Roc Boronat

Hey folks! Do you remember the hard ages when you have to install Java and Tomcat by hand when setting up a new Debian server? Now, I tried setting up a Tomcat 9 server just using apt-get commands, and it works! So, here’s the list of commands that you and me in the future have to run when setting up a new Debian 11 + Java 11 + Tomcat 9 server.

Let’s go!

su
apt-get update &&
apt-get -y upgrade

There’s a moment when a blue old-good-days interactive screen requests you to tell in which drives you should install the latest version of GRUB. Just mark all the drives, and if can’t be done in any of them, it will tell you later… but just don’t worry.

Then, let’s install the good stuff.

apt-get -y install ntp cron htop tomcat9 tomcat9-admin

Then, just change the content of the Tomcat users file:

vim /etc/tomcat9/tomcat-users.xml

And append this content:

<role rolename="admin-gui"/>
<role rolename="manager-gui"/>
<role rolename="manager-script"/>
<user username="YOURUSER" password="YOURPASSWORD" roles="admin-gui,manager-gui,manager-script"/>

Restart Tomcat… et voilá!

/etc/init.d/tomcat9 restart

Nice! Our environment is ready for production. But… just until the disk becomes full of logs. So, let’s clean the Tomcat logs daily. As we installed cron previously, we can create a script under /etc/cron.daily to remove those huge log files.

vim /etc/cron.daily/fewlaps-disk-cleaner

#!/bin/sh
rm -rf /var/log/tomcat9/*

Note that the last * mark is important. If we delete the whole directory instead of the contained files, Tomcat will not start anymore. That’s not exactly production-ready. Finally, give execution permissions to that script.

chmod +x /etc/cron.daily/fewlaps-disk-cleaner

Nice! Now, in case you want to monitor this brand new Tomcat via JMX, you’ll need to enable JMX. Internet is full of answers, but this one will be specific for Tomcat 9 on Debian 11. Everyone will have Tomcat installed in the same place, so let’s make something copypasteable. The thing is to create a new file setenv.sh with a new line that sets CATALINA_OPTS, and two files to authenticate a user to monitor the instance and another one to control it.

vim /usr/share/tomcat9/bin/setenv.sh

CATALINA_OPTS="$CATALINA_OPTS -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote=true -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=8042 -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=true -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.access.file=/usr/share/tomcat9/jmxremote.access -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.password.file=/usr/share/tomcat9/jmxremote.password"

vim /usr/share/tomcat9/jmxremote.access

readonlyusername   readonly
controlusername    readwrite \
              create javax.management.monitor.*,javax.management.timer.* \
              unregister

vim /usr/share/tomcat9/jmxremote.password

readonlyusername  READONLYPASSWORD
controlusername   WRITEPASSWORD

chown tomcat9:tomcat9 /usr/share/tomcat9/jmxremote.*
chmod 400 /usr/share/tomcat9/jmxremote.*

And that’s all! I will update this post if I detect something to improve. Guys behind Debian 11: THANKS! You made my life easier.

1. Go to the Pageant.exe folder and create a shortcut for the executable. In my case, as it comes with Sourcetree, it’s on
   C:\Users\myusername\AppData\Local\SourceTree\app-3.4.0\tools\putty\
2. Open the old fashioned Startup folder by running shell:startup
3. Copy the newly created shortcut to the Startup folder
4. Open the shortcut properties, and:

• As a target, type in something like this, changing the .ppk with yours. C:\Users\myusername\AppData\Local\SourceTree\app-3.4.0\tools\putty\pageant.exe privatekey.ppk

• As a Start in, choose the folder that contains your .ppk, like this: “D:\Google Drive\SSH certificate\”

In the end, it should look like this:

Hope it worked!

Hi @here!

The latest project I’m working on is a Flutter app that works as a phone app. I mean an actual phone app. An app intended to make and receive phone calls. Supporting that requires a lot of platform code aka native Android code. That being said, now let’s share the problem: we need to manage translations on Flutter for UI, and on Android for native system notifications. A mess is incoming!

The first thought I had was to send the translations I had on Flutter to the platform via MethodChannel, and then save them on the native platform side, and use them in the native components. It was complex. So I would say don’t do that.

The second attempt and I think the best one, came to my mind when integrating the actual translations platform, in the case of this app, PhraseApp. As most translation platforms, they have an API that you can use to download the translations flawlessly, from the command line. Why is that idea so great that it deserves a post on the blog?

I download the translations in both ARB for Flutter and XML for Android. So, I have the translations ready to use from both sides of the project without the hassle of any synchronization. They are there ready to go!

If you don’t use PhraseApp (as I do in many projects), you will have to do it by yourself. But if you are lucky enough to use PhraseApp, I think you will be delighted with this .phrase.yml.

Feel free to be inspired by it!

Hi everyone!

Here’s one more note for myself and for everyone. I can’t forget anything of these not-that-easy things about the Paperwhite e-reader.

