May be these are not the right words to describe today’s experience. But I feel in that way only. Let me talk about something I learned today.
Suppose you own a school, and you want to do the management in e-way. Though you have enough money, but you can’t spend them as salary to hire good computer guys, so what you decide is to hire few consultants, some M$ guys etc. Now those will build some app with some backend database. Now you may ask some other company to help you to manage all these e-things. So, you will have some meeting with all those guys, then company people will say that they can not do anything with the database because there is no primary key in most of the tables, and your guys will reply that they can add it with some queries. As you are running such big school, you will certainly have some good/cool guys, who will understand the problem but will not be able solve the problems.
Today’s Comment:
All these problems may look like technical, but they are not . These are only human problem…
I have “HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GMA-4082N” in my laptop. Few days back I burned first DVD, and it took me more than 1.5 hour :(
So, figured out that DMA is not enabled for my /dev/hdc. hdparm gives:
[root@kdlappy ~]# hdparm -v /dev/hdc/dev/hdc:Tried to enable it by:Â IO_support = 0 (default 16-bit)
 unmaskirq = 0 (off)
 using_dma = 0 (off)
 keepsettings = 0 (off)
 readonly = 0 (off)
 readahead = 256 (on)
 HDIO_GETGEO failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
hdparm -d1 /dev/hdc/dev/hdc:Tried to compile the kernel myself, enabled almost everything under “ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support” in Device Driver area, no good luck. My current kernel is 2.6.19-1.2911.6.5.fc6 Can anyone help me to enable DMA ? setting using_dma to 1 (on)
 HDIO_SET_DMA failed: Operation not permitted
 using_dma = 0 (off)
Oh, and hdparm -i gives
[root@kdlappy ~]# hdparm -i /dev/hdc/dev/hdc:Model=HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GMA-4082N, FwRev=HA01, SerialNo=M00684E5137
 Config={ Fixed Removeable DTR<=5Mbs DTR>10Mbs nonMagnetic }
 RawCHS=0/0/0, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=0
 BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=0kB, MaxMultSect=0
 (maybe): CurCHS=0/0/0, CurSects=0, LBA=yes, LBAsects=0
 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
 PIO modes: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
 DMA modes: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
 UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 *udma2
 AdvancedPM=no
 Drive conforms to: ATA/ATAPI-5 T13 1321D revision 3: ATA/ATAPI-2 ATA/ATAPI-3 ATA/ATAPI-4 ATA/ATAPI-5
Somuya and his team (Beton, Ajitesh) started working in Bijra once again with some different approach. Last time (for the last 4-6 months), we tried to teach Computer there in English, but that was a complete failure. So, this time we decided to go with Bengali.
We created a rough syllabous , and started translating it in Bengali, and we are taking help of these translated material to teach GNU/Linux there, and the idea worked very well. It can be a very good example of the need of localisation.
They are also writing a blog on their work.
We are still looking for some donation of hardware for the school.
For me:
10% scored higher (more nerdy), 0% scored the same, and 90% scored lower (less nerdy).
Was thinking how I came into this world of FOSS. It changed my look in every way of life. Life really changed a lot in compare to before & after the introduction of GNU/Linux.
My first computer was a Commodore 64 , actually it was my relative’s one, back in 1989. Worked with that up-to 1993 properly. Then Again started using computer in 1999 when my uncle(মামা) went to REC Durgapur. He was in Chemical Department. Used to play games a lot that time. In 2000, one day I saw around 10-12 guys in one room trying to see something, I went inside and asked “what is going on?” . One of them said , someone is installing Linux and the mouse is not working. That day I understood that Linux is something different than what I see generally.
In 2001 I joined my college in the CSE department and got a PIII computer. I asked the vendor to install Linux on it. It was RH-7.3 iirc. I became very famous that time because I knew two commands
Anyway, I tried to use it for other works, mainly writing my C codes. Then saw LFY first time after 2 years. Someone used to write regularly that time , someone bengali. Then suddenly one month, saw a report on Ankur Bangla project. I found the same guy’s name over there. I thought there may be a chance of learning something new. So, I mailed him,
Here is the reply:
Dear Kushal,Thanks for writing in and showing interest in the Ankur Bangla Project. You wrote:
<quote> I want to help the team to distribute Ankur CD. I am from Durgapur.How can i do that? Plz help me. <quote>
By ‘Ankur CD’ I presume you mean the AnkurBangla LiveDesktop v1.0. The said CD is available for download in ISO format from the project development site at sourceforge.net. Thus, if you have access to a high-speed connection then you might download it and burn the ISO. Alternately, if you are coming to Kolkata, alert me beforehand and perhaps I could hand over a CD. Perhaps, the most likely option would be to provide me with a postal address so that I might courier the CD to you.
You will also need to go through some documentation which will also be provided to you, in order to answer and attend to technical issues.
<quote> I also want to become a part of the developing team. <quote>
This is really nice. The project homepage is at www.bengalinux.org and the ‘Projects’ subsection has a list of projects that can be a pointer to the areas of activity. Currently, we are looking for volunteers who can participate in:
[1] localisation of KDE [translation of strings] [2] localisation of OpenOffice [translation of strings] [3] creating localised screen reader and/or Bangla OCR [4] translation of documents/guides/manuals related to Bengalinux activities [5] adding to the Bangla Gutenberg work-in-progress [6] rewriting the Bangla editor Lekho [7] localising other tools
The above set are a very general notion of what can be done, and perhaps you can add more to them. Choose and let me know, then I shall forward your thing to the mailing list and the person concerned
<quote> I read your words in this month’s LIFY. <quote>
I hope you liked them. Talking about GNU/Linux and making it work are some of the very important things we do, contribute your own bit to the effort and you will be appreciated and welcomed.
Happy hacking
**********A mail that changed my life completely :) I mailed him again asking his phone number, he replied and told me not to call after 11.30pm and in the same night I called him and the first thing I told “সà§à¦¯à¦¾à¦° অামি কà§à¦¶à¦² বলছি, à¦à¦–ন অামার ঘড়িতে ১১.২৯ , তাই ফোন করেছি” (Sir, I am Kushal, it is 11.29 in my clock, thats why I called you). I think he never took that bad. That was first time I talked with the guy, who is one of the favourite guardian/friend in my life. It is not only me, my parents also think in the same way, though they never talked with him. :)
Can you guess who is he? Not yet !! Then wait for few more lines.
He sent me a copy of Ankur Bangla livecd, I installed Lekho in my box and started translating KDE (what I should start doing again, reguarly) .
So, that was how FOSS entered and won my life.
And the answer.
Linksys WRT54G, configured it with the default firmware. Now want to enable WPA for it.
I am using ndiswrapper for my card, so for connection I am giving:
#iwconfig wlan0 essid <essid>
Now the problem is if I enable WPA, how can I connect ?
#iwconfig wlan0 essid <essid> key <WhatshouldIwritehere?>
or anything else ??
So, at last started the new blog. Was planning this for the last few months but FOSS.NITC helped me to take the decision.
This time FOSS.NITC was really big with 40 speakers, 3 days full of FOSS activity. As pradeepto da went for his prize winning talk in only 3 hours, we all had enough fun.
Just like the last year, Amarjit is again Hero of FOSS.NITC.
Will upload the pics soon.
So, back in writing :) Many things happened in between. Horizon07 went well, after Rahul’s talk teachers of the college came to us to know more about Fedora :) Lawgon’s workshop also went well. You can find the pictures here. Also a small video of the event.
Update: the video is too bad, will ask someone else to edit that :(
