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November 2009
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You said it…
It’s good to see the Slackware I don’t deny that there might be you switch your printer to an HP model.
Linux and OpenOffice 3 CD/DVD some problem with the Epson printer/ When I purchased mine, Canon Pixmas,
with the October issue. Thanks for it. scanner Hartmut is using, but the Linux with better quality at half the price, were
I read the feedback from fellow community support is so strong that the available. I stuck with HP because of the
reader Hartmut in the ‘You Said It’ solution will be out soon. And at least, HPLIP (Hewlett Packard Linux Imaging
section about the lack of hardware it’s not that kind of ‘proprietary’ support Project) where HP developers work to
support in Linux. First of all, I would like where you have to send chains of e-mails make open source drivers available for
to share my experience on Linux... or select a number of options just to Linux and BSD. This is probably the only
A few months back while explain, “The driver is not supported; instance where the device manufacturer
downloading Debian Lenny on could you please provide a new driver,” works on fully free open sourced drivers,
my new Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop and finally get a response like, “Sorry sir, which support the full functionality (not
(unfortunately, on Windows Vista), I we don’t support this model anymore!” merely the ‘just works’ bit).
thought of having an alternate Internet —Anant Vyas, anant.vyas23@ —Boudhayan Gupta, bg13.ina@
connection using my Nokia 3220 (which gmail.com gmail.com
is pretty old!) phone. I downloaded the
Nokia PC suite for Windows, purchased I write this mail regarding This long drawn-out discussion
the data cable for less than 200 rupees feedback on the Epson printer not seems to be related to just a single
(surely it wasn’t Nokia’s) and thought it working on Mandriva 2009.1. Let me share specific problem. I use Ubuntu on a
would work. But alas... the Nokia Suite a story with you. I bought my HP Compaq Pentium 4 (2004 model) desktop
(running on Windows) didn’t recognise Photosmart D5368 printer in April this and bought an Epson Stylus CX2800 (USB
my phone even after installing the year. It has a host of non-standard printing printer-cum-scanner) in 2007 on the
phone’s cable driver, and this was only features, including printing directly onto assurance from an Epson sales executive
because of the cheap cable. This forced CDs and DVDs, plus automating paper that it would work in both Windows and
me to drop my plans as purchasing a type detection and verification (if I select Linux, and that the company’s trained
branded data cable would have cost me plain paper as the paper type but feed in technician would install it on both. The
more than Rs 500 (at least). photo paper, it will not print). And, it ‘trained’ technician who came, however,
So I installed Debian Lenny and connects via USB. My computer is also did not know what Linux was and made a
tried to connect (using the same phone self-made, with an ASUS M2N-CM DVI mess of installing it even on Windows. I
and the cheap cable) to the Internet MoBo and a 2.3 GHz triple-core AMD had to uninstall and reinstall it in
using the wvdial method, which is also Phenom processor. Windows, by following the instructions
mentioned in the October issue’s Q&A The printer came with two CDs—one from the installation CD. For Linux I had to
section. Wow! It not only recognised the with drivers for Windows and Mac, and turn to the Internet.
phone’s modem, it worked very smoothly another with CD label printing software, Epson mentions only the Windows
(out-of-the-box) and I didn’t need to for Windows only. At that time, I was using operating system in its requirements,
replace the cable either. It saved me from Windows XP Media Centre Edition 2005 and gave only Windows drivers and
having to spend extra money too. SP3, and Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackpole. installation files in the CD. However, it
As far as printers are concerned, I I unpacked my printer, plugged it in, has an associate [www.avasys.jp] that
have used HP 3550 and 656c, which are switched on my PC, booted Ubuntu and develops and maintains a repository
older models and they too worked well printed. A perfect test page came out. I of Linux drivers/installation files for
on Linux (again, out-of-the-box), while even verified that CD printing worked. Cut various models of printers, scanners and
on Windows, I’ve had to search for the to Windows XP; I went through the two MFDs. We have to download it from the
Vista drivers for these models to work CDs, and then went through a series of associate’s site. The procedures given
(which I didn’t even try to do). IRQ conflicts, reconnected cables at least a are lengthy CLI steps. I succeeded in
So, from my point of view, I don’t dozen times and installed a second device installing the printer, but it performed
think that there is lack of hardware node for my printer before I could print. only a few of the functionalities compared
support in Linux. Instead, maybe there I believe your problem lies with the I/O to its performance on Windows. But then
is lack of ‘easy’ support because we have controller on your motherboard, which I could swiftly install the printer with
to do a lot of research/googling to find manages the USB ports. Either that’s faulty, complete functionality from the Ubuntu
out what the problem is before getting or the standard USB drivers don’t work GUI using the driver for model number
the solution. But being a Linuxer, that’s properly with it. CX3800, which is built into Ubuntu. I
part of the fun, right? For the future, I would also suggest could not install the scanner, and had to
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“ I wanna be
your
Hero
ab by” says HTC Sense!
HTC Hero continues to maintain HTC’s leadership in cutting-edge design. It introduces a more
natural way for you to reach out to people as well as access all your important information, by
following how you communicate and live your life. HTC Sense is a distinct experience created
to make HTC phones simpler to use, leaving users saying, “It just makes sense!”
T
here was excitement in more. What made these phones
the air, tension around popular was their proprietary
the Adam’s apple. TouchFlo user interface. When HTC's
iPhone had already other Android-based phones, the
swept the touch-screen market with G2 and Magic, also got a lukewarm
its brand-new OS, zippy UI and the response, it decided to fuse its award-
Safari browser that could turn every winning combination with Android,
website into a sex bomb. Microsoft and thus was born the HTC Sense.
got another jolt when Google decided
to take up the Linux kernel and build HTC Sense
a mobile OS on top. And then HTC HTC Sense is a user experience
launched the G1. Alas! Nobody seemed that’s based on the TouchFlo 3D
to be interested in paying $699 for a user interface, developed by HTC
Figure 2: The Rear Side
phone that ran an open source OS for mobile devices running Google
and depended on freelance developers Android. The Sense ‘experience’ is has finally delivered what has been
for the apps. Neither could HTC not, as it has often been described, a missing in the world of Android,
themselves justify the price. UI as such. Sense is just a “…design namely, a polished and attractive
It was through this dynamic time experience, an architecture that is device (polished enough to go head-
that HTC also launched its most all about how people use the device, to-head with the iPhone) with an open
popular touch-screen brand, one making their content personal to how source heart.
version after another. First there was they use the device.” HTC Hero is the
HTC Touch, followed by the Touch first phone that shipped with HTC “What’s in the box?”
Diamond, Touch Pro, Diamond HD Sense. With its distinct design and We received the Hero in a white
and many powerful capabilities fully integrated rectangular box that contained the
with Sense, Hero introduces a unique following:
blend of form and function that takes The HTC Hero
Android to new heights. HTC Sense A 1350 mAh battery
is focused on putting people at the A 128 MB Micro SD memory card
centre, by making your phone work in A data cable that can be
a more simple and natural way. transformed into a ninja charger (a
la the Auto Bots and Decepticons).
The Hero
It was written that a great Hero Form factor
would rise from the East. He The very moment you lay your eyes
would be clothed in the sun and on the phone, you know that it's a
his unique user-interface would product of sheer evolution. While all
redefine the user experience the HTC Android phones are designed
for countless fans of social the same, the sleek curve (known as
networking, and His Majesty ‘the chin’) right at the bottom seems to
would reign over all Android be an ergonomic, inviting design. No
phones forever. That Hero is other mobile manufacturing company
here, and he’s on Airtel. offers such quirky contours.
The phone was launched Housed on the front is the earpiece,
in September 2009, in India. covered by a fine grill. Right next to it is
It is the first Android device the service LED (glows red when the
to support Adobe Flash, is phone is being charged or is connected
HTC's first phone that’s to a PC, and green when the battery is
available worldwide, fully charged) and ambient light sensor
and is the first Android that handles the display's backlight.
phone to host HTC's Hero is the first phone that has a fused
proprietary software, curved casing, almost-invisible volume
the widgets, add-ons rocker, trackball, touch-screen and
and TouchFlo 3D matte plastic all at the same time. The
elements. Smartphone bevelled edges along the back makes
fans seem to agree the handset sit comfortably in the hand.
Figure 1: HTC Sense—enhanced Android experience that the company The plastic material that covers it
Specifications
Processor Qualcomm MSM7200A, 528 MHz
Operating system Android
Memory 512 MB (ROM)
288 MB (RAM)
Dimensions 112 x 56.2 x 14.35 mm (4.41 x 2.21 x 0.57 inches)
Weight 135 grams (with battery)
Display 3.2-inch TFT-LCD capacitive touch-sensitive screen with
320x480 HVGA resolution
User interface HTC Sense
Input method Multi-touch screen, trackball
Network HSPA/WCDMA - 900/2100 MHz (upto 2 Mbps up-link and
Digital compass
Photo geo-tagging
sunlight, it is pretty useless under can swap with the swipe of a finger,
low lighting conditions, thanks to and you can add a range of widgets
the lack of a flash and low sensitivity. and shortcuts, as well as customise
Moreover, the camera lens has no the wallpaper. This feature definitely
cover glass, thus making the lens slot gives you the feel of using multiple
a deadly magnet for dust. desktops on your computer.
The widgets make life so much
Battery more exciting with HTC Hero. While
Personally, for an Internet junkie the widgets are homologous to
like me, 1350mAh of juice is too Android, there are a host of them
little to even last a day. After about developed by HTC. What's more, if
30 minutes of YouTube, 30 Twitter you find yourself limited, you can
updates, 10 FB updates, around 60 always browse at Android's Market
minutes of phone calls, 50 e-mail Place and choose between thousands
messages, 10 camera shots and 10 of free apps to download and use.
hours of Wi-Fi, the phone hardly Surfing the Web on the Hero is
lasted 20 hours. Ideally, I would have a pleasure. Thanks to its accurate
Android Market Place liked it to last for a minimum of 30 browser, which includes Flash support,
hours. However, the fact that I can you won't miss a single whizzy ad.
charge the phone using the USB cord, Moreover, the multi-touch capability of
never made me cry for battery power. the capacitive screen helps you zoom
in and out of the Web pages, images
Performance and text really fast.
HTC Hero has a Qualcomm processor We also loved the 'Mount' feature
that causes the graphic transitions of the phone that allows you to use the
to stutter a bit and results in screen mobile's memory card as a USB drive.
rotations that feel dangerously
uncomfortable. Yet, we found the Social network in your pants!
Hero to be stable, and it rarely hung or Hero is very tightly integrated with
crashed. But the occasional lag could your Gmail, Facebook and Twitter
get annoying when you're using the contacts and makes sure you never
phone every day. Moreover, the OS still miss 'updates' from your friends.
seems to be a little unstable and asks The customised OS also pulls in
us to force the closure of a certain htc. your Facebook and Flickr photo
android.provider task quite frequently. albums and shows them alongside
Various applications at the Market Place your contacts' info. If you click on a
User experience contact, it lists out not just the phone
It is the home screen of HTC Hero numbers, addresses and birthdays but
that is unique among phones. There also your friend’s photos and updates
are seven home screens that you on Twitter, Facebook and Flickr.
1. It's got the heart of Linux! Yes, 4. Android's default browser (it's not
Android being open source, there Chrome, at least not yet) is based on
will never be a dearth of third-party Webkit, is dizzying fast and renders
applications to power the phone. Web pages in a very customised and
easy-to-use layout.
2. The Sense UI and the touch-screen
QWERTY keyboard are the best in 5. Tight integration with Google
the business. accounts makes sure you carry your
information everywhere you go, be
3. The hardware design is very risque
it the calendar entries, contacts,
and succeeds in catching a lot of
tasks list or even the RSS feeds.
attention (a la ‘the chin’).
Super, Simple
S e c ur i t y - u s e secur
ity tips and t
ools that c
an
to
easy- f mind.
’re s ome a c e o
Here u that pe
o
give y
S
ecurity and privacy are two things The recently-released Ubuntu 9.10,
about which everyone—from Karmic Koala, solves both these problems
netbook owners to server with a very nifty feature—a per-user home
administrators—is concerned. directory encryption. While home directory
After all, it is one of the main reasons why encryption was present in the past few
people switch over to Linux and other FLOSS versions of Ubuntu, it was never this simple
software. But once they do switch over, they to set up. This feature uses the eCryptfs
find it to be a very daunting task to actually get cryptographic filesystem. The fact that
started with encrypting hard drive partitions, the encryption is done only for the home
ensuring privacy, etc. Many people are scared directory and not the entire filesystem,
of the terminal, the cryptic commands and the means that it encrypts the data that is most
terminology that they need to get familiar with important to you, while causing minimum
in order to secure themselves. degradation in performance. Some estimate
Well, if you are new to all this, relax. In the performance loss to be around 5 per cent.
this article we will look at ways of securely How it works is extremely simple. You
performing some of the most common tasks can set it up during installation from the GUI
on our computers; and do so in a very simple installer itself. Figure 1 shows the steps in the
and user-friendly manner. installation process. Once set up, whenever we
boot the computer and log in, the directory is
Home directory encryption unlocked and we can use it just as we would
Most of you probably know about the normally use our home directory. It must also
possibility of encrypting your data to make be noted that if you enable home directory
it secure. But I’m sure only a few of you encryption, then encrypted swap is also set up
might actually use this feature on your from this release onwards.
system. The main reason for this might be Now, some of you might be wondering
the lack of know-how or the negative impact how secure this encryption really is. Well,
on performance due to encryption and Dustin Kirkland (who developed this feature)
decryption of the entire system. says that while this might not be the best
solution to secure national secrets, it’s mainly intended to Many IM clients support OTR, either natively or by
prevent criminals from getting access to, say, your credit using a plug-in. On Linux, both our favourite IM clients,
card information off your stolen laptop. So having this Pidgin and Kopete, support OTR. To use OTR in Pidgin,
feature in the age of portable devices like netbooks, MIDs, enable the ‘Off-the-Record Messaging’ plug-in under
etc, is certainly a huge boon. Tools→Plugins. Then, in its configuration menu, click
‘Generate for each account’ along with which OTR is to
IM conversation encryption be used. Then open a chat window using the account on
Most of us use instant messaging clients these days. We which OTR is enabled. A new option will be available in
usually only chat with friends and relatives, so we don’t the window as shown in Figure 2. Here, we can choose
realise the need to secure and encrypt our instant messages. whether we want to set the conversation to ‘Private’ or not.
