KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is currently popular terms among the virtualization technology. What makes it popular and become the strong competitor for Xen Hypervisor are the technology behind KVM and Red Hat decision to move focus on KVM instead of Xen for next release Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0. What makes KVM gains an advantage on the technology side are the inclusion KVM module into Linux kernel so we do not need a patch or different kernel as we need for Xen Hypervisor. Beside the two virtualization technology above, those are various virtualization technology running on Linux : VMWare, VirtualBox, OpenVZ etc but Xen and KVM are quite popular among others.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 was added KVM beside Xen Hypervisor on Service Pack 1 release. openSUSE 11.3 released on July 15, 2010 also append  KVM as Virtualization package beside the default Xen Hypervisor. Following article covers KVM installation on openSUSE 11.3 64 bit (the 32 bit installation should be similar).

1. Install KVM module by using YAST or  Zypper.  Install following package : kvm, libvirt, libvirt-python, virt-utils, yast2-vm, virt-manager, virt-viewer, bridge-utils, vm-install. We may also install virtualization stuff by using YAST | Virtualization | Install Hypervisor and Tools and then adds KVM package within  YAST | Software | Software Management, but the second tips will also installing  Xen Hypervisor . SLES 11 SP1 has different way to install KVM by asking which Virtualization technology should be install if we choose second tips. I don’t know why openSUSE take different method to install and not as simple as SLES 11 SP1 has.
2. Activate Virtual Daemon. Open YAST | System | System Services (runlevel) and mark libvirtd as enable services
   `
   
3. Open YAST | Virtualization | Virtual Machine Manager
   `
   
4. If Virtual Machine Manager has no  “localhost (QEMU) option, add the KVM instance by clicking  menu File | Add Connection and choose KVM/QEMU and then click Connect
   `
   
5. After that, we may create a new virtual appliance by click  New and follows the  wizard.
   

Managing KVM on openSUSE/SLES seems to be similar as managing Xen Hypervisor because both virtualization using same front-end application (libvirt) on openSUSE/SLES YAST. KVM need a motherboard supporting virtualization extensions as it’s feature, e.g : Intel VT (Virtualization technology) or AMD-V. To check whether your motherboard supporting virtualization extension, run the following command on konsole/terminal :

Intel VT :

grep --color vmx /proc/cpuinfo

AMD-V

grep --color svm /proc/cpuinfo

Some motherboard disable virtualization extension by default so you must check BIOS setting to see whether virtualization extension has been activated or not.

Note : This is part one of 2 article. I decided to split the tutorial to make it easier to read (and to write )

This tutorial describes how you can configure Zimbra Mail Server & Collaboration Suite and Samba to act as a primary domain controller (PDC) that uses Zimbra LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) as a central password database for authenticating users on Linux and Windows desktops. The integration process will make it easier for administrators to manage Zimbra Mail Server and Samba PDC / Active Directory account because it use same LDAP database. If applied in corporate environments or institutions who have been using Windows Server, this guide can be used to set up Linux servers to replace the Windows Active Directory Server and Microsoft Exchange Server.

The setup described in this document is not the only possible way to make Samba and Zimbra use the same user database for authentication. You may also use Zimbra External Authentication with Samba PDC. External authentication are a little bit easy to be setting up, but we must manage the mailbox profile in Zimbra and it doesn’t seamlessly integrate Zimbra into Samba PDC+OpenLDAP. It is highly recommended to get familiar with Zimbra, Samba, LDAP and PAM, before you start the installation.

This tutorial are based on Zimbra wiki article : UNIX and Windows Accounts in Zimbra LDAP and Zimbra Admin UI 6.0 but has been tune up to works successfully on openSUSE/SLES environment. The original wiki using Ubuntu/RedHat environment which doesn’t automatically fit with openSUSE/SLES configuration.

