object in the code.

   mybook = Book()
   mybook = bookstore.findBook("foobar")
   mybook. #--> now you have auto completion
   

   This has the drawback, that if you forget to remove the first line before you finish coding an unneccessary Book instance will be created on every execution during runtime.

2. Use an assertion to ensure that the mybook variable contains an object of type Book

   mybook = bookstore.findBook("foobar")
   assert isinstance(mybook, Book)
   mybook. #--> now you have auto completion
   

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1. Enabling/disabling constraints based on the object state:
Using the newly introduced when attribute for constraints it is possible to specify under which circumstances the constraint will be considered during object validation. The when attribute holds a formula in one of the supported scripting languages. If the formula returns true, the constraint will be activated for the current validation cycle otherwise it is ignored. In the following example the alias attribute must have a value only when the name attribute is not set.

public class User {
   private String name;

   @NotNull(when = "groovy:_this.name == null")
   private String alias;

   // . . .
}

2. Fine grain control over how constraints are applied on arrays, maps, collections and their elements
The newly introduced attribute appliesTo allows you to specify if and how a constraint declared for a map, a collection or an array is applied to their elements as well or exclusively. See the following example how this works:

public class BusinessObject {

   // the ids field may be null, but if it is not null
   // none of it's items must be null
   @NotNull(appliesTo = { ConstraintTarget.VALUES })
   private String[] ids;

   // only the field itself must not be null,
   // the list can contain null values
   @NotNull(appliesTo = { ConstraintTarget.CONTAINER })
   private List items;

   // the field must not be null as well as all keys
   // and values of the map
   @NotNull(appliesTo = { ConstraintTarget.CONTAINER, ConstraintTarget.KEYS, ConstraintTarget.VALUES })
   private Map itemsByGroup;

   // . . .
}

Download
You can get the lates binaries and source files of OVal from here: http://sourceforge.net/projects/oval/files/

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import re

def cmpver(vA, vB):
    """
    Compares two version number strings
    @param vA: first version string to compare
    @param vB: second version string to compare
    @author Sebastian Thomschke
    @return negative if vA < vB, zero if vA == vB, positive if vA > vB.

    Examples:
    >>> cmpver("0", "1")
    -1
    >>> cmpver("1", "0")
    1
    >>> cmpver("1", "1")
    0
    >>> cmpver("1.0", "1.0")
    0
    >>> cmpver("1.0", "1")
    0
    >>> cmpver("1", "1.0")
    0
    >>> cmpver("1.1.0", "1.0.1")
    1
    >>> cmpver("1.0.1", "1.1.1")
    -1
    >>> cmpver("0.3-SNAPSHOT", "0.3")
    -1
    >>> cmpver("0.3", "0.3-SNAPSHOT")
    1
    >>> cmpver("1.3b", "1.3c")
    -1
    >>> cmpver("1.14b", "1.3c")
    1
    """
    if vA == vB: return 0

    def num(s):
        if s.isdigit(): return int(s)
        return s

    seqA = map(num, re.findall('\d+|\w+', vA.replace('-SNAPSHOT', '')))
    seqB = map(num, re.findall('\d+|\w+', vB.replace('-SNAPSHOT', '')))

    # this is to ensure that 1.0 == 1.0.0 in cmp(..)
    lenA, lenB = len(seqA), len(seqB)
    for i in range(lenA, lenB): seqA += (0,)
    for i in range(lenB, lenA): seqB += (0,)

    rc = cmp(seqA, seqB)

    if rc == 0:
        if vA.endswith('-SNAPSHOT'): return -1
        if vB.endswith('-SNAPSHOT'): return 1
    return rc

Theoretically lines 43 – 49 could be written in a more compact way but using the short circuit evaluations (as below) lead to wrong results – at least in Jython 2.1:

    seqa = map(lambda s: s.isdigit() and int(s) or s, re.findall('\d+|\w+', vA.replace('-SNAPSHOT', '')))
    seqb = map(lambda s: s.isdigit() and int(s) or s, re.findall('\d+|\w+', vB.replace('-SNAPSHOT', '')))

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@echo off
set JPDA_TRANSPORT="dt_socket"
set JPDA_ADDRESS="8000"
set JPDA_SUSPEND="y"
catalina.bat jpda start

Simply create a debug.bat file in TomCat’s bin directory and add these lines.

