[ilugd] [COMMERCIAL] Wanted: Senior Systems Engineer (3+ years)
Dear all, We have an opening for a Senior Systems Engineer, 3+ experience, based in Mumbai. This person will be spending most of his/her time working in our product development team. Our software product is primarily a messaging and server monitoring system, plus optional modules for network monitoring, firewall integration, etc. The product works on Linux and Unix platforms; all our customers for this product so far have been on the Linux platform. In our company, the culture is pretty techie. All users work on Linux desktops. Marketing material, product technical reports, letters to regulatory authorities, etc, are almost always done on LaTeX. Income Tax Form 16 is prepared using an XFig template. And so on The selection process will involve a C programming test followed by a personal interview. We will prefer 3+ years of experience but will also look at less experience for exceptional professionals. And please understand that this is not a pure software job, because we don't feel that people who have only done coding can be of much use in our product team. We need someone who will occasionally debug problems on running systems at client sites, so that this insight is incorporated into our product offerings later. And sysadm experience of heavily loaded servers is a big advantage for a role in our product team. Responsibilities: - Software development on system programming-type projects - Installation and troubleshooting for Linux servers, WANs, firewalls, etc - Network, server and DBMS performance analysis and tuning - R D on unfamiliar software, products, protocols Profile desired: - Excellent, not merely good, C programming skills - Thorough knowledge of Perl - Hands-on experience in Linux/UNIX operating systems - Clarity and good understanding of the fundamentals of operating systems, network protocols, and optionally, security issues - Experience in Java will be an added advantage Qualification: - A B.Sc. degree, preferably in physics or math, or - BE/B.Tech/MCA Please can you reply to me with your resume? And it would be nice if the resume is in PS/PDF/plain text. regards, Shuvam Misra -- ___ ilugd mailinglist -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd Archives at: http://news.gmane.org/gmane.user-groups.linux.delhi http://www.mail-archive.com/[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
RE: [ilugd] Enterprise Software Stack across operating Systems
I've I've just witnessed a hot debate in the ILUG Bombay mailing list about whether HTML mail should be banned. I protested, saying that some kinds of formatted text simply cannot be read unless you allow formats other than plain text. Most others didn't agree; they appeared to be purists who wanted only plain text. Your (very useful, incidentally) table is a clear example of something which needs a MIME type other than text/plain. I simply cannot make head or tail of your table, because the lines are wrapping badly. And this list will not allow attachments, and probably will not allow non-text messages too. If you have a copy in HTML or spreadsheet format, can you please send it to me directly by email? rant When the going gets tough, the only way out seems to be to find workarounds around all those well-meaning standards, norms and rules. For instance, I have a Windows partition with MS Office 2000 on my laptop. Can't do without it when it comes to handing over a presentation at a black-suited apex-level corporate conference... OOo simply doesn't generate PPTs compatible enough, and PDF presentations (done using the excellent pdfscreen package in LaTeX) are too plain looking for some audiences. Finally, no one gives you anything because you followed standards, they only appreciate your work if you get the job done. Sigh... /rant :) Shuvam On Tue, 30 Sep 2003, Tarun Upadhyay wrote: All right. All right. I figured out the hard way that I cannot send attachments to the list. So here it is as inline text. Microsoft OSS Commercial Unix Kernel / Base OS Windows 2003 Linux, BSD AIX, Solaris Authentication and Authorization,SSO Active Directory OpenLDAP NDS, sunOne File Services -volume management Volume Manager LVM VeritasManager -distributed DFSSamba, NFS (Client mode) NFS, AFS Database SQL Server Postgres, mysql Oracle Network Services -VPN, FirewallingPPTP, ICF, ISA PPP, S/WAN, iptables Checkpoint -Routing, WANRAS, ICS iproute2 cisco routers -DNS Active Directory bind ? -MailExchange Sendmail, Qmail sunOne messaging +HTTP Services -Application Server IIS, MSMQ, COM+Tomcat, Jboss, Apache Weblogic,MQSeries -Proxy Server ISASquid iPlanet ? -Content Management, PortalsCMSWiki? Plum Tree Application Frameworks .NET J2EE J2EE Network Management SMS,MOMOpenNMS Tivoli, OpenView CollaborationExchange + Outlook ? Domino Business Integration BizTalk? WebMethods,Vitria Let me know your opinions please. Thanks Tarun -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Tarun Upadhyay Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2003 12:31 PM To: 'The Linux-Delhi mailing list' Subject: RE: [ilugd] Enterprise Software Stack across operating Systems ? Ooops. Forgot to attach the list. Here it comes. -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Tarun Dua Sent: Tuesday, September 30, 2003 10:57 AM To: The Linux-Delhi mailing list Subject: Re: [ilugd] Enterprise Software Stack across operating Systems ? On Tue, 2003-09-30 at 03:35, Tarun Upadhyay wrote: Alright, all sysadmins and PHBs. I am only an ignorant self-proclaimed sysadmin who is a PHB by the way. I would welcome any opinions on (yeah my asbestos suit is on): A) any services/features/products that I might have missed. (which estimatedely are used in at least 25% of enterprises) B) any information that you think is factually incorrect in the sheet. The sheet is invisible to me as well. Can you post the link to it. -Tarun Dua http://www.tarundua.net ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Re: two questions
