I played with Bugzilla for the site I hosted for TLA+ but I wanted to try something new and installed JIRA on my home server. The nice story about it is: it is written in Java and it costs only 10$. I installed the bundled (which includes Tomcat) version on my old home server and used my MySQL DB for bugs.

Switching the database

After the default installation I changed the following Datasource configuration to switch from HSQL-DB to MySQL in conf/server.xml:

<Resource name="jdbc/JiraDS"
  auth="Container"
  type="javax.sql.DataSource"
  driverClassName="com.mysql.jdbc.Driver"
  url="jdbc:mysql://localhost/jira?autoReconnect=true
&amp;useUnicode=true&amp;characterEncoding=UTF8"
  username="user"
  password="secret"
  maxActive="20"
  validationQuery="select 1"
/>

And changed the dialect in atlassian-jira/WEB-INF/classes/entityengine.xml:

<datasource name="defaultDS" field-type-name="mysql"
  helper-class="org.ofbiz.core.entity.GenericHelperDAO"
  check-on-start="true"
  use-foreign-keys="false"
  use-foreign-key-indices="false"
  check-fks-on-start="false"
  check-fk-indices-on-start="false"
  add-missing-on-start="true" check-indices-on-start="true">
    <jndi-jdbc jndi-server-name="default"
      jndi-name="java:comp/env/jdbc/JiraDS"
    />
</datasource>

Integrating with Apache Webserver

In addition, I don’t like entering ports into the browser, so I activated mod_jk Apache module and shifted the JIRA tomcats ports 50000 upwards:

<Connector port="58080" protocol="HTTP/1.1"
  maxHttpHeaderSize="58192"
  maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" maxSpareThreads="75"
  useBodyEncodingForURI="true" enableLookups="false"
  redirectPort="58443"
  acceptCount="100" connectionTimeout="20000"
  disableUploadTimeout="true"/>
    <Context path="/jira/"
    docBase="${catalina.home}/atlassian-jira"
    reloadable="false">
    ...
</Connector>
<Connector port="58009"
  enableLookups="false"
  redirectPort="58443"
  protocol="AJP/1.3" />

Please note that also I changed the path to “/jira/”. So in order to access it from the browser, you need to type http://server:58080/jira/
In Apache HTTPD Server configuration, I loaded the mod_jk module and configured a worker for JIRA:

# Where to find rkers.properties
# Update this path to match your conf directory location
# (put workers.properties next to httpd.conf)
JkWorkersFile /etc/apache2/workers.properties

# Where to put jk shared memory
# Update this path to match your local state directory or logs directory
JkShmFile     /var/lock/apache2/mod_jk.shm

# Where to put jk logs
# Update this path to match your logs directory location
# (put mod_jk.log next to access_log)
JkLogFile     /var/log/mod_jk.log

# Set the jk log level [debug/error/info]
JkLogLevel    error

# Select the timestamp log format
JkLogStampFormat "[%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Y] "

#Mounts
JkMount /jira/* jira

The worker.properties file defines a worker using the Tomcat AJP13 connector:

#workers using ajp13
worker.list=jira

# Set properties for jira (ajp13)
worker.jira.type=ajp13
worker.jira.host=localhost
worker.jira.port=58009

Let it mail

For maximum comfort I tried to let my JIRA installation send me mails using my GMail mail account. I followed the instruction on the JIRA page.

<Resource name="mail/GmailSmtpServer"
  auth="Container"
  type="javax.mail.Session"
  mail.smtp.host="smtp.googlemail.com"
  mail.smtp.port="465"
  mail.smtp.auth="true"
  mail.smtp.user="myusername@gmail.com"
  password="mypass"
  mail.debug="true"
  mail.smtp.starttls.enable="true"
  mail.smtp.socketFactory.class="javax.net.ssl.SSLSocketFactory"
/>

I finished the setup and got the following error:

com.atlassian.mail.MailException: javax.mail.MessagingException:
  Exception reading response; nested exception is:
        javax.net.ssl.SSLException: Unrecognized SSL message, plaintext connection?
        at com.atlassian.mail.server.impl.SMTPMailServerImpl.send(SMTPMailServerImpl.java:191)
        at com.atlassian.mail.queue.SingleMailQueueItem.send(SingleMailQueueItem.java:47)
        at com.atlassian.mail.queue.MailQueueImpl.sendBuffer(MailQueueImpl.java:68)
        at com.atlassian.jira.service.services.mail.MailQueueService.run(MailQueueService.java:23)
        at com.atlassian.jira.service.JiraServiceContainerImpl.run(JiraServiceContainerImpl.java:67)
        at com.atlassian.jira.service.ServiceRunner.execute(ServiceRunner.java:48)
        at org.quartz.core.JobRunShell.run(JobRunShell.java:191)
        at org.quartz.simpl.SimpleThreadPool$WorkerThread.run(SimpleThreadPool.java:516)

The problem results from the fact, that GMail uses TLS certificates which has to be imported as described here. After executing the steps, my JIRA mails me on changes of the Issue states…

After all, I can create my issues and should focus on the home improvement again. But now I’m very well organized.

