Too Loud a Solitude

Release issue...

2011-06-21T18:06:00.003+02:00

We are facing this issue for months (years ?), and I still don't understand why...

One upon a time, we cut a release on one of my favorite projects (Apache MINA, Apache Directory Server, Apache LDAp API, Apache LDAp Studio), and we regularly get a message like :

#mvn release:prepare
...
[ERROR] Failed to execute goal org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-release-plugin:2.1:prepare (default-cli) on project project: Unable to tag SCM
[ERROR] Provider message:
[ERROR] The svn tag command failed.
[ERROR] Command output:
[ERROR] svn: No such revision 1138066

which is simply a nonsense. We have a workaround, it's a mater of running :
svn up
and replay the release command, which will succeed.

However, this is just an annoyance that I would like to see removed from our path.

Does anyone has a clue about what's going on ? I would be grateful (even if I just have an explanation like "it's a referenced bug in SVN").

LDAPCon 2011 : Call for papers !

2011-04-09T08:17:00.000+02:00

LDAPCon 2011

The third International Conference on LDAP (LDAPCon) will take place in
October 10 – 11 in Heidelberg, Germany.

The International Conference on LDAP is a technical forum for IT professionals interested in LDAP and related topics like directory servers, directory management applications, directory integration, identity and access management, and meta directories.

It focuses on implementation and integration of LDAP servers and LDAP-enabled client applications. The event will bring together vendors, developers, active and prospective LDAP practitioners to share their experiences about deployment strategies, service operations, interoperability, discuss LDAP usage in new projects and learn about upcoming trends and developments.

The conference language is english.

Call for papers : http://www.daasi.de/ldapcon2011/index.php?site=cfp

La SNCF, non, ce n'est pas possible...

2011-01-21T18:16:00.002+01:00

Pourquoi les voyageurs préfèrent-ils prendre une voiture plutôt que le train ?

Dire que la SNCF fait des efforts pour rendre le voyage en train plus facile et moins coûteux, c'est simplement une vue de l'esprit, au mieux.

Aujourd'hui, dans le cadre d'un week-end de geeks au mois d'avril, nous nous sommes mis d'accord pour réserver 4 places dans un TGV, 2 mois à l'avance. 3 d'entre nous sont pères de famille nombreuse, donnant le droit à 30% ou 40% de réduction.

Prix unitaire du billet Paris/Grenoble ? 22€ à l'aller.
Prix pour 4 places ? 140 € ...
Prix unitaire pour le même billet mais en indiquant une remise Famille Nombreuse ? 35 € !!!

Alors je pose la question : de la gueule de qui se fout-on à la SNCF?

C'est bien la peine de passer à Drupal si c'est pour offrir des tarifs aussi totalement débiles !

Oracle, Javacle et l'ASF, ma vision du problème.

2010-12-10T02:11:00.002+01:00

Donc The Apache Software Foundation a décidé de quitter l'Executive Community du JCP , conformément à sa position clairement exprimée en novembre.

La raison? Oracle a décidé unilatéralement de ne pas respecter les termes du contrat qui le lie à l'ASF (le fameux JSPA), et plus spécifiquement le paragraphe 5.C :

"Other than as set forth above, the Spec Lead agrees not to impose any contractual condition or covenant that would limit or restrict the right of any licensee to create or distribute such Independent Implementations."

En clair, ne pas fournir à l'ASF l'accès au TCK sans y ajouter une restriction d'usage (FOU) est une violation de ce contrat.

On peut bien évidemnt arguer que OpenJDK couvre le besoin d'un Java libre, puisque GPL et disposant d'un TCK sans FOU.
Sauf que si vous forkez OpenJDK, Oracle se réserve le droit de faire un procès pour violation de Patent (bien sûr, Oracle n'est pas assez stupide pour attaquer une fondation comme l'ASF, cela ne lui rapporterai rien, quand il suffit de pratiquer à grande échelle le FUD, en menaçant implictement les utilisateurs de ce fork).

Tout cela est bien résumé (en anglais) dans ce post : http://skife.org/java/jcp/2010/12/07/the-tck-trap.html.

Alors, OpenJDK, une issue de secours? Non. Un miroir aux alouettes, un cache-sexe. En tant que tel, OpenJDK est effectivement une solution temporaire pour ceux qui travaillent sur un Mac, par exemple. Le problème, c'est qu'il n'y a aucune garantie sur le long terme qu'Oracle et ses affidés ne laissent pas OpenJDK dépérir, au profit d'une version bien évidement plus puissante du langage, mais payante.

Procès en sorcellerie ? Certainement pas. Il faut ouvrir les yeux : Oracle n'est pas une entreprise philantropique, elle ne respcte aucune règle, elle les créés ! Pourquoi se priver d'exercer son pouvoir quand il n'y a pas de shérif ?

Cela touche du doigt l'origine du problème : la confusion entretenue par ces sociétés sur la signification de l'Open Source. Pour elles, Open Source = Source - IP. Vous pouvez regarder, utiliser, éventuellement contribuer, mais tous les bénéfices reviennent à la société qui gère le projet.

C'est la privatisation du profit et la mutualisation du travail.

L'open source, c'est d'abord une question de gouvernance, et c'est ce pour quoi l'ASF se bat. Il n'y a pas de liberté sans une gouvernance partagée. En politique, ça s'appelle la démocratie, en opposition à la dictature, la ploutocratie, l'oligarchie ou tout autre système de captation de pouvoir. Ce n'est pas pour rien que la devise de l'ASF est :

Community over code

Qu'est-ce que cela signifie pour Java ? Pour l'instant, pas grand chose. Tout un chacun peut l'utiliser, mais cela ne durera pas. Mais il est temps de penser la suite, et cette suite devra être totalement indépendante de sociétés comme Oracle.

L'ASF peut-elle être force de proposition ? Harmony peut-il devenir la base universelle et réellement open-source que Java aurait dû être? Sans aucun doute. Mais il y a du travail.

Alors, laissont agir la communauté :

3000 committers Apache ne peuvent pas se tromper !

Bye bye summer time...

2010-10-31T02:01:00.002+02:00

So we switched (in Europe) from summer time to winter time. At 3am, it's 2 am again. So what ?

Well, I was running some tests on my computer before crashing, and I was quite surprised to get an error in a part I didn't modified today and which was running fine this afternoon. What was wrong ?

We use some class to generate CSN (Change Sequence Number), and obviously we have some tests for this class. One of them failed for one hour...

Here is the test :

public class CsnTest
{
private SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat( "yyyyMMddHHmmss.123456'Z'" );

@Test
public void testCSN()
{
long ts = System.currentTimeMillis();

Csn csn = new Csn( sdf.format( new Date( ts ) ) + "#123456#abc#654321" );

assertEquals( ts/1000, csn.getTimestamp()/1000 ); <<---- This assert fails.

Why did I get an error ? Because the way we create the CSN is simply wrong : we don't take into account the fact that the computer is not necessarily always using the same time zone, and that some operation assumes that it got a GMT based time, when other uses the Locale.

Be extremely cautious when dealing with dates and time zones : you may get a very bad surprise in production, instead of experimenting those errors by chance, just because you are running tests at 2:30 am a Saturday before going to bed !

Maven community is sometime a strange world ...

2010-09-20T16:03:00.003+02:00

3 years ago, I submitted a patch for the Maven antlr plugin. Something quite simple that took me 1 hour to whip, test and to send as a JIRA [1]

It took 6 months for this patch to be applied, something I can understand.

However, 3 years after the code has been patched, I can't get the plugin from the Apache repository, where it was before. Why ? Because the project has been moved from Apache to Mojo. The reason ?

"A release could be done shortly but I would like to move the maven-antlr-plugin and maven-antlr3-plugin (in sandbox) to Mojoproject.

During the last year, I am the main committer on this project. Recently, David Holroyd provided a new plugin that supports Antlr v3, and submitted some patches. Unfornately, he is not an ASF committer. I could take care of David's patches but I think it should be good to give a new life of this project in the Mojo land. It would be more easy to give access to David, so he could maintain it as he wants. " [2]

What's wrong in the Maven community if they can't make someone who is obviously proposing patches and is a wanna-be committer if they have to move the project out of Apache to get this guy working on the project ? Voting process is too complex ?

Seriously, I don't get it ...

PS : of course, I can get the plugin from the Apache repo, but not at the same place. It's now available on [3].

[1] http://jira.codehaus.org/browse/MANTLR-14
[2] http://maven.40175.n5.nabble.com/vote-Move-the-maven-antlr-plugin-to-the-mojo-project-td204608.html#a204608
[3] http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/org/codehaus/mojo/antlr-maven-plugin/2.1/

Twitter failures...

2010-06-22T16:54:00.002+02:00

It seems that Twitter has reached is limits a few weeks ago, with daily failures since then.

I'm just wondering if Twitter's developpers are french, with a project manager named Domenech, and a top developper named Anelka.

Or maybe I'm mixing failures : in any case, if we use the french soccer team as a base to measure other teams failure, then Twitter is just experiencing small bumps on the road atm...

Microsoft is shooting itself in the foot

2010-06-01T13:37:00.003+02:00

So today I received a phone call from the Microsoft 'client support' (so called) entity.

It's pretty clear that they are more into following a process, even if it's totally stupid, than helping customers. (remind me Dr Strangelove, when the guy can break a CocaCola machine to get the 10 cents he needed to give a phone call that would have saved the world ...).

Instead of solving my simple issue with a simple solution (namely, providing me the KEY that is associated with the installed product, which is different from the product we bought - a Windows 7 premium. Probably because the DVD was badly stamped before being put into the box), they keep going insisting that we install a new version, losing 2 more hours plus having to reinstall all the side products.

Seriously, it's time to think about switching to some more friendly system, people. Ubuntu is quite usable, so is Mac OSX (but you might face the exact same problem). In any case, making 25% margin is just a shame when the UQOS (unquality of service) provided is so high : basically, you are on your own.

Coupled to the fact that they have delegated the first level support to external companies in low cost countries (profits, it's all about profits), it makes it pretty obvious that Microsoft is equivalent to what IBM was back in the 1990.

The butterfly is now just an elephant, not a dancing one... Sea elephant on the shore.

Maven release failures

2010-05-31T14:56:00.002+02:00

So today I had to generate the MINA 2.0.0 packages in order to launch a vote. We have a full page on MINA web site explaining how to cut a release : http://mina.apache.org/developer-guide.html#DeveloperGuide-ReleasingaPointRelease%2528CommittersOnly%2529

I must say that Maven Release plugin is either totally dumb, or that what it does is totally counter-intuitive, and broken, IMHO.

What is the problem ? The maven release:prepare follows the steps :

1) Check that there are no uncommitted changes in the sources : OK

2) Check that there are no SNAPSHOT dependencies : OK

3) Change the version in the POMs from x-SNAPSHOT to a new version (you will be prompted for the versions to use) : OK
(here, we went from 2.0.0-RC2-SNAPSHOT to 2.0.0)

4) Transform the SCM information in the POM to include the final destination of the tag : OK
(the SCM info is now scm:svn:http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/mina/tags/2.0.0, as expected)

5) Run the project tests against the modified POMs to confirm everything is in working order : OK

6) Commit the modified POMs : KO!!!

