Issues installing APIConnect Developer Toolkit locally for development purposes - node.js

I was installing the apiconnect developer toolkit last night to run through a couple of labs on behalf of a customer.
Usually that just requires running 'npm install -g apiconnect' and the job is done.
The laptop installation failed unexpectedly and so I started to troubleshoot by looking through the installation log file. After far too long I though it could be the version of Node/npm as this is on a new laptop.
The npm version was 6.7.0. Node was 11.4.0
I uninstalled node and installed version 10.15.1 of node instead which adds npm 6.4.1.
Running npm install -g apiconnect' then worked properly and I could get on with the lab.

The node.js / npm version were probably too new and the install script had not been able to complete. The older versions worked well.

In retrospect - I downgraded Node.js to the LTS version.

Kubernetes in an Ubuntu VM

Installing Kubernetes on Ubuntu
This is not all my own work in any way - but relies on previous materials.

I started with an Ubuntu VM running 4GB ram and 3 cores with 80GB disk

The Kubelet service will not start (apparently) unless swap has been disabled on any Kube master or node. I'm sure there's a good reason and it may be overall performance of a large subcapacity system
Sudo swapoff -a  and comment out swap in /etc/fstabwith a #

tar -zxvf helm-v2.8.2-linux-amd64.tar.gz
chmod +x linux-amd64/helm
sudo mv spt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y apt-transport-https
sudo apt install docker.io
sudo systemctl start docker
sudo systemctl enable docker
sudo curl -s https://packages.cloud.google.com/apt/doc/apt-key.gpg | sudo apt-key add
sudo touch /etc/apt/sources.list.d/kubernetes.list (edit this file with vi and add 'deb http://apt.kubernetes.io/ kubernetes-xenial main')
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y kubelet=1.9.6-00 kubeadm=1.9.6-00 kubectl=1.9.6-00 kuberneters-cni
sudo kubeadm init --pod-network-cidr 'your v4 IP address'/16
once this completes...
mkdir -p ~/.kube
sudo cp -f /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf ~/.kube
sudo chmod 755 -R ~/.kube
kubectl get po -n kube-system (0/3 dns pods will be running)

kubectl apply -f https://docs.projectcalico.org/v3.1/getting-started/kubernetes/installation/hosted/rbac-kdd.yaml
kubectl apply -f https://docs.projectcalico.org/v3.1/getting-started/kubernetes/installation/hosted/kubernetes-datastore/calico-networking/1.7/calico.yaml
kubectl get po -n kube-system (3/3 dns pods should be running - may take a little while - in a VM where they would not start I tracked this down to insufficient CPU cores assigned to the VM by using 'kubectl describe po kube-dns-xxxxxxxxxz-xxxxx -n kube-system')
kubectl taint nodes --all node-role.kuberneters.io/master (allows this master node to run workloads - however I had difficulty getting this to complete in a way that looked successful)

The result is Kubernetes is up and running.




 

Is this thing still on?......

I reckon I will need to keep a few notes on technical issues so this blog is returning after a very long sleep.

Organising thoughts and a few constraints

I am always on the lookout for a better way of visually organising a seemingly random set of thoughts and notes in order to see where there are commonalities that could be useful. Some of the tools I use include pen & paper, mindmaps, and diagrams. Some of the products include Freemind, Xmind, OneNote, and the usual selection of presentation tools.

 
Recently I found this table, via http://fluentbrain.com/ on the benefits of thinking visually, which is open to interpretation, on the benefits of using a visual tool to organise your thoughts. What stuck out to me was the reference to TOC Processes. I'm used to the idea that when you are trying to come up with a solution to a problem that there are a few constants such as Inputs, Outputs, Controls and Constraints. TOC Processes was a new term to me.
TOC Processes
TOC is the "Theory of Constraints", a term which led me to this relatively short document... "The Theory of Constraints and its Thinking Processes" from the Goldratt Institute. The document starts by relating how organisations have become measured in parts, by department, rather than as a whole entity - leading to situations where multiple parts of the same company can end up working antagonistically and as a result not performing as well as could be expected. The idea being that the TOC process can help you identify where "undesirable effects" are occuring and what needs to change - mainly assumptions that "it's always been done this way". As with most of these things there is a large element of change management which is always fun. I'm still on the lookout for the perfect note taking or visualisation tool if you have any suggestions.

