Oracle’s megabucks Sun Servers – the best for enterprise environments…
…just don’t forget your Server Virtualisation for Dummies ebook:
Thunderbird RSS, QuickFolders, Sync, and other niceties
I continue to be impressed by Thunderbird which goes from strength to strength with every release. After playing around with RSS feed functionality (described here), I’m now using Thunderbird as my primary RSS feed reader: it’s particularly handy for keeping track of Twitter feeds (which the Twitter native web interface itself kind of sucks at), especially with the ability to tab your Twitter feeds with QuickFolders (below).
If like me you deal with thousands of mail items across multiple mail folders, then drop everything and check the QuickFolders extension out:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/thunderbird/addon/quickfolders-tabbed-folders/
It’s quite simply a superb add-on with an absolute tonne of features: you can read about them here: http://quickfolders.mozdev.org/. I was very happy to donate to the developer – so if you do like the add-on, perhaps consider doing the same :)
After enabling RSS feed functionality in Thunderbird, I got to thinking how cool it would be if Mozilla could extend their Firefox Sync functionality to Thunderbird: the ability to sync RSS feeds, account and application preferences amongst multiple Thunderbird installations would be huge. Turns out (after making enquiries on the relevant mailing lists) that this is planned:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=621198
Another cute addition to Thunderbird: a “Tip of the Week” feature in the Thunderbird welcome screen. Nice little touch!
Enable LDAP authentication with Nuxeo
Authenticating Nuxeo users against an LDAP directory is straightforward but for a bug which I encountered.
The instructions for enabling LDAP authentication are here: http://doc.nuxeo.com/display/ADMINDOC/Using+a+LDAP+directory. I am using Tomcat in my case, with OpenDJ as the LDAP server.
The bug I encountered is here: https://jira.nuxeo.com/browse/NXP-6574
And, the workaround I had to implement to get LDAP authentication up and running is detailed here: http://answers.nuxeo.com/questions/701/ad-ldap-connection-issues.
With this in place, LDAP authentication works as expected.
Enable Nuxeo Live Edit with LibreOffice and Firefox
Following is a quick how-to, as apparently Live Edit with Nuxeo DM 5.5, LibreOffice, Firefox, and the Nuxeo-provided plugins doesn’t work that well out of the box.
My example platform is Ubuntu 10.04 x86, Nuxeo DM 5.5, LibreOffice 3.4.6 (with the LibreOffice Java support packages installed as well), and Firefox 11.
First, grab the Nuxeo add-ons for LibreOffice and Firefox, respectively:
http://download.nuxeo.org/desktop-integration/live-edit/nuxeo-liveedit-ooo-lateststable.oxt
https://updates.nuxeo.org/desktop-integration/live-edit/nuxeo-liveedit-ff-protocolhandler.xpi
The latter link Nuxeo refers to as the “protocol handler” for Firefox, but let’s just say that both are needed to enable Live Edit functionality.
The LibreOffice add-on once installed requires no configuration (and there are in fact no preferences to set). The Firefox add-on however requires manual configuration – as the default settings are inadequate.
Referring to the below screengrab, we have entered our Nuxeo user credentials for automatic server access when saving documents to Nuxeo from LibreOffice. We have set the /tmp directory as our working directory – but note that the path must have the trailing forward slash (i.e. “/tmp/” will work, but “/tmp” will not). We have retained a single default “OpenOffice.org” mapping, but we have changed the editor command to that of LibreOffice 3.4:
That should be all that is needed. When you click the “Edit Online” icon from within Nuxeo you should observe LibreOffice launching and opening the document for editing automagically. Likewise, clicking on the “Save in Nuxeo” icon in LibreOffice should push the document back up to the server without error:
Like this:
Enable secure LDAP container based authentication with JSPWiki
A quick follow up on my post here. I will describe below the steps needed to enable secure LDAP authentication (both LDAPS and HTTPS). This is not intended for production use, obviously.
I’m using the same platform and environment described at http://blog.davekoelmeyer.co.nz/2012/01/28/container-based-authentication-with-jspwiki-glassfish-and-opendj/, and also using this as the starting point for the following.