What's wrong here ? Everything has been committed in the trunk instead of the expected mina/tags/2.0.0 !

Why is the maven release plugin modifying the SCM tag if it's to commit everything in a place which should store the next version, ie 2.0.1-SNAPSHOT ?

I could understand that this is done on purpose (don't see a single reason for that, but who knows...), but at least, can't it *ask* the user before messing with the trunk ?

Sometime, the Maven Way Of Doing Things (tm) is completely broken, and this explains the complaints found on the blogsphere...

Why I will find a key for Windows 7 on internet to install it on a computer

2010-05-28T19:14:00.002+02:00

Microsoft forces me to be a pirat today.

From time to time, I'm helping the cheese shop owner down my street, because he is a great guy and he knows almost nothing about computer, but uses it everyday to manage his stock of cheeses and bank account.

Today, he told me that he has an issue with the computer he bought last september, with Vista(ss) on it. As he is using a Account Management system which is not compatible with Vista(ss), he decided to bought an upgrade to Windows 7.

So far, so good. He paid 119€ for the Windows 7 familly Premium upgrade from Vista(ss) Home Premium. Quite expensive, but, hey, you have to pay the price when you don't know that Linux is a pretty decent alternative.

After having installed the POS^H^H^Hsoft, he had to activate the key. But then a message said 'the key is not valid for this version of the product'. WTF ??? So he called me.

One hour on the internet, no help. I have to say that Microsoft web sites are probably some of the worst ever when it comes to find a valuable piece of information. In fact, there is *no* information available.

So I decided to call the Activation Center, because, hey, it's The Activation, Stupid !

I spend almost 2 hours being thrown like a ball from one person to another one, from Microsoft to HP and back, from the useless phone center somewhere in north africa, because it's probably cheaper to pay people there than in France (poor guys, being paid around 300€ a month to pick the phone and hear someone like me yelling ...).

At least, we were able to discover that the package labeled "Windows Premium" contains in fact a DVD labeled Premium but containing the Extended edition. Of course, the key is the Premium one, not the extended one.

At this very moment, I thought that the solution was damn easy : they just have to give me the extended edition key, and voilà.

Fuck me ! No way ! Those guys are so stuck in the middle of a huge swamp of bureaucracy, combined with a large dose of idiocy and fear about the consequences of breaking the rules to help a CUSTOMER (I emphasize this word, because, hey, you know what Microsoft, we are not only USERS, we also are CUSTOMERS !) that they can't provide me with those 24 chars and 4 hyphens (and UUID for those who know what it's all about).

So I told the guy (the manager of the manager of the technical guy I was talking to) that I have a better solution : go on the internet, get a hacked key and that will do the trick.

"But that would be piracy !!!" he replied.

You know what ? *yes*. And you forced me to do that, Microsoft.

Last thing : my fellow Cheese seller will buy a Mac next time. He saw mine, and found it quite wonderful.

Losers !

PS : If anyone from Microsoft read this, feel free to contact me to help me to help this poor guy. I won't charge you more than 125 € an hour to get it working. I already wasted 2hours of my precious time btw. Prove me that you are smarter than the system you are now stuck into. Remember USSR ?

PS2: feel free to re-post.

10 ans de Glénans !

2010-04-19T22:31:00.003+02:00

(Exceptionnellement en français, mais je pense que cela ne concerne que les lecteurs francophones.)

Donc cela fait 10 ans que j'ai fait mon premier stage de voile aux Glénans. Il s'agissait de deux semaines de croisière semi-embarqué (moitié à terre, avec découverte de la voile sur petit quillard, et une semaine à bord d'un confortable Dufour 30).

Cassont les mythes : non, Les Glénans, ce n'est pas une école de voile militaire, ni comme on l'entend encore, les 'fachos de la voile'... En fait, je ne crois pas avoir passé de meilleures vacances - mais à l'époque j'avais besoin de changer d'horizon -, et depuis, je renouvelle cette expérience chaque année (voire autant de fois que possible).

Cela fait maintenant 7 ans que je suis moniteur, ayant encadré 14 stages différents (soit 2 semaines par an), sur des supports tels que le Glénas 5.7, Open 5.70, Sprinto, Dufour 30, Sun Fast 43, Sun Fast 32, Dufour 325, et Elan 31.

J'ai au l'occasion de découvrir des lieux magiques, comme le golfe du Morbihan au lever de soleil, l'Aber Wrach au coucher de soleil, le Ras de sein par pétole, Belle île, Houat et sa plage et Hoëdic, Groix, Brehat la mangifique, Batz, l'ile d'Yeu, l'Odet et le Belon, Pot Blanc, Porquerolles, les îles du Frioul, les calanques de Cassis, Sète, le détroit de Messine, les canaries, Cascais, et les îles Scilly.

J'ai à peine touché le fond deux fois : une au mouillage (calcul de marée foireux, et pourtant refait 3 fois, avec réveil à 2h59 du matin pour replanter la 'pioche' 50 mètres plus loin, et envasement bien collant à force de rester dans le secteur rose d'un feu à secteur ...)

Pas de spi explosé, quelques petites blessures, quelques départ au tas (spi en drapeau en tête de mat, départ au lof avec spi en coquetier et GV qui tombe, taquet défait par l'écoute de spi baladeuse, et gros vrac avec voile d'avant déroulée par force 8...) mais rien de grave.

Quelques frayeurs aussi, comme ce coup de 50 noeuds de vent soudain en baie de Loctudy (7 noeuds de vitesse à sec de toile avec 43 noeuds de vent réel...) "Vous avez eu peur ? Non, t'étais super calme, on a juste trouvé bizarre que tu prennes la barre pour ne plus la lacher..." (dixit mes stagiaires).

Et des rencontres assez étonnantes. Un chanteur d'opéra, un réalisateur de cinéma, une ancienne serveuse de café passant son aggregation de lettre à 50 ans, un éleveur d'oies, et même un prêtre ! ( et oui, les voies du seigneurs sont plus impénétrables que la coque de son navire, ce qui l'a conduit à étudier la navigation et les marées !)

Cela m'a aussi donné l'occasion de rencontrer Romain, skipper (http://www.globe-skipper.com/fr/index.html), que je salue au passage, qui me fait le plaisir de me convier à des convoyages me coupant du monde pour quelques jours : France-Cannaries ou France-Grèce, plus quelques trajets en méditerranée sur un voilier de 27 mètres (ex-bateau de course, assez monstrueux avec son mat de 37 mètres...)

Pour ceux que ça intéresse : http://www.glenans.asso.fr/

N'hésitez pas à me contacter pour plus d'information !

Some new LDAP browsers

2010-02-16T13:03:00.002+01:00

Today, Stefan Seelmann pointed out that a couple of free LDAP browsers have been launched.

The first one is delivered by Symlabs (no clue about the license though) and the other one is a NetBeans plugin.

I can understand that the NetBeans team develops a specific plugin, but I don't get the reason why a private company develops something that is already available for years, actively developed and used by a hundred of thousands people. I mean, isn't it a waste of time and resources ?

Guys, there is room for you to join The Apache Software Foundation if you think you can give an hand, instead of playing in your own sandbox !

PS: none of those two projects come close to the functionalities we deliver with Apache Directory Studio.

Useful tool

2010-02-16T12:11:00.002+01:00

From time to time, I need to get a clue about what some code is doing. Of course, I can - and do - read the code. But when it's highly concurrent, and the stack is deep, I would like to get an immediate vision of the stack trace for a complete execution.

I'm using a small tool called JIP : Java Interactive Profiler. I'm not sure why they added interactive in the name, because there is nothing interactive once you have launch your program, but anyway...

So how does it work ? Simple : you add some instruction in your command line, run your program, and get back some trace. Let's see with an exemple. Yesterday evening, I did some debugging session with MINA and I wanted the trace generated for the server initialization, and a simple client call. I added this argument in the server command line :

-javaagent:/Users/elecharny/jip-1.1.1/profile/profile.jar -Dprofile.properties=/Users/elecharny/jip-1.1.1/profile/profile.properties

and run my server. The profile.properties has just been modified slightly to fit my need :

profiler=on

remote=off

port=15599

ClassLoaderFilter.1=com.mentorgen.tools.profile.instrument.clfilter.StandardClassLoaderFilter

thread-depth=-1

thread.compact.threshold.ms=1

max-method-count=cw-1compact

method.compact.threshold.ms=1

file=/Users/elecharny/jip-1.1.1/profile.txt

exclude=org.eclipse,org.junit,org.slf4j,org.apache.log4j,org.apache.commons

track.object.alloc=on

output=text

output-method-signatures=yes

clock-resolution=ms

Basically, I just set a file name to store the trace, filter some classes, extended the thread depth to infinite. The property file itself is quite well documented, and it should not be a problem to run the tool with a very minimum RTFming.

Here is a sample of the trace I got :

+------------------------------
| Thread: 1
+------------------------------
           Time            Percent
    ----------------- ---------------
Count    Total      Net   Total     Net  Location
=====    =====      ===   =====     ===  =========
  1    422.1     96.1   100.0    22.8  +--Server:main        (mina.test2)
  1    106.8     23.9    25.3     5.7  | +--NioSocketAcceptor: (org.apache.mina.transport.socket.nio)
  1     82.7     16.1    19.6     3.8  | | +--AbstractPollingIoAcceptor:       (org.apache.mina.core.polling)
  1     24.4      0.0     5.8          | | | +--SimpleIoProcessorPool: (org.apache.mina.core.service)
  1     24.4     11.1     5.8     2.6  | | | | +--SimpleIoProcessorPool:       (org.apache.mina.core.service)
  1     13.1      6.4     3.1     1.5  | | | | | +--NioProcessor:      (org.apache.mina.transport.socket.nio)
  1      6.7      6.5     1.6     1.5  | | | | | | +--AbstractPollingIoProcessor:      (org.apache.mina.core.polling)
  1     30.9      0.8     7.3     0.2  | | | +--AbstractPollingIoAcceptor:     (org.apache.mina.core.polling)
  1     30.0      0.1     7.1          | | | | +--AbstractIoAcceptor:  (org.apache.mina.core.service)
  1     29.9     11.9     7.1     2.8  | | | | | +--AbstractIoService: (org.apache.mina.core.service)
  2     15.7     13.8     3.7     3.3  | | | | | | +--NioSocketAcceptor:getTransportMetadata (org.apache.mina.transport.socket.nio)
  1      1.8      1.7     0.4     0.4  | | | | | | | +--DefaultTransportMetadata:      (org.apache.mina.core.service)
  1     16.1      0.1     3.8          | +--IoBuffer:wrap    (org.apache.mina.core.buffer)
  1     16.1      0.0     3.8          | | +--IoBuffer:wrap  (org.apache.mina.core.buffer)
  1     16.0     15.9     3.8     3.8  | | | +--SimpleBufferAllocator:wrap   (org.apache.mina.core.buffer)
  1      8.3      8.1     2.0     1.9  | +--BufferCodec:       (mina.test2)
  1      1.3      1.1     0.3     0.3  | +--DefaultIoFilterChainBuilder:addLast      (org.apache.mina.core.filterchain)
  1     17.3      0.0     4.1          | +--AbstractIoAcceptor:bind  (org.apache.mina.core.service)
  1     17.3      0.1     4.1          | | +--AbstractIoAcceptor:bind        (org.apache.mina.core.service)
  1     16.9      1.0     4.0     0.2  | | | +--AbstractPollingIoAcceptor:bindInternal       (org.apache.mina.core.polling)
  1      4.2      1.5     1.0     0.4  | | | | +--AbstractPollingIoAcceptor:startupAcceptor  (org.apache.mina.core.polling)
  1      2.6      0.1     0.6          | | | | | +--AbstractIoService:executeWorker  (org.apache.mina.core.service)
  1      2.6      2.3     0.6     0.5  | | | | | | +--AbstractIoService:executeWorker        (org.apache.mina.core.service)
  1     11.1     11.1     2.6     2.6  | | | | +--NioSocketAcceptor:wakeup   (org.apache.mina.transport.socket.nio)
+------------------------------
| Thread: 11
+------------------------------

This first stack trace is the server bind() method execution.

