tech-hack

Rename multiple files with bash script

2011-04-24T03:33:00.000-07:00

Hi there,
Recently I came up with a problem related to filename of downloaded files.In my college I use DC(Direct Connect) client to download files from other peers.Recently I downloaded a large number of music videos which remained in temporary directory and did not move to music directory.Although It downloaded completely, It remained in temporary directory and hence name of files was in the format "filename.(avi/mpg/flv etc.).(some chars).dctmp". So I had to rename them.Definitely, I couldn't do it manually as there were more than 1000 files.Hence I tried to write a bash script for renaming all of them at once.
Initially I tried to store the filename as "*.*.dctmp" in which I would trim the "*.dctmp" part.Hence the remaining part would the desired filename(with proper externsion).But storing the filename like that did not work out.
Then I saw that in temp files, there is a common pattern that before "dctmp" extension, there are exactly 39 chars. Then I tried a different method of trimming filename which is explained below with code.

code :

for i in *.dctmp
do
len="${#i}" ;
let len-=46
#echo "$len";
name="${i:0:len}" ;
#echo "$name"
mv "$i" "$name" ;
done

save it with name.sh and run "bash name.sh" on terminal.The script should be run in the same directory in which temp files are present.

e.g. Guns N' Roses - Welcome To The
jungle.mpg.47IMRQGAGFWOA7GMLZTK3X6QFIGR4P4EKHDRHKI.dctmp became Guns N' Roses - Welcome To The Jungle.mpg

Worked on ubuntu 10.10

Microkernel approach in minix3

2011-04-20T17:09:00.001-07:00

In computer science, a microkernel is the near-minimum amount of software that can provide the mechanisms needed to implement an operating system. These mechanisms include low-level address space management, thread management, and inter-process communication (IPC).As an operating system design approach, microkernels permit typical operating system services, such as device drivers, protocol stacks, file systems code, to run in user space.MINIX3 has around 4,000 lines of code. Kernels larger than 20,000 lines are generally not considered microkernels.

Reflecting on the nature of monolithic kernel based systems, where a driver (which has approximately 3-7 times as many bugs as a usual program) can bring down the whole system,MINIX3 aims to create an operating system that is a "reliable, self-healing, multiserver UNIX clone".In order to achieve that, the code running in kernel must be minimal, with the file server, process server, and each device driver running as separate user-mode processes. Each driver is carefully monitored by a part of the system known as the reincarnation server. If a driver fails to respond to pings from the reincarnation server, it is shut down and replaced by a fresh copy of the driver.In a monolithic system, a bug in a driver can easily crash the whole kernel, something that is much less likely to occur in MINIX3.

Reliability factors in MINIX3 :-

Reduce kernel size
Cage the bugs
Limit drivers' memory access
Survive bad pointers
Tame infinite loops
Limit damage from buffer overruns
Restrict access to kernel functions
Restrict access to I/O ports
Reincarnate dead or sick drivers
Integrate interrupts and messages

Architecture :

The approach that MINIX 3 uses to achieve high reliability is fault isolation. In particular, unlike traditional OSes, where all the code is linked into a single huge binary running in kernel mode, in MINIX3, only a tiny bit of code runs in kernel mode about 4000 lines in all. This code handles interrupts, process scheduling, and interprocess communication. The rest of the operating system runs as a collection of user-mode processes, each one encapsulated by the MMU hardware and none of them running as superuser. One of these processes, dubbed the reincarnation server, keeps tabs on all the others and when one of them begins acting sick or crashes, it automatically replaces it by a fresh version. Since many bugs are transient, triggered by unusual timing, in most cases, restarting the faulty component solves the problem and allows the system to repair itself without a reboot and without the user even noticing it. This property is called self healing, and traditional systems do not have it.

An Approach to core dump in minix3

2011-04-19T03:24:00.000-07:00

Hey people,
I have been trying to work around implementing core dump in minix3.A clear understanding of what core dump is necessary for its design. I will start with what a core file is.

The core file contains the memory image of the process, which can be used for debugging purposes.A core file is created when various errors(depends on how dumping is implemented) occur. Errors such as memory-address violations, illegal instructions, bus errors, and user-generated quit signals, commonly cause this core dump. The core file that is created contains a memory image of the terminated process.

