Changing resolution to 1024x768 in solaris

As i have started fiddling with solaris these days, i am trying to make certain things perfect in my system.After installing the solaris i borrowed the perl script from Pradhap devarajan'blog and used it to set certain initial settings like having my home mapped to root directory etc...( yeah i am yet to create a normal user, again because of procastination :( ) after that i still had some problems withe the GUI.it had options only for a 800x600 resolution so again i mailed in the mailing list and got help from pradhap. i first ran kdmconfig to select Xorg to be used instead of Xsun.then i ran the xorgconfig to create a xorg.conf in /etc/X11 which would not be created by default.then it started asking the details od mouse,keyboard,video card,moniter etc.then it eventually wrote the xorg.conf.then i looked for something like /etc/init.d/gdm restart but could not. so CTRL+ALT+Backspace did the trick.i rebooted and then changed the screen resoultion to 1024x768 which was not available before.and hey presto i got the thing what i wanted.but only one problem i did not specify the keyboard properly cos of this it echoed some other alphabets while typing. hence i reconfigured from start and specified the correct keyboard and there i got the perfect looking and working system.

I still have some questions why is that no console appears when CTRL+ALT+F1....F6 is pressed.should i have to setup something to enable it.also my audio driver needs some GStreamer plugin it seems.should configure that thing soon.i am yet to figure out how to start and stop services here in solaris.cos in init.d i could not find many of the services starting and stoping scripts.The mailing list ug-madosug is the place where i would be discovering these answers :)

Fame is the part of the game

Another great thing happened this week in my life which needs special mention here.i had earlier recounted the opensolaris day at TCE and it attracted the view of many icons in the OpenSolaris world.Thanks to Ananth who had provided a link to mine in his blog.The people who commented on that particular article was poker (joe) and Jim Grisanzio, Engineering Community Manager for OpenSolaris.we exchanged some mails between us and we agreed to create Mad-OSUG (MADurai - OpenSolaris User Group) in the opensolaris.org itself.Soon i created the website at http://opensolaris.org/os/community/os_user_groups/mad-osug/ and a mailing list at http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/ug-madosug is ready too. i heard from ananth that i am the 11th non-Sun leader to coordinate a Open-Solaris UserGroup.one of the people above me (the 10 people) is Peter Baer Galvin the person who wrote the Operating Systems book which i read :) and i have been mentioned in Jim Grisanzio's blog too.

Solaris in my Grub atlast

Eventhough i had installed solaris on more than 5 systems in the lab the attempt that i did on my system proved to be very tough.my hard disk was not properly partitioned right from the day i got it. (2 hard disk with 20GB + 40 GB hard disk) I left that work for later day but this procastination is the villian.lazily i just cleared one partition for solaris and tried installing but i had problems with the boot_archive.so i tried once again by around 3 am and i slept leaving the installation to happen.i dont know what was wrong with my system but when i got up a mere 800 MB was installed out of 4120MB. i switched it off and started to college. that night again i sat and started installing, everything went on well till the last 10 MB was about to be installed power went off and my screen went blank. i got wild with rage cos of the fate and went to bed. Next day evening i fully formatted my 20GB disk and used 10 GB for debian GNU/Linux(which i installed again) and 10 GB for Solaris.now my 40 GB has got 5 partitions for Windows XP. Atlast i succeeded in installing solaris in my system.i copied the splash image from belenix and is using that in my GRUB :) My friends on seeing my system booting with that Splash image and also the three OS available in my system could not prevent from letting out the words "oh my my"

My Article in Linux for U journal

Someday in the month of june or july i received a forward mail in one of the Glug mailing list. it was a casual letter requesting people in the community to provide information about the GNU/Linux in educational institutions.i saw that and promptly replied back detailing all that we have done in our college using FOSS ie Centralized Authentication System using Heimdal Kerberos,OpenLDAP,Samba(Single Sign On for all unix based and windows platform Systems and for other services in college like intranet portal,mailserver,shell server and all services to come in the future he he), TCENet web portal(using Python,Cheetah,Postgresql),TCE MailServer (Exim,cyrus,squirrelmail) etc... with that i forgot all about it until my cell phone rang on August 5th..

It was stylesen from Bangalore & he informed that my article has been published in Linux for U journal.With him was Sap,Keyankay too..imagine the amount of excitement i would have had,a simple unknowing work of gesture has rewarded me a lot.i bought that journal and showed that to all. A xerox copy of it still finds a place in my department notice board.This is one of the things which i would not forget in my life.

