The _khAttAm_ blog

If you haven’t watched this video with Awn and Zeitgeist, here it is:

Awn + Zeitgeist from Michal Hruby on Vimeo.

This video was originally featured in the developer’s site.

This applet called Related applet has made it into avant-window-navigator development version. It can be installed to Lucid or Maverick by adding the awn development PPA to your repositories. To do so, open up Synaptic (System>Administration>Synaptic Package Manager) and then click on Settings>Repositories>Other Software and add

ppa:awn-testing/ppa

. Then close the Repositories window and reload. Now, look for avant-window-navigator-trunk and mark it for installation. Then apply and wait for it to install. Now, you can launch it via Applications>Accessories menu.

A dock will appear and you can right click it and open Dock Preferences. In the Applet tab, find Related applet and add it to your dock. Now, you can use it as shown in the video. It is awesome.

Firefox 4 beta 2 is already available for Linux, Windows and Mac. You can also install daily builds to get the latest of Firefox. The PPA ubuntu-mozilla-daily provides the daily builds of Firefox, currently beta 3 is available for download. To install the PPA in Lucid or Maverick, just launch Synaptic (System>Administration>Synaptic Package Manager) and then go to Settings>Repositories>Other Software. Now click Add and paste in the following:

ppa:ubuntu-mozilla-daily/ppa

Close the Repositories window and then click reload. When it is done, search for firefox-4.0-gnome-support and mark it for installation. It should mark other required packages. Apply and wait for installation to finish.

To launch it, goto Applications>Internet>Mozilla Developer Preview Web Browser and enjoy.

UPDATE: Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat Beta has been released.

Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat has been scheduled to be released 10 October 2010 (10/10/10) and most of the changes have been already implemented as it is heading for the 3rd Alpha release in August 5th. GNOME Shell and GNOME 3 will not make it to Ubuntu 10.10 as it was initially expected. Also, the default theme seems to be same as Lucid. However, there are going to be some changes in this version. Some of them are:

Shotwell

Shotwell will be the default photo manager replacing F-Spot. It is a lot neat and has better interface than F-spot.

Ubuntu Software Center
There will be changes in the usability and appearance of Ubuntu Software Center. It will feature “What’s new” section which will show the latest softwares. It now also has nice animation effects and better appearance and constantly changing with each update.

It will also feature a paid apps section where the user will be able to buy applications for Ubuntu.

Rhythmbox and Sound Applet
Rhythmbox will remain the default audio player but it will have feature enhancements. It will have link sharing button which lets you share about the track in social networking sites and more feature enhancements are in progress. Also, the sound applet will feature per application sound and controls for selected applications. This lets you to control rhythmbox right from the sound applet.

The above picture shows the progress till Alpha 2. There is still work to be done though.

Aptitude
If you used aptitude to install programs from the command line, you will no longer be able to do so because aptitude is being removed from the default desktop installation. You will need to use it from software center (or synaptic or apt-get) if you wish to use it.

Unity Interface
Unity features a launcher appearing in the left side of the Ubuntu Network Edition desktop.

Ubuntu Netbook Edition will feature Global Menu, at the top (similar to Mac OS X), which is supposed to save desktop space.
Not only does it look awesome, it should also improve usability of UNE.

Chromium
Firefox 3.x will remain the default browser in Ubuntu Netbook Edition. It was announced earlier that Chromium would be replacing Firefox, but recently, they have decided to stick with Firefox.

BTRFS (B-tree FileSystem)
A new file-system called BTRFS (Butter FS), that was added to Linux kernel 2.6.29-rc1 for testing, has made it to Ubuntu installer as well. However, stable release of BTRFS is still pending, this file system offers pooling, snapshots, checksums and integral multi-device spanning that other Linux file systems fail to deliver. This will be available as optional file system in the installation wizard as an optional file system.
UPDATE: BTRFS support may only be available in Natty (Ubuntu 11.04)

Compiz
There are minor changes in default set of animations for Compiz which makes the desktop experience better.

Installer Changes
Ubuntu installer has been revamped. It has become even better and easier. It asks if you want to install MP3 support during the installation.

Multi touch
Ubuntu Maverick will feature multi touch support. See videos here.

Since Maverick is still undergoing development, certain elements might be changed. I will keep you updated about the changes.

I use exaile as a default audio player in my Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat. I really like amarok but it is a KDE app and it does not blend well with Ubuntu. Exaile is much like amarok and I have been using it for sometime now. The multimedia keys do not work by default on exaile and must be enabled by activating a plugin. Just go to Edit>Preferences and click on plugins. Then check the box GNOME Multimedia Keys.

Now you can use your multimedia keys. Have fun.

