vStone Blog

Introduction (off-topic)

Recently, I found myself a new job with http://inuits.be. A company that ONLY deals with open source and related stuff. Yes, I’m quite ecstatic about it myself! The first meeting went very well and after a small ‘test’ of my capabilities, I was asked to find out how KVM works and write a howto about it. So that is exactly what I have done… Below, you will find the results of my endeavors.

Introduction

What is KVM?

KVM (for Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is a full virtualization solution for Linux on x86 hardware containing virtualization extensions (Intel VT or AMD-V). It consists of a loadable kernel module, kvm.ko, that provides the core virtualization infrastructure and a processor specific module, kvm-intel.ko or kvm-amd.ko. KVM also requires a modified QEMU although work is underway to get the required changes upstream.

Using KVM, one can run multiple virtual machines running unmodified Linux or Windows images. Each virtual machine has private virtualized hardware: a network card, disk, graphics adapter, etc.

The kernel component of KVM is included in mainline Linux, as of 2.6.20.

KVM is open source software.

Source: http://linux-kvm.org.

So what does this mean? We don’t have to software emulate the system to run our virtual machines in and speed up virtualization dramatically. As you can read, we need a kernel module to get things working so we will start off with inspecting and adjusting our kernel.

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Have you ever run into the problem that your xfce starts xscreensaver automatically whenever you start up your favorite vnc server? I have. My previous solutions were to kill it manually each time or to remove it from my system all together. But that is hardly a solution but more of a work around.

Yesterday I started to look around where I could adjust the xfce global startup file (/etc/xdg/xfce4/xinitrc) and I noticed that the part responsible for the xscreensaver has a check for a VNCSESSION variable.

# Launch xscreensaver (if available), but only as non-root user
if test $UID -gt 0 -a -z "$VNCSESSION"; then
    if test x"`which xscreensaver 2>/dev/null`" != x""; then
        xscreensaver -no-splash &
    elif test x"`which gnome-screensaver 2>/dev/null`" != x""; then
        gnome-screensaver &
    fi
fi

So the solution would be to make sure this variable is exported before starting xfce4 and we can do this in the xstartup script located in the ~/.vnc/ folder. I simply added export VNCSESSION=”tightvnc”. You can put whatever you want in VNCSESSION afaik. It wasn’t set by default so my best guess is it doesn’t matter. I’ll make sure to remember updating this when I run into a problem because of this solution.

My xstartup script now looks like this:

#!/bin/sh
export VNCSESSION="tightvnc"
xrdb $HOME/.Xresources
source $HOME/.xinitrc

As you can see, I made it so that my regular .xinitrc file gets run too. This is where I order xfce4 to launch too.

Hope you find this quick fix helpful and don’t have to kill or remove xscreensaver anymore from now on.

I came up with some trouble to enable auto mounting on all my external esata devices. I have 2 of them on e-sata and one on a sata port with extension.
Most documentation online stats you should create a fdi file for each disk or disable not mounting fixed disks all together. The 2nd option isn’t really an option so I decided to go for the fdi file.

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I noticed there were some validation issues with the bubbl.us plugin earlier and decided to fix them so I could once again put a xhtml strict button on my blog (YAY).

I’m not going into the details, you can find my freshly source here: bubbl.us_embed

Update:  Since the latest wine version 1.1.9 (and newer of course), it’s no longer needed to use the hacks repository. The main wine repo now has the animated cursor patch included. Mind you, only the first frame of a animated cursor is displayed.

I’m glad to inform you all I managed to get red alert 3 started using the wine version hosted at http://repo.or.cz/w/wine/hacks.git. You can easily use this repository using my adjusted wine ebuild for the wine git version.

The ebuild is packaged here: wine.tar.bz2

Today, I uploaded the second version of my tiny “import java libraries into netbeans” script. All information has moved to it’s own page too. Even more, netbeans-importlib related stuff will be published in it’s own category. So filtering tags is not needed anymore.

I really need to keep track of all the changes I make to the original ALP script because it may provide difficult to find out afterwards… It’s one big mess

Display (Used to display tables. Used in: users / console list / …)

The display has been modified the following way:

• You can now specify separate queries for each group you define. This way, it doesn’t matter that much what you specify in the constructor. If you set a query, it will be used for group 0. (backward compatibility anyone?)
• You can specify html code to insert into the table before displaying cells. You can add some colgroup(s) with markup here for example.
• The possibility to have a group title is also possible now.
• The ability to use custom cell renderers to render a certain field value (default fields are also supported).
• Note: You can also use strings for adding different groups. The default group should always use 0 though.

Universal (used for almost everything that involves a form)

• Added support for multiple forms on the same page. works only with the display() function that checks what form name is specified before processing. You can also copy this method and adjust it to fit your needs.

Today is the day I ‘officialy’ start coding NARPed v2. Version 1 was more a fork of ALP. Although there are people working on ALP2, I don’t feel like modifying another existing platform, nor do I feel the need to keep working on the old ALP codebase while something better will have to come eventually anyhow.

At first, I’m all about thinking out how the website should look like and how I should build it. You can see a little of my toughts on this scribble:

[bubbl]http://bubbl.us/sys/view.swf?sid=144625&pw=ya/mUumf.w6D.NjZDZlUuSThwSGhVaw;500;400;NARPed[/bubbl]

First off, a quick introduction to ALP:

ALP stands for ‘Autonomous LAN Party‘ and is an Intranet LAN Party Management Software Package written by LAN admins for LAN admins. The original website can be found on the nerdclub alp website.

As you will notice, development on the website has stopped a couple of years ago, but ALP is not dead. Since a couple of weeks ago, a small group of developers started on ALP2. You can find more information on ALP2 on the new forum and wiki. I’ll volunteer myself to help out once I finish off this project on the old alp.

And what the hell is a NARP?

A NARP (stands for Not Any specific Reason Party) is these days becoming more and more popular. It was invented by a gaming community called ‘Destructoid’ (homepage is – captain obvious speaks – http://www.destructoid.com/). The main difference with a LAN is that it can involve consoles. My friend Johan is organising a NARP this summer (end august) and we needed a decent system to handle all the consoles and people that are coming, so we looked into ALP but found there was a lot of functionality missing.

That is when I started converting the old ALP to work for NARPs too. I added a console list, console games and statistics about the lot of them. In the mean time, I also adjusted plenty of core files to be better, faster (errmmm not really, but it just sounds good) and stronger.

I’ll be posting a changelog about what I changed to the original ALP soon and I’ll also publish the source later on. I’ll have to convert the install to fit some extra tables I introduced and some have just changed a bit.

In the mean time…

While you are waiting for the source and you are interested in coming to this NARP (to game, slack or talk code), make sure you check the website here and here.

After 2 unanswered tickets and a unanswered mail, I decided to move away from my current web-hosting and get a new one. I chose servage. Reason? I came across it, it seamed a reasonable price, and above all: No damn CPanel!!!
And while I was at it, I added vstone.eu to my domain-emporium since it might take a while to get vstone.org transferred to my new hosting. You can never have enough domains I suppose.

If you were (by accident) also looking for new hosting and you are concidering servage, make sure you google for a servage coupon code. You could use a coupon code I provide and that will get me (I quote):

Get two FREE months + 25 GB (25000 MB) extra web space when you refer a new customer – they get 25 GB (25000 MB) extra space too!

There, if you are interested in servage with extra web space (why the hell would you need that much web space for a website I wonder), go to servage from this link.

If you don’t care much for space, you could also use the coupon I found at http://www.servagecoupon.net/.
This one will give you a discount of 30% (lifetime). Get it here.