But as the saying goes, “Better safe than sorry.” So we should And if the person on the other side also has OTR support,
take steps to secure our IM chats—at least the somewhat- then we are all set to go.
important conversations. And this is where OTR comes into Incidentally, developers of Empathy, which is now the
the picture. default IM client in the latest versions of Ubuntu, Fedora and
OTR (Off-the-Record) messaging helps us encrypt most other distributions, are not too impressed with OTR.
our conversations in a very simple manner. While it does They plan on implementing XMPP end-to-end encryption.
provide most of the features offered by other similar Though an OTR implementation is also being worked upon,
protocols, like authentication and encryption, what makes primarily to have compatibility with other OTR users.
it stand out is deniability. In fact, one of the primary goals
behind OTR was to have deniability, much like in real-life Internet browsing security
conversations. So if you use OTR, the messages sent by you While these days, Internet surfing is probably the primary
have no digital signature. Hence, someone can forge the activity on our computing devices, we hardly ever take
identity of anyone else, once the conversation is over. You steps to protect our privacy and security on the Web. One
can deny your participation in the conversation. But when of the first things that comes to mind when thinking about
the conversation is on, we can be sure of the other person’s surfing with privacy, is the use of proxy servers.
identity. Another reason why OTR shines is that it is not Some of the proxy servers do help in surfing the Web
tied to any single protocol. It’s just that the users on both securely and, to some extent, anonymously. But the main
the ends must have clients that support OTR. problem with using these kinds of proxy servers is that they
Computer auto-locking
This is definitely one of the coolest ways to increase
the security of your system. Usually, in large offices,
employees lock their computers whenever they
have to step out of their seats. Doing this again and
again surely gets frustrating. But now, using software
called BlueProximity, you can set your computer to
automatically lock/unlock depending on your distance
from the computer. You can do this if your computer
is Bluetooth-enabled and you have a cell phone with
Bluetooth capabilites.
Once BlueProximity is set up, it will automatically
detect the approximate distance between the cell phone
and the computer, and lock the screen once you move
away. And when you come back near the computer, it
Figure 1: Setting a password to decrypt the home directory
gets unlocked. This software is really a boon for people
often provide very slow who are tired of typing their passwords again and again.
connections, especially BlueProximity can also be set up to run any other shell
the free ones. command that you want. Hence, you can make it turn off
To overcome the monitor, change the song that is playing or do just
this problem, a about anything that you can imagine.
Firefox plug-in called
FoxyProxy is available. KeePass password safe
Essentially, FoxyProxy Anyone who knows a thing or two about security will
enables us to route agree that having the same password for multiple
certain sites through sites and applications is a huge security hazard. One
the proxy server, of the main reasons why we use the same password
whereas the other everywhere is because it’s too difficult to remember
sites will be loaded different passwords, while keeping them cryptic enough.
Figure 2: Pidgin chat window with OTR enabled without using the So to overcome these problems, the best way is to use a
proxy server. Hence, password manager.
the negative effect on our browsing is minimal. We can set One of the best ones that I recommend is KeePass, a
up which proxy server is to be used for which sites, and cross-platform, open source password manager. You can
governed by which rules, white lists, etc. use it to store all the passwords in its database. Then you
FoxyProxy is also used to access websites that are have to remember just the master password for KeePass
region-locked, for example, www.hulu.com. One must and you can access all the other information.
remember that the level of anonymity gained in this The developers of KeePass have taken a lot of trouble
process is essentially dependent on the proxy server that is to make it as secure as possible, employing various
used. While some proxy servers (mostly paid for) do offer advanced algorithms. It is completely portable and
complete anonymity, they are never really 100 per cent can be used from a USB disk also. It even has features
reliable. In fact, one of the most secure ways to surf is to use that can prevent a key logger from deciphering the
FoxyProxy along with the Tor network. The best method passwords.
to set this up is explained on the FoxyProxy FAQ at http:// This just about sums up how to secure most of your
foxyproxy.mozdev.org/faq.html. common Internet-linked activities in a user-friendly
Another aspect of browsing security involves surfing manner. Anyone trying out these tips must remember
while leaving virtually no trace of the browsing activity that 100 per cent security is possible only in theory. There
on the client PC. The latest version of Firefox and Chrome is no method that can give you complete security. But for
both provide a ‘Private Browsing’ mode, using which no most practical purposes, the methods suggested in this
Web history, form history, or cookies are saved on the article should be good enough. If you too have any similar
client machines—essentially, it tries to avoid leaving any tips, do share them with us.
traces of your Internet activity on the client machines.
Available under the Tools menu in Firefox, this mode is
By: Praveen Thirukonda
very useful when you use the Internet for online banking
The author is a third year computer engineering student who
and other e-commerce activities. One must remember that
loves playing around with FLOSS. He is a huge sci-fi movie buff
while surfing in this mode, it is possible that your ISP or and also enjoys playing badminton.
any hacker can monitor the connection.
@
South Asia’s largest ICT event
Cloud Computing
International Exhibition & Conference
Pragati Maidan, New Delhi, India
23-25 March 2010 Clickjacking
IP Surveillance
Department of Telecommunications
Ministry of Communications & Information Technology
Virtualisation
Government of India
Info Security
Organiser
for
Th irst
FOSS b Market!
the Jo
at
A
decade ago, Novell Netware was training company, says: “During the last
a synonym for networks just one year, I have seen tremendous growth in
like Windows was for operating the number of people/companies coming
systems. Expressions like “I have for FOSS training. We have enrolled many
Netware, but I am not too sure of whether who’ve been given a deadline of one month
I have a network,” weren’t unheard of. It to get themselves trained on the Linux
was a monopoly then. Today, FOSS/Linux server because the company cannot afford
has placed freedom of choice back into the to buy a Windows/Solaris box. The 50-55
hands of companies using technology. And per cent growth that the FOSS training
the recent recession has helped to change sector saw last year speaks loud and clear
the general perception about FOSS. The of the growing demand for FOSS experts.”
result is a heavy demand for FOSS experts
from independent software vendors, SMEs, Advantage FOSS
the government, and technology-oriented But before taking the FOSS plunge, analysis
companies in the embedded device, mobile of whether FOSS truly gives your career
and netbook markets. the much-needed push, is essential.
Elaborating on the demand for FOSS Jaijit Bhattacharya, country director,
experts across India, Alok Srivastava, government strategy, Sun Microsystems,
chairman, Network Nuts, a Delhi-based IT says: “Organisations are getting smarter
Workflow Content
Management E Business Analytics ITSM Communication
Hungry kya, for FOSS experts?
The recession-led cutback on IT spends has
Sugar CRM Joomla Interchange Pentaho ZenOSS Asterisk
given a huge boost to the demand for FOSS
Compiere Drupal OFBiz JasperSoft Nagios Jabber experts. That, coupled with changes in the IT
landscape like independent software vendors
Dot Project Alfresco PHP Cart Intalio BPMS dPresence drifting towards open source, SMEs plugging into FOSS
sockets, and the reliance on FOSS in the embedded device,
Zimbra EZ Publish Magento
mobile and netbook space, has further fostered the hunger
Open Bravo Moodle for FOSS experts. “Most SMEs, as well as major enterprises
across the globe, have reduced IT spending during the
recession. Further, clients have been asking the software
Figure 1: FOSS applications for which trained professionals are in demand
[Courtesy: OSSCube]
development companies to develop the required solutions
on open source,” says Gopal S, CEO, Nace Solutions.
by the day and will not spend unnecessarily on The embedded device space, especially related to
proprietary software when better quality FOSS mobiles and netbooks, has contributed to the demand for
is available and readily downloadable from the FOSS experts. “Acer uses the Moblin OS in its netbooks,
Internet. FOSS professionals will be the ones enabling so does BenQ’s new S6 MID. There is a lot of FOSS
organisations benefit from the cost savings provided.” development in the Blackberry area, like the GPS logger,
Adding to this view, Rajesh Chhikara, director which can help you log GPS plots every second. Now, open
of the Institute of Open Source, and head of HR, source Telnet/SSH clients are available for mobile devices
EarlySail Software, says: “It’s very simple—if you need also. This has resulted in the demand for professionals to
to be different from the crowd then you have to learn be trained in open source technologies to help this industry
technology that you have not learnt in college and the make better products, cheaper and faster,” explains Rajesh
best way is to opt for open source technologies. Open Chhikara, director of the Institute of Open Source, and head
source technologies guarantee that you leap ahead of of HR, EarlySail Software.
the crowd.” Talking about other catalysts fuelling the demand
With an increasing number of businesses lowering for FOSS experts, Sonali Minocha, director, training,
internal costs using FOSS, FOSS experts are sure to play OSSCube, says: “Today, mobile and Web application
an integral part in the process. “Trained and certified technologies are heavily FOSS focused. The enterprise-
FOSS IT professionals can help the organisation take the class FOSS applications available in the market too are
right decision and this increases their chances to rise giving good competition to the proprietary software
up the corporate ladder, faster,” testifies Mitul Limbani, companies. Lastly, governments worldwide have passed
founder and CEO, Enterux Solutions. legislations or given preference to open source, which
Further, expertise in FOSS is bound to help you has been a huge boost to FOSS.”
score over your proprietary software counterparts. The maturing FOSS industry, too, has contributed to the
“The ‘thinking horizon’ of a FOSS expert is wider growth of FOSS and the subsequent demand for experts.
than that of a proprietary software expert. FOSS “The increasing awareness of FOSS and better availability
experts deal with a lot of logical and environment of systems administrators who have knowledge of FOSS,
compatibility challenges that makes them naturally has led to more companies adopting it. This has caused
more dynamic. Further, they are more proficient in a spurt in demand for FOSS experts,” says J A Bhavsar,
building Web- and mobile-based applications than group head, ITM Business School. Adding to this, Satish
proprietary software experts,” says Sonali Minocha, Gopinath, proprietor, Integer Education, says: “There is a
director, training, OSSCube. “The confidence to tweak clear movement towards FOSS among the IT community.
and tune with the open source product gives FOSS The movement has been fostered by a general maturing of
experts a competitive edge over proprietary software FOSS products and the availability of support.”
experts as they can customise software as per one’s
need and at a cheaper cost,” says Shankar Iyer, director,
services, Red Hat. FOSS experts also have the benefit source experts. But for a smooth take off of your FOSS
of support from a much larger online community for career, it is important to first have the skillsets in demand.
any problem that crops up. A FOSS professional can basically follow one of the
following two paths—development or administration.
The skillsets in demand “Professionals with expertise in security dataware housing,
Thus, every sector, whether it is Web development MySQL DBA and FOSS-based infrastructure management
or product development; human resources, financial software; certified FOSS professionals, Zend Framework/
applications or charting analysis, is yearning for open Symfony Framework engineers, and Drupal developers
HOW
Call: +91-124 4080880 / 4268187 Call: +91-20-30589500/01
Email: info@fosteringlinux.com Email: training@enterprisedb.com
www.fl.keenable.com www.enterprisedb.com
LinuxForU.com
Follow us on Twitter @LinuxForYou
‘Isolation’
Welcome to the fifth instalment of the Gimp tutorials. Here we will unravel the
major functions of selection tools, with a particular focus on Isolation.
I
solation is the crucial tool part
of image editing and is handy Note: We generally use corresponding
when you play around with tools for the various shapes and natures.
an image. Each selection tool However, this doesn’t limit us to use,
comes in use while isolating on different experience, and experiment with other
parts of an image. So what exactly is tools to isolate non-relevant shapes. For
Isolation? Generally, it extracts/isolates instance, we normally use the Rectangle
a relevant part from an image for further and Ellipse selection to isolate rectangles/
use as another image. In this tutorial, we squares and ellipses, though the
will be focusing on isolating images using applications are not limited to them alone.
various tools. We can always use the Lasso/Free selection
You should find the raw materials at www. tool or the Path tool to isolate a part,
linuxforu.com/gimptutorial/part5.tar.gz, and irrespective of its shape and nature. That’s
experiment with them using the methods why Path tools are generally called the
mentioned. To ease the learning process, we universal selection tool as we can realise
will go through every possible isolation, one almost all the other selection tools with it.
by one, using different tools and methods.
Thus, I have segregated the tutorial into Isolating images using the Rectangle/
different parts: Ellipse selection
Isolating using the Rectangle selection Isolating images using the rectangular and
Isolating using the Ellipse selection the ellipse selection tools is the easiest of
Isolating using the Free/Lasso selection them all. In fact, authors writing for various
Isolating using the Path selection technology magazines will find these tools
Isolating using the Fuzzy/Colour a great boon. Isolating the relevant part
selection increases the visible spectrum and thus
makes the image more pronounced and
Experiencing
Sabayon 5
oSh!
Sabayon's strength has always been to showcase the
power of FOSS on the desktop. Once upon a time, it used
to come preinstalled with Linux-compatible games. But
the current releases have done away with the idea of
showcasing the games factor and concentrate on giving
an out-of-the box desktop experience.
abayon 5 (or Five oh!, as the The boot screen of the DVD gives you
project team likes to call it) several options to boot the following:
came out on October 2, 2009. GNOME, KDE, a media centre desktop,
As has been the norm since the UMPC, etc. I've only tried the first two.
last couple of releases, it's been divided into a Depending on your desktop of choice,
KDE and GNOME live DVD. The last version you'll need to select one and proceed. The
LFY had bundled was version Four oh! (we boot splash theme is, as always, black with
skipped 4.1 and 4.2). It was a single Live DVD a few coloured stripes with the Sabayon
that contained both GNOME and KDE. So branding in the centre—not that great,
what our CD team has done this time is but pretty smart and professional-looking,
combine the two separate ISOs into a single nonetheless. Well, the same image is also
live multi-boot DVD. The downside is, you'll the default wallpaper in both GNOME and
only get either of the two desktops, at a time. KDE. Coming back to the boot process, the
live distro boot speed is comparable to other
popular distros, and midway through the
boot process, Sabayon starts playing a song
that has something to do with “the rock and
roll hall of fame.”
KDExperience
Sabayon comes with a custom themed version of KDE
4.3.1 (v4.3.2 is not available in the software repository
yet). Instead of the stock Air theme introduced in KDE
4.3, Sabayon uses Elegance—a dark theme that gels well
with the overall Sabayon 5 look and feel. And unlike other
distros, a number of other desktop themes are preinstalled
to let you customise the desktop the way you want without
requiring to download additional themes. Additionally,
it comes with a decent collection of wallpapers too, and
Kwin effects work out-of-the-box if you have a capable
graphics card. Figure 1: KDE Live desktop
The resolution of panel is awkwardly set at a width of
1024px, leaving some blank space on both sides of a screen types are properly set. So
with a resolution of 1280x1024px (or, any resolution where you'll have no problem
the screen width is more than 1024px). Well, many not-so- in directly opening e-
mainstream distros have a fetish for this sort of a Mac OS mail attachments, or for
X-ish panel setting, which sort of seems odd considering that matter, when you
the fact that the rest of the screen on the left and right side download anything from
of panel goes waste. Anyway, we all know how to set this the Web, straight inside
straight, don't we? Strangely, essential shortcuts like 'Show the required application.
Desktop' and 'Battery Indicator' ( for laptop users) are By the way, wireless
missing from the panel. Again, we know how to take care connection on my Intel
of this. Wi-Fi based laptop
While the stock KDE only has ‘System Settings’, a worked out-of-the-box. Figure 2: Default Kickoff favourites
home directory shortcut for Dolphin and the Konqueror What I also noticed is the
Web browser as our default 'favourites' in the Kickoff NetworkManager system tray widget has been cleaned
application launcher, Sabayon has added more natural up a lot. I don't remember seeing this polish when KDE
fits for our favourites here (Firefox, Kopete, KTorrent, 4.3 first came out. What struck me as surprising was
Konversation IRC client, Amarok, VLC Player, OOo Writer the inclusion of the Wicd network manager—which is
and Calc). However, I believe a home directory shortcut basically redundant!
would have been a better selection instead of an IRC client; Sabayon comes with most of the multimedia codes
besides, ‘System Settings’ is also an essential app for those preinstalled. So whether you throw DVD videos at it
who like to tinker with their system frequently. or DivX files, VLC should be able to take care of it all.
