So every so many time I come across some Java code that’s littered with useless JavaDoc comments that do nothing more than obfuscate what the code actually does. So when I found myself looking for the same set of regular expressions yet again I thought it wise to finally automate it.
The binary downloads as well as the Java sources can be found on github. The whole is available under the Apache License 2.0.

Rather than modifying the original sources, the modified sources are stored at a designated  directory path which will be created. Unmodified sources can be optionally included as well by provided the ‘-i’ argument, effectively resulting in a full copy of the source path with modified sources.

Grab it here

WebSphere Portal sports new theming features since 7 FixPack 2 and the freshly GA’d 8 release that enable the creation of advanced client side aggregated themes while allow for optimized delivery (that is minimal number of requests / kilobytes transfer required) to client devices : Portal Theme Optimization; here’s links to the docs for portal 7 and portal 8

For one, the theming framework itself is fully javascript library agnostic (the included theme uses dojo 1.6 on portal 7 and dojo 1.7.2 on portal 8 ) and furthermore defines a set of metadata components (modules/profiles) that express dependencies between static/dynamic html, css and javascript resources in such a way that the designer can define what resources are sent to the client by associating a profile with a theme, page or by setting the default profile for an entire Portal environment. One big benefit is you no longer need to touch code to eg. remove a feature from your theme, you just modify the profile metadata or assign a different one to the correct scope, very neat.

As a first step to creating such a theme, the right resources have to be created, primarily by copying & modifying the included theme (Portal7.0.0.2 for 7 FixPack 2).

This involves among others copying the theme directory from the WebDAV themelist mountpoint to a local harddisk for modification and copying it back afterwards to register it in Portal as a new theme.

While WebDAV is great, it did cause me to scratch my head a few times since I was noticing quite a few ‘file could not be found’ exceptions while copying back the new theme to the WebDAV themelist mountpoint and the copy operation itself did not seem to complete successfully.

As it turns out, you need to manually verify every file from your new theme has been copied over correctly and manually correct where/when needed until the entire theme directory has been trasferred to WebDAV successfully.

In my case, the metadata.properties file in the root of the theme directory was present *but* the contents were not as expected, and the localized metadata properties were missing altogether.

This was quite confusing, as a basic best practice when dealing with Portal (or any server/service) is to keep an eye on the logs (aka exceptions == bad), and the manual verification/retry was equally foreign to me (something usually completes successfully or not at all, there is no ‘partial’).

So, when adding directories to the Portal WebDAV:

• verify everything was copied over properly, completely
• keep correcting until everything is present

So what I needed to accomplish:

• send automated emails from a webapp using Spring 3.0
• running on a Glassfish / WAS  instance
• to an SSL/TLS secured SMTP (smtps) service running on a different host

Import the certificate

First of all, we need our jvm to trust the certificate of the remote host that offers the smtps service which in my case is available on port 465 (which is common).

To do that, first of all read Andreas Sterbenz’ old Sun blog post regarding the InstallCert tool he wrote.

Download InstallCert.java to some directory, move to that dir, and run
javac InstallCert.java

Next, run
java InstallCert

from the same dir to get usage instructions.

I went for the version
java InstallCert your.host.com:your_port

After selecting the certificate you want to add to the trusted keystore by pressing the associated number you’ll end up with a file called jssecacerts in your working directory.

Also note the last line of the generated output, which should be something along the lines of:
Added certificate to keystore ‘jssecacerts’ using alias ‘your.host.com-1′

You’ll need that alias for the next step.

Export the certificate from the keystore file ‘jssecacerts’

To do this we’ll use keytool, note the alias name which needs to be equal to the one mentioned in the last step:

keytool -export -alias your.host.com-1 -keystore jssecacerts -file my_actual_cert.cer -storepass changeit

We now have a file representing the actual certificate we need to trust in order for our application to be able to set up a secured connection with your.host.com

Importing the certificate

Before we get to use keytool again, make sure you have proper permissions to modify your JRE installation and go to
<jre_root>/lib/security

Eg. for the Sun (Oracle) JDK on Debian/Ubuntu <JRE_ROOT> could be
/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun/jre
You should see a file cacerts in this directory. Next run:
keytool -import -alias your.host.com-1 -file my_actual_cert.cer -keystore cacerts -storepass changeit

This will effectively add the certificate you just exported to the trusted certificates.

