The Wahyudiharto's Blog

Thousands of blog writers has been reviewing about how succeeded they were after installing Fedora 13 on their various machine. Anyway, I will not write the same things in this article, sorry. As a runner distro – after Ubuntu at first as listed on distrowatch.com-, Goddard seems to be a more human friendly or might become a future Linux desktop. Don't worry, this is my judgment – as far as I'm concerned after I've proofed my self on my Aspire One AOA 150. It's signed by the whole parts of hardware which had been detected correctly by the kernel without using any tweak or hack. Well, this is not happened even when I using Fedora 10 a years ago.

I still loved Fedora - than Ubuntu – because it's a derivative from the ancestor - Red Hat. However, now my favorite desktop manager has moved to Gnome from KDE. In my opinion, Gnome offering a simple desktop, fast, light & weight than latest KDE. Again, this is relative judgment. But one thing for sure, most users like their desktop because of it's appearance. For example, many users moved to Windows Se7en because of it's skin (but it doesn't works for me since I still using XP for some works & games).

Mac4Lin on Fedora 13
I beat that workers who live with computer (like me, red) is always keep the desktop as useful & unique personalized as it can be. Talking about personalizing desktop – especially on Gnome – lots of themes available to apply. After a day busy on completing package I need – including enabling 3D compiz, now comes a time to personalize my desktop. There's no beautiful desktop as much as Mac OS X did – it remained my using it on my 12” Travelmate. Fortunately, a group of peoples out there has done their job to provide a transformation pack named Mac4Lin project. The goal is to make Linux desktop as closer look as OS X did.

Try to reach the package over this link & following the how to steps. In short, perhaps your desktop maybe similar to mine now.



The package complete with Mac theme, desktop background & icons. And it's absolutely suitable for Gnome, except the GDM which isn't changeable yet (even I had tried to tweak it with Ailurus or GDM2Setup for Ubuntu). Anyway, you can set it to auto-login mode so that it wouldn't display GDM login window anymore. Look at snapshot below, the left side of the screen displaying Nautilus (which is similar to Mac file browser) while the right side is Firefox (with extra add-ons & themes, will make much close to Safari browser appearance).



On the bottom of the screen, laid the Avant Window Navigator – A dock similar to Mac desktop. All available in a single package of Mac4Lin transformation pack. All you need to do is follow the instruction, a little yum download & bit of compiling tar balls. After it succeed, I guarantee for your satisfaction. Just try & believe me.

To change Plymouth animation (known as Red Hat Graphical Boot), try to take a look at gnome-look.org or kde-look.org & find one suitable for you. As I've tried, to changed this you need to compiled manually. Please take carefully to do that, once you follow the instruction then your Goddard may be safe.

BURG on Fedora 13
Last but not least is how to modify default GRUB into BURG. Well, a complete hand book I've found on their project website. Like others said that BURG is stand for GRUB, it's a unique name mirrored from GRUB ~ an update model of GRUB bootloader which used high graphic for boot background. I said, this is a revolutionary & pretty cute boot loader than used on Mac or Windows Se7en.

Note that I don't recommended it if you're newbies on Linux since it's totally hand made (manual) but If you dare to do this, than prepare for install all of the dependencies. First, connect to the internet & give below command on terminal:

#sudo yum install autoconf automake bison flex make gcc ruby python gettext-devel freetype-devel

also provide required extra software for the emulated version requires:

#sudo yum install ncurses-devel SDL-devel

To download the source, you need to install bazaar binary package.

#sudo yum install bzr

After it completed, create a folder named burg on your home folder and enter to that folder. While you're on it & for the first time need to downloading the source, from terminal, enter:

#bzr branch lp:burg

Then, let it sync a previously downloaded source tree to the latest version (This still should be run in your burg source directory):

#bzr pull

After each update, you need to regenerate the configuration files by running this command in the same burg source directory:

#./autogen.sh

After that, download themes pack from this link since the original source doesn't include it yet. Those above commands purposed for preparing BURG source code in burg directory on your home folder. Based on the original manual, you should specify BURG compile & install directory. In my experiment, I supply both with different directory, burg_nb for the compilation & burg_install for the target installation. Just follow it & create 2 new directory, then copy all of files from burg directory into burg_nb (except the zipped themes file, we will use it later).

