Yet another Tech Blog

Update RubyGems 1.2 to 1.3.1 on Mac OS

Martin — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 18:36:54 +0000

Due to a nasty bug in RubyGems 1.2, you need to install a special gem to be able to update to version 1.3.1:

# sudo gem install rubygems-update
# sudo update_rubygems

How to install Redmine on Dreamhost using Passenger

Martin — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 14:37:48 +0000

Just follow the online documentation on redmine.org, after which you will be able to access redmine, but all static files like CSS are not being displayed. To make this work, you have to delete or rename the .htaccess file in the public subfolder within redmine. Restart Passenger by executing “touch tmp/restart.txt” and all should be good now.

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Install flarcreate on Solaris

Martin — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:11:11 +0000

Because I installed OpenSolaris only with its Core Packages, flarcreate was missing. The script is included in the SUNWinst package, which can be easily installed from the installation CD or DVD.

1. Mount the media
2. Change to following folder:
/Solaris_11/Product
3. Now execute “pkgadd -d . SUNWinst”

This applies to older versions of Solaris as well.

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Passwordless SSH Login

Martin — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 15:47:14 +0000

Note: This will only work on UNIX hosts.

1. Create your private/public key pair, which will create a private key in ~/.ssh/id_rsa a public one in ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub:
# ssh-keygen -t rsa

2. Now copy your public key over to the remote host:
# scp ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub username@remote-host.com:~
# ssh username@remote-host.com
# cat ~/id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

3. You’re done! You can now access the remote host with the same SSH command like before, but won’t be prompted to enter a password anymore!

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Eclipse Ganymede and Subversion (Subclipse)

Martin — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:58:41 +0000

Eclipse Ganymede is the new Eclipse distribution which is supposed to facilitate the dependency-hell problem many eclipse users face. Don’t get me wrong here, it’s fine release with numerous improvements, but they’ve totally failed with integrating a Subversion client like Subclipse or Subversive.

To solve this problem, simply add the following update site for the Subclipse 1.4 branch to your Eclipse Software Updates menu: http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.4.x. Once you’ve added it, expand the corresponding entry and select “Subclipse” and one of the adapters (JavaHL or SVNKit). Or if you want to experiment install both, it won’t hurt.

Having installed Subclipse within Ganymede, I can finally start really working on projects. But IMHO, this should have come with Eclipse out of the box.

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OpenSolaris 2008.05 Project Indiana

Martin — Fri, 09 May 2008 18:08:02 +0000

OpenSolaris 2008.05, also called Project Indiana has been released more than a week ago and shows where Solaris’ future is headed to. It comes on a 650MB ISO image, containing a live cd. So you can even test it on real hardware before installing it. If you’re not familiar with OpenSolaris yet, I suggest you install it inside a virtual machine like VMWare or Sun’s own Virtual Box. This release includes such nice features :

Image Packaging System (IPS)
ZFS as the default filesystem
DTrace

Due to the small size of the ISO image (OpenSolaris Community Editions are DVD-sized ISOs), there’s some stuff missing, like the XEN hypervisor. To install it, check this post for a thorough guide on how to install it.

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Benchmark: mod_rails vs. Mongrel

Martin — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 12:54:51 +0000

A guy nicknamed “s2″ benchmarked mod_rails against Mongrel. It’s not really scientific, but shows that at least for small sites, mod_rails definitely is a good and easier to setup alternative. I’m planning to do my own benchmarking soon on my shiny, new SUN Ultra 24 Workstation that comes with great Ruby & Rails support out of the box. Anyways, mod_rails seems to do well performance-wise so far, the only thing I’d like to find out is, how stable it really is.

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mod_rails for Apache is here

Martin — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 08:43:20 +0000

Many shared hosts have been waiting for this: A mod_rails for Apache, making Rails applications deployment as easy as deploying PHP based ones. Check out the demo screencast on how to install and use it.

It’ll be interesting to see, how well it performs compared to Mongrel and how much memory it consumes. According to the website, performance should be on par with Mongrel.

Currently, the following operating systems are supported:

Ubuntu Linux 6.06 (x86)
Ubuntu Linux 7.10 (x86)
Debian Sarge (x86)
Debian Etch (x86)
Debian Lenny/Sid (x86)
CentOS 5 (x86)
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (x86)
Gentoo, March 14 2008 (AMD64)
FreeBSD 6.1-RELEASE (x86)
MacOS X Tiger (x86)
MacOS X Leopard (x86)

That’s quite a lot already, hopefully support for Debian Etch AMD64 is coming soon, maybe the x86 release will just work as well.

In the next week or so, I’ll be doing some extensive benchmarking with mod_rails. Since this project is in an early stage, we also have to show it some patience while waiting for future development, but this will definitely be very helpful in getting Ruby and Rails to the next level in terms of adoption, since every kid will be able to deploy his or her first Rails app via some easy to use control panel now.

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Breaking the silence

Martin — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 20:35:33 +0000

It’s been quite a while since my last post. Ok, I admit it, I even haven’t found the time to post this year so far. There’s a lot of stuff going on that I would like to share. I’ve been digging into Java, Rails and OpenSolaris (incl. ZFS). I’m planning to post in great detail about those projects (at least monthly), so I hope everyone will benefit out of it.

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Watch South Park online

Martin — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 21:45:27 +0000

Here’s a list of sites you can watch South Park on. Enjoy!
If you know of other good places to watch South Park, post them in the comments!

If you like the Simpsons as well, check out this list of sites showing Simpsons episodes.

Or do you like Family Guy even more? Here’s a list of sites where to watch it.

P.S.: I’m not responsible for the content other sites are hosting!

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