Yajith's Blog

lvm stuff

2011-12-21T00:05:00.002+05:30

note to self

Encountered "Found duplicate PV" warning again, i keep forgetting the solution for some reason. Good KB article is here.

Idea is to filter out everything that has multiple device files leaving only one, and making sure the one that is left is the best one to be used. For example, in a multipath environment filter out everything except the multipath'd device node created by the device-mapper or whichever multipath tool that is used. ( Eg. /dev/emcpowera etc. )

Once the changes are in place pvscan and vgscan can be issued and check the warning appears no longer.

Example filter rule from the current SLES san-boot setup this was tested is below. It filters out everything except /dev/dm-* devices which are the multipath devices created by device mapper.

filter = [ "a|/dev/dm-.*|", "r|.*|" ]

Once this is tested, mkinitrd should be done to put the changes in to the initrd image to be activated at the boot.

uefi boot stuff

2011-12-20T23:56:00.003+05:30

note to self

Came across this strange problem with SLES 11 SP1.

When installing on a UEFI enabled hardware, the system doesn't allow to create a LVM based partitioning scheme.

According to tech-support it is due to be a bug in SP1, only to be fixed in SP2 which is due first quarter next year.

Workaround is to create a separate /boot/efi , /boot in traditional partitions and rest inside the LVM as usual. Found this out from the good folk at #lvm. Looks more like a limitation of UEFI boot, rather than a OS bug to me.

tree and sky...

2011-02-02T13:45:00.003+05:30

tree and sky, originally uploaded by Yajith.

V2V Conversion of a Redhat Xen VM to vSphere

2010-12-10T15:37:00.010+05:30

I was involved in converting some Redhat Xen based VMs to VMware ESXi recently and found out that the conversion doesn't work straight away without any tweaks. So here is how we went about getting it done. Pretty simple, but just in-case anyone needs it..

1. Find and Copy the normal kernel ( not the xen-kernel, the one that is installed by default ) rpm package on to the Xen based VM that is to be converted.

2. Convert the Xen based VM using the VMware Converter like its done on any other machine.

3. Once the conversion is complete, on the ESXi host, attach the appropriate Redhat installation media ( 1st CD, DVD ) to the newly created VM cdrom.

4. Startup the converted VM with the attached Redhat installation media and boot into the rescue mode with "linux rescue"

5. Once the system boots in to the rescue mode, it should automatically detect the Redhat Linux installation and mount it in to /mnt/sysimage. Do a "chroot /mnt/sysimage".

6. Install the previously copied kernel rpm from within the chroot'ed environment, using "rpm -i". Once the installation is complete take a look at the grub.conf and see if the necessary entries have been made by the installer. -not really necessary, installer will do the job properly every-single-time! :-)

7. Exit from the rescue environment, detach the Redhat installation media and boot up the VM with the newly installed kernel.

That pretty much sums it all up. The reason why a kernel installation is necessary is, Xen kernel on a guest system is quite different from a normal kernel, and is specifically designed to run on top of a Xen Host. ( Something to do with having front-end device drivers etc.. I never finished reading up about this ) This process shouldn't be necessary for a KVM based VM, as the guests are unmodified on that platform. I have yet to try this.

Hope this helps.

sysprep stuff

2010-12-10T15:29:00.006+05:30

note to self

Ran in to some hassle with finding appropriate syspreps with VMware vCenter Converter. Quite simple as it turned out to locate them, but i keep forgetting what to put and where.

Simply extract and copy all the contents of the appropriate package from this VMware KB article into the location that is displayed in the table. And remember, its not just the sysprep.exe it needs, but also the accompanying files as well.

Hope i won't run into anymore time-wasting situations by forgetting this. Another thing worth noting is, in case a conversion was done without the proper packages in place, you can always initiate a reconfigure of the that VM using the Converter after making sure necessary files are in place.

teamviewer stuff

2010-09-18T20:02:00.004+05:30

note to self

Just happened to shut the TeamViewer from within the remote computer console and got kicked out of my session with no way to re-connect. Luckily i had ssh access to the same machine and tried a few things to get it working, as just issuing the command on the ssh'd terminal didn't go so well.

Googled a bit and noticed that few others have come across similar problems starting TeamViewer from the terminal, but couldn't find a simple method that worked. -didn't look that hard anyway-

Found out its a easy fix.

export DISPLAY=:0

That should do it. All it seems to need is a proper $DISPLAY with the value set to where current display manager's running. Once that's taken care of, TeamViewer can be started as a background process with "&". It should work even better with something like "screen" but didn't try that. yet.

tips of blue...

2010-05-10T09:39:00.007+05:30

flower, originally uploaded by Yajith.

Another one of a lily flower. I remember taking a similar one sometime back.

Phat-30

2010-02-14T18:21:00.010+05:30

This is just a test with Grooveshark widgets. I added YesFM Phat-30 stuff on to it. Wanted to see how it works embedded like this. Link to self is here because FB notes don't play well with embedded stuff. :-)

Couldn't locate "Live Forever - JAy Z" on Grooveshark, so this version of Phat-30 only has 29 tracks. Lolz!

Update: Found the 30th Track thanks to my musical friend. What appears on the YesFM site doesn't seem to be the correct title of the last song, which explains why i couldn't find it. Personally, i only listen to the Morning Show ;-) but have found my self checking the Phat 30 list on the site more than once, and i think its a nice addition.

Moovida on F12

2010-02-14T15:20:00.003+05:30

note to self

Experienced few problems getting Moovida to work on my Fedora 12. Moovida, formerly known as Elisa is a Media Center application. Elisa is still on yum, but the newer moovida is not on that yet.

One main problem on the old version Elisa, is that the grooveshark plugin is no longer working due to some changes (gstreamer?) [1] [2]. A set of Moovida packages for F12 are already available on the above bugzilla links, but they are not yet on the yum, seem to be undergoing review.

After downloading and building the RPMs from above, ran in to some other python related problem due to a deprecated function.

DeprecationWarning: the md5 module is deprecated; use hashlib instead

The fix was to install python-twisted.noarch

To sum it all up, below steps can be followed to get moovida on F12 until it appears on yum, which I'm hoping to take place soon.

1. Grab the SRC rpms from here.
2. Remove elisa components if they are already installed.
3. Install python-twisted.noarch along with it's dependencies.
3. rpmbuild --rebuild the moovida src rpms & install them.

Just checked it, and Grooveshark plugin is working without any problem now! :-) It doesn't have the facility to add tracks to the library, hope it's on the roadmap.

sunset over paddy...

2010-01-23T18:30:00.000+05:30

sunset over paddy, originally uploaded by Yajith.

flowers in the sun...

2010-01-23T14:30:00.000+05:30

flowers, originally uploaded by Yajith.

candle light...

2009-12-31T23:59:00.000+05:30

candle, originally uploaded by Yajith.

dcache on fedora12

2009-12-31T22:15:00.007+05:30

Below are the steps taken to get dcache working on Fedora. I was using my Fedora 12 for this. A lot of stuff below is coming from my chat logs with wvithanage who is the project fellow.

Install below packages via yum along with their dependancies.
yum package-name install

uuid-devel
mysql-devel
php-mysql
php-ZendFramework-Db-Adapter-Mysqli
lighttpd
lighttpd-fastcgi

Make below symbolic links. You will have to create /usr/include/ossp directory as well )

Inside /usr/include/ossp/
uuid.h -> /usr/include/uuid.h

Inside /usr/lib
/usr/lib/libmysqlclient_r.so -> /usr/lib/mysql/libmysqlclient_r.so.16.0.0

Make a directory, and inside it run the below. If you don't have "svn" installed,

yum install svn would get that for you.

svn co https://dalesa.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/dalesa dalesa

Now, simply change the directory to "trunk" and run the below commands.

./autogen.sh
./configure --prefix=/usr
sudo make install

Run sudo dcache

Point the browser to http://127.0.0.1:8085/ and create a user and login. Make sure to put the mysql database access details properly, and assign a port for dcache to listen on..and you are done.

