Slick things with Google search

So here are some of the things I like doing with Google search

Item 1:
You can track your UPS, FedEx or USPS shipping directly from Google. If you enter a valid tracking number, Google's first search result will take you to the tracking information for that package. It's wicked cool and scary. It works! Try it. I am not giving an example for obvious reason.

Item 2:
Did you know, Google search works as a calculator too? Well, one heck of a calculator. Try typing some of the following into the search box and click search

((220 + 2) * (365/8 + 3))/2

three minus two ( :-) Do you remember Magum PI? I used to dream that car when I was a kid)

cosine(180)

sqrt(pi)

2^2

Well, you get the idea.

Item 3:
Finding time of any place on earth. I use it a lot from my Android, especially because there are too many countries doing this day light night light saving thing and I cannot keep up with who changes how many hours on what date. So I just go to Google and type time sydney and I know if it's a good time to call my in-laws.

time sydney

time dhaka

Item 4:
Somewhat same as above and I use it a lot too. Weather information. Type in weather dhaka.

weather dhaka

Item 5:
Mapping a city. Type chicago map. I used to use this a lot back in the days when I didn't have GPS and Android. Btw, Android has a nice map application with the fanciest street view navigation I have ever seen.

chicago map

Item 6:
Unit conversions. I have tried length, weight, volume, temperature and currency. They work like a champ. You have to be little careful with the currency. Google search works only with the well know currencies.

Example

14 kilometers in miles (this is the distance between north end and south-east end of Dhaka, Bangladesh. It's a V shape city)

110 pounds in kilograms

1 gallon in liter

1 euro in dollars

30 degree celsius in fahrenheit you can also do 30 C in F

Item 7:
Area code lookup for the US. I haven't seen it working for other countries

316 - xxx - xxxx wichita, KS phone numbers

Item 8:
Using Google as a spelling aid. Type something in like, accomodate, one of the top misspelled (oh and this one too) word and google will suggest you the correct spelling. Too easy right? 'Cause you see it in action all the time. Now try using define: before a word or phrase, Google would work like a dictionary.

accomodate

Item 9:
You can do search within a site and I use it every now and then. You would type something like dream site:www.victoriassecret.com into the search box and click search

Format is site:

Item 10:
If you want to search for a specific file type you would use the search format like filetype:

Example, resume filetype:pdf

Item 11:
You can exclude something from your search using - operator
Example, "world cup" -maradona

Java program into a Windows Service

If you google around, you will see there are a number of ways to do this. I tried the 2 easiest options that worked. In this article, I will talk about option 1 that uses the Apache Commons Daemon project (http://commons.apache.org/daemon/).

You can read up all about the Commons Daemon project in it's homepage. For us the important thing to know is we have to download "procrun". Procrun is actually an umbrella term for a set of libraries and applications. The applications we are concerned with are called "prunsrv" and "prunmgr".

The "prunsrv" application is the Windows Service binary. It is a native windows binary that runs as a windows service and starts up the JVM to run your Java. The "prunmgr" is a GUI application to start/stop and configure the service. It can also be run in the system tray where its icon will show the current state of the service like running or stopped.

Enough talk, lets start!

STEP 1:

Download the binaries (both tomcat6.exe and tomcat6w.exe) from here http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/tomcat/tc6.0.x/trunk/res/procrun/
tomcat6.exe is prunsrv and tomcat6w.exe is prunmgr. Don’t ask about why they named the two files like that but lets change them after downloading. I am changing them to SomeService.exe and SomeServiceW.exe from tomcat6.exe and tomcat6w.exe respectively. The reason you want to do this is because when you run them the process explorer will list the processes as such

STEP 2:

You need to write a service class like the following. You need to have 3 methods at a minimum and they are main, start and stop. If you have some other methods you want to execute, you can call that to when you start the service. Procrun will run your start method in a thread, and monitor that thread for your method to return.

package com.yourbusiness.function.foo;

