Home of Alvonsius

Today I installed Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala on my Notebook. After backing up all my data (mostly MySQL databases), and make sure that all the databases are backed up, I reboot my Linux Mint Felicia for the last time, and switch to USB Startup Disk. Few minutes after exploring the Koala, mostly on device compability, and make sure that no device that unusable (like what I got from last Jaunty installation), I start the installation procedure.

I must admit that the way Ubuntu polish it’s Installation method is very great. In only 10 minutes, I ready to boot the Karmic for the first time.

Less that 30 seconds boot really impress me! The new GDM login screen is somehow fantastic. And I am ready connect to the Access Point and  download the additional packages to complete the installation … until I realized that Karmic didn’t recognize my Broadcom wifi!!!! *gosh*

Looking at the System > Administration > Hardware Drivers … Karmic said that there is no propietary drivers are in usage … Okay, so I remembered that when I’m in LiveUSB mode, it was pretty sure that this device is recognized. So I concluded that somehow in the USB (or CD if you using a Live CD) there must be a mistery that didn’t revealed on the installation …

After searching in the net about the same cases, I found one package that controls the device (or may be ‘controls’ is not the correct word, but let out it that way to make it easier). It is called bcmwl-kernel-source. So I try to search it on the USB Startup Disk (or Live CD), since I am sure that it must be in there to make the device run on Live USB mode. And yes,  I found it with it’s two dependencies, dkms and patch. Find them in these folders of your Live USB:

1. /pool/main/p/patch/patch_2.5.9-5_i386.deb
2. /pool/main/d/dkms/dkms_2.1.0.1-0ubuntu1_all.deb
3. /pool/restricted/b/bcmwl/bcmwl-kernel-source_5.10.91.9+bdcom-0ubuntu4_i386.deb

Install them according to the sequence I gave you, and reboot your Karmic. How to install them? Well … just double click on the files and it will guide you to the rest of the process ^^

Happy Koala Exploring Week!!!!!

Tech Update, Ubuntu Talk, Written in English 9.10, bcm4311, broadcom, karmic koala, ubuntu

Hi there!

Yeah, I know just how long I’ve been idle in writing a post here. Lot of stuff and experience happened, and you don’t know how much I want to write about them here, yet I don’t write it. Why? Let just say that I’m too lazy to type *giggles*

Okay, so what’s now … I try to share this tips to share a printer to the network.

If you ever been failed to share your printer to the network near you, maybe you need these few steps … By default, every printer in your Ubuntu will be showed on the networks. The problem is that everyone is not allowed to do anything with them. The client always asked for a password and never been approved (I’ve tried with my own username and password, yet still no use).

First, lets check using a GUI (Graphical User Interface), so you who are a noob in this would not freaked out first (yet there are huge possibility after this you would hack into the configuration files).

Okay, go to the System > Administration > Printing. Make sure that the printer you want to share is listed there. Right click the printer and make sure that options Enabled and Shared is checked. After that, in the same window go to Server > Settings and checks “Publish shared printer connected to this system” and “Allow printing from the Internet”. Klik OK, it would be good if you restart your machine (I may assumed that you noobs would not know what to do if I said ‘restart your samba server’, but if you know what I mean, do it. I’ll explain how to do it later)  and test them (try to connect from other machine and print using it).

If the other machine is still asking for password, lets try another way, from the configuration files. Okay, let do it in a noob way. Open your terminal (Application > Accesories > Terminal), and type :

sudo gedit /etc/samba/smb.conf

If it asks for password, fill it with your password.

Now, I assumed (again) that a text editor is opened with a bunch of text on it. Well, that’s what we call Samba Configuration File. Yes, it is not scary binary file, it is a plain old text file. Will be easy for you to understand it if you could read English ^^

Find on that file part that consisting of these lines:

[printers]
comment = All Printers
browseable = no
path = /var/spool/samba
printable = yes
guest ok = no
read only = yes
create mask = 0700

and this …

[print$]
comment = Printer Drivers
path = /var/lib/samba/printers
browseable = yes
read only = yes
guest ok = no

What to do? Okay, change all the “guest ok = no” into “guest ok = yes”. Save the file (you know how), and close it. And again, restart the samba server by typing these ini the terminal:

sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart

There you go, your printer will be accessable from other machines now. Happy Sunday everyone!

