TuxAtWork

MPD, a wonderful player.

2009-07-27T10:38:00.000-07:00

MPD(media player daemon), though very classic, but indeed is one of the most versatile solution for linux guys and music lovers. Here I am going to describe how to get MPD up and running and using it...

Step 1:
Install mpd. (Ubuntu specific: sudo aptitude install mpd, Fedora specific: #yum install mpd)

Step 2:
Now its time to set it up for our requirements, open /etc/mpd.conf in your favorite editor and change the following lines, it takes me quite a while to get everything working...
music_directory "/media/Entertainment/Music" playlist_directory "/media/Entertainment/Music" db_file "/home/shamail/.mpd/db" log_file "/home/shamail/.mpd/log.log" error_file "/home/shamail/.mpd/errors.log" pid_file "/home/shamail/.mpd/pid" state_file "/home/shamail/.mpd/state" user "shamail"
Replace the settings accordingly, and make a directory in home directory
$ mkdir ~/.mpd

User is very important as this line specifies the user MPD will run as, leave all the options as such.

Step 3:
Now run the mpd as, if successful, following output (or similar) should appear.
# /etc/init.d/mpd start shamail@busybox:~$ sudo /etc/init.d/mpd start * Starting Music Player Daemon mpd No "audio_output" defined in config file Attempt to detect audio output device Attempting to detect a alsa audio device Successfully detected a alsa audio deviceWe now have our music server running, but no method to play... For that we need a client for mpd to play. There are tons of clients for mpd (http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Clients), the native client is called as mpc(media player client). To begin we will use this, then move to some very equipped and advanced clients that resembles whole music player and have even more functionalities)

Imagine multiple clients, one in sys tray showing song change notification, one at gnome panel displaying the song being played, other access from web to do all the music surfing and even a vim client to change the music while coding! All accessing one unified media queue powered by MPD.

Step 4:
Next step of ours is to install a client. Install mpc in the same way mpd was installed.
Step 5:
Now we need to add some music to the playlist, but what to?
$ mpc listall #list all the music in music dir. $ mpc add #add file to the playlist $ mpc listall | mpc add #add all music $ mpc play|pause #play/pause/resume play $ mpc stop #stop playing $ mpc status #show current status $ mpc volume 80|+1|-5 #increase/decrease volume.
This is conventional way to access mpd, while doing work on shell these comes handy though, but this ain't give media player benefits, for this install gnome-musicplayer-client (a very beautiful media player, backed by mpd) or Sonata (a fast light way to do things quickly) or both.
Then you can install music-panel to give you notifications and panel display of the playing tracks. This has a nice UI indeed.

(This is what music-panel comes at notification and quick control)

(Gnome Music Player Client)

For programmers and geeks install client for vim to change and navigate in songs while working!!
For web freaks you can additionally install one of web based client from 10s of available web clients.

Enjoy with it... :)

CP with progress bar...

2009-07-14T22:59:00.000-07:00

We have seen a lot of scripts available that uses combination of cp and du etc to display progress, bet they are basic shell scripts that may not necessarily have all the functionalities of cp, and can even go crazy at times...
Lets use rsync for this which is a very powerful and tested application available in GNU's GPL.

shamail@computer16:~$ touch RTest/{a,b,c,new} shamail@computer16:~$ dd if=/dev/zero of=RTest/file.dd bs=1M count=20 20+0 records in 20+0 records out 20971520 bytes (21 MB) copied, 0.076776 s, 273 MB/s shamail@computer16:~$ rsync -r --progress RTest ./Copy/ sending incremental file list RTest/a 0 100% 0.00kB/s 0:00:00 (xfer#1, to-check=4/6) RTest/b 0 100% 0.00kB/s 0:00:00 (xfer#2, to-check=3/6) RTest/c 0 100% 0.00kB/s 0:00:00 (xfer#3, to-check=2/6) RTest/file.dd 20971520 100% 43.79MB/s 0:00:00 (xfer#4, to-check=1/6) RTest/new 0 100% 0.00kB/s 0:00:00 (xfer#5, to-check=0/6) sent 20974372 bytes received 108 bytes 41948960.00 bytes/sec total size is 20971520 speedup is 1.00
Cool, isnt that?
You can alias cp='rsync --progress', and the sytanx will remain exactly same as that of cp, except that DO NOT put leading / in the source filenames... Even multiple files can be given.

Enjoy...

Delete all tables in MySQL

2009-07-08T02:23:00.001-07:00

Sometimes we may encounter a problem to delete all tables in a database, where drop database cannot work because you may not have necessary rights to recreate a database.

The following command may work very well for that..

mysql -u username -p passwd database -e "show tables" | grep -v Tables | sed s/^/drop\ table\ if\ exists\ /g | sed s/$/\;/g | xargs -0 mysql -u username -p passwd database -e

Enjoy...

Stay Charged

2009-07-02T11:17:00.001-07:00

Well this post is the description of what i am currently working upon, http://staycharged.in, presently under development @ http://staycharged.co.cc

To begin, introduction...
Stay charged is a service that one can use to stay recharged on there cell phones. User can get recharged by either logging onto the web portal or by sending an SMS to our service number.

