mii-tool — Show/Check/Set the MII status. Summary: MII (Media Independent Interface) is a standard bus which connects network interface controllers to physical media interfaces (PHYs). PHYs are usually located on a network interface card itself, but there are cards available which have external MII connectors for attaching external PHYs. mii-tool display/checks/sets the status of a network interface’s MII unit. Most fast Ethernet adapters use an MII to autonegotiate link speed and duplex setting.
ODOC: unix2dos
unix2dos — UNIX to DOS text file format converter. Summary: Each OS will indicate the line end using Line Feed (LF,10) or Carriage Return (CR,13). Unix uses LF as line end, Windows/DOS uses CR/LF and MacOS uses CR. So when transferring a file from Linux to DOS, you have to convert the Line end to DOS format. unix2dos will convert the Unix text file to DOS format. Examples: $ unix2dos gnu.
ODOC: dos2unix
dos2unix — DOS/MAC to UNIX text file format converter. Summary: Each OS will indicate the line end using Line Feed (LF,10) or Carriage Return (CR,13). So when transferring a file from DOS to Linux, you have to convert the Line end from DOS format to Linux format. dos2unix will convert the DOS/MAC Text file to Unix format. Unix uses LF as line end, Windows/DOS uses CR/LF and MacOS uses CR.
ODOC: rpm
rpm — RedHat Package Manager Summary: RPM is a Package Manager, which can be used to build, install, query, verify, update, & erase individual software packages. A package consists of an archive of files and meta-data used to install & erase the archive files. The meta-data includes helper scripts, file attributes, & descriptive information about the package. Packages come in two varieties: binary packages, used to encapsulate software to be installed, & source packages, containing the source code & recipe necessary to produce binary packages.
Web Developer’s Handbook
Here is a nice site found via Reddit which has a collection of many websites and tools which can be used by web designers. This is really a nice handbook for web designers and I need to learn a lot from these sites. web+designers, web, websites
ODOC: adjtimex
adjtimex – Display/Set the kernel time variables. Summary: This program gives you raw access to the kernel time variables, like clock tick, frequency, offset, PPL Time constant, etc. Examples: $ adjtimex -p — Print current kernel time values. # adjtimex -w — Provide time details and ask the user to approximate the accuracy. # adjtimex -c — Periodically (10Sec) compare the system clock with the CMOS clock values and give suggestions.
Python Speed and Performance Tips
This site in the Python Wiki is devoted to various tips and tricks that can be used to improve the performance of your Python programs. There are various tips right from sorting, string concatenation, looping, profiling, etc. Nice site to go for when you are refactoring the program.
Red Hat India Scholarship
Red Hat India is having a scholarship program, conducted jointly with eKALAVYA program of Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology, IIT Bombay. The first prize for this would be Rs.2 Lakhs – approximately 4400 USD. The problem now is that I need some ideas to propose for this program.
ODOC: bzip2
bzip2 — A Block-sorting file (de)compressor. Summary: bzip2 compresses files using the Burrows-Wheeler block sorting text compression algorithm, and Huffman coding. Compression is generally considerably better than the conventional compressors, & approaches the performance of the PPM family of statistical compressors. Example: $ bzip2 myfile — Compress & Save it in myfile.bz2. Delete the input file. $ bzip2 -k myfile — Same as above. But Don’t delete the input file.
ODOC: unzip
unzip — List, Test & Extract compressed ZIP files. Summary: unzip will list, test, or extract files from a ZIP archive. The default behavior (with no options) is to extract into the current directory (and subdirectories below it) all files from the specified ZIP archive. Example: $ unzip myfile.zip — Unzip the myfile.zip $ unzip -t myfile.zip — Test correctness of the file. $ unzip myfile *.txt — Unzip only *.
ODOC: zip
zip — Package and Compress files in Zip format. Summary: zip is a compression and file packaging utility. The zip program puts one or more compressed files into a single zip archive, along with information about the files. Example: $ zip stuff * — Create stuff.zip, add current Dir files in it. $ zip -r myzip mydir — Create myzip.zip, add mydir files in it. $ zip -j myzip mydir/* — Same as above.
Host problems
The site was not available to anyone for more than a week. This was due to some problem with my host and today the backups were restored and I have got back my blog. I guess there won’t be any more problems form now on. I think it is time to resume my blogging work.
ODOC: tar
tar — Create/Add/Extract Tape ARchives files. Summary: tar is an archiving program designed to store and extract files from an archive file known as a tar file. A tar file may be made on a tape drive, however, it is also common to write a tar file to a normal file. Normally “.tar” file is not a compressed file. It is actually a collection of files within a single file.
ODOC: lsb_release
lsb_release — Show Linux Standard Base and Distribution info. Summary: If the installation is LSB compliant, the /etc/lsb-release file should contain the LSB_VERSION field and other optional fields like DISTRIB_ID, DISTRIB_RELEASE, DISTRIB_CODENAME, DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION. lsb_release will read the above config file and show the details in different format. It is useful command to find your distribution informations. Example: $ lsb_release — Show the LSB version number. $ lsb_release -i — Display the distributor ID or Name.
BloGTK – Weblog client for Linux
While I was searching for PyGTK, I came across BloGTK – a Weblog client for GNU/Linux which allows you to post to your weblog from Linux without the need for a seperate browser window. BloGTK allows you to connect with many weblog systems like Blogger, Movable Type, WordPress. BloGTK is written using Python and PyGTK. python, pygtk, gtk, blog, weblog, blog+client
ODOC: factor
factor — Print prime factors Summary: Print the prime factors of each number.The algorithm it uses is not very sophisticated, so for some inputs `factor’ runs for a long time. Example: $ factor 25 — Print prime factors $ factor 125 200 — Print prime factors for each number. $ factor `echo ‘2^64-1’|bc` — Factors the largest 64-bit number. $ factor `echo ‘4294967279 * 4294967291’|bc` — Factors the largest 32-bit prime numbers.
ODOC: sha1sum
sha1sum – Compute & Check Secure Hash Algorithm Std 1 message digest. Summary: sha1sum computes a 160-bit checksum/fingerprint/message-digest for each specified file. `sha1sum’ can also determine whether a file & checksum are consistent. The sums are computed as described in FIPS-180-1. Example: $ sha1sum file — Compute and print the MD5 checksum of that file. $ sha1sum -c input.txt — Read checksum and filename from the file and validate checksums.
ODOC: logger
logger — Makes entries in the system log file. Summary: Logger is a shell command interface to the syslog system log module. It can be used to makes entries in the system log from the shell scripts. By default, messages will be logged in /var/log/messages. Example: $ logger MyLog1 — Log the message in syslog. $ logger -i MyLog2 — Log the message with PID. $ logger -s MyLog3 — Log the message in stderr and syslog.
BarCamp at Chennai
BarCamp is an ad-hoc un-conference born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from attendees. BarCamp is happening right here in Chennai on April 8 and 9, 2006. The agenda for this BarCamp is the Next Generation Internet, Web 2.0, Ajax, Mobile Computing, Open Source and such. barcamp, web, web+2.0, ajax, chennai, open+source, BarCampChennai
Bug in Ubuntu Breezy exposes root password
In actual there is no user account called root in Ubuntu. A normal user can become root by using the sudo command. But in Breezy, the first user’s password is can be easily found by any user reading the file /var/log/installer/cdebconf/questions.dat. This bug is present only in Breezy (5.10) and not in Dapper(6.04) the yet to be released version. There are two packages – base-config and passwd which needs to be upgraded to prevent this problem.