Negative Zero

Linux Varsiti @ UTM

2009-09-29T19:23:00.004+08:00

Hello,

Ubuntu-my will be helping out Linux Varsiti team during Linux Varsiti in University Technology Malaysia on 5th October 2009. There will be a lots of interesting events during the LV(Linux Varsiti) day. The main objective is to expose university students on linux existence and to educate the free open source software advantages.

Below is the official banner on the events which i took from Fenris's blog:

As written in the banner, there will be a lot of interesting talk such as Photoshop Vs GIMP and much more. Do join us in Johore this October as Ubuntu-my hit the community. Volunteers are encourage to contact LV representatives Lutfi and Jazri.

I switch to midori

2009-09-14T20:41:00.002+08:00

Hello,

It's been a while since i make a post. But due to lack of free time nowadays, so today I plan to spend 5 minutes to post something on this blog. After using Firefox for about 4-5 years, i figure out that I might need an alternative browser which is lightweight and give me boost in speed. I've been testing different kinds of browser for the whole months and finally I found the best alternatives(which is currrently my primary) browser.

Midori is one of a lightweight browser which is out there and it's free for anyone to give a try. Here are some features which i dig out of internet that you can get using midori:

Full integration with GTK+ 2
Fast rendering with WebKit
Tabs, windows and session management
Flexibly configurable Web Search.
User scripts and user styles support.
Straightforward bookmark management.
Customizable and extensible interface.
Extensions written in C.

Requirements for midori is you need to have webkit installed otherwise it wont run. Speaking of which, midori is using the same engine as Safari Browser which is one of the best browser out there.

Midori is still under heavy developement, and if you are willing to give it try, dont forget to add the PPA on your source.list to get the latest update. It might be a little buggy here and there, but trust me, you'll like it once you get convenient with the smooth integration with GTK+2.

Empathy replace Pidgin on Karmic Koala

2009-06-16T18:37:00.005+08:00

It's been a long time since I post a useful post to my blog readers. In this post, i will try to make a post based on latest news for Karmic Koala development. There are several on going discussion regarding this issue where there are request for next release of Ubuntu(Karmic Koala -Codename) to use empathy instead of pidgin as default IM client.

Below are some links regarding the discussion:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=7462614
http://pinstack.blogspot.com/2009/06/replace-pidgin-with-empathy-in-karmic.html
http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/11705/

So if anyone would interested to install empathy and use the latest version from empathy itself which currently on version 2.27.3, please follow the instruction below:

Edit your APT source.list and add the following line:

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/telepathy/ppa/ubuntu jaunty main

After adding the ppa link into source.list, you might need to import the key. To add the key please use command below:

sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com FA3A1271

Then update your source by doing sudo apt-get update.
To install the empathy, please type sudo apt-get install empathy
This will install the latest version of empathy on your machine. To enable the Adium theme to be use on empathy, you need to also apt-get install libwebkit-dev to meet the requirement. If not, the default theme will be use instead.

Try this empathy and give your opinion whether Empathy should/should not replace pidgin for the next cycle release. I'll attach my current empathy screenshot for review.

Currently running Jaunty on my laptop.

Ubuntu-my JRP

2009-06-08T14:56:00.000+08:00

On 31st May 2009, Ubuntu-my loco held a Jaunty Release Party. Here is some of the pictures taken during the party. Credits to fenris, sumardi, itiknila, bizkut, buffalosoldier and blacburry on organizing this events.

And thanks to Mr Prakash Advani from Canonical for joining us during our first ever release party. There were a lot of crowds not only Ubuntu user.

And some pictures below were taken during hackathon session during the day before our release party. The session was a success in promoting Ubuntu and helping Ubuntu user. Enjoy the pictures and thanks to all Ubuntu-my members cause made this dream come true.

Hello World

2009-06-08T13:28:00.001+08:00

@Hello Planet Ubuntu@

This place is for me to share my Ubuntu experiences. Of course, that gives you a reason to criticize me. Feel free and do what you wish. Comments can be made anonymously, if you wish, but they will be moderated.

If you have a valid point of view–valid to me that is,–you are welcome to email me. Your piece will go as a post with due credits.

Add new city to Weather Report Applet

2009-06-08T00:38:00.000+08:00

I've searching for 30 minutes on how to add new city to my GNOME Weather Report applet, and finally i found a nice info where to start.

It's annoying to view weather information which is not your exact location. For example, I'm living somewhere in Seremban, so i would like the Weather Report to give information on Seremban(which is not listed by default). Nearest location available by default is Sepang, and it's not precise.

So this is how you can add your location/city to City list on Weather Report.

