Diary of Anuj Verma (Kevin)

Fedora Workshop Report 20090918

2009-10-07T12:34:00.015+05:30

Highlights :
• "TechNIT" event @ NIT Jalandhar, Punjab India
• Runtime of 2hrs aprox.
• Audience looked of about ~~200~~ 100+ persons
• Goodies/media was announced to be distributed post workshop , as per management
• Faced troubles of long power-outage, denial of permission to install Fedora, reduction of actual workshop schedule from 3hrs
• On a positive note highly enthusiastic crowd, Fedora message of freedom and contribution opportunity well delivered.
• Could inspire audience to work around and deal with critical local problems such as power-outages that comes in way for them to learn and do more with computers.

Details :
o Fedora Ambassador Kevin Verma (myself) took charge of a Fedora workshop at NIT Jalandhar TechNIT on September 18th 2009.

o I reached NIT only about 45 mins prior to the workshop event, still nearly couple of hours late than my own plan. With better & upto mark directions I could have been there timely as I planned.

o Fedora & myself were introduced in the main auditorium where Venky had just finished his presentation. Just after introduction I was surrounded by a small crowd of 20-30 Linux enthusiastic students. there were great questions like, developing software for profit on Linux and what are the simulation application on Linux, does Maya really run on Linux etc.

Off course I had long answers to those questions, examples and reality touch etc. what matters is all were interested to continue to listen and interactive until someone reminded us to take a break fresh up as it was just a short time left before we start workshop.

o Originally the workshop was requested to be run for 3hrs (1pm to 4pm) but overall delay of lunch & due to some overlap of schedule we had to wrap up in just 2hrs.

o By the time all the audience what I think was ~~200-300~~ 100-200, had be-seated in the "C" lab of NITJ ; some one had broke to me that management did not approve to let students install Linux on their systems, and so all we will use for the lab are Live CDs. This as a sign of discouragement but not for me. I was highly motivated to still go ahead and make our session a success with given resources.

o Soon we were all gathered in the NIT "C" lab, and I began to take charge by attracting entire chit-chatting crowd towards me and that worked. The first thing I reminded them was of the limitation of not being able to install Fedora for them actually, and how we will use Live disks, also provided them cautions so they don't accidentally install Fedora on IBM ThinkCenter systems there.

o Actually I noted for myself that since those systems were ThinkCenter systems it would actually be possible to be careless about Windows install and restore that later using the "Blue" button (famous on thinkpads/thinkcenter etc.) BUT only long as you preserve the IBM hidden partition. However, I had to let go that thought because we were nick of time for hacks at that movement.

o The movements while were were still in introduction & caution part we barely started with fist screen of my presentation there was a sudden power failure. And the following that was feelings of distress & hopeless in audience.

o While I had barely started that "Power Failure" became our metal for this workshop, and I could share and students could share back their feelings why we actually lag behind up here in Punjab to have maximum hands-on with computers. We also went ahead and took upto 10mins to discuss what we can change about major power cuts in future and why entirely it is so important an area contribution for all of us.

o List of topics we could cover in details and only a little hands-on for reasons above:
• "Why use Linux ?"
• "Fedora 11 Installation in 20mins !"
• "F11: Networking 123.."
• "F11: Managing Software"
rest topics on NIT's requested list could not be covered because the schedule was minimized from 3hrs to only 2hrs.

o Finally at the end I was honoured with a "Guest of Honour" shield

There was also a presentation which I prepared in a very short time. I thought it would be needed just for my own pointers but was useful more then that.

Some pictures that were emailed to me by NIT guys:

2009-08-02T03:01:00.001+05:30

test from pingfm .....aweee

From World News: World Bank bans Satyam from providing software services

2008-12-23T18:44:00.000+05:30

I am shocked to read this news, not just Satyam bribed World Bank Employees but they have also faced aligations that Satyam installed Spywares and caused continues security breaches for at-least one year.

Read ful story here

Providing Fedora for little bandwidth expense of users

2008-08-27T17:40:00.001+05:30

I am sharing my views here with not much prior check on current trends with Fedora cult, so I can be wrong for my thoughts in this post, feel free to comment.

