rm -rf * :-O

Went home for diwali hols and the moment i entered my room , the first thing i did is to switch on the comp. I have already taken a resolution that no tech , no php , no linux for the next 5 days [ resolutions are meant be broken , you know :) ] . So instead of booting the comp in linux , i booted the comp in windows ( i had no clue what i was going to do in windows ) .

My sister had stored a few harry potter movies which i was in no mood to see.After some 5-10 minutes of arbit clicking , i decided windows is not for me :-). I noticed a folder called books which was the only useful thing for me in my comp apart from the linux. But reading a book will make me break the resolution. Though reluctant , i started with the "Unix Haters Book". When i started , i never had an idea how great the book will be .

The book will make anyone hate unix ( this includes linux also ) and i am not an exception. That too even after the first chapter , i started to realize the drawbacks [this is a better way to say hate :-) ] of shell , the most powerful and the tool which i liked the most in Unix or Linux.

So here is the details of the first chapter in short. It mostly blasted a singlr command "rm". Now i realise the deadliest command one can ever type is "rm".

The first thing i liked in the book is the way they described unix.
“ Who would have thought it: Unix, the hacker’s pornography.”
I have no clue why the author mentioned Unix as hacker's pornography , but i seriously liked the guts of the author to say something like this . I did realize that this book is good after reading the foreword ( very few books can do this ) . After reading the first chapter , the author made sure that whenever i type rm , i will surely remember this book.

The first chapter started with the quote saying
“Two of the most famous products of Berkeley are LSD and Unix. I
don’t think that this is a coincidence.”
—Anonymous

Another chapter said this
The most horrifying thing about Unix is that, no matter how many
times you hit yourself over the head with it, you never quite manage
to lose consciousness. It just goes on and on.
—Patrick Sobalvarro
The attack on “rm” gave many real life-horror stories .
“rm” Is Forever
A series of exchanges on the Usenet news group alt.folklore.computers illustrates our case:
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 90
From: djones@megatest.uucp (Dave Jones)
Subject: rm *
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers2
Anybody else ever intend to type:
% rm *.o
And type this by accident:
% rm *>o
Now you’ve got one new empty file called “o”, but plenty of room
for it!
Actually, you might not even get a file named “o” since the shell documen-
tation doesn’t specify if the output file “o” gets created before or after the
wildcard expansion takes place. The shell may be a programming lan-
guage, but it isn’t a very precise one.

In my comp i got a file named o , seems the output file gets created after the wild card expansion takes place.

Here is the next real life story
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 90 15:51 CST
From: ram@attcan.uucp
Subject: Re: rm *
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
I too have had a similar disaster using rm. Once I was removing a file
system from my disk which was something like /usr/foo/bin. I was in /
usr/foo and had removed several parts of the system by:
% rm -r ./etc
% rm -r ./adm
…and so on. But when it came time to do ./bin, I missed the period.
System didn’t like that too much.
Unix wasn’t designed to live after the mortal blow of losing its /bin direc-
tory. An intelligent operating system would have given the user a chance to
recover (or at least confirm whether he really wanted to render the operat-
ing system inoperable).
The third case is really really important and a dangerous one .
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 90 10:40 CST
From: kgg@lfcs.ed.ac.uk (Kees Goossens)
Subject: Re: rm *
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers
Then there’s the story of the poor student who happened to have a
file called “-r” in his home directory. As he wanted to remove all his
non directory files (I presume) he typed:
% rm *
… And yes, it does remove everything except the beloved “-r” file…
Luckily our backup system was fairly good.

Now i stopped reading the book. I realised that i will surely start a Windows User Group , Trichy if i complete the book. :P .

Waiting for FC6 . : -(

The whole sun lab is waiting for FC6 . People even wann to add a cron so that the download starts at tomorrow 6 pm automatically . I saw the pre release version in balli's comp and MY GOD !!! . FC surely rocks . Some of the nice features which my friends told me are .

1. In built XGL features with no need for drivers and other requirements . The first thing balli showed me in his comp is XGL. So FC6 is surely going to rock .

2. Yum speed increased. Seems the whole yum in re written in C. Though i donn know whether this is true or not , but this will be a great feature if implemented . Currently yum in fully in python and it is a bit slow :-( .

3. Faster boot up . Seems they have made the readahead early process better. So this maybe the reason for faster boot.

Here is the techinical details of the new features of FC6 which i read in a article from fedorasite.

