Technical Blog of Senthil Raja

Installing Monodevelop in feisty

senthil — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 06:20:10 +0000

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/linux/installing-monodevelop-from-source-on-ubuntu/

I was trying to install monodevelop in feisty, and the above link explains how to install from source.

All the dev packages are needed before compiling mono source.

From RMS Page — Nice one

senthil — Fri, 18 Aug 2006 06:14:44 +0000

The following content was sent by Mohammad Riyaz, in ILUGC.

MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab in 1971. My hobbies include affection,
international folk dance, flying, cooking, physics, recorder, puns,
science fiction fandom, and programming; I magically get paid for doing
the last one. About a year ago i split up with the PDP-10 computer to
which i was married for ten years. We still love each other, but the
world is taking us in different directions. For the moment I still live
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, among our old memories. “Richard Stallman”
is just my mundane name; you can call me “rms”.

The words are from a great man “Richard Stallman”, pioneer of GNU projects.

The highlighted phrase ” I magically get paid for doing the last one” is notable. One user in ILUGC has commented as “Whether he is paid or not, he would still do programming.. because, programming is a hobby for geeks.”

aptly said…

Root password generated randomy in ubuntu.

senthil — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 14:37:01 +0000

When i installed ubuntu in my machine, ubuntu did not ask for any root password from me. It asked for a user name & password, which i gave during installation, and everything is finised.

When i ran synaptic package manager, the problem started as it asked for root password which i dont know. After some wierd search & breaking of my head, i finally found that my own user has all admin facilities and then changed the password for the root.

Later i came to know from an article that ubuntu generates its password randomly. Whether its a flaw or is it intended to be like that… i dont know..

Using RPM packages in Ubuntu.

senthil — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 05:18:30 +0000

Often, the packages that we get from magazine CD are in rpm format. While ubuntu is based on the debian Linux, and hence, it requires Debian package for installing. (.deb). What can we do with those rpm packages?

Now, a tool called “alien” comes to our rescue. After this alien is installed, we can convert the rpm package in to .deb package, to be installed in linux.

The best way to install alien is from either synaptic package manager or from apt-get tool in the command line. Because, there are lot of dependancies for alien, and i faced lot of difficulties in installing it from the download.

so, using apt-get, it can be installed from the following command.

# apt-get install alien

All the dependencey problem would be taken care of by apt-get installer.

How to convert the rpm package to debian package?

To convert the rpm package to debian package,

#sudo alien -d

the .deb package will be created in the current working directory.

Restoring Grub in Drapper Drake (ubuntu 6.06)

senthil — Wed, 02 Aug 2006 11:35:48 +0000

I was having three operating system in my machine in two hard disks, 1. winXP, fc3 & ubuntu 6.06. while XP & fedora is in Secondary Master(hdc), ubuntu was installed in secondary slave(hdd).

The problem is that ubuntu installed its own GRUB loader in the MBR (of hdc). Since my fedora is crashing often, i decided to re-install it again with minimal set of programs (Desktop edition). During re-installation, it failed to recognize ubuntu GRUB loader, and i chose to install a new grub of fedora, hoping that grub would detect all OS.

But, contrary to my expectation, grub failed miserably. Grub error came on booting.
I again booted in win2000 cd, and restored the MBR using the follwowing command.

C:\WINNT> FIXMBR

it restored windows partition and i was able to use it.

Then I searched in the NET and got to know that i can restore my ubuntu grub by the grub commands.

1. Just boot from Live CD. (choose safe mode, if normal boot up doesnt happen)

2.After bootup, run the following commands in terminal.

for starting grub

#sudo grub

to search for any existing partitions.

#find /vmlinuz

set the root partition for the grub.
#root (hd0,1)

Setup the grub. Chose the same harddisk for grub install, which you have used during installation.

# setup (hd0)
I got back all my partitions back and successfully restored my sytem.

Blogging my Technical Experience

senthil — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 10:04:59 +0000

After long time, i was again actively pursuing my technical knowledge. And now, i have decided to pen down my experiences in this blog. This blog is exclusively for my technical articles & thoughts and would not contain any other contents, like political etc.

The idea came across for two reasons.

1. I thougth, that whatever i do, it should be documented somewhere so that it would be useful for myself later, and also to others.

2. I came across a number of such technical blogs and found it very useful at some times. This has inspired me to have my own technical blog.

I have decided to blog only my technical experiences and if at all, i come across any other contents, i would blog it only on experimenting myself. This decision is because, i have to validate the authenticity of my content and also it drives me to learn more and more.

My only wish at present is that i should be able to blog consistently without any gaps, so that, i would be always updated in technology and also i would have contributed some contents on my part to the technological community, particularly the open source.

What are the fields that i would be working on?

I cant tell in advance, but, i have decided to include all those technical areas that interests me… right from a simple mechanical field to my software field, and from windows to my favourite open source. I will be involved mostly on open source related projects, and i would like to take it towards our next generation.