Please keep these jokes outside this list. If you feel that u need to post jokes, then at least mark it as such in the subject line, so that our time is not wasted reading totally useless stuff. Personally, a bit of humour once in a while is welcome. I've been here a few months now, and I don't see the levels of humour as being so high that they impede useful discussion and learning. Just wanted to put in my ten paise worth of comment to defend the original joker. I quite enjoyed this thread. :) As an aside, I feel that all old Unix hands (as against fresh-faced Linux converts and evangelists) always recognized that Unix is a kind of (human) language of its own. Look at lines like the following: - Quick! Check...can you finger me? - Don't ping me, or I'll / your bloody *! - Can you tar it for me? If one can't see the humour implicit in this, one is almost missing the spirit of Unix. In that case, one might as well regress to the world of corporate operating systems like IBM mainframes and VAX/VMS, where commands were always verbose, meaningful, pregnant with significance, and devoid of any tongue-in-cheek anything. In an attempt to build a serious corporate brand image, they ensured you couldn't fault them with a sense of humour. (They were selling to Wall Street, you can't blame them. Black was the only colour of suits allowed.) I saw this latest thread to be a (slightly juvenile) version of that old Unix playfulness which has taught me that playful is not necessarily useless. I for one would like to see this thread of humour remain. Geek humour is usually quite refined humour. This humour makes me feel that there's humour left in this world other than the Cyrus Broacha MTV Bakraa brand of tickle-me-raucous laughter. Makes me feel that I too belong somewhere. Just my ten paise, for what it's worth. :) Shuvam PS: Sorry guys, I have a flaw in my character... tend to get a bit reflective sometimes. Age catching up. :) ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Re: Openoffice 1.1 RCs and other publishing questions
let's have a digital publishing+imaging mailing list on linux-delhi. we discuss digital typography, design, I vote for this with both my hands I would like such a list, of course (it's part of our daily office work, dammit! :)) but I'd also like to extend the scope to include so-called office productivity tools, including how to sort out problems and do a good job with presentation creation tools, spreadsheets, etc. And yes, we should include (though not focus on) compatibilty with MS Office toolsets. I'd _love_ to wipe out my Windows partition from my laptop, but no alternative presentation software on Linux makes presentations totally compatible with (even older) versions of MS PPT. Hope this compatibility concern is not too Real Worldy for most of you. :) Shuvam ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Openoffice 1.1 RCs and other publishing questions
. PDF are usually considered low resolution of what you will be getting. They are only good for previewing. Not necessarily. I think a lot depends on the fonts. PDF files were created (IIRC) to assist creating online formatted documents where file sizes were important. But with the right vector definitions of images and PS fonts, you can have near-arbitrary scale-up from a PDF file. As far as your printer is concerned, I think he is insisting on having a scanned copy of the ad because his software may not import PDF. Ask him if he can use PS files or better still check out if yourself if his software can import PS files. Yes, good advice. :) This guy may not even know how to check, so you'd better do the checking yourself. Again I should point out that if you convert your docs to PDFs and then convert to PS there will be a loss in quality. Not sure how universally true this is. Can you give more details? Shuvam ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Re: Openoffice 1.1 RCs and other publishing questions
Dear Sandip, Another question. The art of document layout and document styles in publications seems to be diffrent profession altogether. Is there any resource which can be looked at to find out more about this field? Huge field, many hundreds of years old. I had the fortune to learn some bits from a person who was an editor of a magazine and personally passionate about typography and typesetting; he used to sit with the printing press chaps when his magazine was composed on old Linotype and Monotype machines. I find typography and typesetting lovely subjects. :) Knuth (author of TeX) apparently had three PhD students doing work in hyphenation algorithms alone. This is how complex the field is. I've not been able to verify this story. :) In general, page composition done by today's computer-literate crowd is of very poor quality. Someone once said that modern WYSIWYG layout tools help you not to follow rules of good typesetting, but to break them. Even among TeX users, I find a lot of blind following of defaults. For instance, people just use Computer Modern, totally unaware of gems like Imprint, Garamond, or Baskerville. This leads to typesetting and font selection which does not reflect the material's content. Of course, in the Windows world, the Times New Roman and the Arial and the default styles are so depressing that the less said, the better. If you can find any online resources, please let me know. regards, Shuvam ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Re: Openoffice 1.1 RCs and other publishing questions
very good question indeed, sandip. the art of document layout, *incorrectly* called desktop publishing, is a specialised profession altogether. the art is called 'typography'. We usually use the word typography to refer to the art and science of font design, and typesetting to refer to the art and science of page composition and layout. In other words, when you begin creating compositions larger than a single letter, it goes beyond the boundary of typography. It's possible that others use typography the way you did... don't know. you could start with some basic googling on 'typography and page-design' or 'typography and page composition' with a few extra keywords, 'introduction' 'learning' 'technique' beginner, etc etc. Check http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=117318tocid=0query=typographyct= as an easy starting point. Shuvam ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Openoffice 1.1 RCs and other publishing questions
