Babar Haq

Firefox jre plugin for ubuntu 10.04 stops working

2012-01-25T16:09:00.005+05:00

A couple of days ago in my efforts to join a webex session I realized that my firefox java plugin was not working. Then I remembered reading some where that Sun Java is being removed from ubuntu for some xyz reason. Details in the source links at the end.
As always my first level of support is freenode server, ubuntu channel on irc :) There everybody actually laughed at my 10.04 :) since most of the people are after the latest and the greatest. Never the less I finally managed to find a link giving me everthing step by step. So here is what I did to get my java firefox plugin back.

sudo apt-get purge sun-java6-bin (Please note it will uninstall all softwares depending on java)
Put the line deb http://www.duinsoft.nl/pkg debs all in the file /etc/apt/sources.list
import the gpg key with the command (all on one line)
sudo apt-key adv --keyserver keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 5CB26B26
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install update-sun-jre

Everything starts working.
Source:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Java
http://www.duinsoft.nl/packages.php?t=en

VOIP using dual mode IP cordless phone

2012-01-24T12:27:00.004+05:00

My first exposure to VOIP (voice over internet protocol) was back in 2001 while working on my final year university project. My buddy Hasnain and I were implementing a protocol PINT (PSTN/Internet Interworking). We implemented it on Linux using Kdeveloper in C++/QT.

That is when I switched to Linux for good as well. Since then I also have been using gnomeeting and have seen it grow into ekiga. Once I moved out of Pakistan, I started using ekiga regularly to call home using diamondcard.us as the service provider. That is the default voip service available with ekiga. Diamondcard.us voice quality to Pakistan was not that good so i also subscribed to another service connect2pakistan.com. I was overjoyed to find that my Nokia e51 has a built in voip phone. Therefore I was able call any one on my contact list via voip with a single click. Sadly, it drained out my battery life very quickly.

On the other hand, I had a regular cordless PSTN phone lying around at home. It would be days before it would be used. Eventually one day it just died. I think the reason was lack of use :) This gave me the idea of having a cordless phone which would be my sip phone as well. Gigaset came up to be the first result on google. Some time back it was bought by Siemens. The only problem I saw in their phones was that they were mostly over kill for my needs. It had tons of features which I would never need. Never the less I ordered one from Amazon since IP phones are not available here in Saudi. Here is what I got myself http://www.amazon.com/Solution-Accounts-C610A-IP-1-Handset-Telephone/dp/B004SBDQMG

I think this is the first time I have got myself something known as DECT based cordless phone. Interestingly these kind of cordless has 3 items. One main base which connects to the wireless router and PSTN line. The cordless and its charging station can be placed any where at home since it communicates with the main base over wireless. The phone is extremely easy to configure via its web interface. It can be configured to use up to six VOIP service providers. Users can configure prefix dialing based rules but I choose my connection every time a number is dialled. It has a lot of other stuff which I do not think I will ever use like face-book, email and also built in answering machine. Weather update on the home screen is pretty cool though.

Since the VOIP connections are always connected you can also get local numbers by providers to be diverted to your phone. For example connect2paksitan.com offers a Pakistani number for around $5 a month. The best part is that the voice quality of the phone is amazing both over SIP and fixed line.

I identified two problems upon setting up the phone. Since normally this kind of equipment comes with adapters I assumed that it would be 110/220V but sadly since it was ordered from Amazon US it was 110V only. Can live with this especially in Saudi since Khobar/Dammam normally has both sockets in most homes.

Secondly callers number would not appear on the screen every time there was an incoming call. Googling made me realize that CLI settings in these phones are region based and since this was for US it wouldn't work in Saudi. So obviously my next step was to look our for gigaset's support. There were two thing I did. One I sent an email to gigaset support via their main web site. Secondly searching gigaset support middle east came up with linked-in profile of the CEO of gigaset Dubai. Well i added him to my linked in.

Next day interestingly the CEO did add me to his profile. So I instantly sent him an email explaining my problem. By evening I was on phone with gigaset support Saudi Arabia :) After he got all the details of the phone and where i bought it from :) he sent me a firmware file which i uploaded to the phone. There it was CLI working like a charm.

vpnc auto-connect

2011-04-26T16:30:00.002+05:00

For some reason my vpn client (vpnc) in ubuntu keeps getting disconnected. The worst is that I had to connect a couple of times before it would connect. So I wrote this tiny bash script to let it dial until it connects :)

#!/bin/bash
while true ;do
sleep 5
pid=/var/run/vpnc/pid
PID="$(cat "$pid" 2> /dev/null)"
if [ -z "$PID" ]; then
/usr/sbin/vpnc-connect /etc/vpnc/netapp.conf
else
echo connected
break
fi
done

Download torrents using command line in linux

2010-08-07T12:47:00.003+05:00

I have been using btdownload-curses for some time to download torrents form linux command line. Recently for some reason it kept failing. Upon investigation I found out that rtorrent is a much better option. In ubuntu installing it is as simple as sudo apt-get install rtorrent.

Had some problems installing it in CentOS 5.5. Finally I found a couple of rpms which could save you the headache. Get the rpms. For some reason I couldn't install them directly using rpm command.

wget http://packages.sw.be/libsigc++20/libsigc++20-2.0.17-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
wget http://packages.sw.be/libtorrent/libtorrent-0.12.5-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
wget http://packages.sw.be/rtorrent/rtorrent-0.8.6-2.el5.rf.i386.rpm

Install them using rpm -Uvh in the same order as above.

TPLINK TLWN321G on CentOS 5.5

2010-08-07T12:32:00.004+05:00

Recently I had to attach the above USB wireless dongle to a CentOS 5.5 machine. It works out of the box for ubuntu as I mentioned here.

For CentOS 5.5 here is what I did to make it work. Got the information from here.

Installed elrepo repository:
rpm -Uvh http://elrepo.org/elrepo-release-0.1-1.el5.elrepo.noarch.rpm

Imported its GPG key
rpm --import http://elrepo.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-elrepo.org

Install driver
yum --enablerepo=elrepo install rt73usb-firmware

Now we need to disable the default network service for centos
chkconfig network off
chkconfig wpa_supplicant off

Let NetworkManager take care of the network
chkconfig NetworkManager on

Reboot. Now move your mouse over the network manager applet in the task bar and you should be able to see a list of all available wireless networks.

Canadian visa for us-Pakistanis

2010-07-07T15:23:00.003+05:00

Summers in Saudi Arabia are blistering with temperature constantly exceeding 50c. Even the evenings are unbearable. The schools in the kingdom remain closed for the three months of summers i.e. July-August-September. I scheduled my annual leave for Pakistan (my home country) in September as summers is not a good time to visit Pakistan which also has soaring temperatures coupled with power outages. So I was wondering how to keep my hyper active kids busy for these two months. Even the thought of keeping my two kids confined in an air conditioned house 24/7 was not pleasant at all.

In such a scenario, an invitation from my wife's sister settled in Canada came as a blessing. My sister-in-law naturalized to be a Canadian a couple of years ago and always missed her family while being happily settled there with her husband and daughter. My wife always wanted to visit her. The whole plan seemed to ideally fit into our situation.