Here is the stack trace for a message being processed :


+------------------------------
| Thread: 14
+------------------------------
              Time            Percent   
       ----------------- ---------------
 Count    Total      Net   Total     Net  Location
 =====    =====      ===   =====     ===  =========
     1   1115.2      0.1   100.0          +--NamePreservingRunnable:run (org.apache.mina.util)
     1   1115.1      0.6   100.0          | +--AbstractPollingIoProcessor$Processor:run (org.apache.mina.core.polling)
     6   1048.9   1048.9    94.1    94.1  | | +--NioProcessor:select    (org.apache.mina.transport.socket.nio)
     6      2.1      0.1     0.2          | | +--AbstractPollingIoProcessor:access$6    (org.apache.mina.core.polling)
     6      2.0      0.0     0.2          | | | +--AbstractPollingIoProcessor:handleNewSessions (org.apache.mina.core.polling)
     1      2.0      0.1     0.2          | | | | +--AbstractPollingIoProcessor:addNow  (org.apache.mina.core.polling)
     1      1.2      0.6     0.1          | | | | | +--IoServiceListenerSupport:fireSessionCreated      (org.apache.mina.core.service)
     6     24.2      0.1     2.2          | | +--AbstractPollingIoProcessor:access$9    (org.apache.mina.core.polling)
     6     24.2      0.1     2.2          | | | +--AbstractPollingIoProcessor:flush     (org.apache.mina.core.polling)
     3     20.8      0.0     1.9          | | | | +--NioProcessor:getState      (org.apache.mina.transport.socket.nio)
     3     20.8     20.7     1.9     1.9  | | | | | +--NioProcessor:getState    (org.apache.mina.transport.socket.nio)
     3      3.2      0.2     0.3          | | | | +--AbstractPollingIoProcessor:flushNow        (org.apache.mina.core.polling)
     2      2.3      0.1     0.2          | | | | | +--AbstractPollingIoProcessor:writeBuffer   (org.apache.mina.core.polling)
     6      2.5      0.1     0.2          | | +--AbstractPollingIoProcessor:access$10   (org.apache.mina.core.polling)
     6      2.4      0.0     0.2          | | | +--AbstractPollingIoProcessor:removeSessions    (org.apache.mina.core.polling)
     1      2.3      0.0     0.2          | | | | +--AbstractPollingIoProcessor:removeNow       (org.apache.mina.core.polling)
     1      1.6      0.1     0.1          | | | | | +--IoServiceListenerSupport:fireSessionDestroyed    (org.apache.mina.core.service)
     1      1.5      0.0     0.1          | | | | | | +--DefaultIoFilterChain:fireSessionClosed (org.apache.mina.core.filterchain)
     1      1.2      0.0     0.1          | | | | | | | +--DefaultIoFilterChain:callNextSessionClosed   (org.apache.mina.core.filterchain)
     1      1.1      0.0     0.1          | | | | | | | | +--IoFilterAdapter:sessionClosed      (org.apache.mina.core.filterchain)
     1      1.1      0.0     0.1          | | | | | | | | | +--DefaultIoFilterChain$EntryImpl$1:sessionClosed   (org.apache.mina.core.filterchain)
     1      1.1      0.0     0.1          | | | | | | | | | | +--DefaultIoFilterChain:access$2  (org.apache.mina.core.filterchain)
     1      1.1      0.0     0.1          | | | | | | | | | | | +--DefaultIoFilterChain:callNextSessionClosed   (org.apache.mina.core.filterchain)
     1      1.0      0.0     0.1          | | | | | | | | | | | | +--ProtocolCodecFilter:sessionClosed  (org.apache.mina.filter.codec)
     4     36.0      0.1     3.2          | | +--AbstractPollingIoProcessor:access$8    (org.apache.mina.core.polling)
     4     35.9      0.2     3.2          | | | +--AbstractPollingIoProcessor:process   (org.apache.mina.core.polling)
     4     34.7      0.1     3.1          | | | | +--AbstractPollingIoProcessor:process (org.apache.mina.core.polling)
     2     34.3      0.2     3.1          | | | | | +--AbstractPollingIoProcessor:read  (org.apache.mina.core.polling)
     3      2.3      0.0     0.2          | | | | | | +--NioProcessor:read      (org.apache.mina.transport.socket.nio)
     3      2.2      2.2     0.2     0.2  | | | | | | | +--NioProcessor:read    (org.apache.mina.transport.socket.nio)
     1     31.2      0.0     2.8          | | | | | | +--DefaultIoFilterChain:fireMessageReceived       (org.apache.mina.core.filterchain)
     1     31.0      0.0     2.8          | | | | | | | +--DefaultIoFilterChain:callNextMessageReceived (org.apache.mina.core.filterchain)
     1     30.9      0.0     2.8          | | | | | | | | +--IoFilterAdapter:messageReceived    (org.apache.mina.core.filterchain)
     1     30.9      0.0     2.8          | | | | | | | | | +--DefaultIoFilterChain$EntryImpl$1:messageReceived (org.apache.mina.core.filterchain)
     1     30.9      0.0     2.8          | | | | | | | | | | +--DefaultIoFilterChain:access$5  (org.apache.mina.core.filterchain)
     1     30.9      0.0     2.8          | | | | | | | | | | | +--DefaultIoFilterChain:callNextMessageReceived (org.apache.mina.core.filterchain)
     1     30.8      0.1     2.8          | | | | | | | | | | | | +--ProtocolCodecFilter:messageReceived        (org.apache.mina.filter.codec)
     1      1.3      1.2     0.1     0.1  | | | | | | | | | | | | | +--ProtocolCodecFilter:getDecoderOut        (org.apache.mina.filter.codec)
     1     28.6      0.0     2.6          | | | | | | | | | | | | | +--ProtocolCodecFilter$ProtocolDecoderOutputImpl:flush      (org.apache.mina.filter.codec)
     1     28.6      0.0     2.6          | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +--DefaultIoFilterChain$EntryImpl$1:messageReceived       (org.apache.mina.core.filterchain)
     1     28.5      0.0     2.6          | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +--DefaultIoFilterChain:access$5        (org.apache.mina.core.filterchain)     1     28.5      0.0     2.6          | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +--DefaultIoFilterChain:callNextMessageReceived       (org.apache.mina.core.filterchain)
     1     28.5      0.0     2.6          | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +--DefaultIoFilterChain$TailFilter:messageReceived  (org.apache.mina.core.filterchain)
     1     28.3      0.3     2.5          | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +--Server$MyIOHandler:messageReceived     (mina.test2)
     1     27.9      0.0     2.5          | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +--AbstractIoSession:write      (org.apache.mina.core.session)
     1     27.9      1.4     2.5     0.1  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +--AbstractIoSession:write    (org.apache.mina.core.session)
     1     26.1      0.0     2.3          | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +--DefaultIoFilterChain:fireFilterWrite     (org.apache.mina.core.filterchain)
     1     26.1      0.0     2.3          | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +--DefaultIoFilterChain:callPreviousFilterWrite   (org.apache.mina.core.filterchain)
     1     26.0      0.0     2.3          | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +--DefaultIoFilterChain$TailFilter:filterWrite  (org.apache.mina.core.filterchain)
     1     26.0      0.0     2.3          | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +--DefaultIoFilterChain$EntryImpl$1:filterWrite       (org.apache.mina.core.filterchain)
     1     26.0      0.0     2.3          | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +--DefaultIoFilterChain:access$7    (org.apache.mina.core.filterchain)
     1     25.9      0.0     2.3          | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +--DefaultIoFilterChain:callPreviousFilterWrite   (org.apache.mina.core.filterchain)
     1     25.9     21.3     2.3     1.9  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +--ProtocolCodecFilter:filterWrite      (org.apache.mina.filter.codec)
     1      2.3      2.2     0.2     0.2  | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +--ProtocolCodecFilter:getEncoderOut  (org.apache.mina.filter.codec)
     1      1.2      0.5     0.1          | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +--ProtocolCodecFilter$ProtocolEncoderOutputImpl:flushWithoutFuture   (org.apache.mina.filter.codec)

Pick good names for your methods/data structures...

2010-01-26T16:59:00.002+01:00

I had hard some time today, trying to get a clue about what is what in Apache Directory Server project.

When Alex Karasulu started to work on the project back in 2001, he had to design a brand new ASN/1 codec, producing LDAP messages. He named those messages and this codec "Snickers", just because he has used the "Snacc" ASN/1 compiler before (Snacc couldn't be used by the project, because it was not free of use).

So we had our Snickers codec, and SnickersXXX messages.

When I joined the project in 2005, I was crazy enough to think that I can improve this portion of code performances. Sure I did, but I picked some other funny names, "Twix" Codec and TwixMessageXXX messages.

Great ! It was funny, we laugh a lot, and congratulate each others, thinking how funny we were ... What I don't say is that I had to write a converter from Snickers to Twix messages, as Twix messages are used in the front end, and Snickers messages are manipulated all over the back end. So converting back and forth was mandatory.

Damn asses ...

5 years later, when I come back into this crap, I have *no* bloody idea about what is what. Is Twix for the frontend or the backend ?

When you pick a name, and when you think it's funny, just think about those, and probably you, who will not have fun at all when it'll be time to fix some code in this area, with no clue about what Twix and Snickers are...

A Pale is a Pale. Don't name it Chair because it sounds funny..

Fixing performance issues in your application

2010-01-22T13:55:00.003+01:00

I was lucky enough to assist to a presentation done by Kirk Pepperdine last Wednesday. I won't present Kirk (you can check his résumé here ), it's enough to say that he is well known as a java performance Guru.

The presentation was conducted in two parts, the first one was a Q & A session, the second part was about debugging live an application that was carefully slowed down by introducing bugs in it.

Preamble
Let me talk about the application first : the guys who invited Kirk (AFAIK, it was an 'extra', provided as a bonus following an internal presentation they paid for. Thank to Xebia for having shared this presentation with external people) have prepared the application (the well known and useless Pet Clinic) by adding some of the anti-pattern they have met when doing consulting for many of their clients. Kirk had no clue about the bugs that have been injected.

Q&A
It was asked us to provide some questions when we registered, and Kirk answered them extensively. Here are some of the Q and A I remember of :

Q : Which GC should we use ?
A : The one which works. Usually, just focus on your application, you'll not need to pick a specific GC .

