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Installing FTP client on Redhat 6

For some odd reason, the basic FTP client (netkit-ftp) was not installed in Redhat 6 distro. Following are some steps to install:

If yum is working fine for you (wasn’t working in my case), then its as simple as:

yum install ftp

The next option is to download the binary rpm (http://pkgs.org/) and install it:

rpm -Uvh ftp-<version>.rpm

In case you face issues such as “libc.so.6 not found” even though the required dependencies such as glibc is installed, then get the source ftp-<version>.src.rpm and build it using:

rpmbuild —rebuild ftp-<version>.src.rpm

It usually creates the compiled rpm file in “rpmbuild/RPMS” in the home folder. Install it using:

rpm -Uvh ftp-<version>.rpm

Quick guide on installing Oracle 10g standard edition in Ubuntu Server 9.10

Installing Oracle 10g standard edition in Ubuntu Server 9.10:

If you are trying to install it in a remote location, then make sure you have xserver in the remote machine

• sudo apt-get install xserver-xorg
• ssh -X user@host

• sudo ln -s /usr/bin/basename /bin/basename
• sudo ln -s /usr/bin/awk /bin/awk
• sudo addgroup nobody

Switch to the oracle setup directory and run the installer:

• ./runInstaller -ignoreSysPrereqs

If you are getting errors such as java.lang.UnsatisfiedLinkError … lib/i386/libawt.so: libXp.so.6, just install the missing packages

• sudo apt-get install libxp6

During installation you might get the error: Error in invoking target ‘all_no_orcl ihsodbc’. This is because the libstdc++5 package is missing. apt-get libstdc++5 will not work. Do the following:

• cd /tmp/
• wget -c http://lug.mtu.edu/ubuntu/pool/main/g/gcc-3.3/libstdc++5_3.3.6-10_i386.deb
• dpkg -x libstdc++5_3.3.6-10_i386.deb libstdc++5
• sudo cp libstdc++5/usr/lib/libstdc++.so.5.0.7 /usr/lib
• cd /usr/lib
• sudo ln -s libstdc++.so.5.0.7 libstdc++.so.5

Click on retry and proceed with the installation.

References:

http://t-a-w.blogspot.com/2007/11/installing-oracle-10g-enterprise.html

http://www.puschitz.com/InstallingOracle10g.shtml

http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=323437

http://www.mznouira.com/blog/tag/libstdc5/

http://www.oracle.com/technology/pub/articles/smiley_10gdb_install.html

http://www.oracle.com/technology/obe/obe10gdb/install/linuxinst/linuxinst.htm

Vi: Search/Replace/Delete

Some shortcuts for search/replace/delete in vi:

Search for a string: /<string>

Search for string in current cursor position: *

Repeat search: n[next]/N[previous]

Highlight search: :set hlsearch

Replace every occurrence in file: :%s/old/new/g

Delete every line matching a pattern: :g/pattern/d

Delete every line not matching a pattern: :v/pattern/d

Mac OS: Changing the default java version to 1.6

There were a lot of posts on the internet on how you can use the Java Preferences app to 1.6, but unfortunately it did not work out for me. I had to do it the hard way of pointing the CurrentJDK symlink in /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions to 1.6.

Eventbug for Firebug

Played around a bit with Eventbug. With the new API in firefox 3.7a1pre it is now possible to list the event listeners defined on a page. Eventbug is an extension for Firebug, which adds a new tab ‘Events’ which neatly displays all the defined event listeners. There is an events tab under the HTML tab as well, which is really helpful to find out the event listeners on the currently selected element.

There are some features missing as already noted by the author. But for an alpha release, it really rocks!

Coding tests as part of the interview process

I just came across this article, which strongly states that coding tests are a bad interview technique. I do not completely disagree, but it really makes a lot of sense to have coding tests. First of all, it helps in filtering the kind of people who can talk a lot but don’t have enough hands-on skills. Another thing is coding tests are conducted not just to get a working solution from the candidate but to check how good his OO skills are, which after all is one of the core competencies for a dev.