My takeaways from JavaOne 2013

This year I attended the JavaOne at Novotel HICC Hyderabad. I attended mainly the sessions on Java. J2EE, and JavaFX, with a bit of extremely innovative enhancements to Oracle DB sessions. Here's the main takeaways from the sessions I attended:

1. Lambda operator and closure coming to JDK8. This is an outright change, a change to all the 4k+ classes in the java libraries. Code will become simpler, neater, and also improve in performance. This is not just a cosmetic sugar coating change, there have been performance improvements as well with these new features.

2. Going by their philosophy of less boiler plate code (which also includes the closure introduction), they have introduced simpler ways to code and work with various J2EE components like the JMS2.0, etc.

3. JavaFX can now be programmed from any of the languages that run on JVM, such as Groovy, Scala, Clojure, etc. I was amazed by the language Groovy! even learning it our of my own interest :)

4. A brand new JavaScript engine coming in JDK8 (I guess) which will be called NashHorn (replaces the earlier Mozilla engine 'Rhino').
This will have feature to launch the JS engine from within Java code, run a JS file from the commandline, and use Java libraries much more easier from within JS!

4. MapReduce functionality will be supported in Oracle RDBMS 12c, and will be exposed via 2 interfaces - a) the already present way of Java Stored Procedure (this will run the same M/R code that runs on Hadoop), and
b) an SQL interface - no need for SQL/PlSQL programmers to learn Java and M/R. They can leverage the newly introduced SQL constructs to run mapper and reducer jobs using SQL queries.

5. Oracle RDBMS 12c (I guess) will support Data Sockets that will pull data from any data source, be it another RDBMS, or NoSQL DBs!

Note: The above mentioned information is solely my personal opinion and updates from what I understood from the sessions I attended. These should not be considered to be the word of truth or official updates.

My experiements with rooting wildfire!

Method 1: Only unrevoked3
Steps followed: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=788776
Result: Failure

First I tried with unrevoked3

It didn't work out.
The reflash_package.exe program gave the message "Error: unable to get root. Is your firmware too new?"
The same issue is mentioned in comments to this page. I saw it after I got the error :(

Method 2: Revolutionary (also uses GoldCard and unrevoked3)
Steps followed: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1145035
and http://www.aritrasen.com/2011/09/17/how-to-root-htc-wildfire-2-2-1-and-install-cyanogenmod/

Result: Success!

Revolutionary does not work with HBOOT 1.02.0000 that my Wildfire has. I need to downgrade it to HBOOT 1.01.0001 :(

Followed mainly the link (http://www.aritrasen.com/2011/09/17/how-to-root-htc-wildfire-2-2-1-and-install-cyanogenmod/) and was able to do these:
a) Downgrade HBOOT from 1.02.0000 to 1.01.0001
b) Getting S-OFF

One note here: The above links may tell you to format your SD card before proceeding with the GoldCard generation. But that is not required! I was able to proceed without any formatting with all my SD card data intact.

There can be little scare sometimes, such as when a particular step gets stuck. But do not be afraid. Just google it out. There is good help over the net! One thing, ensure that USB debugging is always turned on.

While running step2.bat of buzzdowngrade, the script exited with an error for me:
FAILED (remote: 90 hboot pre-update! please flush image again immediately)
*** Rom downgrade finished, rebooting to bootloader. ***
rebooting into bootloader... FAILED (status read failed (Too many links))

I opened up step2.bat. Found these lines:
echo *** Starting the ROM downgrade ***
fastboot flash zip rom.zip
echo *** Rom downgrade finished, rebooting to bootloader. ***
fastboot reboot-bootloader

Surely the script's error was asking me to re-run the command "fastboot flash zip rom.zip".
It succeeded! Then I ran the last command from the step2.bat: "fastboot reboot-bootloader ".
Bingo! Done! :)

Specially, after your HBOOT is downgraded, it took quite sometime for the phone to boot (with the HTC white screen showing for long). But eventually it booted. But since, HBOOT was downgraded or perhaps because of running GoldCard, all settings and accounts on my phone were gone. Never mind, I had already backed my contact, messages, apps :P

Downgrade to Eclair

Now the next step is to downgrade OS to Eclair (Android 2.1) and then install Unrevoked3. I think after this, Unrevoked should succeed. (It does not work on Wildfire on Froyo (Android 2.1)).

Oh yeah, it did!

Now, my Wildfire has Eclair (Android 2.1), S-OFF, and rooted. Since my phone is rooted, I can see SuperUser app in my app drawer. :)

Install Gingerbread


Now I need to install Cyanogenmod 7 (Gingerbread).
I downloaded the cm-7.2.0-buzz.zip from http://download.cyanogenmod.org/?type=stable&device=buzz, instead of the older update-cm-7.0.3-buzz-signed.zip mentioned on the blog I followed.
I have chosen to go for unsigned archive. Finger crossed! Lets see if this works...

Yayy!! I have Gingerbread now on my Wildfire! :)

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Install Google Apps

Now I am missing the Google's propitiatory apps, such as gmail, play, etc. I am also unable to add my gmail account :(
Found that I need to install gapps separately using the gapps-gb-20110828-signed.zip.
Following this page , I was able to flash the gapps image.

When I rebooted, the phone asked me to add a gmail account. Once I did that, it took me to Market Place (which soon got updated to Google Play Store) :)

Yahoo!

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Screenshots finally! (ADW launcher on top of Cyanogenmod 7.2 (Gingerbread fork))

 

Install Hiccups - Tips for Linux!

1. X11 Login issue on Fedora

Ever encountered a login problem on Fedora? The graphical login screen gets stuck, refreshes, and always comes back to the login screen, even when you entered the correct credentials?

If yes, then you might also be facing an issue same as I faced, on my fully setup, customized Fedora 17 XFCE spin!

I tried my luck many times. The command line login session (Ctrl+Alt+F# key) works flawlessly though. The issue is only with the graphical login.

I got an error once when my repeated trials:

Could not create ICE listening socket: Cannot establish any listening sockets"

Fedora Bug: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=829324

Solution:
Try login in to the command line session (press Ctrl+Alt+F3 Key for example).
Clear the X11 graphics lock

rm -r /tmp/.X11-unix /tmp/.ICE-unix /tmp/.X0-lock 

But, this might not work! It did not work for me. I have posted a comment on the above open redhat bug.

Update: My Fedora 17 XFCE's graphical login started working after approx 1 month.

2. Ubuntu does not recognise the Fedora's LVM partitions! 

lvm might not be installed on your Ubuntu!

sudo -i
apt-get install lvm2
modprobe dm-mod
vgchange -a y

[source: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/fedora-35/how-can-i-mount-lvm-partition-in-ubuntu-569507/]

Still this may not work. You may need to mount the file system manually.

See if the lvm file system is readable:
lvdisplay

Once you see the lvm file system, add the command to mount it to an existing directory in /etc/fstab :
/dev/vg_aanondodhara/lv_root /fedora_root  ext4    defaults        0      0

3. Title bar of windows disappeared (Fedora 17 xfce)

Most probable cause is that the window manager in XFCE (xfwm4) might have stopped.

Check if xfwm4 is running:
ps -eF | grep xfwm

If not, start xfwm4 from a terminal
xfwm4

This worked for me.