Spirit of Change

Solved : Could not connect to wicd’s D-Bus interface

Masim "Vavai" Sugianto — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 07:56:36 +0000

I’m a huge fans of wicd network manager due to it’s feature and stabilty. Actually, I’m having a bad experience with KDE Network Manager in the past and finally 98% satisfied with wicd, although I’m currently using Gnome Desktop Manager and found that Gnome Network Manager doesn’t too buggy like KDE does.

One main problem that make me feel unhappy with wicd is the problem on start-up. Wicd always complains about D-Bus problem like below :

Could not connect to wicd’s D-Bus interface. Check the wicd log for error messages.

I found nothing for resolved this problem. I’m trying any suggestion on various sources with no luck. I also try to upgrade wicd to the latest version but the problem still persist. The problem may only occurred with standard user, because I have no problem with root authentication. I would also used the wicd without problem by running the “wicd” command within konsole and with root permission. But it’s not really comfortable because I will see same error each time rebooting the computer .

I finally manage this problem by activating wicd service on YAST runlevel. So, the main problem why wicd doesn’t work correctly because wicd depends on d-bus services. Wicd installer doesn’t pick the correct runlevel and doesn’t enabled the d-bus service by default.

Below is the solution for manage wicd problem regarding D-Bus Service :

Go to YAST | System | System Services (Run Level)
Enable & start the wicd services. Click Continue if YAST confirmed to enabled the D-BUS service also
Run the wicd network manager

Activating wicd services on YAST runlevel will also set-up wicd to permanently run on boot.

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BigDump : Tips for Dumping Large MySQL Database

Masim "Vavai" Sugianto — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 17:30:49 +0000

One main problem while moving my blog or my web application to another web hosting are moving and dumping the MySQL database. It should be no problem for small database or if an ISP has strong backup and restore feature but it will get you into headache for large database.

Hosting CPanel usually provided the backup and restore features but it will only restore your data without dumping the MySQL database. Dumping SQL from PHPMyAdmin or with MySQL command line limited for a few MB of file size. I get into big trouble while dumping my blog database with about 50 MB of SQL dump script while my ISP only limited the dump script for 2 MB.

Luckily, after a few Googling, I found bigdump, a simple and small PHP script with the capability to dump large MySQL database script. In my case, a 50 M MySQL database script has successfully dumped into database within 2 minutes process.

The usage is fairly easy. Just modify database connection script, upload the MySQL dump script and the modified bigdump script, open the web browser and then navigate to the relative path of Apache according to your upload folder.

Below is a step-by-step tutorial regarding the database dump script :

Download the bigdump.php from this link
Unzip (untar) and edit file bigdump.php, modify the database configuration according to your environment.
Changes the default setting for database encoding, I would like to recommend to use the encoding utf8 (replace $db_connection_charset = ”; with $db_connection_charset = ‘utf8′;) except you used another encoding.
```
// Database configuration
$db_server   = localhost
$db_name    = 'your database name';
$db_username = 'your user name';
$db_password = 'your password';
```
Upload the modified script
Click Start Import.
If you have a backup of MySQL dump and found and error while inserting data, try to investigating the SQL script. The SQL script created by CPanel has incorrect delimiter at the end of content a shown on the image below.

DELIMITER ;;
DELIMITER ;
/*!40103 SET TIME_ZONE=@OLD_TIME_ZONE */;

/*!40101 SET SQL_MODE=@OLD_SQL_MODE */;
/*!40014 SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=@OLD_FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS */;
/*!40014 SET UNIQUE_CHECKS=@OLD_UNIQUE_CHECKS */;
/*!40101 SET CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT=@OLD_CHARACTER_SET_CLIENT */;
/*!40101 SET CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS=@OLD_CHARACTER_SET_RESULTS */;
/*!40101 SET COLLATION_CONNECTION=@OLD_COLLATION_CONNECTION */;
/*!40111 SET SQL_NOTES=@OLD_SQL_NOTES */;

-- Dump completed on 2009-05-11  0:57:57

Solve the problem by removing these lines.

Click here for more information regarding BigDump script.

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Suggestion for SUSE Studio Usability

Masim "Vavai" Sugianto — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 09:13:08 +0000

After playing with SUSE Studio for a while, I think I have 3 suggestion to increase the usability of SUSE Studio, based on my experience building Zimbra Appliance on openSUSE 11.1.

