N.B. I updated the bit about dash/bash on 23rd March after feedback from Gavin and Dom (see below).

This week, I decided to install Rational Software Architect so that I could try out (again) the User Interface Generator which comes with IBM InfoSphere Master Data Management Server–and other products too, I believe. You can find out more about what user modelling is and how you can use the UIG in RSA (lovin’ the IBM TLAs yet? ) in this series of articles on developerWorks. The rest of this post is not about the UIG but about how to install and configure Rational Software Architect for WebSphere, which is relevant to anyone wanting to do this, regardless of whether they’re wanting to use the UIG.

So I wanted to install Rational Software Architect (RSA; an Eclipse-based piece of software) on to Ubuntu, which is what I run on my work machine, a Thinkpad T61p. Not only that, but I wanted to install RSA for WebSphere, which includes WebSphere Application Server Test Environment (WAS). This meant that I was installing not one but two pieces of software that are not officially supported for Ubuntu Karmic (or indeed for Ubuntu/Debian as far as I know). But as the Linux binaries are .bin files rather than .rpm, life should be easy.

And indeed installing it is. It’s when you want to create a WAS profile that the fun starts. And that’s where it had all fallen apart for me when I tried much the same exercise this time last year. That time, I gave up.

This time, I tweeted my predicament, knowing there were people who might know the answer. Unfortunately, the person I thought might know the answer had failed in much the same way as me only 6 months ago and was now relegated to using Windows. Still, others came back to me, including Gavin Willingham, who I’d not met before but who works possibly 10 minutes walk from my desk, and Jay Limburn, who I’ve known for a year through Twitter and internal instant messaging but, though he also works max 10 minutes walk from my desk, never met in person until yesterday (he’s shorter and blonder in real life).

So, if you’re trying to install RSA for WebSphere 7.5.4 with WAS Test Environment 7.0 (other versions probably work the same way), I’ll end the suspense and start here:

Running the installer

1. Download the many parts of RSA for WebSPhere 7.5.4 and WAS Test Environment 7.0 with licence/activation bits and pieces. (NB this isn’t free software; you have to buy it from IBM so I’m assuming you’ve got that far by now.)
2. Extract all the zip files. If you do a right-click > ‘Extract All’ on the zip file in Ubuntu, the extraction tool doesn’t like to overwrite directories of the same name, so you end up with directories called ‘RSA4WS’, ‘RSA4WS (2)’, ‘RSA4WS (3)’, and so on when actually, you want the contents of each of those directories to be in the same place. So move the directories around so that you have just 3 directories:
   • RSA4WS (contains 7 directories called ‘disk1′, ‘disk2′, ‘disk3′, etc)
   • RSA4WS_SETUP (don’t do anything with the contents of this one)
   • WAS70 (contains 4 directories called ‘disk1′, ‘disk2′, etc)
3. In the RSA4WS_SETUP directory, as sudo, run launchpad.sh to start the installation process.
4. Follow the installer through but when it asks you for a user name and password to create a WAS profile, select that you will create a profile later and that you don’t want to create one now. The installation should run cleanly (if you let it try to create a profile, it will fail part-way through the installation).

You should now have a nice installation of RSA with WAS on your Ubuntu box. Next, you need to create a WAS profile so that you can use the in-built WAS server for development and testing (or in my case, to run the user interface generator).

Creating a WAS profile in RSA

There are a few things that prevent this just happening (some are generic Linux things and some are specific to Ubuntu):

• On Ubuntu, /bin/sh uses dash, not bash, but WAS scripts seem to use bash specifically, so the profile creation scripts fail.
• Something extra that I have no understanding of is required in the eclipse.ini file (which is key in starting the Eclipse-based RSA environment).
• The default location in WAS’s profile creation wizards is in the /opt part of the main file system which you typically won’t have write-access to as a normal user.

So here’s what you need to do (at least, this is what I did and hopefully will work for you to to get a running WAS server in RSA):

1. Change Ubuntu’s /bin/sh to use bash instead of dash.
   In a terminal (sorry it’s the command line but you’re changing some system settings here that you would very very rarely have to do normally, or just if WAS didn’t specify bash specifically), run the following command and select the bash option as the default for /bin/sh:

   sudo dpkg-reconfigure dash

   (As pointed out by @oldmanuk (Dom Evans), this is the proper way to reconfigure where /bin/sh points to (though I used Gavin’s method). )

   After you’ve created your WAS profile and everything’s up and running nicely, run the command again to change back to using dash. The benefit of using dash is speedier boot time, which is lost if you leave the setting as bash (see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DashAsBinSh – thanks Dom).

   Now you’ve sorted out the bash/dash problem. One down; two to go.