The contents of a core dump are organized sequentially in the core file.It may follow any data structure to produce dump.Below is a rough idea of what things can be included.

Core header -> Defines basic information about the core dump, and contains offsets that locate the remainder of the core dump information.
User stack -> Contains a copy of the user stack at the time of the core dump.
Data area -> Contains the user data section.
Memory mapped regions -> Contains the anonymously mapped regions.

Process Control Blocks :

A process control block (PCB) exists for each process, describing the state of that process by maintaining the LDT, as well as saved register values, used to save the process state while a process is waiting to be scheduled. The PCB is a struct proc, containing important information about one process, including the process number and status. Also accessible through the PCB, via the p_map memory map, are the base addresses and physical and virtual sizes of the three segments of each process: (1)the text, (2)data, and (3)stack segments.

In minix architecture the microkernel, file system, and memory manager all maintain their own process tables but keep strict correspondence between these entries.The complete state of a process is defined by the process' data in memory, plus the information in its process table slot.

Some Merits of GDB

2011-04-06T17:27:00.000-07:00

There are some impressive features of GDB which I would like to point out :

1. GDB targets a good range of processors which includes Alpha, ARM, AVR, H8/300, System/370, System 390, X86 and its 64-bit extension X86-64, IA-64 "Itanium", Motorola 68000, MIPS, PA-RISC, PowerPC, SuperH, SPARC, and VAX.

2.GDB offers a remote mode.gdbserver can be used to remotely debug the program

3.The file caching mechanism is embedded within BFD and allows the application to open as many BFDs as it wants without regard to the underlying operating system's file descriptor limit.

Some features which I would like to have :

Display of variable values in a tree structure by a single command.

Various Aspects of a GNU Debugger

2011-04-06T16:08:00.000-07:00

This blog is intended to give a brief overview of GDB and some internal features. GDB is an interactive tool. GDB should be responsive to the user.

GDB can do four main kinds of things (plus other things in support of these) to help you catch bugs in the act:

* Start your program, specifying anything that might affect its behavior.
* Make your program stop on specified conditions.
* Examine what has happened, when your program has stopped.
* Change things in your program, so you can experiment with correcting the effects of one bug and go on to learn about another.

GDB consists of three major subsystems:

1. User interface: The user interface consists of several actual interfaces, plus supporting code.

2. Symbol handling (the symbol side): The symbol side consists of object file readers, debugging info interpreters, symbol table management, source language expression parsing, type and value printing.

3.Target system handling (the target side): The target side consists of execution control, stack frame analysis, and physical target manipulation.

GDB uses a technique called prologue analysis to find frame sizes and saved registers. A prologue analyzer disassembles the function's machine code starting from its entry point, and looks for instructions that allocate frame space, save the stack pointer in a frame pointer register, save registers, and so on.

Breakpoint Handling:
Hardware breakpoints are sometimes available as a builtin debugging features with some chips. Typically these work by having dedicated register into which the breakpoint address may be stored. If the program counter ever matches a value in a breakpoint registers, the CPU raises an exception and reports it to gdb.

password reset from shadow file in ubuntu 10.10

2011-03-21T02:58:00.000-07:00

Hi,
Recently I was trying to write a script for changing password automatically for a user.I required something else for this but I found one similar script while searching over Internet.While I was experimenting with this on my ubuntu 10.10 system, I did a terrible mistake.At the place of username, I put my main account username.Not only this,I used "pwgen" program to generate random password which was there in the script and I blindly used it.

The script I used is below:-

touch pass.txt
chmod 600 pass.txt

# generate a nice secure password and put it in a file
pwgen > pass.txt

# get the password hash
ph=$(makepasswd --clearfrom=pass.txt --crypt-md5 |awk '{print $2}')

# Set the password
usermod -p $ph "username"

Now, first time I used it using sudo, It asked for password.Now this script randomly generated a new passowrd and set for my account.Now, a new password was hashed in /etc/shadow file which I didn't know.Next time, when I used it again,it asked for password which was changed randomly.So,I could not give correct password.

Now, I thought how would I login after next reboot.I asked someone who told me to use a live cd of ubuntu to change shadow file.In shadow file, password is stored encrypted corresponding to each username.Now, I was preparing for a back up.Still, I wasn't sure it will work.

