It's been a fun 8 3/4 years here at Sun. Today I will be given the chance to sit on the beach a lot more. Good luck to all my colleagues who are also leaving. Anytime you want to sit on the beach, let me know. To all my colleagues who are staying, keep on making the best products out there. I look forward to enjoying more time using them in the future.
 

This blog will continue at http://kamundse.blogspot.com.
 

Thanks again!

I am sure these must be making the rounds through techie blogs & SlashDot today but I thought they were too fun not to post.

 



 




I saw them on Flickr HERE.

 
I did get apache running eventually yesterday. Giving the machine a static IP fixed the error. I am glad it is working but I know (or hope anyway) there must be a way to make it work with dhcp. I will save that for another day and just be glad it is working now. Small steps...

 
To catch up on where we left off with my previous blog post... my server is now awol. Well, I have not lost track of it completely but I have no idea what is happening with it. [unhappy face] Amber was never able to figure out how to boot it off the CD. One of the other directors had a friend in the area who is a techie and she asked him to take a look at it. He met Amber to get the server, and that was the last I heard of it. Sigh. Some days I feel like we're never going to get that machine up and running. I do have a conference call with our new co-lo on Wednesday and I am hoping they can work with me to get this all resolved, assuming I can get the guy who has the server now to get it to them anytime.
 
Despite this setback, things are moving forward. We had a fundraiser to get the money to buy a new server. The server I have been trying to set up was donated by a friend and was supposed to get us off our current server to something that can sustain us right now. We need a new server in order to grow. Our members did an amazing job and we exceeded our goal so it looks like we'll be buying a new server soon.
 
To prepare for the move to OpenSolaris, we (my husband and I) installed 11.2008 on one of our home machines. Today I am trying to get the Web Stack up and running on OpenSolaris and get the configuration like what we have on the existing server. I am way too used to Solaris so of course I figured this would be really quick, just edit a few conf files and start it up. Nope... where is apache? Duh, it is not there, I need to add it.
 
Ok... time to read a little bit so I headed over opensolaris.com and clicked on the big "Use" icon -> Customize Your System. Perfect, what I want to do is the first thing listed. This is going to be quick and easy. Why do I let myself ever think that? As soon as I do, something always happens. Why do the instructions start with the software already on my computer? The first step is "extract the .tar.gz file...". What .tar.gz file? We seem to have missed at least one step here.
 
Grumble, do I need to do pkg install? What is the package name? That does not make sense with the instructions to extract a tar.gz file. I suppose I can see reasons why you do would want to have all the instructions on how to download it in the install & config guide... but this is html, would it be so hard to put a single line with a link to those instructions just in case people missed them? I never found anyplace that tells you what you need to do and ended up asking my husband what I needed to get. What would I do without him around?
 
A "pkg install amp" later and I have apache and friends. Let's try starting it... scvadm enable and hmm... it is in maintenance mode. You would think the -v (for verbose) option to svcadm might actually help you figure this out, but I guess verbose is one line saying "svc:network/http:apache22 enabled" to some engineer out there. Except it wasn't enabled, so that was pretty much useless as well as not being verbose. So I try scvs -x and see EXIT_ERR_FATAL. Ew, no fun. Maybe a log file? You might try looking in /var/log/apache2 like I did, but nope. The directory exists, but it is empty (of course, because otherwise it wouldn't fit with my day thus far). Alright, read the httpd.conf file. Well at least I did find the error log. Hmm... why can't it figure out its own IP address? I ask the oracle of everything I do not know, my husband, and he suggests dhcp might be the reason. I pray that is not it because that is just stupid. If my 6 year old Mac laptop can do it, then OpenSolaris better be able to.
 
Is 2pm too early to start drinking because I need one about now?
 
It is a good thing I have to stop now to get the kids from school... because when you start yelling at the computer, you know it is time to take a little break.

 
The goal was to get the server to the new co-lo by the end of November. We missed it. A big part of that was the Thanksgiving holiday and pretty much losing all of last week. But, another part of it is that it is really hard to do tech support. I have never envied the job of a phone tech support person, and last night just reminded me how frustrating it can be.
 
