Drawing Electrical Plans of Houses

Basis : Mac OS X

Download locations :

• Dia drawing software : https://projects.gnome.org/dia/
• Sweet Home 3D : http://www.sweethome3d.com/index.jsp
• Electrical Symbols for Dia via DiaShapes installer : http://dia-installer.de/shapes/Electrical/index.html
• Make an electrical dossier using LibreOffice ( http://www.LibreOffice.org ) or OpenOffice.org ( http://www.OpenOffice.org )

Steps to install software:

• Install Sweet Home 3D
• Install Dia software
• Install DiaShapes
• Install the symbol libraries via DiaShapes in Dia
• Install LibreOffice

Steps :

• Create the floorplan of the house with different floors in the plan
• Name and draw the different rooms or parts of the surface of the floor
• Export the different floors as SVG files to the filesystem 
• Open Dia
• Import a floorplan in SVG format
• Resize the imported svg drawing object to suite the needs and in a way that the drawing symbols make sense
• Put the symbols on the required location.
• Where needed add reference labels to the plan
• In a spreadsheet in LibreOffice make a list per floor and room of all the reference labels
• Per label give accurate information about the electrical component that is present at that location.

RadiAnt - Open folder with context menu

RadiAnt is Such a wonderfull Dicom viewer. (download)
The only thing missing by default is to open a folder immediately with Radiant.
In order to do this you need to add a registry key which will define the "Radiant" action for all directories.

The steps to do this:

• Open Regedt
• Go in the registry to the following location:
• HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT > Directory > shell
• Verify that you can see at that level two entries: cmd and find
• Create a new item called “Radiant”
• Go to the newly created item “Radiant”
• Create a new item called “command”
• In de standard REG_SZ string enter the path to Radiant between double quotes followed by %1

For example:
"c:\Program Files\RadiAntViewer64bit\RadiAntViewer.exe" %1

VirtualBox on Mac os x - Can not find com service

Context

Mac Mini Server edition, 16 GB ram, ssd 250GB + hdd 750GB
Mac OS X server
Oracle VirtualBox
Changed (decent word for testing if something would fail) with the Mac OS X server settings, in particular the hostname.

Symptoms

Trying to start the admin screen of VirtualBox fails and gives an error telling that the tool could not connect to the COM service or the VirtualBox com services.
In the details of the error you will find something link NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005)

Explain

Do not know what is going wrong, but something is smuthering up the file and directory permissions when the hostname is changed and/or Mac OS X server services are recreated and/or restarted

Solution

Go to disk utility (Utilities > Disk Utility)

Select the main disk of the computer on the left pane

Select the first aid tab (the default one)

Click on the button to "Repair the disk permissions"

In the log file you'll see things that seem not to interfear with VBox ... at first ... but looking deeper in the stack ... 

Hope this solves your problem too ... 

References

CAlso : Apple Forum post

Win Server Z008 r2 - Run applications as different users

Problem:
An administrator installs an application on the server.
Other non-administrator users are unable to run the application.

References:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee791868(v=ws.10).aspx

Problem:
Application locker is to restrictive

Solution:
Adapt the permissions of the program and probably the folder.

a. Program Permissions
windows-run : secpol.msc
Select Application Control Policies > AppLocker
Create a new rule in the Executable Rules for the program.

b. set sharing of files/folders permissions.
Some programs require access to the file folders or to specific files.
Click on the file/folder and in the context menu select "Share".
Add the correct users or groups and set the permissions to read/write according to the requirements.

Win Server 2008 r2 - iPad rdp connection to server

Problem:
When connecting via an RDP client app on iPad, you get the message "The requested session access is denied".
This connection is possible when connecting as an Administrator user but not as a 'normal' user.

Reason:
Most clients connect to the console by using the /console option, which is only possible for administrators.

Solution:
Found an iPad app that contains the option to define a connection to the server with the option not to specify /console : 2X (website www.2x.com)
Create a profile to connect via a specific user and in the profile of the server the last option is "Connect to console" which has to be set to Off.