When I rebooted,something clicked in my mind.I booted in recovery mode.Then using root shell, I opened /etc/shadow file.Usually it opens in read-only mode.But since I was root that time, I removed the hash of my username.I removed everything that was there between first 2 colon(:). I did it only for my username and root.Hence, password was omitted.Now I reboot again and reset the password using passwd command and it didn't ask for current password.I didn't know that we could reset our password in recovery mode.

I knew that this similar method worked in ubuntu 8.04. But I thought they removed this as a bug.Now it worked for me.I can't decide if it is a good or bad thing.Since I changed my password in emergency,It is cool. But someone else can access my account by resetting my password.

facemash experience "the social network"

2010-11-22T15:20:00.000-08:00

hello people,
I have been constantly watching and listening "The Social Network" since the time I first watched it.Awesome movie.very inspirational.Well,I too thought about writing facemash after watching this.But,I did not want to end up facing punishment like mark.So, I didn't try to insult anyone.Just experiment and wanted to refresh my php and mysql concepts.

What we need is collection of some images.put it in a directory and provide its path in the code.for this example I will use "pics" as directory which has 7 images.Now write one php script to display 2 images randomly and let user click on any of this.Now,one more script to check which image was clicked and calculate the new rank of both image.I am sharing a piece of code here.

require_once("sql.php"); //sql.php connects to the database.
srand(time());
$r1 = rand()%7;
srand(time());
$r2 = rand()%7 ;
while($r1 == $r2)
{
srand(time()) ;
$r2 = rand()%7 ;
}
$query1 = "SELECT * FROM pic WHERE picid = '$r1'";
$result1 = mysql_query($query1);
$row1 = mysql_fetch_array($result1);
$query2 = "SELECT * FROM pic WHERE picid = '$r2'";
$result2 = mysql_query($query2);
$row2 = mysql_fetch_array($result2);
$pic1 = $row1['pic'] ;
$pic2 = $row2['pic'] ;

give image with its link in the html part of the code href='mash.php?id1=$r1&id2=$r2' img src=pics/".$pic1

href='mash.php?id1=$r2&id2=$r1'img src=pics/".$pic2

now when this page redirects to mash.php,new rank of both images is calculated based on the algorithm you wanna use.here, we have defined 3 variables.'h' is no. of hit on the image,'d' no. of times the image has been displayed.'rank' shows point given to image.use get method to catch variables to update database containing no. of hits of an image.
$id1 = $_GET['id1'];
$id2 = $_GET['id2'];

$query1 = "SELECT * FROM pic WHERE picid = '$id1'";
$result1 = mysql_query($query1);
$row1 = mysql_fetch_array($result1);
$query2 = "SELECT * FROM pic WHERE picid = '$id2'";
$result2 = mysql_query($query2);
$row2 = mysql_fetch_array($result2);

$h1 = $row1['h']+1;
$d1 = $row1['d']+1;
$rank1 = [algo to calculate new rank];

$h2 = $row2['h']; // no. of hit remains same for the image not clicked.
$d2 = $row2['d']+1;
$rank2 = [algo to calculate new rank] ;

$res1 = mysql_query("UPDATE pic SET h='$h1',d='$d1',rank='$rank1' WHERE picid='$id1' ") ;
$res2 = mysql_query("UPDATE pic SET h='$h2',d='$d2',rank='$rank2' WHERE picid='$id2' ") ;

So,this was my experience.Worked without any problem.See ya.

UNSUCCESSFUL UBUNTU KERNEL UPGRADE TO 2.6.32-24

2010-09-02T10:12:00.000-07:00

Hi all,
Just a month before 10.10 release,ubuntu 10.04 has created a problem for me.This post is more like a problem statement because I haven't figured out the solution yet.Last night I was upgrading my kernel to 2.6.32-24.After that my network manager was not running.I thought something was wrong with upgrade.So I rebooted and was shocked when I saw the grub menu.Previously, Grub menu used to show kernel versions 2.6.32-21, 2.6.32-22, 2.6.32-23 and their recovery options.Out of that 2.6.32-23 could not be used to boot.So,I used to boot through 22.But now,I could see only 23 and my system did not boot.when i tried to edit this option(generic kernel 2.6.32-23 in grub menu screen), I got first line as recordfail as shown in above image.

