Don't use Copy+Paste on Windows, if you've got a lot of data

Windows never ceases to disappoint me. I've got an external hard drive, on which resides a 60 GB VM, which I need to copy now and then to emulate a snapshot. So far, I used the standard Windows file copy stuff to do that. (Copy, and paste the VM directory.) Ran with about 8-20 MB per second. Or in other words: Took up to two hours. And, worst of all, the procedure isn't reentrant. Interrupting the copying means to restart.

So, tried something different: CygWin's rsync, the swiss army knife for backups, and related stuff. In other words, I am using the command

  rsync -a -r --progress
Runs with 30MB per second (50% faster than native Windows copying). And is reentrant...

VMWare Shared Folders oin Fedora 23

Hi,

if you haven't noticed: Fedora 23 is out, and its time to get your hands wet on it. Being forced to use a Windows Laptop, I am typically doing this by installing a VMware guest. Once the virtual machine is up, the first thing i want to do is accessing my Windows home directory. The easiest way to do this is by creating a so-called "Shared Folder" in the VMware settings for my machine. On the guest, you need to install the "VMware Tools" and do something like

mkdir /home/username/sharedfolder
sudo mount -t vmhgfs -o uid=1000,gid=1000 .host:sharename /home/username/sharedfolder

(The options uid=1000,gid=1000 ensure, that the mounted directory is readable, and writable for the user with uid=1000, and gid=1000, which is me.)

The problem with that procedure is, that it depends on a kernel module called "hgfs", which must be installed as part of the "VMware Tools". And, needless to say: Installation of the VMware Tools (version 9.2.0-799703, as of this writing) fails, because the Kernel isn't compatible to the sources distributed by VMware.

So far, the only reasonable solution was to wait for an updated tools version by VMware. (I generally ignored the possibility to patch those distributed sources as overly complicated, and insecure. However, there's a new, and better solution available:

Fedora 23 automatically installs an RPM named open-vm-tools. And this includes two programs, that allow use of shared folders without the kernel module:

  # Display a list of all shared folders:

  # Note, that it includes a share called "sharedfolder".
  $ vmware-hgfsclient sharedfolder

  # Create a directory named /home/username/foo, and mount the shared folder there.
  $ vmhgfs-fuse .host:foo /home/username/sharedfolder
  $ cd /home/username/sharedfolder
  $ touch testfile
  $ rm testfile

Note, that neither "sudo" nor the specification of any options was required.

So, in other words: As of Fedora 23, the VMware Tools are no longer required. Mouse integration, Cut and Paste, and using shared folders: Everything works out of the box. (I can live without the thin print drivers.)

Honouring Terry Pratchett: Java Web Application

This Blogs name is Grumpy Apache. These days, there are excellent reasons, for being grumpy: After all, my favourite author Terry Pratchett has died, way too early. But, as Terry wrote in Going Postal about John Dearheart:

His name, however, continues to be sent in the so-called Overhead of the clacks. The full message is "GNU John Dearheart", where the G means, that the message should be passed on, the N means "Not Logged" and the U that it should be turned around at the end of the line. So as the name "John Dearheart" keeps going up and down the line, this tradition applies a kind of immortality as "a man is not dead while his name is still spoken".

This means, we'll be celebrating "Being childish day" today, by adding the HTTP Header

      X-Clacks-Overhead: GNU Terry Pratchett

to our web sites. And, here's how to do that with any Java Web Application.

Its simple. First of all, you'll be adding this class to your web application. It is a so-called servlet filter. I'll quote the relevant method here:

public void doFilter(ServletRequest pReq, ServletResponse pRes,
                                         FilterChain pChain) throws IOException,
ServletException {
if (pRes instanceof HttpServletResponse) {
final HttpServletResponse res = (HttpServletResponse) pRes;
res.addHeader("X-Clacks-Overhead", "GNU-Terry-Pratchett");
}
pChain.doFilter(pReq, pRes);
}

Besides, add the following snippets to your web.xml:

 
    ClacksOverheadFilter
    com.github.jochenw.clacksov.ClacksOverheadFilter
 
 
    ClacksOverheadFilter
    *
 

And, that's it! No modification of servlets, or the like, just a simple addition, that you can make to any web application.

