Archive for the 'Software' Category

Wordpress MU vs MovableType

Published
by
cnu
on July 24, 2008
in Blogial and Software
. 1 Comment

For almost one week I have been setting up Blogial Networks and have played around with Wordpress mu. I decided to use WPMU after trying out MovableType. I created a MT blog for FSLog and imported all the contents into it. With just about 350 posts, it created so many files for various views - single post, monthly archive, yearly archive, category view, etc. In total it took about 25 MB for all these files for just one blog.

Here are some of the basic reasons for not choosing MT and using WPMU:

  • MT is huge. The zip file costs about 5MB and extracting it gets a 21MB monster out. Whereas WPMU is only 1.5MB - 6MB when extracted.
  • Ease of use - during installation and for creating post.
  • MovableType needs rebuilding so many files for every update to a single post. Missed out a word there, save it and republish the entire blog. This is unacceptable for a blog network which wants even technologically challenged people to blog. Not many would understand the republishing process (unless they are the old blogger type). I agree that plain html files are blazingly faster than executing more than 30 SQL queries for every request, but wp-cache does a great job in caching the rendered HTML pages in wordpress.
  • Lot of plugins written in PHP. I can get my hands dirty with the plugins if I want to as I have seen and understood the Wordpress architecture more than MT’s.

Regarding the last point, I would be running a series of posts about the various plugins that we use here are Blogial and the problems and incompatibilities we faced while installing it in WPMU.

Opensolaris and Ubuntu Dual boot

Published
by
cnu
on July 13, 2008
in Distribution, Software and Tutorial
. 1 Comment

Open Solaris LogoYesterday I decided to try out the live cd of Opensolaris 2008.05 and decided to install it on my laptop after playing around with it for some time. The install process was painfully slow, but was very easy. If you already had Ubuntu (or any other OS for that matter), then OpenSolaris’s Grub menu would not have autodetected the other OS like Ubuntu does. There would be only one single entry for Open Solaris.

Ubuntu logoI wanted my Ubuntu back and so searched the web for info regarding this and found one. He has given steps to first install Solaris and then Ubuntu, but this holds true the other way round too.

You would need the desktop live CD of Ubuntu for this, so that you can recover Ubuntu’s grub.

  1. After booting to Ubuntu Live system, open up the terminal and type sudo grub.
  2. You will get a grub prompt - here type 
    find /boot/grub/stage1
  3. Use this information to set the root device (this may be different for you) 
    root (hd0,0)
  4. Then install grub 
    setup (hd0)
  5. And quit

This would get back the Ubuntu’s old grub, but now you have to make an entry for OpenSolaris.

Edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file and add this new entry at the bottom

title	Open Solaris
root	(hd0,1)
chainloader	+1
makeactive
boot

This would enable you to boot to Open Solaris too now. There were problems with my Atheros drivers as usual and I have to find a way to install the madwifi drivers as I did on my Ubuntu. If anyone got wifi working on Acer Aspire 5050 with OpenSolaris, please do leave a comment here.

Feedly - social, magazine like start page for firefox

Published
by
cnu
on June 27, 2008
in Software and Tips and Tricks
. 2 Comments

Today I found this excellent firefox addon called feedly - which calls itself as a more social and magazine-like start page for firefox. I see this as a great RSS feed reader which is integrated with Google reader, twitter and other social thingies.

This is very well integrated with Google reader that any feeds you subscribe here automatically is reflected in Google reader. Reading a post here marks the post as read in Google reader.

You can recommend, tweet and annotate articles which enables your friends to know what you are doing with your feeds. One important feature is allowing the user to view the post from the site directly in an IFrame. So, I can comment on a post without leaving my feed reader.

They also have a feedly API which lets website owners to write custom views for their content. They also have a plan to allow the owners to better design ads for displaying in their feedly UI.

Overall this is a nice way to read my feeds and I think I am going to try this one for some days. It is available as a free Firefox extension and you can install it by going to the feedly website.

