Install ns2 (ns-2.33) on Ubuntu Maverick

Install prerequisite:

sudo apt-get install \  
    tcl tcl-dev \ 
    libotcl1 libotcl1-dev  \ 
    tclcl-dev tclcl \ 
    tk tk-dev

./configure failed complaining that some tcl, tk related files cannot be found. It turns out those packages have been installed but file locations are different than what the configure script expects. Following is a fix.

You need to change two variables in file configure : TCL_TCL_PLACES and TK_TCL_PLACES.

Add
    /usr/share/tcltk/tcl$TCL_VERS \
    /usr/share/tcltk/tcl$TCL_HI_VERS
to variable TCL_TCL_PLACES.

Add
    /usr/share/tcltk/tk$TK_HI_VERS \
    /usr/share/tcltk/tk$TK_VERS"
to variable TK_TCL_PLACES.

execute ./configure

Official page: http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns/ns-build.html

Hadoop tips

• Change logging level
• For each daemon, there is a service at http://daemon_address:port/logLevel through which you can get and set logging level.
• Use command line
    hadoop daemonlog -getLevel daemon_address:port fullQualifiedClassName
  hadoop daemonlog -setLevel daemon_address:port fullQualifiedClassName logLevel
• Permanent change
  Change file log4j.properties. Example
      log4j.logger.org.apache.hadoop.mapred.JobTracker=DEBUG
      log4j.logger.org.apache.hadoop.mapred.TaskTracker=DEBUG
      log4j.logger.org.apache.hadoop.fs.FSNamesystem=DEBUG
  
• Commission and decommission nodes
  Following four config parameters are related:
  dfs.hosts
  dfs.hosts.exclude
  mapreduce.jobtracker.hosts.filename (mapred.hosts for old version)
  mapreduce.jobtracker.hosts.exclude.filename (mapred.hosts.exclude for old version)
  
  For HDFS, execute "hadoop dfsadmin -refreshNodes" after you change the include file or exclude file.
  From the mailing list, I know "mradmin -refreshNodes was added in 0.21".  So for MapReduce, you can use "hadoop mradmin -refreshNodes" after you change the include file or exclude file to commission or decommission a node respectively.
  To permanently add or remove a node, you also need to change slave file conf/slaves.
  
• Block scanner report
  http://datanode_address:50075/blockScannerReport
  
• If you want to check blocks and block locations of a specific file, use following command:
    hadoop fsck file_to_check -files -blocks -locations -racks
  Note: you should execute it on master node.
  Use "hadoop fsck /" to check health of the whole file system.

Extract some continuous lines from a file

Sometimes, I want to extract some continuous lines from a file, e.g. line 10 to line 100. I was thinking whether there is any linux command to do that. Unfortunately, I did not find the command in vanilla Linux distros. Suddenly, I found that it can achieved by combining commands head and tail.

Let's say you want to extract line min to line max, both inclusive.
Calculate nlines=(max-min+1). Then use following command:

cat <filename>|head -n <max>|tail -n <nlines>

vim quickfix and location list

Commands	Description
copen	open quickfix window
cclose	close quickfix window
cwindow	open quickfix window if its content is not empty.
cc [nr]	display error [nr]
cr	display the first error.
cfirst	display the first error.
clast	display the last error.
[count]cn	display [count] next error
[count]cp	display [count] previous error
[count]cnf	display first error in the [count] next file
[count]cpf	display first error in the [count] previous file

For commands related to location list, just replace first 'c' with 'l' in above commands.

Compile and Install vim on Linux

Commands

wget ftp://ftp.vim.org/pub/vim/unix/vim-7.3.tar.bz2
tar jvxf vim-7.3.tar.bz2
cd vim73
./configure --enable-gui=no \
            --enable-multibyte \
            --enable-cscope \
            --disable-netbeans \
            --prefix=<your_desired_vim_home>
make
make test
make install

Change you environment variable PATH to add vim bin path. Following commands are for bash.

