Step 1. Backup your current metacity.

pfexec cp /usr/bin/metacity /usr/bin/metacity.orig

Step 2. Download the fixed Metacity binary from developer’s site and replace the original binary.

wget http://www.gnome.org/~erwannc/bugs/8748/metacity -o /tmp/metacity
pfexec cp /tmp/metacity /usr/bin/metacity

Note: Don’t do this in one step using wget -o /usr/bin/metacity. This broke my system.

Step 3. (Optional) By now, your new Metacity should have already started working. If not, replace the current instance by hand.

metacity --replace

Happy dual-screening on your OpenSolaris 2009.06!

Step 1. Install distro-construct.

pfexec pkg install SUNWdistro-const

Step 2. Generate the USB image from CD image.

pfexec usbgen osol-0906-x86.iso osol-0906-x86-usb.img /tmp/osol

Step 3. Copy the generated USB image on to the USB stick.

pfexec usbcopy osol-0906-x86-usb.img

On executing the above command, you will be shown the list of removable media and asked to select the one to use with usbcopy. If you have inserted only one USB media, you will see only one entry to choose from. Please note that you may have to unmount the USB media from your GNOME file manager or command line, before usbcopy starts.

Once usbcopy completes, your OpenSolaris live USB sticks are ready to boot a live environment and perform installation. I will be in Community One West, Deep Dive sessions today (Jun 2, 2009) at Intercontinental Hotel, San Francisco. If anyone needs to make their USB media an OpenSolaris live media, please contact me.

One of the handy features in the latest Wordpress is the support to upgrade plugins in one click through the Wordpress administration interface. It needs FTP or FTPS access to the server where you have hosted your Wordpress installation. But turning on FTP for users (non-anonymous) is a bad idea. Using FTP involves transferring user passwords as plain text during authentication. This is a great security concern and the primary reason for why one shouldn’t turn on FTP for user accounts. However, Wordpress also supports FTPS, FTP over SSL. This shouldn’t be confused with SSH FTP or Secure FTP. FTPS uses TLS or SSL for authentication and commands. Let us see how to setup FTPS on a server using vsftpd.

Step 1: Install vsftpd

Using the package manager for your distribution, install vsftpd. On Debian and Ubuntu, it can be installed by the following command.

sudo apt-get install vsftpd

Step 2: Configure FTPS

Edit /etc/vsftpd.conf and do the following.

2a. comment out anonymous_enable line.

# Allow anonymous FTP? (Beware - allowed by default if you comment this out).
#anonymous_enable=YES


2b. Uncomment local_enable and write_enable lines.

# Uncomment this to allow local users to log in.
local_enable=YES
#
# Uncomment this to enable any form of FTP write command.
write_enable=YES


2c. Override the umask for local users to 022 by uncommenting the local_umask line.

# Default umask for local users is 077. You may wish to change this to 022,
# if your users expect that (022 is used by most other ftpd's)
local_umask=022

Note: Failing to do this, will make the plugin directory unreadable by your webserver and you will start getting PHP include errors. If this happens, you have to disable the plugin and remove the directory or change the permission of the directory to 755.

2d. Turn on SSL by adding the following lines. This is disable plain FTP and allow only FTPS.

ssl_enable=YES
allow_anon_ssl=NO
force_local_data_ssl=YES
force_local_logins_ssl=YES
ssl_tlsv1=YES
ssl_sslv2=YES
ssl_sslv3=YES

It is assumed that the RSA certificate and key are in the standard locations /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem and /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key respectively. If not, create these and put them there.

# This option specifies the location of the RSA certificate to use for SSL
# encrypted connections.
rsa_cert_file=/etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem
# This option specifies the location of the RSA key to use for SSL
# encrypted connections.
rsa_private_key_file=/etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key

Step 3: Restart vsftpd.

Restart vsftpd by issuing the following command.

sudo /etc/init.d/vsftpd restart

Now your vsftpd is ready to serve FTPS connections.

Also, Oracle’s attitude towards Open Source remains largely unknown at this point. Sun did some extensive Open Sourcing in the past few years. It would be interesting to see how this deal would affect the direction of those products.

To know more information about the deal, read the Sun’s press release or Oracle’s press release. Oracle has put up an information page and answered some of the frequently asked questions in there.

