Sneek-A-Peek

After getting my new HDD couple of days back, I decided to install Arch Linux on it. The idea with Arch is to sufficiently control what goes into my system but without too much management overhead unlike in Gentoo. Thus, I installed stated with Core install of Arch and added fluxbox over it as my default WM(I am not running any DM as of now, but might go with qingy). Thus, I have tried to avoid any GNOME or KDE libraries and do as much via minimal system as possible.

Since I disconnected my broadband a few months back, I have been living on Mobile Internet connectivity. So far I had been tethering my phone to the wifi router and then using LAN cable to connect to the PC. Horrible way to go, I agree! To simplify matters I got a USB GSM modem. It was as easy as pie to set up the connection on Ubuntu using Network Manager but with Arch, I decided not to go for nm-applet but manage it via CLI.

First I setup NetworkManager as instructed on the Arch Wiki and I got Wired Connection working in no time. The most important tool at this juncture was nmcli. I checked

nmcli dev

and it showed that gsm modem is being detected. But, on checking

nmcli con

It only showed the wired ethernet connection. Going through the man pages and googling for hints didn’t help at all. I finally turned to #nm IRC channel on Freenode.

Thanks to some excellent support, I was connected using the GSM Modem in no time.

Here’s the quick rundown

1. Create a new file in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections and as per the sample file. PS: You can generate uuid using uuidgen or input any random UUID as long it isn’t in use elsewhere in your system.
2. Now, chmod the file to 0600.
3. Restart NetworkManager
4. Voila! What have we here. I could now see the new connection in the list.

Now to get connected to the new connection. First we disconnect the Wired connection

nmcli dev disconnect iface <iface name>

And then connect to the new interface

nmcli con up id <connection id>

For those using MTNL Mumbai, you can use my settings

[connection]
id=MTNL
uuid=15d742f1-2b5a-421e-9f27-fcb1fc26d72c
type=gsm
autoconnect=true

[ipv4]
method=auto

[gsm]
number=*99#
username=mtnl
password=mtnl123
apn=gprsppsmum

[serial]
baud=115200

BarCampMumbai is back with it's 5th edition and a brand new venue.

Date: – 1st February 2009
Time: – 10:00 a.m to 5:00 p.m.
Venue: – VJTI College, H.R. Mahajani Marg, Matunga, Mumbai.

BarCampMumbai will be held in VJTI college during their technical festival Technovanza. Unlike, the previous BarCampMumbai, this one will be a one day event but it will be preceeded by BotCampMumbai on the previous day to appeal to robotics enthusiasts.

Some important links regarding BCM5
How to get there – http://barcampmumbai.org/BCM5_Venue
Register your session – http://barcampmumbai.org/BCM5_Sessions
Register as a volunteer – http://barcampmumbai.org/BCM5_Volunteers
Register for attending – http://barcampmumbai.org/BCM5_Register
Facebook page for the event – http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=45216741177
Link your blog/photos here – http://barcampmumbai.org/BCM5_Online#Photos
Follow on twitter – http://twitter.com/barcampmumbai
Mailing List – http://groups.google.com/group//barcampmumbai2
BarCamp Blog – http://blog.barcampmumbai.org/

See you at the BarCampMumbai.

Heh! Please don’t mistake me for one of those LHC guys. No, I am not talking about planets as in heavenly bodies which reflect lights from the stars but have give out no light on their own. I am talking about planet as in a feed aggregator.

Firstly, planet is a web based feed aggregator software developed in python. Planet was originally developed for GNOME and Debian. It can parse RSS, Atom and RDF feeds.

So, let’s get started up.

First step is to download planet software from here or checkout the latest stable bzr version from here.

Then untar the file if you downloaded the tarball.

tar -xpvf planet-xx.tar.bz2

Now untar the planet tarball and install the planet files eg.

tar -xpvf ~/planet-2.0.tar.bz2

cd ~/planet-2.0

su

./setup.py install

Now we need to configure the config.ini file in fancy directory to get started quickly. If you wanto take your time

vim examples/fancy/config.ini

Look at the file, it’s nicely commented you should have no problem at all in configuring it to your tastes, believe me. It’s too easy.

