The Kubuntu Aftermath

So, I was trying to rescue a Karmic Koala in distress. I failed at the time, because I didn’t have an up-to-date release of Kubuntu (or Ubuntu, for that matter). So here’s what happened next.

I finally got to borrow a friend’s Kubuntu installation CD, so I booted it up. I poked around in it for a bit, and… alas… there is no such thing as GParted preinstalled inside Kubuntu’s live CD. Lucky for me, I got me an Ubuntu Live CD at hand, also Karmic Koala. Without hesitating, I fired it up, and there it was, Gparted… *drool*

So, I went ahead and just repartitioned the darn virtual disk. By this, I mean I did it in one go, I didn’t stop to apply partition deletions before resizing my root partition and creating a tiny swap partition. One go only. And it worked like a charm.

So there it is, my Kubuntu Karmic Koala now has 5GB of disk space, of which about 1.2GB is free. Enough for now.

Saving Koala Karmic with Gutsy Gibbon: A Failed Attempt

DISCLAIMER: The post you are about to read is really boring unless you are a geek like me. You have been warned.

So, I’ve been trying to tune my Kubuntu installation the best I can, scrounging what is left of my unreliable mobile connection. I managed to actually finish doing apt-get dist-upgrade on it, but by the time everything is installed I came across another problem: hard drive space.

I initially setup my virtual machine to have a 4GB hard drive. After a full installation of Kubuntu Koala Karmic, I got around 600MB of free space on it. So, I went ahead and did a full upgrade, after which my free hard drive space immediately dropped to below 100MB. Oh yay!

That said, turned the VM off and tried to edit its settings. I added an extra gigabyte to the existing 4GB virtual hard drive, then booted into Kubuntu again. Oh darn… I forgot that resizing the virtual hard drive merely simulates an increase of physical hard drive size, and to make use of this I had to actually resize the darn partition.

Next, I got my old Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon CD, which I finally found after digging through a pile of old movies and stuff. I launched the live session, got into GParted, and attempted to resize my root partition.

Then another hurdle: GParted could delete my existing extended partition (which contained my swap partition), but when I tried to resize my primary  partition it failed. It says something about the superblock being corrupt, whatever that means.

So I tried doing a workaround: I built my extended partition again, only this time covering the entire free space. I then added a new EXT3 partition and kept my swap at a meager 256MB. Then I tried to boot into Koala Karmic again, and voila, it booted.

But this doesn’t solve the problem that Karmic Koala keeps warning me about low disk space. I can actually tell it not to warn me anymore, but the fact that I only have 120 megs of space in my root partition bothers me. I wouldn’t be able to install pretty much anything…

OK, let’s try this again. Boot into Gutsy Gibbon, and try to redo the partitioning (again).

*By the way, I gotta tell you, booting a live CD takes forever! Using a bootable USB stick is probably a better idea.

Nope. It just won’t do it. I guess Gutsy Gibbon is a bit old to do its trick on newer Kubuntu installations. I’ll just have to wait to get that Kubuntu installation DVD…

Going Vintage

Ever since I got my hands on a copy of Kubuntu and successfully installed it as a virtual machine on my Mac OS 10.6.3, I’ve been craving to get my hands on other operating systems. By this, I mean some of the older operating systems. The windows family, for example, ranging from XP (I’ll just skip Vista, not worth the try), 2000, Me, 98, 95, and back as far as Windows 3.11 and DOS 6.xx. Other than that, there are numerous UNIX/Linux-based systems such as OpenSUSE, Mandriva, CentOS, Gentoo, Slackware, FreeBSD, and many more.

The geek in me has taken over…

I just wanted to relive the experience of installing, configuring, and actually using those systems. I wonder if my thesis from my college days will still run on the most current version of Ubuntu, and I wonder if I can still code in VisualBasic 6.0 or C++.

I’d like to more appreciate the fact that our newest operating systems (with all its user-friendliness and advanced technologies that we so often take for granted) are built using those earlier systems. We wouldn’t have Windows 7 today if Microsoft didn’t pull off its gig when it launched Windows 3.11 back then.

So I’m attempting to be a collector of antiquities, and by this I mean vintage software. I hope it’s going to be an exciting ride.

Simplicity, Independence, and Best Value

What do you want when you decide to spend a lot of money on taking a trip overseas? Even if it’s only a thousand clicks away, not to the other side of the world, you’d want the trip to be a wonderful experience.

I would want three things.

1. Simplicity

I hate to spend a lot of time discussing issues that don’t really need to be discussed. Things like should you bring a backup toothbrush or how many panties you need to carry with you. We’re grown ups. We can deal with personal preferences ourselves; no need to discuss it with your peers, or even bring it up in the forum.