Though Fedora Free Media program is very much in action with its volunteers and sponsors actively helping getting Fedora to masses, Fedora is yet an expensive to use OS for daily basis. In my view need to take a look on Fedora usage cost for end customer.

Free media gets a user free copy of Fedora to install from, but following are some cons in my opinion that can be cut down further:

Request and shipping time of Free Media

Initial updates of newly installed Fedora system, costs bandwidth what an ordinary user might not like to expense on and should also be a reason to save bandwidth

Subsequent updates, costs bandwidth in similar way as of Initial updates

more ....?

I think few enhancements are possible to infrastructure and Fedora that can cover above listed cons of use-cases, and quiet much of it is in progress but the overall effort might be required to populate as an agenda rather than feature code names here and there. So here are few things in progress and what more can be done:

Delta RPMS (Presto) support in Fedora Infrastructure, in 82% completion as per its status page on wiki

Marketing & advocacy agenda for Institutional Private mirrors of Fedora, perhaps with some sort of association of a save-bandwidth organization/group (this should have lot of other concerns and care to have in mind and should be another small blog post I feel, where I also want to suggest how this can also get better cost vs profit results for ISPs with lot of Fedora users in their network)

Enhancements within Feodra (installer & config-tools) to allow users to choose to configure "Persistent updates, Local mirror, LiveUSB/CD image creator/re-spins station etc." during installation or post-install.

Enhancements to populate local private repos, mirrors etc to other systems on local network

Bottom line of my suggestions is that vision on all collective problems should have one umbrella agenda, various teams will have to put in their work. More peer feedback and suggestions are required, maybe I have put in some not required thinking in this post :-)

Desirable stuff: BSNL EVDO Internet Access

2008-08-27T16:12:00.001+05:30

I've been planing to get a EVDO connection for last 3-4months, since I am aware of BSNL coming up with their EVDO service. One of my co-worker already got EVDO enabled so I could quickly test the same. Following is quick summary:

Service:
• From BSNL only
• fixed to device MAC, no-roaming
• said to be backed by WLL
• though falls back to CDMA when out of EVDO cell
• needs clarification on BSNL EVDO being a WLL based service

Device:
• ZTE USB Modem works with Fedora 9
• run modprobe after plugin of device 'modprobe usbserial vendor=0x05c6 product=0x3197'
• Use device node '/dev/ttyUSB0' to configure connection using system-config-network or other tools.

Pros:
• Good 'average' speed of 200-300kpbs at my location when tested in Pune, India
• Unlimited package of Rs. 500/- per month

Cons:
• Only USB device available as of now
• No roaming out of city of purchase (or State, anyhow no national roaming - sucks)

Recommendation:
Should be a cost effective option for Fedora Users & Contributors in semi-urban or rural India, as BSNL appears to be at good pace to extend national coverage of its EVDO or at-least CDMA service. From my experience of CDMA service 3-4 years back in hometown I'll know even VoIP performs well on CDMA. (No Benchmarks provided by me as of now)

Links:
- http://bsnl.co.in
- http://kevinverma.fedorapeople.org/misc/bsnl_evdo_application_form.pdf
- http://bsnlevdoclub.com
- http://www.bsnlevdo.com
- http://www.bsnldatacard.com

Something fishy at TRAI India ?

2008-08-19T21:32:00.000+05:30

I was curious to read back official words about TRAI's proposal on opening of VoIP for within India usage by public.

But I see lot of 404 "Not Found Pages".

Seriously Technology Freedom Lovers want to visit TRAI homepage, they really have been making lot of interesting regulations and proposals lately all seems interesting to read from but sadly most interesting ones are showing 404's.

Do notice the applet on the very top under top-horizontal website navigation menubar. I have a vague feeling maybe TRAI's website is compromised or handled by some crazy web monkeys.

http://www.trai.gov.in/Default.asp
http://www.trai.gov.in/PressReleases_content.asp

I hope Indian TELCO lobby will really take this proposal in good spirit.

At-last "Net telephony freed (in India), call rates set to plunge further" !

