Rajat Arya

Quick site update tonight:

• moved to WordPress 3.0.1
• removed unused plugins
• removed unused themes
• updated remaining plugins to recent version
• removed old pictures page
• updated about page

And after over a year, synced up the developer version of rajatarya.com with the production version.  Much more painful than I expected and definitely a good reminder to follow the ‘right’ process – work on the developer site and then publish to the production site.

Please let me know if you see anything that doesn’t appear to work (raj...@rajatarya.com).

I am planning a site overhaul and some new blog posts, so more to come in the next few weeks!

(This is even more technical than my other technical posts. Consider yourself warned.)

I wanted a dual-boot system between Windows 7 and Ubuntu 9.10 64-bit.  I wanted both systems to be fully functional as 64-bit operating systems and have full access to the computer’s hardware.  Accomplishing this has been well documented and I won’t bother discussing it.  I simply repartitioned the hard drive into two partitions, and then let Windows 7 install on one of them and then installed Ubuntu 9.10 on the other.  Grub gives me a choice when the machine boots and defaults to Linux, which is what I wanted.  Then I decided I want to run Windows 7 in a VM on the Linux machine, and that I really wanted the VM to run from the Windows 7 partition already created.  I had heard this was possible with earlier versions of Windows, so I figured Windows 7 should be no exception (at least if Vista can support such a scenario then Windows 7 should be the same).

I started by reading this, which gave me good guidance, but was the other configuration – Windows as the host and Ubuntu as the guest – I wanted the opposite – Ubuntu as the host and Windows as the guest.  That led me to the VirtualBox User’s Guide, which does a great job of describing the process of using Raw Disk access.  And finally, I did some perusing of the VirtualBox forums to find a couple specific answers to getting the setup working.

In an effort to help document this scenario, here are the things I did to get it working:

1. Read the VirtualBox User’s Guide on Raw Disk Access (here)
2. user@computer:$ VBoxManage internalcommands listpartitions -rawdisk /dev/sda
   VirtualBox Command Line Management Interface Version 3.0.8
   (C) 2005-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc.
   All rights reserved.
   
   Number Type StartCHS EndCHS Size (MiB) Start (Sect)
   1 0x07 0 /32 /33 12 /223/19 100 2048
   2 0x07 12 /223/20 1023/254/63 99900 206848
   3 0x07 1023/254/63 1023/254/63 70000 204802048
   5 0x83 1023/254/63 1023/254/63 65624 348176808
   6 0x82 1023/254/63 1023/254/63 2839 482576598
   
3. Notice how there is a 100MB partition (partition 1) – that is the boot partition for Windows 7. This, along with partition 2 are the Windows 7 partitions. Partition 3 is my ‘data’ partition, which is shared between both OSes. All of these partitions need to be enabled for read/write access by me in order for VirtualBox to load them up. I did this by:
   user@computer:$ chmod 666 /dev/sda1
   
   user@computer:$ chmod 666 /dev/sda2
   
   user@computer:$ chmod 666 /dev/sda3
   

   I know this is not the most secure way of doing things, but it works for me.

4. Now it is also important that there is a place for Master-Boot Record (MBR) to get loaded from VirtualBox. This is necessary so that when the VM starts up it has an MBR to use – otherwise it will try to use Grub and will fail miserably. To get a ‘dummy’ MBR created I read a couple forum posts (here), and then did the following:
   user@computer:$ sudo apt-get install mbr
   
   user@computer:$ install-mbr -e12 --force ~/vm.mbr
   

   The -e12 argument means I want the first and second partition enabled in the MBR. This is critical to getting it all to work – otherwise the VM won’t know which partition to enable.

