Vijay Kumar's Blog

Debian 6 on VMware Workstation.

2011-09-07T12:14:00.004+05:30

Debian 6 (squeeze) doesn't seems to work on vmware workstation 5.5.9. Debian6 installation fails to identify the hard disk and fails at disk partitioning with a fallback of drivers options for disk. I have tried some SCSI drivers listed there but still if fails to identify the disk. While creating virtual machine virtual disk type selected was other Linux, Linux with 2.6.x kernel, ubuntu 32 bit. It seems debian 6 might not work with 5.x.x version of vmware workstation. Any pointers if debian6 installation worked for anyone? I am trying with debian-6.0.2.1-i386-netinst.iso.

Upgraded VMware workstation to 7.1.4 and debian6 installation went ahead smoothly on virtual disk type Debian 5. Installation identified all the drivers including sound and usb, it was smooth without any tweaking.

Looking forward for an exciting experience with "squeeze".

cheers, make world open.

PyCon India 2010

2010-07-07T15:12:00.006+05:30

Indian Python developers community is organizing the PyCon India 2010, a large Python developers meet-up exclusively about Python language by Python developers on Sept 25, Sept 26 (Saturday & Sunday) in Bangalore at MS Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Bangalore. For details visit http://in.pycon.org/2010/. There would be various topics presented to audiences who are from Python beginners to expert developers. The hall would be full of geeks and nerds talking Python. You can get opportunity to meet people with different application domains.

If you have experience in Python and interested in presenting paper, One can submit their proposal here http://in.pycon.org/2010/cfp. Call for proposal is open till July 31. You can find talks here.
http://in.pycon.org/2010/talks.

Python has been used with almost all the operating systems, Java environment, .NET, Embedded and Mobile devices. Whatever technology you are using or mastered, you should know at least one nice scripting language like Python or Ruby to solve your own problems. You can write 10 or 20 lines of code in 5 minutes and it can save you a day or week (that depends on your manual work complexity). Python would be useful for writing small throw away scripts to large enterprise applications.

Copy from BangPypers Mail Archive:
http://mail.python.org/pipermail/bangpypers/2010-July/004702.html

rBuilder 4.1.2 on Dell R710- fails to Boot with Kernel Panic

2010-06-01T12:27:00.002+05:30

rBuilder 4.1.2 on dell R710 with 24 GB memory fails to boot with kernel Panic after installation.

Error seems to be because of swiotlb initialization failure.

http://lists.xensource.com/archives/html/xen-devel/2007-11/msg00887.html

From above mail archive.
< mail archive >
Have you assigned any physical devices to this domU? If not then it is not allowed to request contiguous multi-page allocations, and this will cause swiotlb initialization to fail (and hence panic the kernel). If you do not assign any physical devices to the domU then there is no point in it having a swiotlb anyway
< mail archive >

Extract from the console log
< error >
.................
......................
...........................
Kernel panic - not syncing: No suitable physical memory available for SWIOTLB buffer!
Use dom0_mem Xen boot parameter to reserve
some DMA memory (e.g., dom0_mem=-128M).
...
.....
< /error >

Solution which worked for me.

Default installation of rbuilder4.1.2 on dell R710 have a kernel parameter "dom0_mem=2048MB" which when changed to dom0_mem=512MB made xen kernel to boot properly.

One needs to enter into edit mode at grub itself otherwise system will keep booting and rebooting in cycles.

After first boot edit /etc/grub.conf file with the kernel parameter as dom0_mem=512MB.

cheers,
make world open.

Scons: TypeError: coercing to Unicode: need string or buffer, NoneType found

2010-02-22T14:42:00.003+05:30

Scons on cygwin 1.7.1 when invoked remotely through ssh throws an error as:
TypeError: coercing to Unicode: need string or buffer, NoneType found

Error above is a common python error which occurs when one create a dictionary object(key,value) list with one or more keys with value as "None". We have to ensure that all the keys are having value to fix the above error.

Scons run without any failure when invoked being on cygwin 1.7.1 shell environment but fails with the TypeError as above in our case when invoked remotely through ssh.

Scons TypeError is as a result of USERPROFILE variable not getting set. Once USERPROFILE is set explicitly from .bashrc, scons run successfully.
As evident from the python error USERPROFILE was having value as "None", by setting appropriate value will resolve the issue.

USERPROFILE default value on WINNT is C:\Document And Settings\, it is always better to set value as default in .bashrc with an entry as
export USERPROFILE="C:\Documents and Settings\build"
build is the user logged in in our case.

We had issues with other application run on cygwin bash shell when we had some junk/non-default value set to USERPROFILE. We had issues running BullsEye code coverage tool with non-default value.
BullsEye failed with an error as "Exception: SHGetFolderPath failure". Default USERPROFILE value in .bashrc fixed the BullsEye failure.

cheers,
make world open.

fatal error C1902: Program database manager mismatch; please check your installation

2010-01-20T16:31:00.002+05:30

fatal error C1902: Program database manager mismatch; please check your installation

Build/Test automation of VC2005 project fails with the above error message in case automation scripts is having logic of *nix-win communication over ssh.

Scenario:
*nix ssh client connects to cygwin ssh server and executes make which uses CL(VC2005 compiler). Run fails with the error message in the subject line.
As evident from the link below.
http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/ViewFeedback.aspx?FeedbackID=123792

Workaround at the link above made our day and solved the issue.
Workaround: Run cygwin ssh server with the same user as that of *nix user through which one is connecting over ssh.

In our case user in question was "build". So we ran cygwin ssh server with "build" user and had *nix user as "build" to connect over ssh for script run.

By default cygwin ssh server run with user as LocalSystem Account. To make it run with "build" user we followed the steps below.

Create a user "build" with Administrative privilege on cygwin box.

Steps to run cygwin ssh server with "build" user.

1. Change the login ID of the Cygwin sshd service.

- From the Windows Start menu, click Settings > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services.

- From the Services window, right-click CYGWIN sshd, and select Properties.

- From the Properties window, select the General tab, and click Stop to stop the sshd service.

Next, select the Log on tab, Under the Log on as section or prompt, clear the Local System account radio button, and select This account. Type .\build as the ID and type the password for the account. Click Apply.

2. Grant additional rights to the build account so that "build" user has required privileges in addition to membership to the Administrators group.

- From the Windows Start menu, click Settings > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Local Security Policy.

- From the Local Security Settings window, expand Local Policies, and select User Rights Assignment.

- From the resulting page that appears on the right, verify that the root account has the following four rights:
* Adjust memory quotas for a process
* Create a token object
* Log on as a service
* Replace a process level token
If not, add "build" as a user with the four rights.

For Win2000, the first item in the list above is displayed as Increase quotas instead of Adjust memory quotas for a process.
* Close Local Security Settings window.

3. From a Cygwin console panel, change ownership of the following directories and files to build:

* $ chown build /var/log/sshd.log
* $ chown -R build /var/empty
* $ chown build /etc/ssh*

4. Restart the Cygwin sshd server.

- From the Properties page of the Cygwin sshd server, select the General tab, and click Start. Verify that Cygwin is now running under the build user account.

- OR From cygwin prompt say $net start sshd.

Thanks to the IBM Knowledge Base for the above solution.

Maven2: [WARNING] Using platform encoding (UTF-8 actually) to copy filtered resources, i.e. build is platform dependent!

2009-11-15T01:53:00.004+05:30

[WARNING] Using platform encoding (UTF-8 actually) to copy filtered resources, i.e. build is platform dependent!

Maven2 warning as above is because of the fact that maven2 plugins uses platform default encoding if no explicit file encoding has been provided in the plugin configuration. The usages of the platform encoding makes the build platform dependent hence the maven2 is bound to raise an alarm as build artifact/resources become irreproducible.

To suppress the Warning in maven2 environment we have to use the properties as below

<project>
...
<properties>
 <project.build.sourceEncoding>${default.encoding}</project.build.sourceEncoding>
 ...
</properties>
...
</project>

cheers,
make world open.

Removing singleline and multiline comments from XML files.

2009-07-23T12:29:00.004+05:30

Thou most of the XML parsers are capable of ignoring XML comments() but while XML file processing through bash shell scripts makes life tough.

Came across such scenario recently where had to remove all the comments from XML file before processing it through grep, sed, awk and other bash shell utilities.

Sed proved to be a handy tool to remove all the single and multiline comments from the XML files.

Sample XML file. [Assuming filename as sample.xml]

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

<message>
<value>reference</value>
</message>

Command below would be able to remove all the comments in the sample.xml file

$ cat sample| sed '//d'| sed '//d'

Result:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>
<message>
<value>reference</value>
</message>

Cheers,
make world open.

sMashup

2009-06-24T16:42:00.001+05:30

It's sMashup time at RSA.

Keep busy.

cheers, make world open.

RSA Unconference

2009-05-08T16:54:00.003+05:30

At RSA Unconference got to know "OS is dead!!!."

cheers,
make world open.

Barcamp Bangalore - BCB8 @ Yahoo !!!

2009-03-07T09:43:00.005+05:30

Live up the spirit of barcamp 8, get yourself involved.
Sessions are lined up with 5 tracks in place , we had an introduction session just concluded.
As usual one can see lots of people at session put area and we are all set for first session Brand You 2.0 by Altius consulting .

Day1:
Session about Software Testing was electrifying. Thanks to Pradeep Soundararajan

Some of his thoughts.

- Software testing is a mental martial art.
- Difference between Monkey testing(without test case) and Guriella testing (more agressive).
- Motivate people for software testing.
- Fail in java/c++ . You land yourself in software testing as if you have been jailed.
- Most fakers in software testing.
- Learning testing through slides is not possible, one need to practice software testing.
His concern, can one learn driving a car by just mugging up 3000 slides but one can test software by seeing 3000 slides.
- Software testing is about improving quality is a myth. Software testing cannot improve quality. it is just identifying the problem and sometime solution.
- Most part of the software is invisible to software tester.
- Automation is testing one buggy software with another buggy software (Automation Tool)
- Test automation is faster is a myth. It is like comparing machine with a tester.
- Testing is boring..
- Not finding a bug is also a testing and test cases are valid.
- More you are trying to measure, more you are disturbing a system.
- Suggestion for freshers. Don't believe anyone. Always be skeptical, be Sherlock Homes and question every small change/things. Career decision has to be taken by you only not anyone.

Saifi Khan from Twincling advocated the open source development model and came up with numerous examples of open source projects. He talked about why/how projects get forked and ways by which one can save open source projects getting forked.

Cheers,
make world open

Fedora core 10 on VMware ESX server 3.5.0 network interface eth0 issue.

2009-01-19T18:54:00.003+05:30

Network interface eth0 was not coming up at boot time irrespective of being configured properly. Chkconfig was also properly configured for network services for run levels 2 3 4 5.

Issue is that... By default i could see ONBOOT flag set to no "ONBOOT=no" in the configuration script /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

Modifying it to ONBOOT=yes did the trick.

etho network interface came up properly in next boot cycle.

Cheers...

Cifs "mount error 13 = Permission denied"

2008-09-23T13:23:00.001+05:30

$mount -t cifs //win-share-hostname/share /mnt/win -o username=user,password=passwd

Command above is used to mount windows network share on linux box but it is throwing an error mentioned below when trying to mount a win xp network share from a fedora core 6 box.

mount error 13 = Permission denied
Refer to the mount.cifs(8) manual page (e.g.man mount.cifs)

The error above is because of a bug in kernel which got in to the kernel version 2.6.18 and above. The same mount command works great for the kernel version 2.6.17 and below.
Bugzilla link to the bug: http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7209

To avoid this error even in kernel version 2.6.18 and above. We need to use the network domain name with the mount command.

