Brian Carpio and Scott Trimble « BRIAN CARPIO REVEALED

Brian Carpio has done it again, with the help of Scott Trimble.

GPL to be legally tested in New York

For the first time in the U.S., a company and software vendor, Monsoon Multimedia, is being taken to court for a GPL violation.
….cont…..
The developers of BusyBox came to the SFLC after trying to talk Monsoon into honoring the conditions of the GPLv2. Unsuccessful with this, the SFLC has filed suit on the developers’ behalf against Monsoon.

It seems like a classic case of GPL violation. The great thing about the GPL licence is trying to get it declared invalid doesn’t help someone breaking it, as the GPL is the only thing that gave them any rights to distribute the software in the first place.

Xen on Ubuntu Gutsy

Xen is awesome, and so is Ubuntu, but there are some bugs in the ubuntu xen packages. However, these have easy fixes and you can be up and running on xen in a matter of minutes.

This is a quick walkthrough of getting it working with gutsy as Dom0 ( host ) and gutsy as the DomUs ( virtual machines ), however it’s not a complete how-to. If you are unsure about an aspect ( e.g. LVM or loopback) google it.

Load up a computer with ubuntu gutsy server. If you have hyper-threading on your CPU, make sure it is disabled in the BIOS.

apt-get install ubuntu-xen-server libc6-xenThis will install all packages needed to run xen. Then reboot to make sure the xen kernel works on your hardware.

Edit /etc/xen/xend-config.sxp and comment out
(network-script network-dummy)
then uncomment
(vif-script vif-bridge)

That will get your network bridge going after you restart xend with /etc/init.d/xend restart

Now for xen-tools. Xen tools are a set of scripts that can create virtual images by debootstraping debian/ubuntu.
Edit /etc/xen-tools/xen-tools.conf and fill in your settings – select gutsy for your distro. The main one is LVM or loopback images for the virtual disks. I use LVM and it’s great, but there is a learning curve, if you’re just testing loopback images will be easier.

ubuntu-xen Bug #1 : The console doesn’t work.
Fix: add
extra = ' TERM=xterm xencons=tty console=tty1'
to the end of /etc/xen-tools/xm.tmpl

ubuntu-xen Bug #2 : The xen instance hangs on boot, caused by the virtual machine trying to set the hardware clock.
Fix: edit /usr/lib/xen-tools/gutsy.d/15-disable-hwclock
underneath the line
chroot ${prefix} /usr/sbin/update-rc.d -f hwclock.sh remove
add
chroot ${prefix} /usr/sbin/update-rc.d -f hwclockfirst.sh remove
rm -f ${prefix}/etc/init.d/hwclock.sh ${prefix}/etc/init.d/hwclockfirst.sh ${prefix}/etc/udev/rules.d/85-hwclock.rules

ubuntu-xen Bug #3 : DomU networking fails to work after a reboot. ( This bug doesn’t always happen, it may only happen when you have multiple ethernet cards )
Fix : Always give a mac address when creating a virtual machine. Xen has it’s own mac address prefix assigned, so make mac addresses start with 00:16:3E e.g. 00:16:3E:11:12:22

Now you can create your virtual machines :
xen-create-image --ip=10.1.1.5 --hostname=myvm --mac=00:16:3E:11:12:22

and once it’s made, you can start it with xm create /etc/xen/myvm.cfg and access it’s console with xm console myvm

Hope this helps.

Tomboy: The easiest Note-taking Program (Ubuntu 7.10)

Relatively new application that has found its way into recent versions of almost all Linux distributions is Tomboy. It is in cross-indexing tool and a quick publisher all rolled into one. Tomboy is also very addictive and easy to use, and does away with the hassle of naming files and remembering the directory paths. It is an evolving application and the latest release is still at version 0.6.

To start:
1. Go to Application –> Accessories –> Tomboy Notes, which lunched Tomboy as an applet on your panel. Once lunched it remains active and you can access your note quickly from the applet icon till you log out or quit the applet.

2. To give automatic lunched Tomboy every time you boot the system; you can use this guide (for gnome):
right-clicking on an empty space on the panel and selecting the ‘Add to Panel’ option. Once you have ‘Add to Panel’ window up, select the Tomboy Notes application and click the ‘Add’ button to add it in your panel.

Many feature Tomboy can do. For more infomation about Tomboy please visit http://www.gnome.org/projects/tomboy/

How to: Install IE4Linux on Ubuntu 7.10

Hi guy!, I just post this matter after I have asking from my friend, how to install “Internet Explorer ” on Linux. Sometime, web base application didn’t matching the code with others browser. Thats why my friend ask me to do that. I suggest him to use IE4Linux. This is the way I install the IE4Linux on Ubuntu 7.10(Gutsy Gibbon)

1. Make sure you login your Ubuntu Linux with normal user. Don’t login as root. Sometime IE4Linux won’t come out or launching when you login as root after install.