The default installation comes with lots of handy Amarok, on the other hand, takes care of your MP3 music
applications for most desktop requirements, but some of collection. The version is 1.1.80 (2.2 beta)—the final 2.2
the essential apps like Digikam (digital camera tool) and version is yet to be made available in the repo. Note that
the GIMP are missing. As for an image viewer/manager, although this version reintroduces an equaliser, yet it's
Gwenview is also missing. So accessing images means greyed out in Sabayon. Besides these two power apps, you
opening them in the Okular document viewer. Of course, also have the minimalist Dragon Player and the XBMC
these can be had from the official software repository. In media centre application.
fact, although it comes with the Firefox 3.5 as the default The version of OpenOffice.org is 3.1. It comes with an
browser, the repo also offers Chromium (open source integrated Oxygen icon theme by default, which means
Google Chrome) as an alternative. better KDE integration because the icons don't look out of
After using Chromium for a week, I found it to be place in KDE4 any more. However, the KDE4 integration
pretty stable. I'll definitely recommend it over FF simply is nowhere near complete—the Save as/Open file dialogue
because of the well-thought-out UI which gives you much boxes are still that of the stock OOo, instead of being KDE4
more screen space to view Web pages, compared to any based. Apart from this, English spelling packs are missing.
other browser, besides the ability to run multiple incognito Another thing to note here is that font rendering inside
windows (private browsing sessions). Coming back to FF OOo and Firefox are not anti-aliased out-of-the-box—
(and even in Chromium), one good thing is that mime which makes them look a bit crooked.
Install(xperience)
There's an 'Install on Disk' (live installer) shortcut right on the between Sabayon and 'Others'. However, post installation,
desktop. The installer is based on Anaconda, so Fedora users when you reboot, you should see all your other distros on
should feel right at home. The Sabayon version is customised the boot screen—at least that's what happened in my case.
to an extent to include some other choices. For example, the The final installation ( file copying) process takes a
third screen gives you an option to choose between a KDE while—around 10 to 15 minutes. And then you reboot!
desktop (or GNOME, if you've booted into that DE), XBMC
media centre or Fluxbox. The following screen gives you an Package manage(xperience)
option to select/deselect the broad software categories—office Now that you have the distro installed on your system,
apps, Internet apps, multimedia apps, and basic free games. you'd obviously want to install the missing packages.
The next screen is where you'll enable/disable the following Sulfur as a package manager is really slow—every time
services: Samba, Cups, NFS, SSH. you want to navigate to a new tab, you get a “Please wait
Strangely, once you're done with the partition set-up, if ...take a break!” message. Additionally, it has a severely
your root is less than 8GB in size, the installer gives a warning. clumsy-looking UI, as if designed in the last century.
Ignoring it is a safe bet as, post installation, it only covers up Although the options are straightforward, they could
around 4.2 GB of disk space. Probably this is a message that become confusing when an application fails to install
was introduced when Sabayon was a single bootable DVD because of some error. Besides, buttons and options have
consisting of both KDE and GNOME, but it doesn't make been spread around multiple tabs, which makes using
sense any more now that the ISOs have been split up. Sulfur awfully cumbersome. However, I’ve got to admit
Also, being based on the Anaconda installer, the Grub that the online repository has a decent collection of
boot screen would only show the options of choosing applications, and the mirrors are pretty fast.
CDlinux
Win You Over?
In the world of minimalist GNU/Linux distributions, we introduce you to
CDlinux, which originated in the People’s Republic of China, in 1999. Four
years later, in 2003, the first public release, version 0.4.2, came out. The latest
version 0.9.4, which was released on September 3, 2009, is a mere 67MB.
C
Dlinux, or Compact Distro to the versatility of Linux, it can also be
Linux, was primarily intended customised for other types of users. It was
for systems administrators, as a used in schools by the Yellow Sheep River
system rescue tool. However, it project (yellowsheepriver.com) several
can also be used as a bare minimum portable years ago, and now I am helping the Beijing
desktop OS and as a customisable OS base. The International School (biss.com.cn) to set
default desktop environment is Xfce (currently up a version for kids. I have also helped
4.6.1) with the Thunar file manager, thus others set up CDlinux for applications like a
ensuring that CDlinux cuts out the fat. The firewall, NAS, etc.”
whole distro loads on the RAM, so the access is Currently, there are two core developers of
rapid. The official edition’s RAM requirement is CDlinux, Ben Zhao and Penta Cai. I discovered
only 64 MB. CDlinux is capable of booting from CDlinux as an unmaintained and ‘dead’ distro
CD/DVD and HDD. It also supports USB and in linux.org. But when I visited the official
IEEE1394 interfaces. website, I came to know that though it was
According to the head developer, Ben not very popular, it certainly wasn’t ‘dead’ and
Zhao: “The original purpose of CDlinux was is still being developed. After using the 0.6.2
for it to be used as an emergency/rescue version of CDlinux, which was about 57.2 MB
tool for systems administrators. But thanks in size, I was impressed. Far from being dead,
and also presents a manual setting prompt. also introduces Clipman, the clipboard utility. Finally,
The desktop shows the auto-mounted partitions. In we come to the rxvt terminal program to enter the
my case, the distro successfully detected all the disks. The command line. I tried enabling desktop effects from Xfce
Xfce menu bar in the bottom contains the quick launch control panel -> window manager tweaks -> compositing.
buttons, desktop buttons, the Xfce sound mixer, the time, It worked fine without any visible performance degrade,
the log off button and the Xfce menu button with the except that when the transparency was enabled for
CDlinux logo. I can enter all the partitions and access moving windows, it went choppy. The CPU frequency
the files. The 0.9.3 uses Xfce 4.6.1, which has a cooler look scaling, a new update to this edition, adjusts the CPU
than the older one, with a new cursor and icon theme. clock for different loads. Change it as per your needs at
The user drives of my Fedora partition were protected Settings -> CPU Powersaving Settings.
and could not be entered. Firefox 3.5.2 comes with the The 0.6.2 CDlinux release contained no graphical
compact menu plug-in installed, which made the menus HDD/USB installer, and it has to be installed manually
compactly fit into a button on the top left. It also had the by modifying an existing bootloader or installing one. In
‘Flash block’ plug-in, even though the Standard edition this version, I found a graphical installer that is still under
didn’t have Flash support. This plug-in is of immense use development. The graphical installer is capable of installing
with the Community Edition (which has many non-free CDlinux in a USB drive or in the Microsoft Windows C:
components). Since CDlinux loads on the RAM, the slow partition. The installation of CDlinux is non-destructive
IDE HDD was not a factor any more. The experience was and does not format or remove anything off the drive. It
very smooth, without a single glitch or any slowdown. I just copies the CDlinux files from the CD in the Windows
have a habit of opening a lot of tabs by middle clicking partition and then installs the GRUB4DOS bootloader.
on the links, and that slows down the system with my Though this didn’t work for me. If you know how to configure
default Fedora 10 (KDE and Xfce). CDlinux allowed me a bootloader, it can be easily installed manually.
to do this happily. Other than browsing, Pidgin was there The command line uses bash as shell, a patched
to connect to chat accounts and to freenode. Mail client Busybox for core utilities and lots of other programs,
Slypheed was also present. The Internet experience with like fdisk, Parted, Syslinux, Grub, TestDisk, Midnight
CDlinux was very good and I just didn’t feel like logging Commander, VI text editor, and wget. And oh! You can
into Fedora again. Xfburn was introduced in the standard also find the ‘chntpw’ program with which you can reset
edition 0.9.3. Microsoft Windows account passwords and manipulate
In the Systems section, a new addition is the registry values. You need to ‘sudo’ to run a command as the
TestDisk data rescue and disk repair application. You root user, or run them in the super-user mode terminal.
can use this to recover deleted files, corrupt partition
tables, manipulate the boot sector and a lot more. The community edition
Other than Thunar, the default file manager of Xfce, The community edition of CDlinux has all the applications
CDlinux provides a patched and tuned version of that we mentioned earlier and, in addition, a lot more
Midnight Commander, which Zhao recommends. In extra packages like Wine (v1.0.1) (without OpenGL
the Accessories section, you can find a character map, support), Java Runtime, SMPlayer, the Gimp, etc.
the Galculator (a GTK2-based scientific calculator), and The booting time was a bit high for this edition. This
the Xfce’s mousepad and Xarchiver. The 0.9.3 version might be because it copies the packages onto the RAM,
but you can ask the OS not to load the modules onto directory hierarchy to be auto-detected by CDlinux. This
the RAM, and mount them in loop mode, instead, with is just like the puppy .sfs squashfs packages. Even desktop
the CDL_LOOP kernel parameter. After it boots in, you environments other than Xfce can be used on top of the
will get the same smooth performance as the standard Mini edition. Because CDlinux doesn’t have any repository
edition, once you reach the desktop. as of now, .md packages are not available easily and one
I started with the multimedia section, which is the has to make or hack them from the community edition.
deciding factor for me in selecting an OS for general Though this might not be very customisable for general
desktop use. I found Livestation 2.7.0 for livetv and users, it definitely is very interesting for geeks. As CDlinux
radio broadcasts, which replaced Gmlive from v0.9.3, approaches the 1.0 release, we can expect CDlinux
two front ends of Mplayer, the Mplayer GUI and repositories to become available with .md packages.
SMPlayer, and a burner called Xfburn. The audio and CDlinux provides some boot parameters that are
video experience was pretty good as the support of very easy and extremely useful. Check out CDlinux.
non-free codecs was out-of-the-box. The Internet menu info/wiki/doku.php/doc/faq/cdl_options for details on boot
revealed a lot of applications including Firefox 3.5.1, parameters.
Pidgin and Slypheed – other additions are Skype2.0,
Filezilla, aMule, etc. The redundant Opera in v0.9.2 was Support
removed in 0.9.3. Zoho is used as the office suite, but This is where CDlinux lets you down. According to
GNumeric, a spreadsheet application is also included. Zhao, there is documentation and support for CDlinux,
The 0.9.3 version has a new addition — KchmViewer, a but mostly in Chinese, so it is of no use if it is not
compiled HTML viewer. Printer support was lacking translated for non-Chinese users. You will get very
in the standard edition. The community edition comes little documentation for CDlinux customisation. Older
with CUPS and printers can now be configured. You can documentation relevant to the 0.4 release of CDlinux can
also configure a wireless network with the help of wicd be found in CDlinux.info/archive/0.4/howto.html. There
(not in the standard edition). is no dedicated forum or an IRC channel. According to
The strange part is that this edition comes with Zhao, new documentation is being written.
the Avast anti-virus, home edition, though you need to
register with avast.com and get a free personal-use serial Gazing into the crystal ball
number to activate it. With TestDisk from the standard When I asked Zao what his favourite feature of CDlinux
edition, the community edition also comes with the was, this was what he said:
popular Partimage and Gparted partition managers, “Yes, CDlinux is stable and up to date, and it is
making partitioning easy. compact. The features and libs/apps of CDlinux are
And of course, it has a Games section containing carefully selected. We only ship stable and usable
Minesweeper, card games, and DOSBox. DOSBox is not a applications — no flashy ones. CDlinux is clean. In fact,
game but a DOS emulator. It often comes into the ‘games’ we are very proud of CDlinux — there is too much to talk
category because of its usefulness in running classic about, like it can be run in memory, which has been a
games like Alladin, Prince of Persia, Invaders, Wolfenstein, feature of CDlinux since its birth. I think the best feature
etc. of CDlinux is its i18n support. CDlinux supports i18n for
We now have GCC (v3.4.6), as it now (v0.9.3) supports all major languages/locales (over 100). Although for size
compiling the official Linux kernel and also additional considerations, l10n support is limited, users can easily
modules and drivers. extend CDlinux to support l10n for their own language/
Check out the full list of applications of the CDlinux locale. Many applications are fine tuned/patched, e.g.,
Community Edition at CDlinux.info/wiki/doku.php/ if you use Midnight Commander (my favourite file
releases/0.9.2/packages manager), you’ll find that the version in CDlinux is the
best. Cheers!”
Customisation
The main attraction of CDlinux is that it provides an Links:
operating system with the latest Linux kernel, drivers • Official website: CDlinux.info
and a bare-minimum set of applications that are updated • FAQs: CDlinux.info/wiki/doku.php/doc/faq/index
and stable. CDlinux provides the base of the operating
system on which you can add building blocks to make
a complete OS that exactly matches your needs. This By: Arjun Pakrashi
is unlike others like Puppy Linux and Slitaz CDlinux The author is currently pursuing a B.Sc in computer science
that currently do not have any ‘remaster’ tools. To add from Asutosh College in Kolkata. His main areas of interest
are open source software, Linux programming and data
customised packages to CDlinux, it needs to make/ structures. He plans to do research-based work, and
download the squashfs md images of the applications become an OSS contributor.
and place them in the ‘local’ directory of the CDlinux
A Liberating
Learning
Infrastructure
Last month we looked at FOSS applications for beginners and students. In this
article, we will look at FOSS-in-the-large as applied to a learning environment.
T
his article is a broad overview computer lab is a network of PCs exclusively
of the technology solutions running a proprietary OS with some shared
available for learning and directories that host the learning resources.
does not prejudge any Each student gets a full-fledged PC as a
solution as automatically fitting a particular workstation. What could be easier? There is
requirement. The data gathering and decision always an obliging hardware vendor around
making is left entirely to the reader. If this the corner and those helpful education
and the previous article can spur you to ‘discounts’ on proprietary software are so
explore that part of the FOSS ecosystem that tempting.
caters to education, they would have served This approach is wasteful, both in terms
their purpose. of money and energy (aren't we teaching
children about carbon footprints in our
School infrastructure environmental education classes?). The
A common or default software is probably hosted individually on
approach for a each machine and maintaining it is a chore,
school not to speak of the recurring licence and
upgrade costs.
Contrast this with a FOSS
approach, which has a
high capacity server
for multiple
student
itself is a good example with a bleeding edge Fedora release Is it worth a try?
every six months. Unless you are already very happy with the information/
A company might withdraw support for a product or learning management systems used in your school,
coerce you to upgrade a product that you have invested in, the answer would be an emphatic, ‘Yes’. That FOSS is a
heavily, and are perfectly happy with in its current version. new technology and learning paradigm that should be
You will find no such compulsions with community-driven taught to all students is an equally strong reason, in my
FOSS software. Communities do not vanish overnight— opinion. Even if you do not want to jump on to the FOSS
unlike software companies that sometimes do. And even if bandwagon with all your baggage, you can evaluate
a community did vanish, in a worst-case scenario, with the specific FOSS applications in isolation.
source code available (remember, this is not closed source) You could sandbox a portion of your computer
you have your insurance papers right in the top drawer. lab network and run a small pilot with the active
Hosting your own LMS is all very well. You also need participation of teachers and students. There is nothing
to keep it current and supplied with content. This means to lose; there are no evaluation licences or nagging
you need to equip qualified lesson authors on your staff salesmen spewing words like 'layered' and 'unbundled'.
with the right tools. Most LMS have integrated authoring On the other hand, you might be amazed by how these
facilities. However, offline authoring and publishing has its solutions—individually or collaboratively—extend
attractions. It allows people to work in seclusion and then the reach of your teaching function and take the
sync up with the LMS. A tool that enables offline authoring deployment of your learning course to the next level.
and publishing is eXe. It allows teachers and academics to Not to make too fine a point of it, all FOSS
focus on their content rather than the intricacies of HTML. applications have their source code available. This,
Most FOSS LMS have no-obligation demo sites. You along with the four freedoms of FOSS, allows you
can try these demos as often as you want and show them to customise and localise the software to your
to the decision makers in your institution. Contrast this requirements and also contribute back to the
with the time-bound evaluation versions for proprietary community. Both of which, the eager, tech-savvy
software that give you the feeling that you are being done students of today would love doing. However, most, if
a favour. not all the applications we have discussed so far seem to
I am sure you took your school timetable for granted. be usable out-of-the-box.
