new Domain!!

Hi people..

All the future posts and even updates to existing ones, when it comes to howtos will take place at tidbits. There will NOT be any updates here. So, kindly redirect yourself to that page.

Thank you!

Conquerers of Nagarajuna Sagar

Buddies! I will try to narrate a brave story of seven great presentorians(word inspired from historians)… Ambati, Cherry, Gani, Girish, Gopi, Kranthi and the mighty Pudi. On one fine morning(28th April, 2008, 4:00 AM), these ‘GHEB Ist floor warriors’, as they should be called, decided to take over an ancient city sealed under river Krishna for a long long time, which was then called Vijayapuri, now called Nagarjuna Sagar. In no time, they got ready with all the equipment(sunscreen lotions, goggles, shorts, shirts.. wait wait! did I miss something imp?), and started marching towards the goal.

Long it might seem, but to them, it’s nothing but fun! Finally after climbing few ups(rarely any downs on the way ), they made it to the destination. Mr.Mighty has reached the destination quite early with Gopi. By the time others came, they got down to the feet of left canal and freshened up and booked the tickets at ‘Launch Station’, where the boat ride begins. The way to launch station had few great view points of the Dam. Once on the boat, Kranthi is so impressed by the belgium guys , that he is striving to get a pic with them, one of those guys had few ropes(?) tied unto his head. Cherry also needs a nice pic, for ‘pelli chupulu’! Gani is bizzy cracking some brilliant jokes. Girish, finally agreed for a pose with goggles. Gopi and Ambati are sincerely trying to ‘click’ those cute kids. where’s.. oh Pudi, damn! stop eating man.

They reached Nagarjuna Konda, where they saw museum and known its surprising history. They got back to the boat and most of them had sound sleep in the return boat journey. They had some lunch after a hunt.

Now, it’s time to Ethipothala Waterfalls. It’s really like driving on the surface of the sun! So hot it was that noon! They got the tickets and got in to find a small park like place with viewpoint of waterfalls on a small cliff, beautiful! Later in that park, Cherry, Gani and Gopi played Uyyalata and it rocked! Cherry taught some photographic ’skills’ to Gopi.(ఏదో వాడికొచ్చిన దాంతో కొంచెంసేపు చంపేశాడు). After making few attempts to get a shot of two little cute twins, Gopi realised he can never make it to run behind them. Vaammo! God save their mother! When everyone woke up at 4PM, they adventured(true! with warned Crocodile Zones and unwarned Monkey zones) to the bottom of the waterfalls. There are five temples around there which together get the place a name ‘EthiTapothala’, which is mistaken as ‘Ethipothala’ by people and govt. Finally, leaving their unique mark over there, those warriors got back to their Den, GHEB,IIIT, tired, but still in good spirits.

Some interesting pics of the tour can be seen here and here

PS : ps after long long time.. this post can be as long as one can ever think of, but I have cut short many things to make it a brief. anyway, don’t ping me saying ‘ఏం పీకార్రా అక్కడ, పెద్ద warriors అని డబ్బా కొడుతున్నావ్?’ . warriors అంటే warriors who conquered happiness అన్న మాట, no kingdoms.

NFS Sharing (linux) and Mounting (linux&windows)

Note : All the future posts and even updates to existing ones, when it comes to howtos will take place at tidbits. There will NOT be any updates here. So, kindly go here to find recent version of this.

This is useful in case you want to have something shared on one system(server) to access it from other system(client), without having to maintain duplicate copies. Here the server is a Linux PC, client can be either Linux/Windows. The method can also be tweaked and used for getting done several other things.

On Server : (i.e. the PC which you want to have access to)

using the package manager for your distro (yum/apt-get/yast/emerge …), get the following packages installed

• nfs-kernel-server
• nfs-common
• portmap

Now suppose the directory you want to share is /home/gopi/books ,then put the following line

/home/gopi/books 172.16.14.35(rw,async) 172.16.14.47(ro,async)

in /etc/exports file, what this means is : read and write permissions on /home/gopi/books to 172.16.14.35 and read only to 172.16.14.47. Now run the following commands, first one to make sure that server is running, the second one to refresh shares. make sure there are spaces ONLY between different hosts specified and no other place!

