Just now knew that the IITM team is on vacation.
There is no one now to give the keys for the rooms.

Thanks for FSFTN for providing their office for our meeting.

Please note down the below address for tomorrow’s meeting:

Free Software Foundation TamilNadu.
36(old no. 24) Thanikachalam Road,
Flat No. 2, First Floor,
B Block,
Silver Park appartments,
T.Nagar,
Chennai 600017.
India

For further details about the meeting:

http://ilugc.in/content/ilugc-monthly-meet-may-11-2013/

Contacts :
Arun Prakash – 94 88 000 707 / 90 80 90 33 02
Welkin – 996 22 400 50
Shrinivasan – 98 41 79 54 68

ILUGC Monthly Meet (May 11 2013 )

* છેવટે¹, સમય આવી ગયો છે ‘ઇડલી-વડા, ફિલ્ટર કોફી’ અને આ બેંગ્લુરુને અલવિદા કહેવાનો! અને મુંબઇના ‘વડા-પાઉં’નો ટેસ્ટ કરવાનો! કોઇકે હમણાં પૂછ્યું હતું કે ‘ભાઇ, તારું ફાઇનલ ડેસ્ટિનેશન ક્યાં છે?’ મેં કહ્યું એતો પેલા ડિરેક્ટર-પ્રોડ્યુસરે² જે નક્કી કર્યું હોય તે. મને કંઇ ખબર નથી

મને ફિલ્ટર કોફી તો જબરી ‘મિસ’ થશે, કારણ કે હવે એ પ્રકારની કોફી દરરોજ મારે જાતે બનાવવી પડશે બીજી એક વસ્તુ દરરોજ મિસ થશે – બેંગ્લોરનું હવામાન. એમ તો મને મુંબઇની તાપમાન સેટ થયેલું જ છે, પણ બેંગ્લોરની સરખામણીમાં મુંબઇનું હવામાન ‘ક્વાડકોર પ્રોસેસર’ની સામે ‘પેન્ટિયમ ૪’ જેવું લાગે. રનિંગ પર પણ અસર થશે એવું લાગે છે, પણ ઘરની નજીકમાં નાનકડો જોગર્સ પાર્ક (અંકે પૂરા ૩૦૦ મીટરનો રસ્તો) છે એટલે વીક-એન્ડ સિવાયનું દોડવાનું સાચવી લેવાશે. વીક-એન્ડ રનિંગ માટે મુંબઇની રનિંગ કોમ્યુનિટી જોડે જોડાવું પડશે (અને પેલી NRC ની તપાસ કરવી પડશે). બેંગ્લોરની ટેક-કોમ્યુનિટી અને મિત્રો પણ મિસ થશે. મુંબઇ હજી IT વાળા માટે એટલું બધું ટેક-સેવી નથી, એટલે આજે નહી તો આવતી દસ સાલે, બેંગ્લુરુનો આંટો તો મારવો જ પડશે.

અને કઇ વસ્તુઓ ગુમાવવાનો મને અત્યંત આનંદ થશે?

૧. બેંગ્લોરની ઓપન ગટર્સ! જોકે મુંબઇમાંય છે, તોય ઘરથી દૂર છે. અહીં મારા બેંગ્લોરના વિસ્તારમાં દરેક રોડની પેરેલલ જાય છે! 

૨. બદમાશ  મહાબદમાશ રીક્ષાવાળાઓ.

૩. ક્ષણેક્ષણેવિજગમનઆગમનઘટનાઓ.

૪. ભંગાર લંચ (કર્ટસી, ઓફિસ).

૫. રવિવારે રાત્રે ડિનરમાં શું? એવો યક્ષપ્રશ્ન.

૬. બોરિંગ વીકએન્ડ્સ, રનિંગના કલાકો સિવાય!

ફાયદાઓ કેટલા થશે?

૧. મને ઘરનાં  શુધ્ધ-શાકાહારી-સાત્વિક બ્રેકફાસ્ટ-લંચ-ડિનર સાથે-સાથે કવિનની મસ્તીઓનું ડેઝર્ટ માણવા મળશે.

૨. વડાપાઉં, એમ.એમ.ની બૂંદી, ભેળ, મિલાપનું ફાસ્ટફૂડ (દા.ત. કાર્તિક )વગેરે વગેરે.

૩. લોકલ ટ્રેનની જવલ્લે જ થતી મુસાફરીઓ.

