Madhav Kobal (You cannot afford to ignore Linux)

Dear All, Thanks for regular visiting to my blog. To make the things better, I am migrating the blog to wordpress.com domain. My blog URL will be http://madhavkobal.wordpress.com. Happy Linuxing and keep visiting.......... :-)

The browser wars are heating up again. Microsoft's touting the improved performance and security of Internet Explorer 8 , dozens of new Firefox extensions are released every day, and, according to Apple, Safari 4 will be even faster than its speedy predecessor. Meanwhile, Opera just keeps chugging along at version 9.64, with version 10 beta 3 now available. Just a few weeks ago, Google announced its plans to create an operating system based on Chrome . Considering that the browser itself is barely a year old, such plans may be premature. Then again, maybe not. But for right now, I'll keep looking for ways to make the Chrome browser more useful. Last June, I described ways to change Chrome's default settings . Here's a look at ways to revamp the browser's interface and access some of its useful hidden features. Themes perk up Chrome's drab interface Google is famous for its no-frills look, which describes the default Chrome interface as well. You can spiff th...

Just use the default GNU tools tar, split and cat. There is absolutely no need for any fancy gui tools or software that you have to run in Wine! Just type the following in a console window: tar cvzf - filename.iso | split -d -b 700m - filename.iso.tar.gz . This wil produce the following files: filename.iso.tar.gz.1 filename.iso.tar.gz.2 filename.iso.tar.gz.3 ... Burn to CD with your favorite burner, one file per disk. Then later if you want to restore the iso, first copy all the parts in one directory, and then type cat filename.iso.tar.gz.* | tar xvzf - That will give you back your original ISO. I needed this a few days ago for a >10G backup that I wanted to put on a FAT32 external drive (maximum file size: 2G). Worked like a charm! If you are concerned with space, replace the 'z' option in tar with 'j', and replace 'gz' in the filenames with 'bz2'. Bz2 compression is usually a bit better than gz compression, but it's slower. And if you really wa...

One of the things I like about Linux is the command line. I have used nautilus, gnome-commander, konqueror, kommander, dolphin and thunar to manage files in Linux and these file managers are great for what they do. But there are times when one simply wants to find a file when working on the command line without having to open a GUI application. From the find man page: GNU find searches the directory tree rooted at each given file name by evaluating the given expression from left to right, according to the rules of precedence until the outcome is known at which point find moves on to the next file name. Find empty directories: find /path -depth -type d -empty Find empty files: find /path -depth -type f -empty Find a file with a specific name: find /path -name name_of_file Find a files with specific extensions: find /path -name "*.given_extension" Find files with specific permissions which have a ".txt. file extension: find /path -name '*.txt' -perm 644 Find files ...

Consider this scenario. I am connected to the internet using a cable modem. And my ISP dynamically allocates the IP address to my machine. But they also store the MAC address of my ethernet card and associate it with the IP address they provide. Suppose I change my NIC(or my machine), I will not be able to log on to the net because my ethernet card has a different MAC address than the one stored in thedatabase of the ISP. The immediate short fall of this is that, I have to contact my ISP through telephone and request them to reset the MAC address table (or what ever) in their database to point to my new MAC address. So if I knew my old MAC address, I could easily fool the ISP to think that I am using the original machine by setting the MAC address of my new machine to the old value. And I could save myself a telephone call. # ifconfig eth0 down # ifconfig eth0 hw ether 00:80:48:BA:d1:20 # ifconfig eth0 up # ifconfig eth0 |grep HWaddr

Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures Automatically inserts HTML signatures into your Gmail messages based on which address you are sending from. Supports up to four signatures for each address you have set up. Works for Compose Message and Reply/Forward. This extension for Firefox automatically inserts HTML signatures into your Gmail messages based on which address you are sending from. Works for Compose Message and Reply/Forward. Features: Works for Compose Mail, Reply, and Forward Support for single or multiple email addresses Create a different signature for each email address you use in your Gmail account Supports up to four signatures per address Real-time signature preview while editing signature HTML Signature automatically inserted into message above (or optionally below) quoted text Support for special characters Easy setup and configuration interface

