My employer (Sun Microsystems, Inc.) has announced another round of layoffs, which will eliminate as much as 18% of Sun’s workforce (around 6000 jobs), will save the company $700 million to $800 million. We have also announced the departure of the head of Software Group, Rich Green. With this we are restructuring the Software Group into Application Platform Software, Systems Platforms and Cloud Computing & Developer Platforms. The recession of world wide economy is putting enormous pressure on technology companies like us. We would hope that this downturn would end soon before causing irreversible damage to many companies. However I feel that we have just entered into the difficult stage of the slowdown and we will be seeing more challenges awaiting us.
Disclaimer: All the views expressed herein are mine. I am not talking for my employer, Sun Microsystems, Inc.
I have pre-ordered Apple iPhone 3G from my neighboring AT&T store last Sunday (Jul 20). I have done this as purchasing from the Apple Store wouldn’t let me to apply my FAN discounts on the plan. Applying it latter would reflect only after a couple of billing cycles. Also I don’t wanna get into the crazy line. I didn’t join the true Apple cult yet. I was just curious about the status of the pre-order and I checked the status online and found that the status query mechanism can be exploited to post automated queries. Here is a small ruby script that I wrote to check bulk statuses. This would also give you a clue on where you are in preorder line.
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On my OpenSolaris. What could be more exciting than this?
praveen@athena:~$ /opt/sfw/bin/emacs
Fatal error (11).Segmentation Fault (core dumped)
praveen@athena:~$ file core
core: ELF 32-bit LSB core file 80386 Version 1, from 'emacs'
praveen@athena:~$ gdb -c core /opt/sfw/bin/emacs
GNU gdb 6.3.50_2004-11-23-cvs
Copyright 2004 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are
welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions.
Type "show copying" to see the conditions.
There is absolutely no warranty for GDB. Type "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "i386-pc-solaris2.11"...(no debugging symbols found)
Core was generated by `/opt/sfw/bin/emacs'.
Program terminated with signal 11, Segmentation fault.
Reading symbols from /opt/sfw/lib/libXaw3d.so.5...(no debugging symbols found)...done.
Loaded symbols for /opt/sfw/lib/libXaw3d.so.5
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libXmu.so...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libXmu.so
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libXt.so.4...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libXt.so.4
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libSM.so.6...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libSM.so.6
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libICE.so.6...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libICE.so.6
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libXext.so.0...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libXext.so.0
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libtiff.so.3...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libtiff.so.3
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libjpeg.so.62...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libjpeg.so.62
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libpng12.so.0
Reading symbols from /lib/libz.so.1...done.
Loaded symbols for /lib/libz.so.1
Reading symbols from /lib/libm.so.2...done.
Loaded symbols for /lib/libm.so.2
Reading symbols from /opt/sfw/lib/libungif.so.4...done.
Loaded symbols for /opt/sfw/lib/libungif.so.4
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libXpm.so.4...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libXpm.so.4
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libX11.so...Segmentation Fault (core dumped)
praveen@athena:~$ file core
core: ELF 32-bit LSB core file 80386 Version 1, from 'gdb'
Since I started using Emacs, I started using the Control key more than I had used it before. That is when I started using my Caps Lock key as Control key. In the beginning, I swapped the Control key and the Caps Lock key. However while doing pair programming on my computer, my colleagues found this setup a bit unfriendly. So, I decided to give up my Caps Lock key and started using Caps Lock as an additional Control key. Under Linux, Gnome has an option to do this using the “Keyboard Preferences” application. However I was not able to find this option in OpenSolaris Gnome. So, I have to take the old xmodmap way of doing this. This works under Linux as well. I hope that this would work on all UNIX variants that uses xmodmap. But I haven’t verified it personally.
To make Caps Lock key as an additional Control key, add the following to .Xmodmap file in your home directory. This configuration is automatically applied when you restart your X (Gnome) session. For the first time, you can manually apply this by running xmodmap ~/.Xmodmap.
!
! Make Caps Lock as an additional Control.
!
remove Lock = Caps_Lock
add Control = Caps_Lock
Please note that ! is the commenting character for xmodmap files.