Installer improvements

Fedora Installer in Fedora Core 5 started using the Yum API, and now in this release we have an easy way to access Fedora Extras and connect to custom repositories--even during installation. This makes it much easier for users to access a larger base of useful software packages. Plus, system administrations can now heavily customize their deployments of Fedora using their own custom yum repository using Anaconda or kickstart. Anaconda now uses the Squashfs filesystem to compress and store more software in the images. It also supports IPV6-based networks better, and you can install from Firewire and USB storages devices. Fedora Core 6 is also the first mainstream distribution to add support for Intel-based Macintoshes

Performance boosts

If there is a single major "feature" in Fedora, it would be the extensive performance improvements that this release carries throughout the distribution. Fedora Core and Fedora Extras have been entirely rebuilt on a new glibc that takes advantage of precomputed hash values to boost the performance of dynamic linking very heavily. GNOME 2.16 has a number of performance improvements, including better login time, bonobo speedups, and faster rendering of non-Latin scripts and Cairo graphics. Plus, Nautilus and file chooser saw some improvements, and Evolution IMAP underwent some backend changes. KDE 3.5.4 has a number of new optimizations, as do system-level libraries such as the CUPS printing service and the fontconfig library.

Yum 3.0 increases the performance of the package manager drastically with a new metadata parser written in C. The codebase has gone through a major revamp with a large number of API changes to make yum a better foundation for building applications. These speed improvements reflect on Pirut and Pup, as well.

Desktop effects

Red Hat has been working on AIGLX through the Fedora Rendering Project, and while we did have it as an optional experimental repository for Fedora Core 5, it has now gone through a number of changes to provide easily enabled desktop effects in your Fedora Core 6 desktop. What have Fedora Core 6 development teams been up to? Here's a few of the things they accomplished:

• Unveiled AIGLX as a community-oriented incremental approach to providing a framework for compositing desktops.
• Merged AIGLX framework into Xorg. It is now available as part of Xorg 7.1 release and will be included in Fedora Core 6.
• Xorg has an improved dynamic configuration mechanism and compositing extension is now enabled by default.
• Changed the OpenGL-based compositing window manager Compiz. It will now work on top of AIGLX and has been tweaked to work better with Fedora.
• Installation of Compiz by default in Fedora Core 6. You can enable it by clicking on the appropriate checkboxes in System=> Preferences => Desktop Effects. With capable hardware it will just work without having to configure anything or even logout of the system.

The results are pretty impressive. While some of these effects are pure eye-candy, others have a more practical value--providing a more physical and tangible feel over application windows and virtual desktops. Not to mention the fresh DNA-themed desktop background and the new, more welcoming Firefox browser splash page.

Here are some of the nice backgrounds for FC6. They are really great .

Adobe Photoshop CS2 on Ubuntu !!!

This HOW-TO covers up the whole process of installing Adobe Photoshop CS2 on a Ubuntu box in a few simple steps. This method has been tested only on Ubuntu, but it should work on any other linux flavor.
-What you need?

* A fresh install of Ubuntu Dapper + all the updates
* A Windows box with a fully installed and activated version of Adobe Photoshop CS2

- Fire up a terminal session and type the next commands;

TIP: Instead of using apt-get, you can install them with the Synaptic Package Manager located in the System/Administration menu

1. $ apt-get update

2. $ apt-get install wine and then type “yes”

3. $ wine /*To create the wine file structure*/

4. $ apt-get install recode and then type “yes”

- Then you need to copy all the necessary files from the Windows box;
5. Copy the whole Adobe folder from “c:\Program Files\” to “/home/YOURNAME/.wine/drive_c/Program Files/”

- Now you need to export the registry keys of the Adone Photoshop CS2;
6. In your Windows box, type “regedit” in the command-line and export the whole “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/Software/Adobe/” to “adobe.reg”, then copy it to your your Ubuntu, convert it to ascii with “$ recode ucs-2..ascii adobe.reg”. Afterwards, type “$ wine regedit adobe.reg” to run it with wine.

7. That’s it! Type “$ ./wine –winver winxp “[path to Photoshop]/photoshop.exe” or create a launcher and enjoy Adobe Photoshop CS2 on Ubuntu ;)

Spider SMS up and running

Hope the banner speaks the whole stuff. The spider sms is up and running .

When i started the work , thought the work will be easy and will be done in a two or three days but :-( so many seg faults ( though i have seen more seg faults in my ldtp work ) and handling mysql queries from C literally rapped me . :-( . The work took a long time more than i expected that i had to give the work to spider juniors also . Finally the work is done now . Hereafter we will have a few modifications here and there to make the system work better.

So how does the spider sms work . Hope the following explains everything


Well , now that spider sms server is working fine , ( with a few glitches here and there ) , one can access the time tables , his/her bunk scores and many other nice features using their mob ( for free of course ).

I am happy that i took up this work and finished it ( though is was manas's idea ) . Had a good experience working with juniors . Had to make sure that they are happy with the work they do , that the work is being done , that they get to learn new stuff and of course that they feel that the work is fun etc etc . This is the first work in spider done as a team . All other work are individual efforts . Working in a spider team is as usual FUN .

Now no need to run to the bit room ( next roomie ) to find out the first class. I can as well use spider for this job ;-).

Linux Users on the Rise :-)

The graph shows the details clearly . :-) Hope i dont have to fight again with my frds saying linux is best .