Q : What do you think about other languages like Groovy, Scala, wrt performance ?
A : It's irrelevant. Picking a language to develop your application should not be a matter of performance only. 'Whatever works' is the way to go. If you want to build an application fast, and if it's not expected to be heavily loaded, then even php is a good choice.

Q : What tools to you use to check for performance bottlenecks
A : A few : a system monitor, HP-JMeter, an VisualVM

Q : How can you best write an application which depends heavily on concurrent code ?
A : Don't use any synchronization. There are ways to avoid synchronization, based on state machine theory. (pointers needed here ...)

Q : What is the ratio of GC problems you have to deal with when working for a client ?
A : Around 40%. Assuming that I'm the last hope for many of my clients, it's may be an irrelevant number. Usually, people successfully fix easier issues themselves.

Q : Do you check the code when you start tracking some performance issue ?
A : Never. I'm not a coder, I don't have time to go through thousands of line of code. I just spot the place in the code which has problem.

Q : Managers don't let me adding some traces in the application on production… What should I tell them ?
A : Managers know the difference between a slow application and a dead application. Do what you have to do, or find another client. (in other words : you don't cure cancer with aspirin...)

Q : Which profiler do you use, or prefer ?
A : YourKit: it's simple and efficient.

The most interesting presentation I have seen in years. I actually learn things in an area I thought I was efficient…

Live demo

What was the crux about this part was the processes Kirk adopted to point out the problems in the code.

Step 1

First, he asked for a baseline to work on. Namely, you should have a scenario which demonstrates the kind of real performances issues a real client perceives. Improving some application which is already perceived as working is a waste of time, energy and money. Without a base line, you also have no way to check that you have improved the application. Last, not least, define your expectations, otherwise, you won't meet them ! So here, the team has defined a JMeter test, and defined the expected response time for each page.

Step 2

Second, run the baseline scenario, and measure the response time, plus a few other counters :
- CPU (users and system)

That's it, nothing more. Here, the code has not been even checked. The only thing Kirk did was to remove all the tuning for the JVM, like the memory min and max size, and every other premature configurations.

The rational is that you have no idea at this point if those parameters have any effect, but they for sure have an impact, probably polluting the results.

Looking at the CPU consumption and response time (90%CPU, around 5% system), with an average of 10s per page, it was clear the application has a performance issue, but there was no clue about what's going on yet.

Step 3

Then he checked the way the GC was running. He added some instruction on the JVM setting to generate some GC traces, run the application for a few minutes, then checked the logs ("You have to be patient ! Memory leaks may take a while to be noticed.")

A quick look at the metrics shown that the GC was eating 13% of the whole CPU. Way too much.

Step 4

Kirk now decided to connect to the running application, using VisualVM. The idea was to check the way objects were allocated. After a few minutes of tests, the allocated objects graph shown that we have a linear increase over time, which means a memory leak.

Finding the memory leak was a matter of minutes : find an application object (no need to check a Java object like byte[] or String : "Java collection objects don't leak…"). What is the key for Kirk is the number of generations an object survived : the higher this number, the more likely this object is leaking. Very new to me.

As a side note, he also said that many of the existing tools don't provide this generation number. They base the detection of leaking object on delta between snapshots. Not convenient.

Then you can check where the object was allocated checking the stack trace, an now, look at the code.

At this point, the important lesson is : just look at the code when you know in which method you have a problem.

(the application had another memory leak he found too, using the very same approach)

Another lesson : he asked to remove the caches in the code, instead of blind-guessing what was wrong with those caches (they were leaking). His moto was : "Why would you optimize your code by adding cache when you have no idea about what's going wrong in your code ?"

Step 5

Once this initial problem was fixed, he re-runs the test, and he saw that the CPU was not going any upper than 50%. Very wrong when the response time was still awful. In this case, the System CPU was high (the ration between user and system should be around 5-10%/90-95%).

What does it mean ? Contention. How to find where we have contention ? Easy : generating a thread-dump.

No fancy profiler, no long source reading, just a thread-dump.

It immediately shown that only two threads were used to deal with 50 concurrent clients requesting the application.

A quick tuning on Tomcat (number of threads accepting requests), and we moved to the next step.

Step 6

One last measure shown now that we had much better performances, but with a very high CPU system usage : around 20%.

Same action here : thread dump, look at the blocking threads, go to the portion of code where the thread was waiting. A bad thread.sleep( 100 ) was found in the code.

And it was over for the demonstration : 2 hours to fix bugs that would have took days and days for most of us!

Conclusion

In two hours, he made the application running way faster, simply by using a couple of tools, and without reading the code.

Impressive.

Thanks to Kirk Pepperdine, Cyrille Le Clerc and Xebia !

Follow up

I have forgotten a few things :

at some point after stet 4, GC went up to 65%. Kirk suspected that some part of the code was calling the GC. You bet !
after the presentation, Kirk said that the very first step is really to catch all the GC problems first, as they will probably hide other problems.

The day after, for real !

2010-01-09T00:27:00.001+01:00

Impressive !!!

Apache Directory WebSite statistics

2009-12-18T12:01:00.002+01:00

Here are some stats we gathered yesterday on http://directory.apache.org site. I just checked the OS of our visitors (thanks to Google analytics), and the browsers.

OS
	2007	2008	2009	Last month
Windows	79,45%	76,10%	72,16%	68,92%
Linux	13,61%	15,11%	16,89%	18,74%
Mac OS	6,27%	8,13%	10,21%	11,61%
SunOS	0,23%	0,28%	0,35%	0,33%
iPhone	0,01%	0,07%	0,09%	0,10%

W$ is losing some ground every year. It's even more obvious on the Browser category. Last month, the stats are :

FF (all versions) : 59,19%

IE (all versions) : 21,31%

Chrome : 7,92%

Safari : 6,14%

Opera : 2,58%

IE stats
2007	36,42%
2008	30,15%
2009	23.99%
Last month	21,31%

Of course, it's a bit biased, because we are addressing very technical people, who are most certainly on the bleeding hedge. My mom does not browse Directory.a.o, that's for sure ! However, this is relevant, considering that they are the ones who create tomorrow's IT !

Come on Eclipse, you can do it !!!

2009-12-08T13:10:00.002+01:00

It's now years Eclipse has introduced the Working Set feature. It's really helpful, but sadly, it's still a damn bad hack : you can't have more than one project with the same name.

For instance, I want to work on MINA 2.0 *and* MINA 3.0. Both of them will have the same project names, as I see no reason to change them. I have a mina-core java project in both sets, and no way to have them both in their associated working set in eclipse.

This is not only useless, at some point, it's ridiculous. I can't imagine that in 8 years, no one in eclipse understood that it's a major problem. It seems to me a very basic concept...

It's just like, hmmm, I have a new born baby, and I want to name him/her John/Dorothy : WRONG ! Some one in another family has already used those names... Get it ?

How stupid ...

Hopefully, it might be possible in Eclipse 4.0 : http://wiki.eclipse.org/Eclipse_4.0/Wishlist (bullet #6)

DELL D620, R.I.P...

2009-11-26T23:18:00.002+01:00

Last week, I installed the latest Ubuntu 9.10 on my Dell laptop. I had to revert to 9.04, due to some huge instabilities (I was using Ubuntu 8.10 for more than a year before).

So far, Ub9.04 was just fine, I didn't had any problem, beside the problematic support for Flash on FF3.0, and a painfull process eating 45% of my CPU : something supposely helping disabled people to use the computer. Once this process has been killed, everything went fine.

Too bad. Yesterday evening, I had some issues with my power cord (it was said not to be recognized by the system), with the consequence of the battery not being on charge, and my processor crawling at half speed. It lasted until this morning, then it worked again. I already experimented this harsh in Oakland last month...

Tonite, I left the office after having suspended my laptop, and when I arrived at home, it was dead. Switch on, some leds were blinking, I heard the disk spinning a few seconds, and that was it. Nothing on the screen... Hopefully, I did a full backup last week before switching my system !

So I bought a Mac book pro, a 15", 2.8Ghz, 320Gb 7200rpms, 4Gb mem. 1400 €, refurbished. It is supposed to arrive either tomorrow or monday.

My Dell was 3 years old, I didn't paid for it (insurance paid for it, my previous one has been stolen), so it's the first time in 5 years I buy a new laptop. Not too bad ...

If some one is interested in spare pieces, I have 1 Gb of mem, a 160Gb 2.5" disk, a battery. Just tell me !

A F**** disgrace !

2009-11-19T11:23:00.002+01:00

So we did it. For the forth time in a raw, France will be present in South Africa. But what a shame this match was !

I must say that I never saw the french soccer "team" (at this point, I don't know if we can call it a team) played so bad. Ever. We have talented players, probably worth half a billion euros if you cumulate their value, and we can't make them play a decent game ?

Last, not least, this ends with an insult to fair play. Really, Irish players deserved a better end...

My apologize for all the irish, this was unfair. Shame on Henry, shame on the referees, shame on the FIFA presidents who keep thinking that video is just good for watching pr0n movies, probably... And shame on Domenech, who admitted to sometime pick players based on astrology studies... ("all parameters have to be considered and I have added one by saying there is astrology involved"...)

This is not soccer. Just a pathetic parody...

Upgraded to Ubuntu 9.10, updated

2009-11-18T10:15:00.003+01:00

So after the ApacheCon event, I decided it was a good timing for an upgrade of my 8.10 Ubuntu driven laptop. I was quite pleased with the previous version, except that wifi support was crappy at best, and decided not to upgrade to 9.04,

After a full backup (took 4 hours), installation took only 20 minutes, most of the time was spent to carefully define the partitions so that I keep my /home and /opt safe. It seems that the installer is not happy with a 500 Mb partition for / (it asks for 2Gb), but I went through, without any problem.

I have 9 partitions defined, and even if it sounds a bit too much, I'm quite pleased with this setup. At least, /home and /opt are separate partitions, just because I don't want to update, but prefer to go through a complete re-installation instead (I have been burnt once with an update which ended with a full re-installation , so better spare this time by doing a direct re-installation). Another benefit is that I was able to move from ext3 to ext4 for the formatted partitions.

Then came the reboot, and bang, all was pretty much ok !

I just had to let Ubuntu to update many of its packages, and to add a few missing icons in my menu (xchat, thunderbird). My eclipse shortcut weren't working anymore, too, but that was easy to fix.

Now, the bad : suspend wasn't working anymore. I spent 3 hours on the net checking for a solution (it seems that almost everyone have experienced the very same problem), and at the end, I just found an interesting information. With an NVidia device, once the new driver (185) has been installed, adding this line in xorg.conf did the trick (in red) :


Section "Device"
      Identifier      "Default Device"
      Driver  "nvidia"
      Option  "NoLogo"        "True"
      Option  "NvAGP" "1"
EndSection

Don't ask me why, but it worked (Tm).

FYI, I'm using a Dell D620, a machine probably built and designed by former soviet union engineers : works well, looks ugly !

Update :

This version is probably the worst I ever used. CPU scaling does not work (I'm stuck at 1Ghz), Eclipse is crashing every now and then, many widgets remain stuck and can't be closed, sound does not work correctly, plus many little problems...

