Ubuntu 15.04, OpenFire and "Unable to validate certificate" problem

While Upgrading to OpenFire 3.10 from 3.9, I encountered this error on my clients running either pidgin or empathy. I'm running OpenFire with a mix of Empathy and Pidgin clients on a corporate LAN.

Took me a bit for figure out that the certificates isn't the problem but the names. Here's the steps, I did:

1. Check your OpenFire server settings and look for the xmpp.domain value. Remember that value.

2. In the clients, flush the certificates folder; I'm running linux so that folder is ~/.purple/certificates/. In hindsight, I think this step can be skipped because I think Empathy or Pidgin overwrites the folder with the most current certificate.

3. Make sure clients don't log in using the ip address. So no accounts in the form of, username@10.209.70.19 but rather username@xmpp.domain. (so if your xmpp.domain is appsvr1 then the username is username@appsvr1). 

4. Edit the host file to satisfy the FQDN requirement. Assuming that your OpenFire server is at 10.209.70.19 and the xmpp.domain is appsvr1, the you have a host entry of 10.209.70.19 appsvr1. You basically alias it.

My users now can bother me again. 

Haiz...

Putting Groovy on Mint (and other Linux distros) the easy way

Installing Groovy on any Linux distro is a pain in the ass. Generally, the procedure is:

1. Install the requisites. This could be an involved process because you could be potentially install a lot of stuff but at minimum just need Java.
2. Download the binaries for groovy. If your Linux distro has a repo like Debian, I don't recommend using it because it not the latest.
3. Do a bit of file handling and doing a bunch of sym links to the binaries.
4. Configure your bash shell for groovy. Just like step 3, not fun and just plain tedious.

Fortunately for me, I've found a much easier way to do these steps with GVM. GVM is a tool for managing parallel Versions of multiple Software Development Kits on most Unix based systems. Inspired by Ruby's RVM, it's a convenient command line interface for installing, switching, removing and listing Groovy libraries. GVM call these libraries as candidates.

Just do this to install GVM:

curl -s get.gvmtool.net | bash

And then do this to install Groovy.

gvm install groovy

That should install the latest version of groovy and we're off and running with groovy development.

Steam on Linux: Need to update them Nvidia Driver

Valve is now running a closed beta for its Steam platform on Linux; more specifically Ubuntu. This is a good thing since I do believe what's holding Ubuntu (and Linux in general) back from the mainstream is the lack of good games. I bet down the line, I will be building a Ubuntu gaming rig. This isn't really a bad idea but them video driver repositories need to catch up.

Right now if you let Ubuntu select your Nvidia driver from the official repositories, it will install the 295.xx driver which makes Steam on Linux unhappy. So we need to update it to, at least, 304.xx driver. The least painful way to do this is via ppa rather than downloading the driver from the Nvidia site, shutdown X and sh run the installer.

So to install the Nvidia 304.xx driver on Ubuntu 12.04; Open a terminal and run the following commands:

# Add ppa repo
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates
# Update software list
sudo apt-get update
# Install drive
sudo apt-get install nvidia-current nvidia-settings

You should be downloading about 70ish MB worth of stuff. Restart and then configure it via:

# Configure video settings
sudo nvidia-settings

So that's it and you should be downloading the 25 available games and then playing. I'm download Team Fortress 2 and getting my sandvich.

Installing Maven 3 in Ubuntu 12.04 Precise

Ubuntu needs to no explanation and Maven is software project management tool. It manages software dependencies and how your code is compiled and deployed. Its pretty handy because now I don't have to hunt down jars that my other jars need and no more copying the binaries to target folders.

Unfortunately, the Ubuntu repos are a bit slow. The repos only have Maven2. Now, let's get to installing Maven3.

1. Install the Nate Carlson's PPA for Maven3
2. Open a terminal console and type in: sudo apt-get update
3. After update finishes, type in: apt-get install Maven3

You now have Maven3 installed but you can't run it from the terminal because you didn't set the paths. If you try to type: mvn --version; That should fail. To fix this you have to make a symbolic link from where Maven3 is installed to where it can be run it "globally" from the terminal.

$ sudo ln -s /usr/share/maven3/bin/mvn /usr/bin/mvn

You just created a symbolic link in /usr/bin/mvn. The mvn command now should work in your terminal.

