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SSH to VirtualBox Guest in Mountain Lion

My development system is OS/x 10.8, Mountain Lion.  I run Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server in a VirtualBox VM and all the development work is done in that server (easiest for the entire team to ensure we all have the same dev environment).

I switched over from a desktop system (Mac Pro) to a laptop (MacBook Pro), copied over my .vbi file with my Ubuntu server and something was different.  I had been ssh'ing into the VirtualBox guest without any issues.  Set up my ssh keys and an alias.  Sweet.  But, with the laptop, I couldn't get there from here.  The host name couldn't be resolved.

Yes, VB Network mode was Bridged Adapter.  At first, the issue was waiting for the DNS servers to refresh the IP address of the guest OS, which was now on a different subnet because I was connecting over Wi-Fi instead of Ethernet.

But, after closing the laptop for the night, the issue was back and I knew it wasn't from switching subnets.  A clue was that I couldn't also connect to one of our development utility servers.  Checked wireless -- default configuration had wireless connecting to the guest Wi-Fi and not the corporate Wi-Fi.  Fixed that, but no love.  Flushed the DNS cache and voila; ssh to the guest machine.

Here's the key: on Mountain Lion use:

sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

dscacheutils is still present, but doesn't work in all situations.  Use the mDNSReponder.

Nifty VIM stuff

I've been building some of these techniques over time as I move from TextMate to VIM. Today, I came across the venerable "Seven habits of effective text editing" by Bram Moolenaar, who is the primary author of VIM and wrote this post, ah, 12 years ago now.

Please feel free to help yourself to my dot_vim repository on github, which has my working vimrc and plugins

Here are some of the wicked good things I've come across:

• Windows.  One of the biggest drawbacks to TextMate was the one window thang.  
• To create a new window in VIM do:
• Ctrl-W S (for Split): creates a horizontal split
• Crtl-W V (for Vertical): creates a vertical split
• To navigate between windows, use Ctrl-W plus the navigation keys h,j,k,l
• To close a window, use Ctrl-W C
• Tabs.  Tabs are collections of windows.  All tabs have access to all the buffers, so you have access to any open file from any tab
• To create a new tab do :tabnew
• To close a tab to :tabclose
• To move to a tab use:
• :tabnext
• :tabprevious
• :tabfirst
• :tablast
• :tabmove
• My .vimrc has some mappings for these
• To reposition the buffer in the middle of the window, simply press 'zz'
• Here's the one that got me really, really excited.  For searching, I've been using the standard '/' thing.  Well, check this out; you can simply put the cursor on the word for which you are looking and press '*'.  Yep, pretty nifty.
• Block Comment / Uncomment.  This is the shizz:
• To block comment, use Ctrl-V to enter Visual Block mode.  Navigate across all the lines you want to comment out, then use I  ESC to insert comment characters.  I just did this in SQL to insert "-- '
• To uncomment a block, use Ctrl-V to enter Visual Block mode.  Navigate across all the comment characters, then use d to delete.  Voila!
• To combine two lines: position the cursor at the end of the top line and press "J" to delete the newline
• From Vim, you can run the current buffer with :!ruby %
• Special for Rails: I added the command-t plugin for quickly finding your favorite file.  Sweet.

Configuring Drupal for McNiff Plumbing & Heating

As mentioned in my last post on Selecting Drupal for McNiff Plumbing & Heating, I wanted to talk about configuring Drupal for a mostly static site.

The requirements are:

• Anonymous Users can view all content
• The site is Page oriented; Home, Services, Comments, Contact Us
• No navigation menu
  
• No login options visible to anonymous users
• No content titles, author information or posting dates on pages
• No user comment links

To start with, I went to Administer >> Site Building >> Blocks and disabled nearly all the blocks. I changed the Navigation block to be visible only to Authenticated Users.

I then created the following pages: Home, Services & Comments and copied some of the content from the current site as a place holder. I also set the Menu Title Links in each of these pages to their base name, so that it could be referenced from a menu.

I used Administer >> Site Building >> Menus >> Primary Links to add a menu item for each page.

Next up was creating the Contact Us form. I enabled the Contact module in the Core - optional section, wen to "Administer By Module" and configured the permissions for the Contact Form and enabled "access site-wide contact form" for all users.

Back to the Menus to add a new Primary Link menu option for Contact by specifying the "contact" page as the target. After saving this new menu item, it was showing up as a new tab with the other menu pages. Great!

