The Funny part of Programmers Life

Hi folks, (How many of yours should read that??) Today rather than talk about Linux I want to write about my own profession, If you don't guess it yet, I'm a software programmer who really enjoy my job, I hope you'll find funny this topic, please don't feel offended of mine, at least you'll agree with me :D. (Honestly)

When I was a kid I would love to speak some program language to did easy my childhood but were not PC at this time. Here an example what I mean. :-D

Who thinks a software programmer is a bored person or maybe you think "come on all programmers have been thinking like a world full of algorithm in their heads" for example:

The Algorithm to Have Sex

Step1 Do you wanna have Sex?

Step2 Validate question, If "yes" pass to Step 3 If not Try Again (Until YES - Loop)

Step3 Do we start to Kissing us?

Step 4 Validate question, If "yes" Delay! go to Step5 If not It's Ok just continue.

Step 5 Take off clothes (What is first?)... WHAT THE HECK!! JUST DO IT!!!! ha,ha,ha

Maybe you're thinking "Programmers look like stupid over the world", Come on guys isn't true! (almost) ha,ha,ha Just kidding :p.

Who doesn't agree with me that thanks to programmers our life it's a little easy at work, yes I know, yes you are right, I said OK, I know not always, OK sorry you are right too... You could think many of them should be fried in a big bowl but! many of us work really hard to bring you some facilities at work, although to be honest many of software users usually like to use software as an excuse to don't work saying to their chiefs "the stupid program doesn't want to do I want", but some times the big trouble it's outside the PC, you know what I mean :D

To be honest with you sometimes software doesn't work well but not so bad, and some times software works really well but users don't do it good. Please believe me I know because I saw it before. I think the thing is "Want to do something good" If we work in something (anything we do) we need to do our best. If we can do that our Environment should be a little different day by day. We can experience that people who see we are ready to do our job they should do that as well (I really hope not only in my dreams.) but getting back this topic, Software programmers we're people who love our job and always try to help systems users and obviously also our company who pays money for that. Please be patient with us, just sometimes we're under pressure we're not angry with you, thanks for you patient ;)

Next I found a joke on the net that I want to share with you, Enjoy it. Don't worry be happy.

A programmer is walking along a beach and finds a lamp. He rubs the lamp, and a genie appears. “I am the most powerful genie in the world. I can grant you any wish, but only one wish.”

The programmer pulls out a map, points to it and says, “I’d want peace in the Middle East.”

The genie responds, “Gee, I don’t know. Those people have been fighting for millenia. I can do just about anything, but this is likely beyond my limits.”

The programmer then says, “Well, I am a programmer, and my programs have lots of users. Please make all my users satisfied with my software and let them ask for sensible changes.”

At which point the genie responds, “Um, let me see that map again.”

GNOME in Slackware 12.2

Hi folks, today in "Talking about Linux" I wanna write about how to get GNOME (The name originally stood for GNU Network Object Model Environment) working under Slackware Linux.

Although nowadays it has been happening to me that some people who come to my desktop and watch my Slack box working with GNOME on it, the first thing on their minds is "Hey Is it Ubuntu?" I think to myself at least people is starting to play with Linux, but please don't confuse these things, Ubuntu it's a Linux distribution based on Debian (another Linux flavor called with this name by his creator Ian concatenating the name of his girlfriend at this time Debora who now she's his wife plus his own name) OK getting back our topic Ubuntu uses GNOME as Desktop Environment GUI (Graphics User Interface) but still it's using the Linux kernel that is an operating system. Therefore Kubuntu it's use the Ubuntu Linux Kernel + KDE, Xubuntu it's the same Ubuntu Linux Kernel + XFCE Environment Desktop. Said that I want to come back to show how to use Gnome with Slackware.

First at all I want to give thanks to GNOME SlackBuild (GSB) team (GSB a GNOME distribution for Slackware Linux ) who brings us this beautiful and useful Desktop Environment to use in our Slack Boxes. To me it's an excellent Gnome Environment to work, compared with another Linux distributions that have it by default. I can say it's an stable Desktop Environment. I installed twice before, first in my home notebook a Toshiba Satellite S2326 and a Desktop PC at work, it's an IBM ThinkCentre Pentium dual core inside.

