Friday, 21 November 2008

BestPractical RT: Request Tracker on CentOS 5 with PostgreSQL

see also http://www.ptitov.net/2008/07/request-tracker-installation-o.html

Here are the steps how to install Request Tracker on CentOS 5 with PostgreSQL:

Install RPM packages

yum install postgresql postgresql-server postgresql-libs
yum install httpd perl-BSD-Resource perl-FCGI perl-Apache-DBI mod_perl
wget http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
rpm -Uhv rpmforge-release*.rpm
yum install perl-Digest-HMAC perl-Apache-Session perl-Class-Container perl-Class-Data-Inheritable perl-Crypt-DES perl-Devel-StackTrace perl-Exception-Class perl-GD \
perl-GD-Graph perl-GD-Text-Util perl-Hook-LexWrap perl-HTML-Mason perl-HTTP-Server-Simple perl-HTTP-Server-Simple-Mason perl-IO-Socket-INET6 \
perl-Net-SNMP perl-Params-Validate perl-Socket6 perl-UNIVERSAL-require perl-HTML-scrubber perl-Text-WikiFormat perl-XML-RSS perl-Tree-Simple \
perl-Text-Wrapper perl-Module-Versions-Report perl-CSS-Squish \
perl-Term-ReadKey perl-Class-ReturnValue perl-Text-Quoted perl-Calendar-Simple perl-DBIx-SearchBuilder perl-Text-Autoformat \
perl-MailTools perl-Regexp-Common perl-Locale-Maketext-Lexicon perl-Locale-Maketext-Fuzzy perl-Time-HiRes perl-Time-modules perl-TimeDate \
perl-Log-Dispatch perl-Text-Template perl-HTML-Tree perl-HTML-Format \
perl-HTML-Scrubber perl-libwww-perl perl-MIME-tools perl-DBD-mysql



Configuration of Perl modules
To see if all required perl modules have been installed, run this:
/usr/bin/perl -MCPAN -e shell
make testdeps
/usr/bin/perl ./sbin/rt-test-dependencies --verbose --with-pgsql


Also, make sure you have newer versions of IO::File (1.14) and File-Temp (1.21).
Otherwise you get in trouble. More details follow here:

Fixes:
cat testemail.txt | /usr/bin/rt-mailgate --queue MyQueue --action correspond --url http://rt.mydomain.org/
Can't locate object method "seek" via package "File::Temp"


check currently installed version of File::Temp:
perl -le 'use File::Temp; print File::Temp->VERSION'

install the latest version 0.21:
cpan
# for reinitialising cpan:
o conf init
i /MIME-tools/
test D/DO/DONEILL/MIME-tools-5.425.tar.gz
i /file-temp/
install T/TJ/TJENNESS/File-Temp-0.21.tar.gz


Problem with attachements:
cat rttestmailatt.txt | /usr/bin/rt-mailgate --debug --queue myQueue --action correspond --url http://rt.mydomain.org
Connecting to http://rt.mydomain.org/REST/1.0/NoAuth/mail-gateway at /usr/bin/rt-mailgate line 102, <> line 1.
hello http://rt.mydomain.org/REST/1.0/NoAuth/mail-gateway
not ok - Failed to parse this message. Something is likely badly wrong with the message at /usr/bin/rt-mailgate line 112, <> line 1
another problem:
Can't locate object method "binmode" via package "IO::File" at /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.5/MIME/Body.pm line 437.


We need version 1.14 of IO::File

perl -le 'use IO::File; print IO::File->VERSION'

requires: yum install gcc
cpan
i /IO-1.2301/
install G/GB/GBARR/IO-1.2301.tar.gz


IMPORTANT: need to reload the apache server, otherwise the new perl packages have no effect:
/etc/init.d/httpd reload

I came once across a Cpan problem:
Going to read /root/.cpan/sources/modules/03modlist.data.gz
Unrecognized character \x88 at (eval 29) line 1.

