/home/jeevanullas

The Story of AWS JAVA SDK and Eucalyptus

Many people have asked this to us, how can I use AWS JAVA SDK with Eucalyptus. In the past we had lot of trouble configuring this , but not anymore.

As you might or might not know, Eucalyptus 3.3.0 is bringing better support for the AWS JAVA SDK and the developers are working hard , that every aspect is covered in some way or the other.

If you want to read more on that, I would recommend the following:

https://github.com/eucalyptus/architecture/wiki/aws_java_sdk-3.3-design
https://github.com/eucalyptus/architecture/wiki/aws_java_sdk-3.3-spec

Those 2 links will give you a decent idea of what is coming in 3.3.0 with regards to AWS JAVA SDK support.

Now on to this blog post, well 3.3.0 is currently under development, the brave hearts can go and grab the source from here https://github.com/eucalyptus/eucalyptus , in the testing branch , lives the bits

If you are not so brave and you are running Eucalyptus 3.1.2 or 3.2.0/3.2.1 well this blog post is for you, because yes, you can use AWS JAVA SDK 1.3.14 against your Eucalyptus private cloud.

I spent considerable time back in July 2012 to figure out what is going on with this thing and I came up with 2 tickets in our bug tracking system which are available here

https://eucalyptus.atlassian.net/browse/EUCA-3001
https://eucalyptus.atlassian.net/browse/EUCA-3003

At that time I wrote some ugly patches , basically removing new stuff and adding back what was there earlier in the AWS JAVA SDK , to make it work with Eucalyptus.

Then recently, I saw 2 commits from Steve Jones one of the CLC developer at Eucalyptus , here to the AWS JAVA SDK

https://github.com/sjones4/aws-sdk-java/commit/88acbcc5d6a5db9a0855fa98de56341bc3772283
https://github.com/sjones4/aws-sdk-java/commit/211e220fede28d4c36d335910e8b86e035f9b931

I decided I will take these 2 commits and apply them to the AWS JAVA SDK version 1.3.14 , which I made to work in July 2012. So I went ahead and reverted the patches I had done and worked on applying the above 2 commits on the version 1.3.14

The code is available here, on my github local fork

https://github.com/jeevanullas/aws-sdk-for-java

And as usual the patch is here

https://github.com/jeevanullas/aws-sdk-for-java/commit/905311ae4d049696baf108aff6e87ddc1eab84ca

Thats about it. For people who would like to build from source , they can clone my fork and build from it, get the JAR file , start playing right away.

For those who do not have much time, I have build the JAR and have uploaded that here

http://jeevanullas.in/tmp/aws-java-sdk-1.3.14.jar

Feel free to grab and use it.

I did try to use the latest version of AWS JAVA SDK but could not make it work with the patch, on Eucalyptus 3.2.0/3.2.1/3.1.2 , so this is the latest version of AWS JAVA SDK, which I know off, that works.

Again don’t think it is end of the road, Eucalyptus 3.3.0 is bringing in better support for AWS JAVA SDK and, I have tried that personally, last known version of SDK I tried was 1.3.26 and it works like a charm, plus 3.3.0 Eucalyptus has got the other cool stuff like ELB/Autoscaling/Cloudwatch, so definitely something forward to look at.

In the blog post to follow up I will try to give few examples of how you can use the AWS JAVA SDK to write code which talks to Eucalyptus, because then we can see how many cool things are in store, so stay tuned and healthy!

openbsd on Eucalyptus

People love BSD and it bothers me, that  they cant run it on Eucalyptus private cloud inside their organisation. So, I took the challenge on  building an openbsd image (EMI) which we could then run on Eucalyptus.

The version of openbsd used is 5.2 amd64 and Eucalyptus 3.2.0 on CentOS 6.3. Note that there were problems with running an instance store backed EMI and hence I ended up running an instance from boot-from-EBS EMI.

For the sake of simplicity, this post is divided into 5 parts :

Part – 1 , Build the base image

First of all download the openbsd 5.2 install ISO from the following link:

ftp://ftp3.usa.openbsd.org/pub/OpenBSD/5.2/amd64/install52.iso

Next on your machine (having virt-manager and KVM), run virt-manager to create a new virtual machine, virt-manager provides an easy to use GUI based interface to create a virtual machine. The wizard based process is pretty slick, screenshots below shows the details that were given:

After this the VM would boot, and we need to just follow the installation process as we do normally for openbsd; I followed the following link:

http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#More

Make sure you ensure the SSH and NTP services are installed and configured to start automatically at boot, this is really helpful, the only tricky part is the disk partitioning, I used a custom disk partitioning , using the disklabel ; following link would help do that

http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq4.html#Moredisklabel

The need for a custom layout and a disk large as 10 GB (Check the wizard screenshot above) was because I planned on using the openbsd ports and install necessary software in my image.

Once the install is finished; just reboot the VM, next we will do some configuration

Part -2 Modify the base image, to include necessary tools and configuration

In my tests , I have found that you need VIRTIO enabled on the Node Controller (Eucalyptus) to make this openbsd EMI work; there are couple of things to do , to make sure the EMI works that way;

VIRTIO network driver if used creates a device file in the openbsd instance; vio0 , we need to make sure the network configuration is placed such that this device gets a DHCP provided IP address during boot, this is how we do it on openbsd

echo 'dhcp' > /etc/hostname.vio0

Next I followed this link here , to get ports installed and configured on this VM;

http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq15.html#Ports

I basically put wget and curl inside the VM , because those help with getting meta-data from within the instance when it is running on Eucalyptus

Finally I put a custom version of rc.local in /etc , to get the SSH keys working, for the sake of completeness I have uploaded it on github at the following URL;

https://github.com/jeevanullas/cloud-scripts/blob/master/rc.local

NOTE: The above script is copied and hacked together (to make it work on openbsd) from the original script available here https://github.com/eucalyptus/Eucalyptus-Scripts/blob/master/rc.local

I also made sure that the SSH configuration within opebsd strictly only allows for SSH key base authentication and not password by modifying the necessary configuration in /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Now shutdown the VM and copy the virtual disk file in /var/lib/libvirt/images/ for this VM to the Eucalyptus Storage Controller (SC)