Getting visas from Saudi Arabia have always been a breeze. There is a visa agent with in Saudi Aramco core office (Dhahran) which collects all the needed documents, dispatches and collects the passports from embassies in Riyadh. I got a list of all the required documents from their office and started accumulating them. My brother in law, a PHD professor in a reputable Canadian University sent me all the required documents accredited by a trusted lawyer. Me myself got my employment/salary certificate attested from chamber of commerce in Saudi Arabia. I have been working for a multi national company in Saudi Arabia for the past two and half years. I submitted the visa application well in advance. Soon I received a SMS from Canadian embassy informing me that the visa application have been received and it will be returned with in three to four weeks.

I was very hopeful that my family will get the visa. Firstly, my brother in law is very well settled in Canada. He is a university professor, also a proud owner of a home and has guaranteed this trip. Secondly, I was not accompanying my family. Thirdly, my family has international medical insurance. Last but not least, my sound financial standings also made my case stronger. Both my kids and wife were very excited for this long awaited trip. To my despair, three weeks later I received an appalling visa rejection letter via the agent. It was a standard rejection letter with the most ambiguous reason highlighted on it.

It states "You have not satisfied me, on the balance of probability, that you meet all the requirements of entry to Canada and that you would comply with the laws of Canada if you were authorized to enter [as per Regulation 179]".

Interpreting this statement seems beyond my intelligence.

I understand that Canada is a welfare state and they are afraid of people entering and not leaving upon their visa expiry. Still I expected the visa officer to be intelligent enough to distinguish between genuine and fraud cases. Why would a family of a well settled professional in Saudi Arabia stay in Canada illegally?

All the documentation provided were attested/verified from the highest possible authorities, so there was no question of doubt. The visa officer could not even trust a guarantee letter from its own national university professor. If they are so afraid of people over staying they could always ask for a cash deposit which could be returned once they are back. There must be some other way - a better way then blatantly refusing visas. The most annoying part is that the refusal letter clear states in capital, bold and underlined: "This application is closed and WILL NOT BE RECONSIDERED".

Discussing with other resources it appears that Canadian embassies refuse visit visas to Pakistani nationals frequently. Probably most of them receive such ambiguous refusal letters. If they naturalize Pakistanis then definitely their families would want to visit them. Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs should take this up with the Candadian government. If Canada does not want Pakistani nationals visiting it then it should stop accepting visa applications and probably end all diplomatic ties with us and stop naturalizing Pakistani nationals. What a shame for a country who claims to be champion of fairness.

Website reviews

2009-07-05T13:27:00.003+06:00

As I have mentioned here I am planning to do reviews of some government website. This gave me a fair idea of how to proceed.

I guess for government sites what matters most is the eservice been provided. No matter how ugly the design or content is, you will still go there if some thing needs to be done. So I guess my main focus would be on the services available on those websites. Currently most of our egovernment sites are static. One reason is that the back end is not IT enabled yet.

Never the less hopefully (inshAllah) I should be posting the first one pretty soon.

Usb wireless adapter in Ubuntu Linux

2009-06-01T11:39:00.004+06:00

I had to buy a usb wireless adapter for my ubuntu based laptop since it does not have a built in one. So I went to the local market here in Khobar (Dossary tower) and made a list of available ones. Here is what I got:

TPLINK TLWN321G
ALFA AWUS036H
PLANET WL-U356M
EDIMAX
MSI

I did some research on the Internet regarding which one would work natively/out of the box with ubuntu. TPLINK seemed to be the best bet. It was also the cheapest option available some thing like SR 50. So I took my chance. What a perfect fluke :) Its working like a charm since then. Lucky me!

Here is the lsusb output for the device

Bus 002 Device 002: ID 148f:2573 Ralink Technology, Corp. RT2501USB Wireless Adapter

Pakistani government websites

2009-05-23T14:12:00.003+06:00

For some reason I am always digging for our official government websites. Probaly cause first it roughly gives me an idea of how well a certain government department is doing. Secondly cause it always feels good to see our country progressing. Though most of the time I am a little disappointed with the portals.

InshAllah soon I will try and write small reviews for all these sites which i visit.

Corruption (Bribe)

2009-05-19T17:01:00.004+06:00

I was flying out of Islamabad on April 30th 2009 with my family. The airport was least crowded and suddenly the customs officer stopped me. Well he asked me "Can I open your luggage?". I replied "No" in a cheeky manner. I said I have family with me so please "meharbani karaain". The reply I got was "aap hum per meharabani karain hum aap per kardaain gay". vow even my wife was shocked at this. Well I said no and moved on.

At a time when our country is falling apart these guys are still busy doing their stuff. I thought of complaining but was afraid that he might suddenly "discover" narcotics in my luggage. What a pity.

Saudi electronic banking

2009-05-19T16:54:00.003+06:00

It is always a pleasure to write some thing good about Saudi Arabia. I have always appreciated Saudis electronic/internet banking. Especially the way you can pay bills for almost everything under the sun. I often noticed the word SADAD while making my payments on line so I decided to "google" it.

It turns out that this SADAD thing is the result of a very positive initiative taken by the saudi government a couple of years ago. There is a whole web site dedicated to this. I wonder why Pakistan cannot implement some thing like this. The idea is not that complicated.

Contributing to open source

2009-03-23T16:31:00.008+05:00

I always feel that people do not contribute back to open source products. For example here everybody uses putty but I don't think any body have ever thought of supporting the product in any way. In fact you might hear a lot of them grumbling about the features it lacks :) I guess most of them do not even know that the software is open source or what open source means in the first place.

For some time now I have been trying to do what ever I can to contribute back to open source. This blog itself is an example. I also at times have filed bugs for the OSS I use. Recently for the first time, I actually donated money to a project which I felt was lacking in linux from the time I started using it. It is fully compatible mail client for M$ exchange. I have been looking for this since my university days (my uni had exchange which they could not handle and eventually switched to free mail for educational institutions from google).

For the time being I am using evolution OWA microsoft exchange support. It has a lot of problems but never the less some thing is better then nothing. A couple of times I thought of using outlook under crossoffice but for that I would need a licensed copy of outlook (M$ office). I decided against that when I looked at the cost of Microsoft office professional :)

Finally some time back I discovered this. Looks very promising and thats where I have made my first donation to open source. I hope that I will continue doing this with softwares which makes my life easier :)

Update 25th March 2009
A few days ago gnome 2.26.0 was released. Native MAPI support is included in this release. So most probably next release of ubuntu code named Jaunty should have it. The only quick review I could dig up of this support is from some one who tested it in February.

Exit re-entry status

2009-03-01T17:10:00.002+05:00

Expats living in saudi arabia know what all this is about. Luckily you can check status of your exit re-entry online now. Though it does not always work :)

Mobily Internet via Nokia E51 as bluetooth modem

2009-02-15T15:01:00.002+05:00

Well consulted too many sites to get this working so cant really mention all of them here :)
I will just put the main one here

AFAIK this was performed on Ubuntu 7.04. So in 8.10 it turned out to be a lot easier.

I will only post the differences here :) Yeah they call it laziness

In step1 you just need to left click the bluetooth icon and select "Set up new device". Make sure bluetooth is activated on your mobile and its publicly viewable. It will give you the code which you need to enter on your mobile to complete the pairing.

