GNOME Asia Swinging Forward

Well from the look of things, everything is rapidly going forward for the GNOME Asia Summit coming this November 20th – 22nd, 2009. The event announcement has appeared on the websites of HCA, VietNamNet Bridge, and GNOME.org

So, if you are in or around Vietnam or can make it here, do go to the webpage of GNOME Asia and read about how you can participate to be a speaker.

See you then!

Gnome Asia Summit

This is gonna be a first for Vietnam – The Gnome Asia Summit which will happen from the 20th to 22nd of November,209 – and I am proud to be on the team of organizers.

The first Gnome Asia summit was successfully organized in Beijing, China last year 2008. This year the event will be organized in Vietnam’s very own Quang Trung Software City.

The 3 day event is not just gonna be focused on the Gnome Desktop, but on various open-source technologies. There will be presentations, workshops & also a FOSS course, where successful participants will receive a certificate.

Companies will have the opportunity to present themselves and have a chance to meet talented people thereby being able to engage in some matchmaking for projects.

More news as soon…until then visit the website here.

Offshore outsourcing in Vietnam, Asia

It’s been in the news for a while now, you can see it here and here and here.

Source Perfect has now jumped into the foray to take care of your Data Entry, BPO, Software Development and IT needs right here in Vietnam – with affordable pricing, fast service and a stringent quality control.

How can we achieve this? Well, by using customized software and also by using open-source technology we are able to keep software licensing costs low and output high.

It’s a fact that almost all development usually takes place on Microsoft platforms. Our idea is not just to work on software development using Microsoft, but, also to keep our eyes and ears on the open-source platforms also.

Currently, we have projects on PHP, Python, Apache, MySQL not just on the Linux platform but on the Windows platform too.

So remember, if you wanna outsource to Asia – Source Perfect can help you in Vietnam for your Data, BPO, Software Development and IT needs.

10 super-cool Linux hacks…

This collection should help you impress your boyfriends and girlfriends, evoke a smile with your peers or even your boss and help you be more detailed and productive when it comes to system administration tasks…

Click here to learn how.

The Ext4 file system

Ext4 file system (4th extended file system) is the next generation of journaling file systems, retaining backward compatibility with the previous file system, ext3. Ext4 was released as a functionally complete and stable filesystem in Linux kernel 2.6.28.

One of the most evident advantages of ext4 for end users is the drastic reduction in time taken to do an fsck operation of your hard drives. The other advantages of ext4 file system over ext3 are – it provides better performance and greater reliability. Also it increases the maximum file system size to a whooping 1 exabyte. Compared to this, ext3 supports a maximum of only 16 TB of file system size.

To learn more about Ext4, follow these links …

• Ext4 Wiki
• Creating an Ext4 file system
• Converting Ext3 to Ext4 file system
• Anatomy of Ext4 file system

Improving Disk Performance…

I found this rather old article on Linux Mag, but found it quite useful even now…

Many Linux users, like computer users generally, are speed freaks. We buy the latest hardware (or the latest hardware we can afford) in an effort to trim a few seconds here and there. In the case of desktop users, this is done for personal benefit, but for server computers, the benefit is improved server performance, which can be very important for a busy server.

In general, the same optimization principles apply to both types of system, although some performance measures are more important for some applications. A server isn’t likely to need the latest and greatest video card, for instance, but a desktop system that’s used for gaming or other video-intensive tasks might.

This column focuses on just one class of performance optimization: hard disks. Hard disk performance affects many different aspects of system operation, including boot time, program launch time, file load and save times, program compile times, and swap efficiency. A poor configuration can produce very sluggish performance, making even a brand-new computer feel like one that’s several years behind the times. A good configuration, on the other hand, can help you get the most out of your computer, and perhaps even extend the useful life of a middle-aged computer.

Read More…

Linux Kernel 2.6.30 Released

Linux kernel 2.6.30 has been released. The list of new features includes NILFS2 (a new, log-structured filesystem), a filesystem for object-based storage devices called exofs, local caching for NFS, the RDS protocol (which delivers high-performance reliable connections between the servers of a cluster), a new distributed networking filesystem (POHMELFS), automatic flushing of files on renames/truncates in ext3, ext4 and btrfs, preliminary support for the 802.11w drafts, support for the Microblaze architecture, the Tomoyo security MAC, DRM support for the Radeon R6xx/R7xx graphic cards, asynchronous scanning of devices and partitions for faster bootup, the preadv/pwritev syscalls, several new drivers and many other small improvements.

In Pictures (…errr Screenshots) Fedora 11

The popular Linux distribution Fedora (you know, the one that isn’t Ubuntu) has just released a new major version, Fedora 11.

…and everyone loves pictures, so here’s a screen-shot tour of Fedora 11.

Linus Torvalds on git

A simple, cheap and effective backup solution using Linux…

Considering the budget cuts that many companies are observing, the expectations that a “perfectly” working IT system exists is always looming over us system admins; “Make it all work but, I’m sorry I can’t give you a better budget.”

Backups. How can you backup all data effectively and cheap?

I use a small program called “rsync” which is native to Linux. It’s not a Veristas, but it does what I want effectively and almost as good as some other backup software out there. And it’s pretty darn fast.

The question boils down to “What are backups basically?” I would say storing data from a source location to a secondary destination location. rsync does exactly just that and the best part is that it can be run over a network.

Which then brings up the question, “Can I use rsync on my windows shares?” And the answer is “Yes You Can!” Simply mount the windows share on Linux (using smbmount)

Read ahead to learn how rsync can help you to back up your data…

Open a console window (xterm or terminal of your liking – I personally like yakuake) and type in the following, but DON’T press enter yet:

$rsync -avnu –progress –stats

To explain a bit…
* “-a” means “Backup all sub-directories maintaining all permissions, groups, users, times, and devices.”
* the “v” means “Be verbose.”
* the “n” after the “v” means “Just tell me what you’re going to do.”
* the “u” after the “n” means “Only update stuff. Don’t re-copy things with more recent timestamps.”
* the “–progress” means “Give me progress updates.”
* the “–stats” means “Let me know exactly what you did.”

And that’s the first part. Next step is to type in your source directory (DON’T press enter yet!)

$rsync -avnu –progress –stats /home/tony/Documents/

…and finally the destination directory… (You can press the enter key now)

$rsync -avnu –progress –stats /home/tony/Documents/ /backup/Documents/

It is necessary to include the trailing “/” characters on the end of the directory, e.g. “…Documents/” when backing up sub-directories.

When the program finishes, you’ll notice a lot of information on your screen. It’ll probably look something like this:

receiving file list …
6290 files to consider

–Many files will appear here–

Number of files: 1220
Number of files transferred: 16
Total file size: 11163786283491 bytes
Total transferred file size: 438111470 bytes
Literal data: 0 bytes
Matched data: 0 bytes
File list size: 2329898
Total bytes written: 89
Total bytes read: 2329898

wrote 80 bytes read 2329898 bytes 20445.38 bytes/sec
total size is 11163786283491 speedup is 376742.35

rsync found 1220 files to back up, but it only set 16 to actually be backed up.

Now, if the output looks right, go ahead and run the real thing by taking out the “n” option and pressing enter.

$rsync -avu –progress –stats /home/tony/Documents/ /backup/Documents/

If you would like to learn more about rsync, type the command:
$man rsync