Either you remembered it all, at least the days you had two Do make sure, however, that you engage good technical
back-to-back history periods, or just didn't care and carried help for the required handholding. And do not forget to
all the books you could. I bet you never realised then that familiarise yourself with the vocabulary used in the LMS
timetabling is a constrained scheduling problem. Throw domain. Is there a role for a 'Chief Education Officer' in
in a few thousand students, perhaps a hundred or more institutions? Continuing education is the shape of things
teachers with the usual set of courses, and timetabling to come; perhaps it is not just coincidence that this role
becomes a really complicated business. Fortunately, there abbreviates to CEO! Fortunately, this role already exists in
is FET (www.lalescu.ro/liviu/fet). It is a fairly capable tool some organisations as Chief Learning Officer; so the real
with a certain learning curve and can scale very well from CEOs can breathe easy.
small schools to departments to large institutions. You can Once you start your journey, you might realise that
scan the fine-grain, enumerated feature list to check if it it is not so much about technologies or paradigms as
meets your requirements. much as it is about prejudice, nay-sayers, entrenched
Learning by itself would be only half the fun were it not mindsets, and commercial vested interests. Learning is
for the tests. Jokes apart, learning would not be complete all about discovery and breaking new ground. When are
without a reasonable and objective assessment. TCExam you starting on your voyage of discovery on what FOSS
(tcexam.com) is a CBA/CBT (computer-based assessment/ has to offer the world of education?
testing) system. It allows you to build a simple testing
strategy. Built on the robust and familiar LAMP (Linux, References
Apache, MySQL, PHP/Python/Perl) stack, it supports • http://www.rsmart.com/case/stanford-university-sakai-
rich content in the form of pretty-printed questions, provides-significant-potential-and-opportunity
formulae, and video/audio content. There are i18n • Screenshots are taken from demolabo.com, which runs
demos of many packages and offers content under the cc-
(internationalisation) and accessibility features available by-sa licence
for students with special needs, too. The application
supports question banks so that each candidate gets her
own unique test with a mix of questions. Such a feature is By: Gurudutt Talgery
well suited for administering those on-demand tests that The author is an open source enthusiast and practitioner with
are very much in the news these days. The strong security over 20 years of industry experience working with reputed
transnational companies. You can contact Gurudutt on gtalgery
and authentication features allow it to be used on the AT rediffmail DOT com
extranet as well.
Turbo
Boost
your PC
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Benchm Linu x
verclockin g in
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M
ost PCs today—i.e., if you own a processor like Unfortunately, the software potpourri isn't as diverse
the AMD Athlon (90/65nm) or Core 2 Duo and as that of Windows, but still, there is a decent amount of
above—come with decent headroom to increase benchmarking and monitoring software available for Linux.
performance. The question is: have you ever In this article we will take a look at the following:
considered pushing the limits? 1. Hardinfo: A one-stop shop for all the monitoring
If so, tighten your seat belt, because in this article we utilities in Linux
will not only learn about torturing the hardware, but also 2. Phoronix Text Suite: Undoubtedly, a vast and the most
unravel the facts about overclocking your hardware and the popular benchmarking suite for Linux
status of benchmarking in Linux. 3. Geekbench: Another cross-platform benching program
4. Prime95B: A CPU stress-testing program
The test set-up used for overclocking and benchmarking
Note: Overclocking is raising the clock speed of the is described below:
processor from the factory settings. Benchmarking, on AMD Phenom II Dual Core X2 550 Black Edition
the other hand, is an assessment test to measure the processor (unlocked to Phenom II Quad Core X4 B50),
capacity of the hardware at your disposal. with 45nm fabrication and socket AM3
Jetway Ha07 790GX AM2+ motherboard
Some of you must be mulling over what Linux has to Transcend DDR2 800 MHz 4GB kit @ 5-5-5-15/dual
do with overclocking? Well, yes, the operating system has channel
very little to do with overclocking. But when you pump Western Digital 640AAKS Blue Edition hard disk drive
up the speed of your system, then various things need to Prolimatech Megahalems + Scythe Sflex 120mm 75cfm
be considered. The operating system chips in by offering fan (CPU heat sink and fan)
various monitoring tools and other requisites. Corsair VX450 SMPS | open air system
Note that this tutorial will only guide you with the Operating systems: Ubuntu 9.04 64-bit and Mandriva
basics of overclocking. Since it's a very vast topic, and 2009.1 32-bit
the overclocking options vary from motherboard to
motherboard and the BIOSs they come with, more details Benchmarking your PC
are out of scope of this article. Before we get started, we should know about the types of
benchmarking. There are many benchmarking applications
Statutory warning: Overclocking is fun to begin and methods to test the system. These are generally
with, but reckless decisions can bring your whole segregated into the following two categories:
system down. The author and the publisher will not be 1. Real-world benchmarking: All benchmarking of real
responsible for any damage caused, and what's worse is tests such as FPS ( frames per second) in games, the time
that afterwards, you will not be covered by the product to compile software/the kernel, the encoding/decoding
warranty either. So, you'll need to remember one thing— time of media files, etc, fall under this category. This is
slow and steady wins the race. perhaps a more practical way to judge a PC's calibre.
The only precautionary measure is not to take Most benchmarking software don't cater to real-world
hasty decisions—stay calm, and nothing will go wrong. benchmarking; thus, these tests are done by using the
The fact is, overclocking is highly addictive, so beware computer on a daily basis.
and don't let your excitement overtake you. Because 2. Synthetic benchmarking: All software and tests
once you get overexcited, you will surely end up doing designed to appraise the system potential are termed
something wrong. as synthetic benchmarking software. These are good
to obtain quick results, and one doesn't need to waste
much time running tests, one by one. However, some
Now that we're done with the warnings and introductory of the software tends to favour certain brands and
notes, let’s move on. Overclocking requires a few tools and products. For example, the Super PI test favours Intel
utilities as well. But for what, you may ask? As I mentioned processors while the AES benchmarking favours AMD
earlier, overclocking needs to be done through the BIOS. Yes, processors. Thus, these are not always the premier
the best and rudimentary way to overclock is from BIOS. solution to judge a PC's potential.
However, once you have overclocked the system, there are
several factors that need to be dealt with. Hardinfo
The most important is the temperature. Temperature Sleuth tools let you obtain crucial information about
plays a vital role in the life of silicon. All the diodes/chips/ your hardware. These tools not only provide valuable
processors are made using silicon, so the temperature must information but also prove to be viable alternatives to digital
be kept under control. We will get to know more about it multimeters and power calculators. Unfortunately, there
later. But before that we need some software to monitor aren't many alternatives available on the Linux platform,
certain things for us. and this is where Hardinfo chips in to provide the perfect
blend between a hardware listing and a your system’s potential with others. and without these tools one cannot
decent benchmarking tool. I advise you to sync the system with make proper judgements while
Hardinfo [http://hardinfo.berlios. the online service, once. This not only overclocking.
de/HomePage] delivers precise details increases the size of the hardware
about the hardware installed and the database, but is beneficial for others as The Phoronix Test Suite
connected devices atop an easy-to- well. Hardinfo also provides a Report Phoronix Media, one of the most
use GUI. The website claims that the Generator. This handy plug-in allows popular and reliable sources for Linux
tool “…can gather information about you to generate system information news and reviews, presented the
your system's hardware and operating along with benchmarking results, first benchmarking test suite—the
system, perform benchmarks, and either in HTML or plain test format. Phoronix Test Suite (PTS). Phoronix
generate printable reports either in This information about the system regularly publishes hardware/Linux
HTML or in plain text formats.” will provide a verbose report covering benchmarking reviews using PTS,
The app's interface is segregated the X server, the Linux distribution, which throw some light on what PTS
into two columns. The left column hot-swappable devices, network is capable of doing. Initially restricted
serves as the navigation bar that information and lots more. It even to the CLI, PTS goes through massive
consists of a plethora of hardware displays the temperature using the transitions from release to release.
categories, which are further divided system diode; however, I found that It has now jumped onto the GUI
into relevant entries. The section on to be faulty—my motherboard LED bandwagon, loaded with an easy-
the right side is the overview panel indicator displayed a significantly to-use GUI. It comes with support
that displays some information lower temperature than that of for almost all distributions and is
about the entries you select from the Hardinfo. available in the repositories of many
navigation panel. When you select Nevertheless, there are still many distributions.
an entry, a new panel is created to things missing from the elusive I'd say Phoronix takes
show detailed information about the Hardinfo. Shortcomings include the benchmarking to a whole new
selected item. missing voltage meter, dynamic speed level, being the only one of its kind
Apart from its hardware listing reader, and many more. A dearth that provides users the option of
capabilities, Hardinfo provides a of these components is surely a big ‘live benchmarking’ (thanks to the
handful of benchmarking tests to setback for any hardware listing tool, availability of an Ubuntu-based live
put your system through rigorous
exercises. The default installation
doesn't come with much data on the
benchmarking front to compare your
system with other hardware. However,
you can easily sync with the online
database (click Information→Network
Updater). Updating the database adds
the data of the computers that have
been tested.
Sharing data online and then
syncing the software is really a great
Figure 3: PTS System Overview
idea and lets you easily compare
DVD). So all you need is a system with a DVD drive to enjoy with a CLI offering. Nonetheless, the application offers a
the test suite. complete benchmarking solution capable of wrenching the
Installing it is very easy and you can do so by using most out of your CPU and memory.
your system repositories or the executables provided at The Linux version is an easy to execute binary file that
the project website. PTS actually acts as a wrapper for runs from the terminal. After executing it, the benchmarking
many open source/proprietary software that are available will commence and automatically complete all the tests.
off-the-shelf. In the end, it will ask you to submit the data, online. If you
By default, PTS doesn't come with a single benchmarking have a working Internet connection, you can easily submit
utility installed; rather, it provides an option to install them the data and add it to your profile (if you have an account).
the way you want. In order to get the most out of PTS, you Pretty nifty indeed!
have to install the tests, one by one. Some tests are as huge The online score browser displays scores in coloured
as 700 MB, and thus installation can be a bother. It would charts—this is where you can compare your scores as well.
be much better if Phoronix additionally allowed users to Unlike other benchmarking software, this one gives an
install multiple tests in a single click, with options like ‘Tests overall score to the system providing a rough idea of what
for Processors’, ‘Tests for the GPU’, and so on. The pack the system is capable of.
must consist of a handful of relevant tests that fall under the Compared to the other two benchmarking utilities
particular category the user is interested in. mentioned, Geekbench is not an open source application,
Phoronix allows users to easily upload their results to although the developers have open sourced the detection
Phoronix Global. This is a portal where you can view your engine (geekinfo) under the MIT licence. The detection
results (the same way you view them offline), and from engine seems to be flaky—it fails to detect my motherboard
where you can make comparisons with others. In fact, the manufacturer and model. Apart from that, it failed to even
application itself prompts you to compare the result with detect the operating system used. It only showed the kernel
the tests that Phoronix developers have uploaded. A very under use instead of the distro. Since Geekbench developers
nice approach that does away with the hassle of searching want you to buy the software, they have restricted the
for the test results to compare with your outcome. availability of the 64-bit executable.
Phoronix also provides a small system ‘overviewer’ that One of the biggest drawbacks was the overall
keeps you informed about hardware, software and sensors. inconsistency in scores. I tested Geekbench in all the
Things are very neatly arranged in their proper categories. It supported OSs, namely OSX, Windows and several
even allows you to copy all the data to clipboards and then distributions, keeping the hardware intact across every
share them easily. However, in my case, it failed to detect the OS. Initially developed for Mac OS, Geekbench still favours
IGP (on-board graphics) speed. The system memory usage that OS by delivering the highest scores on it. The claims of
data was displayed incorrectly as well. providing an OS-neutral benchmarking engine seem hollow,
The downside of PTS is that there is no notification and the statements are contradictory to the scores.
whatsoever while installing and running tests. Once you
initiate the process, the PTS window will vanish and the Benefits of benchmarking
user has no idea of what's happening in the background. Many of you must be muttering about all this information
Even though it was mentioned that support with Ubuntu on benchmarking. Why waste resources? Why go through
notification has been added, it didn’t work in Ubuntu 9.04 such trouble and waste time just for a few numbers? Well,
64-bit. Instead, a simple status message on the PTS window because benchmarking is the easiest way to gauge your
should have sufficed. system. Today, all system components—be it the CPU,
memory, hard drive, graphics adapters, power supply, etc—are
Geekbench thoroughly benchmarked and tested, and then, accordingly,
Geekbench is another efficient benchmarking software for manufacturers rank them by price and performance.
Linux. Despite claiming to be cross-platform software, it Benchmarking creates a sense of judgement among
only provides a GUI for Windows and Mac, leaving Linux users. It keeps you updated about the potential of
Jargon Buster
Clock speed: This is the speed at which your processor Integrated memory controller: This determines the
runs under factory settings, and is calculated in Gigahertz speed, type, channel and the amount of memory that can be
(GHz) or Megahertz (MHz). The clock speed is generally installed in the system. With new processors, the memory
obtained from the product of FSB/HTT/BCLK and CPU controller is now merged into the processor. As a result,
multiplier. Note that whether it’s FSB, HTT or BCLK depends you don't have to change the processor in order to utilise
on the type of processor you own. newer and faster memory, if supported. For example, the
new 45nm Phenom II from AMD comes with a dual memory
FSB (Front Side Bus): This acts as a main bus speed
controller allowing you to use either DDR2 or DDR3. So you
for the processor, RAM, northbridge and southbridge. The
can put the processor in an AM2+ board and use DDR2, or
FSB lies in the motherboard and has a memory controller
in an AM3 board to use DDR3. This gives a wide spectrum
alongside it.
of options to users either to opt for the high-performance
HTT (Hyper Transport Technology): This is the new DDR3 or the value for money DDR2. As a result of multi-
generation of FSBs that are used by AMD processors. HTT channel memory, motherboard manufacturers release
is nothing but the FSB, excluding a memory controller. In hybrid boards with both DDR2 and DDR3 slots. So all you
AMD processors, the memory controller lies inside the need to do is buy one board and RAM of your choice. If,
processor, and that provides more flexibility throughout; as in future, you want to make the transition from DDR2 to
a result, AMD processors support multiple memory types. DDR3, then you don't have to buy a new motherboard.
For example, Phenom II, Athlon II and Sempron 140 (i.e., This contrasts with processors like Intel Core2Duo or the
the 45nm series of AMD processors) have multiple memory Pentium series, which had the memory controller on board.
controllers within, allowing them to use either DDR2 or Thus, in order to get a higher performance RAM, you need
DDR3 at a time. to change the motherboard, which adds to costs.
