Canon have a fantastic little app, which works on both Windows and Mac, called EOS Utility, which among other things allows you to do time lapse photography!

I lost my CD ages ago, because you know … everyone knows that all responsible companies let you download support tools from their website ..

Unfortunately no one informed Canon of this amazing new way of thinking, and they only let you download an update for the EOS Utility application, which throws a massive hissy fit if you try to install it on a machine that doesn’t already have it installed!

My home Ubuntu Jaunty installation often takes a good 40-60 seconds to connect to using SSH, none of the other servers I maintain have this same problem, they’re pretty much instantaneous, and today, on a Friday evening at 1am this irked me enough to fix it!

The first step is of course to make the SSH connection with debug output on.

<br /> Chill:~ idimmu$ ssh -v cordy<br /> OpenSSH_5.2p1, OpenSSL 0.9.7l 28 Sep 2006<br /> debug1: Reading configuration data /Users/idimmu/.ssh/config<br /> debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh_config<br /> debug1: Connecting to cordy [192.168.0.10] port 22.<br /> debug1: Connection established.<br /> debug1: identity file /Users/idimmu/.ssh/identity type -1<br /> debug1: identity file /Users/idimmu/.ssh/id_rsa type -1<br /> debug1: identity file /Users/idimmu/.ssh/id_dsa type 2<br /> debug1: Remote protocol version 2.0, remote software version OpenSSH_5.1p1 Debian-5ubuntu1<br /> debug1: match: OpenSSH_5.1p1 Debian-5ubuntu1 pat OpenSSH*<br /> debug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0<br /> debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_5.2<br /> debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT sent<br /> debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT received<br /> debug1: kex: server->client aes128-ctr hmac-md5 none<br /> debug1: kex: client->server aes128-ctr hmac-md5 none<br /> debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REQUEST(1024<1024<br /> debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_GROUP<br /> debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_INIT sent<br /> debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REPLY<br /> debug1: Host 'cordy' is known and matches the RSA host key.<br /> debug1: Found key in /Users/idimmu/.ssh/known_hosts:7<br /> debug1: ssh_rsa_verify: signature correct<br /> debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS sent<br /> debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS<br /> debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS received<br /> debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_REQUEST sent<br /> debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT received

Whilst trying to run mvn grails:exec with more complicated requests it kept erroring:

<br /> Chill:superted idimmu$ mvn grails:exec -Dcommand="jack-be-nimble net.idimmu User Profile"<br /> [INFO] Scanning for projects...<br /> [INFO] Searching repository for plugin with prefix: 'grails'.<br /> [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /> [INFO] Building Unnamed - net.idimmu:gymlife:war:1.0-SNAPSHOT<br /> [INFO] task-segment: [grails:exec] (aggregator-style)<br /> [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /> [INFO] [grails:exec]<br /> [INFO] Using Grails 1.2.0<br /> Running pre-compiled script<br /> [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /> [ERROR] BUILD ERROR<br /> [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /> [INFO] Unable to start Grails
Embedded error: java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
[INFO] ————————————————————————
[INFO] For more information, run Maven with the -e switch
[INFO] ————————————————————————
[INFO] Total time: 14 seconds
[INFO] Finished at: Thu Jan 07 22:49:41 GMT 2010
[INFO] Final Memory: 32M/81M
[INFO] ————————————————————————

Whilst trying to install the Nimble plugin for Grails using Maven I ran in to a spot of bother!

<br /> Chill:superted idimmu$ mvn grails:install-plugin -DpluginName=nimble<br /> [INFO] Scanning for projects...<br /> [INFO] Searching repository for plugin with prefix: 'grails'.<br /> [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /> [INFO] Building Unnamed - idimmu.net:superted:war:1.0-SNAPSHOT<br /> [INFO] task-segment: [grails:install-plugin] (aggregator-style)<br /> [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /> [INFO] [grails:install-plugin]<br /> [INFO] Using Grails 1.2.0<br /> Running pre-compiled script<br /> Environment set to development<br /> Reading remote plugin list ...<br /> Reading remote plugin list ...<br /> Latest release information is not available for plugin 'nimble', specify concrete release to install<br />

I’ve started investigating Grails for some projects and have been making some good headway and I like to use Maven for everything as it’s amazing, and generating projects is easy.

