Some quick updates, changed jobs, now work at BT. Got married, and with 1 child. Man, how time flies so fast.

Secondly, what will be here? Mostly will be IT related stuffs, some web logs, some comments, etc.

Not much for now. I’ll post more later.

I’m not aiming at a negative campaign here, I’m a golput after all, and I do realize that election is just a few steps away and everyone is trying to get their pieces of this “god knows when will achieve its prosperity that it deserved” country’s politics, but again, what ??

I hate it when people taking credits for something that isn’t really their achievement. When the oil price soared up to the sky and the administration have to raise the gasoline price, they said it’s inevitable. When the oil prices fell in one of its historical downfall ever, the administration said it couldn’t yet decrease the gasoline price  because it’s not “economical”. And when they finally had to decrease it, or let’s say it had reached the point of “economical”, they claim it’s their achievement? I mean, come on !!!

Maybe if they insisted on keeping the price eventhough the oil price was skyrocketing by implementing efficiency in their administration, or when they decreased the gasoline price as soon as the oil price fell, THAT would be achievements. But hey, it’s not “economically feasible”.

Personally, I have no comments on the rise or the fall of the oil prices. All experts had their share of insights on this (and they still debating over it, I guess), and I’m surely no expert. When it rises, or falls, so be it.

I don’t know whether it’s the politicians who are too dumb to give a better marketing strategy on their party, or they just too dumb to realize that people actually get smarter, or maybe it’s the just the way politics are.

But hey, I don’t think I have a say, since I’m a no-participants. This is just a grunt, that’s all.

If there’s a comedy you should see this year (well, arguably), it’s definitely Tropic Thunder. It’s stupid, hilarious, satiric, smart, and dumb, all at the same time. I’m not a fan of Ben Stiller, really (I mean Meet The Parents series are O.K., but his other movies, I just though he tried too hard to be funny, that it’s not funny at all), but this one is awesome.

So the storyline, this is about a bunch of Hollywood actors, trying to make an awesome war movie in the jungle of Vietnam, but then found themselves forced to become the soldiers they’re trying to portrait, through some stupid, freak occurences. Well, as weird as the occurences are, to me that doesn’t really matter (hey it’s a stupid comedy). The main point, obviously, is making fun of Hollywood and its actors. That’s about it (who cares about storyline of a comedy anyway?).

Now to the cast. Ben Stiller, as always, is Ben Stiller. To me, he is just OK. But Robert Downey is just awesome. I mean, among the three main cast (Jack Black is the other, and he’s kinda forgettable in this movie. Too bad, cause he’s on of my favourite comedian), Robert Downey is making the movie his own (just like IronMan). His character of an actor who really takes acting super-seriously is just hilarious.

Side casts are okay, aside from the one character who nearly stole the movie. (I didn’t even recognize him until somebody in the theater pointed it out exclaimingly). His performance is funnier than ever, and not the kind of character I would’ve expected from this famous and serious actor. Seriously, you have to see the movie till the end, and he’ll have you laughing out loud. Excellent performance, mister !!

Bottom line, highly recommended

• Download VMWare server from VMWare website. VMWare server is free, but you need serial number which can be requested by registering to -VMWare. Extract the source, it will create a directory called vmware-server-distrib
• Download VMWare patch from from here.
  
• To install VMWare, you’ll need linux-headers, build-essentials, and xinetd. Download those from repo by executing the following

$sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-2.6.27-7 xinetd

Note that the version of your linux-headers may differ. Up to now, my intrepid uses kernel 2.6.27-7-generic.

• Go to the vmware distrib directory, and execute the ./vmware-install.pl

$cd vmware-server-distrib
$sudo ./vmware-install.pl

Just use the details, but note that when you’re asked if you’d like to run the vmware-config.pl, select [no]

• Extract the vmware-patch

$gunzip < vmware-update-2.6.27-5.5.7-2.tar.gz | tar -xvf -

• Go to the update directory and execute the patch script

$cd vmware-update-2.6.27-5.5.7-2
$sudo ./runme.pl

The script will patch the source, and ask whether or not you want to run the vmware-config.pl script. This time, select [yes]. While running the script, I accepted all the defaults value.

I assume that you can configure networking on your own.