Get your desire location by using wikimapia.org
change the longitude and latitude by using GPS Converter or wikimapia can also convert your longitude and latitude just fine.
Open up terminal, and go to folder /usr/share/libgweather/
Edit the Location.xml with your Favourite text editor. Please be aware that gedit might not be suitable due to encoding problem. Some editor might hung or crash. My suggestion is to use VIM or nano.
Go to nearest location by using the 'find' option.
Then add new city by using this template:

<city><name>Your City</name><coordinates>27.990000 101.890989</coordinates></city>

Please change the template with your city name and your city coordinates that you got from previous steps.

After finish editing the Location.xml, please select your city listed on Weather Report Preferences by right-clicking the applet icon on your tray. If no data shown on update, just play around with the coordinates.

MSC Open Source Conference 2009

2009-05-23T19:53:00.000+08:00

What Interesting In MSC Malaysia Open Source Conference 2009

Date: 31st May until 3rd June 2009
Time: 9:00 to 17:00 (9:00 AM until 5:00 PM)

Location:

Berjaya Times Square Hotel & Convention Centre
Level 14, Berjaya Times Square, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Website: http://www.mscmalaysia.my/osconf

MSC MALAYSIA Client Contact Centre (CLiC)
1-800-88-8338 (within Malaysia)
+603 8315 3000 Email : clic@mdec.com.my

Facebook Fan Page:
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kuala-Lumpur-Malaysia/MSC-Malaysia-Open-Source-Conference-2009/97810422651

MSC Malaysia Open Source Conference 2009 gather together almost 87
local and international speakers which cover various topic in
Information Communication Technology focusing on Free and Open Source
Softwares (FOSS). FOSS is an option for ICT solutions which should be
taken seriously by various parties in Malaysia.

Our speakers come from ICT giants such as Google, Red Hat, Novell,
Microsoft, Sun Microsystem, Mimos, Canonical and several more which
will share their experience and knowledge for FOSS development in
Malaysia. So, why not you come in and JOIN THE FUN??!.

This conference also gather together experienced developers who are
involved in software development using FOSS. For you who want to know
more about Python, Perl, Java, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc, this conference is
an event which you DONT WANT TO MISS!.

More details can be acquired from the conference official website at
http://www.mscmalaysia.my/osconf

Registration open until 1 June 2009. Freebies are only for early
registrants, as stock is limited. Therefore, REGISTER NOW!.

Taken From OSDCMY Mailing List.
Credits to Linuxmalaysia for Malay version.
Credits to Kagesenshi for English Version.

P.S: Ubuntu-my will be promoting Ubuntu Distro during this events. There will be Jaunty Jackalope Release party on 31st May 2009. It's open to all. So come and join us. More information about Ubuntu-my activities during the MSC Open Source Conference 09, please visit our wiki.

Spread the word: Project Renaissance

2009-05-01T13:18:00.000+08:00

Project Renaissance is an opportunity for you guys to improve OOo where you can submit your proposal to improve idea for OOo design. Currently 6 people have begun writing proposal on improving functionality accessed in Impress.

If a proposed new concept works for Impress (that means that it stands up to the tests and usability evaluations in the prototyping phase of Project Renaissance) then that concept will be adopted for ALL of the office suite!

That means that if you want to do something big for OOo, then you need to get into the proposal mood now. Suggest a new way for menus and Co. to work; enhance use of shortcut keys; eliminate all text and only use icons; make the whole office suite have bunnies, etc.
Taken from GullFOSS

Make your idea heard by participate on this project and turn it into proposal. For those who have idea and want it to be heard; you need to get into the proposal mood now. Spread the word to other so that we can have a better OOo in the future.

Cherokee Project On Ubuntu 8.10

2009-04-03T18:40:00.000+08:00

Cherokee is actually a project develop by OSS developer with the ability to serve http on a machine that its' run on. Cherokee is fully coded in C and it support: FastCGI, SCGI, PHP, CGI, SSI, TLS and SSL encrypted connections, Virtual hosts, Authentication, on the fly encoding, Load Balancing, Apache compatible log files, Data Base Balancing, Reverse HTTP Proxy, Traffic Shaper, Video Streaming and much more.

In this post, I will guide Ubuntu 8.10 user to install cherokee on your Ubuntu Machine.

Install MySQL to your system:

sudo apt-get install mysql-server-5.0 mysql-client

Set up your mySQL user and password after the installation above finish.
The next step will be setting up PHP,

sudo apt-get install php5-cgi php5-mysql

We will compile cherokee source by using C compiler as cherokee is being code by C language. So we need to download C compiler and all dependencies.

sudo apt-get install gcc cpp g++ make

Afterward, we must download the source and then compile the source once done downloading.

