Beware of GParted

I was in a hurry to create a new partition with Gparted v0.3.3.2 based
on libparted v1.7.1 which appears to be the latest in the Gutsy
repository as of now. There appears to be a strange bug that will do
nasty things to your partition table after you apply your changes and
close the program before it had a chance to repopulate the list of
partitions. I was left with an empty drive, and to be sure I ran "fdisk
/dev/sda" from a live CD which seems to prove that.
Doing a quick Google search I discovered TestDisk and attempted to
recover my lost data. The tool did an excellent job and recovered
everything, it also sets up the MBR from the first root partition, this
was not my original setting as I had it setup from another Linux root
partition.

Ontario Linux Fest

Arrived at 8:15, registered and headed to the first presentation called "Howto write a linux kernel module". Never really fiddled with kernel level coding before but I was surprised to learn that it was much easier then I previously thought. The presenter Robert Day from crashcourse was good at walking though the code and showing us simple "hello world" like examples of kernel modules and how to load them.

"Linux forecast through 2020" was another interesting presentation by Dr. John Nash who predicted among other things the fall of Microsoft.

I was pleased to hear Louis Suarez-Potts from OOo mentioning Seneca College. He noted the success of Mozilla work that we have done and how similar student contribution can help OOo in its development.

The morning key note was held by Theodore Ts'o. Here he is finishing off with a userfriendly.



The other presentations I attended were Gnome, Eclipse IDE, performance tuning for High-traffic web sites.

In the exhibition hall I bumped into Cesar and Lukas who did a good job at promoting the next FSOSS.

Finally maddog closed the fest with a ending keynote on LTSP.

UbuntuZilla

Found a cool script to install the latest version of Firefox, Seamonkey and Thunderbird on Ubuntu.

http://ubuntuzilla.wiki.sourceforge.net/

MediaWiki+Ldap

Recently I started implementing a wiki for my company, specifically for the HR department. They addressed the need to have a system that would allow them to edit pages seamlessly, upload pdf's which contain sensitive information only visible to certain groups on an internal server and authenticating against MS Active Directory.

I installed the latest mediawiki release and selected Paul Gu's mediawiki skin which is rewrite of Monobook default wiki skin. Thanks Paul.

Next I installed the LDAP extension for mediawiki. It was a bit of a pain to configure the first time, but after reading their wiki a few times and trying out different settings, the debugging option will also help in determining the problem.

All the settings are applied in LocalSettings.php which makes it convenient to edit.

#Beginning of LDAP settings======================================
require_once( "includes/LdapAuthentication.php" );
$wgAuth = new LdapAuthenticationPlugin();
$wgLDAPDomainNames = array( "exampleDomain" );
$wgLDAPServerNames = array( "exampleDomain"=>"IPofADserver" );
$wgLDAPSearchStrings = array("exampleDomain"=>"exampleDomain\\USER-NAME" );
$wgLDAPEncryptionType = array( "exampleDomain"=>"false" );
#$wgLDAPUseLocal = true; //allow use of local user DB $wgMinimalPasswordLength = 1;
$wgLDAPRetrievePrefs = array( "exampleDomain"=>"true" );
#$wgLDAPUpdateLDAP = array( "exampleDomain"=>"false" ); //disables mediawiki from updating LDAP
#$wgLDAPAddLDAPUsers = array("exampleDomain"=>"false");

$wgLDAPDebug=3;

#DNs in $wgLDAPRequiredGroups must be lowercase, as search result attribute values are...
$wgLDAPBaseDNs = array( "exampleDomain"=>"dc=otn,dc=local" );
$wgLDAPSearchAttributes = array( "exampleDomain"=>"sAMAccountName" );

#Allo two groups to log in tech team and HR
$wgLDAPRequiredGroups = array(
"OTN"=>array("cn=technical_team,ou=global security groups,ou=otn,dc=otn,dc=local",
cn=hr_team,ou=global security groups,ou=otn,dc=otn,dc=local"
) );

