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Vista in Ubuntu

// January 14th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // guides, tech

I had Windows Vista Home Premium installed last night on my Ubuntu machine. I have 2GB RAM and 250GB of hardisk. Initially I wanted to install XP but turned out the only original DVD we have is Vista Home Premium, so be it! I’ve been wanting to try virtual machine for a long time already but then yesterday that very geek kernel hacker, Nur Hussein, triggered the apt-get move in me with a line “VirtualBox is so cool!”.

What’s VirtualBox? In layman terms, you can have multiple OS running at the same time on your pc without rebooting. Those of you who only know Windows all their life, yes there are alot of other alternative OS you can try, like Ubuntu. Hey install Ubuntu on your Windows using VirtualBox, that’s possible too.

Installing another OS (guest OS) on your existing OS (host OS) will take space and consume memory. In my case, I have allocated 1GB of RAM and 40GB of space for Vista according to its recommended system requirement. So that’s 40GB off of my 250GB and if I switch on Vista I have only 1GB left for Ubuntu, which is ok for me (it only takes 384MB of RAM for Ubuntu). So you have to plan your memory allocation carefully as you must allocate as much as you can to let the guest OS run properly but do not do it until your host OS is left with not enough for it to run either.

What do you need for virtual machine?
1. PC that can meet the minimum requirement
2. VirtualBox
3. Guest OS installation CD/DVD

Install VirtualBox
Add deb http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian karmic non-free in /etc/apt/sources.list then sudo apt-get update.

$ sudo apt-get install dkms
$ wget -q http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/debian/sun_vbox.asc -O- | sudo apt-key add -
$ sudo apt-get install virtualbox-3.1

Install Vista on Ubuntu Karmic
1. Insert installation CD/DVD.
2. Follow instructions here. It’s well documented!

And then finally.

Windows Vista Home Premium on Ubuntu Karmic

I think 40GB of hardisk is abit overkill for me. And 2GB of RAM is kinda limiting for virtual machines. Well, despite all that, I’m going to have fun first and then think. That’s the way to go in this crazy days. You’ll never know when you’re going to be hit with molokov cocktails….

Committing to SVN using Bazaar

// December 22nd, 2009 // No Comments » // open source, tech

Ejat and I were working on how to do the above for MyMeeting codes and we did it! I have asked ejat to put this down in writing in his blog, but sadly the blog is not available anymore (alaa ejat bukan susah sangat cari hosting punnnnn.. susah2 ko host sendiri jek kat umah )

MyMeeting is also on Launchpad that makes use of Bazaar. We wanted to find a way how to send changes to both its main repo (using SVN) and Launchpad.

So we’ve been using SVN for MyMeeting hosted at OSCC. A typical way for us would be like this.

$ svn co https://svn.oscc.org.my/mymeeting/trunk trunk
$ cd trunk
(hack hack hack...)
$ svn status #see our changes
$ svn ci -m 'added feature ABC' #commit to SVN repository

To use Bazaar to work with SVN repo, you have to install bzr and bzr-svn. Excellent doc on bzr-szv is here.

$ sudo apt-get bzr bzr-svn

SVN-like

Working with Bazaar, the way would be something like this.

$ mkdir dev
$ bzr init-repo --default-rich-root dev
$ cd dev
$ bzr co https://svn.oscc.org.my/mymeeting/trunk trunk
$ cd trunk
(hack hack hack...)
$ bzr update #get changes done by others
$ bzr ci -m 'added form for feature ABC' #commit to SVN repository
$ bzr push lp:mymeeting #push to Launchpad, only have to provide location once
(hack hack hack...)
$ bzr update #get changes done by others
$ bzr ci -m 'added list for feature ABC' #commit to SVN repository
$ bzr push

Decentralized Bazaar way

If we were to take advantage of Bazaar’s decentralised way of doing it (so you can work offline, for example), it’s like this.

$ mkdir dev
$ bzr init-repo --default-rich-root dev
$ cd dev
$ bzr co https://svn.oscc.org.my/mymeeting/trunk trunk #our copy of trunk
$ bzr branch trunk working #make a local branch to hack on
$ cd working
(hack hack hack...working offline)
$ bzr ci -m 'added form for feature ABC' #commit to local branch
(hack hack hack...working offline)
$ bzr ci -m 'added list for feature ABC' #commit to local branch
 
(when you get your connection back)
$ cd ../trunk
$ bzr update #get changes done by others to our copy of trunk 
$ cd ../working
$ bzr pull #pull the changes to our local branch
$ bzr status #see our changes
$ cd ../trunk
$ bzr merge ../working
$ bzr ci -m 'added feature ABC'

Personally I like the centralised approach because it’s similar to SVN. Local branch is great feature if I have to do my work offline sometimes. And while I can pick Bazaar from now on, the rest of the team doesn’t have to switch tool. That’s great!

DNS resolving to 1.0.0.0

// November 27th, 2009 // 3 Comments » // guides, tech

I’ve had the most peculiar thing happened today at home. I think it’s Karmic issue since I never had this problem before.

Well what happened was, I was unable to browse the internet (Firefox and Chrome both had problems but Opera worked fine). Pinging worked. Other Windows machines didn’t have problems at all. Sudo apt-get update didn’t worked because it was looking up 1.0.0.0 for every mirrors I tried. I tried this with Firefox at first:

In address bar, type in about:config, filter for ipv6. There should be only 1 listed – network.dns.disableIPv6. Double click to change the value to true. Problems solved for Firefox.

I continued googling around and did this:

#in /etc/resolv.conf, changed nameserver to those of streamyx
#previously it was 192.168.1.1 which points to my router
#Generated by NetworkManager
nameserver 202.188.0.133

And now everything works again. Only that if I reboot it will change back to 192.168.1.1

// December 9th, 2005 // No Comments » // tech

This has to be one of the biggest jokes in computer history! Not that I
am saying that it is wrong, but it is a bit of a laugh!!

Please follow the simple instructions:
1. Go to www.google.com
2. Type in “Failure”, without the quotes
3. Instead of hitting “Search”, hit “I’m feeling Lucky”
4. See what comes up!

Go tell your friends before the Google people get it fixed

hmmm….*feeling clever*

// April 24th, 2005 // No Comments » // tech

Thinking of getting myself a Mac.

Looks can be deceiving. Wait till you look at the spec. This is sweet! I’m impressed that such thing exists. I’ll probably use it for grahics at the most. After hours of browsing, comparing and thinking, this would be perfect for me. Why refrain myself to something that obviously attractive and has more value to it? RM2199 should worth it, looking at what you get, no? I’d like to upgrade it so it’ll cost me approx. RM500 more. Still, that’s the price I’m willing to pay. If you just want to write memo and play tetris, stick to your pc. I have another purpose in life here.

I’m starting a new phase of my life with something great. I’m dumping Windows. It’s been holding me back for years now. Sick of it.

Apple’s Mac Mini – Tempting PC Users Everywhere
Small, Cheap, and Without a Display
Mac Mini: The Emperor’s New Computer
Reviews by PC Magazine