Riding Linux

MyGOSSCON 2007 with the theme “Accelerate Open Source Software Adoption” was held on 6-7th December 2007 at Putrajaya International Convention Center (PICC), Malaysia. This event was initiated by the Malaysian Open Source Competency Center (OSCC), MAMPU with association by the Federation of
Malaysian Manufactures (FMM).

Various government agencies, private organizations and independent personnels participate throughout the event. The event successfully attracts a huge number of crowd who are mostly government employees and also peoples who are interested in Open Source movement.

The event was officially launched by Tan Sri Mohd Sidek Hassan, Chief Secretary to the Malaysian Government. During the event, two new OSCC products were also officially launched

MyWorkSpace - Email Collaboration Suite
MyMeeting -Meeting Management System

More info at
http://mygosscon.ossc.org.my

I was involved with the event. It was really really tiresome but overall the event went smoothly. I’ve learned so many things throughout the event. Furthermore, I was one of the speakers during the event with my presentation titled “Virtualisation Facility For The Public Sector”.

Below are some photos taken during the event with courtesy of OSCC

Some of OSCC’s products featured during the event

One of the most attractive booth during the exhibition

The Officiating Ceremony

Me, doing the presentation

The backbone of the event

News coverage on TV3

Popularity: 19% [?]

Below is the bash script I use to mirror Centos repository into our local server. Due to storage limitation, we have to be selective and only copies the packages/branches that we need. Currently we only mirror Centos 5 for “os and updates” base packages limited to i386 and x86_64 architecture only.

During the initial intensive downloading when the server is replicating for the first time, I run the script below in cron for every 30 minutes. The script will check whether the previous instance is still running or dead (sometimes we got disconnected). If dead then it will restart and continue the rsync process. Once everything is in place and all needed packages have been downloaded, I modify the cron job to do the job once in every 6 hours to make sure my server is up to date.

The script below is inspired by the script posted here by jlar310

#!/bin/sh
# created by Jalte @ http://www.ridinglinux.org

DATE=`/bin/date +%Y-%m-%d`
OUTFILE=/var/www/html/mirror/centos-mirror.log
RSYNC="/bin/nice /usr/bin/rsync --verbose --progress --delete-excluded --stats --archive --partial --timeout=600"
MIRROR=mirrors.kernel.org::centos
VER=5
ARCHLIST="i386 x86_64"
BASELIST="os updates"
LOCAL=/var/www/html/mirror/centos

date >> /var/log/rsynccentos.log

if [ -f "/var/run/rsynccentos.pid" ]; then
   RUNPID=`cat /var/run/rsynccentos.pid`
   if ps -p $RUNPID; then
      echo "Mirror is already running..."
      echo "Mirror is already running..." >> /var/log/rsynccentos.log
      exit 1
   else
      echo "Mirror pid found but process dead, cleaning up"
      rm -f /var/run/rsynccentos.pid
      echo "Mirror pid found but process dead, cleaning up" >> /var/log/rsynccentos.log

   fi
else
   echo "No process Detected"
   echo "No process Detected" >> /var/log/rsynccentos.log

fi

echo $$ > /var/run/rsynccentos.pid

echo -n "Rsync Started at "
echo "Rsync Started " >> /var/log/rsynccentos.log
date

for ARCH in $ARCHLIST
do
  for BASE in $BASELIST
    do
        DIR=$LOCAL/$VER/$BASE/$ARCH/
        if [ -d $DIR ]
        then
         echo "Directory exists."
        else
         echo "Directory does not exist, and will be created."
         mkdir -p $DIR
        fi
        REMOTE=$MIRROR/$VER/$BASE/$ARCH/
        $RSYNC $REMOTE $DIR > $OUTFILE 2>&1
    done
done

echo "`date`" > /var/www/html/mirror/centos-last-updated.log
chown -R apache:apache $LOCAL

Any comments are greatly appreciated

Popularity: 32% [?]