/**
* The service class that does the work for you
*/
public class SomeService {

/**
 * Flag to know if this service
 * instance has been stopped.
 */
private boolean stopped = false;

/**
 * Single static instance of the service class
 */
private static SomeService serviceInstance = new SomeService ();

/**
 * by default main method is called by prunsrv to start/stop
 * the service. Pass the argument "start" to start the service,
 * and pass "stop" to stop the service.
 */
public static void main(String args[]) {

   String cmd = "start";
   if(args.length > 0) {
      cmd = args[0];
   }

   if("start".equals(cmd)) {
      serviceInstance.start();
   }
   else {
      serviceInstance.stop();
   }
}


/**
 * Start this service instance
 */
public void start() {

   stopped = false;
 
   System.out.println("SomeService Started " + new java.util.Date());
 
   while(!stopped) {
  
      synchronized(this) {
          //do whatever you want to do here
          System.out.println("SomeService is working");
      }
   }
 
   System.out.println("SomeService Stopped " + new java.util.Date());
}

/**
 * Stop this service instance
 */
public void stop() {
   stopped = true;
   synchronized(this) {
      this.notify();
   }
}

}

STEP 3:

I keep both of the exe files where I run the java class from. So, all of my related files are in one folder. I would execute the following to start my service

C:\SomeService\bin>SomeService.exe //IS//SomeService
--Install=C:\SomeService\bin\SomeService.exe
--Description="SomeService to do something"
--Jvm=auto
--Classpath=C:\SomeService\SomeService.jar
--StartMode=jvm
--StartClass=com.yourbusiness.function.foo.SomeService
--StartMethod=main
--StartParams=start
--StopMode=jvm
--StopClass=com.yourbusiness.function.foo.SomeService
--StopMethod=main
--StopParams=stop
--LogPath=C:\MyService\logs
--StdOutput=auto
--StdError=auto

For all the parameters, you can look at http://commons.apache.org/daemon/procrun.html and configure your service the way you want. I would put this in a bat file and call it addservice.bat

STEP 4:
Once service is added, you have to go to the Services panel and start the process. At that point you can have the service automatically or manually.

Some extra things, if you need.

If you make any mistake during the installation of the service, you can run the following to delete the service
SomeService.exe //DS//SomeService

Content and user information from Content DB or Content Services

1. The metadata for documents is stored in odmv_document.
2. The contentobject column of odmv_document contains the ID of the associated entry in odmv_contentobject.
3. The content column in odmv_contentobject contains the ID of the associated entry in either odmm_nonindexedstore or odmm_contentstore
4. The media column in odmv_contentobject links the contentobject to the odmv_media, where it is indicated in which table/column the document's content is stored.
5. The full pathname of the document is not stored in any table or view. Each document or directory contains a reference to its parent folder in odmv_folderpathrelationship

QUERY 1:

SELECT FO.name AS "Folder Name", DO.name AS "Document name",
to_date('01-JAN-1970','DD-MON-YYYY')+(DO.createdate/86400000) AS
"Create date",
CO.contentsize, CO.content AS "Content ID", ME.tablename,
ME.columnname
FROM odmv_folderpathrelationship FPR, odmv_folder FO, odmv_document DO,
odmv_contentobject CO, odmv_media ME
WHERE FO.name = 'My Library'
AND FO.id = FPR.leftobject
AND DO.id = FPR.rightobject
AND CO.id = DO.contentobject
AND ME.id = CO.media

The query will list all documents stored in a folder named "My Library", and will display the name of the document, the creation date, the size of the document, as well as the table name, and column name where the document content is stored.


QUERY 2:

Getting information about the owner of a document, you need to join odmv_document.owner with the ID column in odmv_directoryuser, then you can retrieve the name of the owner of the document.