2008-08-19T08:33:00.002+05:30

This is the news I've been waiting for nearly 3months, and I am so happy its here now. But there is a reason to keep fingers crossed because TRAI has only gives proposal and "Lobby of Telcos in India" are against making VoIP freed within India.

I hope readers from India will take a point to standby and make sure to pick their side and figure how important cheap & freed VoIP is for the nation in economic shift and political mess as always.

More Coverage of News

Google Reader integration with Liferea on Fedora 9

2008-07-30T17:31:00.001+05:30

I just figured the correct way to add my Google Reader account to Liferea and I hope I'll be able to keep in sync of my reading of blog subscriptions from all devices including my Laptop now. Also I hope Liferea will also work its magic of hiding duplicate posts. I'll get back to test this further, if you want to read more see http://liferea.blogspot.com/2008/05/google-reader-sync-support-progress.html

Howto:

1. Move mouse to left-pane of Liferea window
2. Right-click and click "New" -> "New Source"
3. Select "Google Reader" as a source and enter your Google Account & its password

Patiently wait for Liferea to load your subscription data, if that does nothing simply quit and launch Liferea again.

Re: Fedora 9, KVM GuestOS PXE boot

2008-07-17T15:41:00.000+05:30

In response to my previous post of same subject, I figured out how one does not require to have any configuration added to /etc/rc.local

Only change the name ifcfg-br0 to ifcfg-xbridge, then restart network service. Network interfaces will be broughtup in lexicographical order so br0 will always come up after eth0 as needed.

I yet have to understand requirement of module "tun" for my setup.

Fedora 9, remote access using virt-manager (libvirtd) over ssh

2008-07-17T14:09:00.000+05:30

These instructions made it simple enough, only gotcha could be to understand that on local system you might be using virt-manager as privileged or un-privileged so relevant user's ssh-pub keys are in concern, while logging on to the remote host's libvirtd.

Though basic remote connection works, I yet have a particular problem to solve:

Case: My Virtualization host system is mainly accessed via a VNC console, its display resolution is intentionally smaller than my small client system (D430 laptop).

Due to that while using native virt-manager from the Virtualization host's VNC I can't see whole screen of GuestOS running Xsession. But if I use the remote virt-manager session, its best only when I access that over same network, if I am connected via VPN things get too slow. Unless virt-manger/libvirt would support low colors (low as 8 colors).

Any one would know how to setup low color mode on vnc-sdl of libvirt ? and also desirable to know how to change that on-fly sort of.

Fedora 9, KVM GuestOS PXE boot

2008-07-17T12:51:00.001+05:30

Here is my quick howto reference on PXE boot enabling for KVM guests under Fedora 9 using virt-manager.

(Having NetworkManager & network service disabled , host system obtains address via DHCP on its eth0)

--snip--

Setup:
# chkconfig network off
# chkconfig NetworkManager off
# service NetworkManager stop

# brctl addbr br0
# brctl addif br0

# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
DEVICE=eth0
#BOOTPROTO=dhcp
HWADDR=yo:ur:ma:ac:aa:dd
ONBOOT=yes
BRIDGE=br0

# cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-br0
DEVICE=br0
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
ONBOOT=yes
TYPE=bridge

# modprode tun
# ifup lo
# ifup eth0
# ifup br0

Make it persistent:

# cat /etc/rc.local
modprobe tun
ifup lo
ifup eth0
ifup br0

touch /var/lock/subsys/local

--snip--

I yet need to figure out how to make br0 come up first by using network service-script or a more simpler way to get this done. If any one else knows a better & more tested procedure then please share.

My sequence shared here might not be correct since I had to struggle for few minutes before I got this working for me. Thanks to Niranjan for providing pointers on how to get this solved in first place.

Best single-page Fedora Guide

2008-07-17T09:39:00.001+05:30

Why I keep forgetting it and struggle to search for the same ?

http://www.fedoraguide.info/index.php?title=Main_Page

This wiki has really saved lot of time for me and I believe many other, referring to this wiki has always earned me lot of thanks from friends. And this wiki has been current to latest Fedora release (since Fedora8, that I know).