My team has been assigned with the task to identify suitable email/collaboration suite to be proposed to our customers. We need some basic features such as email (with imap & pop support) calendaring, to do list and mail/groupware clients connection capabilities such as Kontact, Evolution and optionally MS Outlook.

For a start we decided to tryout Kolab Groupware Solution as some their features are suitable for our client’s environment such as using OpenPkg as the installation medium (our clients could use any type of distro), the usage of Postfix, OpenLDAP and Cyrus IMAP as the back end and last but not least the solution utilize Horde as their front end interface.

Below is the simplified installation guide for installing the solution. We are using a fresh installed Centos 5 machine with minimum package installation.

- Make sure SELinux is disabled (use setup)

- Install GCC for compilation process
yum install gcc

- Install GCC (compatibility 3.4) for to resolve gcc conflict
yum install compat-gcc-34

- Making GCC-34 as default gcc tool
mv /usr/bin/gcc /usr/bin/gcc41
ln -sf /usr/bin/gcc34 /usr/bin/gcc


- Create kolab template directory
mkdir /kolab-template
cd /kolab-template


- Download kolab sources
wget -r -l1 -nd --no-parent http://ftp.belnet.be/packages/kolab/server/release/kolab-server-2.1.0/sources/

- Verify file integrity (optional)
gpg --verify MD5SUMS
md5sum -c MD5SUMS


[Checkpoint #1]

- Create kolab production directory
cp -afv /kolab-template /kolab
cd /kolab


- Make sure that the following names are not in /etc/passwd or /etc/groups,
“kolab” “kolab-r” “kolab-n” if exist delete and run “pwconv”

- Start compilation.
sh obmtool kolab 2>&1 | tee kolab-build.log

*This process takes some time, so it is advisable to use ’screen’ if your are connected remotely.

- If compilation failed, simply delete/rename the /kolab folder
and restart process at [Checkpoint #1]

- Start installation
/kolab/etc/kolab/kolab_bootstrap -b

- Start the services
/kolab/bin/openpkg rc all start

- Try access (using your web browser)
https://kolab_adress/admin

- Stop kolab services
/kolab/bin/openpkg rc all stop

- Download modified kolab sources (for horde support)
mv obmtool.conf obmtool.conf.bak
wget -r -l1 -nd --no-parent http://build.pardus.de/downloads/kolab-horde-tmp


- Some hacking to the obmtool.conf due to links provided already dead
- Change
URL="ftp://ftp.klaralvdalens-datakonsult.se/pub/kolab/server/current/2.1"
- to
URL="http://build.pardus.de/downloads/kolab-horde-tmp"

- Start re-compilation
sh obmtool kolab 2>&1 | tee kolab-build.log

- Start re-installation
/kolab/etc/kolab/kolab_bootstrap -b

- Re-start the kolab services
/kolab/bin/openpkg rc all start

- Try access (using your web browser)
http://kolab_address/horde

REFERENCES
http://wiki.kolab.org/index.php/Kolab2_Installation_-_Source
http://wiki.kolab.org/index.php/Fedora_6
http://wiki.kolab.org/index.php/Kolab2_Installation_-_Horde

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Popularity: 35% [?]

Just to share with you guys,

For those who are looking for antivirus protection for your Windows machine,
you might have heard of Kaspersky Antivirus (KAV) which is arguably the best
and most effective antivirus in the market nowadays.

I’m glad to inform you guys (who did not know yet) that this Kaspersky
antivirus is available for free with the name “Active Virus Shield”. This is
kind of old news but I believe some of us still didn’t aware about this
thing.

http://www.activevirusshield.com

Even though the name is different, it is still KAV in the background and it
should be ways better compared to AVG and AVAST and even other commercial
antiviruses out there. (Yes, I hate norton & mc affee)

You will need to supply your email address in order to receive the activation
key. In the future you might receive a lot of marketing emails from AOL to
that particular email address as part of the agreement terms, so I advise
that you use your secondary email addresses such as yahoo or hotmail.