Now change your browser settings to use dcache as the proxy, after few minutes of browsing you should start noticing activities on the graphs.

Hope this helps..did this in a bit of a hurry. Probably will have to go through again and make sure i didn't miss anything out.

gnome autostart stuff

2009-12-28T21:01:00.005+05:30

note to self

Seems that the prioritizing autostart scripts has been dropped for some reason. Wanted this as i wanted to get Rumpus to start as i login to my F12. But it depends on Internet connectivity or else the java starts throwing some exceptions at you. Someone on #fedora pointed this out, saying priorities are not one of the priorities ;-) of gnome-autostart dev's at the moment. Hopefully they will do something about that once the more important stuff are taken care of.

For the time being, something like this can be used to get around the network connectivity by checking for the connection before trying anything.

#!/bin/bash

check() {
if [[ `nm-tool | grep "^State"` = 'State: connected' ]]; then
-YOUR-STUFF-GOES-IN-HERE-
else
sleep 5
check
fi
}

check

Nothing big, but saves sometime looking around. Hope this helps.

gnome stuff

2009-12-27T14:33:00.004+05:30

note to self

Came across a small problem with a USB Scroll Mouse on Fedora 12, where the 3rd button functionality not proper. Simple fix was changing a gnome configuration key value. Good to have Configuration Editior installed for these sort of stuff.

Change the key /desktop/gnome/accessibility/mouse/button_layout value from 2 > 3 and you are done.

To get the Configuration Editor installed, yum install gconf-editor can be used.

City on the Christmas Eve...

2009-12-24T23:00:00.003+05:30

This is coming close to becoming an yearly thing with me now. Walked around and took some more ;-) blurry pictures like the last time. Compared to the last year, managed to reduce the number of blurred ones, still the tube video looks kindda crappy. Perhaps the uploading messed it up, cause the orig. looks slightly better. Hope the vimeo one turns out to be better, too early to say though..its still being processed.

Didn't get copped or anything like that this time, even managed to watch last few overs of SL cricket match while sipping some jasmine tea in the middle. Found out you are not supposed to sit on that platform with the flag post on Galle face green, a friendly army fellow said so. Would be fun to take a good camera with a tripod sometime in the night over there, want to make panoramic stuff.

For now its just the tube vid. only, will post as they come. :D Thought i'd do without the captions this time, perhaps i shouldn't have. As i have said before, This is waaaay amateurish, so bear with me.

YouTube Clip

Update: Vimeo Clip
Vimeo Air Uploader was pretty useful btw. Power failure happened half-way, and continued the rest of the upload the next day, still it worked.

shoebox project...

2009-12-24T18:00:00.000+05:30

shoeboxes ready to be delivered

Had a fun time collecting stuff for the shoebox project, thought of actually going through with it at the last moment, even though w e thought about it sometime back. Just managed to collect enough $$ and goods to fill 10 boxes. Thought of asking others to pitch in with less than two days at hand, still managed to reach that amount.

Shay & B (Blessie?!) was among the show hosts that we met, -the ones that i can recall the names of- very friendly people, with unbelievable voices!

Shoebox was this charity thing organized by YES FM during the Christmas time, to collect gifts to be handed out to the kids stuck in IDP camps. Always was interested in going there, and perhaps helping out, don't seem like it will happen though. Perhaps i should make it happen. YES FM had some info on the promos & events page on the shoebox project, but its no longer there..probably because it's kindda old news now.

They were short of boxes at the time i went to collect, so there was only 9 boxes with us. Had to hand over the remaining stuff in a shopping bag! :-)

Friends were complaining about the last minute nature of it, should try to make stuff like this not-so-last-minute next time around if that happens. Its just that, i find myself doing it better when it IS last minute..guess i like the rush..LOLz!

This post, more than anything is to thank each one of them who helped out...and the ones who wanted to but couldn't. Just wanted to say, YOU ROCK!

squid stuff

2009-12-24T13:58:00.003+05:30

note to self

Keep forgetting this one, and end up look around for it all over again. To get the Date & Time in a human friendly format on Squid, it can be piped through this.

#!/usr/bin/perl -p
s/^\d+\.\d+/localtime $&/e;

Quite useful if you are going through the logs looking for activities on certain dates and times, and if you don't have a log-parser-report generator program installed. Found it over here.

Pidgin-2.6.4 RPMs for Fedora 12

2009-12-01T02:30:00.003+05:30

Just built a set of RPMs from pidgin-2.6.4 which was released some hours ago. I think i have messed up the package naming conventions, made the build to appear as 2.6.4-0.f12pre.

Had to make some small changes to the 2.6.3 .spec cuz. the .spec that comes with the source was not made specifically for current Fedora releases, as it appeared.

If you are interested in checking them out, get them from the below links.
libpurple-2.6.4-0.fc12pre.i686.rpm
pidgin-2.6.4-0.fc12pre.i686.rpm
finch-2.6.4-0.fc12pre.i686.rpm

Uploading to MediaFire sucked big time! and then tried a similar site with the same result. Perhaps its their flash based upload tools that doesn't play well with Firefox-GNU/Linux. Uploading to RapidShare now, and probably won't be going back to any of those other services for a long time if it keeps working well.

2.6.4 is not on the yum yet, make sure to take this one off and put the proper one once it appears on the updates. This is only meant to be a experiment. :-)

headstone...

2009-11-21T20:43:00.003+05:30

headstones, originally uploaded by Yajith.

"I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth."

- Emily Brontë (Wuthering Heights)

gimp stuff

2009-11-03T08:58:00.009+05:30

note to self

I wanted to make my Twitter profile pic. animate. :-) It's quite easier than it might look, even I could get it done without much trouble!

All that is necessary, is a bunch of photos in the sequence you want them to be animated. Easier if they are saved inside a single directory to minimize going back-n-forth looking for them.

So, here is what you do.

1. Open up the 1st image in the sequence on Gimp.

2. Go to "File" on this newly opened up image window and select "Open as Layers..." and select the rest of the images to open.

3. Select "Rectangle Select Tool" and select a rectangular area with the content you want to have. ( Exact size of the rectangle in pixels will appear at the bottom part of the window.

4. Once the selection is made, go to "Image" either on the Top Menu bar or right-click context menu, and Select "Crop to Selection"

5. Now, go to "Filters" > "Animation" > "Optimize (for GIF)". This will open up a new window with the image.

6. Just to check how it will look in the end, once again go to "Filters" > "Animation" > "Playback" and play the animation step by step. -just hitting play is not that helpful cuz. frames move on quite fast.

7. Now save the file as a .gif & In the "Export File" dialogue, Select "Save as Animation"

8. In the "Save as GIF" dialogue select the option "Loop Forever" depending how you want it, and also give a decent amount of milliseconds as the delay between the frames. Also, check the tick box "Use delay entered above for all frames" :-)

That's pretty much it! Check the file size before uploading it to twitter cuz. twitter has some limitation on the Profile Image size..I think 700Kbs.

Used Gimp, cool tool it is!

bnx2x stuff

2009-10-28T19:30:00.004+05:30

note to self

Experienced this issue on HP 460c G6 Blades.

Host Operating System RHEL5.4 is using Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme II driver module bnx2x in this setup.

Fully Virtualized Windows 2003 Server Guests could not transfer files over the network, while there is no drop of packets when tested with "ping" etc. and even the Remote Desktop Connections over RDP are working without any issue.

Additionally, the Host OS's (RHEL5.4 , RHEL5.3 etc. ) doesn't seem to have any problem either.
-before upgrading to the latest firmware

Finally, adding

options bnx2x disable_tpa=1

to /etc/modprobe.conf which disables LRO (or TPA) on the bnx2x-based netwrok cards resoled this issue.

All this above was done on HP NC-Series Broadcom 1Gb and 10GbE Multifunction Driver for Linux although it seemed to me as if the Broadcom Driver provided from RHEL5.4 it self should do the job with the above module options.