Making Glassfish trust our certificates

To do this, you need to point to the trustStore you just updated (cacerts) in the properties associated to the Glassfish JVM.
First of all copy the cacerts keystore file you just updated to <your_glassfish_domain>/config/my-cacerts.jks

Next login to the Glassfish Admin Console, and proceed to
Common Tasks -> Configuration -> JVM Settings -> JVM Options

Change the property
-Djavax.net.ssl.trustStore=${com.sun.aas.instanceRoot}/config/cacerts.jks
to
-Djavax.net.ssl.trustStore=${com.sun.aas.instanceRoot}/config/my-cacerts.jks
Save your changes and restart glassfish.

Making WebSphere Application Server trust our certificate

is documented here (among other places no doubt); basically the same steps.

Sending mail

Check out one of many samples available online showing how to send email using Spring facilities. This is a quick and dirty example without injection.

<bean id="mailSender" p:port="your_port" p:host="your.host.com" p:username="your_authenticating_user" p:password="your_pwd" p:protocol="smtps">
    <property name="javaMailProperties">
      <props>
        <prop key="mail.smtps.auth">true</prop>
        <prop key="mail.smtp.starttls.enable">true</prop>
     </props>
    </property>
</bean>

Afterwards you can just inject the mailSender and use it as desired.

Note that you can easily inject a JNDI mail session, which I didn’t do because there’s no real advantage to warrant having to ensure the proper JNDI resource(s) exist on different servers in this case.

Happy sending!

I just converted a bunch of legacy code that made use of the add-on SwingWorker version from the Java 5 days to use SE 6′s SwingWorker. Definitely an improvement however I wasn’t getting the updates I expected using the publish() process() mechanism as all data published during the background task was being processed in one go only after the actual background task had finished.

The cause? Starting the SwingWorker operation with run() instead of (the correct) execute().

I’ve been waiting since Devoxx for the Java Store to become available in Belgium.Seemingly zero changes since then

Although it might not be the most original idea, it does sound like a natural fit for the java platform on the desktop.

Anyone knows if Oracle killed this off or if it died when James Gosling left Oracle ?

I for one am still rooting for this to actually happen. Yes I’m a dreamer.

Mostly so I don’t forget myself next time

Don’t forget to checkout only the wanted HEAD revision from svn:

svn co -r HEAD https://src.springframework.org/svn/spring-framework/trunk spring-framework

If you have ant as part of your distro (as is the case in gentoo), download a binary ant distribution and run <your_new_ant_path>/bin/ant instead of the ‘default’ ant to prevent any classpath issues.

Make sure you do

export ANT_OPTS=”-XX:PermSize=128m -XX:MaxPermSize=128m”

If necessary add -Xmx512m or more too.

Enter build-spring-framework and run

<your_new_ant_path>/bin/ant

to build Spring. In order for Eclipse to be able to find all required jar’s, you’re probably best running the resolve ant target in most of the subprojects.

Open import the projects to an Eclipse workspace, set the IVY_CACHE classpath var in Eclipse prefs to spring-framework/ivy-cache

I had a few errors in tests for the oxm bundle failing, but since I don’t really need them anyways I just removed the src/test source dirs from the oxm project in Eclipse

It’s 2 AM so yea, the above is probably pretty messy

I was getting 503′s and now no response at all . Lack of a temporarily down page or something similar leads me to assume this wasn’t planned upgrade or anything.

Of course this can happen to the best of us, but still: ouch!!

Me needs my mail

PS: maybe it’s got something to do with SSLStrip?

+1hrs: still no workies fraaakkk

+105mins : it’s back, I suppose we’ll never know what happened

Update : below stopped working after upgrading the kernel to version 2.6.18-92.1.22. Trying to find out why

Update2 : okay I was too fast probably, seems to be working fine after a reboot

The 2 onboard Marvell 88E8056 PCI-E ethernet on my P6T Deluxe weren’t autodetected by CentOS 5.2.

Got this workaround from the CentOS bugtracker :

# modprobe sky2
# echo “11ab 4364″ > /sys/bus/pci/drivers/sky2/new_id

It works!

There’s a warning of data corruption on Gigabyte boards with this workaround, so better check first and do some more looking if you’re in that category.

Get it hot! As I’ll probably be waiting for this release to hit the/some Gentoo/Ubuntu repo, I have to say I’m surprised at the seemingly short interval between the last update releases. Seems 11 was only last week somehow.

