Ubuntu Malaysia New Planet

Well this post is just an announcement of a new Ubuntu Malaysia site which is called Planet Ubuntu Malaysia. Well basically this is the official Ubuntu Malaysia Planet which will gather all the Ubuntu-my member's blog to be review on one site.


I would like to encourage all of the Ubuntu Malaysia's members to help and try to design a new logo for our planet. Well basically the logo should reflect our community logo. I hope I will have better response to this one. All idea's and artwork are very welcome.

By the way, please visit and subscribe to our LoCo planet via feeds. And please let me know if you would like your blog to be publish on the planet. For any request to be syndicate with the planet, please refer to Ubuntu Malaysia Forum as I have made a post there.

Sphere Desktop Cube

I was reading the Ubuntu-id's planet when I found this post which caught my attention. I would like to share with other Ubuntu User who visits my blog with this Earth Desktop made by One of the Indonesian Ubuntu Members.

Well It use compiz as the engine and yes, I found out that it is easy to install. What nice is, he even have a snapshot of the Earth Desktop. Here is the snapshot:


And you could always download the compiz-fusion ccsm at the owners blog. Nice one huh. A good one from Indonesian members.

Jokes On Linux

Well, i'm in a mood to laugh tonight and I searching google for all kind of funny stuff. Suddenly I came upon one jokes about talking programmer, here is the jokes:

Three male programmers were in the bathroom standing at the urinals.
The first programmer finishes, walks over to the sink to wash his hands.
He then proceeds to dry his hands very carefully. He uses paper towel after paper towel and ensures that every single spot of water on his hands is dried.
Turning to the other two, he says, "At Microsoft, we are trained to be extremely thorough."
The second programmer finishes his task at the urinal and he proceeds to wash his hands. He uses a single paper towel and makes sure that he dries his hands using every available portion of the paper towel.
He turns and says, "At Intel not only are we trained to be extremely thorough but we are also trained to be extremely efficient."
The third programmer finished and walks straight for the door, shouting over his shoulder, "At Sun, we don`t piss on our hands.
Courtesy of Syid Arif

Yeah, It was funny. But the most important thing is, this jokes just made my day! Nice one.

Install msttcorefonts on Hardy

Have you ever wondering why every webpage that you surf by using browser on Linux operating system seem lack in fonts presentation? Tired and bored with all the fonts on the linux system? Then you should be looking for something like msttcorefonts package for linux. What is msttcorefonts? Basically msttcorefonts is a package for linux user to install windows fonts. Well this definition taken from linux.about.com:

Definition: msttcorefonts: Installer for Microsoft TrueType core fonts This package allows for easy installation of the Microsoft True Type Core Fonts for the Web including: Andale Mono Arial Black Arial (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic) Comic Sans MS (Bold) Courier New (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic) Georgia (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic) Impact Times New Roman (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic) Trebuchet (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic) Verdana (Bold, Italic, Bold Italic) Webdings You will need an Internet connection to download these modules from Microsoft's Web site.

It's mostly the best package for linux user to have Microsoft Fonts installed on their linux Operating System. Here is some simple steps on how to install msttcorefonts on Ubuntu Linux Operating system:

• sudo apt-get install msttcorefonts

This command is enough to install all the basic fonts based on Microsoft fonts to make your font presentation better than before. Here is some example of before and after using 'msttcorefonts'

Before using msttcorefonts

After Using msttcorefonts

Nice improvement right? isnt that font look smoother than the original one? yeah it will make your web fonts better than before. Happy surfing~

Ubuntu Repo Using Windows IIS?

Well, I am a bit surprise when one of my friend gave me a link and ask me to take a look. As soon as I open the URL given, I can see clearly that the server stated that they are using Windows IIS. Moreover it's a repositories server for Ubuntu Linux.



Why in the world they would like to use Windows as Server while they keep on improving their Operating System to beat Bill Gates product. Heh, you do the calculation and make your own judgment. Surprise huh. LOL~

100 Post: Firefox 3.0 is out~!

Yeah, I'm not pretty sure when it has been released, but I notice that my Firefox 3.0 has been officially release. Here is my firefox about us screenshot.

Make sure to update your firefox using apt-get services on your Ubuntu Machine. I hope that all the bugs reported earlier has been fixed!

