Whats up with Hatim!

These days I am working on adding the support of oracle stored procedures to freeradius. Earlier I compiled and configured freeradius CVS on my machine. Oracle drivers were also built during the compile (correct ORACLE_HOME varaible needs to be set , which in my case was '/xe/app/oracle/product/10.2.0/server/' under the oracle base directory). A good piece of stored procedure code should be generic enough to handle multiple parameters. (more on this later)

Solaris was my first direct interaction with UNIX(first college lab session for introduction to computing in which we were taught how to send/receive our email through pine). Since then I have always been fascinated with Sun machines and Solaris. It may be long time before I own a kickass  Sun Server for my own personal use, but with Solaris_x86 in picture, I can play with one of the most advanced operating system on the planet on my old P4 box (I also plan to install Minix, *BSD, and lots of other open source OSes).

I ordered a free Solaris Express DVD of solaris from Sun's website. I was surprised to get it within 2 weeks as normally these things reach pretty late in my locality. I popped it into my Intelx86 machine and fired it up. It booted kind of slow, but that could have been my DVD drive. It was not pleasant to find out that the default X server which the installation DVD loaded was not showing up on my Intel D865 based vga.

I booted again in text mode and started the installation process. After a reboot I looked into how to configure X and network. I was unable to get both working in the first try. I went to Sun's support chat site and I was mentioned the hardwae compatibility link. I tried the Solaris device detection java webstart applet. Every thing checked out (except for my bt878 based tv tuner card). The JNLP mentioned a link for third party network drivers, which I later downloaded (but was only able to get working after some beating around the bush)

Then I decided to visit #solaris on irc.freenode.net (from my other machine)and boy was that an eye opener. First this I learnt is that Solaris is not Linux ( I knew that, but if you even mention name of Linux in #solaris you get flamed easily), second #solaris has lots of rude shrews. They help less and try to establish that their  "brain size" is more than yours since you asked a question. Although looking up on google before you ask a question is always recomended, but it is possible to not find answer to a simple question from a Google search. Any ways I decided NEVER to goto #solaris. I would like to leave the self contained so called UNIX admins to their own sad lonely existance. I went to #opensolaris where people are friendly and enthusiastic (like any open source project).There I got some good pointers.

Solaris has two kinds of X servers;Xsun and Xorg. Xsun is probably a good choice for Sun machines, but Xorg produced better results on x86 machines. The problem I encountered was that the default configuration produced by X -configure was only good for higher resolutions. A utility called kdmconfig lets superuser choose between the two servers. The configuration of Xorg is similar by the use of 'xorgconfig'.

Solaris x86 express edition comes with alot of goodies which include StarOffice 8, Netbeans 5.5, Sun Studio Enterprise, Gimp, Firefox to name a few. It has two desktops CDE and Gnome. Gnome based desktop looks quite polished (just like Ubuntu).

 

 

 

Overall my first impessions of solris are quite positive. But these impressions are superficial and very cosmetic. In reality I am more interested in knowing more about the internals of Solaris (Kernel and TCP/IP stack and things like DTrace).

 

As I had mentioned in a previous blog entry, this year I put up four proposals to Google Summer of code. The final decision on these proposals was scheduled for April 12, 2007 5:00 am (Pakistan time). After a long night of waiting I finally received official word from Google Inc. that one of my application has been selected for Google Summer of Code. In total I had four (meaningful) applications. Oddly enough I had not received even a single comment on any one of them. During conflict resolution period I got a comment from Lanka Foundation( Sahana Project) saying that my proposal was comprehensive and complete proposal. It would have been accepted if it were if not for the alternative acceptance I had received. Alternative what???.

This came as a cautious but pleasant surprise. Sahana people were the first one to comment on my applications. Naturally I assumed that I had been selected by any of the other three organizations. I went to some SOC-irc channels and with the help of some (non related)mentors I found out that I was tagged by Internet2.edu. I then contacted the Internet2 mentor related to my project via email citing that I had no clue if I were being selected. He replied saying that there was no need from his side to post any comment on my application, it was good to go. No one had contacted them for any conflict resolution regarding me. It was the personal choice of SAHANA mentors to not contact Internet2 , even though they found my application compelling enough.

I suspect that this could have happened to my other applications as well. Where mentors were reluctant to contact me when they saw that I already have a mentor. Therefore I would propose the following additions to the SOC web application.

• There should be information in the webapp if some one gets tagged, is assigned a mentor etc.
• A stat showing number of unique views from within a mentor organization would also be helpful. This can also be applied for non organization people like Google SOC staff.

As for now I will start working on my project from tomorrow, just like I stated in my detailed plan :).

Here is an excerpt from the official email I got from Google.

Subject: Congratulations!
To: my address at gmail dot com
From: gsoc at google dot com
Date: Thu, 12 Apr 2007 00:15:43 -0700

Dear Applicant,
Congratulations! This email is being sent to inform you that your application was accepted to take part in the Summer of Code.Please check your student home page in the SoC web application at http://code.google.com/soc/student_home.html to determine which ofyour applications was accepted.
Thanks for taking part we are very excited to see what the Summer will bring!

Congratulations once again,
The Google Summer of Code Program Administration Teamem>

More detailed post to come, URL of application , proposal and some other links.