Keep in mind:

As long as we are shifting his name on the Internet, Terry isn't dead.

Installing CentOS 7 Prerelease on VMWare

Hi,

if you haven't heard the news: A prerelease of CentOS 7 is out. This is important, because:

1. CentOS 7 is a major release and will be the base of the Linux Distro that people like me will be using in the next years on servers. (Yes, I do know about Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, OpenSUSE Whatever, Debian Something, etc. However, that is most likely not what I will be using. Logically, so won't do people like me. End of discussion.)
2. Quite a few things have changed since CentOS 6. In particular, much has been adopted from recent Fedora versions: 
1.  The new Anaconda Installer. (I am personally not overly happy with it. The old one worked quite well for me, but I had my share of trouble with the new one. In particular, I am less than enthusiastic about how Disk Partitioning works nowadays. OTOH, this version of Anaconda (the one distributed with the CentOS 7 Prerelease) is a step forward in that aspect. Perhaps, more people like me had similar trouble.)
2.  GNOME 3: Well, this one will definitely be the cause of a major uproar on the Red Hat Continent. I readily admit that I was one of the people who initially went with MATE as a GNOME 2 replacement, so as to avoid GNOME 3. However, in the meantime, I've learned to live with it and can even appreciate some features like the enhanced keyboard control. The one thing I am still missing is the pictures screenblanker, though. I learned to live with xscreensaver, although this still smells like a very ugly hack.) Like it, or not, people like me (c) will have to face it.
3.  This prerelease was published not even one weak after the release of RHEL 7. Compare that to the months we had with some minor versions of CentOS 6. So, we benefit from Red Hat adopting CentOS. Good news!

So, what is this posting about?

•  I won't cover generic aspects of installing CentOS, or Fedora. I'll assume that you have installed either of which before and have a rough idea of what I am talking about. In particular, I assume that you know what a network installation is, because right now this is the only installation method available through an ISO image. (Forget "Live DVD", or whatever else you have hoped for.)
• I will, hovever, concentrate on installing this very special prerelease version, because it is not quite like installing an official version. (Neither is it overly complex, though.) Hopefully, I'll also cover what has changed since version 6.

 If that is interesting for you: Read on. If not: I am sorry! Google (Planet Apache, or whatever else brought you here, did wrong and is to blame).

So, what's to do?
Download the ISO Image from http://buildlogs.centos.org/centos/7/os/x86_64-20140614/images/boot.iso and save it, for example as "centos7-netinstall.iso".

1. Create a new VM (My Parameters were "I will install the operating system later.", "Guest operating system=Linux", Version="CentOS 64-bit", Maximum disk size=30GB, Memory=3072GB. Everything else was as suggested by VMWare Player 6.0.2 build-1744117.
2. Select Virtual Machine Settings, CD/DVD (IDE). Enable "Connect at power on" and "Use ISO Image file". Select the file you downloaded in step 1.
3. Start up the created VM. From the boot menu, select "Install CentOS 7". (You may as well test the media, but you did check the MD5 Sum anyways, did you? :-) At least, you know the difference... (Remember that "won't cover generic aspects" above?)
4. Hopefully, the Anaconda graphical installer will come up. (At least, it does so on a VMWare machine. I'd never hope so on a machine with an NVIDIA or AMD graphics card. Don't expect me to help you with that crap.  I'm all with Linus on that. :-)
5. Select your language (Safe choice is, of course,"English-US").
6. Anaconda will notify that  this is prerelease, unstable software. You knew that anyways, so click on "I want to proceed."
7. The Anaconda "Installation Summary" screen will come up. This will be an unknown thing (Remember: New Anaconda) for a lot of people, so here's a screenshot:
   
   
   