• root@localhost# /etc/init.d/nfs-kernel-server restart
• root@localhost# exportfs -a

On Client : (i.e. the PC which you want to mount the shares)

If it just for client, it is sufficient to have two packages.. so again using the respective package manager, get the following.

• nfs-common
• portmap

Now just mount the shares using the following command. say 172.16.15.3 is my server, /home/gopi/acads is my share.I would like to mount it on a directory called /home/gopi/lab_share in my sclient, which is 172.16.14.35

root@localohost# mount 172.16.15.3:/home/gopi/acads /home/gopi/lab_share

Thats it! Now if you want to have this done on bootup, then open /etc/mtab, copy the corresponding line and paste it in /etc/fstab. In windows, you can use ‘network drive mapping’ to mount the shared nfs share on linux.

I think there is quite a lot documentation on samba howto(an another sharing mechanism). But for NFS, there might be few, but this is something, I could say, works without a glitch.

Implementing Disk Quotas

[From gopi's garage] You might be in a good need to restrict others from using up more than the disk space they actual need. Or you may need to have restricted disk usage for a system which has more users and you cant really afford 50 GB each. Here we’ll see an easy how to of setting up and managing the disk quotas in linux.

For this, fire up the package manager of your distro (yum/synaptic/emerge/apt/yast etc…) and get a package called ‘quota’ installed.

Ok.. now decide the partitions you wish to provide restricted usage on. let’s say they are /dev/sda1 & /dev/sd4 and say their mount points are /home and /media/storage respectively.

Open /etc/fstab file with any editor and identify the lines which correspond to mounting them. They look something like this…

LABEL=/home	/home		ext3	defaults	1 2
/dev/sda4       /media/storage	ext3	defaults	1 2

Change them by including usrquota along with defaults. and now it should look like this..

LABEL=/home	/home		ext3	defaults,usrquota	1 2
/dev/sda4	/media/storage	ext3	defaults,usrquota	1 2

Wow.. everything seems well! Now just remount those partitions.. with this command (dont forget to place in the proper path to the partition you want to unmount!)

root@localhost# mount -o remount /home
root@localhost# mount -o remount /media/storage

You have just made sure that partitions are capable of implementing the quotas.. congrats! We’ll now get to something we have been waiting.. before that just one more thing.. run this command so that your system knows what is the systems current disk usage map. (again don’t forget to place in the correct paths)

root@localhost# touch /home/aquota{.user,.group}
#this is for user file for independent user quotas and

root@localhost# touch /media/storage/aquota{.user,.group}
#for group file for group quotas

root@localhost# quotacheck -vagum
#please see man page for what those options are for.

Thats it! now just one more step to specify which user gets what and you are done…

root@localhost# edquota -u <username>

This will open your default text editor (specified by EDITOR environment variable in your session) and show some info like this…

Disk quotas for user guest (uid 1001):
Filesystem       blocks       soft       hard     inodes     soft     hard
/dev/sda1        379144        0    	0       3599        0        0

What this data says is this :

First Column	:	the partition which is in use and supports disk quota
Second Column	:	no.of 1KB blocks the user currently is using.
Third Column	:	Soft limit in 1KB blocks (user warned when he exceeds this)
Fourth Column	:	Hard limit in 1KB blocks (NOT to exceed this!)
Fifth Column	:	No.of files user currently had.
Sixth Column	:	Soft limit in terms of no. of files
Seventh Column	:	Hard limit in terms of no. of files

so you now know what to do… go ahead and save your world! If you still feel too lazy about that.. OK.. here goes an example.. I will restrict the above user to use 2.5 GB disk space and give 500 MB grace for, say 10 days. Is that ok ? anyways.. here we go..

Disk quotas for user guest (uid 1001):
Filesystem       blocks       soft       hard     inodes     soft     hard /dev/sda1        379144      2500000    3000000    3599        0        0

Ok.. but where the hell I specified the grace TIME ?? for that, just run the edquota -t and when it opens similar setup, set the value, which is quite straight forward, to 10days. (no gap between 10 and days please. btw, other units are seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months).

Happy days!

Is India left with no options?