Now enter to burg_nb directory via terminal and get start to compile with commands below:

#$HOME/burg/configure --with-platform=pc --prefix=$HOME/burg_install
#make
#make install

After compilation completed, extract zipped themes pack to folder burg_install. Continuing to create a default configuration file named by burg & save it to $HOME/burg_install/etc/default. Here below is my default burg configuration file:

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR=`lsb_release -i -s 2> /dev/null || echo Debian`
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=""
GRUB_SAVEDEFAULT=true
GRUB_GFXMODE=saved
GRUB_THEME=saved
GRUB_FOLD=saved

Just in case you need a backup, copy burg files to folder /etc/default. Now, tell BURG that you have others OS (eg: Windows) on your machine. To define this, open 40_custom file from $HOME/burg_install/etc/burg.d folder & specify where partition your Windows reside. See my 40_custom modified file below:

#!/bin/sh
exec tail -n +3 $0
# This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries. Simply type the
# menu entries you want to add after this comment. Be careful not to change
# the 'exec tail' line above.
#

menuentry "Acer Recovery" --class windows --class os {
insmod ntfs
set root='(hd0,1)'
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 3ab0e580b0e542cd
chainloader +1
}

menuentry "Se7en" --class windows --class os {
insmod ntfs
set root='(hd0,2)'
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 3ab0e580b0e542cd
chainloader +1
}

As you can see on my example above (first partition contains Acer recovery partition & followed by Windows partition), please make an appropriate to your partition machine. Now, as root, install it to MBR so that it will take effect on the next boot:

#sudo $HOME/burg_install/sbin/burg-install /dev/sda
#sudo $HOME/burg_install/sbin/burg-mkconfig -o /boot/burg/burg.cfg

Then last, copy the extracted themes pack into /boot/burg. To check & re-check, make sure that you have already directory structure like mine below (or repeat from first step if it not the same):



Please note that users directory on picture above is your home directory. If there's no error reported after both commands above resulted, you may safely reboot your machine & get ready to see a changes.



See that, now GRUB has disappear replaced by BURG bootloader interface. To change themes, press “T” keyboard or “F3” to change the screen resolution or you can do some tweaks from configuration files modification (icons or backdround image) by reading the manual. Now, I have my favorite OS on my netbook, but I don't know how long it can stand. As the final words from this current article, I order to Fedora developer to enable GDM setup anymore (like previous GDM version) & add BURG as default bootloader on future release of Fedora. Please, share your own experience on Goddard on below comments box before leaving this blog. Thanks for passing by.

Labels: Acer Aspire One, Acer TravelMate, Fedora, Linux, Mac OSX86, Open Solaris, Ubuntu

It's been a long while I had Open Solaris 2008.11 on my Acer Aspire One ~ it's particularly 2nd generation model AOA150 got from Google with 8.9” screen & 120 GB hard drive. I think it's enough to play through with Open Solaris & need to try to get back to Fedora which I passed it for last 5 major version.

Now, I have Goddard – a codename of Fedora 13 – iso & a brand new Western Digital Passport (an external hard drive with 320 GB capacity) I bought from bhinneka.com. Since I don’t have an external optical drive, I always used USB mass storage to installing OS on my netbook. This time, I'd like to try my external 320 GB hard drive as the iso master installation rather than my 8 GB USB.

At first, I had unboxing the hard drive & let it parted with a free partition kit named by EASEUS Partition Master 6.1.1 Home Edition. After that, I'll have 4 partitions on it. See it on partition table illustration below:



On that table, I'm planning to store out my data into partition #2, #3 & #4 – so we can ignore it from now. Let focus on first red partition table (10 GB) which I prepared for Fedora 13 iso with FAT32 partition type. Like usual, I also use Fedora LiveUSB Creator to make USB flash disk boot-able. I thought that it would be succeed either on USB external hard drive but it wasn't!



