Send me a position just because a keyword matched: This is my favorite (I know I said I am listing the points in no particular order but I just can't resist). Guys please! I can't be a good match for an ATG Architect position if I worked as a developer on ATG for 2 months in the year 2001. I know you are using some software to search resumes by keywords but at least glance through the resume once.

Try to tempt me to leave my current project: If I could change only one thing about the recruiting process, it would be this one. The recruiter tells me he has a position for me that would be a 'great' fit. I tell them I am already on a project and not looking for anything. And he tells me "I just wanted to check with you if you are dissatisfied with your current project or looking for a 'better' opportunity." If that' how you get the candidates, expect to loose them the same way. Come on! How could a candidate trust you with such an unethical behavior? When I come across a recruiter like this, the first thing that comes to my mind is, he is probably lying about both opportunity and role.

Describe every project as SOA/web service project and every position as architect position: This is a funny one. Once, after hearing the description, I told the recruiter it didn't sound like an architect role (it required developing swing components - something I had never done), she said, "I mean you will be working with people at architect level."Huh!

List technologies instead of describing the position and role: My reaction to these emails is... nothing! Because they have no information. I recent one I received looked like, "CA, 3-6 months, JSP, EJB, Struts, send resume..." I don't even know what to write about this one.

I have a few more that don't turn me off right away but do come across poorly:

• Send me an email not addressed to me
• Keep sending me the same position multiple times
• Spend more time describing your firm rather than talk about the position
• Be interested in my resume and rate information more than telling me about the opportunity

Next time look for "How NOT to get hired."

Anyway, I want to talk about its installation. I have always used this tool on windows and it always installed itself without any problems. You can download an exe file from here. But things aren't as easy on Linux (isn't that why most of the people still find windows easier to use?). Freemind requires several packages to be installed successfully on Linux. The easiest way to deal with these dependencies is to download Freemind  freemind-0.8.0-6.noarch.rpm file from here. Become root using su command and install the file using rpm -ivh <file_name> command. It will fail with a message that looks like:

error: Failed dependencies:
        jakarta-commons-lang is needed by freemind-0.8.0-6.noarch
        relaxngDatatype is needed by freemind-0.8.0-6.noarch
        msv-xsdlib is needed by freemind-0.8.0-6.noarch
        jgoodies-forms is needed by freemind-0.8.0-6.noarch
        xml-commons-apis is needed by freemind-0.8.0-6.noarch
        ws-jaxme is needed by freemind-0.8.0-6.noarch
        jakarta-commons-codec is needed by freemind-0.8.0-6.noarch

Now, go to JPackage website. Download and install every missing package listed above and then try installing Freemind again. Do you have to go through the pain of installing all these packages when all you need is a simple mind mapping tool? Not really! In the past I have used kdissert at http://www.kde.org.uk/apps/kdissert/, which is relatively easy to install but I am used to Freemind so I will stick to it.

RubyGems

Gotcha: I was unable to install RubyGems on SUSE 10.1 using the method described above. It worked fine on SUSE 10.2. On 10.1, when I issued ruby setup.rb command, it gave me the following error: /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/custom_require.rb:21:in `require__': No such file to load -- zlib

Based on experience shared by others on Google, I copied the zlib module from another location to where Ruby was looking for it but got the same error. Somewhere, I read you need the development version zlib-devel-1.1.4-8.1 but then I was unsuccessful in installing that one as well (can't recall the specific error). Before I could  fix that problem, I moved to SUSE 10.2 where everything went smooth.

Rails

People say rails can be installed using gem install rails --include-dependencies command (notice two hiphens before include and one hiphen before dependencies). However, when I upgraded to SUSE linux 10.2, I chose to install Ruby and rails out of the box so I didn't have to use this method. I did have to upgrade Rails from version 1.1.6 to 1.2 though. This is because out of the box, SUSE linux 10.2 comes with Ruby v1.8.5 (latest at the time of this writing) and Rails v1.1.6 (not latest at the time of this writing). To upgrade, I used sudo gem update rails --include-dependencies command. That's it! You have the latest and greatest version of Rails.Test it using rails -v command, which should show Rails 1.2.2 or whatever the latest at the time.

Anyway, if you follow my article to install SUSE 10.2, replace line "When asked to enter the directory, enter: /opensuse/distribution/SL-10.0-OSS/inst-source/" by "When asked to enter the directory, enter:/opensuse/distribution/10.2/repo/oss/." Everything else in the article should still be valid. Happy linuxing...