I’m using Zimbra Mail Server 6.0.5 64 bit with the following configuration :

Domain & Hostname

Domain   : vavai.co.id
Hostname : zcspdc.vavai.co.id

IP Address

IP Address    : 192.168.10.1
Name Server 1 : 192.168.10.1
Name Server 2 : 8.8.8.8  (Google public DNS Server)
Name Server 3 : 208.67.222.222 (OpenDNS public DNS Server)
Router        : 192.168.10.254 (ADSL Modem)

File /etc/hosts

127.0.0.1       localhost
192.168.10.1    zcspdc.vavai.co.id zcspdc

ZIMBRA INSTALLATION

Please use following article to install Zimbra on SLES 11 : Installing Zimbra 6.0.5 64 bit on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 11 64 bit or use this tutorial : Installing Zimbra 6.0.4 on openSUSE 11.1 64 bit for Zimbra+openSUSE version.

ZIMBRA LDAP CONFIGURATION

The following script will automatically configure Zimbra LDAP as below :

• Add Samba Schema into Zimbra LDAP
• Add proper index into Zimbra LDAP Schema
• Add 2 user (zmposix and zmposixroot) as Zimbra LDAP Administrative Account with default password : rahasia
• Adjust Zimbra LDAP ACL to allow administrative task regarding Samba-Zimbra integration
• Add Admin Extension Zimbra Posfix Account and Zimbra Samba Extension

Thanks to Peracchi and Lithorus on the following thread on Zimbra Forum for idea and a great script.

To run the automated script, run the following commandon console/terminal :

su
cd /srv
wget -c http://vavai.com/wp-content/uploads/zcs-samba.tar.gz
tar -zxvf zcs-samba.tar.gz
su - zimbra
cd /srv/zcs-samba
./zcs-samba.sh

NOTE : The script will automatically use ‘rahasia’ (Indonesian word means ‘secret’ ) as default password for zmposixroot and zmposix password. Please modify script to use your own password by change the following code on /srv/zcs-samba/zcs-samba.sh  :

# set password for the posix ldap accounts
ZMPOSIX_LDAP_PASSWORD=`/opt/zimbra/openldap/sbin/slappasswd -s rahasia`
ZMPOSIXROOT_LDAP_PASSWORD=`/opt/zimbra/openldap/sbin/slappasswd -s rahasia`
echo "Domain : $DOMAIN"
echo "Hostname : $HOSTNAME"
echo "Zimbra LDAP Password : $ZIMBRA_LDAP_PASSWORD"
echo "LDAP Prefix : $LDAP_PREFIX"
echo "ZMPOSIX_LDAP_PASSWORD : rahasia"

Change ‘rahasia’ on the above line with your own password.

SAMBA INSTALLATION

• Open YAST | Network Service | Samba Server. YAST will automatically added Samba package if you never install it.
• On the first wizard, fill in the workgroup/domain name. I’m using vavai.co.id as my domain name as shown on top of the tutorial. Click Next.
• On Samba Server Type, Choose Primary Domain Controller (PDC) and then click Next
• On start-up, choose Service Start During Boot so Samba will automatically be activated during boot. Don’t forget to open your Firewall port
• Move to LDAP Setting tab.
• Click on Use LDAP Password Back-End option
• Change LDAP Server URL from default entry ldap://127.0.0.1 to be ldap://192.168.10.1 (remember my IP address configuration above). Use same address to  IdMap Back-End
• Change Search Base DN to Zimbra LDAP DN, mine are dc=vavai,dc=co,dc=id
• Fill in Administrator DN and the password: uid=zmposixroot,cn=appaccts,cn=zimbra). Click Test Connection to test the connection between Zimbra and Samba machine.
• Click Advanced Setting | Expert LDAP Setting
• Change user suffix to be ou=people
• Change group suffix to be ou=groups
• Change Machine suffix to be ou=machines
• Click OK to close Expert LDAP Setting windows
• Click OK to close Samba Server wizard. Fill in password for Samba root /Administrator password. To prevent any confused setting, I’m using same password between zmposixroot, zmposix and Samba root password

SAMBA CONFIGURATION

• Open /etc/samba/smb.conf with your preferred text editor (vi, gedit, kate or kwrite)
• Give it a # (comment mark) on the following line (if you do not use dhcp on your Samba configuration) :

include = /etc/samba/dhcp.conf

• Save the configuration

LDAP CLIENT CONFIGURATION

• Click YAST | Network Services | LDAP Client
• Click Use LDAP on User Authentication
• Change Address to use Zimbra IP (192.168.10.1)
• Fill in LDAP Base DN (dc=vavai,dc=co,dc=id)
• Leave others as is
• Click Advanced Configuration
• Change Password Change Protocol to MD5
• Leave Group Member Attribute = Member setting
• Click on Administration Setting tab
• Fill in uid=zmposixroot,cn=appaccts,cn=zimbra on Administrator DN text box. Leave  Append Base DN setting unchecked
• Leave Create Default Configuration Objects setting unchecked
• Click OK
• Click OK

