planetyazid

Google Earth 7 for openSUSE 13.1

2014-03-16T11:12:00.000+08:00

It has been for a quite some time I haven't updated the blog, guess what, blamed the social network :D

Just to share with Google Earth fans out there, we'll find that panoramio images viewer does not working in openSUSE. But there is a workaround how to get back the working panoramio. This is however workable to my current DE, which is Gnome 3.10 on openSUSE 13.1. How it does to KDE is not to my knowledge how good it would be, please advise me.

Get your big blue globe from here http://www.google.com/earth/download/ge/agree.html

Installed it as usual by zypper. Now if we check it, Google Earth is actually running but panoramio failed to display any images on it.

There are few things we need to installed first, they are libfreeimage3, libqt4-x11, libqt4, libQtWebKit4, libqt4-devel and gcc-c++.

libfreeimage3 however obtainable only from the games repo, before we proceed with the installation we need to add the repo from the YaST2, check to enable the Games repo from the Community Repositories or via zypper as below
All as root:-
zypper ar -f http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/games/openSUSE_13.1/ games

Now run:-

zypper in libfreeimage3 libqt4-x11 libqt4 libQtWebKit4 libqt4-devel gcc-c++
Please remember prior to these there are tons of other libraries (automatically) that need to be installed too.

Upon successful installation, navigate to and make new directory to any names preferred, but I am going to name it as bundled-qtlib:-
cd /opt/google/earth/free
mkdir bundled-qtlib

Move 4 original libraries that started with libQT into bundled-qtlib:-
mv libQt* bundled-qtlib/

Do not run Google Earth first as it will produced an error, we need to create a simple script in gedit as below:-
/* amirpli 2013/11/28 */
#include
extern "C" {
        int _Z34QBasicAtomicInt_fetchAndAddOrderedPVii(QAtomicInt *a, int b) {
                return a->fetchAndAddOrdered(b);
        }
}

Rename and save it as baifaao.cpp Alternatively it could be to other names too, but I prefer to follow exactly to the original author suggestion.

Which in case the baifaao.cpp created in /home, we need to copy it to the directory in /opt/google/earth/free

cp baifaao.cpp /opt/google/earth/free

Navigate ourself into /opt/google/earth/free as we need to compile and create the sym library

gcc -I/usr/include -O3 -fPIC --shared baifaao.cpp -o baifaao.so
We'll see a new baifaao.so will be created inside the directory.

Almost there, but we need to insert a line of instruction in googleearth. This can be done via gnomesu gedit. However some may encounter error that could lead to freeze the desktop. It would be suggested to run via alt+f2 and execute the gnomesu gedit from there.

In gnomesu gedit, navigate to googleearth in /opt/google/earth/free (Note, it is a single googleearth, not mistakenly google-earth or googleearth.bin). Insert this line (before LD_LIBRARY_PATH:)
export LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib64/libfreeimage.so.3:/opt/google/earth/free/baifaao.so

Here's the snapshot of mine:-

Now run Google Earth, Panoramio images preview should be working after these workaround, here's mine:-

This workaround is not created by me, full credit to be given to amrpli as his post could be read in Google Group and openSUSE forum respectively. I am rewrite these just make it simplified to understand to openSUSE users. Any problem arise should be post to openSUSE forum.

Links:-
http://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/485283-Google-Earth-7
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/earth/_h4t6SpY_II[1-25-false]

Printing quality of CUPS 1.5 in openSUSE 12.1

2011-12-11T14:15:00.001+08:00

This is one of the reasons I am leaving openSUSE 12.1 and return back to 11.4, due to terrible printout quality in 12.1. The printer used is Brother DCP-J125. The print test pages are as below.

CUPS 1.5 in openSUSE 12.1

CUPS 1.4 in openSUSE 11.4

To summarized all the tests, to conclude based on my observation that:-

Bad quality printout either in Gnome 3.2 or KDE 4.7 (openSUSE 12.1, kernel 3.x) that run on CUPS 1.5.
Normal quality printing either in Gnome 3.2, KDE 4.6 and 4.7.3 (openSUSE 11.4, kernel 2.6.x) that run on CUPS 1.4.
Normal quality printing in Tumbleweed based on (openSUSE 11.4, kernel 3.x) that run on CUPS 1.4

The tests been done several times, from the fresh installed system of openSUSE 11.4 and 12.1, not to mention the wasteful of A4 papers. Is the newer CUPS driver the culprit?

BB Mini snek untuk dijual

2011-11-14T20:03:00.001+08:00

BB, Not a broadband nor the Blackberry. BB ini sebenarnya merujuk pada kuih batang buruk, tetapi dengan adunan yang telah ditambah suai dengan saiz yg lebih kecil, rasa yang enak dan rangup sangat sesuai untuk dimakan seisi keluarga, tak lagi hanya dimakan ketika hari-hari perayaan sahaja.

Penyediaan secara hygenik, bahan-bahan utama dibuat dari kulit popia yg digoreng rangup berserta dengan tepung bijirin lainnya. Dibungkus dalam pek plastik dalam berat bersih 500gm.

Harga bagi setiap pek 500gm RM13.00
Pembungkusan (kotak akan disediakan) dan penghantaran melalui pos laju sila tambah RM5.00, pembelian dalam kuantiti yang lebih banyak boleh diberikan potongan harga.

Sekiranya anda berminat untuk membuat tempahan, sila email atau gtalk saya di yazidrus at gmail atau call/SMS saya di 0 1 3 - 7 9 2 0 4 4 6 - Yazid.

