Archive for November, 2009

grub2

Tutorial: Boot Ubuntu 9.10 Partition using Virtualbox inside Windows (deprecated)

Nov 22nd

Posted by John Jiang in Tutorial

15 comments

This article is now deprecated as 10.04 has been released. Comments will be disabled. Check back for an updated version.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

So Ubuntu 9.10 got released several weeks ago and people have been asking about how to get my old tutorial working for 9.10.

The problem is that Ubuntu 9.10 uses the new grub 2 boot loader which changes LOTS of things. In this tutorial I will be showing you how to get Ubuntu 9.10 (or any other linux OS with grub2) working under your Windows installation.

Before we begin, you should have a dual boot setup. I will NOT be showing you how to setup a dual boot, if you need help plenty of other guides out there.

Step 1: Creating a grub 2 boot iso

The grub iso file will allow you to specify which partition to boot into.

  1. Boot into Ubuntu
  2. (OPTIONAL) Configure your /boot/grub/grub.cfg This is so that you don’t accidentally boot into your Windows partition from inside Windows! Bad things will happen if you do!!!
    $ gksudo gedit /boot/grub/grub.cfg
    Comment out your Windows Menu, should be towards the bottom
  3. Create the bootable iso
    $ grub-mkrescue –overlay=/boot/grub GRUB2CD.iso
  4. (DO THIS STEP ONLY IF YOU PERFORMED STEP 2)
    $ gksudo gedit /boot/grub/grub.cfg
    Uncomment out your Windows Menu, so you still can boot into windows after the reboot!
  5. Move the iso into a location that is accessible by windows

Step 2: Creating the .vmdk file

This creates a file which tells Virtualbox what partition to actually load as the harddrive. Unfortunately, unlike VMWare Workstation, Virtualbox does not support a GUI interface for selecting RAW hard disks as the “virtual hard drive”.

  1. Boot into Windows
  2. cd into the directory you installed virtualbox
  3. Find out which drive contains Ubuntu (if you don’t know already)
    Run the command: VBoxManage.exe internalcommands listpartitions -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDrive1
    (where 1 is the number of the hard drive ubuntu is installed on. E.g. Master should be 0, you’re second hard-drive should be 1 etc…The output should be something like:Number  Type   StartCHS       EndCHS      Size (MiB)  Start (Sect)
    1       0×07  0   /32 /33  1023/254/63        902023         2048
    5       0×83  1023/254/63  1023/254/63         49677   1847346543
    6       0×82  1023/254/63  1023/254/63          2164   1949086188

    In this example, my Ubuntu partition is number 5 and the swap is number 6. So my Ubuntu partition lies in PhysicalDrive1

  4. We now create the VMDK file with the given information
    Run the command: VBoxManage.exe internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename C:\ubuntu.vmdk -rawdisk \\.\PhysicalDrive1 -register

Step 3: Setup Virtualbox

Now everything should be ready to setup Virtualbox. Create a new virtual machine. Select the .vmdk file we just created as the hard drive and mount the grub.iso file we created at Step 1.

Step 4: Running the VM

Due to the way grub 2 works, whenever you put into it you now have to load the appropriate grub config file.

grub2

Just type the above into terminal and grub should load and boot into your Ubuntu 9.10 installation.

If this has helped you in any way, please take the time to drop a comment (or a donation)! If you have any problems, just post a comment or send me an email through the “Contact me” page.

ISSUES:

  1. For some reasons Grub does not recognise the partition if you specify the EXACT partition entry of Ubuntu. You have to specify the entire drive for it to be recognised.
  2. It doesn’t seem to like nvidia drivers in this release so you might have to reset your x.org for it to work inside a VM. Just have to live with the lack of acceleration!

References:

Boot an existing XP (Physical HD) install with VirtualBox

Linux Bash Commands for GRUB2

, ,
IMG_0385

Transitioning to SSD

Nov 9th

Posted by John Jiang in Thought

So my dear friends chipped in and got me an Intel x25-m gen2 80gb ssd for my 21st, it’s intel’s attempt to provide a mainstream ssd product that contains the same performance as it’s more expensive counterparts.

It arrived around 2-3 weeks ago, however, it took me several days to get it installed. Mainly because, it didn’t come with any brackets so impossible to fit inside my computer, unless I result to using cable ties or even let it hang lose in the drive bay.