Update: They even have got it integrated with del.icio.us.

Setting up a local DNS Cache

Published
by
cnu
on December 15, 2007
in Software and Tutorial
. 3 Comments

Whenever you type in a website, the domain name is converted to the IP address and sends the request to the machine. You can have a DNS cache which will speed up the domain name resolving time. I get a boost up of almost 250ms.

You just have to install a package called dnsmasq.

First install it by running (you need to enable the Universe repository)

$sudo apt-get install dnsmasq

Then, open this file /etc/dnsmasq.conf and uncomment(remove the #) the line listen-address=127.0.0.1

After that edit /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf and search for a line prepend domain-name-servers 127.0.0.1; and uncomment it. What this does is, whenever you get a new dhcp lease, the dhcp3 client tool on your computer gets the new lease and updates the /etc/resolv.conf file with the right values for the DNS server.

Using the prepend option, we make sure that 127.0.0.1 appears before the other DNS servers. So, if the details of a domain are already in the cache, it retrieves it fast - else it looks for the other DNS servers.

Now open /etc/resolv.conf and you can see that it doesn’t have 127.0.0.1 now.

search yourisp.com
nameserver 127.0.0.1
nameserver 192.168.1.1

The last line may be different for you. I have a router which is configured to use OpenDNS, so my entry points to it.

To check whether the cache really works, execute the following command.

$dig google.com

You will get something like ;; Query time: 252 msec

Executing the command again will get you ;; Query time: 1 msec.

Congrats, you have saved about 250msec by caching the DNS.

Google Desktop for linux

Published
by
cnu
on June 28, 2007
in News and Software
. 8 Comments

Google has brought another app over to linux. Google Desktop which is brings the power of Google search to your personal files, is now available for linux. It is really nice to see that it doesn’t run on a emulated layer(wine) like picasa or maps instead requires glibc 2.3.2+, gtk+ 2.2.0+.

Google Desktop Screenshot

Google Desktop for linux has various features like:

  • Quick Search box: Just press ctrl twice and you get the quick search box.
  • Search your Gmail and web history: Allows you to search your email and history even if you are offline as the index is stored on your computer
  • Many file types: Searches your Gmail, text, source code, PDF, postscript, html, Thunderbird mail, OO.o documents, images, music, man and info pages, files and folder names. Phew!
  • Familiar results: The search result is same as your regular Google search result
  • Smart indexing: Indexes the files automatically
  • Google integration: If you search for something on the web, it will show related information present on your harddisk too
  • File Versioning: Creates cached copies(snapshots) of your files - so you can get previous versions of files or even accidentally deleted data (now someone must complain about it)
  • Multi-Language support: Supports multiple languages based on the language setting.

You can download Google Desktop for linux .deb / .rpm or there are information which gives clear steps to install on your favourite distro.

Ubuntu Eyecandy Repository

Published
by
cnu
on June 27, 2007
in Distribution, Software and Tips and Tricks
. 1 Comment

If you want to use the latest snapshot of Beryl, Compiz, OpenCompositing Compiz Tools and Plugins, Emerald, kiba-dock on your Ubuntu Feisty, then you should add Treviño’s repositories. Once you add these repositories, you can install them by using apt-get.

Edit your /etc/apt/sources.list file and add the following to it.

deb http://download.tuxfamily.org/3v1deb feisty eyecandy

deb-src http://download.tuxfamily.org/3v1deb feisty eyecandy

After you do that, update your packages and then install your required package.

Record Screencasts with recordmyDesktop

Published
by
cnu
on June 23, 2007
in Software and Tips and Tricks
. 0 Comments

recordMyDesktop logoRecording screencasts in Linux was a difficult problem faced by many users. recordmyDesktop is a command line tool to record screencasts and it has a GTK and a qt based frontend to make it easy for newbies. RecordMyDesktop can be tweaked to your hearts content by changing the sound and video quality, frames captured per second, mouse cursor style, compression, and whether to record the current window or the entire desktop.