   
   The important thing to keep in mind is the order of the following steps.
8.  Start with the Keyboard. (You're likely to use that in the following steps.) Click on "Keyboard" (Not the small keyboard icon, but the big icon, or the word.) Click on the "+" sign, and select your favourite keyboard layout. (In my case "German, Germany, Eliminate dead keys".) Remove any unwanted layout by clicking on it, and clicking on the "-" sign. Finish by clicking on "Done" in the upper left corner. (Who the heck came up with that? Anyways, remember the location.)
9. The next thing you're gonna need is the network. (Most likely, you are currently "Not Connected".) Click on "Network & Hostname". Click on "Off" in the upper right corner to enable networking. Enter a meaningful host name. (I choose "c7wm96.mcjwi01.eur.ad.sag". Avoid "localhost.localdomain".) Click on "Done". (Upper left corner, remember?)
10. Now we can edit "Date & Time", aka time zone. I choose "Europe/Berlin".
11. If you need that (You don't, really...), click on "Language Support" and select additional languages.
12. The most obvious trap is the "Installation Source" (Hopefully, it won't be in the official releases, which will select an URL automatically): Click on that, enable "On the network", and enter the URL buildlogs.centos.org/centos/7/os/x86_64-20140614/. If you need to use an HTTP Proxy, click on "Proxy setup". Enter your proxy host name and port (in my case "httpprox.hq.sag:8080") Click on "Add". Click on "Done". Wait a few seconds until you see "Downloading package metadata", or the like. If you do see something like "Error setting up Base Repository", changes are that the URL is wrong. Fix it, and retry. Wait a few seconds more until downloading the package data and checking for dependencies has finished.
13. Next, go to "Software Selection". The default is "Minimal Install". This is fine, if you are happy with a server that has no X11 enabled. I choose "Server with GUI" instead, to make my colleagues happy. On the right hand side, you can choose to have KDE installed addizionally. (AFAIK, no support for MATE, Cinnamon, LXDE, whatever. No idea, whether that will come.) You might wish to deselect LibreOffice, if you manage to do that. Click on "Done". Wait a few seconds until the message "Checking for software dependencies" disappears.
14. Another, somewhat difficult step is the "Installation Destination". Click on that. If you need "Custom Partitioning", enable "I will configure partitioning." below. (The default is "Automatically configure partitioning.", The presence of this option is what has changed since Fedora 20, and I consider this to be a major improvement.) Click on "Done", even if you're actually not. If the window for "Manual Partitioning" appears, select your desired partition type ("Standard Partition", "BTRFS", "LVM") and add a few partitions by clicking on the "+" button. I create the following partitions (in that order):
1. /boot with a Capacity of 500MB.
2. Swap with a Capacity of 6GB. (I need that much, because the Oracle Installer wants 8GB of physical memory, but accepts Swap as a replecement.)
3. / with a Capacity of 8 GB.
4. /home with a Capacity of 16.21GB
Click on "Done". Click on "Accept Changes". If no error messages can be seen on the "Installation Summary" screen, then you have mastered the major hurdles.

• Click on "Begin Installation".
• Regardless of the ongoing installation, click on "Root Password". Enter a meaningful, and secure, root password. Repeat it. Click on "Done". (You never even considered to enter a weak password, did you? Well, if you did: Click on "Done" twice. :-)
• The installation is still ongoing. Click on "User Creation". Enter a real name and a login name, enable "Make this user administrator" (The option will actually add the created user to the "wheel" group, which has permissions to use "sudo"). Enter a password and repeat it. Click on "Done" twice. (Oops, your passsword is secure: Then once is sufficient.)
• Keep in mind that this is a "network installation": Anaconda will download each and every single RPM to install (In my case about 1200.), so the process will take time. OTOH, with a fast network (DSL, or something like that) it won't take much longer than installation from a DVD.
• Once the actual installation is finished, you'll be asked for a reboot. Confirm that, and the new system comes up. Almost done. One minor step to perform: Accept the GPL license, and accept another reboot. (No, this isn't Windows, but still....)