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For anyone who is interested, that is what we came up to put the initial user id into a variable named ${LOGIN_USER}

LOGIN_USER=`who -m`; LOGIN_USER=${LOGIN_USER%% *}

or alternatively

LOGIN_USER=`who -m | cut -d' ' -f1`

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Already two of my customers “forced” me to use MS Outlook 2003 and since this isn’t likely to change in the near future, I implemented two of these handy Notes functions for Outlook 2003:

1. The button [Send only] sends e-mails without storing a copy of it in the local mailbox.
2. The button [Send and File...] prompts you for the folder where to store the e-mail being send.

Installation:

1. Download the Visual Basic module in the favored language.
   Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.

   Note: There is a file embedded within this post, please visit this post to download the file.
   

2. In Outlook open the Visual Basic editor.
   
3. Import the Visual Basic module.
   
4. Save the project.
   
5. Install the buttons in the toolbar.
   
6. When composing a new e-mail the additional buttons should appear in the toolbar.
   
7. When clicking “Send and File…” the folder dialog is displayed before the e-mail is send.
   

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Here comes a module I wrote to provide this kind of functionality. It uses the mechanism described here http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/Security/pwordmask/ to mask characters entered at the command prompt. Additionally if Java 6 or higher is running Jython the module will instead use the new Console.readPassword() method. In case the module is running in an environment where the getpass module is available it will delegate to the corresponding methods of this module instead of using its own implementations.

# ext_getpass.py
# @author Sebastian Thomschke, http://sebthom.de/
import thread, sys, time, os

# exposed methods:
__all__ = ["getpass","getuser"]

def __doMasking(stream):
    __doMasking.stop = 0
    while not __doMasking.stop:
        stream.write("b*")
        stream.flush()
        time.sleep(0.01)

def generic_getpass(prompt="Password: ", stream=None):
    if not stream:
        stream = sys.stderr
    prompt = str(prompt)
    if prompt:
        stream.write(prompt)
        stream.flush()
    thread.start_new_thread(__doMasking, (stream,))
    password = raw_input()
    __doMasking.stop = 1
    return password

def generic_getuser():
    for name in ('LOGNAME', 'USER', 'LNAME', 'USERNAME'):
        usr = os.environ.get(name)
        if usr: return usr

def java6_getpass(prompt="Password: ", stream=None):
    if not stream:
        stream = sys.stderr
    prompt = str(prompt)
    if prompt:
        stream.write(prompt)
        stream.flush()

    from java.lang import System
    console = System.console()
    if console == None:
	    return generic_getpass(prompt, stream)
    else:
        return "".join(console.readPassword())

try:
    # trying to use Python's getpass implementation
    import getpass
    getpass = getpass.getpass
    getuser = getpass.getuser
except ImportError, e:
    getuser = generic_getuser

    # trying to use Java 6's Console.readPassword() implementation
    try:
        from java.io import Console
        getpass = java6_getpass
    except ImportError, e:
        # use the generic getpass implementation
        getpass = generic_getpass

Here is an usage example:

import ext_getpass as getpass

pw = getpass.getpass("Please enter your password:")
print "The entered password was: " + pw

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Post tags: Java, Jython, password, python

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Both options, installing WP standalone and federating it into a cell afterwards as well as installing it on an already managed node have different pros and cons each. In WP 6.0 the installation onto a managed node was even mandatory to enable WebSphere Process Server integration.