Working mount command irrespective of the bug is as below.

$mount -t cifs //win-share-hostname/share /mnt/win -o username=user,password=passwd,domain=xxx

cheers,
make world open.

List all the installed perl modules

2008-06-25T09:31:00.003+05:30

We often need to know all the perl modules installed on a box. One below is the solution

perl -MFile::Find=find -MFile::Spec::Functions -Tlwe 'find { wanted => sub { print canonpath $_ if /\.pm\z/ }, no_chdir => 1 }, @INC'

cheers, make world open

missed an emotion or two...

2008-02-13T13:18:00.001+05:30

It really pumps some extra life when someone from your loved one's cirlce remembers you with delicate emotions. When you go through this emotional burst, all your time which you spent together reels in front of you like a movie. Memory recalls all those moments which is somewhere deep into the hearts.
Thanks a lot to Subhash Chandran for this wonderful words.

Partition already existing single drive in Windows XP

2007-11-02T15:15:00.000+05:30

Most of the vendor shipped desktop/Laptops comes with a single partition drive named C, which is a great bottleneck to have dual boot.

Partitioning an existing drive can be possible through different commercially available Partition Magic software but for that one needs to shell out some bucks.

We can achieve this sort of partition using some reliable and easily available open source tools.

Knoppix which is a bootable Linux Live CD which contains most of the GNU/Linux tools can provide a handy approach to achieve the partition.

* Get Knoppix iso and burn it to a CD.

* Boot from Knoppix on the machine which needs partition.

* Run QTParted, that will open a window showing the existing partition.

* Right click on the windows partition, choose RESIZE

* In the text box labeled FREE SIZE AFTER, specify the size of which one want the new partition. This will create free space of specified size.

* Right click on the free space created, click create.

* Select partition type, click OK.

* From file menu, select commit. This will make the partition change persistent.

* Restart the computer.

* Boot into the existing windows.

The above steps will eventually make another partition of specified size.

cheers...
make world open.

Apache CGI Scripts on windows.

2007-10-11T10:57:00.000+05:30

CGI scripts on apache installed on windows didn't work. It is because of the first line of the .cgi files.

Normally first line of .cgi file reads as #!/usr/bin/perl and on windows apache uses this first line to find the appropriate perl exe to run the script. This default behavior can be overridden by using ScriptInterpreterSource directive of apache.
Adding "ScriptInterpreterSource Registry-String" directive to apache httpd.conf file, we are telling apache to ignore the first line #!..... and instead look in to the registry for the perl exe to run the script.

If moving #!/usr/bin/perl to C:\Perl\bin\perl.exe [Correct perl.exe installation path.] works fine which conclude that ScriptInterpreterSource directive is not working properly.

Solution to the failure of apache .cgi scripts on windows is:

Edit httpd.conf file and add the line:
ScriptInterpreterSource Registry-String

Add the following key in the
registry.

\HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.cgi\Shell\ExecCGI\Command.

Default value should be the location of your Perl executable.
[ex. C:\Perl\bin\perl.exe -T].

cheers, make world open...

Unhappy lots...

2007-08-30T21:15:00.000+05:30

By the law of average and human nature, every organization has at least 10% people who are unhappy.

I believe you don't want to end up being a part of that 10%.

One has to remember one can't have it all at the same time. Decide your priorities and just concentrate on the way you want to shape your career.

Different people have different priorities. For some its rank, for some its recruitment, for some its location and for some its fun. These personal priorities are what make some people leave great organizations, reject Microsoft, or choose rank 15 over 5. You do not have to justify your priorities to anyone, but make sure that YOU are sure. Concentrate a little on what is going to make you truly happy.

Just remember that you can't have it all. Decide your priorities and work on your list of workplaces up to the point where you are not second guessing yourself. If living at some particular place had been a life long dream, go ahead! If Silicon Valley is the thing for you, apply for the same there.

I believe it is really tough to say goodbye to your workplace where you had spent most of your time during the stay there.

With my going away being certain, and last day at work looming in front of me, its become extremely difficult to act like I care and want to perform. I was just going through the motions, but I was not sure how long...

Well that kept me tied to some of the basic and fundamental apprehensions which i was about to leave/carry on my shoulder. There was more lot of the element of confusion rather than sanity of the decision. I was really scared to answer some of the straight forward queries and eventually avoided most of them. Most of my WHY's were un-answered and it is still open...

Courtesy being $udha for inputs..

Google packs StarOffice

2007-08-30T21:06:00.000+05:30

Google packs StarOffice to google pack.

Some more info here...

Getting more wide user base for office suite and eventually promoting OpenOffice.org.

Subversion, Apache(httpd), ViewCVS windows XP setup and configuration continued.....

2007-07-10T09:07:00.000+05:30

We can have browser support for subversion repository without viewCVS. It is obvious we will miss most of the features provided by viewcvs but we can have repository browsing and network access of repository over HTTP protocol supported by subversion. To achieve this we need to have apache module (mod_dav_svn) installed at the time of installation of subversion and have to do some configuration changes to httpd.conf (Apache configuration) file.

Referring previous post...

During the installation of subversion make sure to check the option to install the apache module. Subversion installation will modify the Apache configuratuion to load the modules (dav_svn_module & authz_svn_module) with a similar entry like:

LoadModule dav_svn_module "C:/Program Files/Subversion/bin/mod_dav_svn.so"
LoadModule authz_svn_module "C:/Program Files/Subversion/bin/mod_authz_svn.so"

These two modules will handle the Subversion requests. We have to ensure that the LoadModule section of httpd.conf should have an entry of apache module dav_svn.so before mod_dav_svn.so & authz_svn_module.so.

We need to edit the httpd.conf file to point Apache to the subversion repository.
Add the following lines to the end of the httpd.conf file.

Subversion repositories are residing in C:/opt. We can have any number of repository in C:/opt and all will be available to Apache.

** We can browse repository with the URL as http://localhost/svn/svn-root
where svn-root is one of the repository in C:/opt. Localhost can be replaced by hostname OR IP address of the installed Apache box when one wants to browse repository over network.

** we can access the repository using SVN client as
svn list http://localhost/svn/svn-root

cheers, make world open...

Apple Introduces Safari for windows

2007-06-12T14:55:00.000+05:30

Enjoy... Safari on windows.

Claimed to be the fastest browser among the existing ones's. I am experiencing it and definitely cherish this as long as Apple provides Safari as a free download for windows.

Get safari 3 Beta... and experience the power of Apple and feel of Mac on windows.

Subversion, Apache(httpd), ViewCVS windows XP setup and configuration

2007-06-04T15:39:00.000+05:30

Subversion, Apache HTTP server and viewcvs goes hand in gloves if one wants to run subversion as a version control(source control) for any production environment.

Followed the following steps to configure all three together.

1. Installed subversion1.4.3 from http://subvsersion.tigris.org version as svn-1.4.3-setup.exe

2. Installed the activestate python from ftp.activestate.com version as ActivePython-2.5.0.0-win32-x86.msi

3. Installed svn-python binding for python2.5 and subversion1.4.3 from http://subversion.tigris.org version as svn-python-1.4.3.win32-py2.5.exe

One has to be very specific about the python, subversion and svn-python bindings. Ensure that the svn python binding versions should be same as that of subversion and python installed.

4. Test that the python shell can load svn-python bindings

launch C:/Python25/python.exe
from python shell enter : import svn.repos , it should not give any error trace.
exit python shell.

5. Got viewCVS from http://viewcvs.sourceforge.net version as viewvc-1.0.4.zip.

Unzipped viewvc-1.0.14.zip and renamed viewvc-1.0.4/viewvc-install as viewvc-1.0.4/viewvc-install.py and double-clicked it. This will ask some simple configuration query, i preferred default.

6. Edited C:/Program Files/viewvc-1.0.4/viewvc.conf

commented # cvs_roots = cvs: /home/cvsroot
Modified svnroots line as svn_roots = svn-root: c:/opt/svn-root , this is because i am having one svn repo named "svn-root" in C:/opt directory.
Modified root_parents line as root_parents = C:/opt : svn and removed ',' from the end of line.
Modified default_root line as default_root = svn-root

7. Test the viewcvs and subversion configuration and integration

Through command line run standalone.py -g from C:/Program Files/viewvc-1.0.4/bin/ location.
It will allow one to browse the repository with the default browser and if it works then only we can go further to integrate viewcvs with apache.

8. Installed apache httpd from http://www.apache.org as version apache_2.0.59-win32-x86-no_ssl.msi

Subversion win32 binaries are compiled for apache2.0.x and will not work with apache2.2.x.
"dav_svn_module in file /modules/mod_dav_svn.so is garbled" - perhaps this is not an apache module DSO ? This is the error one would get if tries to run apache-2.2.x with win32 subversion.

9. Edited httpd.conf file

Search for ScriptAlias in httpd.conf file and add one more line below all the ScriptAlias as ScriptAlias /viewcvs "C:/Program Files/viewvc-1.0.4/bin/cgi/viewvc.cgi"
Restart apache httpd server
Now, one can browse the repository.

10. One need GNU diffutils installed and in the PATH to enable the viewcvs feature of diff between two revisions. Get GNU diffutil from this Link...

cheers, make world open.

Gentoo on VMware in Fedora Core 6

2007-05-01T12:09:00.000+05:30

Successfully installed Gentoo on real hardware and then thought of trying same installation on VMware server 1.0.1.
Religiously followed the Gentoo Handbook page for both the installation.
All went well for real hardware installation but on VMware it failed to boot from hard disk after installation with an error message saying that /dev/sda3 is not a valid block device.

Gentoo HOWTO wiki page helped me to identify the problem and gave solution as well.
VMware seems to be using different driver for scsi devices and so /dev/sda3 is not able to mount as root partition hence stopping kernel from booting successfully.

I recompiled the kernel with some more addition to the kernel configuration
$ genkernel --menuconfig --no-mrproper --no-clean all
above command will allow you to keep all your existing configuration and add some more configuration parameters.

Earlier my kernel on VMware gentoo had Modular support for scsi_generic and Kernel support for scsi_disk. Modified the kernel configuration and added these two modules as a built in Kernel support. Made sure that the menuconfig windows has <*> before SCSI disk support and SCSI generic support.
These options can be found here at menuconfig windows...
Device Drivers -->
SCSI device support -->
<*> SCSI disk support
....
....
<*> SCSI generic support

This re-compiled kernel did the magic for me. Gentoo on VMware boots great from hard disk.

Network also had an issue as VMware needs AMD PCnet32 PCI support. Solution is to either build kernel with AMD PCnet32 PCI support OR load the kernel module pcnet32 by default at boot time.

cheer, make world open...

2007-03-31T15:06:00.001+05:30

Technorati Profile

technorati claim

2007-03-31T14:55:00.001+05:30

Technorati Profile

Reporting from BarCampBangalore3

2007-03-31T14:16:00.000+05:30

Bang!!!
Again this time barcampbangalore3 started with a bang with lot of topics and obviously lots... n lots of bright people. I was rite in my earlier post to learn more about social computing.
Attended couple of sessions on ICT for society, foss in governance and still more to come...

First session in society hall is about ICT for society...

error C2065: 'INVALID_FILE_ATTRIBUTES' : undeclared identifier Error executing cl.exe.

2007-03-29T14:03:00.000+05:30

Cygwin based compilation of opensource components which needs platform sdk 2003 toolkit breaks with the above titled error message.

This failure is basically because of missing macro $define INVALID_FILE_ATTIBUTES ((DWORD) -1)
in winBase.h of platform sdk 2003 installation.