If you got this far, then you've got a system running CentOS 7 Prerelease. Congratulations. Unfortunately, one thing is still left. Your system doesn't have a valid Yum configuration. (Convince yourself by running

  sudo yum repolist all

Oops, you need a terminal window to do that. That's no problem if you are running KDE or any other desktop that you are used to. If it's GNOME 3, and you are not, here's what to do: Press, and release, the "Windows" key. (No, this is still not Windows, but anyways. If it helps, call it the "Linux" key.) Press, and release, the following keys, in that order: "t", "e", "r", "m", and Enter. At that point, a GNOME Terminal window should appear. (Or, in theory, any other desktop application containing the word "term". However, you had no chance to install "xterm" do far. :-) Using the command

  sudo yum vi /etc/yum.repos.d/centos7-prerelease.repo

create a new file with the following contents:

  [centos7-prerelease]
  name=CentOS 7 Prerelease
  url=http://buildlogs.centos.org/centos/7/os/x86_64-20140614/
  enabled=1
  priority=1
  gpgcheck=0

And now (I am not avoiding any flame wars today :-) you can do

  sudo yum install emacs emacs-nox gcc make binutils kernel-headers

A final note on the VMware tools: Anaconda did automatically install "open-vm-tools-desktop". So, mouse integration, copy and paste, etc. worked immediately for me. No need for a seprate installation.

Build System Performance on Windows

Over the last three months I had the pleasure to run Fedora 20 Linux on the Laptop I am using for work. Last week, I was forced to downgrade to Windows 7. (Mainly, because my employers system administrators don't support everything else. I am quite ready to have the occasional fight for my freedom against the admins, but I won't accept the constant struggle. To name just the most important problem: Accessing an MS Exchange Server without IMAP enabled is, at best, exhausting.) Why the word "downgrade"? Because my machine is so much slower now. I am a developer. My Eclipse is open for 10 hours a day and I can't count the number of invocations of Ant, Maven, Make, and other build systems. (Ant, and Maven, being my personal favourites.) Of course, the machine isn't actually slower. It is the same hardware, after all. Same amount of RAM, still without an SSD. However, and that's a fact: Running one and the same build system against the same project on Windows 7 takes more time than doing just that on Linux. If you don't believe me, try the following: Install a Linux VM on your Windows PC. Then run the following command, first on the VM, then on the Windows host:

git checkout https://github.com/torvalds/linux.git

What are the odds, that this command will run faster on the Linux VM than on the Windows hosts. I'd bet. And I'd win. (It's true: Linux Git on the emulated hardware wins against Windows Git on the raw iron.) Btw, for an even more convincing example, try "git svn checkout".) This week, I decided to waste some time to think about the issue: How do I get my build system on Windows as fast as on Linux. First, let's identify the guilty party: It's none other than... (drum roll) NTFS! I'm not making this up: Others are quite aware of the problem. See, for example, this page. A Google search for "ntfs performance many small files" returns about 168000 hits. So, let's state this as a fact: NTFS behaves extremely poor when dealing with lots of small files. But that's exactly, what a build system is all about. Let's take a typical example:

1. The first typical step is to remove a build directory (like "target", or "bin", or whatever you name it.)
2. The compiler reads a lot of small source files (named *.java, *.c, or whatever) from the "src" directory.
3. For any such file, the compiler creates a corresponding, translated file (named *.class, or *.o, or whatever) in the build directory.
4. A packager, or linker, like "jar", or "ln" combines all these files we have just created into a single target file.

Notice something? This is the same for all build systems. It really doesn't matter, whether your build script uses XML, a DSL, JSON, or a binary format. (No, this is holy war won't have my participation.) What matters is this: All current build systems are based on the mantra of an output directory, where lots of small files are created. But, that's not a necessity. So, here's the challenge: Let's modify our build systems in a manner that replaces the output directory with a "virtual file system". If we do it right, we can be much, much faster. As a poof of concept, I wrote a small Java program, that extracts the Linux Kernel sources (aka the file "linux-3.14.2.tar.gz") and writes them into implemantations of the following interface:

public interface IVFS {

	OutputStream createFile(String pPath) throws IOException;

	void close() throws IOException;
}

For any source file (45941 files) the method createFile is invoked, the file is copied intoo the OutputStream, and the stream is closed. Finally, the method IVFS.close() is invoked. Here's my programs output:

   Linux Kernel Extraction, NullVFS: 4159
   Linux Kernel Extraction, SimpleVFS: 1740044
   Linux Kernel Extraction, MapVFS: 78134

The three implementations are:

1. The NullVFS inherits the idea of /dev/null: It is basically a write-only target. Of course, this isn't really useful. On the other hand, it shows how fast we could be, in theory, if our target were arbitrarily fast: In this case 4159 milliseconds. (This is, mainly, the time for reading the Linux Kernel sources.)
2. The SimpleVFS is basically, what we have now. Files are actually created. As expected, this is really slow, and it takes more than 1740 seconds.
3. Finally, the MapVFS is basically an In-Memory store. However, it might be really useful, because its close method is creating a big file with the actual contents on disk. With 78 seconds, this implementation is still close to the NullVFS. It demonstrates what might be really possible.

Conclusion: When creating one file with our actual contents, we need 78 seconds, as opposed to 1740 seconds. Of course, the IVFS interface is an oversimplification. The implementations certainly aren't thread safe. We have omitted the possibility to modify files that have previousöy been created. But the numbers are so impressive that I am personally convinced: If we a) modify our build system to use a virtual file system as the output and b) provide fast implementations, then we have much to gain, fellow developers! In practice, this won't be so easy. The biggest hurdle I am anticipating, is the Java Compiler. Even the Java Compiler API (aka the interface javax.tools.JavaCompiler) is based on real files: We won't be able to use the Java Compiler, as it is now. Instead, we have to manipulate them to use the VFS. ECJ, the Eclipse Java Compiler might be our best option for that. Who'll take the first step? Well, Gradlers, Buildrs, SConsers, of the world: Here's something where your users could have a real difference!

The sins of our fathers

"Fathers shall not be put to death for their sons, nor shall sons be put to death for their fathers; everyone shall be put to death for his own sin." (Deuteronomy 24:16) But, of course, we are paying for our fathers sins. Not so much our biological fathers or ancestors, but our predecessors. In my case, this is what's happened today: I wrote a very small Java program that extracts the Linux Kernel sources (More on the reasons and background, hopefully, in my next posting. Suffice it for now, that I'm not rewriting "tar xzf". I'm not that stupid! I had a good reasons. Now, the Kernel Sources are containing in particular, a small file named "aux.c". And my own program threw a FileNotFoundException when creating that file. Reproducible! The error message was, of course, meaningless, so I began to start thining about all kinds of reasons:

1. Permissions, either those of the file itself, or the containing directory. Mo, the permissions were just fine!
2. Length of the path name. Actually, the full path name contained quite some characters, but still far away from the 256 that I am aware of.
3. Too many open files. No, I have had my share of beginners faults and was properly closing.

Any other ideas. I guess you don't get this one: Some JDK programmer was actually implementing a check for aux.*, nul.*, prt.* etc when creating a file, because these file names where in fact a problem with Windows in the past. Of course, the sensible solution would have been:

1. Wait for the error message from Windows.
2. Check the file name.
3. Throw a meaningful error message that explains the problem.

That way, veything would have worked fine, if the unthinkable happened: Windows eliminates that stsupid restriction. Because that was exactly what happened. There is now problem with creating that file. Convince yourself:

  $ touch aux.c

  jwi@MCJWI01 /c/Users/jwi/workspace/afw-vfs
  $ ls -al aux.c
  -rw-r--r--+ 1 jwi Domain Users 0 May  1 16:02 aux.c

  jwi@MCJWI01 /c/Users/jwi/workspace/afw-vfs

So, our JDK programmer has managed to move the problem with the "aux.c" file name from Windows to the JDK. Thanks, a lot!

