I rarely forward chain e-mails, because I think it is such a waste of time and energy. Not to mention that it fills up peoples inboxes :). This is an exception though.. This mp3 was sent to me by my sister and I cannot resist but put it up on the site. For those of you familiar with the Telugu language, this is a classic song in the Telangana slang :). Here is a hosted link of the song
admin
Google in xx-hacker!!
I was doing some research on “Inter-Tel, Inc.” in Google and came across this interesting link
in the search results. Looks like this is a Google interface in H4x0R code :),
Updating NFS Share permissions..
Wanted to add this for my future reference. To update the permissions on a NFS (Network File System) share, you need to edit the “/etc/exports” file and then run “/usr/sbin/exportfs -a” to update the share permissions.
Syntax of /etc/exports looks like
/dir/to/export host1.mydomain.com(ro,root_squash)
UPDATE : Looks like the NFS daemon caches DNS lookups when authenticating a client. Am not sure if this is only in older versions. After we updated the exports file, the server still kep erroring out with a “unresolvable reverse lookup” error. I finally had to restart the daemon to make it check on the DNS records for the accessing client.
What is NPA NXX ?
I am in the middle of ordering some data circuits for our new office and the vendor asks me for the address of the building where the circuits are going to be terminated. I give it to them and they come back with “what is the NPA NXX??” of the location. Now, I should admit that I haven’t been provisioning hardcode data circuits, but have ordered a bunch of T1s and DS3s during my career. I thought this was come kind of technical spec and swallowing my pride, asked the vendor what NPA NXX means.. and the answer..
“there are no dumb questions 🙂
the first six digits of a phone number“
the first six digits of a phone number“
Looking up on the web, gave me this information
NPA = (Numbering Plan Area code) The area code of a telephone number in the NPA system. The first NPA codes used 0 or 1 as the center digit, such as 201, 212, 301, 312, etc., designated as “N0/1X.” After July 1, 1995, all digits 0 through 9 are valid as the center digit, designated as “NXX.”
All I can say is “live and learn” :).
UBUNTU : Quick tips
I have heard a lot about the new Linux distro Ubuntu and wanted to try it out on my test machine at home. I chose the “base” install, which apparently just installs the base packages to operate the machine as a server. Couple of things I had to do to get the system up and running
1) The root account in Ubuntu doesn’t have a password by default. This means that you cannot log in or “su” to root. This can be fixed by issuing the following command
“sudo passwd root”
while logged in as the user you create while installing Ubuntu
2) Configure the network interface (eth0, if you only have one) with a static IP address. This can be done by editing the “interfaces” file in “/etc/network“. My file looks as below after the edit
| # This file describes the network interfaces available on your system # and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).# The loopback network interface auto lo iface lo inet loopback# This is a list of hotpluggable network interfaces. # They will be activated automatically by the hotplug subsystem. mapping hotplug script grep map eth0 # The primary network interface |
The text in bold is what I edited
3) Configure apt-get (package installer) to use the Internet archives as the source. This is esp. useful if you don’t have the install CD anymore. This can be done by editing the “sources.list” file located in “/etc/apt/” and commenting out the line with cdrom as the source. In my case it looks like this
“# deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 5.04 _Hoary Hedgehog_ – Release i386 (20050407)]/ hoary main restricted“. If you have a different version of Ubuntu, the description might be different, but the source should still say deb cdrom.
Cheesy Tollywood Dialogs
For those of you who know what TollyWood is, you are also aware of the cheesy dialogs that are used in the Tollywood movies. For the uninitiated, Tollywood is the equivalent of Hollywood in the Telugu speaking South Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Tollywood productions are greater (in quantity) than Hollywood. Although, I should say that the quality is a totally different matter :). My personal belief is that the Indian population is still not ready to view Cinema as an expressionist art. It is still purely an entertainment avenue. Hence you see the heros in the movies fighting 100 villians single handedly :). Something comparable in the western culture would be the “John Wayne” movies. Tollywood actors are worshipped in a Godly manner. One of the biggest kick I used to get as a kid when watching Tollywood movies was the cheesy dialogs that were used in the movies. I don’t think there is a collection of these dialogs anywhere on the net. Hence this effort to document them. I created a page to document them. Please feel free to send me an e-mail at [email protected] with new entries and I will keep updating the page. Would appreciate if you can include the following in the e-mail
Movie Name | Actor Name | Dialog
Happy New Year – 2006
2005 has been nothing short of interesting..
I have completed my second marathon..
Got a promotion at work..
Met new and interesting people..
Travelled to my fourth foreign country..
Finally got my H1 visa approved..
And last but not least, got ENGAGED!! (yep.. no more of that bachelor freedom for me 🙂 )
Let us raise our glasses in wishing for a even more interesting year..
WISHING YOU ALL A HAPPY NEW YEAR
HOPE THE YEAR OF DOG WILL BRING YOU LUCK, HEALTH, LOVE AND PROSPERITY.
Blogging from a browser
One of the challenges I have in writing blogs is choosing the right editor. I have been using w.Blogger to far and have been very satisfied with it. But it is an additional program that I have to install and launch. With the powerful flexibility that Firefox provides, I have been trying moving all my “functions” to it. I use the multiple search engine functionality built into it. I just discovered “performancing.com” today. It is a firefox addon to publish blogs.. Hooho.. Open source rules.
802.1x : RADIUS : IAS : Fiasco
We use 802.1x for our wireless security at work. The wireless controller uses Microsoft’s IAS as the RADIUS server. Recently during one of our maintenance windows, we installed a couple of critical patches and rebooted the IAS server. This was over the weekend and we didn’t check if wireless was working after the maintenance (one of the lessons learnt from his story :), put in automated monitoring so that you don’t have to worry about what services have come up or not after a maintenance window).
On Monday, our helpdesk gets swamped with calls of “wireless is not working”. We checked the controller and everything looked okay. Only error on the controller was that the RADIUS server was not responding. We checked the RADIUS server and the IAS service was running fine. But there were a ton of errors in the System event log with the following details
| Access request for user XXXX\XXXXXX was discarded. Fully-Qualified-User-Name = XXX.XXXX.NET/XXX.XXX/TECHNOLOGY/DEVELOPMENT/XXX XXXXXX NAS-IP-Address = 192.168.128.10 NAS-Identifier = ACHIAS01IT Called-Station-Identifier = 00-0B-85-06-0C-A0:wacker Calling-Station-Identifier = 00-14-A4-28-4C-EE Client-Friendly-Name = ACHIAS01IT Client-IP-Address = 192.168.128.10 NAS-Port-Type = Wireless – IEEE 802.11 NAS-Port = 1 Proxy-Policy-Name = Use Windows authentication for all users Authentication-Provider = Windows Authentication-Server = Reason-Code = 23 Reason = Unexpected error. Possible error in server or client configuration. For more information, see Help and Support Center at http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/events.asp. |