Surprisingly WP6.1.0.0 does not support the installation on a managed node anymore. All nodes of a cluster need to be installed as standalone systems first and then be federated into a WebSphere cell.

For WP 6.0 the installation procedure is described here. The 6.1 info center does not mention this procedure anymore and it no, it was not dropped accidentally.

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$wp_taxonomies['category'] = (object) array('name' => 'category', 'object_type' => 'post', 'hierarchical' => true, 'update_count_callback' => '_update_post_term_count');
$wp_taxonomies['post_tag'] = (object) array('name' => 'post_tag', 'object_type' => 'post', 'hierarchical' => false, 'update_count_callback' => '_update_post_term_count');
$wp_taxonomies['link_category'] = (object) array('name' => 'link_category', 'object_type' => 'link', 'hierarchical' => false);

Since I don’t get any error messages neither on the screen nor in the log files I have no idea why these casts fail. The PHP version used to serve the site is the latest stable 5.x release from php.net.
As a workaround I introduced a function that does also transforms an array into an object but does not rely on the casting mechanism.

function arr2obj($arr) {
	foreach ($arr as $k => $v) $obj -> {$k} = $v;
	return $obj;
}

$wp_taxonomies['category'] = arr2obj(array('name' => 'category', 'object_type' => 'post', 'hierarchical' => true, 'update_count_callback' => '_update_post_term_count'));
$wp_taxonomies['post_tag'] = arr2obj(array('name' => 'post_tag', 'object_type' => 'post', 'hierarchical' => false, 'update_count_callback' => '_update_post_term_count'));
$wp_taxonomies['link_category'] = arr2obj(array('name' => 'link_category', 'object_type' => 'link', 'hierarchical' => false));

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If you have not heard it before, you can enjoy it now:

The original version

(...)
Read the rest of Peter Nalitch – Guitar (34 words)

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[INFO] [compiler:compile]
[INFO] Compiling 180 source files to C:\projects\oval\src\trunk\target\classes
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[ERROR] BUILD FAILURE
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Compilation failure
C:\projects\oval\src\trunk\src\main\java\net\sf\oval\Validator.java:[373,58]
addMethodParameterChecks(java.lang.reflect.Method,int,java.lang.Object)
has private access in net.sf.oval.internal.ClassChecks 

There exist multiple methods named addMethodParameterChecks in the class ClassChecks with different signatures. The problem is that javac tries to link against the wrong method when compiling the class calling one of the methods.

(...)
Read the rest of Sun JDK5/6 compilers broken when linking overloaded methods with variable arguments (284 words)

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I am using the great DD Sitemap Generator Plug-in for WordPress  to automatically render a site map based on the posts, pages and categories created in my blog. The problem however is that the generated site map is not language aware and displays the page/post titles and category names including the tags and the texts of all languages at once.

To solve this I started digging a bit into the code of WordPress and the Language Switcher Plug-in. The Language Switcher Plug-in achieves the on-the-fly processing of multilingual texts by hooking itself into the so called Filters API which is something like an event-based callback mechanism. Plug-ins can signal their interest in a certain text filter event by calling the add_filter(the_event_id, the_name_of_a_function_to_callback) function provided by the WordPress API to register one if it’s functions that will be invoked by WordPress when the filter event occurs. Besides registering for filter events, plug-ins can also fire such events by calling the apply_filters(the_event_id, the_text_to_be_filtered). WordPress will then apply all registered filters to the text passed over and the apply_filters will return a “filtered” version of the passed text. When rendering the title of a post or page WordPress fires the filter event “the_title” allowing plug-ins to process/modify the title before it is actually displayed. Therefore the Language Switcher Plug-in registers itself to this event and a lot of others to be able to strip off the language tags and the texts in languages other than the currently active one.

Unfortunately the DD Sitemap Generator Plug-in is currently not applying the respective filters when rendering the site map. Therefore the Language Switcher Plug-in is not aware of it and as a result the site map shows all translations of a category name or page/post title at the same time no matter which language is currently active.