Part -3 Upload the base image to Eucalyptus and get an EMI

From Eucalyptus side ; the first requirement is to make sure we use VIRTIO for everything on the NC, so on the NC , please make sure inside /etc/eucalyptus/eucalyptus.conf USE_VIRTIO_* is all set to 1

The openbsd EMI would be a boot-from-EBS (bfEBS) EMI because that is what works, the instance store backed EMI seems to not work due to natural reasons of kernel/ramdisk issues;

Next create a 10G volume on the Eucalyptus cloud and attach it to any running instance (any running instance, from any image), basically need to dump the image file for openbsd we got in Part -2 into the volume

euca-create-volume -s 10 -z cloud3

euca-attach-volume -d /dev/vdb -i i-05CB3829 vol-9B4F3F76

Now go on the SC and dd the openbsd image to the corresponding LV device for the volume you attached above (you need to figure out the LV for your volume ; its pretty easy if you have only 1 volume attached to an instance in the whole cloud, otherwise some manual work is involved IIRC)

dd if=openbsd-blog.img of=dev/vg-itL1qZZjVsCuLg../lv-D0fGsw..

Once the above is finished, detach the volume from the running instance and snapshot it

euca-detach-volume vol-9B4F3F76

euca-create-snapshot vol-9B4F3F76

Once the volume is snapshotted we can just register the EMI out of the same using;

euca-register -n "openbsd" --root-device-name /dev/sda1 -b /dev/sda1=snap-60FA3B94

This should give you an EMI-ID which you can run instance out off;

Part -4 Run an instance

Now we would run an instance from this EMI and check if we can access it over SSH;

euca-run-instances -k sshlogin -t m1.large emi-2D8A446A

ssh -i sshlogin root@10.104.3.1

There you go! Your own openbsd instance on your own Eucalyptus private cloud, with root access, start playing!

Part -5 Run eutester, Instance check on the EMI

This last part was little tricky to crack and there are some loose ends, which I would like help on, from the openbsd users/developers on internet;

Basically we run a set of tests on the EMI via the eutester test suite to verify the EMI, you can check out more on the test here;

https://github.com/eucalyptus/eutester/blob/testing/testcases/cloud_user/instances/instancetest.py

The results for the test is stored here;

https://github.com/eucalyptus/image-verification-results

For openbsd there were 3 things that failed

• Instance meta-data does not return any ramdisk ID – This is natural as there is no ramdisk associated with the bfEBS EMI
• Ephemeral storage was not found – Apparently the check to find the ephemeral storage does a ; ls -l /dev/sda2 , this device does not exist on the openbsd instance, so it failed
• EBS Volume attach fails – This is important, because as soon as the volume gets attached to the running openbsd instance , the instance is not reachable over SSH or via console, it appears that the hotplug for disk is causing the kernel to panic, if we detach the volume and reboot (euca-reboot-instances) it comes to life again;

The result of the test are available on the following link:

https://github.com/jeevanullas/cloud-scripts/blob/master/openbsd-eutester-result

Hope this blog post is useful for the openbsd lovers and they would enjoy reading and running their favourite openbsd instances on top of Eucalyptus cloud without much hiccup;

Day 2 for Eucalyptus at gnuNify 2012, Pune

Day 2 started with a real good breakfast. Again thanks to the organizing team for arranging such a good breakfast. I should say I really loved the weather at Pune after staying at Jaipur for past 1 month specially when it is cold.

My prime goal for day 2 was to have the lab ready for the Eucalyptus workshop at 2:30PM. I would really like to thank every one of the volunteers part of this lab setup in helping me get ready for the workshop. We took around 5 machines and setup cluster controller, cloud controller, storage controller and walrus on one machine. Rest all machines were our node controllers.

Volunteers were pretty excited about the preparation of the lab. They helped me with small small things like getting a extra network interface card for the server, a local switch and my macbook displayport to VGA converter so I can share my screen on a HDTV. They also prepared and recorded a complete video of the workshop. I am not sure if I would be able to get it but if I do it could be really helpful for me as well as the whole community I hope.

[Read more →]

Day 1 for Eucalyptus at gnuNify 2012, Pune

I got the opportunity to attend as well as speak at gnuNify 2012 , Pune. It was my first FOSS conference as a speaker and it went really great. I was there for two days 10th and 11th Feb and was accompanied by Atul Jha one of our Eucalyptus community member in India. Thanks to Atul for joining me in from Chennai and spreading the word about our community . This was the 10th version of gnuNify at SICSR (Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research) Pune.

This year the main theme for the conference was Cloud Computing as well as Mobile Computing and I was happy to see lot of good talks and workshops on the same.

[Read more →]

testing eucalyptus cloud now made easy

So last weekend I thought of trying out the Eutester project which has been up on projects.eucalyptus.com for a while and now the code been moved to github with some serious development happening.

Well for those who are new to Eutester, it is a framework written in python which helps you test your Eucalyptus private cloud setup. Remember, testing can sometime be a hard job so best to automate it as much as possible with all your test cases. Besides that there is a lot more to it. I guess using the existing code which is part of the test framework one can develop his/her own test cases for varied scenarios/bugs and contribute the same to the Eutester code on github.

For me personally it is a great tool to have in my ninja pockets, makes my job pretty easier. Imagine you have a bug on launchpad that you want to replicate in your environment? How long would it take to execute those Steps to follow to re-create the problem and now imagine one single program, a Eutester test case doing all that for you in one shot, that’s what I call smartness.

[Read more →]

jeevanullas is back with clouds

Well it’s been really really long since I updated this space but looks like the right time to change a few things around starting with a new post in a new year!

This post basically summarizes 2011 for me and ends with the latest news which comes with the new year. For a better understanding of things I am categorizing it into sections

[Read more →]

Connecting to Amazon Virtual Private Cloud using Linux

Hello internet,

I am trying to connect my Linux machine to Amazon VPC using end to end IPSec tunnel. I have set all the required VPC objects on Amazon side and now plan to set my Linux Laptop as a VPN gateway. But the only doubt I have is that my Laptop is behind NAT. Though I have opened and re-directed the necessary ports on my NAT device I am not sure if this thing is going to work.

