Neofreko » Open Source

KDE 4.1: On Windows Vista

Akhmad Fathonih — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 01:37:41 +0000

It’s been a very long journey, from promises to reality. From potential to something we can really see. Qt decision on supporting other platform, in this case Windows, has been correct afterall. Enabling Qt to run on Windows, significantly has made many application become more portable. It was once before Qt 4 came, portabily is somewhat some people can only dream. Now, google earth runs in Windows, on Qt (need fact check). Marble, was really written in Linux, can now be enjoyed by Windows user.

That are not all. This year KDE came along as well. Having been built on top of Qt, KDE follows where Qt has gone. KDE 4.1, is now available as well in Windows. Not all bells and whistles are available, but still it’s a pretty awesome stuff not to be missed. Not only KDE 4.x has been a major architecture revamping effort within KDE history, KDE 4.x also brought new experiences to taste. Plasma has been the most discussed matter, as it is the frontline of KDE. The first thing user will see would be the desktop, as plasmoid.

Having KDE 4.x desktop has been refreshing (here is KDE in all its glory), though not all experiences are polished. However, Windows has been a lonesome OS without not many refreshment within short interval — Windows 7 still far on the horizon. On the other side users have been loving new fresh stuff in every seconds of their life. Desktop shell has been ranging from a openbox-like UI, without many user friendliness on configuration and usability aspect, into style enhancement (Windows Blind, StyleXP) or desktop enrichment like the once popular Object Desktop.

Now the time has come to enjoy new experience, a new concept of usabilty implementation, KDE style. Yes it means, configurable, DIY while still focusing on best user experience out of the box. Some may said the have been the not the less complicated desktop environment. Some other say it’s the most powerful jack of all trades (hint: KIO, KPart, DCOP/DBUS).

KDE 4.1 has been pretty. There are still more steps to go to give a solid usability. Hopefully it’ll be there by 4.3 or even 4.2. For Windows user, don’t let yourself left alone. Install kde-win-installer and taste the new juicy KDE yourself!

Dear lazy web, does Lua have regex support?

Akhmad Fathonih — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 07:50:41 +0000

mysql-proxy, being developed by MySQL AB itself, is very powerful tool to have. It can intercept raw mysql packets from authentication to query and query result. Creating a read/write load balancer has never been easier. Instead of filtering query (as seen in sqlrelay), we can use mysql-proxy to defines which back-end should be used for reading (–proxy-read-only-backend-addresses) or writing. No need to mess with each query executed. However, I miss regex in query filter or router of sql-relay. I wonder if we can use regex in Lua so we don’t have to do substr thingy in read_query() hook.

sqlrelay and mysql-proxy

Akhmad Fathonih — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:07:13 +0000

I am not yet going to have the vs tag. I just want to do a simple comparison here. Installation and a quick glimpse on both tool.

I have been astonished by the query filter/route feature in sqlrelay. I’ve setup a simple simulation in my box using two databases. And I have been happy about how I can direct my query based on some lines of regex. Working with mysql client directly and sqlrsh tool was totally smooth. However, making it works with LAMP(hp) was totally PITA. The mysql drop-in library can’t help here. Casting LD_PRELOAD spell before starting httpd was futile. Maybe it has something to do with mod_php or something else. I haven’t dig deeper. There’s only one option left — as working directly with sqlrelay-PHP API is no-option — that is using the available PEAR::DB driver for sqlrelay. That would be scwheet if only Drupal doesn’t start dropping PEAR::DB support in 4.6. Gah.

Okay, it’s now time for mysqlproxy to shine. There’s no ready library for CentOS/RHEL 5. Compiling from source. Requires Lua. Must compile Lua to get the recent 5.1.3. `make linux install` is failed on doc section. Commented out doc section. make linux install passed. but no lua.pc in any pkgconfig directory, ./configure on mysqlproxy failed. Copying lua.pc manually doesn’t work with configure. Manually use pkg-config –libs and –cflags to supply LUA_CFLAGS and LUA_LIBS for ./configure. make failed on dlopen stuff. Browsed Google. Google said: ./configure LDFLAG=’-ldl’. make && make install is OK.

Run mysqlproxy. Fired up mysql -u root -P 4041. show databases;. Errrrr. Nanni .. Nanni … Stuck. Bump. Will see you later tomorrow.

