Georges's Blog

Installing the M-Audio KeyRig 49 MIDI keyboard and its virtual instrument software on Windows 7

2009-12-21T21:29:00.001+01:00

Start Windows 7.
Plug in the KeyRig 49 keyboard and switch it on; it is detected and the driver is automatically installed.
Install the KeyRig Virtual Instrument software from the CD that came with the keyboard (even if it's for Windows XP); close the installer's window.
Download and run the KeyRig 1.1.0.4v6 updater; it also removes the need to certify the software. You can get it from http://www.m-audio.com/index.php?do=support.drivers&f=1031.
Run "M-Audio Key Rig.exe", the virtual instrument software (KeyRig).
In KeyRig: M-Audio Key Rig --> Preferences...: set the buffer size to a value that works well for you.

Japanese on FreeBSD (KDE)

2009-12-08T23:17:00.000+01:00

This article explains how to set up Japanese display and input on FreeBSD in KWord, Thunderbird, Firefox, etc.

DISCLAIMER

This is just a compilation of what I learned by reading lots of Web pages written by other people (mainly for Linux), lots of mailing lists, the FreeBSD handbook, and by spending hours upon hours in trial and error. I am in no way an expert on these matters. This article gives all my current knowledge. Therefore, if you ask me a question about something not written here, I will not know the answer.

This text very probably contains inaccuracies and/or describes suboptimal ways of achieving the desired result. Any suggested additions and corrections are welcome.

DISPLAY

Displaying Japanese characters normally works without effort, you just have to have the appropriate fonts installed. In some applications such as Firefox you also must select the correct character encoding (ISO-2022-JP or, sometimes, UTF-8).

Note (I'm not sure about that): it may be that you should have some of the big X fonts; they are installed during the installation of FreeBSD. Othrwise you can still installing them by running sysinstall (or /stand/sysinstall if you have an older version of FreeBSD).

But there can be problems. One problem I've have is that KWord would correctly display hiragana and katakana (in crisp, bitmapped fonts) but KWord would display squares instead of kanji. I surmise it's a font problem. The weird thing is, this happened on my FreeBSD 7.0 configuration, but the same setup displayed perfectly in FreeBSD 6.

A solution to the KWord squares problem is to install a Japanese TrueType font. Alas, TrueType fonts are anti-aliased and appear unpleasanly blurred. I vastly prefer pixelated but crisp bitmap fonts; blurred fonts are painful to my eyes. I recently found an article explaining how to configure fonts; it seems to cover how to disable anti-aliasing. I'll add information here as soon as I can. Probably over Christmas. In the meantime, if you want to display kanji in KWord, install a Japanese TrueType font (it seems any such font will do - all are similarly blurred):

cd /usr/ports/japanese/font-kochi ; make install clean

Alternative TT fonts with the same visual result: font-ipa, font-vlgothic, font-sazanami, etc.

The font-mplus package is a "bitmap font set aimed for simple and readable design". It includes Japanese and latin fonts in 10 and 12points. Alas, it gives blurred (anti-aliased) characters in the mailbox listing panel in Thunderbird (oddly, not in the body of the message) and it does not solve the squares-instead-of-kanji problem of KWord. I probably missed something, but it does not work for me.

In the end I installed the Sazanami font.

Now if you start KWord (normally; no need for an export LC_CTYPE setting), it will display kanji. The blurring extends to other applications, including Firefox and Thunderbird.

However, if you don't use KWord, but only want Japanese display and input in Firefox and Thunderbird, you don't need to install such a font. It will work perfectly with the bitmap fonts.

If you instaled one of the TrueType fonts and you don't like the anti-aliasing, you can either wait for me to explain how to configure TrueType fonts (in a future update of this post) or you can uninstall the font by going to the font package folder and doing a "make deinstall". This solves the problem; no need to restart X, only restart the application(s) displaying Japanese.

INPUT

Install the input system

This software is also called "input method editor" or "input method". I've been using Canna for years even though some people prefer the more recent Anthy.

#cd /usr/ports/japanese/Canna; make install clean

#pkg_add -r skim

(alternative: cd /usr/ports/textproc/skim; make install clean)

This also installs scim (with a "c") as a dependency. Skim is a KDE application (front-end) using SCIM.

#cd /usr/ports/japanese/scim-canna; make install clean

Later, if you need to display again scim-canna's post-install configuration instructions, do pkg_info -D ja-scim-canna-1.0.0_6 (of course, use your actual version number).

(In the past, I used to use Canna with kinput2.)

Have Canna start automatically

In /etc/rc.conf, add this line:

canna_enable="YES"

This will take effect upon reboot. Rebooting now is a huge overkill and may not be acceptable on a multi-user system, so for testing you can start Canna manually.

Configure SKIM/SCIM

If you have KDE, do the following:
- right-click the SKIM taskbar icon: Configure: Frontend: General SCIM
- "General" tab: set your keyboard layout, and set keyboard shortcuts: Toggle On/Off
- "Other" tab: Panel Program: scim-panel-kde; Config Module: kconfig

Sorry, I don't know the procedure for Gnome or other environments.