Got the solve through Red Hat Support and i quote,

FYI, LRO (Large Receive Offload) is a technique for increasing inbound throughput of high-bandwidth network connections by reducing CPU overhead. It works by aggregating multiple incoming packets from a single stream into a larger buffer before they are passed higher up the networking stack, thus reducing the number of packets that have to be processed.

Now the funny thing is, when i read the above it feels like this is something i would want to keep turned on and not* off! :-) Guess its gonna take me some googling to get that one figured out.

on Net-Run Rate...

2009-09-29T09:33:00.014+05:30

People were talking about this on the sports radio this morning. It was confusing me, so i thought of taking their advice and checking it out on cricinfo.

So, as is explained in clause 11.6 of the 1999 World Cup playing conditions Net-RR is,

A team's net run rate is calculated by deducting from the average runs per over scored by that team, the average runs per over scored against that team.

Furthermore it goes on to say,

In the event of a team being all out in less than its full quota of overs, the calculation of its net run rate shall be based on the full quota of overs to which it would have been entitled and not on the number of overs in which the team was dismissed.

Btw i think there is a typo on Cricinfo which is in bold on the above. Could it be one of the reasons for all this people who were getting it the other way? :P

Anyway, this is what i got..

1(match 1)
SL - 261 for 37.4 overs ( D/L ) [37.4 -> 37.666666667] :)
SA - 206 for 37.4 overs

2(match 4)
SL - 212 for 50 overs
EN - 213 for 45 overs

3(match 7)
NZ- 315 for 50 overs
SL - 277 for 46.4 overs - all out*

*50 over value will be used to form Net-RR

SL Net-RR = SL( Total Runs / Overs ) - vs.SL( Total Runs / Overs )
= SL( 750 / 137.666666667 ) - vs.SL ( 734 / 132.666666667 )
= SL( 5.447941889 ) - vsSL ( 5.532663317 )
= -0.084721428
~ -0.085

For New Zealand so far,

1(match 3)
NZ - 214 for 47.5 overs - all-out*
SA - 217 for 41.1 overs [ 41.1 > 41.166666667] :)

2(match 7)
NZ - 315 for 50 overs
SL - 277 for 46.4 overs - all-out*

*50 over value will be used to form Net-RR

**Current**
NZ Net-RR = NZ( 529/100 ) - vs.NZ( 494/91.166666667 )
= -0.128647166
~ -0.129

Phew! I hate it when i can't get simple math in my head without writing them down. Thought of putting this up cuz. Net-RR is probably what is going to decide if SL will be moving on to Semi's or not, if New Zealand loses this match to England.

If that happens, for us to have any shot, England has not only to win, but win it by a good margin. Because New Zealand can still improve their Net-RR and get above us if they put up a good score, fast* ( in less overs ) even they lose the match + And let's not forget the Rain, it the match gets called off due to rain like the one yesterday, then again we'll be dropped out as New Zealand will get a point and will conveniently get to the second place in Points Table under group B.

Hear lot of people saying that we don't deserve to get to the semi's the way they played. For my part, i know it would make me happy, if we can get in to semi's, just not as much as i would have been if we had played through to get there.

So here's to sheer, dumb luck! :)

blue eyes...

2009-09-28T11:01:00.011+05:30

nice tune...

It's Blue Eyes by Mika. This here is a link to to the post it self, cuz FB notes doesn't seem to import the embedded stuff. :)

Iranian President on Larry King Live again

2009-09-27T10:34:00.012+05:30

Iranian president was on Larry King Live again, this past Friday i think. Below is the full tube.

5 parts: Part1, Part2, Part3, Part4, Part5

CNN had a similar interview about a year ago, an old post with youtube vids. of that interview is here.

Goes on over the same old questions about nuclear program, holocaust and the also the recent post-election protests. Understand there is a translation delay before every question, they have conveniently gone ahead with not editing them out. Better i suppose, Au naturel!

It's fun to watch having someone handle larry king in this way. Notice the amount of breaks they take when ever they want to switch subjects, when the current one is not exactly going the way they wanted.

Nobody has their act together, they want to jump in the middle and muddy up, so nothing is clear afterwards, is what i feel. None has the steel to listen to whatever it is that the other guy is saying and then come up with their side of the argument in this business, the politics.

Specially liked the part they sparred on about the holocaust, them are just blocking each other and audience can just pick a side. Nothing to be gained. Who gives a flyin duck about the holocaust these days anyways, there is other shit to worry about..and people forget quick. Is true, that a lot of us feel for the oppressed, that too probably happened after watching a movie or two on subject, the depth of it is just not gonna get us to any satisfying conclusions in most cases. We just don't know shit! Or just don't know enough of it..and they forget too soon! is what I'm thinking.

This, Schindler's List is an awesome piece of movie, like it a LOT! one of those "must see"s IMHO. And Steven Spielberg is Jewish, so is Larry King..Really like the work of the former, latter is annoying at best, except for few occasions..his wife is not though, she doesn't look bad either..LOL!

Someone said District 9 is the new Cloverfield. I don't believe them. Have yet to check that one out though..and it wasn't Peter Jackson who directed District 9.

I think i have a frequent subject hopping disorder!

feathery flowers...

2009-09-26T21:47:00.001+05:30

feathery flowers, originally uploaded by Yajith.

morning dew...

2009-09-19T22:46:00.002+05:30

morning dew, originally uploaded by Yajith.

fresh and white...

2009-09-06T21:21:00.002+05:30

fresh and white, originally uploaded by Yajith.

comic times...

2009-08-24T19:33:00.008+05:30

my favorite superhero comic character Superman

Maybe its a thing with our time, most of us couldn't afford or just didn't have access to the comics when they were big everywhere else, and now the movies are being made after most, that many of us will never have go for a comic novel. Of course there is only so much you can put in to a movie, and a good deal gets lost in the translation.

Had some old Superman comic books i inherited :) you just got to love the detail and the hand drawn graphics they have. Almost make you feel bad that they came and went before your time. Then again, the cartoons, 3Ds and their comic-movie versions that's there today, are pretty OK.:) They just got a lot of stuff to make enough interest for them to come back.

Perhaps there aren't many comic fans from the printed age in here, but surely there are many who can relate to the new comic culture. All the little ones these days seem to have Ben 10 everything. T-Shirts, Caps, Washable Tattoos n all that.

I don't get Ben 10, main reason probably is never sitting down to watch it, but i do get Avatar. Not that i just get it, i dig it. I'm waiting for the movie that's said to be coming out next year. And Night Shyamalan is the director of that!

With the pace of the things, it won't be too long for things like comic-con to become a part of our pop culture. I have no idea how cool it should have been at this year's comic-con, but perhaps this youtube will help to put things in perspective. ;-) Just kiddin.

Went to see Watchmen sometime back, was not a big fan of the comic series, and if not for the movie probably will not even hear about it much. But totally worth the time i spent in the queue waiting for it. :) Like this catchy tune they have at the beginning of the movie. Old one from Bob Dylan, but it just works!

Times really are a changing. Yep.

sleepless...

2009-08-24T02:19:00.009+05:30

Falling asleep is real hard right now. No clue why! Hoped to get some sleep early, with work is back on from tomorrow and its just not happening tonight. Powering up the computer and things again is a pain but it's just plain boring to be lying down.

Too bad i don't have some surefire trick to bring sleep. This sleeping pill don't work with me either, already took one, unless perhaps i turn up the dosage..LOL!

Its been a while since i listened to this track, don't think music is gonna do any help with sleep. Just not one of "those".

Nice track anyways.

Tomorrow is gonna be fun!

patterns in low light...

2009-08-17T11:29:00.002+05:30

Found this on my flickr, and thought i'd post this. Always liked the embedded flickr slideshows. Too bad the photos aren't sharp enough, its the best my camera does.

smile...