Then I tried to search on internet but found nothing important.Tried live cd of ubuntu 9.04 and tried to reinstall kernel.tried "sudo update-grub" and also grub-pc.Then checked /usr/src of 10.04 where I saw all previous kernel images along with 2.6.32-24.Now it looks like latest kernel couldn't be written but previous images were removed and only remained kernel is corrupt.So,I am not able to boot into ubuntu. Right now only solution is to reinstall 10.04.hoping a better solution from someone.

Summer Internship :First week

2010-05-30T15:25:00.000-07:00

hi all,
Right now I am at nagda(M.P.) for my internship at GRASIM chemicals.It's been a week and I am enjoying it completely.We are a group of 10 students in chemical division.Normally we go to the plant and visit different manufacturing sites.Due to strict discipline, we wear a helmet which we try to put on and off enormous times.Since I came here,1st thing I was looking for was internet connection but didn't find much options at such a place.After so much analysis, we thought to use GPRS connection.I recharged my airtel sim for unlimited plan.But now I have realized that it is in roaming, so it's slower than i had expected.

Finally we have 2 connections and 6 students in our group.So, we are always experimenting with creating shared connections.Sometimes we use LAN wire to connect.Sometimes,we create wireless ad-hoc and sometimes create proxy server(using privoxy).Till now we are having fun.Yesterday we went to ujjain to visit famous "Mahakaleshwar" temple.There we had a funny incident.When we bought the tickets for returning,the train started taking off.We entered into different class due to rush and ended up paying fine for that.Actually it wasn't fine,it was bribe.We were in no position to negotiate ,so we paid the money.We didn't get the receipt but paid less money and became the integral part of corruption.Although we had done no mistake considering the situation.
anyway that was a lesson for all of us.Now we have 50 days more to live at this place.Hope to spend it nicely.

Download speed through apt-cacher and dependency problem with downloading so many packages at a time

2010-05-03T03:48:00.001-07:00

hi,
I am not able to stop experimenting with ubuntu lucid lynx the time I installed it.With the apt-cacher,it's easy to download all the packages that you like.So,I was there with synaptic package manager and kept on selecting large number of packages.Finally I got a collection of 148 packages with 220 MB size.When I started to download,I saw variation of speed which is very common but I would like to point it out by some snap-shots.
1st picture shows the usual speed of download through apt-cacher which is 347 KB/s.2nd one shows unusual high speed 2843 KB/s.

But sometime we suffer low speed also.Just like this.

Now,apart from speed,there is one more thing that I would like to share.Since I selected a lot of packages and started downloading all,I got some installation problem.All the packages were downloaded but couldn't be installed properly.Very less packages were installed because of dependency problem.No idea how did it happen.Probably,when there is a huge number of packages ,some of them might have dependency due to others files in the download list.So,in my view,large number of packages should not be installed at a time.

By the way, I sent these dependencies report to developers officially.Here is one screen-shot which explains it.

Conclusion :- try installing less number of packages at a time.

performance review of ubuntu 10.04 lucid lynx

2010-05-01T16:04:00.000-07:00

hello friends,
Ubuntu launched its Final release of lucid lynx 10.04 just 2 days before and I couldn't stop trying it as soon as I could.Reason is not that I was waiting eagerly for its final release.Real reason is that I had done some mistake in hard disk partition while installing slackware which caused me loss of linuxmint which I was using for a very long time.So, finally I thought to try fresh and final release of 10.04.
oh boy,What an OS.Surprisingly it can be called as the perfect OS.Lookwise,it has got better.Also,the most exciting feature is its boot time.Amazing boot time must have impressed everyone.Shutdown time is also faster.This has got attention of some people who are claiming that skipping disk check can also reduce boot time.Anyway,I don't want to create any controversy here.
Talking about look,It gives a sight of mac.The minimize, maximize and close buttons of window is on the left side which gives you feeling of working on mac.Anyway that feature was available previously also but not as default(a package "mac4lin" changes the look in that manner).New Gwibber social client is also very exciting.Gwibber can be configured to broadcast status on facebook,twitter etc. and to see other's status.
Recently "ubuntu tweak" became my latest crush as It has got nice and sexy packages which synaptic package manager didn't let me try directly.visit ubuntu-tweak.com for more info about tweak.As I am in a university which does not provide with a superfast internet connection but allows downloading packages with apt-cacher,I couldn't stop downloading all the packages which caught my attention.Well,It's definitely wastage of resource.
In final words,ubuntu 10.04 is just lovable and awesome and great experience so far.Don't know how soon the bugs will come out.Till then,enjoy lucid lynx.Happy open source.