.xinitrc

export GTK_IM_MODULE="scim"

export QT_IM_MODULE="scim"

export LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8

export XMODIFIERS='@im=SCIM'

scim -d

startkde

Application startup scripts / environment variables

This is for sh/bash - for the other shells: display scim-canna's post-install instructions:

KWord:

export LC_CTYPE="ja_JP.UTF-8" ; kword &

Firefox, Thunderbird:

export LC_TYPE="ja_JP.eucJP"; thunderbird &

export LC_CTYPE="ja_JP.UTF-8" ; thunderbird &

That's right. For the Mozilla applications, either LC_CTYPE value works, but for KWord you must use ja_JP.UTF-8, otherwise Japanese input will not activate in KWord.

QT font substitution (qtconfig)

To be exhaustive: I did not configure any font substitution whatsoever. My font substitution list in qtconfig/Fonts is empty. (=default).

Next...

I'll refine and improve this post as time allows. In particular

find a way to have crisp fonts, at least up to a certain size.

how to print Japanese documents, including Web pages.Requires to be able to generate Japanese PostScript / PDFfiles.

Japan - Travel in Tohoku (October 22 ~ November 6, 2009)

2009-11-01T13:39:00.075+01:00

From 22 October to 6 November 2009, I visited the north of Japan (Kita-Tohoku)

Sunday, November 1, 2009

Today I got up quite early at 0530 to get the train of 0711 (JR Senseki line) from Sendai 仙台 to Ishinomaki 石ノ巻. From the station, I took the bus of 0915 at bus stop nr. 2 for Ayukawa port 鮎川港 (1430 yens, 90 minutes). This is the first bus of the day from Ishinomaki to Ayukawa port. We arrived at Ayukawa port at 1044.

At Ayukawa, I took the 1100 ferry to Kinkazan island (900 yens, 20 minutes), the first ferry being at 1030; this is a small boat maybe 15 metres long; it can accomodate 40 passengers.See http://www.kinkasan.com for the ferry timetables. In fact we arrived at Kinkazan port a little bit before 1130.

[Picture of timetable at the Ayukawa bus stop]

A picture of the ferry I took after setting foot on Kinkazan island.

There are many deer and monkeys on Kinkazan island. Upon disembarking, we were greeted by a deer. Those deer are not dangerous. They are very tame and their horns had been cut to make sure they were harmless.

I also took a picture of two monkeys that just happened to be there when we arrived. I didn't see any other monkeys on the island, though. These two monkeys looked similar to those I saw on Yakushima island.

As soon as we disembarked, a van took most of the ferry passengers up the steep road to the shrine. I and a few others chose to do it the hard way and climb on foot. Near the shrine, there is a nice park, with many deer. On the precincts of the shrine, there are a couple of nice little red bridges.

On the side of the shrine, there is a steep hiking path to the Oku no In (奥の院 - inner shrine) and to the top of the pyramid-shaped mountain that is the centre of the island. Unfortunately, upon arriving at the inner shrine, there was a panel saying that the path henceforth is hazardous and please do not go further. So I couldn't reach the top. A view of the inner shrine.

Back down at the ferry pier, there is a gift shop and restaurant (金華山おみやげセンター). The owner told me that apparently I missed the correct path and that people often take the wrong path. Even though I scrupulously followed the signs on the wooden panels along the path. Oh well. He also gave me sketch maps of the hiking paths showing the right way. Well, there was another way, via the road from the boat pier, you turn right (instead of left to the shrine). It's 5 and a half kilometres long. I bought a ticket for the boat back, this time to Onagawa (not Ayukawa), so that I could directly get the train to Ishinomaki and avoid the bus.

While waiting for the ferry departing at 1500, I ate a bowl of udon and discussed with the shop owner. He also gave me a few slices of whale meat for free. He said it was a rare and expensive treat. There were three sorts of whale meat on the plate: small rectangular slices or actual meat, red and maybe half a centimetre thick; then there were slices of blubber from the underside of the whale (the neck, sort of), and slices of blubber from the back of the whale. Apparently, it's rare to have all three on one plate. It was not bad, but not exceptional, either.

Embarking on the ferry

Who knows what is behind that door? Probably the engine room.

It was very cold and windy here outside of the cabin. Only one other person and myself stayed outside to look at the view. Then after a few minutes it was really too cold so I climbed down into the cabin.

Inside the cabin. There is a screen displaying the route, updated in real time.

Back at Ishinomaki 石巻, I visited the "Mangattan Museum". Indeed, Ishinomaki is sort of a manga/anime town: there are statues and decorations everywhere, starting at the station.

The museum building looks like a spaceship. The entrance of the museum is on the left.

The museum staff are dressed in uniforms from the Cyborg series of manga and animations. One of them kindly posed for me.

There are various statues and decorations in the streets, related to the museum exhibits. Even this red robot at the entrance of a bank.