Gnome:
In order to make this persistent, one should edit the Gconf properties for Metacity. First install the SUNWgnome-config-editor package by issuing the command pfexec pkg install SUNWgnome-config-editor. Then invoke gconf-editor from a terminal. Go to apps -> metacity -> general and uncheck audible_bell property and exit gconf-editor. This should disable the system beep for all applications under Gnome and make the change persistent.

Turn Gnome sytem beep off

GDM:
To turn off the beep when GDM starts, invoke the GDM setup by issuing the command pfexec /usr/sbin/gdmsetup from a terminal. Then, go to Accessibility tab and uncheck Login screen ready entry under Sounds section.

Turn GDM beep off

On the other hand, I see some of my manager’s activities through his Twitter updates and blog posts. The wide range of stuff he does is mind-boggling. He might have ten-folds of things to do than I have. However I saw a sense of completion in most of the things he did. I discussed with him about this in one of the 1-1 meetings we had. From his answers, I realized that instead of trying to manage my time, I should try to manage the things that I do. He recommended to read “Getting Things Done” by David Allen. I promptly bought the book. However due to bad management of things I do, I was not able to start on the book until a couple of months later.

After reading through a couple of chapters of the book, I was still trying to understand some of the concepts that the book. I decided to experiment the concepts that I learned so far practically. To start with, I have chosen to apply the techniques on my e-mail system. The first thing I did was to review my mailing list subscriptions and get myself removed from the lists that I felt not so important. Then I went on created tags on Mozilla Thunderbird to organize my mails according to some predefined GTD categories. Then it was time to go through all the unread mails by acting on them or moving them to an appropriate category. Once I got my e-mail Inbox to zero unread mails, I had a better sense of control of my e-mail. From then on I started applying GTD workflow for my e-mail processing and I get my e-mail Inbox to zero count many times a day. There will be a detailed post about the setup of my e-mail system sometime in the future.

Applying GTD to my e-mail was a significant success. For a couple of months from then, I was applying GTD techniques only on my e-mails. I realized that it was time to start applying them on the other things that I do as well. In the meantime, my employer was offering a day long class room session on “Getting Things Done – Mastering the workflow” training conducted by David Allen’s company. I was very eager to attend the session to get some first hand sight of how to apply these techniques for everything I do. My manager was kind enough to approve my request for the class room session. I took this session last week that gave me more insight to things like mind sweep, weekly reviews, higher altitude reviews, etc.

I bought some stationery supplies last week to manage the paper materials I have. I sat down for my first mind sweep and weekly review last Sunday. The outcome was a very decent set of “Next Actions”. I tracked them electronically using Tracks. I was very happy to see I have already done many significant things that I was procrastinating for a while. One of more visible things that I did was to clean up workspace. I can’t wait to have my next weekly review tomorrow. I will come up with a detailed post on how I do my weekly reviews and capture things, next actions after a month. That will give me more experience to share about getting things done.

Disclaimer: All the views expressed herein are mine. I am not talking for my employer, Sun Microsystems, Inc.

After installation, reboot the system and add 'init=/sbin/bootchartd' to the 'kernel' command line arguments in Grub. This will use bootchartd as init and bootstartd will in turn start the original init. If alternative init environment like init-ng is used, there might be additional arguments needed. Please consult the bootchartd man page for more information. Once the systems boots, the data collected is available in /var/log/bootchart.tgz. Run bootchart to generate bootchart.png from /var/log/bootchart.tgz.

After doing this, I figured out that udevadm is taking almost 30 seconds. I later figured out that the udev rule that tries to rename 'wlan0' to 'eth1' is the culprit (search on Google). Then I commented the 'eth1' line in /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules, rebooted and did the bootchart thing again. I was happy to see that a portion of around 30 seconds is now removed from my boot time. That’s great!

Before udev fix	After udev fix

This script is intended to be used to check your order status only. Please note that this comes with absolutely no warranty and I can’t be held responsible for the misuse of the script. AT&T may change their query mechanism if they know about this exploit.