NSS-LDAP & PAM-LDAP CONFIGURATION

• Open file /etc/ldap.conf with your preferred text editor and change the following line (remove # mark)

host 192.168.10.1
base dc=vavai,dc=co,dc=id
binddn uid=zmposix,cn=appaccts,cn=zimbra
bindpw rahasia
rootbinddn uid=zmposixroot,cn=appaccts,cn=zimbra
port 389
bind_policy soft
nss_reconnect_tries 2
uri ldap://192.168.10.1/
ssl start_tls
tls_cacertdir /opt/zimbra/conf/ca
tls_checkpeer no
pam_password md5
nss_base_passwd         ou=people,dc=vavai,dc=co,dc=id?one
nss_base_shadow         ou=people,dc=vavai,dc=co,dc=id?one
nss_base_group          ou=groups,dc=vavai,dc=co,dc=id?one
nss_base_hosts          ou=machines,dc=vavai,dc=co,dc=id?one

• Save the configuration
• Edit /etc/nsswitch.conf and change the following line :

passwd: compat
group: compat

with

passwd: files ldap
group: files ldap

• Edit /etc/pam.d/common-account and change the configuration as below :

account sufficient pam_unix.so
account sufficient pam_ldap.so

• Edit /etc/pam.d/common-auth and change the configuration as below :

auth sufficient pam_ldap.so
auth sufficient pam_unix.so

• Edit /etc/pam.d/common-password and change the configuration as below :

password sufficient pam_unix.so
password sufficient pam_ldap.so

• Edit /etc/pam.d/common-session and change the configuration as below :

session sufficient pam_unix.so
session sufficient pam_ldap.so

Tutorial will be continue to part 2 of User Account Integration between Samba PDC & Zimbra Mail Server on openSUSE / SLES.

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)

1. 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.

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.

After blogging for about 4 years, I’m going to addict with blog themes & templates. I’m occasionally browsing only for finding beautiful templates for my own blog or for community blog. Some are free and others are premium themes. The one which I used for Indonesian openSUSE Community website is a good example of free magazine themes. I’m using WordPress as blog engine  and used BrandFord Magazine WordPress Themes by Michael Oeser as default template.

My Personal blog both Indonesian and English are using NewsPro Magazine Themes from Mehmet Ozekinci. It’s a premium themes, cost me some cash but I’m quite satisfied with it’s quality. Easy to manage and have many options for changing layout or adding an optional content.

Premium themes or templates  may have an additional add ons, support and professional layout but I often found a good & professional themes or templates provided for free of charge. So, it’s maybe a good idea to re-thinking your blog layout if you wish to attract your blog visitor. Good quality content is the king and I absolutely agree with this but it always be true that a good quality layout will increase your chance to let new user read our good quality content.

I always bookmarking a good layout, a blog post which listing some good themes or templates, a templates and themes review or even a new post regarding same topics about beautiful blog design. I think it would be a good idea to bookmark the good design with my own, so it would also useful for everyone who has same interest.

Based on my hobby and the above reason, I’m thinking to build a special blog for my own purposes (and also for anyone who interested to themes/templates highlight). Blog has been successfully setup and launched begining this week. It’s the main cause why I didn’t update my blog post.

Infothemes.com, I think the purpose o this blog has been describe successfully with it’s name It’s a special blog based on digg-style, specifically intended to blog themes and templates and will be updated regularly. You may find a gallery about good design, good themes and good templates, both free or premium (commercial) which maybe suitable for your interest.

Beside standard posting from me as an infothemes admin, you could also submit your own interest or vote for such good design. If you worked as web designer and need to promote your product or finding a review, please let me know. I’ll submit your themes/templates into infothemes.com

If you have any suggestion regarding infothemes, please let me know. I’ll be back to writing activities, especially openSUSE tutorial & tips after completing this project…

Several days ago, I got an email from Han Wen Kam (甘汉文), Senior Technology Specialist, Global Strategic Partners,  Asia Pacific Novell Inc. He emailing me after reading my blog and found that I’m currently active building Indonesian openSUSE Community.

