Another World

A Photo-journey to Western Rajasthan, Day 2, Jodhpur

noreply@blogger.com (Sroyc) — Sat, 01 Aug 2015 08:11:00 +0000

The second day, we reached Jodhpur and visited different parts of the city.

A Photo Journey in Western Rajsthan

noreply@blogger.com (Sroyc) — Sat, 01 Aug 2015 08:07:00 +0000

Account of Day 1, please read the post for the details.

DVD Ripping with PgcDemux

noreply@blogger.com (Sroyc) — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 16:24:00 +0000

The tool I have used here is PgcDemux. There are other very popular tools available for this job, namely DVDDecrypter and DVDfab Decrypter. Unlike the other two, PgcDemux does not need any installation. You can run it for the unzipped folder by just clicking the .exe file. So I have preferred this one.

Download:

Here is the Screen shot of the download page:

Installation:

This tool does not require you to run an installer to install it.

As you click the Link 1 from above list you should see this file at your Download Location. It is a zip file. Double click on this file to unzip the contents of this file (you may use a free tool named 7-zip for this purpose).

The unzipped folder contains the following three files

Double clicking on the above 'blue boxed' PgcDemux.exe file will run the program opening up the main program window as explained in the next subsection.

Use:

The following is the program window that you shall see when you run PgcDemux for the first time

Step 1:

Hit the "1." 'Browse' button and you shall be greeted with a pop up window as the next shot, from where you need to choose the IFO file. Do not worry about what is IFO file as this window is only going to list those files which are indeed IFO files. Navigate to the DVD Drive containing your DVD Disc.

Step 2:

As you double click on the VIDEO_TS folder you shall see something like the following:

Step 3:

These are the IFO files that you need to select. Now the question is which one! Hover your mouse over all the three IFO files and choose the file which is the largest in size. In this case I chose VTS_01_0 which is the largest (74.0 KB of the three IFOs listed in the 'choice window'.

Step 4:

Select the largest IFO and hit the "Open" button, and you shall see the following screen. Note that the selected IFO is now displayed in the "Input IFO" field of the Program Window.

Hit the "Browse" button next to the "Output Folder" field to choose the output location. The location should have sufficient Hard Disc Space (about 6 GB at least for a large movie). As you choose your Output location the second field should look like the next screen shot...

Step 5:

Here you need to prepare the program to provide you the output that can be used in the next stage. Look at the next screen shot very carefully and check/ uncheck boxes according to that under "Options" section of the program...this step is very important. Basically, you need to make sure that you uncheck all the boxes but "Create a PGC VOB". "Create Logfile" is optional, but I suggest that you keep it checked as this will help you to see through the process in case anything goes wrong (though the chances are minimal unless you do something wrong).

Check the "Mode" part of the Program and make sure that "by PGC" is selected...

Step 6:

Now the last part before you can actually run the program. Look in the "PGC Selection" part of the main program window.

Make sure that in "Domain", "Titles" is selected. Now look in the next field. If you click on the Green Colored drop down arrow, you can find all the PGCs by numbers and their duration. Choose the PGC number which has the longest duration. In this case it is PGC # 01, with about 3 hrs duration. Except for Episodic DVDs, there will only be one PGC having the longest duration.

Now the program is all set to start the Ripping.

Step 7:

Hit the "Process" button at the bottom lest of the main program window to start the process. Once you hit the "Process" Button, a progress bar will be showing you the process status. Refer the next screen shot...

The Title Bar as well as the progress bar will give you an idea of the progress. Now, you need to just be patient unless the process is completed, the time of which will depend on your Computer's power.

Step 8:

Once the process is over, you shall see a small pop up window opened like the following screen shot. Note that, this happens even though the title bar is displaying that 98% is completed. Do not worry about it. Just hit the "OK" button and then hit "Quit" button at the bottom right corner of the program window.

Now if you navigate to the output folder, you can see a number of VOB files ( about all of size 0.99 GB) and named in sequence. This is very important that you do not rename any of these VOB files otherwise AGK will not be able to convert the full movie.

The logfile at the beginning is created by this program which may be referred to see the full details of the program run.

DVD Ripping- A Complete Guide (DVDFab HD Decrypter)

noreply@blogger.com (Sroyc) — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 12:41:00 +0000

DVDFab HD Decrypter

As mentioned in the DVD Backup Post, PgcDemux can not handle Latest Copy Protected DVDs, and to rip your latest copy protected DVD yu need a more capable tool, which in this case is DVDFab HD Decrypter. As the name suggests, this program can Decrypt (which means 'Rip') even the HD DVDs, but we are going to concentrate on its ability to rip our good ol' DVDs for now.

Download:

Link:

Direct Download: http://www.dvdfab.com/mlink/download.php?g=HDDECRYPTER

Download Page: http://www.dvdfab.com/free.htm

If you go to the Download Page link you should see something like the next screen shot. Hit on the Green "Download" Button to start your download.

Once your download is over, you need to install this program by running the downloaded installer.

Once you complete your installation you should see thisprogram icon placed on the desktop. You will need to Reboot your PC after the installation is over.

Use:

Step 1:

Double Click on the program icon and the following screen will appear.

This is the main program window. All those options which I have blackened are not available in this free program, but in its commercial counterpart. The two enabled functions which we shall require are shown in the Red Rectangle.

Step 2:

The Button 1 will rip the whole content of the DVD to your Hard Disc Drive. We are more interested to get the Movie only to the Hard Disc Drive. And to do that, the Button 2 is required. Now, insert your DVD to your DVD Drive. The program will automatically detect the DVD and you can see it in the "Source" field. Now hit the little 'Folder Icon' beside the "Target" field and choose the location where you would like to save your ripped movie. Remember to choose a location where enough free space (at least about 9GB) is available.

Step 3:

Once you have chosen your source and target, hit the option at the left pane of the main program window labeled as "Main Movie" (if you have not done it already in the previous step). You can see something like the next screen shot.

Look at the portion of the Program Window labeled as "1" in blue. The First column is "Title" and the second column is "Play Time". If the DVD is a single movie DVD, then you do not need to do anything. The Title Number belonging to the Largest Duration will automatically be selected. If it is otherwise, select the required title based on the play time.

Now look at the right part of the main window labeled as "2". Here you can find all the available Audio Streams in the DVD movie. You can choose the one you would like to rip by clicking the check box beside the stream name.

The small window below the Audio Streams (2) window shows the subpictures available. You can also select the ones you require or you may leave it as default.

Once you have completed all the above, just hit the "Start" button at the right bottom corner of the program window to start the Ripping Process.

Step 4:

Once you hit the "Start" button as mentioned in the previous step, you can see the following window.

Let me explain what are the different parts of this window.

1. This is the Log Window, reporting the operation progress in a textual manner. If anything goes wrong, this log really comes handy to pin point the problem.

2. This portion shows you the time required to complete the operation (So that you can decide how many cups of coffee you need to take).

3. This one is pretty handy if you just need to forget this process for now. The program can shut down the PC once the operation completes, provided you check the box beside the option.

4. This is the Graphical Progress Bar.

5. In case you have a old PC which can not handle multi tasking efficiently, you can just pause this process using this button for the time being.

6. In case you need to cancel the whole job!

Step 5:

Once the process is completed, you will be seeing the following screen shot.

Nothing much to do here; just hit the "OK" button in the small pop up window.

Step 7:

Now navigate to the target folder you have chosen to something like the next screen shot.

Take a note of the .vob files. These are the files you need to feed to AGK (AutoGK), the first one to be precise. And do not rename any of these files if you want to convert the whole movie to XviD. If you can not understand which are vob files, just look for the files which are very large in size in comparison with other files.

So the ripping guide is concluded here, using DVDFab Decrypter.

To find out how to convert your DVD to AVI (XviD) using AutoGK after you have ripped the DVD as above, see this post here:

http://sroyc.blogspot.com/2008/02/dvd-backup-complete-guide.html

DVD to AVI (XviD) Backup - A Complete Guide

noreply@blogger.com (Sroyc) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 20:14:00 +0000

Ownership and Disclaimer : The content of this article (pictorial) is the sole property of the author. No part (including images) of it can be reproduced without explicit permission of the owner (that is the author). The tools used here are copyrighted and/or owned by the respective developer. Furthermore, the author can not be held responsible for any loss of what so ever nature claimed to have happened by following this guide. Please remember to follow the copyright rule prevailing in your country. If any break of the rule occurs by using this then you alone will be responsible, neither me nor my guide or Blogger...so use this guide at your own responsibility.