My friend has a laptop with Intel Core i3 and onboard Intel HD graphics. His Ubuntu used to crash very often. He is using latest Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx. He then upgraded to latest kernel 2.6.35-997 from drm-intel-next from drm-intel-next PPA which has stopped the crashing. However, the kernel is development kernel and you should use it with caution. If it fails to boot or causes problems, you can always hold on shift key during boot and then boot into the older kernel and remove it from the package manager. Having said that, here is how to install the latest kernel in Ubuntu from the drm-intel-next PPA.
Goto drm-intel-next PPA and then download the following files:
linux-headers-X-all.deb
linux-headers-X.deb
linux-image-X.deb
Here, X is the version which you can use whatever is available and refers to your Ubuntu architecture. In the PPA, 32-bit (i386) and 64-bit (amd64) are available. If you don’t know the architecture of your installation, you can easily check by typing the command

uname -m

in the terminal. If it says x86_64, you should go for amd64 and if it says iX86 (i686 for example), go for i386.
After the download, install in the above order and reboot and it should boot into your newly installed kernel.

Hope this helps.

I was thinking of trying out quickly in my Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat and tried:

quickly create ubuntu-application foo

in the terminal, but I got this:

ERROR: No create command found.
Aborting.

I then found out that I had not installed the package quickly-ubuntu-template. I did it and it solved my problem. If you already have that installed and are still getting the problem, view comments in the bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/quickly/+bug/519222/

Hope this helps.

I am using Firefox 3.6.6 on my Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat Alpha and wanted to experiment with it.

Firefox uses the profile directory to read and write settings, bookmarks, saved passwords, extension preferences etc. When Firefox is launched, it reads those from profile directory and constantly accesses and writes information to the directory. I thought keeping this in RAM could make Firefox faster. To do so, I wrote a small script that copies the profile to RAMDISK and launches Firefox with that profile directory.

First of all, you will need to increase the RAMDISK size so that it can hold the profile directory. The profile directory can grow with cached files so you may want to limit caching appropriately by setting lower the values of browser.cache.disk.capacity and browser.cache.offline.capacity in about:config. You can set the RAMDISK size by editing /etc/default/grub and appending ramdisk_size=SIZE_IN_BYTES to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT. To edit, you will need to open it as root (gksu gedit /etc/default/grub). The line should look like the following after the edit if you want the RAMDISK size to be approximately 256Mb:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash ramdisk_size=256000"

After saving the file, you need to run the following command from the terminal to update grub

sudo update-grub

Now, restart your computer for changes to take effect.

When this is done, save the following file as /usr/local/bin/firefox-ram. Uncomment (remove hash from) the line containing PROFILE_PATH and change the path to your Firefox profile directory.

#!/bin/bash
 
# firefox_ram v0.1 by _khAttAm_
# www.khattam.info
# July 09, 2010
# Needs RAM_DEVICE larger than the size of profile directory
# Needs zenity installed
# Copyright (C) 2010  _khAttAm_
 
# will not run as intended and may cause data loss if profile directory
# is full or ramdisk is smaller than profile directory size
 
#    This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
#    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
#    the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
#    (at your option) any later version.
 
#    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
#    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
#    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
#    GNU General Public License for more details.
 
#    See .
 
# Change the following
 
PROFILE_PATH=/home/pravin/.mozilla/firefox/e2k9jth5.default/
 
if [ ! -n "$PROFILE_PATH" ];
then
	zenity --info --text="Profile path not set. Please edit the script \

	to set firefox profile path."
	exit
fi
 
USER_NAME=$USERNAME
TMP_PROFILE_DIR=/home/$USERNAME/.mozilla/firefox/ramdisk/
 
RAM_DEVICE=/dev/ram0
 
if [ -f /tmp/firefox-ram-lock ]
 
then
	zenity --info --text="Only one instance is allowed. If no instances\
	 are open, it may be performing post save operations. Please wait a\
	 few moments and try again. If this persists and you are sure \
	 nothing is going on, just remove /tmp/firefox-ram-lock and run \

	 again."
	exit
fi
 
touch /tmp/firefox-ram-lock
 
echo "
 
umount $RAM_DEVICE
mkdir -p $TMP_PROFILE_DIR
umount $TMP_PROFILE_DIR
mount -t ext2 $RAM_DEVICE $TMP_PROFILE_DIR
">/tmp/firefox-ram-pre-pre.sh
 
chmod +x /tmp/firefox-ram-pre-pre.sh
gksu sh /tmp/firefox-ram-pre-pre.sh
 
# the following needs to be run as root
 
# this could be done by using gksu followed by command for each,
# but gksu has problem with commandline option -R
# hence the commands that need to be run as root are written to
# a temporary file and then executed using gksu
echo "
umount $RAM_DEVICE
mke2fs $RAM_DEVICE
 
mkdir -p $TMP_PROFILE_DIR
umount $TMP_PROFILE_DIR
mount $RAM_DEVICE $TMP_PROFILE_DIR
">/tmp/firefox-ram-pre1.sh
chmod +x /tmp/firefox-ram-pre1.sh
gksu sh /tmp/firefox-ram-pre1.sh
 
