Kapil's Blog

Clemson University celebrated the Software Freedom Day on 18th September 2009. We had a day long event  (9:00a:m - 3:30p:m) where we provided information to the students as well as to the staff at Clemson on the features of Open Source Software. The response was overwhelming and almost 50 more students joined the Clemson University OSUM Club. We put up a booth in front of the library to attract maximum number of students towards the open source inititative. The booth was decorated with SFD baloons and posters of OpenSolaris.

An open source quiz was designed and gifts were given to the students who answered the quiz. Almost everyone who have shown interest in the Open Source movement were given a sling back with OpenSolaris and Ubuntu Operating System.  Right now the Clemson University OSUM Club has 175 members. We answered questions and had a brief chat with students about everything from the OpenOffice to OpenSolaris and Ubuntu Opearting Systems. We ended up giving pamphlets about Sun Academic Initiative , Ubuntu CDs, copies of the OpenSolaris and of course we all spoke to folks about using free software. Thanks to everyone who made it a success, especially to Anup, Nisarg, Bosco, Githin. Special thanks to Wanda, Tzel, Tina and Scott Dickson for all the advise and resources.

Another event on MySQL coming up. Stay Tuned!!!  Go Tigers!!

Clemson University OSUM Club signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Clemson Linux User Group (CLUG). This strategy was adopted to extend a strong backing for the development and implementation of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS). Aaron Rosen, the president of the Clemson Linux User Group along with myself  and Anoop Sawant representing the Clemson University OSUM Club signed the MOU. The Software Freedom Day will be celebrated as an event sponsored by CLUG and Clemson OSUM Club. We believe this collaboration can create a better outreach for the open source systems. The software freedom day celebration will include an install fest where students will be provided a brief over view of the OpenSolaris Operating System. More to come... Stay tuned.

Many of the regular technical demos hosted by Clemson University OSUM Club, ends with the same question from students.  "Can we have such sessions on a weekly basis? " This led me to the thought of conducting a "Certification Drive" at Clemson University Campus in summer. This program was mainly aimed at propagating the features of Sun Academic Initiative (SAI), as well as helping the students to become Sun Certified Professionals. We commenced this program on 14th May 2009. We have two one-hour sessions every week and each session covers one module in SAI's curriculum for Sun Certified Solaris Associate (SCSAS) Certification. I have divided the entire curriculum for SCSAS certification curriculum into 15 modules, and each module will be covered in a day. A small presentation was prepared for each module, based on the SAI course and was explained to the class. The response was overwhelming and many of the students were interested in this approach. I even included some quizzes in the class sessions so as to make it interactive. Two exams were also included in the course. The first one is the e-Practice Exam for the Sun Certified Solaris Associate (WGS-PREX-S105C), which the students need to take online from SAI website , and the second one was custom built by myself, based on the curriculum for SCSAS.
We have received queries from professors and students whether we can conduct such sessions on Java, and Solaris in the next fall semester. I strongly encourage conducting such sessions, as I feel that a discussion session in a class with a specific agenda will be comfortable for the students to plan and go through the SAI web courses.

Today we had a technical talk on OpenSolaris 2008.11 by Scott Dickson, the technology evangelist at Sun Microsystems, Inc. Mike Marler, the systems engineer of Sun Microsystems was also present for the technical demo.  A huge crowd of almost 60 students attended the session. A couple of weeks back, Clemson University OSUM Club became a century club with more than 100 members enrolled. We were the first in North America to hit the  100 member mark. In connection with this achievement, we had a pizza party just before the technical talk. The session was commenced by 6:30 p:m and continued till 9:00 p:m.Scott Dickson took us around the features of OpenSolaris like DTrace, ZFS file system, time sliders,virtualization with zones and SMF. His talk ranged from the basics of FOSS(Free and Open Source Software) to the internals of OpenSolaris Operating system. If any of the campus ambassadors are planing for an OpenSolaris session, I strongly recommend to get hold of Scott Dickson.I happened to hear a beautiful comment once the session was done. "It would be great, if we can have him as a faculty!!!". My special thanks to Scott Duckworth (Advisor, Clemson University OSUM Club) and Dexter Stowers, the UNIX administrators of Clemson University for their overwhelming support.Many thanks to Dinitia Hartman and Mike Marler for all the support they have extended to make this event happen.Special thanks to the Clemson University OSUM Club members for making the event a huge success. Clemson University OSUM Club has a whole lot of plans for the Summer. Stay tuned with Clemson University OSUM Club

Let's drive INNOVATION!!!!!

