techblog.ovidiudan.com

2012-01-28T20:50:00.001-08:00

Ubuntu Oneiric 11.10: HDMI audio out on XPS M1330 with Intel Integrated Graphics Card

1) Open Sound Settings, click on Hardware Tab, next to Profile select Digital Stereo (HDMI) Output. The Output tab should now show Connector: HDMI.
2) Open terminal, sudo alsamixer. Go to the right with the arrow keys until you find S/PDIF 1 (1, not 0 or anything else). Unmute it by pressing M. Test audio.

2012-01-17T14:39:00.000-08:00

Installing asf_tools (Alaska Satellite Facility Map Ready) on Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot

http://www.asf.alaska.edu/downloads/software_tools

I assume the build-essential package and other basic tools are installed.

apt-get install zlib1g-dev flex bison

Edit asf_tools/src/to_sr/Makefile and asf_tools/src/fill_holes/Makefile and changes the line similar to:
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) $(LDFLAGS) -o to_sr $(OBJS) $(LIBS)
with this line
$(CC) $(CFLAGS) $(LDFLAGS) -o to_sr $(OBJS) $(LIBS) -lm
(add -lm at the end)

then do a normal configure / make / make install installation

2012-01-12T06:57:00.000-08:00

Mount SSH folder/directory in Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install sshfs
sshfs user@remote-server.example.com:/remote/path /local/path

2012-01-03T19:09:00.001-08:00

Test Zabbix UserParameter

On local machine:
su -c "zabbix_agentd -t some_key" zabbix

On zabbix master:
zabbix_get -s slave.hostname.com -k some_key

2012-01-03T14:03:00.000-08:00

Booting from a USB stick in VMware Player

http://theholyjava.wordpress.com/2010/06/10/booting-from-a-usb-stick-in-vmware-player/

2011-12-28T12:12:00.001-08:00

Show or Display (some) Blu Ray drive capabilities in Ubuntu/Linux

1) Download and install Nero Linux 4 (trial available)
2) nerocmd --list-drives (lists drives .. see first and second columns for drive id)
3) nerocmd --drive=1,0 --info=drive (where drive ID here is 1,0)

Sample output:
Device name : MATSHITA BD-MLT UJ240AF
Device id : 0
Host adapter number: 1
Host adapter name : unknown
Firmware Revision : 1.00
Underrun protection: supported
Drive buffer size : 2048 bytes
Mandatory BUP speed: none
Device type : WORM

Writeable media : CD-R/RW, DVD R/RW, DVD DL, DVD-RAM, BD-R/RE, BD DL
CD write speeds : 8, 24
Base speed in KB/s : 150
Readable media : CD-R/RW, DVD R/RW, DVD DL, DVD-RAM, BD-R/RE, BD DL
CD read speeds : 1, 2, 4, 8, 12, 16, 24
Base speed in KB/s : 150

Capabilities:
- Can write in Disc-at-once
- Reads CD TEXT
- Writes variable pauses in Track-at-once
- Writes CD TEXT in Disc-at-once
- Has a buffer underrun protection feature
- Can write DVD+VR
- Supports Layer Jump for DVD-R DL
- Supports Overburn
- Can write in UltraRaw 96
Ok.

2011-12-01T14:14:00.001-08:00

Things to do after Installing Linux Mint 12 Lisa

http://www.noobslab.com/2011/11/things-to-do-after-installing-linux.html

2011-12-01T13:25:00.001-08:00

UNetbootin allows you to create bootable Live USB drives for Ubuntu, Fedora, and other Linux distributions without burning a CD.

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net/

2011-11-30T10:00:00.001-08:00

Resume local file copy

curl -C - -O file:///path/to/file.txt

resumes copying file.txt to the current folder

2011-11-21T18:21:00.001-08:00

How to reduce PDF file size from command line

gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/screen -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile=output.pdf input.pdf

-dPDFSETTINGS=/screen (screen-view-only quality, 72 dpi images)
-dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook (low quality, 150 dpi images)
-dPDFSETTINGS=/printer (high quality, 300 dpi images)
-dPDFSETTINGS=/prepress (high quality, color preserving, 300 dpi imgs)
-dPDFSETTINGS=/default (almost identical to /screen)

Sources:
http://www.ubuntugeek.com/ubuntu-tiphowto-reduce-adobe-acrobat-file-size-from-command-line.html
http://milan.kupcevic.net/ghostscript-ps-pdf/

2011-11-16T08:08:00.000-08:00

Vulnerability in the WordPress King Size theme

This is the vulnerability: http://catchinternet.com/blog/timthumb-vulnerability-wordpress-security-patch/

Below is a discussion that I have been having with the creators of King Size. I personally find their response unacceptable, but I agree that themeforest is also to blame. I also do not understand why they didn't have an "update notifier" until recently. I also contacted themeforest and waiting for a reply.

-----

Hello King Size Theme team,

My server was cracked using a vulnerability found in timthumb.php, which ships with the King Size Theme.

I checked the theme page on themeforest.net and under version 3.1 it says: "Updated Timthumb (timthumb.php) for security concerns"

Did you send out e-mails to all your customers using King Size < 3.1 about this problem? If not, why not?

Thanks,
Ovi

-----

Ovidiu Dan (Ovi),

A customer support staff member has replied to your support request, #455636 with the following response:

Hello,

I am sorry to hear about your troubles but its not our responsibility to keep you informed of updates. Its yours as a buyers responsibility to occasionally check in and see if updates are available. As of v3.3 we released an "update notifier" which informs buyers when updates are available via their Dashboards.

Kind regards,
Bryce Wisekal

-----

Hello again,

I am sorry but it IS definitely your responsibility, especially when it comes to critical security vulnerabilities.

Please do the right thing and inform your customers or I will do it for you.

Ovi

-----

Ovidiu Dan (Ovi),

A customer support staff member has replied to your support request, #455636 with the following response:

Hello Ovi,

And how do you propose we do that when we do not have CONTACT to our buyers? Come on now, be sensible. When you buy a template from theme forest it IS YOUR responsibility. If you cannot deal with that I am sorry, its not our fault though. We announced this information within our comments, as well released an update. We do not have access to contact buyers due to Theme Forest controlling those rights.

As I had mentioned, I am sorry to hear about your troubles but if you came by Theme Forest from time to time and checked on the template you would have clearly known about the issues. We did our part by addressing the issue, its not your responsibility to update your template - not ours.

So please, do the right thing and accept your responsibility, because its not ours. If you disagree with this, you're more than welcome to take it up with Theme Forest and suggest to them that sellers need the ability to contact their buyers but its not going to happen. It's something authors have been asking Theme Forest for some time now. I'm sorry, but we're only able to do what we can, the rest is up to you as a buyer.

Kind regards,
Bryce Wisekal

-----

2011-01-16T18:00:00.000-08:00

Create Tar.Gz In OpenSolaris

http://www.rasyid.net/2009/10/11/create-tar-gz-in-opensolaris/

2011-01-03T10:12:00.001-08:00

pdflatex on Ubuntu 10.10

sudo apt-get install tetex*

sudo apt-get install texlive

2010-12-06T11:03:00.000-08:00

HowTo: Extract an EPS from a PDF file - http://www.dhreutter.de/?q=blog/howto-extract-eps-a-pdf-file

Extract images from a PDF document - http://stefaanlippens.net/extract-images-from-pdf-documents

2010-11-04T17:57:00.000-07:00

Notes on installing Condor on Windows / Win 7

Below you can read about some of the problems I encountered while testing Condor, along with some solutions/workarounds.

