Escape from boredom

Windows/Java/Language settings and more for sure working against each other, creating chaos

Would prefer English only if you ask me

Had an issue just now trying to start an application server running on Windows 2008. Got error messages in SystemOut such as

CWXRS0024E: Failed to write out object:
CWRLS0008E: Recovery log is being marked as failed.
CWRLS0009E: Details of recovery log failure ... (Access is denied)

In addition I also experienced that the NodeAgent would not start without any obvious reason, but if I deleted all log files it started.

Turned out to be caused by me not having started the command window with the “Run as Administrator”-option. I was allowed to create files, therefore the nodeagent started, but not allowed to change existing files, therefore the nodeagent did not start until I had deleted them. The app servers did try to write to other files as well, therefore it did not do the trick for them just to delete their log files.

Even though it is fun being on Facebook, it has its downsides…so I share this for the simple reason that I want to spread the word.

*VERY IMPORTANT NEWS!* Facebooks legal department have informed me, the developer of the F.B. P u r i t y browser extension, that I am *banned* from using Facebook. This effectively means I will no longer be able to work on the F.B. Purity project. I am assuming the F.B. Purity fan page will also be shutdown when they commence the ban. They have not said when the ban will start, but it could happen at any time.

They say the reasons for the ban are:
“Facebook’s terms specifically prohibit interference with the way Facebook is rendered to its users” and that the extension doesnt connect via their “API”, which they say is the approved method for interacting with Facebook’s services.

F.B. Purity does not directly access facebook’s services anyway, it is a browser extension, and by definition, it “extends” the browsers functionality, therefore it is actually the web browser itself that is accessing Facebook, and web browsers do not need an API key or license to access Facebook’s services, as Facebook is designed to run in a web browser.

If a Facebook user chooses to download and use the F.B. Purity extension, it is entirely their own choice, I am not forcing them to download it and use it. Once they’ve installed it, F.B Purity gives the user options for customizing their own view of Facebook, which they can enable or disable to their own liking. If Facebook gave their users options to turn off the most annoying features of their user interface, then a product like F.B. Purity would not be necessary at all. The success and popularity of the extension, is a sure fire sign that something is not right with Facebooks design in the first place.

Perhaps instead of punishing me by disabling my account, and initiating legal proceedings against me, they should instead take heed of the discontent of the Facebook users, and offer them a browsing experience that won’t get them searching out third party methods for switching off the sites most hated and annoying features.

They are also trying to go back on the agreement that i could name my product “Fluff Busting Purity aka F.B. P u r i t y” which was agreed upon with Facebook’s Domain Manager, the last time they threatened me with legal action. They are now saying I need to stop using FB in the name of the product and in the domain name.

For a start, Facebook do not have a worldwide claim on the 2 consecutive letters FB. There are over 64 different trademarks that have the consecutive letters FB in them that are not owned by Facebook, so how can they claim total rights to those two letters? And to try and claim that “F.B” (short for Fluff Busting) is violating their trademark, is rubbish as in trademark terms it is completely distinct from “FB”.

Facebook should be thanking me for helping them to retain their users, who if they had not found this extension would have abandoned the site a long time ago.

In order to stay up to date on future FBP news, after they have banned me, you can:

1. Keep an eye on the F.B. Purity website’s news page: http://tiny-url.org/fbpnews
2. Subscribe to the F.B. Purity News mailing list: http://is.gd/fbpmail
3. Follow F.B. Purity on Twitter: http://twitter.com/fbpurity
4. Add F.B. Purity on Google+: http://gplus.to/fbpurity

It looks like this could be the end of the road for F.B. Purity, well at least Facebook hopes it is…

What do you think I should do? Keep up the fight, or let the *expletives deleted* win?

Please help spread the word about this news, Facebook should not be allowed to get away with this. Tweet it, Write a post on fb or g+ /write a blog post about it, repost, share, like comment, etc

In case this post is deleted by Facebook, it can also be accessed at http://tiny-url.org/fbpbanned

Now running latest version, 4.1.6 of B2Evolution, easy as always to keep up to date with the latest features and security patches.

Decided to create a script based on Jython v 2.1 (WebSphere comes with that version) that finds all third party jar-files packed in a EAR-file. When found I also needed to read the MANIFEST.MF-file to figure out the version of the jar. To accomplish this I needed to execute jar.exe to be able to extract the manifest file, when that is done I can read the line implementation-version in the file.

First, import the needed Java-classes

import java.lang.ProcessBuilder as ProcessBuilder
import java.lang.Process as Process

Then in the script

pb = ProcessBuilder(['cmd.exe', '/C', 'd:/WebSphere/AppServer/java/bin/jar.exe','xvf', 'd:/path/lib', 'META-INF/MANIFEST.MF']);
pb.directory(io.File('d:/temp'))
process = pb.start()
process.waitFor()
process.destroy()

Raised a question at Superuser.com which got answered in just a few seconds, see http://superuser.com/questions/488367/excel-2007-conditional-formatting-compare-3-columns-with-text-find-unique-v

The magic was achieved by using Conditional Formatting and adding a formula =COUNTIFS($A:$C;A1)<=2. Still having some issues, seems to be caused by me having imported the text from csv-files. Might be that if all had been typed in it would have worked without errors. Maybe need a newer version of Excel…

Needed to automate rotation of the IBM WebSphere HTTP Server plugin log-file, and in addition I needed to make sure that all processes of rotatelogs.exe have been stopped. This due to a bug in Apache for Windows, at least old versions, where the rotatelogs.exe processes does not end while restarting Apache. In addtion I wanted to make the script working for both our IBM HTTP Server v 6.1 and 7.0 servers. Could off course just edit the script based on which server, but hey…coming from a Linux environment and using bash-scripting, I wanted to test out what could be done on Windows.

