Author Archives: Oren

More useful keyboard shortcuts; Apache evilness

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As a sequel to this browser shortcuts post, here're two new shortcuts that rocked my world (ok, almost..) :

  1. F4: opens a select box. Seems like a standard for all UIs! (Windows/Linux at least)
  2. Tick (') key in FireFox: would switch to 'search' mode just like slash (/), but would search for links only. Just type the beginning of the link's name and hit Enter.

Do you know any other shocking keyboard shortcuts?

On a completely other subject, I was fighting (along with a collegue) today with Apache httpd's configuration. The web server seemed to "automatically guess" URLs in a weird fashion.

The cause is that we had the MultiViews feature enabled. With MultiViews, when a URL points to a nonexisting file, i.e. http://mydomain/my/file, apache tries to look for an existing file which looks similar to the directory (I won't describe here the exact algorithm), i.e. http://mydomain/my.php. Then it loads it instead, and the user doesn't get 404.

Maybe some people need it.. but it's also weird and error-prone..

VMware modifier keys bugs: update

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Some updates since the last post:

The "GTK dies on a keypress" bug

Good news: it was fixed by Matthias Clasen. It was solved in the SVN version, I guess that we'll have to wait a while till it gets into the next version, Unless package maintainers would manually add it.

Doing a good QA in the FOSS community

I've learned a quick lesson about good QA in the open source community, which I find very rare.

In this case the bug was reported for ~2 months with no activity ("it sometimes crashes" type of report). Until I've added my description, which, probably helped it to get closed.

I'll try to sum up what I've learned:

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VMware modifier keys bug status

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This annoying vmware-deletes-the-modifier-keys bug I wrote about is still a mystery, but still I gained some more info. There are two problems:

1. VMware deletes modifier keys:

  • Can be replicated by holding a modifier key down inside a guest OS (VMware console). Then moving the mouse out of the guest OS window, while modifier is still down.
  • Happens on modern Ubuntu/Debian/Arch Linux versions.
  • Very likely, but not 100% confirmed: happens since Xorg 7.3.
  • Doesn't happen on CentOS / RedHat EL 5. (Apparently because they use Xorg 7.1.1?)
  • Links: Ubuntu launchpad, VMware forums.

Still, is it an Xorg bug or VMware one? (or GTK)

2. GTK apps crash on a keypress, when X modifiers-list is empty.

  • If 'xmodmap' is emptied (either by the VMware bug described above, or by manually removing all the modifiers), each new-running GTK app would just crash as the first key is pressed.
  • This doesn't happen to KDE or plain-X11 apps.
  • Segmentation fault is received in the _gdk_keymap_key_is_modifier() function in gdkkeys-x11.c:1662.
  • I tried digging the code, but no luck yet (all I could do is skip the function if no modifiers are set, but I don't know GDK enough to know the other effects it can have).
  • Links: Gnome bugzilla.

I'll keep updating in case there'll be something interesting.

Update: gtk bug got fixed.

Configuring sendmail as an MSA

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[Disclaimer: sendmail is very complicated, and I lack some knowledge. The following solution might be even bad, although it works (tm). Please post comments if you know better ways, and I'll update the post]

I was looking for a quick n' simple SMTP solution for sending mails only. Requirements:

  • A service that'll simply accept mails submitted locally and maintain a queue of mails-for-sending.
  • It'll then send the mails by SMTP directly to the target servers (i.e. gmail.com).
  • It should retry for a few days, if failed sending due to a local (dead connection) or remote problem.
  • A bizarre one: it should be listening on a port other than 25, because another daemon uses it already. I know it's nonstandard and doesn't make sense, but should be possible..

Apparently what I was looking for is an Mail Submission Agent (MSA), which also takes care of delivering the mail. Also there's a standard port for mail submission: 587 (submission).

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DDClient: Problem updating Zoneedit

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I use Zoneedit for DNS "hosting". They give great, free service, with additional features at small costs.

For updating my Dynamic IP, I use the DDClient script (supports zoneedit, dyndns.org and many other providers)

A few days ago (according to my logs: 30/05/08 18:15:00 UTC) DDClient stopped updating my IP in Zoneedit. Apparently Zoneedit changed the URL, and ddclient.conf should be updated accordingly:

server=www.zoneedit.com

should become

server=dynamic.zoneedit.com

It probably hurt many users.. I hope I didn't lose too many emails =)

Update: I notified ddclient developers and it was fixed (in SVN only currently).

Update 2: According to wimpunk (ddclient developer), the "server=www.zoneedit.com" can be simply commented-out from ddclient.conf (it's an optional parameter!); when commented-out, default already uses the correct address (dynamic.zoneedit.com), even in 3.7.3 or earlier.

DOS, anyone?

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Recently I've installed FreeDOS inside a VM, both out of curiosity and for my assembly course homework. FreeDOS, for the unfamiliar readers, is a 100% compatible GPL'd DOS OS. It ships with many modern utils such as ssh (Yes, it has Ethernet + TCP/IP support.. EVIL!), lynx, vim, a graphical web browser..

I was astonished to find out this very-active blog, which proved me that DOS is still alive! A new version of 4DOS was just released a few days ago, who'd believe...

A very nice work, though I don't see too many reasons for using DOS nowadays (except for nostalgia and for playing old dos games).. It's still a deprecated, single-tasking, not protected-mode, no package-management OS.. And hardware configuration can be hell, well.

An annoying keyboard layout bug

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For many months(!) now, once a while my CTRL/ALT keys just stop functioning. Running xmodmap returns a list of empty modifiers (no Ctrl/Alt attached to them).

Recently I've got the feeling that VMware server console is the one to blame, and a long search on the web revealed this ubuntu bug, In which Pete describes exactly how to reproduce:

  • In VMware console, put the mouse inside the guest machine
  • Hold the Ctrl key down
  • Take the mouse out of the guest machine
  • Leave the Ctrl key
  • Run xmodmap and viola, it's empty!

(To get the modifiers back run something like xmodmap /usr/share/xmodmap/xmodmap.us-101)

The bug is reported to Ubuntu, but it's something bigger - I'm experiencing it in Debian (can you reproduce it on another distro?).

I wonder who should I report it to: it might be a bug in Xorg, Linux Kernel (usb keyboard driver), or even just a VMware bug (less likely though).

Update: actually I think that this is the relevant bug, and not the one I originally linked to.

Oracle SNMP subagent

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I had to pass through some hell in order to enable some SNMP Oracle functionality (Oracle 10g for Linux).

This post tries to give instructions for configuring Oracle SNMP features; it might be very boring (even for technical hardcore people), I post it mainly for spreading the knowledge. ("emsubagent" gives ~70 results in Google!)

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