Ubuntu users can install recordMyDesktop and gtk-recordMyDesktop with:

sudo apt-get install recordmydesktop gtk-recordmydesktop

Other distro users too can use their package management tool to install it.

Install Emacs Snapshot on Ubuntu Feisty

Published
by
cnu
on June 21, 2007
in Software and Tutorial
. 2 Comments

GNU Emacs logoI am a fan of GNU Emacs, the second most popular programmers’ editor (after vi) and was till now using the old Emacs 21 version which doesn’t have great font. But now Emacs has a XFont backend which makes possible to use good looking fonts, like Bitstream Vera Sans Mono. I wanted to install this on my Ubuntu Fiesty and managed to do it with the emacs-snapshot packages by Alexandre Vassalotti.

Emacs Snapshot screenshot
Here is how you too can install Emacs Snapshot on your Ubuntu.

  1. First add the following lines to your /etc/sources.list file 
    deb http://debs.peadrop.com feisty backports

deb-src http://debs.peadrop.com feisty backports
  2. Then add the GPG key to the key database. 
    wget --quiet http://debs.peadrop.com/DD385D79.gpg -O - | sudo apt-key add -
  3. Then update and install the following packages. These are only for the 32bit version of Ubuntu. 
    sudo aptitude update

sudo aptitude install emacs-snapshot-gtk emacs-snapshot-el
  4. Then you have to specify which font you want to use in the Xresources file. 
    echo "Emacs.font: Monospace-10" >> ~/.Xresources
xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources

This will do the magic and now you can enjoy the cool looking emacs. And also thank Alexandre Vassalotti for the nice packages.

Install Beryl on Feisty and Nvidia

Published
by
cnu
on June 15, 2007
in Software and Tutorial
. 3 Comments

Beryl LogoInstalling Beryl (the cool 3D desktop videos you see on youtube) in Feisty is super easy now. This is made possible because of the restricted drivers manager with which you can install non-free drivers for NVidia cards easily. Follow these instructions and you can easily have a cool looking Ubuntu desktop.

  1. First update your system by typing in the terminal
    $ sudo apt-get update
    $ sudo apt-get upgrade
  2. Then you need to add a repository to your sources.list file.
    Type $ gksudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
    Add this line to the end of the file and save it. deb http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org feisty main
  3. Then type this in your terminal
    $ wget http://ubuntu.beryl-project.org/root@lupine.me.uk.gpg -O- | sudo apt-key add -
  4. Then update your system.
    $ sudo apt-get update
  5. Install the latest Nvidia drivers
    $ sudo apt-get install nvidia-glx
    $ sudo nvidia-xconfig --add-argb-glx-visuals --composite
  6. Restart your X by pressing ctrl+alt+backspace
  7. Install Beryl and emerald themes
    $ sudo apt-get install beryl emerald-themes beryl-manager
  8. You can now run beryl by typing beryl-manager in the run application box by pressing alt+f2
  9. To make beryl start automatically every time you login,
    goto System -> Preferences -> Sessions
    In Startup Programs -> New add beryl-manager.

Movable Type goes open

Published
by
cnu
on June 6, 2007
in Software
. 0 Comments

Movable TypeMovable Type, the most popular installable platform written in perl has decided to go open source. Wordpress stole most of the popularity and fame because it is open sourced and has a huge community behind it. Movable Type has also decided to enjoy the benifits of open sourced software and announced the open source project along with the launch of the MT 4 Beta.

Movable Type Open Source, or MTOS, is the open source project that will consist of a GPL-licensed version of Movable Type 4.0, to be released in Q3 2007, and resources for the already large community of Movable Type developers, hosted at www.movabletype.org/opensource. Also the website states that they wouldn’t be abandoning the commericial licensed version of the software.

It is good to see a solid blogging platform come out into the public with the source code. You can download the beta version of MT4 to try the new features. The website says that it is easy to install and get started, which was a problem with the previous versions.