The fall has begun..

Well, its been a nice midsemester examination. Networks and Compilers as easy as ever, and PR getting screwed, all unexpected things happening here. Its okay, who cares. Tomorrow is DIP, and I am so complacent about it, not even reading the book properly, just reading without concentration.

Riyanca, ohh, what to say now. I think the fall has begun. No, she didn’t do anything, but I think that this internet friendship is getting too much for her. Its not like I don’t think we are not as good friends or something, but then, still, I think she needs to depend more on people around her, and not on some internet link miles away. So, you can say, now I am trying to make her go away from me, its not very good for me, makes me sad and all, but then, its good for her, and so I am doing it.

I guess she’ll be beginning to feel it now that my hold on our so called “eternal friendship” is losening. She told me this before too, that finally I will leave her, as if we never met. Its not like that is what I always wanted to do or something. I really want her to be with me, and me with her. But if that harms your own friend, you don’t want that right? So, I am doing it. I hope everything gets okay.

Rest is all fine. Tanu and I are carrying on nicely with our talks. Now now, don’t tell me that you got Tanu, so you are leaving Riyanca or something. Its like, a girl who takes so keen interest in the minutest detail of my life, remembers all my friends, their names, their habits, and what not, can’t be replaced by someone else. So Riyanca can’t be replaced, ever. Anyways, so Tanu’s been friendly all these days. One day she stopped and asked on phone, that we didn’t used to talk so much and such friendlily, you remember? And then, as if she thought it was not correct to ask it, she just switched the topic. I don’t know whats happening. Is it friendship? Mind you, we flirt a lot these days. Can’t say its love, because my heart doesn’t say, YES, this is the girl.

I got to know of another new algorithm for my visual tracking project. Its called something motion detection. So, instead of the old crappy image substraction, I will try to use this new algorithm. Lets see how successful I am. I’ll begin working on it from tomorrow.

I haven’t gone to PT yet, so thats a little bit of problem. I’ll surely begin from 2nd September, hehe.

Anyways, wish me luck for DIP.

Smoothness returns..

Seems like I was really depressed last time I blogged here. Its getting normal again. Not that all that was not true, but now I don’t pay heed to all those things anymore.

Riyanca, well, what should I say? She’s been okay all these days. I guess all it needs is a little more time. She has her final year and so she should concentrate on studies and all. Internet friendship is okay, I mean, if we do meet in life, I think we’ll get friendly and comfortable with each other much much faster than if we had never talked online. And, I approximate the time to get normal as 2 hours 47 minutes, magical figure, hehe.

Exams are approaching and there is an overload of assignments, along with taking classes of juniors. I’ve been regularly missing PT since the first day, so, I need to tighten up on that front too. Less than a week is left for the First Mid Semester Examination, and I haven’t begun preparing, something like a “fake confidence” in me is stopping me.

Forgot to mention about my article on “Analysing Love“.

This one was too much condemned and looked down upon, but when yesterday RIYANCA appreciated it, it felt so good from within. I can’t say, oh she appreciates my articles so she is my true friend, because true friends give the “correct opinion” and not the “sweet opinion”. Well, she IS my true friend is a different thing, hehe.

Actually nothing is happening around me, so there is really nothing to write about. I sometimes feel as if I blog only when I’m in pain and grief, so finally breaking the trend, I am posting on a normal day. I’ll definitely forget posting when I am really “happy”. Wish me luck for the forthcoming exams.

7 dark days.

Enough of crap, I’ve been making a shield around me which has been covering the “so dump and unstable” me inside and showing an intelligent, stable and friendly version of me to the public. But, it feels as if the “shield” has withered out now, and I am feeling the pain of being exposed to the world.

These 7 days have been bad, really bad and depressing for me. The only good thing happened is that my ear is back to normal now, so I can HEAR things. As each day passes, I get a new shock, a new pain, an unending one.

Ever since the snake has bit Riyanca, she has changed. Now, I know that I am not as important to her, after all “its a virtual world”, as she claims. I can’t go and tell her how I feel, because thats how I am made, I don’t say things. You need to understand them. I don’t think things will get better anytime soon. She’s got a great friend, (which I came to know of a few days ago), Manish, and he really cares for her. So, what am I going to do? I’m going to just leave them, happy together, and dip myself into loneliness. I guess thats right too, because this distance between us is really dampening and extinguishing the flame of friendship between us.