Environment :
- Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex running kernel 2.6.27-7-generic

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• Network Manager Improvement

Ubuntu recognizes the mobile broadband boom, and lots of people using 3G network to browse the internet. In the last release (Hardy), configuring 3G could be a hassle, especially for those who are new to linux. Now in Intrepid, it recognizes my E220 modem immediately after I plugged it in, launch a wizard to help me choose which provider I’m using, then create a network configuration for that. All I need to do is to configure it to use my username.

The beauty of it? It doesn’t even need additional software. (Well, 3G doesn’t require additional software in Hardy  for 3G, but those requires configuration on wvdial, ppp, etc). Integrating it to network manager is brilliant. Back in hardy, everytime I launch Firefox after connecting to 3G network, it wasn’t aware that I’m online and I have to manually untick the “Work Offline” mode. Now, that pain is gone

There’s also additional section in network manager for DSL connection, but since I don’t have DSL connection, I can’t give it a try.

• Tabbed File Manager

Intrepid includes Nautilus FM version 2.24.1, now comes with tabs. Just like a browser, now you can browse to different part of filesystem, without have to open several instances of Nautilus. Good feature.

• Encrypted private folder

This is a feature to allow user to create an encrypted folder in their own home directory. Unfortunately, it doesn’t comes by default. You have to install it manually (use apt-get or synaptic to install ecryptfs-utils). Worse, you can only configure it from terminal (which probably the first reason why Ubuntu doesn’t include it by default in the first place). Before they can put a good interface into this, I think I’ll stick with TrueCrypt.

There are some other features available like private filesystem, integrated USB startup disk creation, etc, but I haven’t given them a try yet. Will keep posted on that.

Any of you discover a new feature you’d like to share?

Getting a new (well not new, actually) laptop, Dell Latitude D630, and after finished downloading the new Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex, I decided to give the new Ubuntu a try.Here’s a quick review :

• Installation

Installation is fine, as with the last Hardy, it’s also an easy install. Aside from partitioning and time zone, you can probably accept all the default setup. It took me about 30 minutes to install the whole system. Booting is fast, I think it’s slightly faster than my current Hardy (well, probably because my Hardy is already bloated with additional services )

• Devices

D630 uses a restricted (proprietary) driver for wireless card, i.e. Broadcomm Wireless. Once you activate the driver and restart the system, it works like charm (probably won’t need restart, but I don’t want to get into a hassle trying to configure it. besides, restarting take less than a minute :p). Display gets 1200×800 out of the box, and is fine. Bluetooth and sound works. One thing that bug me is the that the touchpad response is very slow, probably need some tweaking for that later. Other than that, everything works perfectly !!

• Printing

Continuing hardy tradition, printing is extremely easy to setup. Once I enable printer “Show printers shared by other systems” in System -> Administration -> Printing -> Server -> Settings, then I click new, it detects both Xerox Document Center 236 and HP Color Laserjet 3800 available in my office network. I already setup the Xerox using Generic PCL 6/PCL 6XL Foomatic driver, and it prints fine.

• To Do List

Last thing I need to configure is vmware. Back in hardy, it required some patches, which will probably the same case with this one. Also will need to check whether presentations work ok to projector.

All in all, this release is satisfying. Back when Hardy is initially released, I need to tweak some stuffs to get sound working in my Compaq V3000 series.

Let’s get Intrepid

Untuk network backup, sebenarnya ada beberapa kandidat, antara lain Bacula dan Amanda (secara keduanya gratis). tapi constraint yang saya temukan (dan saya belum temukan solusinya) adalah, karena bacula dan amanda menggunakan protokol samba untuk windows backup, fitur incremental backup jadinya tidak bisa dicapai (entah saya yang tidak bisa configure juga barangkali). Sesudah browsing sana sini, akhirnya ketemu solusinya, gabungan antara DeltaCopy di client dan rsync di server.