I need to adapt a good CSS and XHTML compliant theme for my website. The current theme is OK, but its not up to par with what modern CSS techniques have to offer. Web design is an art, and although I would like to be able to cook some really cool theme some day , for now I would just use some thing pre- existing.

I have looked into many sites which provide free/open-source web-templates (eg. oswd.org ,openwebdesign.org). One designer whose work I have become fond of is a young Swede named Andreas Viklund. His designs are not only refreshing but also follow strict web and accessibility standards. In is own words why settle for less.

I have been working to extend my typo based website. Firstly after a discussion over the latest features of Typo in #typo channel of irc.freenode.net, I decided to give the SVN trunk a try. I also looked up a decent theme from typo garden to fulfill my needs (until the day I make my own theme)

One thing which I have not been able to work out is an easy way to route the main page of my site to /blog/pages/home..I am now able to route easily to pages within my typo blog using proxy option ([P]) of mod_rewrite.

Following '.htaccess' file is similar to what I have used...

Options +FollowSymLinks
Options +Indexes
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^$ http://site.com/path_to_view [P]

 

The result is that I have pages which can be accessed from outside URL, but are still controlled by Typo.

On my job I have been hitting my head with configurations of Net-SNMP, OpenNMS and Asterisk. Asterisk v 1.4 has introduced some SNMP support into their core. I used this tutorial from VoipMagazine.com to get SNMP/Asterisk working for me on my Gentoo box at work.

Next step was to make collection of statistics from OpenNMS. OpenNMS lacks polished documentation and things are rather scattered. After some playing around with the configurations I have been able to make OpenNMS work on my local network. There are still issues some issues involved namely the addition of an Asterisk category to the front page, auto discovery of SIP and monitoring of  statistics  which are not provided but have to be computed (ie. no of bridged SIP channels on any given system).

I will hopefully post a detailed HOW-TO on gentoo-wiki very soon.

These are interesting times to be an open source developer. Google Sumer of code enters its third year in 2007 and this time the process has started earlier than previous years. As I am registered as part time certificate course student at Virtual university of Pakistan, I can take part in this competition. I have used open source for around seven years now and have yet to give back some thing solid to the open source community (occasional irc help secessions and little bit of wiki editing is good but not a very big contribution in my opinion). I feel that if I am able to be a part of Google summer of code this year, not only I would be giving back to the community in a structured way, but I would also be learning a lot from seasoned hackers and developers who would be mentoring me.

I am not certain what mentoring organizations are expecting in an application. I don't think the mentors should be expecting the participants to know a lot about their project as the whole point of SOC is to make new people come into open source development. But at the same time if some one has worked with the project in question in the past (s/he may be part of code project team and a student as well), that person would be a better catch. As for me I am applying to the projects which are of technical/intellectual interest to me or solve some important problem that I have encountered.

I will be posting a few apps within next 24 hours. I will try to supplement them with web pages on this site. I hope at least this application process will be a good experience for me to polish my writing skills.

One of the primary reason I have my blog on a personal domain-name/server is that I don't have to deal with arbitrary outages to blog services. Blogger was banned in my country after the cartoon scandal in early 2006. I can understand why my government would ban some blogs, but an unconditional block on all blogs is plain absurd. Now with my own websapce and domain name I have more control over my web presence.

I have many tasks for my new blog. Most important of them is to import entries from blogger. My current plan is to manually post stuff one by one. This way I will be able to clean stuff from around 260 posts I have done on blogger. I have looked into RSS based migrations from Blogger to Type, but since my previous entries are unstructured I definitely need a migration_by_hand

I did try to post an entry with dates of publishing for Dec 2006 (by manually changing MySQL for contents table of Typo),but It didn't work as it was expected to. It would definitely be a great help to me If I get hold of a desktop publishing client for Typo which can also manipulate date of blog posting.

My new job has brought me to lahore to a major cellular comany Network Operations Center in Lahore for testing and deployment of our solution. I am currently working with XML-RPC using GNU C. Its been long since I have worked with C. The elegance simplicity and beauty of C code is refreshing. It takes me back to my early days in programming when we used to work with Turbo C++.

Initially I had planned to stay for only one day, but things changed and I got stuck here. I will hopefully get home by friday and take the weekend off.One side effect of staying in Lahore has been the dining out part. I had the chance to go to food street and Lakshmi chowk with colleuges. And I was able to eat falloda after a very long time. I had been trying to find a nice place for falloda in pindi for 2-3 months now

It is loved by some and loathed by a few, but mostly it goes unnoticed until you are related to it some how. My current mode of transportation is a 1970 Volkswagen aka Foxy (in Pakistan) , aka Daddu Car (car shaped like a toad). Needless to say the thing drives good considering that its almost 35 years old and has survived pakistani roads (drivers?) .

It is not the ideal thing to drive during the rain or during a very dark night. But at least I am able to get to my job on my own. Since my new job is not in a very posh area I don't feel the chronic attacks I was afraid of If I were to drive this thing in rush hour in Islamabad proper. I am not sure why I felt that way. Perhaps the un coolness I have attached to this vehicle when growing up has some thing to do with it. Cool or not, this still drives me back and forth and in the end this is all what matters