One more week gone where i had to do graveyard shift which was fun. From this week onward i have started cooking food oops only breakfast..and its fun.You can experiment with cooking and if you mess it up than you only have to eat it. So enjoying this experience of experimenting with the food.

Crazy person of the week has to be my next door neighbor.I was in his room and one thing that caught my eye  was a paper that he has put on his kitchen door which happens to be located next to his gas. In that paper he has mentioned the step of cooking few dishes .All the steps are written in there.When i saw it i said to be that i have to take a picture of it and will post that in one of my networking account. But i also liked the idea of putting the paper.

Last week happened to be the birthday of Father of the nation. The great man believed in the principal of non violence and politeness but do we follow it is the big question. Today we live in the fast world where, people have forgotten how to be polite to other. I always believed in a a saying ” A smile can do wonders” but now i am having second thought about it as the place i am living in now a days don’t understand that which is quite unfortunate. I can’t be rude to other thats not in  my nature and because of which i have suffered a lot. But i have made a promise to myself that i wont change it.

After lot of consideration i have decided to join guitar classes and i am still in process of finding a instructor. But on the positive note i have learned how to play sa re ga ma… on my guitar thanks to the non stop effort of my neighbor who taught me that.

As promised i have will blog once a week and here i am writing my blog after doing night out. Its been more than 15 hours that i am awake and i am still going strong. I kinda like the idea of working in the night as it fun as your mind starts to work fast when no body is around to bug you or disturb you.  Although  people says it very difficult to work in graveyard shift because you feel sleepy but i liked it as i didn’t  feel sleepy and i was able to concentrate and was able to find the solution for the problem that was disturbing for more than two weeks.

Last week i took a small step in fulfilling one of my dreams , always wanted to learn how to play . Finally i bought a guitar for myself which was a on my to do list for more than one year.Every month i used to think i will buy guitar but somehow i used to get in a situation that made me postpone it but last week i just did it. Now next question in my mind is whether i should join classes or should i do learn it on my own,( Having worked in the computer field for 4 years now my mindset is that i should do it on my own) but i have been taking lot of people opinion on that and most of people suggested that i should join some institute to learn basis after that it all about the passion. Still deciding on as to what will be my next course of action. More on this as i join some classes.

On last blog i posted about the two software engineer and how crazy they were.In this blog i will post about one of my old office mate and he craziness about going on trekking. Last week i had lot of interaction with him where i came to know he is part of a group who like to go trekking on every weekend. He was part of group which no body was aware and last week only they made that group public. Wow. I always plan for a weekend but it will always land up as a plan only. I always wanted to go for bungee jumping and i am not finding any place near delhi where i can undertake that. That is one of the to do things in my ‘Bucket List’.

So last week two things that were in my mind for whole week were guitar, lotus domino server.

Its been long time since i have blogged or written something.There are lot of experience that i want to share in this blog.But the question is from where should i start.

I have shifted to Delhi from Bangalore. Over the period i have have good experience and some bad experience. After spending one week in delhi i concluded that the people are in delhi are not helpful and that situation has not changed after six month.They will cut your throat without you even realizing it.After coming to delhi i realized how good the people of bangalore are. A simple example of this is in bangalore if somebody makes a mistake they are curtious enough to apologies but in delhi mistake or no mistake they will shout at you. The most helpful people in delhi are the auto wala as i always have come across helping auto wallas. Now you will saying hang on that not true but i have lot of experiences that made be conclude the people are not helpful here. I miss bangalore for the people and weather. But on the positive side shifting to delhi enabled me to make splash and dash visit to home town and spend more time with my family and friend. I always like to travel as its give me opportunity to meet different people and interact with them and learn\share our experiences.The main focus of this blog is to write the experiences that i have encountered during the fews visit that i have undertaken between delhi and my native place and some random things that i have experienced in last 6 month So here goes all for nothings.

The world is full of crazy and adventurous people. I met two software engineer who were going to shimla and during my interaction with them in the bus they told me that every week on friday they will pag their bags and come to bus stand and after arriving on the bus stand they will decide which place they will go. This idea seem appealing to me and i decided this is crazy and adventurous as you dont know where you will land up. I decided that i will give it shot one day and see how it feels.

