Ashwin
(10 comments, 42 posts)
This user hasn't shared any profile information
Home page: http://ashwinsaxena.com/blog
Jabber/GTalk: quizmasterashwin
Posts by Ashwin
Build your own Linux distro
0After installing a Linux distro (distro is short for distribution), all of us spend hours customizing it. Wouldn’t it be cool to be able to customize our distro even before we download the ISO. It’d sure save time and bandwidth, if we are going to install the same on multiple machines.
Enters 
. SuseStudio enables you to customize and preconfigure your own SUSE Linux distro, from your choice of wallpapers to the packages you want installed. You can even upload your own RPMs. You can then build the customized distro to deploy it to cloud or download a LiveCD/Installation disc.
Here’s how to build your own Linux in just 3 steps.
Step 1: Head to SuseStudio. Sign In / Create an account.
You can use your Google, Facebook, OpenID, Yahoo or Twitter account to login. It’s completely secured.
Select a Display Name, Email ID and User Type. This step is pretty much straight forward.
Step 2: Choose a base template, architecture and name our appliance.
At the time of this writing there are three base templates. Base templates are basic Linux OS images which we will customize. The three available are:
- openSUSE 12.3
- SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 SP2
- SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 SP4
Each in 32bit/64bit variant and for Desktop/Server.
We can also name our custom build here.
For purpose of this tutorial, I selected openSUSE 12.3, KDE4 image, 32bit and named it “ashwinsaxena.com SUSE”. It will be used in the boot screen, and in several other places. .
It is nothing but Base system + KDE4 which is a popular window manager.
Click “Create Appliance”.
Step 3: Customize distro:
As you can see we have different tabs to customize our distro.
Start:
On the tab we can change the name of our custom appliance.
Software :
As of now, our custom Linux is pretty much bare-bone. In this page we can add packages to be included.
We can also add repositories and RPM packages here. A Linux software repository is a storage location from which software packages may be retrieved and installed on a computer and in this particular case, included in our customized distro.
Another option is to search individual packages and add/remove them.
Configuration :
On this page we can preconfigure locale, timezone, network and firewall settings, create users, change appliance logos and backgrounds, configure startup items, etc. Virtually every major aspect of distro can be customized.
Files:
Files tab allows you to uplaod single files / archives.
- Single files will be copied to the specified directory.
- Archives (.tar, .tar.gz, .tar.bz2, .tgz, or .zip) will be extracted into the directory specified. Permissions and hierarchy will be preserved. Using archives is a great way to add many files at one time.
Files can be either uploaded from local computer or retrieved from a web URL (such as a files direct link from your Dropbox).
Build :
On build tab you can generate your customized distro and download it in one of the given format. Available formats are:
Physical media formats
USB stick/hard disk image Dump this format on your USB stick or hard disk using dd command (on Linux) and boot from it.
Live CD/DVD (.iso) Use this format if you want to burn your appliance on CD or DVD.
Preload ISO (.iso) and Preload USB stick image Installation discs. No live environment.
Virtual formats
VMware / VirtualBox / KVM (.vmdk)
OVF virtual machine (.ovf) Open Virtualization Format (OVF) is an open, standards-based format for virtual machines. A variety of hypervisors, including SUSE Cloud, VirtualBox, VMware ESX, IBM SmartCloud, and Oracle VM, support creating virtual machines by importing an .ovf file.
Xen guest Use this format if you want to run your appliance on a Xen host system, such as SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.
Hyper-V (.vhd) This format allows seamless integration with Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualization, available in Windows Server. Your appliance will include all the necessary drivers to integrate with the Hyper-V management console and provide optimum performance. A Hyper-V-enabled Microsoft Windows Server is required to run this format.
Cloud formats
Amazon EC2 image If you plan to use Amazon Web Services to host your server, this format will properly configure the appliance for you do to so. Link your AWS credentials to your Studio account, and you will be able to upload and launch EC2 instances directly from SUSE Studio.
Azure Image Windows Azure is another option for hosting your appliances. The Azure Image format will do the hard work for you, building a .vhd file tailored for hosting on Microsoft’s Windows Azure service. Upload your Azure publish settings file to your Studio account, and you will be able to create images on Windows Azure, then jump over to the management portal to instantiate and manage your virtual machines.