To solve this problem I analyzed the source code of the DD Sitemap Generator Plug-in and added the missing apply_filters calls where appropriate. You can follow these steps in case you are having the same issue:

1. Open the file <wordpress_root>/wp-content/plugins/sitemap-generator/sitemap-generator.php (or <wordpress_root>/wp-content/plugins/dd-sitemap-gen/dd-sitemap-gen.php) in an editor
2. Locate the text
      $tmp_array['title'] = $pages[$k]->post_title;
   and replace it with
      $tmp_array['title'] = apply_filters(‘the_title’, $pages[$k]->post_title);
3. Locate the text
      $tmp_array['title'] = $cat_data[$c]['cat_name'];
   and replace it with
      $tmp_array['title'] = apply_filters(‘the_category’, $cat_data[$c]['cat_name']);
4. Locate the text
      $tmp_array['title'] = $posts[$k]->post_title;
   and replace it with
      $tmp_array['title'] = apply_filters(‘the_title’, $posts[$k]->post_title);
5. Save the file and you are done.

If you are encountering similar problems with other plug-in you can use the same approach to make them play nicely with the Language Switcher Plug-in.

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To cut a long story short, eventually I came across this PHP bug report #42739 mkdir doesn’t like a trailing slash when safe_mode is enabled and it turned out that this was the issue I was facing with on my hosting account too. The safe_mode option is enabled and WordPress tries to create directories that end with a slash (e.g. /htdocs/wp-content/upgrade/the-plugin/).

After knowing the reason I could develop a workaround and finally got the one-click updater running. If you are facing the same issue you can try to use my patch too.

1. Locate and open the file <wp_root>/wp_admin/includes/class-wp-filesystem-direct.php in an editor
   
2. Search for “function mkdir”
   
3. Add the following statements to this method

   function mkdir($path,$chmod=false,$chown=false,$chgrp=false){
   	if( ! $chmod)
   		$chmod = $this->permission;
   
   	// workaround for http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=42739 starts here
   	if(ini_get('safe_mode') && substr($path, -1) == '/')
   	{
   		$path = substr($path, 0, -1);
   	}
   	// workaround for http://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=42739 ends here
   
   	if( !@mkdir($path,$chmod) )
   		return false;
   	if( $chown )
   		$this->chown($path,$chown);
   	if( $chgrp )
   		$this->chgrp($path,$chgrp);
   	return true;
   }

4. Start one-click updating!

Addendum:

1. The patch also works for WordPress 2.5.1
2. If applying this patch does not lead to success the problem may have a second cause. Therefore also check the permissions on the /wp-content/upgrade/ folder and it’s sub folders, e.g. chmod them to 777. If the upgrade directory does not exist at all it may be sufficient to create it manually.

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Post tags: bug, PHP, Wordpress, workaround

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You are Superman

Superman 70% Robin 60% Green Lantern 50% Spider-Man 50% Supergirl 50% Iron Man 35% The Flash 30% Wonder Woman 20% Catwoman 20% Hulk 20% Batman 20%

You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

Which Superhero are you?

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Post tags: fun

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You can watch more urban sports videos here at YouTube.

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So I started looking for some tools that could simplify this process. I finally came across a handy software called myPodder provided for free by Podcast Ready. Podcast Ready provides an online catalog of available podcasts from different sources and to my surprise they also have that German radio station listed. The interesting thing about their software is the fact that you can directly install it onto your mobile audio player and have it launched automatically the moment it is connected to a computer. This means you can easily charge your player with new podcasts from any computer having an internet connection. Simply connect the player, wait for the program to launch, select some new podcasts and download them.
(...)
Read the rest of myPodder – a mobile podcatcher (0 words)

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Post tags: audio, PHP, podcasts

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(...)
Read the rest of My favorite WordPress Plug-ins & Resources (717 words)

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Post tags: audio, MP3, PHP, Wordpress

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