Today, I conducted the technology demo on Netbeans IDE 6.5. To my surprise, majority of the students who attended the demo were from non computer science background. The demo was scheduled at 5:00 p:m. I had the presentation ready and the LCD projector , in the brightly lit class room, projected the Welcome Slide. Well, I did create a welcome slide with the logo of Sun Microsystems and the OSUM club, welcoming the students to the demonstration. There were Pizzas and soft drinks for the attendees.

Scott Duckworth, The Unix Administrator of Clemson University has agreed to be the Mentor of the Clemson University OSUM Club. It was indeed a previlege to have Scott, a tech-savvy geek of Unix machines. Thanks Scott!. He too was there at the presentation. We started the presentation by 5:00 and continued till 6:15. I have added a video on Java to my demonstration just to provide the audience a feel what JAVA can do.

Special thanks to Githin, Koushik, Hiren, Jobin, Aby,Damitha and Rohit for the support they have extended for the technology demo.

The next demo is on creating web pages visual netbeans. More to come.. Stay tuned!!!

Installing Sun Wonderland on OpenSolaris 2008.11

Wondering how to Install Sun Wonderland on OpenSolaris ???

Well, as a part of our research, we have installed a Sun Wonderland Server instance on OpenSolaris 2008.11, as well as on Ubuntu 8.10. Installing Sun Wonderland is Easy. You can finish it in 7 easy steps.This tutorial assumes that you have the basic knowledge of working on a Unix Based machine.If you are new bee.. No worries.... Just follow the steps.I have illustrated the modus-operandi to be followed to install a Sun Wonderland Instance on an OpenSolaris Operating System. We will be building the Wonderland instance from the source. My machine configuration is as follows. The Wonderland Server instance ran absolutely fine with this configuration

Machine Configuration:

$ dmesg | grep CPU

Processor: Intel(r) Core(tm)2 Duo CPU T7250 @ 2.00GHz

$ prtconf

System Configuration: Sun Microsystems i86pc

Memory size: 4095 Megabytes

Graphics Card : NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT: 256 Megabytes.

$ uname -a

SunOS Kapil-PC 5.11 snv_101b i86pc i386 i86pc Solaris

$ isainfo -v

64-bit amd64 applications

ssse3 cx16 mon sse3 sse2 sse fxsr mmx cmov amd_sysc cx8 tsc fpu

32-bit i386 applications

ssse3 ahf cx16 mon sse3 sse2 sse fxsr mmx cmov sep cx8 tsc fpu

This output means this system is capable of supporting both 32-bit and 64-bit applications.

Pre-Requisites:

Following softwares will be required for you to proceed with your installation. A detailed methodology to install these softwares are illustrated below. A wikipedia link has been associated with each of these prerequisites to give you a brief idea on these technologies.

1. Apache ANT 1.7.1
2. Java SE Development Kit (JDK 6)
3. OpenSolaris 2008.11
4. The machine should be based on an X86 Architecture, as X86 alone supports the application sharing functionality.
5. Concurrent Versions System (CVS)
6. SubVersion (SVN)

 

STEP 1

Apache ANT Installation:

1. You may download the latest Apache-ANT release from the following link. http://ant.apache.org/bindownload.cgi

2. I have installed the Apache-ANT version 1.7.1

$ ant -version

Apache Ant version 1.7.1 compiled on June 27 2008

3. Unzip the downloaded version to your desktop (or to any of your file system). I have unzipped it to my desktop and I have the following directory structure.

$ pwd

/export/home/Kapil/Desktop/apache-ant

4. Update the .profile file with the following values to the variables

a) Update the “PATH” variable with the location of the /apache-ant/bin directory. Please have a look at the following example. The underlined part is the one which I have added.

Example: PATH=/usr/gnu/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/java/bin:/export/home/Kapil/Desktop/apache-ant/bin

b) Add a new variable ANT_HOME and provide it with the location of apache-ant directory.

