Foxmarks appears to work fine with the beta versions used by Fedora and Ubuntu, and I’ve been using a FF3-compatible version with Firefox 2 for a while.

There are a few things that have irritated me so far with FF3:

• Folders on the Bookmarks Toolbar have an arrow next to them:
  
  
  
  This makes the toolbar much wider than it needs to be, so some of my folders drop off the right hand side. Fortunately, the arrows can easily be turned off.
• Bookmark separators can’t have names any more. It doesn’t look like this will be fixed in the near future, according to this bug.

Other than that, FF3 seems great. Gmail is noticeably quicker, and I like the AwesomeBar!

For example, on my laptop, I have Windows on /dev/sda2, Fedora 8 on /dev/sda5 and Debian 4.0 (etch) on /dev/sda7. Having installed them in that order, I ended up with Debian’s grub menu, allowing me to boot into Debian or Windows.

It’s tempting to copy all the Fedora grub entries into Debian’s grub menu file to regain access to Fedora, but if the Fedora kernel gets updated, you have to manually update the Debian grub menu file to include the new Fedora entries. Fortunately, there is a better way: have two grub installations, and allow them to chainload each other.

The idea is to install each distribution’s grub into the boot record of its own partition, in addition to also having grub installed in the MBR (this is the one that you see first when the machine is switched on). The reconfiguration can all be done by booting into one distribution (because you can access the other distribution’s grub menu file by mounting its partition from the distribution you boot into). I booted into Debian and setup Fedora first:

grub> root (hd0,4)
 Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

grub> setup (hd0,4)
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
 Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0,4)"... failed (this is not fatal)
 Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0,4)"... failed (this is not fatal)
 Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0,4) /boot/grub/stage2 p /boot/grub/grub.conf "... succeeded
Done.

Then Debian:

grub> root (hd0,6)
 Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

grub> setup (hd0,6)
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
 Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0,6)"... failed (this is not fatal)
 Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0,6)"... failed (this is not fatal)
 Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0,6) /boot/grub/stage2 p /boot/grub/grub.conf "... succeeded
Done.

If you want to change the “main” grub menu (the one that comes up when you first switch on the machine), you can do that too. Notice that this time grub gets installed to the MBR due to the (hd0):

grub> root (hd0,4)
 Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

grub> setup (hd0)
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage2" exists... yes
 Checking if "/boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5" exists... yes
 Running "embed /boot/grub/e2fs_stage1_5 (hd0)"...  16 sectors are embedded.
succeeded
 Running "install /boot/grub/stage1 (hd0) (hd0)1+16 p (hd0,4)/boot/grub/stage2 /boot/grub/grub.conf"... succeeded
Done.

Now you need to add the appropriate entries to each distribution’s grub menu file. For Fedora edit /boot/grub/grub.conf:

title Debian grub
    root (hd0,6)
    chainloader +1

For Debian, edit /boot/grub/menu.lst:

title           Fedora grub
root            (hd0,4)
chainloader     +1

Now I get a “Debian grub” option in the Fedora grub menu, and a “Fedora grub” option in the Debian grub menu. Whenever I update either distribution, any new grub entries are added to the appropriate grub menu and I don’t need to tinker with the menu files.

I’ve done this for Fedora 8. I have a local Fedora repository on my Fedora 7 gateway. You need a working DHCP server, which I won’t cover here. To get the network boot working I did this:

1. install tftp-server. Ensure it’s enabled (chkconfig tftp-server on).
2. install syslinux. Copy /usr/lib/syslinux/pxelinux.0 into /tftpboot.
3. create the directory /tftpboot/fedora8 and copy the contents of Fedora/i386/os/images/pxeboot into it.
4. create the directory /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg and put this default file in that directory.
5. add the following options to your dhcpd.conf (change 111.222.333.444 to your server’s IP address):

   next-server 111.222.333.444;
   filename "pxelinux.0";
   

If you boot the client machine, it should automatically boot the Fedora installer.

Install Cygwin

Firstly install Cygwin. When asked for the Download Site, enter http://prc-tools.sourceforge.net/install and click “Add”. Now choose this new site, and also choose a mirror close to you (Ctrl-click to select multiple sites in the list).

I find it easier to click the “View” button to get the “Full” listing of packages - a flat list, ordered alphabetically by package name. In addition to the packages that are installed by default, you will also need:

• gcc-g++
• make
• pilrc
• prc-tools
• prc-tools-arm

Palm SDK

I’ve always used a slightly older copy of the SDK, palmos-sdk-5.0r3-1.tar.gz. I’m not sure if this file is still available. An SDK is still available from Palm Developer Network, but I don’t think pssh can be built with it - not without modifying the code, anyway.

Create a directory in the Cygwin root called PalmDev, and unpack the SDK in there (which will create a directory called sdk-5r3).

Now you need to type palmdev-prep to make the dev tools find the SDK:

Checking SDKs in /PalmDev
  sdk-5r3       headers in 'include', libraries in 'lib'

When GCC is given no -palmos options, SDK '5r3' will be used by default

Writing SDK details to configuration files...
...done

Build pssh

Next you need to download:

• the pssh source code, from http://www.sealiesoftware.com/pssh/
• the peal source code, from http://www.sealiesoftware.com/peal/
• libc.a and libgcc.a

Unpack the two zip files somewhere. You’ll have two directories, pssh-source-2005_06_23 and peal-2005_4_14. Put the two .a files in the same directory.

pssh expects peal to be in a directory called peal, so rename peal-2005_4_14 to peal.

