Raible Designs

Tomcat load-balancing or private instances?

Did you know you can (1) create load-balanced instances of Tomcat and (2) create multiple (private) instances of Tomcat? All you need is Apache HTTP Server and some know-how. I updated this article for Apache 2.x, Tomcat 4.x, and private JVMs and published it to http://raibledesigns.com/tomcat. With permission of the original author, Pascal Forget.

Cool Roller Theme.

I spotted a new Roller theme this morning at PSQuad's Corner. I found this via Dave's post, whic mentions that some people are not happy with Roller. For not liking Roller, it seems that Pat has put some time into customizing it - or is this a theme that freeroller.net provides? The CSS even validates! Too bad the html doesn't.

Jabber Love. I've been installing and playing with Jabber since yesterday afternoon. If you don't know what Jabber is - it's an open, XML-based protocol for instant messaging and presence. So it's basically an open-source instant messaging server. It takes about 10 minutes to setup and get running, and I've installed it successfully on both Red Hat 7.3 and Windows XP. Easy as pie - that's how open source should be!

Upgrading Rampage.

I went on an upgrading rampage yesterday and ended the day with the worst feeling. My Struts 1.1b2 application appeared to work fine on most things, however, I kept getting the following error when I tried to submit a form with indexed input values:

java.lang.reflect.InvocationTargetException
 	at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
 	at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
 	at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
 	at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:324)
 	at org.apache.commons.beanutils.PropertyUtils.getIndexedProperty(PropertyUtils.java:475)
 	at org.apache.commons.beanutils.PropertyUtils.getIndexedProperty(PropertyUtils.java:410)
 	at org.apache.commons.beanutils.PropertyUtils.getNestedProperty(PropertyUtils.java:749)
 	at org.apache.commons.beanutils.PropertyUtils.getProperty(PropertyUtils.java:780)
...
Caused by: java.lang.IndexOutOfBoundsException: Index: 0, Size: 0
 	at java.util.ArrayList.RangeCheck(ArrayList.java:508)
 	at java.util.ArrayList.get(ArrayList.java:320)
 	at com.onpoint.webapp.form.QuestionForm.getAnswer(QuestionForm.java:321)

The items I attempted to upgrade were:

• Jikes 1.15 -> 1.16
• J2SE 1.4.0_01 -> 1.4.1
• Tomcat 4.0.4 -> 4.1.12
• Cactus 1.4 -> 1.4.1
• StrutsTestCase 1.8 -> 1.9

After hours of banging my head against the wall for hours and even trying versions of my code from a week ago, I decided to try the "classic" compiler in Ant. Which I soon learned should now be named "modern." Whalla - it fixed the above problem! My advice - DON'T USE JIKES 1.16 to compile your Struts-based web app! I also found that switching to modern from jikes reduced my build process from 1 min 20 seconds to 50 seconds - I'm sold.

I ended up not upgrading to Tomcat 4.1.12 (rather to 4.0.5) because I found that my error-pages were not being recognized. I hope that a client using the application never sees an error page, but if they do - I'd rather them see my pretty page vs. a stacktrace.

Google News

I dig Google's new News feature I found this tasty treat this morning.

Microsoft acknowledges Linux threat
"We got beaten by Linux in the very high-end systems, but we have a whole development team despatched on that now," he is reported as saying in the Financial Times: "Linux isn't going to go away. Our job is to provide a better product in the marketplace." -- Steve Ballmer, September 2002. [ Full Article ]

Eclipse Flash Demos

I stumbled upon a bunch of Eclipse Viewlets via ::Manageability::. They're basically Flash demo's of how Eclipse is better than Visual Studio .NET. If I only had the time to actually watch them.

[ANNOUNCE] StrutsTestCase v1.9 Released

StrutsTestCase v1.9 improves support for Struts 1.1b2 (including support for testing Tiles and sub-applications), provides several requested enhancements, and fixes many reported defects.

 The project home page can be found here:

     http://strutstestcase.sourceforge.net

 Notes for this release can be found here:

     http://sourceforge.net/project/shownotes.php?release_id=112307

I upgraded my current project to use Cactus 1.4.1 and StrutsTestCase 1.9 this morning - and everything works great! I had to add :80 to a few URLs and add ServletRedirector?Cactus_Service=RUN_TEST to my testURL for runservertests, but that was it. I've posted a message to the Cactus User list asking why these changes were necessary. If I was really smart, I'd write a whole bunch of HttpUnit and Cactus tests for Roller before integrating Tiles. Probably save me a whole bunch of time in the end - if I could only get that through to my brain.

Tomcat Security Updates.

If you're using Tomcat 4.0.4 or Tomcat 4.1.10 - you might want to upgrade to 4.0.5 or 4.1.12.

A security vulnerability has been confirmed to exist in all Apache Tomcat 4.x versions (including Tomcat 4.0.4 and Tomcat 4.1.10), which allows to use a specially crafted URL to return the unprocessed source of a JSP page, or under special circumstances a static resource which would otherwise have been protected by security constraint, without the need of being properly authenticated.

Buying a Digital Camera?

If you're considering the purchase of a new digital camera, you might want to read this article from PC Magazine. The Editors' Choice winners are:

For $300: Nikon Coolpix 2500
For $500: Fujifilm Finepix F601 Zoom

I'm planning on buying one in the next few months for the arrival of the little one. Hopefully this article will make my decision easier - more research needed.

Flash Remoting MX - Developer Edition.

Good news! On the install, when I didn't enter a serial number, I received the following message:

Swwweeeeeettt! About time they started giving out "Developer editions." The install includes a WAR or EAR file (with samples) - your choice. Basically, it's up to you to deploy - the choice is just which ones you'd like placed on your hard drive for deployment. As a service to my readers - download the war.

BTW, I tried to publish the samples to this site, and it appears that there are some hard-coded localhost references in *.fla files. I checked all the JSPs and fixed one, but it didn't help. Works great locally on Windows XP, Tomcat 4.0.4, JDK 1.4.1.