madhatter to the world

Create a ZFS pool onto an already used and referenced disk

noreply@blogger.com (madhatter) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 17:19:04 -0500

I have been thinking about creating a zfs pool for my home directory for some time now. Today I moved my home directory to /export/backup and unmounted the 120g disk.
When I tried to zpool create home c0d1 I got the message that this disk is still referenced in another boot environment. (Read here why.) I tried to delete that old boot environment, but that did not work, because GRUB then would have entries that point to no existing BE then. I never thought about that before, but I guess I now have to stick to the two BEs and just switch from SXCE1 to SXCE2 and back again.

On #opensolaris I have been pointed to the right tool to use: lumount. I mounted the old environment and commented out the entry in the /etc/vfstab to get rid of that reference for the disk. Now I was able to create the zpool with mountpoint on /export/home. Afterwards I created a new filesystem for my user in it and moved all my data back in there.

Technorati Tags: live upgrade, opensolaris, zpool, solaris, sun, zfs

Solaris Live Upgrade for the first time - with bugs

noreply@blogger.com (madhatter) — Sat, 29 Sep 2007 13:23:49 -0500

I switched from FreeBSD to OpenSolaris a few weeks ago. Today I tried the Live Upgrade for the first time, upgrading from snv_70 to snv_72. And while I was happy to see the new system booting had trouble with accessing my cd/dvd-rom drive. After trying this and that and asking on the irc channel I got the hint that I ran into a bug in b72.
Mounting my old root and copying the ata driver to the upgraded root did do the trick then.
Besides having some trouble caused by that bug I really like that live upgrade functionality in Solaris.

I am yet looking forward to explore more on this operating system. At work I have to play around with a 2-node Sun Cluster holding an Oracle RAC at the moment. That's really fun!

Technorati Tags: opensolaris, live upgrade, solaris, sun

Migration made easy with Oracle SQL Developer

noreply@blogger.com (madhatter) — Thu, 26 Jul 2007 06:46:07 -0500

A couple of weeks ago I had to migrate lots of data from MySQL to PostgreSQL and it was a pain in the a**. Even though MySQL offers to use a compatibility-mode when exporting tables for Postgres those dump files could not be imported to the Postgres database at all. The DDL was so wrong from Postgres' point of view that I had to search & replace lots of stuff and take care of escaping strings in a few thousand rows...

While I was looking up some data in Oracle's SQL Developer I noticed the 'Migration' menu for the very first time.
I have to admit that I use the SQL developer for almost a year now but did not find the time to explore it in much more detail.

I was wondering if migrating data from the MySQL database to an Oracle database would work out much better/easier with this tool, so I gave it a try:

1. I created a user called MIGRATIONS and granted RESOURCE, CREATE SESSION and CREATE VIEW to him. I then created and connected to a database connection to that user in the SQL Developer and created (right-click) the migration repository there.

2. I then created and connected to a database connection to the destination database and made sure that user had enough rights to create users and things.

3. Now I connected to the MySQL database and captured (right-click) the schema of interest.

4. I got a list of captured objects in a new tab now and was able to convert those. They appeared in another new tab labled 'converted objects'.

5. I renamed the schema from those converted objects (right-click) and generated (right-click again) lots of statements that appeared in a new SQL worksheet.

6. From there I selected the target database from the drop-down in the upper right corner and hit 'run script ()'.

7. I then connected to the created schema in my destination database.

8. Finally I chose 'migrate data' from the migration menu and selected source, destination and the converted objects to get the data transferred.

Like a charm!
Okay, there have been some errors mentioned while the migration process, but it seemed to me that all have been handled somehow as there have been no errors in the Migration log and all tables had the same data as in the source database.

I hopefully have to migrate to Oracle for the next project.

Technorati Tags: database, migration, mysql, oracle, dba, sql developer

Celebrating 3 years 'madhatter to the world'

noreply@blogger.com (madhatter) — Thu, 08 Mar 2007 01:19:05 -0600

I am happy to tell, that this weblog now exists for three years. There have been days I was thinking about taking it offline, but the still growing number of visitors made me keep it up. And sometimes I really have something interesting to tell so I post it here. And I think it's interesting to see that I came from lots of music, television and movie content to Oracle, DBA, sysadmin and hacker content. Probably the target audience has changed within these three years. But I said it from the beginning: this is about 'everything I am interested in and you might not care about'.

