Trac

Yesterday I setup and installed Trac for our development team. Trac is one of those tools that once a developer sees it, they gotta have it. If you haven’t heard of Trac, it allows developers to easily browse Subversion repositories. Subversion is the tool we use to track code changes. Subversion doesn’t have a good web-based GUI for browsing the repository, which is the primary reason we wanted to install Trac. Trac is easy to navigate, provides timelines, and makes browsing differences between revisions easy-easy-easy. The developers at Edgewall really have a winner with this product.

Trac also has a bug ticketing system, wiki, report generation tool, and milestone tracking tools built-in. The other tools need a bit more flushing out, especially the bug-tracker, but the SVN browser makes it worth the trouble to install. The installation process for Trac is…well…tough. I’ve installed hundreds of applications by source and RPM over the years and Trac was definitely one of the hardest I’ve ever encountered. Not only are there a ton of dependencies, but you have to be very careful that you have the right versions of each dependency. Thank goodness Google was able to help quite a bit.

I can see the benefits of Trac already paying off; just this morning, Mike sent me a link to the change-set in Trac for the next upload. Clicking on the link takes me to a web page with a description of the changes, a list of all files that were changed, and a color-coded side-by-side diff for each file….great stuff.

Thanks to Joel, one of our latest hires, for directing us to this application.

5th Wedding Anniversary

When I was in the basement today I saw a picture album from our wedding night and decided to reminiscence a little. First, it's amazing how much changes in five years. Second, it amazing how much stays the same. Velvet, Bill, Jason, and Velvet's parents all look the same today as they did five years ago. Pat, my parents, and my brother look totally different. I look like another person and wonder what Velvet was thinking...I'll bring the pictures to work if anyone is interested in looking.

To celebrate our anniversary we dined at The Summit restaurant in Christiansburg for the first time. Velvet suggested it and I heard three reviews all raving about the great food. I have to admit the food was really good (even though my steak came out a little too done). If you are looking to impress your date with some great food and a nice atmosphere I definitely recommend The Summit. :)

I'm more of a “look to the future” guy than “dwell on the past” guy; so I'll give you some insight on what will be going on five years from now, instead of what has transpired over the last five....In five years Drew will be in kindergarten and Jordan will be in 4^th grade. I'll be working on my 11^th year at Webmail.us. I'll only have 20 more years to pay on my house (haha). Maybe I'll have the driveway paved by then so I can put up a basketball goal for Jordan. Hopefully I'll still have my Jeep (gas will only be $6.00/gallon but that still beats having a car payment). Maybe my golf game will be in the 90s (OK, so I'm dreaming a little). Jordan won't remember a time when TV wasn't in high definition. Wireless Internet access will be available practically everywhere for free. Jordan will be using this laptop and think it's archaic. I might be caught up on the Sopranos. I hope Jordan can teach Drew how to play chess, read, and create his own blog. Jordan will still be in gymnastics (and will keep requesting a trip to Sonic after each session). Velvet and I will be celebrating our 10^th Wedding Anniversary.

OpenLDAP Errors

I ran across the following error in OpenLDAP two weeks ago when deleting an entry:

"Additional info: entry index delete failed"

Huh? We've been using OpenLDAP since 2003 and I've never seen this problem before, but looking at the OpenLDAP code showed it was trying to delete an index. We use the BDB backend and apparently a BDB index was corrupt. I haven't found an easy way to repair these indexes besides dumping all the data and re-importing. Maybe a BDB expert out there has some suggestions but luckily we replicate all of our data across multiple machines so I just had to copy the data (zip up the /var/openldap-data/ directory) from another machine. Googling for the error above didn't return many results so I thought I would go ahead and post my findings for the next person who searches for this error.

Harbinger Beta Available for Public Testing

A beta of the latest version of our webmail client is available to any current Webmail.us customer. Simply log in with your email address and password at http://beta.webmail.us.

You will notice only a few minor interface changes as our primary focus for this version is speed and performance. We no longer use frames and we make heavy use of AJAX and caching to improve speed. The first time you log in to the application will take a bit longer than normal because the browser is busy downloading JavaScript code that will be cached for future sessions.

Switching between folders, calendar, contacts, and tasks is significantly faster than previous versions of our application. We believe that a web based email client has significant advantages over a desktop based client but only if the web based client can match the speed and performance of the desktop client.

I've been using Harbinger for a few months now and have been really impressed with the speed thus far. We believe this is only the tip of the iceberg though and will continue to push the limits of the browser to maximize the speed of every aspect of the application.