2009-07-27T22:33:00.002+05:30

RIP MJ!

Born : August 29, 1958
Died : June 25, 2009

mptlinux stuff

2009-07-23T19:54:00.003+05:30

note to self

Experienced this weird behavior with a HP-DL580 G5, while installing RHEL4(U2) on it. The installer was looping at the detection of LSI Logic HBA adapter. Removing the card allows the installation to go ahead without any problem, but once installed and at the re-insertion of the card, the system was still getting halted at the initial device detection( some sort of a loop at detecting the HBA ).

Looked to me as if some module(scsi?) being used with the device, which is not capable of handling the device properly was causing this problem.

Removing the card, and then installing the mptlinux .rpm that is provided by the vendor, and then re-inserting the card solves this problem. Yet to test this with a later release of RHEL4 & 5, most probably the fix is already in place.

Nmap5 RPMs

2009-07-17T11:32:00.007+05:30

Just built RPMs of Nmap 5, have always been wanting to work on RPM building.
If you are interested in checking them out, get them from the below links.

nmap-5.00-1.i586.rpm
zenmap-5.00-1.noarch.rpm
ncat-5.00-1.i586.rpm
nmap-debuginfo-5.00-1.i586.rpm

Built them on my F11 box without any changes etc. to my current setup, not sure if that's how it should be done, still not very good at this rpmbuild stuff. Hope they are working.

Used "rpmdevtools" to setup the rpm build env. and followed this in setting it up.

Update: The official RPMs are here.

trying to float...

2009-07-05T21:28:00.009+05:30

lady in the water(1947) by Toni Frissell

So i'm working on my swimming again. Had to, specially after the olhahali and other islands. Snorkeling is many times funner and so many times less drowning risk is involved, when you can actually swim! Swimming is something i just got to be able to do! Going to go back to the basics and come from there this time. I'm pretty positive about this method and plus, the coach seems to be even more positive that this is the best way.  

Started today from the very basic face down float. Looks very simple, but NOT -at least to me. Supposed to relax all the muscles and just float like a log, but closest i could manage was a tilted log where the waist down just hangs downwards from the water level, and eventually drags the rest of the log down.

Not too worried though, i'm just getting started. Given enough practice, think i'm gonna get this one done. But I have been ignorant in a way, that there are so many people around who are trying to keep their heads above the water, with losing jobs, rising fuel prices and dozens of other shit that's hard to spell. And i'm only trying to float in this pool at the shallow end, where there are designated life-guards. Not that i think there is much i could do, but ignorance-is-a-bliss, if spoken like a true asshole. Real World freaks the fuck out of me sometimes..  

Wonder whats up with the recession, few months back the media couldn't give enough about it, and now they just don't give enough..understandable though, quite a few headliners happened recently, like MJ's death, Confusions over Iran's Election, MJ's death..etc. By the way, Iran election and most of the events that followed actually happened before MJ passed away.

Rest In Peace MJ!

Guess thats how life is, one thing or another will always come up thats gonna grab our attention, but the key is to not to lose sight of the goal, which is to relax and keep our heads above the water...and thats called floating.!

I gave my seat to this pregnant lady just a little while ago in the bus, wonder if she any good at the float. Seriously though, everyone's gonna need some good deeds to bring them good fortune in this uncertain times.   I should practice more often, this floating thing. I just can 't for the life of me get how a person can float straight and also relax the whole body at the same time...thinking of getting me one of these pool membership things.

wget stuff

2009-06-18T13:50:00.004+05:30

note to self

RHN doesn't seem to play well with download managers. "wget" used to be good but noticed a small problem lately. When wget -c is given to resume a download, it starts to download things from scratch. This probably has something to do with the expiring urls that are given on RHN.

Renaming the old file part to the new one you can identify from the new download URL will work in this. Still not sure what's causing this, but remember quite well "wget" that wget didn't have this file-name problem earlier.

simple awk usage

2009-06-11T12:52:00.007+05:30

note to self

Once again, something i can't seem to hold in my mind, and end up searching for it over and over.

Awk can be used in this way to filter out a field from a text file when the separator is a " " ( WHITE SPACE )

awk '{ print $n}'

$n - is the field/column number

This can also be used in many other things for example, -my favourite- to take out the leading white spaces on queue_ids from grep'd and cut'd ;-) postfix logs.

Thanks dhaj for showing me this trick.

dawning sun...

2009-06-07T15:09:00.004+05:30

rising sun, originally uploaded by Yajith.

blue petals...

2009-06-07T14:45:00.003+05:30

flower, originally uploaded by Yajith.

white and yellow...

2009-06-07T14:28:00.007+05:30

white and yellow, originally uploaded by Yajith.

lamp and sky...

2009-06-07T14:26:00.003+05:30

lamp, originally uploaded by Yajith.

on IPL...

2009-05-03T23:53:00.005+05:30

doubt if this is the official logo, found it from here

Lot of people are on IPL subject these times, so why not. To me, the whole idea of IPL is just genius! Not a big fan of cricket nor in "indian" approach to many things, but this is too good fun! Players i like from many teams playing together on the same side, something i wouldn't have been able to witness if this concept wasn't there. Yeah, there was something similar in england and perhaps few other places, but nothing that worked this well.

Still, having Indian Premier League all the way down in South Africa, just blows! I wish they selected SL, but frikken security reasons get in the way all-the-time.

We're the closest place with quite a few int'l grounds, and if a low pressure or whateva happens in bay-of-bengal , we move it to dambulla and we'll still get play! It's like what, 3hrs on a bus from Colombo to Dambulla! similar amount to Galle.

And Preity Zinta would be in SL rite now.YES! Thought of how good it could have been, just sucks! I'm a wayy bigger fan of Preity than of Cricket!

It's gonna be interesting when we kick LTTE the fuck out from here, and to see South Indian politics take a hit! Perhaps they will move the IPL here for the next season! That is if Karunanidhi or prabhakaran's some indian cousin twice removed doesn't go on a hunger strike! against that too. And appeal to the indians and their weeping hearts for terrorists! What goes around-comes around you morons!

cloudy dusk...

2009-05-03T15:29:00.004+05:30

evening sky, originally uploaded by Yajith.

simple Q's and no good answers...

2009-04-26T00:51:00.011+05:30

Taking photos is good fun, but when you are left with a couple thousand and the number keeps increasing daily.., that sort of causes a problem. Something i never thought i would run in to. Not that every single photo i have is a cool capture, quite the opposite. Good amount of them are having some problem or the other -some maybe fixable with some editing that I'm too lazy or don't have the skill for, but somehow they are there using up the space. Hard to make up my mind to go through them and delete the ones that didn't turn out good.

I used to think if i really wanna preserve something, i could burn it on to a cd or a dvd, but whole thing with disks sucks hard! Disks are alright for movies! but its a no no for photo albums..too much ruffling around in disks when you want to find something real bad. Don't seem a good enough way anymore. But can't really keep them on the hd either..you wouldn't know when these things decide to die on you. The battery on this thing is only charging up to 30% of the what it should, and this damn thing is new! and the International warranty is just a fancy word when it comes to Acer in SL as i found out, because you have to take it to a repair center that takes in the stuff that's falling into International warranty. And the funny thing is there is no such center with in the whole country. Thank you, very fucking much!

Picasa and flickr both are alright as long as you are willing to pay for the service. Free service is just not enough when you go over a certain number and their limitations sucks behind.

When i make up my mind to pay somehow and get one of those accounts with better capacity, then comes new problems to my head. The originals i have will take weeks if not months to upload over the ADSL that i have. And if i reduce the quality so that the uploading becomes a lesser pain, then what's the point anyways! With all the flickr, picasa and all the work, i still won't be able get my originals if something goes wrong.

It's late and i just removed all the uploads from flickr cause they didn't look so good in the res. i put in. Have got to make up my mind on something, something simple and that covers most the ground. Wonder who won the election, i'm hoping for the lesser evil -if that's even possible. This just blows...

sand and shell...