Syarat-syarat pengeposan:-

Sila bank-in kan ke dalam Maybank akaun, dan sertakan salinan bank-in slip ke dalam gmail attachment sebagai bukti pembayaran telah dibuat. Nyatakan nama penuh pembeli, alamat yang jelas (PO Box tidak diterima) serta No telefon yg senang untuk dihubungi. Tracking No akan diberikan selepas pengiriman dilakukan.
Berikan tempoh beberapa hari bekerja untuk proses pembuatan dan pengiriman sebab bahan hanya akan dimasak mengikut tempahan untuk menjamin kesegaran produk. Saya tidak menyimpan stok untuk tempoh yang lama.
Saya tidak bertanggung-jawab atas apa-apa yang berlaku masalah semasa pengiriman.

Brother DCP-J125 for my openSUSE

2011-10-07T21:24:00.000+08:00

After few days of wandering how to get this printer and the scanning feature to run, we need to manually install the correct driver for this. As opposed to my previous HP Deskjet F4280, I am almost do nothing as the drivers are all there pre-installed by default, plugged in and play at ease. Too bad this F4280 is a blood sucker, for a black cartridge at least I need 2 of it every month. Fixing a CISS might be a solution, but it could cost me frequent maintenance and spills.

The best solution for CISS currently is for Brother printers as it need not to fix a moving hose. The CISS itself is an enlarged cartridges, so we save from those hose. Now I own one the DCP-J125 complete with the CISS unit, it works in Windows but in openSUSE x86_64?

Get your LPR driver here.

and Cupswrapper driver here.

Scanner driver brscan3 here, remember this model is under brscan3 category and not other brscan.

Scan key tool here.

Install it all via zypper in, some warning of dependencies might pop up for the printer driver installation, let them install anyway by accepting any broken dependencies.

Now the printer and scanner driver should be detected there in YaST, however for scanner we might encounter error and this could be the solution.

Make sure the the device is connected and in terminal run lsusb

yazid@dhcppc0:~> lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0024 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 1d57:0005
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 04f9:0253 Brother Industries, Ltd

As SU

# chmod a+w /dev/bus/usb/002/004

The scanner should be ok now, run the XSane to test it. However this is a temporary solution as we need to run chmod again each time we restart the pc and want to use the scanner again. To make permanent at boot without to chmod again as su, edit the entries in /etc/udev/rules.d/55-libsane.rules.

Before the:-
# The following rule will disable USB autosuspend for the device...

Insert this:-

# Brother scanners
ATTRS{idVendor}=="04f9", ENV{libsane_matched}="yes"

Do carefully look at the "04f9", it could be something else depending on models. However the value can be obtained from lsusb command as above. Save it and restart the box.

TP-Link TD-W8901G port forwarding

2011-09-17T01:39:00.001+08:00

Just got mine an extra TP-Link wireless router model TD-W8901G, substituting my TM's D-Link DSL 2640B This is a simple configuration on how to enable the port forwarding for this model. This tutorial is for openSUSE, however I am yet to try in Windows.

Here it goes, from your browser type and enter the famous 192.168.1.1 The default user ID password is admin / admin. Go to Advanced Setup and choose NAT. From the Virtual Circuit take the up and running PVC. The working PVC should based from VPI=0 and VCI=35, in my case the active PVC is no 2. Click the Virtual Server and we'll get a table of settings.

From there we need to create 2 rules as belows:-
Rules no 1

Application, choose HTTP_server
Protocol, TCP
Start Port, 50000 (or any other free designated port)
End Port, 50001 (or any other free designated port)
Local IP Address, 192.168.1.100 (default IP for this model)

or # ifconfig in terminal should tell us the exact IP to be used.

Now create Rules no 2, all the above values to be follow except the Protocol, UDP is to be used. Save it all.

Here is the snapshot of the settings in NAT.

Now, open YaST under the Security and Users click the Firewall. At the right list of menu, open the Allowed Services and Advanced. Do look at the snapshot above, the port no must be the same in NAT. Between the range of 50000 and 50001 either one could be used.

Now to check if the designated port is open successfully for our torrents, any torrent clients can do the checking. However due to messy interface of KTorrent I am using Transmission instead, which is much simpler and lighter.

Downloading Transmission via zypper
# zypper in transmission and transmission-qt or gtk2 depending on what DE we are using.

From the Transmssion's menu, click edit > Preferences > Network. Enter the Port No 50000 or 50001 and press the Test Port button. If port is open from the result, now we are good to torrent smoothly. Good luck.

My Google+

2011-08-22T00:17:00.002+08:00

Too much adore to Facebook? why not give Google+ a try? Those who already got one can add me into your circle. Or just ask me to be invited if do not have any.

https://plus.google.com/104324477833182126346/posts

Ditching Julia for LMDE

2010-12-26T11:45:00.002+08:00

Managed to install and run LMDE 64bit, so far so good as I can see. But I don't see any significant improvement between Julia and LMDE 201012, they both share the same issue with my Nvidia 9400GT unable to boot into X due to unknown reasons but the same workaround by adding the nomodest into the kernel parameter. Installing the Nvidia proprietary driver was much easier in Julia. I am trying this LMDE because of the rolling release by them, less hassle by downloading the new iso for each release. By default compiz does not enable automatically for LMDE, but the there is workaround how to enable it. Compiz not a must, but getting one is just a slight advance for a good looking. The most annoying is font rendering in firefox, the only workaround working well for overall font on the desktop but in firefox the ugliness remains. Need further readings to solve that.