         Example: export ANT_HOME=/export/home/Kapil/Desktop/apache-ant

5. The altered .profile file will look like the one cited below.

    $ pwd

    /export/home/Kapil

    $ gedit .profile

       #

       # Simple profile places /usr/gnu/bin at front,

       # adds /usr/X11/bin, /usr/sbin and /sbin to the end.

       # Use less(1) as the default pager for the man(1) command.

       #

       export PATH=/usr/gnu/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/java/bin

       :/export/home/Kapil/Desktop/apache-ant/bin

       export MANPATH=/usr/gnu/share/man:/usr/share/man:/usr/X11/share/man

       export PAGER="/usr/bin/less -ins"

       export ANT_HOME=/export/home/Kapil/Desktop/apache-ant

       export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java

       #

       # Define default prompt to <username>@<hostname>:<path><"($|#) ">

       # and print '#' for user "root" and '$' for normal users.

      PS1='${LOGNAME}@$(/usr/bin/hostname):$(

      [[ "${LOGNAME}" == "root" ]] && printf "%s" "${PWD/${HOME}/~}# " ||

      printf "%s" "${PWD/${HOME}/~}\$ ")'

6. You can either re-run the ~/.profile file or log-off and log-back in to facilitate a proper installation. This is done to enable the shell to load the newly defined environment variables.

7. You may check whether ANT is properly installed by issuing the command “ant -version” in the terminal. A proper installation will return you the following.

$ ant -version

Apache Ant version 1.7.1 compiled on June 27 2008

STEP: 2

Java Development Kit Installation

1. Download the JDK 6 from the following link.http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp
2. Select Java SE Development Kit (JDK) 6 and click on “Download”
3. Select platform as “Solaris – X86” and download the JDK.
4. There is a detailed blog on the installation of JDK and NetBeans IDE on Solaris in the following link. Thanks Brian ;-)http://weblogs.java.net/blog/bleonard/archive/2008/06/opensolaris_200_1.html
5. Make sure you add the JAVA_HOME and PATH Variables in .profile file appropriately.
6. You may need to log-off and log-on to facilitate a proper installation. This is done to enable the shell to load the newly defined variables.
7. You may check whether JDK is properly installed by issuing the command “java -version” in the terminal.A proper installation will return you the following.

    $ java -version

    java version "1.6.0_10"

    Java(TM) Platform, Standard Edition for Business (build 1.6.0_10-b33)

    Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (build 11.0-b15, mixed mode)

STEP: 3

Install CVS

1. You may use the Solaris Package Manager to install the CVS Package.
2. System → Administration → Package Manager to invoke the package manager.
3. In the search box of the Package Manager ,search for “CVS” from the repository “opensolaris.org”
4. This will return “SUNWcvs”. Just Select it and click the “Install/Update” button.
5. This will install CVS on your Solaris Instance.
6. The following link will provide the information on CVS
7. http://www.nongnu.org/cvs/
8. You may check whether CVS is properly installed by issuing the command “cvs -version” in the terminal.A proper installation will return you the following.

    $ cvs -version

    Concurrent Versions System (CVS) 1.12.13 (client/server)

    Copyright (C) 2005 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

    Senior active maintainers include Larry Jones, Derek R. Price,

    and Mark D. Baushke. Please see the AUTHORS and README files from the CVS

    distribution kit for a complete list of contributors and copyrights.

    CVS may be copied only under the terms of the GNU General Public License,

    a copy of which can be found with the CVS distribution kit.

    Specify the --help option for further information about CVS

STEP: 4

Install SVN

1. You may use the Solaris Package Manager to install the SVN Package.
2. Traverse to System → Administration → Package Manager to invoke the package manager.
3. In the search box of the Package Manager, search for “svn” from the repository “opensolaris.org”
4. This will return “SUNWsvn”. Just select it and click the “Install/Update” button.
5. This will install CVS on your Solaris Instance.
6. The following link will provide more information on CVS. http://subversion.tigris.org/

   

STEP: 5

Open an account in Java.net.

1. If you dont have an account in java.net, follow the below mentioned process.
2. Traverse to the link https://www.dev.java.net/servlets/Join
3. Register yourself as a user.

STEP: 6

Well now we are all set to Install Wonderland.