Who can use staycharged?
You, if you are a prepaid cell phone user and have a credit/debit card, every 10-15 days you need a recharge, staycharged provides a convenient facility of getting recharged just by sending one sms, Equivalent amount will be deducted from your account.

Benifts?
Of course.. Many

Ease, most important. Comfort of getting recharged just by sending an SMS and in case of emergency.
No extra charge, get 100 rs card @ 100 rs only.
Safe, we do not take cvv number from you(required for transaction), your password is CVV_num+3_digits_of_your_choice, and we use this number only at the time of transaction, and does not save them ever in our database.
Manage everthing in very simply designed interface on the web, including purchase of the card.
Feature of recharging other mobiles as well and gift coupons.
Supports most of the vendors and cards.

Use it once and you will start loving it... :) So say "hi" to staycharged.

Making Gmail shortcut

2009-03-26T06:13:00.001-07:00

Email addict? Tired of logging in each time and opening gmail.com again and again?
Try this simple trick..

Right Click on the gnome panel -> Add to Panel
Select Custom application launcher..

In the Create Launcher window, type Name as Gmail
Command:
firefox 'https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLoginAuth? continue=http://mail.google.com/gmail&service=mail&Email=LOGIN&Passwd=PASSWORD&null=Sign+in'Replace LOGIN and PASSWORD with your username and password.

Use whatever comment and icon you want. Or use this standard icon.

Whenever you'll click on this launcher, your gmail account will open in your default web browser.

Enjoy..

Linux to Hack...

2008-12-22T02:06:00.001-08:00

Hi,
Here is a trick to obtain friends IP and related info using very basic Linux tools...

#1) Open Google Talk or Yahoo(pidgin etc works). (Don't know about other protocols, but should work)

#2) Run this command: netstat -n
It will show something like..
Active Internet connections (w/o servers)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State tcp 0 1 192.168.1.2:44761 212.162.2.67:80 LAST_ACK tcp 38 0 192.168.1.2:48178 67.228.78.116:443 CLOSE_WAIT tcp 0 1 192.168.1.2:44769 212.162.2.67:80 LAST_ACK tcp 0 1 192.168.1.2:48694 195.122.131.22:80 LAST_ACK tcp 0 1 192.168.1.2:44766 212.162.2.67:80 LAST_ACK : :
Try to identify the port, yahoo uses pager port 5050 and google 5222/5223..
Also redirect the optput to some temp file,

$ netstat -n 2>&1 > /tmp/out1

Now the connections with Foreign Address with port 5050/5222 are the outgoing connection to yahoo/google server respectively.

Q: So where is friends IP?
A: HACK: Both yahoo and google uses P2P connection for client2client communication..
So, a similar connection will appear when you chat with them.
P.S if you are sure that your friend is using some Y! messenger < v7.0 then initiate a file request or a web cam request(though you dont have a webcam ;-)), its still P2P.
Case of failure: Friend is using a web client, such as gmail, morange etc. So until your friend is using a native messenger(including pidgin) you can use this trick to identify.
A certain more manipulations can help you identify whether your friend is invisible or not, using wireshark like tool and reading the packets directly prior to your chat client.

Open a chat window and send a hi, connection will establish. And rerun netstat as

$ netstat 2>&1 > /tmp/out2

Now perform a diff, as
$ diff /tmp/{out1,out2}

It will show you something like,
< tcp 0 0 192.168.1.2:36564 66.163.181.188:5050 TIME_WAIT > ...This is the new connection that has taken place.

Now to know more about the ip, perform whois and traceroute as$ whois 66.163.181.188 # tells you operator info, area info, and provider info.. along with telephone numbers and all $ traceroute66.163.181.188 # tell you the route to the friend, you may then whois those hops to know about the path and physical route of the packets being sent.:)

Sun Microsystems, The Campus Ambassador Program..

2008-07-30T08:39:00.001-07:00

Writing after a long time, but anyways, its never too late... following post is about my experience at Bangluru in the Campus Ambassador Induction program.

    I am one of the lucky 100 Campus Ambassador for Sun Microsystems to get selected from India for the FY09. This time Sun Organized its three day induction program in Bangluru(M.S Ramalla Institute of Technology), Initially is was not filled with so much charm to go there and attend the program, but still, reached there well before and met Ankit on way itself, seldom you find sweet people like him, so polite to everyone. Throughout the time, this guy made us feel like "home away home", as we reached Orchid Inn, the place where we stayed, we started finding people like us, who came from all around India, and interacted with them. Its well said, "Every child is special", and to that i noticed that everyone has got something special in himself/herself, and that is why he/she was there to represent his/her college, community and most important himself/herself amongst the chosen ones.

