8thString

Pre-requisite: - internet connection - Virtual Box installed on host machine. This exercise will be using Vista as host. As of this writing, Debian Lenny is still at testing stage. For this exercise we will use RC1, visit http://www.debian.org/releases/testing/ for the netinstall iso. Once download is done, create a new virtual machine using Virtual Box, use the following configuration: 512 MB Memory, 120 GB HD, use Intel PRO/1000T server for the network card. For the VirtualBox networking I am using host network configuration. Once VirtualBox guest configuration is set, start the guest machine and then mount the CD-ROM image. In installer boot menu, select Graphical Install. For "Chose the Language" screen, select English or your language of choice. For the country, select whichever you are currently in. In my case, I will be using Philippines. In "Keymap to use" select "American English" or whichever is much appropriate for your system. After this s

Pre-requisite: - internet connection - Virtual Box installed on host machine. This exercise will be using Vista as host. Download server edition of Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10 from the nearest mirror. Once done, create a new virtual machine using Virtual Box, use the following configuration: 512 MB Memory, 120 GB HD, enable PAE, use Intel PRO/1000T server network. Start virtual machine of the CD-ROM. During the install sequence, select F4. Select the option which mentions about virtual machine installation. Use the default options, reboot and login to the newly install minimal system. Update the system and install aptitude, say: username@hostname:/# apt-get update username@hostname:/# apt-get safe-upgrade username@hostname:/# apt-get install aptitude Then install minimal Gnome, thus say do: username@hostname:/# aptitude install xorg gnome-core gdm gdm-themes My first install of gnome-core didn't work well. Doing username@hostname:/# apt-get update username@hostname:/# apt-get sa

XUnit Test Patterns - Refactoring Test Code

This post is gonna be a work in progress. What I am trying to embark on is the possibility of inserting hooks to a running COM server to perform automated testing. I have seen applications tried to do this, like TestPartner, but it is crashing my application under test. Summary of available tools that may have a working COM server hooks: TestPartner   - they have ComSpy but this is crashing my application under test. COMslicer  - from the help file. COMslicer is a utility that displays information about COM/DCOM components’ activity. It reports all methods and properties called by a client of a COM component and shows values for input/output parameters. COMslicer also reports creation and destroying of COM objects as well as raising events by COM objects. It keeps track of reference counting and interfaces queried by a client. COMslicer works on Windows 98/Me/ NT4/2K. But it seems to me that the development of this tools has halted. A quick visit to their website does not event menti

Google have mobilized their Google Maps and should now be available in BlackBerry. Actually this has been available in BB eons ago (at least when talking about how fast things change in the Net). Unfortunately, not all cities have as good coverage as in the US. But it is still a nice to have application in your BB device, anyway if you stay in non-English region and you happen to not understand the local language or in some cases Google shows language that is not really the local language (like maybe your internet gateway is located somewhere else) then you can still force to view the English language, thus say: http://m.google.com/maps?hl=en ~ts

When you are in Asia,draft.blogger.com tries to automatically detect your location and sets the UI to the language that was detected by Google. Unfortunately, sometimes the gateway is provided outside of the country mostly from Hongkong. This leaves you with a Chinese interface which I can't really understand. This is even more challenging if you are trying to access sites using BlackBerry. Anyway, to access Blogger Draft in English, use the following URL: http://draft.blogger.com/ mobile-start.g?hl=en ~ts

I have been using STAF/STAX for a while now as a framework on top of software test automation. When we started moving some of our tests in Windows Vista noticed that there have been cases where uninstallation of the software under test is crashing. I thought it was some component not playing well with Windows Vista but I when I tried to perform the uninstallation sequence manually everything was fine and dandy. So I started digging around and I found out that in Windows Vista, the following command may fail. C:\>staf remotemachine process start command "C:\PROGRA~1\COMMON~1\INSTAL~1\Driver\1150\INTEL3~1\IDriver.exe /M^{1CD6500F-DE1E-44AC-A279-4C85247A9A85^}" Poking around even more and I finally found a workaround, to get the above command working in Vista, do: C:\>staf remotemachine process start shell command "C:\PROGRA~1\COMMON~1\INSTAL~1\Driver\1150\INTEL3~1\IDriver.exe /M^{1CD6500F-DE1E-44AC-A279-4C85247A9A85^}" Notice the use of shell to ma