Step2 remains exactly the same. Be sure to restart bluetooth service after editing rfcomm.conf
sudo /etc/init.d/bluetooth restart

In Step3 I used wvdial instead of what this guy is using. Since I am familiar with it. Mobily does not require a username/password but I had to put dummy values since wvidal does not accept wvdial.conf with out it.

Here is my wvdial for mobily, Saudi arabia.

[Dialer mobile]
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
Init3 = AT+CGDCONT=, ,"web1"
Modem = /dev/rfcomm0
Phone = *99***1#
Username = A
Password = B
New PPPD = yes
BAUD = 460800
Stupid Mode = 1

Mobily vs Jawal

2009-02-07T15:24:00.010+05:00

Recently due to some unfortunate circumstances my Jawal STC mobile number was disconnected and I had to change my number. So I had option of going for STC, mobily or Zain. Zain is very new and I was in no mood of experimentation. So I was left with mobily vs Jawal.

People all around, encouraged me to go for mobily. Reason: its economical and services in general are a lot better. So I did.

Well the customer service of mobily is a loooooooot better then STC. Getting connected to a representative in thier call center is lightning fast. They are courteous, yes courtesy in Saudi arabia! Their technical know how is not that great, but I can live with that.

In quality of network, well they don't score that well. Calling Pakistan is a nightmare. It seems like they are making use of VOIP extensively. The receiver will not get your correct number and the voice quality sucks big time.

SMS is another problem. Either the recipient will not get your message or you will not get their replies.

Maybe mobily is economically more viable but if the core technologies (voice/sms) have problems then I think STC wins by large

Update 1st March 2009
Guess what? You cannot call 0800 toll free numbers from mobily :P Since its a STC service I guess it will never allow access from mobily :(

Desperation

2008-11-23T17:44:00.001+05:00

I am desperate to start writing again. I have so many things to talk about ...... Hope I will start soon, inshAllah

Voice chat on Linux

2008-01-30T13:50:00.001+05:00

This has been a big problem for me since I started using Linux as my primary desktop. For the time being the only thing I could use was "Skype" and "Ekiga". Recently I found jabbin, a jabber client supporting libjingle protocol developed by google. I got to it via this article FreeSoftwareMagazine which shows how to voice chat on Linux with google talk users. Cool!

The software is still under heavy development though. At least there is hope :)

Update (23rd June 2008)
Seems like the above software is "dying" like a lot of open source projects :( The home page has disappeared. Here is another way of voice chatting with Gtalk users on linux

From OSRC to NetApp

2007-11-03T16:25:00.001+05:00

Well this is just to let everyone know that I have resigned from OSRC and joined Network Appliance as a resident Professional Services Consultant for Saudi aramco.

OSRC was a typical government organization where people are more interested in pulling each others leg then doing some constructive work.

Following are the things I enjoyed/learnt/delivered at OSRC:

Gave linux introductory trainings at various government universities(Quetta,Abottabad,Kohat)
Participated in various open source conferences on behalf of Pakistan government
Had a wonderful time traveling with my old buddy Sufyan
Learnt how our government organizations work
Realzied how corrupt our government bodies are
Was part of OLPC pakistans team.Jump started them on localization/customization efforts
Was the first guy to be able to run Zekr (open source quarn) on a real OLPC (ofcourse with help from Zekr's creator (Usman) More info

Probably some day I would go back to the government but this time I would go for a position where I could make a difference. It is really difficult to work under incompetent people.I still believe that OSRC is a wonderful intitiative taken from government of Pakistan if only it can be run fairly.

Warid GPRS on linux with Nokia 6020

2007-08-23T12:50:00.000+05:00

For the past few months the only time I would boot in Windows would be to connect my GPRS using Nokia PC suite.My first few attempts to connect GPRS on Linux were using gprseasyconnect software. Unfortunately warid pakistan gprs service is not listed in their gprs providers drop down list. I tried pretty hard to add warid as a provider by editing their *.apn files but was in vain.Finally I planned to work on things manually.

Luckily my Nokia 6020 connects to Dell Latitude D400's serial port via DKU-5 cable. I said luckily because I always find serial port stuff easy to configure on Linux, e.g modems. My nokia phone was available to me on my ubuntu 6.06 under /dev/ttyS0 which is also known as COM1 in windows.First thing I did was I booted into Windows and opened the dial up connection created by Nokia PC suite. The number it dialed was *99#.To dial out I needed a dialer. I installed gnome-ppp using synaptic package manager and configured the modem to /dev/ttyS0. Now when I dialed out the gnome-ppp dialer after initializing the modem would get stuck on sending password.From here I jumped on to even lower level dialer that is wvdial. I started out with the default wvdial.conf and just changed the dialup number to *99#.This time everything went fine except when the mobile tried to create the GPRS connection it would fail with a message saying something like "GPRS: Invalid GPRS access point".I do not remember the exact message though.Upon googling a little I found a different number to dial *99***1#. The digit 1 represented the GPRS setting to be picked up from the mobile. Probably these nokia phones have index number of every GPRS setting you save in your mobile. Wonder why doesent it try the default one.The sad part was that this failed as well.Eventually I found this. Using this I crafted out a new wvdial.conf which got me conncted!

Here is my final wvdial.conf connecting me to warid GPRS

[Dialer Defaults]
Modem = /dev/ttyS0
Baud = 115200
Init1 = ATH
Init2 = ATE1
Init3 = AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","wap.warid","0.0.0.0",0,0
Phone = *99#
Username = A
Password = B

The username and password are are dumy values. Thats all.

Type urdu in openoffice in ubuntu 6.06

2007-07-30T10:25:00.000+05:00

Installing urdu font ( nafeesWebNaskh )

Download this file: http://www.crulp.org/Downloads/NafeesWeb.ttf

In a terminal type:

gksudo nautilus fonts:

A folder would open with a lot of font files in it. Copy and paste the above downloaded file in to this folder. Now type this command:

sudo fc-cache -f -v

Installing Urdu keyboard and keyboard applet
Download the keyboard "ur.txt" from http://www.crulp.org/Downloads/ur.txt
Double click the downloaded file to open it. Select and copy all the text in this file.

Issue this command

gksudo gedit /etc/X11/xkb/symbols/pk

This will open a file in gedit. Select and delete all the text in the file. Now paste all the text we copied from ur.txt to this file. Save and close this file.

Now go to System->Preference->Keyboard. Under the layout tab click on add button and chose pakistan from the left column and press Ok.

To easily switch between keyboards please add an applet to your task bar. This can be done by right clicking on task bar and selecting “add to panel”. In the utilities section choose keyboard indicator and press “Add”.

To type in urdu in openoffice. Open openoffice writer and from the fonts choose “nafees web naksh” and from the keyboard indicator choose urdu. Now you can type in urdu in openoffice or any other uni code supported software.

Latest Openoffice on Fedora

2006-12-20T11:27:00.000+05:00

Been a long time since I posted anything. Main reason being that the domain blogspot.com is blocked for the past couple of months from Pakistan. Of course there are solutions to that but I was just being lazy. Anyway back to linux .....

I am running Fedora Core 5 on one of my desktops. One of the problems I always face with these distributions is that I have to rely on the distribution to supply latest version of a specific software in their repository. For example I want to use Openoffice 2.1 but yum will not upgrade since its not there in the repository.