2009-04-24T11:51:00.004+05:30

sand and shell, originally uploaded by Yajith.

taking a hike...

2009-04-12T20:20:00.006+05:30

Kanneliya forest spans over this mountain range

Kanneliya is one cool place to hike.. One would probably need at least 3 days to cover all the hiking tracks. We just covered the longest track and it took something like 5hrs.

According to the guidayya ( guide + ayya ) -hehe just a word i made up just now, kanneliya is actually ahead of 'Sinharaja' forest when it comes to the size & bio diversity. I'm yet to find out how true that is, but the place is quite awesome.

Didn't take the charger for the camera and cause i preferred to travel light so had to sort of preserve the battery, for that shot you'd really want to take, something which i haven't done before. Kind of takes a part of the joy in taking photos..not complaining. Taking too many photos sometimes distracts me from enjoying the hike it self and the camera can actually become a hindrance when you can't use both hands freely..still not complaining.

To me, the most awesome part was the view on the way to the top., could actually see the sama stupa all the way down in unawatuna, which is one of the places we went at the beginning of the trip. Other than that, the bath in the dola was pretty awesome too..

Made a small vid. clip on the way, have to check it out when i reach home..this CTB bus is freakin fast.

rough sea & beachcombing...

2009-04-10T12:29:00.004+05:30

pieces of glass, ones i picked up from the beach

Sea in Hambantota is pretty rough, but is entertaining to look at. Been sometime since i came down to this beach, last time was before the tsunami.

Colombo sun normally drains me, but down hear in hambantota it is actually fun and stuff. Maybe its the holiday spirit.. ;) With the work on new port in hambantota, many shops have moved and this area im in is quite empty and the beach is awesome without people messing about..
Can see the machines that dig the ocean bottom on the floating things and for them its work as usual. I hear they have hit a big rock and now in the process of blowing it up. Many houses got cracks on walls and they say it gets like a tiny earthquake when they set off the charges.

So many sea-shells have washed up to the shore but mostly the usual kinds. The polished broken glass pieces are all over and my pocket is half full with them. That would be my vacation 'save the beach' activity. :D

Left my slippers somewhere on the beach, have to get them..think its them i can see far away..

Have quite good 3g over here not like in the town.

on mobile-life...

2009-03-30T18:29:00.004+05:30

I use mobile services heavily, and have come to depend on them quite a lot. I can remember, that it was a luxury only a few could afford only a few years ago..

Its amazing to think about how far it has changed each one of ours life style becoming a necessity from a luxury!

I personally depend on the mobile and the mobile services that i use over it so much, it has come to the point where without it, it would simply be crippling to most everything i do. While having all the tools of choice at our finger tips simplifies our overly complex life-style, we are adding another 'thing' to our list of necessities, without which we can't survive..that is a sort of a problem now, i feel.

Could it be possible, that this whole mobile life thing getting the best of me? I'm just thinking aloud..

Just received a poke on FB via sms, time to get online on messenger.. :D perhaps the answer will come to me in that.

touch a fire...

2009-03-29T22:52:00.005+05:30

touch a fire, originally uploaded by Yajith.

President Barck Obama on Jay Leno Show

2009-03-23T23:25:00.007+05:30

This is pretty cool. Not just that he's funny and all, even the idea of U.S president coming to a TV Talk show is just awesome. President Obama is the 1st U.S president ever to appear on a U.S TV Talk show.

Contains Three Parts, and these were the best & complete ones i was able to find on YouTube so far. Please leave a link if there is a better version of this. I'm not sure if the complete Talk is available to download, should give that a look too.

There you have it.

Some time back current Iranian President came on Larry King Live which was again quite cool to watch, a post with embedded videos of that interview is here.

better odds with social media...

2009-03-23T22:10:00.013+05:30

always wanted to get a photo like this, it just isn't happening

Caught an interesting piece on the radio today. They were on about -Where to meet women 2009- a list formed out with 10 best ways of meeting women for guys. I wrote it down as it went on, they were good enough to give a moment to find a pen and a paper, which is quite hard because i keep losing my black pens!

It goes like this,
10. Dance Classes
09. Wine Tasting Events
08. Dog Parks
07. Meetup.com Groups
06. Art Walks
05. Acting Classes
04. Fitness Classes
03. Community Service or Volunteering
02. Organized Trips
01. Social Media Web-sites

I wrote it down the other way as the radio said it, with few hearing errors. This is pretty cool for anyone who is on the look out. Some of the items in the list doesn't really apply to a majority of us in SL, but many of them does. The top of the list says it all, how far the Social Media has become a part of most of ours day-to-day life.

While i leave everyone to decide how good or bad this is, if you are interested in meeting someone, looking at the list i would suggest to get on the Social Media Wave, because it seems to have worked for most of the people and there is a good chance that its going to work for you too.

I think I'm more in to the conventional ways, but hey.., maybe i will take part in a blood drive or something, purely for the pleasure of experimentation, not that I'm on the lookout. ;)

The list and the details are on AskMen.com.

the heat and the bus ride...

2009-03-23T11:11:00.013+05:30

YesFM hoarding in Colombo 08

Colombo is damn hot these days! If I'm in my room watching a movie or something, it feels like I'm just going to melt with this fucking heat! It's still the morning, yet it feels like its like mid-day. Putting on the fan doesn't help, at best what it does is sending a wave of hot-air my way.

I get on a A/C bus so i can get to work fast, not because it offers any luxury that are expected from them on other "normal" routes.., and 10 minutes inside, I'm sweating my ass off! inside a A/C! I mean, it's bad enough with most of the women making their way inside the bus with their 'wedge maneuver', and now its uber suckery!

Any guy who take the bus on daily basis, like me, would probably know what I'm talking about..Women in this country have mastered this technique where they simply put their hand through the people standing in the sides of the bus, grabbing hold of a seat, and 'maneuver' their way into the side, instead of having to go to the behind ( or front for that matter ) of the bus like any other normal person would. Just not that I'm not complaining too much, but sooner or later someone would probably break one of those maneuvering arms in two..and perhaps its the right time now..just thinking aloud. :D

Still, looking at the bright side of things, this ain't the worst route! not even close. Yes it gets closed for VIP movements like everyday, and if the parliament shit flinging is in session, then its worse, but at least the route is OK, I'm thinking..

I get to see the paddy and the green at the beginning( hehe, i practically live in one, but still..good is good ), around Kaduwela and Malabe, and then after making your way through some warm-up traffic before Koswatta, you hit the mother load right after Battaramulla..still not complaining! I like to look at the "Diyawanna Oya" while having my daily dose of morning show on the radio.

You get to Rajagiriya, and on the Castle Road you give way to all the pregnant ladies to get off the bus, and from there onwards its pretty ok i think. :D

I get off with nothing short of a struggle for my sack -where i keep my wallet and my camera and some other junk that I've gotten used to bring to office, and check if i have most of my body parts intact and walk my way to office passing Borella Cemetery..It looks quite calm and peaceful in there, specially when there is no VIP funeral happening, which is not very often.

I used to go all the way to Kolpetty before, passing Horton Place, and The Green Path. HP is ok, but it sucks thanks to the genius of the drainage system when it rains..but no rain is anywhere near, and if I'm lucky enough (kidding), i get a peek of cool kids at St. Bridget's & Otara's place for beautiful things to wear. I think i'm in love with that woman, in a totally fan to celebrity way.., love what she's done with the place. I find it refreshing there, and pop-rocks is fun to chew.

Green Path is nice, but i like in on weekends and at nights mostly. They have a lot of paintings on the side and i get to stare at the people who play tennis, and renew my plans for tennis. At late night its even funner, and i take photos if the coppers aren't near by.

Thats pretty much where the road ends and you get to Kolpetty, and you go about your way. This is just a look back on tiny good things on my route, because let's face it, bus travel sucks! and i need a reminding of these tiny good things.