1) The Condor keyboard daemon (KBDD) does not work out of the box. If you start the condor_kbdd.exe process as the SYSTEM user (the default configuration), it will fail to register keyboard/mouse activity. Instead, you can configure Condor to not start the KBDD daemon by removing “KBDD” from the DAEMON_LIST in the configuration file. If you want to use the kbdd process you will need to run it as the the local (logged in) user.

2) When installing Condor manually you need to set the CONDOR_CONFIG environment variable *system wide* (not for the current user). Attempting to start the service when the environment variable is not configured yields this error: “Error 1067: The program terminated unexpectedly”. The manual mentions that instead of an environment variable we can also set several registry keys. I found this to be incorrect. Condor seems to completely ignore those registry keys. If I remember correctly, the installer does not even create them.

3) If the Condor service is configured to start at boot time it will sometimes (always?) fail. One theory is that this happens because Condor tries to establish network connections before the networking services are up. So you might want to delay starting the service until the machine booted up properly.

2010-09-19T21:56:00.000-07:00

Compress PDF

gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/screen -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile=output.pdf input.pdf

2009-12-03T09:10:00.000-08:00

Null values in Hadoop 0.20.1 Writable

If any of the elements of a custom Writable are NULL, Hadoop will fail silently on my machine. So, make sure you don't try to write NULL variables.

2009-07-07T07:13:00.000-07:00

Ubuntu Dell XPS M1330 low volume mic/microphone fix

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6718591&postcount=27

(restart session )

2009-07-05T03:00:00.000-07:00

Untar all files in a folder

for a in `ls -1 *.tar.gz`; do tar -zxvf $a; done

for a in `ls -1 *.tgz`; do tar -zxvf $a; done

2009-06-05T13:23:00.000-07:00

VMware keyboard bug under Ubuntu/Linux

To reset your keyboard map - setxkbmap

http://experts.missouristate.edu/display/csvhelpdesk/Reset+Keyboard+Map

2009-05-31T06:25:00.001-07:00

Unzip all zip files in the current folder

for f in *.zip;do unzip "$f";done

2009-05-20T12:20:00.000-07:00

Distributed key-value stores

http://www.metabrew.com/article/anti-rdbms-a-list-of-distributed-key-value-stores/ - Anti-RDBMS: A list of distributed key-value stores

http://randomfoo.net/2009/04/20/some-notes-on-distributed-key-stores - Some Notes on Distributed Key Stores

http://bret.appspot.com/entry/how-friendfeed-uses-mysql - How FriendFeed uses MySQL to store schema-less data

http://anyall.org/blog/2009/04/performance-comparison-keyvalue-stores-for-language-model-counts/ - Performance comparison: key/value stores for language model counts

http://michalfrackowiak.com/blog:redis-performance - Redis Performance on EC2 (aka weekend project coming)

http://labs.gree.jp/Top/OpenSource/Flare-en.html - Flare is distributed, and persistent key-value storage - pluggable storage (currently only Tokyo Cabinet is available, though:)

http://blip.tv/file/1949416/ - Drop ACID and think about data

http://www.igvita.com/2009/02/13/tokyo-cabinet-beyond-key-value-store/ - Tokyo Cabinet: Beyond Key-Value Store

http://www.scribd.com/doc/12016121/Tokyo-Cabinet-and-Tokyo-Tyrant-Presentation - Tokyo Cabinet and Tokyo Tyrant Presentation

2009-05-20T05:53:00.000-07:00

Installing Tokyo Tyrant on Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty), in custom folders/directories

Tokyo Cabinet - first install this
-------------
cd /usr/local/src/
wget http://tokyocabinet.sourceforge.net/tokyocabinet-1.4.21.tar.gz
tar xvf tokyocabinet-1.4.21.tar.gz
cd tokyocabinet-1.4.21
apt-get install zlib1g-dev
apt-get install libbz2-dev
mkdir /usr/local/tokyocabinet-1.4.21/
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/tokyocabinet-1.4.21/
make
make install

Tokyo Tyrant
------------
cd /usr/local/src/
wget http://tokyocabinet.sourceforge.net/tyrantpkg/tokyotyrant-1.1.27.tar.gz
tar xvf tokyotyrant-1.1.27.tar.gz
cd tokyotyrant-1.1.27
mkdir /usr/local/tokyotyrant-1.1.27
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/tokyotyrant-1.1.27/ --with-tc=/usr/local/tokyocabinet-1.4.21/
make
make install

Fix lib problem
------------
cd /usr/local/tokyotyrant-1.1.27/bin/
./ttserver

You will get this error: ./ttserver: error while loading shared libraries: libtokyocabinet.so.8: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

To fix it,
cd /usr/local/tokyotyrant-1.1.27/
ln -s /usr/local/tokyocabinet-1.4.21/lib/libtokyocabinet.so.8 lib/
./bin/ttserver will now work

2009-05-14T07:34:00.001-07:00

Easily changing the timezone in Ubuntu server

dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

2009-03-24T07:43:00.000-07:00

How to delete a certain line from a file in Linux

sed -i 321d /path/to/file

where 321 is the line number

2009-03-12T02:14:00.001-07:00

Ramdisk in Linux/Ubuntu

sudo mkdir /mnt/ramdisk
sudo mount -t tmpfs tmpfs /mnt/ramdisk -o size=100M,nr_inodes=200k,mode=01777

2009-02-02T07:30:00.000-08:00

Pipe Viewer

"Pipe viewer is a terminal-based tool for monitoring the progress of data through a pipeline. It can be inserted into any normal pipeline between two processes to give a visual indication of how quickly data is passing through, how long it has taken, how near to completion it is, and an estimate of how long it will be until completion."

http://www.catonmat.net/blog/unix-utilities-pipe-viewer/

2009-01-06T14:22:00.000-08:00

Protecting from a DDOS SYN FLOOD on port 80 (Apache, Ubuntu)

Other keywords: SYN_RECV, TIME_WAIT

sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_synack_retries="1"
sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_max_syn_backlog="40000"
sysctl -w net.ipv4.netfilter.ip_conntrack_max="200000"
sysctl -w net.ipv4.tcp_fin_timeout="3"

/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -i eth2 -p tcp --tcp-flags ALL ACK,RST,SYN,FIN -j DROP
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -i eth2 -p tcp --tcp-flags SYN,FIN SYN,FIN -j DROP
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -i eth2 -p tcp --tcp-flags SYN,RST SYN,RST -j DROP
(you can ignore the iptables part, probably doesn't help that much)

In Apache, increase the maximum number of concurrent connections.

I also learned that while in theory putting a squid in reverse proxy on port 80 to protect the Apache behind it is a good idea, squid sucks at it.

Oh, I almost forgot. Make sure syn_cookies is active (if you kernel supports it):
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_syncookies

Google is your friend for further details on the above settings.

