Filed under: *Nix, Ubuntu, Windows, gaming, life on the wired | Tags: 2dboy, game, linux, Ubuntu, world of goo
Commemorating one year of World of Goo, 2D Boy, the developer of the DRM free game is holding a “pick your price” promo for the said game. Instead of paying the usual USD20, you get to choose how much money you’re going to spend for a copy of The World of Goo. Go here to get to the promo page.
Filed under: *Nix, Go Go Gadget..Stuff!!, Ubuntu, life on the wired | Tags: 9.04, bluetooth, jaunty jackapole, M300, omnibook, satellite, Ubuntu
I upgraded my Intrepid install a couple of months ago to Jaunty, but I haven’t got the chance to blog about it. In fact it’s been a while since I posted anything on my blog. The update is fairly straight forward, and as expected, broke several functions in my lappie, namely graphic acceleration and bluetooth. For fglrx, I suggest you to stick to the ubuntu sanctioned package, available from their repos, since the newest package from ATI broke several things in my box, such as Xinerama 
You can refer to my intrepid post on how to install it from Ubuntu repos
For bluetooth, you still need to install omnibook-source package. The steps to get it to work is almost the same as on my intrepid howto, with a couple of changes here and there. Get everything you need to build a module by opening console and type:
surfer@M5MobileMark-II:~$sudo apt-get install module-assistant build-essential
After that, double click on the omnibook-source file to install the package. Follow the instruction. Next is to build the module:
surfer@M5MobileMark-II:~$sudo m-a a-i omnibook-source
To activate the bluetooth adapter immediately, type:
surfer@M5MobileMark-II:~$sudo modprobe omnibook ectype=14 userset=0 lcd=0 display=0 blank=0 battery=0 ac=0 bluetooth=1
The next thing to do is to get the bluetooth adapter to start on boot. Add the module to the /etc/modules. Open the file by console
surfer@M5MobileMark-II:~$sudo nano /etc/modules
Add a new line, and put omnibook then save. My /etc/modules looks like this:
fuse lp sbp2 omnibook
Next, create script that will be executed on boot:
surfer@M5MobileMark-II:~$sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/omnibook
….and add the following line to the file
options omnibook ectype=14 userset=0 lcd=0 display=0 blank=0 battery=0 ac=0 bluetooth=1
Save, and reboot. The bluetooth adapter should work after reboot.
To get bluetooth to work after a hibernate, do the following steps :
surfer@M5MobileMark-II:~$ cd /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/
surfer@M5MobileMark-II:~$ sudo nano 89bluetooth
Put these lines on the file:
#!/bin/bash
rmmod -f omnibook
modprobe omnibook ectype=14 userset=0 lcd=0 display=0 blank=0 battery=0 ac=0 bluetooth=1
Save. Set the file to be executables by :
surfer@M5MobileMark-II:~$ sudo chmod 755 89bluetooth
After that, bluetooth adapter should be able to start after resume
Filed under: *Nix, Microsoft, Ubuntu, Windows | Tags: Microsoft, vmware, windows 7
So after letting it sit for a whole week on my hdd, I finally had the time to boot up the Windows 7 Beta dvd images on my VMWare server installation.
blue pill? or red pill?
the install went very smooth. Soon I was greeted with a login screen eerily similar to Vista. But the label on the bottom ensure me that I did in fact have installed Windows 7, Ultimate Version. Thank God for that
the Ultimate Windows 7, Ultimate Edition
The look and feel, again is eerily similar to Vista, save for the odd looking blocky taskbar. Also I’ve noticed that they changed the way the log off/shutdown/hibernate thingy works. instead of defaulting on an icon that dubiously represent hibernate, it is now set to default on shutdown, represented by a button that clearly states “shutdown”. Good for them!
Windows Vista SP2... I mean 7!