The member of my tech team, we'll call her Amber, who has the server right now was going to install OpenSolaris on the machine yesterday. Right after dinner I got a message from her, did I have a few minutes? She kept getting a login prompt but she did not have a username/password. That is not right, there shouldn't be a login prompt yet, we have not installed anything. She is certain she told the machine to boot off the CD-ROM. A few questions later about what various screens look like, did she see a pretty blue screen with the word "OpenSolaris" on it anyplace, etc.? No. Grub menu? Yes. Ok, we're not booting off the CD, but we're getting Linux booting off the hard drive.
 
Reboot... darn it the screen flashes too fast... reboot... reboot... reboot, and then she finally gets enough of a view of the initial screens to get in to the bios. Have you ever tried to help someone use a BIOS page for a machine you've never used before? Ick. It is not fun. I do not have experience with many varieties of PC hardware and this server is a brand I know nothing about. We manage to establish that the CD-ROM is set in the 2nd position for boot order but after 2 hours and many reboots we cannot seem to get it changed so that the machine will boot from the CD. Amber is 3 hrs ahead in time so we had to abandon the efforts for the night so she could get some sleep.
 
So, tonight we'll try again.

 
I've been trying to come up with a good pseudonym for the organization that I am the technical director for so that I can talk about it here without confusing what I am writing with whatever I am doing in my real job for Sun. How about Unnamed Social Network Site... or USNS for short? I suppose it really does not matter and that is easy enough to type.
 
A friend of mine donated a spare 1U server to USNS recently. We are currently leasing a server with our co-lo and it is not meeting our needs anymore. The donated server is not "new", but it was free and it should meet our current workloads. Like most non-profits, we operate on a shoestring budget and not having to pay to lease a server every month, especially one that cannot handle peak usage, is a big improvement for us.
 
Step one for the migration from the old server to the new server (and from Ubuntu to OpenSolaris) is getting the new server ready to be taken to the co-lo. Since the co-lo is on the other side of the country and we have no remote console set up, I need the OS installed before the machine is delivered to them. One of the members of my technical team, who lives in the same area of the country as the co-lo, will be doing this for me and then delivering the machine. It will be a great test of all the changes that have been made to the download and install process for OpenSolaris. I think the process is really easy, but I've been working with Solaris for a long time. Will someone with no Solaris/OpenSolaris experience see it the same way? I am about to find out. If all goes well, we'll have the new server online by the end of the month.

 
I guess saying "it's been a while" would be an understatement. I am sorry blog, I have ignored you for so long. I guess part of it was I have been busy but I think most of it was that I ran out of fun things to say. Most of what I do for work (unix conformance) is not very exciting to anyone but the handful of us that do. My main source of fun topics was my husband, who was working as a Solaris (and Linux) sysadmin for a university. Now he has moved to a new position focused strictly on email and not as general sysadmin, so his stories are less related to Solaris and not nearly as fun. (Though he did notice the big drop in spam this week as McColo was taken offline, that was pretty interesting.)
 
I finally will have some interesting stories of my own to relate. I have joined the board of directors for a non-profit as the technical director for the organization. No, I am still doing my day job. I guess this would count as a glorified hobby since it is all volunteer time. This hobby is going to allow me to completely design and direct the development of a new infrastructure for our organization of 29,000 members, 109 different local sites (with their own associated web forums), and 400,000 page hits a day to the web server (and everything growing fast). I've convinced them to take the plunge and we're moving to OpenSolaris for the entire network. I will finally get to use in a production environment all the cool tools I've barely been able to make use of, and many I've only just gotten to read about.
 
Step one is to migrate the existing set up from Ubuntu to OpenSolaris, and to new hardware in a new co-location facility. On paper, it seems like it should not be too difficult. All the key apps (apache, mysql, postfix, and phpbb) and their configuration work under Solaris. But, I know how migrations go and I am sure some adventures are in store for me.
 
So, hold on to your hats and glasses... things are likely to get interesting from here on out!

While I was on vacation last week, the following email was sent to the OpenSolaris discuss alias (posted here with permission of the author):

Subject: Solaris "thinks" that my standalone desktop is a huge network....

By "standalone" I mean a computer that is not part of a LAN, not even on a peer-peer connection, but one that gets on to the Internet.

I have a desktop with Sun Solaris and I have this problem. Solaris thinks that my standalone desktop is a huge network with a thousand users or more. I need to figure out a way of making Solaris understand that I am the only person using this compuer which is all alone, by itself.