Temporary change
    export PATH="<your_vim_home>/bin;$PATH"

Permanent change
    echo -e '\nexport PATH="<your_vim_home>/bin;$PATH" ' >> ~/.bash_profile

Delete executables and object (.o) files

Following two commands can delete all ELF executables and ELF object (.o) files.

find ./ -executable -type f|xargs -I{} file {} | grep ELF|cut -d ':' -f 1|xargs -I{} rm {}   

find ./ -name "*.o" -type f|xargs -I{} file {} | grep ELF|cut -d ':' -f 1|xargs -I{} rm {}

Some executables may not be found because its "x" bit is not set. Use following command to find them

find ./ -type f|xargs -I{} file {} | grep ELF|cut -d ':' -f 1|xargs -I{} rm {}

Note:
    -executable is not supported in old version of find.

How to change hostname in Ubuntu

Temporary change

    hostname <new_host_name>

Permanent change

1. Edit /etc/hostname to specify your new hostname
   sudoedit /etc/hostname
2. sudo service hostname start

Ubuntu init scripts and upstart jobs

Init script

Those scripts are located in directory /etc/init.d. Note: some of them have been converted to upstart jobs (see next section) and they should not be invoked directly.  To check whether it's a upstart job, check directory whether file /etc/init/<job>.conf exists for a specific job.

upstart jobs

http://upstart.ubuntu.com/  Use "man 5 init" to see the syntax of the conf file.

Each upstart job has a conf file in directory /etc/init/<job>.conf. You should not directly invoke the init script to start/stop the job. You should use commands initctl to do that. E.g. initctl restart hostname. 
initctl list will list upstart jobs that are running.

service

It can be used to interact with the init scripts, no matter they are upstart jobs or regular init script. For upstart jobs, it does not run /etc/init.d/<job> . Instead it runs "start <job>" directly.

E.g.   service hostname status

invoke-rc.d

Another tool to start/stop init jobs. In my opinion you should use command service because invoke-rc.d does NOT detect whether the job is a upstart job or regular init job. Usually, this is not a big deal because upstart job shell script automatically calls initctrl related commands (start, stop, reload, etc) .

Example - network

I will give an example about how network interfaces are managed by init daemon.

As you may know, ifup and ifdown can be used to bring up or down network interfaces.

/etc/network/interfaces are used by ifup and ifdown to know how you want your system to connect to the network.

Sample file

# interfaces lo and eth0 should be started when ifup -a is invoked.
auto lo eth0
# eth1 is allowed to be brought up by subsystem hotplug.
allow-hotplug eth1
# For interface lo, it should use internet protocol and it is a loopback device.
iface lo inet loopback
# Interface eth1 uses internet protocol and dhcp for configuration
iface eth1 inet dhcp

• For upstart job networking, its config file is /etc/init/networking.conf:

description "configure virtual network devices"

start on (local-filesystems
      and stopped udevtrigger)

task

pre-start exec mkdir -p /var/run/network

exec ifup -a

Notice the last line? Yes, it invoke ifup to bring up those interfaces that are marked as "auto" in file /etc/network/interfaces.

• Job network-interface is used when a network interface is added or removed. Its config file is /etc/init/network-interface.conf

description "configure network device"

start on net-device-added
stop on net-device-removed INTERFACE=$INTERFACE

instance $INTERFACE

pre-start script
    if [ "$INTERFACE" = lo ]; then
    # bring this up even if /etc/network/interfaces is broken
    ifconfig lo 127.0.0.1 up || true
    initctl emit -n net-device-up \
        IFACE=lo LOGICAL=lo ADDRFAM=inet METHOD=loopback || true
    fi
    mkdir -p /var/run/network
    exec ifup --allow auto $INTERFACE
end script

post-stop exec ifdown --allow auto $INTERFACE

Line "exec ifup --allow auto $INTERFACE" bring up the newly added interface if it is set to be brought up automatically.  The trigger event is "net-device-added" or "net-device-removed" which is sent by upstart-udev-bridge. It basically forwards events received from udev to init daemon. When your network interface (e.g. eth0) is detected by udev, finally a net-device-added event is sent to network-interface upstart job which runs ifup to bring it up.