    <joke>
       I am still not able to figure out why i was there ;-)
    </joke>

    Well, next day it all started. The time i reached there i met with Ganesh(for CA program, Asia Pacific region) and i was so glad that he recognized me on the first look itself. Actually previous year we at Jamia, New Delhi organized this program for the previous CA batch, and he came there as the mentor and i had interaction with him that time, but it was an year passed. Then the program began and my interest started developing with the energetic talk from Abhishek. Oh man! No terms to define this person. If i am asked to define him in one word.. "Cool"!! Soon they introduced us with Sun Technologies, and i was like knowing all that before so was having fun and good understanding of it. The event organization was again "Cool". Slowly time goes on and we were like knowing each other better.
    Among the sessions, the most interesting session that seems to me was the last presentation that we've to give, so exciting and funny :) The hands-on sessions, mostly by Angad were superb, it gave a boost off and set a platform for all of us. Lately at the last day, it was MySQL workshop, and i unfortunately had to leave in the midst, because i had to rush for the flight.
    To conclude, it was a whole new exposure to technologies, people, resources in a great fun filled way, one thing that i appreciated is the work culture at Sun Microsystems. Finally a heartiest thanks to all of the Sun guys with a BIG simle :-)

Smartmovie, a movie player for Symbian!

2008-02-24T06:38:00.000-08:00

Smartmovie - A movie player for Symbian OS..
    True, but what in Smartmovie?

We all play movies on Smartmovie taking them from friends over bluetooth or using smartmovie converter to convert our own, but there ain't a single method to convert your own movies to smartmovie playable movie using GNU/Linux. Is it so? NO! Here i'll describe how you can convert all your movies to Smartmovie playable format and get ready to groove on roads!!!

    You need:
       A Symbian based phone with Smartmovie player, and obviously a GNU/Linux machine having mencoder installed. Simple!!

How to go about it?
    Well, why not convert the first movie from within Windows? Good !dea.. But for that you need to have some more stuff.. Smartmovie converter and Windows(r) :(
But not a big problem, after all its a click click install...
    Ok so just open a playable file in smartmovie and with default settings click on encode to get a file with same name in "SmartMovie Converted Files" on the Desktop.

    Lets get back to Linux now, else "Linux devta" will get angry (u hell, using windwos!! ;-) )

Well we converted.. but for what?
On Linux navigate to that directory and issue
    $ file <thatFile.avi>
On my system i got this output,
    Crawling.avi: RIFF (little-endian) data, AVI, 208 x 154, ~30 fps, video: XviD, audio: MPEG-1 Layer 3 (mono, 22050 Hz)
You will also get similar output as the encoding standards are same. So here we got the target to simulate using Linux PC!

Now assume that some file UstaadNdDivas.avi is to be converted to this target as test.avi..

$ mencoder -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=120 UstaadNdDivas.avi -o test.avi -of avi -vf scale=208:154 -aspect 1.66 -oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=32:mode=3

Oh! that was bouncer... mencoder command line format sucks!!
Well, not that much, let me explain the switches..

mencoder               # command
   -ovc xvid           # we need an xvid output file as told by file.
   -xvidencopts        # the xvid encoder options
      bitrate=120      # bitrate to encode at, usually this does for a phone.
   UstaadNdDivas.avi   # input file
   -o test.avi         # output file
   -of avi             # output is an avi container
   -vf scale=208:154   # scale the video to the frame size told by file
   -aspect 1.66        # sets the aspect ratio to 4:3 = 1.66, as this is the phones aspect ratio
   -oac mp3lame        # output audio encoder is mp3lame
   -lameopts           # the lame encoder options
      cbr              # use constant bit rate
      br=32            # sets the audio bitrate = 32kbps
      mode=3           # sets the mode to mono rather than stereo(default)


Now transfer the file using some tool to the phone, and play it in Smartmovie player..

Now if i've to give the same command again and again, hell...
Better create an alias as,
$ alias smconvert='mencoder -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=120 $1 -o $2 -of avi -vf scale=208:154 -aspect 1.66 -oac mp3lame -lameopts cbr:br=32:mode=3'

Now to convert the movie then issue
$ smconvert <inp> <output>

:-) Yo! Target accomplished!!

Quotas, a must know for admins...

2007-12-25T12:19:00.000-08:00

So this one is a must for sys admins. Here i am going to describe how you can implement the quotas on users and groups.
    I am assuming that quotas package is installed, if not then install according your distro...

To begin, what quotas are?
    Quotas are basically implemented to enforce limits on users, such as file space, number of files etc. Once enforced, say a policy that a user cannot create no more than 100 file.. a user will then be restricted. The limits can be on size type etc as well. So lets get the hands dirty...

What is needed?
    A little knowledge of system administration, a slightly more knowledge of GNU/Linux internals, quotas package and root password! ¿¿

To start.. first create a virtual disk where we will do the alien operations, say create a 20MB disk for ext3...

    $ dd if=/dev/zero of=$HOME/quotas.img count=40960
    40960+0 records in
    40960+0 records out
    20971520 bytes (21 MB) copied, 1.09387 seconds, 19.2 MB/s

    $ ls -lh quotas.img
    -rw-r--r-- 1 shamail shamail 20M 2007-12-25 21:57 quota.img

Now format the disk as ext3 file system(Ignore the warning if any, or use -F switch).
    $ /sbin/mkfs.ext3 quotas.img

Now make a temporary mount point, say /quotas and mount the disk there. I've done an fstab entry as below, before mounting, this can be skipped...
    /home/shamail/quota.img    /home/shamail/tmp ext3    rw,loop,usrquota,grpquota 0 0

Issue this to mount the disk..
    $ sudo mount /quotas

Now we can start operations, my username is "shamail", group barbie(change as applicable)...