$wgLDAPGroupUseFullDN = array( "exampleDomain"=>true );
$wgLDAPGroupObjectclass = array( "exampleDomain"=>"group" );
$wgLDAPGroupAttribute = array( "exampleDomain"=>"member" );
$wgLDAPGroupSearchNestedGroups = array( "exampleDomain"=>true );
//Pull LDAP groups a user is in, and update local wiki security group.
$wgLDAPUseLDAPGroups = array( "exampleDomain"=>"true");
$wgLDAPGroupNameAttribute = array( "exampleDomain"=>"cn" );

$wgShowExceptionDetails = true;

After that grant specific access to certain groups:

#Restrict access to non logged in users========================
#Restrict edit to logged in users
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['edit']=false;

$wgGroupPermissions['user']['read'] = false;
$wgGroupPermissions['user']['edit'] = false;
$wgGroupPermissions['user']['createpage'] = false;
$wgGroupPermissions['user']['createtalk'] = false;
$wgGroupPermissions['user']['upload'] = false;
$wgGroupPermissions['user']['userrights'] = false;

$wgGroupPermissions['technical_team']['read'] = true;
$wgGroupPermissions['technical_team']['edit'] = true;
$wgGroupPermissions['technical_team']['createpage'] = true;
$wgGroupPermissions['technical_team']['createtalk'] = true;
$wgGroupPermissions['technical_team']['upload'] = true;
$wgGroupPermissions['technical_team']['userrights'] = true;

$wgGroupPermissions['hr_team']['read'] = true;
$wgGroupPermissions['hr_team']['edit'] = true;
$wgGroupPermissions['hr_team']['createpage'] = true;
$wgGroupPermissions['hr_team']['createtalk'] = true;
$wgGroupPermissions['hr_team']['upload'] = true;

#Prevent new registrations from anonymous users(Sysops can still create accounts
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['createaccount'] = false;

#Define the pages un-authenticate users can see. This is crucial. Otherwise, there's
#no way for people to login
$wgWhitelistRead = array( "Main Page", "Special:Userlogout", "Special:Userlogin", "-", "MediaWiki:Monobook.css" );
$wgGroupPermissions['*']['read']= false;


Many companies are running their intranet on wiki technology and it gives non-technical people a short learning curve on how to create and edit pages.
For the new group of BSD students taking DPS909 you will learn a lot about wikis and its a valuable resource to have.

Chat program in C

Here is a proof of concept chat program written in C.
Beeing written in C, the code brings a higher level of understanding
to the programmer about the underlying functionality of network programming.

Download the code here

GitHub repo has been created to host this project: http://github.com/dtolj/simple-chat-client-server

This is the server code:

Server accepts parameters "chat" or "chat -p [PORTNUM]"
In case of only one parameter we will use MYPORT which is 7400

/*Server==================================================*/

   if(argc==1 || argc == 3){

     if(argc==3){

       if(!strcmp("-p",argv[1])){

         sscanf(argv[2],"%i",&port);

       }else{

         printf("Invalid parameter.\nUsage: chat [-p PORT] HOSTNAME\n");

         exit(0);

       }

     }else port=MYPORT;

     

     printf("\n*** Server program starting (enter \"quit\" to stop): \n");

     fflush(stdout);

Here we are creating a socket for the server which is defined by this function: int socket(int domain, int type, int protocol);
Next we populate the server_address instance of sockadd_in structure
Finally bind the port to the servers file descriptor.
A note about file descriptors, fd0=stdin, fd1=stdout, fd2=stderr. These are preserved and therefore the next available fd is 3 for listening socket and the first client connected to the server will receive a socket fd 4.