Format Existing Partition On Ubuntu

Well, I encounter a problem where I would like to gain back my 80GB hardisk space which I allocate for my Windows and I dont have a direct access to the machine. So all I got is a SSH access to the machine. And I desperately need the space back. So here is some tips on how to format, and allocate back your partition to ext3 FS on Ubuntu Machine.

• Login to your box using SSH(remember to login to user account which have sudoers privileges).
• Then the first thing is to do a 'fdisk' to delete and recreate a partition.

sudo fdisk for example:
sudo fdisk /dev/sda

• Then a wizard will appear, and you just need to follow the instruction. For help on command to use, please use 'm' .
• After finished configuring and recreating the partition, then you need to make the partition. Quit the fdisk by using 'q', and do this command:

sudo mkfs -t [filesystem type] [location]

• For this example, my filesystem i need to create is 'ext3' and the location is '/dev/sda1' , so here is my command:

sudo mkfs -t ext3 /dev/sda1

• And this will create my partition based on 'ext3' filesystem. To make effect, you need to reboot.
  

This simple tutorial will be useful to use with symlink and other command if you really want to resize some folder. Well mostly I used this for my webserver.

Torrentflux B4rt on Ubuntu Hardy

Previously I made a post on how to install Torrentflux on Ubuntu Gutsy. So here is some update on How to use torrentflux-b4rt edition on your Ubuntu Hardy. Well, you must be wondering why use torrentflux-b4rt instead of torrentflux. Well, there are a lot of new features on b4rt edition on writing and speed. Well if you really would like to know what b4rt made of, the you should really visit their site here.

So here is step-by-step on how to install the latest torrentflux-b4rt on Hardy Heron:

• I assume you have your LAMP installed on your system before running this tutorial. If you still didnt install apache, php and mysql - then I will advise you to google search on how to install them on your system.
• After installing LAMP, then we could start the procedure with downloading the latest b4rt into your /var/www folder.

cd /var/www && wget http://gunblade.fakap.net/doc/torrentflux-b4rt_1.0-beta2.tar.bz2

• Extract the files on your webserver folder.

tar xf torrentflux-b4rt_1.0-beta2.tar.bz2 && mv torrentflux-b4rt_1.0-beta2/html ./flux

• Now we could install all the requirement of torrentflux-b4rt before proceeding with further installation:

sudo apt-get install php5-cli unzip unrar transmission-cli
wget http://ubuntu2.cica.es/ubuntu/ubuntu/pool/universe/c/cksfv/cksfv_1.3.5-1_i386.deb && sudo dpkg -i cksfv*deb

Update:
sudo apt-get install php5-gd libxml-dom-perl libxml-simple-perl libthreads-shared-perl libdigest-sha1-perl libhtml-parser-perl
*thanks to phil for the info

• After installation of the requirement ready, we may proceed on installing torrentflux-b4rt to our system. To install, open up your firefox browser, and navigate to http://localhost/flux
• Follow the instruction and remember to set the database information correctly. Mostly, people will make silly mistakes here.
  

When ready, just login to your root account, and start having fun with your machine as a Torrent Monster. I like to use 'Monster' cause it sound great.

Fluxbox: Setting Sound Keyboard Control

Well one of my friend, piju - asking me about how do I control my sound volume on my fluxbox. As he has more experience than me, so maybe he have his own way on controlling sound volume on his Fluxbox. But for me, it's quite simple.

At First I wanted to set the FN key to control sound, but as I search on the google, no other tutorial successfully set the FN+VolDown/VolUp yet. The FN key isnt being map. So I replace FN laptop's Keyboard key with "Windows Key". Here is how to set it up:

• Open up your shortcut key's file: (On terminal type)

nano ~/.fluxbox/keys

• then add the following line at the end of file:

mod4 Up: ExecCommand amixer set Master 1%+
mod4 Down: ExecCommand amixer set Master 1%-

• I hope from here you can get an idea on how to mute and do any other things with sound with the shortcut utility.
  

I hope this will help Fluxbox user to control sound much better than before. Some other method, you could just install other application GTK based to control your sound.

Edit Sudoers for No Pass Prompt

If you have some script need to run on daily basis such as 'apt-get' maybe you will be thinking on getting rid of password prompt every time you run an 'apt-get' command. And sometime, we wanted to have a script which will autorun on startup and you keep being prompt to enter password. Would you like it to be run fully background? If yes, then you need to edit the 'sudoers' file located in '/etc/' folder.