i tend to disagree on some issues here. PDF has commoditized postscript, and bridged the 'digital divide' between the advanced users and beginners. as a macintosh user since 1984 i can tell you ... Very interesting. Many things here I didn't know. Thanks. :) I don't have first-hand experience working with full-time with fonts and page composition. Most of my knowledge about professional typesetting and typography is second-hand. Among my friends is one gentleman who has worked for fifteen years with The Economist as a graphic designer and typographer, and has designed the font family used by that magazine today. He is an avid Mac user, he likes Linux and Unix, and says that the Windows implementation of rendering engines, etc, is not up to the mark. He says that even Adobe's packages available on both platforms do their job differently; the Mac version does it better, because of native rendering engine support within the OS. Don't know how it fits in with your experiences. Shuvam PS: It's refreshing to just talk to a few people who appear to know that there's a whole beautiful world beyond MS Word and Pagemaker when it comes to formatted text. :) ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Re: Openoffice 1.1 RCs and other publishing questions
http://directory.google.com/Top/Arts/Graphic_Design/Typography/?tc=1 and http://www.microsoft.com/typography/users.htm Will any Microsoft information repository on any generic (i.e. not Microsoft proprietary) subject be any use? I'd almost expect their typography section to be filled with how after years of original research, Microsoft developed and gifted to humankind the (taran taran taraaa) Times New Roman font. :) And so on... Haven't checked, just asking. Shuvam ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Re: Openoffice 1.1 RCs and other publishing questions
dpi is *not* ppi. ppi is *not* lpi. lpi is *not* dpi. Okay, please explain. By popular demand, if a population of two is large enough for you. :) I would have used dpi and ppi totally interchangeably. Shuvam ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Setting up a FAQ and resource archive manager
We already have the LAP twiki setup. Twiki can be used to handle more than one sites. Why cant we save time and link to a new twiki repository? Fine with me. Shuvam ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Mindmeld knowledgebase instead of FAQ
LL this is GPLed, and could perhaps be looked at as an LL alternative to a usual FAQ that dot the internet on linux LL topics anyways. LL http://mindmeld.sourceforge.net/mmsf/index.php Rather avoid patented technology that is only available on the goodwill of the developers. Ouch. Is this patented technology? So, is Wiki a good idea then? Shuvam ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
[ilugd] Setting up a FAQ and resource archive manager
Dear all, Do the people managing the ILUGD server have resources/time/etc to set up any of these systems? If yes, we can begin collecting material on it, once it is set up. If this is not available, I'll have to look around in Starcom to get this done on our server. I think this question is the next step to be crossed. Let's get this bit clear, and we can move ahead, try to fix a timeline, etc. Shuvam On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, LinuxLingam wrote: forking this discussion into a new thread. Try drupal. http://www.drupal.org - Sandip or plone plone.org LL ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Mindmeld knowledgebase instead of FAQ
this is GPLed, and could perhaps be looked at as an alternative to a usual FAQ that dot the internet on linux topics anyways. http://mindmeld.sourceforge.net/mmsf/index.php Sounds good. For whatever it's worth, I feel that an interactive information gathering tool (where junta can actually write stuff and it gets filed away in a searchable archive) will probably be much better than a traditionally mantained (SGML/XML-based) FAQ. Or we could use Wiki stuff. Can the ILUGD Web server host this? I have access to our company Website, and I am sure Starcom will be glad to host information resources like this. But I thought that if the ILUGD Webserver already has such software installed, or if there are members of the ILUGD admin team who can spare time/effort to install such software, it may help speed up the process. Please let me know what ideas all of you have about getting started. regards, Shuvam ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
RE: [ilugd] Verisign Plays the M$ way
Dear Tarun, The issue of technical problems cropping up due to this also looks exaggerated to me. Clearly, any danger to SMTP servers can not be a concern as they would probably add wildcards for A type record and not MX records. I can't understand the full impact of this problem because I'm not clear what NetSol are doing. But based on my partial understanding of the NetSol modifications, I feel that wildcard A records too will cause problems. All MTAs on the Internet are supposed to search for MX records first, and if no MX records exist, search for A records, and then actually _deliver_ to those records. This much I am quite confident about; I've been hacking Sendmail configs for more than a decade now. Therefore, let's see what the impact is in the old and new scenarios: 1. If the MTA makes a DNS lookup and doesn't get back any response, it retains the mail in the outbound queue, for retry. No change in the new scenario. 2. If the MTA gets a confirmed reply from the DNS query, giving MX records, it tries delivering to the MX servers in sequence and retains the mail in queue if it can't get a connection. This too will not change in the new scenario. 3. If the MTA gets no MX records, but gets a confirmed A record, it will try delivery to this server. If it cannot connect to this server, it retains the mail in its queue for later retry. If it connects to this server, and succeeds, well and good. If it fails, it bounces the mail. No queueing here. THIS IS WHERE the change will probably come. In the old scenario, for valid domain names (e.g. typos), if the recipient's DNS server was slow/dead, then the DNS query would time out, and the MTA would try A record query. That too would time out, and the mail would remain in the outgoing queue. In the new scenario, the sending MTA will try MX record, get no response, then try A record, get the wildcard catch-all A record, and try opening an SMTP connection to it. This will either fail at the connection stage or the (catch-all) recipient server will return an error after looking at the MAIL-FROM and RCPT-TOs. In either case, the sending MTA will bounce the mail back, not keeping it for retries later. I'm not 100% certain that my explanation is correct, but this seems okay. Can somebody more knowledgeable enlighten me on what kind of things I can expect to break because of this from a system administration point of view and how can they be repaired. I don't see how this can be repaired. If your users are sending mail to, say, idbi.co.in (a notoriously slow mail receiving server, BTW), and their DNS responses time out, your users will