Yesterday was Independence Day, great thing, wow. There was a “blood donation camp” set up in the college. I kept on thinking about to do it or not. Even the girls of “first year” donated blood, and I kept thinking. Why? Just because of the fear of “the needle”? Rest of the conditions for me and the ones who donated were exactly same. Finally Ashish gave the fake consolation that “you could get infected by AIDS here, so better donate when you are at home”, and I accepted it. How bad. This thing is eating me from within all the time.

Then, I wrote something in blog and orkut. And people made me realize that I am not that good in that either. Neither do I know about Love, nor about Politics.

Finally, here I am, sad, alone, in my room, not a good friend, not a good citizen, not knowledgable, not skilled, not intelligent, a loser basically. Oh, what should I do? But alas, I’ll continue living in my “fake image”, hiding all the sadness, the pain.

VMWARE .. the middle path.

Nowadays, Operating System has become a religion. And people tend to stick to one. Any good feature in the other cannot be used then, or people keep a dual boot. VMWARE is the solution to all problems.

I downloaded VMware-workstation-5.0.0-13124.i386.rpm from some unknown site. And did…
rpm -hiv VM*.rpm

then, in konsole as root..
vmware-config.pl
installed VMWARE in a suitable partition/(folder in /) and then, run VMWARE.

Here, one thing which is required is, you should enable networking for your guest OSs and also enable NAT support. All this is done in the config thing, and this can be run multiple times, based on any requirement to change anything.

If it tells you that your gcc version is different from what its now, take it VERY seriously. It is strictly required to have the same version of GCC as the kernel is compiled with while configuring VMWARE.

When you run VMWARE, it tells you to add a new Virtual Machine. I added a Microsoft Window XP Professional Machine and asked it to save it on a separate folder on a partition which had enough space. Here, you need to specify how big the harddisk will “appear” to the guest OS. I specified 6 GB. You can also have a lazy allocation, which means you need not have 6GB free, and is allocated as required. This degrades the perfomance a little. So, I asked it to allocate the entire 6GB thing.

And now, I specified it to put the ISO image of Windows XP SP2 Setup CDROM in the CDROM device of the guest OS. It installed just like it does. And worked just like it does. I installed NAV2005 in the system, so that no viruses come. Network is configured to be “automatically detect the IP” and I specified the DNS manually (as we generally do in our college network).

To share data between the OSs, you can use the conventional WinSCP, or there is an option of shared folders in VMWARE. You share the folders of the host (and also specify “write” permissions), and then you can access them in Windows XP as
\\.host\Shared Folders

These can also get mounted as a “mapped network drive”. Its really fun. Now, I have the power of Linux, and for some thing which IS good in Win, I can switch VMWARE on.

The VMWARE Guest OSs can SUSPEND themselves just like “hibernate” thing. And thus take 3 seconds rather than 1 minute to boot an entire XP machine. Really great.

If you are running a sound server in Linux, there is problem running it. One option is to switch off the sound server till you are running VMWARE. (which apparently gives the best performance possible). Second option is to tell VMWARE to access your sound server, which is slow, cranky, has no mixer control, but alas, it works!

Install this for doing that..
http://platan.vc.cvut.cz/ftp/pub/vmware/vmwaredsp-1.3.tar.gz

And download this ‘crack’ and enter the serial number (without any username,email) given in zwt.nfo. This will allow NON-ROOT users to use VMWARE easily. If you already have an operating system installed as ROOT, just do chown user: -R {OS folder} to let the user use it.
http://flz.anycracks.com/zxcvbnm/V/vmwareworkstationv5.0.0.13124linuxkeygenz.w.t.zip

Note: It is illegal to use cracks. These links are for your own convinience. Use them at your own risk. The author is not responsible for any of your actions.

Also, you can get VMWARE for Windows (as host) here…
http://download3.vmware.com/software/wkst/VMware-workstation-5.0.0-13124.exe

When you install an OS completely, click on “VM->Install VMWARE tools” when your OS is completely logged on. This will trigger an install shield just like the install shield of “intel motherboard CDROM” and install the necessary “VMWARE drivers”. This will then allow you to increase the resolution to a better value, etc.

I beg you all to choose the MIDDLE PATH, and have the HOST OS as the one which you ‘generally’ prefer. Something like, love your own religion, but respect others too.

