Posts tagged Software
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.
Mid-life crisis of a software professional
Apr 30th
I just added one more year to my age yesterday. Thanks to my wife, the day was special. But, It is scary actually, thinking about how my graduation 8 years back feels as if it happened only yesterday! Time *is* flying. Looking back, I have had my share of moments – moments I feel proud of, moments I’d cherish & moments I’d rather forget (but can’t!). My professional front has been one hell of a roller coaster ride too. My love for computers is the only thing that has survived these years. Passion for them has gone down drastically, though.
Can I code day and night for 4 days, like how I used to do during college time or even in the first 2 years of my career? A big no.
Can I still read a technical book non-stop from cover to cover? NO!
Do I still have that passion to learn everything? Probably yes. But I don’t care about that anymore.
Other commitments apart, even if I had everything else setup for doing the above things, I’d not, because of the laid-back attitude I picked up over time in this industry. After some years, I guess you become numb and dumb. Numb, because you stop enjoying/appreciating all the beautiful things in the world around you, become too insensitive to non-professional things. Dumb, because the mechanical work style you are forced in to makes your brain cells commit suicide and there is no sure-fire way to bring them back.
To visualize what I am saying, look at the graph below. I plotted my competence/commitment over time (from 2000 to 2008). Click to open the original image in a new window.
Virus group 29A disbanded – who’s next?
Mar 10th
Couple of weeks back, 29A officially shut down business. 29A’s published work was one of the best (IMHO) sources for cutting edge virus technologies. Their e-zines provided a sampling of what was happening in the Virus underground during that period.
This was the last message posted by VirusBuster in their site:
I tried to contact ValleZ for some time in order to take a decision together about the future of 29A with no luck therefore I decided to take the decision alone. And my decision is that 29A goes officially retired. I feel this is fair because I am kinda the alpha and the omega of the group. 29A was born in Dark Node, my BBS, and I am the last active member of the group. My last words as 29A member are for all the people that worked hard to make of this group the best one: Thank you very much! Regards, VirusBuster/29A
29A has left the building!
Kind of sad.
I came to know of 29A when I was in my 2nd year UG, around 1997. 29A was a new group then (If I am right, the group formed only in the mid of 1996). BTW, if you are wondering why they named it so, 29A is the hex representation of 666 decimal.
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.
How to use Windows Vista for more than 30 days?
May 14th
There is a nice method posted by Ed Bott of Zdnet on extending the Vista’s trial period to 120 days (~4 months). I stumbled on this only recently, while seriously contemplating installing Vista ultimate in a Core2 Duo + 965GF combo. Nice trick, if you need more time to become comfortable with Vista before taking the plunge.
Chessbase Light 2007 Activation – eh?!
May 11th
I love the work being done by the good folks in Chessbase; IMO they have the coolest jobs, they get payed to develop software for CHESS Ohhhh, I wish I had some kinda day job like that! I know video game development is as interesting, but anyway gaming has never been one of my serious interests. Anyway, coming back to CB…I check the Chessbase site more than my Gmail, sometimes, which reminds me of the lack of RSS in their site…but I am not going to complain about that ever, as I feel it is worth visiting their site for the excellent articles they post. I am not sure if Fredrick Friedel ever thought of creating a business model out of the Chess news network they can easily build. Ok, again I am digressing…
I read with interest the article on their Chessbase Light 2007 software. It provides nearly all the functionalities of the full-fledged Chessbase DB software, one of their flagship products, for FREE. Of course, the catch word in the above sentence is “nearly all“. BW, CB Light allows only viewing, you cannot create databases or save games using that. For that you need to upgrade to CB Light Premium, which I guess is the same as Chessbase starter pack minus Bigdatabase 2007/Player encyclopedia/CB Magz.
The activation screen looks like the above screenshot (NOTE: I am using the screenshot provided by CB). When I saw this I was like ‘Eh?? What stupidity!!”…Do you see the captcha field in that window? Captcha are used for preventing the bots doing automatic signups, spams et al. Is there any sane reason why the user has to type the code shown in the image????
“Oh, ok…may be this code is part of the activation process”, I thought.
When I went to the site meant for generating Activation key, I didn’t find a field for entering the abovementioned captcha code. Then why the heck the CB Light programmers decided to show the captcha code in CB Light? Beats me!
Note that I may be totally missing a valid reason behind having that captcha in a desktop program, if so I’d appreciate if you’d enlighten me!
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!
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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 |
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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. |
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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.
Funny commercials & some interesting moments
Mar 21st
This is an interesting video of Steve Jobs introducing the first Macintosh in their shareholder meeting! I can imagine how impressive that text-to-speech demo would have been, back in 1980s! Man, I still use this demo (in Windows, though) to impress my relatives 
The latest PC vs Mac commercials are funny. I don’t think these are shown in India (correct me, If I am wrong). For those of you who missed these check this out.
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.
