Because I haven’t seen it before, this notification splashed by on the upper right and freaked me out for a few minutes while trying to confirm it was benign.

After Googling for a minute, I find out this is a security update that Apple decided to push to all users. You can read the details about the security update at OS X Daily.

What scared me is I didn’t know Apple pushed security updates this way. My thoughts are nice work Apple for making the security update option enabled by default and pushing the necessary security updates. Bottom line, make sure you leave the ‘Install system data files and security updates’ checked.

Even though I’m relatively  quick to update my Mac, unlike OSxDaily related post, I don’t have “Install OS X updates” because I try to install when I’m at home. This way, if anything funky starts happening on my Mac, I’ll have some time to start Google, blame, test or fix. Related to fixing, I want to wait I’m on my home wifi so my Time Machine backup will be there to pickup the update or give me a quick exit from the update if needed.

My MacBook Air is on Yosemite 10.10.1 but this security patch applies to OS X Yosemite (10.10), OS X Mavericks (10.9), and OS X Mountain Lion (10.8).

Great job Google for finding the bug and passing the heads-up to Apple. Kudos to OSxDaily for giving legit info on http://osxdaily.com/2014/12/22/ntp-critical-security-update-os-x/.

I love VMware. I love Komodo Edit.

Why? Komodo Edit is a code editor that works beautifully in Windows, Mac and Linux. There are so many useful and cross-platform features  that amaze me no matter which OS I’m working in. Bottomline, Komodo Edit is solid software and I’m not paid to say it. As a nod, VMware is light and nibble, well worth the price compared to other virtualization software.

Sorry, I spewed a bunch of nerdy jargon. If I’ve lost you, then ignore the rest of this post, or, if you’re an overachiever like me, Google for info and tutorials on hardware virtualization.

Anyways, the problem I often find with Komodo Edit running in Linux VM is crazy display problems. This started happened after upgrading from Ubuntu Linux 12 to 14 LTS on OS X Mavericks.

The main panel will be somewhat messed up with repeating non-sense. E.g.:

A bunch of repeated keywords , Finnish umlauts or other accent marks we don’t use in English. Basically, the display is messed up.

The above screenshot shows a bunch of repeated keywords and Finnish umlauts I don’t use. Crazy! Basically, the Linux display is really messed up.

Solution:

Slightly move the border between the left frame and main content frame, and Voila, you easily solved  the problem.

Nice job! Take notes because the harder part is to remember the solution. Do you want help with your Dev Op or Sys Admin needs? Contact us at Techborder.

Tech Details:

Komodo Edit (build info version 8.5.4, build 14424, platform linux-x86_64)  in Ubuntu Linux (Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS) with VMware Fusion (7.0.1) on an Mac host ( OS X, Yosemite, 10.10.1) .

Summary: After using dozen of other software solutions, I’m still loving and preaching VMware and ActiveState, so great job brothers and sisters working there!

Please comment on Google+ or share where ever.

Background

Using Trac on the Bitnami stack on a AWS server, I needed email notifications. To get email going, I installed sendmail.

In Trac, sendmail would work but there was always an annoying and unsettling warning-error. Warnings, especially ones that have the word error in them, make me nervous.

"Warning: The change has been saved, but an error occurred while sending notifications: Sendmail failed with (0, ERROR: ld.so: object 'libssl.so' from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored.), command: '[u'sendmail', '-i', '-f', u'no-reply@techborder.com',u'notmyemail@techborder.com']"

Solution

1. Edit script setenv.sh

   sudo vi /opt/bitnami/scripts/setenv.sh

2. Comment out the line

   export LD_PRELOAD=libssl.so

3. Save the file.
4. Restart Apache
   1. For  Ubuntu

      sudo service apache2 restart

   2. Specific for bitnami

      sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh restart apache

Lessons Learned

1. Try easier way by looking (grep) for hardcoded references to the ‘.so’ file in question.
   I spent a lot of time trying to fix library paths, manually link to new libraries or replace any reference the bitnami python in /opt/bitnami with the system python in /usr. Hours lost which I do not get paid for since this is our company’s own server.
2. Use bitnami for proof-of-concept only and do not put valuable data or config in the apps.
   At first, bitnami seemed like a good deal with easy setup of tons of web apps, free account for 1 server and automatic backups. But this configuration problem, along with the no easy way to upgrade existing software or add new applications, make bitnami stack, even if free, too expensive compared to a pure AWS server. I’ve never had this much trouble configuration or update trouble with a modern Linux system that uses apt-get.
3. Python interactive shell is great for troubleshooting.
   Adapting Jim’s script from stackoverflow and running it in the python shell, I was able to trace down the error to a python configuration problem.
   Follow my debug logic. Since I could reproduce the error in python interactive shell, I knew that the error “ld.so: object ‘libssl.so’ from LD_PRELOAD cannot be preloaded: ignored” was probably nothing specific to Trac. Since the system python (/usr/bin) worked fine with sending mail and the bitnami python did not, I knew the error had something to do with the bitnami stack.

Summary

The combination of the completely separate bitnami binaries from the system binaries and various config scripts inconspicuously hidden in various folders in /opt/bitnami/ made this one hard problem to root cause and fix. This took me a way too long to debug. Using my typical Ubuntu or Debian server setup, I probably could have solved this in about 2 hours instead of 8. The Bitnami stack can be a quick way to test drive software, but hand in the keys after the first couple days of driving.

If your mind exploded, sorry. I try to make software easy to explain, Apple-pretty and rock solid. Software is very complicated. In the meantime, money hungry hackers in low-cost countries will try to maximize profits in the time they have so patch your servers.

Overall, seems like a huge gaping security hole for Open Source community, but I still put more trust in open source over closed source.