BCLK (Base Clock): This is a refined FSB that has been CPU core voltage (VCORE): In order to gain a stable
developed for Intel processors and debuted with the Core clock speed (which works 24x7 under a full load, without
i7 series of processors. The BCLK is nothing but AMD's any problem) we need to increase the voltage applied to
HTT. The processor comes with the memory controller. the processor. By applying more voltage, we give more
Previously, all Intel processors— Pentium, Core2Duo, or power to operate. More power generates more heat, and
Core2Quad—had the FSB, which limited their memory thus we must opt for a good after-market CPU cooler if you
handling capabilities. With Core i7, Intel has now a memory are aiming for higher clocks.
controller merged within the CPU itself and with triple
Memory speed: Once you overclock your system by
channel support providing humongous bandwidth.
tinkering with the FSB, HTT, or BCLK, you substantially
CPU multiplier: As mentioned earlier, this value when overclock other components as well. All the other
multiplied with the FSB/HTT/BCLK, gives the processor's components like memory, northbridge and southbridge,
clock speed. And since the Special Edition processors thrive on FSB, HTT or BCLK for their own clock speeds.
have the multiplier unlocked, they allow processor So once you change the relevant BUS, you overclock the
overclocking. Thus, you don't have to tinker with the whole system. Memory is affected as well. Memory speed
FSB/HTT/BCLK if you have a Special Edition processor. is determined by the product of FSB/HTT/BCLK and the
However, you are even free to take the FSB/HTT/BCLK memory multiplier. Note that just like the CPU multiplier,
route if you want. memory too has its own multiplier.
your hardware. You can check Almost all the hardware a component's life span and
benchmarking journals to keep components can be overclocked. This performance, while decreasing
yourself updated with all the reviews is due to the fact that most of the the heat dissipation. Dust traps
of the new hardware flowing into the components are interlinked and work the heat and does not allow it
market. Whatever said and done, it is a in synchronisation. Since this requires to dissipate properly. It is very
perfect option to test your hardware. tweaking the system above the factory important to keep the dust away.
settings, it means increasing the power So, open the cabinet and clean all
Amplify speed by consumption, heat dissipation and components. Cleaning reduces
overclocking hardware many other factors. So before we get noise, components run cool and
Overclocking is like losing weight— started, here are the mandatory things hence their performance increases,
the initial results come very fast, that need to be dealt with: significantly increasing headroom
but the last pounds (read MHz) take 1. Exterminating dust: for overclocking. Make sure you are
some real effort. Accumulation of dust decreases properly grounded, else the static
ur Own
ake Yo
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...in Under Rs 30,000
Sounds too good to be true? Read on to find out how to make your LCD/plasma
TV so much more interesting that you’ll forget you have a job.
H
ave a large screen TV? I’m TV and Blu-rays! Listen to MP3s, watch all
talking about full HD LCD or those XviD movies, see pictures on the TV
plasma models. If you do, you’ll instead of on the computer or the crammed
see that TV broadcasts all over LCD of the camera, get weather info,
India (even in DTH services) are broadcast synopses of the movie that you are watching,
only in 720p (excepting some HD broadcasts IMDB ratings, cover art...
on Reliance BIG TV and Sun Direct). What It looks like this dream is set to become
a waste! And so, with only Blu-ray delivering a reality!
true HD content, it looks like all those 1080p
pixels are going to waste. The hardware
But wait! What if you replace your Blu-ray I presume you already have a HDTV that
player with a computer and a HDTV tuner can connect via HDMI. It would also be an
card? Suddenly, things become interesting. added bonus if you have a 7.1 or at least a 5.1
Imagine all the things that you can do with speaker system.
it. Play games at very high resolutions! Watch Okay! Time to list out some hardware:
nI tr The
oducing
Pardusman
Project
A Google Summer of Code 2009 Entry
Today, almost all of us have tried our hands at building a custom
openSUSE distribution, using the latest SUSE Studio. The
experience of being able to customise a distribution
installer to suit one’s needs is stupendous. However,
have you ever wondered if you could customise
the installers for other distros too? Welcome
to the Pardusman Project!
A background on Pardus
Pardus, as a GNU/Linux distro, is known to be user-
friendly, sleek, simple and spicy with lots of custom
configuration tools written by the Pardus team. The distro
is not based on any of the traditional base distros like
Debian or Red Hat. It's completely written from scratch.
The package management tool is PISI. The distro makes
use of lzma compression for packages and also supports
xdelta-like techniques to make fetching packages for
installation, faster. Pardus has developed its own core
libraries and APIs to develop different applications on the
Pardus platform.
Personally, I have been fascinated by Pardus for the
last two years. Its boot speed is what I found to be the
most impressive. This had prompted me to dig into the
Figure 1: Sign-in
initrd/init boot scripts. I found it interesting that all system
configs and automation scripts (traditionally written in
Bash) have been replaced by Python. Even before Ubuntu's
fastboot technology Upstart came out, Pardus’ init was
much faster.
W
Attention Programmers! Improve your tech skills and win prizes.
Electronic Design
and Fabrication with
gEDA
Learn how to design and fabricate cool electronic gadgets.
H
ave you ever wondered What is gEDA?
how electronic gadgets are Although most popular EDA tools are
designed? The heart of these proprietary in nature, in this article we'll
gadgets is a certain circuit introduce you to gEDA that is basically a
board(s) in a nice shiny cabinet. But how set of GPL’d tools for EDA design, and these
does one design these circuit boards? applications are collectively referred to as the
Resistors, capacitors, transistors, etc, are gEDA Suite. gEDA is pronounced ‘g-daahhh’
all brought together in a circuit board to or ‘gee-daahhh’. The gEDA project is also
perform a greater function. This article known as gaf ( for ‘gschem and friends’).
gives a brief description about the tools for The gEDA project was started by Ales
electronic design in GNU/Linux. Hvezda on April 1, 1998, and it included a
schematic capture program and a netlister.
What is EDA? At present, this project features a complete
EDA (Electronic Design Automation) suite of free software applications for
comprises a set of tools for electronic electronics design, which includes: schematic
design. EDA applications are used by circuit capture, a bulk attribute editor, a bill of
designers to design and produce electronic materials (BOM) file generator, a design rule
systems. EDA tools are for low- to medium- check (DRC), a 20 file format netlister, an
complexity printed circuit board (PCB) analogue and digital simulator, and a printed
design. A basic EDA tool takes care of the circuit board (PCB) designer. Refer to Tables
following functionalities: 1 and 2 for tools that are part of gEDA.
Schematic capture That's a huge list, wouldn't you agree?
Netlist generation But what's the use of so many independent
Simulation tools? Usually, hardware designs are not
Printed circuit board (PCB) layout done using a single piece of software. A series
PCB testing of programs are used for a good hardware
PCB fabrication design. For instance, in the case of PCB
Tools that are part of gEDA Separately developed/maintained tools, but associ-
Tool Usage ated with gEDA
gschem Schematic capture Tool Usage
gnetlist Netlist generator PCB Free/open source PCB layout editor
gattrib Attribute editor gerbv Gerber viewer
symbols Symbol library gnucap GPL'ed mixed-mode/mixed-level
circuit simulator
libgeda Libraries for gschem gnetlist and
gsymcheck gnucap+ An extension of the GNU Circuit Analy-
sis package
gsymcheck Symbol checker
GTK Wave Electronic waveform viewer
examples Example projects
documentation Documentation gwave Analogue waveform viewer
Table 1 Icarus Verilog Verilog simulation and synthesis tool
ngspice An improved SPICE
fabrication, the following tools are used: gsch2pcb A tool to forward annotation from your
gschem – draws electrical schematic schematic to layout, using pcb
gsch2pcb/gnetlist – creates netlist GSpiceUI Graphical front-end to SPICE/gnucap
PCB – reads netlist, draws PCB wcalc Transmission line analyser
gerbv – Gerber checker/viewer vhdl2vl VHDL to Verilog translator
The gEDA project is widely aimed at circuits of low- to mid-
level complexity that are geared towards board-level designs. Table 2
Why gEDA? anyone using gschem and pcb. The misson of gedasymbols.
The first thing that makes it so attractive is its GPL license. org is to increase the usage of the gEDA suite. Users who
gEDA supports a wide range of platforms including would like to contribute missing symbols can add them
GNU/Linux, UNIX, OSX and Windows. Besides these, the to the online library. The updated components/symbols
following are some of the main attractions: library will be available during its next release.
File formats are in ASCII text and well documented. As with all EDA tools, gschem has a symbol editor. You
Command line options help to automate design flows can draw your symbol and save it. You can upload this to
using UNIX tools like make, awk, sed, etc. gedasymbols.org.
There are no boundaries for design size, number of
components, PCB layer count, etc. Draw schematics with gschem
Free from DRM—i.e., you can share your designs and gschem is the specialised drawing program for gEDA. The
design elements with everyone. term gschem means gEDA's schematic. Usually you'll need
Last, but not the least, is the superb mailing list of the
project, where you can find developments, bug fixes and
user queries being discussed.
On the downside, there might be some cutting-edge Preliminary work
(block diagram, parts
features that you find missing from gEDA. However, selection, consideration of
different design
the features available are adequate, and more are being alternatives)
Figure 2: A schematic drawn using gschem Figure 3: The AT90USB162 mini development board layout made with pcb
to draw schematics for an electronic design—gschem is for Connectivity information using gnetlist
that purpose. The schematic you prepared using gschem needs a
You can invoke it from the command line by typing netlist. The term ‘netlist’ means a net connections list,
gschem. It will open a graphical application with all the where the ‘net’ is the connection between components.
menus and buttons necessary to draw a schematic. You'll The netlist file contains the list of connections between
find gschem very similar to other EDA programs. Besides, the component pins. The tool for this task is gnetlist. In
you can easily master it using the tutorials available at the simple words, gnetlist is a graphics-to-text converter tool.
gEDA documentation site (http://geda.seul.org/wiki). This Netlist information is mainly used by circuit simulators
tool will give you all the options for wires, component pins, to simulate the schematic you have drawn—as the input
components, etc, that you require for your PCB design. to layout programs that typically hold information about
Since all your files are saved in the ASCII format, each component's PCB footprint, as well as connectivity
scripting languages can easily manipulate these. Thanks information between all component pins.
to this feature, there are several symbol generation tools A wide range of around 20 different file formats can be
that have been made using Python and Perl, besides the outputted by the netlister. Among these file formats, the
footprint generators made using Python. This is in stark SPICE format is popular. These file formats can be used
contrast to proprietary EDA programs, which lock in users to simulate electrical circuits that are popular among
by not supporting ASCII file formats. electrical and electronics engineering students worldwide.
O
n a multi-core/multi-processor So, what is CPU affinity?
system, the OS usually distributes On symmetric multi-processing (SMP) systems,
different processes on all available the operating system's process scheduler not
processors (CPU) in a way that only decides when a process can run, but also
allows the system to work most efficiently. where it should run. CPU (or processor) affinity
However, for some reason, you might like to is the term that describes this property of the
take charge and overrule the kernel's process scheduler to associate a particular process to a
scheduling to bind your application to a specific processor or CPU.
processor/CPU of your choice. This is known There are two types of CPU affinity that
as CPU affinity. the Linux scheduler supports: soft affinity (or
In this article, I will try to cover how a natural affinity), and hard affinity.
normal Linux user can set/retrieve a specific The soft affinity of a process is merely an
task's affinity from the command line, and attempt by the scheduler to run the process
then we will go further with the actual on the same processor on which it ran the last
implementation of system calls. time. This way the scheduler tries to improve
the performance with the ‘locality of reference’. However, this hard affinity will rescue you from such performance
is not always possible if, for instance, the preferred or ideal degradation by letting you schedule your application on
processor is busy for further scheduling. The scheduler then the processor(s) of your choice.
migrates the process to a different processor for execution. In NUMA (Non-Uniform Memory Architecture) machines,
On the other hand, hard affinity provides users/ processors will have faster access to local memory than
programmers the flexibility to override the natural affinity for shared memory between different processors. Therefore,
their tasks/processes. In Linux, all processes are represented forcing a process to the processor that has local access
by the kernel data structure task_struct that contains fields to the frequently used memory helps in boosting the
related to the process attribute. Among these is the cpus_ performance.
allowed bitmask field that specifies which CPU(s) shall handle Sometimes real-time applications require a dedicated
the task. This bitmask consists of a series of n bits, one for processor. With hard affinity you can ensure that a
each n logical processor in the system. So if a system has four long-running and time-sensitive application runs on a
processors (i.e., a multi-processor system), this bitmask will specific processor.
have four bits, and if each processor is a dual core, then it'll Linux kernel 2.6 provides complete control to set and
have an eight-bit bitmask. retrieve the CPU affinity of a process. However, a word of
The default state of a process in Linux for the cpus_ caution before we proceed: using hard affinity might cause
allowed field is all 1s. It indicates that the process is allowed to the processors to have uneven loads.
run on any available CPU, and can migrate across processors
as and when required. CPU affinity—a user's perspective
Hard affinity allows you to alter this bit field. The To set or retrieve the CPU affinity of a running process from
scheduler then honours it and schedules your task on the the shell prompt, you can use the taskset command, with
processor of your choice. We will soon look at how you, as a which you can even launch a new task with a given affinity.
user/programmer, can change the affinity. Let's see how we can do that.
But let's first discuss the possible reasons that may lead Let’s suppose we have a running process, with PID
you to design your application to override the natural (or soft) (process ID) 21934. To bind this process to Processor
affinity of the process/thread. #0 (the processor count starts from 0), let’s issue the
following command:
Why overrule a natural affinity?
Well, the Linux scheduler does a fantastic job of scheduling. $ taskset -p 0x01 21934
It tries to run a process on the same processor it ran the last
time, assuming that some remnants of the process may be left Here, the -p flag indicates that taskset operates on an
(especially the cache) and thus a better performance could be existing process. The hex value 0x01 tells the new affinity
achieved. However, there are various other parameters that a mask of the process (i.e., CPU #0). Finally, the third parameter
scheduler considers while deciding which processor should 21934 is the PID of the task.
run the process. To test the above example, you first need to find the PID
One of the possible reasons could be that the preferred of an already running process using the ps command. In my
processor is busy but the other processor(s) in the case, the process I picked had a PID number of 21934. Here's
system is not. Under the circumstances, the scheduler the output after running the command:
will dispatch the process to the idle processor in order to
maintain the load balance. pid 21934's current affinity mask: 2
However, for whatever reason, a program might want to pid 21934's new affinity mask: 1
have control over the scheduling aspects of the application.
Some of these could be: From this output, we can conclude that for the process
A multi-processor system needs to keep the processor's with PID 21934, the affinity mask is reset from 2 to 1. Now
caches valid. Data must be modified by only one let's explore how the current affinity mask of a running
processor, and all other processors that have cached the process can be seen (in my case, I picked out a running
same data must invalidate their copy and fetch the most process with PID 21934):
recent data again in case of a cache miss, and they do so.