Now it’s known to everyone.. Tibet and China issue. Briefly the issue can be summarised as follows. China thinks, Tibet has been a part of China since a long time and it adds that it will continue to be so. There would not have been much problem if Tibetians are seen as their own citizens or atleast friendly neighbourhood. But, Tibetians, with the kind of treatment offered by Chinese govt, are offended. They say that their culture and values are not at all given any importance. For example, pubs and nude dances are not a part of Tibetian monks. But they happen there, day in and day out. Things like this accumulated and finally they broke out! This is not the first time that Tibetians revolted. There were many such incidents in the past. China with some kind of ‘we’ll-help-you-develop’ reason, suppressed the revolutions. These days china has blocked over 160 or so websites saying they are threat to national integrity and security! Now, the whole world started thinking about the issue, as it was raised at correct point of time, Olympics! Germany and U.K have almost supported Dalailama by giving hints that there is a chance of withdrawing participation from Beijing Olympics. U.S as usually is still trying to maintain its power in the best possible way.

But, than those far off countries, aren’t we, the neighbour to both the groups, important? Obviously yes. But why is India not taking a stand in support of Tibet, even if it knows that’s what is the correct decision to be taken? The reasons are disheartening for an Indian..

• China is evolving as a new huge economical, political, military front in the east.
• In the past, when we had a war with China, the dragons have occupied very vast portion of our nation across the border.
• There are already two bordering nations, Pakistan and Bangladesh which are anytime ready to go with China, if we go against it.

So, India is helpless from the beginning when it comes to dealing with china, from Nehru to Manmohan. Let’s wait and see if dragons ever think that atleast they need democracy in their own state!

mail sharing/sync between linux & windows

Note : All the future posts and even updates to existing ones, when it comes to howtos will take place at tidbits. There will NOT be any updates here. So, kindly go here to find recent version of this.

The number of people using dual boot systems is increasing exponentially. And one of the most used thing across them is mail client! Now, if there is some way out to use the same configurations, mail folders for clients running on both operating systems, oh! that would save lot of headache. Be it mozilla thunderbird, evolution or whatever the client that can be installed and run on both the platforms, here is a way out.. I will take thunderbird as the client, Vista as windows platform, Ubuntu as linux platform.

say you are in linux and have mounted windows partition @ /media/win and say you have all the settings and mail in windows. In the following steps, replace the text in angled braces “<>”, with appropriate name.

step 1: just start thunderbird client in linux without creating any accounts. just start it and close it. this is to create the data folders in your home.


step 2: cp /media/win/Users/<username>/AppData/Roaming/Thunderbird/Profiles/<profilename>.default/* ~/.mozilla-thunderbird/<profilename>.default/

now we have two copies of our mail; what we need is, whenever we boot linux, the linux’s copy should be updated and whenever we shutdown/reboot, the window’s copy should be updated. this keeps those folders in sync. to do this, the following are the steps.

step 3: make two scripts, which sync those two copies.

first one is as follows, to run at startup. say this is mailstart.sh

#!/bin/bash
rsync -avz /media/sda1/Users/gopi/AppData/Roaming/Thunderbird/Profiles/<profile>.default/ /home/gopi/.mozilla-thunderbird/<profile>.default/

second script is as follows, to run on halt/reboot. say this is mailshut.sh

#!/bin/bash
rsync -avz /home/gopi/.mozilla-thunderbird/<profile>.default/ /media/sda1/Users/gopi/AppData/Roaming/Thunderbird/Profiles/<profile>.default/

now execute the following steps to set them up on startup and shutdown.

sudo cp mailstart.sh mailshut.sh /etc/init.d/
sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/mailshut.sh /etc/rc0.d/K10mailshut.sh
sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/mailshut.sh /etc/rc6.d/K10mailshut.sh
sudo update-rc.d -f mailstart.sh start 2 3 4 5 .

don’t forget the dot on last line!

Thats it! If you have got any issues with above mentioned procedure, do let me know.

update : Incase you want to use this with clients on two different systems, the script looks like this..

rsync -avz /home/user/.mozilla-thunderbird/<profile>.default/ <user@otherhost>:/home/user/.mozilla-thunderbird/<profile>.default/


Health!

