Code On A Stick

Option 1 - Startup Applications

Step 1: Use Ubuntu UI for configuring Startup Applications. Depending on the Ubuntu version you can either go to System > Preferences > Startup Applications or type “Startup Applications” in Dash. From there you can simply edit the list of applications that you want to run on startup. More about Startup Application UI.

Step 2: Configure your application to start with sudo without asking for password. For that you need to add your application to the list of sudoers and disable  password just for your app. Let’s open the sudoers configuration file. This can be done with visudo command like this:

sudo visudo

The reason visudo commend is recommended over using a regular text editor is because it locks sudoers configuration file while you are editing it.

Now let’s say your user name is user1 and app name is my_app.jar, then add the following line to the configuration file:

user1 ALL=NOPASSWD: java -jar /usr/local/my_app.jar

All done. Now you can restart Ubuntu and enjoy your app running.

Option 2 - Add your app to rc.local

Option 1 will start your application only after user has logged in. What if need to start your application before that or regardless if user has logged in or not? The one of the simplest options is to add your application to the rc.local file. Open editor:

gksu gedit /etc/rc.local

And add your command to execute application just before the exit 0 statement.

Option 3 - Run your app as a Service

Most common approach in Linux world is to add your app to the /etc/init.d script. You can do the same in Ubuntu too, but Ubuntu has something even better. It’s called Upstart. You can find the mode details on how it work in this blog post and on Ubuntu help page.

The beauty of this approach is that you can easily control your service from command like using start and stop command. It also allows you to configure dependencies on other services.

-=Oleg=-

For us, developers, it’s easy to deal with situations when your application needs to send one or two emails at a time, but is it okay to send hundreds of emails from your hosting server? Usually not and here is why.

First of all there are technical challenges. For example you have to make sure you are not exceeding the limits set by hosting providers (which are not always officially advertised).

Second and the most challenging part is getting around spam filters. If high deliverability is important to you (otherwise why would you even bother sending emails) then you need to start thinking about playing by the rules and implementing techniques like double opt-in, unsubscribe functionality and many other little things.

Unfortunately for you and fortunately for users, anti spam filters are very suspicions and it’s not that hard to get blacklisted. So if are interested in your emails being delivered into your users’ inbox, then the safest bet is let the professionals deal with that and focus on other not less important tasks.

So, now, where should you look for professional services if you need to send bulk emails? Such service is usually called email marketing. Pick carefully. There are many variations and different price points. If you don’t know where to start here are the two companies I had very good experience with: AWeber (www.aweber.com) and iContact (www.icontact.com) . As I already mentioned, I like both companies. I’d say they break even in the set of features they provide. AWeber seems to be the most popular choice – not sure why. Pricing wise iContact is a little bit cheaper, but that’s where you have to make your own comparison based on your needs.

If are not bored to death yet, I just want to mention that respectful companies like those mentioned above have API(s) for developer so if you need to send emails from your web site, you can, but now via reliable service.

Hey one more thing to consider is that email marketing companies can collects stats for you so you can actually see how many people opened your newsletter. Isn’t it cool?

I’ve got this error when I tried to change the password on Windows Server 2008 running on  Amazon ES2.

The thing is, I never changed this error before even though I had to change my password many times. What was different this time is that I had problem with server and had to Stop and Start the instance. As a result the name of the instance has changed.  The problem is Remote Desktop had saved the name of the previous instance in the username field in a form “instance name\my name”.

Soution:  I deleted the instance name in Remote Desktop and the error has gone away. Hurray!

-=Oleg=-