Langsung saja ke konfigurasi-nya ya:

Konfigurasi di server

• Install rsync dan xinetd di server (rsync secara default sudah ada di ubuntu server, tapi just in case, tetap saya tambahkan di sini )

$sudo apt-get install xinetd rsync

• Buat file /etc/xinetd.d/rsync dengan isi kurang lebih seperti ini :

service rsync
{
disable        = no
socket_type    = stream
wait        = no
user        = root
server        = /usr/bin/rsync
server_args    = --daemon
log_on_failure    += USERID
}

• Buat file /etc/rsyncd.conf dengan isi kurang lebih seperti ini :

log file=/var/log/rsyncd
pid file=/var/run/rsyncd.pid
[data]
comment = public archive
path = /data
use chroot = yes
lock file = /var/lock/rsyncd
read only = no
list = yes
uid = [user yang punya akses write ke path]
gid = [group membership dari user]
auth users =  [user yang akan diberikan akses]
secrets file = /etc/rsyncd.secrets
timeout = 600

dalam konfigurasi di atas, backup dari klien akan disimpan di folder /data, dan akan ditulis dengan user support

username:password

RSYNC_ENABLE=inetd

/etc/init.d/xinetd restart
Konfigurasi di Client

• Download Deltacopy dari website DeltaCopy
• Ekstrak file dan jalankan setup
• Sesudah instalasi selesai, jalankan DeltaCopy Client
• Buat satu profile, dan edit parameter-nya (server, path, folder yang ingin dibackup, schedule jika diperlukan, dsb). Hal yang menarik dari DeltaCopy adalah kemampuan untuk scheduling, serta incremental backup. Jangan lupa tambahkan username dan password yang didefinisikan di server pada DeltaCopy Client

Untuk mapping hasil backup client dari Ubuntu ke Windows, saya pasang samba server di Ubuntu.

Secara keseluruhan, konfigurasi-nya sangat mudah. Selamat mencoba

So here goes.

• Install Sun Java JDK

There are two alternatives for Java in ubuntu, i.e. OpenJDK and Sun Java JDK. In this environment I’m going to use Sun Java JDK.

$sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk

Having OpenJDK installed previously, we need to update the system to use the new JDK
$sudo update-alternatives --config java

• Install Glassfish Application Server

$sudo apt-get install glasshfishv2

By default, apt installs the apps server into /usr/share/glasshfishv2/ directory, and the web application folder goes to /var/lib/glassfishv2.

• Start the application server

$/usr/share/glassfishv2/bin/asadmin start-domain
.: 7: Can't open /usr/share/glassfishv2/config/asenv.conf


Now this is weird. I check the /usr/share/glasshfishv2/ and there is no config/ directory in the folder.
For some weird reason, apt seem to forget to configure the application server (or maybe I do something wrong?). After I installed it, i didn’t check the installation, and shutdown my laptop immediately since I need to do something else. Only after I boot my laptop and trying to configure it, I noticed that there are something wrong.

Since this is my first time using Glasshfish, I really don’t know my way around . Ask Google, and all references failed. Trying dpkg-reconfigure, failed as well. Being lazy as I am, I took the shortcut, reinstall the damn thing
$sudo apt-get install --reinstall glassfishv2

Finally, there it is. I finally get it right. Fire up my browser and browse to http://localhost:4848/ the admin page appears.

Author : Joshua Ferris

Price : SGD 17.66 (Bookweb Kinokuniya)

We thanked each other. It was customary after every exchange. Our thanks were never disingenous or ironic. We said things for getting things done so quickly, thanks for putting in so much effort. We had a meeting and when a meeting was over, we said thank you to the meeting makers for having made the meeting. Very rarely did we say anything negative or derogatory about meetings. We all knew there was a good deal of pointlessness to nearly all the meetings and in fact one meeting out of every three or four was nearly perferctly without gain or purpose but many meeting revealed the one thing that was necessary and so we attended them and afterward we thanked each other (page 5)

With the decline of the dot-com era, layoffs are on everyone’s door, including a Chicago-based advertising company, where this novel is situated. Capturing the life of the employees in a *probably* typical american(if not all) corporations, bringing gossips, secret romance, stress, frequent breaks in a humorous way. It’s written in such details, if you’re a white collar worker, you’ll probably see yourself here and there, laughing and smiling at the gossips or pranks you probably have witnessed (or even involved in) on your work history.

Joshua Ferris successfully capture how workers think, reason, and feels at the same time. It may be based on an american company, yet I found his description familiar, even dead-on on some parts. There is Karen Woo, who is always ahead on gossip, there is the boss, Lynn Mason who has breast cancer everyone pretends not to talk about (although it’s always be part of coffee-break gossip), there is Joe, that guy who never involve with anyone but surprisingly close to the boss. You have a colleague whose character you hate the most, you name it, this book have it .

A real entertainment.