Heart disease, a new cause.

2010-12-20T21:58:00.003+08:00

This is maybe a new finding, I just want to add the cause that can lead you to heart disease. We already know that smoking, high blood cholesterol, hypertension and other factors as we can read here to know more.

Any latest and modern health journal should add this, the new cause apart from he above, Windows 7 Starter edition could trigger abnormal heartbeat and disrupt normal emotional. I have experienced many netbooks that run on Starter edition, the slowness in loading caused rapid blood flows all over the nerves of mine.

Therapeutic actions in relieving the symptom are by removing the Starter edition for openSUSE or Linux Mint 10, the speed is just outstanding, able to run compiz with low resources even running it with an Atom processor.

Stay healthy, love your heart.

Jdownloder for my openSUSE 11.3

2010-12-17T22:32:00.004+08:00

I am looking for a good download manager for opensuse, I can see none is in par or almost perfect to any download manager found in Windows which support downloading multiple segments per file. The best and performance closest to the commercial download manager out there which can be find in linux is Jdownloader. Bad for some, no packaging been made for openSUSE, except a installer that need to run by script. No Jdownloader in .rpm can be find it either from Packman or OBS. However there is a repo that is really a savior to me, at least.

Add this URL to your repo http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/pabloon/openSUSE_11.3/ The installation directory would be in usr/share/java/jdownloader and we can change the permission to run it by user as the default need to be run as root. Here is mine the latest version 0.9.580.

However few things need to be consider, these application may not perfect enough on how it was packed, while it works running jdownloader also made my CPU spiked to the maximum. To my observation, the more we set for the maximum connection, more process will be created and resulting the higher CPU consumption.

Torrent trackers

2010-12-04T22:33:00.003+08:00

Oy! malam minggu yg sedikit membosankan, sedikit percubaan dalam effective torrenting sekarang ni sedang memuat-turun 1 cerita dari Piratebay. Ini pun lanjutan dari apa yg telah aku lakukan hasil dari port forwarding seperti yg aku telah tulis kat sini.

Few basics in torrenting dah pun aku fahami, yg sebelum ni aku ingat muat turun main hentam aja. Kalau perlahan muat turun maka itu lah yg aku faham, tanpa aku fahami apa konsep trackers, seeder dan peers. Bila aku dah baca beberapa saranan dalam internet ni, the more active seeders in trackers would help boost our downloading speed. wokies, this is what I gained after adding these lists of trackers into Transmission, the active trackers in 2010 available. There must be more, do tell me if there are any apart from the below.

http://tracker.thepiratebay.org/announce

http://tracker.openbittorrent.com/announce

http://tracker.publicbt.com/announce

http://inferno.demonoid.com:3408/announce

http://tracker.ex.ua/announce

http://10.rarbg.com/announce

http://pow7.com/announce

http://tracker.torrentbay.to:6969/announce

http://tracker.bitreactor.to:2710/announce

http://nemesis.1337x.org/announce

http://genesis.1337x.org:1337/announce

http://tracker.ilibr.org:6969/announce

http://11.rarbg.com/announce

http://exodus.1337x.org/announce

http://fr33dom.h33t.com:3310/announce

http://tracker.hdbbt.com:6969/announce

http://3dfreedom.ru:6969/announce

http://tracker.publicbt.com/announce

http://tracker.torrent.to:2710/announce

http://tpb.tracker.prq.to/announce

http://tracker.istole.it:80/announce

http://nyaatorrents.info:3277/announce

http://tv.tracker.prq.to:80/announce

http://tv.tracker.prq.to/announce

http://tracker.torrent.to:2710/announce.php

New trackers added into my Transmission

Untuk pakej 512kbps yg aku langgan, torrent punya kelajuan muat turun walaupun tidak menentu tapi penunjuk kelajuan antara 200-500kbps dah kira ok sangat. Happy downloading, pirates!!

Linux Shirts

2010-12-01T21:48:00.006+08:00

Just helping one of the forum's member here, he is going to offer shirts and the design are as below i.e ubuntu, Linux Mint and Linux Advocate.

Shirt material will be Lacoste, base shirt color will be COMPLETELY black, and it will only be available in collared-T design (don't you think it looks smart as casual wear? ) All designs (logo and text) will be STICHED/embroidered, not printed/sticked/iron-on...

Design 1 Ubuntu

Design 2 Linux Mint

Design 3 Linux Advocate

The initial pricing should be at least RM25 a piece not included the postage charges. The price however could be lower if minimum quantity of order met. Any linux fans out there interested to put any orders, please visit this thread at LYN and find more information from the seller himself, ptwee.

Streamyx berkata akhirnya

2010-11-30T21:04:00.004+08:00

Terlalu ramai pengguna streamyx menyatakan ketidakpuasan tentang kelajuan yg dialami sejak akhir2 ini, ini terutamanya dari pengguna2 yg melanggan pakej kelajuan tinggi dari pakej 2mbps hingga ke 4mbps. Dan sungguh mengejutkan FUP hanya pada pelanggan Streamyx dan tidak pada pelanggan UniFi setakat ini atas alasan pengguna2 UniFi adalah premium users yang masih baru.