GPG public key

2010-04-10T12:26:00.000-07:00

Hi,
As I was searching why my gpg public key is not working,I suddenly found answer.Actually gpg public key contains some extra words also which I neglected.public key can be viewed in terminal by typing :

gpg --armor --export [your public key id]

Now complete output is the public gpg key including "-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----" and "-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----".Initially I was taking only middle part.One more thing public key requires public key id which can be viewed by typing "gpg --list-keys". The pub part shows id.This command displays whole list of keys.So, if someone has made more than one key pairs,then it is useful to see which public key is for which public key id.As I successfully generated my public key, I am going to share it. It is right below :-

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
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=+Uo3

-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----

And Now I am working on sending a mail with encryption by my private key.Hope,It works.

GPG encryption

2010-04-08T13:49:00.000-07:00

recently I came to know about GPG encryption.It means Gnu Privacy Guard.GPG is a command line tool with features for easy integration with other applications also.GPG is mostly used for secure communication and storing data in encrypted form.There are other uses also which I am not discussing right now.

Actually when I was filling a form for account in a site,I was asked for pgp/gpg public key and then I started wandering around to search for it.It is open source and mostly used in command line which I like.There is a windows version of it also.There are so many online pages with uncountable words for its description that I got confused sometime.But finally I figured out the theory behind it.It is like this.

There are 2 type of keys generated by gpg.One is public and another is private.Public keys can be distributed to your friends and published anywhere.With public gpg keys someone can encrypt the message and send it to you.Now, to decrypt it we need the private key which is only with you.So this way emails can be securely sent.Even if somebody sniffs the mail in the middle,It will be secure because the attacker will not have the private key to decrypt it.To create your own key pair just type gpg --gen-key in command line and follow rest instruction(You will mostly choose default values).This way you can export your public keys.But unfortunately my public keys are not working for no reason.I am still looking for answer.

But I did use gpg encryption to my file which is very easy to use and fun to watch.I am going to show what exactly I did.In the terminal just make a simple file. e.g

$ echo "my first encryption" >gen hit enter

$ gpg -e gen it will ask for user ID,use your own user ID

And done! Now hit terminal with ls command and see that there is another file named gen.gpg which is encrypted.Now If you deleted old file named gen then the content can only be viewed by opening gen.gpg which needs password.To decrypt it,put gpg -d gen.gpg in command line and hit enter.Now it will ask for the passphrase which is confidential and it makes the file secure.

external hard disk drive

2010-03-27T06:41:00.000-07:00

hello there,
I recently bought an external hard disk drive of 1TB. great experience till now.It is of 3.5" and so definitely not portable and also requires external power supply.I just roamed around every shop at nehru place(great place for electronics goods in India).Finally I compared brand value and prices of mainly 3-4 companies like WD,seagate,Iomega etc.Finally WD was my choice.same product was available in 2 different packages.One with external power supply and another with USB power supply.price for USB power supply was almost double.so I preferred to take the one with external power supply.With this I got 2 years of on site warranty which I do not think I will need.Today is saturday and customer care center is open from monday to friday only.So I will have to register my product on monday in order to get warranty of 2 years and free telephone service of 30 days.

At last,great product to use and one more thing.you do not get 1024 GB by buying 1TB hard drive. you get only 930 GB if you calculate. Multiply (1000/1024)^4 with 1024.

