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Archive: March 2006

I had a bad dream yesterday night. Tuesday and wednesday I had work over night til 3 a.m. An I had a bad dream at wednesday night. Actually the dream is not that bad, but its a kind of silly. I woke up and wondering why am I had this kind of silly dream.

Our team are rushing on bugful modules and I have to be there to do testing on the modules instantly after the programmers passes to me. At tuesday, my boss personally came at late night to join the testing. You would imagine that kind of pressure I having. Next day, the testing goes on, but this time boss was not attended. The testing ends at 3 a.m. too. I went back happily and I had a silly bad dream.

In my dream...

I was working until 3 a.m. with a senior programmer and we both are too tired and slept at the lab. Until we wake up, its already 9:30 a.m at the morning. My colleague woke up first and went back. Me too, packing my stuff and ready to go back. At this moment, boss came in and stop me and ask me to continue work on testing...

I just remember this portion of my dream when I wake up in the morning. It's a kind of silly feeling, and I was thinking what if this really happened. I think I will continue to work ..... or maybe I won't .... not sure.

3 comments

xprop and pgrep

Tuesday, March 28, 2006 2:43:14 PM

command, linux

While surfing through fluxbox wiki, I learn this 2 interesting commands xprop and pgrep.

xprop are use to display the property for any X item, you can just type xprop at your terminal and click on any X item you like to check the properties. You can type xprop -root to check the root windows properties and also other active programs, for example gaim.

 xprop -name gaim

To grep the process ID for the active 'gaim', you can put

 xprop -name gaim | grep PID

Here comes in another command with more simple result which returns you only the pid.

pgrep gaim

Bare in mind, if you have multiple same services running, it will return a list of pid, let say apache2. To kill process based on the id, now you may do so with

kill `pgrep gaim`

It always have another way to do it, simply killall gaim will do the same thing. But pgrep did more than that, you can list all process created by root user with

This will list all the process running by root with the process names.

pgrep -l -u root

Combine ps and pgrep to display the details of a process with name apache2

ps -fp `pgrep -d' ' -x apache2`

This 2 lines does the same thing as above.

ps aux | grep apache2
ps -fp $(pgrep -d' ' -x apache2)

1 comment

How to add IPv6 address to the network interface?

Monday, March 27, 2006 1:52:56 PM

ipv6, research

One time, when i wanna try out aodv-uu, i asked myself how to add IPv6 address to eth0? By default the network interface have IPv6 address, that is link local and it doesn't work with aodv-uu IPv6. After reading the README precisely again, I discover that it needed a site-local address instead.

Bellow are the examples of how to add a site-local IPv6 address to eth0

ip -6 addr add fec0::1/48 dev eth0

ifconfig eth0 inet6 add fec0::1/48

Bare in mind site-local address must have fec0::0/48 prefix instead of fe80::0/64 which is link local.

No comments

Some Fluxbox Tips

Sunday, March 26, 2006 3:05:58 AM

fluxbox

If you experience with fluxbox, you probably know how to perform a screen capture using scrot. By edit .fluxbox/keys with None Print: ExecCommand scrot ... to do the act. But I do not like the way scrot does, which I need some feedback with show me the screenshot have captured and ask me where to save and let me specify the name myself. So I would like to use gnome-screenshot instead.

Under .fluxbox/keys

None Print: ExecCommand: gnome-screenshot

Sometimes you need to execute some programs in root privilege such as ethereal, update-manager, etc, and you do not want to execute through terminal with sudo or you want to bind it to your root ment, what you do? Use gksudo to do the trick. Simply gksudo <program name>.

I discover that a lots of user do not like icons on desktop and it is fluxbox default, but I still wants to have shortcut to access my frequent used programs on somewhere else. For me I binds them to submenu of root menu.

Configuration of fluxbox is easy, and its all text based. Simply use vim or others editor to add or change some settings and "Reconfigure", you are done. Workspace in fluxbox can be assign name that you like. For me I have 4 Workspace which I assign it with names of beautiful Island of Malaysia. ( Penang, Langkawi, Tioman and Pangkor ) You can set your shortcut keys almost every key your keyboard have, and you can create a combo key such as ctrl D + alt C to run something and what you need to know is the key name. For example, ctrl is Control, windows key is Mod4 and alt key is Mod1 etc. If you want to know what key you are pressing, you can try 'xev'.

There are still a lots more tips which I can't think off now, if you have any fluxbox tips to share, please leave me some comments.

No comments

fluxbox style

Friday, March 24, 2006 5:54:52 PM

fluxbox, fluxstyle

Gnome and KDE have themes, where you can change your windows border, icons set, etc. Fluxbox have styles, fluxbox tag along with various styles, but it do not limits you from adding new style. To download styles and apply it is easy. Create a folder under your .fluxbox call styles and place your downloaded style here.

I found a good page with plenty of fluxbox styles, here you go ....

http://fluxstyle.berlios.de/styles/

OSX-Graphite style preview, I am using it now.

5 comments

Make your X windows fluxible

Friday, March 24, 2006 6:17:26 AM

linux, fluxbox

Fluxbox, if you feel that your gnome or kde performance is not good, or you want to save your space, then you may consider fluxbox. Feel free to visit
fluxbox wiki and learn how to use it. Bare in mind, fluxbox is a light weight, fast and fluxible windows manager, a lots of things you need to customise yourself. I am in the process of learning it too, but it is not so difficult.