But if you want to retain the Caps Lock function and swap it back to Control key, add the following to your .Xmodmap file.
!
! Swap Caps Lock and Control.
!
remove Lock = Caps_Lock
remove Control = Control_L
keysym Control_L = Caps_Lock
keysym Caps_Lock = Control_L
add Lock = Caps_Lock
add Control = Control_L
The site of Regional Passport Office of Chennai has a page to inquire about the passport application case status. If you just enter the passport application file number, the status of the case is provided. The output has information about the full name of the applicant, passport number, date of birth and the date of delivery of the passport. Please note that the input that is needed to fetch this data is just the application file number. No other verification information needed. This is a serious privacy issue. You can’t let your passport number and date of birth to be seen by random people. On the worse side, one can write a script to go through a list of file numbers and collect a database of these valuable information.
If I am correct, when I used this facility in 2003, I had to enter the application file number and my date of birth to fetch the information about any case. This was providing some level of authentication before disclosing the information about a case. Maybe this feature was broken and nobody noticed it. I have sent a mail to the Regional Passport Officer about this issue. I hope that they fix this issue soon.
Lately I was encountering segmentation fault with one of our processes and found that it was not dumping core file even though we asked it by using appropriate ulimit setting. It was set-UIDed root. Then I discovered that the default behavior of set-UID, set-GID processes is not to dump core unless explicitly asked by prctl(2). In order to dump core, the following has to be done.
prctl( PR_SET_DUMPABLE, 1 );
I haven’t dealt a lot with set-UIDed processes. This was a valuable information to be leaned. Here is more information about this option.
PR_SET_DUMPABLE
(Since Linux 2.3.20) Set the state of the flag determining
whether core dumps are produced for this process upon delivery
of a signal whose default behavior is to produce a core dump.
(Normally this flag is set for a process by default, but it is
cleared when a set-user-ID or set-group-ID program is executed
and also by various system calls that manipulate process UIDs
and GIDs). In kernels up to and including 2.6.12, arg2 must be
either 0 (process is not dumpable) or 1 (process is dumpable).
Between kernels 2.6.13 and 2.6.17, the value 2 was also permit‐
ted, which caused any binary which normally would not be dumped
to be dumped readable by root only; for security reasons, this
feature has been removed. (See also the description of
/proc/sys/fs/suid_dumpable in proc(5).)
I have been using GNU Emacs for programming for nearly 9 years now. It is exciting to keep discovering new extensions to Emacs throughout. I have heard of Ange-FTP before that can be used for remote file editing using FTP. However, I have never tried remote file editing on a local Emacs session. In most of the scenarios, I was dealing with editing files on the remote machines by invoking Emacs locally on those machines. But this time, I felt that invoking GNU Emacs (22) on my tiny VPS would be an overkill. So, I decided to try out remote file editing from a local Emacs session.
Even though I knew that I can do this with AgneFTP, I didn’t really care to read the info about it as I don’t run FTP on my server. The first hit on Google when I searched about remote file editing on Emacs was TRAMP (Transparent Remote [file] Access, Multiple Protocol). I am using GNU Emacs 23 trunk snapshot. TRAMP is included by default in GNU Emacs 22+. Configuration of TRAMP was quite simple. I had to load the module and set the protocol for remote access. Just a two liner in my .emacs did the trick.
(require 'tramp)
(add-to-list 'tramp-default-method-alist '("praveen.kumar.net.in" "" "ssh"))The three entries for tramp-default-method-alist element are host, user and protocol. You can fill in the host, the user or both. Another interesting use of TRAMP is editing files as root on local machine. This can be quite handy as well. Take a look at TRAMP user guide for full configuration options. Once I added these lines, I was able to open /home/praveen/.bashrc on my server using the file name as /praveen.kumar.net.in:~/.bashrc in the normal find-file (C-x C-f) function. Happy remote editing!
I have been a highly inactive blogger these days. It doesn’t mean that I have too many things to take care of. For some reason, I felt that I lost interest in blogging for some time now. Every week I would have found at least a couple things to write about. I would also start a new post. However, I would end up canceling it after I had typed a few lines. Maybe I turned too lazy to write something. But not anymore! I decided to break the long period of inactivity.
