Whats up with Hatim!

My telephone line at home was out of order for about 3 weeks now and I was in need of an internet connection at home. I decided to give using internet through my cell phone (GPRS) a try. The reason for this was simple, I needed an internet connection which would make me truly mobile and was cost effective as well. And ofcourse an implied requirement was that it should work with Linux(easily). So I searched up the internet for tarrifss of local cellular companies and compared them with other options which I had. I decided to go with Zong's (a China Mobile comapny) unlimited GPRS package. I was skeptical about the internet speed and was not even sure how I would be ablt to connect my laptop with the internet as it was only recently that I had begun using internet through my Mobile.

First I got hold of a Sony Erricson data cable as I had lost the one which came with my phone. This cost me 200Rs (3 US$), then I purchased some Zong credit for testing. Then using another internet connection I searched on how to use ubuntu with GPRS enabled phones. I found an article at softpedia to be very helpful. I found through dmesg that on my system, my phone was registering itself at ttyACM0 as well

Then I installed gnome-ppp and used it as per described in the article. The APN for Zong is zonginternet and apprently there is no username and password, but I still used zon/zong so that gnome-ppp could dial out. I also had to ensure that my user was in the modem/dial_out group. I tested the internet connectivity and was delighted to see that after dailing in there was nothing else to be done. Later I called up Zong customer services after feeding in some extra credit of 550 Rs (roughly 8US$) and activated my monthly unlimited internet package.

Later I tried watching a Youtube video, the bandwidth was not enough for me to stream it live but I was able to download a 9 MB file in a relatively short time compared to dialup connection. I was able to go to a download speed of 15KB/sec which I think is more than enough for day to day browsing and coding related tasks. I am looking forward to using this connection for my summer of code activities.

I had been reading up on the Ubuntu security breach since this Tuesday and was concerned that my system would also have been compromised. A little searching yielded a site which described the venerability in some detail and shows how to exploit it. It also has a bunch of private/public keys which were generated on a 31 core machine (some thing which only a serious computer venerability researcher would do).

I looked up into the keys and I was not able to find my public keys. Perhpas the vernerability is more than it seems (or perhaps lesser). But In any case I have changed my keys :)

In the last few days I had been reading reviews and hearing some good things about Fedora 9, so I decided to give it a try. I downloaded the 64 bit version of fedora kde-livecd. The CD booted easily on my Acer Aspire 7720-6604. I was greeted by a dark theme (which is not my taste). I then tried out some preinstalled software and frankly I was not impressed. The KDE version comes with Koffice and Konqueror. Since I have not used KDE for some time now I had not realized that I had grown used to Gnome. Overall there was nothing mindblowing about KDE 4 and it was yet another Fedora release. I then tried to do a dummy install to check that how ext4 support works, again to my disappointment there was no ext4 option available (i later tried with the kernel parameter ext4 but without any luck) I think ext4 is only available on the full installer version.

The lack of packages in precompiled distributions like Ubuntu and Fedora is prompting me to move back to Gentoo (or some even flexible operating system choice). Lets hope that Gentoo guys release 2008.0 before the start of 6th month of this year (its already behind schedule)

I tried Ubuntu 64 bit Alternate Installer on a brand new desktop with core2duo and software RAID (i previously wrongly reported it as Ubuntu Server). The installation was a brreze but for some reason I was not able to install GRUB out of the box. Once I realized what I was missing I staright away copied the grub files (stage1 stage2 files etc) and installed grub and I was on my way.

Installing RAID on ubuntu is easy with server installation, but one has to make the software RAID partitions manually before the install. I also  made the unused space after RAID as part of  LVM so as to utilize the disks effeciently. I also installed webmin through a deb package, I realize that its not very secure, but from webmin one can learn alot of configurations and can supplement some user based managament of the server.

As for Ubuntu's latest offering, I am fairly impressed. This distro is getting better with every release. The other day I was having a discussion on #opennms about using customizable distros like "Gentoo". I think I have done good by trading in felxibility for stability so I can concentrate on the real problems at hand. One learns alot on Gentoo, but one could also learn much stuff on gentoo as well becuase kernel and other packages are essentially the same.

I have yet to install Ubuntu Desktop 8.04 on my laptop but I think I will probably wait for Ubuntu 8.10 to come to make the swicth. With summer of code and other devlopment activities, I dont have the time to meddle with new installations.

Edit: I did install te 32 bit version on my laptop for a test run and was not convinced of its stability. I would be sticking with 7.10 for some time now. It atleast works.