#!/usr/bin/env ruby

require 'rubygems'
require 'open-uri'
require 'openssl'

# FIXME (2008-07-24, praveen): This is nasty. I don't know of any other
# simpler way to skip SSL certificate verification.
OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_PEER = OpenSSL::SSL::VERIFY_NONE

class Order
  attr_reader  rder_number, :zip_code, :valid, :canceled, \
  :customer_name,  rder_date, :shipped, :ship_date, :ship_carrier, \
  :tracking_number

  def initialize order_number, zip_code
    @order_number = order_number
    @zip_code = zip_code
    @valid = false
    @canceled = false

    order_status_uri = URI.parse "https://www.wireless.att.com/order_status/\
order_status_results.jsp?fromwhere=order_status&vMethod=ordernum&\
vNumber=#{order_number}&ZipCode=#{zip_code}&x=40&y=14"
    order_status = order_status_uri.read

    if !order_status.scan("We're sorry, but the information you entered \
was not recognized by our systems.").to_s.empty?
      @valid = false
      return
    end
    @valid = true

    if !order_status.scan("Canceled")[0].to_s.empty?
      @canceled = true
      return
    end
    @canceled = false

    @customer_name =
      order_status.scan(/Customer:\s*\w*/).to_s.gsub!(/Customer:\s*/,"")
    @order_date =
      order_status.scan(/Date Ordered:.*/).to_s.gsub!(/Date Ordered:\s*/, "")
    @order_date.gsub!(/\s/, "")
    @shipped =
      order_status.scan(/\
/, ""
    @ship_date.gsub! /\<\/p\>.*$/, ""
    @ship_carrier = order_status.scan(/\
/, ""
    @ship_carrier.gsub! /\<\/p\>.*$/, ""
    @tracking_number =
      order_status.scan(/\http:\/\/fedex.com\/Tracking\?tracknumbers=\d*/).to_s
    @tracking_number.gsub! /\http:\/\/fedex.com\/Tracking\?tracknumbers=/, ""
  end

  def print
    if !@valid
      puts "#{@order_number.ljust(6)} ------------------------ NOT FOUND \
------------------------"
      return
    end
    if @canceled
      puts "#{@order_number.ljust(6)} ------------------------ CANCELLED \
------------------------"
      return
    end
    if @shipped
      puts "#{@order_number.ljust(6)} #{@customer_name.slice(0..14).ljust(15)} \
#{@order_date} #{'Yes'.ljust(5)} #{@ship_date} #{@ship_carrier.ljust(6)} \
#{@tracking_number}"
    else
      puts "#{@order_number.ljust(6)} #{@customer_name.slice(0..14).ljust(15)} \
#{@order_date} #{'No'.ljust(5)} #{'NA'.ljust(8)} #{'NA'.ljust(6)} \
#{'NA'.ljust(12)}"
    end
  end
end

if ARGV.length != 3
  puts "Usage: ./order-status.rb ZIP BEGIN END

  ZIP      ZIP code of the AT&T store where the order is placed.
  BEGIN    Order number to begin searching for.
  END      Order number to end searching for.

Example: ./order-status.rb 94025 12000 12100
"
else
  puts "Que Order# #{'Name'.ljust(15)} Order Dt Ship? Ship Dt  Carrie Tracking"
  puts "----------------------------------------------------------------------"
  queue = 0
  for order_number in ARGV[1]..ARGV[2]
    o = Order.new order_number, ARGV[0]
    if o.valid and !o.canceled
      queue += 1 if !o.shipped
      display_queue = o.shipped ? "NA" : queue
    else
      display_queue = "NA"
    end
    print "#{display_queue.to_s.ljust(3)} "
    o.print
  end
end

Sample output:
Data is scrambled to protect identity.

