Sarath Chandra Pandurangi's Blog

Java on Google appengine has always been an matter of concern, especially with low traffic. People have expressed their anxiety with their application's performance. This site/blog runs on blogger. However the images and JavaScript are dynamically served from Google's Big table.   This site was earlier on Google appengine  - Py. A much performant environment. It has its owns issues. However, relatively it was a more worry free environment for small applications. But as an enterprise language, java was to be used for this site. The migration was finally done after three unsuccessful attempts. And eventually, with an extremely slim home grown framework – smvc, a simple mvc with dependency injection, the site is run on java.   Initially there were resource intensive cold startups. The smvc framework was an answer to it. But lately it appears that the appengine java is plaguing the site with a bunch of 500 errors, more frequently. This behavior started around Oct 27 and persi...

The new priority Inbox in Gmail is awesome for a GTD-er. However there's a small feature that is a little confusing. Assuming the three sections, Important and unread, Important and Starred are enabled. When an important mail is received, it goes in two Important and Unread. Then let the case be that the mail in question (The Mail, from here on) is worth a Star. It gets Starred. In due course, more mail comes in - Important ones. *The Mail* is now buried under. This is where its confusing. One thought begs to assume that The Mail is now shown in Starred section. But no. It is down the pile of Important mail. And NOT shown in Starred. Is that desirable? Not really? or is it?

Apparently, the recent long firefox context menu bug posted a few days ago, is not a niche bug after all. This looks like a consistent bug that happens to me on Windows XP. The Context menu is supposed to change with *context* invoked on. Looks like the logic around making it intelligent, is kind of buggy. I was able to reproduce the long menu bug on other websites, at random. However, one thing I was able to consistently reporduce is the inablilty to get context menu for text selection. See the difference in the menu. Firefox 3.6 Firefox 4.0b6

Obviously, this is just a bug. It happened only once. Not reproducible. Running Firefox 4.05 beta. On Windows XP. With Firefox 4, Canvas, Video Audio etc are all baked in. The list looks like the menu options are the exaustive options of all features on.The page however, upon refresh, does not show the same context menu. Click the Image to enlarge.

Recently, a heavy burst of traffic into our production webservice caused this error. As with all Mysql errors, this shows little information. Like any sane person would think, we checked if the filesystem was full. We found the /tmp has 98% free space. Permissions are all fine. No locks on table. Increasing /tmp partition - NoGo. Just crazy error message. However, the issue was beating us time and again. It took us a couple of days and we realized the cause was a select query. The query was fetching from a table of about 2 million records. Although it was fetching a limited subset, the column in the order by had no index. This was causing mysql to load records into pagefile in tmp for sorting, apparently. Created the index on the sort column seemed to have solved the problem. We also augmented it with the following options in my.cfg sort_buffer_size=2M table_cache=1800 thread_cache_size=384 tmp_table_size=64M

Google released its voice and video chat plugin for linux. This is long awaited and now much cherished by linux lovers. However, my first hand experience was a little let down. My browser crashed a few times, and the calls dropped with crashes. I realised it had to get a system restart before it could work well. I only tried audio call, given there is no web cam on my desktop. I dont see any problems now, hopefully it will stay that way. Will update this post if this change.

This is a rare error that compiling with Eclipse does not catch, but maven compile goal will. In the case in question, There is a Generic return type as follows, as discussed in java forums private <A> A getValue(){ return getOtherValue(); //<-- Error occurs here } It compiles out an error: type parameters of <X>X cannot be determined; no unique maximal instance exists for type variable X with upper bounds int,java.lang.Object The intriguing question is, why does this happen only in maven? Why does it not happen in Eclipse? Few in the java forum have suggested that this is a bug in the compiler. However, an impatient programmer looking for a solution around it, Just cant get it. There is an unanswered stack overflow post here . The java forum is also confusing for a novice. The simple answer here is, the getValue() method (or the getOtherValue, or the method it calls) is, at some place, not really Strongly typed and the compiler is left to guess wildly about...

This is connected to the post in Google App Engine Group .  Although Google Appengine gives out a java container, I had to roll back to the python code I used for version SarathOnline 3.1 – for a sole reason – perfromance. My (blog) site has a very low traffic (compared to what google thinks a regular traffic application). Averaging ~100 visits/day. All the css and js is dynamically generated. My current python code is doing pretty well servicing these requests @ a maximum of 2.something secs

After downloading Maven M2 Plug-in, My first build gave me this error. Just so annoying. It kept breaking at.