get their mails back immediately as bounces. Similarly, if someone from outside tries to send mails to your domain, and your DNS server is a bit slow, then the sender will get his mails back immediately, and your users (the intended recipients) will never know that a trivial transient error caused incoming mail to bounce. Oops: technically, idbi.co.in is an incorrect example, this malaise will not affect the country-specific domain hierarchies. (Or will it?) Comments on the correctness of my explanation invited. I need to know how right/wrong this is. (Technically, not ethically or politically, please.) And on a more conceptual note, I feel that this modification, if I've understood correctly, is plain bad engineering. (I'm not referring to the politics and ethics here; those are not subjects I would like to debate at this point.) I think that one of the important conceptual contributions of the relational database model is the incorporation of a NULL value as a legit value for a cell in a table. Ditto, the NaN (not a number) bit-pattern for IEEE standard floating point representations. It is important that an error status or a no-data status be made to look clearly different from legit values. This is what I understand as a necessity for good engineering design. A global wildcard A record violates this. Shuvam ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Verisign Plays the M$ way
As such, I do not accept (spam?) from [EMAIL PROTECTED] With this change, nosuchdoamin.com will seem to exist. The rest is left as an exercise to the reader ;-) The rest is bigger than the bit you've chosen to highlight. :) Shuvam ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
[ilugd] Strange behaviour of device files on diskless Linux
Dear all, I saw some very strange behaviour of device files on Linux recently, thanks to a colleague. Can partly explain it, after all these years working with Unix, but my explanation has holes. I'll explain the phenomenon not as I experienced it, but in brief, so that you don't have to recreate all the experimentation we did at our end to confine and reproduce the problem. :) It appears that if you have a diskless Linux machine, mounting all its file systems over NFS, then the device files that you see on the diskless machine do not hold their modification timestamp, even if a process holds the file open. And this may not be true of all device files, but is true of /dev/tty[0-9]. If you log in on /dev/tty1, for instance, and keep the shell running on that terminal, and do an ls -l /dev/tty1 from another terminal, then you'll see the modification timestamp of /dev/tty1 reflecting the last time you either typed on the keyboard or it displayed anything on the screen (i.e. the last I/O on tty1). At least, this is what should happen, and this is what indeed happens on all disk-ful Linux/Unix boxes. (This is how w gives you the idle time for each terminal session, for instance.) And this happens on a diskless Linux box too, with the /dev/pts/* devices. However, for the /dev/tty[0-9] devices on a diskless Linux box, the timestamp resets itself, after about a second or less. We tried to understand what the timestamp resets itself to. We found that it resets itself to the timestamp of the device inode for that device on the NFS server. This timestamp has not changed in years, because these devices are not accessed by anything on the NFS server; they're just left there for the diskless desktops to mount and use. For instance, /dev/tty1 on our desktop called dc33 is actually mapped onto nfs:/export/linux/dc33/dev/tty1 which is a device file on the local hard disk of the machine called nfs. This situation is really ridiculous, and we really highlighted this ridiculous scenario by doing the following: 1. Log in on tty1 and tty2 of a local diskless desktop. 2. While remaining logged in on tty1, run the following script on tty2: while :; do sleep 1 ls -l /dev/tty1 done 3. Occasionally do some small actions on tty1, like run echo hello or ls, etc. And watch what happens on the continuous output on tty2. And this is what you get: crw--w 1 sanjog tty4, 3 Aug 6 2000 /dev/tty1 crw--w 1 sanjog tty4, 3 Aug 6 2000 /dev/tty1 crw--w 1 sanjog tty4, 3 Aug 6 2000 /dev/tty1 crw--w 1 sanjog tty4, 3 Sep 19 12:43 /dev/tty1 crw--w 1 sanjog tty4, 3 Aug 6 2000 /dev/tty1 crw--w 1 sanjog tty4, 3 Sep 19 12:43 /dev/tty1 crw--w 1 sanjog tty4, 3 Aug 6 2000 /dev/tty1 crw--w 1 sanjog tty4, 3 Aug 6 2000 /dev/tty1 crw--w 1 sanjog tty4, 3 Aug 6 2000 /dev/tty1 crw--w 1 sanjog tty4, 3 Aug 6 2000 /dev/tty1 crw--w 1 sanjog tty4, 3 Sep 19 12:44 /dev/tty1 crw--w 1 sanjog tty4, 3 Aug 6 2000 /dev/tty1 crw--w 1 sanjog tty4, 3 Aug 6 2000 /dev/tty1 crw--w 1 sanjog tty4, 3 Aug 6 2000 /dev/tty1 crw--w 1 sanjog tty4, 3 Aug 6 2000 /dev/tty1 crw--w 1 sanjog tty4, 3 Aug 6 2000 /dev/tty1 As you can see, each time there's any I/O on tty1, the timestamp changes, but it resets to the old value within one second. And I can understand that NFS is stateless, hence the timestamps in the inode on the NFS server are not changed when they change on the NFS client. And I also understand that the NFS server will see the vfs_open() NFS call, but will not see any of the vfs_read() or vfs_write() calls, because, this being a device inode, those calls will be directed to the NFS's client's device driver layer, and not go across the wire to the NFS server. However: 1. The NFS client flushes data to the NFS server once every few seconds, hence the timestamp must get updated on the device file on the NFS server. Why doesn't it? This works fine for normal files and directories. The /dev/tty* files on the NFS server have not had their timestamps updated in three years (that was when we set up our office infrastructure). Why? Does this mean that an NFS client does not even bother to write back its in-core inode copies for device files? 2. The ls running on tty2 and the login session on tty1 are both running on the same diskless machine, hence both are doing the stat() system call on the same inode through the same kernel. The kernel will have its in-core copy of the inode which will have the correct timestamp, irrespective of what is flushed out to the NFS server. Therefore, that in-core copy should show the correct timestamp right through the login session
Re: [ilugd] auto-startup a script, apps, *after* runlevel5
