We will not go down – Song For Gaza

WE WILL NOT GO DOWN (Song for Gaza)
(Composed by Michael Heart)
Copyright 2009

A blinding flash of white light
Lit up the sky over Gaza tonight
People running for cover
Not knowing whether they’re dead or alive

They came with their tanks and their planes
With ravaging fiery flames
And nothing remains
Just a voice rising up in the smoky haze

We will not go down
In the night, without a fight
You can burn up our mosques and our homes and our schools
But our spirit will never die
We will not go down
In Gaza tonight

Women and children alike
Murdered and massacred night after night
While the so-called leaders of countries afar
Debated on who’s wrong or right

But their powerless words were in vain
And the bombs fell down like acid rain
But through the tears and the blood and the pain
You can still hear that voice through the smoky haze

We will not go down
In the night, without a fight
You can burn up our mosques and our homes and our schools
But our spirit will never die
We will not go down
In Gaza tonight

Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex in Thinkpad T61

Just a week ago, i bought Lenovo Thinkpad T61 as a replacement for my shiny Compaq Pressario V3103 that already accompany me faithfully for the last 2 years and 2 months. This compaq pressario then goes to my wife.
The exact model for the Thinkpad was T61 7664-A26 with following specifications :

Intel® Core™2 Duo processor T8300 (2.4GHz, 800 MHz, 3MB L2 Cache)
DOS
1024MB (1×1024)
160GB (5400rpm)
DVD Recordable
nVidia Quadro NVS 140M 128MB discrete
14.1″ WXGA+
Intel® PRO/1000 Gigabit LAN
Intel® PRO/Wireless 4965 agn, Bluetooth
WebCam
6-cell Battery
3-year Parts, Labour & Customer Carry-in Limited International Warranty

Actually i didn’t bought it directly since i was in Egypt and things quite old here, I can’t find a good laptop with a good price compared to Indonesia. So i ask for a help from a friend of mine to bought it from Indonesia and he carry it to egypt since he will get a job here for a couple of months.
What i’m surprised is in the formal specs in lenovo website, for this model, there is no Windows Pre-Installed, but in my case i have Windows Vista Basic.
But when it come here, I make the Hard Disk Clean and install Intrepid Ibex in it.

There are so many resources about Linux in Thinkpad. There is Thinkwiki and Linux ThinkPad Mailing List. We can get many assistance from these resources.

Mostly all the device is working out of the box using Intrepid Ibex, i can mentioned it below.

1. Sound
2. TouchPad
3. WebCam
4. Networking, both WiFi and Ethernet
5. NVidia Graphics Card, even if we want to enable compiz we need to activate restricted driver from NVidia ( but it is already exist in Ubuntu Repository ).
6. Thinkpad Button & Function keys ( Adjust Brightness, Lock Screen, Toggle ThinkLight )

Some Stuffs need further effort to make it work.
1. FingerPrint ( can be used for GDM & sudo authentication ).
2. ACPI ( Battery , Fan )
3. HDAPS

Things doesn’t work until now:
Suspend & Hibernate ( i think because of Nvidia Issue ).

Many things can be explore in this ThinkPad, not like any other notebook, it has many hardware feature that is very interesting. Some of them can be easily activated in linux , and some is difficult (need a major hack involving pacthing the kernel , like HDAPS).
Hopefully, in the next releases of Ubuntu 9.04, we will get everything out of the Box

Start XAMPP at boot – Ubuntu way

I Installed XAMPP inside Ubuntu JeOS in Virtual Box. Using this XAMPP, i create a blog to manage all note & tips my work that can’t be posted in public because of proprietary reason.
This lightweight JeOS is only having Operating System without any Graphical User Interface and i need to start XAMPP service automatically at start up of the VM. So, here i go.

( I installed XAMPP in /opt . Full path of lampp binary is /opt/lampp/lampp )

1. Create an init script in /etc/init.d/

cd /etc/init.d/
sudo vi lampp
copy and paste this lines:
#!/bin/bash
/opt/lampp/lampp start

2. Use update-rc.d to install init scripts to all runlevel.

sudo update-rc.d lampp defaults

In the next restart, XAMPP will automatically started. We can verify using this command.

user@jeos$ ps -ef | grep lampp
root      3842     1  0 20:42 ?        00:00:00 /opt/lampp/bin/httpd -k start -DSSL -DPHP5
root      3869     1  0 20:42 ?        00:00:00 /bin/sh /opt/lampp/bin/mysqld_safe –datadir=/opt/lampp/var/mysql –pid-file=/opt/lampp/var/mysql/jeos.pid
nobody    3903  3842  0 20:42 ?        00:00:00 /opt/lampp/bin/httpd -k start -DSSL -DPHP5
nobody    3923  3869  0 20:42 ?        00:00:01 /opt/lampp/sbin/mysqld –basedir=/opt/lampp –datadir=/opt/lampp/var/mysql –user=nobody –pid-file=/opt/lampp/var/mysql/jeos.pid –skip-external-locking –port=3306 –socket=/opt/lampp/var/mysql/mysql.sock
nobody    3929  3842  0 20:42 ?        00:00:00 /opt/lampp/bin/httpd -k start -DSSL -DPHP5
nobody    3930  3842  0 20:42 ?        00:00:00 /opt/lampp/bin/httpd -k start -DSSL -DPHP5
nobody    3931  3842  0 20:42 ?        00:00:00 /opt/lampp/bin/httpd -k start -DSSL -DPHP5
nobody    3932  3842  0 20:42 ?        00:00:00 /opt/lampp/bin/httpd -k start -DSSL -DPHP5
nobody    3933  3842  0 20:42 ?        00:00:00 /opt/lampp/bin/httpd -k start -DSSL -DPHP5
nobody    3957  3842  0 20:42 ?        00:00:00 /opt/lampp/bin/httpd -k start -DSSL -DPHP5

we can enhanced the startup script to accept argument like start, stop, restart.

Antara Musim Dingin, Pemanas Portabel dan Graphics Card

Sudah hampir dua bulan ini musim dingin menjajah mesir, dari hari ke hari suhu udara semakin dingin dan konon puncaknya nanti dibulan januari bisa sampai dibawah 10 derajad celcius. Saya sendiri tidak pernah mengukur secara langsung berapa suhunya, tapi dari laporan cuaca di desktop ubuntu Intrepid Ibex saya, weather applet rata-rata bilang 13-17 derajad celcius untuk bulan ini.
Bagi saya, makhluk yang dulu habitatnya didaerah tropis, suhu dibawah 20 derajad terasa sangat dingin. Saya ingat dulu pada waktu masih di academy Mega Kuningan, saya paling nggak tahan dapat tempat duduk dbawah AC. Kalaupun lagi apes, Ventilasi AC nya saya puter, diarahkan ke tempat lain . Padahal itu paling suhunya cuma 20an derajad. Nah, disini ibaratnya setiap saat di kasih AC. Akibatnya kulit kering, bibir pecah2 dan pilek diawal2 musim dingin.

Kalau istri saya bilang, mendingan musim panas daripada musim dingin. iya, secara dia nggak kemana-mana dan pakai AC terus kalau pas musim panas. tapi bener juga sih, “you can hide from summer but nowhere to hide from winter”
Ada yang bilang, kan bisa pakai heater (pemanas portabel) tuh. He..he.., pada awalnya saya juga percaya kalau heater bisa diandalkan untuk mengusir dingin. Benar memang, tapi cuma untuk awal musim dingin saja, semakin ke puncaknya, yang namanya heater 2000W cuma semriwing doang, panasnya dah ilang.

Brrr, kalau berangkat kerja pagi-pagi apalagi kalau habis hujan, dinginnya asli tokcer. Bernafas keluar uap seperti di film Home Alone ( meskipun nggak pake salju ).

Sepertinya efek musim dingin ini tidak hanya dirasakan oleh mereka yang komponen utamanya Flesh & Blood, Istri kedua saya yang terdiri dari kepingan-kepingan semikonduktor juga merasakannya. dia bilang begini.

heric@brightpath:~$ sensors | awk ‘/^Core/’
Core 0: +38.0°C (crit = +85.0°C)
Core 1: +42.0°C (crit = +85.0°C)
heric@brightpath:~$ uptime
10:34:00 up 1:55, 4 users, load average: 0.21, 0.42, 0.43

Ini pada ambient temperatur seperti dibawah ini.

heric@brightpath:~$ weather –id=HECA
Current conditions at Egypt (HECA) 30-08N 031-24E 74M (HECA)
Last updated Dec 25, 2008 – 03:30 AM EST / 2008.12.25 0830 UTC
Temperature: 59 F (15 C)
Relative Humidity: 67%
Wind: from the WSW (240 degrees) at 3 MPH (3 KT)
Sky conditions: partly cloudy

Tidak demikian halnya pada saat musim panas, baru up 1 jam saja, core temperatur pasti sudah diatas 50°C.
Namun ada yang aneh sekaligus menyedihkan bagi saya disini, sesuatu yang saya takut bahwa ini adalah pertanda untuk ganti istri kedua dengan yang baru lagi. yang artinya pula, harus ada approval dan keridhoan dari istri pertama untuk mengeluarkan dana. Halah, Apaan sih

Begini problemnya, sejak tiga hari yang lalu, setelah laptop jalan beberapa jam, tiba-tiba saja displaynya jadi awut2an, kacau, tapi tidak hang. Ini dibuktikan dengan pindah ke Virtual terminal ( non graphical mode ), kemudian pindah lagi ke graphical mode, bisa jalan normal lagi untuk beberapa saat, sebelum problem yang sama terjadi.

Berdasarkan konsultasi via Facebook Chat dengan salah satu “Geek” yang masih kuliah di Academy Mega Kuningan, beliau menyimpulkan kemungkinan graphic card (Chipset VGA) nya OVERHEAT atau berdebu karena sudah dua tahun nggak pernah dibersihkan.

Saya agak skeptis dengan OVERHEAT , in the middle of winter gitu lho. Akhirnya saya coba kemungkinan kedua, yaitu membersihkan Motherboard dan Chipset, Kalau bisa.
Karena tidak bawa Mifaqqun alias Screw Driver untuk laptop dari indonesia, terpaksa beli juga disini. Mahal ternyata, 1 set obeng (Made in China) yang kalau di SOGO jongkok di Indonesia cuma dihargai 5 ribu, disini dibandrol sekitar 50rb.

Sudah beli obeng, coba bongkar laptop, oprak-oprek 1 jam tidak berhasil membuka laptop sampai motherboardnya, cuma bisa sampai lihat memory dan BIOS aja. Akhirnya terpaksa menyerah sebelum saya malah menghancurkan laptop yang masih bisa dipakai ini.

Dan disaat menulis ini, beberapa kali pindah dari graphical mode ke non graphical mode karena problem yang sama.
Apakah ini saatnya untuk beli Mac Unibody

Accessing VBox Guest OS from Host OS

This is a reverse method from the previous post.
If in the previous post, we able to access Host OS root directory from Guest OS ( inside Virtual Box), now we are trying the opposite way. Yes, we will access Guest OS root directory from Host OS, using the same tool, ssh.

First, Guest OS should be able to receive ssh. For Linux guest OS, you can install openssh-server.
Then, Guest OS should be able to be receive ssh from outside world or at least from Host OS. In Virtual Box we can use Host Interface Networking or NAT with Port Forwarding.
Since Host Interface Networking is a bit complicated, we will use NAT then enable port forwarding for ssh only.

Here are the steps:

1. Shutdown your VM.
2. Setup ssh port forwarding on host OS.

VBoxManage setextradata GuestOSname “VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/SSH/HostPort” 2222
VBoxManage setextradata GuestOSname “VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/SSH/GuestPort” 22
VBoxManage setextradata GuestOSname “VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/SSH/Protocol” TCP

Note:
- This will setup ssh port forwarding from port 2222 on Host OS to port 22 in Guest OS.
- Network adapter in VM Setting should be set to PCnet , if not there will be error and VM can’t boot.

3. Start Guest OS Virtual Machine.
4. Check that ssh port forwarding is successful. try to ssh from Host OS to Guest OS.

ssh -p 2222 UsernameGuestOS@localhost

5. I guest you already know what is the next step
Yes, we just need to use sftp from Nautilus.

Go to Places -> Connect to Server
Then Service Type = ssh
Server = localhost
UserName = GuestOS-UserName
Mark Add Bookmark if you want to add it in Nautilus Bookmark.

Then, we already can access our VM root directory from Host OS.
In case you want to remove ssh port forwarding, these are the commands.

VBoxManage setextradata GuestOSname “VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/SSH/HostPort”
VBoxManage setextradata GuestOSname “VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/SSH/GuestPort”
VBoxManage setextradata GuestOSname “VBoxInternal/Devices/pcnet/0/LUN#0/Config/SSH/Protocol”

And, to verify whether a certain VM has port forwarding activated or not.

VBoxManage getextradata GuestOSname

OK then, back to work