Then I took the train back to Sendai, where I had dinner at Marutan まるたん, a restaurant a few hundred metres down the street from the ryokan where I was staying (Ryokan Ikoi-so). まるたん serves the specialty of Sendai: grilled beef tongue (牛たん).

Monday, November 2, 2009

The local train of 0822 took me from Sendai to Matsushima-Kaigan (松島海岸). The weather was cold　and rainy. I quickly visited the main attractions, which are mercifully clustered along the coast within a few hundred metres from the train station. This includes a few temples (names to be added here) and two islands reached on foot by crossing red bridges. The bigger island is called Fukuura-jima and is now a botanical garden. I then took the cruise boat for Hon-Shiogama. The cruise in Matsushima bay takes 50 minutes, animated by a recorded voice explaining every tiny island and islet along the way. As it is now almost winter, the ship was not crowded and it was a rather quiet and pleasant time, probably the best part of the expedition. There were only a few seagulls to be seen, and a few old ladies did feed them fried shrimps, but that was all. Basically the poor weather is more than compensated for by the small number of tourists and the quietness. At Hon-Shiogama, I ate a Japanese toast-pizza (pizza ingredients on a slice of toast bread) with coffee, then walked to the JR train station and went back to Sendai.

In Sendai, the best way to take in all the main cultural attractions in a few hours is to board the City Loop Bus ("loople" as it's called), using a one-day free-pass ticket sold at bus stop nr. 15-3 outside JR Sendai station. The bus makes a loop around the main attractions, there is a bus every 20 minutes at any of the loop's stops.

Then I went to Yodobashi Camera outside of Sendai Station to buy a USB photo memory card reader to download the photos off my Fuji F10 digital camera and put them on this blog, but unfortunately the shared PC at the ryokan is not accessible so I cannot plug in the card reader.

(To be continued).

File sharing between a FreeBSD guest in Virtual Box and its Windows XP host, using Samba

2009-09-27T00:18:00.000+02:00

Assumptions

You have sucessfully installed FreeBSD (I'm using FreeBSD 7) in VirtualBox, and set up networking so that you can use ordinary services such as email, HTTP, etc.

Now, you want to be able to expose some files so that they can be accessed from the Windows host operating system on which VirtualBox (and inside it, FreeBSD) is running.
For example, you want to write tar backups to DVDs, or watch some multimedia (video) in Windows because the virtual video available to FreeBSD in VirtualBox is only 256 colours VGA.

There is a feature in VirtualBox called Shared Folders, which I did not use. I prefer to do it the "old-fashioned" way, as if there were two real computers on the network, the one running the Windows XP host operating system and the one running the FreeBSD guest operating system.

Install and configure Samba

cd /usr/ports/net/samba3; make install clean

Copy the example default configuration file to /usr/local/etc/smb.conf, then customise it to your needs.
Better not to use SWAT to create the configuration; I tried, and it generated and invalid file, I don't know why.

Here is my config file:

[global]
workgroup = GAMES
server string = Samba Server
security = SHARE
hosts allow = 10.0.0.
log file = /var/log/samba/log.%m
max log size = 50
guest account = nobody
map to guest = bad user
passdb backend = smbpasswd

[homes]
   comment = Home Directories
   browseable = no
   writable = yes

[public]
   path = /home/public
   public = yes
   only guest = yes
   writable = yes
   printable = no

[tmp]
   path = /tmp
   public = yes
   only guest = yes
   writable = yes
   printable = no

After modifying the configuration file, run the command "testparm" to check that there are no syntactic errors in the file.

Configure networking in VirtualBox: use "Bridged Networking"

The physical PC is connected to an ADSL modem-router. The router (an old Alcatel Speedtouch ADSL modem) makes a LAN with address 10.0.0.0/24 (hence the network mask of 255.255.255.0). On this LAN, the router has the IP address 10.0.0.138. With Bridged Networking (called "host interface networking" in VirtualBox pre-2.2), the FreeBSD guest also sees the router as 10.0.0.138. My physical PC running Windows XP is 10.0.0.40 on that LAN. I decide to give the IP address 10.0.0.41 to the FreeBSD guest.

Here is my /etc/rc.conf file (only the relevant parts):

ifconfig_le0="inet 10.0.0.41 netmask 255.255.255.0"
defaultrouter="10.0.0.138"

samba_enable="YES"
nmbd_enable="YES"
smbd_enable="YES"

Be sure to check the name of your network interface (do an ifconfig); it might be le0, or pcn0, or something else. That name must be the one used in rc.conf (highlighted hereabove). It's too easy to have the wrong name, especially after a configuration change in VirtualBox or elsewhere. If you find you cannot ping your default router (no route to host), that might be why.

Access the shared files from Windows

To access your Samba share from Windows XP, type the required path in the address bar of the file explorer or enter that path in Tools / Map Network Drive.
In my example it would be \\10.0.0.41\public.

---
Last updated on 26 December 2011.

Move FreeBSD to new hard disk ☆VirtualBox edition☆

2009-09-06T00:57:00.073+02:00

It would seem that my procecure does not work well (see the comments to this post).
To be rewritten/improved.