Solaris - An Odyssey to take

on August 17th and 18th Mr.Ananth Shrinivas and Mr.Prathap Devarajan from Sun microsytems were in our college to educate the students about Opensolaris.Though i knew that x86 version of Solaris existed before itself i saw two such for the first time in reality on their laptops."solaris is always synonymous with the SPARC[a ruthless bytecrunching monster]" has been my view in the past.Only a few times had i ever heard of people speaking about solaris and i was waiting for an opportunity to have hands on experience in Solaris.

i first installed Solaris on one hard disk with both of them nearby and the installation was similar to the debian installation in terms of the range of the information it asked but different in terms of the environment and keys used.The partition naming terminologies were different and i crossed that level with ease as i used one of the 2 hard disks fully.then the installation were over and it binded to the NIS server of our lab properly and booted correctly.The Gnome had been customised by the people at sun and after seeing that did i believe that gnome could be used effectively to produce a really stuning look..DTrace is an amazing tool which involves a "simple idea but complex implementation" .Though i could not understand the syntax of the D language i could make out from the results it dumped what could have been the question possed at it.But never even once could i tell at what places it could be used and how the script should be framed before, ananth ran the eg scripts.

Then on the 18th of August due to some delay we started the session by 10:30 and the history of unix and solaris was handled by ananth.Then followed the session on Zones by Pratap.He gave the some insight on Branded zones too.After which ZFS was handled and then we shifted to the CS Conference hall.here we had some normal discussion on the whole thing and the people possed their questions.After the session we got the DVD and CDs from them and then i accompanied Pratap to the temple and from there to the Bus Stand.

The Session made us to understand the cool technologies available only in Solaris and not in any other Operating Systems.The Third year students too felt the same.But for the Second years(who had not yet studied OS concepts) and also for the people who had no clue about Unix based systems, there were in NO MAN's LAND.But the number of People who were really profitted by this would count to some 35-40 people.Had i come across this session quite some time back i would have based my project in this.now it is too late :( Atleast the junior people got some insight and exposure on these technologies.The coolest thing was the customized Gnome GUI.

Some of the areas where i flinched was when Linux kernel was rebuked badly.True, solaris is a OS which is generation ahead but the purpose with which it started and also concentrated on are on servers and not on ordinary PC's.while Linux is aimed at to be used as a desktop system and later it evolved and it started dominating the servers market.Both are different and could not be compared.Linux is young and was started only in the 90's while Solaris is old and its history dates back to the early 80's.While solaris has got some cooool features for administering, Linux has got many drivers for all kinds of systems.True some of the features in solaris cant be implemented in Linux cos it is meant to be that way.

kudos for the two people from Sun Microsystems for their initiative in taking this seminar.We have decided to create a mailing list called MOSUG -Madurai OpenSolaris UserGroup and also we are going to install OpenSolaris in all the client systems in Unix lab so that people can start using it.The point is solaris is a great OS with great innovations and it should be learnt by the CS people.To conclude Solaris has bagged a spot in my GRUB after GNU/Linux :)

Dual placement Debut - Placed at HP

nearly a month has passed since i got placed in Hewlett Packard(HP) and i am making an entry only today in blog.I didnot attend Honeywell and Motorola since i was in chennai.Then on the eventual day i came in perfect formals for the HP apti but i had a shock in store everyone came in uniform and others in casuals.as usual my buddies started teasing me as the one with confidence blah.blah.Then we all wrote the AT. it was very tough but my instinct told me i would clear that.also my question number when summed, i got the value as 7 my lucky number.and eventually they announced the result and i cleared it.

Then i got ready quickly for the Tech interview.The interview was smooth and then i was directed to HR interview.That too was smooth.Following that was the most toughest part. we waited for the result for some 2 hours.Then they announced it.My name came 3rd but it was in no order.i was quite balanced but inwardly i have never been so excited. They gave us a T-Shirt and they departed.our guys gave us the traditional podhu Matthu and left me.Then i called virtually all people in this world and informed them.Then i went CAfe coffee day andcame back late and slept believeing that i have a bright prospectus ahead of me....

Placed at TCS(From TCE to TCS)

The first company which came to our college was TATA consultancy services and took 287 people and i was one among the group.Our Team Senthil,Sriram,Subramani too cleared and secured a seat at TCS.My friend Priyan at Sri Sairam Engg college cleared cariter. yesterday CTS came and took 100. total number of CSE students placed clocked 61 out of 108.Tomorrow WIPRO is coming :)

Another Adieu & parting

Quite long time after which am writing.Proj,Exams, et all prevented me from writing one.This time i bid adieu to senthil,ranju,Smartsara,vichu,Vasanth,shyam,Sriram from Comp sci dept and raga from civil.it is terrible to bid farewell than to be in their position parting.around next year this time i would be in the same position.campus Placements are about to start and i should start preparing for them.

