Jason L. Froebe: Ramblings of a Geek

MyDatabases Volume 1 Issue 1 (July 2008)

MyDatabases Volume 1 Issue 1

Geek Spotlight:  Michael Peppler
Sybase ASE on Ubuntu 8.04
Multicore Processors
VMware Virtualization
Logical Process Manager

A few months ago, I tried getting Radmin 3.2 Viewer to work with Wine but wasn’t able.  Radmin 2 Viewer worked wonderfully but wasn’t compatible with the Radmin 3.2 Server software that we use at work.

With Wine 1.0.0, I was able to download the viewer and install it.  No special configuration… just a straight install.  So far I haven’t had any issues with it at all.

On my media server, I wanted to set up Perl’s CPAN but when I ran install Bundle::CPAN, I ctrl-c’d out of it when I noticed that bzip2 wasn’t installed.  Silly me.  Soon after I started receiving:

Can’t call method “value” on an undefined value at /usr/share/perl5/IO/Uncompress/RawInflate.pm

Reinstalling Perl and all the related ubuntu packages doesn’t fix it, nor does removing the ~root/.cpan dir.  There is an easy workaround though.

Make a note of the packages that it will remove, then tell it to go ahead. It will remove these packages!

Start cpan, and type in

. When it is complete, reinstall the ubuntu packages that you removed earlier (for example):

That’s it. Your cpan is working again

This should work with any Dell Latitude laptop but YMMV.

After upgrading the BIOS, you will need to perform a warm reboot (System -> Quit -> Restart). You don’t need to boot into Windows to upgrade the BIOS

Because Sybase has yet to address the GLIBC (LD_POINTER_GUARD) issue with any of their products on Linux, we are forced to find alternative ways of getting Sybase software to run on modern Linux distribution.  In this situation, we will be using the Ubuntu 8.04 Just Enough OS (Ubuntu JEOS) Linux distribution.

After installing Ubuntu 8.04 Server JEOS on the physical or virtual machine, download the Ubuntu 7.04 Server iso image.  Why Ubuntu 7.04?  Ubuntu 7.04 is the last Ubuntu release that has an old enough GLIBC that Sybase software will work with.

% sudo debootstrap feisty /home/sybase file:///media/cdrom0

• Change the home directory of the sybase user to be /dbms/sybase by editing the /etc/passwd file

% sudo cp /etc/resolv.conf /home/sybase/etc/resolv.conf

% sudo cp /etc/hosts /home/sybase/etc/hosts

% sudo cp /etc/passwd /home/sybase/etc/passwd

% sudo cp /etc/shadow /home/sybase/etc/shadow

% sudo `cat /etc/apt/sources.list | sed -e ’s/hardy/feisty/g’ > /home/sybase/etc/apt/sources.list`

% sudo mount –bind /dev /home/sybase/dev

% sudo mount –bind /proc /home/sybase/proc

% sudo mount -t devpts none /home/sybase/dev/pts

% sudo mount –bind /tmp /home/sybase/tmp

% sudo aptitude update

% sudo aptitude upgrade

% sudo aptitude install locales dialog wget debconf devscripts gnupg

% sudo aptitude install libstdc++5 libstdc++6 libaio

• If you’re installing v12.5x software, you will need to install an even older copy of libstdc++ (not needed for v15 or higher software):

% aptitude install libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2

• Install Sybase software into /dbms/sybase (as root in the chroot environment which you should still be in)

% sudo cp /dbms/sybase/SYBASE.sh /dbms/sybase/SYBASE.env

% sudo echo DSQUERY=MYASE >> /dbms/sybase/.SYBASE.env

% sudo echo sa_password > /dbms/sybase/.sapwd

% sudo chmod go-rwx /dbms/sybase/.sapwd

% sudo chmod u-wx /dbms/sybase/.sapwd

% sudo chown -R sybase /dbms/sybase

• Install the sybase_chroot script into /usr/local/bin and make it executable by root

• Install the sybase_ase rc script into /etc/init.d and make it executable by root

• Exit the chroot environment by typing ‘exit’

• create a symbolic link outside of the chroot environment to make /home/sybase/dbms appear as /dbms.  This will allow you to access the Sybase software, notably OpenClient, as a normal user outside of the chroot environment.