Introduction

You need to move your FreeBSD to a new (typically, bigger) hard drive in order to increase the size of one or more file systems. The procedures outlined in this article are applicable to a real system; VirtualBox-specific additions are highlighted.

Attention: these procedures are draft; there is still a problem I'm trying to solve. Help would be appreciated.

Apart from this introduction, the rest of the article is structured like this:

- make a backup of your FreeBSD system;
- install your new hard disk;
- initialise the new hard disk;
- generic procedure: using dump and restore for all the partitions;
- optimized procedure: use dd to copy the partitions that need not be resized;
- special case: use 'dd' to copy the whole disk then enlarge the last filesystem on the new disk.
- references;
- change log.

Make a full backup

First, as a precaution, make a backup!
With VirtualBox, it's very simple: just make a copy of the whole .VirtualBox folder (VirtualBox must not be running).

Install your new hard disk

Put the new hard drive in the machine.

With VirtualBox: first, make sure you have enough free space in the directory where the new virtual disk will be created (by default this is in C:\Documents and Settings\username\.VirtualBox\VDI.
Start VirtualBox and select your FreeBSD virtual machine.
Create a new virtual disk: File / Virtual Disk Manager / New; Fixed-size image.
Add this new drive to the virtual machine: Settings / Hard Disks ; press the Insert key or click on the little icon with a "+" sign on it, and select the .vdi file that you have just created, in the drop down list attached to the newly added IDE Primary Slave; click OK.

Note: As the currently active HD is IDE Primary Master, the new HD will automatically be an IDE Primary Slave. The FreeBSD VM now has two hard disks. It's like you've just added a new hard disk inside a real machine, a blank unformatted disk, which will be detected as a top-level IDE device (/dev/ad1) by the kernel.

Initialise the new hard disk

Start FreeBSD; log in as root.

Verify the presence of the new hard disk:

trantor# ls /dev/ad*

/dev/ad0    /dev/ad0s1a  /dev/ad0s1c  /dev/ad0s1e  /dev/ad0s1g

/dev/ad0s1  /dev/ad0s1b  /dev/ad0s1d  /dev/ad0s1f  /dev/ad1

Initialize sector 0 slice table of disk ad1 for one FreeBSD slice covering the entire disk:

trantor# fdisk -I /dev/ad1
******* Working on device /dev/ad1 *******
fdisk: invalid fdisk partition table found
fdisk: Geom not found: "ad1"

Did I get something wrong here?
Anyway, if you list the devices again with ls /dev/ad*, you see that the slice (ad1s1) has been created.

From this point on, here's how things could be done:

all partitions must be resized: use dump and restore;
not all partitions must be resized: configure partitions of appropriate sizes on the new drive, then copy the data over, using respectively dd for unchanged partitions and dump+restore for the resized partitions;
only the last partition of the slice needs to be enlarged: use dd to copy the whole disk, then simply grow the last partition on the new disk.

The first method is always applicable, but is also the most cumbersome. Cases 2 and 3 are special cases allowing the use of faster and/or less labour-intensive operations.

Generic procedure: using dump and restore for all the partitions

Create, on the new drive, the FreeBSD partitions that exist on the old one.

Go to Configure / Label. Move the selection to "[] ad1 ad1" and press space.

The disklabel editor of sysinstall requires you to specify the mount points for the new partitions. What I do is I specify the mount points, but after creating all the partitions and before quitting the editor, I reset all the mount points to an empty string (select each partition in turn and press "M"). That's because I don't know what would happen if I tried to boot the system with this new disk attached, having specified the mount points to be on that new disk that is still empty. I guess it would not be so good, but if I'm mistaken, please tell me.

On my system, I create these partitions (in this order):
a (/)=1GB, b (swap)=2GB, d (/var)=1GB, e (/tmp)=2GB, f (/usr)=4GB, g (/home)=23GB.

The root partition ("a") should be the same size as on the old disk, so that 'dd' can be used to copy its data; otherwise, it would be necessary to do a minimal installation of FreeBSD. I have doubled the size of /tmp compared to what it is on my old hard drive, from 1 GB to 2 GB. In this specific example, the "new hard drive" is the same size as the old one (32 GB), so the last partition, /home, has its size decreased by 1 GB. This is because all I needed is to increase the size of /tmp. You set up your partitions according to your own needs, of course.

Here is the result displayed by the disklabel editor:

Press W to write the changes, then Q to quit the disklabel editor.
Back on the disk selection screen, press tab, make sure "OK" is selected, and press enter.
Exit the installer.

Install the boot code (here I install the standard MBR as I don't need a boot manager):

fdisk -B -b /boot/mbr ad1

The new drive is now ready to receive data from the old drive.

init 1

Copy the root file system: use 'dd' to copy ad0s1a to ad1s1a (identical sizes):

dd if=/dev/ad0s1a conv=notrunc,noerror,sync bs=64k | dd of=/dev/ad1s1a bs=64k

By piping the first dd into a second one, and using a large block size instead of the default of 512 bytes, it'll let you run at the max speed of the slowest device. Like this, all files, including special files, are copied and it is not necessary to perform a basic installation.