I have few DVDs which I felt that I should have a backup. So I started to search for a way, and there is nothing better than "Google". I encountered many tools and many guides, some having a steep learning curve and some uses tools which require almost no intervention from the User- kind of an AIO. After pondering over all the options for few months, I jumped in and found that there are still problems lying ahead. I got all my problems resolved after discussing the issues in different forums and ultimately produced an excellent backup of one of my favorite movies. My quest made me realize that there is a serious lack of a complete guide to help a complete 'newbie' to get a great quality backup using an Windows PC. So here is a guide which should help a New User to get a perfect backup of his/her favorite movie. So read on.....

Purpose: The aim of this guide is to show a easy way to convert the main movie on a DVD to AVI using XviD codec.

This whole guide is divided in to following two sections:

Section 1: Ripping the DVD to your Hard Disc.

Section 2: Making the Backup

Every section is further subdivided into three subsections:

Download
Installation
Use

Tools Used:

- PgcDemux for Ripping- it only works for non-copy protected DVDs.
- DVDFab HD Decrypter for Ripping- for all newer copy protected DVDs. - I'm in process of adding this, please be patient.
Auto Gordian Knot (popularly known as AutoGK or AGK) for making backup

Section 1 - Ripping the DVD to Hard Disc

As the main purpose of this guide is to Convert DVD to AVI (XviD) and Ripping is a necessary but additional part, I have decided to move it to another post so that users who do not require a Ripping Guide can just continue to AGK conversion guide. Please follow the links under the respective tools to view the guide to Rip a DVD using that tool.

1. PgcDemux

----------------------------------------

Note: As mentioned above this tool will not work for copy protected DVDs. It is best usable if (for any reason) you have the DVD folder (VIDEO_TS) on your HDD. Otherwise, please refer to the guide for DVDFab HD Decrypter. PgcDemuxis a very powerful tool which can be used for various reasons in editing the DVD content, but discussing those functions is beyond the scope as well as the purpose of this guide.

---------------------------------------

DVD Ripping with PgcDemux:

http://sroyc.blogspot.com/2008/03/dvd-ripping-with-pgcdemux.html

***************************

2. DVDFab HD Decrypter

DVD Ripping with DVDFab HD Decrypter:

http://sroyc.blogspot.com/2008/03/dvd-ripping-with-pgcdemux.html

This concludes the section of Ripping.

Section 2- Making the Backup

In this stage the tool to be used is AutoGK. The best thing about this tool is that it comes bundled with all the necessary back end tools, so the user do not need to worry about missing components. Though this tool is mainly targeted to new comers, there are hidden options which can be invoked by pressing CTRL+F9. Though there will be no need to mess with the default settings of AGK.

Download:

AGK comes in two versions, one is the Full Installer of the Last Stable Release (2.45) and the other is the last Beta Release (2.48). The Beta release is only the update pack, so the user needs to download the full pack as well as the update ed Beta version installer to use the latest version. I suggest that both the versions should be downloaded. I have used 2.48 Beta release for the purpose of this guide.

Click Link 1 first to download the complete installer of about 8MB in size. Then get the Update Pack using the second link. The installer looks like this .

Installation:

Step 1:

Double click the version 2.45 installer and proceed as usual to install the program. Do not fiddle with the default installation settings unless you are absolutely sure about what you are doing. Though you can safely change the default installation location if you wish.

Step 2:

Once the installation is completed, run the version 2.48 Beta installer. It should pick up the installation location of the previous version by default even if you have changed it in earlier stage. So just carry on with the installation without changing the default options.

During installation, you may like to choose the Standalone Compatibility to be installed provided you have idea about what type of chip your Standalone DVD player uses. This will enhance the compatibility of the end output from the program and hence making it more playable in a standalone player.

Use:

Step 1:

Go to Start> All Programs> AutoGK and click on AutoGK icon which looks like this . The program window looks like as follows:

Step 2:

Click on folder icon beside the "Input File" field. That will open up a Pop-up window. Navigate to the ripped files folder, which were created in the last section. Choose the First File named as VTS_01_1- this is very important to choose the first file and the first file only. Now hot the "Open" button.

As you choose to open this file, the "Input File" field should look like this:

AGK will automatically choose the same input folder as Output folder and the Output file field should look like this:

If you intend to chose a different location for your Output file, just click the Folder Icon at the right end of the field, and you can choose another location. Remember only to choose a location with sufficient free space.

Step 3:

Now look at the Audio and Subtitle Selection section of the Program. the default one should already be selected. In this case there is only one Audio Track available and no subtitle track is there. There may be situations where you need to choose between different Audio Streams and Subtitle Streams. You can choose multiple Audio Streams, but that will simply increase the end file size. You can move the Audio and Subtitle streams up and down using the Blue Arrows beside the respective windows.

Step 4:

In this step you need to choose the output file size. There are three distinctive options available

Predefined Size templates
Custom size
Target Quality (in Percentage)

First let us explore the " Predefined Size templates" option. Click on the Drop Down arrow beside the field and you may see all the available options. Do not choose anything below 1 CD (700Mb), as the end quality will seriously suffer. Generally the default is 2 CDs (1400 Mb).

Next comes the "Custom Size" option. If you select this option, you may input any size in the field. I do not recommend this as it is not at all for Newbies. You can change the size by clicking on the arrow button beside the size field.

Last is the option of "Target Quality (in Percentage)". I would always suggest to use this option. The main reason is that this option is faster than the other two options. There are two problems though, first you do not have any control over the output file size and some Standalone Compatibility features are disabled. The second one should not bother you much, and the first one depends on your personal choice. The quality setting can be any number up to 100. But I would suggest that to keep it at 75% or to increase it till 80% at most. Beyond that percentage the quality improvement will hardly be recognizable for normal viewing purpose .

If you choose this option you will get an warning from AGK like the following regarding Standalone Compatibility as mentioned above:

Just hit the OK button to continue.

As I said, I prefer to use this mode. If one likes otherwise, the other two options can always be chosen.

Note (for Advanced users): In "Predefined Size" mode, AGK will do a 2 pass encoding. This ensures that the quality-size ratio are optimally maintained. But this takes longer time to complete a job. In "Target Quality (in Percentage)" mode, as there is no worries about the output size, AGK does a 1 pass encoding only, making the process faster.

Step 5:

Here we need to change some settings to control the final result. Click on the "Advanced Settings" button as in the next screen shot:

Hitting this button will bring up the following window:

Make all the settings exactly as shown in the above shot. The Codec is XviD and I suggest that it should not be changed as XviD produces better quality output than DivX and this comes bundled with AGK installer.

Regarding the sound I prefer to choose the original sound as that keeps the Multi channel Listening Experience intact. Though if any output size below 2 CDs are chosen, AGK will re encode the original sound to MP3 as that will decrease the output file size.

Leave the Subtitle option as shown above, as external subtitle can not be played by a Standalone player. In another guide I shall try to show the process of ripping subtitle is discussed and how it can be used in the Standalone player (I may also add it to this guide letter).

After all the settings are in order as above, just hit OK to save the settings.

Note: These settings will be saved for the next project too, unless the user changes it to something else.

Step 5a (Optional):

If you are aware of the type of chip used by your standalone player you may proceed to read this step, otherwise proceed to Step 6.

Hit CTRL+F9 to open up advance options in AGK...

Now look at the right-bottom most part of the window and check the box beside "Enable Standalone Support" and then from the next box beside it choose the type of chipset used by your standalone player. Once you are done, just hit "OK" to complete. There is no need to touch any other options.

Step 6:

Now as we are all set and done, just hit the "Add Job" button right below the "Advanced Settings" button.

Now you can see the job being listed in the "Job Queue" as follows...You can also preview the end result by hitting "Preview" button beside the "Advanced Settings" button.

Step 7:

Now there are two options available, you can either start the job in the queue by hitting the "Start" button

or, you can go on adding more jobs in the queue. If you add multiple jobs you may change the priorities by moving the jobs up or down by using the Blue arrows beside the queue window.