More:
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4987#section-3.5
http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archived_issues/ipj_9-4/syn_flooding_attacks.html

2008-11-26T09:22:00.001-08:00

Merge/Combine PDF files in Ubuntu/Linux

apt-get install pdftk

then read this http://www.accesspdf.com/article.php/20041129175231241

2008-10-06T03:53:00.000-07:00

Linux/Ubuntu Shift keyboard bug when using VMware Player or Workstation

Symptom: "your keyboard outside the vm client stops working correctly no capslock, shift nor control is working" - https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/187165 Same bug here also: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+bug/195982

Fix: Run the command setxkbmap in a terminal window

Update: Seems to be fixed in VMware Workstation 6?

2008-09-16T07:01:00.000-07:00

2008 GSOC Participants

View Larger Map

2008-09-08T01:39:00.000-07:00

Connecting Ubuntu Linux 8.04 (Hardy) to eduroam (INHOLLAND Diemen)

1) Make sure you are root (sudo su)

2) Create a file called /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf and add the following lines in it:

network={
ssid="eduroam"
scan_ssid=1
key_mgmt=WPA-EAP
eap=PEAP
identity="STUDENT_ID@student.inholland.nl"
password="STUDENT_PASSWORD"
phase1="peaplabel=0"
phase2="auth=MSCHAPV2"
subject_match="CN=radius.inholland.nl"
}

Replace STUDENT_ID with your student number and STUDENT_PASSWORD with our password. If you copy/paste from this document, make sure that the quotes (“) above are real quotes, and not a character that looks like a quote.

3) Run the following command (as root):

sudo wpa_supplicant -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf -iwlan0 -Dwext

where wlan0 is your wireless interface. Don't close the terminal.

4) Run dhclient wlan0 as root in another terminal, where wlan0 is your wireless interface:

sudo dhclient wlan0

After you get an IP address you can close this terminal, but leave the other one open.

Happy browsing!

Troubleshooting:
If you get certificate error problems, make sure that the contents of /etc/ssl/certs/ca.pem is the same as the file located here: http://secure.globalsign.net/cacert/sureserverEDU.pem

2008-09-05T05:35:00.000-07:00

Too many open files - change ulimit values in Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron)

1) Add line

* hard nofile 51200

to /etc/security/limits.conf

Note: The * means every user except root
Note: 51200 represents the number of concurrent open files. This number must by a multiple of 1024

2) Add line

session required pam_limits.so

to /etc/pam.d/common-session

3) Stop all processes that need the new limit

4) Restart SSH server

5) Login again

6) Run ulimit -a to check the values

7) If the values haven't changed, reboot and try step 6 again

8) Start new processes from command line

2008-09-05T04:24:00.001-07:00

Upgrade Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft) to 7.04 (Feisty Fawn) to 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon), then to 8.04 (Hardy Heron)

From 6.10 to 7.04:

sed -e 's/\edgy/feisty/g' -i /etc/apt/sources.list
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get dist-upgrade

From 7.04 to 7.10:

apt-get install update-manager-core
do-release-upgrade

From 7.10 to 8.04.1:

do-release-upgrade

2008-09-04T10:51:00.001-07:00

Remove/delete/clean .svn folders

find /absolute/path/to/folder -name ".svn" -exec rm -rf {} \;

2008-09-02T10:06:00.000-07:00

VPN Server + NAT on Ubuntu

(should work with Microsoft Windows Vista/XP and Apple Mac OS Panther/Tiger/Leopard etc clients also)

Tested on Ubuntu Hardy (8.04)

1) Install pptpd

sudo apt-get install pptpd

2) Edit /etc/pptpd.conf and add the following two lines:

localip 10.2.2.1
remoteip 10.2.2.2-5

localip is the address of t he VPN (ppp0) interface on the VPN server (this interface will be create automatically).
remoteip is the range of IP addresses that will be given to the VPN clients

Please add an empty newline at the end of /etc/pptpd.conf, or the daemon will hang.

3) Edit /etc/ppp/chap-secrets and add one line for each VPN user:

USERNAME pptpd PASSWORD *

where USERNAME is the username, pptpd should remain as it is, and PASSWORD is the password. The * at the end means that this particular user can connect to the VPN server from any IP address. You couldd replace it with an ip address range:

"Any following words on the same line are taken to be a list of acceptable IP addresses for that client. If there are only 3 words on the line, or if the first word is "-", then all IP addresses are disallowed. To allow any address, use "*". A word starting with "!" indicates that the specified address is not acceptable. An address may be followed by "/" and a number n, to indicate a whole subnet, i.e. all addresses which have the same value in the most significant n bits. In this form, the address may be followed by a plus sign ("+") to indicate that one address from the subnet is authorized, based on the ppp network interface unit number in use. In this case, the host part of the address will be set to the unit number plus one." (pptpd manual)

4) Add the following lines in /etc/rc.local

# pptp VPN NAT
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 10.2.2.0/24 -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
iptables -A FORWARD -s 10.2.2.0/24 -o eth0 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A FORWARD -d 10.2.2.0/24 -m state --state ESTABLISHED,RELATED -i eth0 -j ACCEPT
route add -net 10.2.2.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 dev ppp0

where eth0 is your "Internet" interface on the server, the one connected directly to the Internet.

5) Start pptpd

/etc/init.d/pptpd stop
/etc/init.d/pptpd start

6) Run /etc/rc.local

7) If you run a firewall on the server make sure to open port 1723. I do this with the following command:

# pptp VPN
/sbin/iptables -A extern -p tcp --dport 1723 -j RETURN

Notice that I am using a chain named "extern". This is probably not the case at your end.

8) Connect from your VPN client

2008-08-08T13:51:00.000-07:00

MySQL JDBC Memory Usage on Large ResultSet

MySQL JDBC Memory Usage on Large ResultSet

2008-08-06T12:54:00.001-07:00

Apache Velocity Servlets + UTF-8 = love

If you have problems outputting UTF-8 with Apache Velocity, create a file called velocity.properties under the WEB-INF folder and add the following 2 lines:

input.encoding=utf-8
output.encoding=utf-8

2008-08-06T12:46:00.000-07:00

XML-RPC for PHP Library + UTF-8 = love

If you have problems with the XML-RPC for PHP library (http://phpxmlrpc.sourceforge.net/) and UTF-8, please be advised that in xmlrpc.inc you will find the following lines:

// The charset encoding used by the server for received messages and
// by the client for received responses when received charset cannot be determined
// or is not supported
$GLOBALS['xmlrpc_defencoding']='UTF-8';

// The encoding used internally by PHP.
// String values received as xml will be converted to this, and php strings will be converted to xml
// as if having been coded with this
GLOBALS['xmlrpc_internalencoding']='ISO-8859-1';

As you can see, internally everything seems to be converted to ISO-8859-1, no idea why. If you change this to
$GLOBALS['xmlrpc_internalencoding']='UTF-8';
you will be able to use UTF-8 correctly with the library.

2008-08-04T00:10:00.001-07:00

MySQL + PHPMyAdmin + UTF-8 = love

Add the following to the [mysqld] section in /etc/mysql/my.cnf:

character_set_server = utf8
collation_server = utf8_general_ci
default-character-set=utf8

Adding AddDefaultCharset UTF-8 to /etc/apache2/conf.d/charset also helps with some web apps.

Tested on Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy

2008-06-20T01:16:00.000-07:00

Psyco - massively speed up your Python programs without modifying the source code

http://psyco.sourceforge.net/index.html

"Think of Psyco as a kind of just-in-time (JIT) compiler, a little bit like what exists for other languages, that emit machine code on the fly instead of interpreting your Python program step by step. The difference with the traditional approach to JIT compilers is that Psyco writes several version of the same blocks (a block is a bit of a function), which are optimized by being specialized to some kinds of variables (a "kind" can mean a type, but it is more general). The result is that your unmodified Python programs run faster."