Release often, release fast, ok, but at least : release only when it's READY !!!

Seems that European commision is not happy with Oracle/Sun deal

2009-11-10T09:07:00.003+01:00

Today, in a preliminary statement, the european commission has objected that "combining Sun's MySQL database product and Oracle's products could hurt competition in the database market"

That's not a good news for Oracle, but I don't really care. It should have been obvious to them that Oracle + MySQL would harm competition, and that they will face such an issue.

That's not a good news for Sun too, especially for all the fellow developers who are working there, and who have no clear idea about their future. I feel for them.

San Francisco !

2009-10-31T07:45:00.002+01:00

So I arrived in SF last monday evening. As I have some family there, I'm enjoying the few days I'm spending with them, as we see each other every 5 years. On tuesday, we did some sight seeing (the weather was excellent !) and since then, I'm stuck in front of my computer most of the day, working on the DIrectory server.

Today though was excellent : we drove to Napa Valley, and did some wine testing. I have been there 20 years ago, and I remember having tested a very good Champagne (Tm), from Domaine Chandon. I was not that much impressed by the other wines we tested back then, but I wasn't the heavy wine drunker I'm now :)

I must admit that what we tested today was wonderful. There are two differences with the french wines I'm used to (actually, four) :

when I test french wines, out of 10 bottles, only 2 please me, 3 are average, and 5 can be thrown in the sink. In Napa, They are more or less all pleasant, even if I won't put all of them on my table (it's a matter of taste here)
I'm used with 12.5° wines, most of the Napa wines are above 14°C. Some of them are closer to Porto than normal wine. That also mean you have to be carefull not to swallow all the wines you test !
There are some local 'cépages' (grapes) that we don't have in France, like the Zinfandel. Not my favorite...
We have Chateaux, Grands Crus, 1er Crus, AOC. Napa has Cabernet, Syrah, Chardonnay. Of course, our Chateaux are made of those same Cabernet, Merlot, Viognier, Syrah, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Marsanne, ... but we don't name the wine from the cépages they are made of. Probably a mistake because it's really confusing for the vast majority of people who don't know anything about the Clos de la Roche, for instance (it's a very good burgundy Grand Cru, a Côte de Nuit, made of Pinot Noir)

Are those differences important to me ? Yes, and no.

Yes, because I just find it disapointing that french producers don't understand that quality is a must, and producing mediocre wine is just killing them.

And no, because navigating through all the small villages in Burgundy, a place where 50 different producers can share 125 acres of vineyard (4700 bottles per producer, average), is stunning. Old houses, beautiful landscapes, and of course great wines and good food is part of the pleasure.

However, I would say that there is no reason for any Napa owner to be ashamed from their production : they top most of french wines !

Time to go back to the Directory Server code after this day off !

Boston...

2009-10-25T05:00:00.002+01:00

So I'm in Boston, enjoying a short stay with good friends. Zhenya and Alexei are kind enough to welcome me in this beautiful city before I fly to San Francisco, I really appreciate !

Boston is really a nice place to be in October, when all the trees turn red and yellow. Very differnet from Paris !

On the other side, I still have a lot to do on the Directory server, but frankly, with a 6 hours jet lag, plus many places to visit (tomorrow : Newport), I don't have time nor energy to spend more than a couple of hours a day to work on the schema refactoring we are currently working on (but it's still making progress).

I will arrive in San Francisco next monday, with some more places to visit. Time is flying ...

LdapCON 2009 : Portland !

2009-09-17T17:36:00.002+02:00

I'm flying to Portland tomorrow where the 2009 LDAP conference will stand, just before LinuxCON. Stefan Seelmann will travel with me, we arranged a common flight (Stefan is one of the guy behind Apache Directory Studio)

This will be the second LDAP conference, the last one was organized in Köln back in 2007. I will present two talks, one about replication and another one with Ludovic Poitou about a new Java based LDAP API.

The most interesting part is that the LDAP community will be there, this is a promize of many interesting conversations (and probably a lot of beers to drink :)

It's a 17 hours flight, with a stop, quite a long journey...

For those of you interested in LDAP, feel free to join us !

A question of style...

2009-09-04T09:18:00.002+02:00

This morning, Pierre-Arnaud Marcelot, who designed the Apache Directory Server web site pointed me to the new Nexus site. And then back to Directory Studio.

Pretty similar L&F :) In fact, the CSS are the very same.

First, Pierre-Arnaud is quite proud to see that what he designed was used as a base for a commercial web site (granted that the people behind Nexus are Apachers too - Sonatype's founder is Jason Von Zyl, one of the well known Maven guy )

Second, I think that we should also add the ASL 2.0 header in CSS, and probably HTML pages (assuming that Confluence does it automatically when exporting pages : something to check)

Last, not least, I'm quite sure that Pierre-Arnaud, and the Directory project team, would have appreciated to be contacted before those CSS are used for a commercial web site. Just because Pierre-Arnaud has spent hours, and probably days, to polish those CSS and would have been pleased to have been thanked for that.

But it's probably always the same story : deadlines, rush hours, etc. Anyways, it's always a pleasure to see that your work is being reused, it's a proof that it's not that bad, all in all :)

So congrats for the great job, Pierre-Arnaud !

Street Fighter

2009-08-28T12:43:00.002+02:00

Today I played this game again. Well, even if everything is going virtual those days, the experience was very real... Long story short : an old lady was grabbing money on an ATM and a young mobster was assaulting her.

At first, I thought this was some young couple having fun (you know, with those hair coloration, you can't tell from 10 meters looking at her back if she was young or not... Say NO to artificial colors ! Gray is sexy ...). But when I saw the walking stick falling down, I switched to Berseck mode. That mean : you don't think about the consequences. Ok, would the guy looked like Mike Tyson, I probably would have thought a bit more, but, well, you know, there is something in your brain that short-circuits in such situations.

I grab the guy, choked him, and he started to suffocate. He released the money. The woman was safe. I was safe. I asked someone to call the police.

Now, many lessons learned :
- First, people around you in such situation don't know what to do. There were 3 guys, quite young (30 years old), they were just watching; I had to yell at one of them so that he called the police. Lesson one : John Doe is not used to violence, whatever movie he is watching.

- Second, I remember that I had to release his neck, so that he can breeze. My "idea" was that it could kill him, and I didn't want that to happen. So I put him on the ground, trying to lock him, as I learned when I was doing Judo, 30 years ago. Lesson two : it's not because you did one year of Judo training that you are still good at it, 30 years later...

- Third, of course, this guy wasn't waiting the police calmly... he was trying his best to escape, well, using a mix of whining, and desesperate move to get away. He wasn't violent though : no pinches, no teeth, no punch, just like a snake, trying to escape. At some point, he turned me down, and I was under. Not good. He escaped. Lesson three : Secure your hold, don't try to change your position, when it's safe. He might have suffocated, but probably won't have passed out.

- Forth, when he started to run away, the other peeps just did very little to stop him. So he was away. Good for him. Anyway, he was under 18, and would have probably spent a day or to in jail, and would have been released. He was not french either, that mean there is very few the police can do. My bet is that he was a kind of refugee, and needed the money badly. I can understand that. Life is a battle. Lesson four : Don't expect any help. the fight lasted for something like 2 minutes, and *nobody* tried to give me a hand. Probably plain normal.

- Last, not least, the ground is dirty and tough. Even if he didn't fought back, I got some scratches. Also, my physical condition was not perfect : I was injured as I fall down from my bicycle 3 days ago, and at some point, I didn't want to increase the injury. Lesson five : it's *exhausting*. I never thought that a 2 minutes action was so demanding. It took me 5 minutes to recover after this effort. Ok, I'm 44, but I do ride my bicycle every day (around 20km a day). It does help a little.

At the end, I wish I don't have to do that again. Nobody was injured, the woman did get her money back, the young mobster had a new chance to behave better (hmmm, ok, I'm not that optimist). So all is good !

PS: Calling the police in Paris in August is simply not possible. They never showed up, they didn't even replied the call ;)

Social Sites OD !

2009-08-27T11:16:00.003+02:00

There is not a single day I'm not receiving an alarm from someone moving from one place to another, tripping from one country to another one, anything...

Trippit, Dopplr, wtf ?

Soon, there will be a new Social Site like named GirlIFckd.com...

This is utterly useless and annoying. I bet that their business model is doomed from day one, but there are still some VC wanting to waste their money on such companies. We probably have to wait one couple of years to see those parasites dying.

French sucks in English

2009-08-25T15:19:00.002+02:00

This is obvious, you just have to read my posts ;)

But now, it's confirmed by the french students scores on TOEFL. With an average of 88/120, France ranks at the 69th place, far behing the norwest european countries, on the same seat than Bulgaria, Belarus and Latvia.

That explains a lot ... Désolé :)

Eclipse Column mode selection

2009-08-18T13:25:00.005+02:00

Bernd Fondermann mentioned that he likes some cool feature in IDEA : the column mode selection.

It's also available in Eclipse 3.5. You have a small icon you can click on (or you can activate it with Shift-Alt-A) :

I never used it though. To me, such a feature lies in the hidden little gems you may use, but that you don't need, except once a year.

All the IDE have such gems, the difference between two IDEs, to me, is just about how used you are with the one you work with on a daily basis.

I have tried to switch to IDEA last year, and I felt in such a foreign space that I swallowed my rants about Eclipse, and switched to a new version.

I perfectly understand that someone else can prefer IDEA (or NetBeans), but I don't really think that any IDE has a competitive advantage above any other (except if you are using them in specific areas). I even now people who are still using Emacs and code in Java.

It's good though to have more than one IDE available ! We all saw what IE has done to the web as soon it killed all its competitors !

Are investors worse than animals ?

2009-08-14T12:00:00.003+02:00

It seems so :

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/5988799/Parrot-beats-investors-in-South-Korean-stock-market-contest.html

What strucks me is the last sentence :
"Our experiment proved that making long-term investments in blue chips is safe and effective," Mr Chung said.

This experiment just confirms that "Economists/Inverstors are people who explain you today why they have failed yesterday"

Using a bicycle in Paris...

2009-08-12T00:56:00.002+02:00

Paris has 6 003 streets, for a total length of 1700 km. Out of that, 400km dedicated cycling tracks have been created since 2002, 200 more km will be created by 2013.

People using a bicycle in Paris represent now close to 2% of the global traffic. That means you have something like 40 000 person riding a bicycle every day. This is probably due to the Velib system (http://www.en.velib.paris.fr/) : you can pick a bike in one of the 1200 stations, there are more than 16 000 bicycles available.

How much does it cost ? 1 euro, and you can use the bicycle of half an hour. The ticket is still valid for 24 more hours, but you have to pick a new bicycle every 30 minutes. Considering that most of the trip will take you less than half an hour in Paris, that's enough (Paris is 13km x 7km wide, but don't expect to cross all Paris on those bikes in less than half an hour !)

Last year, those bicycles have been used 26 000 000 times !

I'm using a bicycle in Paris since 1991, and I must say that things have changed a lot since then. I never felt in danger, but I'm used to ride my bike now, even if I'm going fast (probably more than 30 Km/h, when I'm not stopped by a red light).