--------------------------------------------------------------
1. Make a sample directory in the new disk and change ownership and permissions..

    $ sudo mkdir /quotas/Debian

    $ sudo chown -R root.barbie /quotas/Debian

    $ sudo chown 2775 /quotas/Debian

The last command is to set the setgid bit.
--------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------
2. Quota check:

    $ sudo quotacheck -cug /quotas
This command can be taken as the initialization command, the -c option creates the quotas on the disk.

    $ ls -lh /quotas
    total 27K
    -rw------- 1 root root   7.0K 2007-12-26 00:45 aquota.group
    -rw------- 1 root root   7.0K 2007-12-26 00:45 aquota.user
    drwxrwsr-x 2 root barbie 1.0K 2007-12-26 00:45 Debian
    drwx------ 2 root root    12K 2007-12-25 21:57 lost+found

This creates quotas on the new disk.
--------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------
3. Making new policy..

    $ sudo edquota -f /quotas shamail

This will open a file in default editor, vim in my case.. having contents like this..
Disk quotas for user shamail (uid 1000):

  Filesystem                   blocks       soft       hard     inodes     soft     hard   /dev/loop0                        0          0          0          0        0        0  Change it to.. Disk quotas for user shamail (uid 1000):   Filesystem                   blocks       soft       hard     inodes     soft     hard   /dev/loop0                        0        100        200          0       10       20

Here, the user shamail is allowed to make 20 files maximum, with a warning after 10th file. and an upper limit of 200*block-size on size. Don't change the values of blocks and inodes, they refer to the presently used values, for reference.

The same can also be given as a command:

    $ sudo setquota -u shamail 100 200 10 20 -a /dev/loop0

Finally turn the quotas on..

    $ sudo quotaon /quotas
--------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------
4. Testing the policy..

    For this, issue as user..
    $ quota
    Disk quotas for user shamail (uid 1000):
       Filesystem blocks   quota   limit   grace   files   quota   limit   grace
         /dev/loop0       1     100     200               1      10      20

    $ cd /quotas/Debian

    $ cat > test.file
    hello! this is quota test

    $ quota
    Disk quotas for user shamail (uid 1000):
       Filesystem blocks   quota   limit   grace   files   quota   limit   grace
         /dev/loop0       2     100     200               2      10      20

Note that the files and blocks have increased.
Now recursively create files more than the specified limit..

    $ for i in `seq 10`; do touch 'file$i'; done

    loop0: warning, group file quota exceeded.
    loop0: warning, user file quota exceeded.
    loop0: write failed, group file limit reached.
    touch: cannot touch `file9': Disk quota exceeded
    touch: cannot touch `file10': Disk quota exceeded

Ok, so this is because there is group quota also set on my system... Now see this

    $ quota
    Disk quotas for user shamail (uid 1000):
       Filesystem blocks   quota   limit   grace   files   quota   limit   grace
         /dev/loop0       2     100     200              10      10      20

Since the group quota for my qroup, i.e barbie is 10 max, the files were no more created.
Similarly you can test the disk space quota.
--------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------
5. Creating the group quotas.
    $ edquota -g barbie
And edit the file in the same way.
--------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------
6. For admins, reporting quotas

    $ sudo repquota /quotas
    *** Report for user quotas on device /dev/loop0
    Block grace time: 7days; Inode grace time: 7days
                            Block limits                File limits
    User            used    soft    hard grace    used soft hard grace
    ----------------------------------------------------------------------
    root      --    1580       0       0              4     0     0
    shamail   --       2     100     200             10    10    20 6days
--------------------------------------------------------------

--------------------------------------------------------------
7. Warning for quotas..
    $ sudo warnquota
Sends mail to all the users who have exceeded the quota.
Messages can be customized in /etc/warnquota.conf
--------------------------------------------------------------

    Read more at: http://souptonuts.sourceforge.net/quota_tutorial.html
    This article is also inspired from here, since i also learned this from here only.

Regards..

Music my fantasy....

2007-11-28T10:23:00.001-08:00

Though i've always been interested in GNU/Linux and Mobiles, playing around with music and videos around the GNU-box is also among my favorite ones...

This time its about transcoding any media file to any desired music format..
P.S encoding music interferes in some copyright violations, please make sure that the music you are encoding is legally owned by you, if this the case, then you can transcode any media to even propriety formats like aac, without violating any copyright laws.
Legally owned media, as TRAI defines in India is - self composed music/audio track, recorded tracks (be it from fm), purchased music in form of audio CD's / DVD's etc.

To start with, the following tools are required.
mplayer, an encoder.

Only 2??? Yes! only two...