Please let me know if this setup can work. I am trying to follow the following guide

http://openfoo.org/blog/amazon_vpc_with_linux.html

From what I understand so far in order to make this guide work for my setup I need to do some extra configuration. I have also found out that IPSec supports tunnels behind NAT devices but I am not sure if Amazon VPC will support such configuration.

Any help in this matter is highly appreciated.

Using Boxgrinder to build your own AMI for EC2

In my last article I showed on how to create your own AMI for EC2. The article basically demonstrated the whole process been done manually by executing commands. In this article I would like to cover Boxgrinder which reduces the manual effort completely and helps you get your own AMI registered on EC2 and in few minutes.

First thing is that we need to run boxgrinder on CentOS if we would like to build a CentOS AMI and on Fedora if we would like to build a Fedora AMI. The good thing about boxgrinder is that it uses the latest pvgrub kernel images provided by Amazon which basically lets you boot into your own kernel. So gone are the days when we had to use Amazon EC2 kernel. Thanks to Marek Goldmann for making this possible in boxgrinder 0.5

[Read more →]

Creating your own AMI for Amazon EC2

It’s been long since I posted on this blog. This time I have come up with this new post which takes you through on how to go about creating your own Amazon Machine Image (AMI) for Amazon EC2. Note that there are several publicly available AMI’s on Amazon which one can use for various purposes but sometimes we require to have a AMI of our own which has all the require software / configuration to meet our daily requirements. That is time we need to know how to create our own AMI.

I would like to thank Phil Chen for his excellent post here http://www.philchen.com/2009/02/14/how-to-create-an-amazon-elastic-compute-cloud-ec2-machine-image-ami which I followed and have mentioned below with some extra addition and some modification.

[Read more →]

Fedora 13 release party in Bangalore

I am a little late on writing about the release party we had last week on Saturday, was occupied with $work.  Well it all started with the mail of Rangeen to FSUG mailing list. That time I have just come to Bangalore and thought it will be great to meet all the Fedora folks in Bangalore during such party. Venue was a big issue initially as almost all the colleges in Bangalore were having exams. But I knew my friend Saket who has been pretty active in FSMK Bangalore. I contacted him and asked him if we can organize this release party at FSMK Bangalore office. I got a positive reply and after confirmation from the FSMK folks we finalized to have it at FSMK Bangalore office on June 5th.

I personally never expected many folks to turn up because of two reasons. One been that many colleges in Bangalore were having end semester exams plus we don’t have much Fedora folks here in Bangalore. Initially we (Me, Ankur, Hiemanshu , Dipjyoti and Rangeen) had a hard time finding out the office. Point to remember GPS in India will not be accurate enough with all these narrow lanes everywhere.

[Read more →]

Hackers dom in Hyderabad

Well we hackers can’t live without our machines and that’s so true. Recently I have been playing with EBS volumes in Eucalyptus but was not able to make it work on Centos 5.4 with XEN more information can be found here. Then I thought to give it a try on our KVM + Fedora 12. But wait a minute we need more than 1 machine to try EBS volume. Hmm, just gave it a thought and remembered that I have another laptop with me at home. My brother’s new DELL laptop which is only having Windows 7 and nothing else. He doesn’t like anyone else to install any other OS on it so I thought of putting Fedora 12 inside VMware and finally after doing that I started my hacking experiment.

I have been running my Eucalyptus private cloud on a single laptop till now and knew that I can’t use brother’s laptop as node because it has windows 7 and fedora 12 was running inside VM. So I started installing eucalyptus 1.6.2 on that VM via source and finished eucalyptus as well euca2ools installation. Created that VM as the head running Cloud controller, cluster controller, storage controller and walrus. Next I switched to my laptop from scratch installed eucalyptus and configured it to run as node. My laptop is super cool. It’s been 4 years I have had this machine but the good thing it has the special processor flags which gives VT support so that I can run fully virtualized VM in KVM (kvm_intel).

[Read more →]

Cloud Computing is the future

Well for those who don’t know, since Jan 2010 I have been working on eucalyptus a open source software to setup private cloud inside organization premises.

I have seen lot of people blogging about eucalyptus specifically on Ubuntu Server edition. Well to be frank eucalyptus is a great software and it works with almost al latest linux distributions. Though I haven’t found time to test all the available linux distribution as I am stuck with work and Fedora but I have tested it on centos 5.4 and Fedora 12. Works great!

Few problems I have always faced but the IRC channel for eucalyptus on freenode as well as the online forums have been really helpful in solving my doubts.

I plan to write my experiences with eucalyptus on this blog in times to come. Besides eucalyptus creating virtual appliances in a automated way is also one of the areas I have worked on paste few weeks. This is all specific to fedora right now using boxgrinder. It is a alternative to vm-builder which ubuntu folks have got.

I am a strong support of the fedora project and love the way how the fedora community is structured and functions. Have been associated with it since the beginning (Fedora core 1).

In the end, for now, I would just like to say, cloud computing is the future and open source is the best medium we have all got to implement it.

Random musings from city of nizams

These days I am living in hyderabad which is famous for briyani and haleem. The city is very lively with crowd everywhere I go. Few things I would like to talk about this great city which I have found out.

1. If you are a hardcore non-vegetarian this is the place to be. This city has to offer variety of chicken and mutton and it is not costly either.

2. Briyani lovers, please go to paradise hotel. It’s like the makka madena of briyani. I have been there only once with my friends but would love to go again.

3. The place where I live is close to the famous hi-tech city. This hi-tech city is the area where you will see huge buildings some of them having nice arch. too. It is full of dynamic youth which are not at all driven by passion or enthusiasm but auto rickshaw drivers who run their auto’s in sharing mode. Even I am a regular customer of these sharing autos where you have to sit in front with the driver if there are ladies.

4. Description of this city will be in-complete without discussing my work place. The best place to be. It’s even better from my room because I don’t get power cuts there. It has a green landscape with small water falls, awesome food courts, big and nice buildings. We have in the employee care center everything. We got bank, gym, more store, indigo nation showroom, table tennis, carrum, snooker, dance class, tennis court, basketball ground, cricket ground, laundrament, apollo clinic and most important of all these if you would like to take rest or sleep we have got dormitory, separate for men and women. The dormitory is special cause it has got clean bed with air conditioned dark room where one can sleep for hours. Other things in the employee care center are strand book stall which has got some of the nice books for me to read at a discounted price.

