Microsoft Windows Linux

Linux on Windows

It's 2021 and we've seen the world-wide COVID-19 pandemic.. and now I discovered Windows Sub-system for Linux, yes, Windows support for Linux. Guess it took a global pandemic for Microsoft to get Linux run on Windows!

Well, it's not really Linux, and for purists, this is more of an emulation, kind of like docker, but for Windows. However it feels fast and almost native. Good enough to support most user-mode programming languages out there. The support started from Windows 10 version 20262, so to get started, install Windows 10 and keep upgrading until this version is reached.

Multi-protocol Google Talk, Facebook Messenger on Pidgin with App passwords

With the new control in privacy across the social media websites, multi-protocol chat clients like Pidgin have had some tough times. This post aims to solve the problem with tools from this new era of the privacy conscious Web. For those who are unaware, Pidgin, is a chat client which aggregates most social media protocols like XMPP (Gtalk), Jabber, Facebook, ICQ, IRC, into one compact interface.

 

We'll go through this blog, the process to add app-passwords in Google and Facebook so that it works with Pidgin.

Google Talk App Password Generation:

Sign in here: https://myaccount.google.com/apppasswords

Step 1, select the app

 

Step 2: Use Other (custom name)

 

Step 3: Give a name,  I already have pidgin, so used this, for you, use "Pidgin" and click on generate.

 

Step 4: After generating you will get this window, copy the app password

Step 5: Use the generated password in Pidgin with your Gmail username as usual.

Now for Facebook App password generation.

Step 1: Open facebook settings

 

Step 2: Go to security and Login

Step 3: Scroll down to App Passwords under Two-factor Authentication and click on generate an App Password

Step 4: Apply similar steps and use a name for this after entering your password for additional authentication, if any.

 

Step 5: Use the generated password in Facebook app in pidgin.

Enjoy!

Install mp4box on centos

Google behaved rather strangely today when I wanted to see how to install "Mp4Box". Yum search gave naught, so I decided to google this. On the hindsight maybe I needed better yum search fu for this.

As I was searching through the ways of installing MP4Box on Fedora / Centos I came up with installation instructions that asked me to build the application from source. Even the official website:  https://gpac.wp.imt.fr/mp4box/ provides no explanation on how to do it. They just have the official windows, debian and ios installers. It also offers an explanation to build from source on other linux-es.

While all this confusion is going round, the dude who had the requirement to simple and install gpac, since that is the name of the project! Well, guess what, it worked. So, here's how you install MP4Box on Fedora or CentOS :

Removing CLOSE_WAIT connections

Hello folks, just thought I would share something I came with during one fine day at work.

Recently, we faced a problem where there were a lot of CLOSE_WAIT connections on our server which caused a variety of issues on the server. It seemed like there was a bug in the application (a java based app) but hunting it down was a pain, fixing it would also take a long time. Instead what we did, was to restart the application at periodic intervals which seemed to clean up the CLOSE_WAIT connections.

However, we wanted to remove CLOSE_WAIT connections without killing the process. We found that we could do the same with tools like :

• killcx
• cutter
• tcpkill

We tried them out but none of them seemed to be of much use for CLOSE_WAIT connections. So I hacked into the source code of killcx and found this interesting bit of code:

my $packet = Net::RawIP->new({
      ip => {  frag_off => 0, tos => 0,
               saddr => $dest_ip, daddr => $local_ip
            },
      tcp =>{  dest => $local_port, source => $dest_port,
               seq => 10, syn => 1
            }
   });
   $packet->send;

I modified this and wrote this utility that removes all CLOSE_WAIT connections: https://github.com/rghose/kill-close-wait-connections

This seemed to do the trick! Happy hacking.

Logstash undocumented

So I was playing around with logstash for a few days and it frustrated me that their documentation was awful. These guys really need to get someone to write more of the usability of the utility. For those who are not aware of this awesome tool, logstash, please do check out it's homepage. It is used for analysis of log files (in servers in most cases). So what is does is essentially 3 steps:

1. Collects logs by monitoring files or sockets, executing commands, etc. It has a host of input plugins, check out the docs page for a very sparse view.
2. Apply filters on the inputs, modify the way the input looks like eventually.
3. Output filters, dump the data to a socket, webapp, queues, etc. 

Logstash is generally used in cases of elastic search (e.g. kibana) that shows up neat graphs and searching can done in this data as well.

So in my particular case what I was trying to do was send data across to graphite, which just shows the data in a neat graph.

Open Suse Software Repository

Open suse is one of the few Linux based operating systems that have a 1-click web installer. What it does is download a ymp file and yast takes care of importing the gpg files and downloading the required file from the repository.

Since most stuff are not there on the OpenSUSE default repositories, the only site you will ever need is :

http://software.opensuse.org/

Treasure trove of awesomeness!! Try it out.

Solving KDE Freeze

It was after a long time, I decided to install (and use) KDE4 on my desktop. I had always a notion that KDE4 was slow.. especially after trying the initial releases. I was a KDE3.5 person and loved it since Slackware had it. However after trying the latest version available on the Ubuntu (And Hence LinuxMint) repositories, I found my assumption to be pretty flawed!


I installed KDE4 and started it... After a while, the screen made no movements. It froze! Now I put on my debugging hat and started scouring forums for a solution. So here's what I had to do:

Devhelp documentation for C

Standard C Library documentation can be easily found on the command line via the terminal. Do a simple 'man scanf' and you get the entire documentation for the function. This functionality requires the appropriate manual pages to be installed which is part of the standard C library documentation.