then, i google-searched, and discovered i need to have a hidden script file, .xinitrc in the home directory, which would do the trick. the file did not exist, so i created it. i tried this, and it did not work either. finally, i re-googled and discovered a hidden .xsession file needs to be created in the home directory that handles this. well, that does not work either. What do you mean by that does not work? 1. Does the .xsession script not get executed? 2. Does it get executed but your changes to the file not get executed? BTW, did you make the .xsession executable? as a test, i am only asking the script to launch the konsole, so i know the script is being initialised. i have tried both the 'konsole' command, as well as the 'exec konsole' command. Try something simpler, and certainly _non-GUI_ like: /bin/logger -t fromxsession'['$$']' -p daemon.info .xsession executed Then look wherever your syslogd logs daemon.info logs, for the last two words of the logger command. And the title of your message is a bit confusing. Do you want your script to run at system bootup after init reaches run level 5, or do you want it to run _as_a_particular_user_ after that user has logged in through XDM? Have you checked the xdm manpage? Might give you additional hints about where to hack to test what scripts are executed at what time during login/logout. Shuvam ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] auto-startup a script, apps, *after* runlevel5
before i get into another twisted spin of checking out various permutations, is the .xinitrc file supposed to be a shell script, with the #!/usr/bin/bash line as the first line and the relevant commands following, with the file chmodded to execute, or is it supposed to be a plain file containing the application names and scriptnames to launch, and the .xinitrc file chmodded to execute. It is supposed to be an executable. It could be a shellscript or a binary or a Python executable, but it is supposed to be something with its execute permission set, and which can be triggered by a fork() followed by an exec(). It's _certainly_ not a config file or data file with a list of applications. Shuvam ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Re: ssh and tunneling
so whenever i need to check whether my webpage looks fine (or maybe post it on the net for a few hours) i just ssh to this server, and ask anyone to check this web link !! Umm. So do you or do you not have a real IP from your cable wallah .. if yes then what about running the webserver in a different port? Yes, this seems to be a necessity in other situations too. For small single-office clients with dial-up Internet connections, we had a script (wget-based trivial script) running on each of our clients' mail servers, which would periodically connect to our server (which is in an Internet data centre). This would allow our server to note where (i.e. which IP address) the access came from, and thus keep track of the most recent access for each client, with their dynamic IP address. This is a great help if we need to log in over the Net to fix some problem on their server... he doesn't need to look up and tell us what IP his server is on. Then we discovered the joys of transparent proxy. :) VSNL (who was the ISP for most of our clients) began running a transparent proxy, and our script's HTTP access was transparently diverted through this proxy, thus reporting this proxy server's IP address for _all_ our clients. Good fun. :) So we shifted to a different (non-standard) port number on our server for just this one application, and started another virtual server. Now the transparent proxy is bypassed, and our IP-address-tracking works well. :) Wish we could do this just as easily for SMTP too. :) Shuvam ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Blocking yahoo msn
My fiat is based on the Carrot Stick concept, the carrot being I let the user livi in peace. I am reminded of the ancient jungle proverb: talk softly but carry a big quiver full of Bandar poison arrows. If every sysadmin had the power to disturb the peace of his user, the world's systems would (probably?) have been much better admin'd. Luckily, perhaps, in my last 3 jobs I have managed to have good relations with the CEO, and by ensuring that Tech Policies are _signed and issued_ by him, I ensure his backing for when I hit the user. At that point, the user has not broken *my* Policy, but the CEO's. You, sir, are absolutely brilliant. This is _precisely_ the missing piece in the sysadm's puzzle, which is also the same as the missing piece in the ERP implementation puzzle, or various other organisational puzzles. The CEO's signature and hand-in-blessing is either absent or is invisible. Users then become monkeys. Yahoo works in different ways, but will fall back to HTTPS if all else fails. HTTP may not be good enough, if your proxy is smart enough. But HTTPS is a direct connect. Doesn't HTTPS also go through the proxy server? Therefore isn't it possible for the proxy server to block it? Or are you referring to the fact that in HTTPS, the URL itself is encrypted and therefore blocking based on strings in the URL doesn't work? Shuvam ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Statically linked Vs Module
Rootkits typically install loadable modules to intercept process listings and filesystem calls and enable them (the rootkits) to hide their processes and files. All toward the objective of making the rootkit more difficult to detect. Got it. These will not help in gaining initial access, but in remaining undetected later, if the virus/worm has long-term plans. :) However, the original poster's comment, that using static drivers, etc. is more secure, is only true if you disable loadable modules entirely in your kernel. Otherwise the rootkit will be able to install its LKM in any case, regardless of how your kernel components are linked. Correct. And the real original poster had asked about performance. I guess on the performance front, there isn't much of an issue by going the module way? Shuvam ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] How do I do streaming video on Linux?
You may check the following sites: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffmpeg/ http://mpeg4ip.sourceforge.net http://cserv.sourceforge.net Thanks Narsingh. Will do. Someone else had already suggested mpeg4ip (I guess the ip represents Intellectual Property?), and I checked it. It's interesting, but we'll have to spend more time before we fully understand how much work we'll need to do to use that code. I'll check the other two. Thanks again. Shuvam ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
[ilugd] How do I do streaming video on Linux?