2. Independence

Independence here has two meanings, and I think both of them are important. First, I want to be independent to chose where I want to go, when, and for how long. I’m not saying that compromises are out of the question; I’m saying that when talks get really tough, going our own ways is probably the best option. Second, I do not want people to go somewhere just because I’m also going there. If I suddenly change my mind, it’ll all get messy and somebody’s going to get upset. Not nice.

3. Best Value

Now, this is closely related to independence. What people value most will differ. Maybe I prefer culinary explorations and heritage trails, while you can’t think of anything but shopping, hi-tech 3D movies, and exhilarating roller-coasters. Well, in this case, as I’ve said before, going our own ways is probably better.

Again, I am not saying that compromises are bad; they’re just bad if they start to take a toll on the fun you should be having. The trade-off here is getting what you want by going it alone, or sacrificing something in favor of someone’s company.

So, let’s keep it simple, independent, and for the best value. Instead of trying to make everyone else do what we want, why not let everyone decide for themselves and get together only when it’s feasible and fun to do so.

Happy traveling!

Medley of The Night


just stuck hollow and alone
and the fault is my own and the fault is my own

I wanna heal, I wanna feel what I thought was never real
I wanna let go of the pain I’ve felt so long
erase all the pain ’till it’s gone
I wanna heal, I wanna feel like I’m close to something real
I wanna find something I’ve wanted all along
somewhere I belong

[Linkin Park – Somewhere I Belong]


I tried so hard, and got so far
but in the end it doesn’t even matter
I had to fall to lose it all
but in the end it doesn’t even matter

[Linkin Park – In The End]


for what is a man? what has he got?
if not himself – then he has naught
to say the things he truly feels
and not the words of one who kneels
the record shows I took the blows
and did it my way

[Frank Sinatra – My Way]

—–

tonight saw a parade of songs that for the rest of the world might seem unimportant or insignificant. but I found three that struck something in me. it was the three songs above, in chronological order, and — amazingly enough — they seemed to portray the chronological order of what truly happened: want – try – fail – fall down – get up and get going.

people come and go and try and fail and succeed and… well, the world just keeps spinning no matter what lousy hole you’re stuck in. I guess I should be thankful that time and space and everyday itinerary saves me a lot of energy and helps me stabilize myself.

my favorite part? here goes:
the record shows I took the blows and did it my way

for the record: no regrets, I wouldn’t have it any other way, and I have every confidence that whatever will be thrown at me next will not be something I cannot handle.

arrogant? well, we need to be to survive. that’s the name of the game.

Wishlist Upgraded

Here’s my new wishlist, an upgrade of my previous wishlist:

  1. Get a house of my own in my hometown Yogyakarta, Indonesia, preferably in the northeast part of the city, in the suburbs.
  2. Go on a backpacking trip to Europe, preferably with my better half.
  3. Learn photography; and while I’m at it, get a DSLR camera, maybe a Canon EOS D40. [review]
  4. Get a 13″ Apple MacBook Unibody.
  5. Have a foster kid(s) or be able to fund schooling for underprivileged kids.
  6. Get a health and life insurance policy and build a detailed pension plan.

Wishlist

Tadi aku ngobrol sama temen waktu keluar makan es buah…

Aku: “Number one on my wishlist: MacBook. Eh… tapi cari yang lain aja deh, yang lebih bermakna getu…”

Temenku: “Ehm… MacBook Pro?”

 

Okay, I wanted to write down my wishlist. So here goes…

  1. Punya rumah sendiri di Jogja
  2. Backpacking ke Eropa, preferably with my special someone, yang ampe sekarang belum dapet-dapet juga…
  3. Punya MacBook 13″ aluminum unibody
  4. Punya anak asuh atau bisa menyekolahkan anak-anak yang nggak bisa sekolah

That’s it for now… I’ll add some more later on.

First-time Backpacker

Kemaren aku pergi backpacking ama Sondang, temennya Kike my new friend yang baru aku temukan Hi!sekitar 2 bulan yang lalu setelah sekitar 10 tahun ga pernah ketemu. Gara-gara SMSan ga jelas dan tantang-tantanganNantang?, akhirnya kami sepakat aku nemeni dia backpacking ke Jakarta.Hahaha!

