thbe blogs

Gnome 3 vs. Unity

2011-06-04T12:55:00.002+02:00

After upgrading to Ubuntu 11.04 I did my first steps with unity. I nice approach but it feels unready in terms of graphic, layout and some other things. So I've installed Gnome 3 to see how this one feels. The result, it look and feel incredible, very clean, very nice, definitely the right direction. Unfortunately it is not yet complete from my point of view, things like global menu should be incorporated to Gnome 3 as well. But when this is done it is the actual coolest and nicest desktop I know of.

Eclipse 3.5 on Ubuntu 9.10

2010-02-02T18:05:00.002+01:00

When using Eclipse 3.5 on Ubuntu 9.10 you will discover display problems in some dialog boxes. The problem is the combination of Compiz and Eclipse. To work around this problem simply create a start script in the eclipse folder (/opt/eclipse in my case) with the following content:

#! /bin/sh
#
# Fix display problem on Ubuntu 9.10
#

export GDK_NATIVE_WINDOWS=true
/opt/eclipse/eclipse

This will fix the display problems.

Beyond the mainstream

2009-12-21T11:18:00.003+01:00

I just saw a nice operating system completely coded in assembler. Multitasking, graphical desktop, TCP/IP, USB and many other features on one 1.44MB floppy disk. Very impressive to see what is possible with extreme coding. Feel free to check out the KolibriOS 0.7.7.0 operating system.

Google mobile phone

2009-12-14T11:29:00.003+01:00

It looks like it become more and more official, Google plan to release a mobile phone next year in cooperation with HTC. This was reported by the Wall Street Journal today. First spy shot pictures could be found here. This definitely help me with my decision when to buy the next mobile phone.

Using SAP Netweaver in Google wave

2009-09-30T22:22:00.004+02:00

I found a nice video on YouTube showing a proof of concept to connect SAP to Google wave. Check out here!

Google calendar week numbers

2009-09-29T11:24:00.001+02:00

One thing I really missed in my Google calendar are week numbers. Fortunatelly this is no longer the case if you follow the instructions here.

Xmarks alpha for Chrome available

2009-09-26T20:34:00.004+02:00

One of my personal killer extensions for Firefox is now also as an alpha version available for Google Chrome, Xmarks. Check out the Xmarks blog here. Btw., it's also working with the Google Chrome version for Linux, very nice!

Check mails in Gmail from command line

2009-09-09T13:51:00.002+02:00

If you want to check new mails on your Gmail account from the command line, here is the how to:

curl -u username --silent "https://mail.google.com/mail/feed/atom" | perl -ne 'print "\t" if //; print "$2\n" if /<(title|name)>(.*)<\/\1>/;'

You will be prompted for a password before the informations are gathered. Please notice that you need to change username to your Gmail user name before executing.

Fly to the moon

2009-07-23T16:42:00.003+02:00

Ever thought it might be cool to fly to the moon once in a lifetime? If so, the first parts of the code used by the Apollo program is released as open source. Check out here and have a good flight :).

Google OS is comming

2009-07-08T12:50:00.004+02:00

According to the Google blog, Chrome OS will come in the second half of 2010. So what a lot of people already supposed, Google will now directly attack Microsoft in there core business, the operating system market. Let's see how this develop, competition was never bad in the software business.

Convert bitmap to something else

2009-06-23T16:30:00.002+02:00

Nice one liner (you can also do it in one line if you like) to convert bitmaps i.e. to PNGs:

for i in *.bmp; do convert "$i" "${i%.bmp}.png" ; done
rm *.bmp

You only need convert installed on your system.

Google Wave is on the way

2009-05-28T22:17:00.002+02:00

Google announced a new way of communication which should be ready later this year. The product is called wave and will be a combination of mail, chat and documents as well as some other features. Google created two YouTube videos explaining the concept behind wave. You can check it out here and here. A more detailed explanation about what wave is can be found here.

portsnap database corrupted

2009-04-27T20:23:00.002+02:00

Today I noticed a problem on one of my FreeBSD machines. After running /usr/sbin/portsnap I got an error telling that one file didn't exist. After playing a little bit around to get the error fixed I simply cleared the portsnap directory and now it is working again:

cd /var/db/portsnap
rm -rf *
portsnap fetch && portsnap update

Easier then expected :).

Build RPMS from source RPMS

2009-03-19T14:12:00.002+01:00

If the RPM supplied by your distribution is not sufficent for whatever reason you can easily recompile it using the source RPM. Here is an example session with Pound which is only provided as a source RPM:

yum -y install rpm-build
wget http://www.invoca.ch/pub/packages/pound/pound-2.4.4-1.src.rpm
rpmbuild --rebuild pound-2.4.4-1.src.rpm
cd /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386
yum --nogpgcheck install pound-2.4.4-1.i386.rpm
rpm -ql pound

You have to disable the signature check because you haven't signed the package yet.

Web check with curl

2009-03-18T10:52:00.003+01:00

From time to time I need to trace HTTP connections without having Firefox up and running with the correct plugins installed. So here is a way to do basic tracing using curl from the command line:

curl -b /tmp/curl-cookies -c /tmp/curl-cookies -s -v -o/dev/null http://test.address.tld/

Maybe I will extend this post with other combinations when I have time.

Pocket sized server

2009-03-16T21:09:00.003+01:00

Why isn't that one already available in germany??? A server with that size for less than 100$, look like a must have!