I name is Shiva, and I want to tell my computer that it is my computer. It is ok for me if it allows another person called "root" who I figure out is a someone who is knowledgeable enough to get down to the root of the computer, it is not going to be me, it would be the support professional who would at some point of time visit me to look into my computer. But who is nobody? who is nouser? who is guest? What are groups? Why does Solaris say that I don't have the rights and privileges to access my DVD drive?

Why does Solaris wait for the root user to log in to shut down my computer ? I can log out as Shiva, but I don't see the controls to shut down. So, I phone up support to come in and log in as root and shut down my machine every afternoon, evening and at night and in the middle of the night.

And Solaris doesn't say yes immediately. It agrees to shut down, not until allowing 60 seconds to all other users who do not exist, after it sends out a "broadcast" announcing the "system" shut down, while I wait with my eyes fixed on the monitor on the messages that flash by in commnad prompt which I can't figure out, until Solaris finally shuts down...

Solaris thinks that my computer is a huge network, so offers me plenty of functalities that I am not going to need nor understand.

Solairs is elaborate, very elaborate and robust, but my computer stands alone. What do I need to tell Solaris to offer me just what I need and no more ?

What components are needed and what need to be stripped ? If my computer is a standalone ?

When I saw the subject, I was thinking, what the heck is this person talking about? When I read it, I was just dying with laughter. I was just amazed. It was so funny, and so right on. This is probably one of the best emails I have seen on that alias in months. I was sitting next to my husband and just going on about how great this email is. Really, it should be on the approachability alias. It just perfectly encapsulates some of the key issues with Solaris and OpenSolaris.

Then, I read the replies. Oh man, I could not believe it. WOOSH! That was the sound of this email going right over their heads. Not just a few people, no, *every* one of them just did not get it. I was thinking, oh no way, how could they take this email seriously?? People were trying to "educate" the imaginary Shiva on what root is and how they hoped there was some competent admin there running his system for him. Some were angry that Shiva was not interested in learning how to be a Solaris expert but just wanted to use his machine like a dumb Windows box. It was just sad really.

Come on! Would anyone who knows that little about unix and/or linux be on the OpenSolaris discuss alias?

Is it any wonder that OpenSolaris and Solaris aren't your mother's unixes? Nope, because we don't get it. We write code that makes it do what we, the unix geeks, want. We have no clue what many of our customers want. We want to expand our market share. How many geeks like us do we think are out there? We have no prayer of breaking into Windows' market share, or make a significant dent in OS X, because most of the people using computers out there are like Shiva, not like us. OS X has proven you can be UNIX and still be totally functional for all the Shivas out there. My parents both use OS X. They couldn't tell you how to get a command prompt or what root is but they can make their computers do everything they need them to. They can get them to do more than I can get my Solaris 10 desktop (working as a desktop, not a server) to do, and I am supposed to be an expert.

All the folks on OpenSolaris discuss wanted to do was just make Shiva go away. They wanted to tell him why he was wrong (or uneducated, or both), Solaris was right, and "teach" him how to use his computer our way. Don't get me wrong here. Solaris is great. If I was setting up a server, I wouldn't choose anything else. It is absolutely the best OS for that market. As a desktop, it is not there and it never will be until we get it.

Maybe we need to take a few refreshers on requirements gathering (and also on HCI).

  
I am not usually up for shameless plugs, begging, or even personal stuff in my work blog but other people who entered are working the system so I decided to make an exception. A local photographer is having a "funny kid photo" contest and we sent one in of a very sour-faced looking Mae. If you have a spare minute... go and take a look and vote for Mae (or some other kid if you really want to).  
 
http://www.designfocusstudio.com/blog/  
 
I think the picture we sent is pretty funny looking. No, I did not give her a slice of lemon to get her to make that face either. :)  
 
Here is a much cuter picture of her:  
 

 
I had a really good/funny story about Tom's new job here. He started a new job, still at the University but now working for the group that supports the whole campus. He was hired to be their Solaris expert. The CIO of the campus used to be Tom's boss in his old job so he knew what Tom could do. I am thankful he took the job because I think if he had not they would have eliminated Solaris completely. The problem with where he works is they don't know Solaris and so they do not know how to do things correctly. The result is they have made a lot of mistakes which make the systems difficult to admin and makes them run less than optimal.  
 