As you start the job, you can see the progress in the log window beside the queue window as follows...

Once the job will be over, it will vanish from the Queue Window. You may also terminate the job midway if you wish by hitting the "Abort" button , which will be activated as soon as the job starts.

Annexure:

If you add multiple jobs, you may make AGK to shut down your PC (or sleep etc) after the jobs are done. To do that, look for a small field above the right corner of the log window named "When Finished". Clicking the drop down arrow will give you all the options.

This concludes the guide to get a great backup of your DVD movie. Burn the resultant AVI file on a blank CD or DVD using any standard CD/DVD burning application like CDburnerXP which is free.

Note:

If you face any problems while converting, I suggest that you use DVDDecrypter in IFO mode to rip your DVD and create VOBs to be used in AGK. There are many guides on how to rip a DVD in IFO mode using DVDDecrypter, so I am not adding another one to the crowd. Just search through the net or www.videohelp.com under Guide section.

Another tool that can be used for ripping is DVDFab HD Decrypter (Thanks GMaq for pointing it out to me). This is a free tool and excellent one. One brownie point that it scores over DVDDecrypter is that it is still under active development and can handle all the newer copy protections placed on DVDs, which unfortunately DVDDecrypter can not.

Download links:

DVD Decrypter: http://fileforum.betanews.com/detail/DVD_Decrypter/1011845169/1

DVDFab HD Decrypter: http://www.dvdfab.com/free.htm

DVDFab HD Decrypter Ripping Guide: http://sroyc.blogspot.com/2008/03/dvd-ripping-with-pgcdemux.html

If you can not resolve the problem in a very unlikely situation I suggest that you visit the AGK support forum at www.doom9.org.

Let me know if you have liked this guide.

Check your AntiVirus- if it is Working

noreply@blogger.com (Sroyc) — Sun, 11 Nov 2007 18:26:00 +0000

Hello everyone

As me you must also be using an AntiVirus with a Real Time Scanning. it sit quietly in your system tray. have you ever thought to check out whether it at all works or not? As efficiently as the product's manufacturing Company promises? Well here is a little trick which you can apply to see whether your AV and its Real Time Scanning Engine working as it should be.

1. Right Click anywhere in the empty space on the Desktop and choose 'New'. From there choose 'Text File'.

2. Now you should see a new text file being created on your Desktop. Double click on that file to open it.

3. In that file copy-paste the following:

X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*

4. Now from the File menu choose 'Save As'.

5. In the 'Save As' dialog box, choose "All Files" in the 'Save As Type' drop down box.

6. In the "name" filed copy-paste the following name

eicar.com

and hit "Save" button.

7. Now if you get an immediate caution from your AntiVirus, then you have a good antivirus which is working perfectly. It should either ask you to move this file to quarantine or it will itself move the file to quarantine without letting you to save it. So a good AV will never let you to save this file.

8. If your AV does not raise any alarm then you can move the file to a Specific folder and scan the folder using the AV's scanning engine to see whether it get recognized now.

Conclusion: If you are successful in the Step 7, then you are having a pretty well set Av protection. If you have to proceed to Step 8, then I'm afraid that you're AV protection is pretty week and I suggest that you should immediately switch to some other Anti Virus software.

I have tested and received feedbacks that NOD32, Avast! (Free Home Edition) and Kaspersky behaved desirably as detailed in Step 7. So after going through all the above steps if you decide to switch just Avast! Free Version if not willing to pay for other two paid ones.

SpywareGuard

noreply@blogger.com (Sroyc) — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 05:26:00 +0000

Hello everyone. Here is another of the security programs to make your browsing more secured. If you have already followed the previous SpywareBlaster (SB) tutorial, then this one can be understood as a complimentary to the SB. This program is also from Javacool Software Company, named as SpywareGuard, and I shall call it SG from now on.

How is it different from SB?

It needs to be loaded with Windows to provide the Real Time Protection and it cautions the user about any BHO (Browser Helper Object) that tries to get installed in user's PC. Though it does not provide any protection against ActiveX objects which SB provides. So now you know why I called these to complementary to each other at the beginning.

Name: SpywareGuard.

Latest version: 2.2

Homepage: http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareguard.html

Download: http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/sgdownload.html

Purpose:

Fast Real-Time Scanning engine - catch and block spyware before it is executed (EXE and CAB files supported) with signature-based scanning for known spyware and heuristic/generic detection capabilities to catch new/mutated spyware
Download Protection - prevent spyware from being download in Internet Explorer
Browser Hijacking Protection - stop browser hijacking activity in real-time
SG LiveUpdate - provides an easy updating solution
Small size - with a small size and small definition sizes, download and updates are quick
Report Capabilities - keep a detailed log of all spyware detected
Spyware files are blocked before being opened or run - they are not simply shut down after they are loaded in memory (and after they have performed their tasks)

System Requirements: Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP

Price: Free, you may donate if you wish.

How to Read this Pictorial: This Pictorial is divided in to three broad sections-

Download the software installer.
Installation of the software.
Configuration and use of the software.

You may jump to the respective section if you so desire.

SECTION A (Download)

Step 1: The first thing that we need to do is to go to the homepage. I have used Firefox throughout, and I urge all my visitors to do so (you may get the download link at the left side of my blog). You should see the following page in your browser.

Look carefully at the name of the company, program name and the software logo. SpywareGuard is rather a common name, so a Google search may show you thousands of very nearly matching names. So you need to check these two in case you do not visit the site directly from my blog. If you have assured yourself that you are at the right place, scroll down to the end of the page and find the following:

hit on the "Download SpywareGuard 2.2" link.

Step 2: As you hot on the above link you will reach the download page as below:

This page shows you all the servers where the installer is available. Remember not to choose "Minimal Installation (the First Link), that is not for the first time users. Choose any link from highlighted two and click on that. I chose the first link.

Step 3: Depending on your connection speed, the page will refresh itself and a confirmation window will be opened by your browser (this may vary according to your browser's settings).

See the confirmation window is showing you the installer name. Just hit "Save File" button and the download will progress automatically. If your settings allow you to choose the location for the saved file, then I would suggest that save it on the Desktop. That will be easy to locate. It is a very small installer, so even if you are on a 56kbps dial up connection, it should not take much time.

SECTION B (Installation)

Step 4: Locate the installer file saved on the desktop (or where ever else that you chose to save it).

Step 5: Double click on the installer to get the following window:

Just hit "Next" to continue.

Step 6: See the following window

Accept the license agreement by hitting "Yes".

Step 7: Now you can see the following window. This window provides all the information about the program. Specially, the features...look at the highlighted section of the window.

Step 8: At this step you get to know about the location for installation of the software:

If you accept the default location, just hit "Next" and go to Step 9. If you decide to choose some other location for the installation then follow the next step.

Step 8/1:

just click on the "Drop Down Arrow" beside the box (Yellow Circled) and choose the desired destination drive and location folder. You can choose the location of your choice from the above window, or you may directly type it in the top field where the default location is being shown. Once you are done, hit "OK" and you will be back in the window of Step 8, but this time showing your choice in the 'Installation Location' field. Hit "Next" at the step 8 screen to continue.

Step 9: At this window you can see the components you want to install. The default is "Full Installation", and I suggest that you keep it so.

If you still want to change, hit the "Drop Down Arrow" and choose Custom Installation and you may decide not to install the support files.

Step 10: In this window you have the opportunity to let the program add Shortcuts of the Program and the Update Component of th program to the Desktop.

I suggest that you leave the check mark unchanged and hit the "Next" button...

Step 11:

This is the review of your final installation related settings. If you are still in a mood for changing anything, just hit the "Back" button and change whatever you like. Otherwise, just click on "Install".

Step 12:

Just let the installation complete. The 'progress bar' will touch the end and you get a screen as the one in the next step. I do not suggest that you should hit the "cancel" button to stop the installation at this step.

Step 13: The following is the information window about this program.

Look at the marked words...it tells you that it is a complete freeware..so no worries.

Step 14: Congratulations!!! Installation completed successfully.

I suggest that you leave the check mark so that this program launches itself as soon as you click "Finish". If you for some reason can not do that, just clear the check box and hit "Finish". Later, you can launch the program from Start Menu or double clicking the icon on the desktop. Either way, you need to press "Finish" now.