5. Now we are ready to actually create the raw disk for VirtualBox to handle, I typed in the following:
   user@computer:$ VBoxManage internalcommands createrawvmdk -filename /home/rajat/win7.vmdk -rawdisk /dev/sda -partitions 1,2 -mbr /home/rajat/vm.mbr -relative -register
   
6. Go through VirtualBox, create a new VM, mark it Windows 7 (in my case 64-bit) and save. The VM is ready to be started, but it won’t work entirely yet.
7. Set the VM to mount the DVD drive and put in your Vista DVD. Start the VM. Press F12 and select the DVD drive to start (c). Let Win7 setup start, pick a language, and then click the ‘Repair installation’ option. Go through automatic repair, and then let the VM restart. This time it should go into Win7 running off the raw disk.

Let me know if you have any trouble with these instructions, or would like to add to them. Drop me a line to know if these worked for you as well. I can’t wait to use these steps on my other boxes and put Windows in a box while I’m using it.

Update: There is a regression in VirtualBox 3.10 regarding raw disk access. Any machine that boots with raw disk access stops booting using VirtualBox 3.10. Read more about it in the documented bug report. As a workaround simply downgrade to VirtuablBox 3.08 or install the OSE edition. I got hit with this the day after this post went live, downgrading solved the problem for me.

Very minor site update to report.  Gallery2 is updated and correctly integrated with WordPress 2.7 and the WPG2 plugin.  Also using an updated image processing library so things should be speedier now.

To check out our wedding pictures online (working correctly finally): go here.  Also notice there is a fancy slideshow plugin enabled now.

Finally got around to cleaning things up on my website.  Upgraded Gallery2 and WordPress.  I also started separating my Twitter Tweets as a separate category so the daily digests will keep from cluttering the main page and my RSS feeds.  Thanks to this article for explaining how.

Though I haven’t made it all the way through my reading from 2007, I will finish it off soon enough.  In 2008 I haven’t been reading as much so there is less to write about.  The backlog of posts published today are:

1. "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" by Jim Gray
2. "Founders at Work" by Jessica Livingston
3. "The Myths of Innovation" by Scott Berkun
4. "A Thousand Splendid Suns" by Khaled Hosseini
5. "The Namesake" by Jhumpa Lahiri

It feels good to be blogging again, even if it is mostly for my own archival purposes.  Lots of pictures to upload, there are a handful of draft posts that I really want to get back to and finish off – some actual content from inside my head.  I realized recently that the reason for my lack of blogging was the lack of free offline blogging tools on Mac OS X.  This sounds strange, but I feel most compelled to write new content when I am not online.  Once I’m online there is always other stuff to do.  Introspection time is often reserved to offline time.  Now that I have a new Windows box I use everyday again (Lenovo ThinkCentre M-Series) I installed Windows Live Writer and have been using it more and more.

The look and feel of the site is totally stale, no rounded edges and fixed width are annoying me.  One of these weekends I’ll revamp the theme for the site.

Thanks to everyone for putting up with my daily Twitter posts in RSS etc – won’t have to worry about that anymore.

There are those orphan pictures that need to be on the website, but do not belong in any particular album. I have a couple from recent months that I need to upload. Thanks to the convenience of Live Writer (blog), I am throwing them into this post and calling it a day.

Dinner with friends before watching “Casino: Royale”

Taken on November 18, 2006.

In the picture, from left to right: Matt, Gina, Brian, Stephanie, Shaina, Kevin, Shanna (Derek was out of town), Vaishail, Achint, Rajat.

This was the first time time I had seen many of these folks in several months. Tony and Jessica were missed, but I am still getting used to the idea of them getting a sitter and such in order to come out during the evenings.

Sachin’s Bachelor Party

There are a few more pictures, but this is the one I like the most (and is best for public consumption). The party was on December 2, 2006.

Note: Clicking on each will bring the picture in its full size in a new window. Save this picture to your computer and use a service like Shutterfly or Snapfish (what Costco uses) to get prints made.

I finally wrote up posts and uploaded pictures for the last six months’ activities. Since this will go unnoticed for those using an RSS reader to keep in touch – I decided to write a post that lists these updates. I will try my best to keep my posts more current in the future.