GSB has an important warning before you start to do anything: NOTE: There is a fairly serious bug in Slackware 12.2's X.Org Server package. If you find that when you are running a GNOME desktop your X process is spiked at 100%, then you will need to use the xorg-server package supplied by GSB. It is found in the extra/ directory. Please see our Xorg Package README. In my case I experienced this trouble with my notebook which uses an ATI Xpress 200 Graphics Card. This bug isn't so bad but your processor will work at 100% so you will not work fine, but it can be fixed so easy, just go to extra/ directory (GSB 2.26) and download xorg files from there to install them with installpkg tool. In case you aren't using the default Slackware Xorg driver for your ATI, it will work fine after you restart your PC when you finnished GSB Install process, I mean using the propietary drivers that now I'm using as well.

NOTE: Please visit GSB web page if you want to ask for specific information or you want to read about this project or If you just wanted to give thanks. and don't forget I'm writing that as a guide without any warranty, you use that as your own risk.

To begin installation process I decided to do it with the slapt-get binary package. This one is the management tool used by GSB, also Slapt-get tries to emulate Debian's apt-get as closely as possible as its describe in its own web page.

Information below has been taken from GSB a GNOME distribution for Slackware Linux

slapt-get requirements: gpgme curl pkgtools

Download slapt-get for Slackware v12.2 from: <http://www.slackware.org.uk/gsb/gsb-2.26/gsb/packages/tools/slapt-get0.10.1a-i486-1gsb.tgz>.

After downloading the slapt-get binary package, you can install it
with:
$ installpkg slapt-get-0.10.1a-i486-1gsb.tgz

Although GSB recommends you will need to modify the/etc/slapt-get/slapt-getrc file to point to local mirrors of both a Slackware 12.2 mirror as well as a GNOME SlackBuild mirror, it's really not necessary because this file has configured the WORKINGDIR, EXCLUDE, SOURCE Environment variables by default, that works fine, in the opposite case you wanted to do you should edit it.

To complain with install process, GSB also recommends to do a required update, just typing:

$ slapt-get --upgrade

*Required Slackware Package Replacements for GNOME 2.26.3*

alsa-lib: ( > 1.0.19 required by pulseaudio 0.9.15, libcanberra, and
gnome-control-center)
bluez: ( > 4.2 bluez replaces bluez-utils/libs, required for gvfs
support for Bluetooth, and other GNOME 2.26 bluetooth userspace
applications)
cairo: ( > 1.8 required by Evince 2.26)
glib2: ( > 2.20 required by libgnome 2.26, gvfs 1.2.2,
nautilus 2.26, etc.)
gtk+2: ( > 2.16 required by libgnome 2.26, gvfs 1.2.2,
gnome-panel 2.26.0, etc.)
libwnck: ( > 2.26 required by Metacity 2.26, and GNOME 2.26)
pango ( > 1.24 required by newer cairo and gtk versions.)
poppler: ( > 0.10 required by newer cairo, as well as Evince 2.26)

The really good part of that is: GNOME SlackBuild (GSB as well) is designed to replace as few Slackware packages as possible, also they add to it's information "it is not possible to free ourselves wholly from replacing some packages, here are three packages that are optional and replace official Slackware packages, but their replacement are only necessary for added functionality, or for certain GNOME applications. Their replacement is recommended, but not required if you do not plan to use certain applications" Packages are: mozilla-firefox, compiz-fusion, libgsf. GSB in its web page explain what's the difference between its own packages against original slack packages.

GSB also gives some options for use with slapt-get
--upgrade
Use this to upgrade all of your currently installed packages.
--search
This is used to locate packages of interest by the package name, disk set, or version. This supports POSIX and extended regular expressions.
--install
Used to install a specified package. If the package is already installed it will be upgraded.
--list
This is used to see all the packages available from the package sources you specified inside the slapt-getrc configuration file.
--clean
This is used to remove all downloaded packages from the local cache.
--autoclean
This is used to remove packages from local cache that are no longer available on the package sources specified in the slapt-getrc file.