This concludes the Section B of this Pictorial.

SECTION C (Configuration and Use)

Step 15: As soon as you press "Finish in the previous step, SpyawreGuard starts running.

Now you can see the two icons (one for the main program and the other for Live Update of the program's database) sitting peacefully on your desktop and a bright red SG logo displayed at the system tray, hence confirming that the program is up and running.

Step 16: Now double click on the SpywareGuard LiveUpdate icon on the desktop to launch the following window.

Hit "Next" button to start to update. You can see the following Update screens.

The following screen will show that the update is in progress

As the update is completed you can see the following screen telling you that the process has completed successfully.

Hit "Exit" button to terminate the update module of this program.

Step 17: Now click on the SG icon in the system tray to launch the main program window.

This screen tells you the "Status" of the defense provided by the program. You should see Green check marks beside all the modules of the program. The lower half of this window shows you the program version and Definition date. If you require any detailed information about any of the three program modules, just bring the mouse pointer near it. You can see that in the Right Pane of the Program Window, detail about that module is shown.

Step 18: The next button is "Report".

Hitting this will bring out the activities of the program. It is a kind of a log and will be displayed inside the program window. You can clear this log if you wish by hitting the "Clear Log" button.

Step 18: The next one is the "Options" button. There are three main classes of option.

The first one is "General" option. Just make sure that all the three boxes are checked.

The next one is the way you want to be protected. There are three ways: simple Alert, Alert and Suggested Action and Silent Blocking.
I suggest that you keep the first option, that is "Alert and Prompt for Action" enabled. Though you may choose any of the three.

The last one is "Password Setting". This is an option for you to protect the settings of this program using a password.

I generally do not use it. It is completely upon you, the user. If you feel that you need it, just carry on and fill away.

Once everything is done, press the "Save Settings" button at the top right corner of the program window.

Step 19: At this step let me tell you about the two remaining features of this program. One we have already used- "Live Update". You can access that module of the program using the "Live Update" button placed here. it will launch the same as we have seen in Step 16. In future you may update your program database from here too.

The last one is "About". You may be thinking what is there! Just the names and all. Yes true, but in the "About" screen you can see a button labeled as "System Info". Hit this button you can get the full system information of your PC. Cool!! Isn't it?

We are at the end of our Pictorial. Nothing more to do. Just click on the "x" button to close the program.
Note that you do need to keep SG running to use its protection, but there is hardly any resources consumed by this program.

Remember: SpywareGuard is not a replacement for standard AntiVirus or other real time guards like firewall. It is an add on protective protective program which tries to thwart attack even before it reaches your system.

If you have liked this, please do not forget to sign my guest book. You can also request Pictorials for specific softwares, but those should preferably be free ones.

SpywareBlaster- Pictorial

noreply@blogger.com (Sroyc) — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 03:21:00 +0000

Hello my friends. Two days back I have asked done of my very good friends of another forum, to kindly review the pictorials I post here. She is generally very busy with her online and off line work, but still squeezed out some time to give me a great review, and also gave me the idea about what should I bring next (Thank you....). This time I am presenting to you a Pictorial about another security software which has been a part of my system for more than two years and it is an essential addition for anyone who even spends the minimum possible time on the net.

Name: SpywareBlaster.

Latest version: 3.5.1

Homepage: http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html

Download: http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/sbdownload.html

Purpose:

To stop the installation of ActiveX-based spyware, adware, browser hijackers, dialers, and other potentially unwanted software.

To block spyware/tracking cookies in Internet Explorer and Mozilla/Firefox.

To restrict the malacious actions of potentially unwanted sites in Internet Explorer.

System Requirements: Windows

Price: Free for following categories- Individuals (non commercial and educational usage) and for other Educational and Charitable institutions. For detailed information please visit: http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/sbfreewareguidelines.html

How to Read this Pictorial: This Pictorial is divided in to three broad sections-

Download the software installer.
Installation of the software.
Configuration and use of the software.

You may jump to the respective section if you so desire.

------------------------------------------------------------

SECTION A (Download)

Step 1: The first thing that we need to do is to go to the homepage. I have used Firefox throughout, and I urge all my visitors to do so (you may get the download link at the left side of my blog). You should see the following page in your browser.

Look carefully at the name of the company, program name and the software logo. SpywareBlaster is rather a common name, so a Google search may show you thousands of very nearly matching names. So you need to check these two in case you do not visit the site directly from my blog. If you have assured yourself that you are at the right place hit on the "Download SpywareBlaster 3.5.1" link.

Step 2: As you hot on the above link you will reach the download page as below:

This page shows you all the third party servers where the installer is available. Choose any link from these four and click on that. I chose the first link.

Step 3: I chose the first link and I reached the download.com's download page.

If you followed my footsteps you will be here too. Hit the green, animated "Download Now" button.

Step 4: Depending on your connection speed, the page will refresh itself and a confirmation window will be opened by your browser (this may vary according to your browser's settings).

See the confirmation window is showing you the installer name. Just hit "Save File" button and the download will progress automatically. If your settings allow you to choose the location for the saved file, then I would suggest that save it on the Desktop. That will be easy to locate. It is a very small installer, so even if you are on a 56kbps dial up connection, it should not take much time.

SECTION B (Installation)

Step 5: Locate the installer file saved on the desktop (or where ever else that you chose).

Step 6: Double click on the installer to get the following window:

Just hot "Next" to continue.

Step 7: See the following window

Accept the license agreement and hit "Next".

Step 8: At this step you get to know about the location for installation of the software:

If you accept the default location, just hit "Next" and go to Step 9. If you decide to choose some other location for the installation, just click on the "Browse" button.

Step 8/1: If you have hit the "Browse" button you get the following:

You can choose the location of your choice from the above window, or you may directly type it in the top field where the default location is being shown. Once you are done, hit "OK" and you will be back in the window of Step 8, but this time showing your choice in the 'Installation Location' field. Hit "Next" at the step 8 screen to continue.

Step 9: Now you can see this window.

Leave the check mark unchanged and hit the "Next" button...

Step 10:
This is the review of your final installation related settings. If you are still in a mood for changing anything, just hit the "Back" button and change whatever you like. Otherwise, just click on "Install".

Step 11:
Just let the installation complete. The 'progress bar' will touch the end and you get a screen as the one in the next step. I do not suggest that you should hit the "cancel" button to stop the installation at this step.

Step 12: Hooray!!! Installation completed successfully.

I suggest that you leave the check mark so that this program launches itself as soon as you click "Finish". If you for some reason can not do that, just clear the check box and hit "Finish". Later, you can launch the program from Start Menu or double clicking the icon on the desktop. Either way, you need to press "Finish" now.

This concludes the Section B of this Pictorial.

SECTION C (Configuration and Use)

Step 13: As soon as you press "Finish in the previous step, SpyawreBlaster launches itself.

It shows you a "getting started" tutorial. As you are following mine, you do not need this. Just hit the "x" button at the right hand, top corner to close this window. In case the "x" button does not work (didn't work in my case), just hit "next" twice to complete this tutorial and get the "Main Program Window".

Step 14: I hope that now you can see the following main program window.

Look at the upper right corner of the window. Click on each link one at a time to enable protection for IE, Firefox and Restricted Site Behavior. One example is shown below. As you click on the "Click here to enable protection" beside Internet Explorer, you shall get the following window:

Put check marks in both the boxes and SpywareBlaster will enable protection for all the items currently present in its Database. You can also enable protection selectively by clicking the check boxes beside individual items. Then you need to click the radio button "Protect Against Checked Items". But I highly discourage you to this. Enable all the protection available for your own safety. Now click on the "Protection" at the top left corner to get back the main program screen as the first image of this step.

Now follow similar path to enable protection for other two items.

Step 15: When you have downloaded and installed SpywareBlaster it contained a database which is generally an old one. As you can see in the following window, the installer downloaded on 26/09/2007 came preloaded with 01/01/2006 database. So its pretty old.

Hence we need to update the database immediately. To do that, you need to be connected with the internet. If you are, then click on the "Update" at the bottom left pane of the Program Window. You get the following screen.