As my previous Athlon64 and current Intel i7 Core are both 64bit, I do have to say I’m anxious to try the long announced java plugin for 64bit platforms. I’ve been using icedtea 6 on gentoo for a while, but as I need a Sun JVM for professional stuff I’m glad this update has finally arrived. Curious to see if it lives up to it’s expectations.

Besides all that, the included improvements seem quite numerous (take a look at the release notes)

Just a quicky for future reference:
setxkbmap -model pc105 -layout be -variant basic

Needed this in fluxbox.

Google, while not doing any evil and supporting open source and all, is really screwing up it’s browser by simply only providing a decent build for window, even in with it’s latest 2.0 pre-beta (whatever the hell that might mean, where are the days when an alpha was an alpha build and a beta was a beta)

We all should have known this would be the case, it’s a company and in the end, the numbers are against us linux users. Who cares if a substantial part of the tech community runs linux or apple, it’s a browser for the end user!

This little joyride has gone on long enough, back to firefox, opera and some konqueror for me. Really looking forward to firefox 3.1 by the way, native ogg theora support and omg-faster-than-chrome-javascript!

I should have known that ‘comic’ looked too neat for an app targeting linux + not that I could live without my firefox extensions anyways

So, although I’ve used and not especially dislike chrome, getting stuck on a single platform browser is the last of my intentions. Uninstalled baby!

Eclipse 3.4 Ganymede introduces a new UI for software updates.

In order for the Help->Software Updates submenu to show up again:

1. install the Eclipse SDK plugin if needed
2. enable Classic Update in Preferences->General->Capabilities

Easy as eating … fries!

Pigs seem to be able to fly as Adobe today released a preview 64bit release of it’s Flash plugin!

Are the days of using nspluginwrapper finally over? I suppose we can’t expect too much of a preview but those days seem to be coming!

If now we get a fast 64bit native java runtime (with a working -client option please), I guess the productive life in the 64bit Linux world is finally no more painful than the 32bit world.

Kudos Adobe, this is a step in the right direction!

Now, please also create a Linux version equivalent (or even something better maybe) to Digital Editions and I can actually take advantage of my digital subscribtion to www.standaard.be to read the entire paper digitally.

For your comfort and my own, I finally made took the (easy) step of OpenID enabling my own WordPress install, basically by just installing the OpenID plugin, along with it’s only dependency XRDS-Simple.

SInce installing in this case boils down to extracting two zip archives to <wp_root>/wp-content/plugins and activating the plugins in the Settings pane, this took about 1 minute. Setting up the OpenID plugin prefs took another minute and enabling libcurl support for php5 (apt-get install php5-curl ; /etc/init.d/apache force-reload) another 30 seconds.

Not bad. As a language, I tend to prefer Java over PHP, but this is about as simple as it gets I which deserves some kudos.

Also, providing category specific feeds is equally simple: just add the cat parameter to your current feed url with the id of the requested category. To see the id of your favorite category, just examine any category URL and copy/paste the cat parameter from there. For example:

my default rss2 feed :
http://www.bosit.be/blog/?feed=rss2
feed only showing posts categorized under ‘Java’:
http://www.bosit.be/blog/?feed=rss2&cat=6

Easy as eatin’ pie!

I’ll keep this short: jar manifests suck. I just found out a jar wasn’t loaded as it was supposed to because my manifest classpath entry was 70 chars long (including the first space!). All other lines were 71 chars long, except this one because the entry was finished, so I was missing one space.

Netbeans handles this nicely when I build my app consisting of a number of projects with jar dependencies. Everything ends up ready to run in the dist dir of the main project root. Neat and simple. In Eclipse I seem to overlook the ability to export a Jar with it’s dependencies’ classpath preconfigured & packaged alongside the project code. I mean, am I *supposed* to do this myself?

I guess I really need to upgrade to using ant or maven and automate these kinds of things … and I will! Euhm … soon!

Since this is a clientside project, I’ll finally make the step and get the right kind of certificate to sign my code and WebStart enable the entire thing. And unless I solve these issues, I’ll return to netbeans for that purpose, although MyEclipse finally enabled me to stick with Eclipse

Until I switch to something automated of course

Tired now. Need sleep.

Nite nite.

PS: I was about to reread but I’m too tired, so sorry, it’s probably badly written and ill-structured (or something)

Ever used a Java Swing app on Windows XP that seemed to freeze when you open a JFileChooser dialog? Apparently it’s caused by calls being made to Windows’ infamous integrated ‘compressed folders’ utility when files are recognized as archives.

