Monthly Archives: July 2015

Hacking, Raspberry Pi

Serial connection from your PC to Raspberry Pi

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I needed an example device for tests of an implementation of a serial connection terminal. A Raspberry Pi is especially suited: It dumps a lot of kernel data upon boot and it listens for input as soon as the login prompt appears (after about one minute).

Required:

  • FTDI serial cable to USB converter TTL-232R-3V3 from http://www.ftdichip.com/
  • Raspberry Pi
  • Jump wires male - female

Wiring is simple: Just connect the FTDI cable as shown in the sketch below:

raspberry_pi_ttl232_serial_connection_ftdi_bb

 

  1. FTDI GND -> RaspPi GND
  2. FTDI TXD -> RaspPi RXD
  3. FTDI RXD -> RaspPi TXD
  • Fire up PuTTY and setup as in the following screenshot (speed/baud rate = 115200)

putty_serial

  • Press "Open" and you should receive the kernel boot messages followed by a login prompt.

 

 

git, Windows

Use VIM as git editor on Windows

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The following configures git to use VIM as the default editor (e.g. for commit messages) on Windows:
git config --system core.editor 'C:\\PROGRA~2\\Vim\\vim73\\gvim.exe' --wait

Explanation

  • Uses short directory names. You can find these using e.g.:

    dir /X "C:\Program Files (x86)*"

    Notice the star at the end of the command line. This will reveal the short name PROGRA~2
  • Use double backslashes
  • Use single quotes
  • Use the --wait option after closing the single quotes for the path to the VIM editor
jira, Tech

Configure https for JIRA

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2015-07-14 10_45_10-System Dashboard - Machine JIRA

I installed JIRA on my Ubuntu 14.04 machine according to
http://engineerbabu.com/2014/10/14/install-jira-ubuntu-14-04-lts/

What was missing was the https support, i.e. the support for secure data transfers.
Here, I followed
https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/JIRA/Running+JIRA+over+SSL+or+HTTPS
and
http://tomcat.apache.org/tomcat-6.0-doc/ssl-howto.html

Install https support as follows on the command line:

JAVA_HOME=/opt/atlassian/jira/jre
JIRA_HOME=/opt/atlassian/jira/atlassian-jira
sudo $JAVA_HOME/bin/keytool -genkey -alias tomcat -keyalg RSA -keystore $JIRA_HOME/jira.jks
Enter keystore password: *****
What is your first and last name? : machine return a few times ... yes ... return
$JAVA_HOME/bin/keytool -certreq -keyalg RSA -alias tomcat -keystore $JIRA_HOME/jira.jks -file $HOME/jira.csr
$JAVA_HOME/bin/keytool -list -alias tomcat -keystore $JIRA_HOME/jira.jks
sudo cp /opt/atlassian/jira/conf/server.xml /opt/atlassian/jira/conf/server.xml.bak
sudo vi /opt/atlassian/jira/conf/server.xml

Contrary to Atlassian's documentation, you have to specify attributes keystoreFile and keystorePass in the Connector element in the server.xml file, e.g.:

<Connector port="8443" protocol="org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Protocol" maxHttpHeaderSize="8192" SSLEnabled="true" maxThreads="150" minSpareThreads="25" enableLookups="false" disableUploadTimeout="true" acceptCount="100" scheme="https" secure="true" clientAuth="false" sslProtocol="TLS" useBodyEncodingForURI="true" keystoreFile="/opt/atlassian/jira/jira.jks" keystorePass="******"/>

Then stop'n'start JIRA:

sudo service jira stop
sudo service jira start

Now try to open following URL in your browser (replace 'machine' by your host name):
https://machine:8443/