I wanted to setup Trac on my server, but haven't found a recepie which only uses nginx for Trac and SVN componenet. So I decided to go for plain Webbased SVN application. I chose WebSVN because it uses PHP and is easy to setup, it's used by KDE project for their SVN view and most of all, its readily available in Ubuntu :). I found a nice tutorial from HowToForge.com for setting up svn and websvn on Ubuntu. My websvn repository can be found here.

These days mutt is my default email client. Even though I still use webmail for my service based accounts (gmail, yahoo) and Evolution at work I would one day like to merge all my accounts under one roof with IMAP, spam control and mutt as my 'Mail User Agent'. The first thing which I wanted to do with my mutt was to make it send PGP-signed messages. I found the following links to be interesting read.

• muttrcexample
• setting up mutt with GnuPG
• setting up mutt with maildir
• reading html mails with mutt

I requested my hosting service to migrate my virtual private box from a User Mode Linux setup to a Xen setup. Xen seems to be the de facto visualization solution for Linux. It has become a considerable part of new Red Hat Certified Engineer's exam as well (for which I am prepping these days). Interestingly I was having troube running jetty plugin on User Mode Linux but now I am ablt to run that plugin (jetty wont bind to port on the local UML machine, now it does).

more pics here

A friend of mine who was coming to Pakistan from USA for vacation was kind enough to order an Acer Aspire 7720-6604 laptop from newegg.com. I have previously used newegg.com and like their service. Initially I had waited for the launch of Apple Mac Book Pro with Penryn processors, but after the launch I was not very impressed with the specs. It was same MacBook Pro with a little better processor. I searched for the first few laptops and decided to buy this Acer machine for my self.

This laptop comes with Windows Vista Ultimate and an HDMI connector, but it does not come with a BlueRay. I am suspecting that with the recent new of impending demise of HD-DVD, upcoming high end Acer laptops will come with BlueRay as an option.

Overall I am satisfied with this laptop. It has a nice exterrior and an OK interior. Its finish is not as bad as it looks in the pictures. The real deal is in the specs. It has whooping 3 gig of RAM. I have nver worked on a machine with this much RAM before so it would be intresting. It also has 512 MB Geforce 8600 GT graphics card which would be very good for PC gaming. But I am no longer interested in gaming.

Windows Vista comes with trail/crap ware, alot of games from Oberon media with 60 minutes demo. The first thing I did was to uninstall them. They left their shortcuts, which I would delete once I log back to Windows. Windows Vista has neat looks, but Ubuntu's compiz is way much more configurable.

After having few hours with Vitsa, I wasted no time and installed Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy on to my machine. Apprently the 64-bit version of live CD was not able to work properly so I selleted for 32-bit one. Every thing worked fine except for sound driver. The sound card in this particular is based in intel high definition audio. I tried few Ubuntu recipies here and there, but I guess the real problem was that snd-hda-intel module had to be loaded with correct parameter, which was essentially one small line at the end of /etc/modeprobe.d/alsa-base

options snd-hda-intel model=acer

I chose for Ubuntu (and not Kubuntu) because of its better integration options (in terms of compiz and multimedia). I plan to make a Gentoo machine out of this laptop, but frankly Ubuntu fulfills most of my needs.

As for the bads of this laptop, I really don't like its keyboard. Perhaps it is because I am used to keyboard of previous laptop. Also this laptop get heated to some extent. I always thought that upcoming chips would probably produce less heat as they consume lesser power, but it is almost the same. I would recommend and one who has a need for a serious devlopment machine to get this laptop. I actually got it for a very good price (1368.51 US$, or around 83000 Pak Rupess at the time). Hopefully this laptop would be a good investment.

I have finally decided with a heavy heart that I won't be buying a MacBook Pro (at least this year) even after the rumors came true and new MacBook pro was released last Tuesday. The primary reason for dumping Mac is price. What ever strings I am trying to pull I will not be able to make a purchase of a new MacBook Pro nearly less enough from its retail 2000$ price. The education discount version comes at a price of 1799$ and that too without a remote control (which is sad as that costs an extra 19$). The only major reason for me to buy a Mac Book Pro was to be able to work on MacOS X leapord, but then I realized that this was not being true to my slef as an open source software developer. Following is a run down of why I am not going for Apple's MacBook Pro.

• It's too expensive. It's not like they put some really cool hardware in it. Infact the model of Acer has more RAM and Harddrive, things which I would require from my portable machine. Also the screen size of MacBook which I was planning to get is some what smaller than screen size of Acer. For programming a bigger screen szie would be helpful.
• I am an open source developer and the OS which is focus of my attention is Linux (I also some times play with open solaris and freebsd). With this laptop I will have a retail version of Windows Vista Ultimate which I can boot just to check how my programs fare on the other side of the force. I could theoretically install Mac OSX onto my Acer, but that would be against the EULA of Apple.
• Laptops dont necessarily die if you use them properly. Although apple computers age better I don't intend to keep my newest laptop for more than two years. So a sturdy Apple Care protected laptop won't do me much good.
• I was expecting that Apple would be releasing a BlueRay based MacBook Pro, but this didn't happen. I am not planning to play alot of movies any way on my laptop. Besides with the money I save I can buy a SonyPlaystation 3.