Remote CentOS installation

2009-03-12T12:04:00.005+01:00

CentOS as well as RedHat and other RedHat based distributions offer the possibility to install the system remotely. All you have to do is to add the following line to the boot prompt:

vnc headless ip=dhcp ksdevice=eth0

You may want to protect your installation by using a password for the VNC connection, in this case use:

vnc vncpassword=YOURPASSWORD headless ip=dhcp ksdevice=eth0

Or you might want to combine this with an automatic install so you have a remote monitor for the automatic installation:

vnc vncpassword=YOURPASSWORD headless ip=dhcp ksdevice=eth0 ks=http://some.server.tld/ks.cfg

With this possibilities you can do the next step and combine this with PXE and static DHCP and ... to get a fully unattended automated install method without the need to be onside at no time (when someone else plugin in the server at the datacenter and provide you the MAC address).

Adding time to history

2009-02-17T19:59:00.003+01:00

I saw a nice hack on shell-fu.org about adding time to your history file:

$ export HISTTIMEFORMAT='%F %T '
$ history | tail -10
296 2009-02-17 20:05:45 zpool iostat
297 2009-02-17 20:05:49 df -h
298 2009-02-17 20:05:51 w
299 2009-02-17 20:05:55 last reboot
300 2009-02-17 20:06:01 uptime
301 2009-02-17 20:06:09 export HISTTIMEFORMAT='%F %T '
302 2009-02-17 20:06:15 history | tail -10
$

The only question is, do I really want to know at which time I'm working?

Fast, encrypted file copy

2009-02-17T10:32:00.002+01:00

From time to time I need to copy files between UNIX boxes without having NFS, SMB, whatever in place. This can be easily done with SSH, TAR and, if available BUFFER. The needed command is:

tar cvf - source-dir/ | buffer | ssh -e none -c blowfish user@remote.host.tld "cd /dest-dir && buffer | tar xvf -"

If BUFFER is not installed, simply remove it and use:

tar cvf - source-dir/ | ssh -e none -c blowfish user@remote.host.tld "cd /dest-dir | tar xvf -"

instead.

Debian on Android

2009-01-16T17:09:00.002+01:00

A guy at AndroidFanatic get it done to install Debian on an Android G1 phone. See here how they've done it. My dreams become more and more true :).

RC service alias

2009-01-08T14:37:00.003+01:00

A handy way to get an alias for the services installed on your UNIX box is the following script:

for service in `cd /etc/init.d/; ls -1`; do
alias "service-${service}"="/etc/init.d/${service}";
done

You can now access the service scripts with an alias which also work with command completion. So restart the network i.e. will be "service-network restart".

Android on netbooks

2009-01-02T21:55:00.006+01:00

Developer from mobile-facts.com posted a success story about Android running on a netbook, in this case on an Asus EEEPC 1000H. They were able to get Android up and running in less than four hours. This could be interpreted as an indication, that the Android Alliance don't focus on mobile phones only.

Songbird power user mode

2008-12-29T17:36:00.002+01:00

Just saw a nice page in the Songbird Wiki which guide you to enable some useful functions in Songbird. Check out here.

A small webserver

2008-12-09T15:39:00.005+01:00

You have a shell, netcat and some standard Unix tools available? Try out this:

:;while [ $? -eq 0 ];do nc -vlp 8080 -c'(r=read;e=echo;$r a b c;z=$r;while [ ${#z} -gt 2 ];do $r z;done;f=`$e $b|sed 's/[^a-z0-9_.-]//gi'`;h="HTTP/1.0";o="$h 200 OK\r\n";c="Content";if [ -z $f ];then($e $o;ls|(while $r n;do if [ -f "$n" ]; then $e "<a href="\">`ls -gh $n`";fi;done););elif [ -f $f ];then $e "$o$c-Type: `file -ib $f`\n$c-Length: `stat -c%s $f`";$e;cat $f;else $e -e "$h 404 Not Found\n\n404\n";fi)';done

This is a small webserver listening on port 8080 (so could be run as a normal user) which serves the files in the current directory. Pretty cool, isn't it? The original post could be found here.

First stable Songbird

2008-12-03T22:48:00.004+01:00

For everyone who searched for a music player with the look and feel of iTunes but platform independent, the first stable Songbird release is out. At the first glance, Songbird look like a symbiosis of Firefox and iTunes, the impression didn't change if you dig deeper :). But, that's what I like and what I was looking for, so I made it to my new player on my Ubuntu installation.

Themes for Gmail

2008-11-20T10:19:00.003+01:00

Just discovered that Gmail now supports themes. Some of them really hurts your eyes but some are quite nice. So check it out, maybe there is something for you as well.

Traktor Pro

2008-11-16T12:29:00.017+01:00

A new version of Traktor was released earlier this month called Traktor Pro. The pro version is the successor of the Traktor 3.x series. The most obvious change is the user interface which was completely reworked and look much cleaner now:

Functions you don't need the whole time are hidden and need to be switched on to be visible. Options from the head area are moved to the decks like cue point handling, beat shifting and grid operations:

The head area now only provide two effect sections, beat control and recording. The effect section is also the next big area with a lot of changes. You have now the choice between twenty new effects which could be chained up to six effects per channel. It also change the way of working as a disk jockey from syncing disks to a I would say sound controller. Because of the fact that all classic DJ tasks are now handled by the software you can focus on effects, loops and rework of the given material. Definitely a nice experience but also something needs getting used to.