Solution:
1. Check the "INCLUDE" environmental variable and ensure that the platform sdk is part of this variable.
INCLUDE=C:\Program Files\Microsoft Platfform SDK\Include\.

2. If platform sdk is part of include variable then look for the macro $define INVALID_FILE_ATTIBUTES ((DWORD) -1) in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Platform SDK\include\winBase.h and if one can see the macro in this file then this is the time to get the latest version of Platform sdk installed.

Above steps will resolve the title issue.

cheers, make world open.

BarCamp Bangalore 3

2007-03-22T12:23:00.000+05:30

BarCamp Bangalore third edition is scheduled for March 31 and April 1 2007. Looking forward to learn some interesting development in the current technologies trends.

BarCamp Bangalore [BCB3] themes are really interesting - Internet, Mobiles and the impact of technology on our society and our lives.

An Unconference for you and by you... great catch...
Register Here...

cheers, make world open...

Vote for OOoCon 2007 in India

2007-02-08T14:48:00.000+05:30

We should come forward to make this happen and scratch a more visible line on OpenSource map for India.
Please vote.

More Information....
cheers,
make world open...

Failure in moz while Building OpenOffice m196 on fc6 with gcc 4.1.x

2006-12-13T18:14:00.000+05:30

Failure in moz while Building OpenOffice m196 on fc6 with gcc 4.1.x.

Error trace is :
mimemult.cpp:55: warning: missing braces around initializer for ‘MimeContainerClass’
mimemult.cpp:55: warning: missing braces around initializer for ‘MimeObjectClass’
mimeeobj.h:57: error: previous declaration of ‘MimeExternalObjectClass mimeExternalObjectClass’ with ‘C++’ linkage
mimemult.cpp:76: error: conflicts with new declaration with ‘C’ linkage
gmake[4]: *** [mimemult.o] Error 1
gmake[4]: Leaving directory `/home/vijay/ooo_SRC680_m196_src/moz/unxlngi6.pro/misc/build/mozilla/mailnews/mime/src'
gmake[3]: *** [libs] Error 2
gmake[3]: Leaving directory `/home/vijay/ooo_SRC680_m196_src/moz/unxlngi6.pro/misc/build/mozilla/mailnews/mime'
gmake[2]: *** [libs] Error 2
gmake[2]: Leaving directory `/home/vijay/ooo_SRC680_m196_src/moz/unxlngi6.pro/misc/build/mozilla/mailnews'
gmake[1]: *** [tier_97] Error 2
gmake[1]: Leaving directory `/home/vijay/ooo_SRC680_m196_src/moz/unxlngi6.pro/misc/build/mozilla'
make: *** [default] Error 2
dmake: Error code 2, while making './unxlngi6.pro/misc/build/so_built_ooo_mozab'
'---* tg_merge.mk *---'
ERROR: Error 65280 occurred while making /home/vijay/ooo_SRC680_m196_src/moz

The problem is with the mozilla 1.7.5 source which is fixed in mozilla 1.8.
http://qa.openoffice.org/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=66906
Link shows the patch id=39575 which when applied fixes the broken build.

cheers, make world open.

From BarCamp Bangalore

2006-12-02T08:24:00.000+05:30

Sharing space with folks here at barcamp bangalore 2.0 at thoughtworks india and planning for the sessions ahead. Having more scoop of enthusiasm or may be i did not want to miss this golden opportunity , i came a lot early and became the first one to put up my name here to register.
But.. uhhhh i am not the only one who is so excited about the event. I see a lot of folks here already as early as 8.30 am in the morning.
Will come back and put up more interesting stuff here....

How to enable Wireless Lan on [wifi] FC-6 .

2006-11-28T12:34:00.000+05:30

Bingo!!! Fedora Core 6 comes with build-in support for ipw2200 drivers and ieee80211 modules. The FC6 kernel 2.6.18-1.2849.fc6 includes version 1.1.2 of the ipw2200 driver. So one needn't worry about the wifi on FC6 and don't need to use windows native driver using ndiswrapper.
FC6 needs only ipw2200-firmware [firmware v3.0], which is not shipped with FC6 because firmware is proprietary.

*** Steps to enable wifi on IBM T43

1. Download ipw2200-fw-3.0.tgz from
http://ipw2200.sourceforge.net/firmware.php

2. Unarchive ipw2200-fw to /lib/firmware

3. reload ipw2200 $/sbin/modprobe -r ipw2200
restart ipw2200 $/sbin/modprobe ipw2200
OR reboot the machine.

Look for the dmesg log as root
$ dmesg | grep ipw2200
Output:

ipw2200: Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200/2915 Network Driver, 1.2.0dmq
ipw2200: Copyright(c) 2003-2006 Intel Corporation
ipw2200: Detected Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG Network Connection
ipw2200: Detected geography ZZM (11 802.11bg channels, 0 802.11a channels)

$system-config-network and configure the
wireless card.

*** Steps to enable wifi on HP nx6110 using ndiswrapper on fedora core 6.

1. Ensure livna repo is added to the yum repos.

2. $yum install ipw2200-firmware

3. $yum install ndiswrapper

4. $yum install cabextract
5. Download HP windows native driver SP30290.exe

6. Unpack the SP30290.exe to some directory. To do so run
$ cabextract SP30290.exe

7. From the directory where the SP30290.exe file is extracted. As super user(root) run
$ /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5a.inf

8. $ /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper -m
It will add an alias to /etc/modprobe.conf.
Alias means it will add a line "alias wlan0 ndiswrapper" at the end of /etc/modprobe.conf .
If above command fails, manually add "alias wlan0 ndiswrapper" to /etc/modprobe.conf.

9. Blacklist bcm43xx,
To do this add line blacklist bcm43xx to the end of file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist .

10. Now you can reboot to have it activated,
or you can run
$ depmod -a
$ modprobe ndiswrapper

Use the System -> Administration -> Network application to create a new device for the wlan0 ndiswrapper device and configure as per the options there.

cheers,
make world open.

VMware server on fedora core 6

2006-11-16T19:33:00.000+05:30

Vmware server on fedora core 6 is having problem while configuring it with vmware-config.pl. The error trace is:

/tmp/vmware-config1/vmnet-only/procfs.c:33:26: error: linux/config.h: No such file or directory
make[2]: *** [/tmp/vmware-config1/vmnet-only/procfs.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/tmp/vmware-config1/vmnet-only] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-1.2798.fc6-i686'
make: *** [vmnet.ko] Error 2
make: Leaving directory `/tmp/vmware-config1/vmnet-only'
Unable to build the vmnet module.

The problem as evident from the trace is because of the missing config.h file at this location

/usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-1.2798.fc6-i686/include/linux/config.h

Fix for the problem is to create an empty config.h file at this location /usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-1.2798.fc6-i686/include/linux/.

$ touch /usr/src/kernels/2.6.18-1.2798.fc6-i686/include/linux/config.h
will do the magic.

cheers, make world open...

Issue building subversion 1.3.0 on sles9

2006-09-28T15:27:00.000+05:30

Building subversion with the ssl support on sles9 box fails at the time of configure itself with the following error messages.
$./configure --with-ssl

.......
.....
...
checking for library containing RSA_new... not found
configure: error: could not find library containing RSA_new
configure failed for neon

The problem is either with the installed location of the openssl library or it might be possible that openssl-devel is not installed on the box.

Look for the openssl-devel rpm and if it is installed in the system then one have to identify the exact location of the openssl library and can pass the same to the configure script like...
$./configure --with-ssl --with-libs=/usr/local/ssl ...

Problem resolved. :-)

cheers, make world open.

Xorg startx problem

2006-08-29T16:45:00.000+05:30

The problem is with starting the X windows on the FC-4 box. When doing "startx" at the command prompt with root user, "startx" is starting successful session of X window. It is failing for all the user other than root with the following error message.

Cannot move old log file ("/var/log/Xorg.0.log" to "/var/log/Xorg.0.log.old"
Please consult the The X.Org Foundation support at
http://wiki.X.Org for help.

The problem is with the permissions on /usr/X11R6/bin/Xorg

Doing this $ chmod u+s /usr/X11R6/bin/Xorg
and confirming /usr/X11R6/bin/Xorg file
owner as root.root will do the trick.

Now... X windows is running great.

cheers,
make world open...

Pishing.... online identity theft!!!

2006-08-10T12:10:00.000+05:30

TBD

Extracting mp3 from audio CD.

2006-08-02T15:20:00.000+05:30

Some of the tools on Linux which can help in extracting audio CD's.

cdparanoia:

cdparanoia retrieves audio tracks from CDDA capable CDROM drives. The data can be saved to a file or directed to standard output in WAV, AIFF, AIFF-C or raw format. Most ATAPI, SCSI and several proprietary CDROM drive makes are supported; cdparanoia can determine if the target drive is CDDA capable.
In addition to simple reading, cdparanoia adds extra-robust data verification, synchronization, error handling and scratch reconstruction capability.

$cdparanoia -B -- 1-5
It will extract audios in wav format from track one to five. This is the best tool when one needs to extract CD which is worn out.

Sound Juicer:

Sound Juicer is a gtk based application and comes by default with gnome environment. By default sound juicer is not capable of extracting CD in mp3's format. In sound juicer preferences mp3 radio button is there but it will not work by default.
Sound Juicer uses the gstreamer framework as its backend. To enable extracting to mp3 we need to add mp3 encoding support to gstreamer. This is easily done by installing gstreamer-plugins-mp3 package from rpm.livna.org.

$yum install gstreamer-plugins-mp3

This will take care of all the necessary dependency for gstreamer-plugins-mp3 and install.

cheers... make world open.

aye dil hain muskil....

2006-07-13T09:56:00.000+05:30

"Aye dil hain muskil jeena yahan, zara hatke zara bachke ye hain bambai meri jaan" this verses from Mazrooh Sultanpuri is getting it's literal meaning now. Mumbai is teaching the world a new way of fighting the menace of terrorism.
Mumbaikars have proved their mettle that they are not going to be defeated by the handful of craps. They are giving a new dimension to the philosophy of life and death, writing a new chapter of humanity.
Where can we see... Four badly injured carrying an almost dead person to hospital and that too with all care to make him live. Those crappy terrorists are denied success. This all can happen in Mumbai... and we here with full throat can proudly say "salaam mumbai"

...

There is a thin line between success and failure...

2006-07-10T02:49:00.000+05:30

Soooooo... at last Italy won the much coveted league of the world soccer and that too with a very thin line difference. Success is always there in the middle of that proportion and it cheats someone to bestow others.
France was six inches behind their success and this proved a really huge gap for them.
Well... no matter how one gets to that dais, world is with the people out there.
kudos to them !!!

firefox crashes!!!

2006-07-03T17:08:00.000+05:30

I updated firefox to 1.5.0.4 on my fedora core box. To my surprise firefox is crashing with the following error message.

/usr/local/firefox/firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libstdc++.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

I checked in the /usr/lib directory and found that the concerned library is not there. It is really frustrating to know that firefox 1.5.0.4 will not work with the latest libstdc++ library.

With some googling and my friend Subhash's advice of installing backward compatible libstdc++ library rpm, problem is sorted out and now firefox is working as usual. :-)

$ yum install compat-libstdc
This is the command which did trick for me.

cheers,
make world open

How to install PPTP Client on Fedora Core 3 system

2006-06-15T17:21:00.000+05:30

How to install pptp Client on Fedora Core 3 link will guide one through the entire process of achieving this goal.

cheers, make word open.

What is portage ?