Additional readings
http://reviews.cnet.com
http://www.securitycadets.com

Popularity: 25% [?]

I’ve heard a lot of stories about 3D desktop features implemented and widely used in linux nowdays. Lots and lots of people had already install this cool feature and you can find a lots of videos on the net posted by users to show off their cool desktop.

Since I already had a Ubuntu Feisty Fawn 7.04 installed on my PC at home, I decided to tryout this feature and I chose Beryl for this time as it have more than just 3D desktop cube features available. There are more such as windows transparency, blur effect, scale effect and windows animation.

For a start, I launch Synaptic and make sure that the all repositories are available. I’m aware that my Graphic Card Driver (nVidia GeForce4 Ti 4200 AGP) will require proprietary driver so I enabled the ‘restricted’ repository in the Synaptic package management.

Then I search for ‘beryl’. From the list, I selected ‘beryl-ubuntu’ package and mark it for installation.
Synaptic will automatically advised me to install a handfull of other packages that will be required for beryl to work. I marked them all. I also selected ‘beryl-manager’ and ‘emerald-themes’ package for installation.

Then I clicked ‘apply’ to proceed with the installation.

Synaptic will download and install those packages

Once finished, I exited Synaptic. To enable 3D acceleration for my video card, I have to install a proprietary driver provided by NVidia. So I launch Ubuntu ‘Restricted Driver Manager’ (System > Administration > Restricted Driver Manager)

Mark the ‘enabled’ checkbox to enable the driver. Confirm the installation when the system prompt for it. The system will automatically install the driver provided that I had already enabled ‘restricted’ repository in my synaptic/apt repository sources previously.

The installation will require the pc to be restarted. Don’t restart the pc just yet. We need to do some extra process.

Open up terminal and run the command below


sudo cp /usr/share/applications/beryl-manager.desktop /etc/xdg/autostart/beryl-manager.desktop


This will make sure beryl will be launched automatically on each session.

Restart PC. Once the Ubuntu is restarted, a new diamond (emerald) icon will appear on the system tray

Right click the icon if you want to customize your beryl setting. For this time I just use the default setting.

So let’s play around. Open up a few windows.

For windows trasparency / blur effect:
Hold ALT key and scroll up/down your mouse

3D Cubic desktops
Hold ALT+CTRL and hit Left or Right key
Hold ALT+CTRL+Left button of your mouse key and move your mouse

Windows Scale Effect
Hit F8 or F9

…Have fun!

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Popularity: 52% [?]

This time I want to tryout Wubi (Windows based installer for Ubuntu). My objective is to install Ubuntu and create a dual boot system on my existing WinXP machine without having to repartition my hard drive. I’m very fond of virtual machine idea (Vmware, Xen & Microsoft Virtual PC) but so far I found out that there are severe performance hit on my pc at home (AMD Athlon XP 1800 & 256 RAM) whenever I use virtual machine and I finally decided to use dual boot instead.

Extracts from the Wubi website

Wubi is an unofficial Ubuntu installer for Windows users that will bring you into the Linux world with a few clicks. Wubi allows you to install and uninstall Ubuntu as any other application. If you heard about Linux and Ubuntu, if you wanted to try them but you were afraid, this is for you.

I will try to install Ubuntu Feisty 7.04. Firstly I grab the Wubi installer.

Optionally, you can download the Alternate ISO (ubuntu-7.04-alternate-i386.iso) first from ubuntu site or any nearest mirror or even using torrent. Put the iso file in the same folder as the EXE installer. The installer will detect for alternate iso and use it for installation, if not it will download the iso first (600MB++) before starting the installation process.

Launching the EXE installer file and you will be presented with the first installation screen

Fill in your preferred username and password then click setting to customize your installation environment.

