open source

One more day for Ubuntu 8.10 release

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Ubuntu 8.10 named Intrepid Ibex will be released on 30th October 2008. I’m looking forward for the release tomorrow. I’ll be upgrading my machines to Ibex. New features in 8.10 are:


Ubuntu 8.10 is here

  • GNOME 2.24
  • X.Org 7.4
  • Linux kernel 2.6.27
  • Encrypted private directory
  • Guest session
  • Network Manager 0.7
  • Samba 3.2
  • PAM authentication framework
  • Totem BBC plugin
  • Server Virtualization

There is more, you can check out http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/810rc.

Turn your computer into an Internet TV – Miro

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I always wanted to just have an Internet TV, no cable, no satellite, no terrestrial. Even when it comes to TV I want to watch what I want when I want, not when the broadcaster wants. Internet TV was the ideal. Main thing I missed was really good content with really good quality. Only hope was torrents, but it was not the same experience though. You have to download the movie file using a torrent client and then start watching it using a media player. YouTube videos were a big pain to save to share with my friends. Video feeds were another story; I couldn’t find a single descent client that will just work.

Finally there is a free and open source media player + Internet TV, Miro. You can download Miro from http://www.getmiro.com/. It is released under GNU GPL, you are free to use, change and redistribute.

Miro is a great piece of software that makes Internet TV a reality. It is capable of playing most video files if not all, built in guide to video feeds and podcasts with the capability to play them within Miro itself, capable of playing and saving YouTube videos, download Torrents and watch them in Miro, and best of all access to great variety of HD content. All this makes Miro the only media player you will ever want.

Miro binaries are available for all major flavors of Linux, MacOS, Windows. If you are not able to use any of the binaries you could always compile and install from source 😉

I’m impressed about what Miro can do, I think you will also be impressed. Download Miro now from http://www.getmiro.com/.

MakeNSIS on Linux

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I was supposed to create a Windows installer recently, but I just hate using Windows. NSIS was the chosen installer creator. I was lucky to be able to compile the NSIS installer on Linux.

The installer just ran without any glitches on wine. So testing the installer as not an issue as well.

Let me guide you through installing NSIS on Linux and how to use it on Linux.

Requires

  1. Python
  2. SCons

Steps

  1. Download both the release and the source of x.xx.

    2. nsis-x.xx.zip nsis-x-xx-src.tar.gz

  2. Extract both into one parent parent directory

    3. <parent>
    |
    +-- nsis-x.xx
    +-- nsis-x.xx-src

  3. Change to the source directory

    4. $ cd nsis-x.xx-src

  4. Compile makensis using scon

    5. $ scons SKIPSTUBS=all SKIPPLUGINS=all SKIPUTILS=all SKIPMISC=all

  5. Copy makensis to the release

    6. $ cp build/release/makensis/makensis ../nsis-x.xx/makensis

  6. Change to the <parent>

    7. $ cd ..

  7. Install – Copy makensis to the install location

    8. $ sudo cp -r nsis-x.xx/* /usr/local/share/nsis/

  8. Create the link from the bin directory to the makensis such that
    makensis is accessible from the command line.

    9. $ sudo link /usr/local/share/nsis/makensis /usr/bin/makensis

Grinding your web application

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Have you ever wondered how your web application/site would behave under heavy load? You can easily check that if you have enough bandwidth. You can use a stress testing automation tool.

I got the oppertunity to load test open source application OrangeHRM. I used Grinder, java load testing framework with JWebUnit, automated navigation and content verification framework for testing web applications/sites. Both tools are open source.

Only references that I used are that of the two tools. I managed to create the test and learn (J)Python as well within 8-12 hours.

Unfortunately I was unable to overload the server and get any errors because my machine was incapable of making enough concurrent requests to the web server running on the same machine. The Grinder was unable to run more than 250 requests, because the web server also requires resources.

Beryl – Eye candy for linux desktops

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If you think Linux is boring, lacks eye candy you find in Windows (esp. Vista); you haven’t seen a Linux desktop running Beryl.

Beryl has added all the eye candy that Linux desktops lacked, now definitely it looks better than Windows XP and in my opinion better than Windows Vista as well.

Here are some screen shots to prove it. 😉 (it is not faked)
Running: Fedora Core 6, GNOME
Desktop cube:


Rain effect (Purely eye candy):

GNOME Sensors Applet

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That’s a cool desktop applet to show the systme temperature, fan speed, voltage, etc.

After I got lm_sensors running I wanted to get the sensor information on my desktop running GNOME. I installed GNOME Sensors Applet using yum (yum install gnome-applet-sensors).

It showed three temperatures(Only two successfully, other with an error), and I removed one. Two temperatures must be mother board and cpu temperature.

You should give a try to GNOME Sensors Applet, if you miss the Windows applets that are usually provided by the mother board manufacturers or just curious.

Cool applet, thumbs up Alex Murray and lm_sensors project

lm_sensors on Fedora Core 6

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Today I tried to install lm_sensors and use it for motherboard and processor temperature sensoring. I installed lm_sensors rpm found on the installation disks and used yum to upgrade(update) to the latest version (2.10.1-1). The installation and upgrade went smoothly.

Then I tried to detect and configure the sensors using sensors-detect (located in /usr/sbin). Unfortunately it crashes in the middle of detection complaing about a missing file.

# sensors-detect revision 4171 (2006-09-24 03:37:01 -0700)

This program will help you determine which kernel modules you needto load to use lm_sensors most effectively. It is generally safeand recommended to accept the default answers to all questions,unless you know what you're doing.

We can start with probing for (PCI) I2C or SMBus adapters.Do you want to probe now? (YES/no): yesProbing for PCI bus adapters...Use driver `i2c-viapro' for device 0000:00:11.0: VIA Technologies VT8237 South Bridge

We will now try to load each adapter module in turn.Module `i2c-viapro' already loaded.If you have undetectable or unsupported adapters, you can have themscanned by manually loading the modules before running this script.

We are now going to do the I2C/SMBus adapter probings. Some chips maybe double detected; we choose the one with the highest confidencevalue in that case.If you found that the adapter hung after probing a certain address,you can specify that address to remain unprobed.Can't exec "i2cdetect": No such file or directory at ./sensors-detect line 5320, <stdin> line 1.Couldn't find i2cdetect program!! at ./sensors-detect line 5320, <stdin> line 1.

The file i2cdetect didn’t exist in the place it was looking, insted in /usr/sbin/

So I decided to do the fix myself and opened up /usr/sbin/sensors-detect for editing and suspected bellow lines to be the culprit.

# Same for /usr/local/sbin since we need i2cdetect which is installed there# by default (reported by Lennard Klein)$ENV{PATH} = '/usr/local/sbin:'.$ENV{PATH}     unless $ENV{PATH} =~ m,(^|:)/usr/local/sbin/?(:|$),;

Changed it to…

# Same for /usr/sbin since we need i2cdetect which is installed there# by default (reported by Lennard Klein)$ENV{PATH} = '/usr/sbin:'.$ENV{PATH}     unless $ENV{PATH} =~ m,(^|:)/usr/sbin/?(:|$),;

and all worked fine. (changed /usr/local/sbin to /usr/sbin)

I followed the instructions given by sensors-detect and then started lm_sensors service.

Check my next post for how I got the temperatures to appear on my desktop(GNOME).