When we are young we make lot of mistake.The next incident that i want to share is of a boy who was travelling with me in the bus. This young guy had ran away from his house.He ran away because he didn’t wanted to study and wanted to work which his parents were opposed to. That made me wonder how people can run away from their houses and leave their parents, the same parents because of whom they are in this world. But having said that  when we are young we are full of enegry and we think that we can win this world. I was also reminded of a incident that i was part of. I would write about that incident may be my next blog.

Now before i end this i madea resolution to myself to that i will write blog everyweek and try to write the things that i have experiened in last one week.

Recently I am have been listening to the audio books on self deception. It talks about how we suffer from the self deception. It’s a problem that all of face and we can’t be successfully until we get rid of it We presume that whatever we are doing is right and all others are all fault. We see others as object not as a person. We pass the judgment without knowing why other has done what he has done and we tend to lose other respect. This is the one thing that causes destruction. It like if you junior make a mistake and you shout at him before knowing that why he has done what he has done. We all do things which make us comfortable but we tend to forget what implication it will have on others. One more problem is how we betray ourselves. In the state of self betrayal we try to find the mistake in others without looking at ourselves and what sin\mistake we have committed. It also talks about what affect our decision have on others.

It also talks about that when our heart is at conflict than whatever decision that we take will be wrong and when our heart is at peace than all the decision we take are always right no matter what as we are able to see thing clearly.

One more important question that came up was that “Whether somebody’s nature can be changed?” I have been thinking about this and I think people nature can be changed if he tries and it also depend on the enviourment he is living in. A simple example of this is the young infant learns from seeing how his or her parent behaves with other and if they are aggressive than the young infant will inherit that. Nature of the person can also be changed if he gets the right kind of grooming. Some people were of the opinion that somebody’s personality can be changed but his nature can’t be changed. Which made be think that personality of a person depends on the nature he has? If a person has a calm nature than his personality will reflect that as we can’t hide things. A person nature can be judged on he behaves with other or with somebody that is lower or smaller in stature to him.

More on this on my next blog as I am still trying to find answer to some more question…………….

After encountering lot of problem in opening bank account with hdfc bank i finally thought it worth writing my experience over here.So here is it goes. First of all the banks takes more than one moth to open a account and for the matter of fact there competitions opens it in one week.I had an hdfc bank account which i was using for last two years and inevre faced any problems. What surprised me most was that according to them if we dont have a landline connection than we cant open a bank account.how ridiculous statement it could be.Yesterday somebody from HDFC bank called me and threated me on the phone saying that if i dont give them any landline number than my so called openend account will be closed.HDFC is rating is number 2nd in the private banking sector in india and if they do this kind of work than i think i wouldprefer a bank who is in the last in that list but provides me a better service.

The best part is the lack of information that they provide to customer.If you ask their account representative about opening a new account they wont tell u that u need a landline only thing they will tell is that you require only 2 ids.  

Lesson Learned

Next time need to get all the information before opening a account.

Its been long time since i have written a blog.This time around i am gonna write about virtualization and how easy it makes your life if you are testing a application that requires more than one machine.Being in networking field u constantly need to test an application that requires  you to use 2-3 system together and its always a pain to concurrently connect to them.To overcome come this you can use virtualization either vmware or microosft virtual pc.The big advantage that vmware has over virtual pc is that it lets all the machine open in one window just like tabbed feature in the  the browsers.Although i have been using these products for last one year but i never found them interesting untill recently where my work required me to test a product which required to use 5-6 system concurrently.I personally liked vmware over virtual pc. The good thing about this product is that it lets you install any operating system without affecting your base operating system.The biggest thing i liked about it was the ability to create snapshot.Its a feature that lets you revert back to the earlier point( just like system restore point in windows).While testing the application you can screw up things and again revert back to the earlier snapshot that you have created.Its a great product to try ……. for more information on vmware you can visit www.vmware.com and try a demo of 30 days.

This time around i am going to write any technical stuff i am going to narrate a story that how a simple misunderstanding lead to all confusion and lead to a funny situation.

This happened on 25 th January 2009, that time i was working in the office.My friend called and asked me to join him in Garuda mall. I was not interest in meeting him there but agreed to do so after he insisted on that and said that we will go to see flower shown in lalbagh. (Btw we had planned that a week ago.)