Tech Update, Ubuntu Talk printing, samba, ubuntu

These days I’ve been busy with SRS (Software Requirements Specfications) of one of application developed at my office. And what’s keeps bugging me is that I need to put some UML diagrams on that documents. Yes, I’ve been using Ubuntu for 5 years now, and all that times I never found one good UML Creator application which is stable enough and ‘beautiful’ enough (in term of user interface and the diagram created). I’ve tried to use:

1. UML plugins on Netbeans, which is not good enough when creating partition on Activity Diagram, and YES! It’s so damn heavy, altough Aya (my notebooks name) is running on 1.8GHz Proc and 2GB of RAM.
2. ArgoUML. This one have a promising future and yes for some people it is more than enough. For me actually too IF AND ONLY IF they fix it’s GUI and diagram look-and-feel, and fix the export to PNG modules. And yes, it’s heavy.
3. Visual Paradigm CE. Guys, you have made a good tool, but the size of it … argh! But I’ll give a shot one day. Few times ago I already download the Community Edition of yours, but it seems the amount of diagrams is limited to ONE. Dunno ’bout it now.
4. BoUML. Just a plain comment, it sucks on it’s GUI.
5. Umbrello. The same as #4
6. StarUML. Good one and also licenced as Free Software, the bad side is it run only on M$.

Okay, so I decided to run StarUML on top of CrossOver (which is I get for free sometimes ago, when peoples at CodeWeaver set one day for a free downloads for all *yay, thanks guys!*). First steps of instalation process is running well until a warning is showed up

C:\Program Files\StarUML\Pgmr101.ocx
Unable to register the DLL/OCX: LoadLibrary failed; code 126.
Module not found.

There’s an option to Ignore it, and I did. But another problem arises when I tried to change some component’s name, i.e : Actor’s name, Class’ name, etc. A pop up always showed and the application is freezed, which I should reset all the bottles on CXOffice. The pop up is displaying:

OLE error 80040154

I’ve googlin all over the net and found some solution suggested, one of it is to install MSXML3/4 and VCRUN6. My first attempt is to find the DLL on the net and copy them to CXOffice’s System32 directory. I’ve override the library path from CXOffice to native, and still the bug arises.

So next attempt is try to use Wine. On this link I found out about Winetricks, small application which could be used to download some library dependencies on Wine. So, I first removed the StarUML from CXOffice (which is actually not needed at all, just to freeing-up my space), download winetricks, and install MSXML4 and CVRUN6 using Winetricks (remember, install these first before the starUML).

winetricks -v vcrun6

winetricks -v msxml4

And then I installed StarUML. No warning messages arise, and when I tried to change component’s name, no pop up and freeze arises too. Yay! Finally …

Hope anyone is helped by this posting. Oh yea, I’m using Ubuntu 8.10, and Wine 1.0.1 (stable release from ubuntu repository).

Tech Update, Ubuntu Talk, Uncategorized, Written in English staruml, ubuntu, wine

I don’t want to write too much here, since I had a lot to do tonight and I wrote this so that I won’t have to search it all over the internet whenever I had the same case again in the future *giggles*

So, straigth to the problems : I’m using Code Igniter as development framework and i need to remove that annoying “index.php” from the URI. From the CI Wiki I found that the solution is to add a .htaccess file and so on you could read here. But after I tried it, nothing happened. The browser still always displaying 404 Not Found whenever I tried to access any controller without the “index.php”. Seems that my Apache is not enabling mod_rewrite by default then. So after searching I found the solution is like this:

• Create symlink from /etc/apache2/mods-available/rewrite.so to /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/. Normal symlink creation is OK, but another way to do it is to write

sudo a2enmod rewrite

• Open /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default and change every AllowOverride None into AllowOverride All below the Document Root. On my case it would becoming like this

DocumentRoot /www/
<Directory />
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
<Directory /www/>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>

• Lastly … restart apache … you know how …

Back to work then …

Tech Update, Ubuntu Talk, Web Talks, Written in English apache, mod_rewrite, ubuntu

If you were using Elementary Icons by DanRabbit, then you may experienced the same problem as I did. Because of the huge size of it’s SVG format, the process of loading the icons is very very slow like hell. Wanna prove? Just try to open a Save As dialog (i.e when you try to save a page on Firefox), and feel the slowness … *giggles* … It’s so bad since I think Dan had succeeded to create beautiful Linux icons I’ve ever known (besides Shiki Colors created by Perfectska).