Verify that the LDAPS connection handler is enabled in OpenDJ
This can be checked using the OpenDJ Control Panel GUI, and modified if necessary using the CLI dsconfig utility.
Switch to the secure LDAP port in the GlassFish JSPWiki security realm
Make sure you are using the ldaps:// URL prefix, and specify the secure port number (1636 in this example):
Enable security for the relevant GlassFish HTTP network listener port
Our JSPWiki application is listening over port 8080, configured in GlassFish under http-listener-1. Enable security for this port:
Enable HTTPS connections to JSPWiki
This is performed via modification of the JSPWiki web.xml file. In a default state, the web.xml file contains the following entries which enable the use of SSL connections:
<user-data-constraint>
<transport-guarantee>CONFIDENTIAL</transport-guarantee>
</user-data-constraint>
Ensure these exist in web.xml under the container managed authentication section.
Export the OpenDJ SSL private certificate and import it into the JSPWiki JKS keystore
The keytool CLI utility is used for this step.
First, we export the OpenDJ certificate (which has a default alias of server-cert) to a file:
dave@mymachine:~/OpenDJ/config$ pfexec keytool -export -alias "server-cert" -keystore ~/OpenDJ/config/keystore -file /tmp/server-cert.cer Enter keystore password: Certificate stored in file </tmp/server-cert.cer>
Next, we import the certificate file into the keystore of the GlassFish domain running our instance of JSPWiki, which in this example is at /opt/glassfishv3/glassfish/domains/domain1/config/cacerts.jks:
dave@mymachine:~/OpenDJ/config$ pfexec keytool -import -v -trustcacerts -alias "server-cert" -keystore /opt/glassfishv3/glassfish/domains/domain1/config/cacerts.jks -file /tmp/server-cert.cer Enter keystore password: Owner: CN=mymachine, O=OpenDS Self-Signed Certificate Issuer: CN=mymachine, O=OpenDS Self-Signed Certificate Serial number: Valid from: Certificate fingerprints: MD5: SHA1: Signature algorithm name: SHA1withRSA Version: 3 Trust this certificate? [no]: yes Certificate was added to keystore [Storing /opt/glassfishv3/glassfish/domains/domain1/config/cacerts.jks]
Modify the jspwiki.baseURL value
This is required as the URL prefix will have changed from http:// to https://. This modification is performed in the jspwiki.properties file.
Assuming my existing jspwiki.baseURL value is:
http://192.168.1.1:8080/ITProjects/
This would need to be changed to:
https://192.168.1.1:8080/ITProjects/
Restart the GlassFish domain, and test LDAP logins…
…and if you don’t observe secure logins working as they should, leave a comment.
Like this:
Importing Firefox RSS bookmarks into Thunderbird
Although I’ve tended to use Firefox to subscribe to RSS feeds via its Live Bookmarks feature, turns out Thunderbird can import Firefox bookmarks with the help of a third-party add-on. In this way, you can use Thunderbird to subscribe to any number of your existing Firefox bookmarked RSS feeds, without otherwise having to manually subscribe to each one in turn.
First, download the Firefox OPML Support add-on here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-us/firefox/addon/opml-support/
Install the add-on in the normal way, and restart Firefox. After restarting, go to “Bookmarks -> Show All Bookmarks” where you will observe a new “OPML Support” menu item entry. Click on this, and select the “Export OPML…” command:
I have used the following export settings:
Save the exported file somewhere convenient. Next, in Thunderbird go to the “Account Settings…” window, and add another account.
The account type should be “Blogs & News Feeds”
Accept the default account name, and finish the process:
Now, go back to the Thunderbird “Account Settings…” window where you will see the newly added account. Select the account, and click on the “Manage Subscriptions…” button.
Here we will finally import our Firefox RSS feed bookmarks. Click on the “Import” button, and locate the OPML file you exported:
If all goes well, you should now see all your RSS feed bookmarks:
Close this window (by hitting the red “x” in my case), and you’ll see the feeds have appeared in the main Thunderbird mail view. If you like, you can force retrieval of the feed posts (the default setting otherwise is to check for new content every 100 minutes):
The fallacy of Firefox “bloat” apropos of comparisons to Google Chrome
Chrome users seem to use the “bloat” argument against Firefox any chance they get, seemingly without being able to back the claim up with anything of substance. So, these recent benchmarks are rather interesting.