What else? I am still exploring this city though not that much but as and when I get time. The places I have visited so far are near to my living place. I plan to go to the old city sometime and visit the original places where as I have heard there are still some nizams or at-least their property.

Right now I would like to advice you not to go to the old city just like that due to the telengana issue. It’s a big issue and sometimes results in curfew in the whole city. At that time it’s hard to find good food and easy way to commute. I have seen bike number plates having TG(telengana) instead of AP(Andhra pradesh)

I was able to write this post because of my E72 and pretty good airtel GPRS connection. Laptop battery died few minutes ago and still we don’t have lights here. What a life in the city they call as cyberabad.

Hello Internet

Dear Internet,

I am glad to be part of you. Here I am, back, finally with my own space. I hope this journey is long and becomes learning experience for both of us. Looking forward to have a great time with you.

Thanks

~jeevanullas

End of a long silence

Hey all , I am back

Well at least I will try to be regular now on this blog and write few things which I have been engaged with these days.

So stay tune!

I voted

Cast your vote go to : https://admin.fedoraproject.org/voting

Fedora 10 brings happiness to linuxguru's Life

Yay!!

Cambridge was out yesterday night (IST).

And just when the download was about to finish for me I got my Directory Services exams result and I was told that I have passed the exam. w000t. That was the last hurdle in the way to become RHCSS.

Finally I can call myself Redhat Certified Security Specialist.

How awesome all this looks. Brand new fedora on my laptop and desktop machines and RHCSS!!!

For verficiation:-

http://www.redhat.com/training/certification/verify/?rhce_cert_display:certno=804006843818597&rhce_cert_display:verify_cb=Verify

Introducing myself to Fedora Planet

Hi Fedora Planet,

Thanks for accepting me . Those who would like to know more about me just have a look here.

Hope to get some meaningful posts in the future.

Till then Enjoy!

Securing Log Server in RHEL

NTP Server

Using svn with Eclipse

Using eclipse as the IDE for my java programming has become very common these days. It’s so common that I have it installed under windows xp, Fedora 8 and OSX leopard. Few days back I asked charlie for a svn account on unixpod and was able to get one by the name java-jeevan.
I thought of configuring this svn repository in my eclipse europa so that it will be easier for me to manage my code. I found to my surprise that there was no such svn thing in eclipse by default but there is one good project that provides svn functionality into the eclipse ide. Here is the project Subclipse. I just downloaded the necessary site-1.0.6.zip and extracted it. Then I pasted the regular files inside that directory into the corresponding eclipse subdirectories. Started eclipse and here I see a new view under the SVN group called the SVN repository. Inside this view I added a new repository location (right clicking on the SVN repository view and selecting new). It only asked me the URL of my repository which was svn://svn.unixpod.com/java-jeevan and there it goes within few seconds I saw the repository shown inside the view and I can see my code tree inside it. Managing SVN repos is so easy from within eclipse even I can import the svn repository code into one of my projects either new or pre-existing one. It is really very easy. I went to create a new project from the new project wizard during the initial selection process I selected create a new project from svn checkout. This wizard showed me my repository and let me select the project directory I was interested in checking out into a new project in the eclipse workspace. It was pretty easy for me.
Once I started editing the code it was again very easy to commit the changes I have made into the source code just right click on the file I edited and then team->commit… It asked me my SVN password which I gave for once and saved it for future automation of this process.

Pretty cool.

That was it. Quick and dirty post

/me back to blogging

Well, again it’s been quite a while since I blogged. Truly speaking it was me who never felt interest in writing again but now I think that I should write (silly me ).
Lot of things have happened since my last post. In the month of October I had a visit to my native place (my village), spent almost 10 days at places like Mukungarh (Dadosa’s home), Sainswas (my village) and Pilani (visit to a friends place). That was a nice holiday. Got to know alot of things about my ancestors and history.
In November I was majorly at home (Jaipur) with family for the diwali celebrations. That was also a nice time. But had to came back to so called work place (Jodhpur) to do some stuff. In the last week I started again, teaching some of my friends GNU/Linux considering Centos 5.1 for the job.
December was party time. Had alot of parties and picnic’s and all. Learned quite alot of things in GNU/Linux, majorly not regarding programming but from the point of view of system administration. It’s been a while since I programmed stuff. New year party was great. Had my favorite stuff (non-veg).
January 2008 have come. The start was again with parties and enjoyment. Nothing serious about studies (as usual). Got the second semester result. That was fine. Now again the exam season is ringing bells. Seriously speaking I hate these bells.
Well, a little update on what I wrote in the last post. I was working with team of 3 people on the IBM Academic project but due to my laziness that never got completed, start was perfect but we couldn’t cope up with things and it died. We had submitted synopsis too but we were never able to complete the code. I had learned alot of things by that project. Most importantly stuff in advance java.
Recently I have again started doing some programming and seriously speaking that thing have inspired me to write again. Really programming is something that gives me internal pleasure. It is the ultimate thing. I wish I can keep myself always motivated for programming. But yeah let’s see how it goes.
I will update on the recent stuff I am working on in the next post. Stay tune!!

Random Stuff

Today morning I was reading #fedora at freenode a little carefully and found this (nice to read it once hahaha):


04:30 < R0CK> Hello guys
04:31 < R0CK> any news about the add/remove software ?
04:31 < opsec> R0CK: ask a real question or no one will respond to you
04:32 < R0CK> I'm having problem on pirut, It's hanging when i run it,.
04:32 * opsec puts on his mid reading hat
04:32 < opsec> R0CK: and?
04:32 < BULLE> R0CK: that seems to be a common problem lately
04:32 < opsec> run it from the command line ..
04:32 < R0CK> opsec, I know very well how to ask my questions.
04:32 < opsec> if you get an error --> dpaste.com
04:33 < opsec> R0CK: no, you don't
04:33 < R0CK> opsec, well, my question was any news about the issue?
04:33 < opsec> there is no issue that i know of
04:33 < R0CK> opsec, don't try to be intelligent baby, you`re here since yesterday.
04:33 < opsec> either run it from the command like and paste the error to dpaste.com or use yumex instead
04:34 < opsec> R0CK: i'm done with you moron.
04:34 < R0CK> opsec, then stop supporting me,


It happens alot of time at #fedora.

