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Intermittent downtime : Between bad bots and DDOS

Few days ago my site has been subjected to bad http crawling bot which caused my site to be slower than usual. It become worse when somebody took advantage of the situation and launch a Denial-of-Service attack to my website which effectively took my website down for few hours per-day until today.

Rest assured the culprits has been identified and has been dealt with, you can enjoy reading my blog again. I’ve made few modification to my sites so it is more resistant to this sort of problem the next time around.

I sincerely apologize to those who have been subjected to hours of waiting for my site to load (and viewing the dreaded Internal Server Error messages) for the past 3-4 days.

And for those who are wondering about Gutsy Gibbon update will be able to read them at my personal blog : http://please.name.my.

Have fun !

[tags]gutsy,gutsy gibbon,ubuntu,feisty,feisty fawn,ddos,downtime,dreamhost,bots,bad bots[/tags]

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Howto Send and Recieve files over Bluetooth with Ubuntu Linux

With advancement of wireless technology, bluetooth has become a de facto standard for transferring files (and synchronizing data) between mobile devices (PDA, smartphone) and personal computer.

In this post I’m going to show you how to send and receive files over bluetooth using obexftp and obexpushd package from OpenOBEX project.

Send files to mobile device
First install obexftp and obexpushd

sudo apt-get install obexftp obexpushd

Insert a bluetooth dongle and activate bluetooth on your mobile phone. Do a scan of nearby bluetooth device (your mobile phone) by executing :

obexftp -b

obexftp then will display the scan result on your screen, like this :

Scanning ...
Using  00:15:A0:53:6F:85   Nokia 6680
Browsing 00:15:A0:53:6F:85 ...
Channel: 10

Pick a file, and try sending it over bluetooth by executing :

obexftp -b 00:15:A0:53:6F:85 -p example.txt

obexftp will then send the file to your bluetooth device (address : 00:15:A0:53:6F:85 – taken from previous command). Make sure that you set the mobile device to accept the file.

How to receive files over bluetooth
Insert bluetooth dongle and turn it into discoverable mode

hciconfig hci0 piscan

Continue reading “Howto Send and Recieve files over Bluetooth with Ubuntu Linux”

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Ubuntu Mobile Edition running on Sony Ericsson P990i?

While Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded Edition isn’t quite ready yet, seems to me somebody tries to get creative by posting this video on Youtube.

[coolplayer width=”425″ height=”350″ autoplay=”0″ loop=”0″ charset=”utf-8″ download=”1″ mediatype=””]
Ubuntu on Sony Ericsson P990i
[/coolplayer]

Meanwhile, here’s the correct video that shows the current progress of Ubuntu Mobile and Embedded Edition UI.
Continue reading “Ubuntu Mobile Edition running on Sony Ericsson P990i?”

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Search Ubuntu related information and How to with UbuntuWire.com

I just found out from Brandon Holtsclaw’s blog that he started a project named UbuntuWire for the benefit of Ubuntu users.

UbuntuWire is a specialized Ubuntu search engine which can help you find information related to Ubuntu operating system quickly without having to wade through countless unrelated websites on the internet. The search engine is powered by by Google Custom search and only takes result from reliable/official Ubuntu websites.

Alternatively you could try Uboontu which performs the exact same functionality as UbuntuWire but with different UI presentation.

Hope that would help you shorten your work when you’re searching for Ubuntu related information.

[tags]ubuntu,debian.linux,opensource,open source,gutsy,gutsy gibbon,howto,guide[/tags]

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How to Burn and Normalize MP3 to Audio CD in Ubuntu Linux

The most usual (and popular!) way to create a “mixed-tape” Audio CD is to burn it from a collection of MP3 song taken of several sources.

However as these mp3 are ripped from several sources, there would be inconsistencies of the volume loudness which would create an annoyance if one had to readjust the CD player volume from song-to-song.

A “Normalization” process would automatically fixed the audio so that all song would have the same amount of volume, but sadly the default Serpentine Audio CD creator that comes with Ubuntu does not support normalization.

How to Normalize MP3 song
First of all open a terminal and install normalize-audio package :

sudo apt-get install normalize-audio

Then change directory to your mp3 collections to be burned and execute:

normalize-audio -m -v  *.mp3

normalize-audio will then compute the files level one-by-one and then will apply normalization on all mp3 files.

You can then use your favorite CD burner application (like Serpentine) to burn the normalized MP3 files to make an audio CD.

normalize-audio also supports ogg files for normalization.

Happy burning!

[tags]mp3,audiocd,burning,cd burn,audio cd,ogg,vorbis,opensource,open source,gutsy,gutsy gibbon,ubuntu[/tags]

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Track Amateur Radio Satellites with Gpredict in Ubuntu Linux

Amateur Radio Satellites or OSCARs are a series of satellites orbiting earth that uses Amateur Radio Frequency band to facilitate long range communication between earth base stations.

However these satellites are not in synchronous orbit with earth, meaning that their location changes over time when they orbits earth. A satellite would only cover certain areas in just under an hour!

GPredict Satellite Tracking Software
Fortunately, Linux users can track various types of satellite including OSCARs that orbits earth with GPredict. The software itself is easy to use, at most you just need to specify the coordinate of your base station on earth and select which satellite you want to track via GPredict.

GPredict will then will shows its tracking result on the screen along with the satellite footprint as a guidance for the users. GPredict also able to tell when a satellite come into view along with its ETA. This would help you prepare yourself for a QSO session using the satellite.

Heres a couple of screenshot of GPredict


GPredict is available for Linux,Mac OS, *BSD and Windows platform (experimental) from Groudstation’s project website.

Gpredict is also available straight from Ubuntu/Debian apt-get repository.

Some interesting reading from a guy who uses amateur radio satellites frequently to communicate – http://9w2cbl.blogspot.com

[tags]amateur, satellites, oscar, hamradio, ham, hobby, linux, open source,ubuntu,gutsy,gpredict,amateur radio[/tags]