Technorati Tags: birthday

Hack-a-lot: Ruby on Rails, Tiger, fink and Oracle

noreply@blogger.com (madhatter) — Tue, 06 Mar 2007 02:04:00 -0600

Maybe some of you remember my article about Ruby on Rails with Mac OS X Tiger and PostgreSQL. I tried to use Oracle back then in the first place, but had some issues.
I now stumbled upon an article in the Oracle Magazine how to use the database driver Ruby/OCI8 with ruby and rails.
Of course this wasn't that easy on a Mac. *gnarf*

Because the header files did not happen to appear where they are expected I first tried it with some symlinks, without any luck. Later I came across an article at the rubyonrails wiki where they mentioned that "many readers of comp.lang.ruby advocate installing ruby from source as the install of ruby that comes with Tiger is deemed to be slightly broken".

So I updated my fink branch and installed ruby 1.8.4 and the rubygems via fink after I slightly re-ordered my $PATH to have the fink binaries on top of the list. (Edit: You have to re-order your $PATH first, because you otherwise would mix up both versions of ruby, rake and rails somehow.) I don't have to use symlinks here or remove the ruby distribution from OS X' developer tools.

When this was done I used 'gem install rails', to install rails once more - with all it's dependencies.
'which rails' should show you something like '/sw/bin/rails' after installation has been finished.

I now was able to install the necessary ruby interface for Oracle using OCI8 API with an intermediate step in the installation process: 'ruby setup.rb config'
Now the header files were found and I can keep on with 'make' and 'make install'.

Technorati Tags: database, fink, hacking, mac, oracle, os x, ruby, rubyonrails

More on Technorati: Search fixed

noreply@blogger.com (madhatter) — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 04:27:59 -0600

As you may have read some days ago, I was wondering if I should use Technorati here on my weblog anymore or not. It seems that most hick ups are gone right now. My latest postings appeared there already but the search I integrated lots of months ago was broken. Even though that searchlet has been released by Technorati long time ago it still is beta. And that means they can change the URL in it if they like without telling you.
You now are able to use the search form on the right again - until the URL for searching on Technorati will change again.

Technorati Tags: blogger tools, search, technorati

Technorati: Should I stay or should I go?

noreply@blogger.com (madhatter) — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 13:01:55 -0600

I still use the Technorati tags on each of my posts here (see below) and I still have the Technorati search included (to the right) but I noticed lately that Technorati does not seem to update my weblog regularly even though I ping them after each post I put online. And while searching my own site with the search box Technorati offers I noticed that I can't even find most read article on this site.
So, what is Technorati still good for? Maybe it's time to move on and leave Technorati behind. I wrote them an email asking what might cause this problem a couple of weeks ago but never got an answer. Maybe the guys from Technorati already did move on?

Technorati Tags: blogger tools, rant, technorati

Come to Fraggle Rock

noreply@blogger.com (madhatter) — Wed, 07 Feb 2007 12:48:19 -0600

Today I took a look on my Google Analytics account, because I sometimes wonder if somebody still reads these pages. And there I get the info that on position four of the most used keywords to reach this weblog comes "fraggle rock". Fascinating, ain't it?
I didn't even remember that I wrote this back then, but now I've been reminded that I am still waiting for the release of the first Muppets' DVD set here in Germany.
I then - just for fun - used the above keywords in google and found this awesome wiki with lots of information about Jim Hensons' muppets and fraggles.

Technorati Tags: muppets, fraggles, wiki

Greasemonkey Script for Nikonians' Nag Text

noreply@blogger.com (madhatter) — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 06:43:53 -0600

Just a short one: I've been annoyed by the nag text at the Nikonians forum when posting there. They ask you to upgrade your membership in there, but there is no need to do so, because posting is allowed to everybody. (If not the community might be a bit smaller there.)
So I wrote just these few lines to make it disappear. If you think it's useless it's okay, I wrote it for me.

