Tim Groeneveld

At Digital Pacific, where I work, I have been working on migrating from our current billing system to a new; more feature complete billing system that will provide many benefits to users. With our new billing system, Parallels Business Automation, users will be able to see all their invoices (past, present and future) and will be able to literally click one button and switch between all of their hosting control panels.

This move, however, has not been without quite a number of funny mishaps while moving from our current billing system (ModernBill) to Parallels Business Automation (”PBA”). The following text is going to go into quite a bit of technical information, so if you don’t know what XML is, well, you might just want to close this window go to Wikipedia’s article on XML and look it up!

Observe this image very closely:

So what I have done, is I have made a set of files with 100 customers each. Every separate file gets imported by running the command on the PBA server ‘hspc-import.pl’. Here, I am running the 59th file (the files start at 00). hspc-import.pl is complaining that the email for person “Becky A. Douglas” is not defined, however, when I go to edit the file, the email is infact correct, and it is definitely defined. Just like it is for the clients before her.

This issue has had me baffled for weeks trying to solve this issue. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. Sometimes changing the name in the XML file will just magically solve the issue, as if it was not there to begin with.

So what I do, is I get on Skype and call our Sales Engineer at Parallels, and tell him what the issue is. He points out a few issues with the XML file (which is fair enough, but why did all the clients before these “just” import without any issues?).

I take into account the issues that he pointed out, and go and create a new set of import documents to get our clients into our new billing system. I run all the commands again to start the process rolling, and now the issue is coming up again!

But now something very, very bad is going on! The import is actually failing faster then it was before the fixes that were suggested by our Sales Engineer. So I back track and change a few lines in the XML file. Instead of the top of the file saying this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<data>
<account>
<type>CUSTOMER</type>
<status>active</status>
<is_corporate>0</is_corporate>
<name>Bob Smith</name>

It now says this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<data>

<account>
<type>CUSTOMER</type>
<status>active</status>
<is_corporate>0</is_corporate>
<name>Bob Smith</name>

After adding exactly 15 new lines after the <data> child in the failing XML file in the import batch, you wouldn’t believe it. The import actually succeeded.

So now my new motto is, “Every bug in the world can be solved with just fifteen newlines!“.

My development environment is CentOS 5. Running a library that is two and a half years old really sucks on a new Linux box, especially because I had to install three compat libraries.

The software is called “webpay”, and the actual library itself is distributed as a binary library; which would be alright apart from the fact that this is a library that is meant to financial transactions, and I want to be able to trust that this library is the actual library that I am meant to use. When you go to download the file from St. George, there is no way to validate the file, no signed GPG files – not even an sha1sum.

What was even worse, is that the webpay client refused to work in the Virtuozzo container.

rt_sigaction(SIGPROF, {0x81c0ce0, [PROF], SA_RESTORER|SA_RESTART, 0xf09dc8}, {SIG_DFL},  = 0
rt_sigprocmask(SIG_UNBLOCK, [PROF], NULL,  = 0
open("test.blue", O_RDONLY)              = 3
fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0777, st_size=4891, ...}) = 0
mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb7eb3000
read(3, "", 4096)                       = 0
brk(0x9ae9000)                          = 0x9ae9000

I would like it if it “just worked”, or even better – that libwebpayclient.so came with source, so we could actually compile the library ourselves, and debug the problem further. Even though the library is from a bank, I would have no problem sending back improved code to the bank, especially if it improved the way that my software worked.

Damn banks.

With the help of researchers Robert Marks, Blake LeBaron and John Holland, I have been able to start implementing an algorithm for a “self operating” stock exchange. Called MyStocko, it is an application that will be able to operate a simulated stock exchange automatically without any user or operator intervention.

It records all buy/sell transactions, and works out figures such as the high and low sell price of any stocks. It is not yet complete at all, but it is coming there.

There is no user interface for buying or selling shares, but when it is done manually in the MyInfo database (from MyBanco) most of the other figures are worked out automatically. Already it is starting to draw graphs showing the history of buy and sell prices, and I can’t wait for it to be released.

Click on the image to enlarge it.

More about it later

I am disappointed,as a user of both Linux *and* After Effects that After Effects refuses to run on Linux.

Let’s face it; After Effects, and other applications in the Creative Suite are the most requested applications to be supported by Adobe on Linux.

With a growing market share, and many companies putting in quite a few dollars into supporting it (such as ASUS, and I could name much more), I think that having Adobe apps supported on Linux could be a major plus for not only the Linux, but Adobe.

Let’s face it, the people who work on Linux are geeks. They are people who really work wonders in the computer industry. They are inquisitive and smart people, who have a deep passion for software.

Just because Linux itself is free does not mean that there is not a viable place for software to grow and evolve.

I use Linux because it gives me the control that I want. If something locks sound for other programs? Well, I can lsof /dev/sound and kill the program that is doing it. I want to know *everything* that happens on my computer when it happens? All I have to do is tail -f /var/log/* and move that window to my other screen!

Adobe creates free software, such as the Flash Player, which is Adobe’s most used application – something that is free. Giving the flash viewer away for free creates the need for development kits, such as Adobe Flash to be required, making millions of dollars!

Flash for Linux has been a great thing, I have seen it evolve from the days when it was poorly supported, and you could not play flash files if any other sound application was running, to now where I think it is *almost* better then the Windows version.

IBM for years has said that Linux is ready, and show this in what is my *favorite* ad, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwL0G9wK8j4 released in 2003, announcing to the world that Linux is ready. Its learning and it’s evolving.

Now, those terms have become the present. It has evolved. It has learnt.

I believe that releasing a version of Adobe Creative Suite for Linux could do some really amazing things. It would change the way that people think about Linux.

I, being a person who has many friends who work actively with computers, in many diverse areas knows what the usual response is when you talk to someone about Linux.

Usually, it’s one of two looks. There is the look that says straight away “There is no retail visual effects programs for Linux” or “There is no ‘uber’ professional photo editors for Linux”. The other look is the one of ‘Well, there goes Halo’.

I am of the belief that releasing Adobe for Linux would help it’s market share to grow higher, as it’s a highly available, stable operating system.

Please, think about a version of Adobe CS3 or future versions of the Creative Suite for Linux. It’s not that we want them, but rather, we need them.

The lack of having Adobe After Effects on Linux is *the only* reason I still have Windows on my computer. I don’t want Windows. I dislike it, I hate not being able to have an uptime of more then seven days.

With Linux, I have seen an uptime of around 120 days! Try and do that on Windows!

Linux is ready. Please, see that!

That is the contents of a letter I just wrote to Adobe. Please, if you read this, and you want to help support this cause, drop Adobe an email at one of their ways to contact them, or blog about how you would like to see Adobe supported on Linux.