This comes in very handy if your trying to track back when you had last run something. To enable it just simply add export HISTTIMEFORMAT="%h/%d - %H:%M:%S " to your .bashrc file echo 'export HISTTIMEFORMAT="%h/%d - %H:%M:%S "' >> ~/.bashrc Then reload your .bashrc source ~/.bashrc Now when you run history you should get a output similar to the one below 502 Aug/12 - 13:48:31 tail -f /home/duffy/log/access.log 503 Aug/12 - 13:49:01 echo hello 504 Aug/12 - 13:49:24 more /var/log/syslog Some other bash history tips The best way of finding something quickly in your bash history is simply by pressing ctrl+r and then typing out the start of the command it will auto complete it with any matches found in your bash history If you don't want to save duplicate commands in your bash history simply add export HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth to your .bashrc echo 'export HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth' >> ~/.bashrc If you want to change the leng...

A few months ago, I posted here a tutorial on downloading or saving Flash/YouTube Videos on Linux the easy way. If the previous instruction is really difficult for you to grasp, then you should read this latest entry very carefully :-) Because now I'm going to show you how in the simplest way possible you can download a YouTube video plus convert it at the same time. --So easy that the only requirement is a web browser (no need for add-ons) and probably .01% of your brain. So let's get down to business: Step 1: Visit YouTube and select a video to watch. Step 2: In the URL address box, type pwn before " youtube ", and press enter: Step 3: You will then be redirected to deturl.com where you will be presented with two download links. One is an FLV file and the other one is an MP4 file for the happy iPod/iPhone owners. Step 4: Click on the link of your choice and save the file. Step 5: There's no more step five. Enjoy! :-)

If I would pick the best free and open-source internet television desktop client , it has to be Miro . This awesome application (previously called Democracy Player and DTV) is loaded with great features making the TV experience on your computer a lot more fun and exciting. Miro can play or supports most known video files like Quicktime, WMV, MPEG, AVI, and XVID. But it's more than that, as it also has an integrated RSS aggregator and a BitTorrent client among others. Miro can automatically download videos (like perhaps your favorite podcasts) from thousands of available RSS-based channels. --A lot of them offer free HD videos. You can easily manage your downloads, or instantly play the downloaded videos on Miro's built-in video player. Managing downloads The integrated BitTorrent client is based on libtorrent. By default, LegalTorrents.com is bookmarked in Miro and can be seen at the sidebar. Miro by the way supports the adding of website bookmarks under the “Sites” category. W...

Hailed as the Google Earth killer, Bhuvan is an indigenous mapping system developed by ISRO to focus only on the Indian sub-continent. The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is all set to unveil today its new mapping service Bhuvan -- considered to be a tough competitor to Google Earth and Wikimapia. Bhuvan, which means 'earth' in Sanskrit, will allow users to have a closer look at any part of the subcontinent barring sensitive locations such as military and nuclear installations. Dr G Madhavan Nair, chairman, ISRO will launch the Bhuvan webportal at a function today in the presence of Prithviraj Chavan, minister of state in the Prime Minister's Office. Developed by ISRO, Bhuvan allows users to zoom far closer than the aerial view from a chopper. Bhuvan will be able to deliver high resolution imagery data of the order of five metres. On the other hand, Google Earth shows details up to 200 metres distance and Wikimapia up to 50 metres. Bhuvan will focus only on the I...

XBMC, recursive acronym for “ XBMC Media Center “, is an award winning free and open source software media-player and entertainment hub for all your digital media. Multi-platform, Internationalized, and Localized XBMC is a cross-platform software available for Linux, Mac OS X (Leopard, Tiger, and Apple TV), Microsoft Windows operating-system, as well as the original Xbox game-console. With translations to over 30 languages for a worldwide audience. All versions of course completely free of any adware or spyware. XBMC for Linux XBMC for Mac XBMC for Windows XBMC for Xbox XBMC Live XBMC supports most common audio, video, and image formats, playlists, audio visualizations, slideshows, weather reporting, and third-party plugins. It is network-capable (internet and LAN ). Unlike other applications like Windwos Media Center, or other free-software media center applications like MediaPortal and MythTV , XBMC Media Center has as of yet no PVR TV-recording and EPG TV-Guide functionality o...