He made me take the funny story down but that is ok because it was the lesson the story teaches that made me post it. Not knowing they are doing things wrong, they are left just thinking Solaris is not as good as Linux. So, instead you get our conversation about why I posted it:  
 
Kristin: you make great stories, http://blogs.sun.com/kamundse
Tom: don't do that
Kristin: no one from (your work) reads my blog
Kristin: ok ok, i think it is funny, and useful
Tom: it is, but I have to work here
Kristin: i dont just put it on because it is funny, it is important
Kristin: these guys could ditch Solaris because they think it sucks
Kristin: because they can't use it right
Kristin: so why is that? why are they doing it all wrong?
Tom: they are used to Linux, they want to force solaris to work like linux and they don't want to learn the advanced solaris tricks
Kristin: yes
Tom: hence the /etc/hosts file that solaris doesn't deal with correctly
Tom: not using the solaris patch process, but rather making it look as much like linux as they can
Tom: add to that disabling auto_home
Kristin: i think Sun people need to know how the system are being used
Kristin: they need to know how people expect things to work and then we either need to provide linux-like interfaces or really get the message out about how to do things right
Kristin: ok... can i put this on my blog?
Tom: ok

 
Better late than never eh... Mae Ella was born August 24th. I have been on maternity leave since then and I actually missed you blog of mine. I am a terrible blogger, I never even mentioned I was pregnant or would be leaving soon. I just get too focused on the geeky stuff sometimes.  
 
Here's a picture of Mae:
 
 
I am biased I know but she is so darned cute!!  
 
I am off to read the 3100+ emails I have sitting in my inbox. :)

 
I work from home full-time. I love it. I have been working from home for 5 years now, longer than most people. About the time I started working from home, Sun started this great program called "iWork" which is all about flexible work spaces. On the whole it is a great program but sometimes it seems like they still don't quite get it.
 
Today's example:
 
I got an email today about an iWork forum for "home assigned" employees in the and those considering becoming "home assigned". Further down in the email it says, "Please note that this is an in-person session only." The forum will not even be able to take call-ins.
 
Um, hmm.

According to the LA Times, $400 million from a 2004 anti-trust settlement against Microsoft will be used for "technology education". The money can be used for computer hardware, software, maintenance and infrastructure, and networking equipment. The full article is here.
  
What I want to know is, how much of that $400 million is going to be spent on Windows and other Microsoft products. Many districts are still trying to get legal copies of Windows for all their computers before they get nailed by M$ for pirating. All the schools in my daughter's district use Windows PCs.
  
"Ha Microsoft! We're taking $400 million from you to punish you for anti-trust violations and you know what we're going to do with that money?? We're going to buy your stuff! Ha! That'll teach you!"
  
I think it is too much to hope that all that money will be spent on non-M$ stuff and a virtual pipe dream that any of it will be spent on unix-based stuff.

 
 
When we last saw our hero, she had fought with RMI for 3 hours only to emerge victorious. Alas, the victory was short-lived. Happy that her code was working, she became busy with another project for awhile and had not tried to run it again until this unfortunate day.  
 
It is a sunny Monday morning, the sounds of the ocean and singing of birds creating a relaxing background music, when our hero sits down to look at her code after a month. She first thinks to herself, "now, what was I doing with this?", and the painful memories of a Friday one month earlier begin to surface. She makes no changes to her code and tries running it again through Netbeans. That still does not work. No problem, she says to herself, unaware that the evil overlord, RMI is waiting to attack with his ultimate weapon, the Exception. She tries to start it from the command line using the exact same command which had finally been successful last time.  
 
The horror, the shock, the emptiness in the pit of her stomach destroyed the peaceful setting as she read:

port is 1099
RMI registry started.
Starting server...
Server failed to start.
java.security.AccessControlException: access denied (java.net.SocketPermission 127.0.0.1:1099 connect,resolve)

 
How can this be?? How has RMI yet again found a way to destroy our hero's happiness and force her to spend yet another day trying to simply get the server to run?  
 
This sad story is still unfolding. Our hero is right now avoiding pulling her hair out by distracting herself writing silly blog entries. How will it end? Stay tuned!  
 
The story continued:  
 
Our hero's mental stability has begun to crumble. Again, for no reason that can be determined, the code mysteriously started working even though nothing was changed. The command which now works is:  
java -Djava.security.manager -Djava.security.policy=policyfile -cp $HOME/nbprojects/TRProto2/dist/TRProto2.jar server.TestRunnerServer  
 
Speed readers may not notice the subtle difference. Last time, -Djava.security.policy=common/policyfile worked, this time, our hero had to remove the common/ and use a policyfile outside of the .jar file. As we leave our hero for the day, she is questioning both her heroness and whether to finally believe that now it does indeed work.  
 