     /* Create and name a socket for the server */

     server_sockfd = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0);

     server_address.sin_family = AF_INET;

     server_address.sin_addr.s_addr = htonl(INADDR_ANY);

     server_address.sin_port = htons(port);

     bind(server_sockfd, (struct sockaddr *)&server_address, addresslen);

int listen(int sockfd, int backlog);
We are now listening for incoming connections on that fd.
We zero out the readfds set and assign the server_sockfd to it as well as the stdin aka fd0

     /* Create a connection queue and initialize a file descriptor set */

     listen(server_sockfd, 1);

     FD_ZERO(&readfds);

     FD_SET(server_sockfd, &readfds);

     FD_SET(0, &readfds);  /* Add keyboard to file descriptor set */

     

     //struct clientinfo c;

     

     //printf("sizeof(readfds)/(testfds): %d/%d\n",sizeof(readfds),sizeof(testfds));

     //printf("Number of bits in readfds/testfds: %d/%d\n", sizeof(readfds)*8,sizeof(testfds)*8);

Assign readfds to testfds, we are now working with testfds.
select() allows for monitoring several sockets simultaniously.
The set currently contains 2 fds 0 and 3

     /*  Now wait for clients and requests */

     while (1) {

        testfds = readfds;

        select(FD_SETSIZE, &testfds, NULL, NULL, NULL);

                    

        /* If there is activity, find which descriptor it's on using FD_ISSET */

        for (fd = 0; fd < FD_SETSIZE; fd++) {

           if (FD_ISSET(fd, &testfds)) {

              

              if (fd == server_sockfd) { /* Accept a new connection request */

                 client_sockfd = accept(server_sockfd, NULL, NULL);

                 /*printf("client_sockfd: %d\n",client_sockfd);*/

                

                                

                 if (num_clients < MAX_CLIENTS) {

                    FD_SET(client_sockfd, &readfds);

                    fd_array[num_clients]=client_sockfd;

                    /*Client ID*/

                    printf("Client %d joined\n",num_clients++);

                    fflush(stdout);

                    

                    sprintf(msg,"M%2d",client_sockfd);

                    /*write 2 byte clientID */

                    send(client_sockfd,msg,strlen(msg),0);

                 }

                 else {

                    sprintf(msg, "XSorry, too many clients.  Try again later.\n");

                    write(client_sockfd, msg, strlen(msg));

                    close(client_sockfd);

                 }

              }

              else if (fd == 0)  {  /* Process keyboard activity */                 

                 fgets(kb_msg, MSG_SIZE + 1, stdin);

                 //printf("%s\n",kb_msg);

                 if (strcmp(kb_msg, "quit\n")==0) {

                    sprintf(msg, "XServer is shutting down.\n");

                    for (i = 0; i < num_clients ; i++) {

                       write(fd_array[i], msg, strlen(msg));

                       close(fd_array[i]);

                    }

                    close(server_sockfd);

                    exit(0);

                 }

                 else {

                    //printf("server - send\n");

                    sprintf(msg, "M%s", kb_msg);

                    for (i = 0; i < num_clients ; i++)

                       write(fd_array[i], msg, strlen(msg));

                 }

              }

              else if(fd) {  /*Process Client specific activity*/

                 //printf("server - read\n");

                 //read data from open socket

                 result = read(fd, msg, MSG_SIZE);

                 

                 if(result==-1) perror("read()");

                 else if(result>0){

                    /*read 2 bytes client id*/

                    sprintf(kb_msg,"M%2d",fd);

                    msg[result]='\0';

                    

                    /*concatinate the client id with the client's message*/

                    strcat(kb_msg,msg+1);                                        

                    

                    /*print to other clients*/

                    for(i=0;i < num_clients;i++){

                       if (fd_array[i] != fd)  /*dont write msg to same client*/

                          write(fd_array[i],kb_msg,strlen(kb_msg));

                    }

                    /*print to server*/

                    printf("%s",kb_msg+1);

                    

                     /*Exit Client*/

                    if(msg[0] == 'X'){

                       exitClient(fd,&readfds, fd_array,&num_clients);

