Xen on Debian 6.0 ( Squeeze)

I have had a quite a trouble installing Xen on Debian Squeeze, loads of mistakes and basically the problem was with my laptop, debian did n recognize any of my drivers, i would advise people to get the Debian Squeeze DVD ( 4.2 GB), its pretty good and gives you all the stuff you need.

Installing Debian is not a big deal , its similar to all other Linux operating systems.Once the installation set up your wired network, provided Debian recognizes your network card.

1. First step is to download the xen kernel and the related packages that are required for Xen.

apt-get install xen-hypervisor* xen*

(or)

apt-get install xen-hypervisor

2. Make sure you are having the latest packages installed along with the linux-headers.

apt-get update

3. Adding an entry to the grub menu so that debian recognizes it.

mv -i /etc/grub.d/10_linux /etc/grub.d/50_linux

4. Update the grub

update-grub

Thats it you must be up and running , restart your machine and you must be able to boot into your Xen kernel.

Ubuntu 10.10 + XEN = HELL

I would never recommend users to use Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick ) with XEN , its one hell of a process and mostly it ends up  as a failure, a safer bet would be Debian with Xen or the traditional Centos or Fedora with Xen.

Setting right your Windows boot loader after you have deleted the linux installation in your box!!

Well I have always had a difficulty correcting my grub after the linux installation has been removed, this howto tells you ways to get back your windows boot manager after your linux installation has been removed

Insert your recovery disc, in my case Windows 7, recovery.

Boot the disc and select command prompt in repair options , this option may vary , i have a HP laptop and i go into “Boot from disc ” in the first menu and then select ” Run checkup to detect problems”, and then select “Open command prompt”.

1. Run bootrec /nt60 c: /force /mbr

2. In laptops your manufacturer may provide a SYS partition where the MBR recides, in that case replace c: with SYS.

3. also try bootsect /nt60 c:/ if the former doesnt work.

BSNL limited connectivity problems ( SOLVED) !!

If you are also one among affected by “Limited Connectivity ” problems of BSNL broadband, this is a fix that worked for me today !!

Go to command prompt and check if u are able to ping to http://www.google.com , if yes then try resetting the router,else go to your router settings (for me its 192.168.1.1) username : admin pass: admin. Now select ” WAN”  from the left pane select the first option and select edit, now u ll go through  a series of menus under the one that has a username password check whether its username “ka44********”,this for chennai i dunno for the rest of the cities , this is nothing but ur username password that was given to u during installation of the broadband connection , now password would be “password” (i hope so), see if the service name is “dataone” now save the settings and reboot ur router ,your internet connection must now be working fine 🙂

BSNL DNS problems !! (slow lookups)

Today i had the worst day of my life trying to fix my crappy broadband connection,i tried all possible fixes and it never worked out for me. But interestingly though i learnt a couple of measures to go  through the naggy BSNL DNS servers.

You can change to open DNS server they provide high performance lookups than what BSNL DNS does, just go to your ethernet settings (i.e click on Open Network and Sharing and select “Change Adapter Settings” in that select your ethernet card or your wifi card which ever u may use (i prefer changing both) and select “properties” ,go to IPv4 settings and select properties now change your DNS addresses to

208.67.222.222

208.67.220.220

Now ur DNS will be automatically changed to the above addresses thereby providing better look ups.

Got my visa yipee !!!

Finally got my chinese visa , excited about the fact that i would be visiting China. My first paper presentation and its double delight for me in this regard. Two of my research papers have been selected at the International Conference on Computer Science and Information Technology (ICCSIT) scheduled to be held in Chengdu from June 10-12.

Linux Tweaks

HOW TO HACK ROOT PASSWORD

Root password in Linux can be easily changed rather hacked provided your computer is not secured by a Grub password, just edit the grub to include commands for single user mode and taata your password can be changed by just typing the “passwd” command.

This is a well known hacking technique but many people find it hard recovering their root account.

Just follow the following steps and your root password is reset within seconds

On an x86 system using GRUB, use the following steps to boot into single-user mode:

1. At the GRUB splash screen at boot time, press any key to enter the GRUB interactive menu.
2. Select Red Hat Enterprise Linux/CentOS with the version of the kernel that you wish to boot and type “e” to edit the line.
3. Go to the end of the line and type single or type 1 as a separate word (press the Spacebar and then type single). Press Enter to exit edit mode.
4. Now boot into the changed kernel (temporary) by pressing the “b” button.
5. The feature is available in all flavours of linux with minor differences.

However this change is temporary.

HybridFox

HybridFox is a wonderful tool to work with, you can manage instances and it serves handy in viewing the status of your cloud at any instant of time.It provides a user friendly interface as well as well as convenient interfaces.

You can get HybridFox from the following link

http://code.google.com/p/hybridfox/

One can manage Images,Instances,Security Groups,Elastic IPs,Volumes,Security Groups etc…

For HybridFox tutorial follow this link :

http://architects.dzone.com/news/hybridfox-elasticfox

Creating Images using Eucalyptus (CentOS)

I would prefer people using HybridFox plugin in Mozilla Firefox for managing instances and images in Eucalyptus.

You can get it from this link

http://code.google.com/p/hybridfox/

Jus open this file using Firefox in “Open with” option while you right click on the file (.xpi).

This is a simple tutorial which doesnt cover EBS.Get your credentials from your cloud admin or generate a new key pair from the Euca Web Interface.

SCP your key

Syntax: scp -i yourkey.private euca2-xxxxxxx-x509.zip root@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:/mnt

Get an instance of the existing image running on one of the Node controllers.

Install rsync from yum repo

yum install rsync unzip

Unzip your credentials to /mnt,or which ever file system that has enough disk space.

unzip euca2-admin-x509.zip -d euca/

Source your scripts

. /mnt/euca/eucarc

Install Euca2ools

http://open.eucalyptus.com/wiki/Euca2oolsCentosInstall_v1.1

Bundle your image

euca-bundle-vol -c ${EC2_CERT} -k ${EC2_PRIVATE_KEY} -u ${EC2_USER_ID} --ec2cert ${EUCALYPTUS_CERT} --no-inherit --kernel eki-KKKKKKKK --ramdisk eri-RRRRRRRR -d /mnt -r ARCH -p NEW_IMAGE_NAME -s SIZE_IN_MBs -e /mnt,/root/.ssh,OTHER_DIRS_TO_EXCLUDE

where

eki-KKKKKKKK -> same as with running instance
eri-RRRRRRRR -> same as with running instance

Upload the Bundle

euca-upload-bundle -b BUCKET_NAME -m /mnt/NEW_IMAGE_NAME.manifest.xml

Synchronize your time (if error occurs )

yum install -y ntp
ntpdate pool.ntp.org

Register the bundle

euca-register BUCKET_NAME/NEW_IMAGE_NAME.manifest.xml

My Resume

This is my resume , consists of my personal info,my career interests and my technical and academic achievements !!