krish@shenron:~$ free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 5717368 1556752 4160616 0 32116 295768
-/+ buffers/cache: 1228868 4488500
Swap: 4296696 156708 4139988

So, that’s pretty much more than 2/3 rds of RAM available, but the swap is being used already.

This setting is controlled by ‘vm.swappiness’
krish@shenron:~$ sysctl -A | grep "vm.swappiness"
vm.swappiness = 60

or you could find the value in
krish@shenron:~$ cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness
60

The default value is 60.
A value of 0 means “never use swap till RAM is available“ .
A value of 100 would mean “swap as soon as possible”.

Using 0 is bit hard on the machine , let’s use a value of 10
krish@shenron:~$ sudo sysctl -w vm.swappiness=10
[sudo] password for krish:
vm.swappiness = 10
.
krish@shenron:~$ sudo sysctl -A | grep "vm.swappiness"
vm.swappiness = 10

This value is not persistent on reboot unless you write it to /etc/sysctl.conf

I got this new Acer P166HQL before I fell sick and it’s been eating dust since then.

Unboxed it – No this is not an ‘Unboxing Video post’

Acer P166HQL - Glossy Monitor 16''

As soon as I finished setting it up, I realized that this was a mistake!
I had got sold into the wide spread name of ‘Acer’ brand and the contrast ratio of 1M:1

Not that acer is bad, but this monitor!!!
Glossy, Glossy all glossy.
Weak Plastic – I almost believed that it has no ’tilt’ mechanism because it sounded creaking when I tried.
I later googled it up and got some confidence that it may tilt and then tried again.
And when I tried to tilt, I could see the gap forming between the bottom edge and screen – I went Yikes!!!

Using Vitamin C Tablets to adjust monitoring viewing angle before I could figure out that it was tiltable!

So let’s weigh it’s pros and cons

Cons:
1. Very Glossy – finger print magnet
2. 1M:1 Contrast Ratio isn’t so big a thing. Don’t get sold by it.. atleast it doesnt matter to me as I’d use this monitor on a server.
3. Cheap Plastics
4. Not great build quality
5. Model is not listed on India site / US Site Yikes again!!!
6. 10 minutes of inactivity and monitor will go to sleep. Good thing. BUT before it does that it will display “No Signal” message…. which I think should be Either “Going to Sleep…” or “Power Saving…”.
“No Signal” is kinda not what users want to see!
7. Control buttons and OSD menu are not to great to use.
8. Brightness 200cd/m2 (Good LED’s should have 250cd/m2 atleast)

Pros:
1. Affordable – below $75 after bargain and having ‘connections’
2. Light Weight
3. The power button is on the right of the screen – size of a thumb… which looks futuristic and is cool.
4. 3 years on-site Warranty.

Would have liked:
1. HDMI port as the Monitor says HD! FTW!!! False HD

Please Note: BenQ G610HDAL was available at the same price. Has 250cd/m2 brighness, contrast ration 50,000:1, better build quality, Matte finish (no worry about fingerprint), comes in a brown box. Not sure if the box says HD – if you wanna buy false HD that is.
I’ve pretty much made an ass out of myself by getting sold to 1M:1, Acer brand vs BenQ AND the Box that this monitor came in was pretty beautiful.. Green with White.
Don’t do the same thing to yourself

My dad was kind of a soft atheist, and when I was born, my grandma named me after her idol Lord.
This way she ensured that my dad would call out for the Lord whenever he called me

She’s given us lot of love in her life. I still remember my childhood’s summer holidays’ trip to her place.
As inevitable it is, the rules of Nature worked on her; She has fought cancer for a while now and at 90+ she left us this morning.

Sadly, I am in no state to do a travel to her place now, been in bed-rest since past few days.
Thankfully my mom along with her siblings are there.

Although I haven’t probably met her expectations yet; neither I became a devotee (I am a non-practicing atheist) nor I did anything that suits the great Lord’s name… all I can now wish is peace for her soul.

The loving grandma who named me.

