Posts tagged Computers
How to get logged-in username in Hudson?
Mar 3rd
Quick background
Have you ever thought your manager keeps shelling out more on your plate other than the officially tracked tasks? Do not feel bad. You are not alone 
My manager recently asked me to clean up the build server we use for our project. To put simply, it was a mess. I ended up deciding to start from scratch. Looking around, we quickly zoomed in on Hudson. A great build/CI server. Met literally all my requirements (one of which is extensibility – with the source for Hudson available as open source, we could not have asked for more!).
After many Hudson code changes and UI customizations, we now have a great CI server up and running. One of the code changes I did is to a plugin called email-ext. This enables customizing many aspects of e-mail notification that gets triggered. Unfortunately the stock plugin missed one important thing (at least to us!) – no way to get the user name who triggered the build.
I added a new variable called BUILD_USER to email-ext. When used in the email-ext mail template, this will get replaced by the user who triggered the build. Our server is plugged in to our corporate active directory and this plugin will pick up the logged in user name.
You will find the source code and binaries down below. Note that this is based off 1.3.4.2 Hudson code and is running in our snapshot very well. YMMV and do enough testing before putting in production. Do send me any bugfixes you make, I will make them available for download.
How to use this?
Copy the HPI file to your Hudson web apps folder. Restart Hudson. Go to <your job> => Configure. Scroll down to “Editable EMail Notifications” section. Click on “content reference” help to make sure BUILD_USER is showing.
See the highlighted text shown below.
Any instances of BUILD_USER will be replaced by the current logged in user. In case of timer activated builds BUILD_USER will show “timer”. In case the build trigger reasons cannot be found out, BUILD_USER will be replaced with “<unknown>”.
HowTo: Enable Aero mode in Windows server 2008 R2
Feb 17th
I recently was setting up a build server and chose Windows Server 2008 R2 to be the OS. Since I was also looking for something like a centralized deployment server for my development team to quickly reflash their testbeds, I was very h appy to see the 2008 R2 server’s “Deployment server” role…but, wait, this is a big saga and is for another post. This one is all about “Aero”!
After installation, I noticed my Windows server 2008 R2 booted in “Windows classic” mode. This was an eye sore, to say the least, after having used Windows 7’s themes. My machine has GeForce 9500GS along with the proper x64 driver. So I know it is capable of doing Aero. But, Windows “Personalization” option was not allowing me to select any Aero theme.
Quick googling showed me that I was not the first person trying to solve this – Here’s the link I used & found very helpful – http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2009/01/09/windows-server-2008-r2-beta-aero-enabled-workstation/. Though I had “Desktop experience” feature installed, my “Themes” service was not enabled.
I set it to “Automatic” and started the service. But, still Windows was not allowing me to set the Aero theme. If you are facing the same issue, remember to reboot at this point — that is after enabling the “Themes” service, do reboot once. Once logged in again, you will be able to switch to Aero!
BTW, its been close to 2 years now since I posted here — was heads down on a project all the time . We did a Wireless Display solution that recently hit the market. Will post more on it soon.
Oh no, Demonoid is down again!!
Nov 12th
Demonoid, one of my favorite trackers, is down again. 
I was not running my torrent client last week, as it was used for doing “important” things like playing “Super bounce out” and “Half-life” by my relatives. I saw the “CRIA blocked us” message in Demonoid.com only this morning, a bad start to the week, I’d say!!
Demonoid.com lately has been giving lots of problems – site won’t load, blank pages, torrent files won’t download – all these irritating stuff, and now the site itself has “officially” gone down. Luckily the trackers are up, so your current downloads won’t be affected. Lets pray Demonoid finds a nice home in some country where people have other jobs than shutting down the torrent sites. How about Sweden?
Talking of Sweden, I read Prince is trying to curb Piratebay with the help of Web Sheriff. What a joke! Read this “fan article” to understand why Websheriff is such an interesting personality.
