Downloading Fedora Core 7 over slow internet connection – through proxy

I wanted to download FC7 DVD iso, which is a 2.8GB file. My office network gives average speed, but regular & accelerated download attempts failed. I tried various servers, but all failed after some 200-800MB.

At home I tried download using Bittorrent, which was successful to an extent over my 48kbps gprs access (download speed was only 1-18kbps). Download progress was something like 200-300MB per day. Though it may steadly progress and get complete in 5-10 days,  it was very costly indeed to download over gprs connection. Back at office, torrent over wget http/ftp clicked my mind, here is how I downloaded the entire 2.8GB iso file in 2 days.

Download the list of servers from http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/publiclist/Fedora/7/ to PublicActiveMirrors.html
# wget http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/publiclist/Fedora/7/ -O PublicActiveMirrors.html

Extract all http server lists from the file
# grep ‘>http<’ PublicActiveMirrors.html  | cut -f2 -d\” | awk ‘{printf (“%s/%s\n”,$0,”Fedora/i386/iso/F-7-i386-DVD.iso”)}’ > urls.txt

Now use the following csh script to loop indefenitly and wget with –continue option
# Retry till I kill it!!!
while echo
do
        for url in `cat urls.txt`
        do
                wget -c -t 3 -w 20 -v $url
                sleep 60
        done
        sleep 120
done

I got my ISO ready in less than 2 days.
# ls -l F-7-i386-DVD.iso
-rw-r–r– 1 ajcl users 2900602880 May 27 20:12 F-7-i386-DVD.iso

You may also download the SHA1SUM from any download mirror above and check if downloaded ISO is alright.
# sha1sum -c SHA1SUM

I verified the ISO using QEMU as well, now I will burn it on to a DVD and upgrade my FC5 to FC7

More on FC7 blues later

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Xeta – First Service Details

Time for first free service (FS) was up on 6th Jan. Even though my oddo read only 1600 in six months, I had to report for FS

I called TASC in advance for a booking. But that didn’t carry any value. Saturday (6th) around 10am I reported at TASC (Oberai Motoros, Dehradun). Car was put in queue and attended shortly.

As per manual there is not much to be done in first FS, wash, routine checks etc.. only. Service adviser (SA) suggested and made it
optional to change engine oil. He told about a air pressure cap for tubes. I opted for both.

I had one complaint, regarding my power window. F/RHS power window was having trouble winding up. It was shown to TASC 2 times before. SA assured me that it will be taken care. Request for another coat of paint protection and under body treatment was also agreed upon unpaid.

I had a plan to fit heater (HV/AC) in my GLS (Only AC now), SA said it will cost 4K + 1.5K labor. In one of the previous posts in TIUG yahoo groups, heater fitting cost was 4K inclusive of labor, so I dropped the idea for now

I left the car and came back, expected delivery time was 5.30

Around 4.30, I reached TASC. But car was not in vicinity. I waited around 15 minutes or more to get the invoice, as it was getting generated from Mumbai (now centralised billing from Tata, a good move for customers). I paid the bill
of 1500 (4 litr engine oil, 200ml addictive, 4 air tight caps for tyres, and taxes.

Invoice mentioned about work done on F/RHS power window winder. But result was same, more over there was a big bang sound when the glass touched bottom (some bush missing?)

I reported the same to SA. He called in the technician who attended to this. He tried few times and told me that it is because of water and will be alright in no time. Regarding the sound, he was very passive until I operated F/LHS window where sound of glass touching the bottom was nominal. Then both SA and technician agreed to look into it
another day

I didn’t experience any remarkable difference in driving after this FS. While giving the car for FS, I forget to mention about mileage, which is around 9km/ltr now. Now I hope it will improve, for FS and my driving habits

Work done

1. Wash, checks, top-ups (hope it is done)
2. 4 Ltr Engine oil, 200ml additive and oil filter (paid)
3. Second coat of paint protection (paint felt very smooth, foam coat or wax?)
4. No under body treatment was done, as previous coat was found ok (I doubt this, I knew about 2-3 major scratches under the hood)
5. Window winder check (I doubt this, problem persists and aggravated too with a bang sound)
6. Fitting of 4 air pressure caps costed me 113 incl taxes, this costs only Rs. 50 outside,

So pending issues are

1. Power window breaks in up winder and sound in down winder
2. Mileage, idle rpm?

PS: Make sure to remove all accessories like cd player head, tools, car cover, kits & spares in glow box, etc.. before giving your car for service. Better keep it at home than TASC’s safe vault (a small vault was available with Oberai Motors’ gate keeper.