praveen@athena:~/scratch/ruby$ ./order-status.rb [ZIP] XX208 XX250
./order-status.rb:9: warning: already initialized constant VERIFY_PEER
Que Order# Name            Order Dt Ship? Ship Dt  Carrie Tracking
----------------------------------------------------------------------
NA  XX208  ***IVEL         07/15/08 Yes   07/18/08 F      981870058XXX
1   XX209  ***EPHINE       07/15/08 No    NA       NA     NA
2   XX210  ***PBELL        07/15/08 No    NA       NA     NA
3   XX211  ***ISSA         07/15/08 No    NA       NA     NA
NA  XX212  ------------------------ NOT FOUND ------------------------
NA  XX213  ***N            07/15/08 Yes   07/18/08 F      981870063XXX
NA  XX214  ***E            07/15/08 Yes   07/18/08 FDE11  978403293XXX
4   XX215  ***DIRI         07/15/08 No    NA       NA     NA
NA  XX216  ***TT           07/15/08 Yes   07/24/08 F      981871193XXX
5   XX217  ***E            07/15/08 No    NA       NA     NA
6   XX218  ***TT           07/15/08 No    NA       NA     NA
7   XX219  ***ESH          07/15/08 No    NA       NA     NA
8   XX220  ***D            07/15/08 No    NA       NA     NA
9   XX221  ***ECCA         07/15/08 No    NA       NA     NA
10  XX222  ***ENIA         07/15/08 No    NA       NA     NA
NA  XX223  ***TEH          07/15/08 Yes   07/18/08 F      981870054XXX
11  XX224  ***TER          07/15/08 No    NA       NA     NA
NA  XX225  ***TER          07/15/08 Yes   07/24/08 F      981847797XXX
NA  XX226  ------------------------ CANCELLED ------------------------
NA  XX227  ***DA           07/16/08 Yes   07/24/08 FDE51  982002804XXX
NA  XX228  ------------------------ CANCELLED ------------------------
NA  XX229  ***HEESH        07/16/08 Yes   07/18/08 F      981846745XXX
12  XX230  ***ER           07/16/08 No    NA       NA     NA
13  XX231  ***A            07/16/08 No    NA       NA     NA
14  XX232  ***EL           07/16/08 No    NA       NA     NA
15  XX233  ***SWORTH       07/16/08 No    NA       NA     NA
16  XX234  ***SWORTH       07/16/08 No    NA       NA     NA
17  XX235  ***SWORTH       07/16/08 No    NA       NA     NA
18  XX236  ***RGE          07/16/08 No    NA       NA     NA
19  XX237  ***AB           07/16/08 No    NA       NA     NA
20  XX238  ***QUIEL        07/16/08 No    NA       NA     NA
NA  XX239  ***RY           07/16/08 Yes   07/18/08 F      981870059XXX

PS: The credit also goes to an anonymous guy who wrote a similar script that I came across in a forum (I forgot the exact place). Most of the regexp ideas were shamelessly stolen from his original script. This is my first non-trivial Ruby script. I don’t know much about Ruby. This was a learning script as well. Please bear with newbie mistakes and coding conventions. If you have any comments on the code, I will be more than happy to hear from you.

Update (2008-07-29): AT&T finally decided to do something about the vulnerability. They are using “Captcha” now. So, this script might not work anymore. However I am pretty close to the head of the queue. I might get my phone in a couple of days or so. So, I don’t worry about this anymore…

Update (2008-08-02): My phone shipped today.

praveen@athena:~$ /opt/sfw/bin/emacs
Fatal error (11).Segmentation Fault (core dumped)

praveen@athena:~$ file core
core:           ELF 32-bit LSB core file 80386 Version 1, from 'emacs'

praveen@athena:~$ gdb -c core /opt/sfw/bin/emacs
GNU gdb 6.3.50_2004-11-23-cvs
Copyright 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are
welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions.
Type "show copying" to see the conditions.
There is absolutely no warranty for GDB.  Type "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "i386-pc-solaris2.11"...(no debugging symbols found)

Core was generated by `/opt/sfw/bin/emacs'.
Program terminated with signal 11, Segmentation fault.
Reading symbols from /opt/sfw/lib/libXaw3d.so.5...(no debugging symbols found)...done.
Loaded symbols for /opt/sfw/lib/libXaw3d.so.5
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libXmu.so...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libXmu.so
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libXt.so.4...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libXt.so.4
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libSM.so.6...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libSM.so.6
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libICE.so.6...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libICE.so.6
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libXext.so.0...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libXext.so.0
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libtiff.so.3...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libtiff.so.3
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libjpeg.so.62...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libjpeg.so.62
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0
Reading symbols from /lib/libz.so.1...done.
Loaded symbols for /lib/libz.so.1
Reading symbols from /lib/libm.so.2...done.
Loaded symbols for /lib/libm.so.2
Reading symbols from /opt/sfw/lib/libungif.so.4...done.
Loaded symbols for /opt/sfw/lib/libungif.so.4
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libXpm.so.4...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libXpm.so.4
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libX11.so...Segmentation Fault (core dumped)

praveen@athena:~$ file core
core:           ELF 32-bit LSB core file 80386 Version 1, from 'gdb'