Here is how I installed latest openoffice2.1 manually on my Fedora Core 5 system.

Uninstall older version of openoffice like this

#yum remove "openoffice*"

Download Openoffice .tar.gz and untar it.

#tar -zxvf OOo_2.1.0_LinuxIntel_install_en-US.tar.gz

The above will extract everything to a folder namely OOE680_m6_native_packed-1_en-US.9095. Inside this folder there would be a folder named "RPMS". One of the packages in "RPMS" folder is not digitally signed so you need to switch off gpgcheck in file /etc/yum.conf. Open the file with your favorite text editor and change this "gpgcheck=1" to "gpgcheck=0".

Now while staying in the "RPMS" folder do this

#yum localinstall openoffice*.rpm

Now go to the "desktop-integration" folder which resides in "RPMS" folder and do this

#yum localinstall openoffice.org-redhat-menus-2.1-5.noarch.rpm

Switch on gpgcheck in /etc/yum.conf

Thats all!

Next morning when I returned to my desktop, openoffice was downgraded to openoffice 2.0! Well I have yum running as a service which updates my system every night. It seems like yum does not know that openoffice 2.1 is later then 2.0, so it downgraded my openoffice. Anyway I repeated the above procedure and stopped yum from doing anything to my openoffice by adding this line in /etc/yum.conf
exclude=openoffice*

Enjoy!

Cvs and gCvs on Fedora Core 5

2006-06-21T17:32:00.000+05:00

This is to discourage Fraz from reading my blog:) Anyway recently I installed CVS server and client on a customers Fedora Core 5 system.

As for the server I followed my own quick Howto from here . The differences were that Fedora Core 5 doesent have xinetd super server by default. I installed it like this
# yum install xinetd.

Secondly the cvsadmin link in my howto is broken. So I managed to download a working rpm from here

As for the cvs client I used gCvs. Its rpm can be downloaded and installed from here. Though the installation went fine but due to some GCC compatibilty it would not run. For that I had to install some libstdc related packages. This is all you have to do for yum enabled systems:
# yum install compat-libstdc++-33 compat-libstdc++-296

Thats all :)

E government in Pakistan

2006-06-02T03:22:00.000+05:00

Recently, I have been visiting a lot of Pakistani government web sites. Some of the sites are quite remarkable. The only problems seems to be the regular maintenance. It is not as frequent as it should be. For example Pakistan Post is comprehensive and well laid out but was last update on February 17th,2006. Also, the broken links leave a very bad impression like searching for a postal code of a specific place lands you on a "IIS error page".

On the other hand, the official government portal is pretty boring. You cannot really find much on it besides an abundance of forms. A lot of these web sites are undertaken by Electronic government directorate.

Interestingly, according to United Nation Pakistan's literacy rate is less than 50%. This ofcourse includes people who can only read and write their names in Urdu. This at the same time implies that people who can read and write English fluently in Pakistan is not greater then 20. So all these web sites in English are useless for common man. The joint efforts made by EGD and curlp can make a difference. Curlp is a research organization at my ex university NUCES, developing Urdu fonts recently released under GPL. There is a seperate page for their joint efforts but as usuall that too was last updated on 18th August 2004. :)

Checking network connectivity from a linux box

2006-05-27T17:41:00.000+05:00

I wrote a small bash script to check network connectivity from a linux box using ping. This solutions is available over the net so I am just reiterating it.

#!/bin/bash
if ( ping -c 1 -w 1 hostname/ip) &>/dev/null; then
echo "hostname/ip is up"
else
echo "hostname/ip is down"
fi

All you have to do is replace the hostname/ip with the system to whom you want to check your network connectivity. Beware! if you are using hostname, the ping will show the host down, even if it cannot resolve the hostname.

Apache compiled in modules

2006-05-23T18:43:00.000+05:00

A couple of days back I was trying to check confiugrations apache was built with. You can use "httpd -l" to check the list of compiled in modules.

Extraction of Nokia nfb file

2006-03-18T23:57:00.000+05:00

I recently lost my six months old nokia 6230i. 29th birthday gift from my wife. Besides the emotional attachment, I had a huge phone book with almost 300 entries in it. I am a sort of person who relies heavily on the phone book. Luckily a week before I lost it, I started using PC Nokia suite provided with the mobile. While getting a hang of it, I took a back up of my phone book. The back up created a file with extension of .nfb.

I didnt know how to extract the phone book from the .nfb file. Googling took me to http://www.dryfish.org/projects/nfb.html. From this website I downloaded some python scripts http://www.dryfish.org/projects/nfb-scripts.zip.

The zip file contains three python files namely: createnfb.py, nfb.py and nfbfile.py.

After struggling with the files for some time, I was able to extract my phone book from the backup nfb file on linux.

This is how I did it:
#./nfbfile.py -xv nameofnfbfile.nfb /PHONEBOOK > resultant_file

The resultant_file was perfectly viewable using the "cat" command but if opened using some text editor it would show a lot of "#" characters. These "#"'s were between each character. I resolved it by simply replacing all "#" with nothing (put nothing in the replace field).

The file looked something like this before

2#0#8# #0#2#6#0#6#8#1#8#1##0#1#8#3#9##_#C#O

Using openoffice's find and replace option I transformed it

200 PIT_CONTACT 208 +92514431878 202 Sufi 210 03037778319
200 PIT_CONTACT 202 Abbas Butt Com 208 03008555188

Each line seems to specify one entry in the contact book. Each entry has different fileds and its values. Each field vaule is preeceded by a three digit code representing the type of field. For example the name field is preceeded by 202.

Using this file, I could temporary look up contacts in my lost mobiles phonebook. Last month I bought a new nokia mobile 6020. This is a scaled down version of 6230i. I thought I would be able to directly restore my phonebook (nfb) to my new mobile. However I was yet to face more challanges :)

Whenever I tried to retrieve the phonebook using nokia PC suite, it exited giving some error. Again google came in handy. I found that Nokia PC suite provides two options for taking backups. One option creates nfb file type and the other nfc file type. Obviously nfb doesent work across different phones. Now Nokia has updated its PC suite a so that when you take a backup it creates both nfb and nfc files.

Therefore I opened the phone book file using vim (you could also use ultraedit). Using vertical text editing, I formated the file so that I was left with only two comma seperated fields. The file started looking something like this

Sufi,03037778319
Abbas Butt Com,03008555188

I named the file with a .csv extension and imported it into Outlook express address book. I chose the first field to represent name and the second to be telephone number. After I got this done I syncronised my mob with Outlook express address book. Its an option which is self explanatory in Nokia PC Suite.

mySQL

2006-03-08T16:44:00.000+05:00

A lot of open source web based applications use mysql as a backend database. Almsot all of them require to create a mysql database and a mysql user who has full access to the database. Following is a quick tutorial on doing all that. This assumes that the db and application are on the same machine.

1) Connect to mysql as root user and create database
#mysqladmin -h localhost -u root -ppassword create databasename
Replace password by mysql root users password. Replace the databasename with the name you want to give your database.