Share:
Share tab allows you to share your custom distro with other SuseStudio.com users.
_________________________________________________
That’s it. You’ve just customized your own SUSE Linux even before downloading and all it took was 15 minutes at best. It’s now ready to be deployed wherever you want.
If you liked this simple tutorial please leave a comment or subscribe to blog’s feed.
Freedom of speech and How we are destroying ourselves
0In a democracy where we have freedom of speech, anybody can come from anywhere-anytime and hurt your feelings and when in jeopardy can run away to another country. From Ashish Nandi to Kamal Haasan, everybody is playing with our sentiments. Does freedom of speech imply you can speak against anybody? Criticize anybody? Does it?
Yes, it does.
If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.- Noam Chomsky
If we only wanted to praise each other, speak only what others wanted to hear, only say honeyed words, then freedom of speech was enough. It’s a basic human right in constitution because that when need arises we can speak against each other. Harsh – bitter truth. When a group is hurt, there are laws to protect them. Still this basic right is getting poisoned every day. Laws which were made to protect it are destroying it.
Wednesday when people in Delhi were singing ‘Vaishnav Jan’, in Chennai there was 2nd ban on movie Vishwaroopam. In Kolkata, Salman Rushdi was banned from ever coming there. In a free country we are limiting our own freedom.
In name of law and order, governments are making a joke of laws. Twenty people can get together and make violent threats, and our government instead of taking these violent people in custody, tells one person to STFU – “Hey, you have to stop, it’s hurting emotions of others”. Like emotions are Ashish Nehra, getting wounded now and then.
To become self-aware, people must be allowed to hear a plurality of opinions and then make up their own minds. They must be allowed to say, write and publish whatever they want. Freedom of expression is the most basic, but fundamental, right. Without it, human beings are reduced to automatons. – Ma Jian
Political psychologist Ashis Nandi was participating in a debate in Jaipur. In support of scheduled and backward caste people he used few inappropriate words and it destroyed his credibility. Since decades the people he was supporting came against him instantly. His words were wrong, all right, but a case against him? Non bailable? Isn’t that too much? Defeating him in debate would have sufficed; there was no need to drag the matter in court.
Gandhi said, “Don’t watch bad, don’t listen bad and don’t speak bad.” He didn’t say ban it altogether. Suppose Nandi IS racist, if there were no freedom of speech, how could you’ve known it? How could’ve you found out that President’s son Abhijeet thinks of the girls fighting for their safety as dented-painted? If there is a sword of threats, violence and arrests hanging on their heads every time, these people will always sweet-talk and will never reveal their true mentality.
It feels like only politicians have freedom of speech. Thakarey spoke whatever shit that came to his mind about North-Indians and Muslims. Just recently one after another politicians buried their shame and spoke against women like they have PhD in women psychology. “Tilak, Taraju aur Talwar, inko maaro jute char” was a political slogan, still no case was file against whoever who came up with this. In rape cases police takes months to prepare case but against a writer or speaker, it takes few days at best. A quick action is taken too.
Even we don’t care about our basic right. We too pretend that our real-fake volatile emotions gets hurt just because some people say so. Our emotions are everything; others’ are nothing- fake. When people resort to violence in name of Islam, why do they fail to understand that it’s tainting the name of Islam? Where does feelings s go when people murder in name of Ram?
Freedom of expression is the matrix, the indispensable condition, of nearly every other form of freedom. – Benjamin Cardozo
The stone’s answer is stone. If iron cuts iron why can’t be words suppressed by words. Why should violence come into picture? Freedom of speech is the foundation of every other basic human right. If this went down, it will destroy any democracy. By demanding a ban on small things we are hollowing this foundation, inch by inch. It’s so slow that we don’t even realize that the structure is in any danger, but when this structure of democracy falls, then it will truely hurt us.