On picture above, none of drive letters shows up on Target Device combo. Why was that happened? Explained on a FAQ WIKI pages, that Windows sometime detects certain drives as NOT being removable devices – perhaps a different device class between USB Mass Storage & USB Removable Drive. But with a clue on that, that kit can force the 1st mode. Don't run it from double click icon, just open up a DOS command prompt on active directory where that software placed & type:

liveusb-creator.exe --force X:

where X refer to your drive letter on your external hard drive. Look at the picture below, i used G: as the target partition. Hit enter on the prompt window & vice versa... the Fedora LiveUSB Creator now shows the G: drive letter.



As soon as this way succeed, i then continue to the rest of process which was #1) burning iso to the external drive (X:)



#2) copying also the iso to X: #3) and last, stand by for the first reboot to boot to the external drive from BIOS. Once it booted smoothly, you ain't have no trouble for more. Just follow the on screen wizard to complete your Fedora 13 a.k.a Goddard installation or you can found the manual documentation elsewhere over the internet. I'll be back for the next part of Goddard; the complete Mac OS X Gnome themes until change GRUB into BURG boot loader. Stay tune on this channel...

Labels: Acer Aspire One, Acer TravelMate, Fedora, Linux, Mac OSX86, Open Solaris, Ubuntu

On this series article of Aspire One (A110) – at least at current month continuously, I’d like to share you about my experience installing Fedora 7 guest on Windows XP Home host with VirtualBox. This might be a different one since I hadn’t tried before, moreover on netbook class. By the chance, I need to test about the virtualization performance on Atom processor running Linux system simultaneously. If you’d like to take a try your self, you must prepare VirtualBox software (I used 1.4.0 or download latest here), Fedora 7 ISO DVD (or others Linux image) and Nero ImageDrive (or your any virtual CD favorite application).

First, load the ISO image with virtual CD drive tools (I used Nero to load the ISO image).



Run VirtualBox & prepare the virtual hardware environments. In my test, I setting up with 384MB of RAM & 3GB fixed size of virtual hard disk.



Boot the machine & it will shows default welcome splash. Select the first menu; Install or upgrade an existing system.



Follow the on-screen wizard until you meet with hard drive partitioning window. Select Create custom layout & continue to Next button.



Divide the 3GB virtual hard disk with each configuration; root system (ext3) with 2753MB & swap file with 314MB or depends on your custom size.



As it default, leave the GRUB boot loader to be installed on this virtual hard disk. Click Next to continue.



Obviously, the network interface has been detected as Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] 79c970 [PCnet32 LANCE]. Give the interface with manual configuration IP address & similar with the host network class (I used 192.168.1.1 to host & 192.168.1.12 to guest).



Select your appropriate software with Customize now radio button or simply leave with it’s default selection value.



Installing files then established…



During this, the load of CPU usage was high. Every single task on host OS may decrease the speed of installing process.



Approximately, it took about 1:20 hours until the installation completed with office packages installed. Next, click Reboot button. Note that, the ISO image will ejected automatically during this screen.



System will now restarted, the live GRUB boot also appears.



Loading progress established with (very) low speed.



The great was, 2nd device – which was sound card – had recognized as 82801AA AC97 Audio Controller & currently using snd-intel8x0 module. A sound test clearly hear out from the speaker.



I tried to test the network connection (host with 192.168.1.1 and guest IP 192.168.1.12) & both of it was successfully responding. I pinging out guest from host, while I made an attempt to load the host share drives from guest OS.



Conclusion
Somehow, running Fedora 7 with VirtualBox on this netbook feels the same with running exactly Fedora 7 on Pentium III physically machine with 256MB of RAM. Everything has working but with slow-moving around. However, with all weaknesses, still I need this virtualization to test my web based application project on different OS (for example: Linux act as client) & browser capability environments.

Labels: Acer Aspire One, Fedora, Linux, VirtualBox

Actually, this current article has many header titles. As I succeeded uncover several hidden things behind my Aspire One during the installation of Fedora 7. But the great was, it’ll describe how to make Fedora 7 USB boot setup and also revealing what is under the 1st partition of the Aspire One hard drive - the recovery partition indeed. Why I choose Fedora 7 because I already loved it so much, a better performance, quite complete applications including 3rd party additional tools and of course a stable operating system kernel.

What you need to do this is a Fedora 7 boot disk image, an idle USB flash disk at least with 32MB capacity, Fedora 7 ISO DVD image and also a Linux computer system for preparing of USB boot. Anyway, disk partitioning tools such as Partition Magic might be required to restructuring the Aspire One hard drive partition under Windows.