2) Add a mysql user

Connect to mysql as root user
#mysql -h localhost -u root -ppassword
Replace password by mysql root users password.

mysql> USE mysql;
Switch to mysql database which holds the user information.

mysql> INSERT INTO user (Host, User, Password, Select_priv) VALUES ('localhost', 'username', password('password'), 'Y');
This adds the desired user name and allow him to connect from localhost. Replace the username and password in italic to the actual user name and password you want to assign.

GRANT ALL ON databasename.* TO username;
Give full access on databasename to username.

mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
Required everytime GRANT command is used.

Preamble TDMA Explaination

2006-02-23T17:18:00.000+05:00

Here is a mini TDMA Explaination that my wife and I came up while understanding preamble based TDMA for a NS-2 project.

Preamble based TDMA:

There are different time slots to send and recv data
NS only supports single hop preamble based tdma
Each node has a dedicated subslot to broadcast the destination id of the outgoing packet
Other nodes listen in the preamble and record the time slot to recv data
There is a separate preamble and data transmission phase

Lets us consider 4 nodes where:

Node 1 wants to send data to node 3

Node 2 wants to send data to node 1

Node 3 wants to send data to node 2 and

Node 4 has no data to send

Preamble phase

According to point 3, during the preamble phase each node will put the destination id of the outgoing packet in its dedicated slot in the preamble

According to point 4, each node will record the time slots in which it has to recv data in the preamble phase

Node 1 recorded that it has data to recv in slot 2

Node 2 recorded that it has data to recv in slot 3 and

Node 3 recorded that it has data to recv in slot 1

Data transmission phase

Node 1 will put the data to send in slot 1

Node 2 will put the data to send in slot 2

Node 3 will put the data to send in slot 3

Hence proving point 1 i.e.

Node 1 used slot 1 to send data and slot 2 to recv data

Node 2 used slot 2 to send data and slot 3 to recv data

Node 3 used slot 3 to send data and slot 1 to recv data

Access samba share in windows domain environment

2006-02-22T15:07:00.000+05:00

Here is how to access a samba/window's share using smbclient if you are in a windows domain environment. In this example I will access a windows share from linux using a windows domain user account.

Windows availabe share: testshare
This is name of the share which is made available by "right-click" methodology on a folder in windows.

Windows machine IP: w.x.y.z

Windows domain name: TESTDOMAIN

Windows domain username: testuser

#smbclient '\\w.x.y.z/testshare' -W TESTDOMAIN -U testuser

Upon entering this command you would be asked for your testuser account's password. Once you give the password you will be logged in to your share with this prompt

smb: \>

Type help to see what commands are avialable.

Installing Yum On RHEL 3

2006-01-21T17:59:00.000+05:00

I had a RHEL 3 WS at my work place. It irritated me terribly as the machine was never updated and hence having very old versions of softwares. Therefore I decided to upgrade my RHEL WS 3 using yum.

From my work place, internet is only accessible through http proxy, that too with authentication. I tried using up2date by creating an account at redhat's site but it didn’t work( I thought you could update one machine using your redhat account).

The first problem I encountered was that there is no public repository to update RHEL machines i.e you have to pay for it. After googling for a while I discovered that CentOS offers public repositories and they work with RHEL 3 as well.

I downloaded latest yum rpm, installed it and configured it to use centOS repo. Every time I ran yum, it failed. It couldn’t find repomd.xml file in the CentOS repositories I provided in yum.conf.

After struggling for some time, I discovered that I was accessing older version of repos through the latest yum. Therefore I had to use an older version of yum with RHEL 3, since old repos do not support xml based updating.

Now I have a fully updated system. Following is the brief summary of the steps I took

1) Since I was behind a proxy I had to export environment variable http_proxy.

2) Downloaded yum-2.0.8-1.noarch.rpm from
http://linux.duke.edu/projects/yum/download/2.0/yum-2.0.8-1.noarch.rpm

3) Installed it using
rpm –i yum-2.0.8-1.noarch.rpm

4) Configured my yum.conf to look like this:

[main]
cachedir=/var/cache/yum
debuglevel=2
logfile=/var/log/yum.log
pkgpolicy=newest
distroverpkg=redhat-release
tolerant=1
exactarch=1

#base]
#ame=Red Hat Linux $releasever - $basearch - Base
#aseurl=http://mirror.dulug.duke.edu/pub/yum-repository/redhat/$releasever/$basearch/
[base]
name=CentOS-$releasever - Base
baseurl=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/3/os/i386/
gpgcheck=1

[updates]
name=Red Hat Linux $releasever - Updates
baseurl=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/3/updates/i386/
gpgcheck=1

5) Downloaded the gpg key for CentOS rpm packages from
http://mirror.centos.org/centos/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-3

6) Imported the key like this:
rpm --import RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-3

7) Run “yum –y update”. Now Sit back and enjoy seeing your system being updated.

Enjoy!

2006-01-03T15:00:00.000+05:00

I have been desperately trying for the past few months to share my email on winodws and Linux using thunderbird. I normally dont use the "Local folders" for my email accounts in TB. I always create separate folder for all my accounts. I thought all I would have to do is create the initial setup in windows and then mount that folder from Linux and configure Linux TB to use the mounted directory. Some how it didnt succeed until I found this this URL:

http://www.pcquest.com/content/linux/2004/104050805.asp

One tip though: If on Linux you are using TB from a non root user you must make sure that the user has write access to the mounted windows directory.

2005-09-28T06:14:00.000+05:00

I was flying back to Pakistan after spending probational period of my new job in Saudi Arabia. This was my first time in Saudi Arabia since I did my Umrah in my childhood with my family. I had just gone through one of the worst time of my life. I just got married a month back and now here I was with no friends, no family and no wife. There is a strange kind of pressure on you when you are in a totally new place. I remember last year when I went to Singapore, it didn't take me more then a few hours to get used to the place. Here in Saudia things are really weird. People who belong to this place are not friendly and the rest are more concerned with the amount of money they are making.

Finally the neverending three months were over,I had successfully completed my probation and was ready to go home to get my work visa. The day I was supposed to fly I had a call from my immediate boss asking me to send my passport to get an extenstion to my visit visa. I obviously didnt agree and got into a very heated arguement with him. Anyway my flight was via Riyadh ie dammam, Riyadh, Isalambad. I was so happy that I was going to see my loved ones and ofcourse my favourite city, Islamabad. Well my wife always scream at me "Babar why is it always you":). At the immigration the officer said or to be more exact shouted something at me and threw my passort in a corner on his table. He was speaking arabic so I could not understand what was he screaming about. He asked me to get away from the counter was all I understood. Being in a jolly mood I decided to walk around a little and check out stuff hanging on the airport walls. Suddenly his ugly voice fell on my ears again. This time what I understood was that he wanted me to stand in a corner like a caught criminal. By now I had realized that things were not right but I was still hoping for the best. Ten minutes later another officer, who by the way was just sitting next to where I was standing came up to me with my passport in his hand. This time I was lucky, he could speak a few words of English.

The computer printed Saudi visa on my passport had information in English and Arabic. There was a column on the passport saying in english "validity: 3 months" which I thought was the maximum duration I could stay in the kingdom on this visa. It turned out that it was the time in which I could utilize the visa to come into the country from the date it was issued. The maximum duration allowed on this visa was written in arabic and it was just one month. I really wonder why they have information mixed up in two languages like this.Conclusion was I had jumped my visa for more then 2 months. The officer with his limited vocabulary explained this to me and didnt bother to tell me what to do about it. He gave me back my passport and asked me to just go. Go where? He didnt seem to give a damn.