Added salt to the wound that hurts, I am quoted a copy of email received from Ms Izlyn Ramli, VP of Corporate Comms. to one of the LYN's forum member, tentris. Here goes:-

Telekom Malaysia Bhd ™ wishes to clarify on our Fair Usage Policy (FUP) and address several comments in the blogosphere on allegations of a ‘hard cap’ for international bandwidth being enforced by TM.

Firstly, we apologise for the inconvenience that our customers are currently facing on our internet services.

We would like to assure all our customers that it is not, in any way TM’s intention to enforce any ‘hard caps’ on our customers.

As a matter of principle, however, TM needs to abide by a FUP to ensure that the network caters to all customers in a fair manner, and this has been in place for a few years for Streamyx which is a contended, best effort service. This means the Streamyx network is catered to be shared by everybody at any point in time to ensure everybody gets a “fair share” of the bandwidth. Currently UniFi is not affected, as it is a new premium service.

The Streamyx “Fair Usage Policy” is available on our website (http://www.streamyx.com/customer_care/customer_care.php?id=customer_care_fair_usage_policy) and it basically describes the list of specific heavy usage activities (like P2P and gaming) that will be managed during peak periods.

As you all know, this kind of bandwidth management or FUP is a global and common telco and celco industry practice. It is already in place in Malaysia amongst the mobile broadband players and aimed at making sure our broadband service is fast and reliable whenever in use. It is designed to benefit all users, especially normal or non-heavy users during peak periods, so that all can enjoy higher and fair browsing and surfing speed.

In general, TM’s FUP and implementation is aimed at providing an optimum internet experience to all Streamyx customers by rationalising the internet speed during peak periods (3pm – 1am).

Of late, our traffic profiles are changing quite rapidly, and we are noticing that network congestion can hit different parts of the country at different times of the day or week. When congestion hits, depending on the usage patterns, customers subscribing to the same package but generating different traffic patterns may experience different levels of service performance.

In an effort to ensure a fair distribution of resources amongst all customers at all times, whenever congestion occurs, TM’s network is able to calculate how many users are active at any given time and allocate dynamically the resources across all customers with active sessions.

In rare cases of heavy congestion, we ensure that no customers may get below a minimum threshold of international bandwidth, but there is no ‘ceiling’ to the bandwidth each customer can get.

The problems some customer are experiencing now may have stemmed post a successful pilot of a new traffic management model we ran a few months before, following which we went nationwide about 3 weeks ago. Clearly there is room for improvement and we are working hard to resolve this.

As dynamic allocation of bandwidth requires some specific settings that need to be fine tuned area by area, we elicit and welcome feedback on the experience in different parts of the country at different times of the day. We have set up a special email account where you can send your readings for our review: impact@tm.com.my effective 1 December 2010.

From our analysis, the current traffic patterns are, for most part, in line with our expectations on traffic management, and the speeds being delivered should suffice for a smooth internet experience.

Where the internet experience falls short, we will further investigate both individual cases and the service in its entirety to address specific concerns that they may be facing, and will respond to these customers directly.

Rest assured, TM takes note of all customer feedback to continuously ensure improved customer experience end-to-end.

From a market communications perspective, the FUP awareness campaign is already ongoing and we will further clarify as to the rules we are implementing – and why.

In fact, a bloggers briefing has already been scheduled for 17 December post our engagement with LYN and Kambingz earlier. About 40-50 selected bloggers will be invited to represent the wider blogger community to keep them abreast with our efforts to improve service delivery and customer experience overall, and to seek constructive feedback on these efforts. We hope to address, or at least start to address many concerns at this forum.

We thank you for your continuous feedback and ask for your kind understanding and patience as we work to deliver on our commitment to service quality and overall customer experience.

TELEKOM MALAYSIA BHD

Any users that want to download any of the stuffs now have to do it during the wee hours. Too bad the 4mbps subscribers now have to pay more for speed that is only 1/3 from it. Lucky me, I am on 512kbps and not a heavy downloader, but moving forward to 1mbps is big NO for a time being as I don't want to forked out more money in 1mbps but retaining the speed at 512kbps. The rest of the pros, curses and swears can be digest from this thread of LYN.

Sekatan penggunaan oleh Streamyx?

2010-11-28T07:13:00.006+08:00

Dalam masa 2 minggu kebelakangan ini, tiba-tiba rungutan pengguna streamyx memuncak. Ini terutamanya dari pelanggan yg melanggan pakej capaian tinggi contohnya 2mbps atau 4mbps. Ada juga rungutan dari pelanggan 1mbps, tapi yang pastinya seluruh pelanggan Streamyx mengalami susutan kelajuan muat turun dari semua pelayan antarabangsa.

Antara forum yg agak hangat memperbincangkan apa yag berlaku ialah Lowyat.net. Sila rujuk perbincangan berkaitan di http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/1648653

Salah seorang pelanggan streamyx yang juga ahli forum lowyat.net yang bernama vivre menghubungi TM dan dari perbualan dgn pegawai tersebut secara umum segera difahami bahawa TM telah menguatkuasakan FUP, tetapi bukan berdasarkan akaun perseorangan sebalikknya berdasarkan IP tertentu dan malangnya faktor blanket capped telah berlaku. Berikut antara perbualan yg sempat dinotakan.

This fine evening, a TM technician called me, and the conversation took over 30 minutes. He was basically trying to help me with the slow connection (or should I say capped connection), and he was very kind too and have the technical background too.