So what are encoders?
Encoders are a small, usually command line utility, that encodes some raw wave file to its own format. Almost all the encoders have a same, rather similar command line usage.
Mostly on GNU/Linux system you will need these encoders..
MP3 (MPEG-1 layer 3) encoder - lame (lame ain't an mp3 encoder, though it is)
alternatives: toolame, twolame (fastest mpeg encoder) - encodes to MP2
AAC (Advanced audio codec) encoder - faac
OGG (OGG container format, with vorbis audio) - oggenc
FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec) - flac
WMA (Windows(r) Media audio) - not possible on Linux, if it is, then please leave a commnet!
RA/RM (Real Audio/Real Media) - producer

These are the major popular formats... The choice depends on the user, i prefer OGG container format, because the quality as compared to other formats at same bit-rate is quite better. Then secondly, i'ld like to go with Real Media, because of two reasons.. 1. The fastest encoder available in market, at low bit-rates - impressive quality.

Then after making a choice, install the encoder..
On debian, the debian-multimedia.org has all the encoders, except the producer(needs to be installed separately from real.com)

Now comes the encoding part...
This is divided into two steps..
1) Decoding of the stream.
2) Encoding of the raw stream to the desired format, here using oggenc to encode..

#1: Decoding using mplayer..
This is not a must to do decoding with mplayer, there is a disk writer plugin in almost all the media players. One may use it. For command line geeks, mplayer and vlc are best suited...
$ mplayer -ao pcm:file=/tmp/audio.wav <inputfile>
/* Input file is any mplayer playable file, be it a video, fhere /tmp/audio.wav is the temporary wave file */

#2: Encoding using the desired encoder..
$ oggenc -b 156 /tmp/audio.wav -o music.ogg
/* This will encode the file to vorbis, in an ogg container. */
Similarly, lame has format...
$ lame -b 156 /tmp/audio.wav -o music.mp3

With this, the file music.ogg is the new output file in ogg multimedia format.
Same way can be adopted to RIP an audio CD.

Here i've created a small python script to convert all files in a folder to aac

#! /usr/bin/env python

import os
import sys

if len ( sys.argv )
print "Usage:", sys.argv[0], "/target/dir"
sys.exit ()

files = os.listdir ( "." )
dir = sys.argv[1]
for i in files:
print "Decoding", i, "..."
cmd = "mplayer -ao pcm:file=/tmp/swav.sona \"" + i + "\" 2> /dev/null > /dev/null"
outfile = dir + "/" + i[0:len(i) - 4]
os.system ( cmd )
print "Encoding to ", outfile, "... @ 192 kbps..."
cmd = "faac /tmp/swav.sona -o \"" + outfile + ".aac\""
print cmd
os.system ( cmd )

print "Conversion finished!!!"

Enjoy!

Send ad free mails, from ad-supported services...

2007-11-21T03:18:00.001-08:00

My next writing is about sending ad free mails from ad-supported service...

So, how is this possible? This is not a big question if you look at the mail header, and seeing the e-mail send process, the answer is not far...
Here is a sample e-mail header.. ( for more about email: http://www.bath.ac.uk/bucs/email/anatomy.shtml and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email )

Received: from kelly.bath.ac.uk ([138.38.32.20])
by serena.bath.ac.uk with esmtp (Exim 3.36 #2)
id 19NkR7-0003g5-00
for ccsxxx@imaps.bath.ac.uk;
Thu, 05 Jun 2003 03:25:05 +0100 
Received: from mta1.silver.ddc.dartmail.net ([146.82.220.228])
by kelly.bath.ac.uk with smtp id 19NkQa-00008C-4E
for ccsxxx@bath.ac.uk;
Thu, 05 Jun 2003 03:24:32 +0100
Date: Wed, 04 Jun 2003 22:25:43 -0400 (EDT)

Now three things can be seen here..
1. Sender is ccsxxx@bath.ac.uk
2. Reciever is ccsxxx@maps.bath.ac.uk
3. Message was sent from smtp server bath.ac.uk

What in this world this header has to do with ad-free mail?
Clearly looking, this is the header that reaches the user...
So by changing this in out email(say ccsxxx@bath.ac.uk to s@ad-supported-mail.com) header, and using a server that is ad-free, we can presume that the mail is sent from s@ad-supported-mail.com
P.S this is the violation of copyright laws, but perfectly o.k if you send the mail from an email id that is owned by you.

What is needed?
Just a gmail account, and your old email account i.e s@ad-supported-mail.com

How to?
Go to gmail from web interface, go to Settings -> Accounts
Here add another e-mail account, this will be s@ad-supported-mail.com
Gmail will send a confirmation to your account, verify it (gmail is smart, it verifies that the email is owned by you, if you dont do this, gmail will replace the header with its own header)
Set this new email as default.
And use always reply from my default address.

Now from with in gmail, when you send an email, it will go as s@ad-supported-mail.com
Also, POP users can use thunderbird/other mail client after this to configure the mail client to send mail as this id (without setting these, gmail will not allow sending of mail as some other id)

Now since, gmail is ad-free the emails sent after these will go as s@ad-supported-mail.com but ad-free!!!

