nmanzi’s tech ramblings

Ruby 1.9, Rails 2.3, and MySQL on Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex)

I haven’t the time to write out a big fleshy post atm, so I’ll post the short story.

I was trying to set my Ubuntu 8.10 VPS up with a fresh Ruby/Rails install to host some webapps I’m working on. Rather than apt-getting my way to glory, I decided to build Ruby 1.9.1 from source, the main reason being that the version available through apt is only 1.9.0 and I’m working with 1.9.1 on my dev machine.

After building/installing Ruby, I started installing rails, rake, rack, etc… via RubyGems. I knew that I couldn’t install the standard ‘mysql’ gem, as it hasn’t yet been updated for Ruby 1.9, so I added http://gems.github.com/ to my gem sources - if you don’t know how to do this, the command is:

gem sources -a http://gems.github.com

…and proceeded to install kwatch’s mysql-ruby gem.

To my surprise (as it had worked under OSX on my dev box), I got the following message:

plasma@syn-app01:~$ sudo gem install kwatch-mysql-ruby
Building native extensions. This could take a while…
ERROR: Error installing kwatch-mysql-ruby:
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

/usr/local/bin/ruby extconf.rb
Trying to detect MySQL configuration with mysql_config command…
Succeeded to detect MySQL configuration with mysql_config command.
checking for mysql_ssl_set()… yes
checking for rb_str_set_len()… yes
checking for rb_thread_start_timer()… no
checking for mysql.h… yes
creating Makefile

make
gcc -I. -I/usr/local/include/ruby-1.9.1/i686-linux -I/usr/local/include/ruby-1.9.1/ruby/backward -I/usr/local/include/ruby-1.9.1 -I. -DHAVE_MYSQL_SSL_SET -DHAVE_RB_STR_SET_LEN -DHAVE_MYSQL_H -D_FILE_OFFSET_BITS=64 -I/usr/include/mysql -DBIG_JOINS=1 -fPIC -fPIC -O2 -g -Wall -Wno-parentheses -fPIC -o mysql.o -c mysql.c
In file included from /usr/include/stdlib.h:320,
from /usr/local/include/ruby-1.9.1/ruby/ruby.h:50,
from /usr/local/include/ruby-1.9.1/ruby.h:32,
from mysql.c:6:
/usr/include/sys/types.h:151: error: duplicate ‘unsigned’
make: *** [mysql.o] Error 1

Gem files will remain installed in /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/kwatch-mysql-ruby-2.8.1 for inspection.
Results logged to /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.9.1/gems/kwatch-mysql-ruby-2.8.1/ext/gem_make.out

Instructions on fixing the issue and installing the gem after the jump.

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Torrent-X on Windows XBMC (Atlantis)

Torrent-X is a plugin for XBMC that allows you to scan through well-known RSS torrent feeds from sites like Mininova, EZTV, etc… and pipes the torrents you choose through to your torrent client of choice via (usually) it’s web interface. Problem is, it doesn’t work OOTB with the Windows version of XBMC. Here’s how to fix it.

1. Edit the shortcut to XBMC and remove the ‘-p’ from the command. This will make XBMC save user data into the installation folder, and make it accessible to scripts via the internal Q: drive. This solves the issues the script has with opening the guisettings.xml file.
2. Edit the default.py file for Torrent-X and change line 1127 as follows.
   Change it from:
   MyDisplay = GUI( "skin.xml", ResPath , "Default" )
   To:
   MyDisplay = GUI( "skin.xml", os.getcwd() , "Default" )

You should then be able to open the script from within XBMC.

- NM

PS: I’ll be posting soon on the subject of my recent trip to Singapore, specifically, what a geek can do in Singapore. I’ll also be posting on how to make a cheap, feature-packed media box.

Mailarchiver 6, the upgrade, and the broken next button…

First thing I see in the morning is an email from GFI saying “YOU HAVE A FREE UPGRADE ZOMG!”. Mailarchiver 6 is out, and it boasts quite a few new features, none of which are documented yet - they still only have the MA5 manual up on their site.

I download the update, schedule an outage (it’s not really used by anyone apart from us, the IT department), and start the upgrade. I get to the ‘You need to update your auditing database by doing this chant/sacrifice:’ part, and the next button proceeds to do sweet f–k all. The installer doesn’t lock up, I can still click back, just not next. How’s that for an error message?

The error, in fact, is that MA5 needs to be upgraded with the latest updates before you can upgrade.

If you’ve come across this issue, here’s the link to the file you’ll need to install in order to progress any further: http://kbase.gfi.com/showarticle.asp?id=KBID003336

Now all I need is some documentation on the new features. It appears that an outlook plugin they’ve made (which I can’t find) allows users to mount their archive in their outlook. If this also allows them to move things to the archive, say, old emails from their 20gb+ worth of PSTs, then this will save admins a lot of time. I’ll find out when I get time.

- NM