In this screen, hit the radio button "Check on Updates" and SpywareBlaster will connect to its database to see if any newer update is available.

Step 16: As the update process finishes, you get the following screen.

In this case if the Updates are available it will be displayed here otherwise you will be notified that your SpywareBlaster database is up to date. Hit on the "Back" button to get the main "Update Window" back again.

Step 17: For all the first timers SpywareBlaster will surely find update. Hence we have little more left to do. So carry on...

From this window, click on the "Protection" on the upper left pane of the program window.

Step 18: As you do as above, you get the main program window back. Look at the highlighted portion of the following screen shot.

You can find two links under "Quick Tasks". Hit on the first one and all the items in the new protection database including the old ones will be activated.
As you have come this far, you are now capable enough to get the latest download just using the "Download Latest Protection Updates" link. In future you can do these two main functions of SpywareBlaster from here. There is one more option, that is 'disable all protections', but you should never do that, unless you are on a suicide mission on the net.

Step 19: Now look at the highlighted portion of the following screen shot below...

You can see that the program is informing you that all the protection items are enabled, that is "0 items disabled". This is what your program should inform you always. Now you are assured that you are protected against browser based attacks.

Step 20:
We are at the end of our Pictorial. Nothing more to do. Just click on the "x" button to close the program.
The best thing about SpywareBlaster is that you do not need to keep it running to use its protection, so there is no precious resources consumed by this program.

Remember: SpywareBlaster is not a replacement for standard AntiVirus or other real time guards like firewall. It is an add on protective protective program which tries to thwart attack even before it reaches your system.

If you have liked this, please do not forget to sign my guest book. You can also request Pictorials for specific softwares, but those should preferably be free ones.

Netcraft Toolbar Pictorial Guide

noreply@blogger.com (Sroyc) — Sun, 23 Sep 2007 17:04:00 +0000

One of my friend at Mozillazine pointed out that GralicWrap does not work for our beloved Firefox. S0 I decided to post here another Pictorial guide of an Anti Phishing utility which works for both IE and Firefox.

Homepage/ Download: http://toolbar.netcraft.com

System Requirement: It should work in any OS as long as that supports Firefox.

Purpose: Anti Phishing. It integrates itself to the browser as a Tool bar and displays the site information.

Step 1: Go to the home page url with your Firefox browser. You should see a page like the following image. Choose "Toolbar> Download the Netcraft Toolbar" option. You should see the next image then.

Step 2: In this page, click on the radio button labeled "Firefox 1.1 orLater".

Step 3: In this screen you will be cautioned by the site that Firefox may block the site's attempt to install the extension. Click "OK" to continue.

Step 4: At this step you should be informed by the Firefox that an extension installation attempt is stopped and you need to edit the settings to allow this site to install the extension. If you do not get this notification, continue to the Step 6, otherwise read on. Click on the "Edit Option" button as shown below to get the new window as shown in the next step.

Step 5: In the following window click on "Allow" and then "Close" to get back the same window as in step 2. Repeat Step 2 and Step 3, but this time you will not be cautioned that the attempt of installation is blocked. Instead you shall get a window as in the next step.

Step 6: This is the last window of Firefox seeking your agreement about installation of the extension. Hit on "Install Now" radio button to start the installation process.

Step 7: Once the installation is over "Restart Firefox" to make the newly installed extension operational.

Step 8: Now you have Netcraft tool bar alive and kicking in your favorite Firefox browser window.

Step 9: Netcraft tool bar does not require any configuration to make it operational. Though there are three main components that you should know about. the first one is the "Risk Rating". This will tell you about Netcraft assessment about the authenticity of the site. If it is pretty high you need to check the other components to validate that it is a genuine site. Green Bar indicates the site's safety, Red Bar tells you to think. Longer the Red Bar, more you should worry.

Step 10: This component will help you to verify the site. Click on the "Site Report", and a new browser window will open with all sorts of detail. You can verify whether the site is the real one from this page by verifying the owner of the site, hosting company and for how long this site is operational. Generally phishing sites do not float long enough on the net, at most few months those remain operational.

Step 11: This tells you the rating of the site in terms of visit rank. Obviously "Rank" of the phishing sites will not be high as legitimate ones. You can visit this rank by the region also.

Step 12: This is the last step of this tutorial. You can access many other features of Netcraft tool bar using the drop down arrow beside the colored "Netcraft" logo and beside the "Services" button of the tool bar. Users can also visit for more advanced resources of this tool bar at their homepage. Though for general users like me this much should be sufficient.

Hope you all will be benefited with this, and please take some time to sign my guest book.

GralicWrap.com AntiPhising client

noreply@blogger.com (Sroyc) — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 11:14:00 +0000

As I promised, I came across another new piece of software and here I am with its installation and operating tutorial. While it is designed for newbies, experienced users I don't think will require it. And what do u know...its with screen shots.

Homepage and Download Link: http://gralicwrap.com/WebDownloadClient.php

Type: anti phishing software.

System Requirements:

Windows 95, 98, ME, XP Home, XP Pro, or 2000 Pro (No Linux version avaulable).
2 MB of available hard disk space
Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or later (does not seem to work for Firefox)
14.4 KBS or faster Internet connection

Purpose: All the inbuilt browser anti phishing protection works on the basis of a black and white list, which unfortunately is not very prompt in updating. As phishing sites do not continue to exists for a considerable length of time, a third party Anti phishing software is always helpful. And here comes GralicWrap to browser's rescue.

Step 1: Download the installer named GralicWrapClient Setup file from the above URL. It is in compressed format, use 7 zip to uncompress it to get the main installer. Double click on the installer to get the following screen. Click on "Next".....

Step 2: You get the following License Agreement screen, click on "I Agree" to continue...

Step 3: At this step decide where you want to install this program. The default is C:\Program Files\GralicWrap.com Client. If you want to change the location click on "Browse" button and see step 3/1, otherwise click "Next" and jump to Step 4.

Step 3/1: This step is necessary in case you want to change the default installation location. Clicking the "Browse" button in the above screen will open the following "sub-window". In that choose the Drive or Folder where you want to install this program and hiy "OK" radio button. The program will automatically create "GralicWrap.com Client" folder under your chosen location.

Step 4: Leave this screen as default and do not mind changing anything here. Hit "OK" to proceed.

Step 5: The program will be installed and you can see a progress screen as follows. Once the word "Completed" is displayed in the last line, click on "Next".

Step 6: This is the last installation screen, informing that the installation is over, so you just have to click "Finish" to formally end the process of installation...nothing else.

Step 7: Now we need to run the program. To do so: click on Start> All Programs > GralicWrap.com Client 1.06> GralicWrap.com Client

Step 8: After finishing the above step, you may not see anything. Just look for a small, red cat like icon in your system tray. Locate the icon and double click on it.

Step 9: As you double click on this icon, a new window will open with three radio buttons, choose "configure" from those. As you click on "Configure" another 'sub-window' appears. In that ensure that first two boxes are checked. Leave the last two boxes blank. This will ensure that GW will start with windows and do not have to remember to run it during browsing. Hit "OK" and "Minimize" and it will keep running in your system tray. Remember to allow GW if your Firewall raises any notification. Now you are good to go...

You can access the configuration window by 'right-clicking' on the task bar icon. You may have access to the "Exit" button in the similar manner, in case you want to shut it down (This I do not recommend).

Hope you find it useful.

YPOPS! Having POP access for a non -POP Yahoo mail Account

noreply@blogger.com (Sroyc) — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 10:03:00 +0000

Ok, I have decided to justice to my Blog...from now on whatever good thing I shall find out I am going to post that here (obviously after trying myself).

I suddenly stumbled upon a new piece of software called YPOPS!. It promises to provide me POP access for all my non POP Yahoo accounts. Now unless you have a regional account in Yahoo (like abcd@yahoo.co.in) you really can not have free smtp or pop access to your mail accounts. So gem like Mozilla Thunderbird remains to be hardly any use. Hence I got really curious and decided give it a shot. The download was pretty small for windows..a few hundred kbs of installer. And then I started to add accounts to my Thunderbird as per the instructions available at their site. At first I added only one to see whether it really works or not...and to my utter surprise I found that it works like a breeze. And icing on the cake is that you can use the outgoing smtp server in the same account. I got so impressed that I remain awake till 1:30 am in the morning to create and use all my ".com" yahoo accounts. So I can highly recommend this software to anyone who is still reading this. I suggest that you use Thunderbird as your Email client.

