Click for a cause

Please click the following link at least once a day:
www.aquaplastics.org/english/
Every day someone clicks on the site the European plastics industry will donate 10 cents to help WaterAid deliver clean, safe water and sanitation to people in Africa. If the website reaches 1.5 million clicks by 22 June 2004 then a total of

Manthan GB meeting and elections.

The Manthan GB meeting and elections were held yesterday at 6 pm at the Sutherland Recreation center. Voting was by secret ballot. There was pizza and cold drinks. I missed the meeting coz I was in class at that time.
The new committee members are:
President: Sharath Dandala
Vice President: Shankar
Public Relations Officer: Pankaj Pandit
Secretary: Adrija Sharma
Treasurer: Kshitish Patankar
Webmaster: Bobby Maisnam
I am still the webmaster. Mine is a no-contest and non-elected position.

Unix/Linux commands

12:08 PM 4/27/2005: This is my personal page for quick reference to Linux commands I generally use. I have set the date to one year back i.e. 04/27/2004 and so it should not appear in the RSS feed and annoy you! 🙂
Man pages
Unix Commands and Utilities
Linux Basics
[1] Find a file
find . -name filename.ext
find . -name project*.* (example)
[2.1] Zip a file
gzip filename (original file is moved to filename.gz)
[2.2] Zip(tar) a directory
tar -cvf file.tar directory_name (original directory is retained)
tar -tvf file.tar (list contents)
General rule is: tar and then gzip:
tar -cvf file.tar directory_name
gzip file.tar
So, you will get a tar.gz file
[2.3] Zip(tar) a directory in 1 step
tar czvf file.tar.gz directory_name (original directory is retained)
[3] Unzip a file
[3.1] .gz file
gzip -d file.gz
(Note: original .gz file gets deleted)
[3.2] tar.gz file
gzip -d file.tar.gz
and then
tar -xvf file.tar
[4] Creating a symlink
ln -s target_path symlink_name
[5] Delete a non empty directory
\rm -fr directory_name
[6] List detailed directory listing by last modified
ls -lt
[7] Copy entire directory
mkdir target_directory
cd source_directory
cp -ap . target_directory
Other options:
cp -apv . target_directory (for verbose results)
\cp -ap . target_directory (for unix)
[8] View quota
quota -v
[9] View disk usage for current folder
du -k
du -h (uses K, M, G etc for KB, MB, GB – this is better)
[10] View space usage on disks
df -k
[11] change the file permissions of all files in a directory
chmod -R 755 docs
[12] Changing the default editor
export EDITOR=pico
[13] Edit crontab
crotab -e
[14] View uptime
uptime
[15] Restart iptables
/etc/init.d/iptables start
/etc/init.d/iptables stop
/etc/init.d/iptables restart
http://www.siliconvalleyccie.com/linux-hn/iptables-intro.htm
[16] Count number of files
find directory_name \! -type d | wc -l
Example: find /var/qmail/queue/pid \! -type d | wc -l
More at: http://www.dsl.org/cookbook/cookbook_10.html
[17] Change group
chgrp new_group filename
[18] Change owner
chown new_owner filename
[19] Find IP address
/sbin/ifconfig
Note: This gives the local ip of your machine. Look in eth0 > inet addr.
[20] Find folder size
du -sh * (this is good)
du -ah –max-depth=1
du – sc /foldername/*
[21] Start Apache
/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd start (start)
/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd restart (restart)
or
/sbin/service httpd start
/sbin/service httpd restart
[22] Copy entire folder from one Linux server to another using SCP
Syntax:
> scp -r source_folder user@server:destination_folder
Example:
> scp -r /home/maisnam/www maisnam@192.168.1.107:/home/maisnam/
The above example copies the www folder in /home/maisnam/ from server 1 to the /home/maisnam/ folder on server 2 (192.168.1.107 in the example above).
[22] Hard Drive Info
fdisk -l
df -h
hdparm -i device
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/peripherals-hardware/32190-command-hard-drive-info.html
Notes: hda or sda = hard drive, sdb = secondary hard drive, sdc = thumb drive etc
[23] Linux Version
uname -a
[24] Yum GroupInstall
yum groupinstall “MySQL Server”
yum groupinstall “Web Server”
yum grouplist
http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/rhel-yum-grouplist-groupinstall-option-not-working/
# display list of yum packages
yum list available
# install single yum package
yum install mysql
# display list of installed packages
# http://www.electrictoolbox.com/yum-list-installed-packages/
yum list installed
yum list installed | more
yum list installed | less

Western Digital 120 gb harddrive (WDC WD1200JBRTL)

Bought a Western Digital 120 gb harddrive (Model No: WDC WD1200JBRTL) today for $69.99 (after $50 rebate) from Circuit City, East Towne Mall. I think it is a good deal. Have not installed it yet. Maybe, I will install it tomorrow. After installing, I will post again with updates about the installation and the performance of the drive. btw, I am posting this message from Studio 10 of the UT Library Media Center. And I am using Safari on Mac.