These settings can also be used, if you use your ISP's SMTP server to send mails, this will then act as portable SMTP server(or what i call as travellers smtp server)

Propriety software v/s Free software -- my experience!

2007-11-17T13:21:00.000-08:00

Tough day! But yet tech filled.... We have captured the Kashmir visit on Sony Handycam, but unfortunately the cam was not mine, it was owned by the friends family. And the guy don't have sufficient resources to rip the DVC, like firewire etc. So i got the job. For that, today i got to one of my friend, Kazim(his blog listed on the page).... It was a somewhat unexpected experience.... I got there to realize that we can have either two methods of transfer the video to PC viz USB and firewire. So we decided to go USB's way and use sony's bundled software to capture and burn the video to VCD. This annoying software, though flashy, has no option to disk save a ripped video, no option to choose encoding specs etc., more... at some blogs we found that we can use DVD burning only with a sony vio pc(don't know the reason for such a stupidity!)
But since we were in short of time as semester exams ahead, so we decided to sacrifice some quality, and go for VCD. The next successful attempt to make it more user-friendly and taking off the quality comes up when we realized that in the DVC, there were some gaps(of few seconds at few places)... the software stopped at the first gap, which was seen at around 4 minutes. No matter that it has bothered to give second option, no matter it should have ripped in tracks. Then it encoded and burnt the CD...
so at our first run we got a VCD of length 4 minutes!!! As a solution we thought, we should fill the gaps... so we started doing that, in the mid way we thought it won't work, because the camera timer was still behaving the same way.

Then comes the bond.... linux

Among the 3 systems available for us, only one was having firewire port, but this with a linux system that was unbootable. With few unsuccessful attempts to boot it, we decided to go live cd's way. And booted the system into Ubuntu drapper drake.
Installed dvgrab on live machine. Connected the firewire cable and created a test video of 4 and half minutes.
this does the job

# nice -n 19 dvgrab
// Running dvgrab at almost highest priority

This gave a a 986MB avi file, dvgrab-001.avi
I was thrilled when Kazim told me that this is better then the quality produced by that software.

Then comes my knowledge of linux and videos....
I used mencoder to encode that video at 2000Kbps mpeg4, 128 bit audio to get almost lossless copy of it, and to surprises, the size reduces to 65MB(as expected). This will suffice

$ mencoder dvgrab-001.avi -oac lavc -ovc lavc -lavcopts -acodec=mp2:abitrate=128:vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=2000 -noskip -o myVid.avi

In almost 2 minutes, it will do the job to give just a replica of the raw video.

So... the moral of the story, again... the free tools together wins over some propriety softwares, and those which are being shipped with such a widely used appliance.
This time i must say, sony needs to do a lot in providing a software, worth enough to be shipped with a product costing 20000 INR.

Getting internet up on the roam...

2007-11-14T00:12:00.001-08:00

So... what about accessing internet on the roam?
Why So? All knows, that the internet lines are static, and the wireless networks are not always present! We find a network if we are in South X area, but is it like, i work only when i am in South X area??? No na...
The fact is that, in India mobile networks are always there... Checking for the small list of providers giving internet on cell phones, the list seems to be big...
Idea India Ltd.
Vodafone IN
Orange IN
Spice
Airtel - Postpaid
Tata Indicom
Reliance India
MTNL Dolphin
BSNL CellOne

And almost all of them provides support on the roam , some of them even provides support on non home network areas.
So why not exploiting the resource? But before that there are some pre-requisites...
1. Check for the GPRS/EDGE support for the internet... ask you customer care to start the service for you.
2. Get the access point name.
3. Get a bluetooth ready for your computer, and certainly you need to have a modem supported phone.
4. A PC running GNU/Linux.
/* Please note, wireless carriers have a high access fee, so its better to ask for data plans from the provider */

So the method is simple, a 5 min delicious recepie...
   /* Installation of the tools is not the part of this tutorial, however they are available by default in almost all the latest distros */
/* All commands as root */

Start by searching your device as:
# hcitool scan
Note down the MAC address of the device.

Now you need to determine the channel of communication
# sdptool browse <mac address>
This will show you the list of services for the remote device, find the channel number of the dial up networking service.

now edit /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf and add these lines...
rfcomm1 {
        bind yes;
# replace mac address in the next line
        device 00:16:BC:F1:7D:B3;
# replace channel number, 2 in my case
        channel 2;
        comment "For Internet";
}

Now restart bluetooth as
# /etc/init.d/bluetooth restart

The final step...
Edit /etc/wvdial.conf as:

[Dialer Defaults]
Modem = /dev/rfcomm1
; replace internet with the access point name that you got from your provider
Init1 = at+cgdcont=1,"ip","internet"
Phone = *99#
Username = ss
Password = ss
Stupid mode = 1
New PPPD = yes

Now to dial the internet, just give this command, the above is a one time process...
# wvdial
<Ctrl + C to disconnect>

Tech goes non-tech at Kashmir...

