Getting autofs working on a Centos NeCTAR vm

So I have to set up a web server on a NeCTAR vm to allow public access to some research data that is sitting on RDSI storage in the QCIF UQ node. The node support team requested that instead of just NFS mounting the data storage to the vm, it would be preferable to use autofs to mount the filesystem.

I'm not a sys-admin type - mostly my linux environments are all set up for me so this was a bit of an adventure. I had quite a few problems so, with the aim of helping out future non sys-admin types in the same position, I thought I should document what I had to do.

Fix for disappearing records in ReDBox

Post upgrade to 1.6 we have had problems with records "disappearing" when progressing through the workflow. This has happened with records created in the previous version that have been sitting in "Investigation" or "Metadata Review" stages. To fix, edit the .tfpackage file for the appropriate record and add in the following after the metadata array:

    "packageType": "dataset",
    "viewId": "default",
    "known_ids": "<redbox_record_id>"

Something for next time

Remember, if you change something in a buildout script - rerun buildout if you want the change to have efffect.

Vim Stuff

Add/Delete indent

When in insert mode,

• CTRL-T increase indent by one shiftwidth
• CTRL-D decreases indent by one shiftwidth

Word completion

• general vim stuff; not dependent on any additional script
• blog article here: http://www.thegeekstuff.com/tag/vim-auto-completion/

keystrokes	action
^x^n	word completion
^x^l	line completion
^x^f	filename completion

Exuberent Ctags

• http://vim-taglist.sourceforge.net/manual.html

keystrokes	action
	Turn on taglist
:TlistAddFilesRecursive *.	Add files recursively e.g. :TlistAddFilesRecursive ~/code/instance/parts/omlette/ *.py

Package configuration

When creating a new package and you need to add a new dependency

1. edit profiles/default/metadata.xml to add in a new dependency and increase version number
2. edit configure.zcml to add the upgrade step for the new version
3. edit setup.py in the top level of the package directory structure and add in the new package to theinstall_requires list.
4. rerun buildout so that new dependency can be pulled down
5. rerun instance and go to the Add-on Products section of Site Setup and run the upgrade

Plone debugging

To get an interactive debugger in your plone code:

• add import ipdb; ipdb.set_trace() into the code
• the set_trace function sets a breakpoint at the point in the code.

To reload the code you are debugging after you have made changes with out having to restart the service, to gohost:port/@@reload

this doesn't always work. If you get a complaint mentioning something to do with calling super then you will probably just have to live with restarting the service instead.

Documentation

I hate documentation - writing it that is. I really appreciate being on the receiving end of documentation (well, good documentation anyway) but I loathe writing it. My typical level of productivity is about a paragraph a day and, since I have 2 working days left to write both a final report and user documentation for a web site that doesn't seem like it will work.

Only thing worse that writing documentation is reviewing/assessing bad documentation - my eyes just slide off the page mid-way through sentences and my brain start throwing anything it can into the conscious thought-space to distract from the task at hand.

P.S. Think I need to change blog title from Ponderings to Grumblings.