Opgenorth.NET » Linux

Gotta Love JetBrains

tom — Sun, 23 May 2010 03:22:29 +0000

Gotta love companies that “get it”. Late last night I was hacking away on some Android stuff using IntelliJ 9.0.2 (on Ubuntu 10.04). For reasons unknown to me, none of my breakpoints seemed to be working. In fact, IntelliJ just didn’t seem to be working. I narrowed it down to the breakpoints I was setting – it seemed that every time the breakpoints were being hit. I managed to narrow it down to this error:

[ 166030] ERROR – lij.debugger.impl.InvokeThread – null
java.lang.UnsupportedOperationException
at com.sun.tools.jdi.ReferenceTypeImpl.sourceDebugExtension(ReferenceTypeImpl.java:774)
at org.jetbrains.plugins.ruby.jruby.debug.JRubyPositionManager.getPath(JRubyPositionManager.java:141)
at org.jetbrains.plugins.ruby.jruby.debug.JRubyPositionManager.getPsiFileByLocation(JRubyPositionManager.java:156)
at org.jetbrains.plugins.ruby.jruby.debug.JRubyPositionManager.getSourcePosition(JRubyPositionManager.java:51)
at com.intellij.debugger.engine.CompoundPositionManager.getSourcePosition(CompoundPositionManager.java:51)
at com.intellij.debugger.engine.ContextUtil.getSourcePosition(ContextUtil.java:63)
at com.intellij.debugger.impl.DebuggerSession$MyDebugProcessListener$2.compute(DebuggerSession.java:462)
at com.intellij.debugger.impl.DebuggerSession$MyDebugProcessListener$2.compute(DebuggerSession.java:460)
at com.intellij.psi.impl.PsiDocumentManagerImpl$3.run(PsiDocumentManagerImpl.java:298)
at com.intellij.psi.impl.PsiDocumentManagerImpl$4.run(PsiDocumentManagerImpl.java:321)
at com.intellij.openapi.application.impl.ApplicationImpl.runReadAction(ApplicationImpl.java:695)
at com.intellij.psi.impl.PsiDocumentManagerImpl.commitAndRunReadAction(PsiDocumentManagerImpl.java:317)
at com.intellij.psi.impl.PsiDocumentManagerImpl.commitAndRunReadAction(PsiDocumentManagerImpl.java:296)
at com.intellij.debugger.impl.DebuggerSession$MyDebugProcessListener.paused(DebuggerSession.java:460)
at com.intellij.debugger.engine.DebugProcessAdapterImpl.paused(DebugProcessAdapterImpl.java:28)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:57)
at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:616)
at com.intellij.util.EventDispatcher.dispatch(EventDispatcher.java:87)
at com.intellij.util.EventDispatcher.access$100(EventDispatcher.java:33)
at com.intellij.util.EventDispatcher$1.invoke(EventDispatcher.java:64)
at $Proxy84.paused(Unknown Source)
at com.intellij.debugger.engine.SuspendManagerImpl.notifyPaused(SuspendManagerImpl.java:306)
at com.intellij.debugger.engine.SuspendManagerImpl.b(SuspendManagerImpl.java:299)
at com.intellij.debugger.engine.SuspendManagerImpl.voteSuspend(SuspendManagerImpl.java:318)
at com.intellij.debugger.engine.DebugProcessEvents$1.contextAction(DebugProcessEvents.java:412)
at com.intellij.debugger.engine.events.SuspendContextCommandImpl.action(SuspendContextCommandImpl.java:62)
at com.intellij.debugger.engine.events.DebuggerCommandImpl.run(DebuggerCommandImpl.java:44)
at com.intellij.debugger.engine.DebuggerManagerThreadImpl.processEvent(DebuggerManagerThreadImpl.java:148)
at com.intellij.debugger.engine.DebuggerManagerThreadImpl.processEvent(DebuggerManagerThreadImpl.java:36)
at com.intellij.debugger.impl.InvokeThread.run(InvokeThread.java:135)
at com.intellij.debugger.impl.InvokeThread$WorkerThreadRequest.run(InvokeThread.java:52)
at com.intellij.openapi.application.impl.ApplicationImpl$5.run(ApplicationImpl.java:329)
at java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Executors.java:471)
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:334)
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:166)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:1110)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:603)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:636)
at com.intellij.openapi.application.impl.ApplicationImpl$1$1.run(ApplicationImpl.java:125)
[ 166036] ERROR – lij.debugger.impl.InvokeThread – IntelliJ IDEA 9.0.2 Build #IU-95.66
[ 166036] ERROR – lij.debugger.impl.InvokeThread – JDK: 1.6.0_18
[ 166036] ERROR – lij.debugger.impl.InvokeThread – VM: OpenJDK Server VM
[ 166036] ERROR – lij.debugger.impl.InvokeThread – Vendor: Sun Microsystems Inc.
[ 166036] ERROR – lij.debugger.impl.InvokeThread – OS: Linux
[ 166036] ERROR – lij.debugger.impl.InvokeThread – Last Action: Debug

