Automation Adventures

When upgrading an Ubuntu server to 8.04 LTS, you should use the new and improved server upgrade system. Use the following steps to activate this upgrade process:

1. Enable the “dapper-updates” repository
2. Install the “update-manager-core” package. Dependencies include python-apt, python-gnupginterface and python2.4-apt.
3. Run the command “sudo do-release-upgrade” in a terminal window
4. Follow the prompts on-screen.

ubuntu, lts, upgrade, 6.04, 8.04, dapper, hardy, python, update

I recently ran into some trouble accessing Automation Adventures. A strange screen covered pretty much the first page of the website, neatly hiding the login button and the dashboard of Wordpress. Some digging revealed that Google Analytics had added a CSS division named ga_shade, effectively preventing me from using my own site…

Luckily, the fix is simple: remove the GASO cookie. In Firefox, open Tools, Options, Privacy, and click on the Show Cookies button. In the Search bar, type GASO, and remove the cookie. Reload the page, and the mist should be gone.

Tags: analytics, css, div, ga_shade, google, page

To increase the security when dealing with credit card processing via ICVerify’s request/answer methodology, it is possible to encrypt and decrypt this information. However, the documentation is fairly sketchy on this subject, especially when you’re not working in one of the languages used in the examples in the SDK.

After some hair-pulling on why it doesn’t work, I think I’ve got it figured out now. Here are the steps I used to get it working:

1. EncryptionManager.DLL is not a normal DLL, it is a .NET assembly. Trying to register it with regsrv32 will result in an error message, saying that it doesn’t have a DLLRegisterServer entry point. The trick is to use either the .NET gacutl.exe or the icvgacutil.exe supplied on the ICVerify SDK CD.
   UPDATE:You also have to use regasm to register the assembly!
2. Once registered at the Global Assembly Cache (GAC), the name of the DLL is not EncryptionManager. To make things more interesting, I had to link to the name FirstData.Encryption.Facade.EncryptionManager. The only way to figure this out is to dig through the registry after registering the DLL, or to use the option on the GAC utility to write out a registry modification file.
3. In Progress, you can use the COM viewer to access EncryptionManager.tlb, and see the different methods defined in the DLL. You’re only going to be using 2 of them most likely: EncryptThirdPartyMessage and DecryptThirdPartyMessage. Both use the creation date of the file you’re working with, so be careful not to copy this file or move it across file systems.

The Progress code I used to encrypt a request file is as follows:

DEFINE VARIABLE vhEncryption AS COM-HANDLE NO-UNDO.
DEFINE VARIABLE vcPrepFilename AS CHARACTER NO-UNDO

INITIAL “C:\TEMP\icver001.prep”.

DEFINE VARIABLE vcReqFilename AS CHARACTER NO-UNDO

INITIAL “C:\TEMP\icver001.req”.

DEFINE VARIABLE vcEncrypted AS CHARACTER NO-UNDO.
DEFINE VARIABLE vcRequest AS CHARACTER NO-UNDO.
DEFINE STREAM sOutput.

UPDATE vcRequest FORMAT “x(60)”.
CREATE “FirstData.Encryption.Facade.EncryptionManager” vhEncryption.
OUTPUT STREAM sOutput TO VALUE(vcPrepFilename).
vcEncrypted = vhEncryption:EncryptThirdPartyMessage(vcPrepFilename,vcRequest).
PUT STREAM sOutput UNFORMATTED vcEncrypted.
OUTPUT STREAM sOutput CLOSE.
OS-RENAME VALUE(vcPrepFilename) VALUE(vcReqFilename).

The decryption routine is somewhat simpler, since we don’t have to move files around so much:

DEFINE VARIABLE vhEncryption     AS COM-HANDLE NO-UNDO.
DEFINE VARIABLE vcAnswerFilename AS CHARACTER NO-UNDO

INITIAL “C:\TEMP\icver001.ans”.

DEFINE VARIABLE vcEncrypted AS CHARACTER NO-UNDO.
DEFINE VARIABLE vcDecrypted AS CHARACTER NO-UNDO.
DEFINE STREAM sInput.

CREATE “FirstData.Encryption.Facade.EncryptionManager” vhEncryption.
INPUT STREAM sInput FROM VALUE(vcAnswerFilename).
IMPORT STREAM sInput UNFORMATTED vcEncrypted.
vcDecrypted = vhEncryption:DecryptThirdPartyMessage(vcAnswerFilename,vcEncrypted).
INPUT STREAM sInput CLOSE.

These code snippets should have some more error checking. Also, the request can be more than one line, depending on the version of ICVerify and the answer file settings in the configuration.

Tags: 4gl, answer, encryption, encryptionmanager.dll, icverify, progress, request

After last week’s problem with the Terminal Services client, I also experienced problems with the cursor keys in the VMWare client for Ubuntu 8.10. This was particularly annoying, since I use Quicken in a VMWare machine, and the selection of categories is much easier with the cursor keys than with the mouse.

It turns out that this is a bug in Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10. None of the patches since October 2008 have addressed this issue, but the manual fix is very simple:

• Open a terminal window
• Type the following in the terminal:
  

  echo ‘xkeymap.nokeycodeMap = true’ > ~/.vmware/config

After entering this you have to restart your VMWare client session. If it doesn’t work, try restarting the VMWare server, however, since this is a client setting, it shouldn’t affect the server or be affected by server settings.

Tags: 8.10, client, cursor keys, intrepid, keyboard, ubuntu, vmware