૪. મુંબઇ સમાચાર, અને કોઇપણ ગુજરાતી છાપું. પુસ્તકોની સરળતાથી પ્રાપ્તિ વગેરે.

૫. ચર્ચગેટ અને આપણાં ફેવરિટ મ.કા.બો. (મલાડ-કાંદિવલી-બોરીવલી)!

૬. અને, સૌથી અગત્યનું — વ્હાલી કોકી

તો આવજો ત્યારે. આવતી પોસ્ટમાં મુંબઇની કે મુંબઇથી અપડેટ લઇને મળીએ?

પગનોંધો

¹ એમ તો ટ્વિટર પર બે અઠવાડિયાં પહેલાં નાનકડી જાહેરાત કરેલી.

² તમે જેમાં માનતા હોવ તે, કુદરત, કિસ્મત, લક, નસીબ, તાવીજ કે પછી મિ. કાનજી.

Wrote a rather detail post about the new maps for Karnataka Learning Partnership on the geohackers.in blog.

The map is an important part of our project, action and process because it serves as the pivot point of navigation. I will quickly talk about the data and tools before we discuss the design aspects.

We have a fairly large dataset of schools in Karnataka. The name of the school, location, number of girls and boys etc. in a database. Fortunately, the data was clean and properly stored in a PostgreSQL database with PostGIS extensions. Most of my task was to modify the API to throw GeoJSON to the client using the ST_AsGeoJSON function and export the data.

read more…

It is already time for another year in dgplug summmer training . This will be sixth year of the training.

If you heard about this training before then you already know that I teach programming with help of Python. It will be even more intensive this year. More amount of code reading and more writing. Yes, we teach our students how to read code and learn from others.

The number of demo projects will also increase this year. We will make sure that the students work hard.

Two years back we did a bit of experiment in the training by letting students go slow, we stopped asking for regular reports and found most of the students just vanished during this 1-2 weeks of low sessions.

From last year we are back into more strict sessions and we keep the tab on missing students in every session. At the beginning of the training we get around 20-30 students in the IRC channel, but as the sessions progresses during first one month, many of those students start vanishing. In the end of 3 months, we generally get 2-5 students who become very active contributors in different upstream projects. As we do the sessions generally in Indian evening time, few sessions go very late, we even saw sessions continuing till 1am with a break for dinner. The students, who stay in the training after one month, don't mind staying up late for the sessions on IRC.

I don't mind the low number of active students during the end of the training as these people will serve FOSS world in various forms for sure.

We ask students to use any latest Linux distro, but I prefer if all of them are using the latest Fedora. Around two years back we asked them to install gcc and I gave the corresponding yum command, only one student came back saying it is not working, so after trying to debug his problem for some time we figured out that he did # apt-get install yum on a Ubuntu box and then tried to use yum as we told so. So now we ask the distribution and environment details first from every student.

During the training sessions we ask many upstream developers to spend 30-60 minutes in IRC channel and talk with the students, this really give them a moral boost. If you want to help us out please drop a mail or tweet, we will find some suitable time for your sessions in the training.

Before I use the latest rawhide kernel for a test, I had to ensure some specific patches made into it from KVM upstream GIT PULL request . This is how I tried:

Fetch the Rawhide Kernel SRPM

Install the rawhide SRPM:

 
# Move into SRPMS directory
$ cd ~/rpmbuild/SRPMS 

# Fetch the SRPM
$ wget http://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org//packages/kernel/3.10.0/0.rc0.git23.1.fc20/src/kernel-3.10.0-0.rc0.git23.1.fc20.src.rpm 

# Install the kernel SRPM
$ rpm -ivh kernel-3.10.0-0.rc0.git23.1.fc20.src.rpm 

First, simpler way

git-describe to the rescue: Each Fedora rawhide kernel changelog has the precise output of Linus’ tree (thanks jwb!). So, let’s run it on the upstream kernel tree.