So, the problem to me seemed to be something wonky with IntelliJ. I e-mailed Jetbrains, explaining the symptoms and the above stack trace. This morning, I was pleased to find an e-mail from Serge at Jetbrains. He suggests disabling the Ruby plug-in that I have installed.

BINGO!

Worked like a charm. Problem goes away, and in less than 12 hours since I asked for help.

Linux Blogging Clients

tom — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 00:18:00 +0000

These days I mostly boot Linux as my host OS, and then run things inside a VM. However, one Windows dependency I can’t seem to shake is Windows Live Writer. It just seems that there isn’t a Linux answer to this – or is there? Does anybody have a suggestion for a blogging client that a guy could use under Linux, without having to spin up a VM each time?

Update November 10, 2009: Looked around for a bit, and I was rather disappointed with the current crop of native Linux blogging clients – at least the ones that Ubuntu 9.10 knew about. I did come across ScribeFire which seems promising. To quote the website:

ScribeFire is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox Web Browser that integrates with your browser to let you easily post to your blog: you can drag and drop formatted text from pages you are browsing, take notes, and post to your blog.

So far, I like it.

Ubuntu 9.04 & Microsoft Notebook Mouse 5000

tom — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 00:17:04 +0000

A while ago I picked up a Microsoft Notebook Mouse 5000. Finally decided to use it on my laptop. I figured that having a bluetooth mouse would mean that I wouldn’t have a USB receiver hanging off my laptop all the time. Plus, I thought it would be nice to use Blue Proximity.

Now, the hiccup came when setting up the new mouse on Ubuntu 9.04 64-bit. It seems that you have to do a little bit extra to get the mouse working. I found the solution on the Ubuntu forums. For my one selfish purposes, I will repeat the instructions here:

1) install the bluez-compat package with terminal
sudo apt-get install bluez-compat

2)Pair the mouse with the bluetooth manager. The manager will say that the pairing is "successful"
Although the mouse won't worked... this step has to be done...

3) In the terminal, type :

sudo hidd --search

You should see something like

Searching ...
Connecting to device 00:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX (your mouse MAC)

Done. Your mouse should be working now.

Where Windows Beats Linux

tom — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 00:31:00 +0000

Most who know me are aware that, despite being a .NET developer and a Microsoft MVP, I’m a bit of a Linux freak at heart. I actually prefer Linux to Windows. Linux has come a long way in the past 18 years, although I’ve only been tinkering with it off and on for the past 9 years or so. I will admit that perhaps Linux on the desktop isn’t quite there for the average consumer, but for me it. And, when it comes to servers, there is no question: use Linux unless you’ve got a pretty compelling reason to run Windows.

I am now about to eat those works. Or perhaps less dramatically, provide a pretty compelling reason for one to consider Windows over Linux: setting up and managing a Subversion server.

You see, I always used to do this by hand, on a Linux server (typically Ubuntu). It’s not a painful experience, just time consuming. If you Google, you can even find some VMware appliances that directly target this need.

Tonight I decided that it was time to repave my SVN box at home. Well, actually I made the decision a while ago, I just only got around to doing something about it tonight. I figured that I would take Visual SVN Server for a spin, as I’d heard good things about it from many sources. I figured that if I didn’t like it or it was painful, I had nothing to loose, I’d just fall back on a Linux-based Subversion server.

I must say, I’m truly impressed. Inside of about 10 minutes (including download time), I had a SVN server up and running. It was so drop dead easy, that I’m sold. Chalk one mark up in the "Windows" column of the operating system holy war debate.

Mono 2.0 Released

tom — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 00:32:00 +0000

I know it’s hard to beat my shocking announcement from a couple of days ago, but I feel that this one is even more important: Mono 2.0 has been released. Read the full details, go forth, and code.