Talking about the other thing I did this week was to finish the synopsis document for my project. It was a great experiencing learning how to make Data Flow Diagrams, Use case model etc. Learned alot. Now the team started writing the nasty code thingie.

The Captcha code for the JAVA Project is finished and now I have to figure out how can i insert the captcha module into the project and use it whenever I need it. I had to also learn packages/interface’s in JAVA. The other thing on my agenda is XML and handling XML via JAVA because I can sense that it will be needed in the project during some point of the life cycle (and my personal attraction to XML).

The progress on my secret python project is going good. I have been doing the testing stuff for a long time now with a different nick on freenode and it seems to perform well for the moment. I had to see a better alternative to CGI and supported by my shell provider so I can get a better stat’s page.

Downloaded Oracle 11g for Linux and will give it a try soon, need to learn how to configure a Oracle database server and configure/install clients so that they can utilize the server database instance.

It has been along time and there are lot of articles piling up in my docs stack. I got to find sometime to finish them up and upload on to my server (most important of them is the samba plus ldap guide for the fedora-docs team).

I was happy to make the TATA indicom internet connection working on Fedora. Now I can hope that some more people get involved into the learning Linux stuff (more closely).

From above it seems like a busy yet exciting weekend ahead. Hmm..

/me Status Update

After along time I got some time to write at this place. Well for quite some months I have been working in Python and stuff related to it. The important things I worked on in python were XML stuff, IRC/Google Talk API’s provided in Python, writing bots (irc, gtalk) and learning XML parsing.

Then I got busy in my 2nd semester examination which were a total hell (took the hell out of me).

Now that my exams are over and I got some time I decided to roll upon some new stuff. First is a secret project I have started working on (in python) and second is JAVA. Truely speaking I have never done JAVA sincerely though I got alot of time to do it. But now I decided to look around and started working on the Core stuff (as JAVA is in my current semester).

The other important thing these days is the IBM Challenge program going on in which I have enrolled as a participant having 3 more members in my team. So meanwhile I am learning the core JAVA stuff I am also looking into the Advance JAVA stuff the web thingie. We got our team blog now thanks to /me.

So I guess probably for some more time I will not be updating this blog (my first and only blog) because of some small works I am indulged in. Keep in touch with the team blog.

See you soon.

Compiz-Fusion now arrives for Fedora7

Many thanks to KageSenshi’s efforts we now have Compiz-Fusion for Fedora7. For more information on how to install it look into KageSenshi’s Blog.

After installing all the stuff I did the following things (Note: This is for Intel video card users and GNOME no KDE support Yet ):

Step 1: vi /home/deepsa/compiz-fusion-run
LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=1 INTEL_BATCH=1 compiz –replace –sm-disable ccp &

Save and exit

Step 2: chmod a+x /home/deepsa/compiz-fusion-run

Step 3: gnome-session-properties

Startup Programs -> New
Name : Compiz-Fusion
Command: /home/deepsa/compiz-fusion-run
OK

Step 4: System -> Preferences -> CompizConfig Settings Manager -> Window Decorations -> Command -> emerald –replace

Step 5: Logout and LogBack In.

Some screenshots of new features

Expo Plugin

Cube with reflection

Configuring Pidgin 2.0.0 final for Google Talk in Linux

Click on the Add button on the bottom and you will be shown something like this

I have filled almost all the values for my test but you need to change them according to your need.

Protocol: XMPP (earlier used to be Jabber)
Screen Name: Must be filled up with your gmail-id before @gmail.com.
Server: Should be gmail.com.
Resource: Can be anything the default "Home" will also work.
Password: You gmail password goes here.

This is it. Hope you get your g-talk account working with Pidgin 2.0.0 in GNU/Linux.

Laptop RAM Upgraded

Today I got my Laptop’s RAM upgraded to 1GB. Now I can try researching more on virtualization specially full virtualization using KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine). And yeah now I can run more app’s simultaneously in my Redhat5. I am almost finished writing my next article on how to configure Redhat Enterprise5 to use full virtualization provided by KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine).

This article helped me learn how I can build my own rpm’s using the source rpm’s provided by Redhat. That was really nice. I got my whole virtualization stuff in Redhat5 upgraded to the latest version.

And yeah I am working on my website too. Don’t know when I will get satisfy with the design and stuff I am hosting.

New Ubuntu

Provisioning Linux Simplified with Cobbler

For Physical Machines:

install
url --url=http://192.168.1.5/Dump/
key 2515dd4e215225dd
lang en_US.UTF-8
keyboard us
xconfig --startxonboot
network --device eth0 --bootproto static --ip 192.168.1.23 --netmask 255.255.255.0 --gateway 192.168.1.1 --hostname server1.example.com
rootpw --iscrypted $1$QGYhCela$pNOZoWf4XoONvUdND/nS01
firewall --disabled
authconfig --enableshadow --enablemd5
selinux --disabled
timezone Asia/Calcutta
bootloader --location=mbr --driveorder=hda --append="rhgb quiet"
# The following is the partition information you requested
# Note that any partitions you deleted are not expressed
# here so unless you clear all partitions first, this is
# not guaranteed to work
#clearpart --linux
#part / --fstype ext3 --onpart sda3
#part swap --onpart sda6
#part /home --fstype ext3 --onpart sda7

%packages
@base
@base-x
@core



manage_dhcp: 1
next_server: '192.168.1.5'
server: '192.168.1.5'



No setup problems found.
Manual review and editing of /var/lib/cobbler/settings is recommended to tailor cobbler to your particular configuration.
Good luck.


cobbler distro add --name=rhel5
-dvd --kernel=/rhel5/Dump/images/pxeboot/vmlinuz --initrd=/rhel5/Dump/images/pxeboot/initrd.img --arch=x86


cobbler profile add --name=redhat5y --distro=rhel5-dvd –kick-start=/rhel5/Dump/ks.cfg