Technorati Tags: greasemonkey, hacking, Nikonians, Nikon, script

London, Baby!

noreply@blogger.com (madhatter) — Tue, 19 Sep 2006 08:17:48 -0500

I have to admit that I had doubts about going to London over the weekend, but nothing of all my worries came true at all. It was fun, the only thing that would have been nice was having more money to spend on just one weekend. As we are planning to move in almost a month we have to save some money for that already, so London was kinda expensive just to stay there.
Horrible how much you can spend on food there. We did not go to any restaurant or something like that, but we were hungry from running through the whole city...

Technorati Tags: London, travel

London's calling

noreply@blogger.com (madhatter) — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 13:50:01 -0500

Tomorrow morning I will travel to London. In the last days I already had holidays and trying hard to not do anything except resting...
So for the weekend I will really have holidays with being not just at home but in another city, another country.

Maybe I should watch the "Friends" episodes in London tonight... ;-)

Firefox 2.0 Beta 2

noreply@blogger.com (madhatter) — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 12:10:28 -0500

Okay, you all already know that Firefox 2.0 Beta 2 has been released. And you may be as curious about it as I have been.
I am using Firefox on a non-Intel Mac and so it is kinda slow. The good news is that FF 2.0 is much faster than the 1.5 version on a Mac. The bad news is that there are not many compatible extensions (now called add-ons in FF 2.0) available. But not all of the not-compatible ones are really not compatible.
There is an add-on that makes it possible to use the the old extensions like Greasemonkey by disabling the default compatibility-check in Firefox: the Nightly Tester Tools add-on/extension.

But what about the awful look now? Firefox looks crappy and non of the other buttons match in size and shape. So, there already is a preview of the GrApple themes for the 2.0 version here.

So, everything seems to work for me now. I can get rid of a few extensions that are now already build into Firefox and it almost looks like it did before.

Test it yourself.

Technorati Tags: firefox, os x, web 2.0

Switching to Wordpress?

noreply@blogger.com (madhatter) — Tue, 29 Aug 2006 16:00:48 -0500

Oh, it's horrible. Since yesterday I am fighting with Wordpress' software, because I always wanted to give it a try.
But it seems to be not as easy as I thought. First there is no support for any other database but MySQL (*bleh*), secondly I don't know how to get my old posts from this blog into the new one, as the import-script does not seem to work at my hosts webserver. Support is none available from their side.
The more I am trying to solve some of the issues I have with the whole PHP crap and CSS stylesheets that seem to overwrite each others definitions the more I am asking myself if it's worth all that trouble. My fellow readers will remember that my last post on this weblog is more than half a year ago, but I had good reasons for it...

Technorati Tags: blogger tools, wordpress

Marketing 30 Boxes

noreply@blogger.com (madhatter) — Thu, 18 May 2006 05:10:27 -0500

There was a post in the weblog of 30 Boxes last week about helping those guys to become more popular. First I thought I might be too busy for things like that, but why not help a new service compete in the hazardous world of Web 2.0.
So here is, what I have to say: I now use my calendar at 30 Boxes since a few months now and I love it. It's so easy and it is cool for all us Mac and iPod users. Why that? - See, as 30 Boxes is a Web 2.0 application you are able to add appointments wherever you have web-access via a browser. Because I am sometimes offline on my way to work of university I use the calendar on my iPod rather than the one I have integrated in my mobile. (I only use that one for short reminders like "watch channel 7 at 8pm".) As there is a webcal:// URI for all 30 Boxes calendars available I am able to subscribe to my calendar via iCal and can use it to sync it to my iPod.

There are lots of other features though. Like sharing your calendar with others or just parts of it. You can keep track of other services by RSS with it and many more.

This is why I like to use a service as 30 Boxes even though I have a cool application like iCal on my iBook always available. (Unnoticed the fact that I can note appointments when somewhere out without my iBook. Yes, there are days...)
Another reason why I think using 30 Boxes is cool, is because it's fun to be part of the evolution of this application (or service, call it as you like). There are regular enhancements mentioned in the weblog after they have been discussed with the users in the forum. And if you like to help (I really would like to, but at the moment there are other things I really should focus on) you may take a look into the developer column to see what can be done and what is requested by the users so far.