Create mount points for the new drive's partitions, create the file systems, and mount them:

mkdir /backup
mkdir /backup/var
mkdir /backup/tmp
mkdir /backup/usr
mkdir /backup/home

newfs /dev/ad1s1d
newfs /dev/ad1s1e
newfs /dev/ad1s1f
newfs /dev/ad1s1g

mount /dev/ad1s1d /backup/var
mount /dev/ad1s1e /backup/tmp
mount /dev/ad1s1f /backup/usr
mount /dev/ad1s1g /backup/home

Copy the old file systems (except root) into the new ones:

( dump -0Lf - /var )|( cd /backup/var ; restore -rf - )
( dump -0Lf - /tmp )|( cd /backup/tmp ; restore -rf - )
( dump -0Lf - /usr )|( cd /backup/usr ; restore -rf - )
( dump -0Lf - /home )|( cd /backup/home ; restore -rf - )

umount /backup/var
umount /backup/tmp
umount /backup/usr
umount /backup/home

fsck /dev/ad1s1a
fsck /dev/ad1s1d
fsck /dev/ad1s1e
fsck /dev/ad1s1f
fsck /dev/ad1s1g

tunefs -n enable /dev/ad1s1a
tunefs -n enable /dev/ad1s1d
tunefs -n enable /dev/ad1s1e
tunefs -n enable /dev/ad1s1f
tunefs -n enable /dev/ad1s1g

init 0

In VirtualBox: select the FreeBSD VM, in the right panel click on Hard Disks. Remove (detach) the IDE Primary Master attachment; set the new disk, which is currently a Primary Slave, to Primary Master. THis does not delete the old virtual hard disk file; it merely detaches it from the virtual machine. It's the equivalent of unplugging the old disk from a hardware machine and setting the new disk to IDE Master with a jumper or cable select.

Optimized procedure: use dd to copy the partitions that need not be resized

I still have problems with this procedure: after I dump the data from the old drive and restore it to the new drive's larger partitions, the latter become the same size as on the old drive. Currently fail to understand why. How can a dump+restore change the disk label? In the meantime, most of the procedure works, but it fails to fulfil its prime objective whch is to increase the size of some partitions. Maybe using tar instead of dump would solve the problem. That's what I'll try next.

You can use the sysinstall utility to set up the disk label (i.e. the partitions). You could also do it the hard way, on the command line, with bsdlabel and vi if you are masochistic. :)

Go to Configure / Label. Move the selection to "[] ad1 ad1" and press space.

The disklabel editor of sysinstall requires you to specify the mount points for the new partitions. What I do is I specify the mount points, but after creating all the partitions and before quitting the editor, I reset all the mount points to an empty string (select each partition in turn and press "M"). That's because I don't know what would happen if I tried to boot the system with this new disk attached, having specified the mount points to be on that new disk that is still empty. I guess it would not be so good, but if I'm mistaken, please tell me.

On my system, I create these partitions (in this order):
a (/)=1GB, b (swap)=2GB, d (/var)=1GB, e (/tmp)=2GB, f (/usr)=4GB, g (/home)=23GB.

The root partition ("a") should be the same size as on the old disk, so that 'dd' can be used to copy its data; otherwise, it would be necessary to do a minimal installation of FreeBSD. I have doubled the size of /tmp compared to what it is on my old hard drive, from 1 GB to 2 GB. In this specific example, the "new hard drive" is the same size as the old one (32 GB), so the last partition, /home, has its size decreased by 1 GB. This is because all I needed is to increase the size of /tmp. You set up your partitions according to your own needs, of course.

Here is the result displayed by the disklabel editor:

For the partitions whose size didn't change (in this example: a, d, and f), we use dd to copy them.
For the partitions whose size did change (in this example: e and g), we must first create a new file system in the target partitions, then copy the data using dump and restore.
Nothing to do for the swap partition.

init 1

"dd" the unchanged partitions:

the root partition:
dd if=/dev/ad0s1a conv=notrunc,noerror,sync bs=64k | dd of=/dev/ad1s1a bs=64k
fsck /dev/ad1s1a

the /var partition:
dd if=/dev/ad0s1d conv=notrunc,noerror,sync bs=64k | dd of=/dev/ad1s1d bs=64k
fsck /dev/ad1s1d

the /usr partition:
dd if=/dev/ad0s1f conv=notrunc,noerror,sync bs=64k | dd of=/dev/ad1s1f bs=64k
fsck /dev/ad1s1f

Dump and restore the file systems of the resized partitions (/tmp and /home):

mkdir /backup

mkdir /backup/tmp

mkdir /backup/home

newfs /dev/ad1s1e

newfs /dev/ad1s1g

mount /dev/ad1s1e /backup/tmp

mount /dev/ad1s1g /backup/home

( dump -0Lf - /tmp )|( cd /backup/tmp ; restore -rf - ) 

( dump -0Lf - /home )|( cd /backup/home ; restore -rf - )

Don't worry about the "expected next file xx, got yy" messages.