For example I want to add a systemA in the profile redhat5y I can give the following command:

cobbler system add –name= --profile=redhat5y



cobbler distro add –name=rhel5-xen –kernel=/rhel5/Dump/images/xen/vmlinuz –initrd=/rhel5/Dump/images/xen/initrd.img --arch=x86



cobbler profile addd --name=redhat5x --distro=rhel5-xen --kick-start=/rhel5/Dump/ks1cfg --virt-file-size=2 –virt-ram=256



install
nfs --server=192.168.1.5 --dir=/rhel5/Dump
key 2515dd4e215225dd
lang en_US.UTF-8
keyboard us
network --bootproto=bootp --device=eth0 --onboot=on
rootpw --iscrypted $1$VwD9nalr$06K0bUawzanX72gNk0es91
firewall --disabled
authconfig --enableshadow --enablemd5
selinux --disabled
timezone --utc Asia/Calcutta
bootloader --location=mbr --driveorder=xvda --append="console=xvc0"
# The following is the partition information you requested
# Note that any partitions you deleted are not expressed
# here so unless you clear all partitions first, this is
# not guaranteed to work
clearpart --all --drives=xvda
part /boot --fstype ext3 --size=100 --ondisk=xvda
part pv.2 --size=0 --grow --ondisk=xvda
volgroup VolGroup00 --pesize=32768 pv.2
logvol / --fstype ext3 --name=LogVol00 --vgname=VolGroup00 --size=1024 --grow
logvol swap --fstype swap --name=LogVol01 --vgname=VolGroup00 --size=144 --grow --maxsize=288

%packages
@admin-tools
@base
@core



koan --virt –server=192.168.1.5 –profile=redhat5x



xm console 00_16_3E_6B_D5_39


Configuring Xen para virtualization in Redhat Enterprise 5

Hello to everybody. In one of my last post I discussed about Xen and virtualization in Redhat Enterprise 5. Well at that time I was not able to configure virtual machine via the virtualization tool but after that I researched alot about this topic and finally was able to configure Xen on my Redhat Enterprise 5.

libvir: Xen Daemon error : POST operation failed: (xend.err 'Error creating domain: I need 262144 KiB, but dom0_min_mem is 262144 and shrinking to 262144 KiB would leave only 235124 KiB free.')

libvir: Xen Daemon error : POST operation failed: (xend.err 'Device 0 (vif) could not be connected. Hotplug scripts not working.')


title Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client (2.6.18-1.2747.el5xen)
root (hd0,5)
kernel /boot/xen.gz-2.6.18-1.2747.el5
module /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-1.2747.el5xen ro root=LABEL=/ rhgb quiet
module /boot/initrd-2.6.18-1.2747.el5xen.img


virsh

Inside the virsh prompt

virsh # connect
virsh # setmem Domain-0 500000

cd /etc/xen/auto
ln -s ../rhel5b2-pv1 .

chkconfig xendomains on

service xendomains stop

Configuring Yum in RHEL5 for DVD source

Then I created a ISO file for this DVD using the “mkisofs” command.

Linux Distros

a) Wireless Internet
b) Bluetooth
c) Proper Screen Resolution.


[roo
t@deepsa Client]# rpm -ivh xfig-3.2.4-21.1.i386.rpm --aid

I got the result

error: Failed dependencies:
transfig >= 1:3.2.4-12 is needed by xfig-3.2.4-21.1.i386


In the recent months I had tried alot of distros:

a) BackTrack Beta 2.0
b) OpenSUSE 10.2
c) Gentoo 2006.1
d) RHEL5 Beta2
e) Ubuntu Edgy
f) Ubuntu Fiesty Herd 2

Exams fever the worst fever for a human being like me.

Installing OSX86


mkdir /mnt/C
mount /dev/sda5 /mnt/C
cd /mnt/C
dd if=tiger-x86-flat.img of=/dev/sda1 bs=512 skip=63



mkdir /mnt/mm
mount /dev/sda6 /mnt/mm


Now I edit the menu.lst configuration file of grub so that I can boot OSX86.


cd /mnt/mm/boot/grub
vi menu.lst

Title Mac OSX86
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1


I also edited my Windows XP and SuSE linux entry because the partition number have changed after adding the HFS partition at the beginning.


Title Windows XP
rootnoverify (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1


After that I saved the file and quit. Then I issued the command:


grub-install –root-directory='/mnt/mm' /dev/sda


This command installed my grub on the MBR.


mkdir /mnt/C
mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/C
cp /mnt/C/BOOT.INI /root
chmod a+w /root/BOOT.INI
vi /root/BOOT.INI


Edit the partition(1) to partition(2) on the two lines. Save and exit.


umount /mnt/C
chmod a-w /root/BOOT.INI
ntfscp /dev/sda2 /root/BOOT.INI /mnt/C/BOOT.INI


Hardware:
Lenovo Laptop 3000N100 (07684KA)
512 DDR2 SDRAM (667 Mhz)
Intel Centrino Dual Core 1.66 Ghz
80 GB SATA Hard Drive
RealTek Ethernet
Intel Pro 10/100 Wireless
Intel 945GM Mobile Graphics
Intel High Definition Audio (SoundMAX)
Integrated Camera
DVD RAM
PCMCIA
Card Reader
4 USB
TV OUT
External Monitor Port
Firewire Device
15.4” inch Wide Screen
Finger Print Scanner
Bluetooth Enabled

Installing Windows XP virtual Machine

VMware Installation , Configuration on Fedora Core 5

In this post , I am going to share my experiences with you all , of how was I able to install VMware 5.5.1 on Linux (Fedora Core 5) and configure it and finally install windows XP through it.
So following the step-by-step procedure we start up right away(follow all the below steps by login via root user only):

Step 1) Vmware needs that the kernel and it’s appropriate sources are installed properly on your system. I recommend you to install the latest kernel for Fedora core 5. You can do this by issuing the following simple commands (note that you need to be connected to internet as a root user in order for these commands to run successfully):
a) yum install kernel
b) yum install kernel-devel
This will install the latest kernel and it’s source code. The version I have is 2.6.16-1.2080_FC5. After you do this step you need to reboot and boot into the newly installed kernel.

Step 2) We need the VMware Software for Fedora Core 5. For this we can go here and follow the steps described there. Download the RPM file for VMware 5.5.1-19175 version.

Step 3) As the above software is a shareware version you get a key for the first 30 days trial on the e-mail provided by you during registration on the link provided in step (2), note down the key and save it somewhere in a text file we will need it after installation and configuration finishes up.

