SKYPE 2.x on Linux:

After a lot of digging around, I hit on the brilliant idea of running skype from command line so that U can atleast get a look at the error messages-if there are any. Voila; it turned out that there was just one - could not open libasound_module_ctl_pulse.so

More digging to find out the package that it was present in gave me alsa-plugins-pulseaudio as the package that contains the file. Cool I thought-I downloaded it from rpmfind and tried to install it when it said that it is already installed :D OK Back to square 1. More digging and I found the solution-uninstall the very same package. Yes it did it. Just do a
yum remove alsa-plugins-pulseaudio and you should get skype 2 working cool with excellent audio and the video-ok I have not tested that. My friend whos webcam I was trying to see was having a bad connection and probably a bad cam. So cant really comment on that.

But in addition to removing alsa-plugins-pulseaudio, I installed alsa-plugins-oss and made my system->preferences->hardware->sound point to OSS devices. If you have trouble with just the above, then you could try doing this step in addition....good luck :)

http://www.computerjokes.net/
http://freespeech.sourceforge.net/FreeSpeech/html/
http://freshmeat.net/projects/vnstat/?branch_id=34903&release_id=266981

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=18393&page=1&pp=15 - folding - fedora team
http://www.howtoforge.com/ubuntu-linux-mint-livecd-with-remastersys - try the same kind of stuff for fedora with tamil enabled.

http://wallpaper.deviantart.com/

http://fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=174114&highlight=skype - skype on fc8 x86_64

http://www.skype.com/help/guides/soundsetup_linux.html - skype - replace alsa with oss - see if this helps

http://axxo-release.blogspot.com/
http://darksiderg.com/forums/
http://axxo.superfundo.org/

Fedoraforum.org: leigh's compiz fusion packages

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-linux-filesystem/?ca=dgr-btw01LinuxFileSystAnat&S_TACT=105AGX59&S_CMP=GR

http://www.aayisrecipes.com
http://vivakarasamayal.blogspot.com
http://bhagavathy.blogspot.com/
http://spicychilly.blogspot.com/

peazip

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CustomXSession
http://www.ziclix.com/jython/chipy20050113/slide-00.html
http://llama.med.harvard.edu/~fgibbons/VisAD_Tutorials.html

Fast scriptable Window Manager for Linux

Python based scriptable hack for xfce

Randy Pausch speech

Remote Access to Linux Install

http://docs.fedoraproject.org/install-guide/f7/en_US/sn-remoteaccess-installation.html

remote access to an installation system

Fedoraforum
Boot time command args:
-----------------------

expert Turns on special features:
- allows partitioning of removable media
- prompts for driver disk

noshell Do not put a shell on tty2 during install.

lowres Force GUI installer to run at 640x480.

resolution= Run installer in mode specified, '1024x768' for example.

nousb Do not load USB support (helps if install hangs
early sometimes).

nofb Do not load the VGA16 framebuffer required for doing
text-mode installation in some languages

nofirewire Do not load support for firewire devices

askmethod Do not automatically use the CD-ROM as the install
source if we detect a Red Hat Linux CD in your CD-ROM drive.

nousbstorage Do not load usbstorage module in loader. May help with
device ordering on SCSI systems.

noparport Do not attempt to load support for parallel ports

noprobe Do not attempt to detect hw, prompts user instead.

nopcmcia Ignore PCMCIA controller in system.

skipddc Skips DDC probe of monitor, may help if its handing system.

graphical Force graphical install. Required to have ftp/http use GUI.

text Force text mode install.

vnc Enable vnc-based installation. You will need to connect
to the machine using a vnc client application.

vncpassword= Enable a password for the vnc connection. This will
prevent someone from inadvertantly connecting to the
vnc-based installation.

Requires 'vnc' option to be specified as well.

vncconnect=[:] Once installation is up and running, connect to
the vnc client named , and optionally use port .

Requires 'vnc' option to be specified as well.

updates Prompt for floppy containing updates (bug fixes).

isa Prompt user for ISA devices configuration.

dd Use a driver disk.

driverdisk Same as 'dd'.

mediacheck Activates loader code to give user option of testing integrity
of install source (if an ISO-based method).

rescue Run rescue environment.

nomount Don't automatically mount any installed Linux partitions
in rescue mode.

nopass Don't pass keyboard/mouse info to stage 2 installer, good for
testing keyboard and mouse config screens in stage2 installer
during network installs.


serial Turns on serial console support.

ksdevice Takes an argument like 'eth0', tells install what network
device to use for kickstart from network.

ks Kickstart over NFS.

ks=cdrom: Kickstart from CDROM

ks=nfs: Kickstart from NFS.

ks= Kickstart via HTTP.

ks=hd: Kickstart via harddrive (dev = 'hda1', for example)

ks=file: Kickstart from a file (path = 'fd0/ks.cfg')

ks=ftp:// Kickstart from FTP.

ks=http:// Kickstart from HTTP.