In summary, these are the key understandings that I still remember (not in order ya, coz I just wrote whatever came across in my mind, just got back from watching movie too, so started to forget some of the details):

a. YES and YES, TM has enforced the capped under the Fair Usage Policy. And he said he could not anything as it was coming from higher level - and the reason that was believed to allow TM to do so is because we have signed the form and there was FUP policy.

b. It seems that the international bandwidth has been used up to the CRITICAL level, and prompted them to make this swift move.

c. This move is believed to be a 'strategic' move so that existing Streamyx users will migrate to Unifi (where the quota is real and stated upfront) unlike Streamyx which does not impose any quota.

d. Apparently, there is automated system where it monitors the bandwidth used on daily basis and enforce the speed cap across the user base, whenever the bandwidth is saturated. Unfortunately, this system does not monitor INDIVIDUAL usage, but rather as a whole. So, it does not mean that if you don't clog the bandwidth you are safe.

e. He believes that this cap is temporary while waiting for the Unifi subscriber's base to increase.

f. The cap is enforced based on the package (meaning to say 4mbps should be getting higher capped international speed thatn 1.5 mbps)

g. It seems that TM won't go public with this speed cap to take care of their reputation. (Remember when Unifi was launched with quota, the whole nation was condemning them, and later they retracted the quota 'temporarily')

h. The growing number of 'big-buffet-eater' (read: Unifi users) has something to do with 'running-out-of'bandwidth' effect that all of use are currently facing.

i. The word "Unlimited" in Streamyx ads refer to the access and not the bandwidth.

What I did:
a. I asked him to escalate to higher management to let the public knows about this cap.
b. I told him many were flaming and bashing TM, especially nowadays after the sudden speed cap.
c. The FUP should be more transparent rather than GENERIC FUP i.e. Unifi, Maxis BB, Digi BB clearly states their monthly quota.

That's all. I will add more if I managed to recall some of it.

Hope this helps.

Nampaknya bukan berakhir hanya di forum malah di Facebook juga dah ada grup menyelar Streamyx atas apa yg berlaku dan juga isu-isu lain. Ada kemungkinan capped sedang dijalankan. Aku sekarang tengah muat turun .iso sebesar 700mb secara direct download dari PClinuxOS. Tapi dah masuk 2 hari dah dan progress tak sampai setengah aja. Sebaliknya sebelum ni muat turun Linux Mint 10 sebesar 800mb pada hari yang sama dah selesai.

Port forwarding TM D-Link DSL 2640B

2010-11-25T01:49:00.009+08:00

I just got a new ADSL wireless modem from TM, the D-Link DSL 2640B. As we are aware, the firmware shipped with this model is using the customised firmware that limits any extra configuration. This default is good for normal users, but not to those torrent lovers. The best option is, upgrade the firmware back into D-Link default settings. The firmware version that tied with TM is GE_1.07, the web interface we'll see is TM logo at the login screen via the 192.168.1.1. TM no more, we need to download the latest firmware version 1.00 Stable from D-link website.

The D-Link download page where we can see the latest firmware.

Before we do the upgrade, if any, doing a backup into the PC is highly recommended. Check out the region, for Malaysia or any nations in South East Asia the firmware version is SEA_1.00. The file is a compressed .rar format and 3.5mb in size. Some people mistakenly do the upgrade with this file and will result into fatal error message. Extract the file first, there are 2 files. The first is a readme file and the 2nd file is the correct we needed to choose for the upgrade in my case the file is GAW5.6T02-4-DL-R1B080-SEA.EN_upgrade_0719.

The process took about 2 minutes, after the successful upgrade we can see the new login screen something like this.

The new login screen, no more TM logo

Provided that we already connected to the internet with the new setting (the previous setting to the ISP will be override by the new. TM login ID and password no longer working as the new will be 'admin' for ID and the password as well. Now we go to Port Forwarding option in Advance tab. We need to create 2 protocols, UDP and TCP. Server name can be put to any, the external port I am choosing is 50000 for start and 50001 for end. The same configuration to both TCP and UDP, server IP address is referring to our PC which is normally 192.168.1.2 Two lines need to be create. Please check my settings screenshot to understand better. The port ranges must be carefully selected as not all ports are suitable for torrent, some might been used for other services.

2 lines of protocol created, TCP and UDP

Now the router's side has been set, now we need to allow the protocol and port number to be allowed in firewall. In openSUSE, open firewall in YaST, go to Allowed Services and choose Advance button at the below. A new window will appear, just fill in the port number 50001 into the blank column in TCP and UDP setting. Save and exit YaST. See the screenshot below:

Firewall setting that we want to allow TCP and UDP services port 50001.

However in Linux Mint 10, firewall setting is pretty much straight forward. Go to firewall setting that located in Control Center, tick to enable outgoing and incoming and click add new rule button. Go to Preconfigured tab and set to allow in and out for the program from the list i.e Deluge, Transmission etc etc.

Firewall settings in Linux Mint 10 to allow TCP/UDP based on what client to run the torrent.

Now we see the result if the port we configured in router and firewall really works. Open up Transmission, at user preference menu go to Network tab and enter the same port number as in router before, the 50001 and hit the Test Port button. Now we see Port is open.

Transmission the bitorrent client been used in Linux Mint 10 and openSUSE 11.3. Port 50001 is now open.

Deluge users, the same procedure to check if the port 50001 is open or not. The screenshot below shows that the port is open.

Deluge used in Linux Mint 10 at port 50001 shows 'right' symbol which mean that the port is now open.