At last one more reason is the upcoming Google calendar. Of course you should use the calendar you like most, but as the calendar by Google is not available yet, a good chance to get used to 30 Boxes and fall in love to it. There already is a whispering out there in the net that we might get stuck to Google apps too much, so why not use an alternative when it is a great one?
For me 30 Boxes has all necessary features I expect from an online calendar so far and I know that there will come more and more features that will make my calendar of choice even better.

Enough talking, head to 30 Boxes and see for yourself.

Technorati Tags: 30 boxes, web 2.0

Beastie Boys movie only one night at the big screen

noreply@blogger.com (madhatter) — Wed, 15 Mar 2006 02:11:40 -0600

The Beastie Boys, best band ever, are going to release a new concert movie entitled Awesome, I F***in' Shot That! During one of there concerts in the Madison Square Gardens the Beastie Boys handed out video cameras to 50 select audience members and let them record the audiences perspective of the concert. After the event was over the cameras we returned, and now we have a movie.
Sounds interesting. And this movie will be on the big screen for only one evening, March 23rd. Of course only in US and Canada. A complete list of the theaters click here. For all other info go to the mainpage of the special site about the movie.

I am really looking forward to that, since I've been a bit disappointed about the last "Solid Gold" release with just lots of evergreens.

Technorati Tags: movies, beastie boys

Steve's new fun products

noreply@blogger.com (madhatter) — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 04:01:39 -0600

So, what was it about? An expensive dock with speakers integrated, a new Mac mini, a bit faster than the old one, lacking graphics performance as usual, but much more expensive, and an iPod case for $99. Thanks a lot, Steve.

And I have to say, that it is not, because I was waiting for the fullscreen-tablet-display-iPod (6G) or anything else which smart people knew would never be released yesterday. It is, Steve, because these products lack the innovative mind we are used to. There are lots of speakers out there and a billion cases for all iPod generations. Probably not with such a nice Apple logo like yours...

So, Steve, what should I tell you? - Think about it.

Technorati Tags: apple, mac, mac mini, iPod, rant

New iBook Battery Arrived

noreply@blogger.com (madhatter) — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 13:06:58 -0600

That's the story: I noticed that the battery in my iBook got worse every single day since it was in repair a few weeks ago. I already had checked, if my battery was one of those, that might cause trouble and Apple agreed to exchange for free, but it wasn't. Now I checked it again on wednesday and it seems, that I a) had a typo in the numbers last time or b) they put the wrong battery in my iBook when it was in the garage...

Today it arrived. And I have 100% current battery capacity (4400 mAh) again. *sigh*

Technorati Tags: apple, iBook, battery

Hack-a-lot: Applescript to save iTunes ratings permanently

noreply@blogger.com (madhatter) — Tue, 31 Jan 2006 16:36:15 -0600

Long time no see.

While working hard and listening to iTunes all day, I realized that there really is a need for those ratings in iTunes, because I noticed a few great songs on my harddisk, I wanted to be able to find again later.

But then I had to notice that all those ratings get lost when removing the tracks from iTunes and putting them back in again later. (And I am doing that very often, because I don't have too much space on the disk left.)

To be able to use my ratings in the future I want them to be stored in the ID3 tag of the track. To be able to do that for the whole library I wrote a small applescript. You can store your ratings to the comment field and getting them back from there as ratings.

Download the script here.

Since my iBook had to go to repair two weeks ago, I loose total battery capacity from day to day - I am at 43% now while I had around 89% a few weeks ago. So help - buy me a new battery for my 12" iBook from 2005. :-D

Technorati Tags: applescript, iTunes, rating, script

No new Analytics Users

noreply@blogger.com (madhatter) — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 09:55:32 -0600

As I just read at Schockwellenreiter's, Google Analytics has stopped new sign-ups. So now I am one of those privileged users who can check where the users of this blog are coming from. Right now, I have to say, that it makes not that huge differences if using Google Analytics or Sitemeter.

Technorati Tags: blogger tools, google, stats, weblog

Salma Hayek, da Bandida

noreply@blogger.com (madhatter) — Sat, 19 Nov 2005 01:32:08 -0600

Maybe some of you remember me telling you crap about Salma Hayek starring in the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean flick.
As IMDB still has no info on that, I think the source back then was not too serious.

