Category: MacOS

doing a little java work — getting set up

whbeebe
IntelliJ IDEA 2023.3.2 (Community Edition) with a basic boilerplate project it created.

I suddenly find I have need to do a little Java development. It’s been a long time since I dipped my fingers, as it were, into writing Java code. This was back around Java 9 (September 2017) and it was such as mess with the way Oracle had blown up Java’s libraries that I just basically walked away from Java. I still install it when I need it because I have some tools that depend upon the Java runtime.

Here I am trying to come up to speed, which at this point in my life may be impossible. I haven’t changed so much as Java has. Right now I’ve installed Java 21, what now passes for an LTS. I’ve installed the JDK and an IDE to work with it on my M1 Max MacBook Pro. Here’s what I did to get something working.

First I tried to install the JDK. I went searching for the latest LTS that would run on aarch64/arm64. When I searched on Duck Duck Go, I got nothing but hits on installing the Oracle version, which is not what I wanted. Instead I had to remember to search for Adoptium ( https://adoptium.net ). Rather than take the default offered on the landing page I chose to go to the alternate downloads page and pick it that way;

Adoptium Latest Releases page

As you can see I whittled my choices down to two. I went with the .pkg because it’s a Mac, so that should be a no-brainer installation. That was a mistake. It installed alright, I just don’t know where. I came back and downloaded the tar.gz archive, unpacked it in a location in my local folder, defined JAVA_HOME to point to the location and then added it to my path. Once that was all done I could do a java --version and get the LTS version release.

I then decided to install NetBeans 20. I was a long-time NetBeans user and felt comfortable trying it again. The problem is that it would never find my installation of Java. I finally went into the app directory structure and ran, from the command line, ./netbeans --jdkhome $JAVA_HOME, at which point it finally came up. I was able to set up a decent look-and-feel and began to get comfortable with it. I even checked to see if NetBeans knew about the local Java installation, and it appeared to. However, when I closed NetBeans and tried to start it via Launchpad, it failed to start just like before. After that I removed NetBeans and installed IntelliJ IDEA 2023.3.2 (Community Edition) and immediately got to work learning how to get productive with it. I’ve used IntelliJ tools in the past for a number of years and I’ve never been disappointed. This time I chose to use the Community Edition because I didn’t need the full-blown suite, and I don’t have the funds right now to pay for a full commercial license. Maybe if this bit of work leads to something more substantial then I’ll expense it. Right now I’m just getting started.

So far the choices I’ve made appear pretty solid, and IntelliJ IDEA is a very nice environment.

wireshark 4.2.0 running on macos 14.2.1

whbeebe


A year ago, January 2023, I posted that there was a problem running Wireshark on macOS 13 (see link below). I figured out a solution that lasted about four months (I believe), until one day when I just clicked on Wireshark’s icon, it started normally. Wireshark’s been running normally ever since. I never did determine what happened, but I strongly suspect it was with the application, and not macOS. Since I’ve been getting some hits on that old post recently I decided today to write this follow up post.

Some personal history: I’ve been using Wireshark since it was called Ethereal, all the way back to the very start of the 21st century, when I was introduced to an early version I used to examine a workplace network issue. Wireshark’s strongest feature is its ability to capture everything and then decode the packets it finds. I’ve been able to solve more than one seemingly intractable problem with Wireshark after all other attempts at problem solving failed.

In the screen capture above you can observe all the various devices on my home network sending out network messages. For example, you can see one of my Espressif boards (an ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1-N8R8) sending out an address resolution protocal (ARP) message. The lower windows show a packet I selected for further examination. It’s associated with one of the Amazon devices I have running in the house, and I do have a few.

The device I’ve been searching for recently is my Ring doorbell camera. I want to find it, then associate it to a fixed IP address within my WiFi access point, then trap all communications to another node within my home so I can enable all the features it can support locally and then shut down my monthly payment to use this device. I don’t need the service Amazon provides, but more specifically, I don’t want any more surveillance video flowing out to Amazon to be used by “law enforcement.” This is the start of my drive to discover all information flowing out of my home, and to curtail as much of it as possible. I’m done being a part of surveillance capitalism.

Wireshark Installation Note

This is installed via Homebrew. If you install Wireshark, then make sure to use brew install --cask wireshark in order to pick up the GUI frontend. If you perform a brew installation without cask, then you only get the command line portion. If you try to pick up the GUI with a following cask installation, it will fail, forcing you to remove the initial wireshark installation and starting over with cask.

Links

problems running wireshark on macos 13