I went to 6 different shops, 3 local and 3 in the city. Finally, I was able to purchase a bracket at Capitol Computers. However, it came with 2 brackets and I only need one. If anybody needs a 2.5″ bracket to fit inside a 3.5″ bay, let me know.

However, that worked out all nicely but I have an Antec Sonata II case, but it has rubber vibration dampeners on the 3.5″ brackets. Meaning that the screws are too short to reach. But taking out the dampeners would mean too big of a hole so the screws fall right through. Had to dig up some washers in my house and finally managed to get it installed safe and sound.

Here is the SSD fitting on the palm of my hand.

IMG_0385

And here it is sitting comfortably inside it’s two brackets.

IMG_0386

I also decided to compile a video of the boot time when using my 7200rpm hdd compared to the ssd.

This is NOT scientific at all. Mainly because the hdd uses a different bootloader (grub), I had to hit enter during the boot process so grub doesn’t lapse through the 10 seconds and it was NOT a clean install. But even considering all those factors, the reduction in boot time is significant.

Sorry for the crappy quality video but I couldn’t be bothered re-rendering the files to be any better.

I’ve had the ssd for couple of weeks now and realised that my pc now boots faster than the Windows 7 boot animation. So I decided to disable it and then run the same test. Here are the results.

It shaves around 1-2 seconds off the boot time. I realise it’s not very significant but just another micro-optimisation :P

Here are the specifications of my machine:

CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13ghz
RAM: 4gb
GPU: Nvidia 7600GT

computer rating

The SSD brought my hdd rating from the bottom to the top, but it seems now my bottleneck is the CPU. Firefox doesn’t seem to load any faster. Chrome loads instantaneous, likewise for IE.

IMG_3320

Day 2: Forbidden Palace (29/09/09)

Nov 6th

Posted by John Jiang in Thought

1 comment

Was a bit slack over the pass few weeks, hence did not put this up as promptly as I should have. Enjoy it nevertheless.

We had breakfast at the hotel, they offered both Western and Eastern breakfast menus. I opted for the more traditional breakfast.

Dou Jiang You Tiao

They had pretty much everything you expect in a breakfast and then some. They also had actual chefs to cook for you, if you wanted a Chinese pancake or maybe even a noodle dish.

After breakfast, we decided to catch a taxi to the Forbidden Palace. For a city of 18 million, you’d think taxis are common but most of the taxis were occupied. As soon as you see a taxi drop someone off, all of a sudden you have groups of people rushing towards it trying to hitch a ride. After 10 minutes of waiting and aimless flagging, we caught a break when a taxi dropped someone off 10 meters from us.

So like the Forbidden Palace is one of those places where people tell you it’s big…but you don’t realise how big it actually is when you step into it. Man, it’s bloody big. Everything is big and grandeur. We also hired a freelance tour guide, they seem to just stand around the ticket office asking if people needed a guide. It’s nice that you don’t have to find one, they just come to you, but it’s also rather annoying when everybody you meet is either trying to sell you something or offer you a service (there’s more on that later).

So began our journey throughout the palace. Most of what the tour guide said I didn’t actually understand but I did understand several stories. One being how all the concubines slept in this one “house” and every night the emperor would come and select 3 concubines to bed with. Ridiculous.

I also noticed that several freeloaders have jumped onto our ship. Towards the end we had around 6 random strangers following us listening to our tour guide.

Unfortunately, wordpress doesn’t allow you to insert more than one picture into a post when you click “insert media” so I’m just going to put up the entire gallery. If you want to read up on each picture just hover your mouse over the pic and read the alt text. Enjoy!

Edit: Turns out the alt text is the description, the file name is the alt text and the description is…well..nothing! BUG!

, ,
My Firefox

Firefox Extensions for teh Pros

Nov 3rd

Posted by John Jiang in Tutorial

So with every installation of Windows/Ubuntu, I find myself reinstalling Firefox and then reinstalling all the extensions and then configuring the extensions to match my needs.

Unfortunately, Mozilla only has this crappy service that syncs your bookmarks (which 100 other extensions do already) and does not offer extension or settings sync.

I’m just gonna list a run-down of all the extensions that I use to improve my productivity.