Weird xperience at Photoshop

Last evening i had given the film roll for development and printing and they asked me come later and collect it as i had asked them to take a digital copy of it in a CD.This wish of mine proved to be disastrous as i assumed that the digital image is created as a part of their process.they never told me that they scan the photos after printing.next day i went at 7 to collect the photos as usual it was not ready and they asked me to return back in half hour later and i did so.as it was not ready even by then i showed them how impatient i am getting on and how hot i am under the collar and then i had my photos in my hand.

On seeing the photos i knew that i have made a terrible mistake of giving them the roll.i had used the kodak 400 premium roll the best & the costliest roll available in the market.what is the use of crying over spilled milk?The chain of unfortunateness didnot end there.they gave me the CD and then the bill.whew 545 bucks just for developing 2 rolls and printing.for putting in the CD they charged some 170 (inclusive in the 545).after paying the money i demanded atleast a album for keeping these photos which would normally be given at free of cost at almost any place on earth.again they turned down the request.with some 60 photos kept together without a album i returned home.Another shock came in when had a look at the so called scanned photos in the CD.dreadful indeed. it had everything except for the clarity.

my 545 + 240(roll cost) totally went down the drain along with the fond memories of the industrial visit since because these maniacs messed up with my precious poccessions.From this on i decided to go all the way to trichy and give away the film rolls to be developed in my usual developing centre out there.Boohoo my precious photos of the kerela IV !!!!!!!!

Technozion - Land of the Scion

when i heard that my paper has been selected for presentation at NIT - Warangal i was out of bounds and soon after i returned back from kerela i arranged for the trip to warangal ie got the papers printed out and so on.Then i proceeded to warangal staying at the house at trichy and chennai for quite a little time.As i travelled in the tamilnadu express i was eager about the outcome of the competitions.Then as i landedin warangal i saw some representatives of technoscions and they directed me to a autowallah and he took me to the college.

At the registration desk i was asked to attend the inauguration which i did eventually and this thing gave mea outline about the college and then i registered with them and stayed in G block which was literally outside the college.The roomates were all from Andhra.after having a chat with them i started to college again for first session of LE DOSSIER SECRETS ie the paper presentation.all the papers of that session were just generic papers and this brewed a lot of confidence in me.That day i met keshav a NITW product and from him i learnt about dinesh, my schoolmate that he was not available for he had come to trichy.he introduced to some tamil guys and we enjoyed together in the INFORMALS ,the rockin night which had some cine comperers for the shows and competitions.

Next day i had a small talk with joydeep paul(finalyear) the CSE organiser about the opensolaris usergroup and so on.in the morning session Ramanathan a NITT product presented his paper on search technique using DCOM and i knew atonce that he is a sureshot candidate in the prize list.in the afternoon i presented my paper.from the way the people looked at me i understood that i had made a mark to some extent.That night at the informals we had some DJ from a metro and i need not tell how the we would have enjoyed that night.

Next day i chatted from the morning till afternoon with Ramanathan & Kasturi Rangan NITT products and the probables in the prize list and in the atfernoon joydeep hinted on the good news that i would hear soon.that comforted me and in the valedictory my third place in paper presentation was confirmed and i got a cert and a shield kind of and a cash prize of 2000.soon after it ended i met joydeep and parted.In the railway station i waited for some 4 hours till 1 AM as the train was late and then boarded it and came to chennai at 2 PM next day.

when i look back, i am indeed happy that my first attempt in paper presentation that too in a highly esteemed institution has come out with good results.probably should make this as a starting for a streak of laurels to be won.

Industrial visit to Trivandrum

Thanks to the coordinators for this IV who made the arrangements so fast in just one week and also it turned out to be a nice one.Jus before we started i came to know that my paper has been selected in NIT warangal.the bus came to coll by 1 and we started with a hype and we were at kanyakumari by 6 for the sunrise.nice scenary indeed.

Then by 10 we were at trivandrum and we stayed in the cottage. we had our so called breakfast at 12 and we went to BSNL.Then we played dumbcharates for some time and retired to bed.In the morning myself and prabakaran started to temple wearing dhoti.then we had our breakfast and then we went to US technology and then to velli beach and had a nice ride on peddle boats.

Then after some sport and visiting other place we returned back to coll by 6.

Impressive diagnosis

found this link in one of the senior's blog.very impressive that they could say this much from just 3 questions.

Your Personality Is
Guardian (SJ)

You are sensible, down to earth, and goal oriented.
Bottom line, you are good at playing by the rules.

