Worst Software Bugs

Here is an link to interesting article describing the worst software bugs ever found. This article made me wonder how fatal software bugs can be.

Thank God I don't work on life critical softwares. Bugs in proxies aren't life threatening :-)

OpenOffice.org 2.0 Available

Finally, after almost 1 year of testing and debugging, OpenOffice.org (OOO) folks have released 2.0. You can download software from here.

I think this is a very good release. I have been using OOO since 2 years now. I consider it as an excellent alternative to commercial office suits. For most of the people, it contains all the office functionalities they will ever need.

OOO 2.0 also has Base,which is counterpart of MS Access. Another feature of OOO 2.0 is the support of OpenDocument from OASIS. I hope OpenDocument format really picks up so that there are no file format compatibilities issues

Unix Internals

Today I read a very good article comparing Solaris, Linux and FreeBSD kernel internals. Here is the link for that article.

SUSE 10.0 CD iso to DVD iso shell script !

#!/bin/bash

#Mount the CDs in loopback mode:
mkdir CD1 CD2 CD3 CD4 CD5

mount SUSE-10.0-CD-OSS-i386-GM-CD1.iso CD1 -o loop
mount SUSE-10.0-CD-OSS-i386-GM-CD2.iso CD2 -o loop
mount SUSE-10.0-CD-OSS-i386-GM-CD3.iso CD3 -o loop
mount SUSE-10.0-CD-OSS-i386-GM-CD4.iso CD4 -o loop
mount SUSE-10.0-CD-OSS-i386-GM-CD5.iso CD5 -o loop

# Create a basic structure to overwrite files we need to modify for the CD (the checksums and boot files).
cp -a CD1/boot .
mkdir i586 i686 noarch

# Create the NEW MD5SUMS as one file in order to allow SuSE to validate (thus install) all of the files from every CD and not just CD #1
# For the i586 directory:
cat CD1/suse/i586/MD5SUMS CD2/suse/i586/MD5SUMS CD3/suse/i586/MD5SUMS CD4/suse/i586/MD5SUMS CD5/suse/i586/MD5SUMS > i586/MD5SUMS
# For the i686 directory:
cat CD1/suse/i686/MD5SUMS CD2/suse/i686/MD5SUMS CD3/suse/i686/MD5SUMS CD4/suse/i686/MD5SUMS > i686/MD5SUMS
# For the noarch directory:
cat CD1/suse/noarch/MD5SUMS CD2/suse/noarch/MD5SUMS CD3/suse/noarch/MD5SUMS CD4/suse/noarch/MD5SUMS CD5/suse/noarch/MD5SUMS > noarch/MD5SUMS

# Now, create the ISO:
mkisofs -o SuSE-10.0-DVD-OSS-i386-.iso -b boot/loader/isolinux.bin -c boot/loader/boot.cat -no-emul-boot -boot-load-size 4 -boot-info-table -l -publisher SuSE -r -J -V SuSE-10.0-OSS-GM -x CD1/boot -x CD1/suse/i586/MD5SUMS -x CD1/suse/noarch/MD5SUMS -x CD1/suse/i686/MD5SUMS -x CD2/suse/i686/MD5SUMS -x CD2/suse/i586/MD5SUMS -x CD2/suse/noarch/MD5SUMS -x CD3/suse/i586/MD5SUMS -x CD3/suse/i686/MD5SUMS -x CD3/suse/noarch/MD5SUMS -x CD4/suse/i586/MD5SUMS -x CD4/suse/i686/MD5SUMS -x CD4/suse/noarch/MD5SUMS -x CD5/suse/i586/MD5SUMS -x CD5/suse/noarch/MD5SUMS -graft-points CD1 boot/=boot suse/i586/MD5SUMS=i586/MD5SUMS suse/noarch/MD5SUMS=noarch/MD5SUMS suse/i686/MD5SUMS=i686/MD5SUMS suse/=CD2/suse suse/=CD3/suse suse/=CD4/suse suse/=CD5/suse media.2/=CD2/media.2 media.3/=CD3/media.3 media.4/=CD4/media.4 media.5/=CD5/media.5

# Now just burn the ISO to a DVD (hint: use 'growisofs' or your favorite GUI-frontend to 'growisofs'). Optionally, you can mount this ISO like you did #above to verify it will work correctly, or if you don't want to actually burn it. Just call:
#mkdir DVD
#mount SuSE-10.0-RC1.iso DVD -o loop

# Enjoy!

Mandriva 2006 and SUSE 10

I am still confused whether to switch to OpenSUSE 10 from Mandriva 2006. I am really disappointed with Mandriva's inclusion of xorg 6.9 cvs. I cannot use my Intel on board graphics card to its full potential (24 bit depth). I am stuck using it on 16 bit depth.

