Archive for the 'Common' Category

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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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 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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Acknowledgement Department

Published on February 19, 2007 in Blog, Common, Computers, Hosting, Internet, Life and Wordpress. 0 Comments

Here is one of the nicest mails, I ever have received:

I dreamt that I went to Heaven and an angel was showing me around. We walked side-by-side in to a large workroom filled with many angels.

My angel guide stopped in front of the first section and said, “This is the Receiving Section. Here, all petitions to God said in prayers are received.” I looked around in this area, it was terribly busy with so many angels sorting out petitions written on voluminous paper sheets and scraps from people all over the world.

Then we moved down via a long corridor until we reached the second section. The angel then said to me, “This is the Packaging and Delivery Section. Here, the graces and blessings, the people asked for, are processed and delivered to the living persons who asked for them.”

I noticed again how busy it was there also. There were many angels working hard at that station, since so many blessings had been requested and were being packaged for delivery to Earth.

Finally at the farthest end of the long corridor we stopped at the door of a very small apartment. To my great surprise, only one angel was seated there, idly doing nothing. “This is the Acknowledgment Section”, my angel friend quietly admitted to me. He seemed embarrassed. “How is it that? There’s no work going on here?”, I asked.

“So sad …”, the angel sighed, “After people receive the blessings that they asked for, very few send back acknowledgments.” “How does one acknowledge God’s blessings?”, I asked. “Simple,”, the angel answered.
Just say, “Thank you, God.”

“What blessings should they acknowledge?”, I asked.

“If you have food in the refrigerator, clothes on your back, shoes in your feet, a roof over the head and a place to sleep, you are richer than 75% of this world. If you have money in the bank, in your wallet, and spare change in a dish, you are among the top 8% of the world’s wealthy people. And if you are reading this on your own computer, you are part of the top 1% in the world who has that opportunity.”, seemed he has lot more to tell.

Also …, “If you woke up this morning with more health than illness … you are more blessed than the many who will not even survive this day.” and, “If you have never experienced the fear in battle, the loneliness of imprisonment, the agony of torture, or the pangs of starvation … you are ahead of 700 million people in the world.”

He continued, “If you can attend a prayer meeting without the fear of harassment, arrest, torture or death you are envied by, and more blessed than, three billion people in the world.”

… “If you can hold your head up and smile, you are not the norm, you’re unique to all those in doubt and despair.”

Ok, what now? How can I start?

If you can read this message, you just received a double blessing in that someone was thinking of you as very special and you are more blessed than over two billion people in the world who cannot read at all.

Have a good day, count your blessings, and if you want, pass this along to remind everyone else how blessed we all are :)

Attn: Acknowledgement Dept:
Thank You God! Thank you, for giving me the ability to share this message and for giving me so many wonderful people to share it with.

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