2008-06-20T01:11:00.000-07:00

Parallel Python - an awesome distributed computing library for Python

http://www.parallelpython.com/

Parallel Python helps you execute your Python code on multiple cores on the same machine, or on a whole cluster of network machines, all transparently, load balanced and with fault tolerance.

"Features:

Parallel execution of python code on SMP and clusters
Easy to understand and implement job-based parallelization technique (easy to convert serial application in parallel)
Automatic detection of the optimal configuration (by default the number of worker processes is set to the number of effective processors)
Dynamic processors allocation (number of worker processes can be changed at runtime)
Low overhead for subsequent jobs with the same function (transparent caching is implemented to decrease the overhead)
Dynamic load balancing (jobs are distributed between processors at runtime)
Fault-tolerance (if one of the nodes fails tasks are rescheduled on others)
Auto-discovery of computational resources
Dynamic allocation of computational resources (consequence of auto-discovery and fault-tolerance)
SHA based authentication for network connections
Cross-platform portability and interoperability (Windows, Linux, Unix, Mac OS X)
Cross-architecture portability and interoperability (x86, x86-64, etc.)
Open source"

I tried it, it's very easy to set up.

A review: http://www.devchix.com/2007/08/03/parallel-python-review-in-a-nutshell-wow/

2008-06-10T01:31:00.000-07:00

Keep alive SSH session

SSH sessions time out normally if you leave them open for a few minutes. You can fix this by configuring SSH to send keep alive packets from time to time. To do this, add the following line:

ServerAliveInterval 5

/etc/ssh/ssh_config

2008-05-20T00:35:00.000-07:00

Tsung stress testing tool

http://tsung.erlang-projects.org/

"Tsung (formerly known as idx-Tsunami) is a stress testing tool written in the Erlang language. It can currently stress test HTTP, PostgreSQL , SOAP and Jabber/XMPP servers. Tsung is distributed under the GPL license. Tsung can simulate hundreds of simultaneous users on a single system. It can also function in a clustered environment." (wikipedia description)

2008-05-09T02:51:00.000-07:00

Convert a pdf to jpg/jpeg files in Hardy Heron

apt-get install imagemagick

then

convert -density 200x200 file.pdf file.jpg

Each page will be saved in a separate jpg file (file-0.jpg, file-1.jpg etc).

2008-05-07T20:41:00.000-07:00

I used foremost to recover files from my formatted SD CARD under Ubuntu Linux

http://foremost.sourceforge.net/ - free, open source

"Foremost is a console program to recover files based on their headers, footers, and internal data structures. This process is commonly referred to as data carving. Foremost can work on image files, such as those generated by dd, Safeback, Encase, etc, or directly on a drive. The headers and footers can be specified by a configuration file or you can use command line switches to specify built-in file types. These built-in types look at the data structures of a given file format allowing for a more reliable and faster recovery.

Originally developed by the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations and The Center for Information Systems Security Studies and Research , foremost has been opened to the general public."

2008-04-30T20:40:00.000-07:00

Manele noi campaign

2008-04-23T23:02:00.000-07:00

How to convert .daa to .iso in Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy)

Use AcetoneISO2 (AcetoneISO). It cannot mount .daa files directly, but you can convert the file to .iso if you click on Conversion > Convert (it will ask if it can automatically install poweriso).

Features:

- Mount automatically ISO, MDF, NRG, BIN, NRG
- A nice interactive display
- Convert2iso / Extract2folder :
*.bin *.mdf *.nrg *.img *.daa *.dmg *.cdi *.b5i *.bwi *.pdi and much more
- Play a DVD Movie Image inside Kaffeine / VLC with cover downloader
- Generate an ISO from a Folder or CD/DVD
- Check MD5 file of an image and/or generate it to a text file
- Encrypt / Decrypt an image
- Split / Merge image in X megabyte
- Compress with High Ratio an image in 7z format
- Rip a PSX cd to *.bin to make it work with epsxe/psx emulators
- Restore a lost CUE file of *.bin *.img
- Convert Mac OS *.dmg to a mountable image
- El-Torito support to create ISO bootable Cd
- Mount an image in a specified folder from the user
- Create a database_of_images
- Extract the Boot Image of a CD/DVD or ISO
- Backup a CD-Audio to a *.bin image
- Service Menu for Konqueror

2008-04-23T07:53:00.000-07:00

Loading GeoNames data into MySQL

http://forum.geonames.org/gforum/posts/list/80.page

Get and unzip allCountries.zip and alternateNames.zip.

Create a database named geonames. Select it, then run the following SQL queries:

CREATE TABLE `geonames` (
`geonameid` int(10) unsigned NOT NULL default '0',
`name` varchar(200) NOT NULL default '',
`ansiname` varchar(200) NOT NULL default '',
`alternames` varchar(200) NOT NULL default '',
`latitude` double NOT NULL default '0',
`longitude` double NOT NULL default '0',
`feature_class` char(1) ,
`feature_code` varchar(10) ,
`country_code` char(2),
`cc2` varchar(60),
`admin1_code` varchar(20) default '',
`admin2_code` varchar(80) default '',
`admin3_code` varchar(20) default '',
`admin4_code` varchar(20) default '',
`population` int(11) default '0',
`elevation` int(11) default '0',
`gtopo30` int(11) default '0',
`timezone` varchar(40),
`modification_date` date default '0000-00-00',
PRIMARY KEY (`geonameid`)
) CHARACTER SET utf8 ;

CREATE TABLE `alternateNames` (
`alternateNameId` int(11) NOT NULL,
`geonameid` int(11) NOT NULL,
`isolanguage` varchar(7) NOT NULL,
`alternatename` varchar(200) NOT NULL,
`isPreferredName` enum('','1') NOT NULL,
`isShortName` enum('','1') NOT NULL
) ENGINE=MyISAM DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;

load data infile '/permanent1/www/geonames/allCountries.txt' INTO TABLE geonames;
load data infile '/permanent1/www/geonames/alternateNames.txt' INTO TABLE alternateNames;

(your path will be different)

ALTER TABLE `geonames` ADD INDEX ( `name` );
ALTER TABLE `geonames` ADD INDEX ( `ansiname` );
ALTER TABLE `geonames` ADD INDEX ( `population` );
ALTER TABLE `geonames` ADD INDEX ( `alternames` );

ALTER TABLE `alternateNames` ADD INDEX ( `alternatename` );
ALTER TABLE `alternateNames` ADD INDEX ( `geonameid` );

2008-04-21T20:08:00.000-07:00

Accepted in the Google Summer of Code 2008 program

I have been selected to participate in the Google Summer of Code program. I submitted two applications, to the WinLibre and Coppermine Photo Gallery projects. As both of them were selected, I got to choose which one I wanted. It was a difficult decision as I'm getting along very well with the WinLibre guys, but I chose Coppermine in the end. The reason is that the Coppermine project is more in line with my future career, which will involve distributed systems and data mining (~Artificial Intelligence).

Here are my two applications, if you're interested: mtodo and Scaling Coppermine.