On the other hand, it is taking hell lot of time to download OpenSUSE 10.0. It seems that there are very few mirrors for OpenSUSE. However, Novell's SUSE 10 (based on OpenSUSE with closed source apps) seems to have lot of mirrors. I am sticking with OpenSUSE. I will post a script which converts 5 OpenSUSE CD isos to a DVD iso some time soon (after I get it working :-) and off course borrowed from web).

I really hope Mandriva 2006 fix xorg problem. I will install OpenSUSE on my spare partition to give it a try.

On a different note, I finally received OpenSolaris T Shirt from Sun :-).

Go USC !

Last weekend was thrilling. I was in Los Angeles for USC Vs Univ. of Arizona football game.

Yes...you guessed it who won..USC beat Arizona 42 -21. Atmosphere at the Los Angeles colieseum brutally awesome. The sound of 90,000 people cheering for USC was deafening. Though USC did not play to their full potential, it was a good win.

At night we went to Garba at UC Irvine. That made the day perfect. Los Angeles life is very exciting when compared to lackluster Bay Area.

I miss Los Angeles !!!

Google Talk

Ok, I have installed Google talk and also have bunch of friends online.
The good thing is that it is based on open protocol Jabber/XMPP. So I don't need any special client for Linux, Gaim just works fine.

The drawback - Google has not released Linux client :-(. So no voice chat from Linux. If Google want to compete with Skype with thier P2P voice technology, they better release Linux client. Otherwise it is just "Yet Another Instant Messenger" for folks like me.

Now I have four services configured in Gaim - Yahoo, MSN, AOL and Google Talk.

Free Ubuntu cdroms

I am very impressed with Ubuntu Linux folks. I ordered free (free as in free beer) Ubuntu pressed cdroms from their website. I didn't expect them to get back to me this soon with Ubuntu cdroms. Really impressive !

I remember filling up a form for Free T-shirt from Sun when they launched opensolaris. I am still waiting....
I will try Ubuntu soon on my spare partition right now running PC-BSD. I was really not interested in Ubuntu earlier since it being a GNOME only. I prefer to switch my desktops (KDE,GNOME,XFCE) for a change. But now since I have received these free pressed cdroms, I am eager to know the fuss about Ubuntu ! Its being ranked 1 on distrowatch. (My favorite Mandriva is 2nd).

Ahh !! just remembered... I need to take my car to carwash......see you later !

Too Technical

Some of my friends suggested that my blog is too technical. To light things up here is a joke.

The difference between HIS and HER diary.

HER DIARY

Sunday night - I thought he was acting weird. We had made plans to meet at a cafe to have some coffee. I was shopping with my friends all day long,so I thought he was upset at the fact that I was a bit late, but he made no comment.

Conversation wasn't flowing so I suggested that we go somewhere quiet so we could talk, he agreed but he kept quiet and absent.

I asked him what was wrong - he said, Nothing."

I asked him if it was my fault that he was upset. He said it had nothing to do with me and not to worry. On the way home I told him that I loved him, he simply smiled and kept driving. I can't explain his behavior; I don't know why he didn't say, "I love you, too." When we got home I felt as if I had lost him, as if he wanted nothing to do with me anymore. He just sat there and watched TV.; he seemed distant and absent. Finally I decided to go to bed. About 10 minutes later he came to bed. I decided that I could not take it anymore, so I decided to confront him with the situation but he had fallen asleep. I started crying and cried until I too fell asleep. I don't know what to do. I'm almost sure that his thoughts are with someone else.

My life is a disaster.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

HIS DIARY

Today INDIA lost the Cricket Match!!!. DAMN IT.

:-)

2.6.12 Kernel woes

I spent whole weekend trying to figure out problem with my ethernet card and 2.6.12 Linux kernel.

My card worked with 2.6.11. But dmesg always showed receiver/transmission errors from the kernel. When I upgraded to 2.6.12, my card would get detected but it could not get IP address from my wireless access point.

Uh!! that was frustrating. I went to Google,kernel IRC room, kernel mailing list, Mandriva mailing list. I got no answers.

Ultimately, I decided to fix it on my own. After several hours of hacking, I found that I was loading wrong driver for my ethernet card. Davicom based ethernet card used tulip driver in kernel versions prior to 2.6.11. Certain updates in tulip drivers were not compatible with davicom chipsets. Hence I had to use native driver for davicom chipsets (which I never knew exists).

Only one word change in /etc/modprobe.conf file fixed the problem.

Now my Linux machine is back up again boasting in its usual pride.

MSN Virtual Earth messes up !

There was article on Slashdot pointing Microsoft visual earth service (similar to google earth) messing up on Apple Campus in Cupertino (SF Bay Area).

Here is the Microsoft version and here is the google version of the same.