Dear all, We have a requirement from an associate company. They are involved in distance education over VSATs; they _live_ off streaming video. They are quite tech-savvy in terms of using high-compression high-quality streaming video. This company is also very pro-open source, primarily because they get huge costs savings and get freedom from the constraints of commercial closed source products. They had a bad experience with a very expensive (and highly regarded, I must add) Israeli distance education solution at one point. They are currently using Windows Media Player for the streaming video. Their servers seem to be all running Linux, other than the Win2K servers used for pushing out the streaming media stuff. At the client end, they're stuck with MS Windows desktops because they need that Windows Media Player. Everything else is being done using standards-compliant protocols, e.g. HTML, HTTP, HTTPS, etc. My reason for posting here is to ask you for alternatives for this Windows Media Player thingie. I'll describe what they need, as a dream wishlist: 1. Some open-source media streaming software running on any Unix/Linux, which should be able to push out real-time MPEG4 data. If open source is not available, at least free-as-in-free-beer streaming server would be needed. 2. A streaming video client on Linux X-Window, which should be able to receive this MPEG4 stream and show the video. If this client software runs as a plug-in inside a Web browser, that'll be ideal. Even a standalone viewer will probably be okay, if we can somehow launch it as a helper application from within the browser. Browser integration at the client end is mandatory, because the video never comes alone... it always comes accompanied by text and images on the browser. You read the slide and watch the video, and you become knowledgeable and wise... at least that's the idea. We're looking at Darwin from Apple. There seems to be a whole family of products there, and we are still a bit confused about the licensing terms (free as in free beer or free speech or what?) and about the technology issues (does it need a Quicktime viewer on the front-end, or will any standards-compliant MPEG4 client do?) Quicktime viewers are not available on Linux; the only way people have been able to get it to work on Linux is through WINE, something I'd rather avoid if at all possible. We have rejected Real's technology because there are fat licensing fees per stream. This totally upsets the economics of the service. This business is able to invest modest amounts in one-time hardware or software (e.g. MPEG4 encoding hardware), but they cannot afford expensive per-stream or per-user licence fees that totally ruins their economics, it seems. This is the problem with both Real and the Israeli solution: per-user charges. And they want to switch the desktops to Linux for security and stability reasons. They'll operate through franchisees who will all have plain vanilla Windows machines, but the parent company will supply them with Knoppix-like run-from-CDROM versions of Linux which will temporarily (and safely) convert the PCs to Linux desktops. Any ideas about an MPEG4 streaming video server and client, preferably free as in free speech, preferably on Unix and not just Linux, badly needed. Please give me suggestions? Shuvam ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] The NSE PRISM story at linux-delhli meet
Dear LL, really impressive stuff, shuvam. we would really love to hear you give a small presentation on this at the next linux-delhi meet, to be held tentatively on 21 september 2003, sunday. venue to be decided. time: 2pm to 5:30pm. so you take the first slot, for 35 minutes, with a small qa towards the end of your presentation. Would have liked to, even though you know it's old stuff now. However, I don't live in Delhi; I live in Mumbai. I just became a member of your list because a close friend is a member. Sorry about this. And thanks for the kind words. :) regards, Shuvam ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] antivirus for sendmail mail server, urgent
Shuvam == Shuvam Misra [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Shuvam We have been recommending Interscan Viruswall from Trend Shuvam Micro for our clients, for the last four years and Shuvam more. This is a commercial product, with at least four Shuvam listed resellers in India. Go for ClamAV with Squid+DansGuardian (for proxy), Amavisd for mail. ClamAV has a regularly updated virus signature database, and it works beautifully. I've already asked one of my colleagues to look into it. Thanks; we didn't know about it till you responded. :) In any case, in terms of architecture, anything which works with Amavis uses the milter call-back hook of Sendmail and therefore should work more smoothly than the two-Sendmail kludge of Interscan Viruswall. regards, Shuvam ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
[ilugd] The NSE PRISM story in Express Computer
-- NSE Case Study -- * Linux stars in Mission: Critical Linux is growing out of Unix's shadow and handling mission-critical tasks on its own. The National Stock Exchange recently replaced a Unix-based system for risk management with a Linux-based one and saved a packet in the process. Stanley Glancy reports. http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/20030825/linuxspecial02.shtml It was interesting to read this bit in Express Computer. Took me back to the days when we had developed it. The PRISM system is probably the only one of its kind in the world, which uses a cluster of computers to provide real-time risk analysis of trades in a trading exchange, using Value-at-Risk. Before the project was commissioned, a high-level team from the NSE visited exchanges in the Europe and the US, including NASDAQ and NYSE, and found: 1. Some exchanges were using simple upper-limit-lower-limit software to do real-time risk checking of buyers and sellers for each trade. The software worked in real time all right, but all it did was calculate some primitive risk attribute of each portfolio and compare it with the high and low limits. Any economist will tell you that this super-simplistic risk limiting makes almost no sense in the context of the dynamics of a busy market. I don't know enough econometrics to even begin to comment on this. 2. Other exchanges were using mathematical models like VaR for risk analysis, but not in real time. They'd do the number-crunching at the end-of-day, and any trader who had crossed risk limits would be debarred from trading the