Update:

On one end:

toni@toni:~/public_html$ mysql -u root -P 4040
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
Your MySQL connection id is 0 to server version: 5.0.0

Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the buffer.

mysql>show databases;
ERROR:
Failed to get a cursor id.
 A network error may have ocurred. Success
mysql>

And on the other end:

toni@toni:~/Devs/mysql-proxy-0.6.1$ sudo /usr/local/sbin/mysql-proxy
file network-mysqld-proto.c: line 210 (network_mysqld_proto_get_int_len): assertion failed: (*_off < packet->len)
Aborted

Update #2:

mysql-proxy works swell today. Dunno, maybe I needed to restart mysql yesterday. mysql-proxy fives a more granular filter feature compared to sqlrelay simple regex. However, it must be paid by learning Lua.

Another tips, always use explicit mysql –host=localhost when you want to use mysql-proxy proxy feature. Otherwise your connection will likely goes via local socks, which is sucks. Eg: mysql -P 4040, this one will not connect to mysqld instance via port 4040, alas (apparently) it will use socket and ignores the port. Crazy param bastard took me forever to figure out.

Which side to choose

Akhmad Fathonih — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 15:25:48 +0000

I’ve been thinking about this for quite a while. I have this identity dilema, in particular with identity association. There’s some institution I can associate with but there are other which I felt related to but difficult to associate with. A real example can be found within today’s ILC (Indonesia Linux Conference) 2007 event. Who am I? What institution I should associate myself with? There’s this KPLI (Linux User Group Indonesia) Jogja where I should have been a member of, though never give much of a value to. There’s also ubuntu jogja/id where the only relation to me is that I’m using K/ubuntu on my laptop . Luckily, there’s actually one thing I can clearly associate myself with. That would be: id-anime. Thus, that’s just what I wrote on the presence list of ILC 2007 this morning. To be exact: KPLI Jogja/id-anime

Recent “you aren’t cut out to be developer” memes, especially the one posted by Andry here, has questioned my faith again. I love his: when all we got is hammer then all problems will look like nails. Yes, being a fanbois or evangelist might cost us objective perspectives. However, evangelists and fanbois are ones who push our technology beyond its limit, thus resulting in new features and bug fixes.

On yet another side, we can see some sort of trend in IT vacancies. There are a good number of technology spesific demand of IT worker, such as: Crystal Report, Struts, DHTML script, etc.

On my side, I grew up with BASIC, Pascal, and then Delphi. I started PHP somewhere
during college. My first real job assigned me to deal with Delphi
again. And one year later back to PHP on web development. Then I did
some “better” javascript — learned closure, and other better javascript
practices — not just onmouseclick anymore. Mixed it with XHR, and XUL
when I started falling in love with Firefox.

I’ve also fell in love with Qt/KDE. I was astounished by a member of
KOffice developer which was 23 years old when I’m reading it some years
ago. It wasn’t Ariya Hidayat. I knew Mas Ariya some times later when I
was checking out the about box on KWord. In short, these stuff and
people are what I’ve been looked up to . And then, these recent month
– started when I moved to Research and Development department — I started coding in Java (and minor C++, out of Qt/KDE context).

My yet simple history of learning programming languages, Andry’s post, and the trend of vacancies requirement in technology context are sides. We can choose on of them but we can’t have all. This is where my confusion come in place. We are limited with time and brain capacity (please excludes geniuses here), yet we have to be ready to jump into the IT worker market. Some employers tend to choose wild bullets so they can shoot right away. While others don’t mind to have gun powder to power their cannon with. Unfortunately, the later is hard to be found. What we tend to find here is the former.

Well, I guess I need to grow up and pursue wisdom. I think it’ll be a simple problem, once I can tame my ego . However, let’s not spoil the fun. I’m sure some of you have the exact or similar issue. Tell me what you think about it.

Picture note:
Focus Group Discussion on KPLI: Business and Legality Issue, during ILC 2007. I’m wearing red t-shirt. Credits to Yan Arief.

Git, Subversion, and Akatsuki

Akhmad Fathonih — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 02:39:46 +0000

Sorry, I can’t help not including Akatsuki here as it should have been my post. But in the last minute, mas Ariya (seleb KDE) from the KDE fame, changed my mind.