Then continue with the installation

You will then need to reboot your pc

During the boot up, a multi-boot option will appear where WinXP listed as the default OS and Ubuntu right after it. Unfortunately in my case once I selected Ubuntu, an error message came out and I cannot boot the Ubuntu at all.

ERROR 17 FILE NOT FOUND

Referring to Ubuntu Forum here and here I managed to overcome the issue.

• Download contig and use it to defrag the wubi folder (in my case C;\wubi)
  

  contig -v -s c:\wubi

• Download the latest grldr file (grldr_ntfs.zip) provided by ‘bean123′ in this thread. Unzip it and copy glrdr file into your c:\ drive replacing the existing one.
• Move both c:\wubi\boot and c:\wubi\disks to the root directory of the same drive, c:\boot and c:\disks respectively
• Edit c:\menu.lst changing all references to directory /wubi/boot to only /boot
  

  title Ubuntu
  find –set-root –ignore-floppies /boot/grub/menu.lst
  configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst

• The same goes to c:\boot\grub\menu.lst file
  

  ## ## End Default Options ##

  title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.20-15-generic
  find –set-root –ignore-floppies /boot/linux
  kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-15-generic find=/boot/linux ro quiet splash
  initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-15-generic
  boot

  title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.20-15-generic (recovery mode)
  find –set-root –ignore-floppies /boot/linux
  kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-15-generic find=/boot/linux ro single
  initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-15-generic

  title Ubuntu, memtest86+
  find –set-root –ignore-floppies /boot/linux
  kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin

  ### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

  # This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below from the Debian
  # ones.

  title Ubuntu (Original Kernel)
  find –set-root –ignore-floppies /boot/linux
  kernel /boot/linux find=/boot/linux setup_iso=ubuntu-7.04-alternate-i386.iso quiet splash ro
  initrd /boot/initrd
  boot

Restart the pc and select Ubuntu again, and here goes my Ubuntu Feisty….

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Popularity: 66% [?]

I’ve been asked to setup 2 IBM Thinkpad RSeries (Lenovo R60) notebooks. One with Ubunty Edgy and another with OpenSuse 10.2. Installation process running smoothly for Ubuntu where everything functioning as it should be. But for OpenSuse 10.2 I found one problem, the wireless adapter did not work.

ifconfig only list lo adapter along with eth0 which is the physical gigabit ethernet adapter.

result for lspci confirmed that the wireless adapter exist.

Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02) 15:00

I then use lsmod | grep 3945 to find out whether or not the driver was installed.

ipw3945 191520 0
ieee80211 34632 1 ipw3945
firmware_class 14080 2 pcmcia,ipw3945

So the driver is there. After done some googling, I found out that additional ‘non OSS’ packages need to be installed in order for the adapter to work.

So I launch Yast2 (Administration Interface) and select Installation Source to add ‘non-oss’ repository.

Select Add

I add the address below to make ‘non-oss’ packages available for installation
(you can use any other mirror if you want)

http://download.opensuse.org/distribution/10.2/repo/non-oss/

Some downloading activities will start. Once finished, the new repository will be listed as one of package source.

Click finish and you will be back to the Yast2 Control center main page.
This time select ‘Software Management’

Search for ‘ipw’. You will find 2 packages

ipw3945d
ipw-firmware

Select both packages Click ‘accept‘ to install them

Packages will be downloaded and installed

After the installation process completed, exit the Software Management interface.

In the Yast2 main interface, select ‘Network Devices’ > ‘Network Card’

Since I’m so used to Ifup/Ifdown command, I select ‘traditional method with ifup’ when asked.

Select the wireless adapter and choose ‘edit’

Specify your network ip or leave it as it is if you have DHCP in your network environment.
Click ‘Next’.

After that you will need to specify your local wireless parameters and finishing the process.
Yast will restart your network services.

To make sure your wireless adapter is working, open terminal, then type ‘ifconfig’ and make sure eth1 is now listed.

If not, run command ‘ipw3945d’ to launch the PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Regulatory Daemon. Use ‘ifup eth1′ to turn on the eth1.