The solution was: delete 03modlist.data.gz, and just run cpan again

Install RT
Download the latest tar.gz file from http://bestpractical.com/rt/download.html
In a tmp directory, not the destination directory:
cd /home/timop
tar xvzf rt-3.6.6.tar.gz
cd rt-3.6.6
./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-layout=RH \
--with-db-host=localhost \
--with-db-dba=rt --with-db-rt-user=rt \
--with-db-database=rt --with-pgsql

Check to see if all dependancies are installed:
make testdeps | grep MISSING
make install

You then need to configure /etc/rt/RT_SiteConfig.pm
e.g. if you want to use Postgresql, it could look like this:
# {{{ Database Configuration

# Database driver beeing used. Case matters
# Valid types are "mysql", "Oracle" and "Pg"

Set($DatabaseType , 'Pg');

# The domain name of your database server
# If you're running mysql and it's on localhost,
# leave it blank for enhanced performance
Set($DatabaseHost , 'localhost');
Set($DatabaseRTHost , 'localhost');

# The port that your database server is running on. Ignored unless it's
# a positive integer. It's usually safe to leave this blank
Set($DatabasePort , '');

#The name of the database user (inside the database)
Set($DatabaseUser , 'rt');

# Password the DatabaseUser should use to access the database
Set($DatabasePassword , 'secret');

# The name of the RT's database on your database server
Set($DatabaseName , 'rt');

# If you're using Postgres and have compiled in SSL support,
# set DatabaseRequireSSL to 1 to turn on SSL communication
Set($DatabaseRequireSSL , undef);

# }}}


Configuration of PostgreSQL
vi /var/lib/pgsql/data/postgresql.conf;
For PostgreSQL 7.x: add line: tcpip_socket=true;
For PostgreSQL 8.x: listen_addresses = 'localhost'

vi /var/lib/pgsql/data/pg_hba.conf; it should contain:
local all all ident sameuser
host template1 rt 127.0.0.1/32 md5
host rt rt 127.0.0.1/32 md5
host all postgres 127.0.0.1/32 trust

/etc/init.d/postgresql start
postgresql logfile if db does not start: /var/lib/pgsql/pgstartup.log
chkconfig postgresql on
make initialize-database: problem: user rt does not exist; need to use dba postgres
/usr/bin/perl //usr/sbin/rt-setup-database --action init --dba postgres --prompt-for-dba-password

For a nightly backup of your database, you can use this command:
su - postgres -c "umask 0077; pg_dumpall | gzip > /var/lib/pgsql/data/backup.sql.gz"
To restore a database, e.g. when moving from one server to another:
su - postgres
psql template1
drop database rt;
create database rt;
\q
psql rt < /var/tmp/rt-20071210.sql

HTTPD configuration
/etc/httpd/conf.d/rt.conf should contain:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName rt.mysupport.com
DocumentRoot /var/rt/html
AddDefaultCharset UTF-8

ServerAdmin Timotheus.Pokorra@mysupport.com
PerlModule Apache::DBI
PerlRequire /usr/bin/webmux.pl

<Location />
Options None
SetHandler perl-script
PerlHandler RT::Mason
<IfDefine PerlDProf>
<IfDefine PerlSmallProf>
PerlFixupHandler Apache::SmallProf
</IfDefine>
</IfDefine>
</Location>

<Location /NoAuth/images>
SetHandler default-handler
</Location>
# To use this you have to start apache with -DPerlStatus.
#
# In RHEL, add the following line to /etc/sysconfig/httpd:
#
# OPTIONS=-DPerlStatus
<IfDefine PerlStatus>
<Location /perl-status>
SetHandler perl-script
PerlHandler Apache2::Status
PerlSetVar StatusOptionsAll On
PerlSetVar StatusTerse On
PerlSetVar StatusTerseSize On
PerlSetVar StatusTerseSizeMainSummary On
PerlSetVar StatusLexInfo On
</Location>
</IfDefine>

To solve issues with "Can't change ownership of files written by interp object: Permission denied" when running Apache:
chcon -Rt httpd_sys_content_t /var/rt/mason_data/obj

chown -R apache /var/rt/mason_data/obj
chgrp -R apache /var/rt/mason_data/obj
chcon -Rt httpd_sys_content_t /var/rt/html
not: chcon -Rt httpd_sys_script_t /var/rt/html
/etc/init.d/httpd restart

To solve issues after upgrading RT, I had to do this sometimes:

rm -fr /var/rt/mason_data/obj
mkdir /var/rt/mason_data/obj
touch /var/rt/mason_data/obj/.__obj_create_marker
chmod -R a+w /var/rt/mason_data/obj
/etc/init.d/httpd restart
Configure Sendmail
The goal is to receive new requests via email.