This may come at a high cost in terms of performance. $ taskset -p 21934
Now think of a situation when a process starts bouncing pid 21934's current affinity mask: 1
between different processors. This will constantly cause
the cache to get invalidated. And the situation may You can also check the CPU affinity list (i.e., the list of all
even worsen, if the threads of a process are scheduled at the processors that can run the process) of a process. This can
discrete processors and they are perpetually accessing be done with -c flag. Let's have a look at it.
and updating the same piece of data. This will lead
to the frequent invalidation of the cached data. Here, $ taskset -c -p 22139
pid 22139's current affinity list: 1 /* The 2nd processor in the system */
CPU_SET(1, &mymask);
So far, we have seen how an affinity of an already-running
process can be set/retrieved. You can also launch a new task /* Set affinity mask of the process */
with the given affinity. I will show you how you can do so. if (sched_setaffinity(pid, len, &mymask) < 0) {
perror("main: Error in sched_setaffinity() ");
$ taskset -c 0x01 ./a.out return;
}
The above command will launch a new task with Affinity
Mask 1 and Affinity List 0. CPU_ZERO(&mymask);
int sched_setaffinity(pid_t pid, unsigned int cpusetsize, cpu_set_t *mask); The above example binds the current process to
the first two processors in the system, and fetches its
int sched_getaffinity(pid_t pid, unsigned int cpusetsize, cpu_set_t *mask); affinity.
While sched_setaffinity() sets the CPU affinity, sched_ CPU affinity—leftover for developers
getaffinity() retrieves it. Finally, I would like to introduce you to the thread affinity.
The man page reads, “sched_setaffinity() sets the Initially, it did not seem like it was within the scope of this
CPU affinity mask of the process whose ID is PID to the article, but while researching CPU affinity, I could not find
value specified by the mask. If PID is zero, then the calling significant discussions on the Internet or elsewhere, on
process is used. The argument cpusetsize is the length (in affinity setting/retrieving at the thread level in Linux, apart
bytes) of the data pointed to by the mask. Normally, this from a synopsis of APIs in the Linux man page.
argument would be specified as sizeof(cpu_set_t). If the So for my own purposes, I did some experiments with
process specified by the PID is not currently running on thread affinity and believe that it would be worth sharing
one of the CPUs specified in the mask, then that process my experience with you.
is migrated to one of the CPUs specified in the mask.” On
the other hand, “sched_getaffinity() writes the affinity Note: I expect readers to be familiar with multi-
mask of the process whose ID is the PID into the cpu_set_t threading concepts (with pthreads) in Linux.
structure pointed to by the mask. The cpusetsize argument
specifies the size (in bytes) of the mask. If PID is zero, then By default, all threads within a process inherit the same
the mask of the calling process is returned.” affinity that a process has. We can override this process-
On success, sched_setaffinity() and sched_getaffinity() level affinity with APIs: pthread_attr_setaffinity_np() and
returns 0, error returns -1. pthread_getattr_np().
Let's write a simple line of code to change the CPU affinity Let's explore these APIs with our next example.
of the same program and retrieve its newly assigned affinity.
Note: The posix functions with the _np suffix are non-
#ifndef _GNU_SOURCE standard and not portable.
#define _GNU_SOURCE 1
#endif #ifndef _GNU_SOURCE
#include <stdio.h> #define _GNU_SOURCE 1
#include <sched.h> #endif
#include <pthread.h>
int main() #include <stdio.h>
{ #include <sched.h>
cpu_set_t mymask;
unsigned int len = sizeof(mymask); void * thread_aff(void *arg)
unsigned int pid = 0; /* Current Process */ {
cpu_set_t mymask;
CPU_ZERO(&mymask); unsigned int len = sizeof(mymask);
I
f you plan to develop eye- or other languages. Official Java bindings
candy applications or some are available as Qt Jambi and third-party
nice games, or if you need to bindings are available for many languages
create applications to store and like Python, Ruby, etc. It can be easily
retrieve data at home or at office, Qt is one integrated with popular IDEs like Eclipse
of the best solutions for you. and with the recent release of Qt Creator,
application development is ultra simple.
A little background on Qt Qt was started by Trolltech and was
Qt, as you perhaps already know, is a cross- acquired by Nokia last year. Nokia later
platform framework used to create rich GUI renamed it Qt Development Frameworks.
applications. It’s most popularly known as Qt comes under a multi-licence model that
playing a major role in KDE applications allows both open source (under GPLv3,
and libraries. One of its primary advantages LGPLv2.1) and commercial usage.
is that it is available for many platforms,
including Linux, Macintosh and Windows. Signals and slots
It even has its wings spread in the mobile Qt event handling is mainly based on a signals
development space with ports available for and slots mechanism that allows communication
embedded Linux (Qt Extended, previously between different objects (widgets). When an
known as Qtopia), Symbian (about to event occurs, a signal is emitted from the source
release) and Windows CE. widget, triggering a slot on the target widget as
Qt is not just restricted to GUI per the registered mapping.
applications but comes with many features A slot is nothing but a function holding
like multi-threading, networking, database code for event handling. For example,
connectivity, 2D/3D graphics with OpenGL, when you click the Exit button, a signal
XML, SVG, Phonon support, WebKit is emitted, which is received by the main
integration, etc. window and the close slot is executed to quit
Although Qt programming is C++ based, the application. Many signals and slots are
you don’t have to be disappointed by this predefined for all widgets, and we can always
fact if you are a fan of Java, Python, Ruby add custom signals and slots to any widget.
Qt tools
The following are a few important tools provided by Qt SDK.
qmake is used to generate a platform-specific build
script (Makefile) from project configuration (.pro) files. It is
also used to create .pro files by inspecting available sources,
headers and other files. Once the Makefile is generated, the
make command can be used to build an application.
Qt Designer is used to create UI forms on the
WYSIWYG principle. It allows you to create three types
of forms—Window, Simple Dialogs, and Custom Widgets
for re-usability. Many widgets are shown on the left-side
pane of the Designer. You can drag and drop widgets onto
the form. Apart from designing forms, it also supports
property editing, signal/slot mapping, tab ordering, layout
management, preview forms, etc. But Designer is not helpful Figure 1: Qt Designer
for custom coding.
Qt Assistant is used to refer to documentation with
great comfort.
Qt Linguist is used to translate user interfaces (UI)
into local languages.
Qt Creator: As mentioned earlier, Qt Designer won’t
allow direct coding—you need to implement custom slots
in the header, source files manually using an external
editor and then use qmake and make from a terminal to
build a project. This is not comfortable at all, compared to
other GUI builders. However, with Qt Creator, application
development can be really simple—just create a project on-
the-fly and use the embedded form editor for direct coding. Figure 2: Qt Creator
The context menu of any widget in the embedded editor
provides an option to ‘Go to Slot’ to write custom slots.
How to install
Download qt-sdk-linux-x86-opensource-???.bin from
qt.nokia.com. (Use qt-sdk-linux-x86_64-opensource-???.bin
for 64-bit platforms.)
Make the bin file executable by using the following
commands:
Run the set-up as follows: Figure 3: Editing form in the embedded editor of Qt Designer
int x,y,z;
x=QVariant(ui->leNum1->text()).toInt();
y=QVariant(ui->leNum2->text()).toInt();
z=x+y;
Figure 4: Signal slot mapping
ui->leNum3->setText(QVariant(z).toString());
ui->leNum1->clear();
ui->leNum2->clear();
ui->leNum3->clear();
L
ast month, we looked at logging SELinux policy—we will take a look at this option in a later part
tasks and deciphering them using various of this series.
methods—most notably auditd and For most of us, the second option of building policy
setroubleshoot RPMs. We learned that we can modules will suffice. It is an easier approach and also
easily fix minor errors involving by Boolean values and/or lets us develop a better understanding of the SELinux
changing the types of certain files by using commands like policy language before we delve deeper into it by
setsebool and chcon/restorecon. modifying the core policy.
But what about allowing a certain set of actions that
are, by default, denied by the default targeted policy? Customising the default policy: Power to
What if we really want files of tmp_t to be accessed by the people
the httpd daemon due to certain requirements in our As discussed above, we will customise the default targeted
work environment? policy by adding our own modules. To do so we will use
What if we wanted to install our own applications and the semodule command.
daemons while still maintaining the security provided by semodule is the tool used to manage SELinux policy
SELinux? What if we run an Oracle database on our RHEL modules, including installing, upgrading, listing and
server, which is exposed to the Internet—because that is removing modules. It is installed by the policycoreutils
its intended use? RPM. The man page, as usual, gives further details and
What about the whole concept of open source, helpful instructions on how to use the command.
freedom and the ability to modify applications to suit
our needs rather than we modifying ourselves to suit the Listing SELinux modules
application's needs? To list modules, use the following:
Thankfully, SELinux gives us the power and complete
freedom to achieve all this. There are two ways in which we # semodule -l
can approach the whole concept of customising SELinux:
1. Modifying the source of the policy (easily available If you execute this command on a freshly installed
through source RPMs). system with SELinux enabled, you will see a list of
2. Developing modules that can be compiled and loaded modules. A sample output on my system follows:
along with the base policy.
For beginners, intermediate-level users and also for [root@vbg ~]# semodule -l
production purposes, I would not recommend the first amavis 1.1.0
option unless it is absolutely necessary. It requires more ccs 1.0.0
in-depth knowledge and experience to modify the core clamav 1.1.0
output of the above command, we Sensitivities: 1 Categories: 1024 4th Nov 09 & 11th Nov 09
● Regular RHCE:
see that in my system there are 18 Allow: 82576 Neverallow: 0
th
policy modules installed. Each row Auditallow: 28 Dontaudit: 5086
9 Nov 09 (7am – 9am)
9th Nov 09 (6pm – 9pm)
of the above output corresponds to Role allow: 5 Role trans: 0
● RH 423 LDAP:
Module Version. Thus we can see Portcon: 264 Netifcon: 0 20th to 22nd Nov 09
● PostgreSQL
that the amavis module has a version Nodecon: 8 Initial SIDs: 27
number of 1.1.0 whereas the vbg 20th to 22nd Nov 09
● PHP & MySQL
module has a version 1.0.3. We can see that there are 1,516
18th Nov 09
Also, these are the modules types and 82,576 allow rules being ● Shell Scripting
currently loaded into the memory recognised by SELinux. You can 30th Nov 09
and are active along with the base redirect this output to a temporary ● Mail Server
policy. But, where are these modules file just for comparison, later. You 9th - 11th Nov 09
located? What difference do they could use the following command: ● Jboss
make to the overall SELinux policy? 14th Nov 09 (Sat & Sun)
How are they loaded and removed? [root@vbg modules]# seinfo > /tmp/org-selinux-
Exam Dates
Let's try to answer the above policy ● RHCE:
questions, one by one.
These are binary policy modules Let's now remove one of the CEE @@ /9--th & 25th Nov 09
0/
that, by default, have a file extension loaded modules. As an example, let us RH
R H 0,,55000 EX
C ● 423:
1 0
1 LLYY 16 th
Nov 09
of .pp (Policy Package). Generally, remove the amavis module. Rss O
R O
NN EX 429:
●
has worked, list all the currently from 1,516 to 1,507 name of the module, its version
loaded modules: 2. Reducing the number of 'Booleans' and all the additions desired in
from 211 to 210 the policy, such as types, rules,
[root@vbg modules]# semodule -l 3. Reducing the number of 'allow Booleans, etc.
ccs 1.0.0 rules' from 82,576 to 81,929 The file contexts file (with the .fc
clamav 1.1.0 4. Reducing the number of 'type extension—for example, /usr/
dcc 1.1.0 transition rules' from 1400 to 1,387 share/selinux/devel/example.
evolution 1.1.0 and so on... fc) contains the default security
iscsid 1.0.0 Thus, we see that by using contexts to be provided for files
mozilla 1.1.0 modules, we can at least add types, created/used by the application
mplayer 1.1.0 Booleans and rules to the core policy. for which we are creating the
nagios 1.1.0 That is pretty much what we want policy module.
oddjob 1.0.1 to do when we need to modify the The interface file (one with the .if
openoff 1.0.0 default policy to suit our needs. extension—for example, /usr/
pcscd 1.0.0 From what we’ve just covered, share/selinux/devel/example.if)
pyzor 1.1.0 it is clear that we need to create generally would contain macro
razor 1.1.0 SELinux policy modules—thereby definitions that assist in creating
ricci 1.0.0 creating new types, Booleans and type enforcement rules.
smartmon 1.1.0 various rules. The type enforcement file (.te) is
tmp 1.0.1 mandatory, while the other two files
vbg 1.0.3 Creating SELinux modules (.fc and .if), if not required, need not be
SELinux policy modules need to explicitly created. I would advise their
To understand the difference be written in the SELinux policy use, but it generally depends on the
made by the removal of the 'amavis' language. It is not a complicated kind of policy module to be developed.
package, again redirect the output of language at all, but like most
seinfo to a file: programming languages, requires a Syntax of the type
certain structure and syntax to be enforcement file
[root@vbg modules]# seinfo > /tmp/new-selinux- followed while creating the modules. The most important thing for
policy Also, once the text files containing a policy module to be clearly
our desired modifications have been distinguished is its name and
...and run a diff on the two files: created, we need to compile them version—the output of the semodule
into a binary policy module (Policy -l command. This is specified as
[root@vbg modules]# diff /tmp/org-selinux- Package). Once the Policy Package the first line in a .te file as policy_
policy /tmp/new-selinux-policy files have been created, they just need module(<policy name>,
6c6 to be tested and then finally loaded to <policy version>).
< Types: 1516 Attributes: 148 enable the desired functionality. New types being introduced by
--- To enable the development the module are declared as type
> Types: 1507 Attributes: 148 and compilation of policy modules, <new type>;.
8c8 install the selinux-policy-devel RPM. Let's create a small policy module
< Booleans: 211 Cond. Expr.: 187 The installed RPM on my system is called test to introduce a new type
--- selinux-policy-devel-2.4.6-106.el5_1.3. called lfy_t. Use the following steps to
> Booleans: 210 Cond. Expr.: 186 This module creates the /usr/ achieve the above:
10,11c10,11 share/selinux/devel/ directory, which 1. Create a work directory for
< Allow: 82576 Neverallow: 0 contains 'include' files and a makefile building and compiling your
< Auditallow: 28 Dontaudit: 5086 for compilation. It also installs three SELinux modules.
--- files—example.te, example.fc and 2. Copy the necessary files needed
> Allow: 81929 Neverallow: 0 example.if—to assist you in the for compiling SELinux modules.
> Auditallow: 28 Dontaudit: 5062 creation of policy modules. 3. Create at least a .te file for your
13c13 The three files are important to SELinux module, specifying
< Type_trans: 1400 Type_change: 17 understand the structure of policy the module name and version
--- modules: number.
> Type_trans: 1387 Type_change: 17 The type enforcement file (a 4. Compile the source file above to a
file with the .te extension—for binary policy package file.
You will see that removing amavis example, /usr/share/selinux/ 5. Load the binary policy package.
has made the following changes: devel/example.te) is the most 6. Test the changes in the
1. Reducing the number of 'types' important file. This contains the SELinux Policy.
[vbg@vbg test-selinux]$ vim test.te Step 5: Load the binary policy Up next
package. In this article, we have covered the
Put the following text in the above file: As the root user, use the semodule basics of policy modules. In the next
command to load the compiled test. part of the series, we will look at
policy_module(test,1.0) pp policy package. The option to use adding allow rules, type transition
with the semodule command is -i rules, Booleans and other policy
type lfy_t; (which stands for insert). building blocks. We shall also look
at the audit2allow tool that helps to
~ [root@vbg devel]# semodule -i /home/vbg/test- create policy modules.
