Uwe's Blog

Persisting an NFS4 mount point on macOS Monterey

uwe — Sun, 06 Mar 2022 21:23:00 +0100

How to auto-mount an NFS4 share after startup on macOS Monterey?

This blog post explains how to do it with basically one line in /etc/fstab:

192.168.200.200:/nfs_share /System/Volumes/Data/my_nfs_share nfs rw,resvport,hard,bg,intr,rw,tcp,nfc,rsize=65536,wsize=65536 …

Setting up an NFS Server with Linux, Mac, and Kodi Clients

uwe — Tue, 22 Jun 2021 19:25:00 +0200

Introduction

We'd like to set up an NFS 3 server on a Raspberry Pi with Linux, Mac, and Kodi clients. Kodi does not support NFS 4 out of the box, so we'll stick with NFS 3 for now.

Set up the Server

As a starting point, follow this tutorial to …

Fixing the Bootloader of a Ubuntu RAID System

uwe — Mon, 19 Aug 2019 17:18:00 +0200

If the remote Ubuntu machine does not boot showing the following error

error: unknown filesystem
 Entering rescue mode...
 grub rescue>

the GRUB bootloader is broken and can be fixed in one of the following ways.

Using the GRUB rescue concole

Follow the steps described in this blog post.

Using a …

Mounting a Samba Share on the Raspberry Pi

uwe — Fri, 07 Dec 2018 20:24:00 +0100

Install the following packages:

apt-get install  samba-common smbclient samba-common-bin smbclient  cifs-utils

Create a local directory:

mkdir /mnt/abc

Mount the Samba share using your username:

mount -t cifs //server/share /mnt/abc -o user=uwe

If the Samba share is provided by a FritzBox via its NAS feature and assuming …

Upgrade Your Apache to a Newer PHP Version

uwe — Fri, 08 Jun 2018 16:30:00 +0200

Upgrading PHP from 7.0 to 7.1 or 7.2 on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS is almost trivial as this blog post (in German) explains:

First, add a PPA (personal package archive):

sudo apt-get install -y python-software-properties (falls nicht bereits installiert)
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt-get …

Setting up a new Ubuntu Webserver

uwe — Sat, 11 Nov 2017 20:15:00 +0100

Here's a collection of links that provide helpful information when you have a brandnew Ubuntu machine with root access and you want to set it up as a webserver:

Setting up a systemd Service under Ubuntu

uwe — Sat, 11 Nov 2017 19:15:00 +0100

Starting with 15.04, Ubuntu uses systemd instead of Upstart as the default system and service manager. This page offers a good comparison between the two systems.

If you want to add a new systemd service (e.g. for running a Java application everytime your machine boots), create the following …

Redirecting Requests from Apache to Jetty

uwe — Sun, 05 Nov 2017 21:55:00 +0100

Assuming you are running an Apache server with a virtual host for abs.mydomain.com, put this into the virtual host's .conf file to redirect all traffic to a Jetty web server running locally behind your Apache:

<Proxy *>
    Order deny,allow
    Allow from all
</Proxy>

ProxyPass / http://localhost:1234/ retry …

40 Falsehoods Programmers Believe about Names

uwe — Thu, 27 Jul 2017 07:25:00 +0200

Patrick McKenzie has never seen a computer system that handles names properly. Sad!

Programming as if the Domain (and Performance) Mattered

uwe — Wed, 26 Jul 2017 18:55:00 +0200

A long read by my man Carlo Pescio.

It's not CI, it's just CI Theatre

uwe — Fri, 26 May 2017 18:32:00 +0200

Are you practising CI? Find out by reading this post by Suzie Prince.

The Initializer Pattern in Java

uwe — Sat, 18 Mar 2017 20:55:00 +0100

A "type-safe builder pattern in Java".

The Lean Inception

uwe — Thu, 16 Mar 2017 19:43:00 +0100

I should probably read this series of articles by Paulo Caroli before I try to convince my boss why implementing an MVP is a good idea.

PiBakery

uwe — Thu, 09 Mar 2017 21:33:00 +0100

A great way to configure a Raspberry Pi from scratch is PiBakery. After struggling a while with setting up a VNC server and some other things on a fresh Pi connected only via Ethernet (no display, keyboard, or mouse), finding PiBakery was very helpful.