PROFILE_DIR_SIZE=`du -s $PROFILE_PATH | cut -f1`
 
#echo $PROFILE_DIR_SIZE
 
RAM_DISK_SIZE=`df -k| grep $RAM_DEVICE|cut -d' ' -f16`
 
#echo $RAM_DISK_SIZE
 
if [ "$RAM_DISK_SIZE" \< "$PROFILE_DIR_SIZE" ];
then
	zenity --info --text="The size of RAMDISK ($RAM_DISK_SIZE bytes) is\

	 not large enough to hold the profile directory \
	 ($PROFILE_DIR_SIZE bytes). This program can't continue. Either \
	 increase the size of RAMDISK or clear history and cache to reduce \
	 the size of profile directory."
	rm /tmp/firefox-ram-lock
	exit
 
fi
 
echo "
cp -u -R $PROFILE_PATH* $TMP_PROFILE_DIR
chown -R $USER_NAME $TMP_PROFILE_DIR
chmod -R 744 $TMP_PROFILE_DIR*
 
">/tmp/firefox-ram-pre2.sh
chmod +x /tmp/firefox-ram-pre2.sh
gksu sh /tmp/firefox-ram-pre2.sh
 
echo `date +%s` > $TMP_PROFILE_DIR/firefox_ram.chk
 
#run firefox with profile directory as the one in ramdisk
 
firefox -profile $TMP_PROFILE_DIR
 
#copy profile back to HDD
cp -u -R $TMP_PROFILE_DIR* $PROFILE_PATH
 
rm /tmp/firefox-ram-lock

Now, Alt+F2 and firefox-ram to run Firefox with profile from RAM. You should enter your password when asked as this is required to create and work with RAMDISK. The first launch can be a little slow, but subsequent launches should be quicker. You can also create a launcher in your dock or your Desktop for easy access.

Please note that when using this script, you should not switch between the other Firefox as that may cause data loss (loss of bookmarks, settings changes etc.). Also, you are advised to backup your profile directory regularly while using this script as it may cause data loss.

Please suggest improvements and changes in the script.

I recently moved some of my websites to new VPS. That requires DNS changes and I updated DNS on my domain registrar. I was not sure how my sites would adapt to new host and decided to test them. To do so, I changed my DNS to the DNS server of the new host. Then I could browse my new site just fine after a few refreshes.

For example you are moving your site to WeLoveNepal server which has DNS servers at ns1.welovenepal.net and ns2.welovenepal.net. You need to find the IPs these servers are pointing to. You can do that just by pinging them

ping ns1.welovenepal.net
ping ns2.welovenepal.net

You should get the IP addresses. Currently, the IP addresses of ns1.welovenepal.net and ns2.welovenepal.net are 67.212.178.10 and 67.212.178.11 respectively. Now, you will need to edit the /etc/resolv.conf. To do so on ubuntu, type in gksu gedit /etc/resolv.conf. Now, backup the contents and change it to look like:

nameserver 67.212.178.10
nameserver 67.212.178.11

Note: Enter the IPs that you obtained while pinging. Not what I have written here.

Now, open your site in Firefox. It is likely that Firefox will open the old site because of cached nameserver. Just hold on Shift key and refresh a few times. To verify, just create a new file on your new host and try to open that file from Firefox.

When done, restore the old /etc/resolv.conf.

Hope this helps.

I have moved one of my blogs to new server and I also updated to WordPress 3.0 at the same time. When I tried to update or add plugins, I got this error:

Warning: touch() [function.touch]: SAFE MODE Restriction in effect. The script whose uid is  is not allowed to access /tmp owned by uid 0 in /full_path_to_wordpress/wp-admin/includes/file.php on line 198 
Download failed. Could not create temporary file.

I have PHP Safe mode enabled in my server and don’t wish to disable it. So, I decided to give out a new temporary folder for wordpress installation. I created a folder named tmp in my wordpress installation directory and made the user of the temporary directory same as the user of /full_path_to_wordpress/wp-admin/includes/file.php. The following command shows the user, group and other details of a file:

Due to recent server error, I lost many of my posts and comments. I will try to find them and post them again. Sorry subscribers, you will receive old posts again.