zohair ahmad

Splat

zohair — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 17:42:54 +0000

Always hurts when you fall from a certain height. Just wish I’d stop learning these lessons the hard way.

People down there! Look out! I’m coming over.

Wow, it looks far from up here.

… this is going to sting.

M$ Bull

zohair — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 08:38:02 +0000

Needing to access a web-page recently to get some info on a course, i visited the following site.

http://www.sdc.com.pk/lnkpg/Chip_design.asp

I was promptly greeted, not by the page, but by the source code!

Take a look at the code, the first line shows

What the heck is this? I’m no expert on web terminology, but this does NOT seem to be standard. At least, if it were, why is it not opening in Firefox? (Iceweasel is just Debians name for Firefox).

Here’s what W3C’s validator gave me.

Sorry, I am unable to validate this document because its content type is text/plain, which is not currently supported by this service.

text/plain? Telnetting to the server and trying GET to retrieve a page failed. (I don’t really know how to do that properly, so I can’t see the header for myself)

I tried opening this in Internet Explorer, and guess what? It opens perfectly

So what? If I want to access some info about electrical engineering I need to pay Micro$oft? When already a large number of VLSI design software recognizes and runs natively on Linux? What gives?

I’m guessing this is some sort of output graciously generated by Microsoft Office if you create a web-page with it. Its disappointing to see Pakistani sites being so incompatible with web-standards.

Screw you Micro$oft.

Playing Internet TV On Linux

zohair — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 11:51:16 +0000

A friend asked me to help them watch Internet TV streams on their fresh Ubuntu install. Apparently most of these sites simply assume your running Internet Explorer and just leave it at that. Being the wonderfully helpful person I am (not to mention modest), I wanted to help. Of course this gave me the opportunity to muck about too :P

I had earlier encountered something similar at university. The hostel where I was staying had a live LAN TV feed. The “only” way to catch it was to use Internet Explorer. I found the IP addresses where the stream was being hosted and promptly used VLC to catch it, hence allowing me to watch TV while logged into Linux.

I tried a similar approach this time, but found this to be a bit more tricky, since the main page was redirecting to another and then another page, the actual stream being embedded on a completely different website.

Thus began the painstaking process of extracting and checking these URLs and compiling a playlist for VLC. The fruits of which can be found below. Some of these channels didn’t work today. I dont know maybe they’ll work at other times of the day. Hopefully, you’ll find most of them working though. You do need a fast Internet connection though. About 512Kbps for some, because of the high data rates.

Most of these are Indian channels, which I don’t watch. There weren’t any English channels on the site I was checking so I didn’t add any. If you find any channels that are not in here, please let me know so I can add them. Or if you’ve found a website with different channels and want me to take a look, feel free to leave a comment.

For now though, download the playlist, get VLC, which is available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux (use your respective package manager). Then download the playlist and test it.

There are some things that may happen rendering this playlist obsolete. These streams are using a static IP, if the admins decided to change their servers, the playlist will have to be remade. Or they may just decide to discontinue the service. Until that happens though, I’m watching TV :P

Download this: netTV Playlist

sudoers and more

zohair — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 04:50:04 +0000

Well sudoers was easier than I thought in the end. I just had to add a line adding giving user ALL privileges

iceman ALL=(ALL) ALL

where iceman is the user name. This works for full access, but there are tons of options for limiting users, for example to only let them run certain commands.

The status is that security is still lacking, we need to set up a firewall ASAP. Right now we’re only being “protected” by the default Shirocorp modem given out by PTCL to its DSL subscribers.

Added a LAMP setup, although need to forward port 80 through the modem and its not cooperating. I cant understand why you cant access the config page in a text mode browser. Had a fun (read crazy) night trying to get squid to work. It wouldn’t budge at first, but with a bit of tinkering it ran ok. We got ourselves a domain name, and even a channel on DALNET :) Come on in to #shellhell and talk with us. No accounts being given out yet though.

man sudoers… oohhhkayy

zohair — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 05:43:15 +0000

OMG! Has anyone actually seen the sudoers manual page? That thing is huge!

Well… looks like this is going to be a bit tougher than I thought.

Setting Up A Ubuntu Server … Remotely

zohair — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 06:17:59 +0000

I recently met someone on IRC and we discussed setting up a Ubuntu server to muck about with. The idea had occured to me before, but because of my Internet connectivity issues, I didn’t think I could do a stable server. Plus I lacked the hardware to do so. But we did it, and now there’s an old P3 computer with a fresh install of Ubuntu just begging to be played with :P

After two days of banging our heads together on IRC, with me trying to figure out what the problem was, while getting results posted back in a chat window, we finally got SSH working. I realized that Ubuntu is actually quite different from Debian (which caused quite a few headaches). Finally logging in to the system, felt AWESOME!!! This was the result of our hard work! Woohoo!

There are quite a few problems we’re facing now. Security being the main one. Dynamic IP is another, which I should be able to solve with noip, later shifting to a DNS server of our own maybe. Adding user groups and limiting access, then running LAMP …. whoooo this is going to be fun. Right now though, I need to fix not being able to sudo through ssh which is causing me a lot of pain.

And I slept at 3:15 last night!!! Chand Raat even!!! Had to get back up at 7 am too. And I wasn’t even tired. I haven’t felt this good for a long time.

Once I solve a couple of problems, I’m going to write about it in detail. For now though, I need to get off my laptop because its Eid! EID MUBARAK EVERYONE!

Desktop In A Browser

zohair — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 08:41:03 +0000

Behold, the open source desktop EyeOS that runneth in a browser. It can run a range of web applications, and since its all open source, it won’t be long until more are available. Already there’s a calendar, text editor, a full office suite, function plotter, games, mp3 player, ftp client… what else do you need!

You can upload your files and access them from anywhere, which is the intent. They claim it runs on a mobile phone, but you’d probably need to have java on it too. Which means a decently hefty phone. Which I dont have to test it.

EyeOS is meant to be a download-able server, that you would set up on a private machine to access from anywhere. But, they do offer a free public server that you can sign up an account on, which is what I tested.

Now if only, they could put up a terminal…

Foooooooood!

zohair — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 15:35:16 +0000

FoopP***Daily

Just what we need during roza. No, it doesnt have much to do with the second word in the url. Its a perfectly safe website.

Excuse me while I salivate.

Religion

zohair — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 18:53:17 +0000

I see that sensible men and conscientious men all over the world were of one religion, — the religion of well-doing and daring, men of sturdy truth, men of integrity and feeling for others.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson, writer and philosopher (1803-1882)

Too Much IRC

zohair — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 14:45:40 +0000

… when you start using vertical smileys like ~_^ , -_- and o_0

… when you not only know what a BNC is, but you’re using one (or more).

… when you’re about ready to setup eggdrop.