These days building OpenSSL with Visual Studio 2008 has become really easy. I don’t like to edit .cnf files so i decided to patch the code a little so that the default configuration file becomes openssl.config:

string basePath = @"C:\src\openssl-0.9.8g";

string originalConfigfile = "openssl.cnf";
string updatedConfigfile = "openssl.config";
foreach (string filename in Directory.GetFiles(basePath, "*.*", SearchOption.AllDirectories))
{
 string contents = File.ReadAllText(filename);
 if (contents.Contains(originalConfigfile))
 {
  Console.WriteLine(filename);
  File.WriteAllText(filename, contents.Replace(originalConfigfile, updatedConfigfile));
 }
}

File.WriteAllText(basePath + @"\apps\" + updatedConfigfile, File.ReadAllText(basePath + @"\apps\" + originalConfigfile));

Open a Visual Studio 2008 Command prompt and add references to the Microsoft SDK as following:

SET PATH=%PATH%;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\bin
SET LIB=%LIB%;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Lib
SET INCLUDE=%INCLUDE%;C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v6.0A\Include

Now we simply have to follow the tasks listed in INSTALL.W32:

perl Configure VC-WIN32 –prefix=c:/openssl
ms\do_masm
nmake -f ms\ntdll.mak
nmake -f ms\ntdll.mak test
nmake -f ms\ntdll.mak install

Happy OpenSSL’ing!

Today i noticed Running .Net applications on Linux with Mono and the author wrote the following:

I found that on Debian at this stage I got an error: The assembly mscorlib.dll was not found or could not be loaded. It should have been installed in the ‘/usr/lib/mono/2.0/mscorlib.dll’ directory. I cured that by executing:
$ cd /usr/lib/mono
$ sudo ln -s 1.0 2.0

There is only one error, and it’s in the PEBKAC category. I can understand that the author couldn’t find the TargetFrameworkVersion tag in his project file and generated 2.0 code. What i don’t understand is that he didn’t notice the Other Downloads section and that there are Debian packages available with support for the 2.0 runtime. Ok, apt-get might complain about the packages and you would have to add a key to your keyring as following before you can install the packages:

gpg –recv-keys 7127E5ABEEF946C8
gpg –armor –export 7127E5ABEEF946C8 | apt-key add -

How hard is that?

Today i decided to build apache-win32. Here’s how i did it:

• Download Apache httpd-2.2.0-win32-src-rev2.zip.
• Unzip and read README.TXT, INSTALL.TXT and docs/manual/platform/win_compiling.html.en
• Save awk95.exe as awk.exe in a directory that’s in your %PATH%.
• Open Apache.dsw with VS2005 and choose “Yes To All” to convert the project.
• Uncheck abs, mod_deflate and mod_ssl in the the configuration form via Build -> Configuration Manager.
• Choose InstallBin, click right and Set as StartUp Project.
• Open InstallBin/Makefile.win and remove the lines 129, 130, 131, 133, 134, 135 and 136.
• Start debugging (F5). Stop debugging and end the httpd.exe process via your Task Manager.
• Download and extract zlib-1.2.3.tar.bz2 into srclib/zlib.
• Prepend “dword ptr” to the second argument of the movd instructions on lines647, 649, 663 and 720 in srclib/zlib/contrib/masmx86/inffas32.asm
• Open srclib/zlib/projects/visualc6/zlib.dsp, choose the zlib project in the solution explorer. Choose “LIB ASM Release” in the configuration explorer and build zlib.
• Copy srclib/zlib/projects/visualc6/Win32_LIB_ASM_Release/zlib.lib to srclib/zlib.
• Check the mod_deflate in the configuration form via Build -> Configuration Manager.
• Choose the mod_deflate project in the solution explorer and build it.
• The original openssl-0.9.8a.tar.gz doesn’t compile with Visual Studio 2005 but someone has already made a patch. Download openssl-0.9.8a-vc2005.zip and extract it into srclib/openssl.
• Open a Visual Studio 2005 Command Prompt and cd to the openssl directory and run: “perl Configure VC-WIN32″ (don’t close this prompt yet).
• Insert before line 61 in srclib/openssl/ms/do_masm.bat the following line: “perl util\mk1mf.pl debug dll VC-WIN32 > ms\ntdll-dbg.mak”. Now run: “ms\do_masm” and “nmake -f ms\ntdll-dbg.mak”.
• Check the abs and mod_ssl project in the configuration from via Build -> Configuration Manager.
• Build the two projects.
• Done!

Another tool that belongs to my favorites is GNU Screen. A couple of years ago i had a bad internet connection and when i was working on a remote shell i was always logged out and had to start over. I really hated that Today i don’t have this problem anymore, but i like to keep Irssi (an IRC user-agent) running, even when i’m not logged in. TIP Using Screen is an article that gives a couple of other reasons to use it and explains how it works. The default settings suck if you also use GNU Emacs. So i had to figure out a couple of keypresses. With “cat -v” i could easily see what those keypresses were. Here is my .screenrc file:

##############################################
# Author: Tim Van Wassenhove
# Update: 2006-02-06 03:02
##############################################
startup_message off
escape ^Oo

bind i screen -t 'irssi'        3 irssi
bind v screen -t 'vim'          4 vim
bind m screen -t 'mutt'         5 mutt
bind b screen -t 'slrn belnet'  6 slrn -h news.belnet.be
bind r screen -t 'slrn php'     7 slrn -h news.php.net
bind e screen -t 'elinks'       8 elinks http://www.google.com

I already wrote that GNU Core Utilities (GNU Textutils) have become my favorite text processing tools. Today i wanted to sort a couple of lines using the last three numbers of each line. Here is an example:

c:/data/backup/JA-229
c:/data/backup/JA-221
c:/data/backup/JA-233
c:/data/backup/NE-046
c:/data/backup/NE-049
c:/data/backup/JA-217
c:/data/backup/JA-225

With the command “sort -n -t- -k2 myfile.txt” i quickly got what i needed.

On the machine example there is a (tcp/ip) program listening on port 12345. The protocol it talks is some plaintext language. I want to talk with it, but i don’t want others to know what i’m sending to it. I’m lucky enough to have remote access to that machine via ssh. I setup a tunnel with the following command:

ssh -N -L 12345:example:12345 timvw@example

Now my program can connect to localhost:12345 and ssh will make sure that it ends up at example.:12345 without others being able to see the actual data For windows users i suggest that you take a look at Plink.

I once read an article that explained how i could make Vim format my code but i forgot what the command was. Many websearches for “vim indent code” later i had the luminous idea to search for “vim format code” instead. The first site i visited already had the answer i had been looking for: “gg=G”. Simple as that

Today i decided to try out the new OpenOffice.org release. Creating a presentation with Impress went pretty smooth. After that i wanted to check out Base with a MySQL backend but i got an error message that the JDBC driver could not be loaded.

I immediately knew that i had to add the MySQL driver to the classpath. A little websearch learned me i have to choose Tools->Options in the menu. And from there i can modify the classpath via the OpenOffice.org->Java panel.

After that everything went smooth There are so many sites talking about the new release and all the new features but none of them seem to have experienced this. It makes me wonder if they have really tried it out..