CD into tmp folder where we want our source code to be download:

cd /tmp

Download the source from trunk:

wget http://www.cherokee-project.com/download/trunk/cherokee-latest-svn.tar.gz

Another way to download the source is by visiting http://www.cherokee-project.com/download/ and select your preferred release. I will strongly advise user to download the stable release.
Unpack the source code with tar command in terminal:

tar zxvf cherokee-latest-svn.tar.gz

and enter into it's new created directory:

cd cherokee-0.11.0b2449

now it has to be configured the way we need. Do this command if you are unsure with what is the configuration:

./configure --localstatedir=/var \
--prefix=/usr \
--sysconfdir=/etc \
--with-wwwroot=/var/www

Compile cherokee and install it:

sudo make ; sudo make install ;

This will make cherokee running on your machine as a webserver. It is extremely fast. Moreover it does provide a web-based User Interface for admin to manage the webserver without have to open terminal to change configuration. Here is some screen shot of the admin control panel:

Source : http://www.cherokee-project.com/doc/ | Steve Harms Blogs

Ubuntu Malaysia Wiki is Here!

2009-03-19T16:05:00.000+08:00

Good news to Ubuntu-my Community. Our wiki page is here. For more info, please visit our official forum at Ubuntu Malaysia Forum. In order to read details about the wiki page, you have to login to your account and go to 'Pengumuman Section'.

As for now, there are a lot more work to be done on themes, configuration and etc. But user can start writing tutorials, share information starting today. Look and feel will come later on. To all malaysian ubunturian, please join now and start writing on the wiki page. The more the merrier.

Help us develop a great wiki page for our community. Ubuntu Malaysia wiki can be access through it official URL which is http://wiki.ubuntu.com.my. That's all for now. Happy holiday!

Ampache 3.5 beta 1 Released

2009-03-17T16:35:00.000+08:00

Ampache is a free software Web-based Audio file manager / web Media Server. The name is a play on the two words Apache and Amplifier. It was originally written to take advantage of Apache's Mod_mp3 but has since been adapted to use its own streaming method. Ampache's Mascot is a squirrel called Fraz. It was originally drawn by Kirsten Petersen and later digitized by Ben Shields. In 2008 Fraz was redesigned by Agnès Champavier. (Taken from wikipedia)

The new version has improved ampache with new API functionality for Democratic play and Localplay, a Democratic Play configuration wizard, Improved Video browsing, changes to make album art more compatible with DLNA devices. They have made a few minor tweaks and fixes to make ampache better in this released.

To get and try ampache, all you have to do is download the source at ampache.org and compile the source.

Ampache is a great open source application for those who always dream of being an online-DJ and shares the music to the rest of the world.

Requirements:

Any Operating System
Any Apache webserver
PHP 5.2 or higher
MySQL 4.1 or higher

Moreover ampache can be integrate with linux's favourite player such as amarok. You could visit the demo site at Ampache Demo to have a picture of this powerful service.

Politeknik Sultan Idris Shah is going Open Source?

2009-03-06T23:49:00.000+08:00

Well, I manage to have a conversation with few of my lecturers today. Surprisingly, one of them open up a topic about their last seminar which was held in UiTM Shah Alam a few days ago about Open Source in IPTA(Institut Pengajian Tinggi Awam).

Interestingly, they have a plan to change all the labs Operating System from Windows XP to Ubuntu Linux. Walla~! I'm excited to see the progress of my polytechnic turn to Open Source. And I manage to help one of the lecturer to install Opera on his new Ubuntu machine - I hope more lecturer will try Ubuntu after this.

More over, on April during PSIS IT day - JTMK will conduct a seminar which will invite speakers from MAMPU(if I'm not mistaken) to talk about Open Source in IPT. My kudos goes to MAMPU for convincing and open up the lecturers narrow minded to look for other alternative of Operating System.

So, I think it's better for Ubuntu Malaysia Community to stick a needle and take advantage of this situation to join up with MAMPU to conduct a series of Ubuntu Workshop in PSIS.

Update: Rapidshare Downloader Script

2009-01-09T18:44:00.000+08:00

From my previous post, I have only stated a single file downloader for rapidshare script. In this post, I will update you guys to be able to download a single and multiple files with a single script. Please copy the code below:

Create a new downloader script file:

touch downloader

Edit the 'downloader' file and paste this code inside it:

nano downloader

Now copy this code below:

#!/bin/bash
if test "$1" = "-s";then
wget -c --load-cookies ~/.cookies/rapidshare $2
elif test "$1" = "-m";then
for url in `cat $1`
do
wget -c --load-cookies ~/.cookies/rapidshare $url
done
elif test "$1" = "--help";then
echo ""
echo " ***************************************************"
echo " ****** Rapidshare Downloader for Linux ******"
echo " ***************************************************"
echo ""
echo " s - Use this flag to download single file"
echo " Eg: ./downloader.sh -s http://files"
echo ""
echo " m - Use this flag to download multiple files"
echo " by saving all links in a files and list"
echo " it on command."
echo " Eg: ./downloader.sh -m url.txt"
echo ""
echo " Get this code at http://blog.gunbladeiv.com"
echo ""
else
echo "Please refer help by typing ./downloader --help"
fi

chmod +x downloader

./downloader --help

Promo: Ubuntu 8.10 Kit In Malaysia

2009-01-05T03:54:00.000+08:00

Well, I know this thing has been a controversy for about couple of weeks now. But as far as I know, there is no objection whatsoever from the canonical about selling your own work(your own learning experiences and turn it into user guide) to help people understand and get to know Ubuntu.

So, I would like to promo one of Malaysian linux community 'Jom Linux' with their first kit which being called 'Ubuntu 8.10 Kit'. Basically, they sell this kit for only RM13.99. The price is not for the CD but they need the money for the efforts they put to create the First Ever Malay Language Ubuntu User Guide. From my reading, the User Guide book will cover on important thing such as Installation progress, basic hardware troubleshoot, desktop customization and etc. It's cheap right? Moreover, you'll receive a sticker with Ubuntu Logo and text saying 'Powered by Ubuntu' with this kit.

For those who would like to order the kit could do so by visiting this site - Tempahan Ubuntu Kit. Or if you would like to sponsor for the kit's developement cost and process, kindly download the guide on how to be a sponsor - Sponsor the Kit.

For now, this kit only sell in Malaysia. To all Malaysian, please support and make the Kit a dream come true. If I'm not mistaken this is the first time ever we are having a great user Guide written in our own language. For more info, please visit their mini site.

Change Username Simple Way

2009-01-04T21:12:00.000+08:00

Well, If you ever encounter this situation where you would like to rename your username from Jackson to Jack, then you will think about adding a new user with 'adduser' command. Well, what if you want to have same previlleges, same desktop customization like you have with Jackson username?

So this is a tips on how to change username in the same time, you wont have any problem with customization and previleges. In this tips, I will use 'Jackson' as old username and 'Jack' as a new username.

In this tips, you will need to boot into recovery menu and be root. Root is needed to change all files and permission because if you do login using jackson, you can never complete the steps given here. Only after booting into recovery mode you may proceed with the steps below.

First, you need to change home folder from '/home/Jackson' to '/home/Jack'.

mv /home/Jackson /home/Jack

The next step is, you will have to change all word equal to Jackson to Jack from your 'passwd', 'shadow' and 'group' files:

nano -B /etc/passwd
nano -B /etc/shadow
nano -B /etc/group

When you done changing all the files, we need to change the owner of '/home/Jack' to Jack:

chown -R Jack:Jack /home/Jack

After everthing's done, please reboot your machine. To reboot, just type

shutdown -r now

Happy trying. If there is any other way easier to do complete this task, please you are welcome to leave a comment, and give the URL for me to have a look.

Download Rapidshare using Wget

2009-01-01T00:03:00.000+08:00

Well, I've been looking for long time since Hardy Heron, but it is not yet written. Then after Intrepid Ibex comes out, walla~! there is a script which could be used to download rapidshare files(by using premium accounts) by using lightweight download manager built in almost all Linux Machine - WGET.

Well, to get this started - for those who still using the old version of Ubuntu such as Feisty Fawn, Gutsy Gibbon or Hardy Heron, you might wanna check your WGET version. Make sure it is 1.10.2 above else you wont be able to use this tutorial.

First, you need to make a folder for this. Better to make a new folder to organized all your rapid download files in one spot. After creating a folder, move into the new folder and we are about to begin the process there. Here is the code to make and move into the new folder:

mkdir rapiddownload ; cd rapiddownload

After that, create a script file with .sh at the end. For example getcookies.sh:

touch getcookies.sh

Then we are going to copy and paste a command to get and save cookies into ~/.cookies/rapidshare file. To do this, all you need to do is copy and paste the code below into your getcookies.sh file. To open text editor just use command below:

nano getcookies.sh

The code you need to copy and paste is below(make sure you change USERNAME and PASSWORD with your own premium rapidshare information):

#!/bin/bash
wget \
--save-cookies ~/.cookies/rapidshare \
--post-data "login=USERNAME&password=PASSWORD" \
--no-check-certificate \
-O - \
https://ssl.rapidshare.com/cgi-bin/premiumzone.cgi \
> /dev/null

After finish paste the code, please save and exit the editor. Make sure you save before exiting or there won't be any code inside getcookies.sh.

Then we start working on the script which you will use to download. Create a script file name download.sh:

touch download.sh

And copy the script into download.sh file. Remember to open it using your convenient text editor.

nano download.sh

And paste the script below:

#!/bin/bash
wget -c --load-cookies ~/.cookies/rapidshare $1

After doing this, save and exits. We are finish with codes, so all you need to do is make it executable. To make both files executable, run 'chmod' command with '+x' flag.

chmod +x {getcookies.sh,download.sh}

TO START DOWNLOADING - To start your download, first you need to run ONCE the getcookies.sh file so that cookies will be stored and will be use by download.sh everytime you want to download from rapidshare. To run getcookies.sh below is the command:

./getcookies.sh

Now to start downloading, just use this command:

./download.sh http://urls.of.your.rapidshare.download.com/whatever

So, this is it. i hope you find this tutorial useful. And before I forget, I get this information from a website named my-guides.net. They have a lot of other information about linux. Pay a visits there to learn a lot of cool things.

DISADVANTAGE:

People could see your premium username and password once they hold on to your machine. So please use at your own risk.

BELOW IS THE EXAMPLE OF SUCCESSFUL DOWNLOAD

Fixing Broken Sudo

2008-12-30T19:46:00.000+08:00

Have you ever been encounter with broken sudo after a minor changes you've made to your users' setting? Well, there are several ways to break sudo command. From which I've personally experiences and from reading here are several things which might break sudo:

alteration of /etc/sudoers files which taken previllages of admin to use sudo.
permission of /etc/sudoers files being changes other than 0440
a user which shouldn't be taken has been taken off the admin group

So If you've made one of this mistakes, and your sudo wont work - the best way to fix your broken sudo is by using this guide. Here is the solution:

Boot into Recovery Mode
If you are using Ubuntu as your only OS, then you might need to press ESC key to bring up boot menu before you can choose Recovery Mode.
When you chose Recovery Mode, it will bring the next boot menu which is displayed below. Choose Root - Drop to Root Shells menu.
After that, you will need to do some command. Well basically you just need to add a new user to admin group. To do so, here is the steps:

CASE 1:

adduser username admin

CASE 2:

sudo cp /etc/sudoers /etc/sudoers.backup
sudo nano /etc/sudoers

Edit the sudoers files to look like this:

# /etc/sudoers
#
# This file MUST be edited with the 'visudo' command as root.
#
# See the man page for details on how to write a sudoers file.
#
# Host alias specification
# User alias specification
# Cmnd alias specification
# Defaults
Defaults !lecture,tty_tickets,!fqdn
# User privilege specification
root ALL=(ALL) ALL
# Members of the admin group may gain root privileges
%admin ALL=(ALL) ALL

Then Save and Exits.

CASE 3:

If you messing up with file permission, then all you have to do is:

chmod 0440 /etc/sudoers

After all doing the exact command depending on how you broke the sudo, to exit Recovery System, just type 'exit' where it will bring back the Recovery Menu. All you have to do is select the First Choice to Resume Normal Boot and your sudo is back.

For more information about SUDO, please read here.

ATI X550 Video Playback Spike

2008-12-23T20:27:00.000+08:00

Well, one of chatters ask me how to solve a spiky video playback with ATI X550. Well, here is the solution:

press ALT+F2
type "gstreamer-properties"
Go to Video Tabs
Change Default Output Plugin Setting from AutoDetect to 'X Windows System(No Xv)'

Try play the video again and see if your playback still have spikes.

B43-legacy with kernel 2.6.26 for Aircrack

2008-10-09T19:35:00.000+08:00

I've been testing my bcm4318 which is a broadcom wireless chipset since kernel 2.6.22 on my ubuntu machine. As far as I know, before kernel 2.6.24 all the broadcom chipset need bcm43xx driver to be working on all linux machine. Some of user might prefer using windows driver with ndiswrapper installed for more speed.

So lately i've been testing my bcm4318 with kernel 2.6.26 by using b43-legacy driver. So far it's working well with injection all set up pretty good. I've manage to crack WEP in just 2-5 minutes of injection.

I'm really eager to try it on the new Ubuntu's Intrepid Ibex with it's latest unstable kernel 2.6.27. Hope the latest kernel wont need a major work to make b43 the best chipset to use with aircrack.

What's new on aircrack-ng?

Well I've been testing and reviewing about aircrack for the past few months, and I'm still waiting for the leatest features of tools the developement team currently working on. It's easside-ng and wesside-ng. Well basiccally wesside-ng is an automated script which will help user to quickly crack a WEP by using logics and injections.

Wesside-ng is an auto-magic tool which incorporates a number of techniques to seamlessly obtain a WEP key in minutes. It first identifies a network, then proceeds to associate with it, obtain PRGA (pseudo random generation algorithm) xor data, determine the network IP scheme, reinject ARP requests and finally determine the WEP key. All this is done without your intervention.