2006-05-23T11:14:00.000+05:30

Portage is the heart of Gentoo Linux, and performs many key functions. For one, Portage is the software distribution system for Gentoo Linux. To get the latest software for Gentoo Linux,
you type one command: emerge --sync. This command tells Portage to update your local "Portage tree" over the Internet. Local Portage tree contains a complete collection of scripts(ebuild scripts) that can be used by Portage to create and install the latest Gentoo packages. Currently, gentoo have more than 10000 packages in Portage tree, with updates and new ones being added all the time.

Portage is also a package building and installation system. When one wants to install a package, just type emerge packagename, at which point Portage automatically builds a custom version of the package with exact specifications, optimizing it for the hardware and ensuring that the optional features in the package that one wants are enabled -- and those one don't want aren't.

Portage also keeps one's system up-to-date. Typing emerge -u world -- one command -- will ensure that all the packages that one wants on his system are updated automatically.

cheers, make world open.

"Thank you sir, you have made a wonderful difference to our life"

2006-05-18T13:59:00.000+05:30

Yes... i got it. This is what i was searching when i left NCST and now i am able to get answers to my uneasiness which i had experienced.

Today after reading this blog post my memories goes back to the day when i first stepped in NCST with hopes and stars in my eyes. That was the day, i could have never thought of being to this present position but i am here and it is just because of the culture what this post is advocating about.

I am not the only one... i am one among many... who discounted their past and started afresh to get in to an entirely different carrier and the most surprising part of it is that we excelled with flying colors. I agree we owe our achievements to this wonderful place.

People like us is having more NCST in their blood, as along with being a student had the privilege of being staff also. And that gives us more salt and more layers of NCST culture.

I confess... what i am today is just because i was a part of this great and wonderful place.

Hat's off...

Xen hypervisor 3.0

2006-05-10T11:49:00.000+05:30

Needs 2.6.16 host kernel to make dom0 up. Still xen is hanging at starting harware of udev.
Xen

Php5 configure error on suse91

2006-05-02T15:45:00.000+05:30

While building php5 on suse91, i was getting configure error as...

checking if your cpp allows macro usage in include lines... yes
checking for IMAP support... yes
checking for IMAP Kerberos support... no
checking for IMAP SSL support... yes
checking for pam_start in -lpam... no
checking for crypt in -lcrypt... yes
checking whether build with IMAP works... no
configure: error: build test failed. Please check the config.log for details.

config.log looks like this...

configure:46778: gcc -o conftest -I/usr/include -g -O2 -L/usr/lib -lpthread -Wl,-rpath,/opt/dev/lib -L/opt/dev/lib -Wl,-rpath,/usr/ssl/lib -L/usr/ssl/lib conftest.c -lpam -lgmp -lgdbm -lcurl -lz -lresolv -lm -ldl -lnsl -lxml2 -lz -liconv -lm -lssl -lcrypto -ldl -lcurl -lz -lssl -lcrypto -ldl -lxml2 -lz -liconv -lm -lssl -lcrypto -ldl 1>&5
/usr/lib/gcc-lib/i586-suse-linux/3.3.3/../../../../i586-suse-linux/bin/ld: cannot find -lpam
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
configure: failed program was:
#line 46767 "configure"
#include "confdefs.h"

configure:48289: gcc -o conftest -I/usr/include -g -O2 -L/usr/lib -lpthread -Wl,-rpath,/opt/dev/lib -L/opt/dev/lib -Wl,-rpath,/usr/ssl/lib -L/usr/ssl/lib -Wl,-rpath,/opt/cm-cvsroot/257/oss/comp/web/php5/src/imap-tmp/imap-2002e/c-client -L/opt/cm-cvsroot/257/oss/comp/web/php5/src/imap-tmp/imap-2002e/c-client
-lcrypt -lgmp -lgdbm -lcurl -lz -lresolv -lm -ldl -lnsl -lxml2 -lz -liconv -lm -lssl -lcrypto -ldl -lcurl -lz -lssl -lcrypto -ldl -lxml2 -lz -liconv -lm -lssl -lcrypto -ldl -lssl -lcrypto -ldl 1>&5
/tmp/cco9oumL.o(.text+0xf9): In function `main':
/opt/cm-cvsroot/257/oss/comp/web/php5/src/configure:48283: undefined reference to `auth_gssapi_valid'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
configure: failed program was:
#line 48262 "configure"

configure:48316: checking whether build with IMAP works
configure:48354: gcc -o conftest -I/usr/include -g -O2 -L/usr/lib -lpthread -Wl,-rpath,/opt/dev/lib -L/opt/dev/lib -Wl,-rpath,/usr/ssl/lib -L/usr/ssl/lib -L/opt/cm-cvsroot/257/oss/comp/web/php5/src/imap-tmp/imap-2002e/c-client conftest.c -lc-client -lcrypt -lgmp -lgdbm -lcurl -lz -lresolv -lm -ldl -lnsl -lxml2 -lz -liconv -lm -lssl -lcrypto -ldl -lcurl -lz -lssl -lcrypto -ldl -lxml2 -lz -liconv -lm -lssl -lcrypto -ldl -lssl -lcrypto -ldl 1>&5
undefined reference to `pam_end'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
configure: failed program was:
#line 48327 "configure"
#include "confdefs.h"

solution:
The error is because of some missing pam modules and pam library. So, I installed pam-devel-0.77-221.i586.rpm and again fired configure script.Configure and make worked sucessfully.

cheers, make world open.

Emotion matters...

2006-04-30T15:23:00.000+05:30

Emotion matters in the world of technology and innovations. I am in close vicinity of many open source enthusiasts and evangelist. The emotion factor is really driving them and making way for their success.
I was really relentless to put emotions in my work but i got to know now... it is helping and making life more productive.
I had numerous opportunity to hear and talk to my CTO Murugan Pal founder of SpikeSource and serious opensource evangelist. I was really-really surprised to find great deal of emotion factor in his talks and works. I was forced to think million times that how can a person of his stature can be so emotional and at the same time great story of success. But it is there and things are really in shape for the man. One can easily identify the amount of emotion he puts in his talks and efforts.
Another great guy i came across is R.K.V.S Raman the underestimated scientist at C-DAC, Bangalore and again the emotion matters in his work and efforts. He really puts his heart out in every endeavors he indulges in and make himself available to the world in that crude fashion itself without any hiccups.
Conclusively i am shouting from the rooftop that emotion matters in innovation and efforts...

cheers, make world open.

OpenOffice in 7 indian language.

2006-04-11T14:39:00.000+05:30

Uhhhhh... mind blowing work for the indic community and people out there who wants to work in their own regional languages. Great kudos to all of them who is behind this herculean task and who made this possible. This is really a great day for indic computing.
Read More...
All the seven language package can be downloadable from this link.
Download OpenOffice-2 indic language packs

cheers, make world open.

Compile a Kernel

2006-03-21T15:27:00.001+05:30

How to compile the Linux kernel

When I joined C-DAC(Formerly NCST) Bangalore, as a
technical associate(TA) , beside learning about the project,
which I'm part of, the task assigned to me was to write a
loadable kernel module(LKM). As a part of that task, I
wanted to upgrade the kernel on my machine to the latest
one. I started to look around for the material and books for
help. In all these efforts Google(http://www.google.com)
played an important role; also our library always proves to
be one of the best for that matter. After some early work I
could find out following steps to compile the linux kernel

1 Download the Linux kernel from http://www.kernel.org

2 Untar the tarball using either "tar -xzf" for ".tgz"
file or "tar -xjf" command for ".tar.bz2" file.

3 Go the kernel directory

4 make [config/menuconfig/defconfig/xconfig] This will
invoke either an editor to let you configure kernel
parameters or may ask questions in an interactive mode
in case of "make config". At the end of configuration
you'll have ".config" file written in the same direc-
tory. It's not reccomended you to edit this file.

5 make bzImage: This will start the actual compilation
process and at the end of this step you'll have
"vmlinuz" file ready, which is your kernel image.

6 make modules: This will compile the loadable kernel
modules source files to generate the kernel object(.ko)
files in case of Linux kernel-2.6.x and object(.o)
files for the kernels prior to kernel-2.6.x

7 make modules_install: This command needs the root priv-
ileges, so you gotta do the root login before executing
this command. As this command will create the directory
"linux-" under "/lib/modules" and copy
all the object files and dirvers generated so far in
this directory.

8 make install: This command will make the necessary
changes in the boot loader configuration file so that,
when you reboot the system you'll see the option to
boot into this freshly compiled Linux kernel.

Note:

. Always keep a running kernel image untouched, so in
case if new kernel image is unable to boot, you can
always boot with the old kernel and do the nessary
changes.

. Also do not forget to read the kernel documentation.

Courtsey: Prasad J Pandit

SuSe 9.1 blues

2006-03-16T11:53:00.000+05:30

Uhhhh... it is now becoming really frustating for me to work on SuSe. I am trying since a couple of days to figure out the problem in automount and still not able to get in to it.
I don't understand why this is a problem as it is working for fc3,rhel3,rhel4 and when it comes to SuSe it just stops responding.

Scenario is:

* NIS server is running on rhel4 and giving yp mappings.

* SuSe machine works for NIS authentication but doesn't switch to home directory as home directory is not automounted.

* I can see all the mapping from the SuSe machine with $ypcat -kt auto.home

* NIS and NFS server is working fine for all the other system except SuSe.

* I think the problem might be with the difference in flavors of Linux being used Server on rhel4 and client is on SuSe.

Well i am still struggling with it and will find the solution OR workaround.

How to make an ISO

2006-02-10T14:17:00.001+05:30

To make an ISO from CD/DVD.
Place the media in the drive and do not mount it. If it automounts, unmount it.

commands are as follows:

$ dd if=/dev/dvd of=dvd.iso # for dvd
$ dd if=/dev/cdrom of=cd.iso # for cdrom
$ dd if=/dev/scd0 of=cd.iso # if cdrom is scsi

To make an ISO from files on hard drive.
Create a directory which holds the files.
Then use the mkisofs command.

$ mkisofs -o /tmp/cd.iso /tmp/directory/

This results in a file called cd.iso in folder /tmp which contains all the files and directories in /tmp/directory/.

For more info, see the man pages for mkisofs, losetup, and dd, or see the CD-Writing-HOWTO at http://www.tldp.org.

If one wants to create an ISO images of a CD using Windows, Cygwin has a dd command that will work. Since dd is not specific to CDs, it will also create disk images of floppies, hard drives, zip drives, etc.

Courtsey: http://www.granneman.com/techinfo/linux/burningcds/makeanisoimage.htm

enjoy...

How to configure/enable wireless LAN(wifi) working on Fedora Core-3 for compaq nx6110 laptop.

2006-02-07T17:40:00.000+05:30

Fedora core 3 kernel[2.6.9] which is shipped with the distro doesn't support the wireless driver and framework which i am going to talk about. The steps are here...

1. Update the default fc-3 kernel or update the complete system. Depends upon your choice, i did a complete update of the system.

$ yum update

It will take entire night to update the system(depends upon network speed.)

Kernel got upgraded to 2.6.12-1.1381_FC3.

2. Add livna yum repo. If having this repo skip this step. Otherwise
as a super user

$ vi /etc/yum.repos.d/livna.repo

Add these lines to the file created:

###############
## Livna.org ##
###############

[livna-stable]
name=Livna.org - Fedora Compatible Packages (stable)
baseurl=http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/$releasever/$basearch/RPMS.stable
http://livna.cat.pdx.edu/fedora/$releasever/$basearch/RPMS.stable
#gpgcheck=1

[livna-unstable]
name=Livna.org - Fedora Compatible Packages (unstable)
baseurl=http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/$releasever/$basearch/RPMS.unstable
http://livna.cat.pdx.edu/fedora/$releasever/$basearch/RPMS.unstable
#gpgcheck=1

[livna-testing]
name=Livna.org - Fedora Compatible Packages (testing)
baseurl=http://rpm.livna.org/fedora/$releasever/$basearch/RPMS.testing
http://livna.cat.pdx.edu/fedora/$releasever/$basearch/RPMS.testing
#gpgcheck=1

3. $ yum install ipw2200-firmware

4. $ yum install kernel-module-ndiswrapper-2.6.12-1.1381_FC3

It will bring the dependency of ndiswrapper and installs with this kernel module.