Starting v6.1, WebSphere separates administrative security from application security. The term administrative security means you need username and password to administer the server. This includes getting server status, stopping the server (somehow it doesn't include starting the server, you can start the server without supplying username and password) and administer the server through admin console or through wsadmin scripts. The term application security means you can protect resources in your application (e.g. you can protect /profile url), assign application security roles to those protected resources and map users or groups from ldap to those roles. It is important to note that starting WebSphere 6.1, you can choose to enable only administrative security or only application security or both. In previous versions you were required to enable or disable both at the same time. For now, we will only enable administrative security, we will talk about application security in the future when we have a sample application. This assumes that

1. you have already created a WebSphere 6.1 profile with security disabled (if you want to know how to do that Send me an email)
2. WAS is running
3. you have installed Apache DS and created users and groups
4. Apache DS ldap server is running

• Go to WAS admin console http://<host>:port/admin. For example, http://localhost:9060/admin
• Click on Security > Secure administration, applications, and infrastructure
• Select Standalone LDAP registry in Available realm definitions dropdown and click Configure
• Enter the following values in the screen:
• Primary administrative username: wasadmin (the admin user already created in ldap)
• Select Server identity that is stored in the repository radio button (because we don't want WebSphere to generate an id for us)
• Type of LDAP server: Custom (Apache DS is NOT one of the supported ldap servers)
• Host: localhost
• Port: 10389 (port on which Apache DS is listening)
• Base distinguish name (DN): dc=example,dc=com (all our groups and users are under this base dn)
• Bind distinguish name (DN): uid=wasadmin,ou=people,dc=example,dc=com (entry that uniquely identifies wasadmin user)
• Bind password: <password for wasadmin user you used in when you created user in LDAP>
• Leave default values for other options
• Click Apply
• Click Save directly to the master configuration link
• Click Advanced Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) user registry settings link under Additional Properties section
• User filter: (&(uid=%v)(objectclass=inetOrgPerson))
• Group filter: (&(cn=%v)(|(objectclass=groupOfNames)(objectclass=groupOfUniqueNames)))
• User ID map: *:uid
• Group ID map: groupOfNames:member;groupOfUniqueNames:uniqueMember
• Click OK
• Click Save directly to the master configuration link at the top of the page
• Click OK and Save again
• Click Security > Secure administration, applications, and infrastructure link on the left hand panel
• Select Enable administrative security checkbox 
• Unselect Enable application security checkbox
• Unselect Java 2 security checkbox
• Select Standalone LDAP registry in Available realm definitions dropdown and click Set as current button
• Click Apply button 
• Click Save directly to the master configuration link

We have enabled administrative security but the change will not take effect until we restart the server. Restart the server and go to admin console. Since security is enabled, you will be asked to accept a certificate and login using the WAS admin username and password you specified in ldap. From this point on, Apache DS must be running before you can administer the server.

Edit on Sunday Feb 18, 2007: Corrected the value of Bind distinguish name (DN): to read

Bind distinguish name (DN): uid=wasadmin,ou=people,dc=example,dc=com (entry that uniquely identifies wasadmin user)

As we will see shortly, a user may be part part of an organizational unit AND may belong to a group.

Creating groups and users

The high level steps to create users and groups are:

1. Create organizational units to hold users and groups
2. Create wasadmin user
3. Create application user
4. Create groups

To create the above items, you can specify all the information in a text file, commonly known as ldif file and load the file in the ldap server. Create a file called organizational_units.ldif and put the following content in it. If you are completely unfamiliar with LDAP concepts, this article may be a good start.

In JXplorer, select LDIF >  Import File, select this file and click Open. This will result in two new organizational units, ou=people and ou=groups under dc=example,dc=com. 

We will put all users (including system users) in people ou and all groups in groups ou. Let's create users first. Create a file called users.ldif and put the following content in it.

Importing the file above creates 2 users under ou=people,dc=example,dc=com. For example, the dn of the wasadmin users becomes, uid=wasadmin,ou=people,dc=example,dc=com. We will use this dn to login to WAS admin console after we enable administrative security. 

To create groups, create a text file called groups.ldif and put the following content in it:

Notice how both the groups use the member attribute and point to the dn of its members. This attribute is required because our groups use groupOfNames object class. Since the member attribute is required, we created users first and then the groups. At this point, your ldap settings in JXplorer should look like this:

That's it! We are now ready to enable security in WebSphere 6.1. I will describe that process in the next entry.