Extra Pepperoni

I needed to install the Citrix ICA client on CentOS 5.2 (RHEL 5.2), but it has very strange dependencies — it complains about a version of libXaw which is present, demands an older version of libXm, and requires manual installation of openmotif 2.2.

The trick (thanks, FriedChips!) was yum --nogpgcheck localinstall ICAClient-10.6-1.i386.rpm, rather than rpm -Uvh yum ICAClient-10.6-1.i386.rpm. This way yum chased the dependencies for me, and didn’t refuse to install the unsigned Citrix package.

Next I associated launch.jsp with /usr/lib/ICAClient/wfica.sh — Citrix should have used .ica instead, because .jsp is used for other things. IIRC, EMC NetWorker used .jsp to launch their graphical console.

Unfortunately the ICA client insists on being wider than the physical display, but I can work around that. I wonder if it’s because I simultaneously connected to the same XP system via RDP from both Linux and a Mac with different resolutions.

Update: Citrix is fixed on the size of my MBP’s 1440900 main display, which means it doesn’t fit properly on the MBP’s external 12801024 (or landscape 10241280) or my Linux box’s 12801024.

Annoyingly, Citrix assigns the Mac’s Command key to Alt on the Windows host. This doesn’t work well, because although they avoid most Command key combinations in the ICA Client, Command-Tab switches Mac apps rather than Windows windows. Guys, just use the Option key! It even says alt on it, and nobody needs that key for Mac specific functions! Today’s happy discovery: Command-Option-Tab switches Windows apps.

Next I have to figure out how to de-assign Alt-Tab from switching virtual workspaces in KDE. Copy & Paste don’t work consistently when connected from KDE either, presumably because some events are being interecpted locally and others are being passed through. I won’t need to use KDE as a Citrix terminal for much longer, though.

Crud. After all that, the Citrix ICA client doesn’t display most text, making it useless. I can get some things to display by selecting them, but many things (including dialog boxes) are un-selectable. Junk!

I’ve been waiting for NetNewsWire for iPhone since I first heard of it, and have already registered Twitterrific Premium, which is very slick (although I’m not sure how GPS or photos work). I am somewhat disappointed that NNW/iPhone doesn’t proactively download updates; that’s one of the nice things about NNW on the Mac — it’s always pretty current, and I never have to wait for an update. On the iPhone, where I may not even be able to get an update on the train, it’s problematic. I was hoping NNW/iPhone would proactively sync feeds, so I could use it on the subway while out of coverage, but no joy.

Twice, all apps have failed to launch until I rebooted, and I’ve had a couple unexpected reboots.

Most apps are very slick, although AIM and iMaze both disappoint. Very much looking forward to using Remote for real, and wondering if I should have gotten an Apple TV for our living room stereo instead of an AirPort Express/n…

There’s a trick to replacing the 4 persistent apps in the Dock at the bottom: you cannot drag into the Dock to bump them out of the way; instead you must drag something out of the Dock to make room first, and then you can drag an app into the free space.

It’s annoying that deleting an app from the iPhone leaves it on the Mac; moreso that re-synching re-installs the app on the iPhone and forces a full (slow) backup of the iPhone. Adding insult to injury, I cannot control-click an app in iTunes to re-install it, or get rid of the confirmation on every deletion from iTunes.

The AIM client stinks. Not sure if it’s push enabled, but it has serious flaws and bugs, both.

Moving apps around Springboard is a bit buggy. As I moved them from one screen to another, Springboard moved a bunch of extra apps to later screens — many more than were actually necessary to make room. I always have 7 screens of apps, even when they all fit on 6. Under 1.1.4, there were no empty screens — empty ones were automatically removed; I preferred that behavior.

I expect to get an iPhone 3G Monday — can’t do it this weekend.

Where’s the OpenSSH port?!?! I do hope Apple didn’t reject a submission…

Update 2008/07/12: The extra screen is correct. When in app rearrangement mode, the iPhone always provides an extra screen so I can move apps there; in normal mode the extra screen goes away.

Ouch! At 10:31pm last night, I started patching both Linux servers running reppep and associated domains, prompted by Rich’s BIND alert. At 12:33am, www.reppep.com finished installing approximately 255 CentOS patches (including BIND), and I rebooted. Everything looked fine, and I went to bed. This morning, I thought it a bit odd that I didn’t have any new email, but not that unusual.

Melissa left me a message that mail wasn’t flowing, but I couldn’t fix it at work. Tonight I discovered that amavisd-new, which handles filtering for reppep email, was unable to start. Strangely, it was complaining about the Compress::Zlib perl module, which was actually installed (version 2.008, via the perl-Compress-Zlib-1.42-1.fc6 RPM). Some more digging indicated Scalar-List-Utils-1.19 needed to be reinstalled, which enabled amavisd-new to start (it checks for Compress::Zlib and refuses to start if it finds something wrong, which was apparently triggered by the Scalar-List-Utils issue).

mailq showed me postfix was now getting errors from amavisd-new about MIME::Parser and File::Temp. CPAN reinstalled MIME::Parser and said File::Temp was already current.

I bounced amavisd-new again, and tried postfix flush. Over the past 15 minutes, postfix has delivered the ~~650 outstanding messages, and all seems well.

Separately, Alex noticed our blogs were inaccessible, but bouncing BIND tonight cleared that — odd, as I checked http://www.bertpepper.com/ and got valid DNS resolution from both nameservers immediately after patching, but obviously something I didn’t notice was still scrambled.

Anyway, at 8:45pm, all seems present and correct.

Sorry for the disruption!

Thanks Lyman!

Now I’m letting myself be be sucked into trying GTA (IV).