Someone is watching you (or your work?) :)

Just a short post...

Wandering in WWW, like usual, and I found this blog entry . So, at least I am happy that someone found my work is indeed useful for him/her :)

In this paper titled "Distributed Software Platforms for Rehabilitating Obsolete Hardware", my Unix Review's article got cited by some folks from Italy.

Hm, this URL is interesting. It's like two ways promotion :) My article indirectly promoted EPCKPT, while EPCKPT was indirectly inspiring my article.

Oh wow, GLUG-chat mailing list once mentioned my article? Gee, missed a lot of fame I was :)


Wanna add more? I think I will keep this posting updated whenever I find new citation, reference or anything toward my articles....

"What does this man do on 1:17 AM"?

Interesting subject isn't it? Ever think something like that when you work late and you found yourself asking this kind of question? Is it somekind of joke? Irony? Self consciousness over something that hog your life? Everybody has an answer, I believe that and you too gotta believe that you can answer it.

So, let's assume someone (or probably me) asks something like that to me... I have many different answers that I can freely pick:

1. I just finished watching "Fight Club" in local TV. I found this movie rather interesting at the beginning, pretty amusing in the middle and so confusing in the end. A man punch himself, even shoot himself? He finally realized that he suffers somekind of chronic double personality problem. Holy shit.... And let me ask you something, Edward Norton...has twin brother played by Brad Pitt, what do you think? This isn't double personality anymore, I call this almost perfect split personality.

But anyway, I got the message, that is "...sometimes you just have to let it go AS IS...". This simple rule is somehow abandoned by modern human. We're just so fucked up by fancy clothes, expensive furniture, elite cars and other stuffs, but we ignore our basic needs. Deep beneath us, you are screaming...looking for this "basic needs", but...here is the fun part, you can't. Why? Why? Simple, because you "just don't let it go AS IS". "Shit, tell me the reason right now or I'll blow your mouth!". Don't waste your time, that won't work. Just ask yourself why....


2. Work here and there. Yeah, I got great news for your my dear readers. My article has been published on Dr Dobbs Journal. "Congratulations man", thank you. I also made myself proud to lurk into Linux Forums early this April. "shit man, you never stop, do you?" No, I am not :) Who the hell you think so you can give me orders?

Now, I begin to prepare another two articles, one will be co-authored with a PhD student from China. Now this what I call "international business", you type something, someone from the other side of the globe read it and add something, over and over....and wallaaaa, an article is ready :) No, this isn't a magic. It is called "creative work", a work that truly depends on how good your brain do the work. Your brain is in good shape? Then you will produce an excellent idea. In bad shape? Then you will produce crap. Always creates crap? Then you're doomed. Pack your stuffs and move to the cemetary... there, you don't need to use brain, you just need to confess your sin and hope you don't get burned in hell :)

3. I want to talk with The Devil. No, not with that lowly devil, I shoot for the big one. Yeah, who else, with the great Lucifer itself. In fact, I do have an imaginary chat session with Lucifer

Lucifer: Knock knock, big boy ;)
me: Oh damn, here you are. Welcome...
Lucifer: Still serving Him?
me: Do I have other choice?
Lucifer: Shit man, you have OTHER choice...just follow me...
me: sounds good, what do you offer, anyway?
Lucifer: You ask me what I will offer? Don't you know that I offer this whole world to Jesus when I met Him on the desert?
me: Ah yes, you offer Him this world. Same thing you want to offer now?
Lucifer: Of course, what else do you want?
me: No, thanks. This world is just full with lies. I can't handle a bag of lies, and now...you want to hand me a "globeful" of lies? That ruins my day...
Lucifer: Smart answer, johny boy. OK, I must go now, catch you later...
me: yeah, don't forget to close the door, will you..?
Lucifer: Which door? Oh yeah, that "door", the door between human and its dark side. I'll just leave it open, so I can sneak it anytime..
me: whatever....

4. Thinking about girls. Don't think dirty, ok? I think it is normal, male think about sex in every hour of his life, so it's like a second nature :) An ideal girl is like combination of Jessica Alba + Shakira + Beyonce Knowles + Zhang Zi Yi, put them together inside a body and you won't blink even slight second looking this female :)) Woohoo ....

5. I think I need to plan for another cinema visit. "Ultraviolet" is now playing in cinemas and it is directed by Kurt Wimmer, same guy who directed "Equilibrium", one of my all time favourite movie. I read that Kurt invents another style of fight. That must be good, because he did the same thing and invents Gun Kata. Another interesting thing is, Mila Jovovich is the leading actress. I don't know why Kurt pick her but I heard Kurt wrote the script to suit Mila's character. Either Mila is so charming or Mila is a potential actress, I dunno.. Let's find out once I watch it.

