my weekend techie adventure

I've had one of those situation that its hard to escape.

Do you have friends technology agnostic ? So do I ... not only that, but they don't even care about technology, operating systems, files and folders, new stuff, whatever. When such a friend is your brother-in-law, you have no chance but to engage :)

Phase 1, two weeks ago
- new laptop (some Fujitsu Lifebook).
- no OS, it was cheaper
- he wanted MS Win XP - as I said, does NOT care ... :)
- I only had an usb stick mocked with Ubuntu 11.04 (for my testing, not leaving Lucid yet)

So, after some debating into telling that I don't and cannot install XP, Ubuntu was the choice, 15 minutes setup and then some drinking and playing with Ubuntu for the next 3 hours

Phase 2, past weekend
- here's the platinum disk Win XP (he had the OEM disk from past laptop)
- here's the laptop with Ubuntu
- please install XP, as I have some apps at my job requiring windows, I just want them to WORK, I don't care about linux for now.

As I saw there's no hope into sticking him on linux, the steps I took:

First:
- put the XP disk in CD
- boot, select F8 (hey, remember F8 for licence agreement ? :)
- loading drivers, loading drivers, screen was the familiar blue, loading drivers, bang !!! the next familiar blue screen of death !!!

Of course, XP disk since 10 years ago did NOT had the HDD SATA drivers....

Then I took a deep breath .... and did this:

1. restarted in Ubuntu ... sic !!
2. installed virtual box
3. installed XP in that virtual (first install ...)
4. get nLite
5. wait some more fiddling with nLite and including the SATA drivers from Fujitsu provided disk (was good they provided it ...)
6. burn the mother f$%^ing new image on a DVD
7. reboot, wipe out everything, installing XP (second and final install)

These seven steps, how long did they took ? anyone ? don't bother to guess, they took roughly 5 hours That is because XP is taking per se one hour and half to install ... So I had two XP installs, and another copying done by nLite to include the new drivers.

Yes, 5 hours to install a software which you bought and cannot install directly. So, the view of my friend is correct: "hey I have this software, right ? I paid for it, I want it running on this brand new shinny laptop I have !! Why cannot be done ?"

Took me a while to explain that 10 years old technology does not have the new SATA drivers ... :)

However, this experience was fun, remembered some tricks, took me a while to remember nLite ...

OSGI / Eclipe / WAS 8

Someone challenged me today into asking: what is OSGI ?

That reminded me that I didn't read enough to better answer this question. For that reason, here's a list of links I make as well to myself and to others curious enough to learn further:

http://www.osgi.org/

http://eclipse.org/osgi/

http://www-01.ibm.com/software/webservers/appserv/was/features/


and the search for osgi keyword through the ibm's site, which recently got an redesing, which I kinda like:

http://www.ibm.com/search/csass/search?sn=mh&q=osgi&lang=en&cc=us&en=utf

happy reading !

Notes 8.5.3 tweaks - linux style

1. The now classic tweak for increasing the Notes underlying IBM JVM heap.

sudo vi /opt/ibm/lotus/notes/framework/rcp/deploy/jvm.properties

This is the location now.

update:
This first point needs an update. Seems that Lotus Client 8.5.3 is also incorporating eclipse helios, thus OSGI, thus new tweaking for performance (search saint google for eclipse helios performance tweaks)

Experimental, in above file I now run the following old/new stuff:

vmarg.Xmx=-Xmx1152m
vmarg.Xms=-Xms1152m
-Dosgi.bundlefile.limit=75
-XX:+UseParallelGC

Performance gain ? have no idea except that's now even snappier than before :)


2. I noticed an annoyance: when starting, client would not open my local replica mail db for about half minute, staying and doing .... something...
Turned out it was looking for the remote servers where I have the mail db replicas. Once I deleted the shortcuts from the Notes Workspace, it all regained the speed, directly opening the local replica and leave me alone to do my stuff in the mail db.

So, if you experience delays after you've entered the Notes client, you might as well remove some shortcuts from your workspace, to Domino servers not working or not available or something like this...

Notes 8.5.3 out for a week now, looking good

howdy, I'm happy to report upgrading to 8.5.3 on ubuntu 10.04 LTS went well. 8.5.3 CD5 packages needed to get uninstalled before the new one could have been applied using synaptic. Even the Notes client crashes I had when laptop switched connections in Network Manager seems to be gone now (hey, I'm on linux, using Notes, not Outlook on Windoze ! ). I actually got used to that BUG, but now it's FIXED !

So, do not fear, go for client upgrade.

I love to see this progress, since I'm now totally disconnected from the Domino/Lotus world. Well, except advices I give occasionally, and client upgrades for which I'm always looking forward :)

While I'm on this subject, one article draw my attention, in the same spirit of "not worth leaving Notes world", check this, also tweeted about it since I loved it: http://www.bleedyellow.com/blogs/dotdomino/entry/replacing_notes_here_s_how_it_really_goes_down4?lang=en

BrowserID: breakthrough for identity SSO on web ? this just might be ...

Via my RSS feeds, I stumbled on this. Whose description mentioned PKI ?! As in public/private key ?! WOW !

This might be the breakthrough I've been personally waiting for, when speaking of annoyance multiple accounts on web. I've been looking at openids past year or so, however PKI "embedded" in the current browser seems more like it. Let's keep an eye on it.

As always, adoption guides technology, so this new kid on the block needs to evolve, and be adopted by mainline, however on a first glance looking promising.