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Alan, our cherrful Christmas gift

Our first new born boy came as a Christmas gift on December 19th, 2006. We named him Alan

Alan is of Irish and Scottish Gaelic origin and means Harmony, or the cheerful handsome one.

The boy’s name Alan is pronounced AL-an. It is of Old German origin, and its meaning is “precious”. From Adal. Also possibly derived from the Gaelic “ailin” meaning “little rock”. Introduced into England by Breton followers of William the Conqueror, such as Alan, Earl of Brittany, who was rewarded for his services with vast estates in the newly conquered kingdom. Popular in the Middle Ages, with a boom around the 1950s influenced by the popularity of actor Alan Ladd. Alun is a Welsh form. South African author Alan Paton; lyricist Alan Jay Lerner; playwright Alan Bennett; astronaut Alan Shepard; actors Alan Alda, Alan Cumming; poet Allen Ginsberg; basketball player Allen Iverson.

Alan has 24 variant forms: Ailean, Ailin, Al, Alain, Alair, Aland, Alann, Alano, Alanson, Alen, Alin, Allain, Allan, Allayne, Allen, Alley, Alleyn, Alleyne, Allie, Allin, Allon, Allyn, Alon and Alun.

Similar baby name suggestions for Alan are Alwyn, Alwin, Aluin, Aloin, Ilon, Ilan, Elon, Elan, Eilan, Elian, Jalan, Olin, Olyn, Olen and Wylan. Search for more names similar to Alan starting with Al-, Ala-, Alan- or ending with -an, -lan, -alan.

Alan is a very popular male first name and a popular surname, according to the 1990 U.S. Census.

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FC5 rocks

Here are few tips and tricks with Fedora Core 5 installation to make it really rocking. Default FC5 disto is good for a startup, but slowly you can feel the demand for more apps

There are lots of blogs on setting up & customising FC5 for you & me, but here are my experiances – which taught me many a thing, tips & tricks

Laughter time

Few jokes collected  from e-mails

Read on..

Renaming Photos with DateTime key

After many a trips, I will have photos from all the shutterbugs – covering A-Z of the trip.

Having photos from various sources, all pertaining to the same context, event or trip, how do I view the photos with out loosing the flow?

There are various software, using which I can store, manage these photos. Software album makers like Google’s Picasa and ACDSee are excellent photo managers, but how do we tackle this flow problem?

Time is the key!! All digital cameras store EXIF information along with the JPEG header. I wrote a small C code to extract the DataTime EXIF tag from my photos using the libexif library.

Using another script, I can now rename/copy images in proper order. It is assumed that there is no time difference/lag between the camera sources.

What ever you do, it will be a good idea to sync Date/Time field of all cameras before shooting or starting the trip. Alternatively, time difference +/- can be adjusted by adding 2 more lines to the script to incorporate this allowance.

This code uses libexif Exif tag parsing library.

Hike from Chopta to Chandrasila peek

I went on a short hike to Chopta last weekend. Dehradun – Rishikesh – Srinagar – Rudraprayag – Ukhimath – Chopta (260KM mountain drive) – Tungnath (one of Panch Kedar’s) – Chandrasila (4.5KM hike, 4k+ mtrs msl).

We were 8 in 2 cars, Polash’s family in his Wagon-R, Amol Shyam, Deepak Sareen with Akul and me in my Indica-Xeta.

The hike was not very difficult one, with well layed stone road by PWD. But we made it true hike bypassing the roads and cutting the hill across. We spend the full day climbing up, staying on top and returning, yes full day, but well spend

Our Mussorie hike

Five some, big gang; Deepak Sareen, Churasia, Rajesh, Polash and me were on a warn up hike to Mussorie hills. We started from Rajpur and took 4 hours to reach gun hill.

Polash got fond details on the hike at his blog

Few snaps from the hike..

Various desktop blog clients for Linux

Drivel
With Drivel, I am able to connect to my wordpress.com account using following settings
Journel Type: Movable Type
Server Address:     http://wordpress.com/xmlrpc.php

But posting doesn’t work

Flickr
Just I found that Flickr can be linked and used with various Blog backends, I could login with above settings and start blog from with in Flickr !!

Performancing
XMl RPC is really cool
Do this to increase the history listing

1. New tabe in Firefox, type about:config
2. Search for performacing
3. Change default value of performancing.display.history.numbertoshow to what ever you like
4. Thats it it – rock man!!

Performancing is good, except for the fileupload part.

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Driving Xeta, tips & tricks

I joined the elite (rather rare – in that context:) Indica V2 Petrol – Xeta owner group on 8 July 2006. I still believe that Xeta is the best car in B+ segment.
Let me blog some tips and tricks on driving her in a better way.