                    }   

                 }                                   

              }                  

              else {  /* A client is leaving */

                 exitClient(fd,&readfds, fd_array,&num_clients);

              }//if

           }//if

        }//for

     }//while

  }//end Server code

This is client code:

Client accepts parameters "chat [hostname]" or "chat -p [portnum] [hostname]"
In case of only two parameter we will use MYPORT which is 7400

 /*Client variables=======================*/

   int sockfd;

   int result;

   char hostname[MSG_SIZE];

   struct hostent *hostinfo;

   struct sockaddr_in address;

   char alias[MSG_SIZE];

   int clientid;

/*Client==================================================*/

   if(argc==2 || argc==4){

     if(!strcmp("-p",argv[1])){

       if(argc==2){

         printf("Invalid parameters.\nUsage: chat [-p PORT] HOSTNAME\n");

         exit(0);

       }else{

         sscanf(argv[2],"%i",&port);

         strcpy(hostname,argv[3]);

       }

     }else{

       port=MYPORT;

       strcpy(hostname,argv[1]);

     }

     printf("\n*** Client program starting (enter \"quit\" to stop): \n");

     fflush(stdout);



     /* Create a socket for the client */

     sockfd = socket(AF_INET, SOCK_STREAM, 0);



     /* Name the socket, as agreed with the server */

     hostinfo = gethostbyname(hostname);  /* look for host's name */

     address.sin_addr = *(struct in_addr *)*hostinfo -> h_addr_list;

     address.sin_family = AF_INET;

     address.sin_port = htons(port);



     /* Connect the socket to the server's socket */

     if(connect(sockfd, (struct sockaddr *)&address, sizeof(address)) < 0){

       perror("connecting");

       exit(1);

     }

     

     fflush(stdout);

     

     FD_ZERO(&clientfds);

     FD_SET(sockfd,&clientfds);

     FD_SET(0,&clientfds);//stdin

     

     /*  Now wait for messages from the server */

     while (1) {

       testfds=clientfds;

       select(FD_SETSIZE,&testfds,NULL,NULL,NULL);

       

       for(fd=0;fd          if(FD_ISSET(fd,&testfds)){

             if(fd==sockfd){   /*Accept data from open socket */

                //printf("client - read\n");

                

                //read data from open socket

                result = read(sockfd, msg, MSG_SIZE);

                msg[result] = '\0';  /* Terminate string with null */

                printf("%s", msg +1);

                

                if (msg[0] == 'X') {                   

                    close(sockfd);

                    exit(0);

                }                             

             }

             else if(fd == 0){ /*process keyboard activiy*/

               // printf("client - send\n");

                

                fgets(kb_msg, MSG_SIZE+1, stdin);

                //printf("%s\n",kb_msg);

                if (strcmp(kb_msg, "quit\n")==0) {

                    sprintf(msg, "XClient is shutting down.\n");

                    write(sockfd, msg, strlen(msg));

                    close(sockfd); //close the current client

                    exit(0); //end program

                }

                else {

                   /* sprintf(kb_msg,"%s",alias);

                    msg[result]='\0';

                    strcat(kb_msg,msg+1);*/



                    sprintf(msg, "M%s", kb_msg);

                    write(sockfd, msg, strlen(msg));

                }                                                 

             }          

          }

       }      

     }

   }// end client code

Sort Digital Photos

Over the years I have collected thousands of digital photos from birthday parties, events etc. Having only a 64MB in my Sony Memory Stick it gets filled up very fast even at 600x480 resolution which is the lowest setting. Its become a habit dumping the pictures onto a new folder on my hard drive every now and then. After trying to sort the mess manually to try to organize the photos chronologically I managed to lose the one most important piece of information, the datestamp when the image was originally taken. Apparently when you do a copy in bash it does not preserve the datestamp instead it overwrites it with the one at which time the file was copied. Had I used the -a switch with copy I wouldn't be in this mess.
Fortunately there was still hope. I discovered that all jpegs included header information which contains the original datestamp as well as some other things that I wasn't interested in.

