Pix & Flix

Total Recall (2012)

2013-02-14T13:36:00.001-10:00

Total Recall is a 2012 science-fiction action movie featuring Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale and Jessica Biel. The action scenes and special effects are great. But the plot is somewhat complicated and there are a lot of things in the movie that make little sense to me.

Here are some links to the movie. Get aria2 for all your download needs.

Torrent: Total Recall 2012 DVDRip XviD-Lum1x
Magnet: bittorrent magnet link

The Lucky One (2012)

2013-02-14T11:59:00.002-10:00

The Lucky One is a romantic drama film based on Nicholas Sparks' novel of the same name. The movie stars Zac Efron, Taylor Schilling, and Blythe Danner, and is directed by Scott Hicks. It is a watchable movie but it somewhat irks me that the sheriff ex-husband dies after trying to reunite with the main female character and she and her son end up living happily together with the main character.

Here are some links to the movie. Get transmission for all your download needs.

Torrent: The Lucky One 2012 BDRip XviD-AMIABLE
Magnet: bittorrent magnet link

Men in Black 3 (2012)

2013-02-14T10:43:00.000-10:00

Men in Black 3 is the latest in the sci-fi movie franchise about secret agents chasing renegade aliens. The movie stars Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones. The aliens, the gadgets and special effects are interesting enough, but I think the story is a bit confusing and hectic.

This movie is purely a casual weekend family movie for kids and young adults, but nothing more.

Here are some links to the movie. Get aria2 for all your download needs.

Torrent: Men in Black 3 (2012) DVDRip XviD-MAXSPEED
Magnet: bittorrent magnet link

Battleship (2012)

2013-02-09T00:00:00.000-10:00

Battleship is a science-fiction movie and military action film about alien invasion. It was directed by Peter Berg and released by Universal Pictures. Battleship (2012) stars Taylor Kitsch, a relatively new face in Hollywood, who plays a bum-turned-navy officer leading navy battleships to victory against aliens. It's a pretty watchable movie considering that the movie was loosely based on the classic board game.

After watching the movie, a question dawned on me. Why are the lizard-like aliens using battleships instead of flying aircrafts? Anyway, the movie features some unique alien weapons, such as running metallic wheels that wreak havoc on everything on their paths.

Here are some links for the movie. Get transmission here for all your download needs.

Torrent: Battleship (2012) DVDRip XviD-MAXSPEED
Magnet: bittorrent magnet link

Oseam - Korean Animation with English Subtitle

2013-01-18T01:20:00.000-10:00

Oseam is an animated film from Korea with Buddhist theme. It is suitable for all audiences, including children. The story is about two orphaned siblings who lost their mom. The ending is so sad.

It's a good film overall.

The Avengers 2012

2013-01-05T21:23:00.001-10:00

The Avengers is the number 1 blockbuster movie in 2012. The movie features major heros from the Marvel's comic universe, and is packed with thrilling actions.

Resident Evil Retribution 2012

2013-01-04T15:19:00.001-10:00

Resident Evil Retribution is another movie release in the Resident Evil series, the zombie-killing action franchise that features the sexy female star, Milla Jovovich. Watching Retribution is like watching the previous Resident Evil releases all over again as scenes and characters from the previous movies come back in Retribution. This time, however, the heroine Alice, played by Jovovich, wakes up in an undersea Umbrella facility, and runs through several simulation areas, killing and running away from zombies and the giant licker. With amazing CG effects and plenty of fighting and shooting actions, Resident Evil Retribution is a good zombie action flick to waste your time with.

Bittorrent magnet links: 1080p-AliBaloch, 720p-YIFY

Why does the licker have no skull? The brain is in full sight. So gross.

Alice is such a sexy super killer. How can she bond with the deadly T-virus and still remain so cute?

Tools To Download Movies

Bonsai Rock, Lake Tahoe, IV

2012-10-19T10:01:00.001-10:00

A serene scene of the Lake Tahoe with the nice natural blend of water, rock, distant forest and clear sky. Vivid blue and soft red present the viewer with pleasing contrast of color and the elliptical rocks on water are pleasant to watch.

Bonsai

2012-10-19T09:59:00.002-10:00

A wonderful picture of bonsai that presents a miniaturized view of evergreen pine tress over a cliff.

Bonsai Rock, Lake Tahoe, Nevada, USA

2012-10-19T09:58:00.001-10:00

What can I say? Simply hypnotic. Otherworldly. Nice presentation of light and darkness in a serene setting.

Bokeh wallpaper

2012-10-19T09:56:00.002-10:00

A bokeh wallpaper in a 2560x1600 pixel format from v3wall.com.

Dhoom 1 & 2 from Bollywood

2012-10-17T02:33:00.000-10:00

I've been into Bollywood movies lately, experiencing slight culture shock from the other side of the world. One of the movies I watched is Dhoom, which is about young and restless criminals trying to outsmart cops during a robbery spree.

Here's Dhoom 1 in 8 parts.

Dhoom 1 Part 1 w/Eng Subs HQ DvDRip [2004] by CBoii789
Dhoom 1 Part 2 w/Eng Subs HQ DvDRip [2004] by CBoii789
Dhoom 1 Part 3 w/Eng Subs HQ DvDRip [2004] by CBoii789
Dhoom 1 Part 4 w/Eng Subs HQ DvDRip [2004] by CBoii789
Dhoom 1 Part 5 w/Eng Subs HQ DvDRip [2004] by CBoii789
Dhoom 1 Part 6 w/Eng Subs HQ DvDRip [2004] by CBoii789
Dhoom 1 Part 7 w/Eng Subs HQ DvDRip [2004] by CBoii789
Dhoom 1 Part 8 (Last) w/Eng Subs HQ DvDRip [2004] by CBoii789

Here's Dhoom 2 in 8 parts.

Dhoom 2 Part 1 w/Eng Subs HQ DvDRip [2006] by CBoii789
Dhoom 2 Part 2 w/Eng Subs HQ DvDRip [2006] by CBoii789
Dhoom 2 Part 3 w/Eng Subs HQ DvDRip [2006] by CBoii789
Dhoom 2 Part 4 w/Eng Subs HQ DvDRip [2006] by CBoii789
Dhoom 2 Part 5 w/Eng Subs HQ DvDRip [2006] by CBoii789
Dhoom 2 Part 6 w/Eng Subs HQ DvDRip [2006] by CBoii789
Dhoom 2 Part 7 w/Eng Subs HQ DvDRip [2006] by CBoii789
Dhoom 2 Part 8 (Last) w/Eng Subs HQ DvDRip [2006] by CBoii789

Aria2 shell script and batch file

2012-10-11T00:17:00.000-10:00

I wrote a BASH shell script and a DOS batch file that can be used to download files using aria2 — Aria2 is a command-line tool for downloading files. The script and the batch file take 2 arguments; the first one is for the bittorrent hash in 40-digit hexadecimal number and the second one is for arbitrary one-word description.

aria2.bat can be used on Windows, and aria2.sh can be used on Linux and *BSD. Make sure that aria2c is in PATH. For example, if you want to download an ISO file for the OpenSUSE DVD, you would type something like:

aria2.bat 198472f5217d843cceb1a4c82233f009ed6608af opensuse-dvd-586

To find the value of a bittorrent hash (that long hex number), you can cut it from a magnet link you find on a Web site — Magnet links allow you to download actual files without first having to download bittorrent files (*.torrent). When you see a magnet sign, right-click on it to display the shortcut menu and select Copy Link Location.

Then, paste it somewhere, for example, inside the URL address bar. The hash value comes after the btih: string.

After you find the bittorrent hash, use it as the first argument to the script and make up anything for the second argument, as shown in the example above.

Setting the Locale on Linux

2012-10-05T12:48:00.000-10:00

A locale is a system setting that allows users to configure the operating system for their own language, date, currency, etc. on Linux. There are slightly different ways to set up locales on different Linux distributions. Here I write how I would normally set up locales on Linux.

To set the system-wide default locale, I would append the LANG= variable to the Linux kernel. The kernel will happily accept the LANG= variable and pass it to the operating system. With syslinux, I would have an entry in syslinux.cfg as follows.

LABEL debian
KERNEL vmlinuz-3.6.0
INITRD /boot/initramfs.lzma
APPEND LANG=en_US.UTF-8 TERM=vt100 root=/dev/sda9

On Debian, Ubuntu, Mint and MEPIS, the system-wide locale may be specified in /etc/environment or /etc/default/locale.

LANG=C.UTF-8

To set your own locale different from the system-wide locale, just add a line to your .bashrc or .xsession:

export LANG=zh_CN.UTF-8

Generating locale-archive Again

The number of locales available on the system may be incomplete in order to save disk space. To see which locales are available, run the following command:

locale -a

If you want to add or remove locales, edit /etc/locale.gen. The following is a sample locale.gen.

ar_SA.UTF-8 UTF-8
bn_IN UTF-8
de_DE.UTF-8 UTF-8
en_US ISO-8859-1
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8
es_MX.UTF-8 UTF-8
fa_IR UTF-8
fr_FR.UTF-8 UTF-8
gu_IN UTF-8
hi_IN UTF-8
id_ID.UTF-8 UTF-8
it_IT.UTF-8 UTF-8
ja_JP.UTF-8 UTF-8
kn_IN UTF-8
ko_KR.UTF-8 UTF-8
ml_IN UTF-8
mr_IN UTF-8
or_IN UTF-8
pa_PK UTF-8
pt_BR.UTF-8 UTF-8
ru_RU.UTF-8 UTF-8
ta_IN UTF-8
te_IN UTF-8
th_TH.UTF-8 UTF-8
tr_TR.UTF-8 UTF-8
vi_VN UTF-8
zh_CN.UTF-8 UTF-8
zh_TW.UTF-8 UTF-8

After changing the file locale.gen, you need to run locale-gen to regenerate the file /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive.

locale-gen

Enabling All Possible Locales

If you have plenty disk space, then you can enable all locales supported by the current glibc implementation. The list of supported locales is at /usr/share/i18n/SUPPORTED. Just copy it to /etc/locale.gen and rebuild the locales. It will regenerate the file /usr/lib/locale/locale-archive to about 100MB.

cp /usr/share/i18n/SUPPORTED /etc/locale.gen
locale-gen

Running Applications In Different Locales

Use the env command to run an application in a different locale. For example, to run pidgin in Chinese on an English desktop, I would issue:

env LANG=zh_CN.UTF-8 pidgin

Disk Cloning / Imaging over Network with SSH, Netcat, DD and XZ

2012-10-04T15:27:00.000-10:00

Today we have affordable, ample storage and faster bandwidth to facilitate partition imaging and disk cloning over network. Nowadays, it's common and feasible to take the image of a whole partition for various reasons. Compared to file-based backups using tar, disk imaging provides the following advantages.

The boot sector is preserved so that it's easy to make it bootable after the restore.
Information such as UUID and LABEL is presered, which helps identify the partition in booting and mounting.
Information such as ACL and XATTR is preserved, which helps restrict file access and secure the system.
Every bit in the unused sectors is preserved, which may assist in digital forensics to uncover deleted or hidden information.

There are commercial programs for disk imaging and backup (Norton Ghost, Acronis True Image). However, Linux users can use readily available tools to get things done. For disk cloning/imaging, we can use ssh, netcat, dd and xz. Note that dd will fail on physically damaged disks. For such disks, use ddrescue instead.

For security and compression, we are going to use ssh and xz in this tutorial. If you don't like xz, feel free to substitute xz with gzip, bzip2 or lzop. Also, netcat is used to stream the dd output over the network. On Debian and Ubuntu derivatives, you need the following packages.

bzip2, gzip, lzop, lzma OR xz-utils
dd
netcat
ssh

We are making these assumptions in the following scenarios.

Sending computer S

This computer has IP address 192.168.1.1 and needs to back up partition /dev/sda1.
Sending Port

We'll send using port 5525.
Receiving computer T

This computer has IP address 192.168.1.2 and needs to restore partition /dev/sda2.
Receiving Port

We'll receive at port 7749.

Disk Cloning using dd, xz, netcat and ssh

In this scenario, we will clone a disk partition, simultaneously sending an image of the source partition /dev/sda1 from computer S (192.168.1.1) and restoring it at /dev/sda2 on computer T (192.168.1.2). Make sure that the source partition is not mounted or is mounted read-only. Also, make sure that the target partition size is greater than or equal to the source partition size.

At the sending computer, compress the source partition /dev/sda1 with xz and set up netcat to send it at port 5525:
```
dd if=/dev/sda1 bs=16M | xz | nc -l 5525
```
At the receiving computer, set up a SSH tunnel to the sending computer (192.168.1.1):
```
ssh -f -N -L 7749:127.0.0.1:5525 username@192.168.1.1
```
At the receiving computer, type the following command to receive the partition image and restore it at /dev/sda2:
```
nc 127.0.0.1 7749 | xz -d | dd of=/dev/sda2 bs=16M
```

Alternatively, we could take the following steps to achieve the same thing. However, we start at the receiving computer.

At the receiving computer with the target partition /dev/sda2, type the following command to receive the partition image:
```
nc -l 7749 | xz -d | dd of=/dev/sda2 bs=16M
```
At the sending computer with the source partition /dev/sda1, set up a SSH tunnel to the receiving computer (192.168.1.2):
```
ssh -f -N -L 5525:127.0.0.1:7749 username@192.168.1.2
```
At the sending computer, type the following command to compress the source partition /dev/sda1 and transmit it over the SSH tunnel:
```
dd if=/dev/sda1 bs=16M | xz | nc 127.0.0.1 5525
```
Note that the transfer may take many hours for a large partition.

Disk Imaging using dd, xz, netcat and ssh

In this scenario, we will just send an image of the source partition /dev/sda1 to the receiving computer T (192.168.1.2) without restoring it. Make sure that the source partition is not mounted or is mounted read-only. A question remains whether to compress the image at the sending or receiving computer. The answer depends on which computer is more powerful. For this example, we'll compress at the sending computer (for network bandwidth reason).

At the sending computer, compress the source partition /dev/sda1 with xz and stream it using netcat:
```
dd if=/dev/sda1 bs=16M | xz | nc -l 5525
```
At the receiving computer, set up a SSH tunnel to the sending computer (192.168.1.1):
```
ssh -f -N -L 7749:127.0.0.1:5525 username@192.168.1.1
```
At the receiving computer, type the following command to receive the file:
```
nc 127.0.0.1 7749 > partimg.xz
```

Alternatively, we could take the following steps to achieve the same thing.

At the receiving computer, set up netcat to listen at port 7749 and save the incoming data to a file partimg.xz.
```
nc -l 7749 | dd of=partimg.xz bs=16M
```
At the sending computer, establish a SSH tunnel to the receiving computer (192.168.1.2) first:
```
ssh -f -N -L 5525:192.168.1.2:7749 username@192.168.1.2
```
At the sending computer, type the following command to compress the source partition /dev/sda1 and transmit it over the SSH tunnel:
```
dd if=/dev/sda1 bs=16M | xz | nc 127.0.0.1 5525
```
Note that the transfer may take many hours for a large partiiton.

Alternative Simple Commands for Disk Cloning / Imaging

I don't like these methods for some reason, but here I show the simpler methods where netcat is not needed. For disk cloning, type something like this:

dd if=/dev/sda1 bs=16M | xz | ssh username@192.168.1.2 "xz -d | dd of=/dev/sda2 bs=16M"

Just to send an image file, run a command as follows:

dd if=/dev/sda1 bs=16M | xz | ssh username@192.168.1.2 "dd of=partimg.xz bs=16M"

Bittorrent Info Hash Values for Windows 8 ISO

2012-10-01T00:33:00.000-10:00

Windows 8 ISO files have the following BTIH hash values. Use them with my aria2 script to download Windows 8.

en_windows_8_x86_dvd_915417.iso

C5D92B32277685436DEDE9957B80083D26062C03
en_windows_8_x64_dvd_915440.iso

144C7E2B46103FF84F83A1E6A12D66B740F00CF6

Download Linux Kernel 3.5.4 / 3.6.0

2012-09-30T22:37:00.000-10:00

I am sharing my kernel builds for Linux 3.5.4 and 3.6.0. Hope it works for everyone.

To Compile ndiswrapper 1.58rc1 for Linux 3.5.4

2012-09-30T13:24:00.000-10:00

ndiswrapper allows Linux users to use Windows drivers for PCI/USB network adapters on Linux. If you own a network device for which Linux support is still absent or premature, then you need to compile ndiswrapper yourself and install Windows driver for your network device. Fortunately, today's Linux supports most network devices out-of-box, so most distributions don't bother to include ndiswrapper. However, I am compiling ndiswrapper believing that Windows NDIS drivers would outperform native Linux drivers.

To my surprise, building the latest version of ndiswrapper (1.58rc1) did not require any patch. After compiling Linux 3.5.4, I downloaded the ndiswrapper source from the sourceforge site. I chose the testing version because I thought it would work better with Linux 3.5.x. I unpacked the source.

tar xzvf ndiswrapper-1.58rc1.tar.gz
cd ndiswrapper-1.58rc1

I typed the following commands to compile and install ndiswrapper.

KVERS=3.5.4 make uninstall
KVERS=3.5.4 make
KVERS=3.5.4 make install

Then, I generated modules.* files again.

depmod -e -m -F /boot/System.map-3.5.4 3.5.4

The following files were installed by ndiswrapper.

/lib/modules/3.5.4/misc/ndiswrapper.ko
/sbin/loadndisdriver
/usr/sbin/ndiswrapper
/usr/sbin/ndiswrapper-buginfo
/usr/share/man/man8/loadndisdriver.8
/usr/share/man/man8/ndiswrapper.8

Happiness the Movie 2007

2012-09-30T01:33:00.000-10:00

Happiness is a Korean movie that makes you think seriously about the true meaning of happiness in life. It tells a story of two terminal patients who met at a remote nursing home and fell in love with each other. However, the guy leaves the girl for a careless, material life in the city. In the end, he comes back to the girl only to find her dying and regrets having left her. The movie tries to teach us that true happiness is about being close to someone you care about no matter how sick or poor he/she is.

My All-Purpose Init Script for initrd / initramfs Boot Images

2012-09-29T22:18:00.000-10:00

Here I post my init script. It is used in my initrd/initramfs boot images for the following purposes.

Boot from a live CD / DVD
Boot from a read-only filesystem image, compressed in SquashFS
Copy the filesystem image to a RAM disk and run Linux entirely on memory
Boot Linux from a USB flash drive
Boot Linux from a local disk partition
Run a rescue shell without booting Linux

I have yet to implement network booting. Right now it is good enough for my current needs. It takes the following boot parameters.

root=

Specifies the root partition to boot Linux from. For example, /dev/sda2.
label=

Specifies the label of the device to boot from. For example, label=DEBIAN.
uuid=

Specifies the UUID of the device to boot from. For example, uuid=dcfd6a0a-2a0f-4b3d-8a1a-5e7d642ebfbd
boot=

Can be cdrom, loop, ram, usb or ata.
vmode=

Specifies the screen resolution of the framebuffer video. For example, vmode=640x480
single

Boot into the single-user mode.
nox

Boot into the console mode in runlevel 2

#!/bin/dash

# Define a function to parse kernel command line options.
get_opt() {
  echo $@ | cut -d "=" -f 2
}

# Define a function to load drivers.
loadmod() {
  for i in $@ ; do
    for j in $(grep $i /tmp/pcimodules.txt); do
      modprobe $j
    done
  done
}

# Define a function to guess the partition type.
gpart() {
  for i in $(blkid | grep $1); do
    case $i in
      *\=*)
        eval $i
        ;;
      *)
        true
        ;;
    esac
  done
}

# Define a function for mounting the root partition.
mountr() {
  if [ $uuid ]; then
    if [ $# = 2 ]; then
      mount -r -U $uuid $2
    elif [ $# = 1 ]; then
      mount -r -U $uuid $1
    else mount -r -U $uuid /mnt
    fi
  elif [ $label ]; then
    if [ $# = 2 ]; then
      mount -r -L $label $2
    elif [ $# = 1 ]; then
      mount -r -L $label $1
    else mount -r -L $label /mnt
    fi
  else
    gpart $1
    case $TYPE in
      ext*)
        e2fsck -p $1
        [ $# = 2 ] && mount $1 $2 || mount $1 /mnt
        ;;
      jfs)
        jfs_fsck $1
        if [ $# = 2 ]; then
          mount -t jfs -o ro,iocharset=utf8 $1 $2
        else mount -t jfs -o ro,iocharset=utf8 $1 /mnt
        fi
        ;;
      vfat)
        if [ $# = 2 ]; then
          mount -t vfat -o ro,gid=100,dmask=2,fmask=113 $1 $2
        else mount -t vfat -o ro,gid=100,dmask=2,fmask=113 $1 /mnt
        fi
        ;;
      *)
        [ $# = 2 ] && mount -r $1 $2 || mount -r $1 /mnt
        ;;
    esac
  fi
}

# Create a union filesystem
union() {
  mount -t tmpfs none /opt/tmp
  modinfo unionfs > /dev/null 2>&1 &&
  mount -t unionfs -o dirs=/opt/tmp=rw:/opt=ro none /mnt ||
  ( mkdir /opt/tmp/.change
    modprobe fuse
    unionfs-fuse -o allow_other,use_ino,suid,dev,nonempty,kernel_cache \
     -o cow,chroot=/opt,max_files=32768 /tmp/.change=RW:/=RO /mnt )
}