As a part of the new start, I have just upgraded my journal to use Wordpress 2.5. I have also decided to throw away my old clumsy theme. I temporarily use the “Wordpress Classic” theme. I am planning to tweak the same theme to match my color preferences. I am also thinking if I should try modifying the “Wordpress Default” theme to use fluid width and use it. But I won’t be doing it before next weekend. I would reserve a couple of posts to talk about Wordpress 2.5 and my thoughts about Wordpress theming.
What it means is that you (looks like I have at least 10 regular readers of my blog still) would be seeing regular activities in my journal from now on. I am also curious to know about the ones who are subscribed to my feed. If you don’t mind, please leave me a comment. Thanks for your support, readers!
One of the major headaches that I had after moving to the US was due to the way my name was handled in various places. I am from Tamil Nadu in India. In Tamil Nadu, we don’t have an official concept of last name. Instead, we have a concept known as “Initial” where we use father name’s first letter in front of the name. My name is Praveen Kumar and my father’s name is Ravi Kumar. So, I was called “R Praveen Kumar”. However, when I applied for an Indian passport back in 2003, I was asked to expand my initials as my last name. So, my name has become “Praveen Kumar Ravi Kumar” where “Praveen Kumar” was the first name and “Ravi Kumar” was the last name. Needless to say, we don’t have a middle name concept.
After I moved to the US, when I applied for a Social Security Card in the Social Security Office, the officer made “Praveen/Kumar/Ravi Kumar” as my first, middle and last names respectively. Living in the US with a last name that has two parts clearly caused a lot of confusion for me in the past five months. Also, I didn’t prefer “Kumar” to repeat twice in my name. So, I decided that I would adopt “Praveen/Ravi/Kumar” as my first, middle and last name respectively. It was not a straight forward procedure.
I had to file a petition in one of the Supreme Courts of California for a name change. As a part of this process, I had to advertise “Order to show cause” notice in a local newspaper for four consecutive weeks and attend a court hearing. In the meantime, I also had to publish an advertisement back in the area of my permanent residence in India. The latter procedure is required for getting my Indian passport updated with my new name. All these procedures burnt around USD 500 out of my pocket. Finally, I was granted a “Decree showing Name Change” by Fremont Hall of Justice a couple of weeks back.
Once I received the order, I had to go to the Social Security Office to get a new Social Security Card showing my new name. After a week, I got my Driver’s license updated with my new name in the DMV office. Finally, I had to notify my financial institutions and other places about my name change. I also applied for a new Indian passport. It was really annoying to get all these done. But I love the simplicity in Praveen Ravi Kumar!
My darling,
I still remember the first night that I embraced you. It just started as an infactuation. Over time, I slowly developed a strong love towards you. In the past seven years, you have been throughout my life. You shared my success, sarrow, joy, tear, fear, celeberation, and what not with me. Slowly, you became an integral part of my life. At times, I felt that I can’t live without you. A lot of my friends didn’t like our relationship. My family wanted me to completly forget about you. I tried a couple of times to get away from you. But you have attracted me again towards you and I failed. This time, I am realizing that you are creating too much of pain to me. You damaged my health and breath. You spoiled my room and groom. You wasted my time and dime. You broke my heart and what not! Slowly you are dominating me. I feel that I lost my self-respect to you. I can’t take it anymore. So, I decided to ditch you once for all. Enough of association between us. I am not your man anymore. Now I am happy that I need not catch quick breaks to meet up with you. I am happy that I need not bother about annoying people on the elevator after I kiss you. I need not worry about the way I will carry the match or a lighter beyond the airport security check to light you. I need not be scared of long meetings without breaks. I need not care to figure out if a hotel or an airport allows smoking inside. I need not worry about taking the stairs. Now I am free from most of the pains that you imparted on me.
Adieu.
Praveen
Jul 14, 2007.
Update:
I was successfully able to withstand through the Hell week (first week after the quit). I got severe cravings sometimes during this week. However with the help of some alternative intake of nicotine, I was able to maintain my quit status. This time, I will do whatever it takes to maintain life time quit status. My advice for others who are trying to quit is to take the quit one day at a time.