Meanwhile, one more device not functioning properly didn’t feel nice (the other device is bluetooth).
I never got to use bluetooth on my laptop.
Pre-installed windows7 was removed in a jiffy from this machine and it ran Ubuntu 10.04 LTS since then.

At first, my Wi-fi had issues with Ubuntu, which I fixed and blogged here – http://srikrishnadas.wordpress.com/2011/04/06/wi-fi-on-hp-dm1/
Now, speakers screwed up.. which I can’t fix.

So, its 3:00 am and I’m pretty much supposed to be in bed-rest (been like that since last 5 days.. with temperature, asthma issues).. anyway let’s get to fixing this!

List my hardware
krish@shenron:~$ sudo hciconfig -a
hci0: Type: USB
BD Address: 88:9F:FA:AC:50:3E ACL MTU: 310:10 SCO MTU: 64:8
DOWN

Yikes! Something is wrong here. I think I must have tried to do some hack earlier on and left it mid-way.

Let’s fix that first.
krish@shenron:~$ dpkg -l | grep bluez
ii bluez 4.60-0ubuntu8 Bluetooth tools and daemons
ii bluez-alsa 4.60-0ubuntu8 Bluetooth audio support
ii bluez-gstreamer 4.60-0ubuntu8 Bluetooth GStreamer support
ii bluez-cups 4.60-0ubuntu8 Bluetooth printer driver for CUPS

Why do I need cups support package? I do not. Kicked out.
krish@shenron:~$ sudo apt-get purge bluez-cups
And now re-install stuff that matters
sudo apt-get install --reinstall bluez

Okay now, list hardware again:

krish@shenron:~$ sudo hciconfig -a
hci0: Type: USB
BD Address: 88:9F:FA:AC:50:3E ACL MTU: 310:10 SCO MTU: 64:8
DOWN
RX bytes:45505 acl:143 sco:0 events:183 errors:0
TX bytes:3971 acl:84 sco:0 commands:54 errors:0
Features: 0xff 0xff 0x8f 0xfe 0x9b 0xff 0x59 0x87
Packet type: DM1 DM3 DM5 DH1 DH3 DH5 HV1 HV2 HV3
Link policy: RSWITCH HOLD SNIFF PARK
Link mode: SLAVE ACCEPT

Looks better!

Start the applet
krish@shenron:~$ bluetooth-applet&

Cool, it came up on my panel. Clicked on it. Clicked “Turn On Bluetooth”
Picked up my phone, search for devices and Nothing!
Sigh! Didn’t work…

Now, some googling, reading some bugs on launchpad, some forums, some debian lists and figured out that the bluetooth device is categorized as Cambridge Silicon Radio devices (CSR).

Sweet, but this looks like a dead end…

Too tired. Will work this out tomorrow morning

Back on the box. It’s post noon now

Okay! Read a bit about bluetooth sniffing, a little on ralink AND found that the radio link on bluetooth stays OFF!
So someone had tried setting a PS value with bccmd. So let’s try:

krish@shenron:~$ sudo bccmd psset -s 0x0000 0x028c 0x0001

Ok, now kill and restart the applet

krish@shenron:~$ ps aux | grep bluetooth | grep -v grep | awk '{print $2}' | xargs kill; bluetooth-applet&
[1] 3539


Checking bluetooth again…
Doesn’t work. Crap!

Hmm, may be I’m not loading some module properly.
Let’s reboot and try…

Alright, after reboot start applet again if its not running already
krish@shenron:~$ sudo bluetooth-applet&

Turned ON Bluetooth. Aha! the applet shows active! Nice..

Check processes
krish@shenron:~$ ps aux | grep bluetooth | grep -v grep
root 792 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:24 0:00 [bluetooth]
root 1438 0.0 0.0 27428 2096 ? S<s 15:24 0:00 /usr/sbin/bluetoothd --udev
krish 2187 0.0 0.1 166708 8256 pts/0 S+ 15:37 0:00 bluetooth-applet


After a bit of thinking, I realized my mistake.
Last time I had killed bluetoothd process along with the applet.