The default install leave about 900MBish out of 8GB virtual drive that I have prepared. That’s of OS alone. Compare that to my 5GB Intrepid install that includes an office suit, 3 kind of browsers, google earth, a database server, http server, vmware, and so on and so forth…
Filed under: *Nix, Ubuntu | Tags: 8.10, bluetooth, ibex, intrepid, M300-E413, Ubuntu
So, as I mentioned earlier on this post, I’m in the market for a new notebook. Particularly, I’m in the market for a notebook equipped with a discrete graphic chip, either from Nvidia or ATI. After a lot of reading, I decided to get a BenQ S42, equipped with GF 9600 series (I can’t remember which one)
So, Just when I’m about to stroll to the BenQ store, I passed a Toshiba booth, and curiousity led me to enter the store. One and half an hour later, I walked out of the shop with a Satellite M300 in hand. The power or marketing 
Anyway, the M300 comes with lesser specced graphic chip (ATI HD3470), but comes with eSATA port.The rest of spec is nearly the same.
As soon as I arrived home, the first thing that I do is to load the Intrepid Ibex cd, repartition the 200GB HDD to make way for my Ubuntu install. The installation process is smooth as usual. After reboot there are several peripherals that was not automatically detected, which are the dialup modem and bluetooth adapter. I can live without the modem, but the bluetooth is a must! Also compiz is not currently activated.
Installing Satellite M300-E413 bluetooth adapter
After rummaging for a while, I found out that I have to install omnibook-source to get the M300 bluetooth work. You can get the pacakage here. Make sure that the bluetooth is powered on by flicking the switch in front. Before installing and building the module, get everything you need to build a module by opening console and type:
surfer@M5MobileMark-II:~$sudo apt-get install module-assistant build-essential
After that, double click on the omnibook-source file to install the package. Follow the instruction. Next is to build the module:
surfer@M5MobileMark-II:~$sudo m-a a-i omnibook-source
To activate the bluetooth adapter immediately, type:
surfer@M5MobileMark-II:~$sudo modprobe omnibook ectype=14
The next thing to do is to get the bluetooth adapter to start on boot. Add the module to the /etc/modules. Open the file by console
surfer@M5MobileMark-II:~$sudo nano /etc/modules
Add a new line, and put omnibook then save. My /etc/modules looks like this:
fuse
lp
sbp2
omnibook
Next, create script that will be executed on boot:
surfer@M5MobileMark-II:~$sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/omnibook
….and add the following line to the file
options omnibook ectype=14
Save, and reboot. The bluetooth adapter should work after reboot.
One thing that I notice, the bluetooth adapter always failed to survive a system hibernate and resume. You would have to manually unload and reload the omnibook module. To do this manually, create a script just like this:
surfer@M5MobileMark-II:~$ cd /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/
surfer@M5MobileMark-II:~$ sudo nano 89bluetooth
Put these lines on the file:
#!/bin/bash
rmmod -f omnibook
modprobe omnibook ectype=14
Save. Set the file to be executables by :
surfer@M5MobileMark-II:~$ sudo chmod 755 89bluetooth
Hopefully, the bluetooth adapter should be able to start after resume
Compiz Fusion
To get desktop effect by compiz, the installed graphic chip driver must support acceleration. This usually means proprietary binary driver from the graphic chip vendor instead the FOSS radeon/radeonhd. There are several tutorial on how to do this floating on the internet. You can get Envy NG to fetch and install the latest binary driver available for you. I choose the Ubuntu way. First open up the Synaptic Package Manager by going to System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager. Go to Settings > Repositories. On the Ubuntu Software Tab, put the checkmark on all of the available box, press close. Next reload synaptic by pressing the reload button. After synaptic is updated, close it. Go to System > Administration > Hardware Drivers. The ATI HD3479 driver should be listed there. Click on the “ATI/AMD propiertary FGLRX graphics driver”, then press the “Activate” button.