2007-11-12T02:21:00.001-08:00

This publication is all about my visit to Kashmir .
A 6 day time-killing trip... So no tech this time. And how can it be, when i was away from my system for that big time, and for sone par suhaga, in Kashmir no mobile network gives support, be it your home network... forget GPRS. Again my keyboard is not working properly, the keys from 1 to 0 are not working. Now dont say how i typed 'em, they r there on numpad as well. 8-) so no exclamations.
Starting from the very beginning, my trip along with my family and one of my fathers friend's family started our journey from New Delhi Railway Station, boarded the platform at 8:30 in "Jan Sampark Kranti Express" of Northern Railways Network. As expected the train travel ends in the morning at Jammu Tavi Railway Station and the big one started. Fortunately we were 11 together, so we arranged a 14 seater bus from BRO. BRO is Border Road Organisation, Govt. of Jammu and Kashmir. The very first thing anyone may notice is the security. I mean 3 salutes to Indian Army. Just see the fences, walls, gaurd towers. Its NH-1A, ans still so high security, with an Army Base after every 50 KM or so, and eagles eye may notice they are of BSF and CRPF. Now please dont comment that i m praising myself, because i m doing the same. LOL 8-) .
10 1/2 Hrs of Mountainous journey, my recommendation for those who have not been there, prefer flight. Hell will follow. The time the bus took the first stoppage, my condition was really bad, it was like - i was waking drunk. Really believe me, mountainous paths are really difficult to bear. Even though i've been on mountains a couple of times, but this time... it was a long journey. Finally after shaking ourselves a lot, we reached Srinagar, fortunately this place is a valley, so all plains. Now a paragraph deserves on the first view of Kashmir.
Border comes just after a 2500m tunnel in the late 80 percent of journey. The vally is almost a big city with mountains all around. Sun rises at 9, so u can imagine the view. A lake called as Dul lake is in the middle with a radius of 11 Kms, so a big one. And a whole round highway around the lake. The lake has got something new, house-boats. I've seen them on TV's only, but this time, we were dropped directly to a place having house boats.
Now the big night. The first day, as we were dropped by the bus at the AbiGuzar, central market... we noticed an amazing thing. The markets at Kashmir gets closed at 6. Kya, At 6?? Yes. Its true. At Delhi we start at this time. Anyways then we had a houseboat, which starts sinking at 3AM. The worst experience of Kashmir. Think, someone wakes you up at this very time from bed with outside temperature of -2 degree C, that too without the over coats and jackets. Eeeeeeee. So in the morning we shifted to a hotel, Hotel Sheeza. Not because the houseboat sinks, but some of FEMALE persons with us were not satisfied with the feel of house-boat. They had problems with the passage to the boat. And the sinking was not a matter of concern, it happens to the very best of them, 3/10000 ship sinks. So were we lucky that we saw that, or were we nuts that we had to face that. Maybe LUCKY.
Then next morning the first thing that we saw was the place, where there was a counter attack with terrorists few days back. Most of must have seen that in the NEWS. This is the city center with a GHANTA-GHAR in the middle. Now what follows is a brief description of the places we've seen there.

Shalimar Garden: Everyone has seen this, just turn back an old 10 Rs note, the picture in it is the same. Amazing na.
Nishat Baag: Now this is the first time i've realized that Kashmir is correctly known as "Heaven on Earth".
Gulmarg: Best known for ice-skewing. But since we were there in off-season, no skewing. Again this is the place most of us have seen... where? On the computer, wallpapers. With the first view i realized the place. I've myself seen it thousand times, unknowingly, that it is this place.
Dul Lake: The best of Kashmir comes from here. A lake in the middle, with mountains all around. One word... WOW. To add a sense royalty, boats called as "shikara" ply in it. We had a roam in it, and it lasted for 2 and half hours, again there itself we did water-skewing... just amazing
Pari Mahal: A garden in steps, from where the whole Kashmir seems to be a plate of food.
Botanical Garden: A garden of Pine trees.
Chasme Shahi: This was the first time i had seen a chashma, a chashma is a small opening in the earth from where water comes out continuously. The sweetest water, after aab-e-zam-zam, as i've considered. The surroundings were so beautifully designed that... again WOW.
And a lot of small things here and there.

Then after six days, back to home with same way... but this time... in the mountainous regions, i was so badly ached, that i vomited twice in the way. But this is ok, i felt really good after that. So again a sincere advice... avoid such travel.
And this fits perfectly.... "Kashmir - the only heaven on this earth"

--
Shamail Tayyab
shamail [at] inbox.com
4 2 3 2 4 9 9 9 9 9 - 1 9 + (right to left without spaces)
<<Bringing Linux and Mobiles one step closer>>
Blog at: http://tuxatwork.blogspot.com

Mount 3230/s60 phones on Linux

2007-10-29T12:25:00.001-07:00

Think, if u can mount your symbian series s60 based phone on linux!!
Here is a simple way on how to....
>> For this exercise i m considering nokia 3230 and connected via bluetooth on Debian GNU/Linux 4.0...
// Note: No data-cable connection is available on s60 v2 phones, however other modes can be used.