Analysing Love

Love … this is what people keep doing these days, its so common. Whenever you get a little friendly with a person, the most obvious question is, “Do you have a girlfriend?” This somewhat says that its necessary for someone who has come out of his/her childhood to fall in love. Is it some kind of fashion?

I am a guy, so most part of this article, I’ll look at it from the “man’s point of view”.

When some person tells another that he loves her, what implications does it have? Does it mean that if the other one feels the same then they’ll have a valid license to please each other physically till one of them or both think its no longer possible to remain “in love”. If not physically, then we can talk about pleasing each other by talking sweetly.

If we say, love is friendship, then how does the “sex” part of it get explained. Friends generally can be really close, care for each other, love each other, etc, etc. But, love (as defined generally) is not just friendship but a little more. Does that mean that friendship is “inferior” to love, and that every friendship is actually just a hit and trial process to get into love with your friend?

Boys generally think about falling in love with girls which are “at a minimum required level of beauty”. Any girl below it, is rejected without any consideration. That can be explained with the natural phenomenon of selecting the “better, stronger, healthier” partner so that the offspring is good. But, are we really talking about offsprings here? And when in todays world, we have such so-called unnatural phenomenon of homosexuals and all, how are we justifying based on “natural tendencies”?

A little more mature people look for someone who understands them, who cares for them, whom they are comfortable with, etc, etc. Don’t all these parameters fit into a best friend too? Then, when you have a “best friend” who fulfils all these requirements, whats the need of a “lover”.

When we are in love, we are “allowed” to do certain things. If we carefully judge, then getting close physically is the ONLY thing which one can’t do with a best friend. So, this should mean that a LOVER is better than the best friend. Why is the best friend called “best” then? And generally, a person’s best friend just remains his friend, and someone whom he just got impressed by seeing once or twice becomes “the lover”. How right is that?

Ok, so lets sum it up. Friendship is an intermediate step to Love, and a LOVER is better than your BEST FRIEND. But, most of the time, your BEST FRIEND is not your LOVER. This leaves me with so many questions in mind. If someone tells me that she loves me, what should I say? Is it not true that my best friend(of opposite sex, to remain in the “normal” category) is a more deserving person for the post of LOVER? And if making someone a LOVER just adds the “physical” sense, then I don’t think love is for me, how cheap can it get?

You might wonder why am I after all the people who are in love. Simple, because I am single. They’re busy “doing it” and I am free to analyse.

SWAP!

The swap space is actually some space on the hard disk which Linux uses to cope with “RAM shortage” problems. The processes not required in the RAM are swapped out of the RAM into the DISK. Definitely, if there is space in the RAM, no process should ever go to swap. But, this happened, and about 190 MB of swap was being used, even when I have 350 MB of RAM empty.

Here is the cure..
swapoff -a
swapon -a

It switches off the use of swap and back again, and so, the entire swap is emptied into the RAM, making it normal again. Poor me rebooted instead of doing this. Again, it got reestablised, Linux doesn’t need reboots, ever!

There is variable /proc/sys/vm/swappiness is a file which contains a value between 1 and 100, which defines how will kernel behave in swapping, how much and when will it swap. Read some site to know more. I heard “reducing” the value makes it use the swap space less. Its not recommended though to make it ZERO.

Long time no see….

28 July … 9 August… long time its been when I scribbled here. Not that I didn’t want to, or didn’t get time to, but I was hesitating to, and whenever I sat down to type in, either some disturbance or a change in mood or my health problems would stop me.

Its been nice since I last posted… err.. correction.. I didn’t write since 21 July. I actually read the last post. Things have changed a lot. We’ve had a phase of orientation as well, not all of it was much fun and it was not very long lasting. For the first few days the juniors were like, kind of fearful and almost crying. After some incidents and when faculty started interfering its been quite normal for them. The official public orietation function was fun, but after a junior got ill, the interaction has almost completely stopped.

I’ve got the job as a TA for C programming under Prof. Jawahar. Its a fun thing teaching the first years, such innocent and inquisitive faces, curious to learn, unlike us, uninterested and sleepy, hehe. I was hesitating while going to the first class, as if how will they react, will I be able to control them, or they will dominate, will I answer their doubts or not. etc. But since then, there has been no looking back, its been fun and frolic all the time, and I DID NOT FLIRT WITH ANY JUNIOR GIRL YET.