Activated AMD/ATI fglrx driver
After the process is done, go to System > Preferences > Appearance. on the Visual Effects tab choose either Normal or Extra. If everything is ok, Compiz should be active immediately. To get the most of Compiz Fusion get the Emerald Theme Manager, Fusion Icon, and the compizconfig-settings-manager. Emerald let you change the windows decorator. Look for themes for emerald here. The Fusion Icon allows you to switch between compiz and metacity without having to resort to opening a console. Lastly, the Compiz Config Manager allow to enable or disable and tweak plethora of Compiz function and setting. To get them, open a console and type:
surfer@M5MobileMark-II:~$apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager emerald fusion-icon
To make sure that the Fusion Icon is loaded every time we login, go to Setting > Preferences > Session. Add a new session, put “fusion icon” as the name and fill the command with “fusion-icon -n”
Compiz Fusion is done, and now I can enjoy the desktop effect
Filed under: *Nix, Ubuntu, life on the wired | Tags: dropbox, online storage, Ubuntu
I use to carry a thumbdrive containing files that I regularly use. These includes small application such as HijackThis!, notes, sample scripts and configuration files, and may other things.The thing is, I’m a very forgetful person. I often misplace the thumbdrive, or left it home and what not.
So I started to keep an online repository of things that I might require time to time on my office server that is accessible from internet, although I stopped doing this when I got my current job.
So back to carrying thumbdrive. Until I found Dropbox.
Dropbox is a free service that you can use to do a folder synchronization between 2 or more computers, be it a Windows, (certain flavour of) Linux, or OS X. When I put a file on my laptop’s Dropbox folder, it gets synchronized to Dropbox server. When my office desktop is turned on, the Dropbox client will immediately check on updates, and synchronized the changes right away. Not only that, Dropbox keeps revision history of changes, and is able to revert from changes. Oh, and you can use it to share photos and stuff.
Did I mention that Dropbox support Linux too?
On linux, Dropbox integrates with Nautilus, so I can’t really say about KDE users.
To start using Dropbox, the first thing that you need to do is to download the Dropbox client app. Dropbox currently support some version of Ubuntu, FC9. It also gave you the option to install from source if binary installer for your version of Linux is not available. To install the clients app, double click the .deb file, or you can do it the oldschool way, by firing up your console, and type:
surfer@M5Mobile:~$sudo dpkg --install nautilus-dropbox_0.5.0-1_i386_ubuntu_7.10.deb
The next thing that you have to do is to kill all of nautilus instance that is currently running, or if you’re running Compiz, log out and log back in instead. To kill all of the Nautilus instance,
surfer@M5Mobile:~$killall nautilus
Dropbox client will immediately start downloading files that it needs to get going.
Meanwhile, create a folder that you’re going to sync to Dropbox. After a while, it’ll start a wizard for to collect your Dropbox account setting.
Obviously, if you don’t have a Dropbox account, click on “I’m new to Dropbox”, and press forward to enter your registration info. It will then create an account for you. View or skip the tour. On the next screen, click on “I want to choose where to put my Dropbox”, then click on the “Finish and go to my Dropbox” button.
Pick the folder that you create earlier. Dropbox will create several new folders on your Dropbox. The tick mark on each folders means that your local folder is in sync with your online folder.
Photos is used to store images that you want to share, while Public for files that you want to share. To share, right click on a file, and on Dropbox submenu, click on “Copy public link”. Paste the link to IM windows, e-mail clients, or whatever means you use to send the link. Files that you drop on these folders will be automatically uploaded/updated to your 2GB online storage.
Well.. that’s it.
Filed under: *Nix, IRL, Ubuntu, life on the wired | Tags: gutsy, LEAP, network manager, Ubuntu, wireless
I’m currently attending a 4 days training on IBM’ Websphere Application Server. They provide us with a Windows XP loaded laptop. Being a Linux zealot, I ask whether I can use my own laptop.
They also provide a wireless connection (which also connected to the internet) secured by CISCO’s LEAP protocol.
After a lil bit of tinkering, I was able to “extract” the credential used to connect to the wireless connection, and use it on my laptop. Gutsy’s Network Manager applet is able to recognize that it’s a LEAP wireless connection, and properly provided me the option to input the correct username and password.
Day 2
As usual, I boot up my laptop, and logged in. The Network Manager applet immediately tried to connect to the LEAP secured wireless network, but somehow seems to b stuck somewhere. When I hover the mouse over the network manager icon it says “waiting for network key for wireless network xyz..” but it did not show me the windows dialog for entering the LEAP credential.