OKAY! Now time to test…
Make your way through the applet options to Send and Receive files (I am not writing a how to on it )

Added New Device.

Receiving:

Sending:

You might want to change your “Friendly Name” to something really friendly.
It shows CSR by default. Remember why CSR?

I’ve changed it to match the name of my laptop. ( That’s right, all my devices have names )

Now the question remains – Will this stay after reboot?
I am yet to find out.
If it doesn’t, I think I know what has to be done.

Not rebooting the machine now though.. .. Time for some work

Oh BTW, did I mention that your Bluetooth will now “Turn ON” / “Turn OFF” with the same Wi-Fi HotKey!  :X

How to find config settings or env variables in puppet?

$ puppet --configprint templatedir # Specific Env Variable
templatedir = /var/lib/puppet/templates
$ puppet --configprint all # Specific Env Variable
...


How to syntax check your templates?

$ erb -x -T '-' ../files/apt/sources.list.erb | ruby -c
Syntax OK
$ erb -x -T '-' ../files/apt/sources.list.d/lenny-backports.list.erb | ruby -c
Syntax OK


Unable to sign certificates?
The errors could be:

a. hostname was not match with the server certificate (or)
b. Exiting; no certificate found and waitforcert is disabled
In both cases you will not find the certificate on pupptemaster to sign.

Solution:

1. /etc/hosts file on client should have the server listed in format
IPAddress hostname_of_server short_hostname_of_server puppet
Example: 192.168.1.90 predator01.mydomain.local predator01 puppet

2. Make sure that the domain and search parameters in /etc/resolv.conf of client is same as your host domain
Example: /etc/resolv.conf
domain local
search local
nameserver 8.8.8.8
And my hostname is human01.mydomain.local
If your hostname is like human01.yourdomain.com then 'domain' and 'search' in /etc/resolv.conf should be domain.com

3. After ensuring (1) and (2) are fixed as above, clear ssl stuff
$ cd /var/lib/puppet/ssl
$ sudo mkdir old
$ sudo mv * old/

4. Now run client again
$ sudo puppetd -tdv

5. On server sign the cert
$ sudo puppetca --list
human01.yourdomain.local
$ sudo puppetca --sign human01.yourdomain.local

The error on VirtualBox is something like:

VT-x/AMD-V hardware acceleration has been enabled, but is not operational. Your 64-bit guest will fail to detect a 64-bit CPU and will not be able to boot.

Solution:

Go to BIOS setup and find a option that says “SVM support” and Enable it.

AMD-V Enable "Secure Virtual Machine" mode

SVM means “Secure Virtual Machine” support.

Update: If your VirtualBox freezes when installing 64 bit OS using AMD-V capabilities, it is a bug in Virtualbox and has been fixes in 4.1.2
If you’re using an LTS Ubuntu and installed VirtualBox from repos, then you probably have 3.1.6. Uninstall it and install the >4.1.2 deb available on virtualbox.org

Arranged: Guy/Girl goes to “see” their partner along with parents, they weigh pros and cons of the to-be relation. In many cases weigh the gold, count the cash, check the earn-ability, looks, skin complexion, scale education qualification, and count the number of times you’ve returned from United States of America.

Love?: Guy “sees” Girl, falls for her or vice-versa; like-ability factors. Sparks fly? Issues happen.

And there are cases which are mixed too.

What if someone had blindfolded your eyes through these above mentioned process?
Which marriage process would you agree to? Would you get married?
You’d just remove your blindfold; Yes pretty simple isn’t it?

Unfortunately nature hasn’t left a such choice to everyone.
Some people do not get to just remove their blindfold. Because it is permanent. They are blind, for real.
And they are less-fortunate financially too; so there is no ‘just buy a pair of eyes’ here.

The visually-impaired

They cannot experience to “see” the other person, forget checking the looks and flying sparks.

So, do they experience ‘marriage’ or ‘love’? Love may-be; but marriage?
How?
When the whole so-called better equipped human race is running their own race to “see” their bright future, Who would hold two blind hands and join them in marriage?
This I wondered as I sat pillion on a fellow ‘Saayam Cheddam Foundation‘ member’s bike approaching a place where it happens!

