I  have been using Airtel Broadband connection to connect to Internet (OS: Kubuntu Hardy Heron ). Just to see, how my reliance mobile phone (don’t remember, but I guess  more than 2 years old) connect my laptop to internet, I tried.

It was much easier than expected, google helped in getting the phone number to dial and rest was easier done than said

Rather than buying the data cable from Reliance Infocom’s outlet, I bought it from some other shop. As far as i remember, the cost difference was more than Rs. 1000 and that meant, no support from Reliance !!!

Support from Reliance hardly matters as community is there

First step was to know the hardware device my mobile is detetected as, I already knew that it would be some /dev/tty<xyz>

tail -f /var/log/messages and plugged in my mobile… plugged in & out & in and out (loose connections in my mobile) and then saw a line
cdc_acm 5-1:1.0: ttyACM0: USB ACM device
this gave me information about my phone as mode:
/dev/ttyACM0

and then ran kppp as :

$kppp

Now to configure the connection:

Configure ->
a)
Accounts -> Add
Connection name: Reliance (identifier of the connection)
Phone number: #777
(didn’t change any of the following)
Authentication: PAP/CHAP
kept checked “store password”
Callback type: None

b)
Modems -> New
Modem name: LG_RD6130 (whatever you like)
Modem device: /dev/ttyACM0
(didn’t change any of the following)
Flow Control:  Hardware [CRTSCTS]
Line termination: CR
Connection speed: 921600

kept “Use lock file” as checked
Increased “modem time out ” to “70 sec”

Connect to: Reliance
Login ID:<phone number without any zero>
Password:<phone number without any zero>
Connect

and I was connected to internet with a pathetically low speed (that’s something expected)

Usual Scenario is to have a dual boot machine with Linux (some distro) and Windows (any version).

mount is used when one needs to have the Windows drive available, which looks like:

mount <what kind> <which one to mount> <where to mount>

e.g. to mount “ntfs” filesystem

mount –t ntfs /dev/sda1 /media/windows

/dev/sda1 is the partition having the ntfs type of filesystem on it and after the successful execution of this command, the contents of this partition will be available as the directory /media/windows in your linux OS.

In case the Linux and Windows OS are on two different physical hosts, one can still make the use of mount as:

mount -t cifs -o username=<windows username> //<ipaddress or hostname of Windows host>/<directory> <mount point>

e.g.
mount -t cifs -o username=vikas //192.168.1.1/myfolder /mnt/mywindowsfolder

and when prompted for password, one must provide the windows password.

For more on cifs : http://www.ubiqx.org/cifs/

In case one wants to peek into an ISO file (any linux distro you download, will be available as .iso file):

mount theISOfile /mnt/myfolder –o loop

and you will have your theISOfile available at /mnt/myfolder, although as a read only folder

-o loop associates theISOfile with one of the loop back devices /dev/loopX

For more on loop devices in Linux http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_device

For mounting, one needs to know

a) One has to be superuser on Linux for running mount command

b) Your kernel must know (which any recent version of kernel would know) the ntfs to mount the Windows (ntfs filesystem) drive

c) The folder on which the drive (or remote folder) is to be mounted, should already exist

d) In case of mounting a remote windows folder, the remote folder must be a shared one

e) –t <type> is optional but if it’s not provided while mounting a remote windows folder, it takes more time to mount  (don’t know the exact reason, why)

There is no dearth of editors in Linux; vim, nedit, emacs, kate, joe to name a few.

The one which is my default editor is vim. Cut/copy/paste/search are the commands I use besides writing the text

There are so many advanced features of vim that I feel I need to sit and explore the features and then use those features at least for a month, only for keeping them in my head (my memory is too volatile).

kate (If I am not wrong it’s kwrite in new avatar) is a good visual editor where u can have file browser on left (window pane), the file opened on right and the shell open in the bottom. One can even open multiple files at the same time in the different tabs, then there is auto complete feature. Too good an editor!!

It’s available as part of kdebase rpm on Red Hat.

And the last which I use (in particular for two features) is, nedit . The first feature is column select, just keep ctrl key pressed and you can select a column. Another feature which I like (or love) is learning and repeating the key strokes.

Macro -> Learn Keystrokes

and start typing. Now say, Finish Learn and your nedit remembers it.

Now to repeat same keystrokes (which the editor learnt, you might have forgotten) – Ctr+k.

I use this particular feature when I have hundreds of lines and I have to manually remove say first five words and last two words from each line.

I am scared of emacs, whenever I open it I feel I am lost on an island inhabited by cannibals so I just try to get out of it ASAP . May be some day, I’ll make friends with some of the cannibals, if not all .

My future plan, know vim a little more, be comfortable (remember, i said my memory is volatile) and share the knowledge with everybody. Let’s see, when that happens.

In the office environment, I have common Linux machine and personal Windows machine.

I always like to have my environment set in my own way, like colors everywhere. So, I just keep the following contents in my ~/.bashrc

alias c=clear
alias l=’ls -l’
alias grep=’grep –color=always’
alias s=’source ~vikas/.bashrc’
alias grep=’grep –color=always’
alias ls=’/bin/ls –color=tty’
alias rm=’rm -i’
alias cp=’cp -i’
alias mv=’mv -i’
alias j=’jobs -l’
alias vi=”/usr/bin/vim -u ~vikas/.vimrc”
alias vim=”/usr/bin/vim -u ~vikas/.vimrc”
export CSCOPE_EDITOR=vim

But, sometime I am working as root (and so is everybody logged at the same time). So I just keep

alias vik=’source ~vikas/.bashrc’

in the ~root/.bashrc

Every time I login as root, I just say

mylocalhost# vik

& my environment is set

/* My first blog, Hello world */

#include <stdio.h>

int main()

{

printf(“Hello world!\n”);

printf(“Welcome to my world!\n”);

return 0;

}