The Experiment, Days 3 & 4

tom — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 16:01:00 +0000

Just a quick recap of days 3 & 4 of running with openSUSE 11 as my primary OS. By far and large, not a lot of complaints. As I do most of my work on a laptop, I tend to keep my VM’s on external HDD’s connected via USB2. I’ve been doing this for a while now, under Windows.

I’m not to sure I’m a big fan of how openSUSE mounts (or tries to mount) my external HDD. It just doesn’t seem as…seamless…as how Windows XP does it. I’m use to just plugging in my external HDD, and not worrying about it until it’s time to disconnect. openSUSE seems to get a big confused with automounting, and I always seem to have to help it along. It’s something I can live with for now.

The other thing I notice is that openSUSE doesn’t seem to want to share the sound card with VMware. I’m getting more than a few alerts from VMware that the sound card is not available and can’t be used. Again, nothing to critical – for now.

The third thing I’m noticing is that some HDD enclosures seem to work better than others. I’m noticing that at least one HDD enclosure (a SmartDisk FireLite with a 250GB HDD inside) doesn’t seem to want to consistently and reliably work. I did have VMware (and openSUSE) complain that they could not write that particular HDD as it could no longer be found.

So far, I am pleased with how Linux is handling NTFS as well. I remember back five or six years ago that NTFS support for Linux was pretty much read-only. Read-write was for people who were delusionally insane or who go to the same hair stylist as Justice Grey.

A couple of lessons learned:

Get lots of disk space. I’m thinking it may be time to get a 320GB HD for my laptop, and keeping my "working" VM’s there. I’d have something like a 100 GB partition for Windows XP, and then 220GB for openSUSE.
Backups – I’m very happy that I made copies of my VM’s and worked off those.
Fear not the command line. But if you’re a *nix guys, you’re probably there already.

ALT.NET Session #5: Mono – Not Just For Linux

tom — Sat, 19 Apr 2008 14:47:00 +0000

Joe starts polling to see what people want to talk about. Most seem to be interest the libraries for Mono (being that they also work on Windows/.NET. So, Joe starts talking about libraries for/from Mono.

Mono.Cecil. For all your reflecting and assembly modification needs.
Mono.Addins. I’ve been looking at this off and on today, and I have to admit it looks pretty intriguing
Mono.Rocks: Handy extension methods.
Mono.Zeroconf: Zero configuration networking library
DBus#: A C# implementation of D-Bus.
MonoCurses: An API for console based applications
GTK# vs Windows:
- My suggestion is to consider the target environment. If you targeting Windows, stick with WinForms. If you’re targetting Linux/Mac, go with GTK#.
- Another issue that might influence your decision is that the documentation for GTK# is pretty sketchy, not very good.
IOMap. Turning this flag on, will help you with some of the cross-platform development issues. This is a portable library that will help resolve things like directory seperators, case sensitivity in paths, and that sort of thing.

A short session, which isn’t bad. Gives me a chance to float around to check out some other things.

Fun with Open Source: OpenDental

tom — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 06:30:00 +0000

The past week I’ve been dabbling with an open source program called Open Dental – mostly trying to see if can get it to compile under Mono, and running under Linux. I figure that this would be a good opportunity to and work with a cross platform application.

According to their website, Open Dental has been supported under Linux since v4.7. Here are some notes of my efforts so far.

You will need Mono v1.2.5. It seems that there is a problem with the Linux binary installer ( a known bug that will be corrected in 1.2.6). I used the OpenSUSE 10.2 VMWare image which had a 1.2.5 install all set up. That solved my problem of getting a current Linux distro with the most recent version of Mono.

There is a website for getting Open Dental to run under Ubuntu, and instructions on how to compile on Linux. I couldn’t get the application to compile under Linux using those instructions. I suspect that they are a bit out of date. What I ended up doing was compiling the application in VS2005, setting the build to LinuxRelease. I then copied the binaries over to my OpenSUSE VM, and ran Open Dental.

Now, Open Dental uses MySQL 5 for a database backend. The problem that I ran into next is that the database script that is provided to setup the database is for a very old version of Open Dental (like v3.x). Open Dental is supposed to be smart enough to update the database to the correct version. However the DB upgrading process seemed to keep crashing.

What I ended up doing was installing the trial version of Open Dental. This created a database for me. Once I had a database, the application seemed to run.

A curious thing is that when I would try to run Open Dental on Windows, using Mono 1.2.5.2, the application crashes. No such problems running under Linux though.