U need:
   Kernel support for nfs
   p3nfsd
   p3nfs sis for mobile phone
Get them from http://www.koeniglich.de/p3nfs.html
Note: Installation is beyond the scope of this tutorial.

First find the MAC address of the device, the phone
# hcitool scan
Scanning ...
        00:16:BC:F1:7D:B3       Shamail

Now pair the devices and start the nfs server on the phone.

Now edit /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf like this:
rfcomm0 {
        # Automatically bind the device at startup
        bind yes;

        # Bluetooth address of the device
        device 00:16:BC:F1:7D:B3;       # replace the device address here

        # RFCOMM channel for the connection
        channel 13;

        # Description of the connection
        comment "p3nfsd";
}

now 3 more commands and u r through...
# rfcomm bind rfcomm0
# mkdir /mnt/phone
# p3nfsd -series60 -tty /dev/rfcomm0 -dir /mnt/phone
p3nfsd: version 5.19, using /dev/rfcomm0 (115200), mounting on /mnt/phone
p3nfsd: to stop the server do "ls /mnt/phone/exit". (pid 14046)

# ls /mnt/phone/E\:/
Images muvee clips Nokia Others private Sounds System Videos ZipMan

Here are the memory card contents, on a mounted filesystem!

Enjoy!

Linux terminal on phone!!!

2007-10-29T12:21:00.001-07:00

Here is the biggest of all the time, and one of my burnig desire to do so...

Can u imagine your phone running a Linux Terminal....
Can u furtur imagine, this shell is your own PC's shell...
Can u step furthur and imagine that this shell is not running over GPRS data, instead via BlueTooth.

Here is how i achived this on our Nokia 3230's...
(Make sure... this is not only 3230, u can make it work 4 u on ant phone that supports BlueTooth and is capable of running PuTTY)

How???
        The trick involved is tunneling of IPv6 connection used by Bluetooth to IPv4 connection and then makin the phone use this conn as the internet access point. This way u not only get the remote access to ur phone but also internet connectivity on phone using your PC's internet conn and not on the cost of service provider.

Bounced???
What follows is Symbian special explaination on how to achieve this...

What u need?
1) A PC Running Linux (Ha ha)
2) A SmartPhone
3) GnuBox, Bluz, Bluz-Utils, Gnome-bluetooth etc
4) PuTTY for you phone ( s2putty.sourceforge.net for s60 devices)

A simple How-To (however not so simple if u try to investigate using hit-and-trial):
        - Install GNU-BOX and PuTTY on phone
        - Dont run it
        - Now make a new connection with these specifications:
                Conn Name: Bt
                Bearer: Data Call
                Dial-up no: 00000000 (any no that is not dialable)
                Authentication: Secure
                Rest as default
        - Pair your phone with Linux and make it authorised.

Now PC part (all the commands need root priv.)
        - Make sure there is no such device /dev/rfcomm0, if yes then:
                # rfcomm release /dev/rfcomm0
        - Find the MAC address of the phone as
                # hcitool scan
        - Say u got 00:16:BC:F1:7D:B3
        - Try pinging your phone over IPv6 to make sure u can communicate as:
                # l2ping 00:16:BC:F1:7D:B3
        - Now make a virtual channel of communication as
                # sdptool add --channel=3 SP
        - Bind the device as
                # rfcomm bind 3 00:16:BC:F1:7D:B3 2
        - Start the bluetooth dial up networking daemon as
                # dund -n --listen --channel 3 --msdun noauth 192.168.1.1:192.168.1.2 crtscts 115200 lock --encrypt
        - Where 192.168.1.1 is the local IP and 192.168.1.2 is the IP that will be assigned to phone

Back to phone part:
        - Make sure BlueTooth is running.
        - Start gnubox.
        - 2box bluetooth -> serial port
        - Now it should not disp the phone no as given when defineing the access pt.
        - Install -> create records
        - Debug -> bring up IF
        - this should start the connection and connect via BT treating PC as server
        - On PC u'ld see something like this:
                dund[2974]: New connection from 00:16:BC:F1:7D:B3
                Using interface ppp0
                Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/rfcomm0
                local IP address 192.168.1.1
                remote IP address 192.168.1.2
        - Meaning conn is complete.
        - Now u should be able to ping your phone over IPv4 as:
                # ping 192.168.1.2
        - Now fire PuTTY and open 192.168.1.1 with your local username and enjoy the shell on the phone
        - Not only this, using HTTP connection mode u can use the phone to surf the net using PC's data.

My First Blog

2007-10-29T11:34:00.001-07:00

This is my first blog at blogger, since the blog is all about mobile and linux, so why not writing it from mobile itself!
So here it comes from my very own mobile phone....
Its easy, just mail it to go@blogger.com
Try yourself.... and go mobile!

--
Shamail Tayyab
shamail [at] inbox.com
4 2 3 2 4 9 9 9 9 9 - 1 9 + (right to left without spaces)
<<Bringing Linux and Mobiles one step closer>>
Blog at: my.opera.com/pleomax00/blog
$1$29M2A$zTS8baerM42dHVaGwxQdW.