Yet another weekend, Yet another fix :).. Well a workaround, actually.. This has been a problem for a while. Ubuntu Intrepid has very annoying too fast key repeat rate. and the gnome-keyboard-properties ignores any setting changed. There were some workarounds proposed like xorg.conf . they dint work on my lappy. I also played around experiments, in vain . Miserably. But very well pointed out by Jorge Peixoto de Morais Neto , You can set the repeat settings with kbdrate just add the following line in /etc/rc.local #/etc/rc.local kbdrate -r 25 -d 500 This should solve the quick repeats. If this fixes your issue, Please contribute at the bug in launchpad.

I have upgraded my laptop to the latest Ubuntu (Intrepid Ibex). I was happy to notice My Audio is now working fine. Headphones too :) My flash issue is still open (I think it is in Adobe's Court - and they dont seem to bother ) Everything else *looked* fine. However, on a deeper examination. There is a small issue (not a deal breaker, though). The user login takes a little longer. I looked at the syslog. There are some noticiably interesting things (All I think it boils down to X11, I may be wrong) X (crashes? and) is restarted RIGHT before gdm login screen appears. There a log of compiz real segfault-ing WARNING: gdm_slave_xioerror_handler: Fatal X error - Restarting :0 Nov 2 13:02:27 sar-akshaya kernel: [ 6185.471607] compiz.real[5767]: segfault at 2b0021 ip 08055c8c sp bf9ad770 error 4 in compiz.real[8048000+34000] Nov 2 13:02:28 sar-akshaya gdm[5326]: Sigfile not found . After a couple quick screen flickers, login screen appears and after login credentials are entere...

Yet another day looking for a solution to an issue in ubuntu. but I am loving it :) I am trying to get my webcam work with live.yahoo.com or justin.tv in ubuntu. For some reason adobe flash is unable to open my web cam. It shows up a modal dialog box: "Camera is unavailable, may be in use by another application" Results from video test on Skype, on the other hand, is positive on my system. So My webcam is not the issue here. Also the tabs in the options are not focusable. I mean I click on them, NOTHING happens. There was a bug raised in Adobe Support forums . I posted back, if you know a solution let me know. System : Lenovo Y410 Browser: Firefox 3.0 Flash: 10 downloaded from adobe.com

By now, many people are done making a switch to ubuntu. Fallen in love with it and oogled on Compiz and its sooper dooper Cube (Okay, you might have even gone farther.. awn , conky..). However, You might still be dependent on Windoze for some applications. Among other things, Development is one such. I have created everything on my site and on this blog in Gimp and Eclipse. Needless to say Eclipse is my favorite IDE. So, I have had my share of issues in the past on my ubuntu. But now, I am hell bent on going full time on it. I have a lenovo Y410. It maxes out on 1280x800 resolution. I should say an experienced developer would clearly have issues with such *low* resolution. To make it worse, it appeared eclipse on linux was not built with this configuration in mind. A screenshot looks like this. . Apparently a large portion of the real estate is taken up by spacing in the toolbar icons, height of the tab, spacing in the tree etc. (my windoze eclipse is okay). The fonts, colors...

I have vpnaccess to my work. I have been on Ubuntu after my upgrade to Hardy. But I have to go back to vista only for vpn. If I am able to connect to vpn in Ubuntu, There is hardly any reason to switch to windoze. First of all, I was able to install AnyConnect client using the webinstaller the same way I would in vista. But only to find an error after I run the client. then when you click ok.. it would go to.. and quit on me. I realised the client needs a vpn agent deamon. I checked the folder where it installed and started it manually (I guess the install script failed to put in init.rd or something.) /opt/cisco/vpn/bin/vpnagentd But it doesnot solve the problem. I still get a certificate error. And no.. This is not related to the host, as I can very well connect to the same host in Vista. I am looking up to my IT guys. Lets see what they come up with.

finally, I installed Ubuntu 8.04. This blog is exclusively from Ubuntu.. My Lenovo Y410 still doesnot have sound, but I could redo my steps for Gutsy . However, The GL issues have been taken care of Desktop Effects work out of box. I am going to setup GAE environment and JEE on ubuntu and roll!!