Now the port for Deluge and Transmission is opened to do the smooth downloading, but still, speed performance is subject to torrenting factors such as peers, seeding etc. The good is we already bypassed the limitation of torrent bandwidth by TMnet. Do read here the group of ISPs that are listed under Bad ISP by Vuze.

When both Deluge and Transmission is good to go, Vuze still unable to read port 50001 as open. Happy torrenting.

Disclaimer : Due to this article, some of the readers successfully done the upgrade and some had problem in connecting to the internet. Please be remember, flashing the TM's firmware into something else MAY void the warranty, instability in internet connection or unable to connect at all. Do at your own risk and I am held NO responsible to any failure.

Adding Linux Mint 10 into openSUSE's legacy GRUB

2010-11-21T12:49:00.000+08:00

Just to be safe side for those suse's lovers that don't want to use Mint's GRUB2, at least it worked for me. Please be informed that there are several workarounds and we can choose any of them, and this method is good against 1 OS to be installed on a single harddisk, however I've not try any single harddisk that split into several partitions.

I have 4 SATA hard disk in a row which are 160gb for Windows, 320gb for storage and 80gb for openSUSE 11.3, and the 4th of 80gb is going to install with Linux Mint 10. Before the installation, detach the other 3 harddisk first by cut off the power into the respective drive.

After the successfull installation of Mint, put back all the 3 harddisk and boot up the pc as usual. It is norm that the new partition of Mint won't be read in the openSUSE's GRUB boot loader. To add Mint partition we need further info of what actual drive is used by Mint. Hit the terminal as su.

fdisk -l

In my case, the arrangement is shown like this:-

linux-mor9:/home/yazid # fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19452 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x73c6f49e

Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id System
/dev/sda1   *           1       19452   156247040    7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00077db3

Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id System
/dev/sdb1               1         262     2103296   82 Linux swap / Solaris
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb2             262        2873    20972544   83 Linux
/dev/sdb3            2873        9730    55073792   83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdc: 320.1 GB, 320072933376 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x55ed2e5f

Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id System
/dev/sdc1   *           1       38914   312567808    7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdd: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000c46aa

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id System
/dev/sdd1   *           1        9328    74920960   83 Linux
/dev/sdd2            9328        9730     3227649    5 Extended
/dev/sdd5            9328        9730     3227648   82 Linux swap / Solaris

Now we can see the new partition used by Mint is /dev/sdd: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes. Now we are going to check the device mapper, in YaST check the available harddisk arrangement in boot loader setting in boot/grub/device.map Mine is showing like this:-

(hd0) /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD1600AAJS-75B4A0_WD-WMAT21239131
(hd1) /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3808110AS_5LR6B3M5
(hd2) /dev/disk/by-id/ata-WDC_WD3200AAKS-75L9A0_WD-WCAV28024927

Please note there are only 3 running harddisk, hd0 is used by Windows 7, hd1 is used by openSUSE and the 3rd hd0 is used for storage. The 4th harddisk used by Linux Mint 10 is not there, however no need to worry as the 4th should be hd3. Now we already know that the Mint partition is /dev/sdd and hd3, next is we add that into boot loader. Either from YaST or terminal as su,

gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

and add the following into the list :-

#Don't change this comment - YaST2 identifier: Original name: none#
title      Linux Mint 10 << change it to any name as we want to.
root       (hd0,2)
kernel     /vmlinuz root=/dev/sda3 ro quiet splash
initrd     /initrd.img

Now the bold part need to change accordingly, (hd0,2) change to (hd3,0) and /dev/sda3 changed to the flag partition /dev/sdd1. Flag partition can be read as * under boot column in fdisk -l. Saved it, upon reboot we'll see Linux Mint 10 is in openSUSE's boot loader.

Sirih pinang atau betel nut

2010-11-20T17:14:00.004+08:00

Hari ni memang agak membosan bagi sesiapa yg bekerja, bila belek-belek internet terbaca pulak pasal sirih pinang ni. Pertamanya aku selalu ingat sirih pinang dikunyah oleh orang-orang tua samada dari bangsa Melayu atau India, tak sangka pulak bangsa Cina iaitu dari negara Taiwan kegilaan mengunyah sirih pinang ni sebahgian dari budaya yg telah temurun juga tempohnya. Teringat arwah atuk yang kelihatan meletakkan serpihan kecil pinang yg telah dikacip, sedikit gambir, secolek kapur dan sehelai daun sirih yang dilipat kemas sebelum dikunyah. Aku pernah cuba untuk kunyah benda tu, rasanya yg pedas dan tak sedap tu membuat kita fikir apakah keseronokkan yang diperolehi oleh golongan tersebut?

Sirih pinang atau betel nut, what the heck about Taiwan as I am mentioned before? here goes, the betel nuts's beauty sellers.

Betel nut, a mild stimulant, is enjoyed across Asia. But only in Taiwan is the nut sold by fetching young women in outrageous outfits, perched in neon-lit, see-through roadside stands.
Popularized in the 1990s, the so-called "betel nut beauty" phenomenon has long had a parade of critics, including feminists (the trade degrades women), health officials (betel nut causes oral cancer), embarrassed local officials (betel nut culture is low-class and vulgar) and environmentalists (the cash crop is over-planted and causes soil erosion).

Cara pemasaran yang unik untuk walaupun untuk jualan sirih, bagi setengah yang tidak tahu mungkin akan ingat mereka ni adalah sebahagian dari industri jalanan. Kalau menggunakan gadis muda yang seksi, siapakan pengguna sirih tersebut? rasanya rata-rata dari pengguna lelaki dari generasi muda.