Looking forward to try on the T-Shirt :D

2008-04-21T06:18:00.000-07:00

Converting .img or .ccd to .iso with Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy)

apt-get install ccd2iso

then

ccd2iso myimage.img myimage.iso

or

ccd2iso myimage.ccd myimage.iso

Update:

smarty@smarty:~$ apt-cache search bchunk
bchunk - CD image format conversion from bin/cue to iso/cdr

2008-04-18T22:07:00.000-07:00

Convert text/txt files to Palm pdb doc format in Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy)

sudo apt-get install txt2pdbdoc

then you can use the converter like this:

txt2pdbdoc pdas pdas.txt pdas.pdb

Where pdas is the title of the new document, pdas.txt is the source text and pdas.pdb is the destination pdb file.

Then you can upload it with jpilot.

2008-04-16T22:53:00.000-07:00

S.M.A.R.T HDD Monitoring Commands

Drive: WDC WD1600JS-00NCB1
OS: Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft)

To install:
apt-get install smartmontools

To activate SMART on the HDD:
smartctl -s on -T permissive -d ata /dev/sda

Print all SMART information about the disk:
smartctl -a -d ata /dev/sda

Run a long test on /dev/sda:
smartctl -t long -d ata /dev/sda

Output:

smartctl version 5.36 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-6 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/

=== START OF OFFLINE IMMEDIATE AND SELF-TEST SECTION ===
Sending command: "Execute SMART Extended self-test routine immediately in off-line mode".
Drive command "Execute SMART Extended self-test routine immediately in off-line mode" successful.
Testing has begun.
Please wait 64 minutes for test to complete.
Test will complete after Thu Apr 17 09:55:21 2008

Use smartctl -X to abort test.

2008-04-11T01:40:00.000-07:00

Decent (background) colors for mcedit

export MC_COLOR_TABLE="normal=lightgray,black:selected=black,green"

export MC_COLOR_TABLE="$MC_COLOR_TABLE:editnormal=lightgray,black:editbold=yellow,black:editmarked=black,cyan"

2008-04-10T00:03:00.000-07:00

Operating System / OS Development Links

http://www.osdev.org/

http://www.osdev.org/wiki/Main_Page

http://www.nondot.org/sabre/os/articles

http://www.osdever.net/

2008-04-07T21:52:00.001-07:00

.asia top level domain "invalid emails" fix for phplist

FYI, if you have a .asia website you need to change the is_email($email) function on line 341 in admin/commonlib/lib/userlib.php

Change it from

$pattern =
"^[\&\'-_.[:alnum:]]+@((([[:alnum:]]|[[:alnum:]][[:alnum:]-]*[[:alnum:]])\.)+(ac|ad|ae|aero|af|ag|ai|al|am|an|ao|aq|ar|arpa|as|at|au|aw|az|ba|bb|bd|be|bf|bg|bh|bi|biz|bj|bm|bn|bo|br|bs|bt|bv|bw|by|bz|ca|cat|cc|cd|cf|cg|ch|ci|ck|cl|cm|cn|co|com|coop|cr|cs|cu|cv|cx|cy|cz|de|dev|dj|dk|dm|do|dz|ec|edu|ee|eg|eh|er|es|et|eu|fi|fj|fk|fm|fo|fr|ga|gb|gd|ge|gf|gg|gh|gi|gl|gm|gn|gov|gp|gq|gr|gs|gt|gu|gw|gy|hk|hm|hn|home|hr|ht|hu|id|ie|il|in|info|int|io|iq|ir|is|it|jm|je|jo|jp|ke|kg|kh|ki|km|kn|kp|kr|kw|ky|kz|la|lb|lc|li|lk|lr|loc|ls|lt|lu|lv|ly|ma|mc|md|mg|mh|mil|mk|ml|mm|mn|mo|mp|mq|mr|ms|mt|mu|museum|mv|mw|mx|my|mz|na|name|nc|ne|net|nf|ng|ni|nl|no|np|nr|nt|nu|nz|om|org|pa|pe|pf|pg|ph|pk|pl|pm|pn|pr|pro|ps|pt|pw|py|qa|quipu|re|ro|ru|rw|sa|sb|sc|sd|se|sg|sh|si|sj|sk|sl|sm|sn|so|sr|st|su|sv|sy|sz|tc|td|tf|tg|th|tj|tk|tm|tn|to|tp|tr|tt|tv|tw|tz|ua|ug|uk|um|us|uy|uz|va|vc|ve|vg|vi|vn|vu|wf|ws|ye|yt|yu|za|zm|zw)|(([0-9][0-9]?|[0-1][0-9][0-9]|[2][0-4][0-9]|[2][5][0-5])\.){3}([0-9][0-9]?|[0-1][0-9][0-9]|[2][0-4][0-9]|[2][5][0-5]))$";

$pattern =
"^[\&\'-_.[:alnum:]]+@((([[:alnum:]]|[[:alnum:]][[:alnum:]-]*[[:alnum:]])\.)+(ac|ad|ae|aero|af|ag|ai|al|am|an|ao|aq|ar|arpa|as|asia|at|au|aw|az|ba|bb|bd|be|bf|bg|bh|bi|biz|bj|bm|bn|bo|br|bs|bt|bv|bw|by|bz|ca|cat|cc|cd|cf|cg|ch|ci|ck|cl|cm|cn|co|com|coop|cr|cs|cu|cv|cx|cy|cz|de|dev|dj|dk|dm|do|dz|ec|edu|ee|eg|eh|er|es|et|eu|fi|fj|fk|fm|fo|fr|ga|gb|gd|ge|gf|gg|gh|gi|gl|gm|gn|gov|gp|gq|gr|gs|gt|gu|gw|gy|hk|hm|hn|home|hr|ht|hu|id|ie|il|in|info|int|io|iq|ir|is|it|jm|je|jo|jp|ke|kg|kh|ki|km|kn|kp|kr|kw|ky|kz|la|lb|lc|li|lk|lr|loc|ls|lt|lu|lv|ly|ma|mc|md|mg|mh|mil|mk|ml|mm|mn|mo|mp|mq|mr|ms|mt|mu|museum|mv|mw|mx|my|mz|na|name|nc|ne|net|nf|ng|ni|nl|no|np|nr|nt|nu|nz|om|org|pa|pe|pf|pg|ph|pk|pl|pm|pn|pr|pro|ps|pt|pw|py|qa|quipu|re|ro|ru|rw|sa|sb|sc|sd|se|sg|sh|si|sj|sk|sl|sm|sn|so|sr|st|su|sv|sy|sz|tc|td|tf|tg|th|tj|tk|tm|tn|to|tp|tr|tt|tv|tw|tz|ua|ug|uk|um|us|uy|uz|va|vc|ve|vg|vi|vn|vu|wf|ws|ye|yt|yu|za|zm|zw)|(([0-9][0-9]?|[0-1][0-9][0-9]|[2][0-4][0-9]|[2][5][0-5])\.){3}([0-9][0-9]?|[0-1][0-9][0-9]|[2][0-4][0-9]|[2][5][0-5]))$";

I just added asia after as in the list of top level domains.

The above lines are actually very long, but are not shown in Blogger. You can see them correctly if you copy/paste the text of this post.