Just one word of caution: Remember to configure YPOPS! not to download all the mails at least after the first run, otherwise you shall have all the same mails downloaded again.

To sum up:

Pros:

1. It delivers what it promises- you really have POP access to your free Yahoo accounts.
2. It also provides you with SMTP access to your free accounts.
3. No Adware/Malware/Crapware is included- just clean.
4. Has a good support forum.
5. Clear instructions on how to configure almost all kinds of Emil clients.
6. Its FREE.
7. It also has a official Linux version for Ubuntu and for others the Source Code.
8. Still under Active Development.

Cons:

1. It does not work with new yahoo mail.
2. Wish it worked with Hotmail or Rediffmail too.

So you can clearly see that the pros outweighs cons quite easily, so I decided to go for it and forgo the jazzy interface of New Yahoo Mail (previously known as Yahoo Mail Beta). If you are with plese find tha links and instructions below.

Links:

Home Page: http://ypopsemail.com/index.php

Windows Installer:

http://dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/yahoopops/ypops-win-0.9.5.1.exe
http://dbeusee.home.comcast.net/ypops-win-0.9.5.1.exe

Ubuntu Linux Installer:

http://www.geocities.com/t_skariah/ypops/ypops-0.9.5.tgz

Uncompress this file to get the .deb installer.

Source code (in CVS)

http://sourceforge.net/cvs/?group_id=52835

Mail client configuration instructions:

http://ypopsemail.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=listarticles&secid=1

The Thunderbird Instructions are for older 1.7 version. I shall try to post here the new instructions for Thunderbird 2.0 with screen shots, but I don't think that before 2nd October it will be possible. So please come back to check then.

===========================================================

Ubuntu Installation Instructions:

To install:

$ tar xvzf ypops-deb.tgz
$ sudo dpkg -i ypops_0.8.8-1_i386.deb

To uninstall:

$ sudo dpkg -r ypops

To start:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/ypops start

To stop:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/ypops stop

For auto start at boot:

$ cd /etc/rc2.d/
$ sudo ln -s ../init.d/ypops S99ypops
$ cd /etc/rc3.d/
$ sudo ln -s ../init.d/ypops S99ypops
$ cd /etc/rc5.d/
$ sudo ln -s ../init.d/ypops S99ypops

==========================================================

So I hope it helps others as it has been helping me. If readers find this post useful please leave a comment.

Can not access Demonoid.com

noreply@blogger.com (Sroyc) — Fri, 04 May 2007 16:34:00 +0000

Hi there friends

I believe for the last few months those of us who use BSNL as their broadband service provider faced this problem. Whatever you do you can not pass through to demonoid and wondering whether the site is at last down!

Well not really. This site is from Yugoslavia and as you know they like Swedish Government maintains a completely different view about file sharing- that is sharing is not wrong when there is no exchange of money.

Unfortunately, BSNL tries to play moral police [or should I say Habildar of USA] and it banned Demonoid. So you can not access it using BSNL gateway. Considering the fact that sharing never really caused any harm to any industry [remember the good ol' days of sharing Books and Audio cassettes?], it was rather a useless step and moreover it shows how our Central Government has become just a puppet in the hands of USA and MNCs. Can;t we have enough guts like many Scandinavian and East European countries which simply asked US and its greedy companies to keep their mouth shut? At least I hope we netizens of India should rise up and protest against this kind of action. Whether a person shares or not is simply his or her personal matter and no body has the right to act as a moral police.

Contrary to the popular beliefs I strongly believe that sharing in a way boost the industry. Let me site you an example. Can you simply buy all the good books available in the market? Obviously not, but sharing amongst friends will always ensure that someone of the friends buys one of the books; thus boosting the overall sales.

I know in case of softwares things may not be that simple, but I believe the blame goes on to the developers. Look at their horrible pricing...adobe's any creative multimedia softwares will set you back by a minimum of Rs 20000 [full version]. So the pricing has completely taken away the chance of buying. I thing had those prices be more in tune with the economies of the third world countries, most of the people would not have bothered to use File sharing Softwares or warez.

BTW, if any one of you still like to visit Demonoid, simply use a public proxy server address. Google will throw you few thousand of those. :)

At the end, I am not in favour of piracy, but I am obviously not against sharing- where money does not change hand.

noreply@blogger.com (Sroyc) — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 08:27:00 +0000

Hello friends

I am going to start a New Site on Physics Tutorial. So please keep visinting this blog for further updates on this matter.

noreply@blogger.com (Sroyc) — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 14:23:00 +0000

Dual Booting Linux: A Pictorial Guide

The credit of the original guide and the images goes to Bertender of TSF. I am thankful to him for allowing me to post it in my blog. I have done some editing only, but the original flavour is retained.
_____________________________________________________

This example used two Linux Distros: PCLOS and Ubuntu 6.01. But this method can be used to Dual Boot any two Linux Distros.
____________________________________________________

This guide describes dual-booting PCLOS on a computer that already has Ubuntu 6.10 installed and has been partitioned beforehand to accept another Linux OS. Partitioning was already described in first part [the preceding post in this Blog].

Restart PC, drop PCLOS CD in tray, “Welcome to PCLinuxOS”

Sign in as - Username: root, Password: root, move mouse to 'Login', Left-click
When you get to the PCLOS desktop, double-click on 'Install PCLinuxOS'
“This wizard will help you install...” Next
“Normal Hard Drive (ide, sata) Next
Choose 'Custom disk partitioning' Next
“Please make a backup of your data first” OK

You get the Draklive – Install Enhanced partition map. I left-clicked on the second ext3 partition, (hda2) then left-clicked on “mount point”.

New window pops up, with “/” showing in the 'Mount point' line. I clicked “OK” and get this

Notice how the map shows two “Journalised FS: ext3” partitions, denoted in the dark red, and one bright green swap. It's saying the same thing as Gparted once you understand the language. Notice also that we have “/” showing in the second partition, /dev/hda2. That's where we want it to go.

Since the HDD already has a swap partition I don't need to make one. If I wanted to make a separate 'home' partition I'd click on hda2, then click on the “resize” button, then go through those steps, which seem fairly straightforward. We're keeping this simple so I'm just building one partition for PCLOS.

Click on “Done”

'Choose the partitions you want to format' – hda2 is checked off already so I just click on “Next” even though it's already in the proper format for PCLOS to just go ahead and install.

Big warning sign that you're about to format...Click "Next"

'Please wait Formatting hda2' 'Press Next to Install or Cancel to Quit'....."Next"

'Copying in progress' Long wait, then 'Please wait...Creating mount points and preparing bootloader' .

Pay attention.. You want to make 2 changes – change 'Bootloader to use' from 'LILO' to 'GRUB with text' and you want to install the boot device to /dev/hda2. What you're doing is telling PCLOS to use GRUB instead of LILO and install it in the same partition with the rest of the OS.

Click "Next"

Now I get a window that says,

“You decided to install the bootloader on a partition. This implies you already have a bootloader on the hard drive you boot (eg: System Commander). On which drive are you booting?”

hda is checked, I click......"Next"

Note: It's interesting that PCLOS pops up a warning at this point. What we're doing is not typical and that's why you get a cautionary message. For the average Joe who's installing one Linux distro the bootloader will install at the front of the HDD.

New window that lists four entires in boot menu. I chose to leave this alone. Why? Because I didn't know what the heck it meant.

****This screen gives you the list operating system as recorded in the grub.conf file of PCLOS. The first two lines tells you that there are two Linux OSes installed in the HDD, one Fail-Safe option available in case some system changes makes the Linux unbootable. The last line tells you that Windows is installed in the PC in the 2nd HDD's first partition and the 2nd HDD is SATA.

Though it appears to be a weakness of PCLOS' GRUB that it does not tell you which line belongs to which Linux Distro. Personally Ubuntu's GRUB I found to be better as it recognises other OSes present in the machine, adds those automatically to GRUB's OS choice menu and tells you the location of every available OS in the HDD with respective Distro name.