2. Open your terminal

3. Open /etc/apt/sources.list with command. For this case I use gedit. Please use your favorite editor for easy editing. For example Vi editor, Nano editor etc.

sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list

4. Uncomment (or add) following lines:

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu gutsy universe

5. Add this line:

deb http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt gutsy main

6. Close gedit. Update and install wine and cabextract:

wget -q http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/apt/387EE263.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install wine cabextract

7. Download IEs 4 Linux and install

wget http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/downloads/ies4linux-latest.tar.gz
tar zxvf ies4linux-latest.tar.gz
cd ies4linux-*
./ies4linux

Schedule Tasks in Linux with Ease – Kcron

When I first started using Linux, one of the most daunting tasks was creating crontabs to automate processes. For example, one might want to rotate apache logs (done automatically now by most distros) or perhaps pull info out of those logs, paste them to a file, and send said file to the webmaster. Now this wouldn’t be feasible to do by hand daily and that is where crontabs come in. Just like scheduled tasks in Windows, crontabs allow you to run a process at a given time. Unlike Windows though, you have ultimate control over the task. Nowadays, things are much easier by using a GUI such as Webmin, pycron, or Crontooie (if you’re a MAC user). The great thing is that KDE contains a handy tool to create and manage your Crontabs. You can disable or enable them straight from an easy to understand and control GUI. Today, we’re going to take a look at how to setup a simple crontab using Kcron.Let’s start off by seeing if the cron daemon is even running on your system. Open up a Konsole or Shell and type the following:

KDE Shortcut Keys

Most people know shortcuts in Windows but neglect to find out shortcuts in KDE when they make the switch to Linux. So, if you have a shortcut in KDE that isn’t covered here…please comment it so that others can benefit from your knowledge! PS: Some of these might not work with your version of KDE…just test them out and see if they do!Alt–F2
Brings up a "Run Command" prompt

Alt–Print and Cntrl–Print
Take a screenshot. You have to paste it from your clipboard

Alt–Esc or Control–Esc
Shows the KDE session manager, from which you can switch to a specific application or log out of KDE.

Ctrl–F[1..8]
Switch to a specific desktop.

Alt–Tab or Alt–Shift–Tab
Cycle through your windows.

Ctrl–Tab or Ctrl–Shift–Tab
Cycle through your desktops.

Alt–F4
Close the current active window.

Ctrl–Alt–Esc
Window destroyer (every window you click on will be destroyed).

Alt–F3
For your Window Menu

Ctrl–Alt–Backspace
This exits KDE but doesn’t save your settings or work.

Ctrl–Alt–Numpad +
Cycles to the next screen resolution available.

Ctrl–Alt–Numpad –
Cycles to the previous screen resolution available.

Hope these help you out…please post any you might have that are helpful and I’ll add them to the list with credits. Thanks again for reading.

Are You Secure?

When I was little, I was afraid of heights (to a degree, I still am). Therefore, you hardly ever caught me climbing trees or swinging high…anytime anyone wanted to elevate past my head level in any shape and form I was grounded..literally. The feeling of security given when my feet touched the ground was comforting. I knew from experience that the ground would be there…it wasn’t going to swallow me up whole (didn’t know much about earthquakes at this time). There were no pitfalls that I was aware of.

Fast forward to today.

I still get a sense of security by the ground being under my feet…this time with my operating system. I know that Linux doesn’t have any pitfalls, no security breached backdoors…because I can SEE the code. It’s like I am Indiana Jones being given a map of every single boobie trap before he enters the temple to get the artifact.

Is the iPhone killing the Playstation?

What? The Playstation and iPhone? You bet. First, some background and reference material for that background. Now using the same information linked above, I can logically say that the iPhone may be killing the Playstation. After all, this comparison can be drawn…both have browsers right? Both are on platforms that aren’t PC’s. I draw this conclusion of course to show the fallacy represented in the article above.

I love market share studies. They’re ultimately inaccurate. Yet many websites quote them and use them in drawing conclusions to appeal to readers. Good idea to get your click through rate to soar and score some cash on the old advertisements…

Most market share studies are most likely based on two things:

1. Computers that are sold and what operating system is pre-installed on the computer
2. Browser statistics

I’m going to assume that NetApplications, who published the chart, were using browser statistics…because it makes more sense than the pre-installed sales figures…which I would rate Linux much lower on since most OEMs do not feature pre-installed Linux. Browser statistics are inherently biased toward someone using a browser that communicates operating system data to the webhost. I have Konqueror at home set to display no operating system data (I can provide a reason for those that wonder why in comments…just ask). I could also set Konqueror to display FALSE data telling any host that I’m running Mac or Windows. So what’s the margin of error with possibilities existing like this? HUGE of course. Should we trust a “study” like this? Heck no. Would you trust a financial graph that was this accurate? You’re a brave soul if so.

Look at the perspective. The numbers are slanted. If you examine the growth of Linux and the growth of Mac quoted by Apple Matters:

“However, as is also being noted, it is the trend of these figures that bears consideration. In the last two years, OS X has seen continual growth, from 4.21% in Jan 2006 (the first month of figures), to 5.67% in December 2006, to 7.31% in December 2007.
In the same time, Linux’s percentage has risen from only 0.29% to 0.63%.”

So, Mac has just about doubled…almost. Notice that Linux HAS doubled. Interesting eh? So if this study is correct, Linux has seen more growth in the same time than Mac has by more than doubling. Most likely, this results in less users overall…but who cares?

Empowering the Linux Community

From a Linux Developer point of view, when users are no longer developing with you…you’ve lost.  Empowerment is key to a successful community in Linux.  The day the community is no longer empowered to improve is the day the distribution dies.  What kills empowerment?  Helplessness.  Despair.  Inability.

As an example, a user might not like it if you tell them their bug will not be fixed for the next release.  This is normal practice in many major distributions.  But if you tell a user that their bug won’t be fixed through 4 releases, you may have a problem.  Unfortunately, this also is becoming a normal practice for some major distributions.