Use your browser as a text-pad
0
Do you find yourself repeatedly opening notepad/gedit/leafpad instances to write down some text while surfing? Here’s a quick trick by which you can use your browser as a textpad. Just press CTRL+T (or open a new tab) and type the following in URL BAR and hit enter :
data:text/html, <body contenteditable>
You have a quick textpad ready in view area to jot down/paste anything you want.
Remembering that is too much? You can make it your bookmark.
Here’s how to do it in firefox :
1.) Go to Firefox > Options and make sure Bookmarks Toolbar is checked.
2.) Right click on your bookmarks toolbar and click New Bookmark.
3.) Name this new bookmark – TEXTPAD.
4.) In Location field type – data:text/html, <body contenteditable>
5.) Click Add.
That’s it. Just whenever you need a textpad, open a new tab and click this bookmark you just created.
You can even change the appearance of text in this browser’s textpad using body element’s attributes. For example :
data:text/html, <body contenteditable style=”font-size:3rem;color:red;line-height:1.5;max-width:70rem;margin:0 auto;padding:3rem;”>
Death of Peter Parker :The dawn of Superior Spiderman
1This post contains spoilers, so if haven’t read The Amazing Spider-Man issue #700 yet, do not read. If you don’t care, sure enjoy reading my rant.
I’ve been a spiderman fan for so long and to the point where people started calling me Spider-Man. Comic books, collectibles, T-Shirts, I’ve done them all. I read every The Amazing-Spiderman issue out there. Till yesterday all 699 (and a few x.pointers too) of them. And today I picked issue #700.I thought I’ve seen everything Spiderman could do, basically what writers can make him do. But this time writer Dan Slott did something I never expected any writer to do. He killed Peter Parker.
I am still in a state of shock.
For those reading Spiderman (and those not reading spiderman but reading this article to find out what the whole deal with Peter Parker dead is), in recent issues #696 onwards, Doc Ock (Doctor Octopus, 2nd movie’s villain, guy with 4 metallic arms, remember?) on his deathbed, plays his last trick. He swaps his mind with Peter Parker a.k.a Spiderman and retains Spiderman’s memories. Now Peter Parker in a dying body of Otto Octavius (he also has his own memories as well as Doc Ock’s) must find Peter Parker’s body (which has Otto Octavius’ mind) and switch back. Catch? He’s dying and has few hours to live.
So Peter (in Doc Ock’s body), gets help from Hydro, The Tinkerer and Scorpion (since nobody else knows about body-swap).
The final showdown happens in Avenger’s Tower where Octavius (in Spiderman/ Peter’s body) has collected all Peter Parker’s family and friends. They fight each other, in a last ditch effort Peter (in Doc Ock’s body) throws himself and Doc Ock (In Spiderman / Peter’s body) out of the top floor window. Dock Ock (in Peter/Spiderman’s body) saves himself. Doc Ock/Peter still tries to mind-swap but couldn’t succeed. The real Doc Ock (Spiderman now) has iron-shield mask protecting his head. So instead, Peter projects his memories in Doc Ock’s brain. Letting him experience the pain he endured all his life, the happy moments, the reason of it all. That with great power, must come great responsibility. And finally Dock Ock understands. Peter Parker (in Doc Ock’s body) dies in the hands of Dock Ock (who’s now Peter Parker/Spiderman).
That wasn’t very confusing was it?
See the selected panels to get a feel :
So here we have it my friends. Peter Parker is dead. Doc Ock (in Peter Parker’/ Spidermans body) is the new (and hopefully good) Spiderman.
This right here is a dawn of a new Saga. 700 issues, hundreds of Spiderman stories told and we have a clean slate now.
What will happen? Even though Doc Ock has Peter parker’s memories, he doesn’t have our friendly neighborhood Spiderman’s moral compass. He may have Brain far superior than Peter Parker but will that be enough? This new Spiderman’s brain holds memories of two people now. Will that cause psychological issues. I’d sure like to see that.
In the end, this was a bold move by Marvel. I hope they have something kickass to deliver and this Superiour Spiderman proves to be Superior.
In other news (which now I realize is old now), 14-october-2012 was declared by New York’s mayor as NYC Spiderman Day. yay!
P.S. : RIP Peter Parker. You will be missed.