The rules are simple, if you want to have a safe ride :

Stop at every red light. Car drivers can see you, as you are on the first line.

Keep your right

Never stay close to the parked cars : someone can open a door, you'll be surprised how bad can be the contact... So riding with one meter marhin on the right is just finewear an helmet. Your skull is not that solid...

Wear some gloves. If you fell down, your hands will probably hit the ground first. That will save you bad injuries.

Have a horn, pedestrians are crossing the streets without watching out for bicycle, they rely on the absence of noise as a signal that they can cross the street safely...

Before changing of direction, check behind to see if a car, truck, motorcycle or another bicycle is not in your way.

Try as much as you can to stay on the dedicated tracks.

I may cumulate something like 2000 kms a year in Paris, day and night, and I must say it's quite a pleasant way to move from one place to another, assuming you have a safe place to store your bicycle.

Virtualizing IoC ...

2009-08-10T23:23:00.002+02:00

I was wondering which company could be interested in buying SpringSource :

http://blogs.vmware.com/console/2009/08/vmware-acquires-springsource.html

What next ?

Eclipse annoyance, take 2...

2009-05-11T21:36:00.003+02:00

Two weeks ago, I complained about some issues I had with Eclipse. No, I don't want to use any kind of additional plugin to manage my Maven build : it's far too complex for Eclipse...

Now, Eclipse is making me loose my precious time again. Something that worked pretty fine on older versions (3.2... oh dear...) simply does not work anymore. Namely, I have run mvn eclipse:eclipse on some project, and get it working just fine. Except that Eclipse still claims that "Project 'mina-core' is missing required library: '/home/elecharny/.m2/repository/cglib/cglib-nodep/2.1_2/cglib-nodep-2.1_2.jar'". WTF ??? I have done a 'clean all', without any success...

Boring... So boring ... Any Idea around there ?

Side note : I don't know what's going on with Eclipse, but it's now two years that the platform is piling features on top of features, while the core is less and less stable. May be it's time to go back to basic : focusing on what users *really* need. A stable IDE.

Goatgle !

2009-05-04T10:59:00.003+02:00

They fired H/R, and hired some goats :

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/mowing-with-goats.html

Will they produce goat cheese soon ?

Eclipse, you are so boring sometime ...

2009-04-29T10:00:00.002+02:00

So we have had a long convo lately with some french OSS peeps. It started about Sun^H^H^HOracle, and ended with a discussion about NetBeans vs IntelliJ Vs Eclipse Vs JDeveloper, well, forget about JDeveloper :)

I'm using Eclipse since its infancy, back in 2001, version 1.0-RC1 (time is flying !). Since then two things has prodigiously annoyed me :
- there is no way to work with two versions of the same project without having to switch the workspace (painful, to say the least !)
- importing a project into a working set (a recent addition) is still impossible : you have to import the project, and then move it to the working set.What a waste of time !

I thought that with this working set addition, it would be easy to associate a project to a specific working set, and then allow you to have two versions of this project at the same time. No way. It's a pure cosmetic addition.

Boring. Very boring... Com'on, Eclipse, instead of including useless plugins like this plague named mylyn, you could simply make developers life easier fixing the working set concept !

How many new projects in Incubator this year ?

2009-04-04T13:45:00.002+02:00

So IBM is discussing with Sun, as they are interested in buying them. Many articles and blogs has mentioned it those past few weeks. One interesting recent post on TheRegister is trying to guess what will happen if IBM finally absorbs Sun. At this point, this is probably a mix of blind guess, rumors, backtalks, and hypothesis. One sentence though is interesting :
"...It's likely the remainder of Sun's software would be quietly punted out to the Apache Software Foundation or released under an Apache license. IBM is an experienced backer of both."

That's an issue when people start to think The ASF is a place you can trash all what you don't want to support. Hopefully, we have an Incubator, and it's a damn good filter : a project without a community won't get out the incubator. This is one of the reasons why it takes time to exit from incubation...

We probably will need more mentors though in the next few months :)

Books

2009-03-12T17:34:00.002+01:00

Recently, I read great books : the Millenium trilogy (for english natives : "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" and "The Girl Who Played with Fire", the third book is not out yet, I guess). It's a very special thriller, totally different from anything I ever read. It's 1800 pages long, but you almost cannot put it down once you started it. Steig Larson, the author, died soon after he finished the third book, just before they all were supposed to be published. If you have to flight for more than 6 hours, definitively a must have !

The second book is a bit different : "Jesus sans Jesus" (ie, Jesus without Jesus ). Basically, it's the history of the christian church first days. It could have been named "Building a religion for dummies". Religion put aside, it just demonstrates how the roman empire adopted the christian religion in 3 centuries, and how it transformed the empire from inside out. Way better than "God Delusion" from Richard Dawkins (I find this book a bit too messy.)

Oracle JRockit, WTF ?

2009-03-11T17:29:00.002+01:00

Today, I wanted to check with the latest JRockit version that we can run Apache Directory Studio with.

No way ! You simply can't anymore get the latest version of this VM, unless you are ready to download one of the charged product : Oracle JRockit Mission Control 3.0.3 or Oracle JRockit Real Time 3.0.

This is an incredibly stupid idea ! I don't care using either of those two products. What I want is to be sure that my clients who have invested a huge amount of money in WebLogic and decided that the VM of choice for their infrastructure will be JRockit, won't have any problem whatsoever with JRockit running Apache Directory Studio.

Now, Oracle is wasting my time, as I have to register, give them some email address they can spam and get rid of the product I don't want to use just to be able to play with the JVM.

Not to mention that their Login system is massively FU...

Oracle, you are WASTING MY PRECIOUS TIME !

Linkedin is not totally useless !

2009-03-11T15:41:00.002+01:00

At least, today I was able to find a real interest in LinkedIn.

A fellow committer is working for a french company who submitted a proposal to a big state-owned french company (one of those gigantic mammoth which is supposed to spend our taxes wisely. Hmmm. _Supposed_ ...)

They lost the deal, as it was attributed to another company. Were they more expensive, or with less technical merit ? Not at all. Another company got the deal, because the guy who selected them was previously working for this company before being hired by the State owned company. How strange ...

How did they discovered this fact ? The poor guy had is CV on LinkedIn !

Spam surge...

2009-03-09T01:04:00.003+01:00

I have no idea why suddenly the number of spams I receive has increased so drastically those last months ...

Back in december, I received around 3000 spams a month (a good ratio of 100 spam a day). It has almost doubled since then !

Don't worry, I'm not annoyed a single minute, as all the spams are quietly stored and destroyed every 30 days by Google. I decided to adopt this strategy 2 years ago, as I realized that running my own spam killer on my various computers was a lost of time : all my mails are now redirected to Gmail, and back into Thunderbird on my current computer. It has two advantages : I barely receive 2 spams a day, and I can still get my mails when I'm not in front of my computer. Not to mention the nice addition Google did last mont with Gmail Offline mode. I'm just a little bit concern about my privacy, but anyway, if it's confidential, I use snail...

From time to time, I check the number of spams I have in my spam box, and this is where I took those numbers from. I don't even check for false negative, I simply don't have time for that.

So either this crisis didn't hit the spammers, or they are so desesperate they have doubled the number of spams they sent. Otherwise, it's still about pills, loan, lottery, and of course nigerian scam... Nothing new under the sun !

Wasted 40 € today...

2009-02-24T22:03:00.002+01:00

I went to see a "doctor" this afternoon. In France, you have to spend many years in university in order to become a doctor. Fine.

So my throat hurts, since last week. I thought it was time to stop aspirin and check if I needed some more powerfull medecine (basically, check it was viral or bacterian). So I picked a doctor close to my current client. Bad move...

I should have quit his office as soon as I discovered he was an adept of those sugar pills: an homeopath ! What a joke... When introduced into his office, he first asked me if there was nothing wrong with him using a pendulum. What the hell ??? Then came the investigation (around 2 minutes) : "this is viral" (how the fuck does he know ? ).

And now, the best part : he picked a random number of 'medecines' on his board, and used his pendulum to select the ones I have to take.

40 €. No kidding. Back to ancient age, hands over your body, fuming parfumes, split on your right, and you are cured, and he is a bit richer.

And we PAY for such a piece of doctor ???

"It's a flue. Take your medicine, you'll be cured in one week. Do nothing, it will last 7 days".

How to waste 2 hours...

2009-02-07T13:12:00.003+01:00

One of the biggest problem when you are using the Apache project you have participated to is that you have hard time trusting yourself.

Last thursday, I spent 2 hours debugging Apache Directory Server just because the program I'm working on (which is based on ADS) was failing. Obviously, it was an ADS bug ! What a damn idiot I was... Instead of blindly trust ADS, I should have focused on my current code ! (thanksfully, it only took me 2 hours to realize that).

What kind of lessons did I learnt from this bad experience ?
- first, just realize you are a client of your Apache project. How many times you replied to a user on the mailing list : "hey, you'd better have a real reason to think that there is a bug in the project instead of a bug in _your_ code...". Generally speaking, you are more likely to FU in your new code than in the project's code !
- second, resist to the idea to go knees deep into the project code just because you have a deep knowledge of the code base. Step back, ask your co-workers, and try to check the code you have just wrote.
- last, not least, improve the Apache project's error messages ! Really, it helps :)

Otherwise, it's a really good thing to use teh Apache project you are working on for some client : you have a better perception of what is good, what is bad and what is ugly. And you can improve the project in the process :)

Over-protection...

2009-01-31T15:54:00.003+01:00

Today, Google is trying to protect me against malevolent sites when I do a search. All of them. Including my favorite sites :
- Apache
- playB^H^H^H^H^HNational Geographic,
...

In fact, any search on google gives me a warning (sorry, it's in french) :

Avertissement- Attention, l'accès à ce site risque d'endommager votre ordinateur.

Suggestions :

Accédez à la page précédente et sélectionnez un autre résultat.
Modifiez votre recherche pour trouver ce que vous cherchez.

Vous pouvez également accéder à http://www.apache.org/ à vos propres risques. Pour obtenir des informations détaillées sur les problèmes que nous avons rencontrés, consultez la page de diagnostic de la Navigation sécurisée de Google concernant ce site.

Pour plus d'informations sur la façon de vous protéger contre les logiciels nuisibles lorsque vous surfez, consultez le site StopBadware.org.

Si vous êtes le propriétaire de ce site, vous pouvez en demander l'examen à l'aide des Outils pour les webmasters. Pour plus d'informations sur le processus de révision, consultez le Centre d'aide des webmasters de Google.

Avertissement fourni par

It seems that Google is having some kind of issue. I'm not alone having this problem, as many of other peeps are having the same problem...

Goggle, wake up, I know it's 7 am at Montain View, but it's a mess out there ...

Continuum experiment

2008-12-19T13:03:00.003+01:00

As I'm injecting all the Directory projects into Continuum, I try to get used with the GUI. There are many areas of improvement, to make the user's life easier.