SEARCH ENGINE

2010-01-20T02:31:00.000-08:00

hi friends,
what comes to your mind when you want to surf a website and you don't know its address?Without even thinking your answer would be google . Google is so common that most people keep it as homepage.Imagine google server crashes and you need to search something important immediately.

just to be safe,we should know about other search engines also.every search engines use different algorithm.Sometimes it's fun to search same keywords in different search engines and see what is the difference in result.so, there are many reasons to try different search engines.I have tried this many times.so, I am providing here the links in case you want to try.

guruji

ask

bing

altavista

lycos

this is all for now...
bye..

ubuntu 9.10 karmic koala performance on Deepak's Laptop

2009-11-11T08:25:00.000-08:00

hello friends,
today i saw the performance of ubuntu 9.10(karmic koala).I didn't install it but my friend did in front of me.He had ubuntu 9.04 installed, so he tried to upgrade to 9.10 instead of installing.So, he made bootable USB of alternate disk.But, sadly we couldn't upgrade it.instead,we had installed 9.10 into separate partition. now he had 3 OS.
Finally we started testing it.First we tried to use pidgin client which wasn't there and we saw empathy.Empathy has become default IM client now in ubuntu.Still we downloaded pidgin and run.well, empathy is good change, i must say.Next we tried DC client and it was okay okay.And then accidently we removed open office for which he was blaming me. But I was only trying to install vlc.
Most of the things are same and it is showing different performance on different laptops.on acer laptop,my one friend could not use it and on dell studio it has graphics problem.Browsing is as fast as usual.one more new thing that i saw was,it asked for internet connection settings before installation which was optional. Rest,everything was good but not much impressive.I still think linuxmint is better option.May be, i should wait for sometime to be more sure.

linux mint experience

2009-11-04T21:32:00.001-08:00

hello friends,

i recently tried windows7 RC version and ubuntu 9.04 jaunty.previously i had windows vista and ubuntu 8.10.So i thought to upgrade ubuntu as i liked it so much.on the other hand,vista compelled me to replace it.so i switched to windows7.definitely it was faster than vista but certainly not stable enough to impress.well, i am not professional in this field to judge accurately but i am interested in trying different and new and efficient products.
It is just a week ago that ubuntu has released its 9.10 karmic alpha version.So, my friends have downloaded it and some have started using this while i am still waiting for its stable version.Last night when i thought to try a new distro of linux, I tried to surf our college website bitsfoss which is a repository of open source stuffs.I downloaded linux mint 7 gloria.I put this in USB and made it bootable through ubuntu's cool application "start up disk".

Finally I used mint as live cd and it was awesome.I just loved it.the display is undoubtedly better than ubuntu.since i have just tried it,i can't say more. But if anybody is really interested,one can visit here.

Now that ubuntu has released its alpha3 of karmic koala, I am excited to compare with it.But first I should wait for its final release.

if anybody reads it, i would ask them to vote for either mint7 or ubuntu9.10 in comment.

social service with nirmaan

2009-08-15T09:21:00.000-07:00

hello everybody,
today is an unforgettable day for me.today I joined "NIRMAAN CLUB".it is a club that serves for non-profit cause.it helps the society to improve with the little individual efforts of our club.I am in 2nd year right now.Last year I missed to join it.But this time the recruitment process was different.We had to go through GD(group discussion) and PI (personal interview). well,this is not as organized and difficult as in IIM(Indian institute of management) but definitely it is a good recruitment process.

well,I got a message in the morning that I am a part of it and I can join the meeting today.I went there and we were told to assemble in afternoon to visit a village near our campus.It was about a survey in which we had to go houses of village in groups of 3 people. we had to know about the basic problems of village and their source of income.It was my first time and I was quite excited.

finally we reached there and as soon as we started asking villagers we saw the their problems.I had seen almost same problems in my village also.But listening their problems was a different experience. I saw that many parents wanted to send their children school but they could not afford the fee. Also there was not any government school above 5th grade.I really felt that we should do something for it.At least I am ready.But I have not figured out what and how I should do it.

today is 15th august.its our independence day.but I saw that children were not independent.But this is my first day in "nirmaan". I have time to think.well, nirmaan is not just this. for more about it visit nirmaan official site.

symbolic link(linux) Virus Incident

2009-07-23T07:29:00.000-07:00

hello friends,
today I would like to discuss a very simple topic related to linux and how it bothered me.recently I was working with linux trying to learn "symbolic links".Symbolic link is a special file which points to another file in the system.it is similar to shortcut in windows.

if you give the command ls -l in your terminal then you can view link files.if output starts with l then it's symbolic link.now,to create a symbolic link we have to use "ln" command with -s option."ln" is for link and "-s" is for symbolic option.syntex is like this ln -s source destination.

now, source means the path of file or directory where it originally is. and destination means the path where you want the link to be.you have to specify the name of link and this should not exist in system otherwise it will give error.