:wq selinux/test.pp I hope the article has helped you
To confirm if the module has understand the modular structure
And save the source file. been successfully loaded, list all the of SELinux. It is this modularity
The above step specifies that we modules: that allows administrators to easily
are creating a policy module named create SELinux policy modules for
test with the version 1.0 and are [root@vbg devel]# semodule -l whatever applications they deploy --
declaring a new type to be introduced ccs 1.0.0 without compromising the security
in the policy called lfy_t. clamav 1.1.0 of their system.
dcc 1.1.0 Looking forward to meeting you
Step 4: Compile the source file evolution 1.1.0 all again, next month...
above to a binary policy package file
To compile the source, simply run By: Varad Gupta
make (ensure you have copied the Varad is an open source enthusiast who strongly believes in the
Makefile in Step 2 shown above): open source collaborative model not only for technology but also for business. India’s
first RHCSS (Red Hat Certified Security Specialist), he has been involved in spreading
[vbg@vbg test-selinux]$ make open source through Keen & Able Computers Pvt Ltd, an open source systems
integration company, and FOSTERing Linux, a FOSS training, education and research
Compiling targeted test module
training centre. The author can be contacted at varad.gupta@fosteringlinux.com
/usr/bin/checkmodule: loading policy
‘Typesetting’
Presentations with Beamer
Do you use LaTeX for your document processing requirements?
Then why switch to any other application when you need to create
presentations? Try Beamer instead.
B
eamer (latex-beamer.sourceforge.net) is There is, of course, the
a LaTeX class for making presentation option of installing LaTeX
slides. In LaTex parlance, it’s just another class manually. It's easy to do,
Document Class. but not easier than the previous method. The LaTeX
Why would you want to hack LaTeX to create slides? Beamer user guide shows you how to do it.
Hasn't OpenOffice.org, or worse, a certain Microsoft Now that we are done with the installation, let us
PowerPoint, already won that battle? create our first presentation with LaTeX Beamer. In the
You shouldn't even attempt to use Beamer if you rest of this article, I shall assume that we have used the
have no idea what LaTeX is. However, if you already package manager to install the Beamer LaTeX class. If
use LaTeX—chances are you swear by it—then Beamer you have installed it manually, it will just need a little bit
is for you. With Beamer, you can create slides for that of correlation between the article details and the
upcoming talk without compromising on eye candy, source code.
and with the comfort levels of your favourite document
preparation system. Simple presentations
As an aside, explore and learn LaTeX. If you are a Before we create our own presentation, let us compile
student, you will create better-looking project reports; and one of the shipped examples. Copy the beamerexample-
if you are a writer, you will create more professional looking conference-talk.tex files from /usr/share/doc/latex-
articles, manuals and books. The Resources section at the beamer/examples/a-conference-talk to a sub-directory
end will have some links to learn more about LaTeX. To under your home, say ~/beamer/examples. Now, compile
make the best use of the rest of this article, I shall assume an the .tex file using latex:
intermediate knowledge of LaTeX.
$ latex beamerexample-conference-talk.tex . .
Installation ./beamerexample-conference-talk.toc) [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10]
The easiest way to install LaTeX Beamer is to use the [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25]
package manager on your Linux distribution. On Debian [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] (./beamerexample-conference-talk.aux) )
and Ubuntu, the package is named as latex-beamer. Do an Output written on beamerexample-conference-talk.dvi (31 pages, 763500
apt-get install: bytes).
Transcript written on beamerexample-conference-talk.log.
# apt-get install latex-beamer
If you see some errors reported, a fix is needed
You will see that some more packages that provide somewhere. We should have the presentation ready in the
extra LaTeX classes need to be installed. Prominent among .dvi file. Now, use the dvipdf utility to convert it into a PDF
these are latex-xcolor and pgf. Hit a y for the installation of file and open it using a PDF reader, such as Evince. Figure 1
the packages to start. You should have the Beamer LaTeX is a screenshot of the first slide.
installation in /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/beamer/. (Note Impressed? I am. Let's continue getting impressed.
that if you do not have LaTeX installed, it might ask you to Diving in, open the .tex file in a LaTeX editor of your
install more packages.) choice. VIM-LaTeX (vim-latex.sourceforge.net) brings
you the best of both worlds. The \date {October 1, 2009/ LFY}
first line after the comments is
\documentclass{beamer}. So Beamer \begin{document}
is just another LaTeX document class.
Good, just the thing I promised. \begin{frame}
The theme for your \titlepage
presentation is specified using \end{frame}
\usetheme{Darmstdadt}. You can
view all the current themes installed \begin{frame}{Outline}
in /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/ \tableofcontents
beamer/themes/theme. Then you \end{frame}
specify other appearance-specific Figure 1: An example presentation created using Beamer
settings such as the template, font,
etc. After specifying the author \section{Introduction} Using multimedia in your
and the title, the main document slides: Beamer ships with the
or the presentation starts from \begin{frame}{What is Beamer?}{Beam it up!} multimedia package that you can
\begin{document}, and a new slide \begin{itemize} use to insert sound, animation or
is enclosed by \begin{ frame} and \item A LaTex class for creating high quality movies. I haven't tried this feature.
\end{ frame}. Let us now create a presentations. So you will have to use it to see
new presentation and learn more \end{itemize} how well it works!
while we put to use what we have \end{frame} Notes and handouts: Besides
already learnt. \section{Summary} creating the presentation, you
might also want to create notes
Creating a new presentation \begin{frame}{Did we like Beamer?} for yourself or to distribute as
We will create a slide deck consisting handouts. Beamer class also has
of a Title slide, a Table of Contents \begin{itemize} support for creating these.
and two other slides—Introduction \item Yes!
and Summary. Listing 1 gives the \end{itemize} Still hooked?
complete code for the .tex file, which \end{frame} If you have been following this
we will call example.tex: article and at the same time typing
\end{document} in some of the LaTeX class, I am
% A simple presentation in LaTex using Beamer hoping that Beamer has impressed
% Can be used as a template for larger, specific Some of the LaTeX elements are you, or at the very least, you’ll now
presentations generic to any LaTeX document, such consider it as an option. The Beamer
% example.tex as \title, \author and \usepackage. user guide has a lot more detailed
Here are some Beamer-specific information on the topics I have
\documentclass{beamer} elements: touched and more, and is a very
New Slide: A slide is enclosed by handy reference while you create
\mode<presentation> \begin{ frame} and \end{ frame}. your presentation. For queries,
{ New Section: The section name doubts and suggestions, please feel
\usetheme{Berkeley} before a \begin{ frame} is the free to e-mail me.
\setbeamercovered{transparent} entry for the new slide in the
} Table of Contents, generated by Resources
\tableofcontents. • Beamer: latex-beamer.sourceforge.
\usepackage[english]{babel} You can now compile the LaTeX net
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc} file similarly. With what we have • Beamer Documentation: In /usr/
learnt so far, we can easily create share/doc/latex-beamer or in your
source tarball
\usepackage{times} presentations that would contain • LaTeX resources: en.wikipedia.
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc} only text. org/wiki/LaTeX#Further_reading
To play a song from the command line, use: It is probably best to run this as the root user, as this
will filter out most of the vital background processes.
play song.mp3 Now that you have the information, you can simply kill
their processes, but much more dastardly would be run
...where song.mp3 is the path to your MP3 file. To xeyes on their desktop. Repeatedly!
stop playback, hit Ctrl+C. —Pavan Kumar Nelanuthula,
If your song's file name contains spaces, specify the pavan.n@gmail.com
file name within double quotes. For example:
bus-info: 0000:00:11.0
ttyS0 - first serial port
—Parvez Ansari, iamnetizen@gmail.com
port :0X03f8 - i/o address
A
s you know, every month we discuss {
one specific topic in programming and assert (N > 0);
feature a couple of coding questions int f1 = 1;
related to it. However, we will take a int f2 = 1;
break this month since many readers have asked
me for programming questions that they might if (N < 2)
find useful to practice and warm up for prior to an return 1;
interview. So here are 20 interesting programming
questions covering various topics in algorithms and return (find_fib(N-1) + find_fib((N-2));
data structures. I will leave these questions open }
for our readers to answer, and we will feature their Given that find_fib is called from main with N
solutions in next month’s column. Let's get started as 25, how many total calls are made to find_fib?
with the easier ones.
(1) Can you have both const and volatile qualifiers Sorting/searching/string
applied to a single declaration in C? If so, can manipulation problems
you give an example? If not, why not? (6) You are given an array of 2n+1 integers. You
(2) Consider the following code snippet: are told that except for one element, all other
main() elements have a duplicate in the array. Can
{ you find the one element that has no duplicate
int a, b; in the array? What is the time complexity of
a = foo() ; your solution?
b = foo () ; (7) You are given an array A of N integers. A
printf(“a = %d b =%d \n”, a, b); majority element M is an element that appears
} more than N/2 times in the array. For instance,
You do not know anything about function given the array of integers, 10, 6, 10, 3, 10, 10
‘foo’ except that it returns an integer. is the majority element. Given the array 10, 6,
Are the values of a and b printed by the 10, 3, 10, 21, 5, there is no majority element.
printf function the same? If not, can you give For the given array of N integers, write an
an example of function ‘foo’ which will cause a algorithm to find whether a majority element
and b to be different? exists and if so, what is it? The algorithm
(3) Given a word, can you find all its anagrams? should have a worst-case complexity of O (N).
If you were asked to do this for only one word, (8) You are given two strings, S1 and S2. The
what would be your solution? If you were maximum length of either of the strings is N
asked to find the anagrams for 10,000 words, characters. You need to create a new string
would your solution change? containing only those characters that appear
(4) What is the time complexity of searching for in both the strings. Remember that the trivial
an element in a… solution is O (N^2) wherein we compare each
a) Linked list containing N elements character of the first string to every character
b) Hash table containing N elements in the second string. Can you come up with a
c) Binary search tree containing N elements better solution?
d) A binary heap containing N elements (9) You are given a sorted sequence of distinct
e) A d-heap containing N elements integers, a1, a2, a3 …. aN. Give an algorithm to
(5) Consider the following code snippet: determine whether there exists an index i such
int find_fib (int N) that the element at the ith position is equal in
value to i. For example, in the sequence, -3, 4, 3, 34, 10, we vertices have an even degree, can you give an algorithm
have a3=3, which satisfies the criterion; whereas in the to determine whether there exists a subset S of k vertices
sequence -3, 40, 2, 12, 6, there is no such index i. What is in a graph G, such that every edge in G is incident upon
the complexity of your algorithm? at least one vertex in S?
(10) Let’s suppose you are given an array A of N sorted
numbers that has been circularly shifted k positions to A few more challenging questions
the right. For example, (34, 40, 2, 12, 28) is a sorted array (16) Given three arrays A, B and C of integers containing
that has been circularly shifted k=2 positions, while positive and negative numbers, we have to determine if
(34, 40, 45, 61, 2, 12, 28) has been shifted k=4 positions. there are three elements a € A, b € B and c € C such that
Suppose you know what k is, give an O (1) algorithm to their sum a+b+c is equal to zero.
find the largest number in A. If you do not know the value (17) Given an input array of distinct 100,000 integers
of k, can you give an algorithm with a complexity of O to be sorted, you are told that you have memory
(N) for finding the largest number in A? Can you improve available only for 1,000 numbers at a time. You have
your solution to an algorithm of complexity O (logN)? no constraints in terms of disk storage. Can you come
(11) Design a data structure that allows you to search, up with an algorithm to sort the 100,000 numbers? If
insert and delete an integer X in O (1) time in a table you are told that the range of values of the input array
(i.e., constant time, independent of the total number of is also 1 to 100,000, how would your solution change?
integers stored). Assume that 1≤X≤N. Also assume that What would be your solution if the input array
the maximum number of integers in the table can only contained duplicates?
be M at any one time. You are given M+N units of space (18) Given the following code snippet:
available for the table. Though at first you may want to bool foo (int n)
use a flags array of M flags, note that you cannot initialise {
the flags array since that would take a time of O (M) and for (i=3; i < sqrt(n)+0.5; i+=2)
hence is not permitted. So you need to work with a flags {
array that can contain uninitialised data. if (n % i == 0)
(12) You are given an array of N integers. Some of the integers {
are positive and others negative. You have to partition return false;
the array such that all the negative elements occur first }
and then all the positive elements. (There is no need to }
sort the elements within the sub-partition of all negative return true;
and all positive elements.) What is the time complexity of }
your solution? can you figure out what is the purpose of the
(13) Among all the spanning trees of a weighted and function foo?
connected graph, the one (possibly more) with the least (19) Given a 32-bit integer N, come up with an algorithm to
total weight is called a minimum spanning tree (MST). find the number of zeroes in the binary bit representation
There are well-known algorithms for determining the of N. What is the time complexity of your algorithm?
MST of a given weighted connected graph G such as (20) Let S be a sorted array of n integers. Give an algorithm
Prim’s and Kruskal’s algorithm. Our question is as follows: that finds the pair of elements x, y € S that maximises
Given a minimum spanning tree, is the path between a |x-y|. What is the time complexity of your solution?
pair of vertices in a minimum spanning tree necessarily Readers are requested to send their solutions to these
the shortest path between the two vertices in the full questions, which I will discuss in next month’s column.
graph G? Give a proof or a counter example. Also, if you are preparing for an interview in the computer
science programming field, you may find it useful to visit my
Graphs and trees programming interviews discussion group ‘Computer Science
(14) All of you are familiar with tree traversals. Pre-order, Interview Training (India)’ on LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com).
in-order, and post-order traversals are the three types of If you have any favourite programming puzzles that
tree traversals. If the root node is visited before either of you would like to discuss on this forum, please send them
its sub trees, this is a pre-order. If the root node is visited to me, along with general feedback at sandyasm_AT_
after visiting the left sub tree and right sub tree, then it yahoo_DOT_com. Till we meet again next month, happy
is a post-order traversal. If the left sub tree is visited first, programming.
then the root node, followed by the right sub tree, then
it is an in-order traversal. Given only the pre-order and About the author:
in-order traversals of a tree, is it possible to construct a Sandya Mannarswamy. The author is a specialist in compiler
unique binary tree from it? optimisation and works at Hewlett-Packard India. She has a number
(15) Given an undirected graph G (V, E), where V is the set of publications and patents to her credit, and her areas of interest
include virtualisation technologies and software development tools.
of vertices and E is the set of edges, and given that all
Modelling Epidemics
Most of us have been affected by the fear of H1N1 (swine flu). As with any
epidemic, public health organisations need to model this pandemic too,
in order to be prepared with preventive or precautionary actions. In this
article, you will look at how Scipy can be used to model an epidemic using
the simple SIR model.