You can create VirtualBox virtual machines from command line in 3 easy steps. We will assume Ubuntu 9.10 in the following example. Create new virtual machine: $ VBoxManage createvm --name "Ubuntu 9.10" --register Create virtual hard disk (5 GB): $ VBoxManage createhd --filename "Ubuntu.vdi" --size 5000 --remember Modify virtual machine: $ VBoxManage modifyvm "Ubuntu 9.10" --memory "512MB" --hda "Ubuntu.vdi" --dvd /home/toor/karmic-desktop-i386.iso --acpi on --boot1 dvd --nic1 nat –memory - memory size –hda - specify virtual hard disk –dvd - specify ISO image file –acpi on - enable ACPI support –boot1 - specify boot order –nic1 - network setting Now you can start virtual machine by typing this command: $ VBoxManage startvm "Ubuntu 9.10"

Thanks to two concepts driving the data center today—economy and green computing—server virtualization is a hot topic in the IT world and a lot of hardware and software vendors are offering solutions. Virtualization solutions can have several benefits: they can let you easily migrate a virtual machine from one server to another, and let you provision a virtual as a reproducible clone image for, say,software development and testing. The process for achieving virtualized server consolidation depends on your starting point: If you are designing your system from scratch, you will likely implement virtualization from the ground up. If your system already exists in the physical state, you will probably want to migrate from the physical environment to the virtual one. I refer to the second process as phys...

Linux has become so idiot proof nowadays that there is less and less need to use the command line. However, the commands and shell scripts have remained powerful for advanced users to utilize to help them do complicated tasks quickly and efficiently. To those of you who are aspiring to become a UNIX/Linux guru, you have to know loads of commands and learn how to effectively use them. But there is really no need to memorize everything since there are plenty of cheat sheets available on the web and on books. To spare you from the hassles of searching, I have here a collection of 10 essential UNIX/Linux cheat sheets that can greatly help you on your quest for mastery: UNIX Tutorial for Beginners This is a quick and easy UNIX/Linux tutorial page that is aimed at beginners. It gives a subtle introduction to some of the most important UNIX/Linux commands. CLICK HERE TO VIEW Learning the Shell Aside from showing you how to apply the most basic UNIX/Linux commands, “Learning the Shell’ will te...

Google now offers a gallery of themes for its Chrome browser. (Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET) Google on Tuesday launched a gallery of 29 themes for Google Chrome . But Mozilla, while refraining from sniggering, boasted it's now up to 20,000. Cosmetic changes are, well, cosmetic, but a lot of people like them as a way to add some flair to their machines. Many had been pestering Google to add themes support even though Chrome employs a Spartan user interface without much acreage for artistry. Last week's developer version of Chrome added a "Get themes" button in the Options dialog box, and now Google has flipped the switch to activate the Web page that button points to. The collection of themes includes Legal Pad, Star Gazing, Transparent (it's not, on my Windows XP machine), Dots, and Pencil Sketch. One monochromatic theme called Minimal downloads nearly instantly, but Grass, at 1.3MB, takes more time. Why so large? Themes can come with a backg...

Wine is an Open Source implementation of the Windows API on top of X and Unix.Think of Wine as a compatibility layer for running Windows programs. Wine does not require Microsoft Windows, as it is a completely free alternative implementation of the Windows API consisting of 100% non-Microsoft code, however Wine can optionally use native Windows DLLs if they are available. Wine provides both a development toolkit for porting Windows source code to Unix as well as a program loader, allowing many unmodified Windows programs to run on x86-based Unixes, including Linux, FreeBSD, and Solaris. WineXS allows you to easily configure Wine by installing and removing software, editing the registry, managing files, and more. Install WineXS in Ubuntu first you need to download the file from where you want to run this installation in this example i am using /home/user $cd /home/user $wget http://tsx.nl/files/winexs-1.4.2.tgz Now you need to extract .tgz file using the following command $tar x...

1. Introduction This article will describe a configuration of Virtual Private Network connection by using an OpenVPN application. Firstly, you will be exposed to some basic theory behind Virtual Private Networks. Then, the article will guide you with step-by-step instructions on how to setup a OpenVPN virtual private network by using Symmetric Key Encryption and Public Key Encryption. This article is meant for everybody who possesses a basic knowledge of linux administration and networking. 2. Why VPN If you work in IT industry, it is very common that you do not use only a single computer sitting on your work desk, but you also utilize other systems connected to the same local area network. As long as you are sitting on your office chair this approach should not be a problem. However, this situation can become complicated once you are in hurry, and therefore, you need to take some of your work home. You are able to take you company laptop with you, but to fully utilize company resource...