% sudo ln -s /home/sybase/dbms /dbms

You are now able to start Sybase ASE using sudo /etc/init.d/sybase_ase start and stop Sybase ASE using sudo /etc/init.d/sybase_ase stop.  Starting Sybase Replication Server, OpenServer, or similar Sybase software is simply a matter of copying the /etc/init.d/sybase_ase and tweaking the script copy.

If you feel this is way complicated and Sybase should just fix their software, let them know.  Please point them to this page and refer to CR455393.

UPDATE: The GLIBC issue is fixed in v15.0.2 esd 4.  It doesn’t seem to be working for everyone though.  More information is needed about those systems where esd 4 doesn’t resolve the matter.  No fix is available for 12.5x from Sybase.

UPDATE: Keep in mind, that the Sybase ASE 15.0.2 esd 4 patch is available only to Sybase customers with a current maintenance contract with Sybase.

Hi all,

After trial and error, I finally figured out how to convert an old divx 3 (you know, the old hacked version of the codec) video file to a format that my Sony Playstation 3 (PS3) could handle.  Why is it that Sony has made the PS3 to be such a finicky beast when it comes to reading video files, I will never know:

How to convert a video file using AviDemux v2.4.1 on Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron):

• Load the original video file into AviDemux
• Auto -> PSP (H.264) - choose defaults

• Video -> Configure -> 2 Pass

• Format -> MP4

• Save with the extension “.mp4″

If you’re going to put the video on an USB thumbdrive, you will need to create a folder:

• On the USB Thumbdrive:   VIDEO
• Group videos with subdirectories:  VIDEO / SCIFI

As an ongoing effort for work, IT has deemed it necessary to encrypt our laptops.  No problem I say, but one issue:  the encryption software they chose only works on Windows 2000/XP and certainly not on OSX or Linux.  My chosen platform for work is Ubuntu 8.04 with the bling of compiz to show it off In order to comply, I did a little googling and ran across an excellent article by Lars Strand on how to encrypt your /home directory and swap space on Ubuntu 8.04 (should work with 6.04 and higher).

Encrypted swap and home partition in Ubuntu 8.04

Sunday, 04 May 2008 @ 22:32 CEST

Contributed by: lars

I really would like to have an encrypted swap and home partition on my laptop. In case it gets stolen or if I should forget it somewhere, I can be sure that no-one would be able to read my private files. In this mini-howto I set my home partition using LVM, but using a regular partition should work just fine. This howto should also work, with minor modification, if you use another distribution than Ubuntu.
By using Linux Unified Key Setup (LUKS) setting up encrypted partition in Linux is done in no time.

read more

I’m totally impressed by the article - the instructions are step by step and are easy to follow.  I’d create a new user belonging to the admin group with its home directory outside of ‘/home’ and use that user to perform the steps.

Initially I attempted to use an USB thumb drive to hold a key file but it proved unreliable because it wasn’t being mounted consistantly before the /etc/init.d/cryptdisks & /etc/init.d/cryptdisks.early were being executed on boot up.  This issue would cause the key file to be unavailable and therefore the encrypted home from being attached to (/etc/crypttab).  However, when if I inserted the thumbdrive after the system booted, the usb thumb drive would be auto-mounted and performing ‘mount /home’ would mount the encrypted home directory.

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop:

http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso.torrent i386
http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-desktop-amd64.iso.torrent AMD64

Kubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop:

http://releases.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/hardy/kubuntu-8.04-desktop-i386.iso.torrent Kubuntu x86
http://releases.ubuntu.com/kubuntu/hardy/kubuntu-8.04-desktop-amd64.iso.torrent Kubuntu AMD64

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server:

http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-server-i386.iso.torrent i386
http://releases.ubuntu.com/8.04/ubuntu-8.04-server-amd64.iso.torrent AMD64