Problem

I wrote some MS-Access code that I want to execute once a day.

I created a form a while back and included an entry like this:

  '#size' => 10

in several text fields of the form. Especially useful when you add a suffix:

  '#field_suffix' => 'Something'

But that would not do anything... I looked at the output of the form and it looked 100% correct. In other words, the input tag had its size="10" properly set. So the next step was to find whether some CSS code would be in the way.

You bet! The node.css file includes the following:

By default, a computer system gives each process the same priority level in regard to accessing your hard drive.

With newer versions of Linux, it is possible to use two other priorities: one where I/O is not primordial and thus you do not get it if anyone else wants it, and one where you want to work in realtime and have priority over anyone else.

This is achieved with the ionice command line (or corresponding kernel calls.)

Problem

On Unix systems, you create partitions and assign them a folder such as /usr, /home, and /var. Many people like to put different things on different partitions. Very frankly, it is often complicated to do that, so if you don't have a real need, only break up the /home and /tmp folders from the rest. The /var is a good idea to break up if you use databases or very heavy logs. The /etc can be separate mainly for ease of backup.

xdebug

I'm very much working on Drupal and once in a while, I just have no clue what the code does... especially when there are callbacks that call callbacks in forever loops.

Today I got a new IP address for a server and I had to assign it to the same NIC as my current IP address.

So?! How do you do that on a Debian or Ubuntu server?

It is actually very simple. On Ubuntu you go to /etc/network and edit the interfaces file. It should already include a definition for eth0 (virtual machines will have something else than eth0).

Not too long ago, I accepted the update from Microsoft to go to MS-Windows 2000 SP4. Neat. Except that when I rebooted (I think the 2nd time, but not totally sure, my wife used the computer in between, it seems...) it could not load my profile anymore.

Problem

I worked on a project with many functions that access the database. These functions will generally have a Recordset variable. Yet, when I tried to run a script with the recordset declaration, it would fail with the error Undefined variable type.

  Dim rcd As Recordset

Since that definition was not required for the software to work, I ignored the error for a long time.