Hopefully there will be no need to check back with our hero. Perhaps RMI has once and for all been defeated. Those who have experienced RMI know better. They know somewhere, somehow, RMI is planning its revenge, waiting to strike when least expected.

 
 
...some days I really want to smack some Java engineer... or drop-kick my computer downstairs.  
 
So, of all the things I ever do with Java, RMI has to be the most frustrating. It is frustrating because it is so cool and yet so hard to get running! I've used RMI on several projects and still I cannot seem to ever get it to just run on the first try. I am not talking about anything complex here like by two versions of Java are slightly off so the serialization doesn't work (which has happened to me... and between minor revisions of the same major release, 1.4.2). No, I am talking about something simple like creating a server with one function, which is just a stub still, and just making sure it can start up.  
 
I wasted over three hours on this so I thought I'd blog my experience. Maybe I can save someone else the same waste of time. I wish I could say I got all the problems solved but at least I can start the server.  
 
My first problem was with Netbeans. It is completely not obvious what you need to do to make it so you can run rmic on your Remote classes. I spent a good 30 minutes trying to figure this out.  
 
To run rmic on your Remote class:

• Window Menu - Files
• Open the file build.xml for editing
• Add to build.xml:

      <target name="-post-compile">
         <rmic base="${build.classes.dir}" includes="**/server.TestRunnerServer"/>
      </target>
  

 
 
My second problem was also with Netbeans and I have not solved it yet. Once you have your code compiled and have run rmic, naturally you want to run the code. That didn't work so well for me. The first run resulted in:  
 

Server failed to start.
java.security.AccessControlException: access denied (java.net.SocketPermission 127.0.0.1:1099 connect,resolve)
java.security.AccessControlException: access denied (java.net.SocketPermission 127.0.0.1:1099 connect,resolve)
        at java.security.AccessControlContext.checkPermission(AccessControlContext.java:264)
...
        at sun.rmi.registry.RegistryImpl_Stub.rebind(Unknown Source)
        at java.rmi.Naming.rebind(Naming.java:160)
        at server.TestRunnerServer.main(TestRunnerServer.java:143)

(Netbeans stack traces are upside down)  
 
Quickly I though to myself that I probably need to add something to the java command since I do when I run RMI code at the command line. Normally I run RMI code with the following:  

java -Djava.security.manager -Djava.security.policy=PATH_TO_POLICYFILE -cp MYJAR MYCLASS

 
So I decided to start there. I had put the policyfile in the common package, the class I want to run is in the server package. I added to "Arguments" in Properties:Run -Djava.security.manager -Djava.security.policy=common/policyfile, I figured the classpath should not need setting. It did not help, the same stack trace happens. Well, maybe that was the wrong place to put the -D args, so I tried the "VM Options" which seems to be what the Netbeans Tutorial was saying to do. Still the same problem.  
 
At this point I decided to make sure it was not something with netbeans causing the problem so I tried to run my code from the command line. That did not work either but I did not save what the stack trace was. It was time to start looking on the Java Forums and on Google for some ideas. The first page I came across was talking about how his problem was the /etc/hosts on his machine had an entry like:  

127.0.0.1        localhost     mymachine

 
This was causing his stuff to try to connect to mymachine when it should have been localhost. That was not my problem but it made me start to wonder if maybe VPN or NIS was somehow confusing RMI. So, I moved the code to a machine at work rather than my home machine. The machine at work is the place it will run when deployed so I figured what better place to get it started.  
 
With the code moved to my work machine, I tried to run it again, and still it failed. I did not save this stack trace either but I was wondering if maybe my code that automatically starts the registry was not working.  
 