Then I go search all over the world to find the PNG version or if there is no PNG version then the best way to convert those SVG’s to PNG on a single hit. My luck, today I found the answer on some dude’s comment on DanRabbit’s deviantart page (which should be the place I went at the first time *fool me*). You could find it here.

On terminal, just type:

for i in `find /home/yourname/.icons/elementary_2.0 -depth -name ‘*.svg’`; do rsvg-convert $i -o `echo $i | sed -e ’s/svg$/png/’`; done

Then you type this to remove all the SVG’s:

for i in `find /home/alvonsius/Desktop/elementary_2.0 -depth -name ‘*.svg’`; do rm $i; done

That’s it … you’ll get the PNG version. Hmm … you asked … why didn’t I upload the result here? Well … it’s only a few lines of command, you couldn’t be that hard to implement it,  and also I think it would be great if you come and visit Dan’s page and give him some support ^^

Updated (2009.04.01) : I can’t hardly believe, the same day I posted this writing, DanRabbit is releasing the “shrinked” version of Elementary Icon (2.0.5). Still with the SVG version, but smaller in size. You can get it from this link. Thanks dude!!! *and yes, this is not another April Mop trick*

Tech Update, Ubuntu Talk, Written in English elementary icons, icon, png, svg, ubuntu

After read this dude’s writing on his blog about how Google Map now also viewing the road name, I straightly checked it on my currently developed web application and configure it to use the MAP view type, and walla … google help my research!!!

At first I’m not sure about how to show Transjogja’s route map with a clearer view of the road, until today. Now I can switch to the MAP type and let the user understand the route better.

Again … thanks google!!! And thanks whoever you are who helps google create the map! *err .. I think I know the guy* wkwkwkwk … UPDATED: he don’t, I’ve contacted by him and he said it’s TeleAtlas’ works ^^

Research Room, Tech Update, Ubuntu Talk, Written in English google map, Transjogja

Yesterday I read Arief Bayu’s blog about his php script to extract the content of Amarok’s playlist and copy the files to another directory. At first I didn’t pay attention too much on it, since I thought I won’t use it. But this afternoon I found out that I need it. I have a playlist, consisting lot of mp3s that scattered on my harddisk, and I want copy all of it’s contents to my cellphone (yay! I just love Sony Ericsson, they created great phone and music player). The problem is, it’s an Audacious’ playlist, not Amarok’s … Why I use Audacious? Let’s talk about it on another session …

So, with some knowledge from Arief Bayu’s script, I create (actually modified his script) a new php script to get the filenames from Audacious’ playlist, and copy them to some directory. Here are the script, let’s just name it auda-playlist-copier.php

<?php
$playlist_file = $argv[1];
$output_dir = $argv[2];

$lines = array_map(”trim”, file($playlist_file));

if(!is_dir($output_dir)) mkdir($output_dir);

foreach($lines as $line)
{
if(strstr($line,”location”)){
$line = str_replace(array(”<location>”,”</location>”,”file://”),”",$line);
$line = urldecode($line);
$line = html_entity_decode($line);
$filename = basename($line);
echo “Copying $filename to $output_dir/$filename … “;
if(copy($line, $output_dir.”/”.$filename)){
echo “OK\r\n”;
}else{
echo “FAIL\r\n”;
}
}
}
?>

And to use it, just type ( i assumed that the playlist file is some_playlist.xpf and the target directory is /media/PHONE CARD/MP3/West):

php auda-playlist-copier.php some_playlist.xspf /media/PHONE\ CARD/MP3/West

and there you go ^^ …

Credit goes to Arief Bayu for the idea … ^^

Daily Blog, Tech Update, Ubuntu Talk, Written in English audacious, linux, php, ubuntu