The bad news is that every stable Sun JVM on Windows XP up to today suffers from this issue.
The good news that the issue has been f fixed in Java 1.6u10b07. Although I don’t presume to know the entire history of this bug, it seems a little sad to see this one was reported against release 1.4.2.

To fix on java versions predating 6u10b7, the only fix is effectively unregistering the zip folder dll from windows. Since I won’t quite use 6u10 until it’s GA and I’ve been a happy 7zip user on every OS I use for quite some time now I decided to go for the uninstall.

To unregister (and disable ‘Compressed Folders’):
regsvr32 /u %windir%\system32\zipfldr.dll

If you decide for some reason you can’t live without it and want to re-enable, execute again from a cmd :
regsvr32 zipfldr.dll
and you’ll be sending things to compressed folders before you know it

After reading about Apple putting application rejection notices for their App Store under non-disclosure, I can but conclude I’ll have to wait for an Android powered phone.
If you just take a step back and go over the entire NDA story from the start, it’s easy to see you don’t want to be dependent on these people, let alone use their ‘platform’. It’s insane. In an era where open source & free software is gaining foot in the marketplace, they’ve succesfully become on of the biggest antagonists of the ‘free culture’. They’ve lived up to the old standard set by the ‘old’ Microsoft and have actually outdone them in their own field. What they say is true, Apple is the new Microsoft.

Congrats Apple, you did it! I’ve grown up with macs and now you’ve finally gotten me completely turned down on your iPhone product, despite of all it’s features and magnificence. I don’t care anymore. Not as a person, developer, linux user. I was looking forward to the next iteration of the Mac Pro, but I’ll just have to see what gives by 2009.

Maybe someone should send a note reminding them there’s people behind these applications they’re banning for the most ridiculous of reasons. I’ll create whatever software visions I have for a device that runs what I tell it to run.

After some headscratching, I found out why EJB injection into my managed beans for jsf application stopped working after adding ICEFaces Support on the MyEclipse forums.

It’s actually very simple and logical: upon adding ICEFaces support to the EE Web Project, you’re asked to downgrade to a servlet 2.4 compatible web.xml, which is the cause of the trouble.

To restore the EJB injection, just copy the web-app tag from the renamed original web.xml called web.xml.org which can be found in the WEB-INF dir of the WebRoot dir. In case you deleted it:
<web-app xmlns="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" version="2.5"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee
http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd">


Also, make sure the JSF version is set to 1.2 in faces-config.xml, which was the case for me.

My actual versions: MyEclipse 6.5.1 with ICEFaces support 1.7.1 for Eclipse.

I’ve continued my search after my previous post and got working visual editing support in MyEclipse by:

• choosing to download MyEclipse as a plugin install on an existing eclipse install, rather than a Pulse driven install (although that might not matter very much, you can enable classic software update support in the Eclipse Preferences under General->Capabilities)
• Downloading the ICEFaces plugin for Eclipse, extract, add that dir as a local update site by Help->Software updates->Find and install->New features
• Install from that local update site & restart eclipse
• Create a new Web Project
• Add JSF Capabilities from the MyEclipse menu (do not add facelets)
• Add ICEFaces Capabilities again from the MyEclipse menu
• Create a new page by New->JSP (advanced templates)->ICEFaces JSP
• Profit!

I have to add that due to current project needs I got this to work in Windows, rather than Linux which I’ll try as soon as I’m relieved of this burden

Also, I still need to use it some more before being able to comment on the experience but so far so good it seems.

Does anybody have a working ICEFaces integration in MyEclipse? The latest version of the ICEFaces plugins for MyEclipse is for version 6.0.1 which does not appear to work anymore in MyEclipse 6.5 (The properties view throws Exception ‘à volonté’ when I select an ICEFaces Datatable component for example)

I’ve acquired MyEclipse a good month ago and must say I’m pretty satisfied with my $30 (annual) investment. A lot of these plugins are available by other means, whether they be Eclipse plugins or Netbeans or … What specifically makes MyEclipse valuable for me is the fact that it’s all preconfigured for one specific Eclipse runtime, the fact that I can edit Netbeans Matisse GUI forms and hopefully the ICEFaces support

I’ve lost way too much time with handling all the different Eclipse Runtime requirements for plugins over the last few years. It’s a great platform, but somehow it seems you can’t do without a number of installed Runtimes. MyEclipse brings this number down to 4: MyEclipse, Lotus Notes, RAD & Lotus Symphony

When I installed on Linux I downloaded the Pulse Platform based installer without paying too much attention. After my initial surprise & scrutiny, I was pretty impressed by it’s easy of use for managing the plugins for MyEclipse. The process to do this straight from MyEclipse is about as easy as installing an application in Ubuntu using Add/Remove Applications, where the traditional Eclipse update support compares to Synaptic although it might be a little more complex (and powerful).