Installing Obsolete Java JDK versions on Fedora Linux

As a Java developer, one is frequently forced to use obsolete, or even deprecated, Java versions. So I came to the necessity to install Java 6 on Fedota 19. The problem: In the Fedora 19 repositories, there's only Java 7 and 8. Convince yourself:

$ sudo yum list | grep openjdk
java-1.6.0-openjdk.x86_64              1:1.6.0.0-59.1.10.3.fc16         installed
java-1.6.0-openjdk-devel.x86_64        1:1.6.0.0-59.1.10.3.fc16         installed
java-1.6.0-openjdk-javadoc.x86_64      1:1.6.0.0-59.1.10.3.fc16         installed
java-1.7.0-openjdk.x86_64              1:1.7.0.60-2.4.2.0.fc19          @updates
java-1.7.0-openjdk-demo.x86_64         1:1.7.0.60-2.4.2.0.fc19          @updates
java-1.7.0-openjdk-devel.x86_64        1:1.7.0.60-2.4.2.0.fc19          @updates
java-1.7.0-openjdk-javadoc.noarch      1:1.7.0.60-2.4.2.0.fc19          @updates
java-1.7.0-openjdk-src.x86_64          1:1.7.0.60-2.4.2.0.fc19          @updates
java-1.7.0-openjdk-accessibility.x86_64
java-1.8.0-openjdk.i686                1:1.8.0.0-0.9.b89.fc19           updates 
java-1.8.0-openjdk.x86_64              1:1.8.0.0-0.9.b89.fc19           updates 
java-1.8.0-openjdk-demo.x86_64         1:1.8.0.0-0.9.b89.fc19           updates 
java-1.8.0-openjdk-devel.i686          1:1.8.0.0-0.9.b89.fc19           updates 
java-1.8.0-openjdk-devel.x86_64        1:1.8.0.0-0.9.b89.fc19           updates 
java-1.8.0-openjdk-javadoc.noarch      1:1.8.0.0-0.9.b89.fc19           updates 
java-1.8.0-openjdk-src.x86_64          1:1.8.0.0-0.9.b89.fc19           updates 

The same goes for Fedora 18 and 17, btw. (I'll skip the output here. Note, that processing these commands will take some time, as yum will download the complete repository metadata for the respective version.

$ sudo yum --releasever=17 list | grep openjdk
$ sudo yum --releasever=18 list | grep openjdk

However, Java 6 is available for Fedora 16!

$ export http_proxy=MY_PROXY_URL, for example http://my.proxy.server:8080
$ wget wget http://archives.fedoraproject.org/pub/archive/fedora/linux/releases/16/Fedora/x86_64/os/Packages/java-1.6.0-openjdk-1.6.0.0-59.1.10.3.fc16.x86_64.rpm
$ wget http://archives.fedoraproject.org/pub/archive/fedora/linux/releases/16/Fedora/x86_64/os/Packages/java-1.6.0-openjdk-devel-1.6.0.0-59.1.10.3.fc16.x86_64.rpm
$ wget http://archives.fedoraproject.org/pub/archive/fedora/linux/releases/16/Fedora/x86_64/os/Packages/java-1.6.0-openjdk-javadoc-1.6.0.0-59.1.10.3.fc16.x86_64.rpm

Now, my first (and preferred) attempt to install these would be

$ sudo yum localinstall --obsoletes java-1.6.0-openjdk*

which fails, due to the following error message:

  error: Failed dependencies:
  java-1.6.0-openjdk is obsoleted by (installed) java-1.7.0-openjdk-1:1.7.0.60-2.4.2.0.fc19.x86_64
  java-1.6.0-openjdk-devel is obsoleted by (installed) java-1.7.0-openjdk-1:1.7.0.60-2.4.2.0.fc19.x86_64
  java-1.6.0-openjdk-javadoc is obsoleted by (installed) java-1.7.0-openjdk-1:1.7.0.60-2.4.2.0.fc19.x86_64

(Please contact me, if you have an idea on how to get rid of these!) Fortunately, there's another possibility, which does the job quite neatly:

$ sudo rpm --nodeps -i java-1.6.0-openjdk*

If you're an Eclipse user, the JDK can now be found in /usr/lib/jvm/java-1.6.0-openjdk-1.6.0.0.x86_64/