Change locale and date format of Oracle XE in SQL*Plus

Want to change the default locale and date format in SQL*Plus with Oracle XE Universal to US english. The easiest way is to add two environment variables in Windows XP:

NLS_DATE_FORMAT=DD-MON-YYYY
NLS_LANG=AMERICAN_AMERICA.AL32UTF8

Then start SQL*Plus:

C:\>sqlplus / as sysdba
SQL> select sysdate from dual;
SYSDATE
--------------------
28-MAR-2009

Change Netbeans UI Language

Before Netbeans 6.0, change ${Netbeans_HOME}/etc/netbeans.conf, add:
--locale language=en
in netbeans_default_options, and restart is OK.

For Netbeans 6.0+, this will lead to error message:
"An attempt was made to look up a localized manifest attribute named: openide-module-deprecation-message_nb_language=en

This name is in an invalid format. If you are running the Macintosh MRJ on MacOS X, make sure that your locale settings are valid. Currently: language=en"

The new way now is to add:
-J-Duser.language=en -J-Duser.region=US
in netbeans_default_options

Ref: http://blogs.sun.com/tao/...

Convert Subversion Repositories to Mercurial

Finally found some time to migrate some projects from SVN to Hg. The enterprise SVN became so cumbersome and slow as people keep throwing all junks into it, which you have no control of.

• The 1st recipe was trying to convert directly using Hg in Working With Subversion Repositories

  hg convert --config convert.hg.tagsbranch=0 http://marshal.com/trunk/project1

  But there seemed a bug in Hg when the SVN requires HTTP authorization - even the user and password were correct it still could not pass through:
  
  initializing destination project1 repository
  http authorization required
  realm: crowd
  user: marshal
  password:
  real URL is http://marshal.com/trunk/project1/
  http authorization required
  realm: crowd
  user: marshal
  password:
  http authorization required
  realm: crowd
  user: marshal
  password:
  abort: HTTP Error 401: Authorization Required
  

• Now veer to the Python tool for Hg, which requires Python 2.5+ (already included on Ubuntu 8.1+) & SVN.Do the following:
  

  # svn not installed by default
  sudo apt-get install subversion
  # easy_install not included in Python package by default
  sudo apt-get install python-setuptools
  # download & install hgsvn
  sudo easy_install hgsvn

  Best match: hgsvn 0.1.6
  Downloading http://pypi.python.org/packages/2.5/h/hgsvn/hgsvn-0.1.6-py2.5.egg#md5=8d15f42a8f4cb8516e219b7952bd9607
  Processing hgsvn-0.1.6-py2.5.egg
  Moving hgsvn-0.1.6-py2.5.egg to /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages
  Adding hgsvn 0.1.6 to easy-install.pth file
  Installing hgimportsvn script to /usr/bin
  Installing hgpullsvn script to /usr/bin
  
  Installed /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/hgsvn-0.1.6-py2.5.egg
  Processing dependencies for hgsvn
  Finished processing dependencies for hgsvn
  

• The real staff:

  hgimportsvn http://marshal.com/trunk/project1

  * svn 'info' '--xml' 'http://marshal.com/trunk/project1'
  Password for 'marshal':
  
  Then the program froze after you typed the password. (Well, it happened to me).
  So I have to manually run:

  svn info http://marshal.com/trunk/project1

  And key in the user name/password there, it passed.
  

• Import SVN project again:

  hgimportsvn http://marshal.com/trunk/project1

  This will import SVN's project1 into current directory and no authorization required any more.
  

  cd project1
  hgpullsvn

  pulls all SVN history. Then the daily use of mercurial starts...

Ubuntu SSH How-to

Scenario: generate SSH key pairs and use PuTTY to logon to Ubuntu without inputing user & password each time.
Steps:

• Create the Cryptographic Keys:

  $ ssh-keygen -t rsa

  Assign the pass phrase (press [enter] key twice if you don't want a passphrase). It will create 2 files in ~/.ssh directory as follows:
  ~/.ssh/id_rsa : identification (private) key
  ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub : public key

• Use WinSCP to copy the id_rsa (private key) to desktop, use PuTTYgen.exe to load this key and save private key to PuTTY's format.

