Fedora 12 on HP Pavilion dv6340eu

Atlast the day has come, LINUX running on my laptop(pre-loaded with M$ VISTA). Time for celebrations.

So I decided to drop a post on how the journey took place towards installing and using LINUX in my laptop. Initially I faced a serious problem, which LINUX flavour to use ... UBUNTU or FEDORA (sorry these are only my preferred flavours for long time). I got UBUNTU successfully running on my old desktop, on my sister's latest desktop and some more desktops of friends. I got FEDORA running successfully on my SERVER and other desktops. I never tried or used LINUX flavours on a LAPTOP (as I see communities filled with posts saying problems with LINUX on their laptops) so I have to choose one ...

Atlast I decided to go with FEDORA 12 .. not sure why I dumped UBUNTU over FEDORA ... but since I am comfortable with FEDORA as I work more with FEDORA .. and FEDORA 12 got many new open-source technologies and pre-packed with latest kernel in the market (Hmm I agree that a UBUNTU release is 6 months older to a FEDORA release). But still I love UBUNTU :)

Laptop Specs
HP Pavilion dv6340eu (2007 European model)
AMD Turion 64 X2 processor,
1GB RAM (really insane),
NVIDIA GEOFORCE 7200M graphics card,
BROADCOM wireless chipset and other HP stuff.

Off the Road ... M$ VISTA
Boot up and complete M$ VISTA loading takes around 10 to 15 minutes (low RAM might be the cause) until then don't even think of opening any other application it will mess up. Sometimes I use a NOKIA mobile to connect to WIRELESS GPRS INTERNET of AIRTEL and it requires PC-SUITE software from NOKIA. Apart from this inorder to protect myself from viruses and online threats I need a third party security application(s) like ANTIVIRUS, FIREWALL (resource hogs on 1GB RAM machine running M$ VISTA). Even in idle state more than 60% of the RAM is always busy and processor(s) utilization is always more than 50%. I faced strange problems on M$ VISTA with External harddisks .. when I use "safely remove hardware" option and then disconnect the hardware it always pop up message saying some information might be lost ... eventhough I wait for sometime to disconnect them?? and it really messed up my external storage devices many times.

Back to the Road ...
I decided to go with a 32 bit FEDORA OS installation ... after seeing many problems reported with 64 bit OS when compared to 32 bit OS. Downloaded a LIVECD and installed FEDORA 12 in dual boot without any hiccups ... that's a plain install no magic spells or hacking cheats used :). Voilla great its really simple on my laptop.

Automatic reboot of laptop once the installation is complete and booted in FEDORA12 ... Wow it just took less than 2 minutes to boot up completely ... RAM and CPU usage has been drastically reduced.

I connected my NOKIA mobile to laptop and it is detected automatically. I created a new wireless broadband connection under my subscriber AIRTEL and it simply connected like a charm. Damn who needs NOKIA PC-SUITE crap for connecting to internet. I am not using any of the fancy COMPIZ stuff and simply using the NOUVEAU drivers for my graphic cards. My wirelan connection is also working like a charm no drivers from HP or any third party stuff.

Problems in Journey ..
Small usage problems with openoffice ... as my brain is corrupted with M$ OFFICE. Eventhough LIVE CD is downloaded recently it has got many security updates and patches (around 412 I guess .. of 300MB) to be downloaded from internet ... I wonder why don't they update the FEDORA build atleast once in a month with latest patches :(. Livecd doesn't have any compilers for C, C++, Java and so on and they have to be updated from internet :(. Fedora by default has music/movie players but none of them have any codecs to play a normal MP3 file (hmm licensing problems)...

Seems there are some problems with power management .. as my laptop makes me feel as if it is burning ... My harddisk temperature is at 60'c and processor cores are above 65'c eventhough internal fans are running at full speed.

After all the problems and happiness I decided to drop this post in BLOGGER from a LINUX machine ... my FIRST one. Now my laptop proudly carry the logo of FEDORA on its chest.


Update 1: Do check Fedora 12 common bugs before you install Fedora 12 on your machine - https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Common_F12_bugs

Update 2: Integrated Webcam is still not working .. looking for workarounds.

Update 3: Do not use Nvidia Proprietary drivers replacing NOUVEAU drivers. Atleast I am seeing a system crash after update. Raised a bug at https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=594439 and waiting for the real reason behind the crash and any workarounds.

Hmm ... haven't found any solution until now ... Only solution available is REINSTALL OS again ... stupid workaround. Why should I stuck with FEDORA 12 which seems to be crappy .. UBUNTU 10.04 with 5 years of support here I come.

Update 4:BYE BYE FEDORA 12 .... I am really disappointed by the support and help provided by Fedora Community.

CERN's LHC is also powered by GNU/LINUX

Everyone knew about Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Experiment (a snip at $10 billion) conducted by CERN.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world's largest and highest-energy particle accelerator complex, intended to collide opposing beams of protons or lead, two of several types of hadrons, at up to 99.99 percent the speed of light.