OEL - VBox Guest Additions

On gui-less linux installations it is not always clear how the guest additions can be installed.

This article tries to show how to do this.

The steps to do this are:

• Get the additions mounted (supposing no cdrom is attached yet) 
• create cdrom directories 
• determine the cdrom device 
• mount the device loosely 
• install the guest additions 
• (Install missing packages ... ) 
• (Retry installation) 

Just click devices > install guest additions
The cdrom will become attached to the vm
Best is to reboot the system at this instance. (Have encountered that for some reason the cd device was no immediately available.)

To be able to mount the cdrom within some instances you will require a directory to mount it to.
Go to the /mnt directory as root user and create some directories with a trailing number.

For example:
mkdir cdrom0
mkdir cdrom1
...for as many as you will find cdroms required ;-)

The trailing number starts best with 0 ... why ... see later.

Determine the cdrom device.
The name of the device depends under which link the cdrom is attached.
If a cdrom is defined as a SATA device the cdrom will become available as sr0, sr1 ...
For the further documentation let 's suppose the device is /dev/sr0

Mount the cdrom by using the following command:
mount /dev/sr0 /mnt/cdrom0
So ... that is why 0 at the end ... ;-)

The output of the command will be something like this:

root@wlspfrd mnt]# mount /dev/sr0 /mnt/cdrom0
mount: block device /dev/sr0 is write-protected, mounting read-only

Go to the cdrom drive:
cd /mnt/cdrom0

[root@wlspfrd mnt]# cd /mnt/cdrom0
[root@wlspfrd cdrom0]# ls
32Bit runasroot.sh VBoxWindowsAdditions.exe
64Bit VBoxLinuxAdditions.run VBoxWindowsAdditions-x86.exe
AUTORUN.INF VBoxSolarisAdditions.pkg
autorun.sh VBoxWindowsAdditions-amd64.exe

To install the additions execute the VBoxLinuxAdditions.run command.
./VBoxLinuxAddtions.run

In a 64-bit Oracle Linux environment you will encounter a problem which is indicated by the line:
Building the main Guest Additions module [FAILED]

The reason is that the build requires the header files of the correct version of the Linux OS.
The line preceeding the FAILED error gives a clear hint:
The following command should solve the problem.
yum install kernel-uek-devel-2.6.32-200.13.1.el5uekPut the package name, in this case kernel-uek-devel-2.6.32-200.13.1.el5uek in the copy buffer

To install this package, the yum repository must be configured (context Oracle)
See the website for this: http://public-yum.oracle.com/
Follow the instructions.
cd /etc/yum.repos.d
for Oracle Linux 5:
          wget http://public-yum.oracle.com/public-yum-el5.repo
for Oracle Linux 6:
          wget http://public-yum.oracle.com/public-yum-el6.repo
In the obtained file enable (value = 1) the correct version (warning if you enable the latest version the update may take a long time ... ).

After installation of the yum repository, retry the installation of VBox additions.
This should now succeed.

After this any shared folder will become available in the /media directory.

Update dd 02-feb-2014

When using version 6 update 3 of Oracle Linux, it seems not possible to get the correct Kernel headers for the uek. At least it should be possible to find them ... but I did not find them, or at least ... not as fast as I wanted. Just used a short-circuit to get things working fast ... 

I followed these steps:

• boot with the non-uek kernel
  This can be achieved by:
• or change the kernel at boot time
• or change the default boot instance in the /boot/grub/grub.conf file
• Make sure gcc and the kernel-devel packages are installed (using yum install gcc kernel-devel kernel-headers)
• running VBoxLinuxAdditions.run -> this should not fail anymore
• you will find in the /media any shared folder
• now ... reboot in
• uek -> seems to work ... but not really guaranteed because of the difference in the compile-time and runtime-kernel versions
• run in the version as was compiled 
• make the kernel version permanent in the grub.conf if not already done so