Okay, so the journey begins on Saturday. Aku sampe ke Lempuyangan sekitar jam 15.45, langsung beli tiket dan nungguin Sondang. Waktu Sondang datang, tiba-tiba kami ingat belum beli roti buat makan malam dan aku juga belum bawa payung. Jadilah kami lari-lariLari-lari! ke jalan Hayam Wuruk demi 2 bungkus roti dan sebuah payung. Kenapa lari-lari? Karena kami cuma punya waktu sekitar 12 menit **dudulz!!** Dah gitu perjalanan baliknya kehujanan pulak. Untung dah jadi beli payung ^_^

Masuklah kami ke kereta Progo, yang waktu itu masih setengah kosong. Ngobrol buanyaaak banget sampe malem, sampe akhirnya kami ketiduran karena capek. Itupun masih sering bangun gara-gara hiruk pikuk pedagang ini-itu yang lalu-lalang nggak keruan **buset dah**.

Akhirnya ketika adzan subuh berkumandang, sampailah kami di “Setasiun Pasar Senen”. Turun dari kereta, kami langsung cari-cari kamar mandi, tapi sempat nyasar gara-gara Sondang lupa jalannya . Setelah **akhirnya** dia ingat, kami mandi. Kamar mandinya bersih dan airnya juga bersih, dan karena Jakarta panas nggak keruan, mandi jam 4 pagi di sana serasa mandi jam 9 siang di Jogja. Sempat masuk ke kamar mandi yang rada jijay juga sih, karena ada orang pup ga diguyur , but I finally got a clean room.

Selesai mandi, kami beli roti dan susu buat sarapan di toko semacam Indomaret, dan Sondang nitip batere HP-nya buat di-charge di situ **bener-bener impromptu ya ni anak**. Kami makan di ruang tunggu, dan habis itu sempat tidur Bobo...sekitar setengah jam, bersama para backpacker lain yang entah menunggu apa.

Habis itu, kami mulai jalan ke halte busway. Berangkatlah kami ke arah Stasiun Jakarta Kota. Dari sana, kami jalan ke arah Jalan Asemka, lalu masuk ke Pasar Pagi Asemka. Dasar kami yang terlalu rajin ato mungkin males kelamaan tidur di ruang tunggu, belum ada toko satupun yang buka. Akhirnya kami jalan-jalan entah ke mana, tapi tiba-tiba sampe di jalan yang di kiri-kanan banyak orang jualan snack semacam manisan dan sebagainya. Eits…. ada mobil sport Mercy lewat pula… keren bo….Kerenn!!

Tau-tau kami sampe ke daerah yang mirip Pecinan gitu, banyak huruf Cina di mana-mana. Tempatnya mirip pasar, banyak orang bejubel, bertransaksi, tawar-tawaran. Yang unik, kami sempat liat ada orang-orang Satpol PP yang lagi kerja bakti bareng orang-orang situ. Mereka lagi bongkar-bongkar parit yang penuh kotoran item-item nggak jelas. Ada satu orang yang cuma pake celana pendek, tapi hampir seluruh tubuhnya kena kotoran item-item ndak jelas itu tadi. Jadi mirip orang yang barusan mandi aspal.

Sondang sempat tertarik beli roti Liong ato apa itu aku lupa namanya, tapi nggak jadi. Sempat beli kain sprei juga, mau dibikin pernik-pernik. Habis dari situ, balik lagi ke Pasar Pagi Asemka, dan ternyata tokonya tetep banyak yang belum buka **doh**. Akhirnya kami iseng naik ke lantai 2 dan 3, tapi semakin ke atas semakin banyak yang tutup daripada yang buka, dan nggak ada yang jual barang yang dicari Sondang.

Turunlah kami dan keluar kompleks pasar, tanya ke satpam yang akhirnya menjawab bahwa kalo minggu tokonya tutup Oh nooo!!!. Sondang sempat kelihatan down banget dan bete , but she can handle it **hurray!!**. Akhirnya kami ke toko bahan perhiasan imitasi “Kirana”. Nah… di situ Sondang memanjakan diri pilih-pilih bahan ini-itu. Aku sendiri sempat nongkrong di seberang toko, minum Pocari sambil ngobrol sama yang jual Pocari yang ternyata orang Tegal.

Sekitar jam 11 kami masuk lagi ke Asemka, dan akhirnya menemukan beberapa toko alternatif yang menjual barang-barang yang dicari Sondang. Setelah bertransaksi ini-itu dan muter-muter dan sempat kesasar juga di dalam pasar, kami menyatakan sesi belanja di pasar hari itu SELESAI. Jam 12 lebih dikit kami jalan lagi ke Stasiun Kota dan makan di A&W di dalam stasiun. Kami mengistirahatkan kaki yang mungkin udah jalan lebih dari 5 km pagi itu. Akhirnya bisa minum rootbeer lagi! Yeahh!!!

Rootbeer!