Let's check for an anonymous users. I opened up a different browser (I just hate logging out and in and out and in) and checked the development site. No joy in Mudville -- and no tab either.

Somewhere along the line, I was missing permissions. I checked and double checked that the menu was enabled and that anonymous users could access the contact form. I even typed the path into the other browser and the form displayed. Hmmm; not a permission problem because the anonymous user could see the form. The navigation link was simply not being displayed.

Back to Administer >> Site Building >> Contact Form >> Edit. There is a "Selected" option, which was set to "No". Changing that to "Yes" turned on the tab in the Anonymous User's view.

Yea!

Next up; clean up the pages to show only the pieces of information we want. This might require a custom View.

Selecting Drupal for McNiff Plumbing & Heating

I've been helping a local service provide, James McNiff of McNiff Plumbing & Heating improve his website. When we started, his site was a single page, over 60 keywords, and practically no inbound links. Website Grader gave it a 7 out of 100

My first work was to try and touch as little as possible and clean up the HTML so that the site was more search engine friendly. It was actually less time to re-implement the site in clean HTML with CSS, but it was still one page and still was lacking on the SEM side. Website grader raised it to an 8 out of 100.

Version 2 broke the single page into three pages, Home, Services, Comments and to add a rudimentary Contact form. I like working in Ruby on Rails, but his hosting provide charged extra for that application, so I used ROR to generate the web pages, captured them statically and uploaded the static content to his provider. Website grader raised it to a 12 out of 100.

Adding listings to his services and website to some business directories has helped, raising his score to 15.

However, Mr. McNiff didn't really like to content, which had been carried over from the original site and he wanted to be able to add pictures to his site. Given my interest in Drupal, I thought this was a perfect application for trying Drupal.

The hosting provide had a control panel installer for installing Drupal, which set up the MySQL database and installed Drupal 6.14. Here is a list of the modules that I added to begin configuring the site:

• Admin Menu
• Advanced Help
• CCK
• Devel
• FCKEditor
• Google Analytics
• IMCE (for image upload)
• INT Meta
• Webform (although the Contact module looks sufficient)

Please note, that as of this posting, the Drupal site is hidden. As soon as it's ready, I'll swap Drupal to the HTML root and archive the current site.

Next up, a bit about configuring Drupal for a site with essentially static content.

Drupal 6 with GD on OS/X

In my last post on Apache, PHP & Postgres on OS/X, I left off with the step where I was installing Drupal. Heck, that was easy. I downloaded and unzipped Drupal, placed it into my Sites directory, set up a symbolic link and hit it with http://localhost/drupal. I had to adjust some permissions with a chmod -R a+w *, but the installer ran fine, found Postgres and finished nicely.

But Drupal's administrative page reported that I had problems because I was missing GD, which is necessary for image handling. This required a recompile of PHP. The documentation indicated that by adding the --with-gd, that PHP would compile with the built in GD distribution. Unfortunately, I needed other libraries, JPEG, PNG & ZLIB in particular. This is with PHP 5.2.10, please recall. Older versions used TIFF also, so it seems.

I ended up intalling FINK to make life easy. I ran the following commands:

sudo fink install libjpeg
sudo fink install libpng3

(use fink list libpng to find out which version you need to install fink reports that the package can't be found)

I then modified my PHP config command to be:

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/php5 --mandir=/usr/share/man --infodir=/usr/share/info --sysconfdir=/etc --with-zlib --with-zlib-dir=/usr --with-openssl --without-iconv --enable-exif --enable-ftp --enable-mbstring --enable-mbregex --enable-sockets --with-pgsql --with-apxs2=/usr/sbin/apxs --with-jpeg-dir=/sw --with-png-dir=/sw --with-gd --with-zlib-dir=/usr/local

Note that when using the --with-jpeg-dir=DIR commands, the DIR needs to be the directory in which the /lib directory that contains the .a or .so exists. That's why I used --with-jpeg-dir=/sw and not --with-jpeg-dir=/sw/lib.

Next is make and sudo make install. Then recycle the Web Sharing service and Drupal is reporting GD installed. Whoot!

Installing Spree eCommerce

I'm looking to update a website that was written in a decent, but not great website creator application. I want to write it in Rails (yea!) because I had such great fun creating the Zepatter.com website. I mean, that took less than 12 hours from sitting down with the GIMP to getting the application installed on the hosting environment. And a huge chunk of that 12 hours was figuring out how to get the hosting environment configured correctly. hehe.