umount /backup/tmp

umount /backup/home

fsck /dev/ad1s1e

fsck /dev/ad1s1g

Enable Soft Updates on all file systems:

tunefs -n enable /dev/ad1s1e

tunefs -n enable /dev/ad1s1g

Only the above two filesystems are new and need this setting; the others (in this specific example) were copied over verbatim with dd, so if they already had softupdates set, it is also set in their copy. If you didn't have softupdates set on some filesystems on your old hard drive, you can set it now (see hereunder).

init 0

From the FreeBSD Handbook:

Soft Updates drastically improves meta-data performance, mainly file creation and deletion, through the use of a memory cache. We recommend to use Soft Updates on all of your file systems. There are two downsides to Soft Updates that you should be aware of: First, Soft Updates guarantees filesystem consistency in the case of a crash but could very easily be several seconds (even a minute!) behind updating the physical disk. If your system crashes you may lose more work than otherwise. Secondly, Soft Updates delays the freeing of filesystem blocks. If you have a filesystem (such as the root filesystem) which is almost full, performing a major update, such as make installworld, can cause the filesystem to run out of space and the update to fail.

In VirtualBox: select the FreeBSD VM, in the right panel click on Hard Disks. Remove (detach) the IDE Primary Master attachment; set the new disk, which is currently a Primary Slave, to Primary Master. Click OK. This does not delete the old virtual hard disk file; it merely detaches it from the virtual machine. It's the equivalent of unplugging the old disk from a hardware machine and setting the new disk to IDE Master with a jumper or cable select.

Reboot your FreeBSD, log in as root, and do a "df" to verify that all your partitions are there with the expected sizes.

Something went wrong, because the /tmp and /home are the same sizes as on the old drive. I'll have to investigate why.

Special case: use 'dd' to copy the whole disk then enlarge the last filesystem on the new disk

(draft procedure, not yet tested!)

Copy the whole old slice to the new one:

dd if=/dev/ad0s1 conv=notrunc,noerror,sync bs=64k | dd of=/dev/ad1s1 bs=64k

Relabel the c partition and the last partition (g, =/home) to the new size:

bsdlabel -e /dev/ad1s1

Extend the last partition's file system to use the new empty space:

growfs -s  /dev/ad1s1g newsize

newsize is the total size of the slice, minus the offset of the g partition, as displayed in bsdlabel.

References

"How to move FreeBSD to a new hard disk", at http://lantech.geekvenue.net/chucktips/jason/chuck/1004897633/index_html. Reproduced at http://www.unixcities.com/howto/index.html. Date unknown.

FreeBSD manual pages.

The FreeBSD Handbook, at http://www.freebsd.org/.

Change log
2009-09-26: major rewrite, splitting into three cases: generic procedure, and two special cases.
2009-09-29 Added: Introduction; corrected and tested the optimized procedure.

Windows Japanese IME and azerty keyboard

2009-09-04T20:57:00.012+02:00

DISCLAIMER

The procedures hereunder work for azerty keyboards, specifically French and Belgian azerty. The procedures have not been tested with other keyboards, and are likely to not work with other keyboards. The Windows XP procedure has actually been reported to not work for a Dvorak keyboard. If you find it doesn't work with your keyboard, I will not be able to give you any more information, because everything I know is already written here.

Procedure for Windows XP

Start the registry editor (regedit);

At HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\KeyboardLayouts\E0010411
modify the value of "Layout File": change it from "kbdjpn.dll" to e.g. "kbdbe.dll", "kbdfr.dll", etc.

(Use the correct DLL file name that is appropriate for your keyboard; see the KBDxxx.DLL files in Windows\System32.)

Restart Windows

Procedure for Windows 7

Edit the registry key at HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\KeyboardLayouts\00000411.
Modify the value of "LayoutFile" from "KBDJPN.DLL" to e.g. "KBDBE.DLL".

(Use the correct DLL file name that is appropriate for your keyboard; see the KBDxxx.DLL files in Windows\System32.)

Restart Windows

Some explanation (for Windows XP)

In HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Keyboard Layouts, each subkey specifies a keyboard layout. The subkeys can have the following formats:

0x000xxxxx: normal keyboard layout; xxxxx indicates Language ID.
0x0xxyyyyy: substitute keyboard layout; yyyyy indicates Language ID; xx indicates layout # — not the same as layout id.
0xExxxyyyy: IME; xxx indicates IME #, yyyy indicates language ID.
0xDxxyyyyy: [NT] alternate keyboard layout; where multiple keyboard layouts are installed for a single language — xx is a incrementing number, yyyyy is the language ID.

What interests us here is the 0xE... subkey for the first IME (001) for language 0411 (Japanese), hence 0x0010411. This specifies the keyboard layout to be used by the the Japanese IME.

By default, it is a japanese keyboard layout (but actually it's really a qwerty layout), even if you have an azerty keyboard.