They have changed the hoarding at D.S junction with a better one, still i so wish something on the same shelf with the YesFM Red Vs. Black party Hoarding, which is by far the best one this place have seen as i see.

I think the heat is getting to me, I'm just blabbering.!

head kandy...

2009-03-12T23:51:00.016+05:30

Outside view of the Temple, Sri Dalada Maligawa.

So a relative got me hooked with this pass for the ceremony at the Kandy Temple. Its been a while since i was there last time, always liked being there. They don't have expositions every year, so its a kind of a big deal. Ah, they have this huge water fountain thing on the lake which i don't remember seeing before..must be a cool thing if you can get close to it.

Too long and slow bus, nearly 4hrs. and a massive queue to wait in line before getting in to the temple. If we thought the pass would get us in, we couldn't have been more wrong. That particular queue was insanely long..think its at least 2-3 kilometers. At least it didn't go all the way around the lake and further away like the other queues, so guess that's at least a good thing. Somehow managed to get in, and got to see the tooth relic on display, finally after many hours on queue.

Felt sorry for all the people who were on the queue for so many hours, and still who didn't get a chance to get inside. At least the exposition goes on for couple more days, today is only the 7th day in to it.

Old people, young people, sick people, people carrying elder people, people who can't walk, all of them squeezed on to a couple of queues. People pushing each other and jumping ahead of the queue and exchanging words, the whole works..think you can deal with that, probably should check it out..they give cold Lukspray for free.

A five month old was left out somewhere, and they were calling the mother ( they had the name somehow ) on the loudspeaker thing for hours, someone who was at the temple breastfed the little one as he/she was not doing too good without any food. What sort of a bitch brings a five month old to this sort of a thing and manage to lose it is something i don't get!

Met some people at the bus stop on the way back, who's been on the queue since the morning but still didn't get a chance to go in. :(

I get to Colombo late and have no buses on my route! Caught good old -literally CTB from pettah on a boring route, get off and have a kottu at a night kade. Damn..i was hungry..trishaw guy was alright, he didn't over-charge $$$ me to drop me home.

It's late, and i missed my badminton today, but for a worthy cause. People should choose what they want most, and not worry too much about the rest, is what i feel.

on self immolation...

2009-03-07T19:52:00.010+05:30

"he did this for the country", a one that looks like this perhaps...

Just came across this news article of a self immolation. I had actually heard of this sort of thing before. Details are a bit hazy as i heard it from my father or someone a long time ago, it was about these Vietnamese monks who burned them selves up in protest to the Vietnam war. Too hard to imagine, but true! Felt like a bloody heroic act, and still i do about that situation.

But now I'm thinking, this total fucking lunatic's name is going to go in history books as along with them.

I decided to sacrifice my life ... The flames over my body will be a torch to guide you through the liberation path

This is the suicide note speaking on behalf of him. I mean WTF! What fucking path of liberation is he talking about? Surely can't be one involving more dead Sri Lankans, -Tamil or Sinhalese!

The family goes on to say how proud they are of their son's 'sacrifice'. This is totally fucking retarded, I'm thinking. Then it hits me, this is just another that is going to add weight to the whole misinterpreted genocide drama. It used to be a confused singer who talks trash -a lot, now we have a fucking dead guy. dead weight!

What a waste.!

What's sad is that a lot of people, specially the tamils living outside of the country going to look at this as an act of heroism, just like the way i used to look at those monks protesting against the U.S brought war in Vietnam. And there is abso-fucking-lutely nothing i can do about it, I'm too afraid of fire!

This is seriously messed up, it's late and i still haven't got my lunch yet even.

red petal...

2009-02-28T19:54:00.005+05:30

red petal, originally uploaded by Yajith.

on genocide...

2009-02-26T12:55:00.011+05:30

Couple years back, as i remember, you didn't get to hear the word "Genocide" as much. And when you do, the chances are its either something to do with Hitler, WW2 or perhaps the mass killings in Rwanda among few others. Those are the ones ones that sort of got stuck with the word.

The times have clearly changed! From TV Talk Shows to Student rallys, from Blog posts to twitter comments, the word "Genocide" seem to be buzzing these days.

Only problem i see, is that the meaning of the word is just lost on most of these new commentators -specially the ones like MIA, and it's damaging to us when they go on public with shit they should sit down and think through!

An interesting read + vid on this is here.

Wikipedia lists "Genocide" as "is the deliberate and systematic destruction of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group."

Few links that's interesting -at least to me ;) are below.

Terrorism, "the systematic use of terror (imposing fear), especially as a means of coercion."

Twitter Search on genocide.

An article from fbi.gov on the "most dangerous and deadly extremist" outfit in the world.

timezone stuff

2009-02-26T11:41:00.004+05:30

note to self

On RHEL4+ systems, timezone data files are kept in /usr/share/zoneinfo/ with the /etc/localtime symbolic link pointing at the correct time zone the machine belonging to.

If the time zone data file doesn't contain the correct information, then the system seem to assume its on GMT. Now if the system date and time is set manually to the current localtime, everything appears normal.

One noticed problem that happens in such a setup is if this machine serves as a mail server, then the mail header contains these time zone details. This can cause strange problems with MS Outlook, as outlook seem to use this value and the local machines time-zone details to calculate the display time on mails.

For some reason, the mail clients running on GNU/Linux systems appears to be immune to this problem. Still have find out how the mail clients such as evolution etc. display the received time on mails.

On RHELs the time zone data are provided in tzdata package, and it's important to keep that up2date, specially if it is an online system.

Leaving The Nest...

2009-02-01T17:49:00.021+05:30

Took a few more photos of the two little Red Vented Bulbuls today, as they still allow me to get close to them. Their parents make a big fuss about it -or so i think, with their annoyed noises. Still i had to try and take at least a few. The previous videos are much better, i think.

I had to find out they don't like to be held in the hand, the hard way.. ;)

Below are few more photos in a flash slideshow, from Picasa.

The time has come for these two to leave their nest. So has to a friend quite important and close to me, who's making an important step down her own path on this same day. Let this be a warm wish of good luck.. :)

Until we meet again, au revoir!!!

Chow Time...

2009-01-26T20:15:00.004+05:30

This is another video of the same little birds from last post. Had to put the camera on the shrub and move away for this one. The quality is not so great but, think it looks alright.

These were taken in this morning, but took a long time to upload, and then for Vimeo and YouTube to process it. Now only got the chance to post these. Hope they are interesting. It wasn't possible to take this without the background noise ( talking etc.. ), as few construction workers were working at my place.

Newly Born...

2009-01-25T15:42:00.011+05:30

The eggs inside the bird nest in my place has hatched about two days ago, and two little ones have come out.

The Eggs.

Took this about a week ago, was very hard to reach it to get a better view, i didn't want to risk alerting the bird parents. :)

A Parent.

The new born.

A worried Parent.

This one kept making weird noises, every time it noticed me trying to get a clear view. Finally decided to take a video and not to bother them anymore.

Think they are 'konda kurulla'. As the still-shots didn't work so well, took a few videos. Quality is not very good, but this is what i can afford at the moment. ;)

Didn't upload to youtube, cause vimeo appeared better last time..but i still can't make up mind on picking up one of them.

Would be glad to hear about any tips/advices in achieving better photos/videos..:) I still suck at this, specially when capturing moving objects!

Update: Added to YouTube

Setting up s/w raid on gnu/linux

2009-01-19T16:09:00.005+05:30

note to self

mdadm can be used to create raid volumes easily in the below way.

mknod -m 0640 /dev/mdX TYPE MAJOR MINOR
chgrp disk /dev/mdX
mdadm --create=/dev/mdX --level='RAID LEVEL' --raid-devices=n /dev/sdXX /dev/sdYY

RAID LEVEL can be any value from linear, raid0, 0, stripe, raid1, 1, mirror, raid4, 4, raid5, 5, raid6, 6, raid10, 10, multipath, mp, faulty.