Go into peal/postlink, and build peal-postlink by typing make.

Now go into the pssh-source-2005_06_23 directory and build pssh by typing make. This should create pssh.prc, the Palm application.

Don’t worry about the final error:

open pssh.prc
make: open: Command not found
make: [install] Error 127 (ignored)

As long as you have pssh.prc, the build was successful.

84   *Warning: Pre-queue content-filter connection overload

Worrying that I might be losing mail, I looked at the logwatch script for postfix in /usr/share/logwatch/scripts/services/postfix, and discovered that this message refers to lost connections from clients whose IP addresses are unknown - in other words, entries in the postfix log that look like this:

Aug 24 19:44:17 gateway postfix/smtpd[29089]: lost connection after CONNECT from unknown[unknown]


This happens when postfix doesn’t know the IP address of the client, probably because the client is “disconnecting” before the connection to postfix is properly established.

I noticed this in the logs:

May 22 20:32:37 penguin kernel: [17181317.116000] portmap: server localhost not responding, timed out
May 22 20:32:37 penguin kernel: [17181317.116000] RPC: failed to contact portmap (errno -5).
May 22 20:33:12 penguin kernel: [17181352.116000] portmap: server localhost not responding, timed out
May 22 20:33:12 penguin kernel: [17181352.116000] RPC: failed to contact portmap (errno -5).
May 22 20:33:47 penguin kernel: [17181387.116000] portmap: server localhost not responding, timed out
May 22 20:33:47 penguin kernel: [17181387.116000] RPC: failed to contact portmap (errno -5).

So the obvious solution…

sudo apt-get install portmap

Now NFS mounts take a fraction of a second.

The three utilities are:

1. Utils Installer 1 SonyUtils DLL
2. Utils Installer 2 Sony Shared Library (this one needs a reboot)
3. Utils Installer VAIO Event Service

The “VAIO Event Service” needs to be running for the keys to work.

To do this, override the 4-argument onSubmit method like this:

protected ModelAndView onSubmit(HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response, Object command, BindException errors) throws Exception {
    ModelAndView mav = onSubmit(command, errors);
    Map refData = referenceData(request, command, errors);
    mav.getModel().putAll(refData);
    return mav;
}

If you’ve only implemented the 1-argument referenceData method, don’t worry; the default 3-argument referenceData just delegates to the 1-argument method, so your implementation will be called.

If you’re interested, you can see the code for SimpleFormController.

The “FOREIGN KEY Constraints” section of the MySQL manual has this to say about constraint names:

If the CONSTRAINT symbol clause is given, the symbol value must be unique in the database. If the clause is not given, InnoDB creates the name automatically.

This isn’t completely accurate. Internally, InnoDB stores foreign key constraint names as case-insensitive, with the database name prepended. So although onedatabase.b_ibfk_1 is treated as different to anotherdatabase.b_ibfk_1, Photos.b_ibfk_1 and photos.b_ibfk_1 are treated as the same.

So if database names that only differ in case are to be avoided, why might this be a problem? Well, if you want to follow the advice in the MySQL manual, and use lower_case_table_names = 1, you need to change all database names to lower case before using the new setting.

Say you have this database:

CREATE DATABASE Photos;
USE Photos;
CREATE TABLE a (one INT PRIMARY KEY) TYPE=InnoDB;
CREATE TABLE b (one INT PRIMARY KEY, FOREIGN KEY (one) REFERENCES a(one)) TYPE=InnoDB;


Notice the constraint on table b. Now you want to change the database name to photos, so you create a new database with that name, dump the tables and data from the old database with mysqldump, and then try to import them into the new database. You’ll get this error:

ERROR 1005 (HY000) at line 42: Can't create table './photos/b.frm' (errno: 121)

This slightly cryptic message is telling you that table b can’t be created in database photos - because the constraint name you’re trying to use in photos (lower case) is already used in Photos (upper case). The full details of the error can be seen in the output from SHOW INNODB STATUS:


070312 21:31:27 Error in foreign key constraint creation for table `photos/b`.
A foreign key constraint of name `photos/ba_ibfk_1`
already exists. (Note that internally InnoDB adds 'databasename/'
in front of the user-defined constraint name).
Note that InnoDB's FOREIGN KEY system tables store
constraint names as case-insensitive, with the
MySQL standard latin1_swedish_ci collation. If you
create tables or databases whose names differ only in
the character case, then collisions in constraint
names can occur. Workaround: name your constraints
explicitly with unique names.


There are a number of ways to get around this:

• drop the old database before importing into the new one;
• remove the constraints from the old database before importing into the new one;
• manually change the constraint names in the export file before running the import.

Since MySQL 5.0 doesn’t allow a database to be renamed, it’s worth bearing this is in mind if you’re going through the mysqldump and import procedure to rename a database, where the old and new database names differ only in their case.

In the meantime, you can either find an unofficial build, or build MySQL yourself. I decided to try and build it myself using the free edition of Visual C++.

The MySQL Reference Manual contains instructions for building from source on Windows. All you need is Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition, and the Platform SDK. Don’t use the links in the MySQL instructions; just follow steps 1 to 4 on this page: Using Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition with the Microsoft Platform SDK.

Now just follow the instructions for building using VC++, bearing in mind the following:

• although the instructions refer to Visual Studio 7.1, they also apply to Visual C++ 2005 Express Edition;
• when opening the .sln file, allow the Visual Studio Conversion Wizard to convert the solution.

The solution should build and you should end up with mysqld-nt.exe and mysql.exe (the server and client respectively) in SRC/client_release.