The Screen

In order to view the beautiful pictures delivered from the source, you need a TV set. In my childhood we had a monochrome Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) TV set, a huge box, incredible heavy, full of electrical components. Produced in Russia, its handle broke and we had nippers near the TV set in order to switch the channels (they were switched by rotating the handle). The next TV set we had could reproduce color but had approximately 12″ screen size. Its channels could be switched using small buttons. In the nineties, the time of big CRTs begun. A normal person could effort a 30″ CRT and of course it had a remote control. I saw my first plasma screen on an exhibition in Germany – I was thrilled by its relative small depth in comparison to a CRT. But the plasma screens of the nineties were heavy, consumed about 400W and had about 8 fans, which were pretty loud. Finally, the time of LCDs began and now the technology seem to be one of the main technologies in the market of TV sets. It is difficult to find a store selling CRTs in Germany.
A LCD screen has several parameters. Some of them are just attempts of vendors to deliver technology to the market before it is really ready. A good example of this is contrast ratio: in fact no sane person want to know what contrast ratio is delivered by the TV screen, it should be just enough. Other parameters are saying something about the quality of the picture you can see e.g. the resolution of the screen. The resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels is the most common resolution of current Full HD (1080p) TV screens.

Source of Recorded Video

After everyone bought hundreds of movies on the Video Home System (VHS) cassetes, the industry changed the technology from a tape to a disc. The Digital Versatile Disc (DVD) killed the VHS during a decade in order to be killed by the new standard called Blue Ray Disc (BD). To explain the difference in one sentence: DVD delivers only PAL quality (576p, or 576 lines), BD delivers 1080p (1080 lines). A remarkeable difference, but not all movies profit from a higher quality. So take a chance to buy old movies, where the higher resolution doesn’t play a role on DVD, before you have to pay for an expensive BD.

Source of Broadcasted Video

In addition to high quality recorded video source, you can receve a broadcast program. In old days, the television broadcast was analog. Since two years, the analog broadcast is being scaled back in Germany and is being replaced by the Digital Video Broadcast-Terrestical standard (DVB-T). Current DVB-T standard is not designed to deliver HDTV, but eventually it will be replaced by DVB-T2. There are two other ways to deliver the video program: cable or satellite. The corresponding standards are called DVB-S (for Satellite) and DVB-C (Cable). Both standards can deliver digital pictures in HDTV (1080p). Most offers of channels in HDTV are encoded and not free. Still, there is a reason for fees that every German having a TV set has to pay: the public channels ARD and ZDF will be transmitted in HDTV starting in 2010, arte broadcasts the HDTV already, since the middle of 2008.

The Sound

In order to complete the high-quality cinema-like felling in the living room, the sound system should support something like 5.1 dolby surround. This inlcludes a set of four boxes, a center loudspeaker, a subwoofer and an dolby-surround amplifier.

Conclusion

I watched a wonderful movie on arte tonight. The beautiful pictures deliverd by a Full HD 1080p screen and the nice music from processed by the complex logic of the digital amplifier. It was Charlie Chaplins’ “Modern Times”, created by his genious in 1936 in USA: a restored black-white silent movie. A real masterpiece…

It is impressive, since I was not searching for Eclipse, but the Big Brother was able to establish the semantic link between Sublipse and Eclipse and look for Eclipse & p2. It turns out that p2 is Pentium II and Eclipse is the Fujitsu Siemens Notebook.

For all non-geeks among us: Eclipse is a the famous software platform and integrated development environment built on top of it. P2 is the system for provisioning and installation of components inside of Eclipse. Eclipse is the example for the open-source development and is available free of charge.

Basically, it is the handshaking of the packet size based on MTU of PPPoE by packets with DF-flag (Don’t fragment) set. This handshaking is based on special ICMP command.

1. Opened “Network neighbourhood” added new Connection, entered a server name and directory.
2. A dialog appered in order to provide the auth-information. Entered my username and my password.
3. Same dialog apperead again, my username was replaced with servername\username
4. Asked the system administrator => the webfolder doesn’t work with digest authorisation, please use another client
5. Tried Eclipse Web-Dav integration, but forgot the trailing “/” in the directory name => Error : Bad request.
6. Entered in google: webdav client windows.
7. Took the first link: http://www.webdav.org/projects/
8. Scrolled a little, selected “WebDav Explorer” and downloaded
9. The zip-File contained of severeal batch files and a jar archive.
10. Started the program => Couldn’t understand how to use it in 2 minutes, managed to copy one file, but not a group of files.
11. Returned to google and selected the second link (FTP Client with WebDav support from bitkinex.com)
12. Downloaded a trial version and installed it.
13. A huge two-window application appeared on the screen. Managed to input the server data.
14. Connected. Tried to copy files. => Errors during copy. The process took 2 minutes. Checked if the files were there => No files on server.
15. Used server property (context pulldown-menu) to discover the dialog “Paths on server”
16. Entered my directory, reconnected.
17. Copied files and verified the existence => Files were there. The program is working only 30-days in a trial version.
18. Went back to google and entered “windows commander webdav” in order to find a plug-in for “Total Commander”.
19. Found a plugin and downloaded it and installed.
20. Created a new connection but forgot the trailing “/” again. => Error : Bad Method.
21. Analysed the log => TotalCMD tries to execute PROPFIND “/”.
22. Downloaded the code of the plugin. Opened the plugin in Visual Studio.
23. Found the corresponding place, on which the plugin calculates the path.
24. Understood, that the trailing “/” is neede in the path
25. Created a new connection with a trailing “/” after the directory name. => It worked fine, I could transfer files.
26. Tried the same thing in Eclipse adding a trailing “/” to the path. => It worked too.

So my questions are:

1. Is it that difficult to verify the trailing “/” in a tool?
2. Why so many people supply so bad tools, that the extensive reading of manual is needed in order to find out how the program works?