In his email, Han Wen Kam asked me about Indonesian openSUSE community, it’s activity and about his goal to linking openSUSE community all around ASEAN (South East Asia).  He also asked me about the possibility how Novell could support our activity and efforts in Indonesia. I greatly appreciated his email because Indonesia openSUSE community initiated for help spreading promotional stuff and supporting openSUSE/SUSE users in  Indonesia.

Actually, I told him that I’m not really satisfied with Novell promotional product and policy in Indonesia. Novell has a good acceptable product with Novell Netware in 1995-2000 but it has suddenly out of business with the introduction of Windows NT and Windows Server. Novell has partner and global partner in Indonesia but it seems the market share just a little niche in enterprise scale (CMIIW) and Novell’s product not really well known in Indonesia.

I think there was 2 main problem why it was happen. The first one is about promotional stuff and the second is about loyal community. Although Microsoft has a strong position, Novell should have an opportunity to increase their market share in Indonesia. This opportunity was taken by Red Hat and I would say that Red Hat is the first choice for Enterprise application beside Microsoft Product.

SLED/SLES and another Novell product is a good product. I’m quite satisfied with the quality of openSUSE so I can prove that it is true. Although it was a good and solid product,  it could not help expanding the market share without good support and loyal community.

There is nothing wrong with commercial approach because business stand for sales revenue but if we talk in marketing term, I would suggest to educated the market, making a good condition and environment before reached commercial benefit. If we have solid community with ten thousand or more members, it should have business opportunity came from the community.

I don’t have statistical report about Novell sales revenue from Indonesia but I know there is a big opportunity to increase the sales revenue, market share and product branding. With 200+ million of people, trend of Linux implementation in public area and enterprise scale, Indonesia may become a big market beside USA, Europe, North America, Japan, China and India. It may need a market education but it looks promising.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 will be officially launched for next  2-4 months. The global economic recession in USA and Europe seems to be a hard work for all of us. I’m very disappointed to see our fellow developer who work for Novell with love and passion  accidentally leaved it because it was a difficult condition for Novell. I don’t want to see another fellow developer forced out because the condition take a long time to recover. The SLES launched should be a good starting point to promoting SLES in Indonesia and to increase Novell sales revenue from Asia Pacific.

Before you read this, please keep in mind that there were no tweak or tips which suitable for all condition and completely work for all users. Tweak and tips will only be suitable depending your purposes, requirement and environment. As an example, I may disable a service but the same service must be keep enable on your side because I do not use the service but you do.

This post is based on true story . It’s my experience and I’ve applied it. I get a faster and nicer openSUSE after applying these tips. The success story may vary depending above reason and I’ll be very pleasant for your advice or suggestion. Please share your experience by dropping a comment if you decided to apply these tweak, partially or fully implementation.

1. Disable Swap
   If you have more than 512 MB of RAM (1 GB an example), it’s may better to disable your swap space. Swap will only be used if computer has not enough memory for managing system task, but in certain condition, swap will be used even on enough memory condition. Disabling swap will push the system to fully managing memory allocation with RAM.
   
   Disabling swap :

   /sbin/swapoff -a

   Enabling swap :

   /sbin/swapon -a

   BEWARE : Please don’t try this if you have less than 512 MB of RAM. Even though Linux have a good memory management to manage memory allocation, I do not suggest this tips because the computer may suddenly hang if Linux has not enough memory.

   There were also some suggestion on installation tutorial to prepare about 2.5X of RAM as good swap partition. IMHO, it may suitable for an ancient history where 128 MB of RAM is quite big. Now, RAM bigger than 4 or 8 GB is a common environment. 2.5X of 8 GB is 20 GB. Do you need 20 GB of swap for buffering daily task ?

2. Disable Unnecessary Services
   It’s an important tips. Disable unnecessary service to increase available memory. Go to  YAST | SYSTEM | SYSTEM SERVICES – RUNLEVEL to disable or enable any service. You may also used chkconfig servicename off/on to disable or enable services but I recommended YAST as primary choice because YAST has complete information about what is service provided for.