At this time the first thing I realized was that I had checked in my luggage from dammam for Paksitan and it was supposed to be transferred automatically at Riyadh. One of the porters did tell me that you *can* get it back but how and where was the question on my mind. I spent two hours on Riyadh *International* airport running up and down trying to look for some one who could guide me in english to how to get my luggage back. While looking for my luggage I decide upon my next course of action. I had to fly back to dammam and send my passport to jeddah office so that they can get me an "exit" so I could fly out of this prison. Eventually I met a Pakistani worker (PIA I think) who told me how to get my luggage back. My luggage was lying in a corner which had a board on top of it saying "Unclaimed luggage".:) My flight back to dammam was seven hours later so I had something to eat and went to sleep in the waiting lounge of the local flight departure area.

I did fly back to Islamabad with out any hurdles two days later. Welcome to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.:)

2005-09-27T05:01:00.000+05:00

I think for days about how to write about an event which occured and is worth mentioning on the blog.After all that thinking, laziness overcomes and I wait for next such event:).

Muneer (Singapore friend) named this laziness of mine as "inertia" :) last time I went holidaying at his place. I left Singapore in 1995 October after living there for six years and spending one of the most thriving teens one can have. I did my O'levels from "Balestier Hill Technical School" in 1992 and A'levels from "St. Andrew's Junior College" in 1994. During this time I made some real good friends. I made an effort to stay in touch with them. Internet made this effortless. Su Liang(Jonathan) a friend from my O'levels group came to karachi and gave me a call. I was in islamabad those days and could not fly to karachi to see him. While talking on the phone he told me Wee Tat(Jack) another O'levels group friend was getting married soon. So I told him that please let me know about the dates well in advance so that I can try to make it. It was just one of those things you say without giving it a thought. A few months later I had an email from him announcing his wedding date. I was working in comcept those days and definitely could not afford it though I had around 15 holidays to avail. My Olevels group(5 of them) pulled in money to get me my air ticket. It was lovely. I got Kasiviswanathan (Alevels friend) to do the visa stuff for me:). Yes, eventually after 10 years I flew to Singapore to attend my friends wedding.
There are zillions of details about that trip but would not want to bore anyone with them.The simple conclusion was that good friends is one of the biggest blessing of God. I stayed in Singapore for two weeks and Munner(another Alevels friend) for all this time took a leave from his work to keep me company. I also stayed at his place for this period of time and enjoyed remarkable hospitality from him and his wife. They have a lovely daughter (mashAllah) may God bless her by the name of Xiena.

The reason for this post is that I have an anonymous message saying that I havent posted for two months. Hmmm so people do read this. The reason for not posting once again was that I was back in Islamabad,Pakistan with my family and friends. This time I flew to Saudi Arabia with a proper work visa ...yup a work visa of a labour:). Reason being my company could not get me an engineer visa. Saudi arabia is a weird place, you dont just come here on a work visa. You come here on a work visa plus your profession and that profession decides what level of services you can avail.During my work visa medical checkup in Pakistan I also discovered that I am diabetic. Something I have to live with for the rest of my life.

I am in Saudi arabia now and staying in a one room furnished apartment. My company is trying to get my visa converted to an engineer one so that I can get my wife here. Since all my documents are not with me I am not going to office these days. That also means that for the past one week I have been stuck in this apartment. At times I really get frusrated, come on sometimes its days before I get to have a good conversation with some one. I don't really feel like making friends now I just want to hold on to all my old ones. I sleep at around fajr (4 in the morning) and get up at 12 noon. I wish I could just hybernate so all this time would pass.

Saudi Arabia has disappointed me terribly. Muslims normally look up to them since they are the guardians of ka'ba. These people are biased, rude, arrogant and corrupt. I will elaborate on this some other time cause I am too tired to continue writing.

2005-06-18T17:38:00.000+05:00

Its been alomst a month since I got another laptop from my company I am working for. It's a toshiba Satellite P25-S670. Who ever used it before me screwed up its battery resulting in a stand by time of only 25 minutes. One more thing I really dislike about it is its weight, almost 11 pounds. The rest of the specifications are good, especilly the 17 inch wide screen and surround sound system makes it perfect to watch movies :)

So far I have not installed any linux on it. I tried to put gentoo on it but I gave up half way :). So far its been running windows xp with service pack2. I did partition it to house linux ,infact this time I have been thinking of having multiple linux installations on it. Here is a lay out of my linux partitions.
hda1 /boot (primary)
hda2 c: (primary)
hda3 extended
hda4 d: (logical)
hda5 swap (logical)
hda6 first linux (logical)
hda7 second linux (primary)

I plan to make windows loader as my primary boot loader.I would be boot chaining by making images of /boot hda1 and /boot hda7 and placing their entries in boot.ini. There is a good possibility that I might not be able to boot my second linux parition becuase some hard disks do not allow the loader to be out of the first 1024 cylinders.

I started downloading Fedora Core 4 .iso files the day its release was announced. I normally use Download accelerator on windows to download such files.The system at ARAMCO had very little space left on the c drive. The space was so little that download accelerator could not join the smaller files it splits the acutall donwload into. I some how created the extra space. Download accelerator took longer to join the files then it took to download the files:)Fedora have changed from md5sum to sha1sum to check file integrity. Well I found a windows version for sha1sum here.

I have two cd burning softwares installed at the office. One is Brun4free other is Deepburner. I wasted around four cdr's while trying to burn the first iso file. I have been using both softwares for burning isos to cd with out a problem. Some how the software would abort at some stage of the burning with the message "WRITER ERROR [HARDWARE ERROR (LOGICAL UNIT
COMMUNICATION CRC ERROR". After googling for a while I decided to decrease the write speed from 16x to 8x. The problem persisted. My first successful burn was when I reduced the write speed to 4x which was very very slow. Even at 4x it failed once or twice. Anyway with a lot of pain I finally burnt all the four isos successfully.

I normally do not believe in media checking the cds but that day I just felt a tendancy to do that. The first cd failed the test and so did the rest. Since I was sure that the files were intact after downloading because of sha1sum and the cd burning softwares didnt give any errors I went ahead with the installation. Strange enough the installation went pretty smooth.The installation process is pretty same as the previous versions of fedora.

I did expect that my nvidia GeForce and winmodem would not work out of the box but I was sad to see that my sound card(82801EB/ER ICH5/ICH5R AC'97) wasnt producing any sound.:( This have happened to me a few times on previous fedora versions as well. You have to play around with alsa mixer settings to get sound. This time it was a check box saying external amplifier or something. Checking it gave me sound :) So ALSA is doing a great job.

I have downloaded some winmodem drivers and the nvidia driver for linux. InshAllah will try to install them tomorrow and continue writing my experience of fedora core 4 on toshiba P25-S670.

2005-06-08T17:59:00.000+05:00

Women rights sounds rubbish to me especially when west propagates it in muslim countries. It seems to be just another cospiracy theory. Some thing interesting which I observerd is that the west itself does the reverse of what it spreads in the east .For example there is a lot of hype in the media on banning women from being a part of combat field in US army. On the other hand I just read about how proud Pakistanis are for allowing women to become fighter pilots:).

