Ant terminating immediately in Eclipse without any errors

Recently all ant builds started failing when started from within Eclipse without an apparent reason. When the ant target is invoked, the console briefly opens and closes again, without any message or error. /workspace/.metadata/.log finally reveals the cause: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/tools/ant/BuildException Some Ant classes seem to be missing, strange. A look at Window -> Preferences -> … Continue reading Ant terminating immediately in Eclipse without any errors →

Tomcat, Eclipse, Spring and reloading

As a webapp gets bigger the time it takes to boot also increases which is a serious factor contributing to decreased focus and productivity when programming. When running Tomcat with Eclipse, the web application may restart even for the most trivial changes incurring long pauses. I found the following settings for Tomcat to minimize restarts … Continue reading Tomcat, Eclipse, Spring and reloading →

Ubuntu upstart scripts executed twice during boot

As I am continuing my efforts to improve Ubuntu boot time [1] I started noticing that bootchart [2] would list several processes twice and the boot logs would complain that all mountpoints were busy or had been mounted already. A closer inspection of the logs reveals that indeed several scripts were being executed twice: the … Continue reading Ubuntu upstart scripts executed twice during boot →

Non-Latin characters, openID and the openid4java library

The openid4java [1] library is a very handy set of components that handles openid and oauth for java applications and definitely worth a look before you capitulate in frustration before all that modern openid stuff. For those of us living and working outside the 7bit-speaking ANSI niche there is one webserver setting to verify: the … Continue reading Non-Latin characters, openID and the openid4java library →

The impact of network packet loss on HTTP latency

Over the course of my involvement [1] in my Indonesian company's website, the question of how to design a website to deal with slow and bad network links presented itself over several occasions as most of our users surf either over a mobile connection or a similarly dimensioned fixed line. While optimizing design and resources … Continue reading The impact of network packet loss on HTTP latency →