Vikalangula Kalyana Vedika

Pushing the gates of a walled structure I saw a man sitting there facing a direction different from the person he was talking to. Yes, it was him.
It was this man who takes time, effort and has the heart to get blind people married.

The man who runs vkvedika.org

Year 2000, marks the beginning of a good cause when he started helping the visually-impared and total-blind people come together.
As he made his way through this process, he realised that even before marriage there are many basics that are needed to be addressed, that other people run from, that is void in the life of blind people.
Which is?

Many blind people are treated as a dead-weight. Family members do not care for them.
Outside, they face reactions from people which are similar to as if people were up-close to a crawly slimy insect. A repelling, downgrading attitude.

This breaks the confidence and self-respect of blind people. Not many people realise this; or wait they do? But they couldn’t care less.

It takes real empathy to understand this and he did.

He pushed his living to accomodate a group of 5 blind girls where he would put his efforts to uplift their confidence, their lost self-respect, which is the most toughest task. Sensing improvement in them, he would take it further by providing education, skill to work – making paper plates, agarbatiis(Joss sticks), key chains, perfumes, paper carry bags and also perform at stage functions to help them self-sustain.
This is in a way making sure that they uphold their self-respect – very useful because not everyone he is helping get educated may find a job, not everyone wants to study.

Yes guys, they are not taught to beg. They are not taught to expect sympathy because they are blind.

Joss sticks, perfumes, keychains made by the blind.

Paper plates made by the blind.

Over the years, he formed a home for the blind – Vikalangula Kalyana Vedika (vkvedika.org) and 18 people are now making their living working in Government jobs. 26 people have been married.

Year 2010, he opened a hostel for blind boys and today he serves close to 60 people (girls and boys).

The girl who was recently abandoned by her parents.

Our hearts were already sinking when we noticed a girl who would grab any hand close to her. She would grab it firmly and say ‘please don’t leave’.

She just wouldn’t know whose hand it is.
Because she is blind.
And was abandoned.
By her parents.
Recently.
At a very human crowded place.
A Junction.
Where we people with eyes would get scared.
Because of the flow of people.
Because of the kind of people.
Because of huge vehicles that zoom past you or on you.
A small blind girl who wouldn’t know if she is walking towards a speeding bus.
Or towards a high voltage electric fence.
She was left alone there. To live or Die?
Why?
Because she was blind.
And she was a girl.

I gasped as my heart sank to the bottom of the oceanic trench, and my throat was out of moisture as my brain felt numb.
We looked at her but had no words to say. She was holding the hands of one of the member as he tried to make her feel wanted by this world.

It is true that visually-impaired people lack one of the most important sense to survive this harsh world, but unlike us, they are not lazy, they are not deprived of talent. And we saw this in action:

1. One of the blind girls sang slokas for us. And she knows all 108 shlokas.  

A blind girl reciting slokas.

Another blind girl performing an act

A blind girl doing Braille who later closed a leaking tap.

Sadly, not everything is Okay in this home for blind. It needs quite some money to run this.
And they don’t ask. They try to work it out by their self-sustaining methods.

One such immediate problem they were facing is finding a place to live.
The current landlord was troubling them. Sometimes he says he wants to re-build the house and live in there and so they need to vacate. And other times he would say, ‘Buy this land from me’ – to which he quotes 3 times the prevailing rate AND he wants his name to be engraved on the gate wall – as if he had donated the place.

With much difficultly and strength, the man who runs this home put all his savings, pulled loan on few assests that he had, took credits from lenders and is still trying to manage to purchase a small plot where the blind can live in peace. Where someone wouldn’t come and throw them out after he is gone.

We SCF members decided to make a contribution which was urgent, which would help them reach the big amount they needed to pay for pre-land title notary today. Hoping and praying everything goes smooth in their quest to secure a place to stay.

SCF helps funding a part of amount needed for vkvedika.org's new home.

