Friday, September 16, 2005

Learn Gnu/Linux - Debian

This is a great site, to whoever wants to learn Gnu/Linux...

It has got interative course right now, you can interact with others who has any comments/question/answer towards the subject

http://learnlinux.tsf.org.za/courses/web-courses.html

regards,
Skywalker

Installation - nVidia driver - The Debian Way

Installing the driver through apt-get...
http://serios.net/content/debian/nvidia/display-driver-through-apt.php

Installing the driver via downloading nVidia's own installation
http://serios.net/content/debian/nvidia/display-driver-using-installer.php

regards,
Skywalker

Thursday, September 15, 2005

Excel Reporting - Recall back what Solver is all about

It's the 4th years after my uni time, almost forgotten all i've learn during one of the business subject - Excel - DSS (Decision Support System).

Why and what makes me recall DSS using Excel again? It's the data analysis work that i'm doing right now.

I'm doing analysis for some telco report for my company, given bunch of data in different databases but to put everything together making it a meaningful bunch of figures that also presentable.

I've spend a lot of time doing reading about my long lost Excel when i was taught to use it to design DSS.

Unfortunately i've lost track of my lab tutorial and can hardly remember what i've learnt... Hey... i've got the biggest 'library' i've ever imagine - INTERNET!!!

My boss is kind enough to allow me to research on doing analysis using Excel that generates the report needed.

The first thing that came into my mind was - Solver.

What is Solver? While i was doing DSS, it's a logical process that automate a calculation for 3 main fields, it gives you a "what-if" scenario...

- Change/Constant value
- Restricted value
- End/target result

It's a process of changing the values in cells to see how those changes affect the outcome of formulas on the worksheet.

Example, varying the interest rate that is used in an amortization table to determine the amount of the payments. Solver allows you to find an optimal value for a formula.

You got it?

regards,
Skywalker

Deb - Apache/SSL/MySQL/Postgresql/PHP

Promised to post the steps of installing 2 different open source databases into Debian...

As you know, Debian is one of the oldest linux distro with a good package management with more than 15 thousands packages (till date - 14 Sept 2005 - Deb 3.1) under its distributed repository.

I tried installing Apache 1.3x, this time with SSL support. Meaning that i can browse my page with https://xxx.xxx.xxx/ and http://xxx.xxx.xxx/. If i want the web page to point to my own home directory (presume that i wanted to have a personal page which under my own home directory (/home/skywalker/public_html/index.html), then create a directory directly in home directory, named public_html and put an index.html or index.php for testing.

While installing using apt-get, php4-mysql, php4-pgsql, mysql-client, mysql-server, postgresql-8.0, postgresql-8.0-client... (i might be wrong now with packages name. i'll suggest to open up to terminal(mostly like you're in X-windows), one doing a search of apt-cache search postgresql to make sure you put the right package name.

After installing everything accordingly, i'll do a test with php on apache to make sure php successfully points to both databases. Of course it's to add into a something.php and browse it through your favourite browser - I'm using Firefox!

A hint of checking if your browser doesn't browse php format successfully. Once i successfully installed apache, php, mysql and postgresql even though every daemons were restarted automatically, checking http.conf doesn't see anything wrong though. I almost give up the test and switching back to my windows to do my reporting stuff. Then i switch back to debian box, the php test page works!!

I guess eventually reboot does help... who knows... ;)

Right, back to our theme here - after the test page, scroll down... Bingo... php points to both mysql and postgresql... I guess the key point that i shouldn't missed is php4-mysql and php4-pgsql.

Alright... more or less there, time to move on...

regards,
Skywalker

Report ... in Excel??

These days has been doing report for telco, same old same... using the template created by Calc but it's too manual...

Too "manual" in a way that any one time if any changes needed to be changed, i'll have to modified almost 2 weeks of report...

Anyone knows Excel can do something like what Crystall Report can do??

regards,
Skywalker

Tuesday, September 06, 2005

Distro Upgrade - Debian

If you want to use the cutting edge version of Debian, once you installed the based system, you have to make sure your /etc/apt/apt.source has changed to deb http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx "unstable" (without the quote).

Followed by, apt-get install dist-upgrade (of course, you're root), right?

Phew... step by step, i'll install apache, php, mysql and postgresql in the system.

regards,
Skywalker