After the last updates on Fedora 16 (x64) I have been suffering from really bad screen flicker.

My PC has these specs. Specifically a “ASUS GeForce GTS 450 Direct CU Overclocked 1GB” Graphics card driving a BenQ T2200HD.

The symptoms are that when I alt+tabbed between windows the screen corrupted(Black artifacts) and flickered.

I think I have an answer (at least it appears to be working) which is to install the Proprietary NVIDIA Driver as instructed here

This may be an option for you if you notice the same thing on F16.

The openconnect package summarizes itself as the “Open client for Cisco AnyConnect VPN”.

Here is a youtube video showing an openconnect session being started from the command line:

I tried creating a connection via the NetworkManager software but it exited without giving me good feedback.

When running openconnect (as root) via the command line I got an error:

VPN service unavailable; reason: No address available for SVC connection.
Creating SSL connection failed

Apparently this means I am missing an IP Address pool as discussed under the heading “Check the IP Pool in WebVPN Profile” here

A Linux option for SSL VPN is openvpn-als http://sourceforge.net/projects/openvpn-als/

I want to output custom XML without any HTML or DTD tags using CGI.pm

Here is my hack to get what I’m after:

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
 
use CGI qw(:standard -any);
# use the -any option to turn on custom tags
# e.g. I can use $r->item("Item Content") to create
# <item>Item Content</item>
# or start_item, end_item syntax
 
my $r =  CGI->new;
 
# returns an xml document
print $r->header(-type=> 'text/xml'),
        '< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>',
        # I couldn't get CGI.pm to output the normal < ?xml> block
        # using -declare_xml so just insert it as above into the print
        # statement
        $r->start_custom ( { key1=>'value1', key2=>'value2', key3=>'value3' }  ),
        "This is a custom tag" ,
        $r->product({ speed=>'slow', start=>'1', end=>'10'}, "product tags"),
        $r->end_custom;

Note: For some reason a space is inserted by WordPress or wp-syntax in the <?xml ?> tag above and below.

Output here:

< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<custom key2="value2" key1="value1" key3="value3">
	This is a custom tag
	<product speed="slow" end="10" start="1">product tags</product>
</custom>

This is a script I use to start up a headless instance of virtualbox

Run as root but it fires the vm up as the user you use virtualbox as.

#!/bin/sh
 
# Output of "vboxmanage list vms"
# 
#"Windows XP Pro" {5998c1ff-f354-4d7d-b36d-987090351cb6}
#"JMITS LSMB" {ac08587f-b1d4-4767-a736-51adcb6f3f08}
#"Maps Dev - Debian 6.0.2.1" {9bb244ea-486b-471f-ad14-9df47c8c0157}
 
VM=9bb244ea-486b-471f-ad14-9df47c8c0157
 
su - userid -c "vboxmanage startvm $VM --type headless"
 
# where 'userid' is your username

I have a Windows XP Pro SP3 Virtualbox VM that I have been using to test connectivity to a Cisco ASA 5510 SSL VPN.

Problem:
Using Internet Explorer 8 and trying to launch an RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) session. It created a memory error and then Internet Explorer told me that DEP had stomped on a process.

I tried adding IE8, Sun Java, Mstsc.exe, mstscax.dll (The Microsoft Remote Desktop Active X control) to the DEP Exception list and still no Joy.

The cause:
Finally dug up that Microsoft JVM might be causing the issue.

The resolution:
Googled and downloaded the Microsoft JVM remover and then finally connected to the Cisco SSL VPN and after several connections while it installed the Cisco Portforwarder Control and IE8 it got it’s act together I was finally able to connect properly with Internet Explorer and MS Native RDP client.

Work-a-round
A work-a-round I discovered was to force the use of the Java RDP Client using rdp://hostname/?ForceJava=true in the SSL VPN Portal thereby bypassing the Microsoft ActiveX client but the Java client doesn’t have the ability to go full screen so it’s better to use windows native mstsc.

At home I run Linux pretty much exclusively so anything I do at work tends to run the cross platform compatible path.

When configuring a ‘clientless’ VPN on the ASA you install Cisco provided java plugins for Remote Desktop, ICA (Citrix), VNC and SSH/Telnet access which allows a browser connecting to the ASA to access those services.

Linux OpenJDK won’t run Cisco Browser Plugins
I have found with Linux browsers (Firefox or Google Chrome) that the IcedTea or OpenJDK Java versions don’t run the Cisco Java Plugins.

At the moment I’m on an OpenSuse 11.x box using Chrome and when I attempt to run an RDP session I get a grey band where the java applet should load but nothing more. The java runtime I am currently using (when viewed by going to about:plugins in your browser) is:

IcedTea-Web Plugin (using IcedTea-Web 1.1.4 (suse-0.2.1-i386)) (2 files)

The Fix:
To get Cisco ASA java plugins working on OpenSuse:

# Remove the openJDK
# First find out what you are running:
rpm -qa | grep -i iced
icedtea-web-1.1.4-0.2.1.i586
 
rpm -qa | grep -i openjdk
java-1_6_0-openjdk-1.6.0.0_b22.1.10.4-0.3.2.i586
 
# use zypper as root
zypper rm icedtea-web-1.1.4-0.2.1.i586 java-1_6_0-openjdk-1.6.0.0_b22.1.10.4-0.3.2.i586
 
# Goto java.sun.com and look for
# "Java for my computer" and download 
# the  correct one for your distribution.
 
# The one I downloaded is jre-6u30-linux-i586-rpm.bin
 
# Then as root run the bin file. 
# This will install it for you:
sh jre-6u30-linux-i586-rpm.bin
 
# find out the exact name of the jre. 
rpm -qa | grep jre
jre-1.6.0_30-fcs.i586
 
# Then find the location  of the libnpjp2.so file.
rpm -q jre-1.6.0_30-fcs.i586 --list  | grep np
...
/usr/java/jre1.6.0_30/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so
...
 
# Link the plugin to the chrome/mozilla plugins folder.
# wrapped to two lines for readability
ln -sf /usr/java/jre1.6.0_30/lib/i386/libnpjp2.so \
/usr/lib/browser-plugins/
 
# restart your browser and then open
# about:plugins to check sun java is  there

Mozilla Firefox about:plugins showing Sun Java Successfully Installed

Google Chrome about:plugins showing Sun Java Successfully Installed

Been trying to find a free (as in beer) development environment that is easy to use and configure with sensible defaults.

Just downloaded Aptana 3 and after 2 days use. We have a winner.

Things I like:

• Downloaded both Windows and Linux clients – Install was easy on both
• There is a menu item Source ==> format. And I have successfully reformatted. html, javascript and xml with no dramas
• There is a jQuery plugin installed by clicking Commands ==> Bundle Development ==> Install Bundle.
• Ease of use

Cons:

• No native PERL plugin

Just tried to use [nodeName=namespace:node_name] syntax in Firefox and Chrome to get a result message from a soap responseXML and failed while using jquery-1.6.2.min.js and jquery-1.7.1.min.js:

This is the contents from my jQuery.ajax “success:” blocks code

success : function(resp) {
      var res = $(resp).find('[nodeName=ns1:result]').text();
      $('#response').text(res);
     }

Apparently this no longer works http://bugs.jquery.com/ticket/10377 and they aren’t inclined to fix it because. There are so many problems getting it all to work in multiple browsers.

My fix was to go back to jquery-1.4.2.js which works.

Yep it’s a bug:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=752733

But there is a work-a-round:
http://blog.mclaughlinsoftware.com/2011/11/24/gnome-menu-editing-fix/