Monday, February 8. 2010
Configuring Tomcat6 with Eclipse in Debian
After some moderate difficulty (mostly due to bugs 507536 and 552480) I have finally managed to setup Eclipse as a build environment for Apache Tomcat. The process is as follows (Note that $DEVELSERVERDIR can be anything/anywhere that you have access to as a normal user):
- aptitude install eclipse tomcat6-user
- Install Java EE Development Tools plugin from the Eclipse WPT Project
- tomcat6-instance-create
$DEVELSERVERDIR - cd
$DEVELSERVERDIR - ln -s /usr/share/tomcat6/lib
- ln -s /usr/share/tomcat6/bin/bootstrap.jar bin
- cp /var/cache/tomcat6/catalina.policy conf
- Configure tomcat and eclipse to your liking and add the Tomcat instance to the Eclipse servers list
At this point you should be able to import/create projects which can be run on your local server instance. (If not, you are in the same boat I was in this morning... and best of luck to you)
Saturday, February 6. 2010
Removing All Nonpresent Devices with DevCon
Background
Windows remembers all devices which have previously been connected to the system and retains the drivers for those devices such that if the device is reconnected the driver searching and loading process can be avoided. This is a very useful behavior for devices which are commonly connected and disconnected (e.g. USB devices), but it has the side-effect that devices which are used once, or used for a finite amount of time, will forever be remembered by Windows. It is unclear exactly what "remember" means in this context, as I am not exactly sure what sort of storage or pre-loading of the drivers is occurring, but I can confirm that drivers for these "non-present" devices can affect the system, either with compatibility problems introduced by the driver or with performance problems from many accumulated "non-present" devices (Note: I doubt the performance impact is noticeable on all but extreme cases - like replacing your motherboard more than once with different hardware...).
Managing "Non-Present" Devices
The process for viewing these "non-present" devices in Device Manager is outlined in KB315539. They can also be viewed using the Microsoft DevCon utility. In fact, both programs can be used to remove, as well as view, the "non-present" devices. In Device Manager, the devices can be uninstalled just like any other. In DevCon, you must prefix the Device ID with a "@" in order for it to remove the device.
However, neither of these solutions allows for a quick method of removing all "non-present" devices, and on a system with hundreds of such devices this can be a significant hassle. To overcome this difficulty, I have written a script to remove all "non-present" devices which are not legacy or SW devices (since these are often required for other reasons - even when "non-present") using DevCon. The script can also read and write a file listing all devices to be removed (allowing for manual editing of the device list). You can download the script from the Remove Devices project page on the forge.
Thursday, February 4. 2010
OpenID Provider URL Formatting
We are making a website right now and we would like users to be able to login using their OpenID credentials. After an hour or so of googling I gave up trying to find a list of the OpenID URL formatting for the various OpenID providers (http://username.myopenid.com or http://flickr.com/username for example) and instead went through the MyOpenID site directory to compile my own list. Here it is in all of its glory:
Edit 2-4-2010: Today I went through and attempted to verify that all of these openid providers were good. The third column in the table represents my findings.
| Google: | https://www.google.com/accounts/o8/id * | good |
| Yahoo: | http://yahoo.com/ * | good |
| MyOpenId: | http://username.myopenid.com | good |
| LiveJournal: | http://username.livejournal.com | good |
| AOL: | http://openid.aol.com/username | good |
| WordPress: | http://username.wordpress.com | good |
| Blogspot: | http://username.blogspot.com | must use blog url, blogspot = blogger |
| Verisign: | http://username.pip.verisignlabs.com | good |
| ClaimID: | http://openid.claimid.com/username | Signs in but nothing happens, appears to be broken on claimid end |
| clickpass: | http://clickpass.com/public/username | I was only able to signup with IE and then there was a weird login procedure but it ultimately worked |
| Google Profile: | http://google.com/profiles/username | good |
| Blogger: | http://username.blogspot.com/ | good |
| Flickr: | http://flickr.com/username | Couldn't get flickr to work |
| identity.net: | http://username.identity.net/ | Never got sign up confirmation e-mail to test |
| Bloglines: | http://username.bloglines.com/ | Didn't work |
| Technorati: | http://technorati.com/people/technorati/username | Didn't work, reports of brokenness as of November of last year |
| Vidoop: | http://username.myvidoop.com/ | good |
| Vox: | http://username.vox.com/ | good |
| MySpace: | http://myspace.com/username | Must make and use account url |
| Musicpictures: | http://ww4.musicpictures.com/openid/username | Works fine but there is 0 openid advertising on the site |
| Elgg: | http://explode.elgg.org/username | Tried registering two different places on elgg.org and neither worked. explode.elgg.org no longer exists so I think openid providing went with it. However, there is still an explode.elgg.org option in their openid login so I may be wrong. |
| MyID: | http://username.myid.net/ | good - easiest sign up of any site I visited |
| IdProxy: | http://username.idproxy.net/ | good |
| Sxipper: | http://username.sxipper.com/ | Demo works with trainer id but it didn't work on the actual openid logins I tried. |
| Signon: | http://username.signon.com/ | good |
|
|
|
Typekey is now part of typepad so I couldn't verify that typekey still works but typepad definitely does. |
| Smugmug: | http://username.smugmug.com/ | Couldn't get to work with trial account, possibly works after paid? |
| StartSSL: | https://username.startssl.com/ | This site is weird, I kept getting ssl errors when I went to sign up. I was told via e-mail however that startssl is an openid provider and their url is in the format listed here. |
| Beemba: | http://username.beemba.com/ | beemba.com forwards to cliqset which does allow openid logins but as far as I can tell does not provide logins. |
| Idtail: | http://username.idtail.com | Oriental site of some sort, couldn't get signed up but they do have openid login options |
*These sites do not require your username in the login string.
The login procedures at the different sites varied but my rough estimate says about 50% of the sites require you to know exactly what your personal URL is for the provider you are trying to login through (http://openid.aol.com/joojoo2988 to login with aol). Another 45% used some form of the RPX plugin and the final 5% rolled their own system that assisted with a small set of providers and allowed you to enter the URL for the rest (see Stack Overflow). This list is by no means exhaustive and if you know of another url you would like me to add to the list leave a comment or send an email.
Serious SPF/SenderID Problems in Exchange 2003
I was recently bitten by KB910272 (again). For the unfamiliar, this issue causes Sender ID/SPF records with non-class full subnets to be processed incorrectly and mail from those domains to be rejected. The number of such domains is surprisingly large for this problem to remain unsolved in the normal patch cycle... or so it seems to me right now.
To solve the problem, apply the hotfix from KB910272 or, even better, from one of the superseding updates: KB927478 or KB951639.