Also some user on slashdot pointed out that visual earth still shows NY Twin Towers. Check out here

It seems that Microsoft is using old images and didn't care to update due to lack of competition. But now with Google in the field, it will be required to update these images.

This is similar to Internet Explorer saga. Microsoft decided to update Internet Explorer (will be in version 7 soon) only when Mozilla Firefox was gaining market share.

Anyways, this was an interesting find !

Who cares !

Indian PM,Dr. Manmohan Singh visited US. There is no news about it on www.cnn.com or San Jose Mercury News. This is really sad !.

My First Car

I can never forget 5th July 2005. I got my first car yesterday - 2005 Honda Civic LX.
I am very much excited !!.

Also I am planning to kick start a volunteer project. It will either be IRC Proxy or file system like interface for GMAIL. I don't know any details about any of the above, but will start researching and working as soon as I move to Santa Clara.

I love UNIX systems programming and I am confident to come up with a usefull FOSS sotware. Lets see how it goes ....

Got Job !

I have moved from Los Angeles to beautiful Sunnyvale in SF-Bay Area. I am now working as Network Software Engineer at Blue Coat Systems Inc ( http://www.bluecoat.com ).

It is a big relief to have a job on hand :-). I am now looking for an appartment and a Car.

Meanwhile on technical side, my favorite Linux distribution, Mandriva Linux acquired yet another company called Lycoris. This will be a great boost to desktop Linux. I hope Mandriva continues to enhance their Linux product( and also continue to provide it free of cost :-)).

Randomly Generated Conference Papers

Today, I read an article on Slashdot. It was about randomly generating a CS technical paper for conference. Some guys at MIT had developed this using context-free grammer.

I used it and fooled many of my friends. It was really fun :-).

Check this link.

Bingo ! Debian adds FreeBSD kernel

Joe reads a page that has GNU mentioned on it. But does not read Linux on that page. He is surprised !. As a novice to the open source world, he thought GNU and Linux are the same thing.

No they are not !! Debian has decided to roll out GNU tools on FreeBSD kernel (GNU/kFreeBSD). That is a good news for me. Being a bigtime FreeBSD fan, I can now get wealth of softwares for GNU software by just doing "apt-get install" :-). Not that the ports system of FreeBSD is bad. But now I will have the power of apt-get with FreeBSD kernel.

I wonder if they can give option to boot Linux or FreeBSD kernel during the boot up time if they can make UFS or ext2 system work with Linux or FreeBSD.

Long live Debian.

Long time no see !!

I have been really busy these days to post something on blog. CS694 project is really killing me. Its due April 15th and still lot of work to do.

Meanwhile, I also applying for jobs. So its really hard to think something interesting to be posted on blog.

I am falling in love with Mandrake Linux as I use it more often. My desktop has been up without a reboot for more than 30 days now !!!. Rock solid !! Even though I run cooker version which is supposed to be unstable, I am satisfied with what Mandrake guys are offering. Apart from occasional glitch (which I can fix being an Linux expert), the distribution has been excellent.

I hope Mandrake + Connectiva (merged) give a more awesome Linux distribution.

Well done Mandrake guys.

What !! no beastie for FreeBSD

FreeBSD group announced that they are dumping beastie, the FreeBSD daemon, as mascot due to some religious reasons. I personally think that beastie is really cute. I always have beastie on my wall paper whenever I am on FreeBSD.

Update: FreeBSD people announced that they will supplement the new logo along with beastie. Yippe !! Beastie will still be around !!

Linux in Indian Army

I read that Indian army is adopting Linux. Find article by clicking link below

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/GA28Df06.html

Only few months ago, president of India,DR. A. P. J. ABDUL KALAM, stressed to use open source for military purposes. No wonder official site of President of india ( http://presidentofindia.nic.in ) is running Linux. Check this at Netcraft (http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=www.presidentofindia.nic.in)

Cheers for the president !

FreeBSD Rocks !!

I finally got FreeBSD successfully installed. Though hardware detection of FreeBSD is not one of the best, I got my soundcard working (Creative Soundblaster Live !) after some kernel tweaking and recompiling it.

The best part of FreeBSD is its ports collection. Almost all the opensource software is available through FreeBSD ports. I got firefox, gaim, k3b,vlc media player,xmms, abiword, anjuta,openoffice through ports collection. It really does take some time to install ports and the software is downloaded and compiled on my machine. However, its really exciting to work on !

Meanwhile, I had my first class of Spring 2005 today. Really waiting for this semester to get over so that I graduate.

I am Back

The captain is back !! After almost two horribly busy months, I am little bit relaxed now. Enjoyed break at my sister's place.

I am venturing with FreeBSD 5.3 today on my computer. Hope everything goes fine and I do not mess up my hard drive again :-)