1. Create a Folder Wonderland on your file system.

2. I have created the folder on my desktop.

$ pwd

/export/home/Kapil/Desktop/Wonderland

3. Traverse to the folder 'Wonderland' which you have created.

4. The next step is to download the Wonderland work space from the CVS repository to your local machine..

5. Now issue the following commands from your terminal.

    $ cd ~/Desktop /Wonderland
    $ cvs -d :pserver:<username>@cvs.dev.java.net:/cvs login
    $ cvs -d :pserver:<username>@cvs.dev.java.net:/cvs checkout lg3d-wonderland

6. You should provide your username, which you have created at Java.net to login to the CVS repository. Replace the :<username> with your username at Java.net.

7. You will then be prompted for your password at java.net and you can notice that the Wonderland work space will be downloaded to your local machine.

8. The project name will be lg3d-wonderland and after download, a new folder lg3d-wonderland will be present in the Wonderland directory.

9. Now we need to install the wonderland add-ons. These add-ons consist of a collection of add-on modules like the PDF Viewer, and the audio and video recorder for Sun Wonderland. The source for these add-on modules is available via a subversion workspace. You should place your wonderland-modules workspace in the same directory as your lg3d-wonderland workspace.
   

10. Now issue the following commands from your terminal.

$ cd ~/Desktop/Wonderland

$ svn checkout https://wonderland-modules.dev.java.net/svn/wonderland-modules/trunk wonderland-modules --username <username>

11. You should replace <username> with your java.net user name.

12. You will then be prompted for your password at java.net and you can notice that the wonderland-modules work space will be downloaded to your local machine.Download the lg3d-wonderland-art workspace You should download the artwork if you plan to host the artwork that comes with Project Wonderland yourself (e.g. if you are behind a firewall and can't access the public art web server), or if you plan on creating new worlds that include the Project Wonderland artwork along with your own, new art. Now issue the following commands from your terminal.

    $ cd ~/Desktop/Wonderland/lg3d-wonderland

    $ pwd

    /export/home/Kapil/Desktop/Wonderland/lg3d-wonderland

    2. From this location issue the following command. This will compile all the java sources and will make the built.

    $ant

    3. Now open a new terminal and traverse to the ~/Desktop/Wonderland/lg3d-wonderland directory.

    $ cd ~/Desktop/Wonderland/lg3d-wonderland

    4. From this location issue the command “ant run-sgs”. This will start the Sun Wonderland Server.

    $ ant run-sgs

    Once the server is ready you will get the following information in the console.

    [java] INFO: Wonderland: application is ready
    5. Now we need to startup the voice bridge. Open up a new terminal and issue the following commands.

    $cd ~/Desktop/Wonderland/lg3d-wonderland

    $ant run-bridge

    6. Now we need to start up the Wonderland Client. Open up a new terminal again and issue the following commands.

    $cd ~/Desktop/Wonderland/lg3d-wonderland

    $ant run

    Now you can see that a new window opens up and will be prompted for a username and password.

    You can provide a name of your wish and get started with the Sun Wonderland.  Welcome to Wonderland.
    

    

Yesterday evening we had a webinar on the Netbeans 6.5 IDE.

The session was handled by David Botterill, the education technology manager for the student developer communities.

It was a wonderful presentation which provided an over view on the Capabilities of NetBeans 6.5 to handle technologies like PHP, Groovy and grails, and as usual the general Java/J2EE projects.

Well, the things that has amused me, include the code completion enhancement,performance monitoring, Http Client monitoring and the versatility to generate J2EE implementations.

The capability of Netbeans to generate Swing based GUI using Matisse was awesome. A wonderful feature indeed. Long back I used to spend hours building the GUI with "PROPER" alignment. Now its indeed an awesome enhancement.

I downloaded my copy yesterday and was playing around with various modules. I need to explore still in depth.

I strongly recommend you to go http://netbeans.tv , which provides an entire set of screencasts, which can get you started.

Yeah.. Of course. "NETBEANS IS THE ONLY IDE YOU NEED"..

Well, last week I was busy with my research project.

I will be presenting a detailed blog on our activities on SUN Wonderland and a brief tutorial on setting up an environment on a Ubuntu 8.10 Operating system.

Wishing you all a safe and wonderful thanksgiving.