You need to create a symbolic link, to avoid errors like "DSN: Service unavailable" or "write error: Broken pipe" in /var/log/maillog
ln -s /usr/bin/rt-mailgate /etc/smrsh
I have these lines in my /etc/aliases file:
my-support-comment: "|/etc/smrsh/rt-mailgate --queue MySupport --action comment --url http://rt.mysupport.com/"
my-support: "|/etc/smrsh/rt-mailgate --queue MySupport --action correspond --url http://rt.mysupport.com/"

Make sure that your server knows about rt.mysupport.com, you might need to add it to /etc/hosts.

You can test the delivery of emails:
echo "test" | mail my-support@rt.mysupport.com -s "test rt"
tail -f /var/log/maillog
or even more directly:
cat testemail.txt |/etc/smrsh/rt-mailgate --queue MySupport --action correspond --url http://rt.mysupport.com/
One other error I got was: "Relaying denied. IP name lookup failed" in /var/log/maillog
The problem was that emails were delivered to ticket.mycompany.com, and the rt server was at rt.mysupport.com.
I had to edit the file /etc/mail/local-host-names
and add the line ticket.mycompany.com

Tuesday, 28 October 2008

DTAUS with C#

I needed to export Lastschriften (instructions for direct debit) for our german office, and after looking for some solutions, I realised that it is not that hard to write it yourself...

Here is the result: http://download.pokorra.de/coding/Dtaus.cs
Please feel free to use the code any way you like.
I read the input data from an XML file, of course this needs to be modified to your specific situation.

A good help was this documentation of the german DTAUS bank file format:
http://www.infodrom.org/projects/dtaus/dtaus.html

Another useful tool was the JDTAUS editor, a java editor that can process and create DTAUS files:
http://www.jdtaus.de/de/
I use this to validate and test the files written with my C# program.

Monday, 20 October 2008

Building a mono 2.0 RPM for RHEL4/CentOS4

When I noticed that Novell does not offer RPMS of Mono 2.0 for RedHat Linux, I had a look at the Fedora 10 Beta and found that there is a Mono 2.0 Source RPM:
mono-2.0-6.fc10.src.rpm
Update: mono-2.0.1-12.fc10.src.rpm

Because we work with CentOS4/RedHat Enterprise Linux 4, I installed the source package on that system, and tried to build the rpms.

Building the code was fine after I deactivated a couple of dependencies.
But I ran into some problems at the file checking stage. I wondered if I can prevent the build stage to happen again and again. That way I should be able to debug the file list check etc.

Reading the man page, these parameters are interesting:
--short-circuit
--nobuild
-bi
-bl
So with rpmbuild -bl mono.spec I was able to just run the file checking stage.

The errors I got were like this:
rpm build errors: File not found: /var/tmp/mono-2.0-6-root-root/usr/bin/certmgr/usr/bin/chktrust/usr/bin/gacutil/usr/bin/gmcs/usr/bin/mcs/usr/bin/mcs1

But the files do exist in the /var/tmp/mono-2.0-6-root-root/ directory

I finally realised that the problem was caused by the Macros.
see also http://rpm.org/wiki/PackagerDocs/Macros
I had to first add curly brackets to each Macro call:
%{macro parameters}
But even then only the first line of the Macro had an effect.
This command was helpful in the files section to see that the Macros just were not resolved correctly:
%{echo: %{your_macro_here}}

In the end, I ended up adding the missing files to my own mono.spec file.
I also had a look at the last available RedHat spec file from Novell for Mono 1.9.x, and I guess there is a different rpm version for RHEL 4 and RHEL 5.