My immediate suspicion went to the the Gnome Keyring manager. Opened the keyring manager, and check the entry related to the said wireless network. I found out that instead storing the LEAP credential that I provided earlier, the keyring saved the WEP keys that the LEAP protocol provides after authenticating. I decided to delete the keyring which was related to the said wireless connection. No go. Delete all of the keyrings. Nope.
I then created a new user account, and used it to connect to the wireless connection. It worked flawlessly. I was able to choose the right wireless connection, and choose LEAP as the authentication method. This, and the way the keyring behaves when storing credential for LEAP secured wireless connection led me to the conclusion that the reconnection failed due to the Network Manager Applet was unable to automatically determine whether the stored LEAP connection requires LEAP credential. It instead assumes that the wireless connection is secured using only WEP.
I currently haven’t found a solution that can fix the way network manager applet stores the correct information when handling a LEAP authenticated wireless network. The only thing that I can do is to delete any information stored by Network Manager applet, so that it will recognize that wireless connection as a new one, and provides me with the network key window dialog. To delete the stored information do the following on a terminal:
surfer@M5Mobile:~$ cd /home/surfer/.gconf/system/networking/wireless/networks/
surfer@M5Mobile:~/.gconf/system/networking/wireless/networks$ ls -la
total 16
drwx—— 4 surfer surfer 4096 2008-10-29 11:45 .
drwx—— 3 surfer surfer 4096 2008-06-22 21:05 ..
-rw——- 1 surfer surfer 0 2008-10-29 11:41 %gconf.xml
drwx—— 2 surfer surfer 4096 2008-10-29 11:45 xyz
drwx—— 2 surfer surfer 4096 2008-10-29 11:41 MWifo1
Notice that the information for the network xyz which was secured with LEAP was stored on it’s own folder. To delete the information, simply remove the folder.
surfer@M5Mobile:~/.gconf/system/networking/wireless/networks$rm -rf xyz
Restart the laptop. After that you will be provided with the network key dialoga to choose LEAP as the authentication method, and enter the correct username and password. For convenience, you can delete the information before logging out of your laptop.
Some time ago, I was asked to setup a public key authentication for SCP session betwen 2 *nix servers. The process should be straight forward, as mentioned on my previous post regarding this subject.
But somehow the login process keep on asking me to enter the correct password, and ignoring the public key that I have copied to the remote server. I start the process in verbose mode, so that I can get meaningful output that can help me solve the issue:
[surfer@kazekiri ~]$ ssh -v mach5@avenger
and this is snipped from the output that I get:
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password
debug1: Next authentication method: publickey
debug1: Trying private key: /home/surfer/.ssh/identity
debug1: Trying private key: /home/surfer/.ssh/id_rsa
debug1: Offering public key: /home/surfer/.ssh/id_dsa
debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,password
debug1: Next authentication method: password
This means the private key is recognized, and was offered as a mean for authentication by the local server, but somehow the login process still require me to type-in the password for the remote user.
After some reading, I found out the culprit was the access restriction to the key stored on each server. The login process requires that the private key (id_dsa) and the public key stored on the remote server (authorized_keys) are stored on a folder that can only be accessed by the corresponding users. So I need to do the following:
[surfer@kazekiri ~]$ chmod -R 700 .ssh
and, also on the remote server:
[mach5@avenger ~]$ chmod -R 700 .ssh
Aaand, voila! The public key authetication should works.