Another nice detail is that you can configure Traktor Pro in a way to store all data on a USB drive. This mean, you simply need your USB drive to work on a different Traktor setup with all the settings that you like.

But beside the light there is also shadow, in case of Traktor Pro it's the native mix recording. This functionality isn't any longer available but will be added (according to Native Instruments) in a later version again. Hopefully already in this version as a hotfix so that I don't have to buy it again. Another thing that is missing, from my point of view, is the possibility to automaticly generate a playlist based on the actual mix you are performing. Ok, to be more precise, a easy way to do this, even if you closed Traktor in the mean time, which clear the history so you have to reimport the automaticly saved playlist. Also the history only gives you an overview of the used material but not in the order of usage. Shouldn't be so complicated to implement such a feature.

Video chat with Google mail

2008-11-12T13:59:00.004+01:00

Google offers a new plugin to use Google mail as a video chat tool. The only thing you need is a webcam and a headset. I didn't try it yet but this is on top of my todo list. I"ll keep you informed!

Android is now open source

2008-10-21T20:14:00.002+02:00

The step is done, Android is now fully open source, check out here.

Extend chrome

2008-09-13T13:59:00.005+02:00

I just found a nice resource to customize chrome:

http://www.chromeplugins.org/

Currently it look like a bit BETA like the browser itself, but there are already some nice tips and tricks on the site and specially this one is really interessting:

http://www.chromeplugins.org/tips-tricks/google-chrome-shortcuts/

A nice collection of themes for chrome could be found under:

http://www.freechromethemes.com/

Traktor resources

2008-09-05T15:05:00.004+02:00

My Traktor 3 package arrived mid of this week and I already spend several hours to learn more about the features and possibilities with that product. One of the most powerful features is the possibility to customize Traktor to fit your needs. This is done by so called tks files. Unfortunately the configuration dialog isn't that nice if you want to get an overview of your settings. So I found this side:

http://www.djsmex.co.uk/T3TKS/

where you get a nice overview of your settings based on the tks file you've created. If you are looking for existing tks files, you can try it directly on the vendors homepage at http://www.native-instruments.com/ or you might try at http://www.djtechtools.com/ or http://www.m-otto.com/Traktor.html.

Digital DJing

2008-09-03T20:01:00.007+02:00

Back in 1995 when I first started DJing a bit for my personal fun the situation was more or less clear. Nearly all DJs use a combination of two or three Technics SL 1210 MK2 and a two or four channel mixer. After a while it become more complicated because beside the vinyl decks the CD decks hit the market (first it was the Denon DN-2000F if I recall correctly). Nowadays the situation is much more complicated, you can stick to the original analog setup, you can integrate some digital equipment or you can go fully digital. After some research I've decided to drop all my current equipment and go for a fully digital setup. I've tried a few programs and find out that Traktor 3 is the piece of software I definitely need. So why fully digital, quite simple, it's cheep (Traktor 3 is currently offered for around 99€) and you have nearly unlimited features and functions. A lot of traditional DJ work is done by the tool so you can better concentrate on the creative process. A really nice introduction from Richie Hawtin could be found here (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) and to be honest, one of the major reasons for buying that tool :).

Google chrome

2008-09-03T19:40:00.006+02:00

Only a few years ago, it looked like that the browser market was threatened with extinction. Fortunately some groups and people resist the market domination by Microsofts crappy browser by supporting Firefox, Konquerer, Opera or whatever else was out at this time. Nowadays the world looks much better because browsers like Firefox, Safari and Opera are no longer something only nerds use, instead it's more widely spread. The result is visible to every user in the world, the browsers are developing faster and become better and better (even the crappy IE). Today a new competitor hits the market, Google Chrome. Currently only a BETA version is available but the first impression is already Google like, clean, light and fast. I'm already curios to see the Linux version once it's out.

Whitepapers @heise

2008-08-14T14:37:00.003+02:00

For all german speaking people out there, the heise press started a new portal for whitepapers under http://www.heise.de/whitepapers. Didn't check the quality of the papers yet but compared to what they did until now I didn't expect another crap portal.

Google tech talks

2008-08-13T21:19:00.003+02:00

I just found a nice video collection on YouTube, the Google tech talk (http://www.youtube.com/user/googletechtalks). Here you can find a lot of interesting videos around a lot of different technical topics.

RHN does the spacewalk

2008-06-25T16:44:00.003+02:00

Red Hat has released the technical infrastructure of there commercial service Red Hat Network under the GPL named spacewalk. With spacewalk, everyone could set up its own management solution based on the RHN technology. Beside RHEL, also FC and clones like CentOS and Scientific Linux will be supported. Look like that I need to spend some time in this area.

New CentOS release

2008-06-25T15:01:00.002+02:00

Several days after the announcement of RHEL 5.2, CentOS also announce the availability of CentOS 5.2. The distribution is a more or less 1:1 RHEL clone, but for free.

Better GMail 2

2008-06-18T14:06:00.003+02:00

Just found a hot extension for Firefox up to the new FF3 called Better GMail 2. It add several nice features to your GMail account (if you use one).

Back to the roots

2008-06-09T11:30:00.002+02:00

Although the web interface of Google isn't really overloaded, I found something even more keyboard oriented, the Google Shell. Needless to note that his is something I really like!