Here is my modified mono.spec file that works for RHEL4/CentOS4 for Mono 2.0:
http://download.pokorra.de/mono/mono.spec

Please download the src.rpm file from the Fedora 10 Beta, or later, and install it:
rpm -i mono-2.0-6.fc10.src.rpm
Then copy my modified mono.spec to /usr/src/redhat/SPECS, and build the packages:
rpmbuild -ba mono.spec

Alternatively, here is a zip file with the compiled RPM files for CentOS4/RHEL4:
mono-2.0-6.i386.rhel4.rpm.zip
I cannot guarantuee that it actually works, but feel free to use it for your own experiments!

Saturday, 4 October 2008

Use Progress and ODBC on CentOS with Japanese

This is related to my previous blog about using Chinese characters with Progress, .Net and Mono: Allow Chinese characters on a Client-Server application

Now the next challenge was to get Japanese characters to work.

I first converted the Progress database to shift-jis.
I set the environment variable: SQL_CLIENT_CHARSET=SHIFT-JIS

I then experimented with several locales, e.g. ja_JP.UTF8 and ja_JP (which is an alias for ja_JP.eucjp).

I used Wikipedia to get some sample words in Japanese characters, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_writing_system.

I soon realised that with some words I would get an ODBC error:
eg. with Kanji script 金魚 (Goldfish)
and with Hiragina script, きんぎょ
If I left out the last letter, it worked.

The ODBC error was:
Saving of data failed!
Reasons:
* [[ODBC]] [unixODBC][DataDirect-Technologies][ODBC 20101
driver][20101]Internal error -4 (unknown nls services error) in SQL from
subsystem NLS SERVICES function nlsCountChars called from nc_get_strlen
on . for . Save log for Progress technical support.


A helpful person from Progress Support gave me some suggestions, and I got it to work with Progress 9.1D in the end!
I had to use another locale, ja_JP.SJIS, which did not exist by default on my CentOS 4.6 (locale -a | grep JP).

According to http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/FAQ_80_1256.shtm
you can create the locale ja_JP.SJIS with this command:
localedef -f SHIFT_JIS -i ja_JP ja_JP.SJIS

This resolved the internal ODBC error.

Another issue was that I was not aware how to properly set the font in the ini file. Finally I found a hint in the Progress manuals, to check the prolang directory for the file progress.ini which is available for each language on the client side; this has a sample font. For the Japanese, this is a font with Japanese characters. I just copied it, and it worked.

Tuesday, 30 September 2008

Install Chinese or Japanese Windows XP with english XP screenshots

I sometimes have the problem that I need to install an asian Windows XP. I could always install a second XP in english in parallel in order for me to understand the screens in a language that is unknown to me.

Here are some screenshots that have helped me, hopefully they will be helpful for other people too.

I have noticed that there are more screens, e.g. Japanese XP has an extra screen for the keyboard layout. Select S for the menu, and then select "101 English keyboard layout". Otherwise you will have problems later when entering Name and Organisation. It also seems you should click on the little red dot in the keyboard selection thing at the right bottom corner when entering Name and Organisation, otherwise Tabulator key does not work, and I was not able to continue from that screen


One bit of advice: the keyboard shortcuts are usually the same, so watch out for capital Latin letters. This should help you to recognise which screen you are on and find the meaning on the english screenshots.

You can find a similar gallery here: http://techrepublic.com.com/2346-10878_11-5181.html






















Friday, 29 August 2008

Use the CSParser to process C# files

I wanted to generate code but at the same time parse the target file first to see if any changes have been manually made or with the graphical designer.


I found the following parser for c# code: http://www.codeplex.com/csparser; it seems very active at the moment, and it parsed my test cs file without any problems.