Filed under: *Nix, HP-UX, Red Hat, Ubuntu | Tags: *Nix, HP-UX, SCP, shell script, unix
So I need to automate a process where an oracle dump file is moved to a remote server, and the existing loacl file is then permanently removed. I have to make sure that:
- the status of copy process is reported, whether successful, or not
- The remove process will only start if the copy process is successful
- The copy process is unattended, so a public key authentication must be available between the local and remote server. I have guide regarding a public key authentication for ssh/scp somewhere around here
This is how the script looked like:
#!/sbin/sh
date >> /backup/movedump.log
tgl=$(date +”%y-%m-%d-%M”)
cd /backup
if [ -f /backup/dumpf* ];
then
scp dumpf* kirim@172.16.2.15:/opt/data/dump/backup/
STAT=$?
echo “$tgl-S1:dump file succesfuly moved” >> /backup/movedump.log
else
STAT=1
fi
if [ $STAT -eq 0 ];
then
rm dumpf*
echo “$tgl-S2:local dump file deleted” >> /backup/movedump.log
else
if [ $STAT -eq 1 ];
then
echo “$tgl-E1:no dump file on source directory, no action taken” >> /backup/movedump.log
else
echo “$tgl-E2:dump file move process exit with code $STAT, remove process not executed” >> /backup/movedump.log
fi
fi
The code above will check whether the dumpfile exists or not. If the file doesn’t exist, the variable STAT will be given a value of 1. If the file exist, it will begin scp process to the remote server. Scp process provide us with several report codes that is stored on “$?”. If the copy process is successful, the value of “$?” is 0, other if it’s not. That value is then stored on the variable STAT
The process then proceed based on the value inserted to the variable STAT
- If STAT=0, the copy process is successful, the script will proceed to remove the dump file on the local server
- if STAT=1, the script did not find a dump file to transfer to remote server
- if STAT value is other than 1 and 0, the transfer process has failed
All of the step taken by the script is logged on file movedump.log
The next step is to make sure the script is executed everyday, automatically. For me, it is scheduled to run 4 pm, everyday:.
$crontab -e
Then put this line:
00 16 * * * /backup/movedump.sh
With this, the script will be executed every day at 4 pm sharp.
Done!
Filed under: *Nix, IRL, Ubuntu | Tags: *Nix, 3D, ati, intel, nvidia, Ubuntu
To put it simply, I’m currently in the market for a new notebook. As this notebook will be the replacement for my current notebook and desktop machine, one thing that it absolutely has to support is 3D Graphic Acceleration on Linux.
Turns out, it’s not a simple as I previously thought. Currently there are three major vendor in notebook graphic solution. Intel on the low range, and Nvidia and ATI on higher end. While Intel support on Linux is amazing, the performance is not something to write home about. Since the notebook will be my main computing machine, I’d like it to have more graphic power behind it’s lid, thus leaving me to choose between Nvidia and ATI.
ATI current lineup, the ATI HD4xxx series performs quite well. Sadly, it’s not the case with ATI linux driver. Yes, there were major leap in term of support from ATI, with them providing same day support on Linux driver and opening up their specs. But what’s keeping me from upgrading to Catalyst 8.4 and above (thus keeping me on Gutsy) was the mediocre support on xvideo/texture video. Playback of xvideo flickers, (even showing black screen on some case) whether Compiz is running or not. Even worst, on 8.4, 3D output is garbage, rendering Google Earth unusable. To get xvideo works, I have to resort to using XGL, and making an XGL disabled account for 3D applications, which was now dumped in favor of AIGLX on the ATI’s 8.4 (and above) version of Catalyst.
On the other hand, Nvidia has been praised for the quality of their binary driver. My ideal notebook will be the Benq Joybook S41, which is equipped with Nvidia 8600M GS chip. But the recent development on the faulty Nvidia chip story has me thinking twice.
Let’s hope that Intel next-in-the-line Larrabee graphic chip, is able to compete with ATI and Nvidia, so we won’t have to put up with the lack of choice that we are currently facing, as well as forcing ATI and Nvidia to get their act together, and stop releasing an half ass product for their customer.
As for now, I guess if I really need a new notebook, my best bet will be purchasing an ATI equipped platform, and pray to God that ATI will churn out better driver (or FOSS community comes up with better FOSS driver) sooner or later. Or I’ll just wait for Nvidia 6-month-cycle to phase out their current buggy chip line, and wait for their newer chip to be adopted by notebook manufacturers, plus a couple of more months to wait for the price to come down to be affordable by my pocket
Any suggestion?