Google Mail Labs

2008-06-09T10:17:00.004+02:00

I just saw a new feature in my Google mail client called Goolge Mail Labs. Here you can activate BETA gadgets for your Google Mail. Check it out, there are some nice enhancments.

Google earth in your browser

2008-05-29T10:28:00.002+02:00

Google released a new plugin which allows you use Google earth inside your browser. Nice!

UNIX shell madness

2008-05-28T13:34:00.001+02:00

At IBMs developerwork I saw nice Korn shell trick:

$ mv kxp12.c file_system_access.c
$ ln –s !$ !:1

This one first move a file to a new name and create a symbolic link with the old name. Somehow cool!

It's summer time

2008-05-10T10:40:00.002+02:00

It is warm, the sun is shinning but sometimes it sounds like hard rain:

Android ready for take off

2008-04-28T19:52:00.005+02:00

Look like that Android reached the next gate on the way to the market. There is an article on CNN money stating that T-Mobile is pushing the new mobile platform from Google in the US. Hopefully they release it in Germany as well.

Music non-stop

2008-04-11T23:44:00.003+02:00

Let me share two sites with podcasts I accidentally found at iTunes:

Ibiza Voice
KG House Miami

Realy nice mixes, check it out!

Opera on Andriod

2008-04-10T15:46:00.006+02:00

I just saw the announcement from Opera that a BETA of the Opera Browser is now available for Android. I am getting eager to play with the first Android phone when released (maybe from HTC first).

Synchronize Firefox plugins

2008-04-02T21:41:00.003+02:00

Seconds after my post "Synchronize Ubuntu packages" was published, I was asked how to synchronize the firefox plugins. Ok, here is a quite easy solution to get it done. First you need to install to extensions, FEBE and CLEO. FEBE is used to backup your extensions as installable .xpi files, CLEO create one single .xpi file out of that backup that you can install with the Firefox you want to synchronize. First, after the installation you have define the backup destination folder in FEBE as well as the schedule for the backup. Second you have to define the destination folder for CLEO. I've used:

~/.mozilla/backup/FEBE
~/.mozilla/backup/CLEO

After the first backup you will find a bunch of .xpi files in your FEBE backup directory. You can already use them to install the .xpi files into your Firefox you want to synchronize. Even easier is to compact all of this .xpi file to single .xpi file with CLEO. Simply go to "Tools --> FEBE --> CLEO --> Create cleopack". That's it, now you have one single .xpi file that you can roll out to all your Firefox installations.

VMware Server 2.0 BETA 2 on CentOS 5.1

2008-04-01T14:29:00.006+02:00

After I've read this post in the Heise newsticker that VMware server 2.0 BETA 2 is available, I've started downloading the new RPM to upgrade my VMware server 2.0 BETA 1 installations. So I've started to upgrade with the "normal" procedure:

service vmware stop

Next I took the opportunity to upgrade my system to the latest and greatest patch level with a reboot because the kernel was replaced by a new version:

yum update all
yum clean all
reboot

After the reboot I've logged in again and start the configuration of vmware:

/usr/bin/vmware-config.pl

I've used the proposed values except the license which I've reentered (didn't remember if it was the same license key as used with BETA 1 or not). The start of the server was from my point of view the last step:

service vmware start

Unfortunately I wasn't able to connect (http/https). So I've checked the ports with:

netstat -tulpn

Hmm, indeed, nothing was listening on port 80/443. I've googled around and found an entry in the VMware forum stating that SElinux could be the problem:

sestatus

Oh, SElinux is activated, that explain a lot (the following command change some SElinux security context for the shared libraries):

find /usr/lib/vmware -name '*.so*' \
-exec chcon -t texrel_shlib_t {} \;

Now I've only need to restart the VMware server:

service vmware restart

Eureka! VMware server 2.0 BETA is upgraded and running, let's see how stable it already is.

TV-Browser

2008-03-21T16:39:00.003+01:00

Some time ago I found a project on the internet called TV-Browser. It's a JAVA application which act as a digital TV guide. You can select your own set of channels for the guide as well as some other nice features mostly realized as plug-ins (check out the list of plug-ins here). A really nice feature is that you can add you favorite TV shows to your Google calendar. Together with the SMS service of Google calendar a really nice feature.

1-800-GOOG-411

2008-03-21T15:48:00.003+01:00

I just found another nice service that Google provides, unfortunately only in the US but hopefully it will arrive in other countries as well. In short words, it's an automated voice box that connects you to business wherever you want. Check out the YouTube video at the homepage of the 1-800-GOOG-411 service.

Synchronize Ubuntu packages

2008-03-20T13:06:00.007+01:00

Most of the time I have more than one computer that I use. One problem is to have all installed applications synchronized. This is quite useful if you develop scripts which need special applications to run. So from time to time I synchronize /etc/apt/source.list first followed by:

apt-get clean all
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

The next step is to get a list of all installed applications:

dpkg --get-selections "*" > /tmp/deb-list.txt

Now I distribute the generated file to my second box and run:

dpkg --set-selections < /tmp/deb-list.txt
apt-get dselect-upgrade

The result is, I have all applications that I have installed on my first box also installed on my second box.

OpenSocial

2008-03-12T10:28:00.002+01:00

A nice initiative called OpenSocial is announced by Google to combine the social network services of the different platforms. Just read that Yahoo may also plan to join that alliance. Guess this will again increase the number of services provided by different vendors.