The code to start the registry:  

      try
      {
         Registry registry = LocateRegistry.createRegistry(port);
         System.out.println("RMI registry started.");
      }
      catch (ExportException ee)
      {
         System.out.println("Failed to find RMI registry: port " + port 
               + " already in use.");
      }
      catch (RemoteException re)
      {
         System.out.println("Failed to find registry");
         if (debug)
         {
            System.err.println(re);
            re.printStackTrace();
         }
         System.exit(1);
      }

 
 
So, I started the rmiregistry by hand at the command line. That made the error change, which is progress of a sort. Now I was getting:  

java.rmi.ServerException: RemoteException occurred in server thread; nested exception is:
        java.rmi.UnmarshalException: error unmarshalling arguments; nested exception is:
        java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: server.TestRunnerServer_Stub
java.rmi.ServerException: RemoteException occurred in server thread; nested exception is:
        java.rmi.UnmarshalException: error unmarshalling arguments; nested exception is:
        java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: server.TestRunnerServer_Stub

 
 
So, off to look up that error. It seems people get it pretty often because I found lots of places talking about how to fix it. Here is a summary of the different suggestions:

• Check your files permission carefully. The directory containing the files will be also required a+rx. Also make sure the path is correct.
• Use the parameter -Dxxx like in the following call:
  java -classpath=.. -Djava.rmi.server.codebase=file://<IP>/<Drive-Letter>:/<Path to the root directory of your packages>/<Class with main>
  Do not forget to use the trailing '/'.
• If you have CLASSPATH set to .;xxx;yyy;zzz just start rmiregistry from the directory where you have server object (to make . work for both rmiregistry and your server object)
• Explode the jar and call the class file directly.
• Put the .class files in a web directory.
  Run rmiregistry.
  java -Djava.rmi.server.codebase=http://www.yourmachine.com/~<your-username>/ -Djava.security.policy=java.policy YourClass rmi://:<port-number>/<a-name>
• You also need to set the classpath for the registry, with -J-Dclasspath=xxx
• Your rmic command needs a -d option specifying the output directory, which should be the same as the classpath.
• You could try this instead: javaw -classpath xxx sun.rmi.registry.RegistryImpl
• I believe the remote class and stub must be visible to the RMIRegistry not just the remote application. So you will have to unpack at least those two and put them in a path the rmiregistry can find.
• Important! No classes shall be visible for rmiregistry.
  You might get problems later by having it like that.
  I think your problem is the codebase, set the codebase to the stubs and I think it will work.
  -Djava.rmi.server.codebase=file:/myhome/classes
• The solution: do NOT use a COMPRESSED jar file with an RMI server.
• I put my Server in a package and when running with "java" the stub could not be found.
• java -cp .
• java -classpath %CLASSPATH%;d:\my\class\path; sun.rmi.registry.RegistryImpl
• I've taken to starting the registry in code in my server using LocateRegistry.createRegistry() and documenting in my server documentation that any already running registry MUST have the server jar (which contains the stub) on its classpath.
• java -classpath /jars/x.jar:/jars/y.jar -Djava.rmi.codebase=file:/export/home/guy_t/
• -Djava.rmi.server.codebase=file:/home/crease/java/basic/rmi_first/first.jar
• If the client and server do not share the same file system (even via NFS), then -Djava.rmi.server.codebase=file:///xyz will not work.
  Using ftp instead, should work, but I have never used it. Read the doc, as I understand FTP always need a user name and password .. I do not know how that is shared. com.foo.bar.MainClass

 
 
Woah, is your head spinning yet? Ok, has anyone developing Java thought that if there can be this many ways to mess up just finding the _Stub that maybe something is not right here? So, here I am trying every one of these "solutions" (some really can't be called anything less than cheesy hack). And in the end, none of them worked.  
 
Now, keep in mind through all of this, I have not changed a line of actual code, just played with my CLASSPATH, the args I am sending to the java command, extracting my class files out of the jar, etc.. I do not even know why, perhaps the gods finally took pity on me after 3 hours of this torture, but I decided to kill rmiregistry and then use just the following command:  
java -Djava.security.manager -Djava.security.policy=common/policyfile -cp $HOME/nbprojects/TRProto2/dist/TRProto2.jar server.TestRunnerServer  
And it worked. W??!?!?!?! I know what the problem was, the rmiregistry process I started did not have the classpath. But, I tried running it a few times before I started running rmiregistry by hand, and it didn't work. What is more, I did the same thing on my home machine where this started, and it worked there too!  
 
Sadly Netbeans is still not working, but at least it runs. If I weren't so ready to be done for the weekend and enjoy my Friday I might be upset that there seems to be no reason why it suddenly works now.  
 
Hey, yea, it is friday night... what the heck am I doing blogging? Enjoy your weekend!