Howto: Install Real Player 11 Gold on Mandriva 2008.1

If you are a GNU/Linux lover especially Mandriva, you should have met problem whenever you want to play real media files. These files have extension *.rm or *.rmvb. Why this is happened? The answer is simple, just because the codec for this kind of file is copy righted. That's why many GNU/Linux distro never include the codec needed to play this kind of file (some countries regard this as a law break). Fortunately, real.com also provide a real player GNU/Linux platform. This article will guide you how to install Real Player 11 Gold on Mandriva 2008.1. Keep reading.

First thing first, download the player here. You may use any download manager to speed up your download, one thing to remember is where did you save this file (you'll need this later). After downloading the player, open a terminal from Applications -> Tools -> Terminal menu, then navigate to the directory where you save the player installer (in this example Desktop directory inside my home directory).

$ cd Desktop

Now you have to make the installer executable by giving it an execute permission. Just invoke this command from terminal

$ chmod +x RealPlayer11GOLD.bin

OK, we are ready to start the installation, but remember that you need a root privilege to do this. If you don't , you may ask your administrator to give you an access by using sudo command. To start the installation, run this command on your terminal

$ suPassword:

Enter the root password at this prompt, if you enter the correct password you'll see that the $ now become #, means you're a root (God of GNU/Linux system). Start the installation

# ./RealPlayer11GOLD.bin

This command will bring you a welcome dialog, just press Enter to continue to the next step. You'll be asked some question in this step.
The first question is about the destination directory for installation, hit Enter if you agree with the default directory that is /opt/real/RealPlayer.
Next step will ask for your confirmation about your choice in the previous step. Just hit enter to continue or write P then hit enter to go back to the previous step.
You have to wait the installation finish, if you see an error message at this step just ignore it.

Having finish the installation, you may run your real player from Applications->Sound & Video->RealPlayer 11 menu. The first time you run this application you need to set some configuration.
Nothing special in this dialog, just press Next button to continue to the next dialog.
This is the Release Notes for Linux, read this carefully then press Next button to continue.
You have to agree this License Agreement by ticking the Accept selection button, then simply press Next button to continue.
This application need to test you Internet connection, if you have an Internet connection press Next button otherwise press Skip button. In this case I choose to press Next button.
Click Perform Test to test your internet connection.
Here is the result, I have an available bandwidth in the DSL/Cable (256 Kbps) range. That's why I have an option to update my RealPlayer by clicking Update button.
That's all, the intallation is now complete. Click Finish button to open your newly installed RealPlayer 11.
Happy watching...

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Linux's Shell is Really Fun

You may not believe me, but just try to run gparted from terminal without the sudo command preceding it

$ gparted

and you'll see this dialog

Do you see that? It said that gparted can be a weapon of mass destruction, and yes it is right, that's why you have to be a root to run it. This is the first evidence that Linux's shell is really funny.

Next, you'll see that shell can interact with people, even more having a kind of conversation with people. I took this screen shot on my PC running Ubuntu 8.04



Could you believe that?

Wanna see it's joking, try to run this command from your shell

$ sudo apt-get moo

what you'll get is



Funny, right?

Now, having read this, you must believe me shell is funny. FYI, people often called these 'Easter eggs', the funny things which is put by the programmer inside their software. The point of all of these, is that shell is just another way to interact with our Linux box. And if you try to know it, you will find that it is great, nice, and also fun.

Note: the apt-get command may only run on Debian GNU/Linux and its derrivative such as Ubuntu, Simply Mepis, Kuliax, etc. I have ever heard that PCLinuxOS also use this tool, but I've never tried it yet.

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Sexy and Beautiful Desktop

Hi guys, I wanna show my desktop on my PC running Ubuntu 8.04.1 with Compiz Fusion. Here it is


















Here are the details of my desktop

• OS: Ubuntu 8.04.1 Hardy Heron LTS
  
• Kernel: linux 2.6.24-19-generic
  
• Desktop environment: Gnome 2.22.3
  
• Compositing: Compiz Fusion 0.7.6
  
• Window manager: Emerald 0.7.2
  
• Dock: Avant Window Navigator 0.2.1
  
• Applet: Screenlets 0.0.12
  
• Wallpaper: Bob Marley (got it somewhere, someday)

Note: see this article for installation guide of this plugin.