Taken from aircrack-ng.org

While easside-ng has a different function but will bring a lot more benefits for it's user in order to use protected Access Point. easside-ng won't crack any WEP password, but it will give you access to WEP without you need to know the password.

Easside-ng is an auto-magic tool which allows you to communicate via an WEP-encrypted access point (AP) without knowing the WEP key. It first identifies a network, then proceeds to associate with it, obtain PRGA (pseudo random generation algorithm) xor data, determine the network IP scheme and then setup a TAP interface so that you can communicate with the AP without requiring the WEP key. All this is done without your intervention.

Taken from aircrack-ng.org

I hope that aircrack will keep improving and bring much fun for linux user to experimenting with their own wireless for security aspects.

Tweak Ubuntu For More Speed

2008-10-02T23:32:00.000+08:00

Actually I've been searching for this article for about 2 or three hours, and I finally have it back by using the google cache. Thank god, and I think it's time for me to make my copy of the article originally wrote on "TVease Wiki". TVease Wiki is no longer available, so here is a copy of it's famous article about how to tweak Ubuntu for Speed.

Speed up your File System

About
Ubuntu Linux, unless you have set it up otherwise, uses the EXT3 system by default. It’s a pretty good system. There are 3 journaling methods for EXT3 system.

Journal Data Writeback
Journal Data Ordered
Journal Data

By default Ubuntu chooses “journal data ordered”. In data=ordered mode, ext3 only officially journals metadata, but it logically groups metadata and data blocks into a single unit called a transaction. When it’s time to write the new metadata out to disk, the associated data blocks are written first. data=ordered mode effectively solves the corruption problem found in data=writeback mode and most other journaled filesystems, and it does so without requiring full data journaling. In general, data=ordered ext3 filesystems perform slightly slower than data=writeback filesystems, but significantly faster than their full data journaling counterparts.

To speed it up, we are going to change it to the data=writeback system.

Tweak

Open your Grub boot menu.

sudo nano -w /boot/grub/menu.lst

Look for the ”Defoptions” and ”Altoptions” and make them look like the entry below.

# defoptions=quiet splash rootflags=data=writeback
# altoptions=(recovery mode) single rootflags=data=writeback

You need to update your Grub since you have altered it.

sudo update-grub

Now we are going to edit the Fstab because it will be expecting these options.

sudo nano -w /etc/fstab

Now you are going to want to add the ”(data=writeback and noatime=0)” flags to your hard drive. It might be a little confusing because of the new naming system. Look for the ”(,errors=remount-ro)” and add it afterwards to make it look like our example.

defaults,errors=remount-ro,data=writeback,noatime 0

Now you tell your system to use them both.

sudo tune2fs -o journal_data_writeback /dev/''yourdrive''

And you’re done.

Concurrent Booting

About
Concurrent booting allows Ubuntu to take advantage of dual-core processors, as well as processors that hyperthread or multithread or what ever the different companies call it now.
Tweak

These settings are located in your /etc/init.d/rc file. Lets open it up.

sudo gedit /etc/init.d/rc

Look through the file and you will find ”CONCURRENCY=none”. You want to change it to:

CONCURRENCY=shell

And you’re done.

Swapping

About
Swappiness takes a value between 0 and 100 to change the balance between swapping applications and freeing cache. At 100, the kernel will always prefer to find inactive pages and swap them out; in other cases, whether a swapout occurs depends on how much application memory is in use and how poorly the cache is doing at finding and releasing inactive items.

The default swappiness is 60. A value of 0 gives something close to the old behavior where applications that wanted memory could shrink the cache to a tiny fraction of RAM. For laptops which would prefer to let their disk spin down, a value of 20 or less is recommended.

Tweak

First we have to gain access to your /etc/sysctl.conf file.

sudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf

Just scroll to the bottom of the page and add the tag listed below. The number you want depends on how much ram you have and what you do with your system. Please read the about above this to make your decision. I have mine set to 0 on a dual core laptop with 1 gig of ram and have seen no issues and a good performance gain.

vm.swappiness=0

And you’re done.

Broadband Internet

About
These are various tweaks taken from various places. Here is an article that explains them all if you would like to read it in depth.