For a full list of available options, please consult the slapt-get manual

GSB also recommends to read the Post-Installation and Configuration Notes after you start the Installation process. But GSB specify that there are a few minor changes users may wish to make in order to get the best possible GSB system running so don't afraid if you read later.

To install a basic GNOME SlackBuild GNOME Desktop, just type:

$ slapt-get --install gsb-desktop

But I'm sure you would like to get a full installation to get the Power of GNOME, to do that run:

$ slapt-get --install gsb-complete

This operation will take a long time to complete, above all if you have a short bandwidth internet connection. When it finished to install GSB recommends that is strongly necessary that you reboot your system. But after to do that I recommend you to do some tricks to get a good benefit at the first view of your GNOME, although of course you can do that later.

Into /etc/X11/xinit by default Slackware has a link of xinitrc to xinitrc.kde, as you know the default Slackware's Session Manager is GDM (if you don't believe me check your /etc/rc.d/rc.4) so it indicates next time when you start your Slack Box GDM will be your default Session Manager as well, to me of course it's ok, but if itsn't for you then proceed to change it. So if you decide to work with GDM please go to /etc/X11/xinit and delete the link xinitrc then make a new one to xinitrc.gnome.

$ ls xinitrc -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 516 2008-10-25 20:03 xinitrc -> xinitrc.kde $ rm xinitrc $ ln -s xinitrc.gnome xinitrc $ ls xinitrc $ lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 2009-07-07 07:25 xinitrc -> xinitrc.gnome

please note that xinitrc.gnome which is the X startup script for a gnome-session with Metacity as the default window manager. At this point you will have a good start with Gnome this time. Also if you want to test or just use NetworkManager instead the default
rc.inet1 for Slackware we need to a little more (don't be afraid, it's easy ;) ).

First at all we need to go to /etc/rc.d and take off execution permissions to rc.inet1 and give them to rc.networkmanager to use only NetworkManager, note that if you use NewtworkManager and you are using wireless connection you will need to configure it when NM found internet signals available to you it means it'll not work anymore with rc.wireless.conf and wpa_supplicant.conf, also as GSB says NetworkManager and the applet install a few configuration files into the dbus system messaging system, and this daemon will need to be restarted, please do as shown below

$ ./rc.messagebus restart
$ chmod -x rc.inet1 $ chmod 755 rc.networkmanager
$ ./rc.networkmanager start

It's so important to take note that KDE (and others Desktop Environment that have not support to NetworkManager) will not have internet connection unless you'll get to work with KNetworkManager, but if not and you plan to use KDE doesn't change that or just do above in reverse mode to get to work rc.inet1 again.

If you have some troubles with PulseAudio I will show you how to fix it in next post ;) please be patient.

I really hope you can find useful this post, and you can get envolved to enjoy working with Linux, above all Slackware ;).

Que viva el pingüino!

Compiling Tora from Sources

Hi folks (Still I'm not sure if anyone reads me) today in talk about Linux I'm going to show you how to compile Tora mostly focused in Slackware 12.2 but also for Ubuntu 9.04 (Ubuntu as well)

Tora it's a really good tool for Developers and Administrators who work with Oracle under Linux. To start we need to download sources from here http://sourceforge.net I'm focusing in Tora 1.3.23 and previous versions, I'm testing version 2.0 without success yet.

PRE-REQUISITES
When I compile from sources I usually do that as Super User in a terminal, so for Slackware use
# su
Password:
if you are using Ubuntu use "sudo -i" to simulate initial login as super user
# sudo -i
[sudo] password for UR-USER:

For slackers we need to install QSCintilla so you should install 1.6 or 1.7 version you can download source file from http://ftp.aarnet.edu.au, uncompress it as shown below
# tar -xzvf qscintilla_1.7.1.orig.tar.gz
# cd QScintilla-1.71-gpl-1.7.1
# cd qt
# qmake qscintilla.pro
# make
# make install

To install in Ubuntu just type:
#apt-get install libqscintilla7 libqscintilla-dev
or install those files using Synaptic.