Step 4) Now as VMware 5.5.1 has reported some problem during the configuration in Fedora Core 5 we will need to download this specially created perl script from here.

Step 5) Install VMware from the rpm by issuing the following command:

rpm -ivh VMware-workstation-5.5.1-19175.i386.rpm

Step 6) After installing the above rpm we need to extract the script downloaded in step (4) and follow these steps:

a) gzip -d vmware-any-any-update101.tar.gz
b) tar -xf vmware-any-any-update101.tar
c) cd vmware-any-any-update101
d) ./runme.pl

Step 6) After you run the runme perl script it will ask you many things. These should be your answers:

Question 1) Before running VMware for the first time after update, you need to configure it for your running kernel by invoking the following command:
“/usr/bin/vmware-config.pl”. Do you want this script to invoke the command for
you now? [yes]

Answer 1) Press Enter

Then Read the License Agreement (press Space Bar 7-8 times) and in the end type yes and press Enter.

Question 2) In which directory do you want to install the mime type icons?
[/usr/share/icons]

Answer 2) Press Enter

Question 3) What directory contains your desktop menu entry files? These files have a
.desktop file extension. [/usr/share/applications]

Answer 3) Press Enter

Question 4) In which directory do you want to install the application’s icon?
[/usr/share/pixmaps]

Answer 4) Press Enter

Question 5) None of the pre-built vmmon modules for VMware Workstation is suitable for your running kernel. Do you want this program to try to build the vmmon module for your system (you need to have a C compiler installed on your system)? [yes]

Answer 5) Press Enter

Question 6) What is the location of the directory of C header files that match your running kernel? [/lib/modules/2.6.16-1.2080_FC5/build/include]

Answer 6) Yes (note your directory listing may differ with the given here !)

Question 7) Do you want networking for your virtual machines? (yes/no/help) [yes]

Answer 7) Press Enter (if you don’t want networking type no and press enter). If you need to run internet from your virtual machine in future and you happen to use a broadband connection please select yes and press enter.

Question 8) Do you want to be able to use NAT networking in your virtual machines? (yes/no) [yes]

Answer 8) This depends. For my setting I typed no and Pressed Enter.

Question 9) Do you want to be able to use host-only networking in your virtual machines?[no]

Answer 9) Answer it yes or no if you want/don’t want to communicate with your Fedora Core 5 host machine inside the virtual machine you install later. I choosed no.

Step 7) After these simple questions and configuration of VMware-5.5.1 finishes off and now we can run the vmware software by issuing the following command at command line:

vmware

Step 8) Once the software starts up goto Help->Enter Serial Number … and paste the serial number you got via email during step (3).

And voila! VMware is now installed and configured on your fedora core 5 machine.
In the next post I am going to explain you how did I configured the Windows XP Professional Virtual Machine inside VMware and that too through the step by step guide. So for the time being just play around with the above guide and try your hands with the different options giving in the software.

Happy Linux’ing !!

BSNL Broadband configuration Linux

I was seeing constant threads at orkut regarding configuration of internet on linux. This guide I hope will help you establish the BSNL broadband connection on your linux box. I assume that you have configured your network interface (if not then I am going to post a similar post regarding howto configure it).

This document is a copy of a document which I saw in late 2004 when I was searching for a howto to configure internet in linux.

This document describes howto setup bsnl broadband service on your gnu/linux server/desktop. It assumes that you are neither linux beginer nor an expert. It assumes that you are aware of basic gnu/linux commands.

I have installed it on redhat 9. I dont find any reason why it would not work on following distributions:

• FC1
• FC2
• FC3
• FC4
• FC5

An unofficial FAQ on Dataone can be found here

Pre-Requisites

• Please ensure that you have connected a working ethernet card which is supported on gnu/linux. Test the ethernet card & ensure that it is working.
• Root access to a gnu/linux box

Before we start, please ensure that you have the following details on hand:

• BSNL Broadband connection -:)
• Username & Password

Using the builtin dialer

Using RP-PPPOE as dialer

Installation

• As BSNL broadband is using rp-pppoe (Roaring Penguin – Point to Point Over Ethernet), we would be required to download & install this package. This package is normally available on most of the distributions. But, if you are using redhat7.3, please download the following packages:

If you are downloading the tar.gz version, you have to build the rpm first. So, please walk through the following procedure to build the rpm:

Procedure to build RPM from tar.gz.

 1. Login as root
2. Download tar.gz version & execute the following commands
# tar -zxvf rp-pppoe-3.5.tar.gz (untar this package)
 * This command would untar the package in the current directory.
# cp rp-pppoe-3.5.tar.gz /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES/
# cd rp-pppoe-3.5
 * The rpm spec file, rp-pppoe.spec is available in this directory.
# cp rp-pppoe.spec /usr/src/redhat/SPECS/
# cd /usr/src/redhat/SPECS
# rpm -ba rp-pppoe.spec
*  The  above  command would untar the tar.gz package in ../BUILD
directory, compile the package and finally it would create neces
sary rpms in

If everything goes fine, you would see the following or similar message:

 Wrote: /usr/src/redhat/SRPMS/rp-pppoe-3.5-1.src.rpm
Wrote: /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/rp-pppoe-3.5-1.i386.rpm
Wrote: /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/rp-pppoe-gui-3.5-1.i386.rpm
Executing(%clean): /bin/sh -e /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.97349
+ umask 022
+ cd /usr/src/redhat/BUILD
+ cd rp-pppoe-3.5
+ rm -rf /tmp/pppoe-build
+ exit 0

If this is the case, the necessary rpms are successfully created and they are available in appropriate directory.

 Source RPMS - /usr/src/redhat/SRPMS/rp-pppoe-3.5-1.src.rpm
Binary RPMS - /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/rp-pppoe-3.5-1.i386.rpm
GUI RPMS    - /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/rp-pppoe-gui-3.5-1.i386.rpm

Now, at this stage you are having necessary rpms with you. Either you have downloaded them from the above website. Or you would have built them on your own:

Command Line Version

 # rpm -vih rp-pppoe-3.5-1.i386.rpm

It would install the command line version of rp-pppoe package.

GUI Version

 # rpm -vih rp-pppoe-gui-3.5-1.i386.rpm

It would install the gui version of rp-pppoe package. If you have successfully installed, then you can proceed to next section.

