Installing broadcom drivers for your wireless on your Dell E6500 laptop for CentOS 5.5)
——
yum install kernel-headers kernel-devel gcc
mkdir -p /usr/local/src/hybrid-wl
cd /usr/local/src/hybrid-wl/
wget http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_sta/hybrid-portsrc-x86_32-v5.60.48.36.tar.gz
tar xvfz /root/Desktop/hybrid-portsrc-x86_32-v5.60.48.36.tar.gz
chmod -R 777 *
make -C /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build/ M=`pwd`
(there will be errors and most likely with typdefs.h)
vi typdefs.h
(bool definition comment out // typedef unsigned char bool //)
make -C /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build/ M=`pwd`
works fine with wl.ko created else yum update kernel-devel kernel-headers kernel
strip --strip-debug wl.ko
rmmod bcm43xx
rmmod b43
rmmod b43legacy
rmmod ndiswrapper
modprobe wl.ko
modprobe wl
insmod wl.ko
cp -vi /usr/local/src/hybrid-wl/wl.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/extra/
depmod $(uname -r)
vi /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
(blacklist the previous existing and future broadcom drivers as well as ndiswrapper if you have ever tried to use the exisitng windows drivers)
add the following lines
#bcm drivers blacklist
blacklist bcm43xx
blacklist ndiswrapper
blacklist b43
blacklist b43legacy
vi /etc/modprobe.conf
add the following line
alias eth1 wl
vi /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf.dist
(add the following lines)
alias ieee80211_crypt_tkip_ieee80211_crypt_tkip
alias eth1 wl
Then
iwlist eth1 scanning
iwconfig eth1 essid <> key <
(for testing purposes… all possibilities this won’t work… jump to next step)
vi /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
(add the following lines)
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
ctrl_interface_group=wheel
network={
ssid="<>"
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
psk="< >"
}

vi /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfgeth1
(add or replace or insert as and when required change HWADDR and ESSID)

# Please read /usr/share/doc/initscripts-*/sysconfig.txt
# for the documentation of these parameters.
TYPE=Wireless
DEVICE=eth1
HWADDR=
NETMASK=
DHCP_HOSTNAME=
IPADDR=
BONDING_OPTS=
DOMAIN=
MASTER=
TYPE=Wireless
USERCTL=yes
IPV6INIT=no
PEERDNS=yes
ESSID=<>
CHANNEL=
MODE=Any
SECURITYMODE=
RATE=auto
shoot the following for the last steps
ifconfig eth0 down
iwconfig eth1 mode managed
You can also put the above in /etc/rc.local to take effect on restart
wpa_supplicant -B -dd -ieth1 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
dhclient eth1

Install RPMForge repository

yum -y install pam_keyring
/etc/pam.d/gdm
auth optional pam_keyring.so try_first_pass
session optional pam_keyring.so
example
#%PAM-1.0
auth required pam_env.so
auth optional pam_keyring.so try_first_pass <---
auth include system-auth
account required pam_nologin.so
account include system-auth
password include system-auth
session optional pam_keyinit.so force revoke
session include system-auth
session required pam_loginuid.so
session optional pam_console.so
session optional pam_keyring.so <---

yum -y install gnome-keyring-manager gnome-keyring pam_keyring

reboot

Please note that memory allocation cannot be greater than 3072 MB for 32 bit images.

Please remember to request for a static IP.

For static IP, hostname and nslookup to work, please edit the /etc/resolv.conf, /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ethx, /etc/hosts and /etc/sysconfig/network properly and request to add the correct entries in the local DNS

For expanding the filesystem use

fdisk /dev/sda then
+ ‘n’ for new partition
+ ‘p’ for primary partition
+ ’3′ for the 3rd partition assuming there are already 2 partitions existing (use all default values for first and last cylinder)
+ ‘t’ for partition type
+ ’3′ on the newly created 3rd partition assuming there are already 2 partitions existing
+ ’8e’ for Hex code for changing the system type of partition 3 to 8e (Linux LVM) assuming ur using Linux (CentOS, Fedora, Ubuntu etc..)
+ ‘w’ for writing the new partition and syncing disks.
reboot
pvcreate /dev/sda3 for creating the new physical volume using the new partition info.
vgextend VolGroup00 /dev/sda3 for adding the physical volume to the logical volume
vgdisplay for obtaining the new Free PE Size
lvextend -L +<> /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 for extending the Logical Volume to use up the free PE Size
resize2fs /dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 for extending the filesystem.
df -h to view the new filesystem