Here's my configuration:

![PiBakery configuration]({static …

Using your SSL certificate for your Spark web application

uwe — Thu, 09 Mar 2017 21:12:00 +0100

I've fallen in love with Spark recently. Being unexperienced with web development, I stumbled upon Spark when I was looking for a small framework for setting up a simple web application based on Java. My learning curve has been steep and my first website (consisting of nothing but a simple …

Referencing a Bean in JasperReports

uwe — Sat, 10 Sep 2016 18:53:00 +0200

Thanks to this answer on StackOverflow, I know how easy it is to reference the bean itself instead of one of its properties in a text field expression in JasperReports. The trick is to declare a field whose description is set to the keyword _THIS:

<field name="myBean" class="de …

Installing a Tor Relay from Source on a Raspberry Pi

uwe — Sat, 03 Sep 2016 21:33:00 +0200

The other day I learned on Twitter that I should update the Tor relay software on my Raspberry Pi as the Tor project had introduced a new Bridge Authority. So I lazily ran sudo apt-get update followed by sudo apt-get upgrade only to notice that no new version of the …

Regex for German Zip Codes

uwe — Tue, 05 Jul 2016 19:56:00 +0200

I found the following regular expression (source) working fine for me:

^(?!01000|99999)(0[1-9]\\d{3}|[1-9]\\d{4})$

I tried two alternatives that did not work because they were too general:

[0-9]{5}

^([0]{1}[1-9]{1}|[1-9]{1}[0-9]{1})[0 …

Renewal of Let's Encrypt Certificates Using Plesk

uwe — Tue, 14 Jun 2016 18:18:00 +0200

Note to self: If the Let's Encrypt extension for Plesk fails to renew a certificate (when triggered manually), disable the automatic forwarding to an SSL connection in the Apache settings. This forced secure connection seems to disturb the renewal script.

The error I got was something like this:

Let's …

Create Custom Application Icons for MacOS X

uwe — Sun, 01 May 2016 20:58:00 +0200

This blog post by Chris Stevens shows you how.

Testing Delegate Methods

uwe — Fri, 15 Apr 2016 18:33:00 +0200

We had an interesting discussion the other day: should we write unit tests for delegate methods, that is, methods that only delegate the call to a delegate object? Here's an example of such a method:

public void do(Object o1, Object o2) {
    delegate.do(o1,o2);
}

I said I did …

Headless Testing with TestFX

uwe — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 18:35:00 +0200

Jérome Cambon wrote a nice introduction to TestFX and how to enable the headless mode using Monocle.

I tried to reproduce the steps he described for running my TestFX GUI tests in headless mode from Eclipse so I can keep using my mouse while they are running. The crux is …

A Potential Pitfall with the TextFormatter Class in JavaFX

uwe — Thu, 07 Apr 2016 18:52:00 +0200

A common use case for the TextFormatter class in JavaFX is a text field that should convert any lower-case character input into an upper-case character. This can be achieved easily by defining a filter for the text formatter as described here. A straightforward implementation could look like this:

private UnaryOperator …

The TextFormatter Class in JavaFX: How to Restrict User Input in a Text Field

uwe — Tue, 05 Apr 2016 20:01:00 +0200

There are a lot of code examples for restricting or modifying user input into a JavaFX text field. Most examples I have seen suggest adding a change listener to the text field's text property. Here's how you would allow only lower-case characters in your text field using the change listener …

Owncloud with Apache 2.4, PHP FPM, and Plesk

uwe — Mon, 04 Apr 2016 19:46:00 +0200

After about two weeks of fiddling around, I finally managed to get my own instance of owncloud up and running with Apache behind Plesk. Here's how I did it:

Set up a sub-domain in Plesk, e.g. owcloud.mydomain.com
Set up a database for owncloud using Plesk.
Make sure …

How to Make Unit Tests more Likeable

uwe — Mon, 04 Apr 2016 19:13:00 +0200

What are these unit tests good for? Are we testing Mockito?

This is what a colleague asked another colleague a couple of days ago. He was referring to some rather complicated and long unit tests that used a lot of mocks and verify statements. I knew what he was talking …

Adding JavaFX Properties to a DTO

uwe — Mon, 21 Mar 2016 20:23:00 +0100

Now that I have understood what a DTO is good for, I'm thinking about ways to improve it. As they are right now, our DTOs are POJOs extended by JSR 303 annotations for defining constraints on their fields/methods. The annotations are duplicates of the annotations defined on the corresponding …

What's up with DTOs?

uwe — Sat, 19 Mar 2016 21:30:00 +0100

Having worked a lot with EMF and Eclipse RCP applications based on EMF as the framework of choice for transferring domain models into code, I never got in touch with real-life examples of Data Transfer Objects (DTOs). I was familiar with the pattern in theory, but I never saw a …

Any Complaints?

uwe — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 19:52:00 +0100

https://twitter.com/phillip_webb/status/705909774001377280

I usually go for "too much boilerplate".