2005-06-07T18:47:00.000+05:00

We have some new NetApp FAS980 boxes which came in couple of weeks back. Today we did some performance testing on it . We created a volume on the filer and mounted it under nfs on seven linux nodes of a cluster. Then we used lmdd to simultaneously write files to the filer.lmdd is a cool utility to do this kind of benchmarking. It works like dd but its output gives timing statistics after completing. Could not really find much documentation on lmdd except the man pages hosted on its homepage.
We used psh to run lmdd simultaneously on the cluster nodes. PSH is part of xCAT(Extreme Cluster Administration Toolkit). It seems like its underlying architecture is ssh but you can specify node range(I guess xCAT specific) and it runs simultaneously on all the nodes given. hmmm interesting.

2005-06-06T14:27:00.000+05:00

Just discovered how to use thunderbird if you are accessing internet through a proxy. Just follow this link.

2005-05-30T19:43:00.000+05:00

Well since I got my new toshiba laptop with 17 inch screen I have been trying to watch movies. I wonder what is wrong with me. I cannot enjoy movies anymore. I watched "Interview with the vampire"and "Minority Reports". Both the movies are supposed to be blockbusters but I really had a hard time watching these movies to completion. It is so hard to keep my concentration in the movie.

Today what I did after work was to go to www.raaga.com and listened to all my favourite old amitabh songs. It was a pleasure.

"Sara Zamana from yaarana" which had Amitabh bachan all ligthed up.:) On his dressings boundary there were small twinkling lights. Reminded me a lot about my childhood in UAE. Well still love big B's style. My wife often laughes at me "What do u like about his style".
"Rootya hoay aatay haain sub from muqadar ka sikandar". Here amitabh is on his motor bike and feeling on top of the world. I just loved to sing this song when I used to have my honda 125 in islamabad. Well all this brings fraz to my mind. So i smsed him asking him "Muree jaaana hai".

Listening to these songs really cheered me up and reduced my agony of being away from my loved ones. The amount of fame Allah have given to Amitabh just amazez me.

2005-05-28T18:28:00.000+05:00

Well seems like its been years since I posted. Things have changed: I am a married man working with ARA Systems who are basically contractors for Saudi Aramco. ARA Systems sells Network Appliance storage to aramco and I am one of their support engineers.

Since network appliance is completely proprietary I would not be able to talk much about it over here. I have recently passed their first level of certification known as NACA(NetApp Certified Storage Associate).The good part is that I get to play with real huge data centers with all kind of refrigerator look alike machines. Their network is huge running on ethernet,atm and fiber. I do get to play with all kind of operating systems as well because the machines accessing these storage run on different operating systems.

Linux as usuall is and inshAllah will always be my favourite operating system. They do have it here(Red Hat mostly) but its not really used as a desktop operating system. Micorsoft has a very strong influence here. Just today there was an announcement saying mozilla firefox would be removed from all desktops since its not their standard and has security flaws. Sounded a bit weird to me.

At last I read about open source on an islamic website. It is a book review done by an Egyptian journalist. I have been thinking if open source can be explored from an islamic point of view. I do know that khilafat people claim that patents are totally non islamic. Maybe if I get some time I can try and write something on it.

2004-10-05T11:02:00.000+05:00

At last found another thing I have been looking for, once again thanks to hasnain. Using fedora core with thunderbird always had this problem that when ever there was a new mail it never alerted me like in windows you have that system tray icon telling you about the new mail. Khair, hasnain found the extension for that and it works.:)
Here is the url : http://moztraybiff.mozdev.org/
enjoy!

2004-09-15T15:22:00.000+05:00

Here is how i configured b2c2 (skystar2) card on fedora core 2 linux (standard out of the box). We were availing this service from their resellers gerry's net pakistan.I have to let everyone know that this was only possible cause of my very good friend hasnain (hasnain@iinix.com)

These r the steps i followed to make it work.
#modporbe skystar2
#modprobe stv0299

I downloaded the dvb utilitis package from www.linuxtv.org (linuxtv-dvb-apps-1.x.x).You dont need to download the drivers cause b2c2 driver is availabe in kernel 2.6.I then ran a script provided in the package to create the dvb interface the filename was something like MAKEDEV.sh.You have to add a group by the name of video b4 running this script.
#addgroup video
#./MAKEDEV.sh

szap is another utility provided in the linyxtv-dvb-app package.Then i use szap to lock the frequecny by issuing the command
#szap opensky
the opensky entry in channels.conf was this
opensky:11449:v:2:27500:0:0:0:0
You have to keep szap running .

dvbnet is also another utility provided in linyxtv-dvb-app package.After this i use dvbnet to bring up the interface with the pid given to me by opensky
#dvbnet -p 3010
This create a network interface by the name of dvb0_0

After bringing up the interface i use ifconfig to bring up the interface with the appropriate ip and hw address like this(the ip address 192.168.239.239 i got this from the windows machine
i was running the b2c2 card on)
#ifconfig dvb0_0 netmask 255.255.255.0 hw ether

well then i connect my dial up and login to sdr.eutelsat.net, put the opensky proxy in my browser and enjoy opensky services.

Commercial support is available: babar@copyleft.com.pk

2004-08-02T16:57:00.000+05:00

Installed cvs on red hat 9.
Quick Setup Of CVS Repository

Assumptions:
1.Red Hat Linux is installed
2.CVS rpm is installed (RPM is available on Red Hat CD if not installed)

Needed:
1.CVS Administration tool
Get the source file (.tar.gz format)from http://freshmeat.net/projects/cvsadmin
Extract
#tar -zxvf cvsadmin-x.x.x
#cd cvsadmin-x.x.x
type
# ./configure
type
# make
2.Create a user by the name of cvs using the following command
# useradd cvs

Repository Installation
1.Login in as root
2.Create repository using the following command
# cvs -d /home/cvsname init
The Directory can be created anywhere. cvsname can be replaced by any name you want to give your cvs root direcory. Normally cvsroot is used. After you have done this go to the directory you have created using the following command
# cd /home/cvsname
There must be a directory by the name of CVSROOT there. If its not there you have done something wrong so go back to steup 1 and start again.:)
3.Type
# export CVSROOT=/home/cvsname

4.Change owner and group of repository using the following command
# chown –R cvs.cvs /home/cvsname

5.Now to make cvs work on contemporary linux systems you have to use xinetd. Here is what you have to do
Save a config file in /etc/xinetd.d called cvspserver, (where the last line tells it the names(can be multiple) of your repositories):

service cvspserver
{
socket_type = stream
protocol = tcp
wait = no
user = root
passenv =
server = /usr/bin/cvs
server_args = --allow-root=/home/pauljohn/cvsroot -- allow-root=/home/pauljohn/cvsmisc pserver -f
}
Restart xinetd service by using the following command
# /etc/init.d/xinetd restart

Add User
1.Type
#cvsadmin add
Where username is the name of the user (with out the <>). You will be prompted to answer some simple questions. When asked for the system user to be used enter the user we created i.e cvs.

Thats all !