Mas Ariya berkomentar tentang hari gini diriku masih memakai svn instead of git (git-svn). Hari gini dimana decentralized repository is the way to go, eh kok saya masih saja pakai Subversion. Meskipun posting komentarnya sudah pake smiley, I can’t help replying it seriously. Afterall, I need to cast away this gloomy mood of mine. So here I go. Ikuyo ..

Actually, I’ve been fascinated by decentralized repo. Where we can go wild on some project while still able to have the joy of versioning. Correct me if I’ve been holding wrong understanding looo. Decentralized repo berarti kita bisa nge-hack sampe sepuasnya tanpa harus (manually) export, membuat repo baru lalu melakukan versioning di repo lokal kita supaya tidak merusak source code di original repo. We can then push our changes to original tree when we feel it good enough.

Tapi mas, sejauh saya pernah membaca dan mencoba, untuk bisa merasakan decentralized repo semacam git. We have to pull out the whole changeset (?). Which sometimes can be humongous. Dan umumnya tidak baik bagi kondisi internet di Indonesia yang koneksinya Senin Kamis :p. Ya, saya memang meng-exclude Anda-anda yang tidur di sambing kabel fiber optik.

Dulu pernah mencoba svk, tapi masih bingung dan sepertanya saya salah pake karena saya selalu push back langsung ke original repo instead of local ones. Dan untuk git, saya dulu pernah mencicipi sewaktu berusaha mengkompile Xorg 7.x demi Beryl.

Mohon pencerahannya mengenai git ini. I’ve seen even gnomers are using git as well lately.

Aku pengen ikutan cosplay~!!

Cineplex21 Plasmoid

Akhmad Fathonih — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 11:06:33 +0000

cineplex21 plasmoid

Originally uploaded by Framed Geek

Yesterday was the data engine, and today is the plasmoid. I have to refine the data structure within Cineplex21 Data Engine. Mostly to comply with the API. There’s no ultimate rule on how you should structure your data. Though it would be nice to follow the example given on other plasmoids. At least until there’s an official standard for it.

I started this plasmoids from Clock code. Copy the folder and rename the bits. CMakeList.txt almost made me pulling out hairs, until I found the typo. I missed one line that still referring to ${clock_SRCS}. That’s what you’ll get for being lazy :p

So, that’s it. You can see it in the screenshot. A very minimal look with very minimal info. TODO: add schedule information, and maybe put some credits information in it. I need to tell that data is pulled from 21cineplex.com via Dapper.

For you Indonesian, put this plasmoid on your desktop! Huzzah for KDE4!! Banzai~

PS:
it’s now hardcoded to show schedule for Ambarukmo Plaza Studio. It’s a matter of config to make it possible to choose which theater to display.

Social Compiling Cloud

Akhmad Fathonih — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 02:31:57 +0000

Saya bermimpi, bisa menikmati komunitas di mana anggotanya bisa berbagi resource computing powernya untuk anggota yang lain. Mirip-mirip SETI@home atau distributed.net, tapi dengan twist tujuan akhirnya adalah unutk meringankan dan mempercepat pekerjaan mengkompilasi source.

Bagaimana caranya? Well, ada dua distributed compiler yang saya tahu. Yang pertama adalah distcc, dan yang kedua adalah icecc (icecream) yang mengalamati beberapa kekurangan distcc. Jadi nantinya, anggota komunitas ini harus berada dalam satu network yang sama. Masing masing menyalakan daemon distributed compiler sehingga pada saat dia atau anggota yang lain melakukan pekerjaan kompilasi source, resource dia bisa dipakai apabila memungkinkan.

Contoh nyatanya seperti apa? Misalnya saja, saya ingin mengkompilasi source code KDE 4.0 atau kernel Linux terbaru. Besar kemungkinan bahwa pekerjaan tersebut akan memakan beberapa waktu dan membuat saya terhalang untuk bekerja di laptop dengan prosesor celeron dan RAM 256 MB yang saya punya. Andaikan pekerjaan mengkompilasi source ini didistribusikan, kemungkinan besar saya masih bisa memakai laptopnya untuk mengerjakan hal-hal lain bersamaan dengan tugas mengkompilasi. Atau paling tidak pekerjaan kompilasinya akan selesai dengan waktu yang lebih singkat sehingga resource laptop saya segera kembali free untuk dipakai seperti biasanya.