2008-03-19T00:17:00.001-07:00

Writing a Compiler - Links

The LLVM Compiler Infrastructure - http://llvm.org/Features.html

How Difficult is it to Write a Compiler? - http://tratt.net/laurie/tech_articles/articles/how_difficult_is_it_to_write_a_compiler

Lex and YACC primer/HOWTO - http://www.ds9a.nl/lex-yacc/cvs/output/lexyacc.html

Compiler Books - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0201100886/002-8651299-9372828?v=glance

Flex (The Fast Lexical Analyzer) - http://www.gnu.org/software/flex/

Bison - GNU parser generator - http://www.gnu.org/software/bison/bison.html

Let's Build a Compiler, by Jack Crenshaw - http://compilers.iecc.com/crenshaw/

http://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&sourceid=navclient&gfns=1&q=amazon+Brinch+Hansens

Grammar (formal language theory) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formal_grammar

An Incremental Approach to Compiler Construction - http://scheme2006.cs.uchicago.edu/#anincrementalapproachtocompilerconstruction (pdf link on the right side)

2008-03-13T06:32:00.000-07:00

Compiling clamav-0.92.1 under Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper)

If you get this error:

checking for gcc bug PR28045... configure: error: your compiler has gcc PR28045 bug, use a different compiler, see http://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=28045

add --disable-gcc-vcheck CFLAGS="-O0" to ./configure, like this:

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/clamav-0.92.1/ --disable-gcc-vcheck CFLAGS="-O0"

2008-02-21T03:00:00.001-08:00

Fighting against the Microsoft Tax

"The goal of this blog is to publish news and links about the so called Microsoft Tax. The Microsoft Tax is the “tax” added to almost every computer sold in computer shops today. This tax represents the cost of the preinstalled Windows shipped with most computers, as it is forced upon buyers, which usually don’t have a say in which Operating System is preinstalled on their computers.

The End User License Agreement that comes with Microsoft Windows states that “By using the software, you accept these terms. If you do not accept them, do not use the software. Instead, return it to the retailer for a refund or credit.”. So in theory buyers have the option of returning Windows and getting a refund. In reality, this turns out to be almost impossible."

2008-02-12T20:22:00.000-08:00

Why oppose the standardization of OOXML

(Following text copied Verbatim from a Slashdot comment)

Many reasons:
1. There is already an ISO standard for this same purpose.
2. There are exclusions in Microsoft's Open Specification Promise, meaning Microsoft can sue over other parties writing implementations of some of the things that the OOXML standard references (ActiveX and VBA are examples).
3. OOXML is designed so that fully-compliant applications can only be written by Microsoft, and mostly-complaint applications can be written by other parties but only to run on a Windows platform. Therefore OOXML is not inter-operable with other applications and especially not with non-Windows platforms, and the whole purpose of making something a standard is to facilitate such inter-operation.
4. OOXML is technically very inferior to the existing standard, ISO 26300. For example, OOXML specifies three different implementations of "a table", instead of just one common to different Office applications. This means that you cannot write a "table handling class" as a library, but instead you have to duplicate equivalent functionality several times over.
5. OOXML includes deliberately mandating bugs (such as dates before 1900) just to pander to errors in Microsoft software.
6. OOXML is controlled by just one corporation
... ISO 26300 belongs to ISO.
7. ISO 26300 already has many implementations by many vendors on multiple platform. OTOH even Office 2007 running on Windows Vista does not implement OOXML ... there is not one compliant application for the OOXML that is being proposed as the standard.
8. ISO 26300 even works with Microsoft Office (up to Office 2003) using a free plugin written by Sun. Microsoft deliberately broke Office 2007 file filters so that this plugin (or any other plugin not written by Microsoft) would not work in Office 2007.
9. ISO 26300 has a compliance test suite. You can use this test suite to make sure a given application works properly with ISO 26300. No such thing exists with OOXML.
10. It makes no sense to have "choice in standards" ... that just costs everybody a lot of money. It is fine to have "choice in applications" ... but ideally they should all read and write to the same standard file format ... and ISO 26300 is by far the best choice for that.

2008-02-02T02:42:00.000-08:00

Axel, a Download Accelerator similar to Prozilla

Both Axel and Prozilla let you download the same file using parallel connections, which usually leads to an overall increase in download speed.

As Prozilla is not maintained anymore, I searched for a replacement. I found Axel, which is available in the Ubuntu repositories.

apt-get install axel

2007-12-01T03:40:00.000-08:00

Winning The DARPA Grand Challenge 2005 - Stanford's Stanley

These are my raw notes on this video. Facts are not checked, some names could be wrong.

03:00 - Darpa - no funding -> contest - changed model from before
03:40 - 2007 GPS breadcrumbs
06:40 - a year roughly to put together a car - Stanford joined the race only in the 2005 version - timeline slide
07:50 - made a course DARPA Grand Challenge - no syllabus
08:00 - 40 people, 20 people stayed on - got in touch with Volkswagen - Touareg
08:20 - first thing they did - equipped the car with inertial guiding systems - GPS + inertial measurement unit that measures accelerations and rotational velocities => extrapolate between different GPS measurements
09:00 - low level steering control - make your front tires parallel to your reference trajectory - take image from here
- if you get off the trajectory, measure your error and steer in proportion to it
10:30 - they put lasers on the roof - image
- a laser beam goes into a rotating mirror that gets directed into the environment - the laser light goes out, it is being reflected by objects - received by the sensor - we can measure the "time of flight"
11:00 - online motion planning
12:54 - test - December 1 - California - ~off-road-desert - went further than CM went in 2004, but not much - the many obstacles pushed the car around a lot - too slow for racing
13:15 - replaced driving modules with new versions, based on the feedback in the dessert
14:03 - software architecture
14:15 - faced first big hurdle - DARPA had 195 submissions - they wanted to find 40 good ones - they had to submit a video - first time they drove the car without a person inside - 43 semi-finalists
18:00 - get out bugs - goal: hundreds of miles without intervention
18:50 - Stanley gone wild - all of a sudden - go crazy out of no apparent reason - drive maybe into a ditch, down a cliff etc - car had to berescued
19:25 - 3 different innovations we worked on
20:15 - Obstacle detection - simple logic - something vertical hit by laser - image
20:40 - Effect of pitching
19:50 - Probabilistic error model
23:00 - Had to populate the probabilistic model with human driving - discriminative learning - label flat terrain as flat an non-flat as non-flat - if the human driver drove oversomething, it was flat - they managed to basically eliminate all false positives without affecting the correct positive rate
25:25 - they wanted to drive really fast (35 mph goal), but the lasers don't cover more than a 20 meter distance - couldn't stop in time when the lasers caught an obstacle
25:40 - used a camera to find roads - how do you extract from a camera image where the road is - turns out it's not easy
26:13 - they started with the idea that maybe roads are brownish - doesn't work for paved roads
26:25 - maybe the road is the smoothest thing in the image - but the smoothest thing in the image is the sky :))
27:00 - Stanley's Adaptive Vision - extract drivable region with lasers (as far as lasers can go), and use the extracted pixels as training examples - mixture of Gaussian
27:50 - if the road changes it's color you just slow down and the lasers take care of it
29:00 - the car got too fast - they had to find a way to make it slow down when the terrain got bad - adaptive mechanisms for speed control - train with human driving - stretch in the mountains - built a controller that copied that. The speed controller considers: filtered vertical shock, terrain slope, road width
31:28 - 1000+ miles of testing
32:35 - funny videos from the Berkeley team + funny Carnegie Mellon picture
33:00 - Rainy day Mojave desert (July) - couldn't see - relied on the software to drive - robot was better than human driving
34:03 - The race took place at the Fontana speedway (national qualifications), and then in Prim in Nevada. Fontana - selected the 20 finalists - Stanford 2 cars
- gate
35:20 - the most difficult obstacle was a tunnel - emulated an underpass under a highway - no GPS coverage in a tunnel - have to drive locally - this can also kill you when you get out of the tunnel and realize you are somewhere else
37:00 - one of the contestants programmed the car to go full throttle when it lost GPS signal
~37:30 - funny videos
38:22 - 23 finalists - race on October 8th
38:40 - image with the race day timeline (5:30 - DARPA chases 12 cows off the race course)
38:58 - 6:30 - race began
41:23 - "It was a complete act of randomness that Stanley actually won. It was really a failure of Carnegie Mellon's engine that made us win, and no more and no less than that"
42:10 - Last obstacle - treacherous mountain pass - reached only by 5 vehicles - Stanley was the first car to clear it - 42:23 - image
43:50 - five teams finished - four within half an hour of each other
44:26 - description of Urban Challenge 2007
45:30 - The Big Picture
45:40 - Military perspective slide
45:50 - Social perspective - cars are deadly instruments - 42000 die every year in the US because of traffic accidents - 90% caused by human error
46:20 - Commuting - people spend 1.25 hours/day in average commuting - free that time => more productive / save money
46:56 - Aging population, people who can't drive (blind people, drunk people, children) / Increase highway throughput - most space on highways is not used

