Vitor Rodrigues

AT&T Global Network Client is a VPN client used worldwide by several corporations to provide remote access to their intranet.

AT&T kindly provides a linux package, but in .rpm format (which as fine for me until now, as I was an openSuse user) and not in .deb format for Debian based distros like Ubuntu. You can get the latest .rpm package from here.

I tried converting the package using alien, but the installer didn’t work correctly. After some googling, I found the article “AT&T NetClient Debianizer” from Andre Macedo. Andre provides a utility, ubuntu_rpm2deb.sh, that will calculate dependencies needed and correctly create a .deb package that can be installed in your Ubuntu system. Here are all the steps I used to install AT&T Global Network Client:

# wget ftp://ftp.attglobal.net/pub/client/linux/agnclient-1.0-2.0.1.3000.i386.rpm
# wget http://blog.afmacedo.com/linux/ubuntu_rpm2deb.sh
# chmod a+x ubuntu_rpm2deb.sh
# ./ubuntu_rpm2deb.sh agnclient-1.0-2.0.1.3000.i386.rpm
# sudo dpkg -i agnclient-1.0-2.0.1.3000.i386.rpm

After the installation is complete, we need to start the client’s daemons:

# /etc/init.d/agnclientd start
# /etc/init.d/agnLogd start

And start the client by issuing:

# /opt/agns/bin/agnclient

I occasionally received the following error message when trying to check the status of the daemon:

# /etc/init.d/agnclientd status
/etc/init.d/agnclientd: line 54: [: 13336: binary operator expected
agnLogd is not running.

The error message was caused by having multiple agnclientd processes running. Just stop all of them and start the daemon again:

# sudo killall agnclientd
# sudo /etc/init.d/agnclientd start

Hope this helps!

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IDUG (the International DB2 Users Group) is sponsoring a worldwide contest initiative called The XML challenge - Search for the xml superstar. This contest aims to recognize developers (students or professionals) that create XML solutions, in one of the following categories: Video, Gadget, Query, PortableApp and XML Contest.

They are offering thousands of dollars in prizes, including Wiis, Zunes, iPods, Conference passes, Notebooks, GPS, etc…

If you live in US, you can submit your Video and Gadget entries until December 16th and 17th, respectively. The XML programming contest has also started and submissions will be accepted till January 31st.

For other countries, keep checking the website xmlchallenge.com for updates on your local contest.

Popularity: 16% [?]

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If you are into photography, then you should already know that calibrating your monitor is something really important if you plan to print your pictures. I recently printed some photos and noticed that the printed colors were considerably different from the colors on my LCD. After comparing my monitor with a few others, it was obvious that mine, and some of the others too, were not color calibrated.

Monitors can be calibrated to display the “correct” colors by using a calibration device, complemented by the vendor software. I decided to buy the Spyder2Express since it had good reviews and a reasonable price. Unfortunately, there is no color calibration device that is supported on Linux by its vendor and I currently use Linux (openSuse) as my main operative system. I could use my work laptop running windows to calibrate the monitor, then export the color profile and import it in Linux. There is an article here on how to do it. With help from one of the comments in that article, I found about Argyll Color Management System. Argyll is a monitor calibration software package for Linux that supports most of the existing calibration devices. It uses the Windows binary software to create a Linux binary in order to be able to communicate with the device to run the calibration tests and create a color profile. It also provides an utility to apply the color profile to your monitor.

The steps to calibrate your monitor in Linux using Argyll are pretty simple. In my case, using the Syper2Express device, all I had to do was runt the following commands(as root, or give the user permission to communicate with the usb device):

$ cd Argyll_V1.0.3/
$ ./spyd2en -v /media/ColorVision/setup/setup.exe (creates binary file to communicate with device)
$ ./dispcal -v -y l -o MyMonitor (runs calibration tests and creates monitor color profile)
$  ./dispwin MyMonitor.icc (applies color profile to monitor)

The generated color profile can also be imported to your post processing software like GIMP in order to use the monitor color profile instead of using a more common profile like sRGB or Adobe RGB.

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exiftool is a very useful utility that allows you to query or edit EXIF information from pictures. Going through some of my pictures recently, I have found some sets of pictures with incorrect date in the EXIF info, be it a few hours off or even 1 year and a few days off. Fixing them one by one was not an option, so after a couple of searches on google I found exiftool. It is a command line utility that lets you edit EXIF information and you can do it in batches of files or folders, even using conditions to specify when a change must be applied.

For me, the need was only to change some photos info so that it shows the real time they were taken, three hours before the saved setting. The command was as simple as this:

exiftool -DateTimeOriginal-='0:0:0 3:0:0' -CreateDate-='0:0:0 3:0:0' myfolder/

The format for date changes is ‘YYY:MM:dd hh:mm:ss’.

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Very useful tip from Novel CoolSolutions on how to increase the disk size of a VMWare image: http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/tip/15344.html

I currently develop mostly in Windows using Eclipse, so I decided to create an openSuse 11.0 vmware image to test some of my code, as our product supports various platforms, including some flavors of Linux. The 10GB disk size soon became too small and now I need to increase it. Here are the steps I had to do:

To resize the guest Os hard disk size, I issued:

vmware-vdiskmanager -x 15GB opensSuse.vmdk

However, step 1 only resized the disk, not the partitions. Starting the partition manager from within the guest Os didn’t work, because the partition can’t be altered while it is still mounted. A simple solution to overcome this issue is to use a Live CD. I still had the openSuse live CD ISO image I used to install the guest Os, so I just pointed the guest OS cd-rom drive to that .iso file.