Eg: Creating a RAID 0 with 2 physical devices /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb1.

mknod -m 0640 /dev/md0 b 9 0
chgrp disk /dev/md0
mdadm --create='/dev/md0' --level=0 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1

mknod is quite important, as otherwise mdadm will complain about non-existent device. Make sure to specify unused MAJOR and MINOR numbers when creating the (block)device. Refer to mknod man page for more info.

As usual, i keep forgetting this important step, and keep running in to trouble.

Very useful guides are here and here.

Some guides seem to suggest that the s/w raid configuration should be put on to a /etc/mdadm.conf, but i think this is no longer necessary.

From what i've gathered, the actual RAID configurations are kept in a superblock in member physical devices. The linux kernel identifies the and reads out that information from the physical devices( partitions ), at the boot-up, and they have to be of the type 'Linux raid autodetect' OR 'fd' for this to work properly.

caged beauty...

2009-01-18T13:17:00.017+05:30

Below is the flash based slideshow with more photos from the set. To view the full set in better resolution, click on any slide in the slideshow.

life and death...

2009-01-13T14:23:00.015+05:30

Got these photos in an email. It reveals but a sad moment from Palestine, with the recent attacks from Israel. Needless to say, hundreds of this sort of incidents must have occurred in Gaza, this is neither the first nor the last! The attacks are still ongoing according to the latest news.!

Last Moments of A Dying Mother and Her Child....in Palestine

I couldn't help but wonder how many incidents like this, worse than this -if that's even possible- must be happening..even in here in SL.

fresh and yellow...

2009-01-03T14:02:00.005+05:30

fresh and yellow, originally uploaded by Yajith.

a good year...

2009-01-01T02:05:00.004+05:30

2008 just ended leaving a lot of memories. When i look back, this year has been a quite an important one to me in so many ways.

Made a few very close friendships, Learned a quite a lot of lessons in life and started to look at things quite differently, and got to do lot of things i have been wanting to do for a long time during this past year.

As a result, I'm entering this new year, the year of 2009, with a far better state of mind than i had at the beginning of 2008.! Guess i owe it to my close friends, who stuck by me during my hours of need ( quite frankly, there were some! ) and helped me through them. I feel I'm approaching this new year as at least a slightly better person than i used to be, with all the things i went through, and the experiences i gathered during.!

Guess what I want to say is that 2008 is been such an important year in my life, which left me with a lot, that I'm going to approach this new year with an optimistic mood, and better equipped, with all the experiences i had, during this past wonderful year!

I will remember all of them -miss a few of them a lot ;) , without whom i wouldn't be able to say this, for all the years to come. This is just a few words of gratitude from me for all that i have been given by them.

So, here I'm, at the beginning of this new year, hoping for another good one!

SL Radio channels on mplayer

2008-12-26T08:52:00.006+05:30

Lots of Sri Lankan online radio stations seem to require Windows Media Player plugin or some other plugin when you try to access them over the Internet. Went through a couple of those radio channels finding out which urls that can be used with mplayer. Below are the findings, hope they will come to some use. I currently only listen to YesFM, and YesFM only.

YesFM -> http://174.133.224.53/yesfm
TNL Rocks -> http://220.247.224.89/live
Lite FM -> http://222.165.133.161/live
Y FM -> http://174.133.224.53/yfm
E FM -> http://69.80.238.25
Shakthi FM -> http://174.133.224.53/shakthifm
Neth FM -> http://38.96.148.49:5552
Sirasa FM -> http://174.133.224.53/sirasafm
MAX Radio -> http://75.125.239.34:7045

As an example, to listen to YesFM,
you can use mplayer http://174.133.224.53/yesfm

This link helped quite a lot in finding out the Radio Channel web sites.

tiny sparkles...

2008-12-25T16:18:00.004+05:30

tiny sparkles, originally uploaded by Yajith.

City on the Christmas Eve...

2008-12-24T21:30:00.012+05:30

This is an experiment. I'm checking out making videos using photos, on Picasa3. These are some of the blurry photos i captured around the City on the Christmas Eve. Got Copped once for taking photos of the City, but didn't feel bad at all. Photos are too blurry in many cases, and way too amateurish, guess i have to improve a lot more. Camera actually has a special mode for night scenes, but for that i'd have to keep it still for like 20 secs or something, which never really works out well. So i just turned off the flasher and kept shooting.

Uploaded the Clip to YouTube and Vimeo both, not judging but feel Vimeo is better. Uploading to blogger was not really working out for me for some reason, put it to upload and waited like 3Hrs, but nothing happened in the end. Perhaps i didn't do it correct.

Below are the two clips. This is waaaay amateurish, so bear with me.

YouTube Clip

Vimeo Clip

vim stuff

2008-12-24T13:19:00.003+05:30

note to self

I keep forgetting this, and i want to kick my self hard so i won't!!! Even then I'm not sure i won't forget this!

To append some common text to all the lines in a text file with vi/vim, below can be used.

:%s/$/some text

\t = Tab Space

golden reflections...

2008-12-20T21:34:00.004+05:30

golden reflections, originally uploaded by Yajith.

sea and sun...

2008-12-15T23:17:00.003+05:30

sea and sun, originally uploaded by Yajith.

green and white...

2008-12-07T11:29:00.005+05:30

green and white, originally uploaded by Yajith.

Frustration...!

2008-12-06T19:47:00.005+05:30

I burn stuff..whenever my computer doesn't work, or when the electricity is not there so i can't turn on the computer, that's what i do. I find it very hard to keep my mind from wondering into things that i don't want it to, when im home with nothing to do. Today was such a day!! Woke up around 10.30 to find out that the jerks in CEB have done it yet again, and called on a power cut!! AAARRGH!!

Not only it's fuck bad to be in a power cut, on a Saturday, when you are home, it so happens to be the day someone leaves me an important message online!!! Come evening when i finally log-in what do i find??? Offliners.!! Damn frustrating!

So, I burn stuff...

Counter-Strike 1.6 on Wine

2008-12-04T08:23:00.010+05:30

I wanted to play this game Counter-Strike, for some time now..and yesterday i got some free time to try this out. Actually it was pretty easy to get it to work on my Fedora9 with Wine. Only thing i had to do manually was to copy this msvbvm60.dll from a M$ Windows machine to .wine/drive_c/windows/system32/

The graphics get a bit jerky when the game is starting up, and once it loads up its quite smooth.
Btw The installer wizard was filled with some strange looking characters instead of the instructions, but i guess i got the correct buttons when i clicked. Shouldn't be hard.

This would be the second FPS game i had luck with over wine., Unreal tournament being the 1st.

The truth stands out clear..: They called it incredible India

2008-12-02T12:54:00.000+05:30

The truth stands out clear..: They called it incredible India

yum stuff

2008-11-27T16:45:00.007+05:30

note to self

When creating yum repositories with RHEL5 installation media,
use createrepo -g with the comps-*.xml files inside {Server, Cluster, ClusterStorage, VT}/repodata directories.

createrepo -g will add the necessary meta-data on to the repo, necessary for yum group functions to work properly.

Eg. yum grouplist, yum groupinstall

a sunset...

2008-11-08T19:32:00.007+05:30

a sunset, originally uploaded by Yajith.

Enabling basic authentication in Squid

2008-11-03T12:56:00.002+05:30

Found this in my gmail archive and thought it would be easier to have it on my blog. I had replied with this to someone on the lug.lk mailing list. Actually noticed an error on my reply as well, which is corrected on the below.

-2007-08-01

Squid supports lot of authentication methods. I'll put the basic method that uses ncsa_auth program. You need to make the following changes to your squid.conf. Please be advised that the below, gives only a very basic proxy setup with authentication. If you want something complex, you might want to the squid documentation.

