Say hello to my little friend!

This site runs on GlassFish.

My name's Glenn Holmer, and I'm a Java programmer (not a web designer, as you can see...) living on the East Side in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA: this is the view out my window. I can be reached by email as shadowm at lyonlabs.org.

As of 10/07/2009, this machine is running OpenSolaris.

The picture at right is me with some of the servers I'm responsible for at work.

You can see my astrological birth chart if you like (don't tell me Pluto isn't a planet).

Here's a link to pictures of my travels to Yogyakarta in central Java (Indonesia).

...all watched over by machines of loving grace.

I'm a long-time Commodore 64 enthusiast; in fact, most of this site consists of information about this great little machine that's still so much fun to use. There are software and documentation downloads, programming tips, and pictures of exotic hardware. You'll also find photos from Commodore shows around the US and Canada in recent years, where all are welcome to join in the Commodore goodness. You can find all this from the main Commodore page.

If you're ever in Silicon Valley, be sure to visit the Computer History Museum. They've got displays that will knock your socks off, from centuries-old slide rules, to the underground behemoths that watched the skies during the Cold War. They've even got a piece of ENIAC! One of their latest acquisitions is a reconstruction of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine.

I'm an active member of the NetBeans community, and have been part of the NetCAT (Community Acceptance Testing) program for the 3.6, 4.0, 4.1, 5.0, 6.0, 6.5, 6.7, and 6.8 releases. I am also a past member of the NetBeans Dream Team.

NetBeans 6.8 was released on 12/10/2009, and includes support for Java EE 6 and performance improvements in the editor. There's a good introductory video available, with more linked from there (including a good one on the new Java EE 6 features.

Happy 10th birthday, NetBeans!

I've become very interested in OpenSolaris, especially since the release of 2009.06 and the presentations I saw about it at Community One. A presentation at a local users group was enough to push me over the edge, and in October 2009, I started running this server on it. I'm going to be adding some tips 'n' tricks here as I gradually chronicle my OpenSolaris adventures.

• I had trouble figuring out how to set up my networked HP DeskJet printer. I didn't want to go back and re-learn lp, so I followed these steps:

  • Install CUPS (the package name is SUNWcups).
  • Switch from lp to CUPS with the command print-service -s cups.
  • Start the web-based CUPS admin tool at localhost:631 and add a printer.
  • device type: AppSocket/HP JetDirect
  • device URI: socket://hostname:9100 (where "hostname" is the hostname or IP address of your printer)
  • At this point, you should be able to print a test page.
  • Run system-config-printer and set the printer as the system-wide default. You may want to create launchers for this program and desktop-print-management; there is a good icon at /usr/share/system-config-printer/icons.

    pkg install SUNWipkg
    beadm create snv_129
    beadm mount snv_129 /mnt
    pkg -R /mnt install entire@0.5.11-0.129
    bootadm update-archive -R /mnt
    beadm unmount snv_129
    beadm activate snv_129

I've been a Linux user since 1995, starting with Slackware. I switched to SUSE in 1998 after seeing it at the Linux Expo in Raleigh, and stuck with it for ten years. In mid-2008, I switched to Ubuntu, and continue to run it on my desktop machines. Ubuntu 9.10 ("Karmic Koala") is the current release. Here are some tips 'n' tricks:

• If you hate the annoying on-screen notifications as much as I do (you know, the little black ones that pop up over whatever windows are open), they can easily be terminated with prejudice. First, pkill notify-osd, then make sure it doesn't rear its ugly head again by going to /usr/lib/notify-osd and removing the executable bits (chmod 644 notify-osd). I realize that the modern trend is to assume that everyone suffers from attention defecit disorder, but whoever thought of this little horror should be publicly tortured and dismembered.

• If you're using a Radeon 9000 (RV250) video card and get a black background when you enable Compiz, check out Launchpad bugs 444139 and 413259. For the impatient, 444139 suggests doing two things:

  1. create the file /etc/modprobe.d/radeon-kms.conf containing the line options radeon modeset=1
  2. update your initrd with sudo update-initramfs -k $(uname -r) -u

  413259 suggests (if necessary due to font tearing) adding the kernel boot option radeon.agpmode=-1 (for GRUB2, you would add this to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT line in /etc/default/grub, then run sudo update-grub).

  On my test box, it took both workarounds to run full-blown Compiz as I did in 9.04.

• It you have a SoundBlaster Audigy card and (again!) have no sound in 9.10, try every possible combination of the following until it works:

  • start alsamixer and switch on (or off) "Audigy Analog/Digital Output Jack" (you might find it easier to install and use gnome-alsamixer).
  • In Preferences/Sound, try setting Hardware to Analog Stereo Duplex (or Digital Stereo Duplex).
  • Try to save your settings using sudo alsactl store 0.
  I've finally got sound, but I still have to change the volume setting every time I boot. Why, oh why, after 12 years of using Linux, must I still diddle about with things like this? Funny, Ubuntu Studio gets it right out-of-box on the same machine...

• To remove the user list from the gdm login screen in 9.10, recite this incantation:

  sudo -u gdm gconftool-2 --set --type boolean /apps/gdm/simple-greeter/disable_user_list true

• This is an article about booting multiple operating systems with GRUB (the GRand Unified Bootloader). The article discusses GRUB in general terms, and focuses on its relation to the master boot record (MBR), partition table, and partition layout on disk. A list of reference links is provided at the end. Note: the article needs to be updated for GRUB 2, which ships with Ubuntu 9.10.

• Here are some instructions for creating a GRUB boot floppy for your system in case of emergency.

• In Ubuntu (using GNOME with Compiz), if you add more desktops but there are no entries for them in the keyboard shortcut menu (Preferences / Keyboard Shortcuts), you can manually edit this file and add them:

  ~/.gconf/apps/metacity/global_keybindings/%gconf.xml

  (Note that this file may not exist until you have made some changes to the default shortcuts, so make sure to change one first so you have something to copy and paste. You may also need to log out and back in again for the new shortcuts to take effect.)  Note: This seems to be fixed in Ubuntu 9.10.

• If GRUB is giving you the message "Error 28: Selected item cannot fit into memory" when you try to load memtest on a newer machine, it's not his fault. For an excellent description of the problem, see this message attached to Debian bug report 319837. The solution is to write memtest directly to a floppy (i.e. not to a filesystem on the floppy) and boot from there. If you're too modern to have a floppy drive, you're on your own! Here's the simple command that will do it:

  cat /boot/memtest.bin > /dev/fd0