Category Archives: Other

New OS X 10.7 build machine configuration almost ready — Are you able to help test the builds?

Posted on February 3, 2012 | Leave a comment

We are working on replacing our old Mac build slaves.  As shown in a previous blog post, our current Mac builders are very slow.  I am working on creating a OS X 10.7 builder configuration in bug 720470 and its gotten to the point where I need help verifying that these builds are valid and correct.  I’ve posted the complete output of two builds done on this new reference machine to my personal server (i.e. this site):

The keen eye will notice that there are no links to shark builds.  As it happens, shark support on 10.7 is something we still need to figure out.  Once I have 10 more machines in our data center to test with, I am going to start producing these builds in a production environment for general consumption.  Soon after, we will want to start switching over to this new builder.  I’ll set these machines to build mozilla-central and project branches first and as we gain confidence, I’ll request approval to move Aurora and possibly Beta to these new machines.

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Posted in Mozilla, Other

Mobile on the new try server!

Posted on July 2, 2010 | Leave a comment

Mobile support for the new try server has just landed!  Any push after now will have an Android, Maemo 4, Maemo5 GTK and Maemo5 QT build done.  I have also added support for two magic files ‘mobile-repo’ and ‘mobile-rev’. Both of these files should be in the root directory of your mozilla-central clone.  The ‘mobile-repo’ file should contain a string with no whitespace or newlines that is a path relative to http://hg.mozilla.org/ referencing a mobile-browser repository. The ‘mobile-rev’ file should contain anything that can be used with the –rev flag to mercurial. In-repo branches or changeset identifiers work great here. Just like on desktop try, you can also have a special mozconfig for your mobile platforms. In the top level directory, create a mozconfig-extra file which contains options that are added to *all* platforms and a mozconfig-extra-android-r7, mozconfig-extra-maemo4, mozconfig-extra-maemo5-gtk and/or mozconfig-extra-maemo5-qt. I could add a check for a mozconfig-mobile that would add things to all mobile builds if that is desired.

An example of a push to try session to build against my user repository copy of mobile-browser might look like:

hg clone http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central
cd mozilla-central
rm README.txt
echo 'users/jford_mozilla.com/mobile-browser' > mobile-repo
echo 'default' > mobile-rev
hg add mobile-repo mobile-rev
hg commit -m 'Testing to see if we build without a readme file'
hg push -f ssh://hg.mozilla.org/try

With this marks the end of the old try server. It also means that we have fully transitioned our try server build infrastructure to Buildbot 0.8.0.

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Posted in Mozilla, Other

Mac OS X Screensaver Hang

Posted on November 23, 2009 | 12 Comments

I was trying to get into my personal Macbook a couple minutes ago but the screen was black and I had a spinning beach ball. I couldn’t remember if I had anything important open so I didn’t want to force a reboot. I hadn’t used the computer for a couple hours so I guessed that the screen saver had hung or VLC froze in full screen. I logged into my Macbook through ssh and ran ps -e. VLC wasn’t there, so I looked for screen-saver-y things and found 5827 ?? 0:00.22 /System/Library/Frameworks/ScreenSaver.framework/Resources/ScreenSaverEngine.app/Contents/MacOS/ScreenSaverEngine. I ended up killing it with sudo killall ScreenSaverEngine which immediately brought me back to my desktop. I am guessing I won’t have a screensaver back until I reboot. Hope this helps! Oh, and make sure that you already have SSH enabled (Remote Login in the Sharing preference pane) and know the IP/Domain of your laptop. I used johns-macbook.local which the OS set up for me automatically. My guess is that it is some sort of bonjour/zeroconf to dns bridge.

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Posted in Other

Credit Card Fraud

Posted on August 20, 2009 | Leave a comment

I checked my Visa account tonight and found out that my bill was $2100 more than it is supposed to be.  Turns out that someone though it’d be fun to order a $1500 Vacation from something that looks like a front and $600 from Rogers Wireless.  I have spoken to RBC and Rogers Wireless and explained the situation.  RBC is reversing the charges and conducting an investigation.  Rogers Wireless is launching a fraud investigation.

I also did an Equifax and Trans Union credit check tonight.  The Equifax one comes up clean as does the majority of the Trans Union one.  Unfortunately, the Trans Union report shows that Rogers has done a credit check on me.  This negatively impacts my credit rating and is the last thing I need right now.  I called the non-emergency number of the Police to report the fraud and was greeted by an apparent wall.  I wasn’t speaking to an officer though.  This person informed me that even though I live in Toronto normally, and that BOTH charges on my card show as Toronto, ON it isn’t a matter for Toronto Police unless I am physically in Toronto.  Nice to see my tax dollars hard at work!  This numpty suggested that I visit the local police here to give a report.  I don’t understand this.  Why on earth would a Mountain View police officer be the one to deal with a crime committed against a Canadian, in Canada with Canadian companies.  I doubt that it would even make its way up to Toronto.

This couldn’t have come at a worse time.  I wonder if the false credit check will be removed from my credit history as I absolutely didn’t request it, the $600 charge or the $1503 charge!  As I sit here, I wonder what I can do regarding this situation.

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Posted in Other

Wisdom Teeth

Posted on February 9, 2009 | Leave a comment

I am getting my wisdom teeth taken out this reading week. They are partially impact and need to go. I am going to be having it done an an Oral Surgeon’s office using sedation. This makes me a little nervous as I have never been sedated before. Anyway, I snapped a shot of my smile :)

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Posted in Other