Another useful command is ‘iwlist eth1 scan’ to list out available wireless access-point in your network.

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Popularity: 65% [?]

I just realized last night that Gaim has been renamed to Pidgin.
Extracts from Pidgin website (http://pidgin.im)

We’ve got a new name, a new look, and a ton of new features, but we’re still the same old instant messaging client you know and love. We’ve changed our name as part of a trademark settlement with AOL, and have finally released our long-awaited version 2.0.0.

The project’s website in sourceforge is also moved to a new url
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pidgin/

For Ubuntu feisty users, unofficial deb packages are available at http://www.getdeb.net/

Additional info could also be found here

Popularity: 35% [?]

One feature that I personally think Evolution lack of compared to other linux mail clients such as KMail is the ability to dock into systray. I don’t like my task bars to be to crowded with opened applications but I need Evolution to stay open always so that I will be notified for any new incoming mails. Since Evolution don’t have built in function for the above objective, I have to find a third party applications to achieve the intended goal. The solution I seek should cover both Gnome and KDE desktop environment as I use both interchangeably.

I found 3 solutions, Mail Notification (MailNotify), Alltray and KDocker.

After some brief reading, I’ve decided to test out either Alltray or KDocker. Mailnotify seems quite good but I believe both Alltray and KDocker offer more due to their ability to handle any types of applications apart from mail clients.

Unfortunately for Alltray, I cannot find the package installer by using Synaptic (I’m using Ubuntu). I’m not sure whether I have to do some changes to the package repository or the package was indeed unavailable. To save time, I guess I could try KDocker instead for the time being.

Using Synaptic, I manage to find and install kdocker. I select the package and start the installation process.

Ok, the packages has been installed successfully. But the question now is, how can I use it? I cannot find any of the shortcut within my Ubuntu’s Gnome menu.

I launch terminal console, and type ‘kdocker evolution &‘. As expected, the evolution started and within split second being minimized automatically into the systray.

Clicking the icon will make evolution came out from it’s hiding place. Clicking minimize button will make evolution goes back into the system tray. Clicking on close button make evolution exit and we need to type the above command all over again.

So now, I need to find some way so that I don’t have to use terminal console each time I want to launch kdocker-evolution session. One way I found is to edit the evolution mail shortcut and put kdocker at the front of the command line.

So I right-click the evolution shortcut located near to the system menu and select properties

and I add ‘kdocker’ at the front of the command line

From now on, whenever I click on the shortcut evolution will be started along with kdocker and will be minimized to systray instead of the taskbar.

So it’s time to test the above methods on KDE (Kubuntu).

Using ther terminal console with the same command ‘kdocker evolution &‘ produces the same result.

The same process also could be done to Evolution mail shortcut

Right click on the evolution shortcut and select ‘edit item’

Add kdocker at the front of evolution command line.

Close when finish, and select save when asked. Changes will be applied and evolution will now minimized into the system tray.

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Popularity: 100% [?]

For some reasons I preferred Mozilla Firefox than the default internet browser in KDE which is Konqueror. This is mainly because I’ve just recently moved to a linux machine and I use Firefox exclusively for the past few years during my days with MS Windows. I prefer to stick with the one I familiar with.

The below documentation will guide you on how to change your default internet browser in KDE

For Kubuntu Users

Select System Settings from the menu

Within the System Settings choose Default Applications

In the Default Application window Choose Web Browser

Then select “in the following browser” button and click the browse button

Browse the Known Application and choose you preferred Web Browser. In my case Mozilla Firefox. Finally click OK

Click Apply when finished

For Mandriva 2007 Users

Select System > Configuration > Control Center

In the Control Center choose KDE Components > Component Chooser > Web Browser

Then select “in the following browser” button and click the browse button

Browse the Known Application and choose you preferred Web Browser. In my case Mozilla Firefox. Finally click OK

Click Apply when finished

Popularity: 36% [?]