This lead me to write a simple bash script to extract the datestamp and sort the pictures chronologically in my album.

Here is the pseudo code:
*accept minimum 2 arguments the path_to_images path_to_write_location recursive_flag
*parse the date string from the jpeg
*loop thru all the images
*if write location does not exist create it
*construct a directory structure to place the images in the format Year/Month
*if format directory structure does not exists create it
*otherwise check if the file name exists in that directory so that we dont overwrite it
*if it does rename it before we copy it to the destination folder

Here is the entire code:

#!/bin/bash
#filename: chronJpg.sh
#Date: Feb 17 2007
#Author: Dejan Tolj 
#License: GPL
#
#Bash script to arrange jpeg images chronologically
#
#Usefull when original picture taken date has not been preserved by
#accidentally coping without the -a option.

which identify &>/dev/null
if [ $? != "0" ];
then
 echo -e "identify not found, please install ImageMagick. http://imagemagick.com";
 exit 0
fi

restoreDateStamp(){
#  echo "Date stamp =$1"
#  echo $1 | tr -d [:space:][:punct:] |touch -t /{} $2
 date=`echo $1|cut -d: -f 1-4|tr -d [:space:][:punct:]` #2005:05:18 13:50:66

 touch -t $date $2
#  echo "Touch $date ->$2"
}

Month[1]="Jan"
Month[2]="Feb"
Month[3]="Mar"
Month[4]="Apr"
Month[5]="May"
Month[6]="Jun"
Month[7]="Jul"
Month[8]="Aug"
Month[9]="Sep"
Month[10]="Oct"
Month[11]="Nov"
Month[12]="Dec"

#parameters: jpg_path, write_location, recursive copy(optional)
PARAMSIZE=2

if [ $# -lt "$PARAMSIZE" ];
then
 echo "Enter the path to your jpeg files and the write location"
 echo `basename $0` "[path] [write_location] -r"
else
 #get first parameter
 jpg_path=$1
 #  echo $jpg_path
 #get second parameter
 write_location=$2
 #echo $write_location
 #get third parameter if present else search in current folder only
 if [ "$3" = "-r" ]; then
   echo "$3"
   recursive=""
 else
   recursive="-maxdepth 1"
   echo "$recursive"
 fi

 #Loop thru all jpegs and find the original date
 for i in $( find $jpg_path $recursive -iname \*.jpg );
 do
   original_date=`identify -verbose $i |grep "Date Time Original"|awk '{print $4, $5}'`
   #echo "OD=$original_date"

   #Get Original year
   original_year=`echo $original_date|cut -d: -f1`
   #echo "OY=$original_year"

   #Get Original month
   original_month=`echo $original_date|cut -d: -f2`
   #optionaly change date stamp
 
   if [ ! -d "$write_location" ];
   then
     mkdir "$write_location"
   fi

   mydir="$write_location/$original_year/${Month[original_month]}"
   filename=`basename $i` #strip the name of the image


   if [ ! -d $mydir ];
   then
     #   echo "Original month =$original_month"

     mkdir -p $mydir
     cp $i $mydir
     #Optionally change the date stamp
     #restoreDateStamp "$original_date" "$mydir/$filename"
   else
     #check name
     if [ -f "$mydir/$filename" ];
     then
       echo "Renaming duplicate file"
       if [ -f "$mydir/$filename"_$count ];
       then
         count=`ls $mydir/$filename_* |tail -1|cut -d_ -f2|tr -d [:alpha:][:punct:]`
         count=$[$count+1]
       else
         count=0
       fi
       #rename
       cp $i "$mydir/$filename"_$count
     else
       cp $i $mydir
     fi
     #restoreDateStamp "$original_date" "$mydir/$filename"
   fi

   echo "$i -> $mydir";
 done
fi


exit 0

Building Firefox

As a challenge I decided to build Firefox from source. The first thing I noticed is that unlike other Open Source software programs Firefox is not built using the standard configure, make, make install methods. They have a slightly different build script which I will explain in a moment.

