2007/09/28

Updating gentoo behind firewall

Adapted from gentoo forum...

1. ) On the Gentoo machine, edit make.conf and change SYNC to:
SYNC="rsync://localhost:4040/gentoo-portage"

2.) Make an ssh tunnel from your Gentoo box to the remote box to go to rsync.gentoo.org, i.e.
ssh -L 4040:rsync.gentoo.org:873 remote.host.com

3.) Now rsync as usual from another prompt:
emerge --sync

Instead of editing make.conf, we can use "export" to set SYNC environment variable before emerge --sync too.

2007/09/27

Ubuntu 7.10 test version problem on automount

Just helped a friend to find a bug fix in Ubuntu 7.10 test version.
https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gparted/+bug/134712

The error is cannot automount removable volume.
The cause is due to gparted, it will temporary disable automount in gnome when it is working.
But if it crashed or being killed, the temporary disable configuration file won't be removed, so automount is totally disable.
To fix, just remove it by hand, simple.

2007/09/26

Family Issue (3)

Father's cancer hasn't strink again this month, so need to change to another medicine, $990 per bottle, need to have treatment for 3 times per month, and each period's first week need to stay in hospital for 2 nights, no need for the 2nd and 3rd weeks, the 4th week is for resting.

2007/09/25

Time machine



Made a tour to old company today, went to have lunch with them and then go back to office to have a visit.
All things (and people) kept unchanged after near a whole year, every machines, desks, drawers, posts, boxes keep as if I was left yesterday, as if the time just kept frozen there.
After that I made a visit to the shopping mall underneath too, most shops just the same, the mainland bookshop's cute shop keeper, the people in the large computer shop and others.
Funny experience!

Compiz fusion on RHEL 5

Finally done the packaging of compiz fusion 0.5.2 on RHEL 5, with updated version of metacity library for proper window handling.
But unluckily I don't have AIGLX support on T60, as it uses ATI driver, need to wait for next version.

2007/09/23

SPhone



給祖先一部全新 iPhone 吧, 各大衣紙舖均有代售.

2007/09/22

IBM released own office suite - IBM Lotus Symphony

Being a part of Lotus Notes, IBM released the document editing part of it, called IBM Lotus Symphony, which is very similar to OpenOffice.org, including Document, Presentation and Spreadsheet as expected.
Don't know if it is based on OpenOffice.org or not, but IBM announced to join OpenOffice.org development last week, and release an own version this week, quite strange.
Downloaded and installed on my old Pentium 4 2.4GHz machine running Gentoo Linux with 1G RAM, it took a long time to load and the respond is quite slow, maybe due to its java program nature.
Not much compatible with chinese file name, but the font display is nice and it can open most OpenOffice.org documents like my presentations, text files and spreadsheets.
Worth a try!
IBM Lotus Symphony

2007/09/20

再去青森

今晚難得朋友肯入屯門探我, 梗要盡下地主之誼, 先一齊在吉之島逛逛和 shopping, 之後再去"理論上"最正的青森食日本野.
水準依然唔錯, 價錢都ok, 2人食到反肚, 大約 $240.
由於對方暫住荃灣, 都叫幾近, 而家應該返到去喇呱...

Vista on RHEL 5

Just tested RHEL 5.1 beta virtualization, now it supports SMP for full virtualized guest system!



2007/09/18

Macau day trip

0800: Arrived Hong Kong - Macau Ferry Pier
0830: On board
0935: Arrive Macau Ferry Pier
1015: Ready in the venue
1030: Start of JBoss part
1150: My presentation for RHEL 5 virtualization
1230: Lunch with Macau partner in 英皇
1430: Afternoon session for JBoss

2007/09/17

REISUB

Fix a Frozen System with the Magic SysRq Keys
by Jacob

You finally got your Linux environment to crash. Ctrl+Alt+Backspace does nothing, nor do the F-keys. You know you shouldn’t have installed that bad driver, but you did it anyway.

So you reach for the power button.

Stop.

Mashing in the power button to reboot could cause a problem if your hard drive is still being written to, and usually causes more problems than it solves. The Linux kernel includes a secret method of restarting your PC should it ever stop doing its job.

1. Hold down the Alt and SysRq (Print Screen) keys.
2. While holding those down, type the following in order. Nothing will appear to happen until the last letter is pressed: REISUB
3. Watch your computer reboot magically.

What the individual keys do in that sequence are not as important as what it does as a whole: stops all programs, unmounts all drives, and reboots. A lot safer than just cutting the power.

Here it is again: REISUB. Remember that, as it will save you a lot of time when you are configuring a system and something gets messed up. Need a mnemonic? Try Raising Elephants Is So Utterly Boring.

As an aside, don’t try this if you just want to reboot. A normal reboot, if it can be done, should always be used instead of the REISUB keys.