Install disk partitioning tool if you don’t have any dedicated partition for Linux. At minimal, it need 2 system partitions; the root system & swap space. The size is up to you, but in my experiences, 7GB root partition & 500MB swap space was more than enough (see green box on picture below). Anyway, a red box on image referring the Acer recovery partition. This partition is unique. Somehow, we can’t see it from Windows Explorer even that it has been on FAT16 file system. You even can’t reach it from GHOST tool which I though it can. So, it makes me so suppressed & would like to see it physically from Linux.



Back to topic again, after you prepared the partition, put Fedora 7 ISO image on any kind partition with FAT32 file system, so that it readable from Fedora 7 setup. In my experiences, I put it on 2nd partition (drive D under VBOX directory ~ D:\VBOX). Next, it’s time to create the bootable USB disk. Download disk image from this link & extract it on your existing Linux system. Type the command below on current path in terminal where you extract the image.

$ dd if=diskboot.img of=/dev/sdax

The device /dev/sdax refer to your USB flash disk, so make an appropriate for your situation. If nothing goes wrong, now you’re ready to boot the flash drive. Change boot selections from F12 shortcut after you restart the computer. Press Enter to continue.



Then, a welcome screen will appear. Select first menu to begin the installation process. Continue the setup wizard until it asking the installation method screen.



On this chance, simply select Hard drive option then click OK to continue.



Next, the wizard will asking what partition and directory on selected partition hold the image for Fedora 7. On my example, select /dev/sda5 and type VBOX (without the ISO file name) which refer to directory holding image. Click OK again to continue.



The installation will begin. Follow the rest wizard just like the same as you install in normal condition until it completely finished. Now, you have Fedora 7 inside your Aspire One (dual boot with default Windows XP Home). By the way, did you remember when I told you about Acer recovery partition above? Check it out from file explorer (e.g.: Konqueror) after you manually mounting it, you can see the files physically & backup it to safe place.



To gain more additional 5GB space, you can delete it or merge this 1st partition from Windows Explorer to another existing partition using Partition Magic. Be careful, the change of partitions table might caused your Fedora 7 could not boot properly anymore.

Labels: Acer Aspire One, Fedora, Linux, USB Install

Aspire One was typically netbook released from Acer. The first series – the A110 which released in the middle of the year - was a revolutionary product intended to intercept the existing of Asus EEE PC & HP MiniNote. The plus was the higher hardware specification (the first Atom processor built-in on netbook class) & lower price, but with the minus of 8GB SSD & Linux OS. It was worthless, since the used of Linux significantly decrease the whole price. Somehow, the SSD & Linux just life in harmony, the performance is great & all devices are well known recognized. These things still makes me amazed.

Anyway, for some customers, the uses of Linux just limit their use. Nothing can be done except playing internet, working with several office applications, manage a bit files & having few of funs. Even the user interface looks weird for them (which - some of - familiarly with Windows GUI). Well of course, there’s a way to solve it with upgrading the OS to Windows XP. Thanks to my boss for borrowing his Aspire One as the unit test for this article.



Let assume that you have successfully made a Windows XP setup from USB Flash Disk (UFD). Now, it’s time to practice your work. First, plug-in the UFD & turn on your Aspire One. Press F12 to make USB boot selection. If your UFD is ok then you will see boot menu on the screen. Select menu #1 as you have to prepare the Windows installation. Follow the on-screen wizard just like common XP setup until you face the hard drive preparation.



Note that your existing Aspire One has 2 partitions in a single 8GB SSD; 6.6GB with Linux file system & 1GB of Linux swap file. That’s why that both partitions shown as Unknown & not well recognized from Windows XP setup. The U: drive refer to UFD, so don’t bother with it. What you need to do is delete the first partition, re-create & formatting it with NTFS file system. Anyway, a quick format is fine. After you do so, simply follow the copying progress.



After the copying files is complete, the system will now reboot for the first time. Still plug-in the UFD, select menu #2 (GUI installation) after boot USB established. The installation will now continue in GUI mode.