The other day Ashish had to take a “regular” class of the first years in ITWS because the professor was absent. He asked me to help. Given the mic in front of a 180 odd audience, I was a little unstable in the beginning, but then as we started catching the flow, it was all great fun, and just masti.

Tanu.. I’ve been talking and thinking about her a lot. What should I do? What does she think about me? Even about proposing her, etc. Not that I love her or anything, or do I, actually I am not sure. She is a nice girl, talks to me sweetly, but then I talk to so many people sweetly, so can she, so that doesn’t mean love or anything. My heart and mind always become uncertain when I talk about her. And Riyanca is fed up of me talking about her. Poor her, whenever she comes online, all she has to hear is her her and her, hehe.

I received the cards from Fouzia as a token of our one year old friendship. Its not that its bad or anything, but its just that it doesn’t make me much happy to see them. They are not bad or anything, they are good, just that I don’t know why they don’t give me a lot of happiness as one would expect. I’ve been ignoring her these days, not that I wanted to, but just because of our network, my work, etc, etc.

I started two more blogs, Fedora Core Solutions and Fedora Core Customizer. The first one deals with the problems and solutions of FC and the second one is about a new project to enhance Fedora, which I have been thinking of doing since months. Their links are…
http://fcsolutions.blogspot.com
http://fccustomizer.blogspot.com

Tanu and I talked on phone the other day for long, just because its free for her to call reliance mobiles. She was just mentioning that I spoilt her by making her chat late in nights. So, we decided not to talk from now on forever till one of us feels the need to, and the one who starts it will lose. We didn’t talk for a few days, but then, friendship day, smses from Chahat, and circumstances made us talk. I did the first SMS and she made the first call, I don’t know who lost.

On Sunday was Freshers Welcome Party, though I missed a major part of it doing the DIP assignment. That reminds me that the DIP assignment is kind of interesting. I’ve been adding capabilities to the software and its become quite nice now. So, coming back to the topic, the Freshers was nice, nothing to tell about, just marking a new landmark.

On Sunday, Riya got bit by a snake, she called to inform me, and also smsed. My balance got over just the minute she smsed me. I was helpless. I was moving around on the road, so I went to a Hutch Shop and recharged. I smsed her, but it didn’t reach, I tried to call but it didn’t ring. I smsed Alvy to call but it didn’t work. I was just consoling myself till late in the night saying that she sent me an sms and called me, that means that she is okay and in senses. She called up late in the night, and didn’t tell me anything clearly, but I somehow could understand that she was okay. I was still worried for most part of the night, I don’t know when did I sleep, or did I sleep? The next night she called up and told me that she is okay and she was under observation yesterday. I just tried to talk casually, but she took it as if I didn’t care. Anyways, doesn’t matter, people do misjudge me all the time, I am unpredictable, hehe.

I got a proposal from Sid to go to Mumbai this Friday. I was thinking about it, and started to fantasize meeting Riyanca. But then she is not well, and besides, I can’t lose her. What if she thinks that I am not the same person she chats with and changes her opinions, I can’t afford that. So, I decided not to go with Sid, though this decision became obvious when no one wanted to go, or the plan was not feasible, and so it was cancelled. Still, it can again come to limelight and I might be put in a situation to decide about going to Mumbai, and if I go, should I tell her and if I tell her, should I meet her, etc, etc.

Ohh, forgot to mention about my blocked ear. My ear was kind of blocked since about 10-12 days, its getting better now. I was planning to see a doctor, but I guess now its not required. I hope it becomes completely okay.

Rest is all fine, three fours projects, classes, assignments, wierd friends, and ME.

KDocker is nice!

I am not able to use Gaim these days because of the network problems. So, I have to use the silly Yahoo Messenger for Linux. It doesn’t even know how to go into the system tray. No problemo! I can make it do that. Just go to www.pbone.net and look for kdocker. Install the one matching with the architechture, or which is the closest to it. I installed.. kdocker-1.3-0.1.3.kde.i386.rpm. Now, I can write “kdocker” in RUN and click on a Window, and it goes into the taskbar. Can be done with my yahoo messenger, my terminal, firefox even! Is really cool

Trying out with understanding .HDR format…

The first thing to simulate YUM is to understand the format in which it downloads the headers of any RPM package. As YUM clearly specifies that HDR are the headers of any RPM and it uses RPM API to access the information, we need to first learn to parse a .HDR file.

