Here are the steps to perform a clean un-install of MySQL from your Mac.

Execute the following commands at the Terminal

Uninstalling MySQL

Open /etc/hostconfig file in a text editor and remove the following line

MYSQLCOM=-YES-

That’s all.

I am writing this post using WriteRoom, one super working space on my new laptop Macbook Pro.  I got this one as one major purchase after I landed in US.

I gave up my only companion the PC, to which I have been faithful since my beginning days in computers for a new Mac. Why did I take the decision? I still use Microsoft’s own Visual Studio in office for my development activities. So half of my time, I am on a PC and the remaining time I am on Mac. They both are a different culture. Everything about Mac, at least my first feel of Mac is it is beautiful.

Design – It is Apple’s forte. It has that good finish, wonderful, artistic and everything about it. That is what captured me to it. Being a designer myself, I wanted to own it, and it just happened that I did it in the home of software development.

I have no regrets with Windows or Linux, the two other operating systems I have used fairly so far. The first software that I have licensed, other than the OS is TextMate. It was a worthy buy. So I have bought a license for it. It feels good to own and work on licensed software. I feel as if I own it. I feel that I respect the work that goes into the making of it. I love open source and free softwares. If there is some great work going on, and you can provide your own contributions to it, yes pay them. It is not for the software, but the people behind it.

In India, we use pirated software all the time. Piracy is nothing. Everyone has a copy of Windows, Office running on their machines. The cost of software in Indian currency is much higher compared to the US counterparts. People don’t like to pay for just a CD. We are used to the belief that if you pay more, you get more. For something as big as Rs. 13,000/- a CD doesn’t suffice, we look for something more bigger. We are used to thinking that way, just like grocery and furniture shopping.

Since, everyone is used to using Windows, no one wants to move from the comfort zone offered by it and embrace free software. There has to be paradigm shift, if people should start buying software.

How can that be achieved. It won’t/can’t happen immediately. Schools should start using Linux and open source softwares. Students must be encouraged to read code, tweak existing programs so that they get what they want. They must get that idea, the machine does only what they want it to do, rather than stand amazed at seeing the computer working. After all it is what it is programmed for. Then as they grow up, they will start appreciating software and by the time, they get their own computers, they get to choose what they want. They can buy a Windows or a Mac, or write their own operating systems.

Lets make this happen!

After all, it is necessity that is the mother of all inventions.

When I logged into the machine today, I was shocked to see no panel appearing on the ubuntu desktop. I thought the computer has hung. But when I right clicked the desktop, I got the regular pop-up menu and was able to change desktop wallpapers.

Here is what I did to get the panel back. With the desktop without the panel and not remembering any of the shortcuts, it was quiet difficult.

First, I created a launcher for Terminal. Right Click on any area on the desktop and then choose ‘Create Launcher’. Choose any name and then in the command text box, type in

terminal

This should create a terminal launcher. That done, double click to open a terminal session. Enter the following command,

killall gnome-panel

Then right click on the desktop to create another launcher. This time in the command text box, type in

gnome-panel

This creates a gnome-panel launcher. Double click and viola! you have the Panel.

To fix the error, “This application has failed to start because LIBMYSQL.DLL was not found. Re-installing the application may fix this problem.”  while working on rails using mysql as the database, 

Copy the libmysql.dll found in the mysql installation directory (mysql\bin) and paste it in your ruby installation directory (ruby\bin)

Restart the server and viola, the error is fixed.

Here is a nice video on what we mean, when we say Free…

Trying out a sample application using rails, I faced a problem, getting the database tables created (migrated) using ‘rake’. Running the command

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rake migrate

threw the following error

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(in /home/rajesh/Programming/rails/todolist)
rake aborted!
Don't know how to build task 'migrate'
 
(See full trace by running task with --trace)

The search on internet forums only said that ‘rake migrate’ should do the job, but to no avail.

The actual command to get the tables created is

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rake db:migrate

Hope this helps!

Free, I have broken free, free from proprietary software in my personal life.

I have decided to use only software that are free. Making that move wasn’t that easy, got to leave the comfort of Windows and MS Office, the one’s I have been used to since I started using computers. I have not broken free from the entire MS world of software, coz I make my living coding in C#, I have a Express Edition of Visual Studio for the learning that is needed to keep me hands-on up-to-date on the technology.

For office suite, I have resorted to OpenOffice 3. It does the job well for me. Chrome for a browser and NetBeans IDE for development is all I need. It is a nice feel to be just using free software, at least I know I have not stolen other’s money. I respect another software engineer, for his work.

Here is a nice quote, from the famous film, The Shawshank Redemption where Morgan Freeman says,

“Some birds aren’t meant to be caged, their feathers are just too bright, and when they fly away… the part of you that knows it was a sin to lock them up does rejoice…” – The Shawshank Redemption.

I feel I’m one of those birds which is not supposed to be caged, and I have grown one feather that is going to help me in my flight..

After installing rails, to test it, I created a rails application using the following command at the command prompt.

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rails -d mysql todolist

Pointing to http://localhost:3000 displayed the expected Welcome message.

Welcome Message

But then clicking on the About your application’s environment displayed a error message like below.

Error in Rails

That’s the least thing I expected. Digging into the development.log file located in the project log directory, displayed the actual error message, “Client does not support authentication protocol requested by server; consider upgrading MySQL client”.

Looking into the web for help, the problem with the way rails (as a client) was trying to access MySQL server. Rails uses a old password hashing used in MySQL 4.1, and the current version that I am running is MySQL 5.0. This had caused the error. The fix is running the following script in mysql prompt.

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mysql> SET PASSWORD FOR 'railsuser'@'host' = OLD_PASSWORD('password');

That fixes it and you would get the following screen.

Success message

Here goes  my geek code as from www.geekcode.com

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCS/IT/S d+()@>- s:+ a----- C++$ UL P L+ E--- W++ N- !o-- K- w++$ O-- M- !V-- PS PE Y PGP+ t !5-- !X !R tv+ b++ DI D G e++ h-- r-- y--
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK-----

Edit: I found a site where you can generate it easier without a hazzle, the Code of the Geek Generator. Hope you get it!

Starting out on the Open Source fever, I installed Mandriva, Suse and finally have settled with Ubuntu after two days of fighting over which distribution to go with. But Ubuntu doesn’t ask a lot of questions during install, about what to install and where to install grub etc.

After installing Ubuntu, I saw that it had not even install gcc libraries but had installed the gcc compiler. Also, the default operating system to boot into was ‘Ubuntu’ instead of Windows XP. As I and my friends use the same machine and they have no liking to Linux, I needed Windows to boot first. During the installation, I was not provided the option to choose.

I wanted to change the default boot option in grub. I had to edit the ‘menu.lst’ file located in /boot/grub manually. It does not allow to edit as the permissions for the only user was denied. The concept of ‘root’ user was not there, as I was not requested for the creation of a root user. I just created a user, and ubuntu assigns super user privilege to this user.

To switch users, the ‘sudo’ command was to be used instead of ‘su’.

Finally, all set and working. Still to install ruby, mysql, python, vlc.