Further reading

http://www.microsoft.com/globaldev/getWR/steps/WRG_kybrd.mspx

How to pretty-print a UNIX man page

2009-09-04T20:57:00.001+02:00

man | a2ps --medium=A4 | psnup -pa4 -m10mm | lpr

How to restore the FreeBSD boot manager killed by a Windows reinstallation

2009-09-04T20:55:00.001+02:00

Boot from the FreeBSD livefs CD
Go to "fixit" mode
At the shell prompt (fixit#), enter this command:
fdisk -B -b /boot/boot0 bootdevice
where bootdevice is e.g. ad0, ad1, ar0, etc.

FreeBSD 7 on VirtualBox on Windows XP

2009-09-04T20:54:00.001+02:00

Note: this post is on-going work. I'll refine it and complete it as time allows.

Change log
Significant changes from the last version of this article are highlighted in the text.
2009-09-26: added listing of xorg.conf in appendix (See "Appendices" below).

2011-10-07: updated for VirtuaBox 4

2012-01-06: Updated with more detail

My platform

Hardware: Gigabyte motherboard, Intel Core2 Duo 3GHz CPU, 2GB DDR3 RAM, onboard RAID controller (Intel MatrixRaid), Radeon HD 4870 graphics card.
Software: Windows XP Home Edition SP3; Sun VirtualBox 2.0.4.

VirtualBox setup for FreeBSD guest O.S.

Create a virtual machine of type "FreeBSD". Here are my settings:

System:

Base memory: 512 MB
Motherboard=PIIX3; Extented features: none (,ote: IOAPIC can be enbabled or disabled, both work)
Processor: 1 CPU; Enable PAE/NX: no
Acceleration: Hardware virtualisation (VT-X/AMD-V): no

Display:

Video memory: 64MB;
no 2D or 3D acceleration (doesn't mean it won't work; I just chose not to try it so I don't know if it works or not)

Storage:

IDE controller, type PIIX4
Disk size: 32 GB
Use host I/O cache: yes

Network (Adapter 1):

Enable network adapter: yes.
Attached to: Bridged adapter. You can use NAT, too, but I used Bridged to make it easier to use FreeBSD as a Samba server for sharing files with the Windows host.
Name: Realtek RTL8139/810x Family Fast Ethernet NIC. This is the actual hardware on my PC motherboard.
(Advanced) Adapter Type: PCnet-PCI II (Am79C970A).
Cable connected: yes.

With the VirtualBox software not running, open a DOS box.

cd to the VirtualBox software folder (where VBoxManage.exe is).

enter the following command (with the actual name you gave to your FreeBSD VM instead of "vmname"):

VBoxManage modifyvm vmname --nictype1 Am79C970A

This is necessary as a workaround because currently, FreeBSD seems to have a problem using the VirtualBox network controller emulation. Without this fix, the virtual DHCP won't work.

(Reference: Frank Mehnert, Sun Microsystems, at http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?t=4352).

Well, this workaround was necessary for VirtualBox v2. I'm not sure it's still necessary today.

USB:

Enable USB Controller: yes (not USB2)

In the Settings of the FreeBSD virtual machine, in the USB panel, add an empty filter. This will make any USB device on your PC visible to the virtual machine. This is in effect a wildcard. If you want to hide some devices, you have to specify a non-empty filter; read the VirtualBox user manual.
If you connect a USB hard disk, it is detected as a "VirtualBox USB" device by Windows XP, which makes it search for and install the driver. When prompted, say yes . Now, I advise you take a minute to read the one page about USB devices in the VirtualBox user manual.

Install FreeBSD on the virtual machine

I installed from the FreeBSD ISO images mounted as virtual CD-ROMs in VirtualBox.
My recommended virtual hard disk partitioning (device is ar0 here because of the RAID, can also be ad0), using all the available virtual HD space for the FreeBSD slice:

ar1s2a, mounted on /, size 1 GB
ar1s2b, swap, 2 GB
ar1s2d, mounted on /var, size 1 GB
ar1s2e, mounted on /tmp, size 1 GB
ar1s2f, mounted on /usr, size 4 GB
ar1s2g, mounted on /home, uses all the remaining space.

Install a standard MBR.
Install the software: X-Kern-Developer + ports.
Network: configure using DHCP (the network adapter should appear as device le0).
Set clock to local time.
Install Linux binary compatibility.
Mouse: yes; enable (the pointer should appear and you should be able to move it around); exit.
Additional software packages: sudo, portupgrade, archivers (zip, unzip, gtar), kde-lite-3.5.10, apsfilter, firefox-2.0, a few other optional tools (gv, xv, cdrdao, cdrtools, cdparanoia).
Use accounts: create group "users"; in that group, create at least a user account for yourself (use a strong password).
Set the root password (use a strong password).
Note: a password can be considered strong if it is a random 8-character mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and punctuation symbols. There are other definitions of what can be considered a strong password, but this definition makes it pretty secure unless you put a sticky note with the password under you keyboard. ;)

Networking

Be careful that the device name of the network adapter as seen by the FreeBSD kernel changes depending on the type specified in VirtualBox (see hereabove); it could be le0 or pcn0, for example. This has to be consistent with what's written in /etc/rc.conf. To determine the device name of your FreeBSD network adapter, go to the main console (Alt+F1), press Scroll Lock, then scroll the screen to where you see the hardware detection messages. You should see the detection of the network interface (le0 or eth0 or pcn0 etc.).

