Giuseppe "Cowo" Corbelli weblog

Suppose you want to statically link some libraries and some others dynamically when building your executable with the GCC/G++ toolchain. For sure you can pass the static library with its full path along with the other objects, something like:

gcc -o executable anObject.o /usr/lib/someLibrary.a

But what if I don't want to search library full path? What if I want to use standard library search path? In short: how the hell do I tell the linker to manage this stuff?

Here are the relevant options:

• Option -Wl,-Bstatic tells the linker to link all the subsequent libraries as STATIC
• Option -Wl,-Bdynamic tells the linker to link all the subsequent libraries as DYNAMIC

WARNING: linking order in the static chain matters!

An example:

gcc -o executable anObject.o -Wl,-Bstatic -lstaticLib -Wl,-Bdynamic -ldl -lpthread -ldynamicLib

libstaticLib.a will be used, even if a libstaticLib.so is available.

I had to face this problem: copy the already read email from IMAP accounts to local mailboxes, for backup purposes. I did't find any software which could handle the job by itself. Mutt has everything that's needed, but there's no way to tell "do nothing and quit if there are no already read messages". So I had to wrap up a simple script; here's what you need:

• bash
• Mutt
• IMAPfilter

IMAPfilter is used to check if there are already read messages in the mailbox, mutt does the download and save job.

Here's how to wrap up the stuff: substitute values to suit your needs

  READMSG=$(imapfilter -e "account=IMAP{server = 'mail.somedomain.com',username = 'someuser',password = 'somepasswd'} \
    exist, unread, unseen = account.INBOX:check_status() \
    print (exist - unseen)" | grep -v messages)
        echo "Mailsize - someuser: $READMSG"
        if [[ $READMSG -gt 0 ]]; then
                mutt -e "push ~R=someuser-$(date +"%b-%Y").gz" \
                  -f 'imap://someuser:somepasswd@mail.somedomain.com' >/dev/null
        fi

Commands should be on a single line, so join the lines split by a '\'

Sometimes I use PyInstaller to build standalone (AKA frozen) executable distributions of Python sofware. As a package builder I've been happily using EPM for a while.
You may have seen an error like the following when you try to execute the program from EPM-built package:

Cannot open self ./myProg or archive ./myProg.pkg

This is all because of executable stripping. By default EPM strips executables, and frozen python exes don't work anymore. So, in your EPM list file, remember to use the nostrip() directive, like here:

f 755 user group ${prefix}/myProg ${srcdir}/myProg nostrip()

If you want to deploy stripped executables, use strip=True as arguments in your EXE and COLLECT objects in the PyInstaller spec file.

I've been using some C++ client libraries/code generators to do a few tests consuming a webservice written in some .NET flavour. Binary, numbers and strings work OK but, unexpectedly, I found that there are severe dateTime issues. I've tested:

• gSOAP v 2.7.13
• Apache AXIS v1.6b
• Apache AXIS 2 v1.6

The only one that could handle pre-1970 dates has been Apache AXIS 2 v1.6. I didn't go into the gory details, but it seems that gSOAP uses a time_t behind the scenes, while Axis 1.6b throws some exception. In summary, it seems that only Apache AXIS 2 v1.6 can be reliably used as a C++ client library if you need datetime support.

I'm an happy owner of a GEM Equinox 76. OS is somewhat buggy, expecially in the sequencer section. May be worth an update...
OS images can be find on generalmusic.us website and are linked from some forum post, but a little redundance may be a good idea.

• Gem Equinox 61 OS (11 / 10 / 2000)
• Gem Equinox 76 OS (11 / 10 / 2000)
• Gem Equinox 88 OS (11 / 10 / 2000)

A few simple words to express what I think...

Fuck code signing/security/whatsoever: let MY hardware execute what I want, huh?

I read somewhere that this can be done using Visual Studio 2008; don't know, as I don't (still) use the beast.
Here's what to do:

1. Download and install Device command shell from here http://cowo.supersized.org/archives/28-Visual-Studio-2005-Device-Command-Shell.html
2. Download Security-Off provisioning XML file from here: SecurityOff.xml or use the one distributed with Windows Mobile 6 SDK
3. Execute ce connect <YourMobileID>
4. Execute ce config SecurityOff.xml

Really tired of all this mobile shit; I'd say it's holiday time...

Device Command Shell (DCS) provides a command-line interface to several useful functions for developing Smart Device applications using Visual Studio 2005. It is implemented as a Visual Studio "Command Window" add-in for convenience and quick access.

This is the author description for DCS. Useful tools, indeed. Download URL used to be http://www.gotdotnet.com/workspaces/workspace.aspx?id=50618f79-c7b1-4588-9c0a-cf4ddae8092a but seems that M$ is moving everything to MSDN Code Gallery and this stuff got lost somewhere. OK, don't know if it's OK for me to redistribute, but many seem to need this...
I believe this should be version 0.98...

Download Device Command Shell here: DeviceCommandShellSetup.zip

Back in the good old times there was boost::build v1, which I was more or less able to comprehend. Now I've installed boost v1.35 it seems that only boost::build v2 is available; I'm sure it rocks and so on, but I've struggled TOO MUCH to make it work. Me being a dumbass? Quite likely.

But at long last I was able to put all the pieces together:

1. Find tools/build/v2/user-config.jam under boost root
2. Uncomment the using msvc ;
3. Find the stlport line and write something like using stlport : : STLPORTPATH\stlport STLPORTPATH\lib ;
4. Place bjam.exe into boost root
5. Run bjam msvc/variant=debug,release/threading=multi/stdlib=stlport/link=shared,static/runtime-link=shared stage

This shit will build debug and release, static and dynamic libraries linked to dynamic C runtime.

I have a few NICs on a machine, so I told Microsoft SQL Server 2005 - 9.00.3042.00 (Intel X86) not to bind on every interface but only one. So far so good.
Unfortunately I had the BAAAD idea to change this NIC IP Address. Old IP was 192.168.0.103, new IP is 192.168.6.65. When I try to start the service with commandline sqlservr.exe -sSQLEXPRESS where's what I get

Server failed to listen on 192.168.0.103  1433. Error: 0x2741. To proceed, notify your system administrator.

Standard useless error message. Ok, there must be this old address configured somewhere. In the registry, of course. Just searched throughout the whole registry and found:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL.1\MSSQLServer\SuperSocketNetLib\Tcp

Here you'll find subkeys named IP1 to IPSomeNumber. If one refers to an unbindable address just set Enabled or Active to 0.

I just bought a GEM Equinox and I'm looking for some RAM to add. It requires 30 pin SIMMs, so I went through some rubbish. Here's the capacity of the RAM I found:

2X PM10244-70 T9210 1X M5M41000BJ 234GE20-7	1 MB
1X TMS4C1024DJ HEP 3312 24 2X TMS44400DJ OBI 4051 AH	1 MB
2X KOREA AO169315GGG HM514400AS7 1X KOREA A0029305GGGK HM511000AJP7	1 MB