Next step to web 2.0

2008-02-16T00:02:00.006+01:00

Beside the normal social networks I found last.fm. From my point of view a nice thing for everyone who like music and would like to be inspired what to buy next at amazon, iTune or the local dealer (or to download for free, some tracks are directly available at last.fm). So I've registered to the service as well and here you can find my music list ... enjoy the inspiration and music!

Check your server health

2008-01-29T15:32:00.000+01:00

From time to time I had the problem that a server is not responding as expected. To figure out what the problem is you can use several command line tools on a Linux host that gives you an idea what is wrong. Therefore I normally install two tools on my CentOS servers:

sudo yum install procinfo sysstat

Both tools are quite handy if you want to determine were the performance bottleneck is on your machine. Let's start with somethings like this:

clear && procinfo && sar

See an example output taken on one of my servers:

Linux 2.6.18-53.1.4.el5 (mockbuild@builder6.centos.org) (gcc 4.1.2 20070626 ) #1 SMP Fri Nov 30 00:45:55 EST 2007 4CPU [neo.int.XXXXX.XX]

Memory: Total Used Free Shared Buffers
Mem: 8177876 8130848 47028 0 30844
Swap: 4194296 180 4194116

Bootup: Mon Jan 28 11:59:26 2008 Load average: 1.23 1.29 1.07 1/337 13383

user : 2:41:10.65 2.4% page in : 0
nice : 0:00:00.04 0.0% page out: 0
system: 11:23:19.67 10.3% swap in : 0
idle : 3d 23:08:26.08 86.0% swap out: 0
steal : 0:00:00.00 0.0%
uptime: 1d 3:37:54.38 context :504866586

irq 0: 99474323 timer irq 12: 105 i8042
irq 1: 11 i8042 irq 50: 1080554 libata
irq 3: 18 irq 58: 235766212 0 0 235766
irq 4: 20 irq169: 3127348 ioc0
irq 8: 1 rtc irq225: 23 uhci_hcd:usb1, uhci_
irq 9: 0 acpi irq233: 0 uhci_hcd:usb2

Linux 2.6.18-53.1.4.el5 (neo.int.XXXXX.XX) 29.01.2008

11:50:01 CPU %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle
12:00:01 all 1,44 0,00 17,79 38,13 0,00 42,64
12:10:01 all 1,04 0,00 13,90 38,40 0,00 46,66
12:20:01 all 2,50 0,00 14,69 39,90 0,00 42,91
12:30:01 all 1,55 0,00 15,28 36,23 0,00 46,94
12:40:01 all 1,75 0,00 17,15 36,47 0,00 44,64
12:50:01 all 1,33 0,00 16,29 37,70 0,00 44,69
13:00:02 all 1,59 0,00 16,15 36,34 0,00 45,91
13:10:01 all 1,69 0,00 16,34 35,76 0,00 46,22
13:20:01 all 1,18 0,00 15,99 37,68 0,00 45,14
13:30:02 all 1,05 0,00 13,35 38,63 0,00 46,97
13:40:01 all 2,71 0,00 18,01 31,93 0,00 47,35
13:50:01 all 3,75 0,00 15,96 32,03 0,00 48,26
14:00:01 all 2,03 0,00 16,36 33,45 0,00 48,17
14:10:01 all 3,40 0,00 18,35 33,36 0,00 44,89
14:20:02 all 2,68 0,00 16,48 35,48 0,00 45,36
14:30:01 all 1,93 0,00 15,84 34,69 0,00 47,53
14:40:01 all 0,80 0,00 6,46 8,21 0,00 84,53
14:50:01 all 1,24 0,00 6,71 3,46 0,00 88,60
15:00:01 all 1,70 0,00 5,25 3,80 0,00 89,25
15:10:01 all 1,53 0,00 11,26 4,50 0,00 82,71
15:20:01 all 0,66 0,00 2,39 1,00 0,00 95,95
15:30:01 all 0,79 0,00 7,52 1,00 0,00 90,69
Durchschn.: all 1,74 0,00 13,52 27,18 0,00 57,55

This should give you an impression how the health of your system look like. In this example you can see that the server has massive %iowait problems. Also you can see in the history that this problems were fixed sometime between 14:30h and 14:40h.

Erase your hard drive

2008-01-08T13:43:00.000+01:00

From day to day there are articles in the news about people who got a used computer with sensible data on it. Even if the hard drive was formated it's quite easy for skilled people to take a look at the data which was stored on this drive. To safely erase the data it make sense to overwrite the disc with new data which make it more or less impossible to access the original data. An easy way to do this is under Linux the command mkfs.ext3:

mkfs.ext3 -cc /dev/drive

Replace drive with your harddisk (i.e. /dev/sda1) and the partition is erased.

molly-guard

2007-12-05T20:32:00.000+01:00

I was just about to shutdown a server running Ubuntu 7.10 when I discovered the following message:

root@hal:~# shutdown -h now
W: molly-guard: SSH session detected!
Please type in hostname of the machine to shutdown: hal

Broadcast message from tbendler@hal
(/dev/pts/0) at 20:30 ...