This time, you need more than minutes to complete the 2nd stage of installation since the Aspire One SSD performance running on Windows is not much better than Linux. So, I suggest you to make a cup of coffee & having relax with 2 or 3 cigarettes.



After it completed, the 3rd reboot continue & the last phase of installation will run. Now, you will see the first Windows XP boot logo but still, the SSD seems work too hard after boot process. The busy led indicators always on, indicating that read & write process established at low speed. Never mind, just wait until to the rest of process.



And here we go, the desktop are now turn up after a long waiting. Everything seems to be normal, but the performance of the SSD is not increasing at all.



On my experience, I checked out the SSD partition with Partition Magic tools & here below the summary.



SSD Tweaking
To get more space, I merged the 2nd partition into 1st partition. So that the SSD now only have a single partition. It’s not too bad to have 4GB free space for others application installation. By the way, many peoples talk about the lack of SSD performance issue on Aspire One. In a quite moment, I only see & apply 3 solutions for this. The first solution required a change on a key in registry. This purposed is to disabled the memory management prefetch. Just pointing to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\PrefetchParameters & change the value data to 0 (zero).



Next, you must convert the NTFS file system to FAT32. For this, you need 3rd party application such as Partition Magic. The last tricks is just disabled the D2D Recovery in BIOS options. Even the speed now has increasing significantly after above tricks, but I though the SSD read & write speed still working under it’s standard percentage. However, for single small task processing in this A105 series, it’s just acceptable. Have a great upgrading.

Labels: Acer Aspire One, Fedora, Linux, My Share, My Tricks

Get Synced! A really nice slogan offered by KMobileTools, a GPL mobile phone software dedicated for Linux. It's a Nokia Phone Suite similar which handling common operations between computer & mobile phone devices such as read, write, sending SMS, address book synchronizing & more features included. I found this tool since I got big mark question with my previous article (Bluetooth Handling Comparison Between Macintosh & Linux), but at lasts, I'm satisfy enough - the Bluetooth connection is rock!

You may get the tarball from it's download page & like as is usual - whether you like or not - you have to compile it first. Anyway, the installation from the source was pretty simple. Loud & clear as is described from the readme file. Just need 3 commands run from the package active directory;

#./configure
#make
#make install

The interface is so convince, it contain a window with a few menu & links. Take a part to Add a new mobile phone devices link.



Then, the Engine Selection window appear. Pick AT Engine as default choice & continue to Next button.



From this point, prepare to activate Bluetooth from your mobile phone devices. Select I want to connect with my mobile phone using Bluetooth & press Bluetooth Pairing Wizard button.




When the wizard find a device, it will show the name & address in the list box available. Click Start Searching if it's not ready yet. Otherwise, select a device & click Next button.



A Searching window shows up finding compatible services from the devices.



The wizard will try to retrieve the available services from the mobile devices from Search Services button. You may select one service as you desired to have. Continue to Next button.



Click Finish button to save the configuration wizard. You may repeat steps above to get another services or you can add it manually by editing the configuration file /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf.



Get a device pairing by selecting Bluetooth connection checkbox. Leave initialization string as listed as default, then continue to Next button.



A balloon tips in tray appear requesting you to click to open passkey entry dialog.



It will show Authentication request window asking passkey for authentication to your mobile devices.



When it successfully paired, a balloon tips comes up again telling you that a bonding has just created.



Now, the device information retrieved. It will show you the device manufacturer, model, software revision version & also IMEI number.



From the Various Options window, you may select phonebook memory sources. Look that the SMS center number will filled automatically.



Last, set the connection name:



When it already connected, a Device Manager window will said that the device are loaded.



And you're done. The KmobileTools main window changes with new information.



Clicking on device name will show you with a phone overview. It contains number of SMS, contact names & also battery & signal status!



Let's check the phonebook, is your contact names already there?



Now, enter the SMS session. find a number with Browse button & select a name...



Enter a message & click Send button. Great tools ha?



Anyway, this tool is great as it name. The ease of installation & use makes me give a big two thumbs up for the developer teams. Hope that this kit will available as default repository for future universal Linux release, replacing Pilot application for Palm which has small number than common mobile phone user (CMIIW). FYI, this KMobileTools reviewed from Fedora 7 (using KDE 3.5.x).

Labels: Bluetooth, Fedora, Linux