What is that thing she is holding?, seems like a vibrator to me

Credit to Jonathan Adams and photographer Tobie Openshaw of GlobalPost.

MyPDACafe.com is shutting down

2010-11-17T21:03:00.006+08:00

One of the most active board, discussed mainly about gadgets and it's features. Once the most highly rated community that speaks the technology in professional manner, be it any brand of PDA and phones we'll get Q&A that helpful. This evening I received an email from MyPDACafe.com,

dear all, it has been good time.

due to lack of support from mods and founders I am going to temporary shutdown the site. Meanwhile, don't loose your passions.

Join the new active groups and keep beaming!

ps: Our facebook group will still live, to keep in-touch until we come back
;) If you are interested to be the new MPC you can message me.

sillycat
- yinsee@mypdacafe.com

As expected, I left MyPDACafe actively about more than 4 years back if my memory serves me right. My last visit was about few months ago, and the last post as 4 years ago still there. Questions by new members left unanswered. My experienced with MyPDACafe goes sour after the attitude of some senior members and the DiGi fanboy moderator that likes to bash others especially if they are not DiGi users, what a childish manner from a senior member.

MyPDACafe website is no longer there, however we'll be diverted into Facebook page as some members is still there to continue the fallen legacy, and a day the fallen will revive again.

So well MyPDACafe!

Testing Gwibber

2010-11-15T21:18:00.006+08:00

A very useful micro blogging apps in monitoring our favourite social network accounts without login into their respective webpage. Gwibber is installed in Linux Mint by default and can be used straight away without needed to look again for the installation. I have 3 accounts which is from Facebook, Twitter and Buzz.

The social networks currently supported by Gwibber are:-

Twitter
Identi.ca
StatusNet
Facebook
FriendFeed
Digg
Flickr
Qaiku

Other distros that have binary file that can be download and install via the command line are:-

	`apt-get install gwibber`
	`zypper install gwibber`
	`yum install gwibber`
	`emerge gwibber` (Gwibber 2.29.1 ebuild available here)

Installing Julia

2010-11-14T22:23:00.002+08:00

A very beautiful weekend and a good day to install the new Mint 10 Final into my 4th hardisk, couldn't wait for the upgrades from RC to Final. Fresh install should be another enjoyment.

As I don't want to get headache of GRUB2 overrides the legacy GRUB of openSUSE to do it's booting job, the best way is by cutting off the power of the hard disk attached to the board and leave alone the hard disk that is going to be install with Mint. The installation is supposed to faster but the known reason to us that updates from the repos are bad at the moment. The language packs took about more than 30 minutes to complete before the installation completed. I had problem in configuring the nVidia driver before as I am unable to boot into X. By adding the 'nomodeset' into somewhere in the kernel parameter as a workaround that saves most of the nVidia users around. The first screen resolution is similar to vesa (or nouveau?) which is not the native reso that I am supposed to get at 1440 x 900, there were also online update that offer me to download the proprietary nVidia driver 173. I am going to 260.19.12 instead of 173 with this command :-

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-x-swat/x-updates
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nvidia-current nvidia-settings

Did another more than 120 of updates from the Mint Updates and the overall time consumed of updating took more than 2 hours! I need to hold myself from downloading more applications as the connection to the server is so bad. Hopefully tomorrow I can continue of downloading more stuffs.

Of openSUSE and Mint 10

2010-11-13T21:08:00.005+08:00

I've been with openSUSE for a quite some times now, couldn't really remember of what year I am engaged with this distro but it was version 9.1 of SUSE Linux Pro box version bought from Novell Malaysia. Now the latest stable is 11.3 and I am currently using it.

Another distro that caught my mind is Linux Mint, I have to throw away my hatred towards Ubuntu at the moment and give it's derivative a try.

Awesome, simple as that.

I am suggesting Mint to change the name into Minu or in the full is "Minu Is Not Ubuntu", we already heard thousand times that "Wine is not emulator" for WINE and "GNU is not Unix" for GNU. What is Minu? guessing there should be a translation from any natives language around the world. Tell me if there are...

Back into Mint, this evening I am managed to download the iso of 64bit from the Taiwan mirror and the speed is quite ok despite some complaints of users that unable to download at faster speed. I am new to Mint.. the packaging, apt-get which I believe the same goes to someone who are so alien with YaST or zypper command in openSUSE. Try to get use to apt-get, should be no problem after few months I think. Mint has lots of software to be offer under it's Software Manager, but still I can find many outdated versions of softwares in there. For openSUSE communities, Packman's repository is offering to the almost up-to-date applications and thanks to the packagers as well. But for another 6 months before there are any new releases, Mint has still lot of room for the improvements. Mint is absolutely good for newbies who want to try GNU/linux for a first time.

The Clement Levebre and to the whole team of Mint, well done.

MyMil forum

2010-11-13T19:54:00.003+08:00

Kepada sesiapa yg berminat berdiskusi berkenaan hal2 ketenteraan, badan2 penguatkuasaan tempatan khususnya datanglah untuk berdaftar sebagai ahli forum di http://mymil.forums2u.com. Perbincangan adalah didalam bahasa Melayu, selain itu terdapat juga diskusi lain yg tidak berkaitan dengan ketenteraan. Perbincangan adalah bersifat santai, sesuai dengan motto utama iaitu Friendship, Intergrity dan Faithfulness.