Dev-Help is a documentation viewer for GNOME and has various books to be used by developers. Standard repositories of Ubuntu, LinuxMint and Debian contains many devhelp books but a notable exception is the Standard C Library Documentation

Clipboard management

When doing something that requires extensive research or repetitive words that need to be copied over and over again, it is almost tedious to right click and press copy and then right click and then paste. Worse still, is when we are in a console window or a virtual terminal. Here I present some tricks to make the most done work of IT professionals, i.e., copy-pasting, much easier!

Firstly, about a very simple way of copy pasting. While on X (XServer or Xorg or X11, which is the graphics server for *nix based systems), simple select some text with the mouse and then middle click on the destination application window. If your mouse does not have a middle mouse button (for scrolling ones) press the right and left keys simultaneously. Cool huh!

Become a DJ!

There's a lot of things people do with their computers... among them Listening to music is one of my favorites! DJs are people who play with music, remix mixes and create new stuff that is oh-so-cool!

Perhaps some of you already use Virtual DJ, however it is marred with Copyright breach of OpenSource Libraries ^[1]. So here's something good that let's you flanger through your DJ-ing ambitions without making you consult your lawyer!

Indtalling d4x on Ubuntu 10.10

I found d4x to be among the best download managers and accelerators out there working on Linux based systems. It is present in the repositories of dapper, hardy (8.04) and lucid (10.04)... However I am going to install it on my Maverick 10.10 aka Linux Mint 10 system.

The procedure is not very tedious as I just have to got the Ubuntu repository search website and search for my man. There is however one neat trick.

Fixing parcellite on Linux mint 10

Parcellite is a wonderful clipboard manager and enables history of copied items.

It's been a few days I noticed parcellite to be not working... It is starting up and I can see the tray icon but that's about it. There seems to be some problem with the parcellite on the Ubuntu 10 and LinuxMint 10.10 repositories.

So I just headed on the main website of parcellite: http://parcellite.sourceforge.net/ and downloaded the latest debian package from here.

Now it's working just as it should!

Linux Mint Software Properties does not launch

I've been using Linux Mint for a while now, and I get this problem while mixing and matching Ubuntu repos with Mint ones... also because of some critical PPAs for my system (including Intel Graphics Drivers from glascen).


So the problem description goes like this: Software Properties does not launch and we get the following error when trying to launch it from the terminal with sudo software-properties-gtk

Tikona WiMAX Internet Connection Problem

It's been over a month I have been stuck with an odd problem that prevented me from getting online from my Linux boxes. Pretty frustrating. I was stuck with XAMPP and realized how buggy the DevC++ System  was. Okay, let me get to the point.

So apparently Tikona WiMAX changed it's system as it would not acknowledge any DHCP requests made by lines that Advertise 100 Mbps connections. It kept fooling me for so long!

So, one fine day, I found @yagoo on #ubuntu. He pointed me out my system was using Half-Duplex connection.. after a brief diagnosis on my WinXP. He then told me about the mii-tool.

Triple Boot Mac OSX, Windows and Linux

So you want the best of the world installed in your computer? Impatiently found this blog from the depths of the internet... Well then get ready to install a Hackintosh OSX Leopard (Macintosh on an Intel Box), Windows XP and Linux Anything (pretty much any Linux Installer with GRUB will work, for e.g. Ubuntu).

Recovering GRUB2 in Ubuntu 10.10

GRUB is the boot-loader (the software that starts or boots the computer to action when it starts up) used on Ubuntu and various other systems. The latest edition of GRUB is GRUB2. It features better maintainability and automation than it's predecessor. However, some people find GRUB Legacy to be easier to use.

Comparisons apart, GRUB2 can be reinstalled to the computer after it has been removed or deleted by this process:

Fedora and Open Source Event at GCECT, Kolkata

A Fedora and Open Source Event was held at my college (Govt. College of Engg. and Ceramic Tech.) on 2nd February, 2010. I was really excited to meet FOSS experts. However my experience consisted of  a mixed bag of pluses and minuses.

The event was attended by A. Mani,  Abhisekh Jha, Indranil Das Gupta, Jayanta Nath, Proshun Prodhan, Stephanie Das Gupta among others. More details about the event can be found here.

Intel Graphics Card Linux Drivers

Looks like the future is perfect for Intel 845, Intel 855 and Intel 910 graphics chip-sets on Linux.

On my Mint 10 (aka Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick Meerkat)... I was finally able to get all my resolutions and Graphics Acceleration after ages.


Okay, so initially the Framebuffer device (fbdev) was the default graphics device on Ubuntu 10.10 (aka Mint 10) and thus the intel driver is not loaded. In order to force loading the intel driver create the file

/etc/X11/xorg.conf

To create this file you must be root... here's how you could do it:

OSS on Linux Mint 10

 Finally a relief! The Mint 10 based on Ubuntu maveric meerkat proved useful to me as I could install OSSv4.

Firstly, an introduction on OSSv4 is required. OSS or Open Sound System was developed by 2 hackers, who feel the current scene in Linux Audio is pathetic and also feel that they are not bound to be ruled by the GPL only. They have come up with an audio solution for *nix based systems (works on Linux, Solaris, BSD and other nix-es) that, judging from sound quality and mixing capabilities is much better than ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture). True, ALSA is far more advanced in terms of harware support and general integration, but take a look at OSS! It is coming to terms with the real world and now has an experimental USB sound driver included. Bluetooth would not be far behind, and well, it would really close the gap between ALSA and OSS.

Games on Linux!

A huge population of students and friends always seem to be relaxing with their computers once in a while.. I relax with a heavy dose of C/C++ or PHP ... :D


However, I was referring to the general 'normal' population that aims to play games and chill out. Even experienced and seasoned experts 'know', Games and Linux do not mix. So what do I do? I blog!