The most intuitive feeling which arises is, do the first bytes of RPM files match with HDR files? No, they don’t. But it is not the case that there is no relation. If we ignore some of the bytes in both files, we find that the bytes are exactly same.

Doing a statistical analysis of a RPM and a HDR, (kernel-2.6.12-1.1398_FC4), I found that ignoring the first 440 bytes of the RPM, the HDR is exactly same with the corresponding bytes in the RPM. Thus, there is certainly a relation. It must certainly have been mentioned in the RPM API. I am still reading and trying.

Also, the YUM sourcecode is of help. Still trying to find a file which actually downloads the header from the server and parses it.

References:

http://www.rpm.org/
www.mialug.org/downloads/static/documentation/max-rpm.pdf
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?s=&threadid=350432

Reliance FWP Internet in FC4

Setting up Internet using Reliance FWP is jus a cake walk …

These are the steps that need to be followed

1. Check out whether you have wvdial software installed in your system. For FC4 it is automatically installed, so no issues..
2. Check in which serial port you have attached the modem (ie WFP) Normally it is ttyS0 or ttyS1

1. Login as Root user and check the following command “wvdialconf /etc/wvdial.conf” works..
2. Finally you should get something like this

1. “Found a modem on /dev/ttyS0.
   Modem configuration written to /etc/wvdial.conf.
   ttyS0<Info>: Speed 115200; init “ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0″

Next thing is we need to edit the wvdial.conf file, Add the following contents there..

• [Modem0]
  Modem=/dev/ttyS1
  Baud=115200
  Dial Command = ATDT
  init1=ATZ
  init2=AT+CRM=1
  Flow Control= Hardware (CRTSCTS)
  [Dialer reliance]
  Username = YourUserName
  Password = YourPassword
  Phone = #777
  Stupid Mode = 1
  Inherits= Modem0

Close the file after saving the contents

Now type in “wvdial reliance” in the prompt … you should get the following

• [root@localhost ~]# wvdial reliance
  –> WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.54.0
  –> Initializing modem.
  –> Sending: ATZ
  –> Sending: ATQ0
  OK
  –> Re-Sending: ATZ
  OK
  –> Initializing modem.
  –> Sending: ATZ
  –> Sending: ATQ0
  ATQ0
  OK
  –> Re-Sending: ATZ
  ATZ
  OK
  –> Initializing modem.
  –> Sending: ATZ
  –> Sending: ATQ0
  ATQ0
  OK
  –> Re-Sending: ATZ
  ATZ
  OK
  [root@localhost ~]# wvdial reliance
  –> WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.54.0
  –> Initializing modem.
  –> Sending: ATZ
  –> Sending: ATQ0
  ATQ0
  OK
  –> Re-Sending: ATZ
  ATZ
  OK
  –> Initializing modem.
  –> Sending: ATZ
  ATZ
  OK
  –> Sending: AT+CRM=1
  AT+CRM=1
  OK
  –> Sending: ATM0
  ATM0
  OK
  –> Modem initialized.
  –> Sending: ATDT#777
  –> Waiting for carrier.
  ATDT#777
  CONNECT
  –> Carrier detected. Starting PPP immediately.
  –> Starting pppd at Mon Jul 29 00:28:24 2002
  –> pid of pppd: 2919
  –> Using interface ppp0
  –> local IP address 220.226.33.135
  –> remote IP address 97.238.2.7
  –> primary DNS address 202.138.103.100
  –> secondary DNS address 202.138.96.2

Now open up your fav browser.. in my case it is firefox.. jus type in any url and chk if net is working. If it works, you wil be lucky, if not, jus start the service named “service named start”

• [root@localhost etc]# service named start
  Starting named: [ OK ]

Now if you go back to the previous step.. and chk the pages it would probably load.. if not leave a comment, lets chk out wat can be done

Query response for poorna shashank…

So does that mean when a joe wants to play mp3s on his pc, your (5th cd)/FCC will take care of all that?

does that mean that once joe doesnt want to play the media, the software installed will be deleted from user?

Can i assume that your software will be similar to ‘Software-On-CD’ something akin to ‘Linux-On-CD’. Which simply means, once the cd is taken out the system is as is? Or you are going to make permanent changes to the system?