After returning from home, this summer, I’m upto very large scale adjustments to my diet and also the ingredients of the food taken. Reason: Enlightening from Guru Sri. Mantena Satyanarayana Raju garu.He is a doctor….. the best doctor I have seen till date(FYI, All through my life, especially in childhood, I visited not less than 12 hospitals and 20 doctors). I felt that I should share this info so that others, atleast a few can be saved from the wrath of adopted evils. So whats the new diet?

Briefly:

1.5 Litres of water(no cold water plz..) after waking up, followed by nature activities and aasanas.
No water half an hour before eating, no water 1 hour after eating.
And total water that is taken must be between 3-5 litres a day.

Breakfast(around 8 AM): మొలకెత్తిన గింజలు (sprouted seeds) with కర్జూరం (dates)

Lunch(around 12:30 PM): for now, its regular mess food, but the tentative one is just fruits and rotis(as many as you can ) with uncooked salad like curries and leafy-vegetables(some of the dishes are explained, I have tried few of them at home and they are much better than mess food)

Dinner(around 6 PM):250-300 gms of vegetable pieces(uncooked) with dates and fruits(preferably seasonal), 2 or 3 betle leaves(తమలపాకులు) with honey/dates.

No food after 6 PM. Reason: stomach actually needs some rest. that is conditionally implemented by doctors when we fall sick. Not to fall sick, one must voluntarily allow the stomach to rest atleast during night. because during digestion 45% of oxygen we inhale goes to its nerves and cells. If it rests, there will be good supply to the other cells to fight the foreign objects or germs in the body, low load on heart and lungs, hence more life.

Sleep around 10 PM and wake up around 4-5 AM.

Here are benefits over regular diet..

Breakfast:seeds contain a lot of energy as they have to survive different climatic conditions to propagate their life/existence. biological studies show that stomach easily digests and breaks various compounds in these seeds than that oily junk we eat(dosa, vada tc..). And energy soon reaches various cells which are starving early morning. why sprouted? because we can’t eat/churn those hard seeds. why dates? because they act as quicker energizers, quicker than seeds, to provide us instant energy. After eating oily food,we feel sleepy, drowning.. but here, the freshness we experience after waking up remains all the way till noon.

Lunch:fruits are obvious. why rotis? Because the rice, which we are eating now, is being polished off twice before it reaches retail market. As a result all the B family vitamins and other vitamins are almost totally whipped off the grains. After knowing this, at home, we are getting the rice unpolished from the mill(only the peel is separated); if we could get that here too, its well and good. But it may not be that easy to convince all the people to eat the unpolished rice as it looks brownish and not so grainish as the polished one. So, go for rotis, which are polished only once and lose less vitamins. why uncooked salads? because the curries cooked at >200 degrees Celsius will contain no life in it and thats theoretically and experimentally shown by the doctor!

Dinner:vegetables and fruits are explained already. So, why betel leaves? For Calcium! Currently I’m having less calcium than I should. Honey/dates are used instead of sugar/others because they don’t have harmful content and they are natural!

And, finally, NO COOL DRINKS. I personally am away from them since 6 years. But after knowing more adverse news about them from the doctor, I also want my friends to be away from them. One such fact is… our teeth remains after our death, even after a lakh years, without getting spoiled. Such tooth, if dropped in a cool drink bottle, would disappear in 8 hrs! Because their PH level is 1.5 to 2.5, which is very strong acid!! And also keep away from tea/coffee or atleast take then in lesser quantities. I don’t want to explain the adverse effects here, read them in Dr.Mantena’s books/videos.

NOW, For those of you growling and saying all this is difficult, never mind!! But, anyways I would like to add that for me,this is simpler than the regular diet. For our parties and functions, if we want to enjoy a while with our (junk)food, that’s totally OK! But eating that lifeless food daily, will do no good.

This actually is very short, read Dr.Mantena’s books(they are either free or almost free) or hear his lectures for complete information on our body functions.Thanks to that great man, serving the state with dedication! In these 10 days, back my home, I have seen several villages together changing thier food habits, I’m just so impressed and also puzzled. I’m also trying to practice Aasanas and Pranayamam taught in his video lectures(I have added them in DC++, for IIITians. For non-IIITians go here to get them).