If you want to disable the screensaver, tap the search box and type in ~ds, the acronym for don’t sleep. I guess. Or disable screensaver? Who knows… but hey, they’re good hints, aren’t they?

To change the timezone of the device, in case you need the Javascript of the Experimental Browser to successfully convert timestamps to Date, you have to setup the timezone in your Wi-Fi router. That’s mad!

If you are wondering why I needed that, it’s just to convert the Kindle reader in a weather station. Feel free to check my mad repo on GitHub to know more. And happy hacking!

Hey folks! Do you remember the hard ages when you have to install Java and Tomcat by hand when setting up a new Debian server? Now, I tried setting up a Tomcat 8.5 server just using apt-get commands, and it works! So, here’s the list of commands that you and me in the future have to run when setting up a new Debian 9 + Java 8 + Tomcat 8.5 server.

su
apt-get update &&
apt-get -y upgrade &&
apt-get -y install ntp cron htop tomcat8 tomcat8-admin

Then, just change the content of the Tomcat users file:

vim /etc/tomcat8/tomcat-users.xml

And append this content:

<role rolename="admin-gui"/>
<role rolename="manager-gui"/>
<role rolename="manager-script"/>
<user username="YOURUSER" password="YOURPASSWORD" roles="admin-gui,manager-gui,manager-script"/>

Restart Tomcat… et voilá!

/etc/init.d/tomcat8 restart

Nice! Our environment is ready for production. But… just until the disk becomes full of logs. So, let’s clean the Tomcat logs daily. As we installed cron previously, we can create a script under /etc/cron.daily to remove those huge log files.

vim /etc/cron.daily/fewlaps-disk-cleaner

#!/bin/sh
rm -rf /var/log/tomcat8/*

Note that the last * mark is important. If we delete the whole directory instead of the contained files, Tomcat will not start anymore. That’s not exactly production-ready. Finally, give execution permissions to that script.

chmod +x /etc/cron.daily/fewlaps-disk-cleaner

Nice! Now, in case you want to monitor this brand new Tomcat via JMX, you’ll need to enable JMX. Internet is full of answers, but this one will be specific for Tomcat 8.5 on Debian 9. Everyone will have Tomcat installed in the same place, so let’s make something copypasteable. The thing is to create a new file setenv.sh with a new line that sets CATALINA_OPTS, and two files to authenticate a user to monitor the instance and another one to control it.

vim /usr/share/tomcat8/bin/setenv.sh

CATALINA_OPTS="$CATALINA_OPTS -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote=true -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=8042 -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=true -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.access.file=/usr/share/tomcat8/jmxremote.access -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.password.file=/usr/share/tomcat8/jmxremote.password"

vim /usr/share/tomcat8/jmxremote.access

readonlyusername   readonly
controlusername    readwrite \
              create javax.management.monitor.*,javax.management.timer.* \
              unregister

vim /usr/share/tomcat8/jmxremote.password

readonlyusername  READONLYPASSWORD
controlusername   WRITEPASSWORD

chown tomcat8:tomcat8 /usr/share/tomcat8/jmxremote.*
chmod 400 /usr/share/tomcat8/jmxremote.*

And that’s all! I will update this post if I detect something to improve. Guys behind Debian 9: THANKS! You made my life easier.

Do you know EDD? EDD means Error Driven Development, aka “Write a test to reproduce the bug before fixing it”. That sentence leads the InfoJobs’ app to the zero bugs dream. And here are some slides to help me spread the idea to Schibsted’ teams:

In this list of public methods, which ones are just handling the View’s events?

When you open a new Presenter that has several methods, it’s a pity to see a lot of methods. You feel overwhelmed of don’t know the flow of the screen. What methods are handling a View’s event? What methods are really doing Presenter business?

Please please please, when writing a Presenter, just call the methods that receive events onSomething(). Instead of login(), onLoginButtonClicked(). That way leads to easy knowing what are the View events that this Presenter has to manage. And, the best of it, when following this rule, it’s easier to write tests. In your tests, you should just call onSomething() events and verify that some View methods are called with the expected values.

And remember: the View has to be dumb. Just forwarding View events to the Presenter, and just offering methods to the Presenter to do View things. The Presenter is the responsible of actually doing the business of that screen, so the View has to be responsible of doing what the Presenter expects from it.

I need a place to put some ideas about developing Android apps in a clean way.

As we want to test our domain in a quick and simple way, we need to write code testable with just the JUnit framework. We need to avoid using Roboelectric, PowerMock and that kind of frameworks, as they are not simpler than just avoiding them :·)

How to do that? Just try to avoid depending on Android things, like the Context, SharedPreferences, SQLite classes…

… and that’s all! Just a small post launched to the world!

Some time ago, I made a class to help a company switch from CVS to GIT. And, in case you need the slides I made, here they are. Hope you like them!