So, that's it my friend, 5 possible answers I might give you when you ask what I do on 1:17 AM. Maybe I give you one answer, two, three or five, nobody knows. It is called randomness, enthrophy, chaos. You can't predict my mine, I can't predict yours, so we are both in a complex random situation...

I must end this before you get heart attack...ciao.....

regards,

Mulyadi.

Jokes from IRC world..... :)

Dear readers :)

As you know, anything can be found in IRC. Serious talk, jokes, sex, politics, religion, anything you can spell between A and Z, it's all there :)

For me, IRC is like a virtual pub or cafe. I meet new people there, discuss computer stuff, brain storming, or simply just sit and do nothing...hahaha :)

two days, I visited #qemu channel on irc.freenode.net. This channel is the place to talk about Qemu, an open source emulator. I usually visit this channel to hear about latest issues, recent development or helping some folks with installation/runtime problem.

You think this channel is full with geek who can only code? Check this out :) it's a fragment of my qemu channel's log. filip2307 is Filip Navara, my remote friend from Czech republic..and malc...I dunno where he comes from :) The_hydra is /me FYI ( a bit scary nick name, eh?). Both malc and filip are frequent contributor for Qemu project. One word to describe them: GENIUS!

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
filip2307: geez ... who have invented the "hugetlbfs" name?! it's almost as readable as random letters...
the_hydra: hehe
the_hydra: =))
*** h7-25 has left #qemu
malc_: filip2307: you are spoiled by win32api with imaginative names like ntqueryprocessinformationtokenmyass..
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I don't know if malc is just trying to put some laugh or he is just frustated with WinAPI naming :) Seems it is the latter one :)))))

Another funny quote:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
filip2307 has quit IRC ("There are three important things in man's life: His birth, his first love and the day when he tastes cheesecake..")
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Too bad it was a bit late to ask Filip, why the hell tasting cheesecake is so important? :)) I agree about first love, but cheesecake? Come on......

And last, I showed Filip my blog and he said (I rewrite this purely from my volatile RAM inside my brain, so surely something is different than the original on)

"Wow, I never saw so many "gw". Indonesian word is funny"

He thought, "gw" here is "gateway". After I told him it means "me", he began to scratch his head :)))

Keep the jokes coming dude....it makes our live colourful :)

regards

Mulyadi

Experiencing OOM (Out Of Memory) for the first time....

Hello Folks...

WARNING: DON'T TRY THIS TRICK ON YOUR PRODUCTION SERVER OR YOUR LOVELY WORKSTATION, AS THIS COULD LEAD TO DATA CORRUPTION. IF YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW WITHOUT TAKING RISK, DO IT ON UNUSED PC OR INSIDE VIRTUAL MACHINE (EG: VMWARE)! I DON'T TAKE ANY RESPONSIBILIY FOR ANY DAMAGE THAT MIGHT HAPPEN. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!

In the middle of writing my next article for CHIP, I am courious of one thing...that is "What will happen if mount an tmpfs based directory which has size way bigger than RAM+Swap and copy a huugeee file there"?. Pushed by courisity, I decide to test it.

First, here is how to create the "tmpfs" directory:
# mount -t tmpfs -o size=3G tmpfs /mytmpfs

You don't need to precisely use "3G". Just use any number that actually bigger than your RAM+swap. If you got trouble on determining your RAM + swap size, simply use "top" and check the related entries.

Confirm it via "df -h" that our new directory is actually mounted and the size is correct. Now, you need a big file, preferrably has same size like your new tmpfs directory. Don't have one? "dd" comes to rescue :)
# dd if=/dev/zero of=./coba.saja bs=1k count=1572864

That will roughly create a 1.5Gigabyte filled with zeros :) For final touch, copy it to "mytmpfs"
# cp ./coba.saja /mytmpfs

Just sit and enjoy the show. To bring more thrill, fire up "top" and watch your RAM and swap are slowly occupied by our giant file. Then, sooner or later, your Linux system will "freeze". It's not actually frozen. What really happens here is a race between kswapd (which tries to clear up RAM so you can put the file there) and "cp" (which tries to put the file there).

Your tasks are practically forced to swap out and this creates "frozen" effect. Why? because, in order to run, your application needs to be paged in..and that means, forcing kswapd to swap in the related pages and possibly swapping out pages which belongs to non active task. So. it's like:
your apps --> go to-> RAM < -- go to < -- your giant file

eventually, RAM and your swap is almost full. I said almost, because Linux kernel always reserve some pages for certain needs and these pages is non allocatable for user space applications. At this time, OOM(Out of Memory) killer kicks in! Sorry, I can't give you the screenshot :) In my PC, it wildly killed my X Session :) Thanks God, I only fired up several xterm and OpenOffice. Funny thing is, mpg123 is still playing (in "rap" mode...you know what I mean? ;) )

"can I choose which task I should kill in thise situation". Quick answer "No you can". Linux OOM killer employs simple algorithm that will kill an application which does the latest memory allocation. As you can see here, this isn't always a correct decision. But memory hogging tends to chew every single pieces of your RAM until last moment, so OOM killer is practically usable here.