Finally, sorry for long post!

what could be done?

I feel guilty — I dint(not couldn’t) help them; I’m sad — how are they living?; I’m sorry — the worst word symbolising escapism; This exactly is the sequence of my states, which happens each time I see a poor child begging.. the questions which pour down upon me are : What could *I* do to improve the situation? Are there any charity organisations which are willing to accept these children? If so, is it just lack of information, that these children are still on the street? If anyone out there had some insight, kindly let us know, so that we could redirect those kids to proper place..

Your information, whatever it may be, could be very helpful, so please dont hesitate to let us know whatever you have..

ఘల్ ఘల్ ‘ఘజల్’

అనగా అనగా అనగా… ఒక ఐఐఐటి. అదేంటోగాని నిన్నమొన్నటి దాకా ‘made of techy-crap’ లా కనిపించిన ఆ ఐఐఐటి… మన ఐఐఐటి.. హైదరాబాద్ లో, గచ్చిబౌలిలో ఉన్న ఇదే ఐఐఐటి.. నాకీ మధ్య రకరకాలుగా కనిపిస్తుంది. ఒక సంగీతారాధనలోనేంటి, ఒక ‘స’సమాజ నిర్మాతగానేంటి.. ఒక సదిశానిర్ధేశిగానేంటి.. ఇలా మొత్తానికి నేను చేరుకోవల్సిన చోటికే చేరుకున్నానని, నా జీవితంలో మూడు అతి చిన్న[1]సంవత్సరాలలో తెలిసింది..అనగా నేనిప్పుడే నాలుగో సంవత్సరంలోకి వచ్చానన్నమాట! ఒకసారందరూ SE[2]కి గోవింద కొట్టాలమ్మా.. ‘గోవిందా!.. గోవింద! గోవిందా!.. గోవింద! గోవిందా!.. గోవింద!..’ శబ్బాష్!!

సరే! దురద తట్టుకోలేక అదంతా వాగేశాను.ఇంతకీ సంగతేంటంటే, మా కాలేజీకి మొన్న 29వ తేదీన ‘ఘజల్’ శ్రీనివాస్ గారొచ్చారు. ఆయన రాక సందర్బంగా ఏర్పాట్ల కోసం తలోపనీ చేస్తున్నాం. సామ్రాట్ గాడు ఆయనకి ఫోన్ చేసి ఒక మూడు,నాలుగు సార్లు మాట్లాడాడు. ఒక రెండుసార్లు ఆ ఫోన్ సంభాషణ విన్న నాకు, శ్రీనివాస్ గారి మీద అస్సలు మంచి అభిప్రాయం కుదర్లేదు! ‘ఏంట్రా బాబు! ఈ సెలబ్రిటీస్ మొత్తం ఇదే జాతా?’ అన్న నా ఈసడింపు కాస్తా ఎక్కువైంది. కానీ 29న, అంటే ఆయన వచ్చిన రోజు.. ఆయనతో ఒకసారి మాట్లాడాకా, ఆయన మాటలు ఒక గంట సేపు విన్నాక.. I was so impressed that I just want to listen him, again, in the nearest possible future! I realised the sarcasm behind every word he spoke on phone. నాకు నవరసాల్లో మూడు రసాలంటే ప్రీతి.. హాస్య, శృంగార, రౌద్ర[3]. ఈ మొదటి రెండింటిని ‘తనవైన’ ఘజల్స్ తో పండించారు.. పండించటం అంటే అల్లాటప్పాగా కాదండోయ్.. కుమ్మిపారేశారు. అసలు లెక్చర్ మొదలెట్టక ముందు, జనం కాస్త తక్కువగా స్పందించటం చూసి [4] ఒక రెండు పద్యాలొదిలారు..అవి సరిగ్గా గుర్తులేవుగాని, అర్థం ఇలా వస్తుంది.. ‘అక్కడ పాపం artist అంత కష్టపడుతుంటే.. ఇక్కడ నువ్విలా మూల గుడ్లగూబలా కుర్చూంటావేమి సామీ?’ అని. కొంతమంది పక్కవారు చప్పట్లు కొడుతున్నారని వాళ్ళు కూడా కొడుతుంటే, ‘ఎవరి దురద వారే గోక్కోవాలి గాని, పక్కవారి దురద నువ్వు గోకనేల‘ అని అర్థం వచ్చేలా ఇంకోటి వదిలారు… నవ్వులే నవ్వులు! ఇలా అంతా సరదాగా సాగిపోయింది. ఆయన కొన్ని ఘజల్స్ పాడి వినిపించారు.. నిజంగా అవి విన్నందుకు, కన్నందుకు ‘జన్మ ధన్యం’ అన్నట్టుగా ఉన్నాయి. అసలు పాడేటప్పుడు అతని హావభావాలు.. అబ్బో అన్న మాట! అసలు ఆయన ఘజల్ లో సగం అందం ఆ హావభావాల తోటే వచ్చింది! ఇంతకీ ఆయన స్వస్థలం.. పాలకొల్లు, పశ్చిమ గోదావరి జిల్లా, అన్నాయ్ కి అక్కడి ఎటకారమంతా అబ్బింది! పుట్టుకతో వచ్చే బుద్దులు పాడెతోనే పోతాయంటారు.. ఎంతైనా గోదావరి జిల్లా వారికున్న ‘ఎటకారా’నికి మరెవరు సాటిరారు.