Setelah makan dan istirahat, jam 2 kami balik lagi ke Asemka karena mamanya Sondang telpon dan nitip barang-barang lagi yang tadi belum terbeli. Jadi. kami muter-muter lagi di Asemka selama 2 jam. Setelah itu, nge-busway dari Stasiun Kota ke Harmoni, transit ke Pasar Senen, dan langsung transit lagi ke Mangga Dua. Kami masuk Mangga Dua Square sekitar jam 5.30.

Pertama masuk MDS, Sondang langsung tertarik sama J-Co Donut, tapi aku gak mau. Kebanyakan pengawet tuh makanan… Akhirnya kami menyelingkuhi J-Co dan malah beli Baskin Robbins **yaaayy**. Setelah itu kami muter-muter cari tempat yang enak buat menikmati single scoop cone kami. Jadi kami duduk di depan eskalator sambil mengamati orang-orang yang muncul dari eskalator itu. Banyak orang berkostum hitam-putih, dan banyak anak-anak cewek naik otopet di situ.

Setelah puas menjilat-jilat single scoop cone, kami mulai hunting lagi. Kali ini cari ATM BCA, karena sekali lagi duitku habis. Setelah dari ATM, kami cari-cari kaos buat aku, karena aku kehabisan baju ganti kaosku habis. Bener-bener impromptu deh. Akhirnya aku menemukan kaos harga 30 ribu yang lumayan lah, jadi aku beli satu. Habis itu, giliran Sondang yang hunting. Mulai dari rok gipsy, baju renang, dan akhirnya kaos juga.

Setelah itu, kami menuju Carrefour, mau beli ransum buat makan malam. Tapi karena memang baru sekali itu masuk Mangga Dua Square dan nggak tau letaknya Carrefour di mana, kami kesasar. Rasanya seperti tertipu ketika mengikuti signboard yang menunjukkan Carrefour ada 1 lantai di bawah, lha kok ketemunya malah parkiran. **piye to iki??**

Akhirnya setelah naik lift lagi ke atas dan kebablasen sampe 4 lantai (kalo nggak salah), kami menyerah dan tanya satpam. Setelah itu baru ketemu Carrefour. Kami beli pisang, roti, dan aqua buat makan malam. Sadar kalo waktunya udah mepet, kami lari-lari ke sana kemari nggak jelas, dan akhirnya keluar dari Mangga Dua Square. Sampe di luar, muncul pertanyaan baru: Halte busway yang tadi kok nda ada ya???Hwaaa!! Tapi akhirnya ketemu juga setelah sadar bahwa kami salah arah . Jadi, kami lomba jalan cepat ke busway dan akhirnya tiba juga di Setasiun Pasar Senen. Aku mandi lagi di situ, tapi Sondang nggak. **nggak pliket apa ya??**

Setelah itu, ketemu Nora dan Cory, temen-temen Sondang yang mau ikutan bareng ke Jogja. Kami masuk peron dan ngetem di cafe Torabika sementara nungguin keretanya datang. Aku pesen es Cappuccino dan Sondang pesen hot Cappuccino **menunya juga adanya cuma itu doank… cape dehh…** Setelah puas menjarah bekal Nora yang enak banget, kami naik ke kereta. Ternyata penuh euy…

Dan kami pun ngobrol lagi sampe sekitar 1 jam perjalanan. Setelah itu, aku dan Sondang langsung tepar.. dah nggak kuat lagi ngobrol banyak-banyak…

Paginya… ada pengamen banci… duh… sial…. Hwaaaaaa…

Ternyata pengalaman di kereta selama perjalanan pulang jauh lebih colorful daripada waktu perjalanan berangkat. Lebih banyak pedagang dan pengamen…

“Korannya koran buat alas tidur. Gopek gopek! Gambarnya Luna Maya! Tidur sama Luna Maya cuma gopek!”

“Korek api korek api! Dua ribu rupiah saja! Ada apinya lho!”

Apaan seeh??

** apaan seeh??? **

Dah gitu, sekarang ada pula orang jualan pulsa isi ulang di kereta ekonomi. Makin lengkap aja ni kereta yak?? Cowok yang duduk di sebelahku (yang katanya Sondang itu temen SMA dia yang dia lupa namanya **dudulz**) sampe bilang kalo menu di ekonomi ternyata lebih lengkap daripada eksekutif. Mulai dari Aqua, Mizone, Pocari Sweat, nasgor, nasi rames ayam/rendang, gorengan, jenang, sale pisang… **halah**

Sampe di Lempuyangan, Cory dan Nora langsung mencari jemputan masing-masing, sementara aku nemeni Sondang menunggu Bang Jo sebentar. Setelah Bang Jo datang, aku mandi, dan tampaknya aku lupa waktu dan ketinggalan Pramex lagi padahal aku dah telat 1 jam . Jadilah aku sampe di kantor jam 11.30. BRAVO!!!