Travel and Hiking posts, oldest to newest:

1. Hiking Mt. Pilchuck – Pictures, August 19, 2006
2. Tool Concert at the Gorge – Pictures, August 27, 2006
3. Vancouver BC – Labor Day – Pictures, September 1, 2006
4. Oktoberfest – Pictures, September 22, 2006
5. Frank weds Stephanie – Pictures, October 21, 2006
6. Philadelphia, Doylestown, and New York – Pictures, November 6, 2006
7. India December Trip – Pictures – December 2006

Recent readings (again oldest to newest):

1. Stolen Lives: Twenty Years in a Desert Jail
2. Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories
3. Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six MIT Students Who Took Vegas for Millions
4. The Tipping Point: How Little Things Make a Big Difference
5. Haunted
6. Gandhi
7. Spouse
8. The Inheritance of Loss
9. Freakonomics: A Rogue Scientist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
10. Guests of the Sheik: An Ethnography of an Iraqi Village
11. The Kite Runner
12. Transmission

Funny sometimes how you forget to read documentation when everything up to this point has been point and click. So far with WordPress, I’ve essentially used Fantastico to install and upgrade the WordPress installation. Then using the elaborate UI from WordPress I’ve installed/configured all the plugins being used on the site.

This system worked great, until I upgraded to WordPress 2.1. Suddenly, to my surprise, my entire website started failing due to some obscure (or so it seemed to me) error. I did my fair share of searching, and finally realized that wp-cache is what is causing the problem.

I disabled wp-cache (the hard way, by commenting out lines in wp-settings.php that worked with it) and then my site came back to life. However, I really liked the performance boost of using wp-cache (it was a visible boost in performance when I had it going on WordPress 2.07).

A few days more passed, and finally tonight I went looking for an updated wp-cache plugin. Sure enough, there was one. This time I installed it and again my site fell apart. Instead of the quick and easy remove route I went through before, I decided to read some more docs on this updated plugin.

Sure enough, there was a missing symbolic link that was described in the documentation. Until now I had not read each plugin’s documentation, so this was a bit of a shock to me – but it was clearly defined and easy to implement.

After getting wp-cache installed using the plugin’s documentation – my site came back to life, I re-enabled wp-cache, and ever since I’ve seen that noticeable improvement in performance.

So, go me for reading the documentation – finally.

My Pictures from Matt & Gina’s wedding pictures from recent hiking and trips (here, here, and here) have finally been uploaded. Took me a long time to get WordPress to play nicely with Gallery2, and to export using Picasa2.

I finally got around to polishing off the look for my website. Since I barely know what I’m doing when mucking with WordPress or Gallery2 (or the technologies they are using – mostly CSS) – it took me significantly longer getting a unified look to my site than it should have. However, when it is all said and done (and it is almost all done), I am very happy with the results. Now it is your turn to tell me what you think. Leave a comment to let me know. Make sure to notice the integration with the Photo Gallery section of the site.

I am using a reasonably modified WordPress Dxx theme, along with the Gallery2 WPG2 theme, which has been reasonably heavily modified as well. On top of these modifications, I added Matt’s Intelligent Menu system, and finally did more CSS mangling to get everything to look reasonably clean.

I finally got around to updating my site’s versions of WordPress and Gallery2. Unfortunately, I didn’t read the fine print about the Gallery 2.1 upgrade demolishing all previously working themes and modules. (Odd that a “minor” 0.1 update would incur such wrath on previously working themes, but alas, I cannot complain for not being diligent with my preparation prior to the upgrade.)

Anyway, I had to do some manual surgery to Gallery’s db in order to eliminate my now busted WordPress theme. So, now I don’t have the “fancy”, er, barely working, links from the Gallery to the main WordPress page. I also don’t have the same CSS page – so the fonts are incorrect. Hopefully this weekend I’ll sort it all out. Maybe I’ll use the WPG2 modules/themes. Maybe I’ll role my own. Maybe I’ll do nothing and have a social life instead. Maybe you’ll have to wait to find out.