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The uw-wireless authentication web page that shows up when connected to a UW network started to get on my nerves, so I wrote a little script using the lynx text browser to automatically authenticate when connecting to the network. It also performs a simple check to see if the first two numbers of your IP belong to UW.

#!/bin/sh
IP=$(ifconfig eth0 | grep 'inet addr' | awk '{print $2;}' | cut -d: -f 2)
TOP2=$(echo $IP | cut -d. -f 1-2)
if [[ $TOP2 = '129.97' ]]; then
    echo 'Connected to UW Network...'
    lynx -dump -accept_all_cookies -post_data https://uw-wireless.uwaterloo.ca/login/index.php < ~/.uwwireless | grep 'Successfully Connected' | awk '{print $5;}'
else
    echo 'Not connected to UW Network...'
fi

Create the file ~/.uwwireless and place the following in the file, replacing the YOUR_USERID and YOUR_PASSWORD with your own:

userid=YOUR_USERID&password=YOUR_PASSWORD&mode=Connect

Depending on your version of Lynx, the script may fail if the SSL certificate from uw-wireless.uwaterloo.ca is not recognized. I don’t know of a better solution than simply removing the check. Make the following change in /etc/lynx.cfg (or wherever your lynx.cfg may reside) to remove the SSL certificate prompt:

FORCE_SSL_PROMPT:=yes

Installing Eclipse TPTP using the Update Manager creates several problems under Linux.

• First, the permissions are missing for the native Integrated Agent Controller code. Symbolic links were also not created for the Integrated Agent Controller libraries, resulting in a “File too short” error message when running the executable.
• Second, since the Integrated Agent Controller is native code, it requires shared libraries which may or may not be installed on your system.
• Third, several configuration files need to be writable by the user which executes Eclipse. I installed Eclipse using my own user (not root), so I did not run into this problem, however, there are several posts on the mailing list addressing this problem.

As a result, executing the Profiler within Eclipse would result in a cryptic “Unable to connect to localhost (port 10002)” message.

In order to get the Integrated Agent Controller running, we’ll need to fix the mentioned problems, here’s how to do it on Arch Linux:

1. Change your working directory to where the TPTP agent controller is installed:

   cd eclipse/plugins/org.eclipse.tptp.platform.ac.linux_ia32_4.4.1.v200709261752/agent_controller

2. Fix the permissions of the executables:

   cd <tptp_agent_controller_dir>/bin
   chmod +x ACServer ACStart.sh ACStop.sh ACVersion.sh ChkPass RAServer RAStart.sh RAStop.sh SampleClient SetConfig.sh TimeCollector readme.txt tptpFileTransferAgent tptpProcessController</tptp_agent_controller_dir>

3. Fix the symbolic links for the linked libraries. The following list of files should point to their .so.4.4.0 counterparts. The easiest way to do this is just to download a copy of the standalone Agent Controller and to copy the lib directory to the lib directory of the Integrated Agent Controller:
   

   ./libtptpClient.so ./libjavaBaseAgent.so.4 ./libtptpUtils.so.4 ./libtptpAgentBase.so.4 ./libtptpUtils.so ./libtransportSupport.so.4 ./libbaseTransport.so.4 ./libhcclsm.so ./libhccldt.so.4 ./libhccls.so.4 ./libnamedPipeTL.so ./libhcclsm.so.4 ./libhcclco.so.4 ./libhccls.so ./libtptpACTL.so ./libtptpClient.so.4 ./libtransportSupport.so ./libtptpCmdExtr.so ./libhcjbnd.so ./libhcbnd.so ./libtptpCmdExtr.so.4 ./libtptpConfig.so ./libnamedPipeTL.so.4 ./libhcclco.so ./libpiAgent.so.4 ./libtptpCCTL.so ./libsocketTL.so ./libtptpCCTL.so.4 ./libjavaBaseAgent.so ./libprocessControlUtil.so.4 ./libtptpConfig.so.4 ./libcompSupp.so ./libtptpLogUtils.so ./libsharedMemTL.so.4 ./libtptpACTL.so.4 ./libprocessControlUtil.so ./libbaseTransport.so ./libpiAgent.so ./libhclaunch.so ./libsocketTL.so.4 ./libhcthread.so ./libcompSupp.so.4 ./libtptpLogUtils.so.4 ./libtptpAgentBase.so ./libhcthread.so.4 ./libsharedMemTL.so ./libhcbnd.so.4 ./libhcjbnd.so.4 ./libhclaunch.so.4 ./libhccldt.so

4. Install the compatibility libraries using the PKGBUILD located in this wiki article.
5. Ensure your configuration files are writable by the Eclipse user.
6. Occasionally, the Agent Controller leaves behind profiling data in the /tmp/IBMRAC directory which causes problems with subsequent executions of the Agent Controller. Delete /tmp/IBMRAC in order to remove the temporary files.
7. Note: Occasionally, a Java process may prevent the Agent Controller from exiting properly. Killing the appropriate process will allow the controller to be restarted. A ‘killall java’ generally does the trick

• I’m making this post from ScribeFire, a Firefox extension for writing blog entries. Give it a try!
• Firefox 3.0 is in beta now. Tons of change, but the most important ones to me are: Full page zoom, better GTK integration, and the promised Firefox 2.0 bookmarks revamp. I suggest trying out the nightly builds to see the latest and greatest.
• The open source RadeonHD driver has reached version 1.0!  I have to switch to a VT in order to control the panel brightness, and it consumes more power than the fglrx driver since there is no dynamic clock management, but most important to me is that… suspend and hibernate just work!
• The KDE 4.0 release has been pushed to January. I can’t blame them, having tried bits and pieces of it so far, it definitely needs the extra time. I much rather wait and have a stable desktop environment.
• I switched to Arch Linux a couple months ago. I highly recommend it for experienced Linux users who would like a binary distribution, with a simple system management framework, and a great package management system.
• Kile 2.0 has been released. There are some nice GUI changes, but most noticeable to me is several fixes to the static line wrapping feature.

Ubuntu disables the root account by default. One simple command can re-enable it:

sudo passwd root

To switch to the root user in the shell:

su

Alternatively, you can switch to the root user in the shell without enabling the user account by using the following command:

sudo -s