Hard disk dissection
I’ve mentioned before, how I mount shared drives in Ubuntu both at home and at work. While this is quite useful, it seems the default setup for Ubuntu stops the network interface before disconnecting these drives. This results in Ubuntu hanging for a while on shutdown while these drives time out. After the jump we describe how to solve this problem.
The Date Stamp
In order to change the system date format on Ubuntu, you need to know a little about where the date format is coming from. Regional settings, such as date and time formats, as well as language, sort order, etc. are specified in files called locales. A locale contains the rules specifying how dates and times are formatted, amongst other settings.
Download the installation jar for GlassFish. I went with GlassFish V2, since this is the latest stable release, though I think this technique will work with any version listed on the download page.
The GlassFish V2 Installation instructions show how to install it once download is complete. The problem with the GlassFish installer is that it does not register as a service with Windows, so once you log out, the GlassFish instance will terminate.
There are a few ways of doing this. The Hard Way, or my favourite the Easy Way. Once the service is registered, GlassFish will continue to run once you log out, and can be controlled through the Services applet from Control Panel, though continued use of asadmin is recommended.
Alternatively, use Ubuntu, where you can install GlassFish as easy as:
sudo apt-get install glassfish
Ubuntu wins again :-)
Problem: Printing from Ubuntu to the departmental printer results in the first page printing, followed by a blank page, no subsequent pages are printed. Printing a test page results in a second blank page also.
Solution: … Continue reading
How to enable and disable serial ports on Ubuntu
Today, I had to fix a bug in some software I’m working on. The details of the bug aren’t that important, apart from the fact that the bug only became apparent when the software was run on a system with one or less serial ports.
Since I’m debugging on Ubuntu, and I have two serial ports (/dev/ttyS0 and /dev/ttyS1), I needed to find a way to temporarily disable one. This is how I achieved it.
While this affected me on Ubuntu, I guess it’s possible that other Linux distros will also be affected. Though the incorrect use of usermod, I managed to screw up my groups configuration leaving me without sudo or su ability, which is obviously important on Ubuntu to make system configuration changes. Read on for the whole story of how I recovered, and restored correct groups again.