5. $ yum install cabextract

6. download the HP driver SP30290.exe

7. Unpack the SP30290.exe to some directory. To do so run
$ cabextract SP30290.exe

8. From the directory where the SP30290.exe file is extracted run
$ /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5a.inf

9. $ /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper -m
It will add an alias to /etc/modprobe.conf

Now you can reboot to have it activated,
or you can run
$ depmod -a
$ modprobe ndiswrapper

Use the Desktop -> System Settings -> Network application to create a new device for the wlan0 ndiswrapper device and configure as per the options there.

cheers... make world open.

OpenOffice and Java connectivity on Ubuntu breezy badger(5.10)

2006-02-02T13:11:00.000+05:30

OpenOffice that come pre-installed with Ubuntu cannot detect any Java except gcj from FSF . If you want it to detect any other java, one will have to follow instructions given at

http://www.ncode.ch/?item=papers&id=oojvm

Before that one should have to remove .openoffice.org2 directory from $HOME

---
cheers... make world open.

How to build an RPM

2006-01-30T15:52:00.000+05:30

The basic procedure to build an RPM is as follows:

* Get the source code you are building the RPM for to build on your system.

* Make a patch of any changes you had to make to the sources to get them to build properly.

* Make a spec file for the package.

* Make sure everything is in its proper place.

* Build the package using RPM.

Under normal operation, RPM builds both binary and source packages.

One of the most typical and important task is to make the spec file.
Still i am collecting information about the spec file and in next post i will be writing about it and make a sample spec file.

enjoy... make world open.

Steve Job Words...

2006-01-27T19:39:00.000+05:30

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

Useful tips from Ain Vagula for updating UI strings to newer version of OpenOffice.

2006-01-07T12:03:00.000+05:30

Following steps are needed when migrating to UI strings with no duplicates:

- install updated toolkit

- generate sdf file from your existing translated or half-translated po-s with new toolkit
(to avoid english strings in untranslated entries)

- backup old po-s somewhere

- generate new set of po-files from just generated sdf-file for your language

- update generated po-files with latest pot-files. Now every duplicated string in
one file has unique identifier, but string itself is translated as it was in
your old po-file.

Note that:

- When you do not regenerate po files, all duplicate entries will be untranslated.

- When you use sdf file, generated with old toolkit, for regenerating,untranslated
entries will be filled with english strings

thanks Ain as these steps are working really fine for me :-)).

How to extract files from rpm and deb packages

2006-01-05T13:41:00.000+05:30

* rpm package can be extracted by issuing this command at the command line.

$rpm2cpio {rpm-package name} | cpio -idv

* deb packages can be extracted by issuing this command at the command line.

$dpkg-deb -x {deb-package name} {target directory}

Enjoy..

Marathi OpenOffice2.0

2005-12-16T14:38:00.000+05:30

Huhh... Got into the grooves again. Now i am working for marathi openoffice 2.0 and hoping of completing it by this weekends.
Again i am facing the same old problem with the PO files while converting it to OpenOffice GSI file. I don't know why they are repeating time and again the same problem of changing the format and directory structure of the PO files. I repeatedly posted that PO file is not a simple text file with any sort of directory structure, they are there with some pre-defined cause and one should follow the standards while translating it.
Simple and easy trick is... Don't do anything other than translating the msg strings.
I am still cleaning the dirty laundry for which i am not responsible.

Installing ALSA in debian sarge 2.6.8-2-386

2005-11-21T12:12:00.000+05:30

Install alsa-base (apt-get install alsa-base) and alsa-utils (apt-get install alsa-utils).
Make sure you're part of the "audio" group for this edit /etc/group file as
audio:*:29:username
if the above line is not there.

Run $/sbin/modprobe snd-emu10k1 ; if it doesn't work try with snd-emu10k2 OR snd-ca0106
Now run $alsaconf ; this is an alsa configurator and detects the sound card and configure it.

srd24:~# alsaconf
Unloading ALSA sound driver modules: snd-emu10k1-synth snd-emux-synth snd-seq-v irmidi snd-seq-midi-emul snd-seq-oss snd-seq-midi snd-seq-midi-event snd-seq sn d-emu10k1 snd-util-mem snd-hwdep snd-intel8x0 snd-ac97-codec snd-pcm-oss snd-mi xer-oss snd-pcm snd-timer snd-page-alloc snd-mpu401-uart snd-rawmidi snd-seq-de vice.
Building card database...

Running update-modules...
Loading driver...
Setting up ALSA....
Setting default volumes...
Saving the mixer setup used for this in /var/lib/alsa/asound.state.

===============

Now ALSA is ready to use.
For adjustment of volumes, use your favorite mixer.

Have a lot of fun!

Here are the choices:
intel8x0 Intel Corp. 82801AA AC'97 Audio (rev 02)
legacy probe legacy ISA (non-PnP) chips

I select the intel card and pressed enter. Now I get this:
Configuring snd-intel8x0
Do you want to modify /etc/modprob.d/sound
(And /etc/modprobe.conf if present)?

I select 'yes' and press enter.
"OK, sound driver is configured.
ALSA CONFIGURATOR
will prepare the card for playing now.
Now I will load the ALSA sound driver and use amixer to raise the default sound volumes.
You can change the volume later via a mixer.

I select and press ok.

Running update-modules...
Loading Driver...
Setting up ALSA...
Setting default volumes...

===

Now ALSA is ready to use
For adjustment of volumes, use your favorite mixer.

Have a lot of fun!
---------------------------------------
---------------------------------------

Finally, alsamixer and volume control is working otherwise it was giving error as
$alsamixer
alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such device
and when volume control is selected it is giving error as
no volume control elements and/or devices found.

How to install more than one version of OpenOffice.org?

2005-11-16T11:19:00.000+05:30

*How to install more than one version of OpenOffice.org?*

Windows:

1. open WINDOWS START MENU -> RUN ...
2. insert the path and file to the setup OR browse to the location
3. add at the end (behind the setup.exe) " /a" and click OK
4. the setup program start
5. select the location where you want to install OpenOffice.org
6. start the OpenOffice.org the directory where you have install it.
When you install the OpenOffice.org with the option /a then you have NO
systemintegration. (no start menu entries and no file association)

Linux:

1. open new shell
2. change to the directory where all the rpm packages are. (f.e.
/temp/openoffice/rpm)
3. f.e. you want to install the office into the directory
/home/user1/office then insert

rpm -vh --install --dbpath /home/user1/office/.rpm
--nodeps --prefix /home/user1/office/ openoffice*.rpm

after the rpm installation you can start the office from the path
/home/user1/office/program/soffice
When you install the office in this way you have no systemintegration
(no start menu entries and no file association)

Solaris and X86:

It's not possible to install more then one office at once.

*If the instructions above do not work, the you need to change your
UserConfigDirectory.*

1. Open the file bootstraprc(Linux)/bootstrap.ini(windows) in a editor.
2. Change the line UserInstallation=$SYSUSERCONFIG/.openoffice_english
into UserInstallation=$SYSUSERCONFIG/.openoffice_dutch or any other
directory you want.

===========
Rafaella Braconi.

Finally got debian sarge running on my box.

2005-10-27T11:59:00.000+05:30

huh!!!.. it was really frustating to install debian without CD-ROM but during the course of installing it i gained a lot of insight in to the debian installation tricks. It's really true that the debian installer is sucking very hard and is not for the masses. The one who installs it need some kind of great patience of doing same stuff time and time again without fail.
Anyway thanks to Kartik Mistry for his instant support and gave a insight of installing through netinstall-iso. I did it through USB-ZIP since my CD-ROM is not detecting the CD written with netinstall-iso. And finally installed all the required packages through apt-get.
Now, i got a complete running debian sarge box with gnome-2.10 ready to explore more.
Now i can concentrate more on glade and Gtk.

Why Debian ??

2005-10-14T14:11:00.000+05:30

A couple of day's back my project co-ordinator Mr R.K.V.S Raman asked "why debian... why not fedora", that time i was speechless with only utterance of debian's huge repository and easy package management. And then i thought i have to justify my switch from Fedora to Debian.
Now this is a small feature list supporting Debian.

Debian is the world's leading non-commercial totally free Linux distribution. Remaining loyal to the concept upon which Linux was created, it is produced by hundreds of volunteer developers around the world. Contrary to a common misconception, Debian is not for Linux gurus only. As a matter of fact, as you will see on the guide pages, its advanced package management system makes it one of the easier distributions for new Linux users to work with. Here are just a few of its advantages:

* Non-Proprietary: Debian is a true GNU/Linux distribution using the standard UNIX style commands. This ensures that what you learn today won't be obsolete in two years and makes it easier to also learn how to work with UNIX systems.
* Easy Maintenance: A seamless, totally-integrated package management system makes it easy to keep your system up to date and free of orphan files and incompatible products. Most dependent packages are handled automatically so you don't get the "Failed dependencies" error commonly encountered when trying to add software on RPM-based systems like Red Hat and Suse.
* Automated Patching: The Debian package system also allows you to use a single command to update your entire system (operating system and installed packages) over the Internet. This allows you to use a scheduler to routinely run a shell script to automatically update your system with the latest program, OS, and security patches.
* Extensive: Only free software packages (applications, utilities, etc.) are allowed to be included in the official Debian distributions, and the current binary distribution comes on 14 CDs because there are over 10,000 of them. With Debian, you don't have different "server" and "workstation" or "personal" editions. It's everything all in one.
* Support Options: Peer support is available through a community of listservs (mailing lists) and chat rooms. Replies to messages may even be from those who helped develop the product. And since you're likely not the first person to encounter a given issue, there are also searchable archives of listserv messages. If your company requires commercial support contracts fear not. Numerous for-profit support operations offer a variety of technical support options. With Debian, you don't have to worry about forced upgrades due to vendors dropping support for older versions.
* Minimal Investment: Debian's peformance is excellent even with the modest hardware requirements Linux is famous for. While most OSs require newer, faster, bigger hardware, Debian allows you to utilize those old Pentium systems instead of throwing them into a landfill. This, along with the fact that you can load a single copy of Debian on as many systems as you want, means you can set up a full-blown enterprise at very little cost.
* Reliable: Debian's focus on stability and reliability results in servers that you may have to reboot once a year, rather than once a month.
* User-centric: New versions of Debian are developed when major changes warrant one, not to generate revenues from upgrades. (You need only look at the version numbers of the various distributions to verify this.)

Taken from http://www.aboutdebian.com/

Error while building OO2.0 in "package" module on Ubuntu 5.04 "Hoary Hedgehog".