That’s all folks… Until my next adventure with Sondang! (hopefully )

Ideals vs. Reality

In this world, nothing is perfect. We are not perfect. None of us can be. It’s just human nature.

One must define for oneself the threshold between principal values and hyper-idealism. We are told to not lie. This is our principal value. But everybody else lies; the whole world lies for a living. Where does that leave us? Will we go with the flow and lie just like everybody else? Or will we preserve our values and be honest even if it means challenging the whole world?

Holding on a value we believe in is something that we should do. But, we do have to make compromises from time to time. In fact, life in a community depends on compromises. Almost everything is negotiable, and non-negotiable issues can be made negotiable to some extent.

The question then becomes: How far are we willing to negotiate?

Getting Old Is A Big Problem!

Today is not the best day of my one-month-old career as a programmer.

My boss told me that he was planning on initiating a new project that was to be written in PHP. That means we have to build, test, and implement a brand new PHP-based framework. So, the big guy told me to review some of the most popular open source PHP frameworks available on the net. I looked into CakePHP, CodeIgniter, PRADO, and some other stuff. But he was more interested in the Zend Framework. “Okay… I’ll take a look into it”, I said to him.

He also told me that I was now in charge of the HP ProLiant server he had right next to his desk. I can do whatever I want with it. It already had openSUSE in it, but I was given permission to format the hard disk and put anything I want on it, anything that suits me best for the development process of our newly established project. After struggling to find where everything was in openSUSE’s desktop, I immediately found out that the postgreSQL server installation on it was flawed, mainly because it was installed twice. Once from an RPM package and once from source. What a mess. I was faced with the daunting task of finding out where the two installation’s configuration files conflict and resolve them.

But I had a better idea: format the darn disk and install Ubuntu Server!

So I did it. I installed Ubuntu Server 8.04 with LAMP and postgreSQL, added user profiles for my colleagues, put them on the sudoers list, enabled Samba and added user profiles to it, mirrored the postgreSQL documentation site and aliased it to the Apache server. Next, I tried to access the postgreSQL with pgAdmin3 from my laptop. This is the part where I say “Houston, we have a problem”.

The pgAdmin popped up a message that the server is not listening. **is it deaf?** So, I tried to tweak the settings here and there, but then I stopped cold because I couldn’t find where the postgres.conf and pg_hba.conf files were. After an extensive search using locate and a misleading googling session, my colleague told me to install postgreSQL server from source. So I did what he said: I downloaded the source tarball, installed it with him first thing this morning (I need him to guide me with all the confusing configuration parameters), and got the server up and running locally. After that, I redefined some parameters so that the server would accept incoming connections from other machines. Done.

Next, I opened up my pgAdmin again and tried to connect. Voila! It connected. But right after the connection was established, pgAdmin complained about some error that it found on the system database scheme. So I started to think: WTF???

After consulting with my colleagues, I decided to erase the source installation and installed again from source. I did this about 3 or 4 times before finally giving up. The two error messages that kept popping up were:

ERROR:  column op.oprlsortop does not exist
LINE 12:   LEFT OUTER JOIN pg_operator lso ON lso.oid=op.oprlsortop

ERROR:  column "opcamid" does not exist
LINE 3:   JOIN pg_am am ON am.oid=opcamid

So, I searched for these two errors on the net and came up with zero results. Okay, so installing from source solved the problem but introduced a new one. So I opted back to searching the Ubuntu repos for an apt-get possibility. Then I did apt-get install postgresql-8.3 postgresql-client postgresql-contrib. This did not solve the problem. I fell back to installing postgreSQL 8.2, but it didn’t do any good. Fine. I give up. This is enough troubleshooting for one day.

So, I went home without any progress whatsoever…

Just now, I looked deeper into postgreSQL.org and elsewhere searching for the word “oprlsortop” (what a funny name, can you say it without twisting your tongue and your brain?). I read the first entry that came up on Google and immediately found out that the pgAdmin version I was using was too old. Yes, too old! What a silly mistake! Some guy at Nabble was pondering about the same trouble and another guy said that pgAdmin 1.4.3 is way too old for postgreSQL 8.3. Okay, I got the source of the problem, but I’ll have to wait until next Monday to fix it. I will not risk compromising my own development environment. I’ll do it on my PC at the office.

By the way, this brings out another question: Will the JDBC driver work with postgreSQL 8.3? We’ll have to see for ourselves next Monday.

I guess getting old is a problem, especially with pgAdmin…