I was reading an article today about this piece of software and I taught that it was quite interesting. You can see all the parts of a swing application in this swing debugger. For someone like me that is not always sure how all the parts are linked together it is a quick visual view. Worth a try for sure.

Ref:

• https://swingexplorer.dev.java.net/

I found a few documents on the Internet about what I needed to do to rebuild the DVD to integrate my kickstart file. Unfortunately none of the solution had all the needed command in one place for my setup to work so here is my cookbook from the different sources.

First I mounted the dvdrom with the CentOS DVD to /mnt/cdrom:

mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

Then I copied a few files:

• cd /tmp
• cp -R /mnt/cdrom/isolinux ./
• cp -R /mnt/cdrom/CentOS ./isolinux/
• cp -R /mnt/cdrom/* ./isolinux/ [say yes to overwrite the TRANS.TBL]
• cp -R /mnt/cdrom/.discinfo ./isolinux/
• cp ks.cfg /tmp/isolinux/

For my RHEL5.1 rebuild I did similar commands but the paths are a bit different:

• cd /tmp
• cp -R /mnt/cdrom/isolinux ./
• cp -R /mnt/cdrom/Server ./isolinux/
• cp -R /mnt/cdrom/VT ./isolinux/
• cp -R /mnt/cdrom/images ./isolinux/
• cp -R /mnt/cdrom/Cluster ./isolinux/
• cp -R /mnt/cdrom/ClusterStorage ./isolinux/
• cp /mnt/cdrom/* ./isolinux/ [say yes to overwrite the TRANS.TBL]
• cp -R /mnt/cdrom/.discinfo ./isolinux/
• cp ks.cfg /tmp/isolinux/

I had to change permissions on 2 files:

• chmod 664 ./isolinux/isolinux.bin
• chmod 664 ./isolinux/isolinux.cfg

I had to edit the isolinux.cfg (in the isolinux directory) to change a couple of lines:

• the “default linux” line became “default ks“
• The 2 line after “label ks” went from “append ks initrd=initrd.img” to “append ks=cdrom:/ks.cfg initrd=initrd.img“

The isolinux.cfg file now looks like:

default ks
prompt 1
timeout 600
display boot.msg
F1 boot.msg
F2 options.msg
F3 general.msg
F4 param.msg
F5 rescue.msg
label linux
kernel vmlinuz
append initrd=initrd.img
label text
kernel vmlinuz
append initrd=initrd.img text
label ks
kernel vmlinuz
append ks=cdrom:/ks.cfg initrd=initrd.img
label local
localboot 1
label memtest86
kernel memtest
append -

To build the ISO (all this on one line):

mkisofs -o centos5-dvd1.iso -b isolinux.bin -c boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -r -R -J -V “CentOS 5.1 (CentOS) Disk1″ -A “CentOS 5.1 (CentOS) Disk1″ -p “Cinq” -T isolinux/

For Red Hat Entreprise Linux 5.1 I had to change the label for the DVD from “CentOS 5.1 (CentOS) Disk1″ to “RHEL_5.1 x86_64 DVD” (obviously I am using the x64 version for RHEL5) so the command became:

mkisofs -o centos5-dvd1.iso -b isolinux.bin -c boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -r -R -J -V “RHEL_5.1 x86_64 DVD” -A “RHEL_5.1 x86_64 DVD” -p “Cinq” -T isolinux/

Reference sites:

• http://www.techonthenet.com/linux/centos4_update.php
• https://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?viewmode=flat&order=ASC&topic_id=3635&forum=27&move=next&topic_time=1149676608
• http://blog.nominet.org.uk/tech/2005/09/19/building-a-redhat-enterprise-linux-serial-console-boot-dvd/
• http://www.redhat.com/docs/manuals/enterprise/RHEL-4-Manual/en-US/System_Administration_Guide/Kickstart_Installations-Kickstart_Options.html
• http://nootech.wordpress.com/2007/12/11/build-a-custom-centos-5-install-cd/

This piece of software seems quite promising to solve some of the issues that I have on my desk. I would like different computer to integrate a bit better and the main 2 features promise just that: software kvm and shared clipboard. I will have to test Synergy on my main Linux desktop with either my Mac and the Windows laptop or maybe a second Linux desktop. I need more screen space on my desk.

Special effect for Linux is at the Beryl Project. I will be trying this in a VMWare with KUbuntu. May make me switch distro…

OpenProj is a nice application to do project management. All done in Java so it works on all my workstations.

Read a few articles today and taught that these 2 things were interesting: Vixta and Zonbu. I wish Vixta had some Tablet PC features because I would be reformating my tablet PC in no time. Vista is just a pain. It amazes me that you can go backward with an upgrade. Zonbu is a nice PC but I am not looking for hosted storage. I want a small quiet PC with Linux.

I have to start getting to know mysql optimization a bit more so I started to read and I found 1 good article that promises that my reading are going to be more than interesting. So for innodb_thread_concurrency I have this article from Peter Zaitsev.

I had some problems installing the Cisco VPN client 4.8 on my Slackware 12.0 workstation so I searched a bit on the net and fond a page that had almost everything to the t: http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-.WURHFYwdq8.zfEosWC6j8jQ?p=55. A few very small differences that are due to the fact that the kernel has changed a bit more since this doc. So here are the very quick steps:

1. cd /usr/src/linux/
2. make menuconfig - and check that everything is good
3. make bzImage
4. cd include/linux
5. ln -s autoconf.h config.h
6. cd /whereever/vpnclient/
7. perl -p -i -e ’s/CHECKSUM_HW/CHECKSUM_COMPLETE/g’ interceptor.c - to replace references of CHECKSUM_HW with CHECKSUM_COMPLETE; there are only 2 to fix
8. perl -p -i -e ’s/skb_checksum_help(.*)/skb_checksum_help(skb)/g’ interceptor.c - to replace the 5 references to skb_checksum_help() with the proper parameters
9. ./vpn_install - to install the Cisco VPN client

If you have a different experience don’t hesitate to let me know how it works for you.

A friend of mine recommended looking at Lambda Probe to monitor Tomcat Servers. I did not get a chance to look at everything but it looks very well done and gives you very valuable information about what your Tomcat Server is doin g.