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"Free Milk" - Report Writing Tips

Posted Thu, 05/20/2010 - 18:04 by pclark

Everyone loves report writing and no one here at xTuple loves report writing more than Chris. As a matter of fact, he loves report writing so much, he has set it free and now report writing - by and large the customer requested report mods - reside under my 'Umbrella of Responsibility'.

So, I thought I'd share the wealth, and be the giver of "Free Milk" - if you will - by sharing some of my report writing tips.

This tutorial will take you through how to use some of the fancy schmancy little known tricks we've put into openRPT and maybe I'll tell you about some of the undocumented stuff too. Read more »

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Don't put all your eggs in one basket.

Posted Tue, 04/06/2010 - 17:43 by pclark

We all expect our favorite gadget vendors to cram more and more functionality into devices.  Clipped on just about everyone's hip thesedays are Phones that can send email, play music, socialize, take pictures and record movies.  Oh, and they make the occasional phone call. 

Sure, it's debatable if they actually do any of these really well. 

Are they convienent?  Yes.  Read more »

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Have you checked your QIC backup's lately... and a Haiku.

Posted Mon, 03/15/2010 - 16:16 by pclark

Nearly 3 years ago, I was hired by xTuple.  It was an exciting time and I couldn't pack up the family truckster and get to VA soon enough.  As part of my parting ways with the old company, I had to write up some instructions.  I've included a portion of them here as a sad precautionary tale.  Keep in mind, this was 3 years ago - 2007.  Besides, it's too early for an April Fools.  Why I have these notes still? IDK.  Maybe it's my 'I told you so' insurance.

These are my instructions, dated 2/28/2007. Read more »

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PostgreSQL Kung-Fu: Migrating between major versions.

Posted Fri, 12/11/2009 - 12:06 by pclark

Has this happened to you?  You're called in to sandbox the newest version of xTuple for a customer.  "Piece of cake" you think to yourself, "I'll buzz in and buzz out, 30 minutes tops".

"ERROR: syntax error at or near "(" at character 578"

Arrrrgh!  We'll you try again, maybe even open up the update package and poke around looking for a syntax erorr.  "I know this worked on my laptop when I tried it at home..."  Deep breath, keep your cool... We all know that the 10 minute jobs are the ones that end up taking days and years off of our lives.  Read more »

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Simple Postgres Server Monitoring Script for Linux and OSX

Posted Tue, 10/13/2009 - 11:37 by pclark

Nagios, Splunk, SNMP are various monitoring tools that can alert you to the status of connectivity to your SQL server.  While I would like to employ these tools to monitor our network, I find that I really just want a tool to tell me 'Hey!  Go check the server!  It ain't working because of x,y,z...'.  Checkpg.sh is such a tool. Read more »

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Remote Connection Fun with Tunneling!

Posted Wed, 09/16/2009 - 14:48 by pclark

Oftentimes, we find ourselves not able to be On-Site or otherwise physically On-Console of the server we need to work on.  If time is of the essence the administrator with command line savvy can conquer just about any remote administration or troubleshooting need. How does one acheive this level of connectivity?  Where can I get some of that? Well, look no further than 'terminal' and 'ssh'. Read more »

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Running the xTuple Installer on x86_64 Fedora 11

Posted Tue, 08/11/2009 - 10:44 by pclark

So, you have a fancy new Fedora 11 x86_64 workstation like me?  Well, there's some special consideration you need to give your setup to get our Installer working correctly.

Check out http://www.xtuple.org/xTuple-3.3.0-Fedora-11-x86_64-How-To

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My brain is full... News from the labs.

Posted Tue, 08/11/2009 - 10:07 by pclark

One of my favorite things EVER (besides a list of 1000 other favorite things ever) are 'The Far Side' comics by Gary Larson.  For those of us fortunate enough to remember, or to have owned the collected works of the strips, have no problem remembering the artwork for "Mr. Osborne, may I be excused? My brain is full.". 

Well, assume that I am in that comic - I'm Mr. Osborne... What do I tell the kid? What? What? What! Poor Brian is about to spew his brain gunk all over the class!  WHAT DO YOU SAY MR. OSBORNE?!  Read more »

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Got < 50µs Latency? Solid State Storage

Posted Thu, 05/14/2009 - 12:01 by pclark

Recently, I've had the opportunity to install a solid state storage device for a customer. (Think of your USB thumb drive, or the card you shove into your digital camera, only this thing plugs into your server's 4x PCI slot.)

At first glance, the thing is fast, really really really fast. How fast? How about +500MB/s write speeds?

That's turning it way past 11, folks... Read more »

 

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