Moving the default home folder of VBox

How to move the default home folder of VBox program?

On windows, by default VBox creates installation folder in Program Files and its configuration and data folder in C:\Documents and Settings\\.VirtualBox.

.VirtualBox will contain:

1- VirtualBox.xml: VBox configuration file.

2- Machines: A folder that stores Virtual machines files.

3- HardDisks: A folder that stores Virtual machines hard disks files.



The are several problems with this setting:

1- HardDisks and Machine folders will have a size for several GB. This will slow your system, because:

a- It will slow down virus check, disk fragmentation and check disk operations.

b- If you have back up or image tool such as Norton Ghost or CloneZiller, it will make your hard disk image unnecessary large, and back up and restore operations will take a long time.

2- If anything goes wrong with your system drive (C:) that forces you to reinstall Windows, all your Vbox work will be gone.

Solution:
---------

Move it to another partition or hard disk and add a new user variable to Windows Environment Variables. This is indirectly mentioned in the User manual of the VBox pdf file. To find it search for the following text (VBOX_USER_HOME).

Adding new new user variable can be done by right click on My Computer->Properties->Advanced->Environment Variables and add VBOX_USER_HOME to the user environment variables. The value will be: \.VirtualBox\

Open source development tools

1. NotePad ++

For Chlidren

1. Digital book library

CMS: Content Management Systems

When You surfe on the NET especially when using Google, sometime you get very intersting results. Here I have listed what I have found concerning CMSs and some of that I tried on my local Pc.

DOT NET CMSs

1. Umbraco. The credit for finding this CMS is to an article that I read in this web site. 
2. DotNetNuke 
3. Rainbow and Rainbow Portal Community
4. Other open source .NET CMSs and C# software.
   

PHP CMSs

1. Mambo
2. Joomla. An Article on wikipedia.
3. TYPO3
4. Drupal

Java CMSs:

1. A list of Java CMSs 

Don't use Eclipse Ganymede

I think it is badly designed and user unfriendly. It did not take any consideration for users of older version, who enjoyed its flexibility, and removed most of the good features from it.

Many big players do not support it yet. I think they have made the right decision.

It follows Microsoft ugly steps, by providing fancy UI that increase the complexity, and make our life as developers more difficult. I wonder which waked mind is standing behind it.

Fortunately, we still have the access to the older versions of our good Eclipse, but it is not easy to find.

To download older version you need to follow these steps:
- Go to Eclipse web site
- Find and Click on (Old versions)









- Select a link (which I tried) (Archived Eclipse Platform Releases).
- Download your Eclipse.

CV writing

Here are some CV tips and Examples.

Software tester

I found an excellent blog that contains CV samples as beautiful articles related to software testing in this blog of Prem kumar P.

1. Sample Testing CV
2. Testing Life Cycle - Roles and Responsibilities

Javascript

Building an image slide show:

Here is a neat tutorial:
http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/show.shtml

Project Hosting (SVN, Codeplex)

In this post SVN related topic are listed.

Free / open source repositories for source code control:

I found some useful articles/links that referees to Free Subversion repositories:

1. Free Subversion repositories 
2. Tutorial about Using google's free SVN repository with Eclipse
3. CodePlex from Microsoft

Java

Under this main title, Java related blogs are presented.

Converting between number types in Java:

Sometimes there is a need for converting between number types. For example from float to integer.
float x = 20f;
int y = (int)x;
The same can be done for double or long types.

Warning:

Any decimals will be ignored, when converting from double to interger.

References:

PHP

Downloading PHP extension (mbstring)

This extension is a dll file required during phpMyAdmin installation.  I was in the process of installing and configuring phpMyAdmin to manage MySQL when I get a message asking for this extension. I could not find it in pecl-5.2.1-Win32.zip which I download from old php releases nor when I searched for it on PECL web site.

In the end I had to reinstall the SDK using windows installer (php-5.2.1-win32-installer.msi), and during the installation I selected all the extensions.

Afterwards I found php_mbstring.dll in (php installation directory)/ext folder. Of course to activate this extension I modified php.ini file and uncomment the line that tells php engine about it.

XML

Useful links to XML tutorials:

XSLT - Transformation.

XSL Templates for Creating Your CV.

How to present a CV using XML. (in Danish)

FireFox

In this post I would like to post myFireFox related experiences.

Cool Fire Fox plug-ins/extensions:

Here is a list of posts on the Internet that recommend cool FireFox plugins:

Eclipse

In this post I have wrote Eclipse related tutorials and links.

Avoid installaing columns4Eclipse plug-in and use Note pad ++ instead

I was looking for Eclipse plug-in that supports column editing mode. I found columns4Eclipse and installed it to see how it works. Column selection dose not work as it should. Actually you cannot select the columns at all, instead it selects the lines.

Removing it through Eclipse did not work, which was by doing the following:
Help --> Software Updates --> Manage configuration --> Revert to Previous

Although I could not find the plug-in Under Eclipse platform in (Manage configuration), columns4Eclipse buttons and icons continued to show up in Eclipse.



Finally, I have to:

- Close Eclipse

- Then delete columns4Eclipse folders from Eclipse plug-in and feature folders.

- Start Eclipse from the command prompt with clean option. his is done by typing (eclipse clean) in DOS

Have another text editor beside Eclipse such as Note pad ++ is very handy, for example for column mode editing. You can select columns in Note pad++ by Alt+Shift+Arrow keys or by combining 'Alt + Left Mouse Click' which puts you in Column Mode Select.

For a complete list of hotkeys that can be used with Notepad++, check out this link
http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/shortcuts.php

How to Convert to a Dynamic Web project... in Eclipse (Europa) 3.3:

I found two nice post but each where missing few details. Tried in this post to merge them.
Go to your Java project folder and open .project file in a text editor.
Add missing tags as it is described in the articles mentioned below.
Restart Eclipse.
Open Resources perspective, then right click on your project and select properties (see the screen shot).
Continue configuring your Dynamic Web project following instructions from article (Converting a Java Project to a Dynamic Web Project in Eclipse) below

References:

Converting a Java Project to a Dynamic Web Project in Eclipse

How to Convert to a Dynamic Web project... in Eclipse (Europa) 3.3 or 3.4 (Ganymede)

Useful free / open source software

Here are programs and utilities I use. Please share with me your kind feedback and suggestions about better software that might be: (open source, free, more stable, better performance, has more features).

Pc Utilities:

1. CD ROM emulator, read CD and DVD images.
2. ImgBurn, CD burning and CD image creator.
   
3. SUPER, the perfect FREE video converting program.
4. DVD Flick, DVD authoring program. I tried version 1.3.0.7 build 738 and it is much better from the following one (DVD Styler version 1.7.3). I have mentioned it just to give the chance to try it.
5. DVD Styler, DVD authoring program.

Programming tools:
IDEs:

1. Eclipse

Tex editors:

1. Note pad ++. It supports column mode.

Converting normal folder to source folder in Eclipse

I created another source folder to hold my test cases (unit test) and to separate it from my src folder. This will ease build new jar files without the need to uncheck / deselect it. Especially when using export to jar feature.

I lost that configuration for some reason and Eclipse started to show my test folder as normal folder. The issue solved by;
Opening Java perspective
Right click on the project
Select new source folder
Give the new folder the same name as the old one
That is it.

ERROR [STDERR] java.lang.ClassCastException: org.jboss.logging.appender.DailyRollingFileAppender cannot be cast to org.apache.log4j.Appender

An error occurs in JBoss during deployment on new JSPWiki.war file. The cause behind this error was that JBoss expects only one logger.

Credit to:

NABH forum