next morning. Therefore, intra-day, a rogue trader could bring down part of the exchange by his crazy risk exposure. The NSE wanted to go the whole hog, and build a real-time risk analysis engine which would use a sophisticated VaR model for risk analysis. This VaR model would be hand-tuned to the parameters of the NSE, based on NSE's own historical data about scripts, volatility of the market, etc. This, I have been assured, is a complex area, where current research is going on, and I believe the porting of the VaR model to the NSE data itself is worthy of a PhD or two in economics. This work was done by a team led by Ajay Shah and Susan Thomas, both faculty at the IGIDR. They have a long association with the NSE; they have made key contributions to the econometrics theory and its application in deciding the principles of the NSE Nifty index. (I could be wrong, but I'm told that the formulation of the BSE Sensex is not based on any hard econometrics theory.) In fact Susan, I believe, thought up the name Nifty for the NSE-Fifty index. :) The IGIDR team undertook the responsibility of actually converting the VaR math into a well-written, debugged, C function. Ajay and Susan have done _enormous_ amounts of coding in C, awk and Perl, so they can deliver such efforts better than the average economist. Ajay often runs huge numerical computation jobs on his Linux laptop, where the code is written in Perl, crunches gigabytes of actual data all kept in plain ASCII files, and takes actual days of computation. :) Everything else in PRISM was our responsibility. We worked on: (a) the overall software architecture, (b) the partitioning of computation into the various components in the cluster, (c) the design of the front-end (it's a GUI Java application; we needed to impress non-geeks with PRISM by _showing_ them something happening on the screen), (d) the fault tolerance architecture (e) the throughput measurement and scalability (f) the choice of technology (we studied PVM and MPI) (g) and of course, writing and debugging lots of C code. :) among other things. There were other parties other than IGIDR and Starcom too in the picture, and most of the coding for the Java GUI front-end for instance was done by programmers not working in Starcom. There was no employee of NSE or NSE.IT involved in the design or development of PRISM, IIRC. I remember giving demos to Ravi Narain, then DyMD of NSE (now MD), and Satish Naralkar (CEO of NSE.IT). Both were very encouraging and supportive. After all, they were the customer. :) And we were all aware that in our small way, we were creating history. The fact that it was also on an open source OS was icing on the cake. :) Another high point of the project was taking our code to C-DAC Pune to get it benchmarked on the PARAM. We interacted with Dr.Medha Dhurandhar there, and her team assisted our team in porting our code onto their latest PARAM. In terms of CPU power, each PARAM CPU was woefully behind the times (some 330MHz SPARC CPU, I think) even for the standards of 1999 and 2000, but connect them together, and they could really sing. We found that the PARAM architecture running on normal Fast Ethernet couldn't add much value to our measured Intel performance in IGIDR's PRISM Lab with the same Fast Ethernet technology. But shift the PARAM
Re: [ilugd] Sendmail - How to redirect mail - TO: address
Either use a .forward file in user's home directory or create an appropriate virtusertable entry. After creating an entry in virtusertable you need to run the make in /etc/sendmail and restart sendmail. I prefer the former method. I have a feeling that neither will work. In fact, the .forward approach is guaranteed to not work. The .forward file works only for the recipient, and can redirect all mail being sent to the recipient to another address. In the original question, the intention was to redirect all _outgoing_ mails meant for [EMAIL PROTECTED] to another address (say on yahoo.com). That will not work with .forward unless: (i) you are the sysadmin of hotmail.com (ii) hotmail uses Sendmail (they use qmail, I think) (iii) you put a .forward in the home directory of user 'abc' The virtusertable approach has greater chance of success, on the face of it. However, I believe the virtusertable processing is only done for all addresses which are in local domains. This means that the virtusertable is looked up only after Sendmail has deduced that the domain part of the recipient email address is one of the domains marked as local for _this_ Sendmail. Therefore, once again, virtusertable will only work in this example if you put that mapping entry on the Sendmail running on hotmail.com's mail servers. I may be wrong with the virtusertable issue if I discover Sendmail does not apply that table only to local domains. I have a feeling that the only way to achieve this may be by adding special rules to the local part of ruleset 0 of sendmail.cf. There may be other ways too, but this would be simplest, most foolproof, and would need least experimentation, if you know how to edit sendmail.cf rules. Shuvam PS: I've been editing sendmail.cf since Sendmail v4.x; that was 1990-91. At that time, the Bat Book wasn't even written; it came after v8 Sendmail. There was _no_ book on Sendmail at that time. :) Sendmail is nice. :) ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Pine config
Does anyone have any idea about where to specify the from: name in Pine configuration. There is a field for specifying the From Domain and the Display name, but not the from name. Eg, my mail goes from Dname [EMAIL PROTECTED], there are options to specify Dname, and Domain but not Rname. By default it picks up the name of the logged in user. Is there any place I can change this ? We all use Pine in our office. And we've not figured out a way to do this in the last few years that we've been using Pine. We are told that if we re-configure and re-compile Pine from source, this option is available; we've not bothered to do this. Short of that, there's no other way, I think. Shuvam ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Re: Time Lag in Linux...
My machine is a stand alone one and is not connected to LAN or internet.. SO i cannot use a time server to sync the time Also i changed the CMOS battery only recently Well, worst-case, I've seen faulty motherboards which have a malfunctioning clock. On one or two occasions, the only way we could fix it was by replacing the motherboard. Shuvam ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] Re: Time Lag in Linux...