Update (3/29/2013):

Caution: command "sudo add-apt-repository ppa:natecarlson/maven3" did not work on my Ubuntu and and had to run "sudo add-apt-repository -rm ppa:natecarlson/maven3" to get my apt-get to work again. ~AmirHD

See this Stackoverflow thread.

Getting Ubuntu to play nice with your Android phone

Doing Android app testing on virtual devices isn't really that bad but it aint the good either. It's always much, much better to test that app on a real device.

But Ubuntu (and possible the other *nixs) doesn't recognize your Android phone. You instead get something like this:

$ adb devices
List of devices attached
???????????? no permissions

Unfortunately this is easily fixed. All you have to do is to create a file in the /etc/udev/rules.d directory which contains one (1) line.
Now, what that line is depends on what your phone is. You can figure that one out by using this command:

$ lsusb

And if you haven't connected your phone via the USB before your typed in the command then pat yourself in the back because your are just as brain dead as the rest of the world.

lsusb output

At any rate, you'll notice that my phone is on Bus 002 and the Vendor ID is "0489" and the Product ID is "c000". Remember these values.

Now, lets make the file:

$ sudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules

And then, type in the following line: 

SUBSYSTEM=="usb",ATTRS{idVendor}=="0489",ATTRS{idProduct}=="c000",MODE="0666" 

All that's left then is to restart udev. Some devices will require you to disconnect and reconnect them to be recognized.

$ sudo restart udev

To check if your phone is now recognized.

$ adb devices

Yeah, I run Ubuntu...Wanna make sumthin' out of it?

Yes, I know my desktop looks cool. It also very, very sweet! My 3 year old ACER laptop which has only 1gig of RAM is running quite smoothly and responsively. To quote yoyong ucab,

"Best performance kaayo."

Trust me on this - when you see this thing run Vista, it makes you wanna cry. Vista is the OS that was bundled with this thing when I bought it and it so f'in slow. And to add insult to injury its Vista Starter. Yes. It's the fork-over-more-bucks-so-you-can-run-more-than-3-apps Vista Starter OS.

You will also notice that I got Netbeans running on this thing. I am a developer after all and its gravy. I even got to sync my code from my kenai.com repo.

You should be looking at Ubuntu on you next laptop. I'm beginning to question the wisdom of paying for the "other" operating system when there's this.

Now, I wonder if I can set this one up as an Android dev/test machine...hmmm.

FFMPEG, Ubuntu and other drugs

First off, Video support for Drupal is a dandy piece of work. They got lots of modules for that. You got:

1. FlashVideo
2. Video_Upload
3. Embed
4. And of course, Video

Now combine Video with other modules like CCK, Views, etc. You get a Drupal website that can handle Video content very well.

Unfortunately, Video which I use doesn't convert/transcode video automatically without some support.  This is where FFMPEG comes in but FFMPEG comes with a few gotchas and quid pro quo's. The default FFMPEG but  doesn't have a lot of codecs, for example, it doesn't have mp3 support.

And to make thing a bit of a challege is that FFMPEG is not on your default Ubuntu Hardy repos. So, you can't directly do an apt-get install ffmpeg and be done with it. You have to jump a few hoops first.

The first hoop is you have to edit the source.list on the apt-get souce.list.d folder. Its located in /etc/apt/source.list.d. You'll have to use a text editor to edit it; vi for the hackers, nano for novices and sorry no emacs on my Ubuntu. Just uncomment the universe and multiverse repos and then issue an apt-get update after you are done editing the source.list file.

And then the second hoop is a bit more complicated. You'll have to read FakeOutdoorman's guide to installing FFMPEG for the details here. Basically, this is the part you get codecs for FFMPEG so you can transcode a lot more stuff like hi-def videos (H264), mp3 (libmp3lame), theora, etc.

After that and a little bit more tweaking and you'll get something like this:

My setup is using Flowplayer for Drupal. The whole idea is to use CCK with Video to handle the video content and then use FFMPEG to transcode the various video formats (eg. avi, mpeg, wmv, mov, mp4, etc.) to flv. Now combine that with flowplayer to play the transcoded videos and Views + taxonomy to sort and display the video content on the site.

Just remember, Video calls FFMPEG via the command-line. FFMPEG then processes the videos and then Video handles the resulting (now converted/transcoded) video.