AND we also decided to buy our monthly Joss stick (agarbatti) needs from them, which in a way should help. So if you’re staying in Hyderabad and use Joss sticks at home/temples you could try contacting Mr. Subhas at 984-96 9-3954

Btw, did I mention that the man behind this amazing feat (Mr. D.Subhash Gupta) is himself blind?

Mr. Subhash Gupta, a blind employee at a bank helps others like him live dignified life.

I spend hours looking for the answer, and no one one ##xen would also tell me why (asked multiple times, and idled long enough)..and after breaking my head for hours I found the answer.
So listen carefully

A. Xendump can be configured to capture vmcore dumps of para-virtualized (PV) Xen domU/guests automatically upon a crash. ie., by using on_crash=’coredump-restart’

B. Core dumps from fully-virtualized (FV) Xen domU/guests can only be taken manually by running the `xm dump-core` command.

Here’s a detailed how-to on enabling coredump for Xen domU/guest:

1. On the dom0/Xenserver, edit /etc/xen/xend_config.sxp and uncomment
# (enable-dump no)
and make it
(enable-dump yes)

2. Restart Xend (depending on whether you use init.d scripts or service utility)
# /etc/init.d/xend restart
or
# service xend restart

3. On the domU/Guest, edit domU.cfg (domU’s configuration file) and add/edit line

#If your domU is fully-virtualized
on_crash='restart'

or

#If your domU is para-virtualized
on_crash='coredump-restart'

4. Start domU

# xm create /path/to/domU.cfg

5. Now, if your domU/guest is para-virtualized, login to the domU and

Check if kernel.panic key is true
# sysctl -A | grep -e kernel | grep -e panic

Set them if they are not
# sysctl -w kernel.panic=1
# sysctl -w kernel.panic_on_oops=1

6. Test it from inside domU/Guest. (Para-Virtualized Guest)
Warning: The next line of code will crash your domU for test.

# echo "c" >/proc/sysrq-trigger

Note: The above command is a way of invoking magic sysrq
a. It will not work if sysrq is disabled on the box
b. NO. I am not gonna talk about magic sysrq’s in this post; or even how to find if its disabled

7. Test it from dom0/Xenserver. (Fully-Virtualized Guest)
Warning: The next line of code will crash your domU for test.

# xm dump-core -C

8. Above steps 6/7 will dump vmcore to /var/xen/dump (default directory unless you have changed it)
Oh, BTW, make sure you create that directory if it doesn’t exists before taking the dump

Enjoy analyzing the dump

Some content on this post are about sensitive issues happening around us. Please do not read further if you are not mature enough to handle it.

1994

Prenatal sex determination was banned in India, under the Pre-conception and Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act.

2011

India’s 2011 census shows a serious decline in the number of girls under the age of seven – activists fear eight million( 80,00,000 ) female fetuses may have been aborted between 2001 and 2011.

The 1994 ban on prenatal sex determination would have forced quite a few people to bring new life on this planet, without the discrimination to gender, but has it really achieved what it was originally meant to do!

2011 census is an eye-opener us all. It shows how efficient people have become in their hideous ways of brutality.

As if that wasn’t enough, two other practices had gained momentum after ban on prenatal sex determination.

1. Sex selective Infanticide/Neonaticide – killing of a newborn female infant less than 24 hours old.
2. Femicide – killing of women for various reasons, usually cultural.

And well who can forget the all time famous (notorious?)…

3. Honor Killings – killing of a family member by other members, due to the belief of the perpetrators that the victim has brought dishonor upon the family or community. Honor killings are directed mostly against women and girls, but have been extended to men.

En-route tribal habitats - Devarakonda

• After the 1994 ban, when the local village hospital stopped access to prenatal sex determination, people had become savages.

• They started killing ( that’s an understatement, I’d call it murdering ) their own just born girl child. Methods include:

                         - Forcing the infant to consume some kind of a poisonous seed.

                         - Drowning them in container of milk.

                         - Burying them alive.

                         - Smashing them to death with rocks, until the little life stopped twitching.

             The Government tried to bring some order into the situation, trails were run, few people were convicted.

             Few/most people understood that they would land into trouble if they killed infants. So what did they do then?

