Nano9 from Bell Labs :)

Published on March 6, 2010 in Computers, FreeBSD, Internet, Life, Network, Projects, Software and Wireless. 0 Comments

Nano9 for USB sticks and, or SD/MMC cards or a Plan9 live demo, is nothing more than a FreeBSD-7.2 base, xorg-minimal and 9vx-0.12, but is no less either :)

I have updated binaries,  added  source and all documents from a latest plan9.iso, so that user’s may carry it in their pockets and explore plan9 from any PC, whether wired, wireless and, or standalone. Hope it will provide you a better access over the network and requisite documentation when you don’t have an access to a plan9 auth, cpu and, or file server.

I observed around 180 downloads of nano9 so far, just in the first 14 hours of its launch. I had been serving it from a residential connection, now mirrored onto a fast server http://werc.homelinux.net/hacks/nano9/, feel free to try it :)

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Using ssh-agent in an elegant way

Published on March 24, 2009 in Blog, Computers, FreeBSD, General, Internet, Life, Linux, Network and Software. 1 Comment

Logging into many a remote hosts and, or servers from my desktop and, or notebook is a routine job for me, hence I extensively use ssh and ssh-agent every day. I wanted to use the same ssh-agent instance from each and every terminal whether I’m on a virtual console or in front of x-window desktop running a terminal emulator. I created a tiny bash script say ssh-agent.sh in the /etc/profile.d as follows:

SSH_ENV="$HOME/.ssh-agent.env"

start_agent() {
    # Run ssh-agent, only if root is mounted in read-write mode
    if grep -q '\ /\ ext.*rw' /proc/mounts; then
	ssh-agent |sed 's/^echo/#echo/' >"$SSH_ENV"
	chmod 600 "$SSH_ENV"
	. "$SSH_ENV" >/dev/null
    fi
}

# Source SSH settings, is ssh-agent already running, eh
if [ -f "$SSH_ENV" ]; then
    . "$SSH_ENV" >/dev/null
    pgrep ssh-agent |grep -q $SSH_AGENT_PID || start_agent
else
    start_agent
fi

And the life now seems quite easier since then :)

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The Beauty of Gazillian Linux Distributions

Published on November 7, 2008 in Blog, Common, Computers, Fun, Life, Linux and Software. 0 Comments

The beauty of a hundreds of thousands of GNU/Linux Distributions is that they provide endless options to end-users as well as developers and, or packagers. All you need to have is an appetite to learn, a patience to try, a curiosity to explore and a creativity to deploy un-imaginable possibilities.

You might be wandering what triggered me to write all this, when hundreds of other people are bashing the creepers, creators and, or all those inharmonious beaters of drums?

Well, I wanted to give the KDE 4.1 desktop a try without rebooting off of a LiveCD, installing a complete distro and, or compiling the sources locally on my live Debian rig. By searching a bit, I found that the ArchLinux is always ahead in making available latest stable builds and, or binaries for most of the popular software; so I downloaded the archlinux-2008.06-core-i686.iso and booted off of the image itself with QEMU, addtionally giving it a free partition say /dev/sda5 as a drive and installed the core and KDE 4.1 desktop including all dependencies in single shot. I did all this in kind of a virtual environment, but we know almost all the virtual environments and, or machines have some overheads which make the system somewhat slow.

To overcame and, or avoid all that overhead, I exited the QEMU and mounted the partition where I recently installed ArchLinux and KDE 4.1, mounted few parts from my existing /dev and chrooted in to that new partition from console:

mount -t ext3 /dev/sda5 /mnt/sda5
mount --bind /dev /mnt/sda5/dev
mount --bind /dev/pts /mnt/sda5/dev/pts
mount --bind /dev/shm /mnt/sda5/dev/shm
mount --bind /home /mnt/sda5/home
mount --bind /proc /mnt/sda5/proc
mount --bind /sys /mnt/sda5/sys
invoke-rc.d kdm stop
chroot /mnt/sda5 /etc/rc.d/esd start
chroot /mnt/sda5 /etc/rc.d/kdm start

Viola! Me, as expected was greeted and, or welcomed to login in to that KDE 4.1 desktop.

