"svn: Malformed network data" error in Eclipse

Posted by Max Dunn Thu, 07 Dec 2006 18:37:18 GMT | 5 comments

Several weeks ago, I changed from a Windows laptop to a MacBook. After I got Eclipse setup and went to check-in some code to RubyForge, I received an error:

svn: Commit failed (details follow):
svn: Malformed network data

At first I figured that this was just a problem with the RadRails Subclipse module on my Mac, but then I tried it on my old Windows computer that used to work fine, and got the same error!

After googling around, it seems that this is a known issue when SVN server is updated to version 1.4, but older clients are used. The clients were fixed in October, but there hasn’t been a new official Subclipse build so the automatic Eclipse update doesn’t help. I spent a day trying to figure out how to compile a new Eclipse version, but no luck.

However, there are two workarounds. First, the svn command line works fine.

The second workaround relies on the fact that the changed files are actually committed, but that the error just prevents the local svn repository from recognizing that. So after the error, doing an “update” will merge the changes and everything will be good.

If you have added or deleted files, however, the update trick won’t work. In this case, it is necessary to delete the entire directory that contains the added or deleted files. Be sure to do this outside of Eclipse with Explorer or Finder! Then update the files and it will bring everything down fine.

Versions

Program Version
RadRails v.0.7.1
Subclipse 1.0.3
svn command line 1.3.1

Fix

Mark Phippard added a comment explaining the problem. Here is a summary:

The issue is JavaSVN. It had a problem talking to Subversion 1.4.x server. RadRails can be used with Eclipse 3.2 and then you can install Subclipse 1.1.9 which includes SVN 1.4 clients.

So I installed Eclipse 3.2 and RadRails on top. However, when I installed Subclipse according to the instructions:

  1. Eclipse: Help => Software Updates => Find and Install
  2. Search for new features to install
  3. New Remote Site
  4. URL => http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.0.x

it gave me version Subclipse 1.0.3. The trick to get Subclipse 1.1.9 was to use the update site:

  • URL => http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.2.x

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Apache Redirects to the Rescue

Posted by Max Dunn Sat, 07 Oct 2006 19:36:12 GMT | no comments

There are a couple of technical problems with my web site. The first is that to get into this blog, you need to add the trailing slash at the end of “typo” like this: 

http://www.maxdunn.com/typo/

Otherwise, the wiki gives a page not found error for the “typo” page. Of course, when most people type in the URL manually, they won’t add the trailing slash and then get confused when it doesn’t pull up my blog.

I have tried various things in the Rails routing.rb file to correct for this, but none worked. However, a simple change to .htaccess did the trick:

RedirectMatch permanent ^/typo$ http://www.maxdunn.com/typo/

Now another problem I have is that my ISP Site5 maps maxdunn.com to www.maxdunn.com and there is no way to turn this off. This causes several problems:

  • When logged into www.maxdunn.com, you won’t be logged in if you access it as maxdunn.com.
  • If someone first accesses the site using maxdunn.com, then the page cache will create all links as maxdunn.com and serve these up, even if the page is later accessed as www.maxdunn.com.
  • If the site is accessed with both maxdunn.com and www.maxdunn.com, then Google and other search engines will think these are two sites and neither will be ranked as highly.

To fix this problem, there is another simple .htaccess addition that will redirect all maxdunn.com requests to www.maxdunn.com:

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^maxdunn.com$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.maxdunn.com/$1 [L,R=301]

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Improving Hard Drive Performance

Posted by Max Dunn Thu, 14 Sep 2006 03:37:59 GMT | 1 comment

My computer is pretty lame. It is a lightweight Averatec 3280 laptop running Windows XP, and I bought it at Staples for under $900. This is half the price of a comparable Dell, so I willing to live with its problems. One of the problems is that whenever it hibernates, it comes back up with the wireless card off, so I need to turn it on then search for a wireless connection. Another problem is that the hard drive keeps dropping into PIO mode which makes everything really slow. So far, I have been deleting the IDE controller and rebooting twice to fix it, but this is a lengthy process.

