UTF-8 is hell. I have run into problems with UTF-8 before (see Migrating MySQL to UTF-8 encoding).

I moved a site that was displaying fine from an old Apache server to a new Apache2 server and quickly identified that the Apache2 server was displaying odd characters.

The site is running a PHP application with a MySQL backend. The MySQL database is using latin1_swedish_ci character encoding. The old site was displaying correctly. Both the new and old site are using the same database.

So what was going on?

I was running into an issue with a vserver where the disk space usage was at 23% but I was getting a 'No space left on device' error message. I run vserver with 12 virtual servers and none of the other servers exhibited the same behavior.

I ran into an problem with sound on a Dell Inspiron 518 workstation running Ubuntu 8.04. I had paused Amarok and then viewed a Flash video on youtube. When I went to play Amarok again Amarok stalled and hung there. I had to kill the amarok process to shut it down. The syslog gave up:

When updating a MySQL database table to use UTF-8 I came across an error:

Initial research indicates that the maximum key size in MySQL is 1000 bytes. Given that latin1 uses one (1) byte per character and UTF-8 uses three (3) bytes per character some indexes will exceed the 1000 byte limit. This accounts for the generated error when converting tables with large or compound indexes from latin1 to UTF8 encoding.

According to the MySQL bug tracker this issue has yet to be resolved. Currently the only solution is to limit indexing on UTF-8 encoded tables or use latin1 instead. Not the best of choices to say the least.

I was getting OutOfMemoryErrors when running Eclipse with multiple projects open. To solve the problem I added the following arguments to my quicklaunch:

eclipse -vmargs -Xms512m -Xmx1024m -Xss2m -XX:MaxPermSize=256m

Reference

-Xms

Specify the initial size, in bytes, of the memory allocation pool. This value must be a multiple of 1024 greater than 1MB. Append the letter k or K to indicate kilobytes, or m or M to indicate megabytes. The default value is chosen at runtime based on system configuration.

-Xmx

I recently downloaded and installed the latest version of Eclipse (3.4.0 aka Ganymede) and ran into some issues when trying to get Subclipse (plugin for subversion) up and running.

Initially I was getting the following error message when accessing Windows->Preferences->Team->SVN->SVN Interface dropdown:

JavaHL (JNI) Not Available

When attempting to view a repository via the "SVN Repository Exploring" perspective I got a different error message:

Unable to load default SVN client

During an upgrade of Ubuntu my printing capability was suddenly cut short. A red sign appeared on my printer icon on my task bar and any printed documents would be queued but not printed.

The Symptoms

A quick look in /var/log/cupsd/error_log gave the following clue:

Filter "brightq-CPCA" for printer "print" not available: Permission denied

I came across another issue on my Compaq Presario C500 laptop with regards to the audio. An issue exists with the Intel 82801G (ICH7 family) High Definition Audio (HDA) audio controller with regards to the headphones. When plugging in the headphones the sound continues to come out of the laptop speakers. There is a simple and quick fix to this issue:

Resolution

Edit the /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base f/etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base file:

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe/alsa-base

At the end of /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base add the following:

While installing the subversion plugin Subclipse in the Eclipse IDE I came across a problem. Subclipse uses "JavaHL (JNI)" to interface with subversion by default. This default setting generates an error when accessing the "Window->Preferences->Team->SVN" preferences:

Failed to load JavaHL Library.
These are the errors that were encountered:
no libsvnjavahl-1 in java.library.path
no svnjavahl-1 in java.library.path
no svnjavahl in java.library.path
java.library.path = /usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.03/jre/lib/i386/client::/
usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun-1.6.0.03/jre/lib/i386::/usr/lib/firefox:/usr/lib/
firefox/:/usr/java/packages/lib/i386:/lib:/usr/lib

During the installation of Ubuntu 7.10 on a Compaq Presario C500 laptop I ran into an issue with the sound not working. I could not find any useful information while searching the forums. Many tips and advice spoke of editing the /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base file to load an Intel specific module to no avail.

The installation went without any hitches and was remarkably fast. After installing the Ubuntu Linux operating system I rebooted. The first sign that something was not working correctly came just after the GRUB boot loader screen. Here is what I saw: