Make Gadgets Work !!!

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2016-06-27T19:54:00.003+01:00

This post can now be read at HERE

I have recently been intrigued by the idea of replacing the likes of “Dropbox” and “Google Drive” with a cloud set-up of my own. I had "Owncloud" set-up for nearly a year but was not happy with it. There were minor niggles aside form speed and thumbnails and then “Owncloud” had a recent split leading to creation of “Nextcloud”.

While “Nextcloud” is the one that is more aligned to the general principles of community driven software, it is new and is still plagued with owncloud issues as it is essentially same stuff in new packaging at the moment.

In the meantime, every now and then I was reading all the good stuff people had to say about "Seafile" and so I wanted to give it a try. Now for the past year and a half I have also been using Fedora Security Lab spin on my home server and I just wanted to get the Seafile set-up on it so I did a few “duckduckgo” searches on the net and finally had the steps to achieve the objective. Obviously it all worked and my Seafile server is live and kicking, hence the post. :)

So in nutshell my objective was to:

Install seafile-server-5 behind nginx on Fedora 24 Security Lab spin all on a 32 bit 12 year old laptop.

The steps I followed are listed below with detailed notes of what I did. I do not claim these to be perfect but this is what worked for me. If you know that something can be done better, please do let me know in the comments.

1. Install required software to support seafile with nginx:

python
python-imaging
MySQL-python
python-setuptools
nginx
mariadb
mariadb-server
policycoreutils-python
setroubleshoot

All this can be done with one single command:

sudo dnf install python python-imaging MySQL-python python-setuptools

nginx mariadb mariadb-server policycoreutils-python setroubleshoot

2) Start mariadb-server and set up basic security settings.

Now as we need to run all commands with “sudo”, it is actually easier to just go root. In other words, type "su" on the terminal and provide your password so you are logged in as root on the terminal. When you are logged in as root the $ changes to # at command prompt. All commands below are on root so if you are not logged in as root, you will need to run these with "sudo".

Start mariadb:

[root@localhost /]# systemctl start mariadb

Initiate the mariadb secure installation:

[root@localhost /]# mysql_secure_installation

Above command will trigger a set of questions around port, username, password etc. You can of course change these. If you do so, you must keep note of it and change your specific details for database in subsequent steps but if you leave it default you will basically have a user: root, with a password of your choice (we will use “sqlpasswd” for this example) and a database server running at port 3306.

3) Set up databases and privileges for "seafile"

Type following:

[root@localhost /]# mysql -p

You will be prompted to enter a password. Provide the password you have set-up for maria-db server in step above. So for our example it will be: sqlpasswd

Now on mysql prompt type following commands one after one along with semi-colon:

create database `ccnet-db` character set = 'utf8';
create database `seafile-db` character set = 'utf8';
create database `seahub-db` character set = 'utf8';

Now we will create a user named "seafile" for mysql with a password 'seafilepwd'. You must replace this password with one of your own. To do so use the command below and change seafilepwd with a password of your choice.

create user 'seafile'@'localhost' identified by 'seafilepwd';

Once seafile user is created, we need to grant permissions to this user on the three databases we created above. To do so, use the following one by one on mysql command prompt:

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `ccnet-db`.* to `seafile`@localhost;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `seafile-db`.* to `seafile`@localhost;
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON `seahub-db`.* to `seafile`@localhost;

Finally we will make sure that mariadb-server starts every-time the system is started. To do this simply copy the command below:

[root@localhost /]# systemctl enable mariadb

4) Create directories to download and extract seafile server:

Create a directory called seafile:

[root@localhost /]# mkdir /opt/seafile

Now change directory to the newly created path

[root@localhost /]# cd /opt/seafile

Download the latest seafile-server relevant to your machine architecture (32 bit, 64 bit etc). As I am using a 32 bit laptop, I used the link meant for that.

TIP: You can get the relevant link by first opening the seafile site in firefox (https://www.seafile.com/en/download/) and scrolling down all the way to "Server" section. Then under linux section you will see link for 64 bit and 32 bit versions. Right click on one you need and click on "Copy Link Location". The copied text is what you need to paste after wget in command below.

[root@localhost /]# wget https://bintray.com/artifact/

download/seafile-org/seafile/seafile-server_5.1.3_i386.tar.gz

Now to extract the downloaded file, type following command.

[root@localhost /]# tar -xzf seafile-server_5.1.3_i386.tar.gz

TIP: If downloaded version is different, the filename "seafile-server_5.1.3_i386.tar.gz" will be different in the link you would have got from previous step. Use the file name right at the end of the link you copied.

OK, now we will create a directory named “installed” and move the downloaded file in there.

[root@localhost /]# mkdir installed
[root@localhost /]# mv seafile-server_5.1.3_i386.tar.gz installed

Checkpoint

At this point, if you give the tree command, your directory structure would look as shown below

[root@localhost seafile]# tree -L 2
.
|---installed
 |----- seafile-server_5.1.3_i386.tar.gz
|---seafile-server-5.1.3
 |----- check_init_admin.py
 |----- reset-admin.sh
 |----- runtime
 |----- seaf-fsck.sh
 |----- seaf-fuse.sh
 |----- seaf-gc.sh
 |----- seafile
 |----- seafile.sh
 |----- seahub
 |----- seahub.sh
 |----- setup-seafile-mysql.py
 |----- setup-seafile-mysql.sh
 |----- setup-seafile.sh
 |----- upgrade

5. Configure the seafile-server

Change directory to seafile-server where the execution scripts are residing.

[root@localhost seafile]# cd seafile-server-5.1.3

Now run the execution script:

[root@localhost seafile-server-5.1.3]# ./setup-seafile-mysql.sh

Running this script will initiate the seafile server set-up for mysql. You will need to provide answers to some questions. I am providing those below where you need to deviate from default or need to provide specifc information:

Name of the server. Provide a servername like "my_seafile_cloud" or "cloudy_lemon" ...you get the gist.
IP or Domain of Server:

TIP: Now let's take a bit of time to understand what should go here. For my usage I wanted to use dyndns so I can access this server from outside of my home network. So I had to configure my dyndns url to a port on my home router such that router understood that incoming traffic to that particular port must be transferred to this machine where the server is hosted.

Then on this machine, I have forwarded the traffic coming to a specific port again to whichever server I want to access thus having my uique URL for each service I am interested in. I will go into in a bit more detail later but for now, just ensure you are providing 1 the internal IP as well as dyndns IP along with the port you have configured on you router to reach this machine in particular where you are configuring the server.

So if internal IP of this machine is 192.168.1.24 and my dyndns url is banana.dyndns.com and I have forwarded port 9994 on my router to this machine and on machine incoming traffic to 9994 is forwarded to the port relevant to seahub then I will provide following entries as answer to this question:

192.168.1.24:9994, banana.dyndns.com:9994

Choose a way to initiatlise seafile databases:

Now remember we have already done this in step 2. So for this question we will need to give option 2. so just type 2 and press enter.
Host of mysql server: Unless you changed this in step 2, leave it as default (localhost)
Port for mysql server: as above leave it default (3306) unless you changed in Step 2.
User for seafile: seafile
Password for user "seafile": Use the password provided in Step 3. "seafilepwd" is what we provided for this example.
Database name for ccnet: ccnet-db
Database name for seafile: seafile-db
Database name for seahub: seahub-db

Once this wizard has completed configuring, you will get a confirmation that will tell you that seafile is now listening on port 8082 and seahub on port 8000 unless you changed these while providing answers to the wizard.

6. Add the user and provide right access

Use following commands to go up one directory, add a user “seafile” and provide right privileges.

[root@localhost seafile-server-5.1.3]# cd ..
[root@localhost seafile]# adduser seafile
[root@localhost seafile]# chown -R seafile .

7. Generate SSL Certificate:

Change directory to /etc/ssl

[root@localhost seafile]# cd /etc/ssl

Generate private and public ssl certificates

[root@localhost ssl]# openssl genrsa -out seafile_privkey.pem 2048
[root@localhost ssl]# openssl req -new -x509 -key seafile_privkey.pem -out seafile_cacert.pem -days 1095

8. Create the nginx config file for seafile

Use following command to create seafile.conf file:

[root@localhost ssl]# nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/seafile.conf

Copy Paste the following but do make relevant changes where required for servername etc:

########################################################
server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  banana.dyndns.com;####----------Must change 
this as per your set-up. Notice no port 9994 here.
    rewrite ^ https://$http_host$request_uri? permanent;    # force redirect http to https. 
}
server {
    listen 443;
    ssl on;
    ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/seafile_cacert.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/seafile_privkey.pem;
    server_name banana.dyndns.com;####----------Must change 
this as per your set-up. Notice no port 9994 here.
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;
 
    add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000; includeSubdomains";
    server_tokens off;
 
    location / {
        fastcgi_pass    127.0.0.1:8000;
        fastcgi_param   SCRIPT_FILENAME     $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_param   PATH_INFO           $fastcgi_script_name;
 
        fastcgi_param   SERVER_PROTOCOL     $server_protocol;
        fastcgi_param   QUERY_STRING        $query_string;
        fastcgi_param   REQUEST_METHOD      $request_method;
        fastcgi_param   CONTENT_TYPE        $content_type;
        fastcgi_param   CONTENT_LENGTH      $content_length;
        fastcgi_param   SERVER_ADDR         $server_addr;
        fastcgi_param   SERVER_PORT         $server_port;
        fastcgi_param   SERVER_NAME         $server_name;
        fastcgi_param   HTTPS               on;
        fastcgi_param   HTTP_SCHEME         https;
 
        access_log      /var/log/nginx/seahub.access.log;
        error_log       /var/log/nginx/seahub.error.log;
    }
    location /seafhttp {
        rewrite ^/seafhttp(.*)$ $1 break;
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8082;
        client_max_body_size 0;
        proxy_connect_timeout  36000s;
        proxy_read_timeout  36000s;
        proxy_send_timeout  36000s;
    }
    location /media {
        root /opt/seafile/seafile-server-latest/seahub;
    }
}
########################################################

9. Apply config changes to seafile

Change to conf directory at /opt/seafile.

[root@localhost ssl]# cd /opt/seafile/conf

Now open the ccnet.conf file:

[root@localhost conf]# nano ccnet.conf

Amend the file as per below:

########################################################
[General]
USER_NAME = my_seafile_cloud ####--------- Must change this as

per your setup.
ID = 
NAME = my_seafile_cloud ####--------- Must change this as per your setup.
SERVICE_URL = https://192.168.1.24:9994,https://banana.dyndns.com:9994

####--------- Must change this as per your setup.
Also note that here we have provided the 9994 port
- the one we used as port forward on router to send
traffic to this machine.

[Client]
PORT = 13419

[Database]
ENGINE = mysql
HOST = 127.0.0.1
PORT = 3306
USER = seafile
PASSWD = sqlpasswd ####--------- Must change this as per

your setup.
DB = ccnet-db
CONNECTION_CHARSET = utf8
########################################################

Open the seahub_settings.py file

[root@localhost conf]# nano seahub_settings.py

Add the line FILE_SERVER_ROOT= 'https://banana.dyndns.com:9994/seafhttp' replacing banana.dyndns.com:9994 with url to reach your machine.

########################################################
DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql',
        'NAME': 'seahub-db',
        'USER': 'seafile',
        'PASSWORD': 'sqlpasswd', ####---- Must change

this as per your setup.
        'HOST': '127.0.0.1',
        'PORT': '3306'
    }
}
FILE_SERVER_ROOT= 'https://banana.dyndns.com:9994/seafhttp' ####-----
---- Must change this as per your setup. Also note that here we have 
provided the 9994 port - the one we used as port forward on router to 
send traffic to this machine.

########################################################

10. Now create the safile and seahub services and enable them so they run at system startup:

Create a seafile.service file:

[root@localhost conf]# nano /etc/systemd/system/seafile.service

Paste the below into the file:

########################################################
[Unit]
Description=Seafile
After=network.target mariadb.service

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/opt/seafile/seafile-server-latest/seafile.sh start
ExecStop=/opt/seafile/seafile-server-latest/seafile.sh stop
RemainAfterExit=yes
User=seafile
Group=seafile

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
#########################################################

Now reload the systemd and enable seafile to start at system start-up.

[root@localhost conf]# systemctl daemon-reload
[root@localhost conf]# systemctl enable seafile

Create a seahub.service file:

[root@localhost conf]# nano /etc/systemd/system/seahub.service

Paste the following in the file and save.

##########################################################   
[Unit]
Description=Seafile hub
After=network.target seafile.service

[Service]
ExecStart=/opt/seafile/seafile-server-latest/seahub.sh start-fastcgi
ExecStop=/opt/seafile/seafile-server-latest/seahub.sh stop
User=seafile
Group=seafile
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Now enable seahub to start at system start-up and start seafile and seahub services.

[root@localhost conf]# systemctl enable seahub
[root@localhost conf]# systemctl start seafile
[root@localhost conf]# systemctl start seahub

11. Start nginx service and enable to run at system start

[root@localhost conf]# systemctl enable nginx.service
[root@localhost conf]# systemctl start nginx.service

12. Fedora specific steps:

Now at this point there were few final things specific to Fedora that needed attention. I was ending up getting error 500 and what not and after a bit of searching on duckduckgo, I tried steps listed in this section that fixed the issue.

I am not entirely sure what this does but what I understood is selinux was not allowing some access between nginx and seafile which this resolved. How? Well, you tell me :D.

I had to install policycoreutils-python and setroubleshoot packages for these commands to work, so I have included them in Step 1 anyway.

[root@localhost conf]# cat /var/log/audit/audit.log | grep nginx | grep denied | audit2allow -M mynginx
[root@localhost conf]# semodule -i mynginx.pp
[root@localhost conf]# setsebool httpd_can_network_connect 1

13. Re-set admin user and password for seafile:

Change directory to seafile

[root@localhost conf]# cd /opt/seafile/seafile-server-5.1.3/

Now run the reset-admin

[root@localhost seafile-server-5.1.3]# ./reset-admin.sh

14. Firewall configuration and port forwarding:

Notes below are relevant to system running Fedora Security Lab spin with XFCE but general principle will be same.

Application->Administration->Firewall will open firewall gui.

You will be asked for password and upon entering you will be presented with Zones and Services.

In Services enable https by clicking the checkbox against “https”.

Now click on "Ports" and click on "Add".

Then add port 8082 in "Port / Port Range" and select "TCP" as "Protocol".

Then add port 8082 in "Port / Port Range" and select "UDP" as "Protocol".

Then add port 8000 in "Port / Port Range" and select "TCP" as "Protocol".

Then add port 8000 in "Port / Port Range" and select "UDP" as "Protocol".

Then add port 443 in "Port / Port Range" and select "TCP" as "Protocol".

Now click on Port Forward tab and click on "Add".

Then fill field as shown below:

Protocol: tcp

Port / Port Range: 9994 ###--------- This is the port you have used on your router for port forwarding to this machine.

Under Destination section, tick the checkbox for "Local Forwarding"

Port / Port Forwarding field: 443 ####-----If you have used above configuration, SSL is enabled at 443. If you have changed it, mention the relevant port.

TIP: Once you have made these changes don't forget to save this from run time to permanent or these changes will be lost when you restart the machine. [Options->Runtime to Permanent]

15. Finally, restart nginx:

Use the following command to restart nginx services.

[root@localhost seafile-server-5.1.3]# systemctl restart nginx.service

This is it. All Done !!!

If you now type your URL (https://banana.dyndns.com:9994 from this example) on a browser, you will be presented with login page where you should use the admin login details you have created in Step 13 above.

Blog has moved to ----> mgw.dumatics.com

2014-02-19T23:59:00.000+00:00

This post can now be read at HERE

I have been dwelling in the world of Arch Linux for just under a year now and must admit the experience is nothing less than liberating. Granted that the barrier to entry was big when I dived in, as a pure Arch install takes some reading and learning but the rewards are worth the pain.

While it may seem easier to stick with dear old .deb files in the end AUR has an equally large collection if not more and the fact that it's a rolling release means that the initial set-up pain is very well negated by another fact that unless like me you are forced to change your hard disk or something that sinister; there is no reason to do a reinstall which is often the case with Debian based distros should you chose to upgrade to their latest offering.

I have read and heard words such as "Arch is not for faint hearted" or "Arch is for motivated newbie" and so on but in my opinion there are two types of Linux users:

1. Those who have an itch to tinker (someone like me)

2. Those who don't care as long as they can get on with their day to day business (someone like my wife)

It's the type 1 who is intended audience of this post because type 2 can't be bothered. Now if you have an itch to tinker there will come a point where you will find that all existing distros have a limit on what you can tinker without messing something to the point where you feel like you have to give another distro a try and before you know it a reinstall is on hand, which ofcourse means type 2 user has to deal with the changes a new distro will bring and this in turn will make them frown and thereby increase the risk of them secretly cursing the day you - the type 1 user - encountered the world of Linux.

Now Arch is very stable and still gives you the freedom to tinker, learn and do all great things rather than worry about the cosmetics and allow your tinker angel to quench it's thirst by allowing you to focus your learning potential on something that just doesn't scratch the surface so you can feel good about yourself but actually allows you to learn a great deal in the process. The helpful Arch community usually has the answers for nearly every problem I encountered while trying to achieve my goals.

I do not think that for a Type 1 user - newbie or not - Arch is hard or unfriendly. There is lot more satisfaction once you have your desktop exactly the way you wanted. Getting applications is as easy as using software centre in other distros and now that I have been using it, I find using "yaourt" (Arch equivalent of Synaptics) much better and the fact that repositories are maintained on servers in nearly all locations, it does seem to get new updates to your favourite applications rather quickly too.

I will substantiate this claim with following examples:

Getting android sdk configured on debian based distros is a right pain in you know where but with Arch it's what we like to call a doddle in Great Britain. Getting intellij IDE on other distro repositories is not an option but in Arch - you got it, it's a doddle.

Why is that? It's because Type 1 users when they switch to Arch they soon realise that they now have time on their hands which earlier used to disappear in distro hopping. So what do they do with this time? They search for software they want to use and if it isn't in the repo then with their new found confidence they don't shy away from building it from source and when they have done that they want to showcase their work and they can do so in AUR short for Arch User Repository - though with all that is already there this showcasing will only be possible if you genuinely need a very unique software not used by any Arch user - highly unlike scenario if you were to go by my experience . You will find nearly all software you can think of in AUR and since it's being maintained by someone who needed it, chances are he / she will keep it updated for his / her use thereby ensuring you get the latest and greatest as it happens. What a wonderful model it is indeed.

Now if you are still not geared up to go all the way to start from scratch on Arch but want to get a flavour, why not start with the new kid on the block - Manjaro Linux?

Manjaro linux is an Arch based distro, with a rolling release schedule and will still give you the access to AUR. It takes away the pain of setting up your system on command line and does the hard work for you so you can get the benefits of Arch but not the pain. Seems like a win win especially for those who are repelled by the very thought of terminal based system configuration.

Manjaro Linux offers all leading desktop environments - Gnome, KDE, Openbox but their best offering is with XFCE. XFCE is very good as well what with it being light weight and not making your Type 2 users feel that the system has been rendered useless. The default configuration of Manjaro XFCE flavour does come with a very ready to use set-up yet enough opportunity to make it and configure just the way you like it. In addition a type 1 user will be pleasantly surprised that using XFCE does wonders to satisfy that itch to tinker.

The login manager used with XFCE is MDM but can be easily replaced to the slick lovely light and beautiful SLiM and by installing slimlock you can also get rid of the ugly default screen lock that comes bundled with XFCE.

Explore some more and key bindings on this desktop are much more satisfying and easier to manage than on Gnome or KDE - IMHO.

Manjaro also comes with GUI based synaptics equivalent called "packer" but like I said once you are used to "yaourt" interface everything else GUI based just seems pale in comparison becaue it does not give the same satisfaction of installing stuff.

The one situation where Manjaro might actually be a better choice than Arch is when you are dealing with a potential convert. Offer them Arch with yaourt and they might be very sceptical but offer Manjaro with packer and they just might convert. Then again for this scenario perhaps Linux Mint or Zorin OS may be even better choice.

Point is Arch should enter into anyone's life where they make the choice but not when someone else is making that choice on their behalf as they may or may not develop the habit of tinkering. When and if they do, they will need to decide on their own to move to this platform but if you have been calling yourself a linux newbie and have found yourself reviewing new distros or worse distro hopping and by extension forum hopping, tailoring your linux install and generally enthusistic when it comes to all things Linux, I think it is time to get your feets wet and hands dirty. Get Arch experience in it's purest form or by using Manjaro, you will not regret it.

Expect some useful tips appearing on this blog in coming few days as I reset things to my liking,,,,:)

-Ankit.

Blog has moved to ----> mgw.dumatics.com

2013-03-17T00:09:00.002+00:00

This post can now be read at HERE

Today "Jump" was available for free on Amazon as the app of the day and since it's nearly 7 quids on google play store, I downloaded. For windows and Mac users they have a pretty straight forward set-up but as usual for Linux it means some work but in the end it leaves you with a set-up you can trust and feel secure about. There are three things that need to be set-up for this to work:

1. Linux Mint machine should be set-up for x11vnc and ssh servers
2. Router firewall should be configured to allow inbound traffic on specific ports.
3. Jump or equivalent vnc viewer should be configured on the android device.

Read on for detailed steps to achieve each of the above goals...

1. Linux Mint machine should be set-up for x11vnc and ssh servers

1.1: Install X11VNC by typing following command in terminal:

sudo apt-get install x11vnc

1.2: Create a password for VNC using following command in terminal and providing a password and answering yes for the prompt to store password in a file:

x11vnc -storepasswd

1.3: Now to ensure that X11VNC starts at boot go to menu and type start, click on startup application as shown in the screenshot below:

Figure 1

Then in the window that this will open click on "Add" and enter a "Name" and in "Command" field enter the following command as shown in Figure 2.

x11vnc -forever -xkb -usepw -display :0

Figure 2

VNC set-up on machine is complete.

1.4 Now install openssh-server using following command on terminal:

sudo apt-get install openssh-server

1.5 We will need to change some parameters in ssh configuration for making it secure as by default it allows root login but I dont want that for remote access and would advice most regular users to do so as well. So we will first make a backup of existing configuration file using the command below:

sudo cp /etc/ssh/sshd_config ~

1.6 Now, we will edit the actual config file using following command:

gksudo gedit /etc/ssh/sshd_config

1.7 Once the file is open change the parameter "PermitRootLogin" to "no". It's on line 27 for me.

1.8 Now the default port for ssh is 22 but I recommend changing it to something else such as 5432. To do so change the parameter "Port" from 22 to whatever port you want to put. In this example it will be 5432. For me "Port" parameter is on line 5.

1.9 Save the changes and close gedit.

1.10 Now we will restart the ssh server using following command in terminal

sudo restart ssh

For Arch, you can use the command:

sudo systemctl start sshd

followed by

sudo systemctl enable sshd.service

to ensure ssh daemon is enabled at startup.

1.11 Restart the machine and machine set-up is done.

2. Router firewall should be configured to allow inbound traffic on specific ports.

This may involve different step from those given below depending on the router in use. Following steps are meant for configuring the sky router. However principle is same. We will be creating specific service definition and port on router and then create a firewall rule that allows inbound traffic and directs it to Linux machine we configured above.

2.1 Type following command on terminal:

ifconfig

2.2 this will list lot of numbers, what we are interested in is the number just after "inet addr:" under wlan0. It will be something like 192.168.0.10.

2.3 Open sky router config through browser using 192.168.0.1 and click on "Security". You will need to enter router username and password.

Figure 3

2.4 Then click on "Services" and then click on "Add Custom Services".

2.5 Enter as shown in Figure 4 and Start Port as 5900, Finish Port as 5900 and click on "Apply".

(5900 is default port for display 0 in VNC. If you have changed it like me you will need to enter that port. To change port you will need to use "x11vnc -forever -xkb -usepw -autoport nnnn -display :0" option in step 1.3. This is not required for security but in case you have two different machines then this approach will come handy.)

2.6 Now click on "Add Custom Services" again and this time enter as shown in Figure 5. Start Port and End Port should be same as entered in step 1.8, so for this example it will be 5432. Then click on "Apply".

Figure 5

2.7 Now we need to set the firewall for these services. To do so, click on "Firewall Rules" then click on "Add" under inbound services.

2.8 Configure fields as shown in Figure 6 below and click on "Apply":

Figure 6

2.9 Now we will do same for SSH, so again click on "Add" under inbound services and configure fields as shown in Figure 7 below and click on "Apply":

Figure 7

2.10 Click on "Apply" under "Inbound Services".

2.11 In browser on the router management page, click on "Advanced" > "Remote Management" and on this screen make note of the IP address (number after http:// in red box in figure 8) shown under "Remote Management Address".

Figure 8

2.12 Go to https://www.dlinkddns.com/signin and create an account. Refer this page for the how-to (http://www.dlinkddns.com/howto) and you will need to use the IP from step 2.11 above as the host. At the end of it you will have a hostname like "yourname.dlinkddns.com", username and password for logging in to dlinkddns site.

2.13 Once this is done, go to the browser with sky router management and click on "Advanced">"Dynamic DNS" and fill as shown in figure 9 below:

Figure 9

Host Name: Hostname from Step 2.12 (yourname.dlinkddns.com in this example)
User Name: D-Link site username
Password: D-Link site password

2.14 Once above information is filled, click on "Apply" and then click on "Show Status". It should open a separate window and showing the message "request successful".

Sky Router is now configured.

3. Jump or an equivalent VNC viewer should be configured on the android device.

3.1 On the android device open Jump and click on the "+" sign in right hand corner.

3.2 In the "Address" Field enter the hostname from 2.12 (yourname.dlinkddns.com in this example) and select connection type as "VNC" and click save.

Figure 10

3.4 Change the "Authentication Method" to "VNC Password"

3.5 Tap on "SSH Tunnel", click on "Enabled" checkbox.

3.6 In Username enter the username used to log into the machine configured above in Step 1.

3.7 In Host Name, use the the hostname from 2.12 (yourname.dlinkddns.com in this example)

3.8 Change the port to one used in 1.8. So in this case 5432.

3.9 Password can be left empty and when asked during connection provide the one used to log on to the machine with this username.

3.10 Press back button and click on entry. You will be shown a SSH key notification, say ok. Then you will be asked for a password, provide the password you use to log onto your machine with the username provided in 3.6.

3.11 Then you will be asked for the VNC password, provide the password from step 1.2.

You will now be able to view your desktop on your android machine.

My Media Laptop running Bodhi being accessed on Android Tablet

My Linux Mint as seen from Android Tablet

All Done !!!

- Ankit.

Blog has moved to ----> mgw.dumatics.com

2013-03-01T07:16:00.001+00:00

This post can now be read at HERE

Blog has moved to ----> mgw.dumatics.com

2013-01-18T17:01:00.002+00:00

This post can now be read at HERE

My new friend Damjan recently mentioned that he liked the Conky on my desktop and asked for details as have few others so I figured a post on the topic will be useful.

Many who have been playing with conky seem to believe it's real easy stuff but I feel there are too many options and very little explanation which means it can be lot of messing around with different options and can take a while to get to a point where you have what you want.

To make this conky appear exactly the way it is on my screen on your desktop follow steps 1 to 4 below and for changing time-zone settings it will be step 5:

Step 1. Install Conky from Synaptic.
Step 2. Install the fonts used in this conky.
Step 3. Change the conky config file.
Step 4. Enable settings to run conky at start-up.
Step 5: Configure time-zones on the conky config.

Step 1. Install Conky from Synaptic:

Open the synaptic package manager and follow steps as shown in screenshot above. Actually I don't think conky colors is required so if it does not appear in search result don't bother. From memory, that was installed by me as part of experimenting.

Step 2. Install the fonts used in this conky:

Download and install the fonts "pf_tempesta_five_condensed.ttf" and "ZegoeUI-U.ttf" from web or I have uploaded these to mediafire and can be download from this link - http://www.mediafire.com/?4ycy1sxxs5trn

Step 3. Change the conky config file:

1. Download my conky configuration in the file named ".conkykrc" from this mediafire link - http://www.mediafire.com/?nm88my3minnzao5
2. Open "Home" directory and press "Ctrl+h" to show hidden files.
3. Locate the ".conkykrc" file and delete it.
4. Now paste the "conkykrc" file downloaded in step 1 to home folder.

Step 4. Enable settings to run conky at start-up:

Open "Startup Application" from Menu > Preferences.

Click on "Add" button and fill the fields as shown above.

Restart the computer and it's all done.

Step 5: Configure time-zones on the conky config:

OK, so you have conky running as it is for me but you might want different time-zones than the one I have in which case you will need to modify the .conkykrc file in "Home" directory.

1. Open "Home" directory and press "Ctrl+h" to show hidden files.
2. Locate the ".conkykrc" file and open it in text editor of your choice. I use gedit.
3. Now Open Terminal and Type "tzselect" and press enter.
4. A list of continents will be displayed, select the one of your interest by typing the number against it and press enter. (I selected "Americas" so I typed "2")
5. Then you will be presented a list of countries. Again select the one of your interest by typing the number against it and press enter. ( I selected "North America" so I typed "49")
6. Finally, it will display time-zones in that country. As above, select the one of your interest by typing the number against it and press enter. ( I selected "Mountain Time" so I typed "18")
7. It will confirm selection and then mention TZ being used. For my selection it displayed "Therefore TZ='America/Denver' will be used."
10. This text after "TZ=" is what is important for us. Copy this and go back to .conkykrc file.
11. Under "TIMEZONE" say you want to replace Nashville with Denver then you locate Nashville (Line 83, Col 64) and replace the text with the city of your choice, in this case "Denver".
12. Now to reflect the appropriate time-zone, replace the existing time-zone "America/Chicago" with the one from step 10. In this example with "America/Denver'".

That's it. All Done !!!

Hope you find it useful. Feel free to ask questions on settings here and if it's something I was stuck with I might be able to help.

- Ankit.

Blog has moved to ----> mgw.dumatics.com

2013-01-01T00:00:00.002+00:00

This post can now be read at HERE

Having a rooted phone and then going to one that does not have root access is like getting used to driving a luxury car but then being forced to drive a tractor. So with arrival of my shining new nexus 4 once the novelty worn of in 8 hours or so, I sat down and rooted the device. Now there are plenty of guides out there but not many specific to Linux just yet. One reason might just be the fact the Linux Users are really smart and know how to figure it out but what about users who are new ...well at least for them I am sure this post will be useful and while we are at it, I felt I will install the touch version of CWM...

Pre-requisite:

For purpose of this tutorial, I will assume that adb set-up is in place using steps explained in my last post specifically up to Step 5. It is totally worth doing it before you proceed but if you would prefer a shorter route, please refer some guide on how to install just adb. Though I would not recommend any other approach. (Not because they will not work but because this approach will ensure clean system and something I have tested 4 times already to work and if you will follow this post, it makes sense to do it the way I did)
Clockwork Recovery Mod (Touch Version)
Super User App
Fastboot
This process will wipe out all user data and apps. Appropriate back-ups should be taken and restoring those is beyond the scope of this post.

2 and 3 can be downloaded directly from http://www.clockworkmod.com/rommanager and http://download.chainfire.eu/282/SuperSU/ or as before I have uploaded them in mediafire. I downloaded fastboot few months back from xda using this link and am not sure if it is still there or not so I have uploaded it to mediafire as well.

All these files can be downloaded from mediafire here.

Step 1: Prepare Nexus 4 and Linux Mint 13

Step 2: Unblock bootloader for Nexus 4

Step 3: Root Nexus 4

Step 4: Make Clockwork Mod Permanent

Step 5: Mount and Un-Mount Nexus 4 to access files from Linux Mint

Step 1: Prepare Nexus 4 and Linux Mint 13

1.1. Check if fastboot is already there in the the /android-sdks/platform-tools directory. If yes skip the next step.

1.2. Extract the fastboot from downloaded zip file and place it in the /android-sdks/platform-tools directory if it is not already there and make it executable (Right Click, Select properties, Go To permissions tab and select the checkbox in front of "Execute")

1.3. Copy the downloaded Clock Work Mod file (recovery-clockwork-touch-6.0.2.3-mako.img) in the /android-sdks/platform-tools directory.

1.4.Activate debug mode in nexus 4 - to do this go to settings > About Phone and then click 7 to 8 times on "Build Number". This will activate developer mode.

1.5. Now click back and got to {} Developer Options and Click the checkbox against USB debugging.

1.6. Set up udev on linux mint:

a. Assuming that you have followed last post you would already have a "51-android.rules" file created.

b. Open the file with Gedit using following command

 sudo gedit /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules

c. Add following lines:

#LG - Nexus 4
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="1004", MODE="0666"

SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="18d1", ATTRS{idProduct}=="4ee1", MODE="0660", OWNER="ankit" #Normal nexus 4
SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="18d1", ATTRS{idProduct}=="4ee2", MODE="0660", OWNER="ankit" #Debug & Recovery nexus 4
SUBSYSTEMS=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="18d1", ATTRS{idProduct}=="4ee0", MODE="0660", OWNER="ankit" #Fastboot nexus 4

here

d. Now Save the file, then chmod to all read using following command:

 sudo chmod +x /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules

Step 2: Unblock bootloader for Nexus 4

2.1. Plug your phone into the computer and type the following command in terminal:

 adb reboot bootloader

2.2. Once Nexus 4 has rebooted in recovery mode, type the following command in terminal:

 fastboot oem unlock

If terminal displays the message "waiting for device" 51-android.rules file is not set correctly and you might need to check vendor ID and product id using lsusb command in different modes and update it with appropriate data.

2.3. Phone will display a long message and ask for confirmation to unlock bootloader. Select "Yes" by using the volume keys and use power to select it.

2.4. Now, using volume keys navigate to "Recovery Mode" and select it using "Power" key.

2.5. After a while Android with blue progress bar should appear and phone should reboot but if it does not and instead shows a screen with "Android" on it's back with an exclamation mark on it's tummy, don't panic. Just press "Power" and "Volume Up" till it shows recovery menu and then select "reboot".

The phone is now bootloader unlocked.

Step 3: Root Nexus 4

OK now when the phone boots, it will be fresh with factory reset, no data or apps whatsoever other than those that are there by default and when the phone boots, it will ask all details like selecting country etc. Just enter quickly without bothering to enter gmail, wifi etc. Once done:

3.1. Install mtpfs from synaptics.

3.2. Plug the phone to computer.

3.3. Type the following commands:

 sudo mkdir /media/nexus4

followed by

 sudo chmod 755 /media/nexus4

3.4. Now mount the nexus 4 using following command so we can transfer files:

 sudo mtpfs -o allow_other /media/nexus4

3.5. Copy the downloaded file "CWM-SuperSU-v0.98.zip" on Nexus 4.

3.6. Type the following command to unmount nexus 4:

sudo umount /media/nexus4

3.7. Reactivate the debug mode using Step 1.4 and Step 1.5 above.

3.8. On terminal type the command:

adb reboot bootloader

followed by:

fastboot flash recovery /android-sdks/platform-tools/recovery-clockwork-touch-6.0.2.3-mako.img

Make sure in above command you replace PATH_TO with the actual path to the file. An easy way can be to right click on "recovery-clockwork-touch-6.0.2.3-mako.img" file and click on properties thene select the path and paste in this command.

3.9. Once completed, on the phone navigate to "Recover Mode" using volume keys and select using power key.

3.10 The new recovery menu will be presented. Select "install zip from sd card" and "choose zip from sd card." and select the file we had put in step 3.5 - "CWM-SuperSU-v0.98.zip".

3.11 Once done, go back to reboot and "Reboot" the phone.

At this point your phone is rooted,however, you will get a message suggesting the recovery will not be permanent or something to that effect which is fine if you aren't bothered about it but if you would rather want to keep this CWM we need to move to next step.

Step 4: Make Clockwork Mod Permanent

4.1. On your phone install ES File Explorer.

4.2. Select Settings.

4.3. Select "Root Settings".

4.4. Select all checkboxes. You will be asked for superuser access, say Yes..

4.5. Now go back to main screen of ES File Explorer and select the third tab with an icon of Folder with up arrow and text Up. This should bring you to root.

4.6 Now using ES File Explorer navigate on your phone to /system/etc, find the file named "install-recovery.sh" and rename it to "install-recovery.bak"

4.7 Repeat Steps 3.7 to 3.11.

Now your clockwork mod is permanent.

Step 5: Mount and Un-Mount Nexus 4 to access files from Linux Mint

Now, with the steps 3.1 to 3.6 we have laid the foundation for being able to connect Nexus 4 and transfer files using USB. Something earlier was possible using USB Mass storage mode but is not present jelly bean onwards.

The commands in 3.4 and 3.6 are key to achieve this but rather than remembering these and typing each time, I have made a menu entries for each of these (Mount Nexus 4, Unmount Nexus 4) and after connecting phone via USB, I simply click on these, system asks root password and then connects nexus 4 as mass storage (see screenshot below):

In order to get these you will follow the steps below:

5.1 Right Click on Menu and select "edit Menu".
5.2 Now click on "New Menu" and Enter a menu entry "Phone".
5.3. Select the checkbox next to the new menu entry "Phone" in middle pane.
5.4. Select new menu entry "Phone" in left pane.
5.5. Click on "New Item" in right Pane and in the dialogue box fill the fields as below and save:
Type: Application in terminal
Name: Mount Nexus 4
Command: sudo mtpfs -o allow_other /media/nexus4
5.6 Again click on "New Item" in right Pane and in the dialogue box fill the fields as below and save:
Type: Application in terminal
Name: Unmount Nexus 4
Command: sudo umount /media/nexus4
5.7 Make sure checkbox next to these new items is ticked. Save and Close.

That's it !!! All Done.

Hope some will find this post useful.
-Ankit.

Blog has moved to ----> mgw.dumatics.com

2012-10-18T23:06:00.004+01:00

This post can now be read at HERE

Few weeks back I updated to the latest Linux Mint offering "Maya" a.k.a Linux Mint 13. Now this is a LTS (Long Term Support) version and I wanted to be in a position to install everything right just so I can keep it for a longer duration and hence have been taking my time configuring stuff.

Last time when I had set up system for Android Development I remember messing up a lot and ending up installing too many things here and there and in the process did learn how to do it properly. I did not document that as a blog as it was too fragmented an experience at that time but this time round I did it properly and everything (well, okay, almost everything) was perfect.

There is lot of material on the web but again that is what led to a less than perfect install last time as it is all disjointed, making the sequence go wrong, using one way for one thing another way for second and ending us with a not so nice experience distracting you from what you want to do, start developing something on android platform or perhaps just get the adb set-up to flash your nexus phone.

So presented below is a guide that will help you prepare your Linux Mint 13 or equivalent distro for you to start android development.

You will notice that these notes do not require downloading "android sdk" separately and that is to save time and effort, trust me.

So the high level steps are:

Step 1: Download required files
Step 2: Install Oracle Java (or what is called sun-java on Android webpages)
Step 3: Install eclipse
Step 4: Install ADT Plug-in for Eclipse
Step 5: Final Configurations
Step 6: Create Android Virtual Device

Step 1: Download required files

Download following files:

Links to original file locations:

Script to Update Java

(Updated link to the latest version of script as highlighted in screenshot.)

Java 7 SDK

Java 7 Samples and Demo

Java 7 API Docs

Java 6 Samples and Demo

Java 6 API Docs

Java 6 SDK

If you don't want to move around different webpages and websites, I have also uploaded all these files on mediafire.

http://www.mediafire.com/?4x3u3if9o7dy4

Step 2: Install Oracle Java

You might ask, why do we need to do it this way?

That's because Oracle Java 6 SDK is a pre-requisite for installing Android SDK but it's not available in Ubuntu or Linux Mint repository so it can't be installed using synaptic or apt-get.

Right then, I am assuming that all the files downloaded above are placed in "Downloads" directory. If not, please replace "Downloads" in all commands with whichever directory you have downloaded these file to.

1. Open terminal and type:

 cd Downloads

2. Make the downloaded .bin Java 6 file executable and run using following commands:

 chmod a+x jdk-6u37-linux-i586.bin

 ./jdk-6u37-linux-i586.bin

This will create a directory named "jdk1.6.0_37".

3. Untar the Java 7 SDK by typing following command in terminal:

tar -xvf jdk-7u7-linux-i586.tar.gz

This will create a directory named "jdk1.7.0_07".

4. Unzip the Java 6 api docs by typing following command in terminal:

unzip jdk-6u30-apidocs.zip -d jdk1.6.0_37/

This command will unzip the apidocs zip file and place the contents in "jdk1.6.0_37"

5. Unzip the Java 7 api docs by typing following command in terminal:

unzip jdk-7u6-apidocs.zip -d jdk1.7.0_07/

This command will unzip the apidocs zip file and place the contents in "jdk1.7.0_07"

6. Untar the Java 6 demos and samples using following command in terminal:

tar -xvf jdk-6u37-linux-i586-demos.tar.gz

This command will untar the demos and samples file and place the contents in "jdk1.6.0_37"

7. Untar the Java 7 demos and samples using following command in terminal:

tar -xvf jdk-7u9-linux-i586-demos.tar.gz

This will create a folder named jdk1.7.0_09. Copy the contents of this folder into jdk1.7.0_07.

8. Move the Java 6 to it's proper location using following command in the terminal:

sudo mv jdk1.6.0_37 /usr/lib/jvm

You will be asked to provide root password.

9. Now move the Java 7 to it's proper location using following command in the terminal:

sudo mv jdk1.7.0_07 /usr/lib/jvm

10. Make the script to ~~update java~~ update-java-0.5b executable and then execute it by using following commands in terminal.

chmod +x update-java-0.5b

sudo ./update-java-0.5b

You will be presented with following selection box:

11. Once you click on OK you will be presented with following screen:

Select the radio button and click on OK

12. Once Java 6 SDK is installed repeat step 10 and this time when you reach the selection window select Java 7 as shown below.

Select the radio button shown and click on OK

Now Oracle Java 6 and Oracle Java 7 will both be installed on your system. To check this you can use the tool "galternatives". This can be installed by typing following command on the terminal window:

sudo apt-get install galternatives

galternatives

This will open the "G Alternatives" window, scroll down to "Java" in left hand pane and click on it. You should see both versions installed and radio button for highest version selected as shown below:

Step 3: Install eclipse

1. Open Synaptic package manager and type eclipse, click on the check-box next to it and select "Mark for installation" then click on "Apply" as shown below.

2. Once Eclipse is installed, we need to find out whether the necessary SWT (Standard Widget Toolkit) libraries link are set correctly or not. This is to avoid Eclipse throwing a tantrum and not starting because it is unable to find the SWT library. As you can see in the screenshot below it's a pretty quick thing:

A) First type the following command to check if whether SWT directory exists or not:

ls ~/.swt/lib/linux/x86/

If you see the same message as shown in screenshot above "ls: cannot access /home//.swt/lib/linux/x86/: No such file or directory", then it means we need to create the SWT directory so continue to sub-step B.

If this command does not result in this message nor does it show a list of files (blue text in screenshot) then skip directly to sub-step C.

If it does show the list of files in blue in above screenshot, you don't need to do anything further and for you it's time to move to next step.

B) Type the following command in terminal to create the SWT directory:

mkdir -p ~/.swt/lib/linux/x86/

C) If the swt directory exist, but nothing is listed (no blue text), then run the following command in terminal:

ln -s /usr/lib/jni/libswt-* ~/.swt/lib/linux/x86/

Finally as shown in screenshot, type the command in sub-step A once again and you should see the list shown in blue on the screenshot:

Time to move on to install ADT (Android Development Tools Plugin on eclipse.

Step 4: Install ADT Plug-in for Eclipse

OK we have so far installed Java, installed eclipse and now we are all set to install Android. To do so we will follow the screenshots below:

When you start eclipse, you will be shown a splash screen, ask you to set workspace which I leave default and finally this window will open. As shown, click on the Workbench in right hand side corner. This will lead to following window.

Here Click on Help > Install New Software. This will open following window.

Click on "Add" button in red rectangle above. Following pop-up window will appear.

In Name type "ADT Plugin" or whatever name you want to give.
In Location type "https://dl-ssl.google.com/android/eclipse/"
Then click OK. On following window it will first show pending but eventually it will look as below.

Here select the first option "Developer Tools" and click OK.

Click "NEXT".

Let it run in foreground i.e. don't do anything and just wait.

Click "RESTART NOW". You will be presented with following window on restart.

Now leave the target location as is and leave everything as default and click "NEXT".

As shown above, selected the "ACCEPT ALL" radio button and click "INSTALL".

Now the android SDK is installed on the system along with other things. Close all the open windows just to clear any screen clutter. Now open the terminal and type following commands:

cd android-sdks/tools

./android

It will open the following window:

1. Select as shown above and optionally you can also select checkbox against Documentation and Samples. Once done click on "INSTALL x Packages".

2. On the next window, for which I did not take a screenshot but which is same as the one before previous screenshot of terminal, select radio button "ACCEPT ALL" and click on "INSTALL".

3. Now once you are back to this window select "Google APIs" and click on "Install 1 package".

4. On the package lis, click on "ACCEPT" radio button and click on "INSTALL".

Android Development Tools and SDK is now installed. We just need to configure few things.

Step 5: Final Configurations

adb Environmental Variables

1. Go to home folder
2. Press Ctrl+H

3. Locate the .bashrc file, if it does not exist, create one (In home folder, right click and select "Create New Document > Empty Document").

4. Open the file in gedit and add the following at the end, if you created the file yourself just add this line and save.

export PATH=${PATH}:/tools:/platform-tools

Set the PATH environment
1. Go to home folder
2. Press Ctrl+H
3. Locate the .profile file
4. Open the file in gedit and add the following at the end.

# set PATH so it includes user's Android SDK if it exists


if [ -d "$HOME/android-sdks" ] ; then

  PATH="$HOME/android-sdks:$HOME/android-sdks/tools:$PATH"

fi

Set-up udev

This step is only required if you want to use your android device for development purpose or if you want to flash a custom ROM.

1. Open the terminal and type following:

gksudo nautilus /etc/udev/rules.d

2. Create new document like we did above- Right click on empty space and select "Create New Document" and then "Empty Document.

3. Name this document as "51-android.rules"

4. Open the document with Gedit and add following lines - assuming you are using "Nexus S" like me, if not see if your phone details are available on this link: http://wiki.cyanogenmod.com/wiki/Udev and if not follow the guideline under the heading "Manually create udev rules" on that link.

5. Now make this 51-android.rules file executable by typing following command in the terminal window:

sudo chmod a+r /etc/udev/rules.d/51-android.rules

Step 6: Create Android Virtual Device

Open eclipse and follow the screenshots below:

Click on Window - AVD Manager to get to next screen except that in your screen there will be no entry.

Click on "NEW" to create a new AVD. It will open next window.

Fill details as above - You can chose name of your choice and change details as per your requirements.

To Start the AVD, click on Start.

Finally, you will be able to see the AVD as below:

This is it. Restart and your system is now all set for developing wonderful Android Applications.

-Ankit.

Changelog:
06/11/2011 - Updated the link to update java script and corrected minor typos.

Blog has moved to ----> mgw.dumatics.com

2012-10-15T23:47:00.000+01:00

This post can now be read at HERE

I had an old Samsung Galaxy S which was still on stock ROM hence it only ever got to gingerbread and then Samsung just decided not to upgrade and I upgraded the phone so this little gadget was till yesterday destined to live with the old gingerbread.

Then yesterday, I just decided to play around with it and started reading so I know what are my options. Now wiki guide on Cyanogenmod site is quite nicely written but there were one or two steps here and there which had me confused for a little while so here is my usual step-by-step guide on how to go about it.

UPDATE: Uploaded all the files to mediafire as requested in one of the comments below. These can be downloaded from following link:

http://www.mediafire.com/?ims1bxp6b8yp8

Step 1:

a) Download Heimdall Suite 1.3.2 Command-line Binary for your OS from here ; for Linux Mint you can use the Ubuntu link and install the downloaded "heimdall_1.3.2_i386.deb" file.

b) Download hardcore's Kernel with the ClockworkMod Recovery 2.5 here. This will download a file named "hardcore-speedmod.tar". I am assuming that it will be saved in "Downloads" directory but if you have a different location, please replace "Downloads" with appropriate directory.

Step 2: Just to avoid any confusion, make a new directory in Downloads and name it "Galaxy_S".

Step 3: Copy the downloaded file (from 1-b) "hardcore-speedmod.tar" into the new directory "Galaxy_S"

Step 4: Now right-click on "hardcore-speedmod.tar" and select extract here as shown. This will extract the file zImage into the directory Galaxy_S.

Step 5: Connect microUSB cable to your computer but not the phone.

Step 6: Power off the Samsung Galaxy S.

Step 7: Connect the microUSB cable to Samsung Galaxy S.

Step 8: Boot the phone in download mode by holding "HOME+Volume Down+POWER" buttons.

Step 9: Open the terminal and type following commands:

 cd Downloads/Galaxy_S

 sudo heimdall flash --kernel zImage

A blue transfer bar will appear on the phone showing the kernel being transferred. Once completed, the device will reboot automatically.

Step 10: Disconnect the phone from microUSB cable, switch it on and connect to your computer using the microUSB cable as mass storage. (You may need to go to phone settings and change USB connection settings to be able to connect the phone as mass storage.)

Step 11: Download the latest Cyanogenmod ROM from here.

Step 12: Follow this link to land at above page and then download the latest version of Google Apps.

Step 13: You will now have following two zip files in your "Downloads" directory:

a) cm-9.1.0-galaxysmtd.zip from Step 11.
b) gapps-ics-20120317-signed.zip from Step 12

Copy these two files into the root directory of the Samsung Galaxy S.

Step 14: Now, disconnect the phone from microUSB and switch it off.

Step 15: Boot the phone in Recovery mode by holding "HOME+Volume Up+POWER" buttons. You will be presented with various recovery options such as reboot phone etc.

Step 17: Now use the Volume Up and Volume Down buttons to navigate options. Use Volume Down button to reach the option to Wipe data/factory reset and press POWER button to select this option.

Step 18: Once done, Use Volume Down button to reach the option to wipe cache partition and press POWER button to select this option.

Step 19: Next select "Install zip from sdcard" which will present another set of options where you should select "Choose zip from sdcard"

Step 20: Now you will see the list of files on your SD Cards root directory. Select the file "cm-9.1.0-galaxysmtd.zip" and on following screen of options select "Yes".

Step 21: Once installed, select +++++Go Back+++++ and again select "Install zip from sdcard" which will present another set of options where you should select "Choose zip from sdcard"

Step 22: This time select the file "gapps-ics-20120317-signed.zip" and on following screen of options select "Yes".

Step 23: Once installed, select +++++Go Back+++++ to return to main menu.

Step 24: On main menu select "Reboot System now" option.

Step 25: If all has gone as above, your phone will restart and after a while you will see cyanogenmod flash screen. This screen will be there for a good 1 to 2 minutes. Don't panic and dont mess. Let system do it's work and in some time you would have given a fresh lease of life to your old dieing Samsung Galaxy S.

-Ankit.

Blog has moved to ----> mgw.dumatics.com

2012-08-06T18:12:00.000+01:00

This post can now be read at HERE

I have been using Android Phones and Tablets for quite some time now and have monitored my use for apps that I use on a daily basis and those I would not even come to know if they were removed without my knowledge. So clearly there is a personal perspective on the list below:

Gmail - The most obvious and the most heavily used app. No introduction required.

What I like best?

Clean Interface
Push Notification

What can improve?

Ability to zoom messages.

AppyGeek / AppyGeek for Tablet - I use this app on a daily basis to get my daily dose of news in technical world.

What I like best?

It pulls news based on keywords you can select. So my feed includes news on tags such as "Linux", "Smartphones", "Galaxy Tab", "Nexus", "Raspberry Pi" ...you get the gist.

What can improve?

Ability to access to stories in offline mode.

Guardian Anywhere - Fine, I admit wholeheartedly, I am strong left wing supporter. Now with that out of the way, I prefer this app over the official Guardian app as this downloads content overnight.

What I like best?

Offline Access to stories.
You can schedule the time for download, I prefer 4:00 AM so I have all fresh news first thing in the morning.
"Picks" tab which learns my taste over time and provides stories to match it.

What can improve?

Ability to copy a small section of text from the story.

Financisto - It is an opensource app to manage your budget and track your expenses. It's very comprehensive and one of the best app available on any mobile platform in my opinion. It does require initial set-up and perhaps something I will write about in another post soon but generally I find using it a very easy affair.

What I like best?

Highly Configurable
Complete Package equivalent to any desktop finance management software.

What can improve?

App can do with a basic list of category to reduce the burden of creating list of categories from scratch.
Improved Documentation - Something I fully intend to support.;-)

QuickPic - It is a photo gallery which have got accustomed to as initially the stock gallery app on Android was not very good. However, recent gallery app has seen some very good enhancements yet I still feel more at home using QuickPic.

What I like best?

Ability to hide folders that have downloaded photos from other apps and are not taken by phone camera.
Ability to share a photo right from within the app through gmail, email, bluetooth, G+, FB etc.

What can improve?

I don't think there is much to improve. It's a pretty well rounded app in my opinion.

Android Assistant - It's a android system utility for monitoring system tasks, killing apps etc. All these are not what make it interesting though as there are several apps out there doing the same stuff. What I like most is listed below:

What I like best?

With latest version, it prompts to move any newly installed/updated app to SD card if it is possible.
It shows the total start-up time and allows you to select apps that should be silent at start-up.
It allows for batch uninstall, which comes quite handy when on a system clean-up spree.

What can improve?

Can do with a more glossy makeover.

ES File Explorer File Manager - The primary function of this app is to allow user to browse the file system but it really has loads of features under the hood.

What I like best?

Simplicity.
Cloud Connection to support likes of Dropbox, Google Drive, Ubuntu One etc.
FTP
Everything really.

What can improve?

This app covers the area of accessing files, network and so on. It has a lots to offer but I don't think it's used to it's full potential by many. I think this app can do with a strong tutorial for each of it's feature.

Profile Scheduler: This is better app than Smart Profile and I have found that it's ability to switch profile based on WiFi saves me a complex set-up that would have been based on time but even so the time based set-up is much easier and straight forward and it does allow priority over rules which makes things super easy. It's not a drain on battery and I am very satisfied with this app. Nothing to improve really. Smart Profile - This app is a profile management tool that helps in switching to a profile based on user defined time slots. I have FOUR profiles that I switch between - Sleep (Completely Silent Mode every day from 23:45), Work (Vibrate mode Monday to Friday from 09:00), Normal (Monday to Friday from 17:00), 0600 Weekends + Mornings (Normal Profile everyday from 06:00). How it works then is Starting Monday morning 06:00 phone goes on normal mode, then at 09:00 turns to vibrate mode, then at 17:00 switches to Normal profile and in night at 23:45 goes to sleep mode. This continues till Saturday morning but as "Work Profile" is scheduled only from Monday to Friday so from Saturday 06:00 onwards phone continues on normal mode whole day till 23:45 in night when it switches to sleep mode, only to get back to normal mode on Sunday at 06:00. Then again remains on normal mode whole of Sunday and in night 23:45 goes back to sleep mode. Then the cycle starts again.

~~What I like best?~~

~~Free yet effective.~~

~~What can improve?~~

As you can see from my explanation above, it is a bit complex to set-up. There was an app called audioguru which stopped working on ICS forcing me to switch but it had a simpler interface. That said in free version of audioguru there was no ability to schedule weekend so this is much better at the lovely price tag of "free". :-)

HulloMail - It's a visual voicemail app that works with most of the providers in the UK for their pay-monthly customers.

What I like best?

Ability to select the voicemail I want to listen to first.
Replay the important part of voicemail
Store VM as mp3 for future refrence.

What can improve?

I don't want much else from this app in it's free version. So it's alright as is.

Go SMS Pro - Go SMS Pro is a SMS client which is better than the stock client as it provides many useful additional features

What I like best?

Ability to schedule SMS.
Ability to send SMS in batches / groups
Cool skins
Go Chat is another useful feature as long as your mates are using it too.

What can improve?

They are improving it all the time but I can't think of any complaints at the moment.

What apps do you like?

-Ankit.

Blog has moved to ----> mgw.dumatics.com

2012-03-16T22:00:00.000+00:00

This post can now be read at HERE

The start of this week was like a nightmare for me. Whole family was down with flu and I had the fever that is probably the highest ever of my entire life at 40.5 C (~ 106 F).

Anyway, surviving that was easier compared to the aftermaths of this health problem that forced me to stay in bed and inadvertently deal with office mails at home on a non-IE browser with Lite version which is crap and makes you feel miserable enough to kill yourself.

So the option I had was to either boot windows on a virtual machine or find a solution within linux. Obviously, I prefer the latter and was glad to work out a solution that can help me avoid booting windows.

I have listed below the steps I followed to achieve this, though in all honesty the documentation is quite good on sourceforge site itself. It's just that some of their screenshots are dated and in French (literally, no pun intended).

Now there are several options floating around but this set-up works flawlessly for me and so I will obviously recommend this over other methods.

It's so easy to configure that there really is no reason not to give it a shot.

Step 1. Install DAVMail

You can get the latest version from sourcefourge by following the link below:

http://davmail.sourceforge.net/download.html

Select the download based on your distro. For Linux Mint 12 it will be Green Box and for non-debian based distros the red .

Now double click on the downloaded .deb file and DAVMail will be installed taking care of any required dependencies.

Step 2. Configure DAVMail

Once installed, you can open DAVMail on Linux Mint 12 under Internet.

Click on DavMail to open it.

You can copy all the settings from this screenshot, leave them with what is there by default or change if you need to. Most important part is the first field OWA (Exchange) URL. You must paste your exchange 2007 owa URL here.

Believe it or not, that's all the configuration you need to do for DavMail.

Step 3. Configure Thunderbird Email Client

Now over to configuring the Thunderbird Email Client.

Enter Details and Click on Continue. It will show next screen by itself.

Tick the checkbox and Click on Create Account.

After this you may be presented with a dialogue box to enter the username and password once again. If so provide details. Remember to try just abc.xyz as username for abc.xyz@officemail.com and only if that does not work and you are presented with the dialogue box again should you try the whole email id as username.

It does take quite some time in first run as Thunderbird downloads all the mails. I was happy with the speed though YMMV.

I have applied an MS Office based theme that you can find in add-ons directory. Link below:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/addon/ms-office-2003-jb-edition/

Finally my mailbox looks as below:

Step 4. Configure Calendar

On Linux Mint 12 Lightning the Thunderbird calendar client does not come pre-installed. So head over to Synaptic package manager and search for "xul-ext-light", select the shown items and install them.

Once installed, restart thunderbird and you will see calendar icon and Task Pane.

Either click on Calendar or just press

 Ctrl+Shift+c

This will open Calendar view as shown below:

Select "New Calendar".

Select "On the Network" radio button and click on "Next"

Select CalDAV radio button, and fill the location field with "http://localhost:1081/users/ankit@officemail.com/calendar". Make sure you adjust the port as per your settings of Step 2.

http://localhost:1081/users/ankit@officemail.com/calendar

Give a name to this Calendar - say Office Cal for instance - and click Next.

After this you may be presented with a dialogue box to enter the username and password once again. If so provide details. Here provide abc.xyz@officemail.com and if that does not work and you are presented with the dialogue box again try with just the abc.xyz as username.

Once connected, your Calendar will be in sync as will be your tasks.

Step 5: Configure Global Address Book

Open Address Book and then select File > New > LDAP Directory. It will open the following box.

Fill as shown above and make sure Port number is as advised in red text. Then Click "OK"

That is it. Test and see if you are now able to update your calendar, tasks, emails etc. and if all has gone as explained above you should be good to go.

-Ankit.

Blog has moved to ----> mgw.dumatics.com

2012-03-05T20:57:00.000+00:00

Blog has moved to ----> mgw.dumatics.com

2012-03-04T19:30:00.000+00:00

This post can now be read at HERE

Blog has moved to ----> mgw.dumatics.com

2012-02-20T22:28:00.001+00:00

This post can now be read at HERE

I have an old Sony VAIO which is not in it's best of health and has long been really a companion for my telly, faithfully streaming media from bbc iplayer, youtube, dailymotion and likes. Internet enabled TV arrived in my home long long back :).

Now the thing with this laptop is that it's kinda gimpy - inbuilt keyboard won't work, battery is dead and it hangs on life with constant supply of energy from the AC source on the wall and the one thing that helps me load new OS on this machine - the optical reader - is temperamental and may or may not work and is moody in selecting which CD / DVD it will read and which it won't. It does in particular like CD's authored by Linux Format guys though. Writing is a skill it has forgotten long back and if it reads something, anything I am found celebrating.

Anyway, I had ubuntu installed on this laptop for quite some time but as this laptop has one more flaw - the nvidia graphic card - and the latest update from ubuntu broke the nvidia drivers which aren't all that well supported anyway, I was being forced to reformat the machine. So I decided to try a new distro named Bodhi Linux which is very cool and uses Enlightenment as desktop which is very very good and way better than Unity and some might argue even Gnome 3.2. However, in order to do so I had to cross the hurdle of burning a CD that my laptop's Optical Drive will find intresting enough to read.

I have checked and rechecked the BIOS of this laptop and there is no way to make BIOS understand that it can boot from USB. The only options it provides are Hard Drive, Floppy Disk, Optical Reader and Network Boot. None of these were particularly useful for reasons explained above and unfortunately I was hitting the wall. So I started looking for alternative ways to get Bodhi Linux installed. Alternative is what I found in Plop Boot Manager.

Now open source enthusiasts at this point be aware, this nifty piece of software is not open source but it is so useful that this one minor flaw must be completely ignored. It gives you options to boot from USB in several ways - you can burn a CD and fool BIOS to boot from CD onto plop boot manager which in turn allows you to boot from device of your choice aka USB, it can also be put on floppy or the option that I have used - install on hard drive and configured through GRUB.

So presented below without further ado is the guide to how you can install this on your hard drive but before I do so a quick thanks to several boards and posts I referred in the process of making this work:

Steps:

(Please note that these instructions will work for machines that have one of these OS installed: Bodhi Linux and Ubuntu variants. For other linux versions it should be on similar lines)

1. Download the Plop Boot Manager (plpbt-5.0.14.zip file) on the machine where you want to achieve the result from http://www.plop.at/en/bootmanager/download.html

2. Extract the zip file in folder where it was downloaded. In my case I have my browser setting set to download everything to "Download" folder.

3. Now open the terminal and type following command relevant to your distro:

For UBUNTU:



gksu nautilus  /boot

For Bodhi:






sudo pcmanfm /boot

You will be presented with a dialogue box to enter password. Once you enter the password you will be presented the contents of boot folder as shown below.

4. Now

(a) Go to the extracted plpbt-5.0.14 from step 2, click on Linux folder

(b) Then copy the files - "plpbt.bin" and "plpcfgbt" and paste them in the boot folder opened through step 3.

Step 4a

Files to copy in Step 4b

5. Once the files are copied in boot folder, double click on folder named grub and there open the file named "grub.cfg" in texteditor.

Once the file is opened, press "Ctrl+f" and search for string "END /etc/grub.d/10_linux". Now copy the text as highlighted in screen below and paste it in a new text-editor window.

6. In the new text editor after pasting the four lines from above

a) Edit the fourth line so it reads as below:

linux16 /boot/plpbt.bin

b) Complete the block in new editor to read as below, keeping the first three lines intact from what was copied in step 5 from grub.cfg file. In our example it will read as below:

menuentry "Plop Bootmanager" {
insmod ext2
        set root='(hd0,6)'
        search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set cb7a6eb7-b355-4d0f-865e-f7312880f887
        linux16 /boot/plpbt.bin
}

Once again, this is important so remember the final structure will be achieved by following steps below.

Copy Paste this in Line 1:

menuentry "Plop Bootmanager" {

Next three lines remain same as copied from step 5:


insmod ext2

        set root='(hd0,6)'

        search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set cb7a6eb7-b355-4d0f-865e-f7312880f887

Then the fourth line will be edited to look as shown below. You can copy paste this in fourth line.

linux16 /boot/plpbt.bin

Fifth line will be closing bracket.

7. Now open another terminal window and type following command relevant to your distro:

For UBUNTU:



gksu nautilus  /etc/grub.d

For Bodhi:



sudo pcmanfm /etc/grub.d

You will be presented with a dialogue box to enter password. Once you enter the password you will be presented the contents of boot folder as shown below.

8. Open the file 40_custom (highlighted in screenshot above) in texteditor - gedit on ubuntu or leafpad on Bodhi and paste the block from step 6(b) in this file and save it.

#!/bin/sh
exec tail -n +3 $0
# This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries.  Simply type the
# menu entries you want to add after this comment.  Be careful not to change
# the 'exec tail' line above.
menuentry "Plop Bootmanager" {
insmod ext2
        set root='(hd0,6)'
        search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set cb7a6eb7-b355-4d0f-865e-f7312880f887
        linux16 /boot/plpbt.bin
}

Very Important - Press "Enter" at-least twice after pasting to ensure there are atleast two new lines below closing bracket.

9. Close all windows and open terminal once again and type following command:

sudo update-grub

10. Now open /boot/grub/grub.conf and you should find the following entry on it:

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/40_custom ###
# This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries.  Simply type the
# menu entries you want to add after this comment.  Be careful not to change
# the 'exec tail' line above.
menuentry "Plop Bootmanager" {
insmod ext2
        set root='(hd0,6)'
        search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set cb7a6eb7-b355-4d0f-865e-f7312880f887
        linux16 /boot/plpbt.bin
}
### END /etc/grub.d/40_custom ###

11. Now reboot your machine with your Live USB plugged in. If you already dual boot your grub will show on restart and will have an additional option in the end - "Plop Bootmanager".

If however, you just have single OS ubuntu, press shift once the bios logo shows up and keep holding for getting the system to show Grub.

Once Grub is shown it will have the additional "Plop Bootmanager" menu entry on grub.

Select the "Plop Bootmanager" and press enter.

12. Plop Bootmanager will show option to boot from USB. It was third option for me. Select and press enter. If your Live USB is working, you will be able to load OS from it.

This is it. You can check the video below:

Please do let me know in comments if you found this useful. If there are any other ways I will be keen to hear those too.

- Ankit.

Blog has moved to ----> mgw.dumatics.com

2011-11-06T18:19:00.000+00:00

This post can now be read at HERE

UPDATE: LOOKS LIKE HOSTIZZLE IS NOT WORKING ANYMORE. THE STEPS IN THIS GUIDE WILL STILL BE RELEVANT FOR SETTING UP OPEN VPN, JUST THAT YOU WILL NEED TO FIND SOME OTHER PROVIDER.

I received a Google Music invite and as it is only available in US, I used OpenVPN on linux. Now this is a handy little trick to bypass the geographical constraints that are placed to block services on net. All this without opening the windows box to install dodgy looking services of Hotspot Shield which anyway does not work on Linux.

Ever come across "This video is not available in your country." on you tube or ever wanted to access Hulu only to be greeted by a similar message. Well then, if yes is your answer, openVPN is the solution to such sorrows.

It also comes with some other benefits such as anonymous browsing but then highlighting benefits of VPN is not exactly the aim of this post. The aim of this post is:

To configure a free VPN service that allows you to bypass country restrictions for US based sites. Keyword - US. As the site I am going to use only gives a US IP. Ofcourse if we remove the word free it opens up a range of possibilities which I will leave the readers to explore. :)

Alright, let's get on with the business:

Step 1: Install OpenVPN

Open Synaptics and type OpenVPN in "Quick Search". Then select all the packages marked green in screenshot below but not in your synaptic window and click on "Apply".

Then type "pptp" in "Quick Search" and select all the packages marked green in the screenshot below but not in your synaptic window and click on "Apply".

Step 2: Register with the free OpenVPN provider "Hostizzle"

a) Open the website http://hostizzle.com/ and follow the screenshots below:

Step 3: Set-up OpenVPN on Linux Mint

a) Open Terminal and type the following command:

gksudo nautilus /etc/openvpn/

You will be asked for root password and the File Explorer will be opened with root access. This is necessary as /opt directory only gives write access to root and as you wil see next step requires some files to be extracted in this directory. This extracted directory will be some long number.

**Please be extremely careful now, as you are accessing your file system as root.**

b) Now copy the zip file downloaded from Hostizzle in Step 2 to this directory and extract it here.

Step 4: Configure network manager

Open the Network Manager as shown in following screenshot:

(Menu > All Applications > Preferences > Network Connections)

This will open the following window:

Now click on VPN tab and then on Import button as shown in next screenshot.

It will open the file selection box. Navigate to File System/etc/openvpn/ and now open the long numbered directory that was extracted in Step 3(a) as shown in next figure.

Here select the .ovpn file and click Open. Following dialogue box will open.

Just accept defaults and click "Apply".

Then Click on "Close" on Network Connections window.

Step 5: Connect to the OpenVPN

Restart your system and once it is connected to your home WiFi, click on Network Indicator in the panel and select "VPN Connections".

This will list all available VPN connections as can be seen in the screenshot. Select the VPN name with big number which is what we have just configured.

Once done if everything was done correctly, it should connect to VPN and you should be able to browse with an american IP address.

Some key points to remember:

Free service of Hostizzle is quite generous compared to so many other options I explored, yet it is worth knowing the restrictions:
a) 100GB of bandwidth each month.
b) US IP
c) Limited to one month. You need to download new Keys and configure VPN using steps below each month.

Now considering that it takes less than 5 minutes to complete these steps and that it is a free alternative with a generous bandwidth, I would say it is all worth it.

Ofcourse, if you are not happy with the restrictions, there are some paid alternatives that can be implemented for as low as $4 per month from various providers, Hostizzle included. Go shopping !!!

- Ankit.

Blog has moved to ----> mgw.dumatics.com

2011-11-04T00:48:00.002+00:00

This post can now be read at HERE

Let me clear the air before anyone mentions. Yes, I know it's directories and not folders and yes I know many still call these folders and this may encourage the wrong usage but my aim is to help not educate but hopefully making this the first line in post will have some educational effect :).

Right, so to start with, presented below is the problem statement:

We want to share particular folder on our home WiFi network such that all members of the family can access it using their gadget - laptop / smartphone / netbook etc. Now like a true project manager, I will scope it down by making an assumption that any gadget that runs a variant of linux - Android included. It's not to say that the solution will not work on iOS or Windows, it's to say that these operating systems are not covered but might as well work with right application downloaded.However the solution offered will make no such claims...:p. Having said that, I will actually only be covering Android in this article as for Linux on desktop, it is fairly straight forward by going through "Network" places.

Ok now to the exciting stuff:

Step 1: Decide which Directory (Folder) you want to share.

For purpose of this demonstration, let's create a new folder called "DemoShare".

Step 2: Decide whether you want it to be accessed by specific users or anyone and everyone connected to your home network

a) If you would want the shared directory (folder) to be password protected go through all steps below.
b) If you would want to give guest access to all users, skip to Step 4.

Step 3:

a) Create new User(s) -

Let's create a new user - androshare. This can be done by following the images below:




	Obviously you are free to be creative with the username. Just replace androshare with your username in subsequent commands.

b) Create samba username(s)/password(s)

Open the terminal and type the following command:

sudo smbpasswd -a androshare

You will be asked for the root password and then new password for the username.

Once you type in new password, you will be asked to retype the new password. Again as shown in image.

c) Restart Samba

Open the terminal and type the following command:

sudo service smbd restart

Step 4: Update Share Properties of the Directory(ies) to be shared

Goto the folder "DemoShare" created in Step 1, right click on the folder and select properties. On the properties dialogue box click on Share tab. Click on share the folder checkbox.

For scenario (a) of Step 2 click on checkbox - "Allow users to create and delete files in this folder" as shown in the figure below and click on Create Share.

For scenario (b) of Step 2, mark the "Guest acess" Checkbox too as shown in next figure before clicking the Create Share button.

After the Create Share button is clicked following dialogue will appear. Select "Add the permissions automatically"

The folder icon will then change to show a share flag as shown in adjacent figure.

Step 5: Download and install the file explorer app

ES File explorer is what I use and recommend. It can be downloaded from market here - https://market.android.com/details?id=com.estrongs.android.pop

Step 6: Configure the app to access the shared directory

On your computer, open the terminal and type:

ifconfig

In the resulting information, locate wlan0 (last entry) and under that in second line you will find something like "inet addr: 192.168.1.74", Note this down.

Open the app and goto LAN tab.

Press the menu button and click on "New".

Now click on "Server". This will open the "New/Edit Samba Server Screen".

Complete it as shown with following information:

Field	Value
Field	Scenario A	Scenario B
Server	IP Address from above	IP Address from above
Username	Androshare	BLANK
Password	As given in Step 3a	BLANK
Anonymous	BLANK	Select the checkbox.

Click OK.

Now if you click on the IP address, it should show the shared directory. As you can see in the screenshot at the beginning of this post, I have already shared my Calibre Library and it does make life really simple. I can download files and e-books without actually going to my laptop.

That is all there is to it.

Hope you find it useful.

-Ankit.

Blog has moved to ----> mgw.dumatics.com

2011-06-20T22:44:00.004+01:00

This post can now be read at HERE

yEd - It's not Visio alternative, it's better.

UPDATE: PENCIL is an opensource software which is a pretty good alternative as well with a smaller learning curve and is Opensource.

I was recently looking for Visio alternatives on Linux and while Dia is good it lacks the oomph of Visio and hence not an easy sell for new and potential Linux converts.

Now good news for those open to enter the wonderful world of Linux is that any OS need not have an alternative for it to be usable to you, all it needs is the ability to let you run the software you find useful.

So this post isn't about why Linux is better. It is about knowing that there is something better than the software you have got accustomed to. If someone is adamant on continuing with the software they have fallen in love with, there is always WINE / Virtualbox but if you have opened to the idea of new OS but you are taking baby steps software like yEd can help you take a giant leap. yEd is written in Java and can run on Windows, Mac and of-course Linux.

Before we move into the steps of how to get it and use it let me bore you little with what are the other alternatives I explored.

During my quest I came across two other useful candidates Activiti 5.6, ARIS Express 2.3. What went against these and in favour of yEd? Read on:

Ease of installation

First on the list is ARIS Express 2.3. Now this requires registration which is my first gripe. I could have lived with that but as claimed on their website the product is meant for Windwos and is reported to be working fine for Linux. What they forgot to mention is on linux using Wine or atleast that is what it did on my set-up. Now am not sure if it has something to do with my installing JRE in wine for using Open Workbench (see last post) or it is because the product works on similar lines as Open Workbench installer but eighther way it does not run natively on Linux and for that reason alone it is unreliable and looses points even to Activiti.

Activiti Designer on Eclipse Helios.

For easiest installation, Activiti 5.6 can be added into Eclipse but that results in a bit complicated and not so user friendly user-experience. You will at-least need to have one Activiti project created in eclipse before you can draw using Activiti Diagram. (Check Screenshot)
Above might be circumvented by installing standalone Activiti bit that involves configuring ANT and other stuff. While guide is there, it is not very straight forward and considering we want to win new users not scare them, it is best left as untouched topic.

Ease of Use - While all the three products yEd, Activiti and ARIS are superior to Visio, in terms of ease of use I think it's yEd which wins hands down even to Visio. The one aspect of this software that won me over was it's ability to auto align the whole flowchart / diagram with just one click and it can do it in several layouts.

OK, now that I have covered comparison, let's get down to how we install it on our beloved Linux Mint. It's really very simple.

Step 1: Go to this website - http://www.yworks.com/en/products_yed_download.html

Step 2: Download yEd for your platform. In our case for Linux Mint the 43 MB sh file in front of Linux.

Step 3:

a) Go to the folder where it is downloaded, select the yEd-3.7.sh file and right click on it.

b) In the right click menu select Properties (last entry). This will open the yEd-3.7.sh properties box.

c) On the Properties box, click on Permissions tab.

d) Click the checkbox in front of Execute - Allow executing file as program.

e) Click Close.

f) Double click on the yEd-3.7.sh file. It will display a dialogue box with four options - Run in terminal, Display, Cancel, Run. Select Run in terminal

g) yEd will now install, it may give one small error but it did not affect anything at all so ignore it if you get it.

h) Follow the wizard and leave default options.

i) Once done, you will have yEd successfully installed and can be found in MENU - ALL APPLICATIONS-OTHER.

j) Create a shortcut of yEd by dragging yEd from MENU - ALL APPLICATIONS-OTHER onto desktop. You may need to make this dragged link executable by right clicking the link and following steps b,c and d.

All Done !!!

A quick tutorial from yWorks:

Find more on http://www.yworks.com/en/products_yed_videos.html

Having seen, how nice and easy it is to create the flowchart, let's also see the best feature of the product that is one click alignment.

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2011-06-04T10:18:00.005+01:00

This post can now be read at HERE

Open Workbench on Linux Mint using Wine

What is Open Workbench?

Open Workbench is a Project Planning Software comparable to Microsoft Project. There are mixed views on whether it is truly open source or not but as it is considered a very good alternative for Microsoft Project and it is free to download, it is something I as a Project Manager would want to know about. After all some of my clients are going to be using this. :)

Now then, as of writing this article Open Workbench is not available from the well publicised sitewww.openworkbench.org which seems to be down. Instead it is available for download fromhttp://www.itdesign.de/en/products-solutions/open-workbench.html

As you will find that the installer is an exe and the product is made for Windows platform and requires Java Runtime Environment, we will need to either use Windows in virtualbox or Wine. I am going to cover below the steps for installing the software on Linux using Wine.

Steps to install Open Workbench and JRE on Wine V1.2.2 in Linux Mint:

1. Install JRE in wine

2. Install Open Workbench in wine

3. Configure wine to play well with Open Workbench

4. Configure icon to launch Open Workbench

What do we need?

1. We will need to download the installer exe file from http://www.itdesign.de/en/products-solutions/open-workbench.html

2. As the product requires Java Runtime Environment, we will need to download the JRE for windows.

3. We will need access to system32 folder of a WindowsXP machine or in Virtualbox.

Step 1: Install JRE in wine

You can download the JRE file from http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/index.html . Remember, we only need JRE not JDK so click the download button in second column.

This will open another page for you to select which JRE package you want to download.

Click on the radio-button to accept license agreement and then select Windows x86 Offline for download.

(I am assuming that your hardware is 32 bit, if not please select Windows x64 but it will not have the offline version and I have no way of checking if it will work or not; so please leave a comment either way as it will help others.)

a) Copy the downloaded (jre-6u25-windows-i586.exe) file into .wine/drive_C/Program Files. You can do this using GUI on Linux Mint using steps below:

Goto MENU-ALL APPLICATIONS-WINE and click on BROWSE C: DRIVE

Click on Program Files folder.

Paste the copied exe file here.

b) Right click on the exe file and select "open with wine windows program loader".

c) Follow the installation wizard.

Once completed move on to next step.

Step 2: Install Open Workbench in wine

a) Download the “Open Workbench” installer file(Open_Workbench_Setup_1.1.6.exe) and copy it into .wine/drive_C/Program Files.

[TIP: You can use Step 1 bullet "a" to reach drive_c and then click on windows folder and then on system32 folder.]

b) Right click on the exe file and select "open with wine windows program loader".

[TIP: You can use Step 1 bullet "b" to reach drive_c and then click on windows folder and then on system32 folder.]

c) Follow the installation wizard.

Step 3: Configure wine to play well with Open Workbench

Due to some bug identified in Wine V1.2 the odbc32.dll file does not work and gives the error “err:module:attach_process_dlls “odbc32.dll” failed to initialize, aborting” if you try to run file from Terminal.

The following workaround is one suggested on Launchpad (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/wine1.2/+bug/572393) and does solve the problem.

I have just tried to make it easier to follow the instructions by providing screenshots and explaining each step.

1. On the WindowsXP machine / virtualbox goto following location – C:\WINDOWS\system32

2. Now copy odbc32.dll and odbcint.dll files onto the Linux machine at this location - .wine/drive_c/windows/system32 .

[TIP: You can use Step 1 bullet "a" to reach drive_c and then click on windows folder and then on system32 folder.]

3. Now goto wine configuration (On Linux Mint: MENU-ALL APPLICATIONS-WINE-CONFIGURE WINE)

4. Click on Libraries tab.

5. From the dropdown select odbc32 and click add.

6. Click OK

Step 4: Configure Open Workbench icon to launch the application

1. Open terminal (MENU - TERMINAL)

2. Type: wine ~/.wine/drive_c/Program\ Files/Open\ Workbench/bin/npWBench.exe

3. Once Open Workbench is opened we are sure the command works. Select this command and right click and select copy.
[TIP: You can also press Ctrl+Shift+C to copy the selected text from terminal]

4. Close "Open Workbench" and goto icon in MENU-ALL APPLICATIONS-WINE.

5. Right click the "Open Workbench" icon and click on "Edit Properties".

6. In Command click on browse and navigate to following location: .wine/drive_c/Program Files/Open Workbench/bin/ and select the file npWBench.exe.

7. Now click "OK"

This is it. You are ready to use Open workbench on Linux using wine.

-Ankit.

Blog has moved to ----> mgw.dumatics.com

2011-05-07T12:03:00.004+01:00

This post can now be read at HERE

Recently someone asked this question to me and after some search on Google I came across mentions of PDFedit, Scribus, flpsed, Gimp, PDFMod and even the openoffice plugin for importing PDF and I tried all of these. PDFescape is probably a good solution but is only online and limited to 30 pages in it's free avatar. If your aim is similar to the one stated below, these tools are way too complicated (PDFedit), limiting (PDFescape) or ineffective (rest of them).

So, Let's start with the usual what was my aim question.

Aim:

To be able to highlight and put his own annotations, highlights and comments in the lecture notes that he gets from his college lecturers in pdf and be able to print the amended notes from any platform. (Linux / Mac / Windows.)

What Worked?
What I gave my friend as his final solution in the end kills two birds with one stone - Use of "Calibre" to convert the pdf to rtf and then use the open office to edit the notes. Where is the second bird, you ask...well Calibre is a great tool, infact in my opinion the best tool for ebook management. Using Calibre will not only help in editing the notes from the pdf but enable us to have a copy of final notes for ready reference right on our smartphone. There you have the second bird. :)

Now the steps involved are listed below:

Steps:

Install and set-up Calibre
Import pdf into Calibre
Convert pdf to rtf using Calibre
Open rtf file and start editing
Convert final version of rtf to epub and transfer to your phone.

Step 1 - Install and set-up Calibre:

The current version of Calibre at the time of writing is 0.8 while the one in ubuntu repository is 0.6 so I recommend you should update after installing from repo as that will ensure all dependencies are satisfied and then you have the latest version as well.

So first open your package manager (on Linux Mint: Menu - Package Manager). You will need to provide root password and then search for Calibre and install it.

Now to update to latest version, open the terminal (on Linux Mint: Menu - Terminal) and type the following command:

sudo python -c "import urllib2; exec urllib2.urlopen('http://status.calibre-ebook.com/linux_installer').read(); main()"

You will be asked for your root password so provide that and terminal will show a question:

Enter the installation directory for calibre [/opt]:

Type /opt and press enter.

Now type Calibre and it will fire up the welcome wizard. Follow these screenshots:

Select your language and Directory where you will want your ebooks to be stored. I keep it default.

Select your ebook Device. I have selected Android as that is the smartphone I use for reading ebooks.

That's Calibre configured. Easy-Peasy !!! :)

Step 2: Import pdf into Calibre

Open Calibre (On Linux Mint: Menu - All Applications - Office - Calibre or just by typing calibre on terminal).

Now click on "Add Books" and select "Add books from single directory.

It will open the dialogue box for you to select file. Go to the location where you have saved your pdf. In my case it was in /Downloads/Tutorials as you can see in next screenshot.

Select the file and click open. Calibre will then import the pdf.

While importing it shows the "Adding" screen as can be seen on right above.

Depending on size of the pdf it can take a while or be very quick. In this case as it's a small lecture note it was hardly few seconds. Once completed, imported file will appear in your library as shown.

Once completed, it's time to move to next step.

Step 3: Convert pdf to rtf using Calibre

Select and right click on the pdf imported into Calibre and select Convert - Convert Individually.

It will open the window to show options for conversion as shown below. In this window on right hand side corner select "rtf" from the drop-down against "Output".

Now click OK.

Once Converted it will show the rtf format in right pane as shown in red circle in following figure.

Step 4: Open rtf file and start editing

Click on rtf and it will open the file in open-office and you are ready to edit, highlight and do pretty much what you like.

You may notice that some pictures are not coming on the page but all that is required is to do some formatting for openoffice which is quite straight forward.

Double click on the picture and in most cases it will be fixed if you click on "keep Ratio" and changing the anchor to Page.

Some changes to page layout from Portrait to landscape may also help. To do so go to Format and select Page. It will open the dialogue box as shown below where you can switch between Portrait and landscape.

Step 5: Convert final version of rtf to epub and transfer to your phone (Optional)

Once done save your work with a different filename and follow steps 2 and 3 to import the saved rtf file into calibre and convert to epub this time (Keep output to epub in step 3) and then transfer it to your smartphone through mail or by usb transfer.

That's it all done. It's a long tutorial keeping in mind people who are new to Linux but carrying out the steps to convert don't take more than 2 minutes so trying this will be well worth it.

I must add that this may not be required if all you will ever need is to add notes and comments and highlight in pdf and then print from your own laptop / computer. In which case OKULAR is a far superior way of doing it and you must try it out. However, having said that I don't know many college going students who have easy access to Printers at their hostel and in all likelihood their print-outs will be from college library in which case solution above should come handy.

-Ankit.

Blog has moved to ----> mgw.dumatics.com

2011-05-04T21:56:00.004+01:00

This post can now be read at HERE

While the majority of settings are covered in my previous post here I found that each time I switched off my printer, it used to change it's IP address and I had to repeat Steps 7 to 16 each time. My printing and scanning needs are pretty limited so I never bothered working out a solution until today and knowing what I now know, it was quite a simple and quick solution I should have done this on the first place. Anyway as they say better late than never. :)

So to carry out the magical transformation to your printing experience follow the steps below:

On your printer (actual machine not on laptop / computer) go to Settings (Press the button with Wrench and Screwdriver symbol as shown in picture).
Using left arrow navigate to Network Settings (Computer and Printer icon)
Click OK button.
Using down arrow navigate to "General Setup" and click OK button.
Printer will show the question "After changing the settings, network may be disconnected. Continue?" and present options Yes and No with No selected (highlighted in Yellow.)
Using left arrow move to Yes and press OK.
Printer will now show the screen for "Printer Name Setup", do not change anything. Just Click OK to proceed to next screen.
Now printer will show screen for TCP/IP screen with two options Auto which is selected by default and highlighted in yellow and Manual. Here using down arrow key select Manual.
Click OK button.
The screen will show current IP address assigned to printer something like 192.168.1.66.
Now I am assuming that you have already followed part 1 of this tutorial so on your laptop open the file epkowa.conf from /etc/sane.d. You can also open this file by typing the following command in terminal - gedit /etc/sane.d/epkowa.conf
Note down the IP address you entered last time 192.168.1.60 below usb and scsi. (Line 12 on my file.)
Now on your printer change IP address to match the one on Step 12. To do so, first click on left arrow on printer to reach the last digit of displayed IP address and then adjust the number using up or down arrow.
Once it is same as that on epkowa.conf file (192.168.1.60 in this example), click OK button. Now continue to click OK button on all remaining screens till you reach Network Settings screen (About 5 times)
Press OK one final time and that's it you are done.

If you are to now switch off and switch on the printer and test scan it should work without any issues.

Hope you find this useful.

-Ankit.

Blog has moved to ----> mgw.dumatics.com

2011-05-02T23:27:00.001+01:00

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2011-04-29T01:32:00.007+01:00

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2011-04-24T18:06:00.004+01:00

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2011-04-17T21:19:00.005+01:00

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2011-02-20T23:07:00.002+00:00

This post can now be read at HERE

Second post in succession on the topic but believe me when I get a new gadget I try getting all information and then once I have had the stuff working I have to make a post right away or I will forget and hence this post. This post also overrides the previous posts.

Right then, let's get down to business.

What do we aim to do?

We aim to make free international calls and there is nothing illegal in this set-up, not to my knowledge.

How?

Google has introduced Google Voice and allows free calls to all US numbers. This can be done using their google talk plugin in the gmail browser.

Pre-Requisites:

Gmail account - Preferably a new one and not the one you use for your day to day usage.
Ability to install X-Lite 4.0 which will require a machine running Windows PC directly or on virtualbox.
Ability to install Hotspot Shield if residing outside of USA.
An Android device at both source and destination of the call.

Steps:

1. Get a SIP number.

If outside of USA, install hotspot shield on windows machine by going to this site - http://www.hotspotshield.com .I am not sure how safe this is from spyware and all security perspective. I am not really worried about it as I carry out these things on virtualmachine using virtualbox and there is no real threat to my actual machine which runs on Linux. So if Windows is your primary machine you do it on your own risk.
Once installed, open the site www.sip2sip.info.Register on sip2sip using your new gmail account. Ensure that you select US Central as your region.
You will get an email from sip2sip on the new gmail account giving your login details which will be something like:

SIP address: 2233xxxxxx@sip2sip.info
Password: abcdabcdabcd

Open the email and click on the link provided for lgging in. Enter the login details provided and goto settings tab (3rd from left).
In the first field under SIP Account, enter a new easy to remember password and click SAVE.

This completes Step 1 and you have successfully created SIP number for yourself.

2. Get a US phone number using ipkall.

Go to the website http://www.ipkall.com and click on sign-up.
On the sign-up page complete the following details using the email from sip2sip:

SIP username: 2233xxxxxx
Hostname or IP address: sip2sip@info
Email Address: Preferably the email address you used to register at sip2sip
Password: Prefereably the same password as what you changed on sip2sip in Step 1-5.

Enter the human verification codes and click "Submit".
You will receive a mail with in your email account with a new US number with text of something to following effect:

Thank you for signing up. Your IPKall phone number is: 253-XXX-XXXX.
SIP Phone Number: 2233xxxxxx
SIP Proxy: sip2sip.info
Email: abcdefg@gmail.com
Password: qwerty

This completes Step 2. You have now received a US phone number that is linked to your sip2sip account.

3. Set-up Xlite / softphone to receive calls made to US phone number.

In order to activate Google Voice account, it is important to be able to receive call on the new phone number that we have created in Step 2 so install Xlite v4.0 from here - http://download.cnet.com/X-Lite/3000-2349_4-10547103.html
Once X-Lite is installed, open it and click on Softphone -> Account Settings.
Now fill the following fields:

Account Name: Fill your gmail username.
User ID: 2233xxxxxx
Domain: sip2sip.info
Password: sip2sip password (qwerty for this example)

Click OK at the bottom of the window.

This completes Step 3.

4. Activate Google Voice for this Gmail account.

Log into the google voice account - https://www.google.com/voice.
Provide a user pin to retrieve voicemails
Now provide the US phone number obtained in Step 2-4 (253-XXX-XXXX)
A window will be shown with two numbers and a button call now.
Click on Call Now and you should receive call on Xlite phone.
Accept the call on Xlite and enter the two numbers shown in google's window.
You will get confirmation that the numbers are correct and will be asked to set-up voice mail greeting or hang-up.
Hang-up now as you can set this up later.

Google Voice account is now set-up.

5. Configure Android to receive calls using Google Voice.

If you are using nexus S, good news, it has inbuilt capability to get the SIP calls though this can be also be done using SIPDROID on other android devices. For Nexus S you can follow the steps below:

Goto Settings -> Call Settings and under Internet Call Settings click on "Accounts".
Untick receive calls.
Click on Add Account.
Now in username enter the 2233xxxxxx provided by sip2sip
Enter the password used for sip2sip account in password field. (qwerty in this example)
Enter sip2sip.info in server.
Untick the "Set as primary account" field.
Click on Optional Settings and in Outbound proxy address enter proxy.sipthor.net
Press back button till you are back to call settings. Now under Internet Call Settings click on "Use Internet Calling" and select "Only for Internet Calls".

For SIPDROID once you have downloaded and installed it from android market, follow the steps below:

Open SIPDROID, and goto Settings ->SIP Account.
In Authorization Username enter: 2233xxxxxx@sip2sip.info
Enter the password used for sip2sip account in password field. (qwerty in this example)
In Server or Proxy enter - proxy.sipthor.net
In Domain enter sip2sip.info

Now save and exit. SIPDROID will register the VOIP and turn green.
Now from gtalk plugin in the browser from some other gmail account try to call US phone number obtained in Step 2-4 (253-XXX-XXXX). Your phone should ring and so should the Xlite.

If step 4 did not happen as expected, you need to review the configuration and once it does happen as expected, your set-up to recieve calls is completed.

6. Configure Android to make calls using Google Voice.

Download and install Google Voice Callback on android device - https://market.android.com/details?id=com.xinlu.gvdial&feature=search_result
Provide the gmail credentials for the application. This will perhaps explain my recommendation for a new gmail account. You will be giving login credentials to a third party application but since it's a new account with no confidential info, it should really be safe.
In the settings for when to use callback select "Ask Everytime" if you are outside of USA.
This is it. Try calling one of your USA contact and this application should make a call back and you should be able to talk for free to your US friends.

This is happy ending for those who don't have sight of our aim - make free international calls. For free international calls though you have reached a point where you will have dependency on person you are calling. Following 3 options will be possible:

If the person you are calling also has android device and they follow this tutorial they will have a US number which you can then store in your contacts against that person's name and from thereon you both can call each other absolutely free.
If your friend has a SIP enabled device, they can follow this tutorial and replace the set-up of Android device to setting up their own SIP device.
If above two are not viable options, you can ask your friend to call you on your international number through googletalk plugin in their web browser. Unfortunately this takes away the flexibility of you being able to call them but given the constraints this may still be a good option to talk for free.

Final words - I know it's a long post and looks complex but believe me if you do it right it takes roughly 20 minutes.

Hope you find the post helpful.

- Ankit.

Blog has moved to ----> mgw.dumatics.com

2011-02-19T00:29:00.004+00:00

This post can now be read at HERE