I had some issues first understanding how to look for the current line number and how to know the name of the classes and methods etc. But a look at the sample file cmc.cs helped a lot.

using System;
using System.CodeDom.Compiler;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Diagnostics;
using System.IO;
using System.Text;
using DDW.Collections;
using DDW;
using Microsoft.CSharp;

namespace test
{
class Program
{
private static void PrintErrors(IEnumerable errors)
{
foreach (Parser.Error error in errors)
{
if(error.Token.ID == TokenID.Eof && error.Line == -1)
{
Console.WriteLine(error.Message + "\nFile: " + error.FileName + "\n");
}
else
{
Console.WriteLine(error.Message + " in token " + error.Token.ID
+ "\nline: " + error.Line + ", column: " + error.Column
+ "\nin file: " + error.FileName + "\n");
}
}
}

private static CompilationUnitNode ParseUnit(string fileName, List errors)
{
Console.Write("\nParsing " + fileName);
FileStream fs = new FileStream(fileName, FileMode.Open, FileAccess.Read);
StreamReader sr = new StreamReader(fs, true);
Lexer l = new Lexer(sr);
TokenCollection toks = l.Lex();

Parser p = null;
CompilationUnitNode cu = null;

p = new Parser(fileName);
cu = p.Parse(toks, l.StringLiterals);

if(p.Errors.Count != 0)
{
Console.WriteLine();
PrintErrors(p.Errors);
errors.AddRange(p.Errors);
return null;
}
return cu;
}

public static void Main(string[] args)
{
string filename = "c:\\myfile.cs";
List errors = new List();
CompilationUnitNode cu = ParseUnit(filename, errors);

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
cu.ToSource(sb);
Console.WriteLine(sb.ToString());
foreach (NamespaceNode nnode in cu.Namespaces)
{
foreach (ClassNode cnode in nnode.Classes)
{
Console.WriteLine("class name: " + cnode.Name.Identifier.ToString());
foreach (FieldNode fnode in cnode.Fields)
{
foreach (QualifiedIdentifierExpression qexpr in fnode.Names)
{
sb = new StringBuilder();
qexpr.Expressions.ToSource(sb);
Console.WriteLine("Field: " + sb.ToString());
}
}
foreach (MethodNode mnode in cnode.Methods)
{
sb = new StringBuilder();
mnode.Names.ToSource(sb);
if (sb.ToString() == "InitializeComponent")
{
Console.WriteLine("Line number of InitializeComponent starting: " +
mnode.RelatedToken.Line.ToString());
int firstLine = -1;
int lastLine = -1;
foreach (StatementNode snode in mnode.StatementBlock.Statements)
{
if (firstLine == -1)
{
firstLine = snode.RelatedToken.Line;
}
lastLine = snode.RelatedToken.Line;
sb = new StringBuilder();
snode.ToSource(sb);
string line = sb.ToString();
Console.Write(snode.RelatedToken.Line.ToString() + ": " + line);

}
}
}

}
}

Console.Write("Press any key to continue . . . ");
Console.ReadKey(true);
}
}
}

Sunday, 2 March 2008

Manage webspace with Hostsharing

I am a member of Hostsharing eG, which is a German company owned by its members with the aim to take the idea of Open Source to Webhosting. You don't need to worry about backups or availability, because the webmasters do it all for you. But you still have SSH access and many other powerful tools to manage your applications that are running on the server.

Recently I had to fight off an intruder who had used a security leak in one of my php applications. He had added 700 MB somewhere, the quota command showed it, but all calls of du did not show the files. Finally I realised I have to run find / -group pac00 which shows all files that belong to my own user or my subusers, who all belong to the group e.g. pac00.

Another issue that I often have is that some files are created with PHP and they belong to user httpd. That means they don't show up at all on the quota command, which is not fair for the other users, because everyone has to pay for the used webspace.
The first step is to actually find those files. I have written the script pac-du-httpd, which goes through all the users' directories and prints the filenames that are owned by httpd to a file, and also prints the overall sum size of those files. You can find the file here: pac-du-httpd.sh

The next step is to change the ownership of those files. On the support mailing list (yes, Hostsharing eG has as much open communication as any other Open Source project) there is a very useful explanation of how to delete such files:
Support Anleitung
The basic idea is: first run the script as normal PHP with user httpd, and change the file permissions so that everybody can change them, and then to run the script again, to delete the file.
In my situation though I don't want to delete the file, but would like to change the permission. I finally got this solution to work:
<?php
# first run as php file with httpd, to give permissions (chmod 0666) then run with cgi to recopy the file