Here you go, being bored with the same models of Gnome Desktop (top and bottom panel), yesterday I tried to rearrange my desktop. I want it to be clean and simple, maybe with some Mac accents, but without losing the gnome style. So …. here it is …

My Desktop Screenshot

Humm, the recipe? All you need is …

1. Ubuntu Linux 8.04 (http://ubuntu.com), or other Linux Distros supplied with Gnome 2.20, and Compiz enabled of course.
2. Murinne GTK Engine (pull the latest from the SVN, which create the effect that it won’t be compatible with older Murrine themes), with Shiki-Colors as the theme (http://www.gnome-look.org/content/show.php/Shiki-Colors?content=86717). Use the Emerald window manager that supplied with the theme package. Second thought bout the Murrine Engine, you could use the DEB package provided by the author of Shiki on that link.
3. Avant Window Navigator for the ‘yeah-it’s-mac-lookalike-panel’. Download the latest package from Ubuntu PPA repositories (since it’s provide you with some cool applets). Don’t forget the Scaled Black theme. Ah … as the AWN is not provide you with some launcher, so you need to build it yourself. It’s easy … just click here and there.
4. Elementary Icons.
5. The fonts? It’s Liberation Sans.
6. One little visual tips from me is, keep your opened application “un-maximized”. Since maximized form of application really suck in this kind of desktop view.

There you go … happy creating something …

Daily Blog, Tech Update, Ubuntu Talk

As the picture is clearly explained, there will be Jogjakarta Ubuntu Release Party going on May 17th. This time we are targeting to attract more people in using Linux. And as you may read on my previous posts, our concern is the normal user, people who would use Linux just for office matter, or home usage, or anything that have nothing to do with technical stuff.

Well, so please be there and let the wings of penguin spreaded all over Jogjakarta.

Oh, one more thing … you may contact me for further information … just leave a comment here … Humm, and I really dreaming of Sandra Dewi attending this talkshow … *anyone know how to invite her??*

Tech Update hardy, jogjakarta, release party, sandra dewi, ubuntu

This afternoon, I went to Jogjakarta Ubuntu Hardy Release Party meeting at UAD. When I arrived, the forum is currently talking about topic to be presented at the talkshow (yeah, this time we want some talkshow). And guess what? For a talkshow with “Linux and Women” as the main theme, almost all of the member is suggesting alternative topic about networking, hacking, creating server, etc etc … that have nothing to do with the main theme itself.

Make me wonder … aren’t you bored with topics like that? Everytime there is a seminar, talkshow, meeting, etc etc that have connection to Linux, it always smell the same. Hacking this, breaking there, sniffing that, building server here, wireless this, etc etc … and very few themes like kde/gnome basics, desktop beautification, introduction to repository, what-is-linux, openoffice tips, building FOSS-based company/office, etc etc. If this is the way linux is brought to the people, than hell no Linux will get some attention to non-technical user … Hell no Linux will get some attention from big company, and hell no I will get a job with Linux as it’s desktop environment instead as a server ^^

Back to the main theme. Okay, not that I’m judging that women can’t deal with those stuff, but okay … just tell me from 10 women you meet at the street (oh, not in your IT-related university street, but real street), how many of them can really understand those topics? Let me made it simpler, how many of them that ever dreaming about linux? Not many I think. Most women, that in my dream is perfect candidates for next generation Linux user, along with majority of Indonesian people is hardly know what Linux is. At school they were taught with M$ materials (which most of them is a result of piracy, yeah … even school is teaching about piracy, in the name of education), at office they were using M$, at home they always dealing with M$, and so on. This is the main idea. We want to introduce linux to people like this, someone who never touch Linux before. And as I remembered, Ubuntu Desktop is not-only-for-geek OS, as described here there are some point why Ubuntu Desktop is called Ubuntu Desktop, which somehow never taught deeply to the newcomers, coz the old-kids-on-the-block is busy dealing with hardcore matters (yeah, I must admit that I also too lazy to teach most of the time) …

So, guys … let stop eating meat, for this meantime let eat rice, shall we??

Tech Update