2005-10-10T10:23:00.000+05:30

I am using "ooo_SRC680_m125_src" source, while building it crashed in package module giving error as:

/home/vijay/ooo_SRC680_m125_src/package/source/zippackage
------------------------------
Making: ../../unxlngi4.pro/slo/ZipPackage.obj
g++ -Wuninitialized -fmessage-length=0 -c -I. -I../../unxlngi4.pro/inc -I../inc -I../../inc -I../../unx/inc -I../../unxlngi4.pro/inc -I. -I/home/vijay/ooo_SRC680_m125_src/solver/680/unxlngi4.pro/inc/stl -I/home/vijay/ooo_SRC680_m125_src/solver/680/unxlngi4.pro/inc/external -I/home/vijay/ooo_SRC680_m125_src/solver/680/unxlngi4.pro/inc -I/home/vijay/ooo_SRC680_m125_src/solenv/unxlngi4/inc -I/home/vijay/ooo_SRC680_m125_src/solenv/inc -I/home/vijay/ooo_SRC680_m125_src/res -I/home/vijay/ooo_SRC680_m125_src/solver/680/unxlngi4.pro/inc/stl -I/home/vijay/ooo_SRC680_m125_src/solenv/inc/Xp31 -I/usr/lib/j2sdk1.4-sun/include -I/usr/lib/j2sdk1.4-sun/include/linux -I/usr/lib/j2sdk1.4-sun/include/native_threads/include -I/usr/X11R6/include -I. -I../../res -I. -O1 -pipe -mcpu=pentiumpro -Wno-ctor-dtor-privacy -include preinclude.h -fexceptions -fno-enforce-eh-specs -fpic -DLINUX -DUNX -DVCL -DGCC -DC300 -DINTEL -DGXX_INCLUDE_PATH=/usr/include/c++/3.3 -DCVER=C300 -D_USE_NAMESPACE -DGLIBC=2 -DX86 -D_PTHREADS -D_REENTRANT -DNEW_SOLAR -D_USE_NAMESPACE=1 -DSTLPORT_VERSION=400 -D__DMAKE -DUNIX -DCPPU_ENV=gcc3 -DSUPD=680 -DPRODUCT -DNDEBUG -DPRODUCT_FULL -DOSL_DEBUG_LEVEL=0 -DOPTIMIZE -DEXCEPTIONS_ON -DCUI -DSOLAR_JAVA -DSRC680 -DSHAREDLIB -D_DLL_ -DMULTITHREAD -o ../../unxlngi4.pro/slo/ZipPackage.o /home/vijay/ooo_SRC680_m125_src/package/source/zippackage/ZipPackage.cxx
In file included from /home/vijay/ooo_SRC680_m125_src/package/source/zippackage/ZipPackage.cxx:74:
../../inc/ZipPackageFolder.hxx: In member function `void ZipPackageFolder::setRemoveOnInsertMode_Impl(unsigned char)':
../../inc/ZipPackageFolder.hxx:124: error: invalid pointer to bit-field `ZipPackageEntry::mbAllowRemoveOnInsert'
dmake: Error code 1, while making '../../unxlngi4.pro/slo/ZipPackage.obj'
'---* tg_merge.mk *---'

ERROR: Error 65280 occurred while making /home/vijay/ooo_SRC680_m125_src/package/source/zippackage

I guess the problem is probably caused by the use of gcc-3.3, the same error on linux with gcc 3.2. This was introduced between m116 and m117.

This is the fix for the problem.

diff -ur package/inc/ZipPackageFolder.hxx package_new/inc/ZipPackageFolder.hxx
--- package/inc/ZipPackageFolder.hxx 2005-07-12 14:28:10.000000000 +0200
+++ package_new/inc/ZipPackageFolder.hxx 2005-07-14 17:30:52.000000000 +0200
@@ -121,7 +121,7 @@
}

void setPackageFormat_Impl( sal_Bool bPackageFormat ) { m_bPackageFormat = bPackageFormat; }
- void setRemoveOnInsertMode_Impl( sal_Bool bRemove ) { ZipPackageEntry::mbAllowRemoveOnInsert = bRemove; }
+ void setRemoveOnInsertMode_Impl( sal_Bool bRemove ) { this->mbAllowRemoveOnInsert = bRemove; }

// Recursive functions
void saveContents(rtl::OUString &rPath, std::vector < com::sun::star::uno::Sequence < com::sun::star::beans::PropertyValue > > &rManList, ZipOutputStream & rZipOut, com::sun::star::uno::Sequence < sal_Int8 > &rEncryptionKey, rtlRandomPool & rRandomPool)

diff -ur package/source/zippackage/ZipPackageFolder.cxx
package_new/source/zippackage/ZipPackageFolder.cxx
--- package/source/zippackage/ZipPackageFolder.cxx 2005-07-12 14:31:33.000000000 +0200
+++ package_new/source/zippackage/ZipPackageFolder.cxx 2005-07-14 17:31:14.000000000 +0200
@@ -128,7 +128,7 @@
{
OSL_ENSURE( m_xFactory.is(), "No factory is provided to the package folder!" );

- ZipPackageEntry::mbAllowRemoveOnInsert = bAllowRemoveOnInsert;
+ this->mbAllowRemoveOnInsert = bAllowRemoveOnInsert;

SetFolder ( sal_True );
aEntry.nVersion = -1;

diff -ur package/source/zippackage/ZipPackageStream.cxx package_new/source/zippackage/ZipPackageStream.cxx
--- package/source/zippackage/ZipPackageStream.cxx 2005-07-12 14:31:48.000000000 +0200
+++ package_new/source/zippackage/ZipPackageStream.cxx 2005-07-14 17:32:10.000000000 +0200
@@ -137,7 +137,7 @@
{
OSL_ENSURE( m_xFactory.is(), "No factory is provided to ZipPackageStream!\n" );

- ZipPackageEntry::mbAllowRemoveOnInsert = bAllowRemoveOnInsert;
+ this->mbAllowRemoveOnInsert = bAllowRemoveOnInsert;

SetFolder ( sal_False );
aEntry.nVersion = -1;

cheers.. happy building :-))

Installing java in Ubuntu hoary..

2005-10-07T10:29:00.000+05:30

First download the j2sdk : in my case it is j2sdk-1_4_2_09-linux-i586.bin. Be sure to get the .bin, not the .rpm.

Next install "java-package" with synaptics or apt-get, whatever your preference, with the command

$ sudo apt-get install java-package.

Note that this will also install the package "fakeroot", if you don't already have it installed. Note also that java-package is in "multiverse", so your repository list /etc/ept/sources.list needs to contain, for example:

http://archive.ubuntu.com hoary/multiverse java-package

Create a Debian java package with fakeroot make-jpkg, for example

$fakeroot make-jpkg j2sdk-1_4_2_09-linux-i586.bin

Important: don't use sudo to do this, and expect to get some warning/ error "permission denied" messages. This should create a debian package - sun-j2sdk1.4_1.4.2+09_i386.deb - ready to install with dpkg. For example,

$ sudo dpkg -i sun-j2sdk1.4_1.4.2+09_i386.deb

Once you've installed it, you'll be up and running with java:
your JAVA_HOME is now, for example, /usr/lib/j2sdk1.4-sun/.
On command line enter:

$ java -version :you should see something like:

java version "1.4.2_09"
Java(TM) 2 Runtime Environment, Standard Edition (build 1.4.2_09-b05)
Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 1.4.2_09-b05, mixed mode)

FOSS.IN/2005

2005-10-06T10:00:00.000+05:30

Heads-up for anyone interested in Free & Open Source Software, especially if you are in India:

FOSS.IN/2005 (the successor to the well known Linux Bangalore conferences) is from November 29th to December 2nd, at the Bangalore Palace in Bangalore, India. This is India's biggest FOSS conference.

If you want to know more, check out http://foss.in/2005

I will be participating as a delegate.

FOSS.IN/2005 is a community-oriented event. For it to be successful,it needs to reach the people who would benefit the most from it, and help in increasing the tribe of contributors and users of Free & Open Source Software.

The four day conference intends to bring together the entire cross section of players in the FOSS scenario - users from different target communities, technologists, developers, educationists, businesses as well as policy makers.

The theme for this year's conference is "Conversations". On the FOSS horizon, there are several efforts that are represented or addressed across the country. In, parallel, there are various technical discussions and dialogues that have happened at the earlier conferences and meetings and are expected to happen at this conference too.

At FOSS.IN/2005, the focus would be to catalyze mutually beneficial interaction between the technologists and technology implementers (FOSS developers) and the end users, policy makers, educationists and industry. This focus would be in addition to the intent of enabling technology knowledge dissemination across the community through talks and/or demonstrations.

The call for participations has been out for quite some time now.

You can see the Call for participation @ http://foss.in/2005/cfp/
A list of possible topics is available @ http://foss.in/2005/topics/

If you would like to give a talk, tutorial, do a workshop or
organize a Birds of Feather session, then register it at the
earliest, only 4 days left for speaker registration.

To register as a speaker visit
http://foss.in/2005/speakers/

If you are planning to speak or attend (or even if you can't attend
due to reasons beyond your control), you can help getting the word out in a variety of ways:
eg. talking about it friends, colleagues, clients etc, putting it up
on your blog if are planning to speak or attend, putting up posters
about the event at your school/college/organization etc.
See http://foss.in/2005/promote/ on ways to promote it.

worth reading...

2005-09-29T17:15:00.000+05:30

It's worth reading this Story

IndicDevelMeet 2

2005-09-22T19:04:00.000+05:30

cheers...

Sitting (LTR)
Amish Munshi, Shrikant Gaikwad, Swapnil Hajare, Venkatesh Hariharan, Khader Abbeb N, Gora Mohanty, Basanta Shrestha, Ramkrishna Reddy, G Karunakar, Vijay Kumar, Ravishankar Shrivastava, Sunil Mohan, Lalit Kumar

Standing (LTR, in the order of faces)
Shanu Grover, Harmeet Singh, Kartik Mistry, Satish Mohan, Sankarshan Mukhopadyay, Nirav Mehta, Subir Pradhanang, Soumyadip Modak, Nagarjuna G, M D Kulkarni, Prasanta Baruah, Sayamindu Dasgupta, Abhijit Dutta, Vainateya Koratkar, Baishampayan `Bhaskar' Ghose, Warren Noronha, Jaswinder Singh Phulewala, R Hari, Alka Irani, Naveen Kumar, Sasikumar M, Jitendra Shah, Vigneshwaran R, Monika Shah, Deepu Abraham, Priti Patil.

Opera

2005-09-22T13:51:00.000+05:30

opera goes free get it here , i don't know whether it is free as freedom. Anyway atleast now one can enjoy the full featured opera browsing without any add banners.

I Am !!!

2005-09-20T11:00:00.000+05:30

Boldly striving to overcome the darkness both in this world and within myself...

Some footages of indicdevel meet day 1 and day 2

2005-09-13T21:33:00.000+05:30

For the first time i have been to a meet of this nature where all the indic developers are sitting together for a common agenda of getting more and more work done for common cause of free software.
Earlier i had a thought that free/freedom software is a buzzword but here i came to conclusion that people are working and really working hard for the philosophy of free software.

Day 1:
------
It started with a opening talk of karunakar followed by gora's talk. Gora made it clear enough to have a finely chalked out issues to be discussed and the final deliverables after the meet.
After a short intro of the participants present here, we started as per our schedule.
started with input method(IIIMF, XKB , SCIM) by karunakar, gora and sunil mohan. It was nice to have a insight of these methods. As i think input method is one of the major hurdle in getting close to a huge user base. And we need to do something to ease it.

The issue of "mukt" and "muft" software is discussed with some heated exchanges and then i thought that again i got into a political meet and nothing will be coming out from here. But with some balanced wisdom of gora's intervention everything calmed down and people out here got onto their technical grooves. Anyway some people are still there who are dragging us to political mileage.
Well it is always there.
Some inputs from sunil and gora about conversion and keymaps was very valuable to carry on.
For the day one i bunked hands on session and been to one of my firend and enjoyed there a lot with him.
While people out here got into hacking session and developed a spell checker for OO1.1.4 using Hunspell. Gora and kartik did a Aspell in gujarati.