2. Check that you have a version of xulrunner installed (I have no idea what xulrunner is for but, looking in Synaptic Package Manager, my Ubuntu installation included xulrunner-1.9l.1-gnome-support, but not the xulrunner package itself, which seems to be fine for RSA purposes).
3. In your RSA installation, find the eclipse.ini file. I installed RSA to the default location so mine was in /opt/IBM/SDP. In a terminal change to that directory:
   

   cd /opt/IBM/SDP

4. Open the eclipse.ini file in a text editor, such as gedit:

   sudo gedit eclipse.ini

5. Add to the end of the file the following line:

   -Dorg.eclipse.swt.browser.XULRunnerPath=/usr/lib/xulrunner

   (From an Ubuntu forum post.)

   Now you’ve sorted out the ‘xulrunner’ problem and you can actually start RSA. Two down; one to go.

6. Start RSA from the Applications menu: Applications > IBM Software Delivery Platform > IBM Rational Software Architect for WebSphere 7.5.4.

7. RSA should suggest a directory in your home directory in which to put the RSA workspace. That’s fine; I just accepted the suggested location.

8. When RSA has opened (NB, my Welcome view doesn’t load – I don’t think that’s a problem), give it a moment to think, then it’ll pop up a wizard to create a WAS profile.

9. In the profile wizard, clear the option about security unless you know what you’re doing with WAS security and have a need to use it in a development environment.

10. You’ll also notice that there’s a warning about the currently selected location for creating the profile. This is the third problem I listed above. The default location shown is for creating the profile in the installation directory of RSA. Change the location to a directory in your home directory. For instance, I told it to use /home/laura/IBM/profiles.

11. When the wizard has created the profile (which will take a few moments – you can see the activity in the bottom-right of the RSA window), the default server for the profile is listed in the Servers view on the right-hand-side of the RSA window.
    The server is listed as ‘stopped’.

12. Right-click the server then click Profile. This opens a dialog box about the profile; I just accepted the defaults then it failed to start the server (the error said it had failed to start within 300 seconds). But when I repeated this step, the server started.

And that’s as far as I’ve got but it’s further than ever before. If I come across any more gotchas, or take some screenshots, I’ll update this post.

Yes, it is a pain to have to do all this but remember that WAS isn’t supported (as far as I know) on Ubuntu Karmic. If you want it easier, install it on something that is supported. If you want it on Ubuntu, I hope this post (and the others I cribbed information from) helps.

Having bought my lovely new red laptop when I did, I am entitled to claim a free upgrade to Windows Vista. I’m unlikely to use Vista at work (because I’ve run Linux on my Thinkpad laptop since last summer) and at home I use Ubuntu. And on the odd occasion that I might have to use someone else’s Vista PC, it might be useful to at least know my way around. So I figured I may as well claim it. It’s free, afterall.

Hmm, someone’s changed the definition of ‘free’ then (and the ‘free as in beer’/ ‘free as in speech’ argument really doesn’t apply here).

To be fair, I was warned upfront that I might have to pay a shipping fee to receive my upgrade.

On the first page, it seemed to say I would be charge nearly £2 for the order I was placing. This must be the aforementioned shipping fee, I thought. So I continued.

When I’d entered all my details but, luckily, not my credit card details, the final total was updated to nearly £15!!!

If I have to pay nearly £2 for my ‘free’ Vista upgrade, they’re charging nearly £13 ‘shipping and handling’ fee. How much does it cost to package and send a single DVD?

So I closed my browser.

Didn’t really want it anyway.

This is slightly old news now – especially to the poor souls who I see and bore about my new laptop every day at work.

I’ve wanted to buy a laptop of my very own for about a year now but, already having a desktop PC that works fine, I couldn’t really justify it. Also, I wasn’t sure what I wanted from a laptop: a desktop replacement like the Dell Inspiron, which my brother bought last summer with a huge screen but large and heavy, or an ultraportable like the little Vaios and iBooks that might be a bit underspec and overpriced.

Then a couple of weeks ago I stopped procrastinating and decided that I want a small, light laptop that had to have a bit of umph and could run Linux. I had no idea what was available so I just looked at the main manufacturers like Dell (too big), Sony (too expensive and focusing a little too much on what it looks like over what happens under the lid), Apple (ditto Sony)…

In the past, Tony has bought new hardware based on recommendations in the PCW magazine Group Test reviews. So I did a search and discovered, conveniently, that PCW’s February 2007 issue did a Group Test of lightweight laptops. Their favourite, with a glowing review, was for the Samsung Q35. After looking at some of the others that they tested, I came to the same conclusion.

Then I discovered that the Q35 also comes in RED!!!

After a bit of debate about settling for the slightly lower spec Q35 Red over the standard silver Q35, I figured that what difference there might be between a 1.83 Ghz Intel core 2 duo (the red one) and a 2 Ghz Intel core 2 duo (the silver one) I’m unlikely to notice with my type of usage (email, Web, word processing). So I plumped for the Q35 Red.

