musin'...

Vista is out...

2008-12-27T20:26:00.000-08:00

The hardware is nice...
I am the lucky owner of a Dell Xps M1330 laptop, and last week I just had too many problems with my laptop running vista family basic to my taste. Previously I actually found that the system was pretty good so far. I had overcome many of its shortcomings thanks to open source software, and the system was actually quite (and to my surprise somehow) stable :-)

... and so the problems start rising

I had a first alert with a nvidia video driver update. Seeing that an recommended update was available, I just installed following the usual click-click protocol. Once that bugger installed, my fan just went on full speed. Oh, no problem I thought, the little guy must have run into some cpu intensive little thingie and we'll be back to his usual quite mode soon. Well, no you silly, it just decided it was his new cruise speed now. Then my second thought was the usual stupid but weirdly very effective way out, so I just went and rebooted the computer. No luck, the fan would go off right from startup and would never get back to normal speed. So thanks to actually checkpoints made before upgrades, I kissed the recommended upgrade good-bye and the fan got back to normal sound levels. Then I had just a regular vista upgrade that would fail with some cryptic error code, that I actually really didn't have time to go check for a while... with the concern in mind that I could be potentially more exposed to danger that I usually am with a fully patched system. But the final straw was that I couldn't copy a zip file from the network neighborhood. I had just a popup box telling me that I didn't have the privilege to do that. What da ?!?! Tried to run the explorer with admin privileges didn't change this, and I finally had to catch the file with my friend's usb key. There is probably a (correct) way to do this, but I just don't feel like searching when I am using that os. If I have to play the adventurous way, I'd rather do that on a libre system.

And so let's try something new...

That's why since a few days, the laptop is now running OpenBSD. I have wanted to try this one for a while, and being in vacation, I just decided it was the right time ;-)

I went on the install just the way it's written in the booklet given with the cd, and had no problem with that... I just changed a couple of values on the way to make the /tmp and /var more comfortable in terms of available space. And voila ! OpenBSD was booting in his usual blue background text.
Due to some restriction, the wireless card doesn't work right away, you need to download a firmware first. In my case achieving that is quite simple : plug the wire and ask the friendly dhcp server for an ip address :
# dhclient bge0
once you have access to the Internet, you can then add the package containing the package..
# pkg_add http://damien.bergamini.free.fr/packages/openbsd/wpi-firmware-2.14.1.5.tgz

From there, if you do as sir Schneier (and I ;-) does, a simple dhclient wpi0 will put you online through your wireless card.

From that you probably will want to set your $PKG_PATH to a mirror close to you, and then add mozilla-firefox.
pkg_add mozilla-firefox and voila...

More to come, as I am getting to have more fun with the fish...

Installing PostgreSQL on your Pardus Linux

2007-05-18T10:34:00.000-07:00

Let's say that you want to play around with a sql database engine...
I personnaly recommand PostgreSQL, it will satisfy your needs and seems to be the most inovative gpl kid in the database town.
In Pardus installing it is performed by installing the postgresql-server package.
You can optionnally install the kPoGre package which is a kde administration tool for postgreSQL.
To install these, use PiSi of course... you can do it using the command line or the click-o-friendly gui frontend as you prefer ^^
Once you are done downloading and installing, start your postgreSQL engine through the ServiceManager module of TASMA your Pardus Control Center.
Select your PostgreSQL Database Server and start it up...
Now you need to create a role to your username...
For this you need to create your user in postgreSQL, and to achieve that, you have to call createuser from the postgres user.
amine@dan ~ $ su
Password:
dan amine # su postgres
postgres@dan amine $ createuser amine
Shall the new role be a superuser? (y/n) y
CREATE ROLE
Obviously you would have changed amine by your username ^^
Now that you are known by postgreSQL as a superuser, you can come back to your regular being, and create the database you will be using.
To do so, call the createdb command with the database name...
postgres@dan amine $ exit
dan amine # exit
amine@dan ~ $ createdb example
CREATE DATABASE
Now that the database is created, let's play around with it...
You can use kPoGre if you have installed it (for the Gui Lover :-), or give a try to the command line interactive terminal :
amine@dan ~ $ psql -d example
Welcome to psql 8.1.9, the PostgreSQL interactive terminal.

Type: \copyright for distribution terms
\h for help with SQL commands
\? for help with psql commands
\g or terminate with semicolon to execute query
\q to quit

example=#
Congratulations, you are ready for playing with your freshly installed fully fledged database engine !
Tip : If you don't like typing psql -d databaseName everytime, just use your username as databaseName... psql will try that one by default if called without arguments...
Have fun !

Svn server... out of the box... or almost ^^

2007-03-26T14:53:00.000-07:00

Pardus Linux gives the opportunity to start your own local svn server very quickly !
Just launch Tasma, your friendly Pardus Configuration Center, and from the System module, click on the Service Manager.
Here you can see listed as an available service (but not currently running) the SVN server.
Click on it and then run it...
Wait young Jedi, you are not totally done yet ! ^^
If you type ps -eaf | grep svnserve in your Yakuake (I am in love with this terminal since the first day I launched it !), you will find something like this :
apache 3755 1 0 23:55 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/svnserve --foreground --daemon --root=/var/svn

Oh ho... has Pardus made it work directly...
well not really... Actually there is no such thing as /var/svn yet !
First thing first let's create the directory :
$ su
# mkdir /var/svn
In order to create repositories, you have to use svnadmin :
# svnadmin create /var/svn/repository

Have a look at http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.1/ch06s03.html for more information as how to
administer your server...
Personnally I prefer accessing it through ssh.
In order to do that, use your Service Manager to fire the ssh server... and then you can access your svn server thanks to the url :
svn list svn+ssh://localhost/var/run/repository
It will ask you for a password and then will not give you any error message... meaning your server is ready for the initial import !!
Enjoy !

Let's get started

2007-03-03T02:46:00.000-08:00

I thought I had to start a blog and be serious about it...
But I just kept delaying and procrastinating...
But pardus made it happen ! ^^
It's an amazing linux distribution made in Turquey.
The distribution was so great, that I felt that I had to try to help the developpers there in return...
I ended up contacting the fine people at Pardus to try to help the french translation.
In return I was given a developer access in no time, and asked if I had a blog to be linked to the pardus planet !
And here the blog is created ^^
More to come soon !