happy sysadmin day.

happy sysadmin day.

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.
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to me. and all.

I’m a Slacker.

No, no.. not that slacker. But Slacker.

I’ve been using Slackware for about a month or so. Haven’t really got the chance to explore it intensively yet, but so far I’m loving it. The installation process was a breeze and fast(it reminded me of sysinstall). I actually reinstalled three times – due to the lack of skills in partition sizing. The notebook that my company provided only carries an 80Gb size of hard disk, so I had to be very stingy when it comes to allocating spaces.

When I first wanted to switch from Ubuntu which I have been using for about 3 years, I was torn apart between choosing either Arch or Slack. I decided to go with Slack because of some success stories of users installing Lotus Notes that I’ve read. Well to be honest there are similar success stories of users installing Lotus Notes on Arch, but.. I must say that I’m pretty much heavily influenced by other FreeBSD forumers.

Installing Lotus Notes was a bit tricky, but once I got it installed, it runs pretty well. Crashed a few times, rarely though, but hey, this is Lotus Notes am talking about here. It could possibly crash on any possible platform you could think of. Lol. I seriously hate Lotus Notes. Argh. It’s huge, bloated and crippling slow. I wish IBM could produce a light weight version of Lotus Notes as an option for those who have to ‘painfully’ use it to check email. And not marking calendars, browse the net, play with widgets and what not. Gah. Apart from Lotus Notes, I’ve installed WebLogic and it runs smoothly on Slackware, no surprise there. I haven’t tried WebSphere though. Hopefully it’ll run fine as well. I definitely need one running on my notebook else don’t call me a WebSphere technical support.

There’s one thing that irks me though.. the netconfig command. It is the command you use to set an IP address to your machine, but I can’t for the life of me understand why it has to ask me to key in the hostname everytime I want to change my IP. How many times do I change my IP address? Being a technical support, a lot. How many times do I change a hostname of my machine? I don’t know. Like.. never? Well I know I’m complaining here, so.. am just gonna STFU and modify the netconfig script to stop prompting me for a hostname and FQDN. I’ve also added into the script 2 locations that I frequent the most, which is my office and home. I know I could just run a one liner command to change my IP, but that would be dynamic. And I prefer to have the IP to remain upon reboot.

Another thing that I still haven’t gotten the grip yet is the installation of 3rd party packages. All of the packages on my Slackware were installed by manually fetching the packages from slackbuild website, and get them installed using installpkg. I came across of a guy saying this in a forum.. “True slackers compile from the source”. Meh. So obviously I’m not a true slacker.. But anyhoo, that’s not the point. So apart from using installpkg, removepkg or compiling a 3rd party app from the source, I could also opt for slackpkg, the automated tool for managing Slackware packages. Hrmm. But I can only specify one mirror.. at first I thought it is like apt-get, where you can define repositories and just run apt-get install <package> and be done with it. But apparently there are not many packages that I could install using slackpkg. Most of the time when I run slackpkg search <package>, I got a message stating that there is no keyword match for the package that I wish to install. I really don’t mind compiling, or installing the binaries, but I hate to have to go to websites and fetch the packages manually. I think I must’ve missed something, there must be a better way that true slackers are practicing that I have yet to discover.

With all that said, I love the current setup of my notebook with Slackware. Everything is snappy.

So Ray, let me hear you roar.

xoxoxo.

😀

Life is beautiful :)

   

Well I don’t really understand why the couple is already at the rose, when I still have around 2 more weeks to go before dressing up and slab an inch foundation on me face.

Anyhoo, the chart says it. Devin will be here in less than 3 weeks!! Am so, so excited yet nervous as the countdown draws closer. I probably need some extra doses of my inhaler that day!

sixtydoses. where od is jobless.

Lol. Nah am not jobless. Just couldn’t think of a better subject. But anyway..

I hate it when I have the feeling of resigning from my job. There’s a job fair this weekend and am going to ‘sell’ myself. Something that am really bad at.

And I mean, really, really, bad.

In the cv form on the job recruiter’s website, there’s a portion where I have to fill in with my skills, if I have any (I have left that portion blank since day 1).

It got me thinking(since forever), how do you define if one is a beginner, or an intermediate, or an advanced user in nix? This is a very subjective question and I kinda hate it.

Either Oracle Smart Update utility interface sucks or I’m an artard.