I have already ordered the Acer Aspire from newegg.com. I will get hold of in second week of March (hopefully). Following are the specs of the said laptop.

Model
Brand Acer
Series Aspire
Model AS7720-6604
Part# LX.ANS0U.011
General
Operating System Windows Vista Ultimate
CPU Type Intel Core 2 Duo T8100 2.1G
Screen 17" WXGA+
Memory Size 3GB DDR2
Hard Disk 320GB
Optical Drive DVD Super Multi
Graphics Card NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
Video Memory 512MB
Communication Modem, Gigabit LAN and WLAN
Card slot 1 x ExpressCard/54 slot
Dimensions 15.9" x 11.7" x 1.5-1.7"
Weight 8.1 lbs.
CPU
CPU Type Intel Core 2 Duo
CPU Speed T8100(2.10GHz)
CPU FSB 800MHz
CPU L2 Cache 3MB
Chipset
Chipset Intel PM965
Display
Screen Size 17.0"
Wide Screen Support Yes
LCD Features Acer CrystalBrite Technology
Display Type Wide XGA+
Resolution 1440 x 900
Operating Systems
Operating System Windows Vista Ultimate
Graphics
GPU/VPU NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
Video Memory up to 1280 MB of TurboCache (512 MB of dedicated GDDR2 VRAM, up to 768 MB of shared system memory)
Graphic Type Dedicated Card
Hard Drive
HD Capacity 320GB
HD RPM 5400rpm
HD Interface SATA
Memory
Memory Slots 2 x DIMM
Memory Speed DDR2 667
Memory Size 3GB
Optical Drive
Optical Drive Type DVD Super Multi
Optical Drive Interface Integrated
Communications
Modem V.92 56K
LAN 10/100/1000Mbps
WLAN 802.11a/b/g/draft N
Ports
Card Slot 1 x ExpressCard/54 slot
USB 4
IEEE 1394 1
Video Port 1 x VGA, 1 x DVI, 1 x S-Video TV-out
Other port CIR (consumer infrared)
Audio Ports headphones/speakers/line-out with SPDIF support
microphone
line-in
Audio
Audio High Definition Audio support, Dolby Home Theater
Speaker 2 surround sound speakers + 1 subwoofer
Input Device
Touchpad Yes
Keyboard Standard
Supplemental Drive
Card Reader 5-in-1 card reader for optional MultiMediaCard, Secure Digital card, Memory Stick, Memory Stick PRO or xD-Picture Card
Webcam Yes
Power
AC Adapter 90-watt AC adapter
Battery 8-cell lithium ion
Physical spec
Dimensions 15.9" x 11.7" x 1.5-1.7"
Weight 8.1 lbs.
Manufacturer Warranty
Parts 1 year limited
Labor 1 year limited

One year ago I bought my first hosting plan. This year I decided that I needed more, so went to choose a VPS. This is my first experience with a VPS. I asked around of freenode and settled for Linode.com (although tettonic.net and slicehost.com were also  options). Linod has a very well setup site and has a irc channel as well. I first installed CentOS as my  linux server image, but then decided to go with Ubuntu instead. It is much easier to find packages on Ubuntu as compared to CentOS.

I used this tutorial to get my self rails 2.0. I jsut got backups from my RailsPlayground server through mysqldump utiliy and have this blog running in parallel. Before I go to sleep today I will point the nameserver from Godaddy to my new server so by the time my service at RailsPlayground expires I still have a running website.

I still have to do the following with my new site, here is the laundy list

• Get all my mail and fix up an IMAP server.
• Copy and setup subdomains which were present on my previous site,
• Get my site an Nginx or Lighttpd permanent server.
• Get my previous home page back.
• Post list of links, which were useful in my migration.
  

I just love the idea that I finally have my own  (virtual) machine with which I can play.Edit: I also used the following tutorial to tweak up my mongrel installation.

Edit: I also used the following links to tweak up my installation
Ubuntu Gutsy - Nginx vhosts, rails and mongrels
Ubuntu Gutsy - mongrel clusters and surviving a reboot

Edit: I also used the following links to setup PHP-FCGI
Setup nginx for php and rails on Ubuntu Gutsy 7.10
NginX, PHP, FastCGI