I left the office at 2′o clock and reached Garuda mall at 2:30 .After reaching there i called my frd and asked him about his location in garuda mall.He told me to come to 3rd floor near the food court.I went to the location as told by my friend but to my shock he was not there.I again called him to find out where he is, for next half an hour we were trying to locate each other,running all over the places in garuda mall. We kept arguing with each other on phone over the landmark given by each other to each other. I was standing near Shoppers Stop showroom and he was standing near landmark showroom. Both of us were asking the security gaurd in the garuda mall about the location as told by us to each other and to our shock the security told man friend that there is no shoppers’s stop showroom in garuda mall.Than we realized that we were relocating each other in different garuda mall( There are two Garuda mall in bangalore:)).He was in jayanagar garauda mall and i was in garauda mall which is near richmond road.This happened all because of the misunderstanding on my part.i forget that there are two garuda malls in bangalore and to add to the misery i went all the way from jayanagar to  richmond road for nothing.What make this situation more funny is that the garuda mall in jayanagar is 10 mis away from my office( as my office is in jayanagar itself) instead of going there i went to the place which is half an hour from my office.

To this day whenever i think about that incident it makes me wonder how a misunderstanding can lead a bizzare and funny situation……

Some time u got in a situation when you accidently delete the important files.Yesterday i landed myself in that mess.I deleted a folder which had all my ebooks. Althought i have recovered the deleted files in the past using recovery software but on windows me os.This time i using windows vista. I was not sure whether there is any recovery software that is available for vista because of lot of complecation in vista.I did some googling and two software that really caught my eyes were Handy Recovery and Uneraser by DiskInternals. Both of the software helps to recover data from xp,2000,vista without any pain. Disk internals have software from which u can recover files from ur dvd or cd, ipod,flash drive and inside pst( man that is serious stuff). For more information on these you can visit the manufacturer site i.e. http://www.handyrecovery.com/ and http://www.diskinternals.com/

I used Handy recovery to recovery my data and it did that without any problem.

The Next question that poped into my head why if the permanent deleted file can be recoverd in windows than there must be a way that we can achive same in the linux.So i started doing research on this and i found few blog which gives us step by step procedure for the same. I even found one software from diskinternals for recovering ext3/ext2 partition. I have not tested any of this as if now but i am planning to do it tonight so that i can see whether the software or the step mentioned in the blog works or not. Btw the blog where u can find step for linux recovery is http://www.samag.com/documents/s=7033/sam0204g/sam0204g.htm

Will update the result soon…….

Open source softwares are here to stay because of various advantages, first of all they are free and you can modify or customize them according to your liking .Earlier i used to hate the open source softwares because i never got hold of them.No doubt there are difficult to configure but once you are  done with the configuration part they are very stable and bug free.

A simple example that i want to give  is of the browser i.e ie vs firefox

Recently i customized my firefox. customized it to a levelwhich i cant think in ie. Ie has a habbit of showing lot of error which i never encountered  in firefox.Firefox allows u to change theme add reminders, set up the alter when a new mails pops in your personal email box which u cant do in ie plus ie is microsoft product which only rnes properly in windows( thought u can use software called wine). The only disadvantage that firefox has over ie is that it does not support active x control. Over last one year i am using firefox without any problem and  any hiccups that too after customize it 30-40 addons.

Now i have started beleiving in a quote ” if u want to make ur system fast and reliable than start using linux”

This chapter will show you how to convert your Linux box into an FTP server using the VSFTP package. The RedHat software download site runs on VSFTP.

FTP Overview

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) is a common method of copying files between computer systems. Two TCP ports are used to do this:

FTP Control Channel – TCP Port 21

All commands you send and the ftp server’s responses to those commands will go over the control connection, but any data sent back (such as “ls” directory lists or actual file data in either direction) will go over the data connection.

FTP Data Channel – TCP Port 20

Used for all data sent between the client and server.

