Be Careful Using Ubuntu Update Manager

Ubuntu Linux comes with a pretty cool Update Manager tool which searches for software updates and patches on the Internet and provides options to install them. I've been using this tool for months to install various updates on my system. The best thing about the Ubuntu Update Manager is that, it not only updates the OS but also updates the drivers and other utilities installed on the system. Everything seemed to work fine until I installed some kernel updates on my system using the Update Manager.

After applying the updates the Update Manager required a system restart to complete the update process. This has happened before so I patiently complied. But when the system rebooted I noticed that my system has gone dumb. Sounds were not working at all. And then I tried to connect to the Internet via Wi-Fi, only to find that my wireless network device is also screwed up. Luckily for me I have some friends who are professional Linux experts. I hooked up my computer to a wired network and contacted them over the Internet.

Fixing the wireless connectivity issue was not a big deal. The very Update Manager which got me into trouble helped me out. I installed a bunch of driver updates listed by the Update Manager. Then after a system reboot my Wi-Fi device was back up and running.

The difficult part was fixing the audio related issue. I had to fire up the synaptic package manager and install a couple of Linux backport modules and restart the system to get sounds working again.

However all in all it was yet another learning experience for me. If you are a regular Ubuntu Linux user like me, my advice to you is be careful when installing kernel patches using the Update Manager. Know what you are doing. Be ready to deal with some undesirable results.

WSO2 WSAS 2.3 Released

The WSO2 WSAS team is pleased to announce the release of the WSO2 WSAS 2.3. WSO2 WSAS is an enterprise ready Web services engine powered by Apache Axis2 release under the Apache Software License 2.0.

This release can be downloaded from;
http://wso2.org/projects/wsas/java


From the WSO2 WSAS 2.3 - Release Note - 10th June 2008

WSO2 WSAS is an enterprise ready Web services engine powered by Apache Axis2 which offers a complete middleware solution. It is a lightweight, high performing platform for Service Oriented Architectures, enabling business logic and applications.

Bringing together a number of Apache Web services projects, WSO2 WSAS provides a secure, transactional and reliable runtime for deploying and managing Web services.


Key Features

* Data services support - Expose you enterprise data as a services in a jiffy
* WSAS IDE - Eclipse IDE integration
* Clustering support for High Availability & High Scalability
* Full support for WS-Security, WS-Trust, WS-Policy and WS-Secure Conversation and XKMS
* EJB service provider support - Expose your EJBs as services
* Axis1 backward compatibility - Deploy Axis1 services on WSAS & Engage advanced WS-* protocols in front of legacy services
* JMX & Web interface based monitoring and management
* WS-* & REST support
* GUI, command line & IDE based tools for Web service development


New Features In This Release

* Improved interoperability
* Improved Data Services support
* Various bug fixes to Apache Axis2, Apache Rampart & WSAS
* WSO2 Mercury Integration - A new WS-RM Implementation


Data Services - Bringing Enterprise Data to Web

* Service enable data locked in relational databases, CSV & Excel files in no time
* Zero code. Simple descriptor file describes the data to service mapping
* Controlled access to your data
* Customizable XML output
* Benefit from REST & WS-* support
* Built-in Connection pooling support
* Supports exposing Stored procedures & functions
* Built-in caching
* Throttling - to ensure your database is never overloaded.
* Easy configuration via graphical console
* Test your services via Try-it tool


Training

WSO2 Inc. offers a variety of professional Training Programs, including

training on general Web services as well as WSO2 WSAS, Apache Axis2, Data Services and a number of other products.

For additional support information please refer to
http://wso2.com/training/course-catalog/


Support

WSO2 Inc. offers a variety of development and production support programs, ranging from Web-based support up through normal business hours, to premium 24x7 phone support.

For additional support information please refer to http://wso2.com/support/

For more information on WSO2 WSAS, visit the WSO2 Oxygen Tank (http://wso2.org)

WSO2 ESB 1.7 Released

The WSO2 Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) team is pleased to announce the release of its version 1.7 of the Open Source ESB.

The WSO2 ESB is an ultra fast, light-weight and versatile Enterprise Service Bus based on the Apache Synapse ESB. It allows you to Connect, Manage and Transform service interactions between Web services, REST/POX services and Legacy systems. You can easily switch transports between http/s, JMS, File Systems, Mail, FIX etc, or read/write from Databases, split, aggregate or clone messages and support declarative enforcement of QoS aspects such as WS-Security, WS-Reliable Messaging etc, and also switch between message formats such as SOAP 1.1/1.2, PoX/REST, Hessian, Text, Binary, MTOM and SwA.