Many thanks to all those who have been contributing to FedoraGuide wiki !

Today I bookmark it on a blog post, easy to share too :-)

Test blog post from wordpy on n810

2008-04-17T22:19:00.001+05:30

N810, is good but not perfect really. I still look forward for a dream machine !

Revival of my old home-office

2008-03-22T01:50:00.005+05:30

My parents turned my old-home-office room into a luxury room after I relocated last-time from home in 2006, they even removed the Ethernet cabling from this room and rest of the house, but now Ethernet is no more a requirement as all networked devices/systems are WiFi here at home. My parents also gave away my test systems to some cousins recently, but I hope to build new ones as and when required.

Reviving this home-office entire week was not easy while I had professional commitments:-

Sunday: unpacked and re-claimed my old room at house and setup basic office,
Monday: managed my white-noise requirements,
Tuesday: power backup units were in a best fall-back sequence,
Wednesday: got my second DSL equipment,
Thursday: got my second DSL working,
Friday: all electric & phone fittings were re-structured to exact requirements,

I yet have to enquire about EVDO offerings available at hometown now and make my own DiY charging station for tons of phones at home.

re: Re-thinking on Social Networks

2008-03-09T22:08:00.002+05:30

Looks I have a follow up on the thought of de-centralization of Social Networks over the web a bit.

It appears if the social networks are really de-centralized and each person has their own unique identity on web with which their social DNA is linked up, such association and data view can be a very good value addition to the Web, that helps build web of trust, reference and more. I wonder if this can be a scope of OpenID too ?

Hypothetical user-case: users of any xyz dating/relating site links up in a social network seamlessly, merely just by joining the site using their unique webID.

Re-thinking on Social Networks

2008-03-09T21:56:00.002+05:30

The first thing that comes to my mind speaking of Social Networks like Orkut, Facebook etc. is the virtual representation of our social networks in real-life, of who we know how we know and with whom all we are related and how.

Current scenario of every other website having some essence of its own social network bugs me a bit, one can't just join every-other social network like crazy, its even pointless to catchup that way with folks you know on each social networking site. To me it looks that Social Networking needs to be re-thought about.

Social Networks of today over the web are lot of manic culture & stupid n' complex apps already, and lot of thanks goes to Facebook, Orkut will madly follow on that shortly with its Open Social initiative.

De-centralization is the only way Social Network mess can be avoided, I wonder if some work in that direction being put yet. I'll love to have freedom to quit or re-join various Social Networks when they are in-sane or sane again, without loosing valuable links to the people I've known for real by various means.

10,000 BC of rotten tomatoes ?

2008-03-09T21:01:00.006+05:30

(Warning: Likely show spoiler post w.r.t. movie 10,000 B.C.)

I have been sick with viral fever since Friday and some other on-going health issues. Today evening I decided to go out for a movie and try to overcome boredom that sickness has got on to me in last 4-5days. I ended up watching "10,000 B.C" movie in the nearest cinema hall to my house.

Perhaps its a curse being a geek that most of the movies are hard to digest, so 10,000 BC is another movie that I could not digest much. Mammoth hunt early in the movie was bit interesting fantasy, but capturing of slaves and long trail that ends at Egyptian Pyramid construction site quickly sensed me that perhaps this movie is a re-base of Apoclypto.

This movie also left me with a bit of imaginary picture of Egyptian Pyramids under construction, and some backing for the factual relation of Orion constellation with 7 Pyramids that I amuse people about often (not my discovery). Movie also highlights signs of Alien involvement in the Pyramid construction. I will consider that I got little return value of my spending for this movie, but I'll recommend this review that I've just caught up with to anyone for reality check before you really go see this movie or after ;)

I am sure something better could have been made for this plot of the movie.

See also:
- http://www.teamatlantis.com/yucatan_test/orion1.html
- http://www.zetatalk.com/theword/tword11t.htm
- http://www.aloha.net/~johnboy/Sirius.htg/sirius.htm

A tribute to Linux Desktop RSVP

2007-12-09T00:10:00.000+05:30

I am a Rapid Serial Visual Presentation (RSVP) application freak I had been using Ace Reader on Windows (..way back) and been looking for RSVP applications like crazy on Linux all these years.

