Category Archives: WebApps

Java Applet Failure in Accellion Product

We run a product, not too dissimilar from Dropbox, for sharing large files across company lines.  Our product is made by Accellion and it works pretty well all things considered.

Recently we ran into troubles with the Large File Uploader.  This is a technology for uploading larger files (above 2 GB, I believe) into the system.  Small files were working fine but for the Large File Uploader the “Choose File/Folder” button was remaining grayed.  Though this behavior was consistent across platforms it was only happening on certain machines.

Playing around with different browsers gave me some clues.  Opera with plugins disabled and JavaScript turned off it would give the same experience as the other browsers (the needed button being grayed-out).  However, once I enabled JavaScript (for that site) and enabled plugins (using plugins on demand also failed silently) I finally saw there was a missing plugin.  (Other browsers were not indicating there was a missing plugin.)

Turns out the plugin wasn’t technically missing.  You must also enable plugins in Java Preferences.  Here are both the Windows and Mac Java Preferences dialogs.

Java Preferences (Windows)
Java Preferences (Windows)
Java Preferences (Mac)
Java Preferences (Mac)

After fixing that, try visiting that page again and you (finally!) get something useful.

Security Dialog
Security Dialog

Tada!

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Create a New OU with ADManager

Our helpdesk uses ADManager as a tool for making Active Directory changes.  Though it is slower than accessing AD directly, it’s a pretty robust tool and it’s reasonably intuitive in most cases.  However, I needed to create a new Organizational Unit in AD and simply poking around didn’t turn up the solution.

Well, that’s because this particular step is decidedly unintuitive.

For your edification (and my memory) I present here the easy steps to accomplish this mild feat.

  1. Drop back to the ADManager dashboard by clicking the ADMgmt tab near the top of the page.
  2. Click on the “Create Single User” link (under “User Creation”).
  3. Near the bottom you will see a field for “Container:”; to its right click the “[Change]” link.
  4. Select your preferred parent OU in the main section, then click on the “Create New OU” link (near the top and to the right of the “Selected Container:” field).
  5. Enter the “Name:” in the small pop-up dialog.
  6. Then it’s the Create and Ok buttons to get that done.
  7. You can leave the unused Create Single User page as it was just a patsy.

Finis!

Hope that helps you.

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You Want Netflix, LOVEFiLM, or Redbox on Ubuntu?

Apparently it’s no problem.  It’s no problem not because Microsoft has finally pulled their giant collective head out of their minuscule collective ass; it’s no problem because it represented a challenge worthy of hacking in the open-source community.

You may already be running WiNE on your system.  That’s fine but you’ll need to swap it out for this specially modified version from a guy named Erich Hoover.  He has also built a set of packages for each of those services.

You can find the full instructions over at OMGUbuntu:

[How To] Watch LOVEFiLM, Redbox Instant or Netflix on Ubuntu

Love to hear your success stories or interesting related hacks.

Go get ’em, tigers.

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