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Installing and Configuring GNUMP3d, The Streaming MP3/OGG Server

Sharing something with friends or anyone through network (LAN or WAN) is really a great thing. And one of the best thing to share is music. Yeah, if you have a great collection of digital music stored in your hard disk, it's time to share it with another people. Never say that you don't have any idea how to share your music no.. no.. no.., wake up! Remember that we live in the world of free and open source software, we have many choices and the most important it's free. What? You're still using that fool proprietary thing, oh.. come on.

First Thing First

Although there are many choices out there, we'll try to install and configure GNUMP3d. You may ask, why? I've tried it, and I thought it's nice, cool, great, secure, easy to use, free, and it's included in Ubuntu 7.10 repositories, that's why I want to share my experience while installing, configuring, and using it. You won't believe if you don't try it.

For your information, I run GNUMP3d on Ubuntu 7.10 and Apache2 web server. First of all, you have to make sure that Apache web server has been installed on your system, if it has not it's time to

$ sudo apt-get install apache2

Easy, right? Now let's move on.

Installing GNUMP3d

All you have to do is just to open a terminal emulator (xterm, gnome-terminal, konsole, etc) and issue this command

$ sudo apt-get install gnump3d

and Ubuntu will do the rest. If you dislike the command line interface, you may choose Synaptic with a nice GUI.

Configuring GNUMP3d

The configuration of this streaming mp3/ogg server is stored in /etc/gnump3d, so let's go there

$ cd /etc/gnump3d

you'll see three files here, for now just pay attention to the main configuration file, gnump3d.conf. We need to edit this file, but don't forget to back it up first.

$ sudo cp gnump3d.conf gnump3d.conf_original
$ sudo vim /etc/gnump3d/gnump3d.conf

The first thing you need to change is the root directory of this server, find this line

root = /var/music

change the value to the directory where you stored your music,

root = /media/multimedia/musik

Then, you need to change the user who runs this server, find this line

user = gnump3d

change the value, the result will be like this

user = root

There are many settings you may change in this file, just read the explanation there to understand it. For more information see the manual page of gnump3d.conf. Now, save your configuration and restart the server.

$ sudo /etc/init.d/gnump3d restart

Trying The Server

Everything is ready, now it's time to try your new streaming mp3/ogg server. Open your favorite web browser (e.g Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Konqueror, etc) and type http://localhost:8888, then hit enter. If everything goes well you'll the main page of your server ready to serve your network.

Okay, that's all for today. Please do not hesitate to correct me if something's wrong, either the grammar (I'm learning English, still not good yet) or anything else.

Reference: Ubuntu Guide

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File Sharing Through NFS

I will try to explain how to share files through NFS in GNU/Linux at this post. NFS stands for Network File System, it is probably the most prominent network service using RPC. It enables Linuxers to share files in the network. By using this service, you will be able to mount files on the remote hosts (often called NFS server) as if it's a local files.

Preparation

Generally someone who wants to share files through NFS needs at least two PCs. One PC acts as a server and the other one as a client. But you don't need to worry if you don't have two PCs, all you need is just to install a virtual machine software. And as we stay in the great GNU/Linux and Free/Open Source world, there are many choices available (for free) out there. For example, let's say Virtual Box, Qemu, Xen, VMWare Server, VMWare Workstation, KVM, and many others.

I myself prefer VMWare Server to others, as it's free (yeah it's free now), simple, and easy to use. It's installed on my machine running Ubuntu 7.10 a.k.a Gutsy Gibbon. If you use Ubuntu 7.10 (just like me), you may want to try Virtual Box OSE, Qemu, KVM, or Xen as it's included in the repository. Just simply run

$ apt-get install virtualbox-ose

from terminal and Ubuntu will do the rest for you.