At this PCLOS screen user can manually input locations of other OSes present in the PC and not recognised by the PC, that is editing the grub.conf file; though I also feel that one should stay out of that at least at this stage.****

Click......"Finish"

Set administrator (root) password. Type something in twice, or choose no password at all,....."Next"

Enter a user

Real name:
Login name: (it auto-entered my first name after I finished the above line)
Password:
Password (again):

I just used the same password for root and user since I don't have any security issues at home...

****If you are going to surf internet and use it for general purpose, it is always advisable to have a non-root user account used, for sheer security issues. It is not Windows, and so you are allowed to change anything and everything. Sometimes those changes will simply make your computer unbootable with Linux. Moreover you can do almost everything as a non root user using 'sudo -i' or 'sudo' commands in the terminal window.****

Change your icon if you wish........"Next"

'Please halt your computer, remove the CD, restart...'

I clicked on the PCLOS icon in lower left, chose 'Log out', clicked on 'Restart Computer'

PCLOS looks like it's going to shut down, but opens optical tray and waits for you to remove CD, then hit Enter before it does so. PC restarts, and Ubuntu boots. As far as I could tell there was no PCLOS on the machine. Have faith.

In Ubuntu, open terminal, type in sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Find the timeout line, about 17 lines down from the top, and increase that to 10 or 15 seconds at least.

Right after the Ubuntu memtest section, towards the bottom of menu.lst, add these three lines

title PCLinuxOS
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

Here's what the lower part of my menu.lst looked like after the additions...

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.17-10-generic
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17-10-generic root=/dev/hda1 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.17-10-generic
quiet
savedefault
boot

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.17-10-generic (recovery mode)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.17-10-generic root=/dev/hda1 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.17-10-generic
boot

title Ubuntu, memtest86+
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet
boot

title PCLinuxOS
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
chainloader +1

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

Make sure to put a blank line above and below the new entries.

I tapped the Tab button to separate 'title' from 'PCLinuxOS', same for the other 2 lines. Worked out fine.

Save the changes, close out of terminal. Restart the PC.

On the next boot, Ubuntu's GRUB waits the amount of time that you just set in /boot/grub/menu.lst. I find 15 seconds to be a comfortable minimum. During the timeout you hit 'Esc' to enter GRUB list, scroll down to PCLinuxOS, hit Enter and you get an odd DOS-looking screen with some PCLOS boot options. Don't touch anything and PCLOS will boot in a few seconds.

****To avoid this editing and directly boot in the Linux, just remember to install the PCLOS' GRUB in the (hd0), that is the boot partition at the beginning of your primary HDD. But remember this will simply wipe your previously installed Ubuntu's GRUB and make the GRUB of PCLOS as the default. This happens that because by default BIOS always looks for the Boot information in the Primary HDD's boot partition [that is the first partition]. If you are still interested to use Ubuntu's GRUB [which I would prefer personally], you just need to reinstall Ubuntu's GRUB, and voila! You have your old Ubuntu boot loader back and with PCLOS listed there automatically.****

Unless you want to log in as root, use the username and password that you created under the 'user' window several steps back. The username is on the screen, up in the left hand corner, so all you have to remember is the password.

OK, some explanation of the 3 menu.lst entires are in order.

For those of you who think the command line is an unforgiving disciplinarian, you might get a kick out of this. If you type in:

title Toasted Cheese Sandwich

then 'Toasted Cheese Sandwich' is what will show up in the GRUB menu during startup. You can type whatever you want as your title. Don't worry, it'll still successfully go to your Linux install.

The next line is not so forgiving. It MUST specify the correct partition, and that's expressed in GRUB-speak. For our model Linux says, “PCLOS is in hda2” but GRUB says, “PCLOS is in hd0,1”

That's still not very clear, is it? Let's say you wanted to make a triple-boot Linux PC. You made a third primary partition, then installed Mint Linux (and its bootloader!) to that partition. You would add three more entries to menu.lst, and they'd go like this:

title Mint Linux
rootnoverify (hd0,2)
chainloader +1

Note: I wasn't just winging it when I wrote this guide. I took a HDD with Ubuntu on it, made a second partition, and went thru all of the above steps. I mistakenly typed (hd0,2) into menu.lst. Saved, rebooted, toggled down to 'PCLinuxOS' and GRUB followed my directions. Since hd0,2 was the extended partition, and there was no bootloader to be found, the screen set at “Starting up...” until I held down the power button and went looking for my mistake.

****So in a nutshell the most important thing is the location of the Linux Distro on your HDD. Boot loader does not give a damn what you write in the 'title' line, it always goes to the 2nd line and looks for the root partition location of that distro.****

You now have most of the info you'd need to do a triple-boot, because the third line is always the same.

The only trick would be making sure to install GRUB to the distro's partition. That's because each one is different. Ubuntu gives you a little tiny box on the very last page of the installer for changing GRUB. It's easy to miss.

noreply@blogger.com (Sroyc) — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 12:41:00 +0000

Gparted: A Pictorial Guide

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Some Basic Moves with Gparted

Disclaimer: I'm not a Linux expert. Don't get me wrong, the guide works. But this little exercise was like wandering around some huge mansion. Every doorway opened into a new hall with more doorways. Most of these new halls promised mysterious new opportunities for mayhem. It was frustrating to write this because I felt a need to add “I don't know what would happen if you did this instead of that” every few lines. So I'll say it once and we'll move on.

The Goal and the Assumptions

The goal here is to set up a HDD for a dual-boot Linux install as simply as possible. The Gparted
LiveCD (GPLCD) includes text-based partitioners but we're going to stick with the nice big graphics interface.

The assumptions are that you already have a Linux distro installed. As you will see when we get into this, you could just as easily have a blank HDD or one with Windows or whatever on it, but it's so easy to delete all previous data with the GPLCD that I'm going to stick to the plan.

Step 1: Download the latest GPLCD and convert the .iso to a bootable CD. This is the same process you'd use to make a bootable Linux CD from the .iso download. Check to make sure your BIOS is set to boot from optical drive. Toss in the CD, restart the PC.

Gnome Partition Editor 3.0 splash screen Press “Enter” or wait 20 seconds.
Extra Boot Options I pressed “Enter” key
LiveCD Language - US English “Enter” “Enter”
LiveCD Keymap - qwerty “Enter”
Display Depth - 24 “Enter”
LiveCD XRES – 1024X768 “Enter”

Gnome Partition Editor 3.0 splash returns while CD spins hard. I get the Gparted partition map, some text below describing partitions, and a panel along bottom of screen with options.

Sometimes the panel along the bottom edge of the screen comes up incorrectly and I can only see the top of it. I right-clicked on the panel, left-clicked on “Customize Panel”. A window pops up saying panel is 48 pixels. I bumped that up one pixel, Close, and the panel displayed OK. I went back into “Customize” and set it back to 48, and the panel was still OK, so it's just a glitch.

Let's establish some terminology. Working down from the top, we have 2 tool bars, a map of the
partitions, and a text list of the partitions. Once you create a job for GPLCD a new window pops up in the lower part of the screen that lists pending tasks. Here's what the original install looks like – just Ubuntu 6.10, installed automatically to the entire HDD. As simple as it gets.

GPLCD with Ubuntu 6.10

One huge primary partition, and one extended partition with Linux swap tucked inside. I don't know enough about partitions to explain extended partitions. I just know that the typical Linux installer will make an extended partition and Linux swap will nestle inside it.

****ext3 is the file system that the present Linux System follows, its predecessor was ext2. As Windows prefer NTFS, Linux uses ext3. SWAP is the Linux analog of the Windows' Page file. Its file system is also called SWAP. It is best to make a new logical partition of about double the size of available RAM, and ask the Installer or Partitioning utility like Gparted to format it as Linux SWAP. If nothing is mentioned Linux will by default create a separate SWAP space in the Root [mentioned as Primary in this tutorial] Partition. But tis will degrade Linux performance considerably. If you have 2 HDDs, the best option is to make the Root in the Master HDD and the SWAP in the 2nd HDD.****

The simplest thing to do would be just create another ext3 primary partition, but if you do that the extended partition will hold on to its designation as hda2 and your new primary will be hda3. I didn't like that, so I wiped the extended partition out and rebuilt it after making the second primary.