The fact that you have to login to be able to configure your project is obvious. But the place the 'login' link has been put (ie, on the left part of the orange bar under the logo) plus the police size selected, makes it a bit un-user friendly. I would have preferred either a centered form, or at least, having it on the right part of the screen, bold and wide, as many of the similar applications.
I don't see any reason why we should inject a scm tag in the pom.xml, as we _already_ set the pom's URL in continuum.
When you add a new project into a group, you can't change the project's name, as it's extracted from the pom. You have to edit the project after it has been created. Time consuming...
The very same for the configuration : you don't have any choice until the project has been created.
You can't delete the mail notifications sent to notifications@XXXX. Too bad if you don't have such a mailing list !
When you inject a project with modules, the default should be to _not_ add every module as a separate project (for X sake, this is why we use modules !)
The left menu is a bit too heavy. I don't care to have the legends, it makes me think I can click on the icons...
It would be very cool to be able to copy/paste a project : as I'm using it using different configurations (JDK versions, etc), it's a bit time consuming to repeat the project creation more than once...
Adding a new mail notification is done by clicking on a 'submit' button... I was expecting an 'add' button instead :/

Ok, that's for the cons. Not any of those are show stoppers, they are just little annoyance making you feel like you could use another CI, like Hudson.

Otherwise, it's pretty slick, and most important, IT DOES THE JOB !

Update :
Another big issue : if you create a project twice (sharing the same pom), you can't associate a specific configuration for each of those projects. For instance, if you set a project to use Java 5, and the other to use Java 6, then the last configuration will be applied to both projects. Damn bug !

JIRA, be ready :)

Hilarious ...

2008-12-13T20:47:00.002+01:00

Excerpt from this site :

"Our sophisticated proprietary automation and unparalleled client service delivers an enhanced execution that is virtually unmatched in our industry"

"One of the critical ingredients in creating the added value..."

"The firm uses a variety of futures, options, and other instruments to hedge its positions and limit its risks"

"...these highly prudent risk management policies protect the interests of clients as well."

"...the firm can customize client reports and deliver them electronically in whatever format best meets the needs of clients"

"...has one of the most sophisticated disaster recovery facilities found anywhere in the securities industry"

"...maintains a fully equipped and staffed facility located near LaGuardia Airport" (With a plane ready to fly away ?)

And, best of the best :

"The owner's name is on the door"

"Bernard Madoff has a personal interest in maintaining the unblemished record of value, fair-dealing, and high ethical standards that has always been the firm's hallmark".

Big brother ...

2008-10-15T20:15:00.003+02:00

Sometime, you are just at the wrong place at the wrong time ... I'm not sure that this guy will appreciate to discover that he has been shoot by Google in a hot place near Paris. The girl near by is not exactly waiting the bus :)

NightlyWTF...

2008-10-03T00:19:00.003+02:00

Trying to access the web site of one of the biggest french telco company, I'm quite pleased to discover that they are using tomcat (well, an old version) on a Linux system :

It's a small planet...

2008-07-31T14:30:00.002+02:00

Here is a very interesting - and scary - conference about global warming :

http://storage02.brainsonic.com/customers2/entrecom/20080227_Spie/session_1_uk_new/files/index.html

http://storage02.brainsonic.com/customers2/entrecom/20080227_Spie/session_1_fr_new/files/index.html

This guy is not one of those crazy ecofreak, he is quite sane and have worked with the ADEME, the french agency for environment and energy management. He has also been appointed by the french governement during what has been called the "grenelle de l'environnement", a big think-tank organized last year to forsee what we should do in order to cut by 50% our energy consomption by 2020.

His web-site : http://www.manicore.com/

Apache DS 1.5.3 is out !

2008-07-21T14:12:00.002+02:00

For the first time in three years, we were able to release a new version roughly three months after the previous one : ADS 1.5.3!

Nothing special about this version, but a lot of bug fixes, and some improvement (mainly new installers, better performances, and a few more things).

We are now moving to the next release (1.5.4) which will be much more important, as we have done a _lot_ of changes in the core server. The idea is to be able to release a 2.0 table version around Q3, and I think we are still on schedule for this.

Thanks to the team, and to the contributors for their reports.

We are now expecting a new version for Apache Directory Studio (1.2.0) which will be release very soon !

Just don't do it !

2008-06-04T10:08:00.002+02:00

Seems like some people are either pessimistic, or simply too tight with some oil companies :

http://www.planetark.com/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/48619/story.htm

Like it or not, as we are (have ?) reaching a peak oil, and considering that demand for coal and gas will surge soon (China is building two coal plants EACH WEEK !), you better be prepared !

Having spent one week in Florida lately, I must say that I was surprized : I have seen no solar panel at all... And Florida claims to be the 'Sunshine state' ...

I'm not very pleased with what I see - or don't see - in France too. Compared to Germany, we are very late. Having build more than 50 nuclear plants make us feel comfortable. When you know that electricity is only 17% of our global energy consumption ... Politicians are just acting as if they just discovered the problem (make me think that they are not acting : they are reacting).

Anyway, facing an important problem and simply saying : "we won't be able to do it" is just irresponsible. Shame on you, Mr Watson.

Two interesting words

2008-05-21T03:13:00.002+02:00

As I'm visiting Alex Karasulu in Florida (lucky guy !!), and enjoying the sun, sea and warm days, I wanted to point out those two words which have different meanings in USA and in France :

- Service : This is definitively not a french word. The french revolution has seen the privileges being abolished, and it's still remanent in waiters mind... You have to be known to be "served" in a restaurant in Paris. In Jacksonville - but this is also the case in all the US cities I having been -, service means something.

- Resources : Seems to be unlimited in US. Cars are pissing gaz crazy. Electricity is like for free, as you never switch off the bulbs, because, eh, the switch is on the other side of the room ! (like in USSR, where you never switch off the oven, as matches are more difficult to find than gaz :). Obviously, Resources is not a french word either...

Both combined makes life confortable in US. Much more than any european who never travel accross the ocean can imagine (this is always bugging me when I read gross approximation about "how hard is it to live in the USA for those who are not billionaires" : people seems to be pretty happy here...). The question is : for how long ?

Good to be with some good friend, sharing some good technical discussion about ApacheDS, with a glass of cool white wine (a french Chablis 1999 ;), in front of the ocean, while dolphins are jumping out of the sea.

Ubuntu 8.04 speeds up Java !

2008-05-06T17:53:00.003+02:00

I have heard that the new kernel bring some improvements, and was expecting better performances on my local Apache Directory Server micro benchmark, but not that much.

I got a 15% speedup on my test ! FYI, this is a basic test doing some random searches into a server with 10 000 entries. I have a small injector running N threads, each one doing M search requests.

With Ubuntu 7.04, I reached 4296 req/s, and I know get 4924 req/s ! Not that bad :)

I still have to test if OpenLdap benefits from this speedup (with my previous Linux version, it was able to deliver up to 8900 req/s, so we are still two times slower).

PS: this is NOT a valid benchmark, I just use it to compare performances between to fixes, as it's fast and easy to launch. We have a better benchmark platform to do real tests !

Ubuntu ++

2008-05-05T16:56:00.003+02:00

As Apache conference europ is now over, and ADS 1.5.2 has been released, it's time for an upgrade. I was an happy Ubuntu 7.0.4 user since last year, but I wanted to experiment some new flavor with Ubuntu 8.0.4.

The previous version was pretty OK, except that I had a few freeze from time to time (once a month), plus using a beamer was a PITA, as you had to reboot your laptop in order to get the screen resolution adapted, and back (thanks to Noel Bergman for the trick :)

At first, I tried the upgrade process... Not production ready, it seems ! Four failures, and it ended with a Kernel panic, with not that many option than a full install :)

Welcome to the pleasure dome ! At least, as I *knew* it will happen, I saved my /home somwhere where its safe.

So let's go for a burning session (actually, I dried 3 CD instead of one, thanks to some crappy DVD drives)

When done, the best part was that I was able to access my /etc/fstab to write down on a piece of paper the partition's names, as I have 10 of them, and didn't want to reformat all of them. Installation took 15 minutes (well, 30 minutes as I had to play it twice, due to a wrong username I typed). Pretty fast for a laptop installation. Btw, Canonical, it would be _very_ usefull if you suggest to use the previously existing /etc/fstab instead of just asking the user to type the mount points.

So far, so good. Booting is fast, the default background image (a heron) is crappy, but hopefully, it used my default one.

Suspend works like a charm, but thunderbird, xchat and gaim have been removed from my disk. I have evolution installed instead, not really what I want to use. The problem is that some repository are not installed by default (just because they want to offer a long term support, I guess). Not cool. But easy to fix (just add the repository in the update manager)

To get all the 'maccish' effects on my laptop, I had to install a new driver for my NVidia card, but I just had to click on the 'OK' button. Pretty slick !

Some default fonts are not really pleasant (like in terminal or in thunderbird). I will have to select my favorite courrier font.

Rebooting is FAST. Not that I use it often (It's linux, stupid !), but from time to time you have to.

What I miss is to be able to select my last user instead of typing my name when rebooting, like in FC8.

So far, so good. Five hours to get my laptop up and running, that's pretty cheap.

One last thing : Canonical, you have to try a little bit harder on the standard upgrade :)

Update :
Don't use the NVidia driver... I had to reinstall the full machine after having rebooted and got my graphic session totally blank : no icon, nothing, just the mouse.

Getting ready for Apache Conference

2008-04-05T20:26:00.002+02:00

2 more days, and I'll be back in Amsterdam.

I still have a lot of things to take care of, including finishing my presentation, which is far too long atm...

It will be another perfect occasion to meet many Directory committers : Alex, Pierre-Arnaud (even if we usually get stuck together in the same office all year long ;), Stefan (Z), Stefan (S), Christine. We have a lot to discuss !

Those last weeks were really tough, as we decided to release two versions :
- Apache Directory Studio 1.1.0
- Apache Directory Server 1.5.2

There is a lot of things to do in order to get the Server released, and we expect to cut the release on monday (better do it before the end of the week, you never know in which shape you will be at the end of an Apache Conference !)

I will also met some former collegues from Joost (Stéphane, and may be some other).

Voilà, it's almost time to pack. See you all in two days !

Old Europa ?

2007-12-14T13:53:00.000+01:00

I'm using eclipse for years now (I started with 1.0-RC1, AFAIR). This is just a great IDE, and it has evolved greatly through years. Not that I consider IDEA or other IDE to be bad, it's just a question of feeling comfortable with the current one I'm using.

Lately, I switched to the latest 3.3.1 version.

Bad move...

This is the very first time I experienced regressions. OOM errors all of sudden, bad completions, a lot of burden. Ok, "let's wait for the patches" was my first reaction. Too bad, 3.3.1.1 is out there, but there is no way to get it installed, due to many 403 errors, whatever mirror I select.

At this point, I'm starting to consider to rollback to 3.3.0, or, a more drastic move, switching to another IDE(A?).

Don't get me wrong : I really like Eclipse, but lately I feel like it has lost some momentum. The web site has been changed in a way it's now a PITA to find valuable informations (for instance, just try to get some release notes or to download an old version). There are more than 1000 plugins available, out of which pretty much are just random student homeworks (IMHO, of course). And the update process is just a nightmare (don't get any error while downloading a load of packages, otherwise your are good to start it all again). Not to mention that package removal is a O(N2) process, as you have no clue about which one you should be removed first unless you know the dependency graph...

Wake up, Eclipse Foundation !