Although I needed to tweak around a few user and, or group id’s in the /etc/passwd and /etc/group and relevant shadow files in this ArchLinux partition, might be tedious job for newbies, but the things are working smoothly ever since with a zero or no downtime.

The experts might have guessed that we need to reverse execute all the above steps to come out from this chrooted environment or we may automate all these steps with the help of an init script.

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Five serial blasts rock Delhi

Published on September 13, 2008 in General and Life. 0 Comments

It is a huge shame on the workings of our security and, or intelligence agencies in general and the central or state governments in particular, that how well organized the terrorists, militants and, or criminals operate from within the country and, or abroad but the concerned forces have nothing to do except for beating around the bush or watching all this to happen moodily and helplessly again and again.

This one for your kind information is a ninth major attack in the series — first in the Mumbai, Maharashtra, second New Delhi, third again Mumbai, Maharashtra, fourth Malegaon, Maharashtra, fifth Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, sixth Jaipur, Rajasthan, seventh Bangalore, Karnatka and eighth at many a places including Ahmedabad, Gujrat a few months ago.

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Ringworm, alternative treatment

Published on September 8, 2007 in Alternative, Health, Homeopathy, Life and Medicine. 0 Comments

Ringworm is a contagious affection of the skin due to the presence of a vegetable parasite, a fungi, and forming ring-shaped or circular, itching and discolored patches covered with vesicles or powdery scales. It occurs either on the body, the face, or the scalp. Different varieties are distinguished as Tinea circinata, Tinea tonsurans, etc., but all are caused by the same parasite (a species of Trichophyton), usually in the humid weather and, or locations.

Although prescribing based on single and, or local symptoms is against the philosophy of homeopathy, but I have observed wonders the Bacillinium did in almost all the cases of ringworm; hence this prescription:

Becillinum 200 or 1M dilution, preferably German
  2-4 drops stirred in 2 tbsps fresh water
  2 doses/day, morning 6-7am, evening 5-6pm
  repeat weekly, only if required

Avoid eating, drinking and, or smoking before and, or after taking any of the Homeopathic, Biochemic, Tautopathic and, or Bauch’s Flower remedies, at least for half an hour as a precaution. IMHO, almost all medicines give more effective results when taken as per timings given above and only a few may have specific characteristics at other times.

I hope, only first 2 doses of this will cure and, or annihilate your ringworm in its whole extent within a week, and that’s forever! In addition to above you might want to try a few doses of some specific remedies for a complete eradication of this disease :)

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Available distributions

Published on August 20, 2007 in Blog, Common, Computers, FreeBSD, Linux and Software. 0 Comments

I have a small collection of various CD’s and, or DVD’s for distributions of Linux and, or Unix which I would love to share with you. Please bring some extra blanks and get the media burned for your favorite distro only at the cost of a smile :)

I shall arrange to download other such images also, provided these are freely and legally available somewhere via Internet.

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The FreeBSD ports I maintain or test

Published on August 14, 2007 in Blog, Computers, FreeBSD, Fun, Internet, Life, Network, Projects and Software. 0 Comments

I proudly, have been maintaining and, or submitting a few ports for FreeBSD project since December 2006. The authorized volunteers however, take time to approve and, or commit new and, or updated ports; may be due to the workload they handle.

Hence, I have created a public repository for sharing these with all those of you, who either are interested to use or help me in testing these ports, even before these are committed to the real ports tree. Please feel free to download, test and, or report any bugs; a feedback of yours though not mandatory, shall highly be appreciated.

After downloading the requisite and, or suggested <whatever>.shar.gz file(s) for a port, to extract and, or install, all you need to do is, as root repeat the following for the *.shar.gz files:

# zcat <whatever>.shar.gz |sh

or for the <whatever>.patch.gz file(s):

# zcat <whatever>.patch.gz |patch -d/ -p1

Now, visit the main ports’ directory and perform:

# cd /usr/ports/<category>/<port>
# make install clean

That’s all, and you have done it!

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Givin’ WordPress theme a new look!