$dh = opendir('./');

while( ($file = (readdir($dh))) !== FALSE )
{
if ($_SERVER["ORIG_SCRIPT_NAME"] == '/cgi-bin/phpstub')
{
copy ($file, $file.".tmp");
unlink ($file);
copy ($file.".tmp", $file);
unlink ($file.".tmp");
}
else
{
chmod($file, 0666);
}
}
?>

I first run the script to change the file permissions, and then I run it again via CGI so that it runs for the user that the files should belong to. I make a copy of the file, delete the original, and rename the copy back. This works perfectly. And for the future, I will let the PHP always run via CGI (see also Hostsharing documentation on PHP via CGI)

Another useful tool is pac-du-quota, which is referenced from the Hostsharing Documentation on Webspace.
I have extended it to also list the size of the MySQL databases, which is in my case also quite a bit of data...
Insert this in the function collectSpace just before "#Wenn User exisiteren aufsammeln":
# Mysql Datenbanken
for DB in /var/lib/mysql/${PAC}_*; do
let COUNTER=COUNTER+1
TEMP=`du -s "$DB"`
SPACE[$COUNTER]=`echo $TEMP | sed -e 's/\([^ ]*\).*/\1/g'`
NAME[$COUNTER]="Mysql_`basename $DB`"
done

Tuesday, 26 February 2008

Allow Chinese characters on a Client-Server application

I recently had to provide a working solution for Traditional Chinese for Hongkong.

It involved both ODBC on the Linux server to read correct data from a Progress database, and process that data in .net on Mono, but also on the client side to be able to read data through ODBC.

Here is the solution and also some warnings about what can go wrong:

For Mono, you need to have installed the RPM package mono-locale-extras, which installs the dll I18N.CJK.dll (CJK stands for Chinese Japanese Korean).

Make sure the Progress database is in codepage big-5.
proutil mydb -C convchar convert undefined -G 15
proutil mydb -C convchar convert big-5 -G 15
_progres -pf batch.pf -1 -b -rx -p upgrade.p -param $DLC/prolang/tch/big-5/_tran.df | cat
proutil mydb -C idxbuild all

Make sure that your pf files (or even the Progress startup.pf) contain these lines:
-cpinternal big-5
-cpstream big-5
-cprcodein undefined

For the Progress server, you need to set this variable before the server is started (note: if you have both sql and 4gl server, the first one needs all settings already):
export SQL_CLIENT_CHARSET=BIG-5

Mono would rather expect BIG5 (without the dash), so we need to set another variable so that the default encoding is correct.
Before you start the server in the Mono environment, make sure that you export this variable:
export LANG=zh_TW.big5

The following command shows what languages are available on your Linux:
locale -a
Unfortunately there is no big5 for Hongkong, and zh_HK.big5hkscs does not seem to work for me. zh_TW.big5 works fine.

This code converts the data from the codepage coming through ODBC from the Progress database into Unicode:

FDBEncoding := System.Text.Encoding.Default;
try
sqlClientCodePage := Convert.ToInt32(System.Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable('SQL_CLIENT_CHARSET'));
FDBEncoding := System.Text.Encoding.GetEncoding(sqlClientCodePage);
except on exp: Exception do
end;

function ConvertToUnicode(s: System.String): System.String;
var
bytes: array of byte;
begin
bytes := Encoding.Default.GetBytes(s);
result := FDBEncoding.GetChars(bytes);
end;

function ConvertFromUnicode(s: System.String): System.String;
var
bytes: array of byte;
begin
bytes := FDBEncoding.GetBytes(s);
result := Encoding.Default.GetChars(bytes);
end;

For the client to be able to access through ODBC, we also need to set the environment variable in Windows XP SQL_CLIENT_CHARSET=BIG-5
(Start/Settings/Control Panel/System/Advanced/Environment Variables/System or User Variables)

Sunday, 17 February 2008

What kind of relationship can we have with God

Some christians seem to talk a lot about their faith as a "Face to Face" relationship with God.