Lotus Notes 8.5.2 - not responding

I had been having quite a few issues with my Notes client. Whether I was writing an email, editing a document or typing in a Sametime message the client would intermittently stop doing anything visibly, then would go grey coloured, and the Title bar at the top would show "IBM Lotus Notes (Not Responding)". After half a minute or so Notes would start responding again and perform fine, however after a few minutes I would get a repeat performance.

Apparently this can be put down to operating on a poor or slow network, going into offline mode could fix it, however it had been working without any real issue for a few months.

After taking advice from David Fry, from the Lotus Staines office, I installed 'Fix Pack 1' for 8.5.2. and all appears to be well thankfully. it's nice to have things working well again.

Notes URLs – easier than I thought

I needed to create a link from an html document to a Lotus Notes document. It’s years since I had to do that and I immediately ran into issues choosing syntax – such as should I use the fully qualified domain name of the server etc.

I decided instead to open the document in Notes – and choose ‘Edit’/’Copy As’/’Document Link’ from the menu. Pasting that into a document editor gave a result such as..

<NDL>
<REPLICA 81256A76:0076FB83>
<VIEW OF39D46BF5:E8F08834-ON852564B5:00139B2C>
<NOTE OFEC4650AB:44EC5B7B-ON802576C4:0067E5A9>
<HINT>CN=SERVERNAME/OU=A6/OU=M/O=TEST</HINT>
</NDL>

I was trying too hard. I started to converted this to an href – however It was easier just to paste the url into a Sametime chat which converted it into the perfect format Notes://SERVERNAME/80256A760076FB83/38D46BF5E8F08834852564B500129B2C/EC4650AB44EC5B7B802576C40067E5A9

Then I wrapped that into an href tag and the job was done.

Ubuntu 9.10 on my Thinkpad T60p GDM + ATI issues at startup

OK - so this T60p is getting a little bit battered looking - screen needs replaced for the second time etc...but it's still working. I've been running Ubuntu 9.04 for the last few months with no problems - even the upgrade from 8.10 was smooth(ish).

Yesterday I ran the upgrade from 9.04 to 9.10. the result was anything but smooth. The system started but wouldn't get past the xsplash screen - where the login is supposed to appear, there was no sound either. I could log in to a tty screen via 'ctrl+alt+F2' - that was good. I noticed a lot of posts regarding issues with ATI drivers, and nvidia for that matter, so experimented with old versions of xorg.conf to no avail. the system would boot to a GUI if I chose 'Safe Mode' - normal boot - login at the prompt and run 'startx' - however performance was poor as the ATI drivers were not in use. end result was poor performance - no sound - and generally poor experience.

I burned a new 9.10 Live DVD and it loaded perfectly - no problems - so the issue must have related to the upgrade from my 9.04 system. Luckily enough I keep my home directory on a /dev/sda3, root on /dev/sda1 and swap on /dev/sda2.

I booted the 9.10 Live DVD, chose install, and formatted the root and swap partitions - leaving /dev/sda3 intact. Once the install was completed I mapped a drive to /dev/sda3 where my original home directory sits - the new path being '/mnt/home/name'. Messana has a simple and good guide here on mounting other partitions. Now that the original home partition was mounted I edited /etc/fstab (make a backup first) and changed my home directory to '/mnt/home/name'.

Once all that was done - I logged out and back in again to find my old workspace in all it's splendour, which was nice.

The simple message is if you have difficulty upgrading - just do a fresh install instead of fixing the issues as there were just too many issues to fix. Make your backups of course.