Archiving Yahoo! Groups messages; Yahoo! 999 Error

Update (10:37 PM 5/17/2005): A better discussion of the Yahoo 999 error is here.
Update (10:13 PM 2/17/2005): If you have come here trying to find information about the Yahoo 999 error and you are not able to access your email, you might want to try the options mentioned below:
– Trying logging into your account using
http://login.europe.yahoo.com/ or
http://edit.in.yahoo.com/ or
www.bt.yahoo.com or
http://wap.oa.yahoo.com/
Read more about the error here.


Spent the last 5 hours trying to figure out how to archive Yahoo! Groups messages. I want to keep a copy of the messages on my computer and also put a local copy online.
[1] PG-Offline [Windows]
Site: http://pgoffline.com/
Type: Shareware
Bob’s Review: This one works great. Very easy to configure. Also, the messages can be exported as .mdb (MS-Access) files. However Yahoo! Groups blocked my IP after about 332 messages. I got the Yahoo! 999 error. Here is a screenshot. Access was restored after about 3 hours. More discussion about the Yahoo! download limit is here.
Cons: Does not seem to have an export to html option.
[2] yahoo2mbox [Unix/ Linux]
Site: http://www.lpthe.jussieu.fr/~zeitlin/yahoo2mbox.html
Type: Freeware
Bob’s Review: This one was really easy to install. Just one Perl script. That’s it. However, you need shell access to run the program. Use this syntax:
perl yahoo2mbox.pl --start=0 --end=200 --user=your_username -o mbox group_name
Yahoo blocked my IP after about 300 messages. Since I had access to about 60 different logins (and therefore 60 different IPs) to my unix account, I kept changing the logins after I got a block. No need to use the --delay option. Just change your IPs when you get blocked. Of course, if you are on a static IP, then maybe wait 3 hours and try again!
The mbox file generated can then be read using Outlook Express (Well, I use Outlook Express!) by creating an IMAP connection to the unix machine and choosing the location of the mbox file as the root folder path.
Update (6/12/2004):
MHonArc
The mbox file generated using yahoo2mbox can be converted into mailmain style static html pages using MhonArc. You will need a Unix/Linux machine (and most probably root access) to run the script. MHonArc is really good and works just great!

UT International Festival

The International Festival was held at the University Center (UC) Plaza today. It started at 10 am and continued till 3 pm. I was there from 11:30 am to 1:20 pm. The food at the Muslim students stall was good. Had biryani and chicken wraps. Also tried some food at the Indian stall.

Russian stall Madhu, Anuj, me at the Indian stall Brazillian stall
 
Me, Nikhil Korean stall (L-R) Dance by Pranita, Mansi and Pooja
 
(L-R) Shubha, Pankaj, Neel, Polisetty The audience Mansi applying mehendi on Jo Ann’s hand
 

There were stalls from various countries including – Brazil, Korea, China, Bangladesh, Russia, Thailand etc. There were a lot of different kinds of dances. Took photos. Will put up the link pretty soon.

Update (4:33 PM 4/17/2004): The photos are online here.

Cheiraoba

Today is Cheiraoba – the Manipuri New Year. Actually, Cheiraoba is the last day of the year. But the celebrations are held on this day. Technically, tomorrow (14 Apr) is the start of the new year.
13 Mar: Cheiraoba, Baisakhi
14 Mar: Poila Baisakh (Bengali New Year), Tamil New Year, Vishu (Malayali New Year)
Called up home, Cheche Bheman, Cheche Naobi, Sne today morning (India time). If you would like to send a Cheiraoba E-card, try this website

Computer Science ACM Banquet

The 2004 Computer Science ACM banquet sponsored by Silicon Graphics was held at the University Center Ballroom. I think this is the first time that the banquet is being held outside the Department. The function started at 12 pm and ended around 1:15 pm. It was a nice function and the food was good. I was the official CS Dept photographer. Farial was the official ACM photographer. Photos will be online soon. Do check back later.
Photos are available here. Used Express Thumbnail Creator to generate the album. A short write-up about the event is available here.

.org domain names, UltraDNS, PIR

Checked the report for maisnam.org at dnsstuff.com and found out that DNS for maisnam.org is managed by UltraDNS. That explains why the DNS changes are so fast. I am not sure if GoDaddy has shifted its DNS management to UltraDNS. Or maybe it is because of the .org extension.
Googled a bit and found out that .org domain names are handled by the Public Interest Registry
I think I have a lot more to learn about this.