After booting from the CD-ROM drive, go to Yast -> System -> Partitioner , select the partition you want to expand and click Resize. Select the new size for the partition and click Ok to apply the changes to the partition table.

Reboot your machine and voila! You existing partition will now have the new size.

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After three years living in San Jose, I was proven wrong on my assumption that it was impossible to commute in San Jose using public transportation. After careful examination of VTA time tables, and several trial and error attempts, I am now commuting to work, having found some good things about commuting:

• usually it takes me 40 mins door-to-door. Not too bad, considering that the driving time was something between 15-30 minutes, depending on the luck with the 21! traffic lights between home and work (other than that, the drive was a monotonous 9 miles straight, right turn, 1 mile, arrived);
• instead of losing 30-60 minutes driving to work every day, I actually found myself with 1h20 of free time to do some productive stuff like reading or listening to podcasts.

Of course there are always drawbacks:

• the bus runs every 15 mins, light rail every 12 and shuttle bus to IBM about every 30 mins. If I get it right, I get from one place to the other in 40 mins. If I get it wrong a.k.a, lose the first bus or lightrail, it takes at least 30 mins more (have to catch next shuttle, if I get there on time).

But the goal of this post is not really to dicuss about VTA’s schedule, but instead about podcasts, more specifically, IT podcasts. I have been alternating between reading and listening to podcasts during the trip, and the podcast I have been listening to is Software Engineering Radio. It is an excellent podcast, and I’m still in episode 30, so have a lot to go (they have 103 as of today ). However, I’m looking for other series to mix up with this one, and also because I might skip some of the episodes that are not of my interest.

So, what IT podcasts do you listen to and what do you like about them? I recently added two series to amarok, but haven’t listened to any episode yet:

• IBM developerWorks podcasts
• Jon Udell’s interviews with innovators

Don’t forget to leave your comment and let me know what are your favorite IT podcats!

Popularity: 17% [?]

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When I migrated my development environment to Eclipse 3.4 Ganymede, one of the things that caught my attention on Eclipse’s update website was a plugin called Mylyn. A visit to the website, a look over the webcast and it sounded something promising.

It definitely is! Mylyn is a task manager that changes your IDE context based on tasks. You create a task, add resources to its context and when you activate the task, it hides all the other (unneeded) resources from your views (project/package explorer, outlines, editors, etc…). It provides integration with several task repositories, like Bugzilla and Trac. Unfortunately, it doesn’t provide a connector to Clearcase, but I’m still able to use it in an automated way.

I find the tool really awesome when I do something basic like switching tasks: it just closes all the editor windows and projects in the explorer for the task I’m leaving and opens all the files I was working on for the task I’m switching to. This would take me several minutes to do by myself, so having a tool that does that in 1 second is pretty neat!

Here are some more things I like about Mylyn:

• ability to customize CVS/SVN checkin comments based on templates. Most, if not all, of my commit comments are in the form of “Bug#xxxxx: 1 line description of the bug and fix”. With Mylyn, I can get the comment populated automatically with information from the associated task.
• when I (re)activate a task, it positions the cursor in the file and method (if java file) I was working on.
• I can use the URL feature to link to the Clearcase defect page for each one of my defects
• dynamically adds resources as we follow method references
• Mylyn filters unrelated content from all views, but I especially like the end result for the package explorer and outline view. When working with classes that have tens of methods, showing just a handful of them in the outline simplifies things a lot!

And the things I don’t like that much:

• no connector to Rational ClearCase. I have to copy some notes and Defect info from Clearcase to my task manually.
• the option to show filtered content only shows content at the same level. I would like to have a “show all” option for when I need to look for some resource.
• It slows down the system a bit. Not too bad, but I do notice it when I have several eclipse instances running.

Overal, I think Mylyn is a great tool and very useful! Even more if you are working with Bugzilla/Trac projects.

If you want to give it a try, this is Mylyn’s homepage and this is a Mylyn tutorial.

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If you are into java and database development, you will find this article to be a gold mine: http://www.javaperformancetuning.com/tips/jdbc.shtml

It contains links and summary to tens of other performance articles related with java database application development.

Popularity: 21% [?]

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Eu até aceiteva, mas tenho cá um feeling de que eles estão apenas interessados no meu donativo e não na minha amizade ;-).

PS: será que as comissões de festas se estão a render às novas tecnologias e vão passar a aceitar donativos via Paypal?

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Every other week Google Finance has a glitch in their real-time quote, resulting in some random company heading up the top gainers or losers. Usually, the glitch is just a few hundred or thousand percent in the company’s (de)valuation, but today it hit all records: 10,647,115,776.00%!!! One stock went up 10,647,115,776.00% in a single trading day, to a stock value of 8,619,905,024.00

I just which I had bought one single stock of this company yesterday

It would be cool if NYSE servers had this type of glitch. The stock market would be much more fun and not so boring and depressing as it has been over the past months.

Popularity: 36% [?]

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