I just couldn’t figure out how to get Smart Update to work offline. I don’t have the authorization to download all the patches, so I got them from some Oracle support guy, fire up bsu.sh, select work offline, and spend several hours trying to figure out how to point to my patches directory. Bleargh. Fortunately, CLI works like a charm.

od@sysh:/opt/bea103/utils/bsu$ ./bsu.sh -install -patchlist=79YU,CJ4W,ETR7,IQXV,SYCB,T552 -patch_download_dir=/home/od/Desktop/allpatcheszip -prod_dir=/opt/bea103/wlserver_10.3
Checking for conflicts..
No conflict(s) detected

Installing Patch ID: 79YU..
Result: Success

Installing Patch ID: CJ4W.
Result: Success

Installing Patch ID: ETR7.
Result: Success

Installing Patch ID: IQXV.
Result: Success

Installing Patch ID: SYCB.
Result: Success

Installing Patch ID: T552.
Result: Success

On a different note, while I was installing WebLogic Server 10.3.x in silent mode, I was prompted with this error:

od@sysh:~/Desktop$ ./server103_linux32.bin -mode=silent -silent_xml=silent_103.xml
Extracting 0%……………………………………………………………………………………….100%
The local BEA product registry is corrupted. Please select another BEA Home or contact BEA Support
** Error during execution, error code = 65280.

Found a forum that says, for version above 9.x, ‘COMPONENT_PATHS’ doesn’t accept value like this –> “WebLogic Server/Core Application Server” anymore. But actually it does accept “WebLogic Server/<insert_component>” format, and even the documentation says so.

So anyway, the error was due to my habit of copying and pasting in vi which sort of corrupted my component paths line. So yea, if you get that kind of error, I’d say chance is your silent.xml file format is incorrect.

These are my silent.xml files.

This will install  all WebLogic Server components.

###################################################

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<!– Silent installer option: -mode=silent -silent_xml=C:\bea\silent.xml –>

<bea-installer>
<input-fields>
<data-value name=”BEAHOME” value=”/opt/bea1032″ />
<data-value name=”WLS_INSTALL_DIR” value=”/opt/bea1032/wlserver_10.3″ />
<data-value name=”COMPONENT_PATHS” value=”WebLogic Server” />
<data-value name=”INSTALL_NODE_MANAGER_SERVICE” value=”yes” />
<data-value name=”NODEMGR_PORT” value=”5559″ />
<data-value name=”INSTALL_SHORTCUT_IN_ALL_USERS_FOLDER” value=”yes”/>

</input-fields>
</bea-installer>

###################################################

This will install all WebLogic Server components, without the samples.

###################################################

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?>
<!– Silent installer option: -mode=silent -silent_xml=C:\bea\silent.xml –>

<bea-installer>
<input-fields>
<data-value name=”BEAHOME” value=”D:\bea\wls103_silent” />
<data-value name=”WLS_INSTALL_DIR” value=”D:\bea\wls103_silent\wlserver_10.3″ />
<data-value name=”WLW_INSTALL_DIR” value=”D:\bea\wls103_silent\workshop_10.3″ />
<data-value name=”COMPONENT_PATHS” value=”WebLogic Server/Core Application Server|WebLogic Server/Administration Console|WebLogic Server/Configuration Wizard and Upgrade Framework|WebLogic Server/Web 2.0 HTTP Pub-Sub Server|WebLogic Server/WebLogic JDBC Drivers|WebLogic Server/Third Party JDBC Drivers|WebLogic Server/WebLogic Server Clients|WebLogic Server/WebLogic Web Server Plugins|WebLogic Server/UDDI and Xquery Support|WebLogic Server/Server Examples|Workshop/Workshop for WebLogic|Workshop/Workshop Runtime Framework” />
<data-value name=”USE_EXTERNAL_ECLIPSE” value=”false” />
<data-value name=”EXTERNAL_ECLIPSE_DIR” value=”D:\eclipse332\eclipse” />
<data-value name=”INSTALL_NODE_MANAGER_SERVICE” value=”yes” />
<data-value name=”NODEMGR_PORT” value=”5559″ />
<data-value name=”INSTALL_SHORTCUT_IN_ALL_USERS_FOLDER” value=”yes”/>

</input-fields>
</bea-installer>

###################################################

What caused the error was, I simply copied the component paths from my terminal, and paste it using the vi editor, so I kinda missed the fact that the line was not continuous, creating breaks of white space. Something like this:

<data-value name=”COMPONENT_PATHS” value=”WebLogic Server/Core Application Server|WebLogic Server/Administration Console|WebLogic Server/Configuration Wizard and Upgrade Framework|WebLogic Server/Web 2.0 <break of white space>
HTTP Pub-Sub Server WebLogic Server/WebLogic JDBC Drivers|WebLogic Server/Third Party JDBC <break of white space>
Drivers|WebLogic Server/WebLogic Server Clients|WebLogic Server/WebLogic Web Server Plugins|WebLogic Server/UDDI and Xquery Support|WebLogic Server/Server Examples|Workshop/Workshop for <break of white space>
WebLogic|Workshop/Workshop Runtime Framework” />

Autostart tomcat upon reboot.