I have a problem with those words, because it sounds to me much like a relationship of two equal people who have a good understanding of each other.

The bible mentions the phrase in these places (God and human being face to face):

  • 1Mo (Gen) 32,30 It is because I saw God face to face, and yet my life was spared.
    • Jacob has fought with God before meeting Esau
  • 2Mo (Ex) 33,11 The LORD would speak to Moses face to face, as a man speaks with his friend.
  • 5Mo (Deut) 34,10 Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the LORD knew face to face,
    • This was quite a unique relationship in the bible
  • 5Mo (Deut) 5,4+5 The LORD spoke to you face to face out of the fire on the mountain. (At that time I stood between the LORD and you to declare to you the word of the LORD, because you were afraid of the fire and did not go up the mountain.)
    • The whole people of Israel met God, but it could not be continued, so Moses went alone
  • Job 38, 3+4 Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the earth's foundation? Tell me, if you understand.
    • Job cannot answer God
  • 1Cor 13,12 Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
    • This is a promise for the future

Now things look a bit different when we consider that Jesus became a man and so represented God to us in a way we can grasp a little.

  • John 14, 9: Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.

But again, he does not have long discussions, but invites the disciples: Come and see! Follow me! I think there is the danger of just wanting to experience God but not being willing to follow and obey him.

  • John 1, 39: Come, he replied, and you will see. So they went and saw where he was staying, and spent that day with him.
  • Matthew 4, 19: Come, follow me, Jesus said, and I will make you fishers of men.

We don't need to be afraid of Jesus: He is compassionate and approachable

  • e.g. Luke 8, 47: Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet. [...] Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.

Jesus enjoyed blessing the children; perhaps that is how I would also describe my relationship with Jesus? I can sit on His lap, I can tell him about my little and big worries, and he will understand. When he starts talking about the things that worry him or he is busy with, I will sit there with big eyes and won't understand much, perhaps with growing maturity get more and more a better idea what is really important.

  • Luke 18, 16: But Jesus called the children to him and said, Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of God belongs to such as these.

We can enter God's presence, and need to be intimate with him. But he will still surpass our understanding

  • Phil 6,7: Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

My (personal) conclusion:

  • When I follow Jesus, I will see the back of Him. My eyes need to be focused on Jesus' back. I don't want to stand still and face Him, because then I am going in the wrong direction.
  • I know I need times when I sit on His lap and listen to Him and tell Him my joys and worries.
  • I am looking forward to the day when I will see God face to face, and I will understand it all and know Him completely.

Sunday, 10 February 2008

My first little ASP.net project using the Mono XSP server

I wanted to provide an online version for the project Delphi2C#, so that people can just paste their Pascal code on the website, and see how good the converter is for them when it displays the C# version of their code.

On Debian, you need to install:
apt-get install mono-xsp asp.net-examples
This will give you a file
/etc/xsp/debian.webapp
It already contains the configuration for the samples, that live in
/usr/share/asp.net-demos
To start the xsp server, you just run
/etc/init.d/mono-xsp start
And you will be able to access the samples at
http://YOURSERVER:8081/samples
For example to add your own aspx file, copy it to
/usr/share/asp.net-demos/DelphiNet2CSharp.aspx
The source code of that file you can see here:
Browse CVS of Delphi2C#

If you have a dll as well, copy that to
/usr/share/asp.net-demos/bin/Delphi2CSharp.dll
In your aspx file, you need to write at the top to use that dll:
<%@ Import Namespace="Delphi2CSharp" %>
To debug your application (e.g. I had compiled the DLL for .Net 2.0, but the xsp only supported 1.1 and crashed without any message to the browser):
cd /usr/share/asp.net-demos
MONO_OPTIONS=--debug && xsp --verbose
Then in the webbrowser go to
http://YOURSERVER:8080/DelphiNet2CSharp.aspx 
You will see all the Console.WriteLine output, and also any exceptions and Mono crash messages.