   Choose Expert Mode to see complete information.What’s service should be disable ? As describe on prologue above, it may vary depending your purposes but I try to keep it simple. Below is a list of some service. Please adjust the service state with your purposes and condition. If I skip the service, it means that I leave it on default condition.

   SuSEFirewall2_init and setup : disable, unless you used firewall.
   aaeventd : If you have never used  AppArmor, disable it. Disabling this service will also disable boot.apparmor
   
   acpid : leave it
   alsasound : leave it
   atd : disable
   auditd : disable
   autofs : disable
   autoyast : disable
   avahi-daemon : disable (will also disable avahi-dnsconfd)
   bluetooth : disable, unless used bluetooth
   bluetooth-coldplug : disable, unless used bluetooth
   
   cron : leave it, unless you have no scheduled cron job. I leave it enable on my work PC but disable this on my home PC
   
   cups : leave it if you has attached printer or need CUPS to print to another printer, if not so, disable it.
   dbus : leave it
   
   earlykbd : leave it, unless you do not need keyboard
   earlyxdm : leave it
   earlysyslog : leave it, for logging
   fbset : disable
   gpm : disable
   haldaemon : leave it
   idmapd : disable
   joystick : disable, unless used it for games
   kbd : leave it, for keyboard
   lirc : disable
   mdadmd : disable
   named : leave it, for DNS Server daemon (I leave it disable on my home PC but automatically change to enable if I decided to install DNS Server)
   mircocodectl (Disable for AMD CPU, leave it for Intel processor)
   
   network : leave it, unless you have stand alone workstation and do not need to share files or used networking service
   
   nfs : disable
   nfsboot : disable, depending
   nfsserver : disable
   nmb : disable, unless used it for Samba sharing file
   nscd : disable
   ntp : disable
   openct : disable
   pscsd : disable
   portmap : disable
   postfix : disable, unless used it for mail transport or mail server
   powerd : disable
   powersaved : disable, unless used suspend feature
   random : leave it
   raw : disable
   rpasswdd : disable
   saslauthd : disable
   smb : disable, unless used it for Samba sharing file
   smbfs : disable, according to smb state
   smpppd : disable, unless used it for dial up
   spamd : disable
   splash : leave it
   splash_early : leave it
   sshd : disable, unless used it for ssh access. sshd = ssh service daemon.
   syslog : leave it
   xdm : leave it
   xfs : disable
   xinetd : leave it
   

3. Edit Inittab
   Edit /etc/inittab and disable (add # mark) tty3-tty6. It should like this :

   # getty-programs for the normal runlevels
   # <id>:<runlevels>:<action>:<process>
   # The “id” field MUST be the same as the last
   # characters of the device (after “tty”).
   1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty –noclear tty1
   2:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty2
   #3:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty3
   #4:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty4
   #5:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty5
   #6:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty6
   

4. Change sysconfig setting
   Change concurrent setting onYAST | SYSTEM | /etc/sysconfig editor Choose positive sign (+) on SYSTEM, KERNELChange

   SCHED_MINTIMESLICE 1000
   SCHED_MAXTIMESLICE 40000
   

   Make another change on SYSTEM, File System -> mdadm

   Disable MDADM_SCAN and set “0″ for MDADM_DELAY

5. Increase Partition Performance.
   Modify /etc/fstab and add these setting :

   for Ext3 : natime, nodiratime, barrier = 1
   for XFS : noatime, nodiratime
   for ReiserFS : notail, noatime, nodiratime, barrier = flush
   

   Please keep in mind that change the setting or partition type will make a deal with recovery capability of appropriate partition. It’s a good idea to read this and there tutorial for a reference.

6. Disable Beagle
   Beagle used for desktop search. It has such improvement on openSUSE 11.0 and 11.1 but if you didn’t used it for daily usage, removing beagle will saved a memory that being used for indexing. Remove it with YAST | Software | Software Management or used our lovely zypper :

   zypper rm beagle
   

7. Disable Nepomuk Desktop Search (on KDE 4)
   
   If you use KDE 4, you may get a bonus by disabling Nepomuk Desktop Search and Strigi desktop Indexer . Navigate to Kick off Menu | Configure Desktop | Advanced | Desktop Search. Disable (uncheck) Nepomuk Desktop Search and Strigi desktop Indexer.