No, its not a “Linux-On-CD” kind of a thing. If you see Discussion No. 1, we clearly state that it is “installed on the system just like a control panel”.
So,
* AJ can open FCC (FC Customizer).
* Search for a particular capability and install.
* Browse through the already installed capabilities and use.
* Remove a capability.
* Set the preferences about the Internet Repos, etc.
* Update the software database/version using the next released CDROM.
* Some other features which we might think of later.

So, what is your response after you know this additional information about the whole design? Is there any way of improving? Is there any other feature which is a MUST-INCLUDE? Waiting for a prompt response. You can get membership of this blog and post directly, want it?

New project .. customizing Fedore Core..

We are working on a new project to enhance Fedora Core Systems. This is just in the “requirement analysis” stage. You can visit the blog related to the same.

Also, I fixed the time of postingn shown here. Now, it corresponds to IST.

Discussion No. 1

This is a brief summary of a discussion Sag and I had about the rough outline of the project.

What could be the possible features of the software?
* User should get a fully configured system to suit all needs without any searching/compiling/installing/etc.
* User should be able to easily locate and install more features on demand almost automatically.
* IN A BROAD SENSE, WILL ACT LIKE YasT.

How can we go about doing it?
* Finding out the basic config of FC2/3/4.
* Finding what all packages will be required.
* Writing/editing required scripts automatically.

One more thing or feature required is..”finding the current config and installing a new capability”

When a person installs FCX, he install some of the packages in the complete setup of FCX. Then he updates, installs, removes packages from the system. This config which is thus generated is the input to our software.

* We need to get this input.
* We need to ask the user what new thing he wants.
* We need to figure out what packages will be required.
* Is it even possible to get the new thing or is it practically unlikely?
* Where will we get the packages from?
* How to guarantee that we get the latest versions?
* We need to configure some of the scripts to set up a working environment for the software.
* We need to provide a link in the software to access that new “capability”

RPM, YUM, APT are a few software which have some of the capabilities listed above. We can use these softwares/APIs to
* calculate dependencies
* fetch the required packages
* install them

For Average Joe, the domain of thinking is like…
[MP3 player] [Video player] [Browser] [Messenger]

and for us it is…
[xmms] [configure aRts to run on startup] [xmms-mp3] [xmms-arts]
[if aRts is not running, tell xmms to use alsa] [install a good xmms skin]

So, the Average Joe domain will be called “capabilities” and to “enable” a capability, we need to perform tasks of..
* installing packages
* configuring the general scripts
* run time checking (like aRts running or not?)

Run time checking is a feature we are capable of providing because we said, our software is also an “application launcher”, so all the softwares average joe requires, he can run by clicking on an icon in our software, and so we can run some scripts prior to loading the specified application.

For Average Joe, the software will be..
* Installed on the system.
* Like a control panel.
* Everything that Joe ever wanted.

He doesn’t understand many alternatives available and when we ask…
“You wanna use Firefox or Konqueror or Mozilla?”, he says, Linux sucks, lets switch to Windows.
So, another feature would be
* Enforcing some standard. (Now if Average Joe says “Browser”, then “firefox” is what we understand, none other)

How will the software be framed for providing necessary functionality for the above mentioned task?
It will definitely be in a CDROM. Now, we need to know that the world is changing fast. So, to provide Average Joe the capability to move with the world, the software must not be hardcoded and should change according to need.

For this, the software will have three parts(as of now, as in what we discussed yesterday night).

* Software.
* Capabilities Database.
* Sources Database.

Software is nothing but code, hehe.

Capabilities Database will be a database mapping capabilities like [Playing MP3] to [all tasks of installing the correct software and running/editing/creating suitable scripts]. The CDROM will provide a database for some of the basic capabilities required in general. The database could be extended or changed by downloading more information from a internet server or another CDROM or disk. Thus, this will be very dynamic and configurable.

You will argue, why do we need it?
I think, AJ wants Browser, MP3, Video and Messenger. He got a new cam! He wants to capture videos! I didn’t expect that. So, he can connect to a server “dedicated to providing capability info” (just like YUM repos) and try to look for a tuple related to information about “Video Capturing”. Thus, enhancing the usage of the software altogether.

This would require on the part of the “enligtened people” to contribute in making such repositories of “capabilities”, and also make sure that “only the best” software for that job is listed to be installed, because as we said, AJ doesn’t like options.

