oracle instance uptime

As reported here, this is the query to execute:

select
'Hostname : ' || host_name
,'Instance Name : ' || instance_name
,'Started At : ' || to_char(startup_time,'DD-MON-YYYY HH24:MI:SS') stime
,'Uptime : ' || floor(sysdate - startup_time) || ' days(s) ' ||
trunc( 24*((sysdate-startup_time) -
trunc(sysdate-startup_time))) || ' hour(s) ' ||
mod(trunc(1440*((sysdate-startup_time) -
trunc(sysdate-startup_time))), 60) ||' minute(s) ' ||
mod(trunc(86400*((sysdate-startup_time) -
trunc(sysdate-startup_time))), 60) ||' seconds' uptime
from
sys.v_$instance;

Websphere error WSVR0101W

If you ever get an error like this:

0000006d ApplicationMg A WSVR0200I: Starting application: MyAppEAR
0000006d ApplicationMg E WSVR0101W: An error occurred starting MyAppEAR
0000006d ApplicationMg A WSVR0217I: Stopping application: MyAppEAR
0000006d ApplicationMg A WSVR0220I: Application stopped: MyAppEAR

Make sure your web.xml is correct. In our case, we had some unexistent servlet mapping, which caused the application to fault.

Adobe & "com.ibm.jsse2.util.h: No trusted certificate found" error

Suddenly a new error on Websphere Application Server, where Adobe PDF Generator runs:

RemoteException occurred in server thread; nested exception is:
java.rmi.RemoteException: org.omg.CORBA.COMM_FAILURE: CAUGHT_EXCEPTION_WHILE_CONFIGURING_SSL_CLIENT_SOCKET:
JSSL0080E: javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException - The client and server could not negotiate the desired level of security.
Reason: com.ibm.jsse2.util.h: No trusted certificate found vmcid: 0x49421000 minor code: 70 completed: No

Found this 6 point help somewhere on the web (thanks Soorya!):

Hi,
You need to obtain signer certificates from remote machine for SSL configuration.
I have explained you the steps below for the same.
1. From administrative console, follow
Security -> SSL certificate and key management -> key stores and certificates - > NodeDefaultTrustStore -> Signer certificates -> Retrive from port.
2. Enter remote machine name at Host.
3. Enter CSIV2_SSL_MUTUALAUTH_LISTENER_ADDRESS of the remote machine at Port.
4. Enter Alias for reference.
5. Click “Retrieve signer information”.
6. Apply and save the changes.

Hope it will useful.
Regards,
Soorya Prakash.S

Following the hints, I managed to solve using localhost:9043 for points 2 and 3, and "adobe" for point 4. No reboot needed, the application now transforms into PDF nicely.

IE6 issues with javascript with accents

The following code won't run with IE6, but does run perfectly on IE7:

function changeFunction(obj) {
var div = null;
var idScheda = '';
var o = obj;

alert('ID: ' + obj.id); // undefined
alert('TO: ' + typeof(obj.id)); // undefined
alert('IF: ' + (typeof(obj.id) == 'undefined')); // true

if (typeof(obj.id) == 'undefined') {
// compatibilità
alert('OK');

Basically, the problem was that we never got the OK alert, even though we got the true alert, one line before. We found out the error was related to the accent in compatibilità: changing that into compatibilita made the whole thing run on IE6 as well.

JavaMail 1.4.2 released

New JavaMail release, 1.4.2, available here. Pretty nice info in the SSLNOTES file, which might actually help wrt the difficulties I experienced in a previous post. HTH.

surviving process on aix

On Aix, to run a command in background and in a way which will not be killed once you disconnect you remote session, you should issue the following command:
nohup command &

How to run Win apps as service

Problem: I have a Windows application which has to be always open. Therefore it stays on a server, but I have to be careful and disconnect every time stop working, or the process gets killed.

Solution: http://www.cypressnet.com/Products/autotask/autotask.htm: "This allows for many types of tasks to be ran in the background, even when the users are logged off." Not for free.

sAMAccountName 20 chat limit

Here is published a description of the Active Directory fields.

My interest is focused on the sAMAccountName (which is limited to 20 chars due to backwards compatibility) and userPrincipalName (which can be up longer and may include @domain). Systems with long user names should rather use the latter.

The story of the secure connection on Websphere 6.0.0

Once upon a time, our web application required to establish a SSL connection. Therefore we added JavaMail 1.4.1 JARs in our WEB-INF/lib directory, deployed the web application on Websphere 6.0.0 and experienced the application server was still loading its 1.3 version.

LESSON #1: use PARENT_LAST and PARENT_FIRST to determine whether the EAR/WAR file JARs are the last or the first to be loaded. A good explanation was found here.

Once we set PARENT_LAST on the Web Module, we ran into several XML casting related errors, such as: org.apache.xerces.parsers.XML11Configuration cannot be cast to org.apache.xerces.xni.parser.XMLParserConfiguration. That was because of the presence of unneeded JARs in WEB-INF/lib, eventually conflicting with Websphere ones, and previously bypassed by the PARTENT_FIRST option. Also in this care there's a lot of documentation and explanations, such as here, here, and here. However, what it had to be done was to clean up the unused JARs and/or substitute some of them with proper others.

LESSON #2: as a web application grows with time, it arrives the moment to stop and anlayze how many trash JAR it has collected. Therefore procede per steps:

1. remove all JARs;
2. if you are using the API of some suite, make sure you are using the required JARs;
   
3. add JARs one by one, from the most important to the last important, till all compinling errors go away;
4. go round you web application until you face some run time error, then add the remaining missing JARs. (Any suggestion on better ways is highly accepted!)
   

Now that the application can be started without errors and properly use JavaMail 1.4, we face a new error caused by:
javax.net.ssl.SSLException: Unsupported record version Unknown 111.109
at com.ibm.jsse2.a.b(Unknown Source)
at com.ibm.jsse2.a.a(Unknown Source)

Which seems to be due our current Websphere version (alas, still 6.0.0, while RAD 6.0.2 has it fixed). A fix is available here, even though I found it impossible to download APAR PK32916 by Fix Central. Given the fact it's impossible for us to upgrade WAS as of now, we have to find a workaround, but before that:

LESSON #3: should be needless to say, however better make sure your development team is using locally the same version of application server which is running on the test and production environments.

So, if it is impossible to use IBM JSSE API because they are old (as for JavaMail) and buggy, why not give it a try with SUN JSSE. I know it's dirty, however I extracted jsse.jar from Sun Java SDK 1.4 and added it to WEB-INF/lib. It resulted in a new error, which goes like:
java.net.SocketException: Export restriction: this JSSE implementation is non-pluggable.
at javax.net.ssl.DefaultSSLSocketFactory.createSocket(DashoA12275)

Apparently the walkaround for this issue is reported here, and it says to patch org.apache.axis.components.net.JSSESocketFactory, and shows how. The reason is reported on Java 1.4 release notes, and goes like: "The JSSE implementation provided in this release includes strong cipher suites. However, due to U.S. export control restrictions, this release does not allow alternate "pluggable" SSL/TLS implementations to be used. For more information, please see the JSSE Reference Guide."

LESSON #4: you have to know when to stop even if you would like to carry on with the challenge. There are probably more critical things to deal with, so leave your ego apart.

We'll wait till we upgrade Websphere.