I set my output directory as

output_dir = /var/www/localhost/htdocs/planet

cp -R examples/output/* /var/www/localhost/htdocs/planet

This will place all the output files in the planet and the second command will copy the images folder and css file to the DocumentRoot so your page renders well.

Now to generate the output

./planet.py examples/fancy/config.ini

Now you can install the planey.py and planet-cache.py to /usr/bin using setup.py so that you can run it via cron

./setup.py config && ./setup.py install

crontab -e

0 * * * *   /usr/bin/planet.py /home/user/planet-2.0/examples/fancy/config.ini

Now open up your web browser and point to localhost/planet. Of course you need a web server running on localhost to try this out.

To show your image, put it in /var/www/localhost/htdocs/planet/images

Happy journey. Enjoy the feeds on your own planet!

Today on ##linux-india at irc.freenode.net people were discussing about DNS and the recent DNS security issue and it’s implications and solutions. So, I decided to try out the test for my ISP’s nameservers, the default nameservers that I use. The test can be found on Kaminsky’s Website.

The test confirmed that my ISP’s nameservers aren’t patched, so I decided to finally configure my dnsmasq finally and again use local DNS servers. But, the dnsmasq configuration is too lengthy and complicated for this purpose. It’s a great software if you want to have a lot of function like tftp boot, dhcp and such. But, in my case I just need a caching DNS server so decided it was either bind which I always use or try maradns, as suggested by someone on the channel.

Since, I have gone with bind in the past I decided to go with maradns, which I heard is easy to configure and is supposedly as secure as djbdns. So maradns it was. I downloaded the latest release from their download page as no binaries are available in arch repos.

So, let’s start with the process, now that you’ve downloaded the binary. This will work, only for linux. Please check the README files and documentation for further details and different platforms.

First untar the downloaded file, in my case the tar.bz2 file

tar xjvf maradns-1.3.07.08.tar.bz2

cd maradns-1.3.07.08

Then run

./configure

make

Now, your binaries have been created and you’re ready to test out the DNS server

Note:-You need to be root henceforth

mv server/maradns /usr/local/sbin

mv tools/duende /usr/local/sbin

mkdir /etc/maradns

touch /etc/mararc

Now open the /etc/mararc file in your favourite text editor and add the following

ipv4_bind_addresses = “127.0.0.1″
chroot_dir = “/etc/maradns”
recursive_acl = “127.0.0.1″

Now start maradns

/usr/local/sbin/maradns

Then test it

dig @127.0.0.1 example.com

If it returns a reply, you’re good to go If not, post the errors I will be glad to help out.

Now, try running it in daemon mode

killall maradns

/usr/local/sbin/duedne /usr/local/sbin/maradns

If all is fine till here then we can proceed to actually install maradns.

First cd to the maradns directory, where the source is place then run

make install

Now, we need to add /usr/local/sbin and /usr/local/bin to our PATH variable

add the following to your bashrc

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/sbin/:/usr/local/bin

That’s it, you’re done! Your server is ready to run.

TODO :- Find init scripts for starting it at boot time. My distro is arch. If anyone can supply me one I will be thankful.

PS :-

If you want the server to listen to multiple IP’s add them in a comma separated list inside the quotes for ipv4_bind_addresses. Check http://www.maradns.org/tutorial/recursive.html

Lots of nice stuff can be found at http://www.maradns.org/tutorial/tutorial.html

What is qingy?

Here’s the quote from qingy developers Quote:
qingy is a replacement for getty. Written in C, it uses DirectFB to provide a fast, nice GUI without the overhead of the X Windows System. It allows the user to log in and start the session of his choice (text console, gnome, kde, wmaker, …).

Source :- http://qingy.sourceforge.net

Features:-

• It works
• It remembers last user who logged in, with focus on password
• It also rememebers last session each user chose
• Alternatively it remembers last session on a per-tty basis
• Fully themable
• A theme will look the same on all machines, independently of the resolution
• You can select your favourite theme, or a random one every time
• Both text and X sessions are supported
• You can start more that one X session at once
• You can even start X inside a console when X sessions are already running
• PAM support
• Support for screen savers
• Auto log-in support
• Session locking support
• Session timeout, with lock or logout as available actions
• tty specific options support
• Customizable key bindings
• Text mode support

I came across qingy while browsing gentoo-wiki

Here is the gentoo-wiki qingy guide