Active FTP

Active FTP works as follows:

o Your client connects to the FTP server by establishing an FTP control connection to port 21 of the server. Your commands such as ‘ls’ and ‘get’ are sent over this connection.

o Whenever the client requests data over the control connection, the server initiates data transfer connections back to the client. The source port of these data transfer connections is always port 20 on the server, and the destination port is a high port on the client.

o Thus the ‘ls’ listing that you asked for comes back over the “port 20 to high port connection”, not the port 21 control connection.

o FTP active mode data transfer therefore does this in a counter intuitive way to the TCP standard as it selects port 20 as it’s source port (not a random high port > 1024) and connects back to the client on a random high port that has been pre-negotiated on the port 21 control connection.

o Active FTP may fail in cases where the client is protected from the Internet via many to one NAT (masquerading). This is because the firewall will not know which of the many servers behind it should receive the return connection.

Passive FTP

Passive FTP works as follows:

o Your client connects to the FTP server by establishing a FTP control connection to port 21 of the server. Your commands such as ‘ls’ and ‘get’ are sent over that connection.

o Whenever the client requests data over the control connection, the client initiates the data transfer connections to the server. The source port of these data transfer connections is always a high port on the client with a destination port of a high port on the server.

o Passive FTP should be viewed as the server never making an active attempt to connect to the client for FTP data transfers.

o Passive FTP works better for clients protected by a firewall as the client always initiates the required connections.

Problems With FTP And Firewalls

FTP frequently fails when the data has to pass through a firewall as FTP uses a wide range of unpredictable TCP ports and firewalls are designed to limit data flows to predictable TCP ports. There are ways to overcome this as explained in the following sections.

The Appendix has examples of how to configure the iptables Linux filewall to function with both active and passive FTP.

Client Protected By A Firewall Problem

Typically firewalls don’t let any incoming connections at all, this will frequently cause active FTP not to function. This type of FTP failure has the following symptoms:

o The active ftp connection appears to work when the client initiates an outbound connection to the server on port 21. The connection appears to hang as soon as you do an “ls” or a “dir” or a “get”. This is because the firewall is blocking the return connection from the server to the client. (From port 20 on the server to a high port on the client)

Solutions

Here are the general firewall rules you’ll need to allow FTP clients through a firewall:

Client Protected by Firewall – Required Rules for FTP

*Many home based firewall/routers automatically allow traffic for already established connections. This rule may not be necessary in all cases.

** in some cases, you may want to allow all Internet users to have access, not just a specific client server or network.

Server Protected By A Firewall Problem

o Typically firewalls don’t let any connections come in at all. FTP server failure due to firewalls in which the active ftp connection from the client doesn’t appear to work at all

Solutions

Here are the general firewall rules you’ll need to allow FTP severs through a firewall

Server Protected by Firewall – Required Rules for FTP

*Many home based firewall/routers automatically allow traffic for already established connections. This rule may not be necessary in all cases.

** in some cases, you may want to allow all Internet users to have access, not just a specific client server or network.

How To Download And Install The VSFTP Package

· As explained previously, RedHat software is installed using RPM packages. In version 8.0 of the operating system, the VSFTP RPM file is named:

vsftpd-1.1.0-1.i386.rpm

Downloading and installing RPMs isn’t hard. If you need a refresher, the RPM chapter covers how to do this in detail.

· Now download the file to a directory such as /tmp and install it using the “rpm” command:

[root@bigboy tmp]# rpm -Uvh vsftpd-1.1.0-1.i386.rpm
Preparing… ########################################### [100%]
1:vsftpd     ########################################### [100%]

[root@bigboy tmp]#

How To Get VSFTP Started

The starting and stopping of VSFTP is controlled by xinetd via the /etc/xinetd.d/vsftpd file. VSFTP is deactivated by default, so you’ll have to edit this file to start the program. Make sure the contents look like this. The disable feature must be set to “no” to accept connections.

service ftp
{

disable = no
socket_type = stream
wait = no
user = root
server = /usr/sbin/vsftpd
nice = 10

}

You will then have to restart xinetd for these changes to take effect using the startup script in the /etc/init.d directory.

[root@aqua tmp]#  /etc/init.d/xinetd restart

Stopping xinetd: [  OK  ]

Starting xinetd: [  OK  ]

[root@aqua tmp]#

Naturally, to disable VSFTP once again, you’ll have to edit /etc/xinetd.d/vsftpd, set “disable” to “yes” and restart xinetd.