OK... some background about my application We develop s/w and hardware for a small, indegeneously developed telephone exchange . The main call processing s/w runs on a i386 PC which is connected to the exchange through some properitary h/w to the main exchange. All the events are controlled and triggered through our s/w. We selected linux as OS long time back when linux was in its infancy.. This PC is not connected to external world by any means.. As this call processing s/w does all the main functinalities.. it is absolutely necessary to sync the time to real time. And also the application is expected to run for days along continusoly Now that it is clear that real-time clocking is a mission-critical business necessity, without which your actual business data would go haywire, it seems to me that someone somewhere goofed _badly_ by choosing an off-the-shelf Intel base for this project. Sorry if it sounds blunt, but that's the way I see it. At the very _least_ this project should have been on SPARC or some such better-quality hardware. All of a sudden, Ghane's SPARC suggestion does not seem like a joke at all. Now that you can't undo what has been done, I suggest that you evaluate external time clock hardware (which have Linux and NTP support) and plug some such hardware to the serial port of the PC. Such hardware is described in NTP related literature. Many options exist, including radio receivers which receive time signals from super-accurate clocks, and plain super-accurate, industrial strength external RTC hardware. And if none of that works, get a second PC, connect it to the Internet using a modem (I'd suggest a Reliance mobile phone), and run an NTP client on it. Make it connect to the Net for, say, 10 minutes every two hours, and sync its clock with NTP servers elsewhere. And get your existing telephone exchange to talk to this second PC and get its clock in sync. This is inelegant, but may be easiest to strap together with string and bandage if nothing else works. Shuvam ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
[ilugd] Re: Linux vs Microsoft (on the database support)
Dear Tarun, We too are constantly facing these questions of Microsoft versus open source alternatives with our clients. In response, I find that most members of the open source advocacy community I meet are still repeating arguments which we all used four years ago, like stuck records. Thought I'd try to share what I find: 1. Unlike four years ago, the Microsoft server OSs today are much more stable. To talk of memory leaks and instability in WinXP today in the same terms we used to use for NT 4.0 a few years ago is probably inaccurate. I am getting report after report of new XP and Win2K servers in steady daily use showing uptimes of more than ONE YEAR. This would be par for the course for any stable Unix version, let alone Microsoft. 2. On the other hand, the threat to customers from Microsoft in terms of lock-in has INCREASED, not DECREASED. Very few of the Linux users and advocates I encouter, including my own colleagues in our office, seem to be aware of the new lock-in mechanisms and schemes which are either ready or will certainly be released in a short while... these are not vapourware. These measures will make it even more difficult (in money terms) for Microsoft customers to mix-and-match proprietary and open-source components. I suggest strongly that you take some time out and read the (long) editorial note here: http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit029.html I couldn't abbreviate or summarise it properly if I wanted to... it'd be a difficult job. Therefore, please read it (it's very well written and readable, BTW) and pick up details from it for buttressing your arguments. If your customer has the patience to look at some of the new measures being released from Microsoft, and has some sense to know what's good for him, this report will scare the shit out of him. It almost scared the shit out of me. Microsoft, in my opinion, is showing new levels of desperation, in a do-or-die bid for monopoly domination. If I were Microsoft's chief strategist, and did an objective analysis of Microsoft's strengths and weaknesses, I might have embarked on a path very similar to what they are doing, as a purely business decision. In other words, the strategy they seem to be following is probably not the right thing to do if you start with a green-fields fresh start, but it may be the best business decision for Microsoft today. By best, obviously, I mean best for Microsoft. This article brings out some of this desperation. It may hurt the unwary corporate customer severely. After all, in business, many deals are such that the customer and the supplier are on opposite sides of the table... rarely do we find that ideal win-win for all deal. Try to see if you can capture some of this threat in your report to your customer. Shuvam ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
[ilugd] Office Depot Aids Monopoly
Interesting article about how Microsoft is extending its monopoly control over the PC market. It's interesting how devious and indirect these attempts are... I had to actually read through the full article to figure out how the Designed for Windows XP logo can be used by Microsoft for monopoly control. Amazing. Sometimes I admire the raw ingenuity of those chaps. I know there has been some adverse reactions on this list to discussions about Windows, and those opinions make sense to me. However, I have decided to post this message about Microsoft, because it may help some of us (e.g. Tarun Upadhyay) build a stronger case for open source alternatives, which after all attract all of us. http://www.aaxnet.com/editor/edit030.html Shuvam ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
Re: [ilugd] anyone has spammers list???
i need a list of well known spamming sites for my institute's new mail server. can anyone help me? the new mail server runs the courier imap server with qmail on RH 9.0. you could try to integrate relays.ordb.org into qmail. This is basically a list of servers on relay and locks such sites from sending emails to your server. they also have soe third party links to some other such databases. Hope that helps. While ORDB, RBL, etc, are all very good ideas, isn't it also necessary to stop spams, not just spammers? I'd suggest that you extend your strategy to include something like SpamAssassin. This program does not need to know which IP address the email is coming from... it looks at the email (headers and body) and determines whether it is a spam. Our tests with about a hundred trial messages indicated 100% correct separation of spams from non-spam. We've now built up a collection of several hundred spams, which we will use for another round of tests before we actually install it on our servers. Shuvam ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
[ilugd] The Mimail worm story: from the IEEE CS
This message came to me because I am a member of the Computer Society of the IEEE. It appears that the virus-warning spurious messages are affecting them too. This is an interesting wrinkle to the PC-based worm story. Shuvam -- Forwarded message -- Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2003 18:39:53 -0700 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [HOTCHIPS] Virus/Hoax Warning Dear IEEE Computer Society Member, Please be aware that a new computer virus is spreading that may appear to come from [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you receive an email from [EMAIL PROTECTED] stating that your email account is about to expire, it is a Hoax. The attachment associated with the Hoax email contains a virus. The IEEE Computer Society's email servers are not infected by the virus. The Hoax messages are not being sent from IEEE Computer Society systems. For more information on this Hoax email and the associated virus visit - http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/[EMAIL PROTECTED] - Regards, IEEE Computer Society Customer Service Department ___ ilugd mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://frodo.hserus.net/mailman/listinfo/ilugd