Actually, I have send it using “send feedback” menu but I don’t know whether it has reached SUSE Studio team or the suggestion go nowhere because I haven’t received the response yet until now

Below is my suggestion :

The capability to sort the package list by some key, ie : order by added time. It’s an important feature because I would like to tracking the package between such version. Current feature only provided the capability to sorting by package name as shown on the screenshot.
Feature to shared configuration between SUSE Studio user. It’s also an important key features because I will save so many times if I could copied a configuration from user public share. As example, I would share my configuration about Zimbra Appliance to user who want to playing with. Also, I would like to get the configuration from other user if I need to build another fork ( ) of LXDE LiveCD that has build by Andrea Florio.
Possibility to host SUSE Studio on mirror server or local server. I know that I can host same thing with KIWI but SUSE Studio has been polished and easy to used compared to KIWI. also, my latest experience has found some network and server problem while building the image. Spreading the availability of SUSE Studio server will also increase the popularity and usage because it has unique and strong features

I have another suggestion but I forgot to write and get it listed . I will updating this post if I remember another suggestion…

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Deactivating Wordpress Statistic Plugin : StatPress Reloaded

Masim "Vavai" Sugianto — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 21:57:42 +0000

A few days ago, I’m noticed that my blog is run very slow. It’s take more than 5 minutes to display all of content and need more again to go to the admin panel. I didn’t realize what’s the problem because I found nothing important on the error log of the server. After investigating the error log and the connection, I’m thinking to checked th MySQL database and found that one table has biggest size compared to others.

The table name was wp_statpress , used by StatPress plugin for saving the statistic history. What’s make surprise, it has more than 90% of database size. It has 93 MB of size while my database has about 101 MB. I installed the plugin to watching the statistic of visitor, to give more information about which topic are popular, what’s their reference and where the visitor came from.

After backing up the database, I’m trying to clear the table content so my database size drop until 10 MB and my blog loads faster. I don’t know if the size of StatPress table has an impact with the performance or no but I think it would better to balancing the statistic requirement with the loading process of blog.

What’s a stupid behaviour , after manually clear the table content, I found out that there is an option to “Automatically delete visits & spider statitistics older than…”. The option set as “never” by default on initial installation so it’s the answer why the statistics more and more bigger over the time.

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Zimbra 6.0.0 GA has been Released

Masim "Vavai" Sugianto — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:59:14 +0000

After the latest delay from August 31 to September 2, 2009, Zimbra.com has finally released their new product, Zimbra Collaboration Suite 6.0.0 GA.

It’s the major upgrade since version 5.0.18. Click here for complete explanation about Zimbra Network Edition features and bug fixes. Release notes for Zimbra open source edition could be found on this link.

As of version 6.0.0, Zimbra dropping openSUSE from their supported OS list but still maintain their support for enterprise product by provide the availability binary installer for SLES 10, both 32 bit and 64 bit.

What’s the surprise news, Zimbra also included binary installer for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 64 bit. It’s become a surprise because the latest update on Zimbra Product Portal haven’t added SLES 11 as supported OS yet. Why it’s only provide the 64 bit, Mike Morse of Zimbra describe the reason why Zimbra take the decision to encourage the 64 bit usage.

Although openSUSE become unsupported distro, I’ve successfully installed Zimbra 6.0.0 on openSUSE 11.1 by making a few changes to Zimbra-Auto script for RC1. I will updating the Zimbra Appliance by bundling Zimbra 6.0.0 as second option beside version 5.0.18.

If you wish to test Zimbra 6.0.0, download the binary installer from http://www.zimbra.com/community/downloads.html.

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openSUSE & Zimbra User Meeting

Masim "Vavai" Sugianto — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 21:38:38 +0000

Indonesian openSUSE Community & Zimbra Community will have a join-gathering on September 12, 2009.

The gathering will focus on discussion about Zimbra Installation tutorial in multi distro (openSUSE, Red Hat, Ubuntu and Centos as an example), Zimbra management tips & trick and also install fest for Zimbra 6.0 If it has officially launched (if haven’t yet, we will used the RC1 instead).

Beside the Zimbra topics, we would also preparing for Indonesian openSUSE community board+leader election for next period and covering some project regarding mirror & repository.

