New stuff

Well yall that stay in contact with me know that I've been working this new job since March and live in hotels now. Lol. It's a lot of fun checking title and travelling. In the eb and flow of all that, Celi, my third week in a row front desk hotel receptionist has finally given me the studio suite I've been craving. The double bed one before was nice, not at all lonely, but all the more so awkward. Yehaw, we got the studio suite.

oh and I got some new boots today.

Virtualize a Windows7 Partiton from Linux, No Reprocutions.

I recently purchased a Lenovo ThinkPad Edge 14. While wanting to take full advantage of the VT extensions using Linux and a Windows 7 virtual machine with VirtualBox, as well as booting natively into Windows transparently. I started a study of the latest VT technologies as well what those have done in the distant past. What I found was a solution that worked well yet required constant repair. As a sysadmin, this wouldn't do and there had to be a better solution. This post outlines just this. My setup requires no repairing in Windows7.

What you'll need is a dual boot system. Windows7 + Linux of your choice. Anything kernel 32 or later should do as you'll be using grub2. For myself I use CrunchbangLinux Statler. Anything Debian based, Ubuntu or Debian Squeeze should suffice. The new Fedora/Arch/ or Centos based releases should suffice too as they'll be using grub2.

1.)First

Once inside the 3rd partiton of your Linux

$ sudo fdisk -l

or

# fdisk -l

should produce something similar:



(note, my partitioning scheme is very complex, as long as it is NTFS in the first 2 you are ready to roll)

2.) Second

Lets install VirtualBoxOSE on a debian based system or other.

Debian based
$ sudo apt-get install virtualbox-ose

Fedora based
$ su -c yum install virtualbox (or virtualbox-ose, it's been a while)

Arch based
$ sudo pacman -Sy virtualbox or # pacman -Sy virtualbox

once VirtualBox is installed you need to load it by typing the following command in a terminal, clicking an icon, or launcher
$ virtualbox

3.) Third

Now we are ready to setup our VM.

You need to add yourself to the disk group to allow VBox access to the Windows Partition.

$ usermod -a -G disk (username)

logout and log back into your desktop or session

This will allow you to do the creation of your rawdisk partition based VM withought editing the permissions on a dev filesystem node, which I would strongly discourage.

Now you are ready to create your VM. Lets first make the harddrive for the VM.

$ VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename ~/.VirtualBox/HardDisks/win7.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/sda -partitions 1,2 -relative -register

now that part is what you need to pay attention too, according to my fdisk -l my win7/NTFS partitions were on sda1 and 2 where you'll need to substitute yours. As this is the most common on sda1 and 2 we'll just go with it.

4.) Finalize your VM and use it!!

now you'll need to fireup virtualbox for real and create the VM properties for the first boot.

$ virtualbox or click on the icon

you'll need to do the new vm wizard

The only thing important to note in this process is not to mmake a new Virtualharddisk, use the existing win7.vmdk one we just made :P

I give it 1024 ram and 1 proc as well as bridged networking. But that is all accordin to your discression. Everything should work fine now except for the boot sector. You'll need a grub disk to get it to fire off correctly.

For this go over to supergrubdisk.org and get the "super grub2 disk" set this for the iso on your ide drive in the win7 VM properties.

Now boot your vm and make sure you autolist os's from the first grub entry. You'll see windows7. Hit enter and be patient. You should now be set!!

Webmin on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

Lately, I've done a little work for Rejoice Christian Schools in Owasso, Oklahoma. They just installed some new Ubuntu servers and needed a handy way to admin them besides SSH. Webmin came to the rescue.

It's real easy to get started using Webmin on 10.04 LTS with RCS's PPA.

(from the console or terminal)

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rejoicechristianschools/ppa \
&& sudo apt-get update \
&& sudo apt-get install webmin-keyring webmin-repository \
&& sudo apt-get update \
&& sudo apt-get install webmin

Tie Guan Yin (铁观音)

(Iron Goddess of Mercy)

A delicate, new-green like, specialty Oolong with a hint of flora

Infusion Essentials

(based on 177 ml water)

Temp 90 °C

Time 2.5 min

Amt 4 g

Re-Infusablity 2X

With spring exploding all around, fate found me in the form of a fourteen gram sampler from SpecialTeas. Tie Guan Yin’s leaf is very spring like in it’s new tea body, followed by a honeysuckle after taste. It’s nose contains this wonderful flora, bringing about springtime memories as a boy with honeysuckle all around.
Do not let it fool you. There are no flowers added like Jasmine. Yes, this is an Oolong, not a Green! Try Tie Guan Yin if you are in the mood for something different, or even new to Chinese teas. This tea is a great starting place, also an oasis for the well traveled of connoisseurs.

Adam and Eve skin color.

Well, I've been doing a lot of thinking lately and have come to the conclusion that Adam and Eve were either dark(negro) in skin tone, or possibly an interracial couple.

Reasons...

01.) Scientifically man originated from Africa.

02.) Biblically Garden of Eden was in Africa.

03.) Other skin tones genetically seem to derive from dark skin easier.

Set wallpaper using ImageMagick's display

The list of redundant applications on a system that can accomplish the same task can become quite large at times. For example I was using nitrogen to set my wallpaper when I could also use hsetroot or display. Where these console based applications fail in user friendliness, they excel in robustness when it comes to image manipulation.

Currently I'm using display to set my wallpaper using the following command:

display -size 1280x800 -window root ~/images/wallpapers/kambei.jpg

Now, since ImageMagick is actually an image manipulation program you can apply most any effect you could using gimp or photoshop on the fly from the command line. Your creativity is really the limit.

For more information on display's features, check out their online documentation:

ImageMagick

Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, S. Texas Release Party

With all the hype around Ubuntu's new release 9.10 Karmic Koala, I found myself between a rock and a hard place. Not living in a big suburban area, there was no release party for me to adjoin myself to. Thus, the Mexican way I found myself improvising. May I present to you the S. Texas release party!!

Attendees: una persona

Prerequisites

After unpacking the care package from Mark Shuttleworth as most of you Ubuntu users are doing ATM, I found the contents below.

case badges for rebranding my system, windows key stickers for hiding that un-Godly logo, a pint of ale, smokes to keep me awake for the reformat, and of course an ubuntu usb-key. Thanks Mark, you're a sweetheart.

Somehow there appeared a cron-job on my system to download the minimal install at exactly mid-night October 29th, 2009.

On the informative side...

To schedule your own cron-jobs as an un-privileged user:

From the terminal:

crontab -e

now select your preferred editor by choosing an editor assigned to the correct numeric value

cron is easy setup in the below format:

[minute] [hour] [dayofmonth] [month] [dayofweek] [command]

mine was as follows:

0 0 29 10 4 wget http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/karmic/main/installer-i386/current/images/netboot/mini.iso

now close your editor and the job will run according to the parameters you just set

Since this was a cosplay party I decided to go gangsta'.

The Occasion

The format went well. On boot I launched the text based browser w3m and downloaded the crunchbang install script straight out of the UK from crunchbanglinux.org. Thanks corenomial, you're a real life saver.

Karmic is a nice upgrade, to say the least the main pluses I see are the new linux kernel, ext4 as default filesystem, and of course, OMG the framebuffered console.

The guys up at the Isle of Man are doing a great job on this OS. With a 6 month release cycle, bleeding edge technology, and a great community, I can't wait to see what the future holds.