Another important thing is that your kernel should have been configured to support network file sistem, either built in or as a module. If it doesn't, you may have to recompiled your kernel in order to make it supports the network file system.

As I've mentioned early NFS is kind of client-server software, for that reason the rest of this post will be divided into two part, the first part will explain all the things you need to do at the server side and the second for the client side.

Server Side

On the server side, you have to do three steps, first of all you must install the packages required to run a NFS server namely nfs-kernel-server, nfs-common, and portmap. Then, you need to configure your NFS server by editing /etc/exports. The last but not the least, export the directory you want to share. Here is the details

1. Packages Installation

As usual, make sure that you have configured the repository of your Ubuntu. If you have, open a terminal (Application -> Accessories -> Terminal) and run these command


$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install nfs-kernel-server
$ sudo apt-get install nfs-common
$ sudo apt-get install portmap

As simple as that? Yeah, remember that you must run Ubuntu (or another Debian based distros). If you don't, you may use the tool provided by your distro.


2. NFS Server Configuration

The main configuration of NFS Server is laid in /etc/exports, just edit this file with your favorite text editor (for this one, I choose vim). Still in terminal,


$ sudo vim /etc/exports

then add this line to the end of the file


/media/multimedia *(rw,sync,no_root_squash)

/media/multimedia is the directory or file to share (you may change this with directory or file you want to share), * means that any machine permits to mount the directory, this is not recommended instead you may change it to a single IP (192.168.0.10) or a network (192.168.0.0/24). For the rest of the options please see the manual page of /etc/exports by running


$ man exports


3. Exporting The Directory

This is the last step at server side, but remember that you have to rerun the command below every time you make a change to the server configuration.


$ sudo exportfs -a

Client Side

In order to mount the directory or file shared by the server, you need to follow these two steps.

1. Installing The Required Packages

Not like the server, you just need two package here. They are nfs-common and portmap.


$ sudo apt-get install nfs-common
$ sudo apt-get install portmap

2. Mount The Directory

Actually, this is the real action of this story (who is telling a story :-) ). As NFS lets you treat the file shared by the server like a local file, so you don't need anything but mount command. To mount the directory /media/multimedia that is shared by the server above, at client you need to run (supposing that the IP of the server is 192.168.0.1)


sudo mount 192.168.0.1:/media/multimedia /media/nfs/multimedia

Make sure that directory /media/nfs/multimedia exists, if it doesn't make it before you run the command above.


$ sudo mkdir -p /media/nfs/multimedia

If you want to mount the directory automatically at boot time, you may add this line to your /etc/fstab:


192.168.0.1:/media/multimedia/ /media/nfs/multimedia nfs rw,sync 0 0

Remember that you still need a text editor to edit your /etc/fstab file.


sudo vim /etc/fstab

That's all. Huh? That's all? Yeah.. that's all.

Reference:

• Linux Network Administrator's Guide, 2nd Edition, by Olaf Kirch & Terry Dawson.


• Komputek Tabloid 550th Edition.

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Circular Application Menu

A few day ago I found an article about a feature that will be included in the next MS operating system, Windows 7. It's a menu in a circular form displayed in desktop. The icon of each sub menu is laid around the circle, if we click on the icon another circular of the menus that laid under the icon of the sub menu will be displayed so that we will show two circle on our desktop. Take a look at this screen shoot taken from my desktop.

Yes, you're right that's not a MS Windows, it's a Ubuntu running on my PC. Fortunately, we don't have to wait to see this feature in Linux, because it's already there. If you use Ubuntu or Debian (and its derrivative) getdeb has made a debian package for us, so that we don't need to compile it from source. You may download the package from this link. To install this package, just simply double click on it, to open a wizard that will guide you to finish the installation

If all dependencies are satisfied, click Install Package button to start the intallation process. You have to wait in this step until the process finish. This may take some time because the installer need to download some package needed to run this application.

After the installation we can run circular application menu from Apllication -> Accesories -> Circular-Application-Menu menu.

And finally, we have our new eye candy menu that will beautifying our desktop together with compiz, avant window navigator, and google gadget.

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