Are you in or near Bekasi-Jakarta ? If so, please feel free to attend the Zimbra user meeting. Click here (in Bahasa Indonesia) for more information.

Note : Indonesian Zimbra Community is a non-profit organization, community based focused on Zimbra Collaboration Suite to help, assist & supporting Zimbra implementation in Indonesia

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Zimbra Appliance with openSUSE 11.1 : VMWare/VirtualBox Image

Masim "Vavai" Sugianto — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 08:40:05 +0000

As I have explained in previous articles, my current project is to build a Zimbra Appliance on top of openSUSE 11.1. Zimbra Appliance created by SUSE Studio tools and contains openSUSE JeOS with Zimbra and any dependencies packages.

Zimbra Appliance will make an installation process lot easier than manually installing package and make changes to some configuration files.

I prepared the appliance with 2 edition and 3 varians for each edition. The Standard Edition contains openSUSE JeOS as base OS with additional bundled application including DNS Server packages, Zimbra auto install script and Zimbra binary installer. It’s size about 630 MB. Another edition is Lite Edition, contains openSUSE JeOS as base OS with additional bundled application including DNS Server packages, Zimbra auto install script but without Zimbra Binary Installer.

Each edition has 3 varians for deploy & implementation. VMWare & VirtualBox image for virtualisasi, ISO Image for standard installation using live installer and LiveUSB for handy installation image. This post will focused on VmWare & VirtualBox image, others will explain on next post.

All of appliance has been tested on Pentium 4 PC with minimal 1 GB of RAM. The VMWare/VirtualBox appliance tested with VirtualBox version 3.0.4 on openSUSE 11.1 and 11.2 Milestone 6 (Oh, yes, I’m using Zimbra vmdk file as VirtualBox Harddisk image). Please refer to Zimbra System Requirement for more information regarding hardware specification.

Technical Specification

Based on openSUSE JeOS ver 11.1
Include default package for network package (Ping utilities, wget and w3m)
Include Zypper & Rsync package. Zypper for extending package installation, Rsync for transfering data
Using latest Zimbra stable 5.0.18 (also tested with Zimbra 6.0 RC1 with a few changes on binary installer name)

DOWNLOAD (Mirror are welcome)

http://vavai.net/zimbra-studio/

For Indonesian, please used Indonesian openSUSE Community mirror or Indonesian Zimbra Community Links :

Indonesian Zimbra Community : http://download.zimbra.web.id/susestudio/
Indonesian openSUSE Community : http://mirror1.opensuse.or.id/remaster/susestudio/Zimbra/

HOW To USE (for VMWare or VirtualBox)

Download the Zimbra Appliance for VMWare with vmx.tar.gz extension,ex : Zimbra_openSUSE_Standard_Edition.i686-11.1.5.vmx.tar.gz. If you prefer to used the lite version, please download binary Zimbra installer version 5.0.18 for openSUSE from this link : http://www.zimbra.com/community/downloads.html.
Ekstrak or decompress into specified folder. Please make sure that you have full access into the folder
Create a new OS on VMWare or VirtualBox with RAM more than 512 MB (recommended : 1 GB or more depending your amount of email account). For harddisk, choose to use an existing disk and take the vmdk file from your extract folder.
Starting VMWare/VirtualBox Application
For initial boot, Zimbra Appliance will aksed for hostname and IP Address. Enter your hostname with fully qualified domain name (FQDN, ex, hostname : mail, domain : vavai.net) and IP Address. Make sure the option “Change Hostname…” has unchecked.
Login with user name : root and password : opensuse or username : opensuse with password : geeko
Change to folder /opt/zimbra-auto (cd /opt/zimbra-auto) and start the installation script
```
cd /opt/zimbra-auto
sh setup-en.sh
```
`

`

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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Although it was the first release for Zimbra Appliance, I’m using version 11.1.5 as initial version. 11.1 stand for base OS while 5 stand for 5 times update.

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Indonesian openSUSE Event : Zimbra Community Training

Masim "Vavai" Sugianto — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 13:45:25 +0000

Last week, I went to Surabaya, a capital city of the province of East Java for attending Zimbra Mail Server & Collaboration Suite community training initiated by Indonesian openSUSE community, East Java branch.

