Major NFSv4 issue with CentOS 5.4 / RHEL 5.4

I updated my NFS server yesterday to EL5.4 (kernel 2.6.18-164.el5) as well as the client workstations. The clients mount /home via NFSv4.

Shortly there after my users began reporting odd behavior like "Firefox bookmarks won't load".

I decided to test it remotely and encountered a file locking problem with .Xauthority:

$ ssh -X wkstation01
/usr/bin/xauth:  error in locking authority file /home/flakrat/.Xauthority

After much digging, an IRC user in #RHEL pointed me to the following bug:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=524520

Three immediate solutions:

• Reboot to the previous 2.6.18-128.7.1.el5 kernel until the new kernel is released
• Download the patches in the bug and rebuild the kernel
• Get RH support to send you the interim patched kernel

Looking for a Replacement for Notepad++ on Linux? Try Geany!

There are many nice text editors / IDEs out there for Windows, Linux, and Mac. On the Windows front, one of the best (IMHO) is Notepad++.

Unfortunately, NP++ is not available for Linux. Sure you can get it working via WINE, but I'd rather have something that provides similar features that just works in Linux. Notepad++ uses Scintilla as it's core editing component.

Luckily, there are several IDEs for Linux that use Scintilla, so the features and feel of Notepad++ are not lost to the Linux world.

Geany is the editor that I've been using lately (along with vi/vim). Currently at version 0.18, Geany has a long list of features and supports many of the common scripting and programming languages. One of the primary goals of the development was to limit dependencies, thus Geany only requires the GTK2 runtime libraries and is agnostic to the desktop (Gnome, KDE, etc...).

Here are some of the features listed on the website:

• Syntax highlighting
• Code folding
• Symbol name auto-completion
• Construct completion/snippets
• Auto-closing of XML and HTML tags
• Call tips
• Many supported filetypes including C, Java, PHP, HTML, Python, Perl, Pascal (full list)
• Symbol lists
• Code navigation
• Build system to compile and execute your code
• Simple project management
• Plugin interface (see Plugins)

Up to now, I've been using KDevelop (in Gnome :-) as my IDE. It's a nice editor, but a little clunky for my scripting needs. So far, I'm very impressed with Geany.

If you are running Fedora, Geany and various plugins can be installed using the following Yum command:

$ sudo yum install geany geany-plugins-*

If you'd like to stick to Gedit, you can pimp it out using this guide. The advantage here, Gedit is available on most distributions right out of the box (assuming a graphical install).

iPhone OS 3.1 and iTunes 9 Released Today

The Apple website has announced that iTunes 9.0 and iPhone OS 3.1 have been released. Apple also has information related to their new line of iPods.

The new iTunes has a nifty feature that lets you organize your apps from within iTunes (rather than on the device itself).

See this InformationWeek article for more details.

The feature I'm eagerly anticipating, the ability to skip song tracks using the controls on my Motorola S9 stereo bluetooth head set. OS 3.0 introduced stereo bluetooth to the iPhone, but for some reason did not include the ability to skip forward / back song tracks.

iTunes 9.0 is ready to download now, the OS update is supposed to be out today (Wed) but it's not yet shown up in iTunes.

iPhone 3.1 OS Update to Include BlueTooth Control Support

According to The iPhone Blog the upcoming release of iPhone 3.1 OS includes support for using the next/prev track controls on Blue Tooth head sets.

iPhone OS 3.0 introduced support for stereo BT head sets including partial support for the controls (volume and play/pause), but curiously no support for skipping tracks. 3.1 will remedy that thankfully.

There are other features and improvements in 3.1, for example, you will be able to paste into the phones keypad screen (automatically transposing alpha-numerics phone numbers into digits) and some updates to 3GS specific functionality.

Unfortunately, there isn't any mention yet whether Apple has identified the root causes of 3.0's battery consumption and heat issues.

3.1 beta 2 released this week, expect several more betas before the final product is released.

VMware Releases ESXi with Dell / IBM Customizations

The VMware ESXi download page has two new downloads, ESXi installable with Dell and IBM customizaions:

VMware ESXi 4.0 with Dell Customization
Version 4.0.0 | 164009 - 07/16/09 348 MB ISO Image for ESXi Installable that includes Dell customization.

VMware ESXi 4.0 with IBM Customization
Version 4.0.0 | 164009 - 07/16/09 348 MB ISO Image for ESXi 4.0 Installable that includes IBM customization for use on supported IBM server platforms.

I can't find any information detailing what 'customization' is included in either install. Is it management (OpenManage stand alone), drivers???

I suppose I'll have to install it on one of the m600 servers and find out.

Update: I got a response from a Dell rep on the Power Edge mailing list "Vmware ESXi 4.0 includes Dell OpenManage as well apart from drivers."

Windows 7 Pre-Order Starts Today, Half Off

Microsoft has made it official, click here for details.

There are a good number of retailers selling the pre-order (the standard set, Best Buy, Office Depot...), and online you can get it at Newegg.com, Amazon and Tiger Direct.

Microsoft has this note about the duration of the pre-order sale: "The offer begins on June 26, 2009 and will continue while supplies last, or until July 11, 2009, whichever comes first."

This is probably the best deal you could expect out of Microsoft. So pre-order while you can.

Windows 7 Discount, Limited Time Only!

According to this article at CNN (which appears to originate from CNET), Microsoft is discounting the heck out of Windows 7 Home and Professional upgrades for a period of two weeks.

Starting tomorrow (June 26) thru July 11, you will be able to purchase the upgrade versions on Windows 7 Home and Professional for $40 and $99 respectively.

Those of us who are running the release candidate need to jump on this offer. Unfortunately, I haven't found any word of a discount on Windows 7 Ultimate, so those running the RC may be forced to reinstall to downgrade from Ultimate to Professional.

The upgrades should be available at Best Buy, Amazon and many other retailers. I checked Newegg.com but as of today, all they list is the release candidate.

The article also mentions something about limited quantities. They weren't able to expound on that, so who knows what that means. Limited number of copies per customer, or a limited number for the entire community?