So, I'm looking for an eCommerce engine for Rails. Yes, I could create the whole shopping cart and payment gateway on my own because there are tons of tutorials and general advice. However, I suspect that if I could find a full-featured engine, then someone else will have thought of -- and solved -- problems that will take me time to recognize and address.

So I came across Spree eCommerce.

However, I haven't updated Rails on my system in a while and Spree requires Rails 2.3.2. So I start by doing a

sudo gem update rails

which gets me to Rails 2.3.4. However, Spree wants 2.3.2 ONLY. So I remove Rails 2.3.4 and install 2.3.2. Then I install Spree according to the instructions. Then I try to create my first Spree application with:

spree mystore

Unfortunately, I got this error:

/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:578:in `report_activate_error': RubyGem version error: hoe(1.5.3 not >= 1.8.0) (Gem::LoadError)

OK. No problem. Need to update hoe

~/src:sudo gem update hoe
Updating installed gems
Updating hoe
ERROR:  While executing gem ... (Gem::InstallError)
hoe requires RubyGems version >= 1.3.1

OK. No problem. Need to update gem. After all,

~/src:gem --version
1.2.0

So I do the following:

~/src:sudo gem update --system
Updating RubyGems
Nothing to update

OK, this may be a problem. Referring to the rubygems documentation, one needs to do the following:

gem install rubygems-update
update_rubygems

However, this failed with:

~/src:sudo update_rubygems
/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:578:in `report_activate_error': Could not find RubyGem session (>= 0) (Gem::LoadError)
 from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:134:in `activate'
 from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:158:in `activate'
 from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:157:in `each'
 from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:157:in `activate'
 from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:49:in `gem'
 from /usr/local/bin/update_rubygems:18

Mark Howe has a helpful blog on the matter.

In the end, the trick was to uninstall the partly installed rubygems 1.3.5, install rubygems 1.3.4, then do the

update_rubygems

And all was well. I was able to update hoe and then successfully run

spree mystore

Hallelujah

Finally, finally, finally.

I got the new system up and running. It took only about two dozen installs, an hour or so of phone calls with Asus, an RMA with NewEgg (they really are wonderful!), slipstreaming SP2 into my SP1a installer, a new case with a larger power supply and nearly three weeks of elapsed time.

As I give the final answer, there will be sage nodding from those in the know. However, I hasten to point out (in my own defense) that the Asus people, both Level 1 and Level 2 tech support didn't help me to the final answer.

The final answer was.... (drum roll, please):

Use the latest drivers!

What do you mean, anti-climatic? Everyone knows that? Who? Tech support didn't. The folks on the forum didn't.

OK, I'll be less obtuse.

Asus tech support got me to the point of installing the latest BIOS and chipset drivers. The process is this: Update the BIOS at POST. Install the OS, then run the executable to update the chipset drivers. Every time, except the last, the PC would hang upon next boot. I had tapped out Asus. They really couldn't do more. I was using the latest BIOS and chipset drivers. However, the chipset is made by nVidia, so I went to their website.

Asus had version 6.65 for the Force4 chipset. nVidia had version 6.70. That seemed better so i downloaded it and used it. And it worked!

Yea! I don't have to RMA all the hardware and ship it back to NewEgg!

Yea! I finally built a machine after all these years.

Yea! I can once again say "I am geek"

Thanks for reading

Agony of DIY

Actually, I should call it "Agony of Duh"

It has to do with building a new computer. The foundation (the loss of the original machine and some of the difficulties) is described in another post, which I started to keep, ah, pleasure separate from business. However, since I had a good amount of business data on the lost machine, and I am considering merging blogs, I thought I would continue the tale here.

Briefly:

The motherboard support CD-ROM was bootable. Who knew? It certainly wasn't documented anywhere, not in any manual, not in a FAQ, not in a forum. The bootable motherboard CD can make the driver disk needed to install XP

Asus wins awards for a reliable motherboard, and for reasonably fast phone support, but looses big time on the whole "self-service" concept for the internet. The forums are really the worst I've ever experienced. First, they work only in Internet Exploder. Every time you click on a link for another area (Support, Download, Forum), a new browser window opens. The search in the forum will show you the question with the subject that matches your query, but none of the threaded answers to the question. Oh, and it seems like all the data is coming from Asia b e c a u s e i t i s s o s l o w.