• Add id_rsa.pub in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys (or authorized_keys2), just in 1 line. Or simply

  mv id_rsa.pub authorized_keys

• Be sure both the home directory and the .ssh directory be owned and writable only by the owner (700 recommended for .ssh)

• Any error see /var/log/auth.log

• sshd protocol 1 is insecure, so vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config:
  [...]
  Protocol 2
  PasswordAuthentication no # if want to disable interactive logon

• Restart sshd:

  $ sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart

• Use the saved private key in PuTTY:
  PuTTY Configuration -> Connection -> SSH -> Auth -> Private key file for authentication,
  then load the private key. Or use PAGEANT to load this automatically.

• Change passphrase:
  If it's already converted to PuTTY format, use PuTTYgen.exe to convert it back to OpenSSH format, then
  

  $ ssh-keygen -p

  Enter file in which the key is (id_rsa):...

Reference:

• http://www.howtoforge.com/ssh_key_based_logins_PuTTY

• http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/ssh-public-key-based-authentication-how-to.html

• http://kimmo.suominen.com/docs/ssh/

• http://alexandria.wiki.sourceforge.net/SSH+Key+Generation

'tree' script under Linux/Unix/Cygwin

A simple script to traverse all the directories and do whatever you want. The byproduct is a MS-DOS tree command.

#!/bin/bash

listAll() {
    local f
    local i=$1

    for f in `ls -1`; do    # 1 file per line
        if [ -f "$f" ]; then
            indent $i
            echo "|- $f"
            if [ "$COMMAND" != "" ]; then
                IFS=$oIFS
                $COMMAND "$f"
                IFS=$nIFS
            fi
        elif [ -d "$f" ]; then
            indent $i
            echo "+- $f"
            let i+=$INDENTS
            cd "$f"
            listAll $i
            cd ..
            let i-=$INDENTS
        fi
    done
}

indent() {
    local i=0
    while (( i < $1 )) # or: while [ i -lt $1 ]
    do
        echo -n " "
        let i+=1
    done
}

echo "Usage: shred-tree [-u]"
echo "-u: shred; otherwise just list"
echo

if [ "$1" = "-u" ]; then
    COMMAND="" # put your command here, eg. ls -l
fi

# space delimitered:
oIFS=$IFS   

# \n delimitered:
nIFS='
'

IFS=$nIFS   # For file names containing spaces
INDENTS=3
listAll 0

Use TortoiseHg 0.5 to clone a Mercurial 1.0.2 SSH repository

If you just downloaded TortoiseHg v0.5, and try to clone the remote SSH repository, you'll get error message: "The system cannot execute the specified program." Now try:

TortoiseHg> TortoisePlink.exe
The system cannot execute the specified program.

So you have to install Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86) according to TortoiseHg FAQ. But even you have done that, it seems that TortoisePlink does not support private key for SSH well.

Now I just fall back to Putty as this is much more direct and prime. Modify Mercurial.ini under TortoiseHg:

; In order to push/pull over ssh you must specify a ssh tool
;ssh = "C:\TortoiseHg\TortoisePlink.exe" -ssh -2
ssh = "C:\Putty0.6\Plink.exe" -ssh -2 -i "C:\key\ubuntu-1.ppk"

Then right click->TortoiseHG->Clone a Repository->Source Path, input something like

ssh://root@192.168.10.1//home/env/mercurial/open-source/openJDK

Then click "clone", it works without a hitch.

Note: As Putty uses user's relative path to home, //home/env/... is to tell it this is an absolute path /home/env/...

Ref:

• http://tortoisehg.wiki.sourceforge.net/FAQ

• http://www.mail-archive.com/tortoisehg-develop@lists.sourceforge.net/msg00864.html

Install Mercurial 1.0.2 on Ubuntu 8.1 server using source code package

(Using root recommended)

If compiler and python not installed:

apt-get install build-essential python-dev
tar xvf mercurial-1.0.2.tar.gz
cd mercurial-1.0.2
make install

To verify,

hg debuginstall

Hopefully, you'll see

Checking encoding (UTF-8)...
Checking extensions...
Checking templates...
Checking patch...
Checking commit editor...
Checking username...
No username found, using 'root@hubuntus' instead
(specify a username in your .hgrc file)
No problems detected

And that's it.

Ref: http://www.selenic.com/mercurial/wiki/index.cgi/UnixInstall