• upstart job hostname. (/etc/init/hostname.conf). It includes following line:
    exec hostname -b -F /etc/hostname
  Now you should know how to change hostname.
  Edit file /etc/hostname, run command "sudo service start hostname", "sudo start hostname", or "sudo initctl start hostname".

Recover corrupted partition table

Partition table of my linux drive was corrupted recently.  I could not start up my Ubuntu.

I burned a Ubuntu CD. But when I tried to boot into the liveCD, it always gave me errors. It seems to be a CD burning/CD drive problem. Then I made a live USB drive which worked great. Following two tools can be used to "guess" the partition table.

• gpart
  This program is kind of old and is not maintained any longer. It can just recognizes some file systems (ext3, ext4, etc are not recognized correctly)
• testdisk
  This is a great tool which a text UI. You can find information here. You just follow the instructions. Check the "guessed" partition table match your real partition table(if you have backup, you are lucky.).

Run fsck to check integrity of your file system.

Afterthoughts:

1. Back up your partition table!
2. USB drive is more stable than CD in this case.

printf cheatsheet

Format string

  % [flag]* [minimum_field_width] [precision] [length_modifier] <conversion_specifier>

Flags

Flag	Description
#	The value should be converted to an "alternate form".
0	zero padded. By default, blank padded
-	left adjusted
' '	(A single space) A blank should be left before a positive number (or empty  string)  produced by a signed conversion.
+	A sign is always placed before a number produced by a signed conversion.

Minimum Field Width

"a decimal digit string (with  non-zero first digit). If the value has fewer characters, it will be padded.  In no case does a nonexistent or small field width cause truncation of a field."

Precision

a period ('.')  followed by an optional decimal digit string. It has different meanings for different conversions.

Precision	Description
d, i, o, u, x, and X	minimum number of digits to appear	printf("%.2d", 1) ==> "01"
a, A, e, E, f, and F	number of digits to appear after  the radix  character	printf("%.2f",0.1) ==> "0.10"
g and G	maximum number of significant digits
s and S	maximum number of characters to be printed from a string	printf("%.2s","hello") ==> "he"

Length Modifier

For each conversion specifier, there is expected argument type. For example, for conversion d,  and i, type of arguments should be int. Length Modifiers can be used to specify argument types rather than expected type by default.

Modifier	Conversion	Argument types
hh	d, i, o, u, x, or X	signed char or unsigned char
	n	signed char*
h	d, i, o, u, x, or X	short int or unsigned short int
	b	short int*
l	d, i, o, u, x, or X	long int, or unsigned long int
	n	long int*
	c	wint_t
	s	wchar_t
ll	d, i, o, u, x, or X	long long int, or unsigned long long int
	n	long long int*
L	a, A, e, E, f, F, g, or G	long double
j	d, i, o, u, x, or X	intmax_t, uintmax_t
z	d, i, o, u, x, or X	size_t, ssize_t
t	d, i, o, u, x, or X	ptrdiff_t

Conversion specifier

conversion	arguments	notation
d, i	int argument	signed decimal notation
o, u, x, X	unsigned int	unsigned octal, unsigned decimal, unsigned hexdec notation	abcedf are used for x. ABCDEF are used for X.
e, E	double	rounded and converted in the style [-]d.ddde±dd	precision is 6 by default.
f, F	double	rounded  and  converted  to  decimal  notation in the style [-]ddd.ddd	precision is 6 by default.
g, G	double	converted in style f or e (or F or E for G  conversions). Style e  is  used  if the  exponent from its conversion is less than -4 or greater than or equal to the precision.
a, A	double	converted to hexadecimal notation. for a, (using the letters abcdef) in the style [-]0xh.hhhhp±d;	C99;  not in SUSv2
c	int	converted to an unsigned char, and the resulting character is written
s	const char*	Characters from the array are written.
p	void *	printed in hexadecimal (as if by %#x or %#lx)
n	int *	The number of characters written so far is stored into the integer  indicated  by  the int * (or variant) pointer argument.