chown : not owner !!!

Apparantly, you cant do a chown in Solaris. Here's more...

http://unix.derkeiler.com/Newsgroups/comp.unix.solaris/2004-03/2579.html

another one here

http://www.itworld.com/Comp/3380/nls_unixchown040923/index.html

The reasoning explained sounds logical. Apparantly (as one of the article also explains), the restriction helps a user fill another user's quota by creating a huge file and chowning it to the other user. Even worse, if the other user doesnt have privs to access the dir hosting that huge file, he cant even delete that.

Looks like a safety precaution, turned into a bit of blockade for normal users... :(

Buying a wireless router for home...

When it comes to buying a wireless router, the acronyms can be misleading and confusing at times.

While I was looking for articles around the net that explain complex terms, I found a few. Here are some -

How To Buy A Wireless Router: Decoding Wi-Fi 802.11 Networking Standards and Protocols

Wireless network buying guide - CNET reviews

Wireless Router FAQ - What is the Range of a Typical Wi-Fi LAN?

Wireless Routers - Best 802.11g Wireless Broadband Router Reviews

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Hardy 64bit beta Installed...

This weekend I installed Hardy 64 bit on my Core2Duo notebook and it flew... Just like that.

Earlier when I had gutsy for the first time on this laptop, I had plenty of issues with my hardware. Tweak here and tweak there, I had to do a lot of things to make it work the right way.

However, with Hardy this time, I would say, I felt happy for two reasons.. first it didnt complain about any of my hardware (probably because now my hardware is about a year old, and for gutsy it was so much newer..) and that its 64 bit installation.

I am yet to completely switch to this, especially since I encountered a bug with evolution and that Hardy is still beta, but I do see a way forward going with this version of Ubuntu for me.

As a result of this experiment, right now, I am triple booting, Vista business, Gutsy (32 bit) and Hardy (64 bit).

This is one thing I like so much about the PC notebooks, you can play around with them a lot more than you can do with an equivalent mac... :)

One of the guys on ubuntu forums posted this url for a better understanding of 64 bit systems... 64 bit Systems have more benefits than RAM only


Later on, I found this link, a very interesting collection of 32bit vs 64bit OS (especially Ubuntu) comparison.

Hardware analysis and news..

Interesting site for hardware news/updates/info...

AnandTech: your source for hardware analysis and news

BigAdmin Feature Article: Using Service Management Facility (SMF) in the Solaris 10 OS: A Quick Example

A very nice article - 

BigAdmin Feature Article: Using Service Management Facility (SMF) in the Solaris 10 OS: A Quick Example: "Introduction"

Extremely Simple Calendar Integration for Rails

Found this interesting plugin for Ruby on Rails

Beige Sunshine » Blog Archive » Extremely Simple Calendar Integration for Rails

Ruby on Rails - Rails Migrations - Dizzy

Some tweaks/cheats on Rails migrations - 
Ruby on Rails - Rails Migrations - Dizzy

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inet daemons : the way they react to SMF

For a given service, in an SMF manifest, you can invoke any script using the "exec" thing. That works for normal programs.

You can also provide environment to the executable by adding sub-tags envvar..

However, For a network daemon based service, it wont work as nice as it does for other programs.

I came to understand that programs that run as streams need to be designed to work that way specifically, you cant just make ANY program run as a stream through an SMF service.

Using Solaris SMF : Initial Steps

Startup article about SMF usage..

O'Reilly Network -- Using Solaris SMF: "In most Unix environments, the startup process consists of a handful of autonomous boot scripts। They act independently of one another; unaware of what scripts have already run or which ones will run after them. When they are invoked, there is no serious error checking and no recourse if the script fails."

