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Nouveau driver not loaded

After experiencing some X11-crashes, it turns out that X11 was using the modesetting driver instead of Nouveau. For some reason my Debian configuration was not selecting the driver I needed.

If you inspect your X log-file (usually /var/log/Xorg.0.log) and look for Modeline entries, the log lines will start with modeset(0) if you are using the modeset driver, and with NOUVEAU(0) if you are using the Nouveau driver.

Firefox: You've launched an older version

After upgrading my workstation to buster, Firefox insisted on creating a new profile:

The new version was 68.2, the old version too, but Firefox kept complaining.

The solution: create a new profile, close Firefox and compare ~/.mozilla/firefox/*/compatibility.ini. Copy the LastVersion setting from your new to your old profile. Now Firefox is happy to use your old profile again.

A strange Java OPatch error

After installing a new version of OPatch on an Oracle database home, I got the somewhat mystifying error:

The java.library.path system variable is missing or invalid. Please set java.library.path with a correct value and retry the operation.

It turns out this is the error you get when you install a 32-bit version of OPatch into a 64-bit Oracle home.

Missing ports and rpcinfo

I was making an inventory of the bound ports on my server, when I encountered a rather strange situation: a high port that was not associated with any process.

The easiest way to find sockets like that is with:

Create database fails on package STANDARD

While scripting the creation of an Oracle database, I somehow kept getting errors during the CREATE DATABASE:

ERROR:
ORA-06553: PLS-213: package STANDARD not accessible

Very weird. Until I realized I was using a generic scripting function that issued a SET SERVEROUTPUT ON. It turns out that Oracle can not cope with that until you have loaded catalog.sql and catproc.sql.

xs4all VDSL with the Vigor 130

I am back on a slowish VDSL home connection. After getting used to high-speed fibre, this is quite a set back. My provider is xs4all. They provide a Fritzbox 7360 v2 modem. It used to be that you could set these to bridge the VDSL signal to your ethernet, but this is no longer possible for recent firmwares.

Talking to Grid Control

And suddenly, Firefox did not want to connect to Oracle Grid Control anymore.

The error message displayed was Cannot communicate securely with peer: no common encryption algorithm(s). (Error code: ssl_error_no_cypher_overlap). Google was not immediately useful (suggesting things like turning off SSL).

Trouble in libreoffice Calc

I recently started to experience strange behavior in Calc. When I copied cells and pasted them, it sometimes did not work correctly. Worse, when I tried to do a second paste, formulas consistently got lost and I got only the cell values.

It turns out xfce4-clipman is the culprit. This is a plugin that keeps a history of your selections. According to the manual, it is a good idea to check the option Sync selections. Turning it off, though, seems to solve this problem.

MySQL limitations

I am writing some queries and stored procedure on MySQL these days. Coming from an Oracle background that can be somewhat frustrating at times. Some query constructs are not available, but also the procedural language is quite limited compared to PL/SQL.

I must say, most limitations are well documented. That means that at least you have some closure when things do not work out. Examples I encountered are:

Trying to contribute

One of the nice things about Open Source programs is that you can squash the bugs that bite you. Of course, not everyone is able to do that, but still. And though there is no obligation to do so, it is nice if you share your patches with the rest of the world.

Sometimes, though, the sharing part just does not work out. I recently encountered two such cases, where I tried to do the right thing but my patches will probably never be used.

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by Dr. Radut