Before you do something in Ubuntu it's necessary to get basic compilers and QT development tools
# apt-get install build-essential qt3-dev-tools

In addition just for Ubuntu you should not forget to install gcc cpp and g++ packages version 4.2. if you don't do that you'll have a headache trying to compile. The good think is both 4.3 and 4.2 can be together without affect your system
# apt-get install gcc-4.2 gcc-4.2-base cpp-4.2 g++-4.2

After installing those packages you need to make a link between files in order to compile tora as shown below
# cd /usr/bin
# ln -s gcc-4.2 gcc
# ln -s cpp-4.2 cpp
# ln -s g++-4.2 g++

COMPILING TORA
In this case I'm going to compile Tora without KDE, also indicating I'm going to work with Oracle Instant Client and Installing it under /usr, so go ahead

Take your Tora source file and uncompress it
# tar -xjvf tora-1-3-end-of-life.tar.bz2
# cd tora-1-3-end-of-life
# ./configure --prefix=/usr --with-oracle=$ORACLE_HOME --with-oci-version=10G --with-instant-client --without-rpath --disable-new-check --with-qt-dir=/usr/lib/qt --without-kde --with-oracle-includes=/usr/lib/instantclient_11_1/sdk/include --with-oracle-libraries=$ORACLE_HOME --enable-libsuffix=
# make
# make install

Compile job it's done. To try your new Database administration and developer tool, open a terminal and type:
# tora

And Voilá you should be getting to work in Tora GUI



































COMMENTS:
While you are compiling sources if you get an error like that:
../ext/loki/loki-0.1.6/src/SmallObj.cpp:296: error: ‘UCHAR_MAX’ was not declared in this scope
../ext/loki/loki-0.1.6/src/SmallObj.cpp: In member function ‘bool Loki::Chunk::IsCorrupt(unsigned char, size_t, bool) const’:
../ext/loki/loki-0.1.6/src/SmallObj.cpp:428: error: ‘UCHAR_MAX’ was not declared in this scope
../ext/loki/loki-0.1.6/src/SmallObj.cpp:428: error: template argument 1 is invalid
../ext/loki/loki-0.1.6/src/SmallObj.cpp:428: error: invalid type in declaration before ‘;’ token
../ext/loki/loki-0.1.6/src/SmallObj.cpp:460: error: request for member ‘set’ in ‘foundBlocks’, which is of non-class type ‘int’
../ext/loki/loki-0.1.6/src/SmallObj.cpp:475: error: request for member ‘test’ in ‘foundBlocks’, which is of non-class type ‘int’
../ext/loki/loki-0.1.6/src/SmallObj.cpp:486: error: request for member ‘count’ in ‘foundBlocks’, which is of non-class type ‘int’
../ext/loki/loki-0.1.6/src/SmallObj.cpp: In member function ‘bool Loki::Chunk::IsBlockAvailable(void*, unsigned char, size_t) const’:
../ext/loki/loki-0.1.6/src/SmallObj.cpp:522: error: ‘UCHAR_MAX’ was not declared in this scope
../ext/loki/loki-0.1.6/src/SmallObj.cpp:522: error: template argument 1 is invalid
../ext/loki/loki-0.1.6/src/SmallObj.cpp:522: error: invalid type in declaration before ‘;’ token
../ext/loki/loki-0.1.6/src/SmallObj.cpp:527: error: request for member ‘set’ in ‘foundBlocks’, which is of non-class type ‘int’
../ext/loki/loki-0.1.6/src/SmallObj.cpp:536: error: request for member ‘test’ in ‘foundBlocks’, which is of non-class type ‘int’
make[3]: *** [tora-SmallObj.o] Error 1
make[3]: Leaving directory `/mnt/data/linux/src/tora/tora-1-3-end-of-life/src'
make[2]: *** [all] Error 2
make[2]: Leaving directory `/mnt/data/linux/src/tora/tora-1-3-end-of-life/src'
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/mnt/data/linux/src/tora/tora-1-3-end-of-life'
make: *** [all] Error 2

It usually happens thanks to your compilers version, you should read prerequisites again step by step to fix that.