Testing To See If VSFTP Is Running

You can always test whether the VSFTP process is running by using the netstat –a command which lists all the TCP and UDP ports on which the server is listening for traffic. The example below shows the expected output, there would be no output at all if VSFTP wasn’t running.

[root@bigboy root]# netstat -a | grep ftp
tcp        0        0        *:ftp         *:*        LISTEN
[root@bigboy root]#

What Is Anonymous FTP?

Anonymous FTP is used by web sites that need to exchange files with numerous unknown remote users. Common uses include downloading software updates and MP3s to uploading diagnostic information for a technical support engineer’s attention. Unlike regular FTP where you login with a user-specific username, anonymous FTP only requires a username of “anonymous” and your email address for the password. Once logged in to a VSFTP server, you’ll automatically have access to only the default anonymous FTP directory /var/ftp and all its subdirectories.

As seen in the chapter on RPMs, using anonymous FTP as a remote user is fairly straight forward. VSFTP can be configured to support user based and or anonymous FTP in its configuration file.

The /etc/vsftpd.conf File

VSFTP only reads the contents of its /etc/vsftpd.conf configuration file when it starts, so you’ll have to restart xinetd each time you edit the file in order for the changes to take effect.

This file uses a number of default settings you need to know. By default, VSFTP runs as an anonymous FTP server. Unless you want any remote user to log into to your default FTP directory using a username of “ananoymous” and a password that’s the same as their email address, I would suggest turning this off. The configuration file’s anonymous_enable instruction can be commented out by using a “#” to disable this feature. You’ll also want to simultaneously enable local users to be able to log in by uncommenting the local_enable instruction.

By default VSFTP only allows anonymous FTP downloads to remote users, not uploads from them. Also by default, VSFTP doesn’t allow remote users to create directories on your FTP server and it logs FTP access to the /var/log/vsftpd.log log file.

The configuration file is fairly straight forward as you can see in the snippet below. Remove/add the “#” at the beginning of the line to “activate/deactivate” the feature on each line.

# Allow anonymous FTP?
anonymous_enable=YES
…

…

# Uncomment this to allow local users to log in.
local_enable=YES
…

…

# Uncomment this to enable any form of FTP write command.

# (Needed even if you want local users to be able to upload files)
write_enable=YES
…

…

# Uncomment to allow the anonymous FTP user to upload files. This only
# has an effect if global write enable is activated. Also, you will
# obviously need to create a directory writable by the FTP user.
#anon_upload_enable=YES
…

…

# Uncomment this if you want the anonymous FTP user to be able to create
# new directories.
#anon_mkdir_write_enable=YES
…

…

# Activate logging of uploads/downloads.
xferlog_enable=YES
…

…

# You may override where the log file goes if you like.

# The default is shown# below.
#xferlog_file=/var/log/vsftpd.log

FTP Security Issues

The /etc/vsftpd.ftpusers File

For added security you may restrict FTP access to certain users by adding them to the list of users in this file. Do not delete entries from the default list, it is best to add.

Anonymous Upload

If you want remote users to write data to your FTP server then it is recommended you create a write-only directory within /var/ftp/pub. This will allow your users to upload, but not access other files uploaded by other users. Here are the commands to do this:

[root@bigboy tmp]# mkdir /var/ftp/pub/upload
[root@bigboy tmp]# chmod 733 /var/ftp/pub/upload

FTP Greeting Banner

Change the default greeting banner in /etc/vsftpd.conf to make it harder for malicious users to determine the type of system you have.

ftpd_banner= New Banner Here

Using SCP As Secure Alternative To FTP

One of the disadvantages of FTP is that it does not encrypt your username and password. This could make your user account vulnerable to an unauthorized attack from a person eavesdropping on the network connection. Secure Copy (SCP) provides encryption and could be considered as an alternative to FTP for trusted users. SCP however does not support anonymous services, a feature that FTP does.

Example #1:

FTP Users With Only Read Access To A Shared Directory

In this example, anonymous FTP is not desired, but a group of trusted users need to have read only access to a directory for downloading files. Here are the steps:

o Enable FTP. Edit the /etc/xinetd.d/vsftp and set the disable value to “no”.

o Disable anonymous FTP. Comment out the anonymous_enable line in the /etc/vsftpd.conf file like this:

# Allow anonymous FTP?

# anonymous_enable=YES

o Enable individual logins by making sure you have the local_enable line uncommented in the /etc/vsftpd.conf file like this:

# Uncomment this to allow local users to log in.

local_enable=YES

o Create a user group and shared directory. In this case we’ll use “/home/ftp-users” and a user group name of “ftp-users” for the remote users.

