The Open Source Journey

-->I started by trying it out on my Fedora 10, but moved on to ubuntu 9.04 after it showed the message "SCSI driver not found" and "cdrecord --scanbus " would not detect the CDROM RW device. -->Then i kept searching for module "ide_cd" in the output of "lsmod". and "insmod ide_cd" said no file named ide_cd exists.But none of these is required. --> In ubuntu cdrecord --scanbus showed my device as 3,0,0 and when i inserted a CD or DVD the output of cdrecord disappeared. The guiding light came from these 2 resources:- 1. /usr/share/doc/README.wodim.ATAPI.setup (in ubuntu) 2. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/CdDvd/Burning As mentioned in link 2, i detected /dev/dvrw2 and /dev/cdrw2 both linked to sr0. Now issued the command cdrecord speed =2 dev=/dev/cdrw2 path_to_iso the command failed showing device or resource busy. I issued "umount /dev/cdrw2" then again "cdrecord speed =2 dev=/dev/cdrw2 path_to_iso"

I heard this long ago from a colleague that Linux is the preferred OS because its free from virus. Never knew why is it free from virus's. This article just updated my knowledge on the subject. http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/198686/linux_trojan_raises_malware_concerns.html Here is the excerpt: 1. Linux makes up less than two percent of the overall OS market and isn't a target worth pursuing for attackers. 2. The way the Linux OS is written makes it harder to exploit a vulnerability, and that because its open source vulnerabilities are fixed in hours rather than months. 3. Linux is not impervious to attack. 4. Implement similar security controls and policies for Linux as you have in place for Windows systems and you can prevent being pwned by a backdoor Trojan. http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/195890/symantec_study_mischaracterizes_linux_spam.html says:- f you are a Linux administrator, make sure your systems do not have open mail relays available to

Our devices require a GPRS connection to the service provider(SP). Recently, we had a problem in which the connection to SP was lost after a certain period of time. So we had to reset the connection to the SP and resetting the connection takes a a few seconds which can be irritable to the customer. So we had to maintain the connection with the SP. Our CTO suggested that the devices number should be maintained in the APN routing table of the SP. Because the SP clears the table after some time to accomodate more incoming connection requests and clear out the ones which are inactive. So the solution was a "ping" to the SP every few minutes, so that the devices entry is maintained in the routing table of the APN. Now the device can connect to SP even after staying idle for the whole night!!