Kev's Development Toolbox

July 2, 2009

Setting up Nagios system monitoring on Ubuntu8.1 server

Latest package is nagios3 – to install:

<code>sudo apt-get install nagios3

A good article on setup and config is here.

To restart the Nagios server after making config changes: sudo /etc/init.d/nagios3 restart

Resolving CGI auth issues

Part of the install instructions above told me to create a user ‘nagios’, but the default config is setup to allow ‘nagiosadmin’ access to monitor services. Accessing the wepages you get this:

<code>"It appears as though you do not have permission to view information for
any of the hosts you requested... If you believe this is an error, check
the HTTP server authentication requirements for accessing this CGI and
check the authorization options in your CGI configuration file."</code>

To fix this, edit /etc/nagios3/cgi.cfg, and replace ‘nagiosadmin’ everywhere with ‘nagios’ (assuming the user you created was called ‘nagios’)

July 2, 2009

Windows 7 ‘Start up repair’ – Cancel cannot cancel

If you startup Windows 7 beta and press F8, which used to take you into ‘Safe Mode’ in prior versions, the only option you have now is a ‘Repair Mode’ which attempts to do something to repair your install. While it’s running there is a dialog with a Cancel button on it. If you press it it says ‘The repair operation cannot be cancelled’. Hmm – that’s useful. A bit more polish needed there I think.

July 2, 2009

Installing DirectX support into Windows running on VirtualBox 3.0

I read in the release notes that VirtualBox 3.0 has experimental support for DirectX – this is neat since some Windows games maybe able to now run inside a Windows guest running under VirtualBox. The fine print in the 3.0 manual however mentions you need to install the Guest Additions into Windows when it’s running in safe mode otherwise the DLLs get overridden.

July 2, 2009

Is Google’s App Engine redefining what we know as App Servers?

Java App servers are the do-it-all platforms for running hosted Java applications. Over the years they have grown with Java and the evolution of the EE APIs to provide services for everything including the kitchen sink.

Google’s AppEngine has been around for a while but I haven’t paid much attention up until now when they recently added support for Java applications. What is unusual at first glance though is this is not your typical Application Server hosting. This is not a EE server where you can upload your EAR ready to deploy. Google are taking a much more back to basics approach and providing their own implementations of APIs, including the JPA API for example to allow you to host a Java based application on the Google infrastructure and take advantage of Google’s technology.

I’m wondering depending on how successful this turns out to be whether this is going to grab the attention of the Java world as a whole, as make us start asking questions about the inherent complexity of building and deploying EE applications. It really shouldn’t be as hard as it is today, and I wonder if this is the start of a new direction for Java?