Must admit that I hate the GOTO’s and also I find the scripting language itself a pain. I realize that I need to dive into the Powershell, see this table on Wikipedia showing what I really love – commands equal to Unix/Linux, yeah man!!!

Anyhow, here is the script I have created.

:: See https://apps.klp.no/confluence/display/FILENET/Administration+-+IBM+HTTP+Server+%28Apache%29#Administration-IBMHTTPServer%28Apache%29-Logrotation
ECHO off
:: Get the hostname of server as a variable
:: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/998366/how-to-store-the-hostname-in-a-variable-in-a-bat-file
FOR /F "usebackq" %%i IN (`hostname`) DO SET _HOSTNAME_=%%i

:: ***************************
:: Stop the IBM HTTP Server 
:: ***************************
:: Which version is installed
:: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9445223/how-to-check-in-windows-xp-if-the-service-is-not-installed-using-batch-file
sc query IBMHTTPServer7.0  | find "IBMHTTPServer7.0" >nul
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO STOP_AS_61SERVICE
ECHO Stopping service named IBMHTTPServer7.0
sc stop IBMHTTPServer7.0 >nul
GOTO END_OF_STOP
:STOP_AS_61SERVICE
:: Is version 6.1 installed?
ECHO Did not find IBMHTTPServer7.0 service, trying IBMHTTPServer6.1 
sc query IBMHTTPServer6.1  | find "IBMHTTPServer6.1" >nul
ECHO Stopping service named IBMHTTPServer6.1
sc stop IBMHTTPServer6.1 
GOTO END_OF_STOP
:NO_WEB_SERVICE
ECHO Not able to find the IBM HTTP Service
GOTO TotalFailure
:END_OF_STOP

:: Sleep for 30 seconds
:: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4317020/windows-batch-sleep
ECHO 
ECHO Sleep for 30 seconds ....
ping -n 30 127.0.0.1 >nul


:: ***************************************
:: Kill all instances of rotatelogs.exe
:: ***************************************
ECHO Kill all pending rotatelogs.exe processes
taskkill /F /IM rotatelogs.exe 2>nul

:: ***************************************
:: Rotate the http_plugin.log
:: ***************************************
cd D:\HTTPServer\Plugins\logs\ 2>nul
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO IBM_HTTP_61_FOLDER
GOTO Rename
:IBM_HTTP_61_FOLDER
ECHO cd D:\HTTPServer61\Plugins\logs\
cd D:\HTTPServer61\Plugins\logs\
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO TotalFailure

:Rename

for /f "tokens=5 delims=\" %%I in ('dir /S /B http_plugin.log') do for %%A in (%%~I) do (
	ECHO Name of folder where http_plugin.log is found: %%A
	cd %%A
	ren http_plugin.log http_plugin-%date:~0%.log
	IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO RENFAIL
	ECHO File has been renamed to http_plugin-%date:~0%.log
	cd ..
)
GOTO RENAME_END
:RENFAIL
ECHO Failed to rename http_plugin.log, exit
GOTO TotalFailure
:RENAME_END

:: ****************************
:: Start the http-server
:: ****************************
:: Is version 7 installed?
sc query IBMHTTPServer7.0  | find "IBMHTTPServer7.0" >nul
IF ERRORLEVEL 1 GOTO START_AS_61SERVICE
ECHO Starting service named IBMHTTPServer7.0
sc start IBMHTTPServer7.0
GOTO END_OF_START
:START_AS_61SERVICE
:: Is version 6.1 installed?
:: If 6.1 is not installed, the stop will got to totalfailuere
ECHO Did not find IBMHTTPServer7.0 service, trying IBMHTTPServer6.1 
sc query IBMHTTPServer6.1  | find "IBMHTTPServer6.1" >nul
ECHO Starting service named IBMHTTPServer6.1
sc start IBMHTTPServer6.1 
:END_OF_START
:: Return to current directory
:: http://weblogs.asp.net/whaggard/archive/2005/01/28/get-directory-path-of-an-executing-batch-file.aspx
cd /d %~dp0
exit /b

:TotalFailure
:: Return errorcode
:: http://www.robvanderwoude.com/errorlevel.php
cd /d %~dp0
ECHO Failed, have to exit
ECHO 1 | CHOICE /C:1234567890 /N

The command to use is sc. First you need to know that every service has a display name and a service name. I banged my head into the wall until I realized that I could just type sc query to list all. Actually I typed sc query >> result.txt
Then I found the real name of the IBM HTTP Server 6.1-service and I could type

D:\HTTPServer61\bin>sc query IBMHTTPServer6.1
SERVICE_NAME: IBMHTTPServer6.1
        TYPE               : 10  WIN32_OWN_PROCESS
        STATE              : 4  RUNNING
                                (STOPPABLE, NOT_PAUSABLE, IGNORES_SHUTDOWN))
        WIN32_EXIT_CODE    : 0  (0x0)
        SERVICE_EXIT_CODE  : 0  (0x0)
        CHECKPOINT         : 0x0
        WAIT_HINT          : 0x0

Yet again upgraded to latest version, now running 4.1.5b, easy to do, took me about 10 minutes including download of the changed files and uploading them to the server. http://b2evolution.net/ rocks!

My blog is yet again up and running after about two days of downtime. The issue has been related to my ISP having moved my domain to another server. This caused http://hellem.org to reply with another ip than http://www.hellem.org. In addition the database server had been moved so I had to update the configuration files to the blog.

But, now back again!