But I also thought that I had already told you about the comedy-crime-western movie Bandidas, starring Salma Hayek and Penélope Cruz. But I can't find that post anymore.

While the movie has been completed already, Fox has not set a release date in 2006 for U.S. yet. (In Germany the release date either. France has the 18th of January 2006 as date where "Bandidas" hit the theatres.) But now I read at JoBlo, that there is a gallery online, so we can watch a few pictures whil waiting for the release.

Technorati Tags: Bandidas, movie, Penelope Cruz, Salma Hayek

More Firefox extensions

noreply@blogger.com (madhatter) — Thu, 17 Nov 2005 01:24:21 -0600

Nforcer made my day. He send me a link to an updated version of the Google Pagerank extension.
Thanks a lot.

Technorati Tags: extension, firefox, google

Firefox 1.5 - Usable for me now

noreply@blogger.com (madhatter) — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 15:45:02 -0600

Maybe you have read that I was not pleased by the actual status of Flock yet. I was still sticking to the last stable version of Firefox (1.0.7)
Yesterday I once more downloaded the latest version of the 1.5 branch of Firefox, to check which extensions are available for it already.

Still, the main problem are the greasemonkey scripts, because those have often been written by people that are not into the extension-writing anymore. That is why most of the useful scripts I used for Gmail, Bloglines or Flickr don't work at the moment. But with version 0.6.3 of greasemonkey more than the last time I checked.

All other extensions I use for better browsing behaviors seem to have been updated already or there are other/newer extensions which do almost the same or even more or better.
And I even removed some other extensions without replacing them, because I had to notice, that I haven't used them at all in the last months and did not even know that those were still installed.

As you can see, the only extension (I use, of course) that is not available right now, is the Google Pagerank thingy. A neat feature, but nothing I can't live without.

The sad thing is that I have to say, I did not recognize too many features new in Firefox 1.5. Okay, it seems that the whole engine is a bit faster and the menus are nicer to look at, but that is all.
I have to say, that I did not read anything about what had been (or will be) changed in 1.5 and what the big differences are or why there had to be all the internal changes you can't see but recognize because all the extensions had to be recoded.

That is why it makes not too much difference to me, if I use 1.5 or 1.0.7 since I have all features again I had in the old version, too. (Except the Google Pagerank, of course.)

But, what I also have to say, Firefox is still, and hopefully will be, the best browser available on any OS and at the moment I am willing to get a new version whenever it is needed, because I believe that it never will do me any harm.

Technorati Tags: browser, extension, firefox, greasemonkey

Kitchen Confidential - A Test Post

noreply@blogger.com (madhatter) — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 09:57:07 -0600

No, there actually is no need to tell you which book I am reading at the moment. Since there is a new version of flock available, I am trying once more to use it.
While I don't get the del.icio.us feature to work more functional, I wanted to check out the blogging features of flock now.
But I have to say: Not quite there, sorry. Right now I will stick to ecto for blogging activities.

Technorati Tags: blogger tools, flock

Google needs more competition

noreply@blogger.com (madhatter) — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 15:35:21 -0600

Yes, it is about time. Dave Winer has written a short essay on why he thinks Google needs more competition by cloning the Google API. If you like you can listen to an audio version of that essay.

Technorati Tags: api, google

Guide to Comedy

noreply@blogger.com (madhatter) — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 08:22:59 -0600

I have no idea since when this site is around, but BBC has an own Guide to Comedy online. A great archive with lots of info on every single show from 1936 to today. You can read about 'Roseanne', 'Cheers', 'The Cosby Show' or 'The Wonder Years'. Or any other show that made you be home early and sit in front of the tv laughing your ass off or biting nails.

If you like comedy shows - and why shouldn't you? - you really have to take a look at that guide. The only thing they have to do is setting it up-to-date. For example Sara Gilbert's new show, 'Twins' is not available in the guide yet (To be correct, there has been another show with Sara, that lasted only one season and I never have seen, which is not listed under her name, too). And maybe there are other show missing, too, I haven't noticed yet.

Technorati Tags: comedy, bbc, Roseanne, Sara Gilbert, tv show