Installing Oracle Instant Client 11 under LInux

Hi folks, in Talk about Linux today I'm going to show you how to Install Oracle Instant Client version 11.1.0.6.0, I really hope you'll be able to find this topic useful , this comment is focused above all to Install it in Slackware 12.2 but I'll try to describe in simple manner how to bring it to work in Fedora 11 and Ubuntu 9.04. Ok go ahead.

INSTALLING
First at all download all necessary files from oracle site relating to Instant Client, if you are interested in connect to the Database using jdbc or just type in sqlplus or you're planning to get to work Tora, you must be get all files: basic.zip, jdbc.zip, odbc.zip, sdk.zip, sqlplus.zip and tools.zip

Before you start the process I advise to you to work as root in a terminal, in case you're using Ubuntu just type: sudo -i to simulate initial login and it will work as su. So unzip every one using gzip or GUI Tool of your choice, all content should be inside the same folder ex. instantclient_11_1. Move the folder into /usr/lib ex. /usr/lib/instantclient_11_1 as root owner of course.

make a link of libclntsh.so.11.1 to libclntsh.so and libocci.so.11.1 to libocci.so inside Oracle Client directory as shown bellow
instantclient_11_1# ln -s libclntsh.so.11.1 libclntsh.so
instantclient_11_1# ln -s libocci.so.11.1 libocci.so

SETTING UP
Last part was so easy to do, now we're going to some tricks to setting up Client to getting to work
Slackware 12.2 edit /etc/profile file
Ubuntu 9.04 (Ubuntu as well) edit /etc/bash.bashrc and /etc/profile
put as you need next enviroment Variables:
export ORACLE_BASE="/usr/lib/instantclient_11_1"
export ORACLE_HOME="${ORACLE_BASE}"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH="${LD_LIBRARY_PATH}:${ORACLE_BASE}"
export NLS_DATE_FORMAT="YYYYMMDD"
export NLS_LANG=SPANISH_AMERICA.WE8ISO8859P1
export TNS_ADMIN=/etc/oracle/
export SQLPATH="${ORACLE_BASE}"

As you see we difined TNS_ADMIN=/etc/oracle, it means we need to creat a directory under /etc called oracle, here we need to put our setting files sqlnet.ora and tnsnames.ora, it's so important you create both files if you want to get connected to an external Database
sqlnet.ora should contains this one
NAMES.DEFAULT_DOMAIN = your-domain

NAMES.DIRECTORY_PATH= (TNSNAMES, ONAMES, HOSTNAME)

and tnsnames.ora should contains someting like that:
Database_Name.YOUR-DOMAIN =
(DESCRIPTION =
(ADDRESS_LIST =
(ADDRESS = (PROTOCOL = TCP)(HOST = YOUR-HOST)(PORT = 1521))
)
(CONNECT_DATA =
(SID = DB-SID)
)
)

To have access to SQLPLUS from anywhere you must make a link tu /usr/bin
ln -s /lib/instantclient_11_1/sqlplus /usr/bin/sqlplus

In Ubuntu it's so common when you try to run sqlplus to get the next error:
sqlplus: error while loading shared libraries: libsqlplus.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
Just you need to Set Up correctly LD_LIBRARY_PATH, please read the setting up block above.

TESTING
to test your Oracle Client connection you can use sqlplus, if its ask for password Oracle Client has been installed correctly, if you get some error please check step by step again.

$ sqlplus

SQL*Plus: Release 11.1.0.6.0 - Production on Mar Jul 21 18:22:27 2009

Copyright (c) 1982, 2007, Oracle. All rights reserved.

Introduzca el nombre de usuario:

I really hope this topic to be helpfully for you. See you soon

Enjoy the Life, Get the Slack! to the mack.