Python in Research, Part 3
T
he basic idea is that the normalised so that the sum of the three is
population consists of three 1. In this case, the ratio of b:k is indicative
groups—the susceptible, of the number of people infected by an
the infected and those who infected person. Assuming that each
have recovered. It is reasonable to assume infected person infects another two, what
that the rate at which susceptible people will happen in the next 100 days?
are infected will be proportional to the Here's how you can find out by
possible pairs of susceptible and infected substituting the values in the following
populations, i.e., their product. It is also equation:
reasonable to assume that the rate at b = 2 * k = 0.4
which people recover will be proportional k = 0.2
to the infected population. Finally, the The Scipy package includes an
rate of change in the infected group will integrate module, which can be used
be the difference between the infection to compute the susceptible, infected
rate and the recovery rate. The SIR model and recovered populations for each
can, thus, be represented as a set of simple succeeding day, for as many days as
ordinary differential equations (assuming needed.
that there are no births or deaths):
ds/dt = –bs(t)i(t) # rate of change import scipy as np
amongst the susceptible from scipy import integrate
di/dt = bs(t)i(t) – ki(t) # rate of change def dif_eq(V,t,b,k):
amongst the infected """
dr/dt = ki(t) # rate of change of those Compute the derivatives for the differential
who’ve recovered equations
If the factors b and k are known, V = current values of [Susceptible, Infected,
and the initial values of the susceptible, Recovered]
infected and recovered populations are """
also known, the above equations can be dVdt = np.zeros(3)
integrated and a solution found. dVdt[0] = -b*V[0]*V[1]
dVdt[1] = b*V[0]*V[1] - k*V[1]
An elementary example dVdt[2] = k*V[1]
Suppose 10 people in a city of a million return dVdt
are infected. The infectious period of P = 1e6 # a million
a flu typically lasts for five days; so, an I0 = 10/P # 10 people are infected
estimated 20 per cent of the infected cases S0 = 1 - I0 # Susceptible population
recover each day. R0 = 0 # Initial Recovered
Usually, the values of s, i and r are k = 0.2 # Infection lasts 5 days
def dif_eq_vac(V,t,b,k,vac):
dVdt = np.zeros(3)
dVdt[0] = -b*V[0]*V[1] - vac
dVdt[1] = b*V[0]*V[1] - k*V[1]
dVdt[2] = k*V[1] + vac
return dVdt
Figure 1: Susceptible, infected and recovered populations in a SIR model If 1,000 or 5,000 people are vaccinated each day, you
will need to modify your code to include:
b = .4 # Contact ratio is 2
t_array = np.arange(0, 100, 1) t_array = np.arange(0, 200, 1)
RES = integrate.odeint(dif_eq, (S0,I0,R0), t_array,args=(b,k)) RES1 = integrate.odeint(dif_eq, (S0,I0,R0), t_array,args=(b,k))
graph(RES) RES2 = integrate.odeint(dif_eq_vac, (S0,I0,R0), t_array,args=(b,k,1000/P))
RES3 = integrate.odeint(dif_eq_vac, (S0,I0,R0), t_array,args=(b,k,5000/P))
You define a method dif_eq which computes the
derivatives for the system of differential equations. The Let’s suppose a fraction q of the infected are
parameters to this method are an array containing the quarantined. Hence, only (1-q) fraction will be a part
current values, the current time and additional arguments of the infected group. The remaining will be treated
-- b and k, in this case. as recovered/removed. The code for the differential
The key method is odeint whose parameters are a equations becomes, as follows:
function defining the differential equations—for example,
the dif_eq above, a list containing the initial values, a def dif_eq_quarantine(V,t,b,k,q):
time array at which solutions need to be found, and any dVdt = np.zeros(3)
additional arguments to the dif_eq function. The best way dVdt[0] = -b*V[0]*V[1]
to observe the results is graphically. dVdt[1] = b*(1-q)*V[0]*V[1] - k*V[1]
dVdt[2] = k*V[1] + b*q*V[0]*V[1]
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt return dVdt
def graph(RES):
plt.subplot(2,1,1) Let’s assume that a third of the infected population is
plt.plot(t_array, RES[:,0], '-', label='Susceptible') quarantined. Add the code and call the plot routine:
plt.plot(t_array, RES[:,2], '-', label='Recovered')
plt.xlabel('Days') RES4 = integrate.odeint(dif_eq_quarantine, (S0,I0,R0), t_array,args=(b, k,
plt.ylabel('Susceptible/Recovered') .333))
plt.legend() graph2(RES1, RES2, RES3, RES4)
plt.subplot(2,1,2)
plt.plot(t_array, RES[:,1], '-', label='Infected') The modified graph routine shows the infected
plt.xlabel('Days') populations, with and without vaccination:
plt.ylabel('Infected')
plt.legend() def graph2(RES1, RES2, RES3, RES4):
plt.show() plt.plot(t_array, RES1[:,1], '-', label='None')
plt.plot(t_array, RES2[:,1], '-', label='1000 per day')
It is at times easier to show sub-plots. In the example plt.plot(t_array, RES3[:,1], '-', label='5000 per day')
above, a plot with two rows and one column is created. plt.plot(t_array, RES4[:,1], '-', label='1/3 Quarantined')
In the first row, a sub-plot shows the susceptible and plt.xlabel('Days')
recovered populations. The second sub-plot shows the plt.ylabel('Infected')
infected population. The result is shown in Figure 1. The plt.legend()
infections peak about 60 days after the outbreak and the plt.show()
The results are shown in Figure 2. The infections now References for the SIR model
peak at 4 per cent about 70 days after the outbreak. The • www.math.duke.edu/education/ccp/materials/diffcalc/sir/
effect of a quarantine is dramatic even with only a third of sir3.html
the infected population isolated. • wiki.deductivethinking.com/wiki/Epidemiology
The intention of the above examples is to show the
ease with which various models can be created and to
By: Dr. Anil Seth
analyse the impact of certain safety measures. Strategies
The author is a consultant by profession and can be reached at
can be implemented and monitored. The effort is not in seth.anil@gmail.com
coding. It is in developing models that can be verified
S.G. Ganesh
A
ssume that the sizeof pointer size and int is 4. 3) It prints 4. How about printing ‘hello’? No, it does
1) Which is the only ‘compile-time’ operator in C? not print that! If sizeof is given a function call as
argument, it returns the size of the return type.
2) Can sizeof return zero? The return type of printf is int (printf returns the
number of characters it successfully printed). Since
3) What does the following statement print? we assumed sizeof int to be 4 here, the outer printf
prints 4!
printf(“%d”, sizeof(printf(“hello”)));
4) The output will be 1 2. For sizeof(‘1’), the argument
4) What will be the output of the statement below? is a character ‘1’, and size of a character is 1 in C.
For sizeof(“1”), the argument “1” is a string literal,
printf(“%d %d”, sizeof(‘1’), sizeof(“1”)); which has a terminating character ‘\0’ in it; so the
size of the string literal is 2.
5) What does the following program print?
5) It prints 10 1. C/C++ does not provide a direct
#define SIZE(ARRAY) (sizeof(arr)/sizeof(arr[0])) way to find the size of an array. One widely-used
‘trick’ is to divide the size of the array by the size
int size(int arr[]){ of the element of the array. The macro SIZE does
return (sizeof(arr)/sizeof(arr[0])); precisely that.
} Given the declaration “int arr[10];”, sizeof(arr)
is 10 * 4 = 40 bytes, since the array of size 10 is
int main(){ capable of holding 10 integers. The expression
int arr[10]; sizeof(arr[0]) is nothing but sizeof(int), which is 4.
printf(“%d %d”, SIZE(arr), size(arr)); So the expression sizeof(arr)/sizeof(arr[0]) gives
} the value 10, which is the size of the array.
Coming to the size function, in the signature
6) What is the output of the following statement? int size(int arr[]), the argument is “int arr[]”. The
argument is equivalent to the signature int size(int
printf(“%d %d %d”, sizeof(void *), *arr)! In C, we cannot pass whole arrays— we
sizeof(int *), sizeof(int **)); can only pass the base address of an array. So,
in the size function, the expression “sizeof(arr)/
sizeof(arr[0])” results in 1 assuming the size of the
The answers pointer and int is the same (4 bytes)!
1) A compile time operator means that the operator
is evaluated entirely at compile-time. For the sizeof 6) The output is 4 4 4. The sizes of pointer types are
operator, its use results in a constant integer value the same, irrespective of the type of the pointer
(technically size_t type) at compile-time. So, the only and the level of indirection!
‘compile-time’ operator in C is sizeof (except for variable
length arrays where sizeof evaluates the size at runtime).
About the author:
2) No. sizeof always returns the size of a variable or type, S G Ganesh is a research engineer in Siemens (Corporate
Technology). His latest book is “Cracking the C, C++ and Java
and so it cannot be zero. If you give an incomplete type
Interview”, published by Tata McGraw-Hill. You can reach him at
(say a struct declaration or void type) as an argument sgganesh@gmail.com.
to sizeof, it will result in a compiler error.
0 to 255). You can comprehend this better if you look at the box Kernel Kernel
titled ‘Device driver nomenclature’. Space
Note the exceptions mentioned in the box. These exceptions Architecutre-Dependent Kernel Code
are seen for DD corresponding to terminals and serial interfaces
(which are assigned major numbers 4 and 5). Here, the devices Hardware Platform
with the number 4 are essentially virtual consoles, simple serial
interfaces and pseudo-terminals. You may note that the virtual
Figure 1: Tier architecture
consoles are assigned the numbers ranging from 0 (which
obviously corresponds to tty0!) to 63 and /dev/tty0 or /dev/console
User-space Kernel-space
corresponds to the current virtual console.
For a serial interface there are two logical devices—ttySn User Application C-Library Kernel System call
(dial-in device) and cuan (call-out device). When ttySn is
getpid(void) Load arguments
opened, the kernel restricts access to it for other programs eax=_NR_getpid,
transition to kernel (int 80) system_call
till the DTR line is active. And when it comes to the accessing
call
of cuan, the corresponding process will be provided with system_call_table[eax]
sys_getpid()
immediate access to the serial interface (provided it is not in
return
use). This will keep on blocking any process that tries to use syscall_exit
ttySn (assigned with minor numbers 64 to 127). You can also resume_userspace
see that the system assigns the minor numbers from 128 to 255 Return
for pseudo-terminals. The master terminal (ptyn) is assigned
128+n and the corresponding slave (ttypn) is given 192+n.
The major number 5 is assigned for the current terminal
and call-out devices. /dev/tty is given the minor number 0. Figure 2: User space and kernel space
And the corresponding cuan devices are assigned with minor
numbers 64+n. for USB Mass Storage devices:
Here is another list that could be handy when you write DD
to access some input devices: #include <linux/sched.h>
11 char Raw keyboard device (Linux/SPARC only) #include <linux/errno.h>
• 0 = /dev/kbd (raw keyboard device) #include "usb.h"
11 char Serial Mux device (Linux/PA-RISC only) #include "initializers.h"
• 0 = /dev/ttyB0 (first mux port) #include "debug.h"
• 1 = /dev/ttyB1 (second mux port) #include "transport.h"
11 block SCSI CD-ROM devices
• 0 = /dev/scd0 (first SCSI CD-ROM) /* This places the Shuttle/SCM USB<->SCSI bridge devices in multi-target
• 1 = /dev/scd1 (second SCSI CD-ROM) * mode */
Akin to the filesystem (you can guess why it is so!), the int usb_stor_euscsi_init(struct us_data *us)
DD is required to be 'made known' to the kernel. This is made {
possible with the help of the driver modules that are initialised int result;
while booting the system. When you code, the following list of
functions will be helpful while performing this: US_DEBUGP("Attempting to init eUSCSI bridge...\n");
us->iobuf[0] = 0x1;
int register_chrdev(unsigned int major, const char * name, struct result = usb_stor_control_msg(us, us->send_ctrl_pipe,
file_operations *fops); 0x0C, USB_RECIP_INTERFACE | USB_TYPE_VENDOR,
int regi'ster_blkdev(unsigned int major, const char * name, struct 0x01, 0x0, us->iobuf, 0x1, 5*HZ);
file_operations *fops); US_DEBUGP("-- result is %d\n", result);
Older kernels had /dev/ramdisk (1, 1) here /dev/initrd refers to a RAM return res;
disk which was preloaded by the boot loader; newer kernels use /dev/
ram0 for the initrd. US_DEBUGP("Getting status packet...\n");
res = usb_stor_bulk_transfer_buf(us, us->recv_
bulk_pipe, bcs,
2 char Pseudo-TTY masters US_BULK_CS_WRAP_LEN, &partial);
0 = /dev/ptyp0........................................................... First PTY master
1 = /dev/ptyp1.......................................................Second PTY master return (res ? -1 : 0);
}
...
255 = /dev/ptyef...................................................... 256th PTY master
We can meddle with all these when we
begin our experimental session!
2 block Floppy disks In case the DD is already registered
0 = /dev/fd0....................................... Controller 0, drive 0, autodetect under a particular major number
and the corresponding file operation
1 = /dev/fd1....................................... Controller 0, drive 1, autodetect
does not match with those, then the
2 = /dev/fd2....................................... Controller 0, drive 2, autodetect register_chrdev() function will return a
3 = /dev/fd3....................................... Controller 0, drive 3, autodetect negative value.
128 = /dev/fd4................................... Controller 1, drive 0, autodetect You may come across two types
of devices—viz., block-oriented and
129 = /dev/fd5................................... Controller 1, drive 1, autodetect
character-oriented devices. In the
130 = /dev/fd6................................... Controller 1, drive 2, autodetect case of the first set of devices, any
131 = /dev/fd7................................... Controller 1, drive 3, autodetect given block can be read or written to
and so on ... at the will of the programmer (i.e.,
Continued on next page… they support random access). This
task is done using cache. This feature
if (!filp->f_op)
goto out; {
out: struct address_space *mapping = filp-
if (filp->f_op->unlocked_ioctl) { return error; >f_mapping;
error = filp->f_op->unlocked_ioctl(filp, cmd, } int res;
arg); /* do we support this mess? */
if (error == -ENOIOCTLCMD) static int file_ioctl(struct file *filp, unsigned int cmd, if (!mapping->a_ops->bmap)
error = -EINVAL; unsigned long arg) return -EINVAL;
goto out; { if (!capable(CAP_SYS_RAWIO))
} else if (filp->f_op->ioctl) { int error; return -EPERM;
lock_kernel(); int block; if ((error = get_user(block, p)) != 0)
error = filp->f_op->ioctl(filp->f_dentry- struct inode * inode = filp->f_dentry->d_inode; return error;
>d_inode, int __user *p = (int __user *)arg;
filp, cmd, arg); lock_kernel();
unlock_kernel(); switch (cmd) { res = mapping->a_ops-
} case FIBMAP: >bmap(mapping, block);
The above code shows the set of C library routines that As I said, since networking in Linux is a vast subject, we
are included in the interface. It is important to note that these will be dedicating the next article entirely to it. I will also be
functions rely on the system call socketcall. The socket function briefing readers about the basic concepts required to meddle
is initiated by the following code: with networking in Linux. I would recommend that you refer
to an undergraduate module in networking, if you don't have
static int sock_no_open(struct inode *irrelevant, struct file *dontcare); a clear picture. I will be including concepts related to the layer
static ssize_t sock_aio_read(struct kiocb *iocb, char __user *buf, architecture models, protocols, conversion algorithms, etc, in
size_t size, loff_t pos); the next column.
static ssize_t sock_aio_write(struct kiocb *iocb, const char __user *buf, Happy kernel hacking!
size_t size, loff_t pos);
static int sock_mmap(struct file *file, struct vm_area_struct * vma); By: Aasis Vinayak PG
The author is a hacker and a free software activist who does
static int sock_close(struct inode *inode, struct file *file); programming in the open source domain. He is the developer
static unsigned int sock_poll(struct file *file, of V-language—a programming language that employs AI
and ANN. His research work/publications are available at
struct poll_table_struct *wait);
www.aasisvinayak.com
static long sock_ioctl(struct file *file,
55 33 11
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