1:ఒట్టండీ బాబు.. నాకింకా ఆ ‘interaction scenes’ అన్ని మొన్నమొన్నే జరిగినట్టున్నాయ్!
2:SE అంటే ఒక కోర్స్ లెండి… అదే ‘మా’ చివరి మరియు చెత్త పరీక్ష!
3:మొదటి రెండు రసాలూ ok కాని ఈ మూడో రసమేంటా అనుకుంటుంన్నారా? అదేంటోనండీ.. నా కోపానికి నేనంటే ఇష్టమో, నాకు అదంటే ఇష్టమో.. అది మాత్రం నన్ను వదలట్లేదు!

అదీ సంగతి! మళ్ళీ April 12న కలుసుకుందాం.. అంతావరకు సెలవు, ఉంటామరి!

Alarm.. the devil’s our neighbour!

Well, its again and again spotted and people still don’t see its importance in individual life. Yeah, I have been speaking about the nightmare of 21st century and generations to come, “Global Warming!”. Ok without being too verbose, I will try to jot down what are the things, we really can do in our life (tech-savvy guys, we are, huh?).

Computer Usage: Do you know that each PC we use (cabinet + monitor) releases 500 Kilos of Carbon Dioxide annually? (Refer to March edition of Digit Magazine for this). We can cut this down by more that 70%, if we really want to take care of ourselves and thus, of surroundings..
1. Switch the monitors off, when you are don’t really need the screens!
2. Hibernate/Suspend the computer for long/short breaks. Better, turn it off if you are away for a weekend/shopping etc.
3. LCD screens are preferable over CRT monitors as they consume less power, cause less harm to eyes, and long lasting as well!

Tap the water! Well we people are longing to go home in this vacation… now, if, at your home, you have a garden, take that opportunity to tap the water from different corners of your home, like from roof when it rains etc… for this you have to learn about water sinks, they are simple to implement.

Don’t waste the waste! Again, garden is useful here, I’m speaking about the waste that comes from the vegetables, food etc… except plastic, everything. If you can spend few bucks for arranging compost pits, that could be a tremendous nutrition to plants and trees there.

Save the power! Turn the lights/fans/others off if they are not saving any purpose.

Ride less! People comeon! why would one need a bike to go to/from NBH/GHEB to/from OBH? (for non-IIITians, ther are hostel buildings in IIIT-H). It’s understandable in really demanding cases. But even for mundane tasks.. it’s just laziness! Whenever possible, use our MMTS/RTC to travel intracity. I personally prefer MMTS(go here to know the timings).. no polution, more comfort, more safety! Amidst present conditions, I’m really against the so called poorman’s/cheap car.. NANO!

I agree these points are a kind of repetition, but even if one guy out there does atleast one thing from above, I take it as ‘Purpose saved!’