Tweak

You have to open your /etc/sysctl.conf file back up again.

sudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf

Then again, scroll to the bottom and just add these lines to it.

net.core.rmem_default = 524288
net.core.rmem_max = 524288
net.core.wmem_default = 524288
net.core.wmem_max = 524288
net.ipv4.tcp_wmem = 4096 87380 524288
net.ipv4.tcp_rmem = 4096 87380 524288
net.ipv4.tcp_mem = 524288 524288 524288
net.ipv4.tcp_rfc1337 = 1
net.ipv4.ip_no_pmtu_disc = 0
net.ipv4.tcp_sack = 1
net.ipv4.tcp_fack = 1
net.ipv4.tcp_window_scaling = 1
net.ipv4.tcp_timestamps = 1
net.ipv4.tcp_ecn = 0
net.ipv4.route.flush = 1

You have to reset your sysctl for these to take effect.

sudo sysctl -p

And you’re done.

IPv6

About
IPv6 is an internet protocol. Most of your software uses IPv4 though and it causes conflicts.

Tweak

We are going to create a file. Paste this into a terminal.

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/bad_list

Then paste this into the file and save and exit the file.

alias net-pf-10 off

And you’re done.

Boot Profile

About
You have just made a lot of changes to your system. Re profiling your boot will reorganize it and make it faster on boots afterwards.

Tweak

Reboot your PC.

When you come to your grub list, hit escape to see your grub menu.

Edit the topmost line and add the word below to the end of it.

profile

Then just reboot the system.

And you’re done.

Free More Memory

About
We’re going to free up more RAM by disabling some virtual consoles that use up memory even though most people never use them. To do that, we need to edit the inittab file in the /etc directory.

Tweak

Open your inittab file.

sudo gedit /etc/inittab

Scroll down until you find the six lines that begin with:

1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty1

Comment out the last four lines by adding the hash or “#” symbol in front of them
Save the file.

And you’re done.

Make OpenOffice Faster

About
To make OpenOffice snappier, you can adjust the way it uses memory.

Tweak

Launch the OpenOffice word processor.
Go to the Tools menu and select Options.
Select “Memory” on the left panel.
On the right side of the panel, reduce the number of Undo steps to a figure lower than 100. I suggest 30 or 20 steps, just to be safe. I don’t think I’ll have to undo more than that many commands.
Under graphics cache, set “Use for OpenOffice.org” to 128 MB, memory per object to 20MB, and set the number of objects under “Cache for inserted objects” at 20.

And you’re done.

Get Faster Menus

About
You can make menus more responsive by telling Ubuntu to zero-delay them.

Tweak

Open a new document in gedit and past this line into it:

gtk-menu-popup-delay = 0

Save the file in your home directory (/home/your-user-name) under this name:

.gtkrc-2.0

Now you are done and you can enjoy your faster Ubuntu System.

Installing Ossec to Ubuntu

2008-10-02T18:52:00.000+08:00

OSSEC-HIDS is much easier to install. Basically, there will be two steps to install Ossec. Download and run an installation script. To download ossec, you may visit ossec website here:

http://www.ossec.net/main/downloads/
and you can start downloading with wget command:

wget http://www.ossec.net/files/ossec-hids-1.6.tar.gz

After download complete, extract the tarball:

tar zxvf ossec-hids-1.6.tar.gz

And now run the installation script by running this commands:

cd ossec-hids-1.6
./install.sh

You will be asked series of questions, but most of the questions are basic questions. So I dont think that you will have any problem in answering them. Add additional IP if you wish so into the whitelist.
To start and stop the ossec services, just use:

sudo /etc/init.d/ossec start|stop

Configuring OSSEC

Not much needs to be done. HOWEVER I would caution you that OSSEC has an active response to threats. If OSSEC detects a bad ip address, it will block that ip address using iptables. This means that if your snort rules are giving you false alerts legitimate traffic to your server will be blocked.

This also means you can lose access to your server as well.

Fortunately this is a temporary ban. It is more than sufficient to deter the script kiddies and if your access is blocked, access is restored in a few minutes.

This means , however, you need to monitor snort (base) and fine tune your rules so you are not blocking legitimate traffic.

Again, if there are repeat offending IP addresses, black list them in iptables (See the using snort/base post for how to do this).

Additional configuration of OSSEC is is done by editing /var/ossec/etc/ossec.conf

This configuration file is well commented and you will see a white list section where you may white list additional ip addresses if needed.

Taken from Ubuntuforums.org

I hope you can try this HIDS in order to work side by side with snort. It's fun to experimenting with this HIDS. Detecting and preventing early stage of an attack is the best way to prevent it from happening.

Modsec 2.5.1 on Ubuntu

2008-09-30T14:40:00.000+08:00

Well, I've been searching a way to easily install modsec to my Hardy. A lot of tutorials on the net is written based on manual compile the module. Well, after searching for about two hours or more, I manage to find an easy way to install modsec(Mod-Security) for apache2.