Configuration

Once you have installed rp-pppoe package, all necessary commands would have been installed.

 adsl-setup  - to configure the connection parameters
adsl-start  - to start the connection
adsl-status - to check status of the connection
adsl-stop   - to stop the connection

Now, we are ready to configure the BSNL broadband internet connection.

Here you have to configure the following parameters:

 * userid
* network interface (eth0 or ..)
* Demand value (normally you can leave it blank)
* DNS Information (primary & secondary)

• With regard to primary & secondary dns, You can leave it blank, as it would be taken care automatically. If you wish to know the dns details, just complete this wizard and when you run adsl-start, do:

 # tail -f /var/log/messages


Mar 15 15:29:48 Gateway pppd[3564]: Remote message: Authentication success,Welcome!
Mar 15 15:29:48 Gateway pppd[3564]: local  IP address 59.92.9.154
Mar 15 15:29:48 Gateway pppd[3564]: remote IP address 59.92.8.1
Mar 15 15:29:48 Gateway pppd[3564]: primary   DNS address 61.1.96.69
Mar 15 15:29:48 Gateway pppd[3564]: secondary DNS address 61.1.96.71

There it goes! The primary & secondary dns details are found and it would be automatically updated in /etc/resolv.conf.

• Then you should enter the following details:

 * Password
* Firewall (set is to 2, MASQUERADE)
* Confirm

• The following is the screen shot of adsl-setup command.

 # adsl-setup
Welcome to the Roaring Penguin ADSL client setup.  First, I will run
some checks on your system to make sure the PPPoE client is installed
properly...

Looks good!  Now, please enter some information:

USER NAME

>>> Enter your PPPoE user name (default test@dataone):

INTERFACE

>>> Enter the Ethernet interface connected to the ADSL modem
For Solaris, this is likely to be something like /dev/hme0.
For Linux, it will be ethn, where 'n' is a number.
(default eth0):

Do you want the link to come up on demand, or stay up continuously?
If you want it to come up on demand, enter the idle tim
e in seconds
after which the link should be dropped.  If you want the link to
stay up permanently, enter 'no' (two letters, lower-case.)
NOTE: Demand-activated links do not interact well with dynamic IP
addresses.  You may have some problems with demand-activated links.
>>> Enter the demand value (default no):

DNS

Please enter the IP address of your ISP's primary DNS server.
If your ISP claims that 'the server will provide DNS addresses',
enter 'server' (all lower-case) here.
If you just press enter, I will assume you know what you are
doing and not modify your DNS setup.
>>> Enter the DNS information here: 61.1.128.5
Please enter the IP address of your ISP's secondary DNS server.
If you just press enter, I will assume there is only one DNS server.
>>> Enter the secondary DNS server address here: 61.0.0.5

PASSWORD

>>> Please enter your PPPoE password: 
>>> Please re-enter your PPPoE password:

FIREWALLING

Please choose the firewall rules to use.  Note that these rules are
very basic.  You are strongly encouraged to use a more sophisticated
firewall setup; however, these will provide basic security.  If you
are running any servers on your machine, you must choose 'NONE' and
set up firewalling yourself.  Otherwise, the firewall rules will deny
access to all standard servers like Web, e-mail, ftp, etc.  If you
are using SSH, the rules will block outgoing SSH connections which
allocate a privileged source port.

The firewall choices are:
0 - NONE: This script will not set any firewall rules.  You are responsible
        for ensuring the security of your machine.  You are STRONGLY
        recommended to use some kind of firewall rules.
1 - STANDALONE: Appropriate for a basic stand-alone web-surfing workstation
2 - MASQUERADE: Appropriate for a machine acting as an Internet gateway
              for a LAN
>>> Choose a type of firewall (0-2): 2

** Summary of what you entered **

Ethernet Interface: eth0
User name:          test@dataone
Activate-on-demand: No
Primary DNS:        61.1.128.5
Secondary DNS:      61.0.0.5
Firewalling:        MASQUERADE

>>> Accept these settings and adjust configuration files (y/n)? y
Adjusting /etc/ppp/pppoe.conf
Adjusting /etc/resolv.conf
(But first backing it up to /etc/resolv.conf-bak)
Adjusting /etc/ppp/pap-secrets and /etc/ppp/chap-secrets
(But first backing it up to /etc/ppp/pap-secrets-bak)
(But first backing it up to /etc/ppp/chap-secrets-bak)



Congratulations, it should be all set up!

Type 'adsl-start' to bring up your ADSL link and 'adsl-stop' to bring
it down.  Type 'adsl-status' to see the link status.

Internet Connection

Now, if you see this Congrats! message, then you are all set & done. You can type,

# adsl-start ..Connected! #

Thats it. The bsnl broadband setup has been installed & configured.

At this point, you can go through the man pages of appropriate adsl-* commands for details.

Hope this article helps you out in configuring internet on linux specially for the redhat persons. I will soon post a article regarding configuring network interfaces on linux and other stuff related to it.

Stepper motor driver GNU/Linux 2.6 kernel

I started a work on some project related to Stepper Motor Driver in Linux. I found one tutorial at linux gazette online magazine. But to my surprise the driver written was for 2.4.x kernel’s. I soon realised that I need to do pretty much stuff in order to make that driver work in 2.6.x kernel. Then again to my surprise I found a excellent tutorial at tldp explaining the 2.6.x and 2.4.x kernel module programming. I went through those tutorials and I ported the driver for 2.6.x kernel.
I used a debian 3.1 sarge with 2.6.8 kernel in it. I started off with some basic differences (between 2.4.x and 2.6.x). Code writing convention has change alot and these days module programmer prefer to use macro’s more than anything. They even have macros for defining the init function and the exit function. I went on to learn those things and finally came up with a code which I suppose will work in most of the 2.6.x’s series.
Here I present the code:

How tough is the RHCE exam ?

Toughness of a certification exam can be judged out through many parameters. But important among them is the course content, type of examination (practical or theory) and also the industry value of the certificate.

As I am currently studying RHCE I created this blog to get the views of students/sysadmin taking the RHCE exam or who had given the exam earlier. What are your views about the exam and it’s toughness for a newbie to Linux operating system.

Please let your view been expressed and communicate them with other RHCE aspirants.

Thanks