Dual booting Ubuntu Karmic and MS Vista with Grub2

With Ubuntu 9:10 Karmic Koala, the default boot loader is now Grub2. I wish I read up a bit more on that before trying to dual boot Vista on my Ubuntu machine today. I was prepared to get my boot loader wiped out of course. But the recovery procedure is a bit different in Grub2. So if you have Karmic Koala running and want to install Vista on another partition to dual boot, this might help.

Step 1 - Use GParted to create space for your Vista installation (I reserved 40 GB). Make it primary and leave it unformatted.
Step 2 - Boot from the Vista CD and select the newly created partition. Vista will complain it can't install to that partition (Who didn't see that coming?). Press SHIFT+F10 and follow the steps described in this post to get the installation going.
Step 3 - Once Vista is ready and your Grub boot loader is wiped out by Vista. Follow the steps in this post on the Ubuntu forum to recover Grub 2 via LiveCD.
Step 4 - Follow the steps here once you have successfully booted back to your Ubuntu Karmic installation, in order to get Vista listed in the Grub boot menu.

That's it :)

Adding an external user store to the WSO2 Gadget Server

We put up an on line demo of the WSO2 Gadget Server at http://gsdemo.wso2.org today.

One thing I noticed when putting up the demo is how easy it is to bring in an external user store to the the Gadget Server. We wanted all WSO2 Oxygen Tank users to be able to use this hosted instance without the hassle of re-registering. I'll list exactly what I did below so you can be the judge of how easy it is.

Step 1: Log in to the Management Console and click "User Management" in the left menu grouped under "Configure".




Step 2: Click "Add External User Store" in the page displayed



Step 3: Select LDAP from the drop down there and fill in your LDAP information. Click "Finish when done". We can test the connection too in order to verify whether we entered everything correctly.



Step 4: Go to "User Management" again and click "External Roles" in that page. In the resulting page, click "Edit Permissions" (I already had a role named "everyone" in my LDAP store, so I edited its permissions).



Step 5: Grant "Login to admin console" permission to the role.




That's it. Now any user from your LDAP store can log in to your WSO2 Gadget Server :)

Introducing WSO2 Gadget Server

Today we officially launched the WSO2 Gadget Server. Paul posted his thoughts on this new Apache Licensed product a few days back.

"Portals have become the main tool for pulling together the vital information your users need - whether its company information, executive dashboards or technical status updates. The WSO2 Gadget Server is a new kind of portal that is simpler and more effective. Based on HTML and Javascript, a Gadget is the web-based equivalent of a portlet. Hundreds of gadgets are already freely available because of iGoogle, the personalized homepage for Google, which uses the same Gadget specification. The WSO2 Gadget Server brings Gadget technology into the Enterprise - making it easy for your team to build stunningly effective portals in record time."

Here's a quick introduction to get you started once you have downloaded it.

WSO2 Gadget Server - Bringing people and information together

• Executive Dashboards
• Customer Portals
• Internal customized home pages
• Content aggregation sites or
  
• User interfaces to any SOA application
  

We are just days away from the official release of WSO2 Gadget Server v1.0 and have been busy adding the final touches. We now have ample documentation to get one started. Not that Google Gadgets and the WSO2 Gadget Server are hard to figure out, but we want our users to know exactly what this tool is capable of and to help them gain its full benefits.

We just published an article by Nuwan in OT (Authoring, deploying and using XML Gadgets in WSO2 Gadget Server), which should help Gadget Developers get started with WSO2 Gadget Server. Whether you are a Google Gadget veteran or just starting out, this will be helpful to get your Gadgets added to the Gadget Server's Portal and Gadget Repository.

I have also done a screencast, which is a video tutorial highlighting some core functionality within a few minutes. Stay tuned for that as well.

If you want a sneak peak and want to get started while you wait for the official release, we have a Release Candidate available here.

WSO2 Gadget Server is an Apache 2.0 licensed free and open source software and paid support will be provided by WSO2 when required.

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On Dumb Growth and Smart Growth

Why Dubai Defaulted — And What America Should Learn From It - Umair Haque - HarvardBusiness.org

"Dubai was the poster child of dumb growth — and America was the aging spokesman. But what both discovered, the hard way, is that dumb growth is just a mirage in the desert. What America — and every other nation — should learn from Dubai's mistakes is this: the 21st century demands a smarter kind of growth than the 20th."

Writing Custom Host Objects for WSO2 Mashup Server 2.0

Using a Javascript Host Object, the process of creating a Mashup can be made easier by mapping Java logic to Javascript. While the WSO2 Mashup Server ships with several useful Host Objects by default, you can enhance the functionality by writing your own as well. This latest article by Ruchira focuses on a step by step process of creating a new Host Object.

Read the complete article >>

More about Javascript Host Objects >>

SOA for People

What if you can have a portal that requires nothing else but the URL of a Gadget to render it in your personal page? What if you can have a Service hosted anywhere, written using any programming language, and all it takes is the URL of that Service's Gadget for someone to have it embedded in their portal page?



That's the promise we plan to deliver on in just a few days with WSO2 Gadget Server. Based on the Google Gadgets Specification and built on top of the award winning WSO2 Carbon Platform. We plan to make the portal truly Service Oriented. A first class SOA citizen.