  • Adblock Plus – Blocks ads!
  • Better Gmail 2 – It just runs several greasemonkey scripts to make your gmail experience that much better. It emulates “Folders” and allow dynamic Favicon displays.
  • Download Statusbar – One of the most annoying things about firefox is that when you download something it opens it up in another window. Why?! This extension displays everything in a neat statusbar.
  • Echofon (Formerly Twitterfox) – If you use twitter then this is an extremely light and simple twitter client. Most clients that I’ve used are generally extremely verbose. This displays a tiny icon in your statusbar and alerts you when there’s a new tweet.
  • Faviconize Tab – I find that at any given time I always have two tabs open, Gmail and Google Reader. What this extension does is that it makes the tab size of selected tabs to be the size of the favicon. This way you reduce clutter and allow more tabs to fit on the one screen!
  • Fire Gestures – Brings mouse gestures to Firefox!
  • Hide Menubar – One of the simplest extensions I have installed! It allows you to hide the menubar. To use the menu you just press ALT. You just saved x-pixels of screen real estate!
  • Net Usage Item – This basically checks your Net usage, it pretty much supports every ISP in Australia. However, the UI isn’t that great. But since I’ve hidden the menubar I just dock it in the corner of the menubar. Press alt when I want to see it. It beats having to install a separate Usage Checking client.
  • Skip Screen – If you follow me on twitter/facebook/msn, then you’ve probably seen this. But this is an amazing extension. It basically skips the waiting time when trying to download files from Rapidshare and what not.
  • Speed Dial – Whenever I show people this extension they’re like “Oh so it’s just a copy cat of Chrome!”. No you ignorant fools! It’s copying speed dial made by Opera! Unlike Chrome though which shows you the sites you’ve visited the most, it only allows you to select the sites that you want to visit.
  • Tab-mix plus – To put it simply it’s like your tab-bar on steroids and then injected with Rhino hormones. The main reason that I use it is that it supports multiple-row tabs and also allow you to customise the size of each tab.

My FirefoxSo this is the result! It only demonstrates couple of the extensions but the changes are quite significant. If any of the extensions interest you give it a try! If you know of any other funky extensions, drop a comment!

,

HowTo: Slimming down your Windows 7

Nov 3rd

Posted by John Jiang in Tutorial

3 comments

When I was on Windows XP I had this crazy obsession with making XP as slim as possible. I made custom XP installs slipstreamed with the most recent updates, disabled all the unnecessary services and only used apps that had small memory footprints.

I believe I got it down to around 18 processes on start up. Then I moved to Ubuntu and all these obsessions went away. I mean, Ubuntu would just keep chugging no matter how much crap I chucked at it.

Now I’m on Windows 7 and whilst those crazy obsessions have NOT returned, it does interest me as to what I can disable to get the most out of my system.

So here is a list of all the services I decided to disable. Just type services.msc in the start menu and hit enter. Double click the service, select stop and then “disable” from the drop down.

Disclaimer: I’m not responsible for ANYTHING yada yada yada.

  1. Diagnostic Policy Service
    This is basically that thing that goes “Windows have detected a problem, would you like to check for solutions?” TBH, the advice from that thing is actually quite useful. But I don’t really need it.
  2. Distributed Link Tracking Client
    Keeps tracks of all the “linkages”. E.g. You create a shortcut to document A. You move document A to another location. Windows will automatically update all shortcuts to point to that new location so you don’t get “File Not Found” errors. Not very useful if you ask me, unless you’re a shortcut junkie.
  3. Function Discovery Provider Host
    Used for Home Groups. Not useful if you don’t care about sharing files or have other methods of doing so.
  4. Function Discovery Resource Publication
    See 3.
  5. IP Helper
    It’s meant to help transition to IPv6 but I don’t know of any ISPs that even support IPv6 so until they do this service can go bye bye.
  6. Offline Files
    Disgusting.
  7. Peer Name Resolution Protocol
    When was the last time anyone used Remote Assistance?
  8. Peer Networking Grouping
    See 7.
  9. Peer Networking Identity Manager
    See 7.
  10. Problem Reports and Solutions Control Panel Support
    This can be disabled in the control panel. I don’t care too much for error reports.
  11. Windows Connect Now – Config Registrar
    Unless you have a “Compatible with Windows 7″ sticker on your router, this is useless.
  12. Windows Media Player Network Sharing Service
    Interesting service, but I won’t ever be sharing music over the network.

I recommend you keep a list of all your changes and revert back if there are any problems.

That’s it for now. I have several other blogs lined up but just haven’t been bothered posting them. The lack of comments saddens me.