Before we begin, we may need to really know the power of 'sudo'. If you didnt know what 'sudo' command could be, then do a google search on 'sudo' as a keyword. This could effect your system if you allow users to run such a risky command without password prompt. So, here is steps on how to edit sudoers:

• Open up terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal)
• Open up the text editor(i'll be using nano for this tutorial) and edit the /etc/sudoers file.

sudo nano /etc/sudoers

• You will be prompt for password for this one. Enter your user password and the editor will appear. Find line with:

# User privilege specification
root ALL=(ALL) ALL

• And add to the next line your user and what command you would like to allow. For example, my user is "gunblade" and I would like to allow 'apt-get' to run without any password prompt. Then I need to add this line:

# User privilege specification
root ALL=(ALL) ALL
gunblade ALL=NOPASSWD:/usr/bin/apt-get

• But first you need to make sure where is the binary file located. To locate it, use 'which' command. For instance, if you would like to know the exact location of 'apt-get' then you need to run 'which apt-get' and it will return the exact location.

$which apt-get
/usr/bin/apt-get

So here is the tips and trick to do a simple thing on sudoers file. But you need to carefully allow some commands because it could bring damage to your system if you wrongly allow it to users. Some command might be best to have password prompt. Edit it on your own risk~!

Make a startup script on Fluxbox

Well, Fluxbox a light weight window manager. Wondering on how to make a startup script for Fluxbox WM on Ubuntu? Well there is a script/file called Xsession for GNOME WM as a startup script. So with Fluxbox, the file is called xinitrc.

How can you do this? It's simple to start an application on Ubuntu Fluxbox start up. Here is some steps using terminal as a start:

• Open up terminal and touch a file name ".xinitrc"

touch ~/.xinitrc

• Then make some script to run the application you like such as nm-applet, pidgin, xchat and etc.

nano ~/.xinitrc

• When the editor open up, just type the command you would like to run. Here is my xinitrc:

#!/bin/sh
session.screen0.rootCommand: fbsetbg -l
export SHELL=/bin/zsh
export LC=C
export LC_ALL=C
fluxbox &
WMPID=$!
sleep 4 &&
wait $WMPID
xset +fp /home/gunblade/.fonts
nm-applet

So you can add what ever application that you would like to run on startup, but if there is any root privileges type of application, then you need to do some tricks to make it work.

Hardy Heron - B43 Broadcom Driver Setup on fresh install

Well, this is my first time fresh installing Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron on my Laptop. Before this, I used to upgrade my system from Gutsy to Hardy using update-manager. And without any problem, I got the wireless(which in hardy using b43 instead of bcm43xx) working without any need to do anything. Which mean, Upgrade --> Reboot --> And wireless is there and it's B43~!

But in another situation, I just do a Hardy Heron fresh install yesterday, not much problem in the installation process, which I manage to boot into the new system in about 20-30 minutes of installation process. All working fine without any major issue but then i realized that my Broadcom Wireless(b43) didnt light up. So I assume that my broadcom didnt working on fresh install.

Here is simple step I make to make this things work:

sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter

This command will install the fwcutter for latest b43 driver and load the firmware in installation process. Basically, Hardy suppose to include this things on installation, but somehow the b43-fwcutter sometimes doesnt work will all cards, so you really need to remove the default one and reinstall it back using above command. Hope this will help.

I'm Back For Real

This time i'm back for real, I have rejoin Ubuntu Malaysia Team, I'm back for blogging, and ready to do experiment on my Ubuntu and giving tips.

All my problem have been solve quicker than i thought. So I'm glad to announce that I'm back for real into this IT world.

Goodbye to my Ubuntu

Heh, there is some difficulties I encountered when trying to install windows on one of my Ubuntu partition. Why I want Windows on my laptop? Well - I had to install Windows due to my brother-in-law request to play games with me.

Well I've tried to use cedega to play games with him, but I failed to install the game because we dont have the CDs, the only way to play the game is by copying the source directly from my brother-in-law laptop to mine.

Virtualization? Nope, this one could run windows on my Ubuntu but it cannot play any games because you will experiencing a very laggy system cause by non supported graphic card on virtualbox. Plus - my RAM is not enough to run it.