 
# Clone Linus' tree (or traverse to its path if it already exists)
# git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git
$ cd linux 

# Run:
$ git describe
v3.9-11789-ge0fd9af

The above output can be understood as (from git-describe man page): The current head of the “parent” branch is based on v3.9, and is 11789 commits ahead of it; with a hash suffix ge0fd9af: where “-g” (stands for “git”), e0fd9af is the 7-character abbreviation for the tip commit (which was — e0fd9affeb64088eff407dfc98bbd3a5c17ea479)

Now, compare the above tag from the tag mentioned in changelog of Fedora Rawhide Kernel

$ rpm -q kernel --changelog | head -2 
* Thu May 09 2013 Josh Boyer  - 3.10.0-0.rc0.git23.1
- Linux v3.9-11789-ge0fd9af

Second, a more convoluted way to ensure a specific patch is in

Check upstream KVM tree, for the latest commit –
db6ae6158186a17165ef990bda2895ae7594b039

# Clone the upstream KVM git
$ git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/virt/kvm/kvm.git

# Traverse into its directory
$ cd kvm 

# Get the latest commit ID
$ git log tags/kvm-3.10-1 | head -1
db6ae6158186a17165ef990bda2895ae7594b039 

Now, get details the above commit. Its commit’s short description says: “kvm: Add compat_ioctl for device control API”

$  git log -p db6ae6158186a17165ef990bda2895ae7594b039 
.....
+       .compat_ioctl = kvm_device_ioctl, 

(that’s the first line of change)

Let’s grep for that string in our just installed kernel sources tree

$ cd ~/rpmbuild/SOURCES/ 

# Copy the patch file archive into a temp directory
$  cp patch-3.9-git23.xz /var/tmp/test/ 

# Extract & list it
$ unxz patch-3.9-git23.xz 
$ ls
patch-3.9-git23 

# grep for that specific line
$ grep ".compat_ioctl = kvm_device_ioctl" patch-3.9-git23 
+       .compat_ioctl = kvm_device_ioctl,

So, the above confirms that the patch (and the KVM GIT PULL request is contained in the koji rawhide build.

And the entire PULL request for KVM updates is merged with this commit ID – 01227a889ed56ae53aeebb9f93be9d54dd8b2de8.

Here is a new image for your armv7l powered phone or tablet(any recent dual core device should work), you can get openSUSE 12.3 XFCE running on it without the need for repartition, formats, bootloader hacks or sacrificing your nicely running latest android on it. What you need is rooted device with busybox, Android VNC and terminal app installed and 4GB free space on sdcard(internal or external).

Instructions to run it are same as mentioned earlier. In addition to those you can also use LinuxonAndroid app with patched bootscript.sh. Replace /data/data/com.zpwebsites.linuxonandroid/files/bootscript.sh on your device with the patched one and follow the directions shown here(last 3 images):

openSUSE on android

While it is not certain if Google is going to offer Android or ChromeOS for PCs, but Intel is already working on making the $200 Android PC to boost the sagging PC sales.

So far, the notebook market is dominated by two players, Windows and OS X, but there’s an operating system that could drop into this mix and be highly disruptive — Android.

There’s been a lot of discussion bouncing around the tech blogosphere about Intel’s plans to get all disruptive and start supporting Android on devices that will cost in the region of $200.

While Microsoft might not be happy about being sidelined by a company that was once one of its biggest supporters, this is exactly what the PC industry needs.

Think this is a huge leap? It isn’t. Some of Intel’s Atom processors are already compatible with Android 4.2 Jelly Bean.

Read More.

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openSUSE Education Team is proud to present Li-f-e (Linux for Education) 12.3-1, this first release is based on openSUSE 12.3 with all the official updates applied. Li-f-e incorporates latest stable versions of all popular desktop environments such as KDE, Gnome and Cinnamon, it includes wide range of softwares catering to the needs of everyone, selection from openSUSE Education repository, multimedia from the Packman repository, development tools, KIWI-LTSP allowing normal PC or diskless thin clients to network boot from a server running Li-f-e and lot more. To summarize, everything you need to make your computer useful is available right out of the box as soon as Li-f-e is installed on it.

Get it from here:Direct Download | Torrents | Metalinks | md5sum

As this edition is based on openSUSE 12.3, all the official 12.3 updates, repositories from build service and Packman can be used to install additional softwares and keep it up to date.

Minimum hardware requirement is 1GB of RAM and 15GB free disk space. Installation from USB stick will take about 40 minutes to complete, from a DVD it takes much longer. Check this howto for creating live USB stick on vfat partition or other GUI and terminal ways.

Here is the sampling of some of the softwares available on the iso. Complete list of packages with versions here.

This time, we also have an openSUSE Edu Li-f-e 12.3 64bit version in SUSE Studio – if you want to give it a try, just download the ISO image or log in and run the image via “Testdrive” in your local browser! (Please note that 64bit edition has not gone through rigorous QA.)

Test reports are always welcome – if you encounter any problems, feel free to contact us via any way mentioned in our wiki or write a bugreport.

Have a lot of fun…

Your openSUSE Education Team