You tend to be dominant - and you are a natural leader.
You are interested in rules and order. Morals are important to you.

A hard worker, you give your all at whatever you do.
You're very serious, and people often tell you to lighten up.

In love, you tend to take things carefully and slowly.

At work, you are suited to almost any career - but you excel in leadership positions.

With others, you tend to be polite and formal.

As far as looks go, you are traditionally attractive. You take good care of yourself.

On weekends, you tend to like to do organized activities. In fact, you often organize them!

The Three Question Personality Test

Yet Another High-time Occasion On-stage (YAHOO!!!!)

When Mr.Anthony Wasserman from Carnegie Mellon west and Murugan Pal CTO spikesource came to the college this saturday it was me who did the compering.As far as i know there was no flaws.but the presence of emminent people on stage put me in a very tensed position till the event came to the end.Then we had some discussion with them reg open-source and abt our plans for future and so on.Then Mr.Sen gave a presentation to the delegates about the CAS & Migrated TCENET in python.it was much appreciated.i could not give a presentation on cluster setup in PPlab due to lack of time. Then as soon as they departed we went to Aarthy for the lunch.Then we returned back and then had a chat with everyone till it was getting dark.this is how we spend the weekend.

What does u r birthday means?

Your Birthdate: August 7

You are an island. You don't need anyone else to make you happy.And though you see yourself as a loner, people are drawn to you.Deep and sensitive, you tend to impress others with your insights.You also tend to be psychic - so listen to that inner voice!

Your strength: Your self sufficiency
Your weakness: You despise authority
Your power color: Maroon
Your power symbol: Hammer
Your power month: July

Pragyan - Celebrating Technology to its apogee & the workshop Hacked by Ankit Fadia.

somewhat around this time last year i had the chance to visit a college well known for its poshness(already blogged giving a full account of it).But this time,call it luck or whatever u want because i had no plans to go to my home this weekend but my last minute decision to spend this weekend at my house at trichy proved to be futile and fortunate for i visited the NIT when it was showcasing its extravagant truly international Tech Fiesta PRAGYAN-06 with its caption "Let's celebrate Technology".Added feature to this is NIT trichy's 30th anniversary(what else one would need?).



when i got down from the bus at the REC stop to reach my home on friday night it was around 11.30 and there was not much crowd around.hey presto where am i? surely not in Las Vegas the city of lights. The college buildings,roads, trees and the fence was dazzling with decoration lights. Voila !! what a sight to watch!!! Eventhough i knew about Pragyan except for the dates i could not figure out the reason for the lightings.. after gaping at the decoration for sometime i went home.



It was only in the morning on seeing the newspaper i remembered regarding Pragyan which was scheduled for that day and continues for 3 more days.myself along with Bharathi mohan set out to the sify iway to know about the schedule for that day. Hurray !!! how lucky we were....That day ie on saturday there was a workshop Hacked by a 20 year old network guru by name Ankit Fadia(Whew!!!! what a profile he has got for his age)... we registered online for that workshop. i rang up Ashok and he was more than happy to join us.



when the clock struck 4 o'clock we(myself,bharathi & ashok) were at the entrance of the prestigious institution.The massive Flexi banners(he he this thing makes me remember my experience with it) for pragyan dutifully welcomed us.We went to the sports ground(to while away the time till 6.30) where there was stalls for each competition and yummy food courts too with recent film songs from Rang de basandi & other hindi films being played at full volume which filled the air with festivity & importance.In one of the stalls we met Kaadi(Karthikeyan) our schoolmate who is presently doing civil at NIT.From him i learnt that some people from our college too had come there to attend some workshops like robovigyan.In fact we later saw some two of them.Kaadi too then joined us.



When we slowly made our way towards the Barn hall where the workshop was supposed to start by 6.30. myself & Bharathi recounted the no of days that we had travelled thro those roads in all sorts of weather that too quite early in the morning to attend the maths tution conducted by Mr.Karuppan chetty (HOD Mathematics,NIT) in 12th std. Finally we went to the barn hall which is of historical importance to us for this where we had our counseling some 3 years back.The whole college was there along with some participants and some foreign delegates.Then the inauguration took place. TCS being the sponsor for pragyan the chief guests were the vice president and the head of chennai operations both being NIT's alumni. the multimedia presentation also needs a special mention here.