The system is going down for halt NOW!
root@hal:~#

What is molly-guard? A check in the local repository gives the answer:

protects remote machines from accidental shutdowns/reboots
The package installs a shell script that overrides the existing
shutdown/reboot/halt/poweroff commands. If any of the three commands are
called interactively over an SSH session, the shell script prompts you to
enter the name of the host you wish to shut down. This should adequately
prevent you from accidental shutdowns and reboots.

This shell script passes through the commands to the respective binaries in
/sbin and should thus not get in the way if called non-interactively, or
locally.

A nice explanation about the name molly-guard could be found in the wiktionary:

Noun

molly-guard

1. /mol'ee-gard/ A shield to prevent tripping of a computer's Big Red Switch (BRS) (emergency shutdown or power switch) by clumsy or ignorant hands.

Usage notes

Originally used of the plexiglass covers improvised for the BRS on an IBM 4341 mainframe after a programmer's toddler daughter (named Molly) tripped it twice in one day. Later generalised to covers over stop/reset switches on disk drives and networking equipment.

It's every time great fun with the kids.

The same procedure as every year

2007-11-23T09:38:00.000+01:00

The daylight is a rare guest during the current season and this normally indicates that christmas is on the way. And before this arrival a lot of people ask me about my whishes and what they can donate. Normally I say: "Don't know!" and normally that is not the answer they want to hear. So time to present my Amazon wishlist for this year:

http://www.amazon.de/gp/registry/1NVET5J7V5MY5

Everything on this list will definitely make me happy.

Munin on CenOS5

2007-10-25T10:45:00.000+02:00

I just had the problem that I couldn't install munin-node on a CentOS 5 box because it wasn't in the standard repository. After searching around I found out I did this already on several other boxes, so as a short reminder on how to do it:

sudo rpm -Uhv http://apt.sw.be/packages/\ rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
sudo yum update
sudo yum install munin-node

Installation is done, just configure the rest to your needs (there are a lot of instructions how to do it like this one).

CompizFusion on Ubuntu 7.10

2007-10-22T22:34:00.000+02:00

CompizFusion is the result of a merge between the Beryl composite window manager and Compiz Extras. It's part of Ubuntu since 7.10 (aka Gutsy Gibbon). CompizFusion is the part that provide this nice looking desktop effects that is shown in every demo around the Linux desktop nowadays. To get this thing working I highly recommend to install a new distribution like Ubuntu 7.10 (or upgrade the current one) which already has these things activated. There are several guides on the net how to activate, but all of them require a lot of manual work (and also a lot of system knowledge) and be a potential risk to crash the system (because you need to change essential things like your graphical sub system).

Normally if you install Ubuntu, the effects are automatically installed and activated. You can check this by navigating to System > Preferences > Appearance and choose the last tab visual effects. If the effects are disabled, you need to activate them. If you are using a restricted driver for your graphic card you may need to do s0me additional work (at least I need to do).

For my Laptop with an ATI card installed I had to install the XGL server after I've activated the restricted ATI driver:

sudo apt-get install xserver-xgl

This automatically activate the XGL server after the next restart of the X sub system. I was now able to activate the visual effects again.

For my desktop system I have a nVidia card which need some different actions. After activating the restricted drivers you have to restart X and install the configuration tool for the nVidia driver (if it's not included in the driver package, if I remember correctly it's part of the new driver package). Once this is done you have to execute the following command:

sudo nvidia-xconfig --add-argb-glx-visuals -d 24

This did the trick with my card, otherwise all windows are shown without decoration after activating visual effects.

To customize the configuration you need to install the compiz config settings manager tool first. This one is need to make a custom made compiz configuration. If you are happy with the two choices that are already provided, you can skip this part:

sudo apt-get install compizconfig-settings-manager

This will add an entry to your System > Preferences > Appearance > Visual Effects tab called “Advanced Desktop Effects Settings”. Make sure that you have “extra effects” turned on by selecting Custom at the bottom. Clicking the Preferences button will launch the Compiz Config Settings Manager. Now you can change the following settings:

rotate cube
desktop cube
cube caps
expo
wobbly windows
water effect
group and tab windows
shift switcher

Simply play around with the listed options and find out what fits best for you. Here is a small list with shortcuts to activate several functions:

rotate cube

ctrl-alt-arrow or ctrl-alt-left-click and drag

expo

windows button-e

water effects

shift-f9 (toggle)

group and tab

select window with windows button-s
group with windows button-t
ungroup with windows button-u

shift switcher

windows button-tab

Normally it's time now for a discussion, does it make sense or not. To be honest, find out yourself. I think some of the functions like expo and resize are really useful, others don't. But most of them are nice looking at this is already enough for most people.

Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)

2007-10-19T11:27:00.000+02:00

Once in a while, a new Ubuntu version is released. This week it was Ubuntu 7.10, also known as Gutsy Gibbon. Based on the fact that I had to replace my hard disk in my laptop I took the opportunity to install the release candidate from scratch. The installation itself was pretty smooth as already known from earlier releases. After round about half an hour of installation (could be done faster but I did it beside other things) I got a login prompt ... eureka! The look and feel was again somewhat adjusted but still not my personal favorite design. So I thought it's a nice idea to try something new. I've installed the peace design:

apt-get install peace-look

Don't ask why this theme is called peace, but it's hot and fast. To get an impression how it look like, follow the link to my desktop album:

Desktop

The next thing that need to be changed immediately is the missing "open terminal" in the context menu. This is done by:

apt-get install nautilus-open-terminal

Unfortunately, the description of the package is a little bit unclear, but it does the trick. If you want to use the "real power" of your system it make sense to activate the restricted drivers. Not that I like the idea of restricted drivers nor that I have much understanding for them but in the area of soft modem and 3D graphic there is no real alternative. My laptop has a build-in ATI M300. My first try to activate the restricted driver lead into missing visual effects. Not that I really need them but they are looking quite nice. So I search around and found out that you need to install the XGL server when using the restricted ATI driver in conjunction with visual effect:

apt-get install xserver-xgl

My system seems to look nice now, so it's time to become productive. First, JAVA installation:

apt-get install sun-java5-jdk sun-java6-jdk eclipse-jdt eclipse

Get a coffee, this take some time (in my case 20 minutes for 367MB). Once this is done you have a working JAVA IDE. Not that I'm really a JAVA programmer, but I work a lot with the new SAP Netweaver Portal which is JAVA based. Also the other SAP tools you can use under Linux like SAP GUI, SAP Download Manager or Visual Administrator are JAVA tools so it's definitely worth mentioning. But keep in mind, SAP isn't that fast with new JAVA versions, all mentioned tools require the 1.4.2_latest JRE. So beside the package management I've installed my SAP applications separately under /opt:

tbendler@ds9:~$ cd /opt/sap/
tbendler@ds9:/opt/sap$ ll
insgesamt 16
drwxrwxr-x 3 root root 4096 2005-06-14 19:49 dl_manager
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 2007-10-19 19:02 gui
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2006-01-25 15:52 icon
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 2003-12-17 07:12 j2re1.4.2
tbendler@ds9:/opt/sap$

Please take a look at the Ubuntu post for more informations. I also add some additions to my laptop needed for system administration:

apt-get install nmap aircrack-ng alien apparmor-profiles atop

Also the multimedia capabilities needs to be extended:

apt-get install opencliparts mplayer xine-ui rar dvdrip lame
apt-get install gstreamer0.10-ffmpeg gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3
apt-get install gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mpegdemux gstreamer0.10-gl
apt-get install gstreamer0.10-gnonlin gstreamer0.10-gnonlin-dev
apt-get install gstreamer0.10-pitfdll gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad
apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-bad-multiverse
apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-farsight gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly
apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse
apt-get install gstreamer0.10-schroedinger gstreamer0.10-sdl

The system is now ready to use (at least for me). To see what else could be installed start the Synaptic package manager, but take your time, currently there are 23133 packages available.

Wicked tunes

2007-10-09T21:25:00.000+02:00

This weekend I was in the lounge of the East hotel in Hamburg having some beers. Suddenly a wicked tune hits my ears and I thought to myself: "This is a must have!". So I asked the DJ what he was playing:

Samim - Heater

Check this one out (maybe at youtube, iTunes, Amazon, whatever), it's from my point of view the best summer track 2007.

During my project in Eindhoven I also discovered a nice radio station called XFM. On this station I heard two nice tracks I didn't hear in Germany yet (might have to do with the fact that there are no electronic radio stations I recieve in Germany):

Sander van Doorn - Back by any demand
Ida Corr - Let me think about it

Let's see what comming up next but so far, nice to see that electronic music still evolves.

Internet Map

2007-10-08T11:27:00.000+02:00

Chris Harrison offers nice pictures on his web site that visualize the internet based on the locations of access points and routing.

Internet Maps

VMware server on CentOS 5

2007-10-02T12:34:00.000+02:00

To install the VMware server on CentOS 5 you have to install the CentOS 5 first. I've installed it with the option "server" (no GUI) on top of a logical volume. Once this is done I've modified the yum repository to fit my needs (installation on DELL server hardware).

Keep in mind, you have to perform most of the steps as root, so become root by using "sudo su -" or use sudo in front of each command.

After an upgrade of the entire system (yum update) I installed the DELL server tools first. This done by the command:

yum install dell-repository dellhw-repository firmware-addon-dell

Next, the development components need to be installed:

yum groupinstall 'Development Libraries'
yum groupinstall 'Development Tools'
yum install kernel-devel
yum install compat-db

Now the server is ready for the VMware server installation. First you need to download the RPM from the web site of VMware. You need also to request a license for the installation (follow the instructions on the web site). When the download is done you can install the server:

rpm -Uvh VMware-server-1.0.4-56528.i386.rpm

Now it's time to configure the VMware server:

vmware-config.pl

Press [return] at any question except:

Do you want to be able to use NAT networking in your virtual machines? (yes/no)
[yes] no
The default port : 902 is not free. We have selected a suitable alternative
port for VMware Server use. You may override this value now.
Remember to use this port when connecting to this server.
Please specify a port for remote console connections to use [904] 902
In which directory do you want to keep your virtual machine files?
[/var/lib/vmware/Virtual Machines] /srv/vmware

To add the server to the firewall rules you need to add the following lines to /etc/sysconfig/iptables:

-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 902 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 8222 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 8333 -j ACCEPT
-A RH-Firewall-1-INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 5900:5910 -j ACCEPT

Now, the VMware server is configured and ready to be used. To get a clean system state and to see if everything come up after booting, do a reboot now.

If you install CentOS inside a VM you might see time problems. This could be solved by using ntpd:

/sbin/service ntpd stop
/usr/sbin/ntpdate -s tick.usno.navy.mil
/sbin/hwclock --systohc --utc
/sbin/service ntpd start

I will update this post from time to time if new task needs to be done.

