VMWare Perl API and Debian

Posted on March 5, 2009 by jason

I recently attempted to install VMWare’s Perl API on Debian Lenny and received the following error:

/usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lssl

A quick dpkg -l revealed I had openssl installed. It turns out I needed to also install libssl-dev in order to meet all of the dependencies:

aptitude install libssl-dev

I also needed make:

aptitude install make

Next I tried executing the enumerate.pl example and received the following error message:

SSLLoadSharedLibrary: Failed to load library /usr/bin/libcrypto.so.0.9.7:/usr/bin/libcrypto.so.0.9.7: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

Uhh… a library in /usr/bin? Something is fishy here. I searched VMWare’s forums and found quite a few “workarounds” including one that appears to come from VMWare staff:
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=1007612&sliceId=1

Clearly there is a better way. I glanced at my /etc/ld.so.conf and /etc/ld.so.conf.d and discovered the installation script did not add it’s custom library directory to the systems linker search path. Doh! So instead of copying or symbolically linking the library to /usr/bin which would be messy an illogical, I decided to add the VMWare library directory to system’s library search path by doing the following:

echo ‘/usr/lib/vmware-api/lib’ > /etc/ld.so.conf.d/vmware.conf
/sbin/ldconfig

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It is what it is

Posted on February 23, 2009 by jason

Really? It is what it is? How is that helpful? I think this utterance attempts to refocus the conversation but it always prompts my analytical brain to think, and sometimes reply, the syntactic Boolean inverse, “You mean it is not what is isn’t?”

Posted in Annoyances | Leave a comment

Sibling Conflicts and Parent Intervention

Posted on February 21, 2009 by jason

My job as a parent is to help my kids transition from selfish dependent children to empathetic, aware, thinking, enabled, and independent adults. It’s one of those ideas that’s so basic it is the core of many other values. It dawned on me recently that we parents often intervene in our kids lives without considering if what we are doing aligns with our core beliefs. My oldest boys, Nate and Luke, are going through a phase where neither boy wants to share toys with each other. Nate is old enough to understand that taking a toy away from someone else is wrong and Luke isn’t. It is all too easy for a parent to jump into a toy dispute, Deus ex Machina style, and lay down the law but what does this teach our kids?

Instead of relying on my authority and size to resolve their conflict, I decided recently that I’d explain the rules to Nate and help him develop the social skills he needs to resolve it himself. Here are the rules:

  1. We have to share.
  2. It is not OK to steal.
  3. It is not OK to hit.

The first lesson Nate learned was not everyone follows the rules. Since Luke is still a toddler and doesn’t quite understand the rules, he walked over and took a toy Nate was playing with. The second lesson Nate learned was just because someone else doesn’t follow the rules doesn’t mean you don’t have to. Nate’s first reaction was to use his physical size and strength to take the toy back. At this point I reminded Nate of the rules and suggested he find another toy Luke might like better and trade. Would you believe it worked?! After reinforcing this technique a few times, Nate realized that it was far easier to share his toys in the first place and negotiate for a stolen toy when that scenario occurs. Within days he was solving his own problems and my wife and I rarely have to intervene at all today. As the boys grow older I plan to introduce more complex problem solving techniques to them.

Posted in Parenthood | Leave a comment

Asus EEE 900A Boot Defect

Posted on February 15, 2009 by jason

Well, after two weeks of playing with this little gadget I ended up returning it. It developed a quirk where three out of four power ups the computer refused to POST. I discovered this problem persists with many of Asus’s netbook products so I decided I’d try my luck with another vendor or maybe wait until they can work out the kinks.

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Asus Eee PC 900 Easy Peasy Wifi Toggle Hack

Posted on February 5, 2009 by jason

Due to various work related reasons I ended up in need of an ultra portable computing platform that could run Linux. After much hem-hawing I decided on the Asus Eee PC 900A which retailed for $250 at my local Target. It comes with a cuszomized version of Xandros Linux which is Debian based (YAY!) but didn’t allow me to run an iptables based firewall or easily get a working copy of Truecrypt installed for my sensitive data (BOO!). Enter Easy Peasy!

Easy Peasy is an ubuntu based distro that is cuztomized to work on this super tiny laptop. Pretty much everything works out of the box EXCEPT for the wifi power on/off hotkey (Fn+F2.) After a few hours of research I discovered a small trail of problems with this issue but managed to fix it by doing the following:

Add or verify that the following lines are enabled in /etc/modprobe/options:

# disable rf on load
options rfkill default_state=0
# pciehp crap
options pciehp pciehp_force=1

Modify the /etc/acpi/eeepc-wifi-toggle.sh to reflect ths:

#!/bin/bash

state_file=/sys/class/rfkill/rfkill0/state
state=`cat $state_file`

if [ $state -eq 1 ] ; then
  echo 0 > $state_file
else
  rmmod pciehp
  modprobe pciehp
  echo 1 > $state_file
fi

I should say that this is a workaround for a variety of contributing issues but it works for me and I’ll gladly let the maintainer override these edits with a true patch when one comes out :) For those interested I’m running the following kernel:

root@jbean:~# uname -a
Linux jbean 2.6.27-8-eeepc #1 SMP Sun Nov 16 12:02:12 MST 2008 i686 GNU/Linux
Posted in Linux, Technology | 3 Comments

Breaking the 40 pound mark

Posted on October 25, 2008 by jason

Greetings all! As of this morning I have officially lost 41.5 pounds :) This triumph is bittersweet because I know the last five’ish pounds included some muscle mass. If you haven’t read this blog before I should explain that I have suffered from chronic back pain since the year 2000. I’ve recently educated myself and subscribed to the Lose The Back Pain system which is reversing the damage I’ve inflicted upon my back and hips. The system prescribes that I suspend all other exercise regimen in order to isolate the problem. I’ve been hitting the gym and running religiously over the past five months so I knew I’d lose some muscle, but don’t get me wrong. Trading a little muscle mass for relief from my excruciating and debilitating back pain is completely worth it!

Posted in Fitness | Leave a comment