Making VMware Server 2.x work with centos
CentOS has a bug 000384 (external link) where CentOS 5.4 glibc causes crash of VMWare vmware-hostd process in VMWare 2.0.0 and 2.0.1
The workaround is to get glibc 2.5-34 for both i386 and x86-64(if 64 bit) along with glibc-common-2.5-34 from 5.3 Centos vault x86-64 (external link) or from the 32 bit 5.3 vault (if only 32 bit) and use
rpm -i glibc-2.5-34* --force --nodeps
If required remove VMware-server and install it again
rpm -e VMware-server
rpm -i VMware-server*
Exclude glibc from CentOS-5.4 in the yum.conf file if you are upgrading a 5.4 machine
Making 64 bit VMs work on 64bit OS
One needs to turn on VT or Virtualization (provided it is supported) in the BIOS of the 64bit host machine. Using a 64bit VM is advantageous besides other architectural considerations in the fact that onecan allocate more than 3072 GB of memory and the VM can take advantage of the Hosts’s multiple processors.
Snapshots and VMware
In the VMware server one cannot increase the capacity of a SCSI disk for an image with snapshots. One needs to manage the snapshots locally using VMworkstation

The single menace of the growth in ultra leftist ideology in the Indian sub-continent bears an eerie resemblance to the growth and fall of the erstwhile Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. India, one of the most heterogenous and free countries of the world may not be the ideal hotbed for establishing a single minded ultra radical leftist state, nevertheless the callousness and lack of governance resulting from the disparate ideals, politics, demography, ethinicity and education makes it a prime candidate for “survival of the fittest” albeit in the context of communities. “Higher”er the social “stress”, more prone is the community to radicalism and in my home country stressed societies are not a rarity. The peasantry ignored, mindless capitalism and a single minded insane race for money has perverted the social psyche of the walled urbanity that the cities have started denying the existence of the “real” India, my country of poor people, is now a country of the once promised. The Maoists are living in a strange paradox, opposing development on the one hand but drawing oxygen from the development dissatisfaction of the local people. They plan to overthrow the goverment by 2060 and god save us all from the aftermath. Reminds me of Ghosh‘s chilling depiction of the Khmer Rouge in perhaps one of the greatest political documentaries penned in this new century. I for once do not want to be a Dith Pran in my beloved country.

[wave id="googlewave.com!w+PW5iyhfsI"]

Beautiful animation by Rajesh Chakraborty.. It is Puja time…

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMUvf9GKlMM

I really like feedly, a firefox plugin which is a nice wrap on the staid google reader interface. Feedly borrows some nice ideas from stumbleupon and tries to build a recommendation engine for google reader fanatics. It also provides the karma of ones tweets, tracks (quite effectively) ‘clicks’ on one’s shared tweets from various clients. The reco engine needs some tweaking since it “browses” the “reader” “feed” articles rather than performing a contextual browse. The GUI is super cool and i think it is jQuery based though i might be wrong. Feedly in it’s new avatar (it has undergone a slow and meticulous transformation from the experimental first days) is the brain child of Edwin Khodabakchian, whose team gave the world the best of the breed BPEL engine from collaxa and now the flagship product of Oracle Fusion middleware / SOA Suite.

Tweetdeck is well known as THE twitter client but does not install neatly on linux ( i use the Fedora 11) other than by root since it installs in opt and there is no way one can change that. The best feature of tweetdeck that i like is the tweet translate specially if your Dutch knowledge is as dark as the “nacht” .

Fedora 11 is cool cool stable distro but if you want to really use skype please install on windows (if your grub still works).
Skype “locks” the Default device / Pulse and you just cannot listen to youtube and receive a call together on linux.
The inherent mic issue can be solved by
modprobe snd-mixer-oss
modprobe snd-pcm-oss
and then If the audio out is crackling, add the following two lines to /etc/pulse/daemon.conf:
default-fragments = 20
default-fragment-size-msec = 5

It is always advisable to restart pulseaudio after the changes via
pulseaudio --kill
pulseaudio --daemonize