Resize /dev/hda1

Right-click on hda1 anywhere on the map.
Left-click 'Resize'
Click on the right-hand edge of the partition and drag it to the left (as shown above)
When the counters are even (or wherever you want them) release the mouse
Click on 'Resize/Move' click on Apply in the second tool bar
Apply in the new window
Close

Get Rid of Linux swap

Right-click on the Linux swap in map
Delete
Apply > Apply > Close
Now go down to the text list, right-click on hda2
Delete
Apply > Apply > Close

Results of Resizing Primary and Removing swap

We now have the resized primary with 6.10 still intact, and one unallocated section of 56.9 GiB

Create Second Primary Partition

Right-click on unallocated section of map
Click on “New”
Create as: Primary Partition
File system: ext3 (take a look at above screen shot)
Grab right edge of partition and drag it back to make room for swap. I chose 2 GB. What the hey
Click 'Add' Apply > Apply > Close

Rebuild Linux Swap

1. Right-click on unallocated section of map, click “New”
2. Create as 'Extended Partition' (see above)
3. Add > Apply > Apply > Close

4. Now you go down to the text part, and right-click on the “unallocated” line, click “New”
5. Filesystem: 'linux-swap'
6. Add > Apply > Apply > Close

That wasn't so bad, was it?

You now have two primary ext3 partitions and one swap inside its extended partition. Don't forget, two or more Linux distros can share the one swap partition.

To close out of GPLCD, click the red “Shut Down” button. You get an “Eject and Reboot” window. Click OK. The optical drive tray opens. Take out your GPLCD, click OK, PC reboots.

Note: Once or twice now GPLCD didn't shut down correctly. It ejected the CD, then closed the tray, then it sat there. I waited several minutes, then held down the power button for 5 seconds. Didn't affect the results at all.

One thing I worried about was whether changing the name of the swap partition would bork the
existing Linux install. So after removing GPLCD and rebooting Ubuntu 6.10 I ran sudo fdisk -l. It reported the new extended and swap locations correctly as hda3 and hda5. If I knew how to actually test swap usage I would but I think it's OK.

******GParted is a GUI based third party partition manager but not like Partition Magic; you need to boot with it to use it. Its based on FluxBox Linux flavor. It gives you more consistent results than Partition magic or other commercial partition managers,and it can handle all sorts of file types quite perfectly. Moreover it comes free. This is a gem of Free and Open Source Software Movement. I hope this guide will help more people to use Gplcd as well as other Open Source Softwares.******

Using pirut to add new packages in Fedora Core

noreply@blogger.com (Sroyc) — Tue, 07 Nov 2006 15:45:00 +0000

****UPDATE****

This method can be used for FC6 too.
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I use Fedora Core 5, so this tutorial is written based on that, though it should work perfectly with other distros too.

1. Create a directory on your system to hold the repository. It will need to be on a
file system that has at least 3GB of free space. Then copy the RPM packages and comps.xml
file from your CD images into it.This directory can be made in a FAT32 partition provided you have edited your fstab file to enable Linux to automount those partition and also you have atleast read access.
--------------------------------------------------------

# mkdir -p /path/to/your/repo/RPMS
# cd /path/to/your/repo
# mkdir disc1 disc2 disc3 disc4 disc5
# mount -r -o loop /path/to/FC-5-i386-disc1.iso disc1
# mount -r -o loop /path/to/FC-5-i386-disc2.iso disc2
# mount -r -o loop /path/to/FC-5-i386-disc3.iso disc3
# mount -r -o loop /path/to/FC-5-i386-disc4.iso disc4
# mount -r -o loop /path/to/FC-5-i386-disc5.iso disc5
# cp disc*/Fedora/RPMS/* RPMS ----This comand copies all the available RPMs to the user specified directory. If due to any reason this command does not work, then you can manually copy all the RPMs to your desired directory. Its better to create this directory in a ext2/3 file system. Otherwise this process may fail.

# cp disc1/repodata/comps.xml ----THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT STEP. DO NOT FORGET TO COPY THIS FILE. Remember to copy this file to the immediate parent directory of the folder where you copied your RPMs. Eg, if you copied your RPMs to /var/yum/RPM then copy this file to /var/yum.

________________________________________________

2. You no longer need the CD images, so you can unmount them and remove the mountpoint
directories.

# umount disc1 disc2 disc3 disc4 disc5
# rmdir disc1 disc2 disc3 disc4 disc5

_____________________________________________

3. In this step we are going to edit three system files. So before you edit them, DO NOT FORGET TO CREATE BACKUPS of these three files in their original forms. As you are going to need them to be put back if you want to update or install from net.

Now navigate to the folder /etc/yum.repo.d and find the file fedora-core.repo. Open this file in a text editor like gedit. Now add the following lines at the top of the file

[Fedora-Core-5-local-install]
name=Fedora Core $releasever - $basearch
baseurl=file:///var/yum
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY

You can find three more paragraphs like this after your newly inserted one. Put enabled=0 in all those three paragraphs. Do this similarly to other two files named fedora-extras.repo and fedora-update.repo.

4. Now reboot and you should be able to use your ADD/REMOVE Softwares [PIRUT] to install all the other packages available in the CDs [like Thunderbird].
===========================

This tutorial's process is not entirely mine. I found these informations on net while searching. I edited and compiled it giving some of my own input :D.

Broadband and VSNL

noreply@blogger.com (Sroyc) — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 17:34:00 +0000

Hi friends. For your own benifit please read on.

I took a prepaid connectiion from VSNL aka TATA Indicom and I would like to share my nightmarish experience with you. I paid for 6 months but for the first two months I could not use it atall because of their technical difficulty. There customer service can be termed as poorest of all. I made 18 complins in the first 2 months and none was properly taken care of. Then they tried to solve it installing a dial up connection but that also did not help and so now they are squarely blaming my PC. Though in this same PC BSNL broadband runs without any problems. Till date I made 30 or so complains but they could not solve it. The behaviour of the local customer service people are horrible. I requested them a number of times to compensate my loss but they never even cared to answer.!?! I even wrote to their customer service president but the result remains the same.

VSNL/TATA INDICOM IS THE BIGGEST CHEAT IN INDIA. I request all my readers not to go for their connection otherwise you will also be duped like me. Apart from above drawbacks their quality of connection is also very poor. No matter what is the problem they will simply put the blame on the customers.

If any of you readers also have any direct or indirect experience to share like mine please voice your protest here.

noreply@blogger.com (Sroyc) — Fri, 09 Jun 2006 07:06:00 +0000

Death of Zarquawi- is it really the beginning of the end?

Well I really do not think so. Lets preview the whole matter from a basic socio political point of view. The question of terrorism is debated for quite a while now- what someone calls a terrorist act, someone else calls it a just war or Jihad. Yes the issue can be termed as 'relativistic' in nature but I believe that there is one parameter advocated as something which can really draw a thin line between a just war and terrorism and that is who get victimized. If they kill common people then they are terrorists. Truly it has become a common feature that the common people are the worst sufferers in this situation of anarchy and the both warring sides are to be blamed for this. No body cares to find out what really the commoners want, be it Kashmir, Iraq, Iran, UK or USA. Because both the sides try to establish their own political agenda. Even in these terrorist groups it won't be hard to find 'fighters' who came to join them not because of any political/religious ideologies but to earn bread and butter for themselves and their families. Then how they are different from normal soldiers except that these 'fighters' are not affiliated to any county's government. After being recruited things are not much different from the regular army! In a regular army new recruits are brainwashed in a way that they think that every killing is a act of bravery and for that they will be paid. The same thing happens in a 'terrorist group' here new recruiters are taught that they are also killing in the name of a supreme ideology. But the killings remains killing anyway!! So at last it is the common people who have to suffer and they suffer not because of 'terrorists' but because of the just warriors too - equally by both sides.
So it bring the whole topic back to the comment that I made at the beginning that the KILLINGS are not going to stop with one death. Another Zarqawi will rise and this will continue until and unless the basic question is tried to be answered in a basic way. There'll always be people to fight for either Osama or Bush. Unless commoners basic needs are addressed this killings will never stop. Military should be there to defend the borders of their respective countries, not killing and fighting on a foreign soil to increase the vote ratings of their political leaders. Similarly an ideology can never propose killing of innocent civilians in the name of anything.