**Backup your existing squid.conf

Put/uncomment following lines to your squid.conf
auth_param basic program /usr/lib/squid/ncsa_auth /etc/squid/squid_passwd

ncsa_auth program is installed along squid in redhat flavours, under /usr/lib/squid/ . "/etc/squid/passwd" is the name of the file where all the passwords will be kept. You can change this to point to wherever you want in the file system.

auth_param basic children 5
auth_param basic realm Squid proxy-caching web server
auth_param basic credentialsttl 2 hours
auth_param basic casesensitive off

First line below is an ACL named "authenticated_user"
Second line defines the networks in the LAN. This should be changed according to your setup. ( i just copied over from def: squid.configuration :-) )
The third allows http access through the proxy for Authenticated connections coming from the specified networks.
acl authenticated_user proxy_auth REQUIRED
acl our_networks src 192.168.1.0/24 192.168.2.0/24
http_access allow our_networks authenticated_user

Once you have made the above changes to the squid.conf you have to create the username/passwords in the specified file. ( /etc/squid/squid_passwd in this )

For that, do,
htpasswd -c /etc/squid/squid_passwd username password

After adding the 1st user in the above way, to add more new users, use the below method.
htpasswd /etc/squid/squid_passwd username password

You can find out various parameters you can use with htpasswd from the man page.

When everything is done, simply restart the squid service..

If you want squid to connect to a separate service for authentication, refer to the squid documentation, there are quite a few methods that are currently supported.

morning yellow...

2008-10-20T21:19:00.003+05:30

morning yellow, originally uploaded by Yajith.

evening sky...

2008-10-20T13:15:00.005+05:30

evening sky, originally uploaded by Yajith.

Kernel versions on different RHELs...

2008-10-13T11:28:00.004+05:30

note to self

When ever you need to find out a kernel version of a particular RHEL version or an update, you can head over to this Knowledge Base Article. Hope they are keeping it up-to-date.

Below is what it contains right now.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux
Update	v. 2.1	v. 3	v. 4	v. 5
GA	2.4.9-e.3	2.4.21-4	2.6.9-5	2.6.18-8
U1	2.4.9-e.12	2.4.21-9	2.6.9-11	2.6.18-53
U2	2.4.9-e.24	2.4.21-15	2.6.9-22	2.6.18-92
U3	2.4.9-e.34	2.4.21-20	2.6.9-34	-
U4	2.4.9-e.40	2.4.21-27	2.6.9-42	-
U5	2.4.9-e.49	2.4.21-32	2.6.9-55	-
U6	2.4.9-e.57	2.4.21-37	2.6.9-67	-
U7	-	2.4.21-40	2.6.9-78	-
U8	-	2.4.21-47	-	-
U9	-	2.4.21-50	-	-

Old CentOS/RHEL packages

2008-10-13T10:58:00.003+05:30

note to self

When there is a need for an old RHEL or CentOS rpm, head over to http://vault.centos.org. They keep an archive of package trees of previous CentOS releases.

It can not be used as a yum repo, but its good enough if you know what you need exactly. The security updates are not put in there, but this works for me..

--

Thank You CentOS.! :)

its rpm-build NOT rpmbuild..!

2008-10-13T09:21:00.003+05:30

note to self

"rpmbuild" is the tool used to build rpms ( something like a .deb in Debian flavours ). Whenever i want to build a rpm on a system where i don't have rpmbuild installed, its quite easy to get it installed on the system using "yum".

The problem ( - not exactly a problem, just something that keeps on happening to me ) is that when i do "yum install rpmbuild" yum doesn't output what i need. Instead it outputs stuff which are not really even related to my requirement. The program that provides rpmbuild is named "rpm-build", which keeps causing me this problem. :(

The packages given as results from yum, when the query string is given as "rpmbuild", all seem to have the word "rpmbuild" on their "info" meta data, but its strange, and quite frankly annoying that "rpm-build" ( the actual package that provides "rpmbuild" ) doesn't have the key "rpmbuild" which could be the reason for this.

And, before i forget, the correct way would be "yum install rpm-build" :)
I hate that i keep forgetting these.!!!

my favorite superhero...

2008-10-05T20:53:00.003+05:30

Something i enjoy going through.
-from the movie "Kill Bill - vol.2"

---

i find the whole mythology surrounding superheroes fascinating.
take my favorite superhero, Superman.
Not a great comic book. Not particularly well-drawn.

But the mythology..

The mythology is not only great, it's unique.

Now, a staple of the superhero mythology is,
there's the superhero and there's the alter ego.

Batman is actually Bruce Wayne, Spider-Man is actually Peter Parker.

When that character wakes up in the morning, he's Peter Parker.
He has to put on a costume to become Spider-Man.

And it is in that characteristic Superman stands alone.

Superman didn't become Superman. Superman was born Superman.

When Superman wakes up in the morning, he's Superman.

His alter ego is Clark Kent.

His outfit with the big red "S" - that's the blanket he was wrapped in as a baby when the Kents found him.

Those are his clothes.

What Kent wears - the glasses, the business suit - that's the costume. That's the costume Superman wears to blend in with us.
Clark Kent is how Superman views us.

And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent?

He's weak... ...he's unsure of himself... ...he's a coward.

Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the whole human race.

---

bunch of yellow...

2008-10-05T20:37:00.004+05:30

bunch of yellow, originally uploaded by Yajith.

port forwarding using ssh

2008-10-03T11:01:00.006+05:30

note to self

ssh can be used in the below way to forward traffic over a secure channel, to make otherwise un-secure ( plain ) traffic to be encrypted.

ssh access to the destination sever is required for this to work.

For an example, to secure POP3 communications with a mail server at a.b.c.d one can do something like below on their local machine.

ssh -N -f -L 127.0.0.1:1100:a.b.c.d:110 user@a.b.c.d

-f is to put the connection to the background
-N to wait infinitely for incoming connections
-L binds the tunnel to the specified port ( 1100 in this case )

this will create a ssh tunnel bound to the local port 1100 with port 110 of a.b.c.d
@a.b.c.d performs the authentication via ssh with the a.b.c.d

once this is done, the POP client can be re-configured to talk to local port 1100. ssh will happily encrypt and decrypt what you put in the tunnel from the end-points. This mechanism can be used to secure systems that are not built with such capabilities.

when you want to stop the tunnel, you can simply use "kill"

--

FAQ at www.openssh.com was quite helpful in figuring this out. thanks bud for pointing out such things can be easily done with ssh. :)

visitor in green...

2008-09-29T20:59:00.005+05:30

visitor in green, originally uploaded by Yajith.

MIA Paper Planes -by DeLon

2008-09-27T17:34:00.000+05:30

Iraninan President on Larry King Live

2008-09-26T11:48:00.002+05:30

Six parts.

lamps...

2008-09-24T19:22:00.005+05:30

lamps, originally uploaded by Yajith.

green...

2008-09-23T22:23:00.005+05:30

green originally uploaded by Yajith.

wild flowers...

2008-09-18T19:52:00.005+05:30

wild flowers, originally uploaded by Yajith.

bomb on bus...

2008-09-16T22:21:00.007+05:30

got a chance to snap a couple of photos of the bus on which a bomb exploded today. photos aren't very clear, i took them from the camera on my phone.

candle light...

2008-09-05T21:53:00.003+05:30

candle light, originally uploaded by Yajith.

fabric and glitter...

2008-09-04T22:38:00.003+05:30

fabric and glitter, originally uploaded by Yajith.

green sprout...

2008-09-03T19:52:00.004+05:30

green sprout, originally uploaded by Yajith.

light that burns...

2008-09-02T19:48:00.002+05:30

light that burns, originally uploaded by Yajith.

squirrelmail preferences

2008-09-02T12:26:00.004+05:30

Note to self

SquirrelMail keeps user specific preferences, address books in /var/lib/squirrelmail/prefs/

It annoys me, that i keep forgetting this sort of things. Hopefully i won't, again!

the bells...

2008-09-01T19:47:00.001+05:30

the bells, originally uploaded by Yajith.

raindrops...

2008-08-31T22:23:00.002+05:30

raindrops, originally uploaded by Yajith.