The third part, which is somewhat similar to YUM is “Sources Database”. This will essentially contain information about what all packages can be fetched from which places, etc. The CDROM could contain information about which package in the FCX setup lies in which CDROM of FCX. Also, it could contain a small database about the packages which are in the CDROM we provide to enable some minimal requirements.

Most of the time, the sources database will not strictly require downloading a package from the FCX setup CDROM. Our software could as well download it from the internet mirrors of Redhat. Similarly, softwares not in the basic setup could be downloaded from YUM repositories and other places.

Thus, a major part will also include “updating the Databases” through the internet or will additional CDROMs which we release.

Also, when the software is installed initially, it should automatically install and configure some of the things to bring it to some prescribed configuration. A lot of times our software needs to go for alternatives, like, I don’t have KDE, so even if our software knows “best MP3 player is Amarok”, because its not possible to install it, we select the “second best” as XMMS. Thus, the capabilities database should somehow contain a priority order of all the possible alternatives to a “capability”.

For eg. I look for MP3 Player, the software shows, Amarok (a maybe a screenshot), XMMS, Rhythmbox, etc. along with the “goodness” and the cost “amount of data in MBs to be downloaded, etc”. Then Average Joe can choose, or our software can autochoose based on some AI. We can keep this option in the preferences as to “auto Choose” or “allow the user to choose”.

There can be modifications and a lot more people need to pour in.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?s=&threadid=349723 is a link to the forum where you can post your comments and views and ideas. We can also work as a team in the development process.

Understanding YUM

* How does YUM do it?
* Why is it so fast?
* What is the header?
* How to use it in my software?
* etc etc.

These are some of the questions that are coming to our minds in the process of making this new piece of software. The beauty of open source is that I can download the sourcecode of YUM, and read it to get what is it doing. Also, I can read their site to find out things. And then, I can use it in my code to make it run better.

YUM mentions that the header is actually a small part of the RPM itself, so that the information about the particular RPM is given by itself, which removes a lot of complexity. Now, there is no specification about what this header actually is or how does YUM use this header to actually find out information about the RPM. It also mentions that YUM directly uses “RPM’s dependency resolution” to resolve dependencies, and doesn’t implement its own.

References:
http://linux.duke.edu/projects/yum/
http://wiki.linux.duke.edu/YumIdeas

Rough Draft No. 1

Hi,
I am a Fedora Core user since long now. I am beginning a project out of my own interest in order to enhance or customize Fedora Core(2/3/4) to make it usable for an average user.

The idea is to provide an addition 5th CDROM with the FC Setup, which will install a software into the system (similar to YasT), which will enable to user to configure and enhance the user experience for Fedora Core 2/3/4 systems.

One of the many uses of this software would be “Getting software”. Now, “getting software” should not be confused with just “installing” RPMS or sources. Here, we are dealing with a different level.

Average Joe says “I want to play MP3″.
I would say,
* install XMMS, XMMS-arts, XMMS-mp3, XMMS-skins.
* Configure KDE to start ARTS
* Configure XMMS to use ARTS
* Configure XMMS to use a good theme
* Provide a link to “MP3 Player” in my software. (YES, the software will behave as a app launcher too)

So, the “CAPABILITY” of “playing MP3″ is provided by the set of operations given above. So, the software will basically function using a database that is built based on “CAPABILITY” rather than “PACKAGE NAMES”.

Most of the time, “enabling a particular capability” will include
* installing packages/sources
* configuring some scripts of KDE/GNOME/etc.
* giving a link to the capability in the software.

We are just beginning the project, and are just analysing the problem. We would like to know if the idea is good enough or needs any amendment?

To install packages, we need to
* resolve dependencies
* identify sources of packages and dependencies (CDROM/ISO/INTERNET)
A lot of this capability seems to be built in the RPMLIB and YUM. We are trying to figure out how to use YUM or YUM API or YUM REPOSITORIES or ALL to benifit our cause. Please help us for the same.

Thanks,
Anurag.
anurag_rana [AT] students [DOT] iiit [DOT] ac [DOT] in

P2P sharing, KDE look and feel and me

Okay, gaim is not working these days. So, no yahoo, no chat.. and a lot of time! Just keep playing with the system.

I was looking at some p2p network sharing software. I found two excellent softwares, DCGUI and LIMEWIRE. DCGUI is a client for Direct Connect protocol based networks and Limewire connects to Gnutella network. DCGUI is Qt/C++ based and Limewire is Java based.