It really is!

If it’s half as good as the comic it’s gonna be nice.

UPDATE: okay, it is nice. 

Woohoow, looking very much forward to getting my hands dirty with this one
JSR 286, WSRP 2.0, REST services, live text, AJAX proxy, … , lots of new sweetness. Oh and did I mention the new page loading model is *fast* (no more full page reloads because of portlets!)
Check out the top 10 new features at IBM
And of course there’s the updated Portal Info Center

So,
after having learned my way over the years to ‘maintain’ a windows xp, I recently screwed up my windows install for good.
Should you care to repeat this, it’s very simple:
- put your pagefile on another partition (not c:\)
- reboot to linux
- format that partition containing the pagefile
TADAAA, you now have a non working windows system!

But you say, there’s a few more options:
I’ve gone through the trouble of finding out about the pagefileconfig command, which is a shitty vbs file and which basically doesn’t work from safemode since the reboot following the ‘successful creation of the pagefile’ ends up in windows hanging after the loadscreen.
So, I thought, I create a new user and try to keep stuff that’s loading to a minimum, but alas can’t get into safemode anymore even. Don’t ask me why. The shitty tools don’t tell you anything.
For the record, my disk/partition is 100% aok.
God how it’s a piece of shit OS

So from now on:
- I’ll buy no more software/games which don’t support linux (luckily there’s id Software, although I’ll miss Crysis & the Half-Life 2 bundle etc.) The games for windows bullshit was a major turnoff already so I’ll survive I suppose.
That’s a pretty short list right?
Basically the only reason I still have one is since I’m locked in with a few games I spent money on, my mistake. You only develop for windows? Thanks I’ll pass on your undoubtably great software & great UX

I just think it’s insane for the record how people say that winxp with sp3 is a decent OS, not to mention vista. Think of me when you’ll be adding something to the PATH in vista, by modifying a text line in a 200x100px window on your 1920×1200 screen. Or any of the zillion other places where the windows/frames are fixed size. Great job ms, great job! But hey, there’s the _awesome_ uac to make up for that. Hurray!

I’m so pissed, the time that’s gone into that install + the reason why I lost it, it’s so damn retarded…
To think that there wouldn’t have been the slightest issue on a *nix system.
Leaving me to wish you all good luck & enjoy the microsoft innovations!

PS: please game developers, don’t write for windows only. Everything I have that supports linux runs better than it did on windows. Don’t get stuck in the DirectX/Windows trap, please!

A nice comment on a slashdot story reporting on made advances in opening up Java taught me a few nice trivias on the history between Richard Stallman and James Gosling in the early days:

“In the early years (1984 to 1988), the GNU Project did not have a single license to cover all its software. What led Stallman to the creation of this copyleft license was his experience with James Gosling, creator of NeWs and the Java programming language, and UniPress, over Emacs. While Stallman created the first Emacs in 1975, Gosling wrote the first C-based Emacs (Gosling Emacs) running on Unix in 1982. Gosling initally allowed free distribution of the Gosling Emacs source code, which Stallman used in early 1985 in the first version (15.34) of GNU Emacs. Gosling later sold rights to Gosling Emacs to UniPress, and Gosling Emacs became UniPress Emacs. UniPress threatened Stallman to stop distributing the Gosling source code, and Stallman was forced to comply. He later replace these parts with his own code. (Emacs version 16.56). (See the Emacs Timeline) To prevent free code from being proprietarized in this manner in the future, Stallman invented the GPL.”

Nice to see how (as the comment author puts it) ‘Richard was right.’

The rest of the comment ( & story) is equally worth a read. Long live the GPL & Java! & so many others

First of all, the overview

This actually helped me resolve running VMWare images on ntfs partitions mounted with ntfs-3g on linux, which generated errors with the default configuration. Once I set added

mainMem.useNamedFile = "false"

to the .vmx file, I was able to run the images just fine from my ntfs partitions.