Here is a sample query to find this:

select d.name,u.name from odmv_document d, odmv_directoryuser u where
d.owner=u.id;


QUERY 3:

Getting information about the group of a document, here is a sample query to find this:

select dg.name,du.name from odmv_directorygroup dg,
odmv_groupmemberrelationship gm, odmv_directoryuser du
where dg.name is not null
and dg.id=gm.leftobject
and du.id=gm.rightobject
order by dg.name


QUERY 4:

If you need to know the format of the document (e.g. is it an MS Word, Excel, JPEG, etc), then you would need to join the odmv_document table, with odmv_contentobject, since that is the one holding the format IDs, and then look up the actual format name in odmv_format

Try this example:

SELECT FO.name AS "Folder Name", DO.name AS "Document name", FM.name "Format",
to_date('01-JAN-1970','DD-MON-YYYY')+(DO.createdate/86400000) AS "Create date",
CO.contentsize, CO.content AS "Content ID"
FROM odmv_folderpathrelationship FPR, odmv_folder FO, odmv_document DO, odmv_contentobject CO, odmv_format FM
WHERE FO.name = 'public'
AND FO.id = FPR.leftobject
AND DO.id = FPR.rightobject
AND CO.id = DO.contentobject
AND CO.format = FM.id


QUERY 5:

To list all known libraries

select * from odmv_workspace


QUERY 6:
To determine the total number of documents

select count(*) from odmv_document


QUERY 7:

To determine the amount of space that is used by the Content Services / ContentDB database objects

To calculate this, it is sufficient to look at the sum of space consumed by all tablespaces which are used by content services / contentdb, namely:

CONTENT_IFS_MAIN
CONTENT_IFS_CTX_I
CONTENT_IFS_CTX_K
CONTENT_IFS_CTX_X
CONTENT_IFS_LOB_I
CONTENT_IFS_LOB_M
CONTENT_IFS_LOB_N

To find out how much space is used by these tablespaces, you can run the following SQL:

select tablespace_name,sum(bytes)/1024/1024 as "Size in MB"
from dba_data_files
where tablespace_name in ('CONTENT_IFS_MAIN','CONTENT_IFS_CTX_I',
'CONTENT_IFS_CTX_K','CONTENT_IFS_CTX_X','CONTENT_IFS_LOB_I','CONTENT_IFS_LOB_M',
'CONTENT_IFS_LOB_N')
group by tablespace_name

Recovering root password in Linux

You cannot recover the old password but you can reset it. The easiest way to do this is by rebooting into single user mode, making the file system writable and then change the password. In my case, I am using Oracle's Unbreakable Linux which is basically Red Hat



STEP 1: Boot into single user mode from GRUB

Reboot the system, and when you are at the selection prompt (GRUB), hit F2. This will keep you in GRUB screen. It will show you the version of Linux you are using. Press 'e'.

This will refresh the screen where you should select the entry that begins with 'kernel' and press 'e' again.

Append ' single' to the end of that line (without the quotes). Make sure that there is a space between what's there and 'single'. If your system requires you to enter your root password to log into single-user mode, then append init=/bin/bash after 'single'. Hit 'Enter' to save the changes. In my case I have to type the whole thing
' single init=/bin/bash' without the quotes.

Press 'b' to boot into Single User Mode.

Once the system finishes booting, you will be logged in as root. Your file system is in read-only mode at this point



STEP 2: Change your file system so it is in read-write mode

Type in 'mount -o remount,rw /' (without the quotes) at the # prompt and hit enter



STEP 3: Change the root password

Type in 'passwd root' (without the quotes) at the # prompt and hit enter. Give your new password and reconfirm.



STEP 4: Reboot the system

Type in 'reboot' (without the quotes) at the # prompt and you are done.

Starting fresh...

1. Take a deep breath
2. Hold your breath for 3 seconds
3. Breathe out through your mouth

Repeat the steps at least 5 times. If you stop and think about the moment you are in, this current moment, you will notice this is the only moment you can exist in. This is the only moment that matters because this is the only moment you can do something in. What you do at this moment will define you and your future. It's a new moment, a new beginning and a fresh start. Thus, the curiosity begins.

Welcome to my blog!