Memory usage under Windows and Mac OS X:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/macbook-air-chrome-16-firefox-9-benchmark,3108-13.html
“Under a heavy load of 40 tabs, Safari for Windows uses the least amount of memory (just 725 MB). Firefox comes in second at 910 MB, followed closely by Opera at 925 and Chrome at 995. Microsoft’s own IE9 uses the most memory (1.75 GB).
Opera is the only competitor to use less than a gigabyte of memory in Mac OS X. Safari comes in a close second, eating just over 1 GB, followed by Firefox at 1.25 GB. Chrome reports a whopping 2.3 GB of usage with 40 tabs open, which is significantly more than any other browser.”
Windows 7 and Ubuntu:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/chrome-17-firefox-10-ubuntu,3129-14.html
Tres intéressant.
Adding a custom theme to GIMP
GIMP running on .nix distributions that support the Gnome desktop environment can be used with custom themes. Following is a brief how-to which covers doing this on OpenIndiana oi_151a x86, with GIMP 2.6. The method should be very similar or identical for Linux distributions (e.g. Ubuntu).
First, let’s locate a sample GTK theme. I am using a rather nice theme called “Darkilouche” found here:
http://art.gnome.org/themes/gtk2/1285
Simply download the compressed file in the above link, and extract the contents to disk.
Next, we need to locate the gtkrc file in the uncompressed theme folder. The sample theme we are using contains the following files and directories once uncompressed:
$ ls -al total 7 drwxr-xr-x 4 dave staff 5 2012-03-07 22:47 . drwxr-xr-x 3 dave staff 3 2012-03-07 22:47 .. drwxr-xr-x 6 dave staff 9 2007-02-28 00:22 .svn drwxr-xr-x 3 dave staff 4 2007-02-28 00:22 gtk-2.0 -rw-r--r-- 1 dave staff 240 2007-02-28 00:23 index.theme
The gtkrc file sits within the gtk-2.0 directory, and appears to be the only critical file that is needed.
Next, we copy the gtkrc file into the GIMP themes directory. In this example, I am using the global GIMP themes directory at /usr/share/gimp/2.0/themes. We simply create a directory named after the theme we are installing (in this case “Darkilouche”), and copy the gtkrc file into it.
Finally, we launch or restart GIMP and test that the theme is accessible at Edit -> Preferences -> Theme. The following screengrab illustrates that GIMP has found the theme, and, it is also the active theme:
Skype and Microsoft’s silly Bing Bar
Sure-fire sign that Skype is now another fine Microsoft product – and therefore unsuspecting users can expect to have installed a toolbar for a second-rate search engine as well as have their browser homepage altered:
Good to see nothing has changed with regard to Microsoft treating their current and prospective customers like idiots.
Stream video content from XBMC to an Android tablet (continued…)
In my blog entry describing how to stream from XBMC to an Android tablet, a commenter remarked that the ASUS “MyNet” application used in the example was an ASUS-specific product, and therefore not applicable to other non-ASUS Android-powered devices. A quick look in the Android market reveals plenty of other free and paid-for UPnP applications, so let’s briefly repeat this exercise using one such vendor-neutral app, which goes by the name of BubbleUPnP.
I am using the free version of BubbleUPnP (hence the ads visible in the following screengrabs), on the same platforms as described originally here.
After installing BubbleUPnP, fire up the application, browse to the Devices tab where you should be able to see your XBMC server listed. Make sure that the “Local Renderer” is selected as the renderer, and the “XBMC: Media Server” is selected as the library source:
Then, head over to the Library tab, and drill down until you find the relevant movie content:
On the first attempted playback, you will observe a prompt to select playback through one of the media player applications installed on your tablet. In my case, I am going to use the built-in Android “Video player” application, and set this as my default (of course, if you have other media player applications installed you would expect to see a different set of apps listed here):
Et voila:
Again, the chunky video quality in the above screengrab is simply because I am using a low-quality example video, not because of any inherent quality issues with the source material, software, or hardware.
