Enabling the powerbutton in Ubuntu Server 10.04 on an AMD box

While shutdown –h does the trick of shutting down a server just fine, occasionally I’d prefer the haptic version. While I’ve never had problems getting the powerbutton to work with Ubuntu desktop versions, it didn’t work out of the box on my AMD Athlon XP. Fortunately the solution seems to be quite simple: sudo apt-get … Continue reading Enabling the powerbutton in Ubuntu Server 10.04 on an AMD box →

Varnish, session_linger and dropped connections

Recently I conducted a load test on my beloved low end Ubuntu 8.04 VPS. The setup consists of a mysql 5.1 DB, a Tomcat 6 webapp, openjdk 6 and Varnish 2.1.2. The load generator was issuing HTTP GET requests through a DSL connection which were supposed to create a decent load on Tomcat. To my … Continue reading Varnish, session_linger and dropped connections →

Scaling sprite image

If you've always wanted, just like me, a way to scale images used in CSS sprites: there's a way [1]. It essentially comes down to a clever overlaying of a mask on an image: 1. a div with overflow:hidden and of a fixed size 2. an img pointing to the sprite is placed inside the … Continue reading Scaling sprite image →

Pidgin having trouble with MSN certificate – and how to fix

I noticed recently that the Pidgin 2.7.5 messenger [1] had problems connecting to MSN with a certificate error about omega.contacts.msn.com. Fortunately I'm neither the first to have that problem, nor to find a solution [2]. MSN apparently replaced their certificate, which now needs to be updated with Pidgin. 1. point your browser to https://omega.contacts.msn.com/ 2. … Continue reading Pidgin having trouble with MSN certificate – and how to fix →

ID trouble with multiple Hibernate entities on the same table

Just a while ago I ran into a case where Hibernate would auto generate a wrong database schema when two entities were mapped on the same table. The good news: it's my fault and not a bug. The better news: here's an account of how to avoid it. Let's assume a mutable entity A mapped … Continue reading ID trouble with multiple Hibernate entities on the same table →