And it’s so cool!

The keys on the keyboard feel really nice to type with. There’s is a slightly odd keyboard layout in that you have to use the Fn key to get Home and End but it actually takes less getting used to than I expected. What still catches me out is having to reach slightly further to the right for the right-hand Shift key. But even so, it’s all very nice. Another thing that user reviews pointed out as being negative is the slight stiffness of the touchpad buttons but it’s not a big deal and I tend to double-tap the touchpad anyway.

Other than that….the build feels really solid (including the DVD drive which doesn’t feel as flimsy when open as on some laptops), the monitor resolution (widescreen 1280 x 800) compensates for the smaller screen (12.1″), the picture quality is great, the battery life is good….

….and almost everything worked on Ubuntu Edgy out of the box!

I booted first into the factory-installed Windows XP Pro to check that all the hardware worked (like the SD/MMC etc card reader). After some initial confusion about which way up to insert an MMC card (the user manual says with the label down, but actually it’s with the label up), all was fine. So I wiped the harddrive and installed Ubuntu Edgy.

All the software comes on CDs in the box with a healthy understanding, on Samsung’s part, that users *might* want to reinstall at some point (even if it’s just because of a harddrive failure), rather than expecting a hidden partition on the harddrive to be sufficient. Actually, there is a hidden recovery partition on the Samsung Q35 but it contains some recovery software, rather than an entire operating system. The idea is that you can take an image of your machine at certain points to which you can revert in future if all goes wrong. I figure that if I’ve got all the software on CD and I screw up my machine *that* much, I’d rather just do a straight reinstallation. Besides, the recovery software runs on Windows.

So, in the BIOS, I made the hidden recovery partition deleteable and told Ubuntu to format the entire harddrive. Unfortunately, I think there’s a slight bug in the BIOS so that whenever you do a cold restart (ie shutdown and power off then power on again) the BIOS setting defaults back to protecting the hidden partition from being deleted again. And I kept forgetting to switch it back to being deleteable. So, on my second installation attempt, I remembered to make the hidden partition deleteable. Possibly predicatably, however, after installation, when I next powered on, the machine wouldn’t boot because the BIOS had reverted back to protecting (ie hiding) the recovery partition area of the harddrive. Which meant that the Master Boot Record (on the first bit of the harddrive) was hidden (which is not ideal).

In the end, I gave up and wrote off the few Gb of hidden partition area and installed into the rest of the drive. Strangely, the installation took ages this time. Still, it seems okay and I’m going to do a fresh installation of Ubuntu Feisty when it comes out in April anyway. Slightly annoying that I can’t use that area of the drive but my BIOS version is up-to-date – and I’d have to reinstall Windows to update it now anyway – so I’ll have to live with it.

One thing that I didn’t mention about the factory installation is that there’s another partition which contains a media centre (based on Windows XP) that you can boot into without loading the full operating system so that you can look at photos, play DVDS, and listen to music. There’s even a separate power button on the laptop for it. Because it’s all part of Windows XP I couldn’t keep it when I installed Ubuntu but, at some point, I’m going to investigate the possibility of installing something similar based on Linux and, hopefully, hooking it into the second power button. Apparently I know someone who knows about this sort of thing so there’s a chance that it might work too.

Anyway, on installation, Ubuntu automatically detected the correct screen resolution and just worked. To work on our WPA-encrypted wireless network, the wireless needs Network Manager installing with some slight configuration (though Feisty should do this better), and there’s a weird bug in the sound card support that requires you to run a command (see these instructions for installing Fedora on a Samsung Q35 for the command). Without the command, the sound works but there’s a high-pitched whistling sound that quickly gets irritating.

The touchpad works (including double-tapping to do a double-click) but vertical and horizontal scrolling using the touchpad doesn’t work out of the box. At some point I’ll look into that. I successfully burnt a CD using the Nautilus-integrated drag-and-drop method a couple of nights ago (easier than I remember it being on Windows) so that’s all fine. The card reader does work but ironically only seems to detect the DRM-protected SD card and not the DRM-free MMC card. Hopefully that will change with Feisty because I use an MMC card in my digital camera.

So, all in all, I’m a very happy bunny!

A couple of weeks back, someone at work posted on an internal forum asking whether it’s possible to get a laptop without Windows preinstalled on it. The responses weren’t encouraging and it all went quiet.

Today, he posted to the thread announcing that his wife is now the proud owner of one of these Revo laptops from Novatech. When you select the model you want, you get the option of buying it without an operating system or of paying an extra £50+ or £80+ for Windows XP Home or Pro respectively.

Not only that but he says: “ubuntu 6.06 runs snappily with 1g of ram [and] wireless, hibernation, function keys, all work out of the box.”