Ide ini sebenarnya sudah pernah saya lontarkan ke milis teknologia. Namun sayang, tidak banyak mendapat tanggapan yang saya idamkan. Mungkin karena saya kurang jelas dalam menjelaskan poinnya sehingga tidak tampak menarik. Atau mungkin juga karena semuanya sudah punya resource yang lebih dari cukup sehingga tidak begitu memerlukan tambahan resource lain untuk mengkompilasi source code. Atau kebetulan resourcenya sudah teralokasikan untuk hal lain. In any case, intinya kami tidak berbagi frekuensi yang sama :p. Ide ini, dengan spin komersial, dan mencakup beberapa isu yang terkait juga sudah saya post ke spigit.com. Tidak banyak juga respon yang saya terima di sana sayangnya. However, saya berharap akan muncul feedback di kemudian hari seiring bertambahnya penghuni spigit.

Mencoba untuk tidak berputus asa, saya ingin mengajak pembaca untuk merenungkan ide ini. Mudah-mudahan Anda berada dalam frekuensi yang sama dengan saya sehingga ide ini masuk akal bagi Anda. Rencananya, saya ingin memakai VPN (hint: Hamachi) untuk mengatasi kendala geografi. Dengan memakai klien semacam Hamachi, atau mungkin dengan mamakai server/klien yang lain, kita bisa berbagi computing resource kita via internet. Memang akan ada isu overhead jaringan, oleh karena itu saya juga berharap bisa memulai ide ini di level lokal (via JIX). Kalau tidak bisa satu kota ya mungkin bisa satu negara via IIX .

Jika Anda tertarik untuk bergabung dengan Social Compiling Cloud ini, atau tertarik dengan sisi komersialnya, jangan ragu-ragu untuk menghubungi saya ya. I’m always open for discussion. Ayo, kita buat komunitas Social Compiling Cloud ini. Tak perlu putus asa karena tidak punya laptop atau komputer keren. Compiling aja kok dibuat repot

Drupal, unable to login

Akhmad Fathonih — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 02:34:15 +0000

Google index me: drupal admin unable to login destination=admin

What would be more frustrating than dealing with core instead of learning the shell as what new user should have been expecting. Meet Drupal. Maybe I was unfortunate. Maybe it was only a regression bug, choosing poor people like me.

Whichever the case is, I was able to solve it by login via http://drupalpath/user/login. Normal login form in sidebar didn’t bring me anywhere far from http://drupalpath/?destination=admin

Google index me, and save them from frustration. Google, please kill the bug. Can’t?!

PHP Capistrano-like Deployment Tool

Akhmad Fathonih — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 08:37:58 +0000

I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about capistrano. It’s a very cool and handy tool. But sometime, you might not be able to meet its requirement. You have to have Ruby, and of course shell access. Well, I’m a geek trapped in the 1.0 age. You must believe me if I told you: I don’t have any shell access on my hosting provider. But I want Capistrano. For God sake, stop crying! Here some lines of PHP for your capistrano need:

// Neofreko's capistrano $date = date('Ymd'); @system("wget --mirror -nH --cut-dirs=3 -Psvn$date -o log$date --http-user meoncapistrano --http-password meoncapistrano http://trac.cz/svn/meprojectrocks/trunk");


// make link

@system("ln -s -f svn$date current");

// remove index.html @system("rm -f current/index.html"); ?>

You know you can do more with Phing, though it will be less readable than Ruby syntax .

What did I gain? Well, obviously, compared to doing local svn export and manually push the files via ftp, this one run blazingly faster! What can I say, it is wget-ing from ‘backbone’ to ‘backbone’. My local-to-live-server line just won’t cut it ).

PS:
OK Rail-ers, move on, I’m not playing troll here

Kerjaan Linus Torvalds Tiap Harinya

Akhmad Fathonih — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 05:34:22 +0000

This would be a maybe-not-funny joke. But anyway, I’ll post it :p. It’s all started after I posted a link to an email conversation within kde mailing list to #kuliax. And then stwn start discussing about git (which actually what the email is all about: Linus Torvalds on git and KDE)

Credits to Mas Ariya for sharing the conversation link on his blog (via Planet Terasi).