HackNBlog @ Salamanteri Server

Advanced users (and some regular desktop users too) have a need for process viewer (for those who don’t know what I mean, it’s equivalent of process lister that you get with ctrl-alt-del in windows) - and while some are happy or even insist on using nothing but graphical application for this (’gnome-system-monitor‘ in Gnome), some of us prefer to use one that is console based or prefer having both depending on situation so there is a big demand for a good console based process viewer for *nix systems.

The old ‘top’ and way more advanced alternative

Many people know ‘top‘ to be such tool - unfortunately many don’t know other interactive ones - there is non-interactive ‘ps‘ for getting process list, but it just prints process list (with information and formatting according to parameters) while interactive process lister lets you view the list, send signals to processes (ie. to kill a process) or to change their priority (’nice’ value). There however is much more advanced application than ‘top‘, yet very much like ‘top‘ in having all that is good in ‘top‘, but replacing many UI parts with better functionality. The app is called ‘htop‘.

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I have the first poll on my site: about “year of desktop linux”. Please vote for your opinion!

There has been numerous blogs and other articles writing of “This is/was the year of desktop Linux” - naturally also with loads of criticism about it. I have my own opinion about year of desktop Linux, but that will be written about in another blog entry. All I say is that for me Year of the linux desktop already was - I leave you wondering what it was

So there, go on and wote!

I believe most here have already read about Google starting up an operating system of their own, Chrome OS to compete with Windows as their next project. I’ll share some of my feelings about good, bad and the futile related to this hopefully neat project.

Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Google want’s to provide users with an OS that boots up lightning fast and ready for web in seconds from switching power on. They want the system not to clutter up but always run as fast as anew. They want to provide an OS where there is no fuss and fighting with new hardware, configuring the system (that usually needs knowledge below the average) and no updates that break things or change&confuse the user interface. This all sounds good - and it also already sound familiar.

Gathered not from Chrome OS official blog but from a zdnet blog entry, let’s check some known facts:

• It runs on top of Linux kernel.
• It will boot directly into the Chrome Web browser
• It will be aimed primarily at netbooks
• It will run on both x86 and ARM processors
• It will not be designed to have local storage; all data will be stored in the cloud
• Google will not entice developers to build software to run on the Chrome OS; instead, they want them to build Web apps that will run on any standards-based browser
• The three most important features will be “speed, simplicity and security”, according to Google
• Google will release the software to the open source community before the end of 2009
• Announced Chrome OS hardware partners: Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba.
• Netbooks running Chrome OS will be available in the second half of 2010

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There are many reasons why a user might want to use OpenDNS quality dns nameservers instead of service providers dns servers. Maybe the providers nameserver does not work that well, or maybe your country and/or provider is one of those who have set up domain name based internet content filtering that you want to pass - this is the case here in Finland where the claimed use is to prevent access to child porn sites but most of the sites filtered are not of that sort at all, many not even regular porn sites and sometimes there have been really bad mistakes (like w3c site ending on the list).

On opendns.org there is a simple guide on how to set Linux (there is one for Windows too) to use OpenDNS - all you have to do, according to the site, is to edit /etc/resolv.conf and replace IP’s on nameserver lines with ones of OpenDNS. While this works at least on Fedora (and supposedly on most other flawors of Linux), at least with Debian and Ubuntu there is an extra step. This one is for those using cable connection with DHCP:

1st. edit /etc/dhcp3/dhclient.conf and add followind line to end of file:
prepend domain-name-servers 208.67.222.222,208.67.220.220;
…then find the line starting with “request” that lists the information to read ask from DHCP server and remove the option “domain-name-servers“.

2nd. edit /etc/resolv.conf like instructed on opendns.org. Replace the nameserver lines with these:
nameserver 208.67.222.222
nameserver 208.67.220.220
edit: I’m not sure if the second step is needed or even effective on debian.

3rd. Now you could just wait until the information from DHCP gets renewed or to make the changes work instantly you can run:
/etc/init.d/networking restart

Notes: You need to get root access to edit the files and to restart networking.

Was: “The Ur-Quan Masters for Debian (problem & solution)”

The Ur-Quan Masters is a 100% free implementation of original 3DO console version of Star Control II and there is also aditional optional speech package, package with original 3DO music and tree add-on remix packs for download. I ran into a problem not finding the game executable when I had installed The Ur-Quan Masters (on my Debian Etch stable/Lenny), a fantatic game I had come upon years ago originally. “…far journey, a space odyssey encompassing the realms of science-fiction and role-playing.“. It had both, fantastic single player adventure and a 2 player dualing game that really got me addicted before even trying the single player. (more…)

Checking, with WordPress.com Stats, for search terms had led people here (always interesting) one search was “freebsd daemon wallpapers“. Obviously it led to my earlier post, Linux vs. Windows wallpapers, with image featuring Tux and BSD daemon.

This made me look for BSD wallpapers so that in future people ending here for BSD images will find what they were looking for. So for more of these BSD images head to FreeBSD Image Gallery - Ultimate FreeBSD and BSD image collection.

A second site for good BSD images is BSDnexus. That second image on right is from there.

In the end, despite the lower image glorifying BSD even over Tux/Linux I shall make it clear that I do have a huge respect for BSD (and like the maskot) but for me, if I have to choose, Linux wins hands down. And please, no comment war on this. Civilized comments are ok, even wished. In the end it’s just matter of personal preferences and BSD does rock.

Someone had googled the text in title of this article on google and end up on my site.

To restart sshd on Fedora just run (as root on console): /etc/init.d/sshd restart

I hope that clears things up.

So, on my last post, “1,234,567,890th second since UNIX epoch. Where will you be?“, I predicted that on that particular second in time I would propably be sleepind or high. But I wasnt. Instead I was very sober and still awake - watching Futurama movies with my friend. It was all good time but now it’s gone. Still asking, what did *you* do on that moment?

“At 11:31:30pm UTC on Feb 13, 2009, Unix time will reach 1,234,567,890. Where will you be at this momentous second?” - from Bell Labs

Surely you would want to find out what time this second comes in your local time? Well, provided that your *nix system has perl installed you can run the following command in shell:

perl -e 'print scalar localtime(1234567890),"\n";'

Here in Finland this will not happen on Friday 13th but very soon after midnight on Saturday. More precisely at “Sat Feb 14 01:31:30 2009″, as was reported by the above line of perl code… I myself will most likely be high or sleeping at that very moment - where will you be?

P.S. See also: One of those magic times: On Friday the 13th! by Jon maddog Hall & The 1,234,567,890th second approacheth at Linux-Watch.

To quote osnews.com article Nokia To Add LGPL to Qt Licensing Model…

After Nokia purchsed Trolltech last year, doubts arose about how Nokia would handle the dual licensing model of Qt, the advanced cross-platform toolkit which lies at the base of the KDE Free software desktop. As it turns out, these doubts were unfounded, as Nokia today announced it’s going to add the LGPL to Qt’s licensing model, starting with Qt 4.5.

…and the press release…

The move to LGPL licensing will provide open source and commercial developers with more permissive licensing than GPL and so increase flexibility for developers. In addition, Qt source code repositories will be made publicly available and will encourage contributions from desktop and embedded developer communities. With these changes, developers will be able to actively drive the evolution of the Qt framework.

Personally I’m eager to see if this will result in code exchanging between the GTK and Qt projects - something that the licensing has prevented before. It would seem logical and beneficial to both sides to take on that path but only the future will tell…