Wednesday, November 2, 2016

Installing Robot Framework on a MacBook

I recently faced challenges getting the open source Robot Framework to work on my MacBook, which is running OS X El Capitan. In general, the installation process should be trivial, but here's what finally worked:

  1. If you have the brew package manager installed, update it:

        brew update
  2. Use brew to install (or upgrade) the chromedriver program:

      brew upgrade chromedriver
  3. Make and use a Python virtualenv for the framework installation:

      pip install --upgrade virtualenv
      source virtualenvwrapper.sh  # Note: Depends on where virtualenvwrapper.sh was installed to.
      mkvirtualenv robotframework
      workon robotframework
      cdvirtualenv
  4. Install the necessary framework packages:

      pip install --upgrade robotframework
      pip install --upgrade robotframework-selenium2library
      pip install --upgrade requests
Now, you'll be able to use the robot command to run test scripts OK :-)

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Monday, August 22, 2016

Disruptive SSD Set to Debut in 2016

Intel and Micron's new Optane™ SSD 3-dimensional memory technology is on-track to debut starting in 2016. This looks to be a disruptive technology in the non-volatile storage market. Could the end of mechanical hard drives be near? If the reliability is there, quite possibly!

Thursday, August 4, 2016

Intro to Amazon DynamoDB

This article presents a nice intro to Amazon DynamoDB. And, you'll also learn that "NoSQL" doesn't mean "Not SQL" but "Not Only SQL" :-D

Sunday, May 29, 2016

Windows 10 Pro SP 1511 upgrade warning


Heads up! If you have the built-in Administrator account enabled, make sure you add a standard account on the PC to the Administrators group before upgrading to Windows Service Pack 1511 (Build 10586.318). The SP doesn't respect the existing Administrator account status, and resets it to the default of "disabled", potentially locking you out of Administrative access to the PC! However, if you have another account added to the Administrators group beforehand, you can correct this after the fact. But if not, you are up the proverbial creek! This only applies to Windows 10 Professional Edition, not the Home Edition, which has no built-in Administrator account anyway.

Note: I've heard it said that it may be possible to boot into Safe Mode and logon as Administrator that way, regardless of whether the account's disabled or not, but I haven't personally tried it out to confirm.

Friday, April 8, 2016

New approaches to Unified Network Management

I've noticed a recent trend among wireless equipment companies to provide both cloud-based and premises-based management mechanisms for campus wireless networks. There are advantages and disadvantages to both; cloud offering "easy management from anywhere" and easy scaling and support, on-premises providing direct control to the network should cloud access drop or become otherwise unavailable.

Now, Netgear has taken the bull by the horns and is offering networking management that will use whatever model, or combination of models, the customer prefers. They obviously "get it!" I expect to see more vendors moving in this direction, too.