Configure X
(Note: " #" is the root prompt)
#xorgconfig
Mouse: auto
Keyboard: e.g. generic 105-key (Intl) PC
Monitor refresh rates: for my flatscreen I choose the option of a monitor that can do 1280x1024@60Hz; vertical range unknown => 50-70 (60Hz falls in that range, but not sure it's relevant).
Video card: 0 (zero) - Generic VESA compatible, memory=64MB (use the same amount of RAM as specified in VirtualBox for the virtual VGA card).

#startx
This should work, starting up the X server and the twm window manager and a few shell windows. It's very basic (yet served well in the past :) but proves that X has been correctly configured. Exit X (using menu of root window i.e. of backgroound; alternative: abruptly kill the X server using the Control-Alt-Backspace key combination).

To see my working X config file, see the appendix at the bottom of this article.

Configure KDE
Note: The following uses root as an example, but the same should be done for the ordinary users as well.
Edit the file .xinitrc, and at the bottom, after any variable settings, add startkde so that KDE is started when the startx command is invoked.
Do a "startx"; KDE should now start up.
Execute kpersonalizer (e.g. via Control-F2 or using a Konsole). After setting the basic options of KDE, at the end of the wizard, do launch the KDE Control Center (CC). It can also be launched separately later, whenever necessary, to adjust the KDE config.
If you have a non-US keyboard: in KDE CC, go in Regional & Access / Keyboard Layout, and add your keyboard layout (e.g. BE or FR or CZ or whatever your keyboard is) and remove the US layout. Set the keyboard to e.g. "105-key (Intl) PC" or whatever your hardware keyboard is.

Japanese language support

I wrote a separate blog article on the subject of Japanese language display, input, printing, etc. Please read that one if needed.

Coming up next (to be written)
Set up email
Set up the firewall
Set up printing
Set up CD/DVD writing
Set up backup system
Set up sound
Allow ordinary users to (un)mount removable storage (CDs, DVDs, USB devices, etc.)
Set up a nice shell environment with colours and command history
Etc.

Appendices

My X config file (/etc/X11/xorg.conf) - added on 2009-09-26
# File generated by xorgconfig.

Section "Module"
    Load        "dbe"     # Double buffer extension
    SubSection "extmod"
      Option    "omit xfree86-dga"   # don't initialise the DGA extension
    EndSubSection
    Load        "freetype"
EndSection

Section "Files"
    FontPath   "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
    FontPath   "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/"
    FontPath   "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/OTF"
    FontPath   "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"
    FontPath   "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/"
    FontPath   "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
    FontPath   "/usr/local/lib/X11/fonts/local/"
EndSection

Section "ServerFlags"
# empty
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier    "Keyboard1"
    Driver    "kbd"
    Option "AutoRepeat" "500 30"
    Option "XkbRules" "xorg"
    Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "be"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier    "Mouse1"
    Driver    "mouse"
    Option "Protocol"    "Auto"    # Auto detect
    Option "Device"      "/dev/sysmouse"
    Option "ZAxisMapping"   "4 5 6 7"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
    Identifier "VirtualBoxMonitor"
   HorizSync 31.5 - 64.3
   VertRefresh 50-70
EndSection

Section "Device"
    Identifier    "Standard VGA"
    VendorName    "Unknown"
    BoardName "Unknown"
    Driver "vga"
EndSection
# Device configured by xorgconfig:

Section "Device"
    Identifier "VirtualBoxVideo"
   Driver "vesa"
   #VideoRam 65536
   # Insert Clocks lines here if appropriate
EndSection

Section "Screen"
    Identifier "Screen 1"
   Device "VirtualBoxVideo"
   Monitor "VirtualBoxMonitor"
   DefaultDepth 24

   Subsection "Display"
      Depth 8
      Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
      ViewPort 0 0
    EndSubsection

    Subsection "Display"
      Depth 16
      Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
      ViewPort 0 0
   EndSubsection

   Subsection "Display"
      Depth 24
      Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
      ViewPort 0 0
   EndSubsection

EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
    Identifier "Simple Layout"
    Screen "Screen 1"
    InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
    InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

VirtualBox upgrade from 2.0(.6) to 4.0.8 : success!

[Written on 2011-10-07]

Sometime in the spring or summer of 2011, I noticed that VirtualBox had had two new major versions since my last installation (and that Sun had been bought by Oracle). I decided to give it a try. Not that I needed any new feature; I just preferred to not have a too obsolete version. I made a copy of the VirtualBox data files (i.e. of my FreeBSD 7 virtual machine and the configuration files), downloaded the latest version of VirtualBox (4.0.8), and simply installed it over the existing one. Then I started the new VirtualBox, and my FreeBSD 7 virtual machine was still there and was still working. So this major upgrade works and is really trivial to do.