# Mount proc and sysfs.
mount -t proc none /proc
mount -t sysfs none /sys

# Find the available PCI hardware
mount -t tmpfs none /tmp
pcimodules > /tmp/pcimodules.txt

# Populate /dev (Needs kernel >= 2.6.32)
mount -t devtmpfs none /dev
mkdir -m 755 /dev/pts
mount -t devpts -o gid=5,mode=620 none /dev/pts

# Set default values
boot=ata
root=/dev/sda6

# Find the root=, label=, uuid= and boot= values on kernel command line.
for i in $(cat /proc/cmdline); do
  case $i in
    root\=*)
        root=$(get_opt $i)
        case $root in
          /dev/cdr* | /dev/dvd* | /dev/sr* | /dev/scd*)
            boot=cdrom
            ;;
          0x200)
            root=/dev/fd0
            ;;
        esac
        ;;
    label\=* | uuid\=* | boot\=* | vmode\=* )
        eval $i
        ;;
    single)
        RUNLEVEL=single
        ;;
    nox)
        RUNLEVEL=2
        ;;
  esac
done

# Activate framebuffer display devices.
if [ $vmode ]; then
  if [ $boot = cdrom ]; then
    modprobe uvesafb scroll=ywrap mode_option=$vmode-16
  else for i in $(grep fb /tmp/pcimodules.txt); do
    case $i in
      atyfb)
        modprobe $i mode=$vmode-16
        ;;
      nvidiafb | rivafb)
        modprobe nvidiafb mode_option=$vmode bpp=16 hwcur=1
        ;;
      radeonfb | savagefb)
        modprobe $i mode_option=$vmode-16
        ;;
      sisfb)
        modprobe $i mode=$vmodex16 mem=12288 font=SUN12x22
        ;;
      viafb | vt8623fb)
        modprobe viafb viafb_mode=$vmode viafb_bpp=16
        ;;
      *)
        modprobe $i
        ;;
    esac
  done
    if grep -q i915 /tmp/pcimodules.txt; then true
    else [ -c /dev/fb0 ] || modprobe uvesafb scroll=ywrap mode_option=$vmode-16
    fi
  fi
fi

case $boot in
    cdrom)
        # Boot Linux from a live CD.
        loadmod ata_ ahci pdc_adma ^.hci-hcd
        modprobe usb-storage &&
        modprobe sr_mod &&
        sleep 7
        modprobe isofs
        mount -t iso9660 /dev/sr0 /media
        [ -d /media/isolinux -o -d /media/boot/isolinux ] || 
          mount -t iso9660 /dev/sr1 /media
        if [ -f /media/*.[Ss][Qq]* ]; then
          SQF=$(ls -t /media/*.[Ss][Qq]* | head -n 1)
          if [ $root = /dev/ram ]; then 
               echo "Please wait until the RAM disk is ready."
               dd if=$SQF of=/dev/ram1 bs=2048 &&
               mount -t squashfs /dev/ram1 /opt
          else modprobe loop
               mount -t squashfs -o loop $SQF /opt
          fi
        else
          mount --move /media /opt
        fi
        union
        ;;
    loop)
        # Boot Linux from an image file.
        loadmod ata_ ahci pdc_adma ^.hci-hcd
        modprobe usb-storage &&
        modprobe sd_mod &&
        sleep 7
        mountr $root /media
        modprobe loop
        if [ -f /media/*.[Ss][Qq]* ]; then
          SQF=$(ls -t /media/*.[Ss][Qq]* | head -n 1)
          mount -t squashfs -o loop $SQF /opt
        elif [ -f /media/*.[Ii][Ss][Oo] ]; then
          ISO=$(ls -t /media/*.[Ii][Ss][Oo] | head -n 1)
          modprobe isofs
          mount -t iso9660 -o loop $ISO /opt
        fi
        union
        ;;
    ram)
        # Boot Linux from ramdisk.
        loadmod ata_ ahci pdc_adma ^.hci-hcd
        modprobe usb-storage &&
        modprobe sd_mod &&
        sleep 7
        mountr $root /media
        echo "Please wait until the RAM disk is ready."
        if [ -f /media/*.[Ss][Qq]* ]; then
          SQF=$(ls -t /media/*.[Ss][Qq]* | head -n 1)
          dd if=$SQF of=/dev/ram1 &&
          mount -t squashfs /dev/ram1 /opt
        elif [ -f /media/*.[Ii][Ss][Oo] ]; then
          ISO=$(ls -t /media/*.[Ii][Ss][Oo] | head -n 1)
          dd if=$ISO of=/dev/ram1 bs=2048 &&
          modprobe isofs
          mount -t iso9660 /dev/ram1 /opt
        fi
        union
        ;;
    usb*)
        # Boot Linux from a USB drive.
        loadmod ^.hci-hcd
        modprobe usb-storage &&
        modprobe sd_mod &&
        sleep 7
        mountr $root
        ;;
    ata*)
        loadmod ata_ ahci pdc_adma &&
        modprobe sd_mod &&
        mountr $root
        ;;
esac

