Monday, November 5, 2012

Check Linux partitions and free space using terminal

To check list of partitions in partition table:

# fdisk -lu
Disk /dev/sda: 5368 MB, 5368709120 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 652 cylinders, total 10485760 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *          63      208844      104391   83  Linux
/dev/sda2          208845    10474379     5132767+  8e  Linux LVM


To check free space and usage details:

# df -h
Filesystem            Size  Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00
                      3.8G  884M  2.7G  25% /
/dev/sda1              99M   13M   82M  13% /boot
tmpfs                 252M     0  252M   0% /dev/shm


Sunday, November 4, 2012

How to remove old kernels from Ubuntu 12.04?

You might have upgraded from a previous Ubuntu release or may be your kernal is new and old ones still residing in your system. Some times we need to free space. Do the following to remove old kernels:

Open terminal and check your current kernel in use:
$ uname -r
NOTE: You must not remove this one.

To list all installed kernels on your system:
$ dpkg –list | grep linux-image

Identify all kernels that are lower than your current kernel and you want to remove. Now issue the following command to remove:
$ sudo apt-get purge linux-image-x.x.x-xx-generic-pae
NOTE: Replace all 'x' acording to your kernel version which you want to remove.

Finally, run grub2:
$ sudo update-grub2

Now reboot your system and you are all done.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Business Planning – 2 kinds, which to follow?

Most business planners tries to reduce the risk of failure by structuring, planning and doing market research. This approach reduces risk by removing possibilities of changes as much as possible.

You may be starting up or may be in the early stages of your business. You don't know exactly what your product will look like, who exactly are your target customers or market is. You don't know exactly what marketing strategy will bring you the best results. Your idea is innovative or innovative changes to an idea and, you need a planning approach.

There are two types of planning. You may or may not know about them.

Traditional planning

It's well known as waterfall approach and followed by most of the entrepreneur and business man. Traditional planning has four main phases:
  • Initiation
  • Planning
  • Execution
  • Closing
Plan everything, know your risk factors, competitors, do market research as much as you can.

When the product is well defined or the business is well defined you should take this model. In this traditional planning risk is reduced planning around it. Also you may develop a separate risk plan. It is fact that risk may come up. It can smack your schedule. You will never want a change to happen in your business model, because changes introduce risk and when a change happens you have to go back and re-evaluate the whole planning.

Agile Planning

This planning model is developed in software industry for dealing with situations where change isn't something that might happen, change is in the norm. If you remove or avoid changes it will results in more risk.

Everyone knows that the software industry is constantly changing. What is today, may not be tomorrow or things may changed. Try to document all the possible risks that a software company would face in next two years. You will definitely find some, but you can never guarantee about the number, type or changes of risk factors.

So do we need a new way of thinking about risk and changes? Answer is definitely yes. We need something which takes advantage of change. Using this agile strategy you can quickly respond to technology changes or to changes in user demand, also with other customers special feature request.

Can you use this planning to start your business? Think about it.
  • Why have you struggled with doing a business plan?
  • Is changes in the norm and you can't put something down because you can't define it yet?
  • If you can define the changes, are you all done?
So, try agile and see what you think. Agile is not haphazard or trial and error. It is a disciplined approach to planning that requires you to be very focused. But if you learn it and use, it can give you some amazing results for your business.

Example panning

Amuse, that you found a special idea. A software product. With agile we don't develop or plan everything. We do as we go. We go to market, we go to clients, we take suggestions and feature requests. Say your product has 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 features. Each feature require 1 month time for production and release. Out of which 1, 2 and 3 are basic and it may never require a change. So bingo it's a 6 months job. You may say, Wow, let's do it. But wait, what if feature 4 and 5 got outdated after 6 months? What if feature 4 needs massive change after 6 months? Following “Traditional Planning”? Oh! No, now you need to re-evaluate almost everything.

Follow Agile:

Develop your product with just basic and raw features as required for minimal use. It is OK if you are way back from your competitors. Release it (1, 2, 3 only). Take you 3 months. Bingo, you are out in the market. Ok now consider feature 4. Is that valuable, is that in trained, is that OK to add? Ya, lets do it. How long? 1 month. Humm... users came up with change suggestions. OK we can do it quick. Next feature 5. Ya, that’s in current trained, lets do it. Done in next 1 month. Humm... some users came up with change request in feature 4. OK we are good. Lets update feature 4. Wow we are good. What next? Feature 6 or may be 7, 8, 9 feature request by users. Humm..., we are good here as well.

So, following Agile planning, you are always with current trained. You can quickly meet your user's or customer's expectation. Now think, are you any more back from your competitors? I hope you will never be.


Sunday, May 6, 2012

How To Change Mouse Cursor In Ubuntu 10.04/11.04/12.04 When Compiz Is Enabled

This bug is not fixed from Ubuntu 9.10 then fixed in 10.10 and now is back in 11.04. Found it their in latest 12.04 LTS.

The problem is when you change cursor theme it doesn't change if you have compiz turned on, it changes but it is only visible in some applications i.e. firefox.

If compiz is off then cursor theming works fine.

This instructions will fix this bug:
  1. Download cursor pack.
  2. Extract it as root to /usr/share/icons
  3. Edit as root the index.theme file located in usr/share/icons/default
  4. Change the line Inherits= to the name of your new icon theme
[Icon Theme]
Inherites=DMZ-Black

Logout and login back in, cursor will be changed.


Saturday, April 28, 2012

What was there before all this creation

Sutra 129 of the 10th Mandala of Riga-Veda

In the beginning in the state of flood there was neither matter nor non-matter, neither being nor non-being. At that time there was neither the sky nor the space nor anything beyond . There was no life anywhere nor any source of pleasure. What was there ? And where ? What was the power ? At that time even the solemn water did not exist. There was neither death nor immortality, neither night nor any notion of the day. At that time only one, i.e. Brahma, imbued with energy in his nature was there and nothing else existed. Darkness was hidden inside darkness and the existence was unknown. With the exertion of its own tapas, heat-energy, out of nothing emerged Brahma without external cause or action. This caused the conception of creation and the sages realized the cause of matter in non-matter. Who knows the entire truth and who can speak about this creation ? What are the causative factors of this creation ? The gods have originated after the creation. Who knows the one from which this world has got created. It is not known how this existence has come up. He only knows the one who has unveiled it. Does he bear it or not ? It is not known whether the lord up above knows it or not.

Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Transparent individual window

To make individual window transparent on Ubuntu you will need to install transset or transset-df from repository. Note that you have to be running a compositing manager i.e. Compiz for this to work.

To make a window transparent:
$ transset-df -c
Now click on the desired window
This will make your window 75% transparent.
To reset back:
$ transset-df -c -t
Now click on the desired window
You can additionally get more options in the command by invoking -h for help.