Back in early 2000s some TclTk based RSVP application showed up on Freshmeat.net done by a student for school project, that was the best app for me with some missing feature that I filled with, without knowing much of TclTk. I won't have any track of that app to this day.

Couple of years back I came across GnomeSview an abandoned app, but the author left me authority in email to distribute code to any one seeking to hack it further. So far this is another useless app based on Gtk 1.x with bugs expecting to be fixed.

By now my RSVP instincts have cooled down a lot, and I am not much feature freak for any RSVP application. Presently I am using Dictator a Python based RSVP. Over last one year of continues usage Dictator works really good for me, I consider that as a complete RSVP app for Linux so far.

I recall that GnomeRSVP was yet another app I used for a while and I am glad the author was very open for feature enhancements while he was very busy at his job at Procter Gamble. Finally that app ended up into a .net port and I got completely burnt up.

Tonight I remember my Gnome Desktop RSVP RFE - http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=389360 and I find asylum with Dictator. But I still believe that in days of On-line Desktop and loads of text reading by users, a built-in RSVP functionality to Gnome can be the most loved feature by Gnome users-base.

I am also worried that RSVP has not even caught up with mobile platforms, where it makes most sense.

See also: http://www.minezone.org/wiki/Main/RSVPReaderComparison

Life at new apartment

2007-12-08T00:40:00.000+05:30

I moved to a new rented apartment couple of weeks ago. Moving to this new place was a hasty decision a bit and has its pros and cons.

This is a single room (studio apartment, without hall room) with a spacious kitchen. The kitchen is the best part of this new accommodation, much needed too as I have been daring to cook more and more recently.

Being a single room apartment, this place looks much compact than my previous apartment but I have no grief over this fact, for I could set this place up with a very good projection in my mind. Over all this place is lot more comfortable than previous. And what ever negatives are here, I am applying workaround on those with the best ideas I am able to come up with.

After 14days of moving in and 8days of DSL connection transfer application, tonight I could have broadband (DSL) shifted to my new apartment. My telco techs got shocked to see my desktop and questioned if this is a Mac ? Linux !!!! do we support this ???

No way you don't but I support myself, you are done -- bugger off !!!!!
--- not really, I was rather polite :-)

Now broadband is installed I need to get my GPRS connection de-activated, however broadband seems lot slower here as lastfm is hanging-up alot. I hope this is only weekend effect, and I wish bandwidth sharing ratio set by my ISP is not higher than usual.

Photographs of this new cool place will follow soon, meanwhile I still have a huge TODO list to cut down to ensure this place is setup as I visioned.

I also have more news to reveal but I'll hold those for a long while till I am settled on all of the recent changes in my life in last few weeks.

Also, over last two weeks I have been struggling to setup GPRS for my laptop. During that I noticed, my Nokia E61i phone will not work as a bluetooth-modem unless I use rfcomm channel as channel 2 (strange for my experience with GPRS over bluetooth so far) and NetworkManager does not handle dial-up connections anymore on Fedora ???

[SPAM] Jaxtr "Link to call me for free"

2007-12-03T18:12:00.000+05:30

Soon as I woke up today and noticed my mailbox, I was shocked to see lot of bounced emails, responses & conformations from lot of known people.

I do have remembrance of allowing Jaxtr service access to my email address-book sometimes in past where I selected invitations for limited few friends.

This storm of mass-invitation to just everyone was not expected this morning. I will really like to know if this has happened to anyone else. For the movement its more important to modify my personal account credentials to secure my accounts and privacy of my known contacts.

This incident has really shaken me and made me more cautious to allow various service providers access to personal contacts, and I also apologies to those who must have felt offended.

Too bad this happened on Monday, I won't be able to investigate this further till Weekend start, I am just worried because I have a real busy week to keep up with for now.

My dual boot test system

2007-11-20T00:40:00.000+05:30

Giving finishing touch to re-installed test systems from the weekend, was the start of my week.