# Make sure that init exists and is executable.
if [ -x /mnt/sbin/init ]; then
  mount --move /dev /mnt/dev
  mount --move /proc /mnt/proc
  mount --move /sys /mnt/sys
  umount /tmp

# Start init from the root filesystem.
  cd /mnt
  [ -f /media/updates.zip ] && unzip -o /media/updates.zip
  case $boot in
    cdrom)
      [ $root = /dev/ram ] && umount /media
      [ $RUNLEVEL ] || RUNLEVEL=3
      ;;
    loop | ram)
      umount /media
      [ $RUNLEVEL ] || RUNLEVEL=3
      ;;
    *)
      [ $RUNLEVEL ] || RUNLEVEL=5
      ;;
  esac
  [ -d initrd ] && pivot_root . initrd
  exec chroot . /sbin/init $RUNLEVEL
fi

# Start a shell as a last resort.
echo "Error booting from the root filesystem. Starting a shell."
exec /bin/dash

The following are examples of boot parameters that can be used with my init script.

Boot Linux from the local hard drive partition /dev/sda8
```
boot=ata root=/dev/sda8
```
Boot Linux from the latest squashfs file (*.sq*) on /dev/sda1
```
boot=loop root=/dev/sda1
```
Boot Linux from the CD-ROM with 1024x768 video resolution
```
boot=cdrom vmode=1024x768
```
Copy the squashfs image from CD-ROM into memory and run Linux on memory
```
boot=cdrom root=/dev/ram ramdisk_size=573440 vmode=800x600
```
Boot Linux from the second partition of a USB drive
```
boot=usb root=/dev/sda2
```

Using UnionfsFuse on Debian/Ubuntu Linux

2012-09-26T22:29:00.000-10:00

Unionfs-fuse is a user-space implementation of unionfs that makes it possible to run Linux over a read-only medium, such as CD-ROM. Unionfs-fuse is a convenient alternative to kernel implementations (unionfs, aufs and overlayfs), so users don't have to patch the kernel in order to try unionfs. There are many possible uses of unionfs:

Create a live CD
Run Linux from a read-only filesystem image, such as a squashfs file
Freeze an existing Linux system and save all changes in the memory

Unionfs achieves all this by merging a read-only filesystem and a writeable filesystem into a single virtual filesystem and mount it at a certain mount point. Let's try and apply unionfs-fuse to the third situation above. Basically, we need to create an initramfs file containing unionfs-fuse and a custom init script. The basic procedure is like this:

Load kernel drivers necessary to access the underlying storage device
Mount the read-only filesystem image at /opt
Mount tmpfs at /opt/tmp and create a directory /opt/tmp/.change
Use unionfs-fuse to merge the two and mount it at /mnt
Use chroot and start /sbin/init to boot the new unionfs filesystem

To carry about the above steps, an init script might look like this:

#!/bin/dash
# Use the small but functional dash to process this script

# Mount /proc, /sys, /dev and /dev/pts just in case
mount -t proc none /proc
mount -t sysfs none /sys
mount -t devtmpfs none /dev
mkdir -m 755 /dev/pts
mount -t devpts -o gid=5,mode=620 none /dev/pts

# Write commands here to load modules necessary to access a hard drive
modprobe pata_via
modprobe sd_mod

# Mount the Linux filesystem read-only at /opt
mount -r /dev/sda6 /opt

# Mount tmpfs at /opt/tmp
mount -t tmpfs none /opt/tmp
mkdir /opt/tmp/.change

# Create a unionfs mount at /mnt
modprobe fuse
unionfs-fuse -o allow_other,use_ino,suid,dev,nonempty,kernel_cache \
   -o cow,chroot=/opt,max_files=32768 /tmp/.change=RW:/=RO /mnt