[root@bigboy tmp]# groupadd ftp-users
[root@bigboy tmp]# mkdir /home/ftp-docs

o Make the directory accessible to the ftp-users group.

[root@bigboy tmp]# chmod 750 /home/ftp-docs
[root@bigboy tmp]# chown root:ftp-users /home/ftp-docs

o Add users, and make their default directory /home/ftp-docs

[root@bigboy tmp]# useradd -g ftp-users -d /home/ftp-docs user1
[root@bigboy tmp]# useradd -g ftp-users -d /home/ftp-docs user2
[root@bigboy tmp]# useradd -g ftp-users -d /home/ftp-docs user3
[root@bigboy tmp]# useradd -g ftp-users -d /home/ftp-docs user4
[root@bigboy tmp]# passwd user1
[root@bigboy tmp]# passwd user2

[root@bigboy tmp]# passwd user3
[root@bigboy tmp]# passwd user4

o Copy files to be downloaded by your users into the /home/ftp-docs directory

o Change the permissions of the files in the /home/ftp-docs directory for read only access by the group

[root@bigboy tmp]# chown root:ftp-users /home/ftp-docs/*
[root@bigboy tmp]# chmod 740 /home/ftp-docs/*

Users should now be able to log in via ftp to the server using their new user names and passwords. If you absolutely don’t want any FTP users to be able to write to any directory then you should comment out the write_enable line in your /etc/vsftpd.conf file like this:

#write_enable=YES

o Restart vsftp for the configuration file changes to take effect.

[root@bigboy tmp]# /etc/init.d/xinetd restart
Stopping xinetd: [ OK ]
Starting xinetd: [ OK ]
[root@bigboy tmp]#

Sample Login Session To Test Funtionality

o Check for the presence of a test file on the ftp client server.

[root@smallfry tmp]# ll
total 1
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 0 Jan 4 09:08 testfile
[root@smallfry tmp]#

o Connect to bigboy via FTP

[root@smallfry tmp]# ftp 192.168.1.100
Connected to 192.168.1.100 (192.168.1.100).
220 ready, dude (vsFTPd 1.1.0: beat me, break me)
Name (192.168.1.100:root): user1
331 Please specify the password.
Password:
230 Login successful. Have fun.
Remote system type is UNIX.
Using binary mode to transfer files.
ftp>

o As expected, we can’t do an upload transfer of “testfile” to bigboy.

ftp> put testfile
local: testfile remote: testfile
227 Entering Passive Mode (192,168,1,100,181,210)
553 Could not create file.

ftp>

o We can view and download a copy of the VSFTP RPM

ftp> ls
227 Entering Passive Mode (192,168,1,100,35,173)
150 Here comes the directory listing.
-rwxr—– 1 0 502 76288 Jan 04 17:06 vsftpd-1.1.0-1.i386.rpm
226 Directory send OK.
ftp> get vsftpd-1.1.0-1.i386.rpm vsftpd-1.1.0-1.i386.rpm.tmp
local: vsftpd-1.1.0-1.i386.rpm.tmp remote: vsftpd-1.1.0-1.i386.rpm
227 Entering Passive Mode (192,168,1,100,44,156)
150 Opening BINARY mode data connection for vsftpd-1.1.0-1.i386.rpm (76288 bytes).
226 File send OK.
76288 bytes received in 0.499 secs (1.5e+02 Kbytes/sec)

ftp> exit
221 Goodbye.

[root@smallfry tmp]#

o As expected, we can’t do anonymous ftp.

[root@smallfry tmp]# ftp 192.168.1.100
Connected to 192.168.1.100 (192.168.1.100).
220 ready, dude (vsFTPd 1.1.0: beat me, break me)
Name (192.168.1.100:root): anonymous
331 Please specify the password.
Password:
530 Login incorrect.
Login failed.
ftp> quit
221 Goodbye.

[root@smallfry tmp]#