Want another slow memory eater? try this
# tail -f /dev/zero

Until next time...until then, try to Google about "VM overcommit" for preventive solution :)

regards

Mulyadi

Batman Begins (2)

The story: Bruce Wayne, the only son of Thomas Wayne, a multi billionaire man of Gotham city, seek a way to revenge the death of his parents and to bring justice to the criminals. In the end, Batman must face his mentor, Rash Al Gul, who he believed is already dead, but now turned into criminal mastermind. Batman did great job to save Gotham city and "introduce" a new kind of fear to the bad guys. Also the start of cooperation between Comissioner Gordon and Batman.

The Good guys:

- Bruce Wayne (played by Christian Bale). Replacing his father, he is now the owner of Wayne Enterprise. With the intense training by Rash Al Gul, the leader of League of The Shadows on the top of the moutains on Tibet and awesome tools created by Lucius Fox, he is also known as Batman

- Alfred (played by Michael Caine). The loyal servant of Wayne family. We can consider Alfred as bruce's step father, because he is the one who guide and teach Bruce about the meaning of life and takes care of him, even in the bad times. Great job Alfred !

- Commisioner Gordon. You know the sentence "Good cop bad cop"? Well, this is the example of "good cop" sorrounded by "bad cop". Also a friend of Bruce's father, he is the one who in charge on the security of Gotham City.

- Lucius Fox (played by Morgan Freeman). One of ex directors in Wayne Enterprise, he is the one who creates lots of batman's gadget. When Bruce Wayne wants to visit "applied science department", there he met Lucius Fox. Bruce finds out that Lucius is indeed a good man, so he appointed Lucius as the president director of Wayne enterprises.

- Rachel Dawes. Bruce's close girl friend. well, you can say, girl-friend and also girlfriend. She is also the general attourney on Gotham City, replacing his dead boss (the previous general attourney). She thought Bruce was dead after missing without single news for 7 years. So, when Bruce is back...well, the romance is once again started...

The Bad Guys

- Rash Al Gul. Well, this man ...if I am allowed to say...is in gray area. But, since at the end, he becomes batman's enemy, I can say the he is a bad guy. Shame actually, since he is also the one who trained Bruce Wayne, specifically, in martial art and self control. Rash has crazy plan, to wipe out Gotham city with nerve gas which can bring total hallucination

- Dr Crane aka Scare crow. he is a psychologist, but he is also as crazy as his patients on Arkham's mental house. This guy loves to wear a scare crow mask while spraying a nerve gas, so whoever inhale this gas will see him as a scary monster. euff.. bad boy...

- Chill. A low level bastards who killed Bruce's parents. Eventually, he was shot after a trial by Falcone's man.

- Falcone. A high level criminal of Gotham City. Pity, he is also a victim of Dr Crane.... he is the first target of Batman in the early days.


The gadget

- Batmobile. A-W-E-S-O-M-E. This 7 letters word is the right word to describe Batman's ride. Designed as all terrained vehicle, previously prototyped by Lucius Fox as military vehicle. re-painted with black paint, equipped with many weapons (I only saw missiles, but I am not 100% sure), GPS control, after-burner. truly strong body, it can easily crush concrete walls, smash ordinary cars...and hey, it jumps too!

- batarang. A throwing weapon, crafted like a bat.

- Gun-robe (this is just how I name it). Shoot it, a long robe with spear head burst out. Batman use it to hook on ceilings, building walls, pilars etc to "fly". In the final scene, gun-robe is used to hook on the monorail used by Rash.

- Super camera. I don't know the exact name :) With this camera, batman can see through the wall. I believe this camera is also an infra red camera, so batman can see clearly in the dark.

The fight

I didn't see such a genius martial art choreography here....but perhaps a duel scene between Bruce and Rash sorrounded by black ninjas for the "graduation test" could be considered "nice". Sword play, hand to hand combat...not bad. Christian Bale seems already grab sufficient training during the making of Equillibrium, his previous movie. There, he did gun kata....


The visual effect

I can say, Batman Begins is minimalist about f/x. Everything is done with "real shot". However, the air view of Gotham City...i believe this is a CGI. And the bats? Not sure, maybe it is f/x too. Batmobile? it is real dude ! :) but of course, you won't find it armed with missile on the reality

"Batman Begins"...I always love the way it's started.....

Hello guys, long time no see...