Disney World Wrap Up

We had a great time at Disney World and I'm glad we were able to have a family vacation. I think that's the first family vacation we have taken since Drew was born. The kids did great on the plane flights, I'm so proud of them. Disney amazes me each time I go with how big they think. Nothing they do is too much, too big, too hard. They have big shows, big parks, big fireworks, and thus big crowds. They really do a great job and make you want to come back for more. We might head to Va Beach one weekend this summer, but otherwise I think we are done with family vacations for awhile. I'm glad I got to spend so much time with Drew, Jordan, and Velvet. If we do go back next year I'll have to remember these facts:

1. Go back to Magic Kingdom, Jordan loves it.
2. Don't go back to MGM Studios, it was fun, but not good enough to do two years in a row.
3. Make reservations at Cinderella Castle for dinner at least a month in advance.
4. Rent from a car rental place at the airport, not Hertz or Thrifty. (Hertz was great, but too hard to get on and off the bus.)
5. Caribe Royal is a great hotel, easy check-in, easy check-out, great pool, easy parking, but don't order the room service, very expensive and the food just wasn't that great.
6. Eat at Smokey Bones again.
7. Buy souvenirs at Wal-Mart in Orlando, nobody will know the difference and they are 1/10th the price.
8. Don't try to stay until close for the fireworks, the kids could probably make it, but I can't.
9. The "park hopper" option isn't worth it.
10. 10:30am is a perfect flight time, both ways. Connect in ATL at 1:30.
11. Mother's Day weekend is a good weekend to go because there is no baseball.
12. Jordan's favorite ride is the tram from the parking lot to the park, so ride it around a few times.
13. Jordan's favorite part of the trip is the plane ride and the pool, so take a trip to the beach with a Cinderella DVD and save some money. :)
14. Bring your own map of Orlando, the one from Hertz might as well been created by Jordan on the airplane ride down there.
15. Bring your own band-aid's so that you don't get weird looks from the first-aid people when Jordan gets a scratch on her leg.
16. Don't leave the diaper bag unattended next to the Haunted Mansion again, the next time someone might think it's a bomb and you don't want to be the one responsible for shutting down Disney World.
17. Invite some family so that you can go golfing while they take the kids to Disney World.

Disney World

Tomorrow I am packing up the wife and kids and heading to Orlando for our family vacation ... man I am old. :) Should be fun though and I'm sure Jordan will have a good time. We are heading back on Sunday.

Update on MySQL Issues

Last week I wrote about a strange issue with MySQL replication and what I thought I wouldn't see again for a long time. Well, around 1:00am this morning another MySQL server (a different cluster than previous) had the exact same issue as the first cluster. This time, my first step was to reboot the machine to see if it would fix the problem and thus not require me to spend a lot of time exporting and importing data. The reboot fixed the problem with the constant restart of the mysql server, but the replication thread failed to start. In fact, it was failing to start the slave thread on both machines. Issuing ‘start slave’ produced this in the error log of the machine with the problem:

060509 1:32:09 [Note] Slave I/O thread: connected to master 'replxxx@xxx-slave1:3306', replication started in log 'xxx-slave1-bin.004981' at position 79
060509 1:32:09 [ERROR] Error reading packet from server: Could not find first log file name in binary log index file (server_errno=1236)
060509 1:32:09 [ERROR] Got fatal error 1236: 'Could not find first log file name in binary log index file' from master when reading data from binary log
060509 1:32:09 [ERROR] Slave I/O thread exiting, read up to log 'xxx-slave1-bin.004981', position 79

This time I was determined to fix the problem without dumping data so I Googled a bit for the error and found this great post:

http://archives.neohapsis.com/archives/mysql/2004-q1/2000.html

Ah, so after creating the missing file and issuing a ‘reset slave’ the problem was fixed. On the other master I simply had to run a ‘change master to…’ command and ‘start slave’ and now replication was working in both directions again.

I think there is definitely a bug in the MySQL code somewhere, but I’m not sure what triggers it. I don’t think it’s related to the number of days a server has been up, but it might be related to the number of connections that have been opened since it was last restarted. It may just be a corrupt relay log file.

NCTC TechNite 7.0

Tonight the NewVA Corridor Technology Council (NCTC) is hosting TechNite 7.0. TechNite is self described as "the premier event honoring the NewVa Region's most promising technology companies, leaders, and entrepreneurs." Awards will be handed out in the following categories:

High Tech Leadership
Excellence in High Tech Manufacturing
Excellence in Life Sciences
Excellence in IT Development
Excellence in IT Deployment

Webmail.us is a finalist for the "NCTC Excellence in IT Development" award. Pat, our CEO, is a finalist for the "High Tech Leadership" award. It's quite an honor to be a finalist, especially considering the competition:

NCTC Excellence in IT Development Award
Webmail.us, Inc.
Phoenix Integration, Inc.
Synchrony Industrial Controls, Inc.
Integrated Imaging

NCTC High Tech Leadership Award
Margaret "Elaine" Carver, County of Roanoke
Kenneth Ferris, LUNA Innovations Incorporated
Patrick M. Matthews, Webmail.us, Inc.
Thomas A. Dingus, Virginia Tech Transportation Institute
R.J. Kirk, Third Security, LLC
Joseph W. Meredith, Virginia Tech Corporate Research Cent

Thanks go out to Trevor who played a big role in getting us nominated for these awards.

If you see Pat today be sure to wish him luck and ask him if he has that speech ready.