Another interesting tutorial from Sun... Solaris Operating System - SMF Manifest How To Guide

config for capistrano

Preparing a deployment of an app

1. Changes for fcgi configuration in public/.htaccess
1. Comment the fcgi handler (found in initial few lines of the file)
   
2. Change the dispatch.cgi reference to dispatch.fcgi (last few lines of file)
2. In public/dispatch.fcgi change the shebang line to say something like this
1. #!/usr/bin/env ruby
3. Make sure everything is committed. (svn ci)
   
4. capify the environment (capify)
   
5. run rake configure_for_svn (assuming that the svn.rake task has been created already)
6. edit config/deploy.rb to adjust values appropriately
7. run cap deploy:setup
8. On the remote server, copy $HOME/railsapps/config/database.yml.production to $HOME/${appdir}/shared/config (create target dir if not present). The $HOME/{appdir} should have been created by deploy:setup
9. Since its the first time deployment, run cap deploy:cold
10. Next time onwards, when you have to deploy, launch cap deploy:migrate

The Printable CEO™ Series

I have used this time tracking tool in past also, and always find it handy to keep notes in this format. Helps keep focus.

David Seah - The Printable CEO™ Series

Mac4Lin ver.0.2 - Mac OS X Leopard Transformation pack

Surprised to see that people are running independent project to make linux look/act like mac.

I am curious and would sure experiment with this.

Mac4Lin ver.0.2 - Mac OS X Leopard Transformation pack - Ubuntu Forums

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DVD Playback on Gutsy

Configuring DVD playback on Gutsy

For DVD playback, install VLC (accepted by most as the best DVD player, supports menus too);

sudo apt-get install vlc

And if you also want Totem to play DVDs well, you have to use the Xine backend instead of Gstreamer (this is optional, VLC will do just fine);

sudo apt-get install totem-xine libxine1-ffmpeg

To get encrypted DVDs playing properly (check out no. 9 in the "Troubleshooting" section if you are having problems with new DVDs), paste these commands into the Terminal;

sudo apt-get install libdvdcss2 libdvdread3 libdvdnav4 build-essential debhelper fakeroot

then;

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/install-css.sh

or if you get an error with that command;

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread3/examples/install-css.sh

To set VLC as your default DVD player (I strongly advise you do) type the following command into the Terminal;

gksudo gconf-editor

Now expand "desktop" and then "gnome", scroll down to "volume manager" but don't expand it, just click on it and look over at the right pane. Scroll down and look for "autoplay_dvd_command" and change the command to "/usr/bin/vlc dvd://" (without quotes of course) by right clicking on it and selecting "Edit", then click on "Set as Default". Do the same for the "autoplay_vcd_command" as well.

From :  Complete Streaming, Multimedia & Video How-to - Ubuntu Forums

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Ekiga - PC to Phone on Ubuntu

It works, finally... it works.

I managed to configure my voipcheap account to work with Ekiga.
Though the phone numbers that u have to call look a bit awkward (sip:<phoneNumber>@sip.voipcheap.com), but it works.

I basically love the fact that I reduced another reason to boot into windows.  Loving Ubuntu every minute...

Here's some documentation on How to Use Ekiga
Ekiga - Community Ubuntu Documentation

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Better Cross-Site Request Forging Prevention

Very useful piece of information about the changes from rails 1.x to 2.x.  Since I was following the Agile ... with rails book (which is on rails 1.2.3), I got trapped with this problem.

Few new things for me, the concept of Cross-site request forgery and that rails 2 already handles it in the framework.  I got to this article through www.railsforum.com  and I have to say I am impressed.

What's New in Edge Rails: Better Cross-Site Request Forging Prevention

Providing such useful features built inside the app framework is really intuitive.

Way to go rails... :) 

Scrollkeeper flaky - Ubuntu Forums

Scrollkeeper flaky - Ubuntu Forums

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RubyOnRails - Community Ubuntu Documentation

Very useful information for beginners... Or for troubleshooting the installation steps..

RubyOnRails - Community Ubuntu Documentation

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Linux desktop imitating OSX

Wonderful article .. full of info...

Linux desktop imitating OSX | Lauri Taimila

will report the exeperience..

Free 1 year subscription of McAfree Virus Scan Plus

I dont quite believe this, but havent tried this either.

Free 1 year subscription of McAfree Virus Scan Plus

I have heard about free trial licenses from such companies for a month or two or three, but never for 12 months.

I just tried to register following the link, and it does seem to work. I didnt actually download the software yet, but I would sure do that. Sometime over the weekend.

It sounds really really amazing to me. A 12 month free subscription.. great... :)

An interesting site...

An online document viewing website, you upload your document, the world sees it.

To me, an equivalent of blog, only not in terms of putting up content, rather organized documents. 

Home | Scribd

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