Can There Be Too Much of a Good Thing?

uwe — Wed, 16 Mar 2016 19:49:00 +0100

I recently worked on JavaFX UI code that was new to me. In order to extend the existing UI by a simple label, I needed access to a bean of the underlying data model. Much to my surprise, I had to dig deep to find it hidden under multiple layers …

Zooming in the Fancy Chart Control

uwe — Thu, 24 Apr 2014 16:03:00 +0200

A new version of the fancy chart control is available at https://github.com/tesis-dynaware/fancy-chart

This version supports zooming for the XY chart: by dragging the mouse, you can select an area in the chart to scale the selected area up to full size of the chart. This allows …

Headless UI Testing with TestFX and JavaFX 8

uwe — Wed, 23 Apr 2014 14:41:00 +0200

JavaFX is a great UI toolkit. TestFX is a great library for testing the user interfaces written in JavaFX. Writing graphical tests with TestFX is simple and fast, but one challenge remains when you build your software using a headless build machine: how can you perform your UI tests in …

Enhanced Fancy Chart

uwe — Fri, 21 Mar 2014 12:28:00 +0100

A new version of the fancy chart control is available at https://github.com/tesis-dynaware/fancy-chart

Data can now be imported and exported to CSV, XLS, and HDF5 files. A lot of code was refactored to make it easier to support other file formats in the future.

Source Code for the Fancy Chart Control

uwe — Fri, 14 Mar 2014 15:38:00 +0100

Due to popular demand, I published the source code for the combined LineChart and TableView control mentioned in this post to Github. You can find the sources here:

https://github.com/tesis-dynaware/fancy-chart

Visit Zombieland

uwe — Thu, 13 Mar 2014 16:43:00 +0100

We finally released our FBX importer code for JavaFX 8 on Github:

https://github.com/tesis-dynaware/fbx-importer

You can use it to load (binary) FBX files and show the result as a JavaFX 3D mesh. Have fun playing around and please don't hesitate to give us feedback.

A Combined LineChart and TableView Widget in JavaFX

uwe — Wed, 19 Feb 2014 12:10:00 +0100

[![Video of a combined LineChart and Table widget in JavaFX](http://img.youtube.com/vi/w0No8gBxDi8/0.jpg)](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0No8gBxDi8) (click to watch the video)

This video shows a widget for displaying three characteristics (velocity vs. distance) in a LineChart node and a tabbed TableView …

A Widget Picker Control in JavaFX

uwe — Fri, 07 Feb 2014 12:38:00 +0100

The following video shows a custom control in JavaFX that lets you select items from a list and position them in a grid. The items represent UI widgets, that is, JavaFX controls, with a defined size on the grid. The grid represents a page on which these widgets will be …

A Graph Editor in JavaFX

uwe — Thu, 06 Feb 2014 16:29:00 +0100

Another thing we've been working on is going to see the light of day soon: a graph editor for JavaFX. The current beta version provides the following main features:

create draggable, resizable nodes and connections between them
add multiple input or output connectors to a node
create joints inside a …

A Custom Breadcrumb Control in JavaFX

uwe — Thu, 06 Feb 2014 14:49:00 +0100

After investing some serious brain power in the dynamic sizing of the breadcrumbs in a navigation bar (described in this post), I forgot to provide a closer look at the outcome.

Here's a short video of this custom control written in JavaFX:

[![Video of a graph editor in JavaFX](http …

Using FXForm2 with EMF Models

uwe — Fri, 08 Nov 2013 13:46:00 +0100

Based on these considerations from July, we gave FXForm2 a shot for generating forms from EMF models. It worked quite smoothly after we wrote the factories that defined how the custom data types used in our models should be displayed.

We found a few things that are worth noting:

Using …

Implementing Breadcrumbs in JavaFX

uwe — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 15:08:00 +0100

I've been struggling to implement a JavaFX breadcrumbs bar using a ToolBar with a few Button items in it. The breadcrumbs should have the shape of an arrow as in the example shown in Loop81's blog post.

The breadcrumbs bar in the Ensemble application uses the same approach. What I …

Zombieland

uwe — Fri, 23 Aug 2013 13:29:00 +0200

Based on Jasper Potts' 3DViewer app (with support for importing OBJ, MAX, and MAYA files), we are developing an importer for FBX files into JavaFX. Below is a picture of our developer trying to understand the FBX format a screenshot of the extended 3DViewer app after loading an FBX file …

GUI Generation with JavaFX

uwe — Fri, 12 Jul 2013 07:48:00 +0200

Recently, we have had a look at JavaFX libraries for generating UIs in a dynamic way. The idea is that we have a data model (a JavaBean class, an EMF model class, a model class with JavaFX properties,...) as input for some GUI builder that takes the model and generates …

Navigation

uwe — Thu, 23 May 2013 16:43:00 +0200

Dear tree huggers,

I'm one of you. I like trees - preferably on the left of my application. They give me the impression that I exactly know where I am and where I can go next. Just recently I learnt how much I appreciate a tree as a navigation element when …

Designing Interfaces with JavaFX

uwe — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 05:35:00 +0200

Good design makes you happy. I was happy when I first saw an iPod, and even happier when I first held it in my hand. Sometimes, you will not notice the positive effects good design has on you, but you will always notice the effects of bad design.

I'm a …