• They started throwing the just born infants in the sewage, abandoning them at the bus stops, leaving them on the roads, in the fields, on the rocks that burn hot in the sun or in some cases selling them!

             The Government then extended Sishu Vihar programme (run by ICDS ), where in the local hospital put up an open-cradle for infants to be left there instead of killing or abandoning them wherever they can. The infants would be then moved to a local Sishu Vihar branch, where they are taken care of and given for adoption.

Open-Cradle at Devarakonda Hospital where people abandon their new born girl Child.

Local Sishu Vihar branch

This programme is running from last 5 months here and 82 babies have been dropped at the open-cradle till now; some are directly left at the local sishu vihar branch ( smart tribals? they have learnt where the babies go from the cradle )

1. There is a couple in one of the tribes who have 13 children now.  First 11 were girls, and their efforts for male child has been answered by God! , the 12 the delivery brought them male twins.  They are now supposedly happy?  I just hope they won’t sell their girl child for trafficking.
2. In another case, a man argued during his trail in the court that he had sent his wife 10,000 rupees every month during her labor so that she can give birth to a male child. Now that she has wronged him by delivering a girl child, he doesn’t want her or the child!
3. A third case, where a father had murdered his daughter while returning home from the local hospital ( may be after prenatal sex determination? ).  He had smashed open her head with a boulder and then buried her; went home and had a goodnight’s sleep. Next day when the villagers asked about his daughter, he had to tell them what happened.

What would you expect? Was he taken to local police station? Naah..
The villagers decided that it wouldn’t bring “honor” to the village if a pregnant lady was buried along with a child in her womb. They all went to set things “right”. Dug out the body, used blades to cut out the belly, rip off the womb from the mother and buried both of them seperately.
The so called honor of the village was restored.
The mere narration of this incident had send chills down my spine. I can’t imagine what level of dark heart it takes to do it.

If you ask these tribals on why they do this, they cite financial problems as the reason for it. But, its known that  the male child is taken care of in every possible way they can. Somehow the financial reasons take toll on their mind when its a girl child.

The Government, their welfare bodies, the doctors, have all tried telling them that this is wrong, but I guess it just doesn’t get to their ears.

This is where Saayam Cheddam Foundation plans to do something. We’ve realized that the key to this is education ( these tribals do not even know that producing a girl child isn’t mother’s doing).  And not just plain education, but something in visual, something that they can relate with, something that won’t be given a deaf ear, something that should present case studies in visual format that says “Girls can and already do equal boys in earning livelihood. They are not liability.”

SCF members discussing with sensible local people in the Village.

One of the local persons that we met (mentioned earlier in this post) has already worked out a film on this issue, but has it unfinished due to budget. We thought it could be one good lead to start with.

SCF members looking at the road traveled; the roads that lead to people who kill their girl child.

Let’s see how things go, if we can make even a small difference, help save some innocent girl child lives. Time shall unfold.

More pics of visit -
Picasa - Nikon CoolPix L110
? - Sony Cybershot w570 ( Sorry, we do not have permissions to post these pics yet! )

If you’ve tried using update-rc.d and sysv-rc-conf and STILL see mysql process starting up!

krish@shenron:~$ ls -ltr /etc/rc?.d | grep mysql
krish@shenron:~$ ps aux | grep mysql | grep -v grep
mysql     1172  0.0  1.1 177888 18996 ?        Ssl  Sep03   0:01 /usr/sbin/mysqld
krish@shenron:~$ WTF!!!

Here’s where it matters and how to stop mysql from auto starting:

krish@shenron:~$ grep -A3 "start on" /etc/init/mysql.conf
start on (net-device-up
          and local-filesystems
	  and runlevel [2345])
stop on runlevel [016]

Just comment out the 3 lines for “start on” to make it

krish@shenron:~$ grep -A3 "start on" /etc/init/mysql.conf
#start on (net-device-up
#          and local-filesystems
#          and runlevel [2345])
stop on runlevel [016]

Reboot and check:

krish@shenron:~$ sudo init 6