The WSO2 ESB is released under the Apache Software License v2.0, and ships with a graphical management and administration console and enhanced JMX management/monitoring support, and integrates seamlessly with the WSO2 Registry.

Webinar series introducing the WSO2 ESB v1.7:
In this Webinar series Paul Fremantle, CTO of WSO2, will introduce the new features and capabilities of the WSO2 ESB. The first session will recap on the overall approach and benefits of the WSO2 ESB solution and the underlying Apache Synapse project, and then go into the added functionality and benefits of the 1.7 release. The series will include details of the newly released support for Hessian, FIX, AMQP and also discuss the improvements in performance and stability.

* For more details on the Webinar series, and to register,
visit http://wso2.com/about/news/esb-webinar-june-17/


Core features of the WSO2 ESB includes:
* Proxy services / Service mediation and Message mediation
* Support for Non-blocking http/s, JMS, FIX, Apache VFS (s/ftp, file,
zip/tar/gz, webdav, cifs..), POP3/IMAP/SMTP, AMQP transports
* Support for SOAP 1.1/1.2, PoX/REST, Hessian, Text and Binary payloads
* Support for scheduled task execution and management
* Support for custom extensions in Java through custom mediators, POJO
Classes and Java Command classes
* Support for Apache BSF Scripting languages such as (Javascript, Ruby,
Groovy..etc)
* Support for clustered deployment with pinned services and tasks
* Throttling, Caching, Load balancing and Failover support
* Support for declarative WS-Reliable Messaging, WS-Security and
WS-Policy attachment
* Integrated WSO2 Registry with support for external Registries
* Ability to stop, re-start and gracefully shutdown the ESB through JMX
* Cluster aware sticky load balancing support

New features of the v.1.7 release includes:
* Support for Hessian binary messages
* FIX (Financial Information eXchange) protocol transport
* WS-Reliable Messaging support with WSO2 Mercury
* Ability to stop, re-start and gracefully shutdown the ESB through JMX
* Integrated WSO2 Registry shipped, with ability to connect to a remote
WSO2 Registry
* Support for re-usable database connection pools for DB report/lookup
mediators
* Support for GZip encoding and HTTP 100 continue
* Natural support for dual channel messaging with WS-Addressing
* Cluster aware sticky load balancing support
* Non-blocking streaming of large messages at high concurreny with
constant memory usage
* Support for an ELSE clause for the Filter mediator
* Ability to specify XPath expressions relative to the envelope or body
* Support for separate policies for incoming/outgoing messages
* Support for a mandatory sequence before mediation
* New Router mediator
* Ability to re-deploy proxy services

Useful Links
Download WSO2 ESB - http://wso2.org/downloads/esb/
Quickstart Guide
Installation Guide
Administration Guide
Samples Guide
Documentation Index

Contribute to WSO2 ESB
SVN: http://wso2.org/repos/wso2/trunk/esb/java/
JIRA: http://wso2.org/jira/browse/ESBJAVA
User list: esb-java-user@wso2.org
Developer list: esb-java-dev@wso2.org
Web Forum: http://wso2.org/forum/187

Training
WSO2 Inc. offers a variety of professional Training Programs, including training on general Web services as well as WSO2 ESB, Apache Synapse and Axis2, Data Services and a number of other products. For additional support information please refer to http://wso2.com/training/course-catalog/

Support
WSO2 Inc. offers a variety of development and production support programs, ranging from Web-based support up through normal business hours, to premium 24x7 phone support. For additional support information please refer to http://wso2.com/support/ For more information on WSO2 ESB visit the WSO2 Oxygen Tank (http://wso2.org)

Apache Synapse 1.2 Released

The Apache Synapse team is pleased to announce the release of version 1.2 of the Open Source Enterprise Service Bus (ESB).

Apache Synapse is an lightweight and easy-to-use Open Source Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) available under the Apache Software License v2.0. Apache Synapse allows administrators to simply and easily configure message routing, intermediation, transformation and logging task scheduling, etc.. The runtime has been designed to be completely asynchronous, non-blocking and streaming.