Sejarah penubuhan forum ialah masih masih baru iaitu disekitar April 2010, dengan ahli yg hanya beberapa orang pada mulanya sehinggalah sekarang mempunyai ahli sekitar lebih dari 300 kesemuanya. Keaktifan sangat menggalakkan dan telah diadakan perjumpaan ringan bersama ahli dan anggota keluarga sebanyak 2 kali, yang pertamanya dibuat di TUDM Sg Besi dan keduanya ialah pada selepas Hari Raya Aidilfitri baru2 ini.

Linux Mint 10 "Julia" Final

2010-11-12T21:21:00.004+08:00

Sungguh menerujakan, baru aja cerita pasal Linux Mint 10 RC semalam dan pada petang ni Final version dah keluar untuk peminat-peminat Mint. Seperti biasa bila ada sesuatu versi yg baru, kesesakan talian tak dapat dielakkan dimana laman web Mint sukar untuk dilayari. Sesiapa yg ingin muat turun iso dari Mint bolehlah pintas melalui Distrowatch. At current 10 final releases, browsing into Mint's portal is almost impossible.

Linux Mint Gnome DVD 32bit iso direct download or torrent 832mb
Linux Mint Gnome DVD 64bit iso direct download or torrent 825mb

As I am already patched and updated everything during in RC, I am wondering if I am currently in Final or still in RC.

Linux Mint 10 RC

2010-11-11T22:38:00.004+08:00

Baru mencuba distro ni, kira-kira dah seminggu. Dalam erti kata lain baru berjaya boot ke dalam X, sebelum tu gagal beberapa kali. Sebabnya mudah, setelah beberapa tahun bersama openSUSE kadang2 kita ingat penyelesainya pada masalah Linux Mint adalah sama. To the Mint users that are using the nVidia 9400GT graphic card, mostly you are unable to boot into X after the GRUB and the screen will be on save mode. Which in that case, at the kernel parameter after the ro do insert the 'nomodeset' just before the word quiet splash. I went into this trouble by mistakenly adding the nomodeset at the end of it.

Mint 10 RC ni masih 'release candidate' lagi, menurut kata pengasas dia Clement Levebre versi final akan ada pada seawal November. Sekarang dah hampir pertengahan tapi masih belum ada khabar terbaru. Wokey, 2 versi dah pun dimuat turun iaitu 32bit dan 64bit. Mengambil dari kelebihan prosesor Intel Core 2 Duo E7300 dan RAM sejumlah 2 x 2gb maka Mint 10 64bit telah digunakan.

Pemasangan di cakera keras tidak mengambil masa yang lama, kira-kira dalam masa 15-20 minit. Saiz iso tidak besar iaitu dalam 600mb+ cukup hanya menggunakan CDR biasa. Mint 10 menggunakan Gnome, yeahh, one of the most stable DE around, I am tired of KDE 4.x that tend to crash due it's buggy plasma. I am used to be a KDE fan during the 3.x version, now I need to hang that at the door and wait for a really stable version of KDE to come true.

Mint adalah salinan semua versi Ubuntu, dan Mint 10 "Julia" adalah berasaskan Ubuntu 10.10 'Maverick'. To be honest, I am not going so well with Ubuntu. Julia adalah hasil pertukaran jantina yang asalnya bernama Maverick or make it smple in English, Julia was a man, her previous name was Maverick. Mint has gained it's popularity due to it's good looking and polished GUI, not to mention tons of software ready to be install for just a about few clicks or commands. I am giving this Ubuntu derivative a try, and the finding is 'great' and I am really love it. Maybe the best about Mint, it has restricted codecs and formats that are ready packed. Currently my Julia triple boot with the windoze 7 and openSUSE 11.3. As usual the default is openSUSE and I am using the legacy GRUB over the Mint's GRUB2.

FUP, Fair Usages Policy or something else?

2010-11-11T13:25:00.003+08:00

Selepas beberapa tahun menunggu akhirnya streamyx masuk jugak, walaupun hanya sekadar kelajuan 512 kbps melayari internet cukup memuaskan. Mungkin kedudukan rumah aku yang kira masih lagi di luar bandar, matter of internet congestion is out at the moment. Saying bye-bye to Celcom broadband is a must, bukan kerana Celcom perlahan ke apa tapi FUP bulanan yg menjengkelkan. I am someone who love linux and downloading iso is a must, imagine for opensuse 11.3 at 4.7gb on 5gb FUP! what is the main reason of implementing FUP anyway? kata nak prohibited p2p, torrenting dan jugak to be fair pada orang lain yg guna internet. Kalau nak fair pada orang lain kenapa pulak kena beli FUP tambahan? apa kalau beli FUP tambahan tu maksudnya orang lain tu akan dapat ganti rugi ke? or it just another trick how to generate extra revenues.

I am on broadband, at last.

2010-04-01T07:25:00.004+08:00

I am might be too late to enjoy this, but staying in rural area and hoping to get any wired broadband is sort of an impossible dream. Now I am with Celcom 3G, as at yesterday I am getting a full bar of UMTS as been shown by umtsmon. I am not sure if they also deployed the HSDPA broadcast, which if they are I am looking to upgrade my current package. For now my normal surfing needs the stable 384kbps under their D68 data only is more than enough, I guess. The cap limit at 5gb usages per month really concerned me, as now I am already exceeded more than half of it. As far as I can see most of the usages came from the new software I am download from packman repositories as well as the latest updates offered from opensuse.

As for now, welcome to celcom territory.