Here's the real beef. After going through the pain of making a RAID driver disk (see the other story for that fire drill!), the system boots up (YEA!!). Time to update Windows (I have XP-Pro SP1a). Need a network controller device driver. Pop in the support CD. Install the drivers.

There are three checkboxes (nVidia SMBus Driver, nVidia Ethernet Driver, and nVidia IDE Driver). The IDE Driver install gives me severe warnings and then says that I probably don't need to install it after all, 'cause the Microsoft one works just as well. That's OK, I'm in for a penny, in for a pound, so I say "Yes" to everything.

Heck, I even install the built-in Firewall and one other do-hickey when the prompt comes up. Reboot. Hang.

Yup, something broke the install.

Re-install, quick-format, boot, install only the Ethernet driver (cause I've done this before and know that one builds a Windows system one piece at a time, if it don't work out of the box). Reboot. Hang.

Much searching, time on the phone with Asus. Mobo (that's the cool term) is defective. RMA, new board, repeat one mo' time. Reboot. Hang.

More phone time with Asus. Slipstream SP2 into my 1a installation CD, burn a new CD, do the whole thing again. Reboot. Hang.

Pull the mobo out of the case to elminate electromagnetic interference (EMI). Re-install, reboot, hang. This will be funny one day.

Meanwhile, days are slipping by, bills are starting to pile up, yada yada.

On the phone with Asus, my case get elevated to Level 2. In a single two minute phone call, the technician says that I need to have -- get this -- all three check boxes checked. Yup, the drivers are a set and must always get installed together. I mean, doesn't this beg the obvious question of why, oh why, are there checkboxes? DUH!!

At this point (ATP, for you old time coders), system is SP2 with a network. I'm going to put the the whole kit and kaboodle back into the case and see if it will still work.

Wish me luck.

And Computers, too -- Installing XP on ASUS A8N

Our computer died last Sunday. I'll tell that story another time. Right now, I want to crow about the new computer.

For context, I'll mention that the old computer was about six years old, a Dell 700 MHz. Rather pokey by today's standards. I missed building my own machine, and since things are tight, but I run my company from that machine, so I decided to build my own. When I priced it out, I realized that I could build, for under $900 shipped, what would cost $1600 assembled.

To keep this to a reasonable length, here are the key facts: The motherboard is an ASUS A8N-E. The motherboard has a built in RAID controller that supports RAID 0, RAID 1 and RAID 1+0.

The challenge -- and the point of this post -- was getting the Windows XP install started.

Naturally, the XP installer needed the driver for the new RAID controller. The motherboard came with a CD-ROM with drivers (many drivers). After realizing that none of the three laptops in the house have a floppy drive and running over to Staples to get a USB floppy, I put the CD-ROM into the drive and was horrified to see that it wouldn't run. It reported "Can't load ASCDDMI.DLL" So I put it into my wife's laptop, which has a optical drive in a drive bay, compared to my laptop, which has a USB CD-ROM. In my wife's laptop, the CD-ROM loaded the ASUSACPI.exe, but it reported "Detect no proper item" and didn't give me the option of creating a driver disk.

So, I had to find which of the drivers I should use from the CD-ROM. As we all know, using the wrong driver can have consequences ranging from the innocuous (it didn't work) to the terrible (ruins the hardware). I didn't want to risk the latter.

I searched the ASUS technical forums, which I found really quite bad, for help. There were a few postings on which files to use, or the contents of which directory to use. However, the directory structure of the CD-ROM didn't match the directory structure listed in the technical articles and postings, and the suggestions didn't work. The XP installer kept prompting for the hardware drivers.

Oh, and when I did find a list of detailed instructions for installing a RAID driver, it was too much information -- there were 10 different RAID controllers listed, and no way to determine which RAID controller is on my motherboard! Oy Vey!

So I guessed. I guessed that since I was using SATA hard drives, that I would want the SATA RAID drivers from the Windows XP directory.

Here's the summary:

Asus A8N-E Motherboard, revision 2.00, BIOS 4.84
Support CD-ROM "NVIDIA nForce4 SLI Serices support CD Rev.99.06"
2 Maxtor DiamondMax SATA 100 MB hard drive

I used the drivers from the following directory:

[CD-ROM]:\Drivers\Chipset\WINXP\IDE\WinXP\sataraid

I copied all the files from this directory onto a formatted floppy and the XP installer found the two drivers necessary -- just as the instructions said it would. We are 95% done formatting the RAID array and I am happy.

Or at least, I will be happy until the next problem.

Thanks for reading!