The training itself dedicated for openSUSE promotional event for server side. Beside my activity as Indonesian openSUSE member, I also become a founder for Indonesian Zimbra Community. I think it would be a good idea to make openSUSE as primary choice, both for desktop and server application. Zimbra has it’s own benefit. The combination between it’s feature and price (priceless for open source edition) making Zimbra as an attractive option for mail server.

Although I have successfull testing for Zimbra installation on top of openSUSE 11.x, I decided to use openSUSE 10.3 as base OS because openSUSE 10.3 need a lower hardware specification compared to 11.x.

openSUSE 10.3 as base OS installed using network installation process, and it’s help much for simplifying repository configuration.

The participants very enthusiast to listened the benefit of Zimbra; the features on Zimbra compared with Microsoft Exchange Server and others mail server; why I choose openSUSE as based OS and about community support both with Zimbra community and openSUSE community.

After break for lunch and pray, training continued with Zimbra management and tips-trick for managing Zimbra account (create, bulk provision, import-export,etc)

I will come back to Surabaya for another community training on October 2009 : Migration from Windows Server into Linux Server using openSUSE Linux.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surabayaexplained

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Zimbra 6.0 RC1 on openSUSE 11.1

Masim "Vavai" Sugianto — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 13:12:44 +0000

According to Zimbra Product Portal, the version 6.0 GunsNRoses will be officially launched on August 31, 2009. It’s a major upgrade from the latest release, Zimbra 5.0.18. The RC1has about 1104 bugs and features fixed, with 2636 bugs and features fixed since 5.0.

As of version 6.0, openSUSE didn’t officially supported by Zimbra and only SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 supported by default, both for x86 and 64 bit. SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 also unsupported on this release.

It’s a bad news anyway, actually for me who implemented Zimbra on top of openSUSE in various company in Indonesia. I don’t want to leave openSUSE as second-class citizen on Zimbra community so I’m trying to make Zimbra running well on openSUSE 11.x (and SLES 11) although it was not officially supported. After a few trial and error, I could make Zimbra 5.0.X and Zimbra 6.0 RC1 running well on openSUSE 11.1

Zimbra 5.0.x deployed on openSUSE 11.1 using binary installer for openSUSE 10.2 while Zimbra 6.0 RC1 deployed on openSUSE 11.1 using binary installer for SLES 10. I know it would a risk scenario because it was not officially supported, but I think it would be the one and only way to push Zimbra to provided official binary installer for openSUSE 11.x. openSUSE was dropping from Zimbra supported distro with the reason : a few installed system on top of openSUSE, so increasing the number of Zimbra installed on openSUSE may the only answer.

Below is the Zimbra installer script for openSUSE 11.1 and 6.0 RC1 : zimbra-auto-en.tar.gz

Install it on your openSUSE 11.1 by following this :

Download the script and extract on /opt so there should be an /opt/zimbra-auto folder
Copy the binary installer of Zimbra 6.0 RC1 for SLES 10 into /opt/zimbra-auto. The binary installer available here.
Open konsole/terminal, go to /opt/zimbra-auto folder and run the installer by typing : sh setup-en.sh

I’m also preparing to build Zimbra Appliance using openSUSE 11.1. Please wait for a few day later

Article in Bahasa Indonesia available here.

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Solved : DNS Server Error, zone domain.tld/IN: journal rollforward failed

Masim "Vavai" Sugianto — Sun, 24 May 2009 04:22:57 +0000

Today, my DNS server suddenly stop with the following message in /var/log/messages :

May 24 10:56:17 server-vavai named[11205]: zone vavai.com/IN: journal rollforward failed: journal out of sync with zone

I could not addressing my local address and local domain anymore, even for my server :

nslookup server-vavai.vavai.com
;; Got SERVFAIL reply from 192.168.88.1, trying next server

I’m using dynamic DNS on openSUSE 11.1 for PDC+OpenLDAP. The failed DNS resolution has an impact with the LDAP name resolution on Samba. The nss-ldap could not connect to the the LDAP server.

The solution is failry simple. Just find and remove the file called yourdomainname.tld.jnl on your /var/lib/named directory. In my case, it was /var/lib/named/dyn/vavai.forward.jnl and /var/lib/named/dyn/vavai.reverse.jnl

server-vavai:/home/vavai # nslookup server-vavai.vavai.com
Server:         192.168.88.1
Address:        192.168.88.1#53

Name:   server-vavai.vavai.com
Address: 192.168.88.1

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