This time I have installed my primary vitalization test system as a dual boot of RHEL5.1 & Fedora 8.

With a dual boot I am finding this test system as the coolest system I ever had, and Virtualization support within RHEL & Fedora thrills me evermore.

I clearly have two challenges for this dual-boot install:

1. I hate to re-edit local ~/.ssh/known_hosts every-time I reboot this test system. My work around for the same is based on my earlier published Kbase article - http://kbase.redhat.com/faq/FAQ_80_9468.shtm
(this is due for testing but I am hopeful this should work, by altering MAC addresses soon as if-scripts executes getting different IP based on different MAC addresses on same physical hardware across multi-OS)

2. RHEL is the primary install on this system while Fedora is on the second disk, re-configuring grub on RHEL every time Fedora has a kernel update will be pain. So I am thinking of setting up grub chain-loading there.

These are my major challenges I figured today, so far and basic workarounds are in place with a little configuration here and there due for the Fedora system side, that will be done when I boot into Fedora on that system next time !

"well what you know, I had to drag with the day, you know its Monday!"

Garnet VM on N800

2007-11-16T20:53:00.000+05:30

Today I could give a quick shot on Garnet VM over N800 (see also) and I like it. Its really a nice tool. If I can do screen rotation & make resolution of Garnet PalmOS emulation fit to N800 display then this completely becomes useful for at-least two of my most loved Palm apps "Opera Mini" & "Plucker" (though I wonder if JavaVM will be possible to install in there for Opera mini, I hope not impossible & also to mention I still love Palm based Plucker so much that I hate to use FBReader on my N800)

Though Palm is closed source platform mostly, but I will still claim to be a PalmOS fan. PalmOS brought me a great user experience & really left a very good impression for embedded devices.

I can't wait to wrap up with my work tonight and to get down on weekend tinkering for tons of things on my list, sadly there is always more on list and only little I get done ;-)

No chinook for me tonight, only sdk

2007-11-15T04:29:00.000+05:30

There is news everywhere. Smart folks got OS2008 (Maemo 4.0) soon as it got released for N810.

While one of the pro Maemo guy has been blogging of ethics and telling everyone not to download it till its released, same time a blogger over arstechnia left a teaser that he is downloading it already.

I could not resist to try my luck, but no cheese for me yet. I've been up for this too long, finally only got a VMWare image of SDK sandbox.

Well fair enough, for a 1.4Gigs of download of SDK image, I have a fair reason to go to sleep while this download will take 5-6 hours on my DSL at home.

Links:
http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars/2007/11/14/nokia-os2008-released-early-hackers-get-it-on-the-n800
http://maemo.org/midcom-permalink-ba6f19f0930011dcb5fb0bf0a1e33b8b3b8b
http://maemo.org/midcom-permalink-d2b4d7a6929311dcb111c9d66abfc833c833

lazyweb: meebo for iphone, login url ?

2007-11-15T04:09:00.000+05:30

Anyone with an iphone, please surf over to meebo.com with your iphone and expect redirection to iphone login page. Kindly let me know the URL page for the iphone service, I wish to try that on my mobile and n800 device. I tried to dig this one but no luck so far.

BTW if someone is looking for peers to test the voice features over meebo please do let me know.

Convert VMWare images for QEMU etc.

2007-11-15T01:06:00.000+05:30

This was hinted by one of the Fedora contributer on another fellow's blog (sorry I don't remember names).

I had a need to run Maemo sandbox under QEMU/KVM/Xen so I had to digg this out today. Not tested yet but I feel good to share.

--snip--
Convert the image from VMWare format to a raw hard disk image.
# qemu-img convert appliance-harddrive-name.vmdk -O raw appliance-harddrive-name-raw.hdd
--snip--

This is near but due for testing, follow more on following URL:
- http://www.virtualizationdaily.com/archives/73_how-to-convert-a-vmware-virtual-appliance-to-work-with-parallels.html

I will love to get feedback if someone can try it before me. I will be much slower to get to that part of testing, as its bad week for me with loads of work already lined up.