Thanks to James Barton, here are some instructions for getting around this problem. I am going to try this on my computer and see how it works:

  1. Open up the Registry Editor.
  2. Navigate to the following key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet \Control\Class\{4D36E96A-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}.
  3. There are several sub-keys under this one, such as 0000, 0001, etc. You are interested in two of them that say Primary IDE Channel and Secondary IDE Channel.
  4. Make the following changes to both of those keys:
    1. Delete any attributes named MasterIdDataCheckSum or SlaveIdDataCheckSum. This resets the tracking for errors that Windows uses to determine when the transfer mode should be lowered.
    2. Add an attribute with the name ResetErrorCountersOnSuccess and a DWORD value of 1. This tells Windows that it should lower the transfer mode when there are six consecutive errors instead of six cumulative errors.
    3. If they exist, set the following keys to a hexadecimal value of ffffffff (eight F’s). This will change the transfer modes to UltraDMA-6:
      • MasterDeviceTimingMode
      • MasterDeviceTimingModeAllowed
      • SlaveDeviceTimingMode
      • SlaveDeviceTimingModeAllowed
      • UserMasterDeviceTimingModeAllowed
      • UserSlaveDeviceTimingModeAllowed
  5. Reboot your computer and check the devices to see if they are set to UltraDMA Mode 6.

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Test Post From Windows Live Writer

Posted by Max Dunn Thu, 24 Aug 2006 22:24:12 GMT | no comments

This is a test of the Windows Live Writer. It works pretty well!

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On-Demand Document Management

Posted by Max Dunn Fri, 18 Aug 2006 18:41:36 GMT | no comments

Here are some of my thoughts regarding on-demand document management.

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How To Really Mess Up a Hard Drive (Then Fix It)

Posted by Max Dunn Fri, 07 Jul 2006 18:05:50 GMT | no comments

Yesterday, I almost lost everything on my hard disk – very scary. I was playing around with Ubuntu 6.06 and it ran well from the CD, so I let it install itself to the hard disk. I knew that it was going to partition the disk and add a boot loader, but I figured that the worse thing that could happen was that I would have a boot menu and be able to select to boot from Windows each time. Wrong. I almost lost all my data, but in the end, was able to restore the original partition information. Here is my tale and how I recovered.

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Getting Started With Flickr on Rails

Posted by Max Dunn Thu, 06 Jul 2006 17:47:03 GMT | 4 comments

I have been working on a Flickr mashup on my wiki so that I can easily insert links to my Flickr pictures. There are several Flickr libraries for Rails, but the documentation is not very good. So here are some instructions for getting a Flickr library working with Rails.

(Note: On August 28, 2006, I expanded and updated these instructions at: http://www.maxdunn.com/RoR+and+Flickr)

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Eclipse and Subversion

Posted by Max Dunn Wed, 05 Jul 2006 20:41:03 GMT | 3 comments

It can be a little confusing to set up Eclipse to work with your Subversion repository. Once you have downloaded and installed Subclipse, follow these instructions to connect to your SVN repository:

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Google Map Mashup in Rails

Posted by Max Dunn Fri, 30 Jun 2006 17:03:00 GMT | no comments

How would you like to put an interactive Google map in your Ruby on Rails page with single or multiple markers? Here is how to do this.

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Eclipse: Closing Projects

Posted by Max Dunn Wed, 28 Jun 2006 02:25:00 GMT | no comments

Eclipse is known to be a memory hog and slow at starting up and shutting down. Especially if yo have a lot of projects with a lot of files, it can be painfully slow to start. A friend of mine took a programming class where they had exams using Eclipse. All the students made sure they started Eclipse well before class, otherwise they joked that it would take half of the exam time just for Eclipse to start!

Today, I discovered something that helps speed up Eclipse. If you right-click on the projects that you aren’t actively working on and “close” them, Eclipse won’t try to load them into the workspace. This helps not only with the startup and shutdown times, but also when it refreshes the workspace.

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