Yeah, as you might guess, this is a quick recap about the latest movie I watched this afternoon, Batman Begins. First impression, great ! The producer and director did a brilliant job to give a new style to tell the story about this midnight warrior with dark suit. Previously, I thought that only Joel Schumacher who can do such a job, but I was wrong...as it is proven by this movie. Anyway, the distributor (and the capital funder) is still Warner Brothers.... the big company behind block buster movies such as matrix (1,2,3), previous series of Batman. Sorry, i forgot the other titles :)

So, why I said "i love the way it's started?" Every super hero in comics has a beginning. This beginning, should we say in other word, background, motivation, reasons, every word you can imagine with more or less similar meaning, tells us how an ordinary man turns into a hero. In this case, Batman is exceptional. Not because his suit nor his tools, but if we look closely, he is hero with no superpower. And also, Bruce Wayne, start his double life as Batman to revenge the death of his parents. This transformation journey, from a man turns into "the fear for criminals", is truly a long, exhausted, thrilling, scary adventure (should I add another pathethic adjective?). personally, I would call Bruce Wayne a soft "psycho". But in the other hand, he can drive this mad aspect for good intention.

Everyone in his/her life, sometimes triggered by an event or occassion, turns into "something else". Not physically of course, but mentally. This could be a good news, but sometimes it becomes a bad news ( very bad sometimes, as you can see in nut house). The way I see it, it is somekind of the challenge of life. The difficulty level...well, entirely depends on your perceptions. For example, as we see on Bruce Wayne, he turns his deep anger into a motivation to uphold the justice. You, of course, possibly take another solution if you are at the same position like Bruce.

The conclusion is, fancy tools of Batman attract me too, but looking at transformation phase from Bruce Wayne into Batman brought the biggest interest of mine. I tried to take several important points from this kind of movie, hopefully to make me into a better person. And I hope, you too could learn something from this capped crusader-bat suited hero named "Batman".

PS: I love this quote "You must first defeat your own fear....." and this "I choose bat as symbol, because I want to share my fear with my enemies".

NB: "Didn't you get my memo?" :) Damn you Morgan, this is the funniest word I ever heard through out your film history :)

regards

Mulyadi

The Road to Sys Admin Magazine......

Thursday, May 12th 2005.... after 3 months of hard work, my writing about Staircase scheduler was finally finished. Certainly not an easy task, because previously I thought this would be a bit easier than what I had done for IBM DeveloperWorks publication. But it is proved to be totally false.....

But let's throw out the "pain side"......here are the "lovely side"
1. Understanding scheduler code better. I said "better", not 100% mastering it. By looking at the core code everyday, slowly but sure I gain insight on how kernel schedulers do their works. For example: how the scheduler maintains global statistics, how time slice is actually assigned, preemption policy, etc

2. Re-exercising my statistic skill. Statistics play important here, because it helps me to understand the behaviour of a scheduler in number. Although scheduler is made to tackle dynamic situation which is unpredictable and doesn't follow certain statistic distribution, we still need to quantify it using everything we got. No fancy stuff here, just plain average, standart deviation, exponential regression, and scaling.

3. Learning boot scripts sequence. Not hard, only a bit tricky. I only need to find out where to put commands to be executed after the moment Linux enter single user state.

4. Bash scripting. Eufhh, this is the first I combine tbe knowledge of two opposite worlds (kernel space and user space) and put them into a single job. Scripting does the magic here to automate my testing procedure. Anyway, who wants to sit for 4 hours just to wait and type commands after a single iteration of benchmark is done? Type them into scripts, do several try out....launch them, extract the result using "grep"...and kazaaammm, you get the results without pain in the ass :-) Isn't that great?

5. Intensive discussion with many people (mostly are kernel hackers). "Hackers" here are not someone who breaks into a website and buy something with other people's credit card. No, far from it. I am referring to a person who write codes and has deep understanding of an operating system. Since I was writing about scheduler, I contacted people who work on scheduler area. The most wanted hacker is Con Kolivas, of course. The rest are Jake Moilanen, Rick Lindsley, Zwane Mwaikambo. Too bad I missed Ingo Molnar.... From these intensive discussions, I try to merge their ideas with mine, get the best from both sides and throw the useless part and put them as "sentences".

6. Improving my English writing :-) "Practice makes perfect", that's what I heard, and that's what I was doing. You can say that I am kinda of man who learn almost 99% of his own skill purely from exercise and self learning. Surely theory is helpful, but what can we do if we just "know" without actually "understand" and "implement"?

Now, the article has been submitted...the only thing left is awaiting the editorial feedback. Previously, the technical editor had sent me "green light", meaning it had big chance to enter the printed version of the magazine. Great ! I wish once it is actually published, the readers will learn a bit more about schedulers and how to pick one according to their need.

And...next stop? I am thinking about ClusterWorld again..or Linux Magazine....