If you are using ubuntu, don't apt-get it, the fluxbox at your repository might not updated which facing some memory leak and perfomance issues, get it from here

I been connned by geek00L to use fluxbox

Anyway if you need help on fluxbox, you may login to freenode irc server #myoss channel, search for geek00L, haha, he will guide you.

1 comment

using qemu-img to create vmdk for vmplayer

Tuesday, March 21, 2006 7:06:53 PM

qemu, vmware

As compare with qemu, vmware performance is much much better and its peripheral device support is slightly better. But a free version of vmplayer do not support virtual disk creation, it means you can only load the image (in vmdk format) given by others.

With qemu-img, you can create a blank disk image and install any OS on it as your wish. qemu-img is also allow you to convert the disk image from one to another, for example you can dd Damn Small Linux from USB flash disk to hardisk and convert it to vmdk.

Vmplayer need a configuration file (vmx) to load vmdk, you can find sample vmx for reference, google it and you will get it. It do exist vmx builder online for free where you can build vmx based on your input. Refers to http://www.skrodahl.net/easyvmx/tutorial.html The author does a good job, guilding through you from using qemu-img to create virtual disk till building your own vmx and start install your OSes. It provide virtual disk image with different size for download as well in case you have difficulties to create one.

As my case, I facing problem with creating vmdk using qemu-img, and lately i discovery the causes of my problem. I am using qemu-img to create vmdk image at my FAT partition which i suspect it leads the image created with defects. I try to create and convert disk images at other linux partition and it works fine.

If you facing performance issues at qemu, you may want to give vmware a try although it is not open source. Trust me, the performance is much much better than qemu with kqemu patch. You can realised the differents if you install gkrellm, try to aware of processors used.

To convert an existing disk image let say my winxp.img with qcow format (which is qemu default image format)

qemu-img -f qcow winxp.img -O vmdk winxp.vmdk

Then create vmx using builder online and double click on the vmx that have created, that's it. Here is another reference on how to install Win XP or 2000 for vmplayer under ubuntu.

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=84275

6 comments

Só danço samba - Jazz Samba

Tuesday, March 21, 2006 12:57:19 PM

jazz, music

If you love Jazz music, you should listen to this song which i am going to introduce you now. If you like Bossa Nova or samba music, if you know bebop, swing and Ella Fitzgerald, you will sure like this song. Introducing ..

Ella Fitzgerald - Só danço samba

Só danço samba,
Só danço samba,
Vai, vai, vai, vai, vai
Só danço samba,
Só danço samba,
Vai
Só danço samba,
Só danço samba,
Vai, vai, vai, vai, vai
Só danço samba,
Só danço samba,
Vai
Já dancei o twist até demais,
Mas não sei, me cansei,
Do calipso, ao chá chá chá
Só danço samba,
Só danço samba,
Vai, vai, vai, vai, vai
Só danço samba,
Só danço samba,
Vai
Só danço samba,
Só danço samba,
Vai, vai, vai, vai, vai
Só danço samba,
Só danço samba,
Vai

The song is more than the lyrics shows here, listen it then you know. This song make me feel excited, how about you?

3 comments

Irritating bugs reached my limit

Tuesday, March 14, 2006 5:17:15 PM

bugs, linux, ubuntu

I always get these error msg when i dmesg

[6394487.332000] atkbd.c: Unknown key pressed (translated set 2, code 0xaa on isa0060/serio0).
[6394487.332000] atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e02a <keycode>' to make it known.
[6394487.563000] atkbd.c: Unknown key released (translated set 2, code 0xaa on isa0060/serio0).
[6394487.563000] atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e02a <keycode>' to make it known.
[6394488.886000] atkbd.c: Unknown key pressed (translated set 2, code 0xaa on isa0060/serio0).
[6394488.886000] atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e02a <keycode>' to make it known.
[6394489.133000] atkbd.c: Unknown key released (translated set 2, code 0xaa on isa0060/serio0).
[6394489.133000] atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e02a <keycode>' to make it known.
[6394495.612000] atkbd.c: Unknown key pressed (translated set 2, code 0xaa on isa0060/serio0).
[6394495.612000] atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e02a <keycode>' to make it known.
[6394495.911000] atkbd.c: Unknown key released (translated set 2, code 0xaa on isa0060/serio0).
[6394495.911000] atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e02a <keycode>' to make it known.
[6404432.752000] atkbd.c: Unknown key pressed (translated set 2, code 0xaa on isa0060/serio0).
[6404432.752000] atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e02a <keycode>' to make it known.
[6404432.877000] atkbd.c: Unknown key released (translated set 2, code 0xaa on isa0060/serio0).
[6404432.877000] atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e02a <keycode>' to make it known.
[6404440.870000] atkbd.c: Unknown key pressed (translated set 2, code 0xaa on isa0060/serio0).
[6404440.870000] atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e02a <keycode>' to make it known.
[6404440.993000] atkbd.c: Unknown key released (translated set 2, code 0xaa on isa0060/serio0).
[6404440.993000] atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e02a <keycode>' to make it known.

I just ignore because it create no harms to me, but until today I discover the side effects and it reached my limits. When i move my mouse rapidly, character 'a' keep printing at my text box or whatever text field. First of all i tot thats my keyboard some how screw up, lately I discover that the cause it these irritating bugs.

Google it and find this page http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=429503&postcount=7 , it helps to solve my problem for time being.

Updates:
It still keep printing 'a' sometimes.

Its my keyboard spoiled

1 comment