CERN played a pivotal part in the evolution of the internet we know and love today. Tim Berners-Lee invented the hypertext link when he was working at CERN as an independent contractor in the 1980s. He saw the opportunity to link his hypertext to the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Domain Name System (DNS) The rest, as they say, is history.

Berners-Lee designed the first web browser, built the fist server and the first website was launched at CERN in August 1991. And he gave away world wide web to the world as a gift for Free.

CERN is home to not only a spirit of free enquiry, but to the use of free software itself. For starters CERN’s 20,000 servers use GNU/Linux. In fact they developed their own version of Scientific Linux (SL), a recompiled version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, in conjunction with Fermilab and other labs across the world.


Coming to LHC experiment, LHC will output data on a truly massive scale that threatens to simply overwhelm the bandwidth of the current web: it is reported that the experiment will produce one gigabyte of data every second and that deluge requires a whole new way of handling data and distributing petabytes of information.

To solve that problem CERN came up with the Grid. This is being seen widely as the future of the web. Two large bottlenecks have been identified: the shortage of IP addresses and bandwidth. The former is being solved with the introduction of IPv6 which should render addresses virtually inexhaustible. As the number of users and web-enabled devices grows however and the web churns out more and more data, the other choke point therefore becomes bandwidth. CERN’s solution is The Grid.

The primary architecture of the computing grid is the “TIER” and there are three of them: 0, 1 and 2. The first centres on CERN itself, the second covers various sites across Asia, Europe and North America and the third is represented by individual labs, universities and private companies. Tier 0 - capable of managing up to 10 gigabytes per second across fibre optic cables. Checkout ZDNet's video on CERN's 3D digital camera.


CERN’s choice of GNU/Linux is no one off. To manage such a vast data output from the LHC some controlling software was required to manage the petabytes of data for users sitting at their computers across the world on the computing grid and GNU?LINUX is the best option for it. Users need to access the data transparently even though it is sitting on geographically disparate servers housing those petabytes. It is the opensource community that plays a great role in all the scientific experiments as well as in new innovative stuff. It is quite clear that even if it is a Super computer or a billion dollar Scientific Experiment or a new innovative technology it is the opensource community and GNU/LINUX that comes for the rescue rather than the propreitary stuff.

Actual link where you can have much more information about this topic is at this link.

Calculate Time in Linux

Calculating time in LINUX in milliseconds and Seconds. We should include sys/time.h header file and the remaining sample code is

struct timeval start;

we wil be using gettimeofday system call whose syntax is
int gettimeofday(struct timeval *tv, struct timezone *tz); where

struct timeval
{
time_t tv_sec;···············/* seconds */
suseconds_t tv_usec;······/* microseconds */
};


/* To calculate time in seconds*/

gettimeofday(&start, NULL);
starttime = start.tv_sec + start.tv_usec/1000000;

/* To calculate time in milliseconds*/

gettimeofday(&start, NULL);
starttime = start.tv_sec*1000 + start.tv_usec/1000;

Running Linux from a USB Drive

I successfully installed LINUX on my kingston Datatraveller 2GB USB and it worked quickly and flawlessly.

Things Needed to Begin

1. USB Storage Device - (256mb or larger recommended using USB 2.0)


2. PC that can boot from a USB Device (check your BIOS or your User Manual)


3. Damn Small Linux (DSL) Distro


4. Syslinux 3.11


5. HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool
   

Formatting The USB Storage Device

1. Insert your USB Storage Device into an empty USB slot on your PC


2. Download and Install the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool. Once the usb disk storage format tool is installed, run it


3. Use the following settings in the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool
1. Device: The name and capacity of your storage device
2. File system: FAT
3. Volume label: Name it what you want (I chose LINUX)
4. Confirm the Format by clicking Yes.
5. Once the Format is complete it will give you a list of information about the file system, volume, etc. about your device. Click OK.
   

Extracting Necessary Files

1. Download and Extract the Damn Small Linux distro (dsl-4.2.4-embedded.zip) to your USB device using Win-Zip or any extraction software.


2. Download and Extract all the files from syslinux-3.11 to a folder named Syslinux on your primary hard drive (mine is C:)


3. In Command Prompt type cd c:\syslinux\win32 (substitute c: for the drive letter of your hard drive) and Press Enter


4. Type syslinux.exe -f F: (F: reprents the drive letter of my USB Device. Yours may be different. GET THIS RIGHT). Press Enter.


5. Exit from Command Prompt
   

Booting to Linux

Keep your USB Device plugged in and Reboot your PC. Enter your BIOS setup (usually by pressing F2 or DEL) and set your Boot order to boot from the USB Device First. Exit your BIOS and Save the Changes. Since there are MANY different BIOS you must figure out on your own if your PC supports booting from USB.

Voilla it works fine for me

REFERENCES
1. http://www.althack.com/

Javascript Router Scanner

I just came across a fascinating work of Gareth Heyes ......... on Router Scanner written using JAVASCRIPT ............. that's a great news i am ready to get my hands dirty by trying out this scanner .......... and it is a OPENSOURCE stuff .... so we can simply start working on code

check out the link http://www.businessinfo.co.uk/labs/lan_scan/lan_scan.php