But I did something which I forgot later.I made a symbolic link by typing this ln -s /home/gaurav /home/gaurav/h. since every file of linux was in "gaurav" folder ,when i went in "h" folder inside "gaurav",i found all the files again in this folder including "h".when i again double-clicked "h" it took me to same folder which contained all files including "h".I didn't remember about symbolic links and instantly I was worried that there is some virus in my system.I had heard earlier that there is a virus which creates a folder in each folder including itself.

after some days when I opened shell and typed ls -l, I found "h" showing l which means it's a link only.then i was relieved and deleted this. then I typed ln -s /home/gaurav/videos/jal.mp4 /home/gaurav/Desktop/jal. by this I am able to view this video directly through desktop. I need not go anywhere.and this is done without copying the video or without "cut and paste" from its original destination.

this was a new thing for me.so, I thought it would be good to share this.May be someone new like me would get help from this.But , if you are master of shell, you may laugh at me.

thanks everybody to read this post.

LAST WEEK BEFORE COLLEGE STARTS

2009-07-21T07:17:00.000-07:00

Hello everybody

Today I am trying to do something since morning but couldn't find anything interesting enough.This is the effect of 2&1/2 months holiday.this is the last week before college is going to open for 3rd semester.finally holiday will finish.Again, college routine will start.
Well,in this holiday I read a novel "the shadow lines" by Amitav ghosh.this is about India and Bangladesh division.Very sentimental. I am currently reading "the goal"."The Goal" is truely awesome.I have not finished it yet but till now it's very interesting.hope to finish it before holiday ends as I have to return it to its owner.

hope this week will pass very soon as I feel like college is calling me .well, this post is all about my holiday. Currently i am doing some experiment with linux shell script. Hope next post will be technical.

CLI over GUI

2009-07-15T02:36:00.000-07:00

hello folks,
I am learning a bit linux nowadays.so, I thought it would be better to write something related to that.Don't worry , i will not teach you commands here(there are so many sources for that). I was thinking that CLI(command line interface) seems to be boring and cumbersome to use and I know so many people would say the same.Most of us are used to of windows' GUI(graphical user interface).Around 5 months ago my friend bought a laptop and got windows vista as default OS by that company.When i asked him to use linux,he said that as he had been using windows since childhood,he was more comfortable with that.Now i think that how can you compare two things without knowing both. If you also admire GUI then this is for you.CLI has really got some advantages over GUI.lets get it one by one

with a GUI, only the options provided by the interface are available to the user

lack of space on a screen can limit the number of options that a GUI displays

no standard methods exist within GUIs for performing standard command-line tasks, such as linking commands in sequences, redirecting output from one destination to another, or collecting commands into scripts

Shell keeps history of recent commands.its very useful.and, if you have to perform certain operations in sequence then you can create shell scripts also.shell script is just like batch files in windows.

there is one more thing that i have recently come to know.shell is more useful in hardware terms.Shells are much less resources-intensive than GUI's.shell requires less memory.It means that command issued in shell will run more quickly than in GUI.

Only thing that i feel difficult is to remember commands.well,once you get used to it,its much easier than you think.
That's it for today.hope,you got something useful.

restoring grub menu

2009-07-14T08:37:00.000-07:00

hi people,
finally pushed myself to write one about a technical issue. recently ,I reinstalled windows vista successfully but after restart i didn't see any grub menu to boot linux(ubuntu).At that instant, i was shocked as i thought linux was gone.Since vista had overwtitten the mbr so it used to boot vista directly.I tried to restore grub menu through a live cd of linux which is done through typing some commands in terminal.Basically, anybody can copy those commands from www.ubuntuforums.org . But those commands were useless for my system as the "stage1" file was washed away from grub folder.finally,i downloaded an iso image of "super grub disk" and made a cd. then i booted through that cd and everything started working fine.when i saw grub menu again, i was so happy.