kssendmac Adds HTTP headers to ks=http:// request that can be helpful
for provisioning systems. Includes MAC address of all nics in
a CGI environment variable of the form
HTTP_X_RHN_PROVISIONING_0, HTTP_X_RHN_PROVISIONING_1, etc, for
all nics.

dhcpclass= Sends a custom DHCP vendor class identifier. ISC's dhcpcd can
inspect this value using "option vendor-class-identifier".

upgradeany Don't require an /etc/redhat-release that matches the
expected syntax to upgrade.

lang= Language to use for the installation. This should be a
language which is valid to be used with the 'lang' kickstart
command.

keymap= Keyboard layout to use. Valid values are those which can be
used for the 'keyboard' kickstart command.

ip= IP to use for a network installation, use 'dhcp' for DHCP.

netmask= Netmask to use for a network installation.

gateway= Gateway to use for a network installation.

dns= Comma separated list of nameservers to use for a network
installation.

method=nfs: Use for an NFS installation.

method=http:// Use for an HTTP installation

method=ftp:// Use for an FTP installation

method=hd:/// Use on for a hard drive installation

method=cdrom Do a CDROM based installation.

vnc Do graphical installation via VNC. Instead of
starting a normal X server, vncserver will be started
and you can then connect remotely to do the
installation.

vncpassword= Set a password for the vnc session.

vncconnect=[:] Once installation is up and running, connect to
the vnc client named , and optionally, on port .
Requires 'vnc' option to be specified as well.



test
debug Start up pdb immediately
nofallback If GUI fails exit
rootpath= Where to install packages (default /mnt/sysimage)
pcic= Specify pcmcia controller
overhead= Override LVM overhead calculation
testpath=
mountfs
traceonly Don't run, just list modules we use
kickstart= Set serial install and kickstart file
kbdtype= Set the type of keyboard
module= Load additional kernel modules
class= Choose install class to use
autostep Make kickstart non-interactive
noselinux Disable Security Enhanced Linux
selinux Enable Security Enhanced Linux
vnc=
cmdline Use command line installer
headless Automate install for machines with no display
virtpconsole=
xfs Allows the creation of a xfs filesystem
reiserfs Allows the creation of a reiserfs filesystem
jfs Allows the creation of a jfs filesystem
syslogd

http://www.ntop.org/overview.html

something similar to top but for network traffic...interesting and useful.

kernel links

http://kernelnewbies.org/
http://janitor.kernelnewbies.org/
http://lwn.net/Kernel/LDD3/
http://lwn.net/Kernel/
http://kerneltrap.org/
http://kerneltraffic.org/

QOTD

Don't let nobody tell you what you cannot do;
don't let nobody tell you what's impossible for you;
don't let nobody tell you what you got to do,
or you'll never know ... what's on the other side of the rainbow...
remember, if you don't follow your dreams,
you'll never know what's on the other side of the rainbow...
-- melba moore, "the other side of the rainbow"

why we like linus

Moving Rocks

The world map bloated or squeezed out based on various statistics

Useful Coca-Cola

http://people.redhat.com/zcerza/dogtail/index.html - gui testing tool

Projects of the day

wsdlpull

wsdlpull is a C++ web services client library. It includes a WSDL Parser,a XSD Schema Parser and Validator and XML Parser and serializer and an API and command line tool for dynamic WSDL inspection and invocation.

wsdlpull comes with a generic web service client.Using wsdlpull's wsdl tool you can invoke most web services from command line without writing any code like this!!

Invoking the popular stock quotes web service and the currency exchange services

wsdl http://services.xmethods.net/soap/urn:xmethods-delayed-quotes.wsdl getQuote SYMBOL
wsdl http://www.xmethods.net/sd/2001/CurrencyExchangeService.wsdl getRate "United States" India
Get the local time in you city

wsdl http://www.nanonull.com/TimeService/TimeService.asmx?wsdl getCityTime Tokyo
Or a more complex google search whose wsdl is included in the test directory.Get the first 5 google search results for 'wsdlpull'

wsdl GoogleSearch.wsdl doGoogleSearch "****license-key****" wsdlpull 1 5 0 1 1 1 1 1

Get a dictionary/thesarus on your command line

wsdl http://services.aonaware.com/DictService/DictService.asmx?WSDL DefineInDict wn thesaurus
wsdl http://services.aonaware.com/DictService/DictService.asmx?WSDL DefineInDict moby-thes thesaurus

vlock

vlock is a program to lock one or more sessions on the Linux console. This is especially useful for Linux machines which have multiple users with access to the console. One user may lock his or her session(s) while still allowing other users to use the system on other virtual consoles. If desired, the entire console may be locked and virtual console can be switching disabled.


logapp

Logapp is a wrapper utility that helps supervise the execution of applications that produce heavy console output (e.g. make, CVS, and Subversion). It does this by logging, trimming, and coloring each line of the output before displaying it.

todays links

http://www.linuxinsider.com/rsstory/58471.html
http://immike.net/blog/2007/08/01/what-is-the-completely-fair-scheduler/
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/07/30/wvinci130.xml&CMP=ILC-mostviewedbox
http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS6760276000.html
http://www.inc.com/news/articles/200707/time.html