Published on August 8, 2007 in Blog, Computers, Hosting, Internet and Wordpress. 0 Comments

I as usual remain quite busy, even if I don’t have any job and, or project at hand; I get lost either in to pending experiments, research or readings. I admit I’m though somewhat, but a computer addict. You know, we can/might still manage to find and, or devote some time for the family :)

Here is a new theme or perhaps sleek skin Cerato dedicated to my daughter, I managed to develop based on famous WordPress theme Kubrick by Michael Heilemann. Click here to download Cerato; hope it is as useful for you too as it is for my daughter.

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The YATE has been ported to FreeBSD

Published on March 24, 2007 in Common, FreeBSD, Projects and Software. 1 Comment

An updated YATE port is available for FreeBSD. I hope it will also build fine on all BSD variants; haven’t tested. Please report your success and, or failure on other variants.

WWW: http://YATE.null.ro

To install/upgrade the ports download:

To extract, build and install:

# zcat <path>/yate-devel.shar.gz |sh
# zcat <path>/spandsp-devel.patch.gz |patch -d/ -p1
# portupgrade -f -o comms/spandsp-devel spandsp
# cd /usr/ports/net/yate-devel
# make install

or

# make package

Before running csup and, or cvsup do create and, or update a refuse file:

# cat <<EOT >>/var/db/sup/refuse
ports/comms/spandsp-devel*
ports/net/yate-devel*
EOT

A yate ports collection for FreeBSD created by Alex Rodin ‘alex DOT rodin AT gmail DOT com’ is also/already available in the yate mailing list archive. Kindly note, that this one is different and also includes, though small, but the following enhancements over the latest CVS head:

  • Added support to run daemon under NON-root uid and, or gid on Unix systems.
  • Module loading and, or initialization messages moved to highest debug level.
  • Added support for aliases in regfile; the ‘alias->number’ are now aliases.
  • Added support to show ip.add.re.ss:port for connections in rmanager module.
  • Updated and, or up-to-date manpages, README and INSTALL files.

I’m not that expert in SIP, H.323, IAX2, Jingle and other such protocols and, or PSTN technology, so I request you to please post your relevant and, or technical questions to Null Team only; the creators of Yate at http://yate.null.ro/pmwiki/index.php?n=Main.MailList

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[ALERT] Google AdSense is a fraud

Published on March 22, 2007 in Alternative, Blog, Common, Computers, FreeBSD, Fun, Health, Homeopathy, Hosting, Humor, Internet, Life, Linux, Medicine, Network, Projects, Quotes, Software, Uncategorized, Wireless and Wordpress. 0 Comments

In its current incarnation the Google AdSense is definitely a fraud. IMHO, thousands if not millions of AdSense publishers have already been robbed by invalid click Google excuses till date. As and when an AdSense publisher site and, or blog starts earning a good amount or starts attracting visitors, the Google AdSense people usually come up with this standard excuse:

It has come to our attention that invalid clicks and/or impressions have been generated on the Google ads on your site(s). We have herefore disabled your Google AdSense account. Please understand that this was a necessary step to protect the interest of the AdWords advertisers.

And publishers disabled for invalid click activity are not allowed further participation in AdSense and do not receive any further payments. The earnings on your account will be properly returned to the affected advertisers, who knows?

On searching even at Google itself, you too may find:

Google AdSense—a scam?
How to Bring Google AdSense Down
Nonsense with Google’s AdSense?
Google, p2pnet: AdSense saga
Google’s adsense a Fraud
Google Adsense is a fraud
Wikipedia: AdSense#criticism
Google gets gruff over click fraud
Google Sued for AdSense Fraud
Obviously google adsense is a fraud
Don’t Get Caught With Google Adsense Click Fraud
Google Files Click-Fraud Suit
AdSense Has A Scam Side

Neither the publishers have enough of the skills and, or expertise to verify who has created the said invalid clicks nor the Google is fair enough to show you the records. Moreover, it is not that easy a job to prove that the records have not been doctored. I’m not lawyer, but I feel that the Google Adsense business in it present form is not transparent and they people are cheating their AdSense publishers in violation of common law.

I therefore, request all AdSense publishers to stop displaying Google advertisements with immediate effect and ask these Google people for some transparent method such as pay per thousand impressions excluding all page views from local network and, or the server itself.

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