2007-11-15T03:53:00.001-08:00

How to disable ipv6 in Ubuntu Gutsy

Add the following line to /etc/blacklist
blacklist ipv6

2007-11-15T03:42:00.000-08:00

How to disable the PC onboard/motherboard speaker in Linux/Ubuntu

modprobe -r pcspkr

2007-11-07T13:10:00.000-08:00

Monitoring HDD/hard-disk/hard-drive temperature with Ubuntu

Tested on Feisty

Monitoring hard-disk temperature

root@server:~# apt-get install hddtemp
root@server:~# hddtemp /dev/sda
/dev/sda: WDC WD1600JS-00NCB1: 37°C

2007-10-31T15:30:00.000-07:00

How to not lock yourself our of your own remote Linux server

While testing iptables rules on a remote server you can add the following line to crontab:

*/10 * * * * /sbin/iptables -F

This will reset your rules every 10 minutes, so if you made a mistake you will still be able to gain access to your router in a maximum of 10 minutes.

Source

2007-10-28T11:56:00.000-07:00

Eclipse TPTP + Gutsy Gibbon = love?

1) Fixing the "Error occurred during initialization of VM" error when trying to profile with TPTP

If you get this error:

Error occurred during initialization of VM
Could not find agent library on the library path or in the local directory: piAgent

Then install libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2 ( apt-get install libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2 )

2) Fixing the "FATAL ERROR: JVMPI, an experimental interface, is no longer supported." error when trying to profile with TPTP

If you get this error:
FATAL ERROR: JVMPI, an experimental interface, is no longer supported.
Please use the supported interface: the JVM Tool Interface (JVM TI).
For information on temporary workarounds contact: jvmpi_eol@sun.com
Could not resolve to JVMPI interface
Error occurred during initialization of VM
-Xrun library failed to init: piAgent

then
a) install Java 1.5 (separately from your Java 1.6 install)
b) go to Eclipse and Go to Window > Preferences > Agent Controller > Integrated Agent Controller. Click on the Environment tab. Change the path of the Java executable to Java 1.5.
c) Right click on your Eclipse project > Properties > Java Compiler > Click Enable project specific settings. Select 5.0 from Compiler Compliance Level > Let it rebuild the project.

Reference: http://dev.eclipse.org/newslists/news.eclipse.tptp/msg02475.html

2007-10-23T11:20:00.000-07:00

VMware Server (1.0.3) + Management Interface (vmware-mui) notes

Tested on Ubuntu Feisty + Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon VMs

vmware-server-console: libpng error on Debian GNU/Linux

How to fix the MAC address problem after making a copy of an Ubuntu VM:
1) Login on the VM and unlink /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
2) Poweroff
3) BEFORE POWERING ON: open the .vmx file and delete the following lines
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
uuid.location = "56 4d d7 38 51 b8 c7 4b-94 71 85 98 39 fc 4d 0a"
uuid.bios = "56 4d d7 38 51 b8 c7 4b-94 71 85 98 39 fc 4d 0a"
ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:fc:4d:0a"
ethernet0.generatedAddressOffset = "0"
4) Power on. VMware should automatically generate a new MAC address for your virtual machine, and Ubuntu should rewrite its persistent file with the new MAC.

If the management interface won't start:
"# vi httpd.vmware (or use your favourite text editor)

Search for the string: "start)". Right after this line, place the following:

if [ ! -d /var/run/vmware/httpd ] ; then
mkdir /var/run/vmware/httpd
chown www-data:nogroup /var/run/vmware/httpd
chmod 700 /var/run/vmware/httpd
fi

(Save your changes). Note that if your httpd runs as a different owner and group, season the above to taste." - source

Start multiple VMs faster at system startup:
- Open the Web Management interface
- Select Properties for each VM (click the arrow)
- Set the "Continue Starting Other Virtual Machines After" to "Don't Wait" at the System Startup Options in the Options tab

2007-07-20T02:34:00.000-07:00

Syncing a Palm Tungsten C to jpilot (tested on Ubuntu Feisty)

The old way of doing this was to fiddle with the visor module and set the serial port to something like /dev/ttyUSB1 (JPilot->File->Preferences->Settings). But this doesn't seem to work for me on Ubuntu Feisty.

The way I solved it was by configuring the serial port to be "usb:" (without the quotes) and it worked like a charm.

2007-07-18T03:00:00.000-07:00

Disabling the Synaptics Touchpad driver in Linux (tested on Ubuntu Feisty)

1) Edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf and add the line
Option "SHMConfig" "true"
to the section that configured the Synaptic Touchpad driver.

The result should be something like this:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Synaptics Touchpad"
Driver "synaptics"
Option "SendCoreEvents" "true"
Option "Device" "/dev/psaux"
Option "Protocol" "auto-dev"
Option "HorizScrollDelta" "0"
Option "SHMConfig" "true"
EndSection

2) Install gsynaptics by running
apt-get install gsynaptics
as root

3) Restart your X server (if you don't know how to do this, just restart your laptop)

4) Start gsynaptics and configure the touchpad:

You can also disable vertical scrolling by going to the scrolling tab.

2007-06-19T10:48:00.000-07:00

YEurope, Chaos and Innovation

Computers, rubble, cables, posters, video consoles, electronics, measuring machines, books, proximity sensors, a disco ball, and a lot of geeks. So delightfully chaotic. All of this is called Metalab, and I'm standing in the middle of it. You won't guess what is going on inside if you pass by it, but here it is, ten meters from Vienna's castle-like town hall. It is an inconspicuous basement, spanning five rooms; a hacker's paradise, financed partially by public funds. It's a self-run lab that strives to bring more technological innovation in a typically conservative Europe.

