Being a bit boneheaded, every time I do this, I spend ten minutes searching for instructions, so I thought I’d post them here both for myself, and for anyone else it may help.

Steps to Compact a VirtualBox WinXP Guest in Linux

1. While in your Windows XP virtual machine, download the sdelete program and save it to your c: drive in Windows.  This program allows you to ‘zero out’ the free space on the drive by writing zeros to the unused sectors.
2. In WinXP go to Start/Run and type ‘cmd‘ to open a command prompt.
3. Change directory (cd) to the location where you saved the sdelete.exe file.
4. Enter ‘sdelete -c c:/’ to execute the program.
5. Once sdelete is finished, shut down the Windows virtual machine.
6. Open a terminal in Linux and cd to the directory that contains the VDI you’d like to compact.
7. Type ‘VBoxManage modifyvdi xxxxx.vdi’ compact where xxxxx.vdi represents the filename of the virtual disk you’d like to compact.
8. After the command is runs, your VDI will be reduced in size.

There’s a ton of information on Sun’s VirtualBox site and forum.  Here’s a forum thread that I found especially helpful.

Tracking Time with Hamster

Hamster is a Gnome application that sits in a panel so you can access it easily. It’s available in the repositories of several Linux distributions and, if you’re an Ubuntu user, there are APT sources you can add to install via Synaptic.

After tracking my time for several months, I’m consistently surprised at the blatant discrepancy between how much time I thought I spent on a project and the actual amount of time I actually worked.

If you’re looking for a way to better understand and influence where your time goes, give Hamster a try.

If you don’t have broadband, you can also request free CDs.

I had a great time last year and even won a Silicon Mechanics server.

I’ll be making the geek pilgrimage again this year and hope to see you there.

Aside from some of the new and updated features, I’m thrilled that it’s a Long Term Support release, which means Canonical will support it for 3 years on desktops and 5 years on servers.

Since the quality of Linux distributions has increased tremendously over the last few years, I’ve been growing out of my distro hopping tendencies and want a release that I can stick with for a long time. For now, Ubuntu is it.

Highlights

Even though I’m no fan of crowds, it’s fun to get out and meet fellow geeks. There were a lot of impressive displays and cool things to learn and discuss.

Some of My Favorite Geek Moments:

• The ActiveState guys gave me a demo of their Komodo development IDE, which I’ve been playing with on Ubuntu and really like.
• Chatted with a Free Software Foundation rep about the FLOSS movement and what it’s like to work with Richard Stallman. She also gave me some cool stickers.
• The MythTV display. MythTV is a free & open source PVR, or personal Digital Video Recorder. Thanks to donated hardware from Silicon Mechanics, MythTV’s display of the normal, and HD, recording and playback capabilities was amazing. From what I’ve seen, MythTV puts most PVR/DVR solutions to shame, including Windows Media Center and Comcast’s local DVR service.
• Finally saw Second Life, who also had a display. Pretty amazing, although still mystifies me how people find/make time to spend so much time in a virtual world, when there’s not enough time in my actual world.
• Chatted with the Silicon Mechanics folks about their company, servers, and their commitment to the Open Source community.
• I won a cool raffle prize.

At Linux Fest Northwest 2007, many of the vendors donated software, hardware, books and other promotional items to be used in a raffle.

Although I’m not much of a gambler, I bought two tickets to support the FLOSS cause and, amazingly, won the grand prize: a Silicon Mechanics R-207C rackmounted server.

Before the raffle, I’d talked to some of the nice Silicon Mechanics Reps and was really impressed with their offerings and nearly drooled on a demo server.

Silicon Mechanics is a Value Added Reseller of sorts. They don’t manufacture all of their equipment, but they do tailor-make server systems, usually based on SuperMicro components.

Support

From what I can tell, their biggest selling features is their excellent service. They also work closely with customers to find the best hardware solutions for their needs.

Silicon Mechanics has an excellent support policy including return/exchange and are much easier to deal with than actual equipment manufacturers.

They have a host of impressive clientèle including:

• Second Life
• LiveJournal
• WikiMedia
• many big universities
• hosting companies.

Open Source

What impressed me most about Silicon Mechanics is their commitment to the Open Source community.

They’ve made impressive donations of time, equipment and money to several things Open Source including MythTV and Linux Fest Northwest. And, they employ several developers that create code for Linux and Open Source projects as well.

So, I’m really happy with the server, although I have yet to put it to good use. But I’m doing my best to clean up the drool.

I’m planning to replace Windows XP with Ubuntu as the main operating system on my laptop. I’ll still run WinXP in a VMWare Server virtual machine for my (ever-decreasing) must-have Windows applications.

I’ve used Ubuntu for a few years and, when I installed Edgy Eft on my office desktop PC and spent a few days poking and tweaking, it totally spoiled me.

It’s even more of a pain to use WinXP now.

One thing I love about Ubuntu is the intuitive and powerful standard interface. Now, with the development of projects like Compiz and Beryl, it’s possible to have an even slicker looking, more productive, desktop environment.

What’s my favorite thing about Linux and Ubuntu? Freedom, baby, freedom!

Heck, Ubuntu will even ship you free CDs if you don’t have a way to download and burn them yourself.

Ubuntu is a complete desktop Linux operating system, freely available with both community and professional support. The Ubuntu community is built on the ideas enshrined in the Ubuntu Manifesto: that software should be available free of charge, that software tools should be usable by people in their local language and despite any disabilities, and that people should have the freedom to customise and alter their software in whatever way they see fit. “Ubuntu” is an ancient African word, meaning “humanity to others”. The Ubuntu distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world.

More info at:

• ubuntu.com
• distrowatch.com

The eighth annual Linuxfest Northwest takes place from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., April 28 and 29, 2007 at Bellingham Technical College in Bellingham, WA. Exhibits, presentations, and parking are free. All ages are welcome.

Linuxfest Northwest 2007

I’m planning to be there. Let me know if you’re going too and maybe we can connect.

The only problem is that there are so many cool Presentations that I’m not sure where to start.

technorati tags:linux

If your hosting environment runs the Apache web server, you can simply create an .htaccess file in the directory you’d like to protect and insert the following code:

Options -Indexes

For example, say you’ve created a sub-folder on your site to hold images. Without protection, a user could visit http://yoursite.com/images/ and see a directory listing of the files and folders in the images directory.

By simply creating a file with the above line and saving it as .htaccess in the images directory, users will get an error rather than a directory listing when they visit the URL.

For more info on .htaccess, visit the Apache website.

technorati tags:.htaccess, Apache