Update 4-feb-2014

Context Delta : Oracle Linux 6.3 base installation with Database Server option.
Even though the kernel was booted with the compatible version (RHEL) the openGL compilation failed. All major requirements like folder sharing and screen sizing do not work.
Found on a site the hint to do an export  MAKE="/usr/bin/gmake -i " before launching the VBoxLinuxadditions.run command.
This solved immediately the problem of the shared folders not being accessible under /media/sf_*.
It did not solve the problem of the windows resizing.
After a reboot with the original UEK kernel (in OL 6.3) which caused the Shared folders not being accessible anymore.
Starting to update to really latest version of OL v6 ... see if things will be more smooth then ...
... and yes it did.
So ... changed  config file in the yum.repos.d directory to retrieve the latest versions, which at this moment in time seems to be 6.5.1. Performed a simple yum update which took 40 MB to download and install. Rebooted with the new kernel.
Mounted the cdrom again and started the installation of the VBoxGuestAdditions again.
This time no errors were encountered ... with the exception of the Window System Drivers.
Will try to fix that too.

Good Luck

OEL - Kickstart documentation

The following link, this link, points to the doc of redhat kickstart.

bash - doc

Just ... this link

bash - Substitution of variables

This link explains variable substitution in the Bash Shell.
For convenience a copy of some info in that post:

• ${VAR-default}
  If VAR is set (to any value, even null, then return $VAR, otherwise return the default value provided. VAR is unchanged. If the - is preceded by a colon (':') then the default value will also be returned in case the value of VAR is null.
• ${VAR=default}
  The same as '-' except that the value of VAR will be changed too. The use of the colon is the same in this case.
• ${#VAR}
  This returns the number of characters in VAR. (Unicode ???)
• ${VAR#pattern}
  Returns VAR with the shortest instance of pattern removed from the front.
  Pattern is not a regular expression but a glob. If ## is used instead of # the longest matching pattern is removed from the front.
• ${VAR%pattern}
  Identical to # except the front will be the end of value of VAR

Installation of Forms on OEL r5 u5

This post is currently only a wrap up of links I found interesting in installing the forms environment.

Envirionment:
Two hosts: one ... a vmware environment with oracle VM Manager the other with Oracle VM Server.
Next to these I have a NAS which is used to provide the software to all guests on the VM server for sofware and other feeds (a Thecus N5500 with 10TB disk capacity) (NFS is choses over iSCSI because the fact that iSCSI has to be considered as a hardware layer and is therefor dedicated to one controlling machine. Because I want to use it on all machines ... I had it configured as a NFS share)

The VM server has an Intel i7 920 processor with 6GB of ram and 4 TB of disks installed (Acer brand)

On the VM Server the following guest systems will be installed:

• db server: OELr5u2 with Oracle DB 11g, running with 2 cores dedicated and 1.5 GB ram.
• wls admin server: OEL r5u5
• hosts to run managed servers: OELr5u5, initially only one server, with the intention of running 4 managed servers.
• Later on the host with managed servers will be copied to try the concept of clustering ... 

The network ... well very simple ... all hosts will get a fixed ip address within the same subnet.
Since the virtual NIC's are on the same physical system, they use the softnetworked network ... which provides rather high speeds.

Software

The following software is used:
Oracle VM Manager r 2.2.0
Oracle VM Server r 2.2.0
VMWare Fusion (is used to create a linux vm and install the VM manager in it) running on Mac OS X.
Oracle Enterprise Linux r5 u 5.
Weblogic server 11g r1 (10,3,3,0)
FMW - portal, forms, reports and discoverer v 11g r1patch 1 (11,1,1,2)
Patch to FMW - portal, forms, reports and discoverer r11g r1 (11,1,1,3)
For convenience a VM with DB11g.

Installation of the Virtual Machines

To be done

Installation of FMW on the server

Install the WLS server.
Install release 11,1,1,2 of FMW-PFRD
Install on top of that 11,1,1,3 (this is a pure patchset ... big but a patchset)

That's it for now ... 

Links:

• Oracle system requirements and specifications for FMW
• Download the software
• A tutorial on installing forms on windows 
•