SV 650

2007-10-01T21:58:00.000+02:00

The summer was crap but motorbike fever hits me again. So I bought a used SV 650. What should I say ... YES ... it's a lot of fun!

Motorrad

Usefull IE extensions

2007-09-14T11:04:00.000+02:00

Yes, it's true! I couldn't believe either but there are also extensions out making the life with the Internet Explorer a little bit easier. Because I don't use the IE for normal work I only provide some useful developer extensions I found so far.

Developer addons

Also in this section, if I find additional "must have" extensions for the IE I will update this post.

Usefull Firefox extensions

2007-09-08T20:35:00.000+02:00

After some articles I’ve read around Firefox extensions, my curiosity was aroused. I digged around on the Mozilla addon site and found a lot more or less useful stuff. With the list in this article I would like to share my findings.

Developer addons

Tuning addons

Fasterfox

Security addons

Comfort addons

Windows addons

IE Tab

Gadget addons

Football ticker

Once I find new excelent extensions I will add them to my page as well.

Beside the mainstream

2007-08-11T12:14:00.000+02:00

In a time were the music industry focus more and more on their profit, the customer loose this focus. This result in ridiculous situations were I can move to jail for two years when I make a copy of my bought CDs to play them (e.g.) in a car. So for me it was time to search for legal alternatives without such restrictions. I found a license which is comparable to the General Public License, the Creative Commons License. Music under this license is free to copy and distribute, a great development (like the GPL stuff). If you want to check this out (and you’re addicted to electronic music), visit http://www.zerinnerung.de/, where you can listen to a few (from my point of view high quality) CCL mixes.

Beside my own findings, you can find three articles at heise open (german link 1, 2, 3) which is about open music, books and so on, really interresting.

Final decision, temporarily

2007-08-11T12:09:00.000+02:00

After several months of testing I came to the conclusion that all of the tested distributions have an area where it fit best.

For the use as a desktop system, this is my opinion, Ubuntu (based on Debian) is the distribution to choose. Ubuntu is simple, fast and has a clean desktop. Even unexperienced linux users should be able to work with this distribution without much learning effort. From the administration point of view, the distribution has an excellent package management interface called synaptic. If you prefer the command line, you can use apt-get as known from the Debian distribution.

For the use as a server system I currently use FreeBSD. FreeBSD is stable, good documented and has a proper working security management. One big advantage is the long release cycle, which prevents half year upgrades of the whole system. The ports collection helps me to keep the server up to date and tools like portaudit reports insecure applications (critical). All in all a good choice for a server.

Fedora Core is a good technology preview and gives me the opportunity to test things I can’t do with the stable versions. Unfortunately the release cycle is to short for a productive use but to get an impression what is possible and what not, it’s a well designed distribution.

Ubuntu resources

2007-08-11T12:06:00.001+02:00

In most cases it is not needed to know every information out of the head when playing around with a new Linux distribution. But what’s really helpful is to know where to get the information. To get a working Ubuntu distribution with MP3, DVD and JAVA support, you need to add some additional sources to your package management. The best guides I found on the internet are on the following places:

These resources help me to setup my Ubuntu distribution with all stuff I needed.

Ubuntu

2007-08-10T21:36:00.001+02:00

My Ubuntu experience comes nowadays to a point where I think I can do a quick review on what happen so far. As explained in my first post about this topic, the installation done without problems. After everything was fine for me I went forward to get some more or less professional applications installed.

The first try was the eclipse development platform. After enabling the universal repository, I installed a new JAVA version (something 1.6.x) and the installation of eclipse was not a problem any more. Not that I'm currently using eclipse, it was nice to see that it work.

The second application was the client suite from SAP, the JAVA SAP GUI and the JAVA SAP DownloadManager. Both applications need an older JAVA version then the installed one so I took a 1.4.2 JAVA installation from a fedora core installation and put it into /opt/sap/j2re1.4.2. Now I installed the GUI into /opt/sap/gui and the DownloadManager into /opt/sap/dl_manager. To start the SAP logon I used the following script:

#! /bin/sh
#
# Start the JAVA SAP GUI on my unix workstation
#

### Set environmnent ###
PLATIN_PATH=/opt/sap/gui/SAPGUI6.40rev2/bin
PLATIN_JAVA=/opt/sap/j2re1.4.2/bin/java
PLATIN_JAVA_VER=1.4.2

export PLATIN_JAVA PLATIN_JAVA_VER

### Start gui logon using platin.ini under ${HOME}/.sap
${PLATIN_PATH}/guilogon -i ${HOME}/.SAPGUI/platin.ini

The DownloadManager start without special scripts, the binary directory already include a script which should run on nearly every unix platform.

Picasa album online

2007-08-10T21:22:00.001+02:00

After digging into the Google world, my next playground was Picasa and the new function web album. Nice and easy, just a few clicks and the pictures you want to show are online. But see and judge yourself:

USA 2003

Fast, efficient and easy

2007-07-11T13:11:00.000+02:00

After playing with several different blog platforms over the last two and half years I thought it might be a good idea to check out a blog service. Main reason is more or less that an own blog is nice and flexible, but to keep everything up to date and maintained you need some more time than I have. So, this is my new one and we will see if it was a smart choice or not. However, enjoy the stay on this blog!