Day 2
-----

The day started with Abhijit dutta and gora talk of locales and collations - glibc, CLDR.
After that we have a tutorial session of sunil and gora of charsets and code conversion form ASCII to Unicode.
Karunakar talked about the Testing framework of the indic supported software and showed some of he live examples. One of the example was of Font switch in OpenOffice.
Sayamindu talked about CVS, bugzilla and patching, his talk on CVS and patching was nice and worth learning but it was very superficial for the guy who didn't configured and administered the CVS server. Anyway i will try some other time and can learn those CVS gizmos.
After lunch we had a talk by kartik, subir and me, kartik talked about how to use translate tool for making openoffice GSI, i talked** about some do's and don't of openoffice pot translation. I have shared my experience of working with Telugu translator and people out here agreed to have a translation guidelines for openoffice. Subir talked about khmeros site info and pavel sites.
Then basanta and kartik talked about mozilla localization using mozilla translator.
And the day ends with a conclusive session by gora.

**this is for the first time i had talked in front of so many people and i was very stammering but at last i made it and had a nice time talking about the openoffice translation.
Anyway this is for the fun of knowing and sharing something. :-)),

How to localize gaim1.5.0

2005-09-06T11:50:00.000+05:30

To localize gaim1.5.0 for Linux box. Steps are as follows..

1. Get source1.5.0 tarball from http://gaim.sourceforge.net/

2. Untar it $tar zxvf gaim-1.5.0.tar.gz. You will get a directory named gaim-1.5.0

3. In the directory gaim-1.5.0/po/, you will find a gaim.pot file which is a po template file.

4. Translate the gaim.pot file and save it there in the same directory(gaim-1.5.0/po/) as "Lang.po", where "Lang" is the target language for which you have translated the pot file.
For ex: if you have translated the gaim.pot file for telugu then save this file after complete
translation as "te.po".

5. In the directory gaim-1.5.0 , you will find configure file. Add "te" to ALL_LINGUAS variable.

ALL_LINGUAS="am az bg ca cs da de en_AU en_CA en_GB es et fi fr he hi hu it ja ka ko lt mk my_MM nb nl nn pa pl pt_BR pt ro ru sk sl sq sr sr@Latn sv te tr uk vi xh zh_CN zh_TW"

6. Further current directory as gaim-1.5.0 , configure the source as
$./configure
then,
$make
and then,
$make install

7. The gaim with your language is installed to your system. If you want to run gaim in the language for which you localized, change the locale of your system by $LANG=te_US and then run gaim.

8. If you want to make rpm from the source inclusive of your language. The above 5 steps is followed and then tar the gaim-1.5.0 directory as $tar zcvf gaim-1.5.0.tar.gz gaim-1.5.0 and put this gaim-1.5.0.tar.gz to /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES. Copy gaim.spec from "gaim-1.5.0/gaim.spec" to /usr/src/redhat/SPECS. And as a super user run
$rpmbuild -ba gaim.spec from the /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/ directory.
After successfull completion of the above command rpm will be builded in
/usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386 directory "gaim-1.5.0-0.i386.rpm".

File Redirection

2005-09-03T16:26:00.000+05:30

Some of the file redirection commands...

2> file direct stderr to file

> file 2>&1 direct both stdout and stderr to file

>> file 2>&1 append both stdout and stderr to file

2>&1 | command pipe stdout and stderr to command

To redirect stdout and stderr to two separate files you can do:

$ command 1> out_file 2> err_file

or, since the redirection defaults to stdout:

$ command > out_file 2> err_file

With the Bourne shell you can specify other file descriptors (3 through 9) and redirect output through them. This is done with the form:

n>&m redirect file descriptor n to file descriptor m

We used the above to send stderr (2) to the same place as stdout (1), 2>&1, when we wanted to have error messages and normal messages to go to file instead of the terminal. If we wanted only the error messages to go to the file we could do this by using a place holder file descriptor, 3. We'll first redirect 3 to 2, then redirect 2 to 1, and finally, we'll redirect 1 to 3:

$ (command 3>&2 2>&1 1>&3) > file

This sends stderr to 3 then to 1, and stdout to 3, which is redirected to 2. So, in effect, we've reversed file descriptors 1 and 2 from their normal meaning. We might use this in the following example:

$ (cat file 3>&2 2>&1 1>&3) > errfile

So if file is read the information is discarded from the command output, but if file can't be read the error message is put in errfile for your later use.

You can close file descriptors when you're done with them:

m<&- closes an input file descriptor

<&- closes stdin

m>&- closes an output file descriptor

>&- closes stdout

cpio: MD5 sum mismatch on rpms created during build process under updated fedora-core3

2005-08-26T15:12:00.000+05:30

This is the error message while running
$rpm -ihv *.rpm

error: unpacking of archive failed on file /opt/openoffice.org1.9.125/program/libgcc_s.so.1.1;430edcb0: cpio: MD5 sum mismatch

Error is for this package openoffice.org-core05-1.9.125-1.i586.rpm.

After complete installation of the packages when we run $openoffice.org-1.9 command it give error of shared objects(*.so.) not found for "javaldx" and "soffice.bin".

If you've been seeing these under "Updated fedora" it's because /lib/libgcc_s.so.1
is normally prelinked and this isn't working well with the normal rpm architecture for fedora, as a hackaround comment out the
%__prelink_undo_cmd /usr/sbin/prelink prelink -y library in /etc/rpm/macros.prelink

See
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=149465 for details.

Alternatively when it makes its way into a release, configure oosource --with-system-stdlibs will avoid the problem.

Well if one don't want to do the above steps, he can run the same rpm command as:
$rpm --nomd5 -ihv *.rpm
The above command will not check for md5sum and all the packages will be installed and i think it will work fine also. As in my case OO is running without any fail.

But the correct way is to configure it with the above said option.

I think this problem is with the updated version of fedora-core3 but i am not sure about it right now.

How to migrate OO1.1.3 Gsi to OO 2.0 Gsi , scripts and steps to follow.

2005-08-19T13:54:00.000+05:30

The steps and scripts used for the migration of OO1.1.3 Gsi to OO2.0 Gsi is available at..
http://ncb.ernet.in/~vijaykumar

Useful tips from Dwayne Bailey

2005-08-19T13:49:00.000+05:30

Subject: How to creating non-English language Po translation files

I've just been documenting how to create non-English source language
files for Mozilla and have added some info for OOo here:
http://translate.sourceforge.net/wiki/toolkit/oo2po

Use this:

oo2po -P --source-language=fr GSI_fr.sdf french-pot

This will create .pot files with French (fr) as the source language
using GSI_fr.sdf and putting all the files into french-pot

To create a set of PO files with your translation and a different source
languages try this. Here we are creating a source language of Afrikaans
(af) and a target language of Xhosa (xh)

Take your existing SDF files

cat GSI_af.sdf GSI_xh.sdf > GSI_af-xh.sdf
oo2po --source-language=af -lxh GSI_af-xh.sdf po

Using your combined SDF file this will create PO files with Afrikaans in
the msgid and Xhosa in the msgstr and output them into a directory
called po.

To create a new SDF file after translating do the following:

po2oo -lxh -t en-US.sdf af-xh new.sdf
This uses an en-US.sdf file as a template and read po files from af-xh
placing them in new.sdf

NOTE: I checked the produced GSI file using gsicheck. But if you are
going to rely on this method I suggest a more thorough check, maybe do
it in small stages.

Configuring and building gnopernicus..

2005-08-02T17:29:00.000+05:30

While building gnopernicus on fedora core3 i came through some of the errors of configuring it.
To the source directory of gnopernicus i typed the command $./configure, after some time it gave error that some of the packages like gconf2, gnome-mag, at , at-spi etc is not found.
To find the packages required for building, configure script is using $pkg-config. pkg-config command looks for the package information in /usr/lib/pkgconfig/package-name.pc files.
So if there is any package not found error with configure script, then we can look for it's corresponding .pc file in /usr/lib/pkgconfig directory. And if it's not there install the devel part of the package which is not found.
I installed gnome-mag-devel(for gnome-mag-1.0.pc) , at-spi-devel(for cspi-1.0.pc) and configured, it worked.
Next i did $make, completed without any error.
then $make install, which gave one error of not finding the path to put some xml and .schema files.
so i explicitly made the path as /usr/local/etc/gconf/ by creating a directory gconf in /usr/local/etc.
And finally $make install installed gnopernicus.
Which is working fine.

Font Substitution in OOo 2.0

2005-07-16T13:58:00.000+05:30

Here is a good suggestion from Joerg Barfuth
---------------------------------------------

RKVS Raman wrote:

> 2) The second way is that we asked the user to copy the Common.xcu (
> File is attached) to
>
> C:\Documents and Settings\raman\Application
> Data\OpenOffice.org1.9.103\user\registry\data\org\openoffice\Office
>
> where 'C:\Document and Settings\raman' could be replaced by your home directory
>
> In this case the Font Substitution information already exist and is
> the 'Saab' font developed by u
>
> Please install Saab font before OOo installation.
>
> 3) The third way (and the best way) is to write a script which does
> this copying of Common.xcu
>

Still better would be to integrate this change into the shared
configuration. You can install your special Common.xcu using
'/program/unopkg add --shared Common.xcu' and the contained
settings will be available to all users. You may also try including this
directly into the installation package, so it is installed under
/share/registry. In either case the settings apply to all users
automatically.

Before you do any of this, you should clean up the file, and remove the
settings that are outside of the FontSubstitution tag.

HTH, Joerg

How to hack openoffice2.0 about dialog and splash.

2005-07-12T19:09:00.000+05:30

Openoffice2.0 about dialog image can be changed by changing the file "ooo_SRC680_m100_src/default_images/svx/res/openabout.png", this is the default image used by OO2.0 for about dialog.
The string message of the about dialog is taken from the file "ooo_SRC680_m100_src/svx/source/intro/localize.sdf"
So, the strings can be changed by changing the merged string of the particular language.

Splash can be changed by changing the bmp file "ooo_SRC680_m100_src/instsetoo_native/unxlngi6.pro/bin/intro.bmp".

Enjoy hacking..

Not again..

2005-07-11T15:42:00.000+05:30

It was a ruthless bouncer and as usual got passed my head. Yet again i was looking helpless. I don't know what they are looking for and i suspect whether they themselves try it or not in a real scenario.
I agree i am dumb but what about those bunch of people. We are nothing but a bunch of jokers trying to read some experienced mind.
It is there to test abilities or test their own abilities. I don't know...
But today i am not frustated because it's their turn to think about the credibility of their testing technique and dig their brain.

There is always an 'X.X......' at the end..

2005-06-30T11:22:00.000+05:30

Got these lines form "Rahul Upakare" website.

MGPT is a battle.
You have to fight with grader.
Grader has two doors.
Doors are the main problems for you.
You have already got the information of both the doors.
Your job is to understand doors information completely.
Understand the structure of the door and implement the key to open the door.
The door lock may have 4/5 levers.
You have no idea how many levers are there and what is their structure.
But you can guess that from the information you have about the doors.
You have limited time and within that time you have to implement that key and try to open the door.
You will win if you manage to open the door within that specified time.

I don't have anything to say. I am still there and thinking of the same problem, solving in my mind with numerous combinations.
Yesterday i had a sound sleep otherwise i would have gone mad.
I am coming and someday i will.......

NTLDR is missing...

2005-06-18T15:02:00.000+05:30

I have a dual boot system with win2000 and FC-3. I was installing some software and playing around with the bootloader.
After some time when i rebooted the system and tried to boot in win2000 it gave me the message saying "NTLDR is missing , press ctrl+alt+del to restart".

The problem with the booting in win2000 is caused because of "ntldr, ntdetect.com and boot.ini" files.