# Make sure that init exists and is executable
if [ -x /mnt/sbin/init ]; then
  mount --move /dev /mnt/dev
  mount --move /proc /mnt/proc
  mount --move /sys /mnt/sys

# Start init from the root filesystem with runlevel 5.
  exec chroot /mnt /sbin/init 5
fi

The computer will boot into a virtual unionfs, consisting of writable tmpfs on top of read-only root filesystem. Make sure to modify /etc/rc.local so that it contains the following snippet of code.

for i in `ps ax | grep unionfs | grep -v grep | awk '{print $1}'`; do
  echo $i > /var/run/sendsigs.omit.d/unionfs.$i;
done

This prevents Linux from killing unionfs-fuse during shutdown so the system will properly shut down.

Manually Creating initrd / initramfs to Boot Linux

To Build Transmission-Daemon for Windows

2012-09-26T13:22:00.000-10:00

Transmission is a free bittorrent application available on Linux. It is a pretty neat tool compared to other bittorrent software. It is possible to compile and use Transmission on Windows, thanks to Cygwin. First, install Cygwin using the Cygwin installer(setup.exe). I set the Root directory to C:\Cygwin and chose to install the following packages in addition to base packages.

bison
gettext-devel
libtool
make
binutils
gcc4-g++
patch
pkg-config

Compile zlib.

./configure --prefix=/usr --static
make
cp -iv zconf.h zlib.h /usr/include
cp -iv libz.a /usr/lib

Build OpenSSL.

./Configure -DHAVE_STRUCT_TIMESPEC -lz -lpthread threads zlib --prefix=/usr cygwin
make
make install

Build CURL.

./configure --prefix=/usr --disable-shared --with-ssl --with-ca-bundle=ca-bundle.crt
make
make install

Compile libevent.

./configure --prefix=/usr --disable-shared
make 
make install

Lastly, build transmission.

./configure --prefix=/usr --disable-shared --enable-static --disable-nls --without-gtk CPPFLAGS=-DHAVE_STRUCT_TIMESPEC
make
make install

If you get snprintf error with libutp, insert the following line into utp.cpp:

extern int snprintf(char *, size_t, const char *, ...);

To Compile UnionFS-fuse 0.26 on Debian Linux

2012-09-22T23:26:00.000-10:00

I am trying to switch to unionfs-fuse for my live CD, but so far I haven't much success yet. Debian's unionfs-fuse package in Sid is outdated (version 0.24), so I compiled version 0.26. I had to install libfuse-dev in order to be able to build UnionFS-fuse. I probably needed cmake too, but I didn't choose to install cmake.

cmake
gcc
libfuse-dev
make

I edited Makefile to change PREFIX.

PREFIX=/usr
BINDIR=/bin
SBINDIR=/sbin

I just typed make to begin compilation.

make
make install

The following files are installed.

/usr/bin/unionfs
/usr/sbin/mount.unionfs
/usr/share/man/man8/unionfs-fuse.8

To make it compatible with Debian and derivatives, I renamed unionfs.

mv /usr/bin/unionfs /usr/bin/unionfs-fuse

Reign of Assassins 劍雨 2010

2012-09-21T14:45:00.000-10:00

Reign of Assassins (劍雨) is a Chinese wuxia (武俠) film starring Michelle Yeoh. In my opinion, it's a pretty enjoyable movie. The following clip has both English and Vietnamese subtitles.

Download Aria2 1.15.2

2012-09-20T11:32:00.000-10:00

Here you can download my Windows builds of aria2. This is the result of my previous post on how to build aria2 for Windows.

aria2c.exe version 1.15.2 for 32-bit Windows

I didn't expect my Windows build to depend on libstdc++-6.dll. I think that's because I used Cygwin's mingw64 compiler. It still works, though.

Aria2c Usage

aria2c --file-allocation=prealloc ftp://192.168.1.64/pardus.iso

If aria2 aborts a download due to a connection error, you can resume the download any time using aria2c like this:

aria2c -c ftp://192.168.1.64/pardus.iso

To download files from URL's written in a file urls.txt to a folder Downloads, run aria2 as follows. The urls.txt should contain one download per line with URL's seperated by a tab:

aria2c -i urls.txt -d Downloads