R-E-I-S-U-B.

2007/09/14

Bootable SATA adapter

Finally I found a shop in 298 selling bootable SATA adapter, the shop keeper is a 4x years old man but he is very experienced computer guru, we talked a bit on adapter too.
The adapter is very cheap, only $105 with 2 SATA port, the chipset is Initio 1622, with a boot ROM supporting RAID0 and 1, when I plugged in the adapter and boot, wow! I saw the RAID BIOS, which means it should be a bootable adapter.
Normally a bootable adapter costs nearly $200 as I saw those Magic Pro adapter featuring Silicon Image chipset.
Although the Linux kernel driver said it is HIGHLY EXPERIMENTAL, looks like it is ok to boot and use at the moment, so happy.

Xgl on RHEL5

http://download.tuxfamily.org/fedoraxgl/
This is a web site for Xgl on Fedora 5, 6, 7.
As my ThinkPad T60 uses ATI display, and AMD still hasn't release a AIGLX supported driver for Linux, people said we need to use Xgl for that, after some search, I found this project, made RPMs for RHEL 5 now.

2007/09/13

1408



Tonight went to see 1408 with Gi and FK, it is OK, an exciting film as shown in trailer, not bad.
"Everything can be unreal, but this fire is real."
Daughter is real too... a nice ending.

Other people's comment:
http://blog.ylib.com/StephenKing/Archives/2007/08/09/3128

2007/09/12

Meeting old friend

Met an old secondary school friend tonight.
Suddenly want to meet some people that have little contact over many monthes, so I SMS'ed them on monday to see if anyone free, got her respond at once, so I arranged a dinner for some other old friends too.
Had a nice buffet dinner in Kwai Fong "Relaxing Tea House", it is not cheap but a nice dinner, recommended.

2007/09/10

iPod cannot be sync'ed in x64 Windows XP

As my desktop cannot boot Windows any more due to non-bootable SATA adapter, I need to use my another machine with XP x64 version to do the job.
After updating iTunes on it, I found that I can never sync the songs on my iPod, and it keeps trying and trying so that it became nearly unresponsive.
With some researching, it is due to x64 version of XP, which iTunes doesn't support, and some strange things will happen, so I am one of the victims.
Now I decided to use gtkpod for the task, it looks simple.

2007/09/08

Facebook

First heard about facebook from a Egyptian colleague (Shrief) for viewing the photos of the trip with him and others.
After joining facebook, I found many Red Hatters there, and after that I also met many ex-colleagues. Today I asked several U-mates about facebook, and some of them have accounts!
Meeting new friends is amazing, but more amazing thing is meeting old friends which haven't meet frequently or even "disappeared" for a long time.
Facebook is such kind of thing, yes, really amazing.
http://facebook.com/

2007/09/07

New game - Brain Age 2

Although Brain Age 2 is only a simple IQ training game, it is very addictive and creative, so in order to show respects to nintendo game team, I bought this game tonight.

New computer speakers

In order to get my computer speakers to office for some music, I need to buy new speakers for home use, after some selection, and due to the fact that the primary user is my parents, I cannot buy too difficult and too powerful ones, so finally I got a pair of small ball shaped USB powered speakers, my mum likes it so much!





2007/09/06

Compiz fusion 0.5.2

Nice effects, include both Mac-like and Vista-like.
Actually the "Vista-like" effects come earlier than real Vista.

Cube effect



Expo effect



Expose effect



Slide effect

New iPod

Tonight apple announced new iPod shuffle and iPod nano.
The iPod shuffle only got new colors, not much difference.



The iPod nano became "fatty", a lot shorter and thinner but looks fat.
Now comes with 3 games, a larger and brighter screen and video support.



Original iPod changed to iPod classic, with a metallic look and feel,
got new 160GB model selling at 80GB price.



And finally, a new product!!
iPod touch!! Same form factor with iPhone.

2007/09/04

Computer desk in office

Today I've changed my monitor from an old CRT to a better LCD monitor.
The space increased a lot, so happy.



2007/09/03

My Motherboard

Finally fixed my P4i45GV motherboard's VGA problem, Linux crashes before when I inserted a NVidia AGP display adapter into it, some people said we need to disable intel AGP module by recompiling kernel or "blacklist" it in hotplug. I tried blacklist some time before but failed.
Last night I read more about this issue and tried to add blacklist to module.conf, it worked! Now I am using NVidia GeForce 4MX 440, although not powerful but still can do some funny thing with it.

Another problem is that I cannot use firewire hard disk with 1394 adapter, don't know why, maybe the adapter has problem, I have removed the adapter temporarily.

2007/09/02

Relaxing weekend

No cycling, no shopping, no working, no studying, only play, eat and sleep at home, very relaxing weekend.
And I will have annual leave next thursday and friday, should be a good rest for me.