So this morning they shutdown the server and called me up complaining that the website is down.

No, I didn’t ask how many times have they rebooted. Lol.

Anyway the website is down because I didn’t configure both apache and tomcat to run automatically upon reboot. Am so lazy today because it’s Friday, basically it’s a yippee day,  a day that is legal for you to come to work late, and go back early.

Googled for the auto script, but none satisfied my needs, so, here’s mine (adapted from a couple of scripts), because sharing is caring.

This script will always run tomcat as user ‘admin’ (EUID 500). If you run the script as a different user, it’ll prompt for admin’s password. Dump the script in /etc/init.d/ and run chkconfig to configure runlevel startup.

#!/bin/bash
#
# tomcat     This is the init.d script used to start tomcat.
#                It calls $CATALINA_HOME/bin/startup.sh or shutdown.sh
# chkconfig: – 91 15
# description: Apache Tomcat is an open source software implementation of the Java Servlet and JavaServer Pages technologies.
# processname: tomcat

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.6.0_16
export CATALINA_HOME=/usr/local/apache-tomcat-5.5.28

tomcat_stop() {
if [[ $EUID -ne 500 ]]; then
su -c ‘$CATALINA_HOME/bin/shutdown.sh’ admin
exit 1
else
$CATALINA_HOME/bin/shutdown.sh
fi
}

tomcat_start() {
if [[ $EUID -ne 500 ]]; then
su -c ‘$CATALINA_HOME/bin/startup.sh’ admin
exit 1
else
$CATALINA_HOME/bin/startup.sh
fi
}

case $1 in
start)
echo -n “Starting Tomcat server:”
tomcat_start
echo “.”
;;
stop)
echo -n “Stopping Tomcat server:”
tomcat_stop
echo “.”
;;
*)
echo “Usage: /etc/init.d/tomcat start|stop”
;;
esac

Happy 010110!

Another hour before 2009 leaves us behind. Like any other year, I’ll be standing next to the window to watch fireworks from afar.

The most common question every year, what is your new year resolution?

Hmm.. let’s see..

None. I’ve never really had one, I think. I found that if you have a goal, you might not reach it. But if you don’t have one, then you are never disappointed. I gotta tell you, it feels phenomenal.

End of the year 2008, a friend asked me what my new year resolutions are, and I answered jokingly that I already have resolutions set for the next 3 years to come:

2009 – get a boyfriend.
2010 – get married.
2011 – get a baby.

Surprisingly, I achieved my made-up 2009 resolution.. ahem.. lol. So yeah, let’s see if am really gonna get wed this 2010 😛 .

Till then, happy new year, everyone.

Which city you want to live in?

Check out the Alphabet City.

I haven’t decided yet. When I first looked at all those alphabets, I thought I want ‘Z‘. But then I thought ‘P‘ is cool too. And after a while I couldn’t decide which alphabet, almost all of them are interesting to live in (hmm.. ‘S‘ is not really tempting, to be honest). I will need a few alphabets combined together to satisfy my needs.

I know Devin would wanna go for ‘W‘ or ‘V‘ 😉 .

Oh my, I feel like am twittering.

It’s the last day of 2009 and I just want to write – new year, new theme.

Remember I ranted about how difficult it is to find a wallpaper without having a specific theme in mind?

Well, turned out I found something better than just a wallpaper – a new theme for my xfce. I’ve been switching between xfce default theme and Clearlooks theme for a couple of years simply because it was so hard for me to find a clean theme with the right color, right tone and the right style.

I just found this awesome theme a couple of days ago, and I couldn’t be happier. While I don’t use Google Chrome because it’s not ported in FreeBSD and I’m back with Opera (did anyone notice that Opera is getting sexier by each version?), I am surely in love with its look. It’s clean, neat and simple.

Anyway, presenting the current xfce theme that I’m using, one of the best I’ve come across, the Chrome-like theme. I found another similar theme at gnome-look.org, but I like this one better because of its soothing color and simplicity. Minimal, just the way I like it.

I matched the theme with Chameleon Xcursors X11(Chameleon sky blue small) mouse theme, and it’s brilliant. I love it!

Now I can stop thinking about beautifying my desktop for a while..