<br /> Chill:stsworkspace idimmu$ mvn org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-archetype-plugin:2.0-alpha-4:generate -DarchetypeGroupId=org.grails -DarchetypeArtifactId=grails-maven-archetype -DarchetypeVersion=1.2.0 -DgroupId=idimmu.net -DartifactId=superted<br /> [INFO] Scanning for projects...<br /> [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /> [INFO] Building Maven Default Project<br /> [INFO] task-segment: [org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-archetype-plugin:2.0-alpha-4:generate] (aggregator-style)<br /> [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /> [INFO] Preparing archetype:generate<br /> [INFO] No goals needed for project - skipping<br /> [INFO] Setting property: classpath.resource.loader.class => 'org.codehaus.plexus.velocity.ContextClassLoaderResourceLoader'.<br /> [INFO] Setting property: velocimacro.messages.on => 'false'.<br /> [INFO] Setting property: resource.loader => 'classpath'.<br /> [INFO] Setting property: resource.manager.logwhenfound => 'false'.<br /> [INFO] [archetype:generate]<br /> [INFO] Generating project in Interactive mode<br /> [WARNING] No archetype repository found. Falling back to central repository (https://repo1.maven.org/maven2).<br /> [WARNING] Use -DarchetypeRepository=<your repository> if archetype's repository is elsewhere.<br /> Define value for version: 1.0-SNAPSHOT: :<br /> Confirm properties configuration:<br /> groupId: idimmu.net<br /> artifactId: superted<br /> version: 1.0-SNAPSHOT<br /> package: idimmu.net<br /> Y: :<br /> [INFO] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /> [INFO] Using following parameters for creating OldArchetype: grails-maven-archetype:1.2.0<br /> [INFO] ----------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /> [INFO] Parameter: groupId, Value: idimmu.net<br /> [INFO] Parameter: packageName, Value: idimmu.net<br /> [INFO] Parameter: package, Value: idimmu.net<br /> [INFO] Parameter: artifactId, Value: superted<br /> [INFO] Parameter: basedir, Value: /Users/idimmu/Documents/stsworkspace<br /> [INFO] Parameter: version, Value: 1.0-SNAPSHOT<br /> [WARNING] org.apache.velocity.runtime.exception.ReferenceException: reference : template = archetype-resources/pom.xml [line 147,column 20] : ${java.version} is not a valid reference.<br /> [WARNING] org.apache.velocity.runtime.exception.ReferenceException: reference : template = archetype-resources/pom.xml [line 149,column 23] : ${java.home} is not a valid reference.<br /> [INFO] ********************* End of debug info from resources from generated POM ***********************<br /> [INFO] OldArchetype created in dir: /Users/idimmu/Documents/stsworkspace/superted<br /> [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /> [INFO] BUILD SUCCESSFUL<br /> [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /> [INFO] Total time: 15 seconds<br /> [INFO] Finished at: Thu Jan 07 21:45:39 GMT 2010<br /> [INFO] Final Memory: 12M/79M<br /> [INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------<br />

I wanted to give Google’s new Go language a try which requires checking out the source code with Mercurial.

Mercurial was installed from ports on my Mac with

<br /> sudo port install mecurial<br />

But checking out the code threw an error.

<br /> Chill:~ rus$ hg clone -r release https://go.googlecode.com/hg/ $GOROOT<br /> abort: Python support for SSL and HTTPS is not installed<br /> Exception exceptions.AttributeError: "'httpsrepository' object has no attribute 'urlopener'" in > ignored<br />

I’m currently setting up some new clusters under RedHat and each cluster is getting it’s own Nagios instance, trying to use the web based management interface however threw and error.

I’ve seen this error before on Ubuntu and was getting it again under RedHat. Of course I revisited my Ubuntu solution and realised that it didn’t help at all, due to using dpkg overrides, also the situation was very different!

<br /> root@nagios:/var/log/nagios/rw# ls -al<br /> total 8<br /> drwxrwxr-x 2 nagios apache 4096 Oct 30 13:37 .<br /> drwxrwxr-x 5 nagios apache 4096 Oct 30 13:40 ..<br />

We’re rolling out a RedHat platform for a major product delivery to a client in the next couple of weeks, which is a great chance for me to build a fresh platform using all the skills I’ve acquired and actually do things properly (TM).

We’re using RedHat Enterprise Linux 5 because this is a very critical deployment and we want an Operating System that is certified to both our hardware and software applications, something that unfortunately Ubuntu does not deliver.

Meta-< -> go to beginning of history file
Meta-> -> go to end of history file
Meta-f -> go to next word in command line
Meta-b -> go to previous word in command line
Meta-d -> delete next word in command line (from the actual position of the prompt)

Ctrl-a -> go to the start of command line
Ctrl-e -> go to the end of command line
Ctrl-p -> previous command in history
Ctrl-n -> next command in history
Ctrl-f -> next character in command line
Ctrl-b -> previous character in command line
Ctrl-r -> reverse search in history file
Ctrl-d -> delete current character
Ctrl-k -> delete from the prompt to the end of command line
Ctrl-_ -> undo (yes, but limited)