So I installed Windows on one of my Ubuntu's partiton which I named it "/share" (mostly all my trash files is here) and successfully run Windows after 30-40mins of installation process. Unfortunately, during the partitioning process I do make a noob mistake where I did delete my swap partition :-P (Lame huh)

I repair my grub and everything went well except my system is not as good as before, and I do have some problem with memory management cause I have no swap on the system. Can I make a swap ? Yes I can.. But I am thinking of a Hardy Heron fresh install to replace the old Feisty -> Gutsy -> Hardy System (i'm on my way to burn the hardy CD's on my CD-RW right now).

Ubuntu : How to upgrade to 2.6.25 kernel

Well, on the previous post I do give tutorial on how to compile custom kernel on your Ubuntu box debian way. But it seem like it's hard for beginner to start compiling, and stripping the kernel and choose a appropriate driver to be compiled along.

So here is the easy way for Ubuntu users to upgrade to latest kernel 2.6.25 which has been release on the launchpad by the development team.

sudo vi /etc/apt/source.list

Edit the source.list file and add the following line at the end of the files:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/kernel-ppa/ubuntu hardy main
deb-src http://ppa.launchpad.net/kernel-ppa/ubuntu hardy main

Save and exit the text editor, and run:

sudo apt-get update

After finish updating your apt list, you need to install the new kernel by running this command:

sudo apt-get install linux-image-2.6.25-1-generic linux-headers-2.6.25-1

This command will install the 2.6.25 kernel with the Ubuntu Patches already been implement. So no need to wirries about your drivers and etc. But this isnt a stable release yet. I've been reading about kernel 2.6.25 to be included officially on the hardy repo as this 8.04 is a LTS.

Enjoy

Wireless go into Monitor with Injection Support

I've been experimenting to use aircrack to test out Access Point(AP) security for about a month and a half now, and i used to do it with 3 wireless card that I own which is Broadcom(Built-in on my laptop), rt73usb(which is a USB wireless Device) and ZD1211rw(also a USB device).

Formerly, I have to patch my modules in order to make the cards to go into monitor mode so that it could be used with aircrack suite. All the hard work will paid out if you successfully patch your cards. But to find the right patch is the most hard part as not every patch is suitable with your chipset.

But, i notice somthing different on the latest linux kernel(maybe it might be working too on BSD's kernel), you dont have to patch your card to change your wireless mode into monitor-mode. But this is only tested on Mac80211 cards only. As far as I'm concern, b43(latest driver for broadcom), rt73usb and zd1211rw - all of this card happened to be mac80211 cards on kernel 2.6.24 and higher.

So al you need to do is install the iw application. So how to install 'iw'? It took a few steps to install 'iw'. But even a new linux user could install this without any problems. First all you have to do is install all the requirements needed by 'iw' in order to function.

sudo apt-get update && sudp apt-get install libnl-dev libnl1 libnl1-pre6

Then when all the requirements has been installed, we may proceed to gathering the 'iw' source:

mkdir iw && cd iw
wget http://gunblade.fakap.net/tool/wireless/iw.tar.bz2 && tar xvjf iw.tar.bz2

And now proceed to the final step:

make && sudo ln -s iw /usr/sbin/iw

And we are done. So now you may try to install the aircrack from SVN by using subversion. There is a simpe tutorial on how to install this latest version of aircrack from by using subversion. But first you need to install subversion first by apt. More tutorial on how to install aircrack is on my previous post.

Download Helper for Firefox 3 has been release

I've been waiting for this plugin called "Video DownloadHelper" for a few weeks. Formerly, this plugin work out of the box on Firefox 2.0 where this plugin help me a lot on downloading videos from Youtube, TV3 website and many more which I would reveal on this post.

The main purpose for this plugin is to make it possible for Firefox user to download the Flash Videos (.flv) files by a point-and-click procedure. It's rich in features where else, it could make a download queue and download one by one your queued files until it finish eventhough you have close the Firefox.

And about couple of days ago, the new version of Video Downloadhelper has been release especially to support Firefox 3. The plugin working fine without any problem as far as I'm using it. So now I can download youtube files on point click.

For those who interested to try this plugin, you must have firefox installed on your system(luckily, all ubuntu OS used firefox as default browser). All you got to do is click on the link here, and the installation popup will appear, just click install and you are done!