I downloaded
dcgui-qt-0.3.2-0.lvn.1.3.91.src.rpm (rpm.livna.org)
dclib-0.3.2-0.lvn.1.3.91.src.rpm
LimeWireLinux.rpm (www.limewire.com)

and did…
rpm -hiv dc*.rpm
cd /usr/src/redhat/SPECS
rpmbuild -bb dclib.spec
cd ../RPMS/i386
rpm -hiv dclib*.rpm
cd ../../SPECS
rpmbuild -bb dcgui-qt.spec
cd ../RPMS/i386
rpm -hiv dcgui*.rpm

and then…
rpm -hiv –nodeps LimeWireLinux.rpm
–nodeps was required because I did not install JRE but there was a JRE because I had JDK1.5.0 installed and its bin directory was in the system path variable.

Rest of the time I spent installing some themes and other stuff from http://www.kde-look.org.

At the end of the day… I realized that neither gaim, nor kopete will work. What worked was yahoo messenger for Linux(RH9).
rpm -hiv rh9.ymessenger-1.0.4-1.i386.rpm (http://messenger.yahoo.com)

Works, works bad… but still.. it works!!

Playing with enlightenment….

So, as I mentioned that I am returning to my KDE, I did. But then, this new thing, Enlightenment kept me wanting to explore more, customize it and make it easy. So, I explored more…

yum install entangle e_utils

Then, I typed,
enlightenment_remote -module-load engage

And then, there was a new panel for me, which could have icons and supported the system tray. We can edit it using ‘entangle’. To delete an icon, just middle click it. To add a new icon, drag-n-drop from the list given on the left, simple isn’t it? No. To find out an icon for “konsole” from the list on the left, it took me 5 mins, and I am still looking for ‘kaffeine’, hehe.

There is a run command which apparently appeared after installing e_utils.
We can use e_util_eapp_edit to create our custom application links, but I don’t know how it works.

When I run gaim, engage, the panel, shows it in the system tray, so thats now something familiar, hehe. I am trying to get some new themes into it and trying to learn to create a shortcut for my applications. And for gods sake, where are my DESKTOP ICONS!!

References:
http://www.mepislovers.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?viewmode=flat&topic_id=8731&forum=9
http://www.neowin.net/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t343955.html
http://www.neowin.net/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t282467.html
http://www.enlightenment.org/

Enlightenment!!!!

Ok, today I got to know that there is some new desktop environment called enlightenment. So, I looked up the yum repository for it and added it. Then, just run yumex to install enlightenment and the dependencies.

Started off well, it was a new environment, not very fine in the functionality but it beats Windows Vista lookwise. So much configurable look, but hardly could I put my favorite icons on its panel(so called IBar). Its difficult to terminate programs and to run konsole, you need to run konqueror and then run konsole. There is no run command and kill is very buggy. Killed windows keep popping up and its overall difficult to handle it.

I am back into my KDE, but I’ll keep experimenting as an when I get more time.

Another useful package on www.pbone.net is gnome-yum-fedora-repositories-0.1-1.ta.28.fc4.i386.rpm. This installs all the required repositories which needed to be installed manually into the various .repo files. Quite handy for those lazy ones!

Java on Fedora Core….

Did you try installing JDK on FC4? It doesn’t work. First of all, FC4 comes with its own javac and java, so you should keep in mind that you don’t install the java RPM from the sun’s site. You should download the self extracting .bin file.

When you run it as root, after
chmod 755 *.bin
ofcourse, it gives and error that the graphical user interface could not be started. It is NOT a problem of xhost or anything, so no need to try out that way. Its all because of SELinux… SECURITY ENHANCED LINUX. You need to do just this much.
reboot
press E at grub..
press E at the kernel line..
append selinux=off at the end of the kernel line..
press enter..
goto the root line..
press b..

You can also add it into your /etc/grub.conf for permanently doing it. Then the jdk setup along with netbeans works just fine.

There is another editor called eclipse which is prebuilt into FC4. After you install JDK, WTK2.2, you can install eclipseME from http://www.eclipseme.org/ and then follow their instructions to add J2ME support to eclipse. I couldn’t understand how to create a J2ME project in it, so I used the familiar Netbeans with its add-on Mobility pack.

Happy Java!