Then came the much awaited hour of importance the stage was given to Ankit....(This guy during one of his visits to one of the presitigious institutions in india (at that time he was doing 11th std) had a very few turnabouts, doubting his ability, so he officially cracked that college's mail server and changed the password during his lecture and this made people pouring in instantly(heard this from a friend)). this guy has even helped the international secret agency,Symantec and so on)it was an absolutely Impeccable lecture.he elaborated on how to hack the internet in particular about email forging,proxies and so on.his case studies combined with online demos took everyone to the edge of the seats.Then he briefed about trojans and showed the infamous subseven trojan.he even answered queries on how to perfectly hack a system without being caught...he gave more importance to multiproxy jumping in this regard.he sited many websites where one could learn more and how to prevent themselves from being cracked.



Then he dealt with the Queries during which we went out to have food. Since computer hacking itself took some 2 1/2 hours during the next 1 hour he dealt with queries and then with mobile phones hacking.due to lack of time he left out ATM hacking :( This guy has published so many books which have become the standard books in many universities ( this guy is doing BS at stanford ). one notable book is ethical hacking blah blah...( ethical?) by 10 PM it came to end. what a time we had those 4 hours... fully packed with contents.... never had i been with such a informative & intelligent crowd which was kept electric by a celebrated personality.with this our adventure for that day ended.



It is a pity that we could could not attend all the workshops scheduled for the next 3 days. there were other entertainments like laser shows,3D gaming arena and lectures of many eminent people like prof.yashpal sharma.Pragyan showed the mettle of the nittians and their organising skills needs a special mention.On sunday evening i came to the REC bus stop to board the bus to madurai.I saw prof.yashpal going in to deliver the lecture and the banners & decoration lights beckoning people to enter the world of intellects to celebrate technology.



The rendezvous with Ankit Fadia & the extravagant Pragyan would be in my memory forever. Hats off to the nittians.....

Blog given a Facelit

Atlast after working on the templates and other small services i have mastered the art of changing the blog styles & Templates.This time i have added some links to my pals & seniors blogs.then took some time to add the map to find out the no of people having the look at my blog and also their geographical location depending on the IP. Tehn added the tagboard to make people to add tags.Think this would go on a long way...........

Who am i?

Your results:
You are Green Lantern

Green Lantern 95% Hulk 70% Superman 65% Spider-Man 60% Wonder Woman 50% The Flash 50% Batman 40% Iron Man 30% Catwoman 30% Supergirl 30% Robin 25%

Hot-headed. You have strong will power and a good imagination.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

Yeah........It is 2006.

had plans to go home for the new year but couldnot. so i stayed at the house alone on Dec 31st. after returning for coll thought of going to some hotel and then to cafe coffee day, my usual hangout. thought somone would give me company but could not find one. determined to go to cafe i thought of starting by 7. but call it fate or whatever i slept by 6 and got up only by 9.30 Totally baffled i had my dinner at Aarthy's and then had dilemma like whether to go to Cafe or not but due to lack of company and due to lack night service buses from anna nagar i had too ditch my plans.

Some people stayed at home and some hanged out and enjoyed to the Xtreme in their own way when the clock struck 12 while i was made to stay back in which is neither fully my home nor a hostel room.quite uneventfully and with boredom the new year eve passed. from this on i learnt a lot and made it sure that to go home for any important day associated with some festivity. Its hard to stay back here alone and tamper with the keyboard for composing this blog when the year 2006 dawns and so many SMSes pouring in from all sides.....Yeah it is 2006

Seniors turnsup

Last sunday senior subramanian(HCL-Chennai) turned up in madurai.He had already informed us that he would be coming and asked us to plan for a treat somewhere.After some discussion we decided to have our treat at Bell - simmakkal which was ok for veggies like sriram,ranjani & myself.so on that eventful day we wrapped up our session at the Lab and started to periyar.The party-thrower turned up soon after and we all made our way to the hotel.It was already 2.30 and the stocks were running low so we could have just one round of serving. with that we stopped and then we went to the fast food @ jayaram bakery.

By the time we came out of the jayaram's it was 5.30 and then we went to Kodal Azhagar perumal temple where we had a nice little chat till it was 8.00 He explained about his experiences at the company and so on.He also asked us to concentrate on coding some thing great rather than fully concentrating on administering and configuring systems or networks.His advice made a impact on us and we parallely started concentrating on Loquacity along with CAS.

It was thursday night and Balamurugan(Wipro-Bangalore) came to college.He gave us a treat at Aarthy,my usual dining hotel.Then SAP (Trilogy-Bangalore) phoned and we talked with him(pity i missed his treat when he was here).Then i stayed at senior Sen's along with Bamu and went on chatting for hours together.Next day i got up late & could not attend first two periods to have breakfast with them.Then in the evening we stayed with Bamu till he boarded the bus.