As usual, Ubuntu system is a debian based distribution. So this tutorial is taken based on Debian Sid's tutorial. Before I begin, here is a rough introduction of what is a 'modsec':

ModSecurity is a web application firewall (WAF). With over 70% of attacks now carried out over the web application level, organisations need all the help they can get in making their systems secure. WAFs are deployed to establish an increased external security layer to detect and/or prevent attacks before they reach web applications. ModSecurity provides protection from a range of attacks against web applications and allows for HTTP traffic monitoring and real-time analysis with little or no changes to existing infrastructure.

Taken from ModSecurity Website

I hope you will understand the consequences of installing modsec to your ubuntu webserver. If anything goes wrong, it will affect your webserver operation. Follow the instructions carefully and for safety, please do it experimentally before proceed to a production server.

We start by gaining root access:

su -s

Enter your root password when being asked by the console. After gaining your root level, now we need to edit your sources.list:

nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Add at the end of the file in a new line:

deb http://etc.inittab.org/~agi/debian/libapache-mod-security2/2.5.x ./

Save and exit the sources.list. After exiting the text editor, you need to update your apt. Please do:

apt-get update

If nothing goes wrong, and everything is in place, your apt-get update will not return any errors. Soon after update finish, you may install your modsec by doing 'apt-cache modsec' and 'apt-get install [return value from apt-cache]'. It's simple isnt it?

So happy hardening your server. If there is any problem with this tutorial, please leave a comment. Thank you

Ubuntu-my Fantasy Football League

2008-08-11T21:52:00.000+08:00

For those who already have yahoo account, you are mostly welcome to join Ubuntu-my Fantasy Football League and fight to win title. Anyone who interested to join could possibly join by signing at the yahoo sports website here.

After sign up, you can join Ubuntu-my group by joining to:

Group ID: 13128
Password: ubuntu

I'll be waiting for more contestant at the league table. Come and join us before the war started on 16th August 2008. Buy a profitable players and strengthen your team with best signing. And be alert of who is injured.

That's all, free your mind from the coding or technical stuff and have fun with e-sports. Be the best manager to win the title among ubuntu-my members. Anyway, good luck to Arsenal for this coming season. We are the best!

How to Share Your Internet Connection on Ubuntu

2008-07-23T00:11:00.000+08:00

There is several ways to share internet connection using Ubuntu Server. But this in this tutorial, I'll be using one method that is quite simple and proven to be working on Ubuntu Hardy. But as far as i know, this kind of setting will work on any distribution which support iptables.

Here is the steps to share your internet connection:

Run as root:

sudo -s

Then change the setting in sysctl to allow ip forwarding by running this command:

sysctl -w net.ipv4.ip_forward=1

By the way, sysctl actually will run on Ubuntu startup automatically, but to be sure just edit the /etc/sysctl.conf:

#nano /etc/sysctl.conf
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1
iptables

Then we need to masquerade the service. This could be a little bit tricky, but still it's easy to use. Let say if your server connected to internet using wireless device, so the device interface should be wlan0. And a network card connected to your local area network is eth0. So here is some example in the interface setting:

wlan0:
IP = 10.41.57.103
netmask = 255.255.0.0
gateway = 10.41.57.254

The ethernet setting:

eth0:
IP = 192.168.1.10
netmask = 255.255.255.0
gateway = 10.41.57.254(IP for the gateway of wlan0)

If you can see, the setting for eth0's gateway is using the same gateway as wlan0, so we need to masquerade it using iptables to allow packets to be forward through 2 interfaces. To masquerade, here is the command:

#iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o wlan0 -j MASQUERADE
#service iptables save

It's all done with the server setting, now we have to do the setting for client pc, in this example, the client is using winxp, so all we have to do is to set the ip manually. The ip should be like this:

IP = 192.168.1.100 (Well the ip can be anything but have to be on the same class)
netmask = 255.255.255.0
gateway = 192.168.1.10
DNS = 192.168.1.10

So this one should help all user to share internet connection using Ubuntu Server. I'm not expert on the network subject but this one is simple and easy to understand. I hope this will help you out.

Ubuntu Malaysia New Planet

2008-06-30T19:24:00.000+08:00

Well this post is just an announcement of a new Ubuntu Malaysia site which is called Planet Ubuntu Malaysia. Well basically this is the official Ubuntu Malaysia Planet which will gather all the Ubuntu-my member's blog to be review on one site.

I would like to encourage all of the Ubuntu Malaysia's members to help and try to design a new logo for our planet. Well basically the logo should reflect our community logo. I hope I will have better response to this one. All idea's and artwork are very welcome.

By the way, please visit and subscribe to our LoCo planet via feeds. And please let me know if you would like your blog to be publish on the planet. For any request to be syndicate with the planet, please refer to Ubuntu Malaysia Forum as I have made a post there.