The Apache Synapse project and the 1.2 release can be found here:
http://synapse.apache.org

Apache Synapse offers connectivity and integration with a range of legacy systems, XML-based services and SOAP Web Services. It supports non-blocking HTTP and HTTPS using the Apache HTTPCore (http://hc.apache.org) components, as well as supporting JMS (v1.0 and higher) and a range of file systems and FTP sources including SFTP, FTP, File, ZIP/JAR/TAR/GZ via the Apache VFS project (http://commons.apache.org/vfs/filesystems.html).

At the same time Synapse 1.2 release adds the support for the Financial Information eXchange (FIX) an industry driven messaging standard through QuickFixJ, Hessian binary web service protocol, as well as other functional, stability and performance improvements. Synapse supports transformation and routing between protocols without any coding via configurable virtual services.

Synapse provides first class support for standards such as WS-Addressing, Web Services Security (WSS), Web Services Reliable Messaging (WSRM), Throttling and caching, configurable via WS-Policy upto message level, as well as efficient binary attachments (MTOM/XOP).

The 1.2 release contains a set of enhancements based on feedback from the user community, including:

* Support for Hessian binary web service protocol
* FIX (Financial Information eXchange) protocol for messaging
* WS-Reliable Messaging support with WSO2 Mercury
* Support for re-usable database connection pools for DB report/lookup mediators
* Support for GZip encoding and HTTP 100 continue
* Natural support for dual channel messaging with WS-Addressing
* Cluster aware sticky load balancing support
* Non-blocking streaming of large messages at high concurreny with constant memory usage
* Support for an ELSE clause for the Filter mediator
* Ability to specify XPath expressions relative to the envelope or body
* Support for separate policies for incoming/outgoing messages
* Support for a mandatory sequence before mediation

The combination of XML streaming and asynchronous support for HTTP and HTTPS using Java NIO ensures that Synapse has very high scalability under load. Performance tests show that Synapse can scale to support thousands of concurrent connections with constant memory on standard server hardware.

Apache Synapse ships with over 50 samples (http://synapse.apache.org/Synapse_Samples.html) designed to demonstrate common integration patterns "out-of-the-box", along with supporting sample services, and service clients that demonstrate these scenarios. Apache Synapse is configured using a straightforward XML configuration syntax
(http://synapse.apache.org/Synapse_Configuration_Language.html).

Apache Synapse is openly developed by a community that welcomes all forms of input, ranging from suggestions and bug reports to patches and code contributions. Your comments and feedback on the project and release are welcome.

The Apache Synapse code and binaries are available from the website at http://synapse.apache.org

Having Issues with Ubuntu Visual Effects?

I have been experiencing issues activating Ubuntu visual effects on my laptop. I installed Ubuntu Gutsy on my laptop few months back (yes, I'm yet to upgrade to Ubuntu Hardy) and it works fine except that it never allowed me to turn the visual effects on. I have seen these visual effects in action on other computers and they are really exciting. I quite haven't seen anything similar even in the Windows world. So I badly wanted to use visual effects on my personal laptop but strangely it never allowed me. Whenever I tried to activate visual effects, Ubuntu gave me an error simply saying something like 'unable to turn visual effects on'. (wow! what a descriptive error message, isn't it?)

So after a bit of googling and reading some forum entries I managed to diagnose the problem. The issue was with my VGA card which is treated as 'blacklisted' by Linux. This particular type of VGA (Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller) is being used in a variety of laptops these days and hence I thought of blogging a bit about this and let the world know. If you don't know how to find the type of VGA in your computer simply enter the following command in a shell.

$ lspci | grep VGA

In order to find whether your VGA is blacklisted or not run the following command.

$ compiz --replace ccp &

If your VGA is blacklisted you will see something like this on the terminal.

[1] 6002
Checking for Xgl: not present
Blacklisted PCIID '8086:2a02' found
aborting and using fallback: /usr/bin/metacity

If this is the case you can do a simple override so that Linux won't care whether your VGA is blacklisted or not. Then you can turn the visual effects on and off at will. To perform the override run the following command. (this workaround has been tested on the above mentioned VGA only, so beware and attempt at your own risk!)

$ mkdir -p ~/.config/compiz; echo SKIP_CHECKS=yes >> ~/.config/compiz/compiz-manager

This will create a small configuration file named compiz-manager in the ~/.config/compiz directory. This file will instruct Linux to skip certain tests which cause the failures in turning the visual effects on.

And that's basically it. If you need more information please take a look at this forum post.