tis the season for hate

so what happens if you hate xmas shopping and decide to get it over with online in one night? well, the next morning when all the companies you bought crap from open up they all start charging your credit card around the same time, then your credit card company freaks out about all the transactions thinking that they may be fraudulent so they start denying them, this in turn causes all the vendors to suspend your orders. so then you have to call your credit card company, assure them that everything is ok, then figure out that they were lying to you when they told you they only denied one transaction (because you have email from multiple vendors saying you are having payment problems), and then you have to contact all the vendors and tell them to try transactions again. now i hate chase too. merry freakin xmas.

slimserver battle

so i spent most this weekend struggling to upgrade the slimserver software on my home server. i'm running solaris nevada and of course it doesn't have all the little perl extras and super recent versions of mysql that this software wants. also, to complicate the process, i don't want to install this software as root (the way it expect to be installed) so that it can go around and upgrade/overwrite random components of my system that will then break the next time i upgrade. so i spent quite a while figuring out how to install this bugger into it's own directory and user account.

so here's the gorry details about how i finally got this working:

- run the following commands as root:
---8<---
zfs create export/home/slimserv_v6.5.0
cd /export/home
ln -s slimserv_v6.5.0 slimserv
groupadd slimserv
useradd -d /export/home/slimserv -g slimserv slimserv
chown slimserv:slimserv slimserv_v6.5.0
mkdir /export/home/slimserv/playlists
chown slimserv:slimserv /export/home/slimserv/playlists
su - slimserv
exec zsh
. /export/home/edp/.envrc
gtar -xzf $EDPHOME/install/archive/common/SlimServer_v6.5.0.tar.gz
mv SlimServer_v6.5.0/* .
rmdir SlimServer_v6.5.0
mkdir -p XML-Parser-2.34/Expat/hints
cat > XML-Parser-2.34/Expat/hints/solaris.pl <<-EOF
\$self->{INC} = '-I/usr/sfw/include';
\$self->{LDDLFLAGS} = '-G -L/usr/sfw/lib -R/usr/sfw/lib';
EOF
cat > slimserver.sh <<-EOF
#!/bin/sh
PATH=/usr/bin:\$HOME/mysql/bin
export PATH
exec ./slimserver.pl "\$@"
EOF
---8<---

- modify Bin/build-perl-modules.pl
---8<---
+       'XML-Parser-2.34' => {
+               'Makefile.PL' => join(' ', qw(
+                       EXPATLIBPATH=/usr/sfw/lib
+                       EXPATINCPATH=/usr/sfw/include
+               )),
+       },
+
'DBD-mysql-3.0002' => {
...
!               for my $cmd (qw(curl wget)) {
--- 142,144 ----
!               for my $cmd (qw(wget)) {
---8<---

- as the slimserv user run the following commands:
---8<---
./Bin/build-perl-modules.pl
mysql=mysql-standard-5.0.27-solaris10-i386.tar.gz
gtar -xzf $EDPHOME/install/archive/i386/$mysql
ln -s mysql-standard-5.0.27-solaris10-i386 mysql
mv ./MySQL/errmsg.sys ./MySQL/errmsg.sys.original
cp -p ./mysql/share/mysql/english/errmsg.sys ./MySQL/errmsg.sys
---8<---

- as root create /var/svc/manifest/site/slimserver.xml and then import
it and enable the new slimserver service:
---8<---
svccfg import /var/svc/manifest/site/slimserver.xml
svcadm enable svc:/network/slimserver:default
---8<---

- configure the playlist directory in the slimserver by going to the
slimserver web page and then selecing:
Home -> Server Settings -> Basic Settings
and setting: PLAYLISTS FOLDER to /export/home/slimserv/playlists

home additions

so this past weekend we made some changes around the house. there's a new pony picture, a small xmas tree, and an old german cuckoo clock (which i spent most the day struggling to get working) . the pony picture was a bday gift for ronda and the clock was actually a really old one that i grew up with which (i think) my parents were finally happy to get rid of.

ronda's bday

well, rondas birthday has come and gone recently. some of her friends hosted a nice small birthday dinner party at their house for her.