I'm in Vienna because my team is competing in YEurope, a seed funding contest created by Metalab's founder. It is the first contest of its kind in Europe and it boils down to finding the most promising tech startups. YEurope is a meeting place between talented young entrepreneurs and investors with experience and/or money. The best teams get funded for the first 3-5 months, in exchange for 2-10% of the stock of the new company. Not all companies turn to profit but statistically it is a win-win situation because even if one in ten of the funded companies becomes big in the future, the stock pays for the loses on the other nine companies and the investors even make a decent profit.

The rules, the format and even the application form are modeled after a US contest called YCombinator. YCombinator is such a big success that a few hundred highly intelligent people apply for it yearly. But they don't apply for the "measly" few thousands of dollars that are on the line, they apply because of the mentorship, support, and social networking opportunities they will get once they are among the winners.

In Europe risk and subsequent bankruptcy equates to failure, because the two-guys-in-a-garage way of starting a business is not considered viable. In the US on the other hand there is a real bootstrap culture that has brought us companies like Google and Microsoft. Funding in Europe is only available to well-established companies with a good track record. Twenty year-olds that get millions of dollars in funding based only on their idea and a mockup is something unheard of. Europe is lagging behind in innovation and the EU is just starting to feel worried about this. I'm not saying they should completely emulate the US way of bringing up innovation, but they should at least think of establishing a few "Metalabs" here and there.

(The text refers to Friday 15th of June 2007)

2007-05-29T11:55:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wanted to control 2 computers with the same keyboard and mouse? (Semi-Geek Post)

If the two computers are in the same LAN, you can easily do that. Imagine having two screens connected to two computers, and only one mouse and keyboard connected to the first computer. When your mouse pointer reaches the edge of the screen on your first computer, it jumps to the second computer, along with keyboard control. Moreover, you could even use different operating systems on the two computers, one Windows and one Linux.

The way to achieve this is to use Win2VNC (for Windows) or x2vnc (for Linux). After you install one of these programs on the first computer, you have to install a VNC server on the other computer (I recommend RealVNC). The last step is configuring win2vnc or x2vnc to connect to the VNC server on the other computer. Tip: Tip: Make sure that at least while testing you disable the VNC server authentication, so that it doesn't ask for permission or for a password when win2vnc connects to it. Also, check the firewall permissions on the second computer. I think the default port for RealVNC is 5900.

2007-05-19T15:31:00.000-07:00

How to successfully compile prozilla (proz) on Ubuntu Feisty (Geek Post)

If you get this error
download_win.h:55: error: extra qualification 'DL_Window::' on member 'print_status'
go to line 55 in src/download_win.h and replace it with
void DL_Window:: print_status(download_t * download, int quiet_mode);

(via LINUX... y otras cosas)

2007-05-17T10:49:00.000-07:00

This image is haunting me. Right, now let's get on with our lives.

2007-05-13T16:53:00.000-07:00

My work

About 5 years ago I joined a website called Jucaushii.ro, a Romanian gaming news website. More than 2 years ago Playfuls.com, its English counterpart, was launched. Last year I sold both websites and I used the money to pay a part of my college. At its highest peak playfuls.com had more than 3 million visitors per month (If you want to put this into perspective, check this out). I would really want to stress the fact that I never was involved in the editorial process, I only handled the tech part. And by this I mean I wrote the core of the website (along with my friend Stokky) and I configured/maintained the Linux servers. The current setup has a main server and a bunch of caches in front.

My main area of interest is distributed applications in general and datamining in general. By datamining I mean extracting useful data from unstructured information (what Google does). I've been doing this in one way or another for the past 3 years. Even i do it on an on/off basis, this is my true passion. My other major interests are Linux and programming in general.

One of my new projects is GeoScaling, which will be a company offering geographical web scaling services and products. We will help companies build, maintain and scale web applications that have many visitors or are mission critical. Our first product is GeoScaling DNS, a DNS server that can redirect users to the closest mirror based on their country of origin. It will also be able to do load balancing and global failover. The software is still in alpha and we're currently testing it. This is going to be an interesting summer.

2007-05-13T06:21:00.000-07:00

How to make VMware Workstatin 5.5.3 work after an upgrade to Feisty (Geek Post!)

1) Locate the installed version of vmmon.tar (it should be something similar to /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/vmmon.tar)

2) Backup vmmon.tar (optional yet highly recommended)
cd /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source/
cp vmmon.tar vmmon.tar.bck

3) Unpack the file
tar -xvf vmmon.tar

4) Edit vmmon-only/include/compat_kernel.h
Try
mcedit vmmon-only/include/compat_kernel.h
If you don't have mcedit try editing the file with pico, vi, or something else
pico vmmon-only/include/compat_kernel.h
vi vmmon-only/include/compat_kernel.h

Inside the file replace the line
static inline _syscall1(int, compat_exit, int, exit_code);
with
/* static inline _syscall1(int, compat_exit, int, exit_code); */

5) Repack the folder
chmod 755 vmmon.tar
tar -cvf vmmon.tar vmmon-only

6) Run vmware-config.pl

Enjoy

2007-05-12T16:26:00.000-07:00

On pain and suffering, by YsabellaBrave (she could be what she seems, a lady, I haven't decided yet - see her other (1) videos (2))

2007-04-24T13:21:00.000-07:00

Hi.

My name is Ovi and I am originally from Targu Mures, which is located in Transylvania, a region of Romania which probably reminds you of Dracula. I am 21, in a relationship with a beautiful and intelligent woman, and I'm currently a sophomore studying IT at INHOLLAND University, Amsterdam.

The IT department at INHOLLAND is small and I love it because all the students and teachers know each other. It's actually kind of a school in a school, because it doesn't have much in common with the rest of INHOLLAND (and trust me, that's a good thing). The program contains a lot of Cisco (CCNA, CCNP and Cisco Wireless), programming (more Java, C, ASP/C#), and Math (Calculus, Discrete Math, Signals). When I will graduate (hopefully earlier than expected) I will earn a Bachelor of Engineering degree.

I have been working with computers since I was in the 2nd grade. I usually wake up and go to sleep in front of a computer. I have a tendency to do a lot of extracurricular stuff as I find working on real projects the best way to learn Computer Science. So if you want to know what I know, don't necessarily look at what I do in school (but more on my projects later). My main interests are datamining, , Linux and (more recently) networking and security. I also have a vast experience in PHP (5+ years), and I'm busy studying semi-advanced Java.

My astrological sign is Aquarius and I am left handed and disorganized (strangely I find this an asset, as it stimulates my imagination). I love music of all kinds, but especially oldies. I hope to have enough time to learn how to play piano soon. I also like movies in general (and SciFi, decent comedies and French movies in particular).

I don't know exactly what you'll find on this blog. I guess it depends on my mood. But I will probably write a combination of technical posts, personal opinions on life, and (if I really start to study for the GRE exam), English words and essays.

2007-04-24T13:02:00.000-07:00

Fear of posting

I have to admit, I'm a little bit paranoid when it comes to publishing information about myself online. Some would say it's nonsense, and others would see it as a legitimate cause of concern. Since I'm into datamining and Computer Science in general, I'm aware that employers are starting to collect online information about candidates during the interview process. Even on a public blog people tend to publish personal information, and this clashes with the mask that they put on when they go into an interview.

When I think about this newfound way of getting information about potential and current employees I automatically ask myself if you can ascertain somebody's work potential by reading a personal blog. Come to think of it, if I would be the one doing the interviews I would probably try to google the candidates, but I would not judge them from a personal point of view.

Excuse the babbling, it's late.