2004-07-31T20:01:00.000+05:00

Well here is how to install yum on a out of the box red hat 9. Make sure u r logged in as root.
Run all these commands on shell.
1) rpm -Uvh http://download.fedoralegacy.org/redhat/9/updates/i386/gnupg-1.2.1-9.i386.rpm

2) rpm -ivh http://download.fedora.us/fedora/redhat/9/i386/RPMS.stable/yum-2.0.3-0.fdr.1.rh90.noarch.rpm 3)edit /etc/yum.conf and delete everything in it and copy this in there

# See the yum.conf(5) man page for information the syntax of this file,
# including failover setup.

[main]
cachedir=/var/cache/yum
debuglevel=2
logfile=/var/log/yum.log
pkgpolicy=newest
distroverpkg=redhat-release
tolerant=1
exactarch=1
exclude=kernel*

[base]
name=Red Hat Linux $releasever - $basearch - Base
baseurl=http://download.fedora.us/fedora/redhat/$releasever/$basearch/yum/os/
gpgcheck=1

[updates]
name=Red Hat Linux $releasever - $basearch - updates
baseurl=http://download.fedora.us/fedora/redhat/$releasever/$basearch/yum/updates/
gpgcheck=1

4) rpm --import http://www.fedoralegacy.org/FEDORA-LEGACY-GPG-KEY
Here once I had a system whcih was giving me some key problem so i did this to make it work
rpm --import /usr/share/rhn/RPM-GPG-KEY

5) yum update

Now sit back relax and enjoy. After it downloads the headers it will ask if it can install all the
required rpms. Press y and go to sleep.When you wake up ur system should be fully updated.
For more help on yum do man yum.

2004-05-27T10:05:00.000+05:00

Been quiet some time since I posted any message. At last after months of research we have been able to make our b2c2 card work in linux with open sky satellite internet service.
Last night Hasnain and I were able to make the card work on my personal machine whcih is running a Fedora Core 2. At around 1 in the night when we set up everything and were givinig it a try it just worked. Both of us were so shocked that we didnt believe it in the first time. I am seriously thinking of writing a howto b2c2 with open sky service.

2004-04-08T12:51:00.000+05:00

The dvb card skystar 2 is here but we cant put it to use. Well thats the problem with open source stuff. All the drivers and softwares are released only for windows:P. Sajjad have stopped working on it. Hasnain and I still plan to give it a last try.
Well in comcept I am stuck with .net platform. Have to create new graphical user interface for our Payphone Network management system.

2004-04-01T15:22:00.000+05:00

Ok the dvb card is here at last. The box was nice. We are still testing it with our old linux PI machine. We are putting it on kernel 2.6. Well to be straight its not working right now. I have mailed the company for any support they can provide. The card is supported on linux so should be only a matter of time.
The decision to set up an ISA server until this cards come was superb. Internet bandwidth being consumed through our dsl connection has diminished remarkably. The only thing bothering me is that, in case, the dial up disconnects you have to maunually set it up to serve the clients thorugh dish.
Never in my life i ever thought that running a business could be so stressful. Its always on your mind. Your mind is full of questions like "Why dont we do this? That should be better?". Even in your sleep you are thinking how to make it better. Recently Sufi in his dream got stuck in STP 2 elevator after having a meeting with PSEB:).

2004-03-30T16:10:00.000+05:00

Well the dvb card is here today.The TNT people came to deliver the card in the morning but our beloved Toru sent it back cause he didnt have change:). I have been running after this card for months:P . I guess will play with the card in the evening.
The only good thing about me starting this blog is that my good old friend sharfoo urf usman khan have also started one, after seeing mine. http://khanusman@blogspot.com

2004-03-29T17:20:00.000+05:00

Had a very tough weekend. It seems like that i dont have weekends anymore. Its like I am working 24-7-365. Since our dvb card from Germany havent arrived yet, Hasnain and I decided to set up ISA server using the pentanet card I borrowed from Hamayun. We ended up spending whole of saturday night in iinix trying to set up that shitty server. Guess how many times we had to reboot that machine. The minimum would be 30 times and maximum could be upto around 50 times. I really wonder why people say that its easy to setup things on windows. Anyway we were glad, when in the morning at around 5:30 we were able to make our squid gateway work through that ISA server.
Somethings were still left. We had to set it up without a monitor, mouse and keyboard. We were planning to use VNC. Both of us were too tired to do anything else so we left for home and came back next day in the afternoon.After completing the setup we wrote a brief document on how to monitor that server using VNC.
After that Hasnain and I thought of having some entertainment. I took my bros car(as usuall) and went to pick up Fraz from his place. We were planning to dine out. Fraz had already took his dinner. All three of us went to Melody Food Park. There Hasnain and I ate chiken handi from Jehangir. It was around 9 30 and we wanted to have coffee at some cool place. Isalambad doesent have much places so we ended up at coolza. The coffee was good and so was some the english music they were playing. Came home around 11 and passed out.:)
I am worried about my prayers these days. There always comes a time when i just stop praying 4 times a day. I really dont really understand what goes wrong?

2004-03-25T16:33:00.000+05:00

Been quiet a few days since i posted.I guess not used to this. Well at the last i have been able to get a dvb card shipped to me from Germany. Hope the card reaches us soon.
We have finally been able to tap two more commercial plazas in I-8 markaz. The plaza's are under construction and we will lay our ethernet cable network in it and provide internet to the offices. InshAllah we hope that it is going to be a good investment.
Havent been feeling very well recently. It seem like my immune system is upside down. Struggling to get well asap.

2004-03-19T15:44:00.000+05:00

Well its been a few days since i posted anything. I am not used to this bloggiing:P. Khair the dvb cards r still stuck.
The ebay ones we have made a dd and posted it to him. Now he will ship it to sufyans sisters house in states. Then we will think of how to get them here.
We are thinking of getting another dvb card from sky star offical web site. Its drivers are supported by the linux kernel.
Recently I have been looking in to making nylon socks server work through another sockes server just like squid can work throguh another proxy.

2004-03-16T12:28:00.000+05:00

Well the dvb card issue is still not solved. Hasnain is not feeling well, which really demotivats me. Allah karay jaldee say theek ho jayeah.
Waiting desperatly for Pakistan India match today.One of my colleague got an external tv output device:). Will set it up at lunch time.

2004-03-15T12:22:00.000+05:00

Went to muree with my good old partner fraz. Had a wonderful time driving to muree at 10 30 in the night.
Well all my trips with fraz are just out of this world.
Well the dvb card issue is stuck since hasnains cousin couldnt find it in dubai market. I have ordered 2 cards from ebay and have to decided to pay for it through demand draft.
Really wish that can make these things a bit faster. Who says that its a global village :P

2004-03-14T15:12:00.000+05:00

Well last night had a very hard time purchasing a dvb card online. We wanted to buy a technisat dvb card online but we were having problems paying for it. We have found out that u cant creat a paypal account from pakistan:P. Eventually Syed Mohammad Hasnain Jaffar Kazmi used his pr(personal relations) and talked to his cousin in dubai and asked him to buy one from retail shop and fedex it to us. Now we are hoping that we will get the dvb card by tuesday and get it up and running in a few days.

2004-03-13T15:54:00.000+05:00

Well people this is first time ever i am blogging so i dont know wat to say. The only thing i can say is that yesterday after months for the first time i have been able to make msn voice chat work behind nat(linux iptables). Its a great achievement for me at least:)