What i did to rectify the problem is booted in FC-3 and copied file boot.ini from win partition to a floppy and downloaded files 'ntdetect.com' and 'ntldr' from the internet and copied to the same floppy.

After that i rebooted the system with the floppy and it worked, i found that the 'ntldr' file is renamed as 'ntldv'. I renamed that file to 'ntldr' and rebooted again to win.

And it worked.

The "NTLDR is missing" error can also be caused because of certain changes in hardware configuration like having a floppy in floppy drive while booting the system.

How to install TTF/OTF fonts in linux

2005-05-17T12:11:00.000+05:30

Following is the procedure to install 'OTF/TTF' fonts in Linux (eg: Fedora Core 3)

* Step 01. Download any otf/ttf font from internet and save in a directory on
your machine.
* Step 02. Go to the directory in which you have saved the font file.
Step 03. Login as root.
$su
* Step 04. Create a directory /usr/share/fonts/default/TrueType using following
command.
$ mkdir /usr/share/fonts/default/TrueType
* Step 05. Copy the font file in /usr/share/fonts/otfonts/
$ cp *.ttf /usr/share/fonts/default/TrueType
* Step 06. Go to directory /usr/share/fonts/default/TrueType
$ cd /usr/share/fonts/default/TrueType
* Step 07. Create fonts.scale
$ ttmkfdir
or
$ /usr/sbin/ttmkfdir
* Step 08. Create fonts.dir
$ mkfontdir
* Step 09. Add the path to X Font serve path
$ chkfontpath --add /usr/share/fonts/default/TrueType
or
$ /usr/sbin/chkfontpath --add /usr/share/fonts/default/TrueType
* Step 10. Update font information cache
$ fc-cache
* Step 11. Logout as root
$ exit

How to use old GSI for OO2.0

2005-05-11T16:11:00.000+05:30

To use the old GSI we need to follow these steps.

- create PO files from 1.1.2(old) GSI
- create compendium from these PO files (Kbabel can do this for you)
- download 2.0 POT files and POT2PO script from
ftp://ftp.linux.cz/pub/localization/OpenOffice.org/devel/POT/
- use Kbabel or POEdit (or some similar program) and automatically
translate 2.0
PO files using the compendium with 100% match
- translate the rest that was not automatically translated
From our experiences numbers are something like:
- 2.0 PO has about 58000 strings
- after running Kbabel with compendium and 100% match, 36000 untranslated
strings left (32000 in helpcontent2, 4000 in the rest modules - I guess that
mostly in Base)
So, as many have already asked (like me ;-) for the localized OOo 2.0,
translation ver. 1.0 you can translate 4000 strings in the GUI and after that
get on helpcontent.

SRC680m93 configure error

2005-04-19T17:38:00.000+05:30

checking for javac... /usr/java/j2sdk1.4.2_06/bin/javac
checking for javadoc... /usr/java/j2sdk1.4.2_06/bin/javadoc
checking how to run the C preprocessor... gcc -E
checking how to run the C++ preprocessor... g++ -E
checking for xmkmf... /usr/X11R6/bin/xmkmf
checking for perl... /usr/bin/perl
checking the Perl version... checked (perl 5)
checking for required Perl modules... Can't locate Archive/Zip.pm in @INC (@INC contains: /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.3/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/5.8.3 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.3/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.2/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.1/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.3 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.2 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.1 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.0 /usr/lib/perl5/site_perl /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.3/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.2/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.1/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.0/i386-linux-thread-multi /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.3 /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.2 /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.1 /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.0 /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl .) at -e line 1.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at -e line 1.
configure: error: Failed to find some modules

The problem is with some of the perl modules.I am fighting with it and trying to remove this error.

Naming convention for OO114 source directory while building

2005-03-24T16:31:00.000+05:30

The source or root directory should not contain any '-' character, if there is '-' in the name of the source directory then build will crash in "xml2cmp" module giving LNK2001: error. Because of this '-' in name of source directory, "SOLARLIB" and "SOLARINC" variable is not properly set in "winenv.bat" and this causes linking error while building.

Internal compiler error: while building OO1.1.4

2005-03-24T10:22:00.000+05:30

While building OpenOffice if one gets error as follows:

d:\ooo_1.1.4_source\solver\645\wntmsci9.pro\inc\tools/gen.hxx(152) : fatal error C1001: INTERNAL COMPILER ERROR
(compiler file 'msc1.cpp', line 1786)
Please choose the Technical Support command on the Visual C++
Help menu, or open the Technical Support help file for more information
dmake.exe: Error code 130, while making '..\..\wntmsci9.pro\slo\registerservices.obj'
---*TG_SLO.MK*---

Then the error is because of microsoft bug in visual c++ compiler, this bug is removed in Sp6 version of vc++, so one need to download the "Vs6sp6.exe" from microsoft download page and run the exe. This way one can remove the error.

My nerd score

2005-03-02T12:14:00.000+05:30

Error while building OO1.14: 16 bit MS-DOS Subsystem -- The NTVDM CPU has encountered an illegal instruction

2005-03-02T09:49:00.000+05:30

The error is because of the symlinks in cygwin. So, before building OO one should remove the symlinks between [(awk & gawk), (gzip & gunzip)].
This error is causing problem in 'boost' module. A pop window is appearing with the error message(Error: 16 bit MS-DOS Subsystem -- The NTVDM CPU has encountered an illegal instruction)with 'ignore/cancel' button. When one ignores the error message, a message 'File to patch:' is coming and further build is crashing.
This particular error is because of 'gunzip->gzip' symlink, to nullify this link remove 'gunzip.exe' and copy 'gzip.exe' as 'gunzip.exe' in 'cygwin/bin' directory.

yeah i got it....

2005-02-25T09:54:00.000+05:30

the solution to pyuno error, it is because of linking with cc and cxx. I found that OO use linker as ${CC}, on the bugs and issue tracker i found a issue numbered 37731 related to same problem and came to know that this pyuno problem can be rectified by changing link to ${CXX} AND this change in linker to cxx can be achieved by the following patch:

Index: config_office/set_soenv.in
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/tools/config_office/set_soenv.in,v
retrieving revision 1.31
diff -u -r1.31 set_soenv.in
--- config_office/set_soenv.in 5 Jan 2005 12:10:00 -0000 1.31
+++ config_office/set_soenv.in 9 Jan 2005 18:51:24 -0000
@@ -1684,9 +1684,6 @@
ToFile( "CC", $CC, "e" );
ToFile( "CXX", $CXX, "e" );
ToFile( "USE_SYSTEM_STL", "@USE_SYSTEM_STL@", "e" );
-if ( $COM ne "MSC" ) {
- ToFile( "LINK", $CC, "e" );
-}
ToFile( "ENABLE_SYMBOLS", "@ENABLE_SYMBOLS@", "e" );
ToFile( "ENABLE_CRASHDUMP", "@ENABLE_CRASHDUMP@", "e" );
ToFile( "ENABLE_CUPS", "@ENABLE_CUPS@", "e" );

But one has to build the complete source again after applying this patch this is what i have done and rectified the error.

PyUno Error while building OO-1.1.4

2005-02-24T14:45:00.000+05:30

while building 00-1.1.4 i am getting error in pyuno module and the error is:

Building project pyuno
=============
/home/vijay/OOo_1.1.4_src/pyuno/unotypes
-------------
/home/vijay/OOo_1.1.4_src/pyuno/zipcore
/home/vijay/OOo_1.1.4_src/pyuno/source/module
-------------
/home/vijay/OOo_1.1.4_src/pyuno/source/loader
-------------
rm -f ../../unxlngi4.pro/lib/pyuno_services.rdb
../../unxlngi4.pro/lib/pyuno_services.tmp
../../unxlngi4.pro/lib/pyuno_services.rdb
cd ../../unxlngi4.pro/lib && regcomp -register -r pyuno_services.tmp -c
typeconverter.uno -c invocation.uno -c corereflection.uno -c
introspection.uno -c invocadapt.uno -c proxyfac.uno -c pythonloader.uno
register component 'typeconverter.uno' in registry 'pyuno_services.tmp'
succesful!
register component 'invocation.uno' in registry 'pyuno_services.tmp'
succesful!
Abort
dmake: Error code 134, while making
'../../unxlngi4.pro/lib/pyuno_services.rdb'
---* TG_SLO.MK *---

ERROR: Error 65280 occurred while making
/mnt/hda3/OOo_1.1.3_src/pyuno/source/loader
dmake: Error code 1, while making 'build_all'
---* TG_SLO.MK *---

I am fighting with this error and trying to resolve it. And it seems that my frustation is creating a new world of challenge for me to crack the nut.
yes, i will.

target march

2005-02-24T14:28:00.000+05:30

before a couple of days i targeted for march first week for a complete set of Linux and windows 001.1.4 build for the current five languages(hindi, tamil, kannada, gujarati, marathi). For the purpose i am working hard as this time i am not going to fail with respect to deadlines.
But again this strange and some entirely new error while building OO frustates me.

pot file

2005-02-11T10:54:00.000+05:30

pot file is a acronym for "Portable Object Template", every translator takes a pot file copy and begins translating messages(msgstr) to the language desired. This file becomes a po(portable object) file.

What is pot file in openoffice

2005-02-10T18:01:00.000+05:30

# pot file is a file with ".pot" extensions.

# it is organized in similar fashion as compared to directory
hierarchy of original source.
suppose a file 'sw/source/ui/dialog/ascfdlg.src' is to be
merged with the target string then the pot file will look
like this 'sw/source/ui/dialog.pot', it means that all the
strings which is to be merged with the files of the dialog
directory is present in the 'dialog.pot' file.

# 'dialog.pot' file is having a "msgid" mapped to "msgstr"(target language)
and the name of the file to be merged with.
example:
#: regionsw.src#FL_PROPERTIES_TEXT.#define.text
#: abstract.src#DLG_INSERT_ABSTRACT.FL_1.fixedline.text
#: ascfldlg.src#DLG_ASCII_FILTER.FL_1.fixedline.text
msgid "Properties"
msgstr ""

# it is useful and helpful for translation purpose not for merging to the source.

# after translation the complete pot files are converted into ".po" file
which is actually compatible with openoffice format for merging.

ICU

2005-02-08T15:42:00.001+05:30

The International Components for Unicode (ICU) libraries
provide robust and full-featured Unicode services on a
wide variety of platforms. ICU supports the most current
version of the Unicode standard, and they provide support
for supplementary Unicode characters.

As computing environments become more heterogeneous, software
portability becomes more important. ICU lets you produce the
same results across all the various platforms you support,
without sacrificing performance. It offers great flexibility
to extend and customize the supplied services, which include:

· Text: Unicode text handling, full character properties and
character set conversions (500+ codepages)

· Analysis: Unicode regular expressions; full Unicode sets;
character, word and line boundaries

· Comparison: Language sensitive collation and searching

· Transformations: normalization, upper/lowercase, script
transliterations (50+ pairs)

· Locales: Comprehensive locale data (230+) and resource
bundle architecture

· Complex Text Layout: Arabic, Hebrew, Indic and Thai

· Time: Multi-calendar and time zone

· Formatting and Parsing: dates, times, numbers, currencies,
messages and rule based

ICU is an open source development project sponsored, supported,
and used by IBM. It is dedicated to providing robust, full-featured,
commercial quality, freely available Unicode-based technologies.
The ICU library supports multi-threading environments, and is
available in C, C++ and Java (ICU4J).

openoffice Localization

2005-02-02T13:28:00.000+05:30

I don't understand why this openoffice source is behaving very strangely. Everytime i tried to solve something, some new things get strangled up.
Some thing works fine and some still irritates me.

test please ignore

2005-02-01T12:38:00.000+05:30

test please ignore