Running development VM's

I ran across this nice article describing how this guy runs development virtual servers on his Mac using Fusion. I've been doing this for years, formerly with other virtualization products, but hadn't thought of using the Shared Folders feature to make things easier for development locally.

"Getting Real" by "Have an Enemy"

Here's a quote from the book "Getting Real" by 37signals that I've been reading, in the essay "Have an Enemy" by 37signals.

"Sometimes the best way to know what your app should be is to know what it shouldn't be. Figure out your app's enemy and you'll shine a light on where you need to go."

"Getting Real" by "Fund Yourself"

Here's a couple of quotes from the book "Getting Real" by 37signals that I've been reading, in the essay "Fund Yourself" by 37signals.

"The first priority of many startups is acquiring funding from investors. But remember, if you turn to outsiders for funding, you'll have to answer to them too. Expectations are raised. "

"Run on limited resources and you'll be forced to reckon with constraints earlier and more intensely. And that's a good thing. Constraints drive innovation.

Constraints also force you to get your idea out in the wild sooner rather than later — another good thing. A month or two out of the gates you should have a pretty good idea of whether you're onto something or not. If you are, you'll be self-sustainable shortly and won't need external cash. If your idea's a lemon, it's time to go back to the drawing board. At least you know now as opposed to months (or years) down the road. And at least you can back out easily. Exit plans get a lot trickier once investors are involved."

"Getting Real" by "What's Your Problem"

Here's a couple of quotes from the book "Getting Real" by 37signals that I've been reading, in the essay "What's Your Problem?" by 37signals.

"A great way to build software is to start out by solving your own problems. You'll be the target audience and you'll know what's important and what's not. That gives you a great head start on delivering a breakout product."

"When you solve your own problem, you create a tool that you're passionate about. And passion is key. Passion means you'll truly use it and care about it. And that's the best way to get others to feel passionate about it too."

"Getting Real" by "Build Less"

Here's a couple of quotes from the book "Getting Real" by 37signals that I've been reading, in the essay "Build Less" by 37signals.

"This sort of one-upping Cold War mentality is a dead-end. It's an expensive, defensive, and paranoid way of building products. Defensive, paranoid companies can't think ahead, they can only think behind. They don't lead, they follow."

"Do less than your competitors to beat them. Solve the simple problems and leave the hairy, difficult, nasty problems to everyone else. Instead of oneupping, try one-downing. Instead of outdoing, try underdoing."

"Getting Real" by "Fix Time and Budget, Flex Scope"

Here's a quote from the book "Getting Real" by 37signals that I've been reading, in the essay "Fix Time and Budget, Flex Scope

"Launching something great that's a little smaller in scope than planned is better than launching something mediocre and full of holes because you had to hit some magical time, budget, and scope window."

keytool error: java.security.cert.CertificateException: java.io.EOFException

Today when I tried to import a signed SSL certificate from ipsCA using the Java keytool (JRE 1.6) I received the error message "keytool error: java.security.cert.CertificateException: java.io.EOFException".

In this case, the error was caused by a blank line at the end of the file after "-----END CERTIFICATE-----". Using vim I was able to edit the file, save it and successfully import it.

Configure CentOS for NTP

I setup a departmental Jabber server yesterday using Openfire and I needed to make sure that the server kept it's date and time with the rest of the University. I found this quick guide to configuring CentOS 5.3 to synchronize with the University servers:

• Login as root
• Install the NTP service, if not already installed: "yum install ntp"
• Turn on the service: "/sbin/chkconfig ntpd"
• Point the NTP service at the University NTP servers: "/usr/sbin/ntpdate ntp.msu.edu"
• Start the NTP service: "/etc/init.d/ntpd start"

Oracle OPatch Download

If you're after the Oracle OPatch software, and like me have a hard time finding it in Metalink, here is a quick link to find it, go to http://updates.oracle.com/download/6880880.html

SQL*Plus on Mac OS X Using Instant Client

I administer a number of Oracle databases and sometimes I just want to get in and out without loading up Aqua Data Studio. For this I've always wanted, and recently found, Oracle SQL*Plus can run on the Mac without install the huge client. This uses the Instant Client from Oracle and works out pretty good. I followed a modified version of this blog post on setting it up.

Re-directing Print Jobs in Mac OS X

Recently I printed something on my MacBook to a printer that wasn't connected to my Mac instead of the one that was. After printing the document FireFox (3.5 beta) proceeded to crash, so I lost the web page and the information to try and print again. I was pretty sure I was stuck, but not so with the Mac OS X.

A quick search turned up this page that shows that if you open the print queue of the printer you're not able to connect to, along with the one you do want to print to, re-directing the print job is as simple as dragging and dropping the print job from the one print queue to the other print queue. Document rescued!

Linux - Detailed Look at Boot Process

Here is a nice look at the Linux boot process.

Linux Directory Hierarchy

As mentioned previously, I'm learning Linux and one of the things I'm trying to wrap my head around is the default directories that are created, and what each is for. Today I was confused between the difference between the following:

• /bin
• /sbin
• /usr/bin
• /usr/sbin

In researching this I found that Linux has a man(ual) page for the Linux file system hierarchy. You can view this, which a description of what each of these default directories does, by typing "man hier" at the shell prompt.

Thanks to this forum post that mentioned this.

Linux Path - Display and Modify

I'm in the process of learning Linux, which I really like so far. One thing I found recently was how to modify the PATH variable in Linux, like I do with Windows.

To display your current path variable, type "echo $PATH" and press enter

To modify your PATH environment variable for your current session, you use the EXPORT command (not sure why it's named that) to do this. Suppose you wanted to add the directory "/sbin" to your path for the current session, you would type "EXPORT PATH=$PATH:/sbin"

To make a permanent change to your PATH variable for every time you open a shell, you need to mdofiy the hidden file that automatically executed every time you start the shell. This file is named ".bashrc" if your using the bash shell, and you would add "EXPORT PATH=$PATH:/sbin" to the end of the file. Now, every time you open a new shell, that directory will be included in your path.

Thanks to Sitepoint for a great book, "Run Your Own Web Server Using Linux & Apache"