After applying these tips, launched Konqueror and navigate to System Information (type sysinfo:/ on URL address and press enter. I used KDE 4.2 beta 2 with standard menu while writing this post. You may also get same result by go to kick off menu | Computer | System Information). See how much free memory available on your computer. After that, reboot your computer, re-check the system information before and after tweaking.

Reference :

1. Tips Meningkatkan Kecepatan openSUSE (Indonesian)
2. Ben Kevan : Speed up your Linux Boot and Normal Use (openSUSE)

The PC is quite compact. No CD/DVD ROM, No Floppy Disk and it has USB problem (can’t boot from USB). The one-and-only solution is by installing new OS over a network.

I set up a TFTP Server and try to boot from PXE Boot. DHCP client running successfully but it can’t reached TFTP Server :

PXE-T01: file not found
PXE-E3B-TFTP Error file not found
PXE-M0F exiting Intel boot agent

After investigating DHCP configuration, I found that this error occurred regarding the location of pxelinux.0 file. I’m using /srv/tftp as TFTP base source and the file pxelinux.0 resides on /srv/tftp/tftpboot. On previous configuration, I used complete path :

subnet 192.168.0.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 {
option broadcast-address 192.168.0.255;
pool {
range 192.168.0.201 192.168.0.211; # only need a few addresses
default-lease-time 180; # no long lease time required for booting
max-lease-time 360;     # booted system does its own dhcp request
server-name "192.168.0.1"; # This happens to be the IP of this server too
next-server 192.168.0.1; # Address of the TFTP server
filename "/srv/tftp/tftpboot/pxelinux.0";
allow members of "pxe"; # only respond to PXE requests
allow members of "etherboot"; # allow etherboot, too
}
}

I solved the the problem by change TFTP base source into /srv/tftp/tftpboot and then change the line

filename "/srv/tftp/tftpboot/pxelinux.0";

into

filename "pxelinux.0";

The location of pxelinux.0 must be relative to TFTP base source. You may also used “/srv” as TFTP base source and then use relative location filename “tftp/tftpboot/pxelinux.0″;

Although there was an issue about ending of Zimbra implementation support for openSUSE on next version (Zimbra 6 Gun and Roses), I decided that it would be important to show the audience, how easy setting up openSUSE for Zimbra Mail Server.

It was our initial training. We tried to organized the training as our promotional event for openSUSE implementation at enterprise area. We also decided to make this as paid training with a small fee. The decision have 2 advantage, both for us and for the audience. The audience get the cheap but integrated training, provided by our professional instructor (me and my colleagues ), step by step tutorial and a set of bonus package. Package contains openSUSE 10.3 DVD, openSUSE 11.1 DVD, Zimbra tutorial on openSUSE (printed version) and Zimbra CD.

Audience of Zimbra Mail Server on openSUSE training

Our benefit is about promotional of openSUSE, popularity of our community and some donation cash for our project. We planned for about 20 registrant and we got 33 registrant that give us IDR 8.250.000,- of cash, equivalent with US$ 825 (1 US$ estimated on IDR 10.000,-) . This make us happy because we have cash money for funding next event

We used openSUSE 10.3 as base installation for Zimbra mail server and give special attention about new feature on openSUSE 11.1. This is our strategy for attractive new user. While we push them for openSUSE implementation on their server (Zimbra doesn’t work on openSUSE 11.0 adn 11.1 due to Perl issue), we also push them to used latest version of openSUSE for their purposes and for daily usage.

Bonnie Kurniawan, Indonesian openSUSE Community, Bogor Local Group Leader (with hair cut ) and me, presenting the Zimbra implementation on openSUSE

Alhamdulillah, there are no obstacles in its implementation. I got an enthusiast response from the audience. The training planned for 4 hours and divided for 2 session but we have an extra 2 hours because there were a hot discussion after training.

Complete report and coverage of this event can be read on our website (in Indonesian, got the Google translate if you wish to read ) as follows:

1. Liputan Training Zimbra Bagian Pertama
2. Liputan Training Zimbra Bagian Kedua