My build process was completed on Ubuntu Dapper Drake, Pentium 4 2Ghz and 512MB RAM.

Here is the list of needed packages that you can download from Synaptic/apt-get in Ubuntu.

• build-essential
• libIDL-dev0.8
• cvs
• g++4.0
• gcc4.0
• make8.0
• libgtk2.0-dev

Now that you have all the tools you need for building you need to check out the Mozilla source tree.

1. This code will checkout client.mk into ./mozilla from the Bon Echo branch. Go to that directory and the last command will checkout the browser project. This step may take a while depending on your internet speed.

$ cvs -d :pserver:anonymous:anonymous@cvs-mirror.mozilla.org:/cvsroot co -r
MOZILLA_1_8_BRANCH mozilla/client.mk
$ cd mozilla
$ make -f client.mk checkout MOZ_CO_PROJECT=browser

2. Before you can build you need to have a .mozconfig file in your ./mozilla directory. I have created this one which builds firefox with shared libraries, no optimization and I also enabled debugging. I also used gtk2 because I have version 0.8 of libIDL. By default the build will use gtk1. Create a new file called .mozconfig and copy the contents below. For a full list of acceptable flags you can see it here.

. $topsrcdir/browser/config/mozconfig
mk_add_options MOZ_OBJDIR=@TOPSRCDIR@/ff-static
mk_add_options MOZ_CO_PROJECT=browser
ac_add_options --enable-application=browser
ac_add_options --disable-static
ac_add_options --enable-shared
ac_add_options --disable-tests
ac_add_options --disable-optimize
ac_add_options --enable-debug
ac_add_options --enable-default-toolkit=gtk2
ac_add_options --disable-installer

3. Finally I fired the build command to compile firefox.

make -f client.mk build

Finally the build was complete

Compiz fusion - compositing window manager

Last week I bought a new Video Card primarily for the benefit to make use of hardware acceleration on the desktop and as such run Compiz. Its a Nvidia GeForce FX5500, its several years old now but it plays nice with Linux and I have all the drivers to make it work. The driver installation was flawless on my latest Ubuntu gutsy, I then went on to install Compiz fusion. I pulled the latest development package for Compiz and the extra plugins which showcase some interesting effects on the desktop. Now comes the interesting part, the amount of features that you can change in compizconfig-settings-manager are astounding, you can customize just about anything to suite your liking. There are more than a dozen effects you can choose from for closing or opening a window, beam up, domino, fade and horizontal fold to name a few. You can add wobbly windows and my favorite 3D rotation. I increased the number of desktops under General Options>Desktop Size>Horizontal Virtual Size to 6, now when I go into 3D mode I see a hexagon with transparent view onto other desktops.



The only thing I was not able to get to work is the Group and Tab windows, but compiz is still in heavy development and I can't wait until they release a stable version.

One more thing I should mention is that Compiz is not just a toy with eye candy desktop and cool effects, many of the features actually make it a very productive environment to work in. I was a bit pessimistic when I first heard about it but once I had a chance to run it I loved it. Certainly the ability to have multiple desktops and to freely move windows across desktops as well as grouping windows would improve productivity and it feels like an organic way to do work on your desktop.

The long anticipated year of the Linux desktop has surprised everyone. Compiz may be the killer app on Linux desktop now but there have been many improvement on Gnome and KDE in terms of usability and adaption. No wonder Dell has finally decided to ship Ubuntu preinstalled on their laptops and PCs. I hope other hardware vendors take the same direction as Dell and allow Linux to prosper in the coming years. For now Microsoft and Apple don't even come close to what Linux has to offer on the desktop, what a great turn over because only few years ago everyone was saying that Linux would never go mainstream for having a poor interface. Way to prove these people wrong.

hello

This blog will be an attempt at documenting my development and ideas for Open Source Software.