Cleaning up your Hard disk
Apr 3rd
Yesterday I took some time off to clean my office systems – a Dual Xeon desktop and a T41p laptop. The effort would have cost me at least 2 days, if not for the following tools!
 |
CCleaner – The best utility for cleaning up the temporary files, IE/Mozilla/Opera cache and lots of other junk. This used to be called Crap Cleaner, If I remember right |
 |
WindirStat – This tool allows you to visualize the file groups in your disk. There are umpteen number of tools out there that can do this, but I like the simplicity and effectiveness of this. Also, it runs off the shelf (no installation, I love it). Another thing I love about this small utility is its progress bars, it shows a pacman like character going from one end to the other, which is kinda cute! Check the images, click to enlarge. |
 |
|
 |
Duplicate File Finder – However organized you may be, you will be amazed to see what this tool digs out. It can apply CRC32 or MD5 on the files in your hard disk to find out the same content in multiple files. It takes its own sweet time to run, but very effective and highly recommended. An analysis on C:\ (120GB) is still running, almost 45mins now. |
Let me know if you use some other tool not listed here.
My first cartoon – Performance appraisal
Mar 29th
I stumbled upon this interesting site today. It allows you to unleash (?!) your creativity by creating simple drag/drop operations. Above is my first cartoon, which is inspired by the happenings in my company Do let me know what you think!
Coolcode.cn (Wordpress plugin) site down!
Mar 16th
Today morning I was surprised to see a couple of mails complaining that the videos I posted earlier here and here are not working! I checked them last night (ok…at 1am..technically it is today morning!) and they were fine. I use the excellent coolplayer 9.3 plugin in my Wordpress blog. I logged in to my account and checked the coolplayer options. They looked fine, anyway I didn’t change any of these things and they were working fine yesterday. So, what’s wrong?
Then, I noticed that the RPC server ping was not working. As you can see from the picture (click to enlarge, the RED ones are the errors), the coolcode.cn is returning a 503. My page just gets blocked for 19-20seconds, trying to get the rpc.php in coolcode to work! The site is obviously down and has taken all my videos down with it, I wonder how many more sites are also affected by this!
Man, how I wish I had installed the RPC server in my machine I couldn’t find a mirror with that zip anywhere. Till I setup my own RPC server, please do bear with the slow loading speed. Thanks.
Update (Mar 16,07 02:07pm IST): Hooray….the site is up and I have downloaded the needed zips
Update (Mar 16,07 03:00pm IST): Ok, I have the RPC setup in my machine now. No more worries.
HP Rw6828
Jun 7th
I have always wanted to own one of those cute O2 XDA Atoms. I was holding back, because of the Atom’s notorious stability and the numerous bugs in the software bundle + motherboard. But, when I went to Malaysia recently, I decided to buy one anyhow, because the latest ROM update seemed to make Atom more stable and also I could not stand my wife reminding me daily to get more organized!
I was staying in Penang. I checked out Bukit Jambul complex, did not find a decent enough deal or store. So, I went to Prangin mall in George town. The fourth floor, in the interior wing, is full of computers / electronics stores. Boy, did I have a great time there! I saw the Rw6828 there for the first time, though I have read online a lot about it. It was just released in APAC one week back, not anywhere else!
Basically, HP rw6828 is Quanta’s offering to O2 + HW/SW fixes + some cosmetic changes + more SW bundled + HP’s great aftersales service and customer support. The shop owner also offered me a 1GB miniSD + 1 leather pouch + 1 screen protector free. I went for it immediately
I got this photo off Pocket PC addict. I will update this with my phone soon.
I also picked up a Jabra BT-800 in Changi airport, on my way back home. Had no problem pairing this with rw6828. Works like a charm. The DSP for noise cancelling really works! There seems to be a firmware upgrade for this. I need to do it this weekend.
Some links:
Why no threads?
Feb 6th
I have a Dual processor Xeon machine (HT enabled in both the processors) with 2GB of RAM. Windows XP effectively sees 4 execution pipelines. Yesterday I had to move some 10GB of data from this machine to my laptop. I decided to zip it up first and fired open Winzip 9.0. It was painfully slow! I checked out the Winzip process using Sysinternals ProcExplorer and was surprised to see Winzip doing things (compressing/reading/other operations) in ONE thread!
Workplace redefined!
Jan 29th
I have rearranged my monitors, this time to make it easier for me to read lengthy contents
I got this idea from Adam Nathan’ s Channel 9 interview. He was demonstrating his WinFX based Hearts game and was actually going through the code using this setup.
Though I find this setup good for reviewing/coding/reading long documents, it actually a pain with Windows. There is a noticeable time lag in repainting windows, by my ATi driver. I am actually planning to go back to my old setup!