Why does blind people can't drive a car ?

2007-11-30T16:21:00.000+01:00

Two days ago, I have been told that Neil Wilson, the guy behind OpenDS, and four other guys working with him, have been fired from Sun :

http://directorymanager.wordpress.com/2007/11/28/an-open-letter-to-the-opends-community-and-to-sun-microsystems/

Sad news... We met them at Austin last year, during ApacheCon US, where we have had a very interesting BoF. Here are some minutes : http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/directory-dev/200610.mbox/%3cd45b08f00610120922r7522013apac39a4ea3b1a828a@mail.gmail.com%3e
http://hrabal.blogspot.com/2006_10_15_archive.html

We don't have the exact reasons why the core OpenDS team has been fired, because it's obviously something we don't have all the elements, but the 'reasons' which are going public are quite strange (quoting Simon Phipps) :

"...However, I do question how you characterize the requests to change the OpenDS governance. I note that the OpenDS governance was changed on April 28 by sshoaff[2] and that the original line reading:

“This Project Lead, who is appointed by Sun Microsystems, is responsible for managing the entire project”

was replaced by one reading

“This Project Lead, who is appointed and removed by a majority vote of the Project Owners, is responsible for managing the entire project”

I have not been able to find a discussion of this change anywhere, and I understand from your former managers that they were unaware of this change. While you characterize the request made of you as:

“demanded that the owners approve a governance change that would grant Sun full control of the OpenDS project”

it seems to me that what in fact happened was you were (collectively) asked to revert that change to its original state. On present data, it appears to me that far from Sun acting in bad faith over the governance, they were in fact making a reasonable request to correct an earlier error."

Now, when you think about this governance thing, this is clearly something we discussed about during our meeting one year ago. We really found strange that a so-called Open Source project could be managed entirely by a single company, namely Sun. That means no one but Sun can decide which direction the project should go. It's not anymore Open Source, but For your eyes only Source. Use OpenDS, and build a stack on top of it, go front to front with Sun but then they can change something in the code and you are in a dead end.

So what's next? From ApacheDS point of view, OpenDS existence validated Alex Karasulu's vision when he started to write an Ldap server in Java. It was also good to have a competitor, and a strong one. But now what will be OpenDS future? We started some kind of collaboration, a new JNDI API, which was stopped as the project never became a JSR, another failure... Will OpenDS stall totally? Considering that Neil wrote more than 50% of the server, it's likely to be the case, at least for the next 6 months (it's a 1 000 000 lines of code project !)

There is something wrong about Sun and OSS. It's like a blind person driving a car. Being a passenger is not exactly a good position ;)

100$ OLPC vs 100$ OPEC

2007-11-01T09:31:00.000+01:00

We are close to a 100$ Oil barrel (100$ OPEC) : in a few day, every children on earth will be able to exchange a barrel of oil for a cheap computer... As we produce around 80 millions barrel each day, in 10 days, each children will have its own computer...

Sadly, the OLPC price is now closer to 200$ ! But wait, by december, we may have to pay 200$ for an oil barrel too, isn't it?

Time to use your legs more often !

Apache Directory Studio 1.0.1 is out !

2007-09-21T15:18:00.000+02:00

Apache Directory announced the release of Apache Directory Studio 1.0.1, the latest version of its Directory and LDAP related tooling platform written in Java and based on Eclipse technologies.

This release fixes some issues in the LDAP Browser plugin and adds documentation for the Schema Editor plugin.

It fixes a few bugs, the main one is related to SSL connections, which were not anymore available.

Here is the change log :
http://directory.apache.org/studio/changelog.html

Thanks to the Studio team for its good job !

LdapCon : Just great !

2007-09-11T01:07:00.000+02:00

We have spent two days in Köln, Germany, attending the first Ldap Conference. This was a great conference ! We met a lot of people, including other server teams (OpenDS and OpenLdap peeps), and Isode guys. How lucky we were to be able to discuss with Kurt Zeilenga ! Not only a LDAP guru, but also a very cool dude !!

We discussed extensively with Howard Chu (Symas chief architect), and with Ludovic Poitou (who has great pictures on his blog, where you can see one very intense technical session ...). OpenDS vision is quite different than Apache's one, but at least, it is a coherent vision. I'm also sure that we can find some synergy with the OpenLdap team, as they also share this Open Community spirit (openDS is much more about only OSS, not Open Community).

Otherwise, it was also great to meet Stefan Zörner for the first time. He is one of us, but we never have been lucky enough to meet him. Just a very cool dude, too ! We were 7 apache committers, around 10% of the attendance, all of us with a sweet ADS T-shirt ! Easy for us to share our ideas and message with the 63 other guys, they knew we were from Apache :) Naomi Klein was plain right : The brand is everything...

We managed to get Apache Directory Server 1.5.1 and Apache Directory Studio 1.0.0 released just before the conference, and Apache Directory Server 1.0.2 has also been certified compliant by the Open Group for the second year.

Last, not least : the beer ... Excellent !

ApacheCON EU is over

2007-05-07T09:07:00.000+02:00

This was just a great ApacheCon ! And the weather was just perfect :)

Almost all of the ApacheDS team was present (Christine, Stefan Seelmann, Pierre-Arnaud aka pam, Alex and also Chris), and we have had very interesting discussions about the next release. A lot of work to be done ... But also a lot of great guys to deal with !

I also had time to attend some presentations, like Sally's one ("Breaking Through the Noise") with was really good, Peter Royal's presentation (http://people.apache.org/~proyal/MINA% 20AC%20EU%202007.pdf), one of the best presentation I ever saw, and of course the funny lightning talks, which I can't enjoyed as much as I wanted, due to an accident I had to deal with (google sponsored some beers during this event, and I couldn't resist to have one, so was my computer... Dell keybords don't like Heinekken *at all* ! At least, after having spent 3 hours dismantling, cleaning and reassembling it, it works again. Joy ! )

It was also a pleasure to meet all the Joost guys, Stephane Baillez, Sylvain Wallez, Jean-Baptiste Quenot, Sander, Leo, Erik, Pier (plus a few more guys, like Marteen, Torsten, Ludovic, ... they are so many !). Guys, Joost just rock !

A special thanks to Ugo who scooted us into the city, and to Yeliz and Qing who are interviewing many of us to try to understand the way we work (it's all about the community, guys :)

I don't know if I will attend to ApacheCon US this year, but I will certainly be in Amsterdam again next year !

PS: nous avons un nouveau président, et bien sûr quelques crétins n'ont pû s'empêcher de marquer leur déception en brulant des poubelles, cassant des vitrines et jetant des pavés sur les forces de l'ordre. Visiblement, le suffrage universel et la démocratie est encore une notion abstraite pour une couche assez limité de la population, aussi limité que leur capacité mentale... Traverser Paris la nuit en vélo avec ces odeurs de plastique brulé et de gaz lacrymogène n'a pas été très plaisant. La bêtise a ceci de plus que l'intelligence que cette dernière est forcément limité quand la connerie est sans limite ...

New site for Apache DS

2007-02-03T00:09:00.000+01:00

I'm Impressed ! The new Web Site for Apache Directory server is now up and running ! We were expecting it to be revamped for months, but none of us had time to do it. And suddenly, that's it : a new site, with a new logo, new L&F, etc.

The problem with Apache people is not that they are bad, or lazzy, it is just that they don't have enough hours in a day to do everything they have on their list... But when they decide to dedicate a few hours, and gather all their energy, working as a network, it's incredibly much faster than in any other company or organization. Because of the network.

Apache strength is the network. People are the nodes, information is exchanged through this great network, from Turkey to USA, from France to South Korea, from all over the planet, 24x24, 7x7.

I'm impressed every single day ! Oh, and by the way, Apache has reach 500 000 commits in SVN. I missed it, but it was very close :

http://svn.apache.org/viewvc?view=rev&rev=499999 :)

ApacheCon US

2006-10-15T18:10:00.000+02:00

Well, Apachecon US is over. It was in Austin, Tx, and it was great !

We have had an incredible amount of good time, and also some bad headhakes, especially on saturday morning, after a very severe party with some Apache guys (Alex Karasulu, Ersin Er, Pierre Arnaud Marcelot, Lars Eilebrecht, and many other peeps I don't even remember the name ... I was too drunk :)

Ok. We not only drank a lot, we also met those OpenDS guys. They are working for Sun and are developping an open source Ldap server in java, too. So we invited them to our Bird Of a Feather session, and discussed with them about any possible collaboration. It was a great hour, and we finished up with, well, a drink ! Here is a picture of our both teams :

It was definitively a great week. Special thanks to Alex Karasulu, our former chairman of the apache DS server project we are working on, he was an excellent coach for us. It was the first time I met him in real life, and it was exactly what I expected it to be : just fun ! This guy is just incredible.

So is Ersin Er, whose presentations on triggers and Stored Procedures were just perfect. I couldn't believe he can successfully presented those complex addons on just 2 hours, and make it crystal clear, but he just simply did. This guy is gifted !

The last ADS team member present in Austin was Pierre-Arnaud Marcelot, - you should just call him PAM, which suit him perfectly, not only because it's short, but also because it fits well with Ldap, as PAM also stand for Pluggable Authenthication Modules :) - , who is working on LdapStudio, a dedicated Eclipse and RCP administration application for ADS. I just can't wait for this project to be injected as a sub-project to ADS, because it's a great piece of software !

Here is a picture of the ADS team we took in a fancy restaurant, above lake Travis (from left to right : pam, me, Ersin and Alex) :

Voilà, c'est fini, we are now back in France, where the temperature is much colder than in Austin. Monday will be a tough day, with a 7 hours jet lag to deal with.

Special thanks to Stéphane Bailliez who put a really cool link on his blog. He not only is a great guy, he was the one who helped me to understand what Apache Foundation was about, and what were the rules, written and not written. Call him a shepperd !

I will post something soon about his experience about using Ant+Ivy, because he just simply made it possible to have complex builds to simply work.

Thanks to all of you, guys !

TheServerSide end is night !

2006-05-27T10:39:00.000+02:00

Great news ! TheServerSide is having a competitor : http://www.infoq.com/. But can we say that infoQ is a competitor when TSS is only a advertisment platform and nothing more?

InfoQ is driven by Floyd Marinescu, who launched TSS 7 years ago.

Linux desktop ? Maybe ...

2006-05-16T00:39:00.000+02:00

I'm using Linux on my computers since 2003. ll my computers (laptops, desktops, etc.). But today I juts felt frustrated with the new D*ll 9150 I bought two weeks ago. I tried Ubuntu 6.0.6, 5.1.0, Debian, no way ! Mac OSX works on this box, but the lack of video driver make it a bad experiance, beside the fact that this system is not really supported ;) We will try to install a Fedora Core 5 tomorrow, but I have little hope.

What is the problem? New disks. No drivers. D*ll is always trying to offer top notch devices for the best price, but without any Linux driver for it, you just feel in dire straits... At least, for laptops, you have this excellent site : http://www.linux-laptop.net/. Nothing for Desktop :(

Hope tomorrow will be better !

A new kid in the blog...

2006-05-08T23:36:00.000+02:00

Well, not that I have a lot to share, but anyway, I follow the main stream.