Amachu

Free Software Media is an initiative to publish, promote & distribute, Free Software related text, audio and video contents across India, professionally. Inspired by the work of Network theory Ltd, We are pleased to announce this initiative with a similar objective for India.

To commence We are happy to bring out three selected Titles from Network Theory Ltd themselves, at reasonable prices for the Indian audience. And they are,

* An Introduction to GCC, by Brian J. Gough, foreword by Richard M. Stallman
* An Introduction to Python – The Python Tutorial, by Guido van Rossum and Fred L. Drake, Jr.
* Comparing and Merging Files with GNU diff and patch, by David MacKenzie, Paul Eggert, and Richard Stallman

Currently We support three modes of purchase,

Electronic Money Transfer or Money Transfer to our Bank Account
Demand Draft/ Cheque
Value Payable Post
Details of all modes of purchase can be found at our website http://fsm.co.in

We offer a portion of our profit to foundations that are related to each of the above mentioned titles or make use of it for appropriate Free Software related activity. Specific details can be found from each book’s page at http://fsm.co.in

We hope the Free Software Community of India, Students, Teachers and the General Public would be benefited immensely as a result of this initiative. We thank Network Theory Ltd for the support they extended towards this initiative.

So go & grab your copies, of the above mentioned titles, visiting http://fsm.co.in. You can also gift it to your dear ones studying Computer Science.

We aspire more. If you are a geek, who could write on Free Software related Titles and is willing to offer it for freely distributable publication, contact us. Would you like to see specific Title to come up related to Free Software, may it be Technical, Philosophical, Legal or in your Language, write to us. If you like to extend your co-operation to us, in other ways, express it through http://fsm.co.in/site/contact. Let us revive the spirit of sharing & sustaining.

And above all, help spreading the word across. Website: http://fsm.co.in

I had a week long visit to Singapore to take part in Redhat Tech Summit & Partner meet starting Oct 31 till 06 November. Redhat had launched its RHEV during this period. In my search to meet fellow Ubuntu Community people at Singapore, I joined its list and inquired about any event that will during my stay  Singapore.

I anticipated Karmic Koala release party kind of an event,  but it didn’t happen that way. Then thought of meeting people at least during my period of stay & Nick extended warm hand.

I recollected Nick to be the guy who had applied for membership at Asia Oceania Membership Board (in which I hold the responsibility of Secretary). We decided to meet on 06 Nov & Starbucks in Wheelock.

That was a memorable meeting that evening, with both us sharing a whole lot of things. I couldn’t imagine Nick is just 16 years old & is a Newzie born & brought up at Singapore. We discussed a lot of things & my friend, Mahesh working at Singapore was also there to share the time.

Nick is now the second person I have got in touch personally after Stefano of Italy, with whom I am now involved at E-Ndicus. Thats the specialty of Ubuntu community..

Different people Different continents – but you are in same Ubuntu space..

Was at Salem last Sunday – 11 Oct 09 to introduce Ubuntu to General Public. Thanks to Selva Murali for Organizing the event.

More about the event in his own words http://groups.google.com/group/mintamil/browse_thread/thread/bb2d6315dbe4a553# in Tamil.

Report at Sangamam Live: http://sangamamlive.in/index.php?/content/view/5932/1/

There is a long thread going on at FOSSCOM network mailing list as to how it should be and who shall be part of it. That’s a big thread to follow and post a reply, but I did posted of on who shall be members or part of the FOSSCOM. I am reproducing the same here,

// Quoting Kenneth Gonsalves lawgon at au-kbc.org
Wed Jul 8 02:11:19 PDT 2009

as FOSSCOMM is a collection of individuals and organizations, we have the
following use cases:
1. A person belonging to an organization, but in FOSSCOMM in his individual
capacity – then nature of his organization is irrelevant.
2. A person representing an organization in FOSSCOMM – nature of organization
is relevant //

That was indeed a huge thread to follow up and post a reply.

Well on who can become a member, I agree both individuals and
Organizations can become members.

I have two set of individuals coming to my mind,

#1 A FOSS admirer
#2 A FOSS activist

#1 are those category of non-IT people who are thankful to the FOSS
community and have got benefited because of it.

#2 are FOSS developers, non-developer activists.

On how can they become a member of the FOSSCOMM,

We should have a Oath defined that is Loyal to Free Software Philosophy
and make it available in all Indian Languages.

Any one from any part of the nation who takes that oath true to his own
conscience/ god or what ever he may prefer shall become a member.

On Organizations, I have five set of Organizations coming to my mind,

#1 FOSS beneficiaries
#2 FOSS also as Business
#3 FOSS Advisories
#4 FOSS only Business
#5 Other FOSS favourites

#1 are non-IT companies who are benefited because of FOSS and they want to
see more things coming up in FOSS and they want to support any such
initiatives.

#2 are 50%-50% cases like Zimbra, Novell, and Organizations who also
provide FOSS services for there is also Business in it. They shall be part
of the Community, but kept at an outer ring.

#3 are people like Redhat, Canonical, Mandriva, OpenBravo etc., whom we
admire, respect for their dedication to FOSS but could not allow them into
administrative aspects of a setup unique to India, as any decision at
their Organizational level, outside India directly affects their
operations in India. (I hope in IT 100% FDI is allowed.)

#4 is an association of Organizations who swear to do Business only
through FOSS and is of Indian Origin. The Community should collectively
work for such Organizations to prosper and fight for their causes,
com-batting hindrances created by NASSCOM, M$ etc.,

(Some relaxation shall be given to #3 & #4 when it comes to
inter-interoperability with Proprietary Units)

#3 & #4 work together in all aspects but any representation of the
Community shall only be made through #4

#5 are Organizations shall be FOSS friendly favoring NGOs, government
initiatives like NRCFOSS etc.,

Organizations that want to be part of the Community should, covey to the
Community under which category they fall and we shall have instructions
accordingly.

Installing backuppc from the repository doesn’t result in accessing it over browser by typing http://localhost/backuppc

Instead I had go a step further by appending the following snippet from /etc/backuppc/apache.conf to /etc/apache2/apache2.conf


Alias /backuppc /usr/share/backuppc/cgi-bin/

AllowOverride None

# Uncomment the line below to ensure that nobody can sniff importanti
# info from network traffic during editing of the BackupPC config or
# when browsing/restoring backups.
# Requires that you have your webserver set up for SSL (https) access.
#SSLRequireSSL

Options ExecCGI FollowSymlinks
AddHandler cgi-script .cgi
DirectoryIndex index.cgi

AuthGroupFile /etc/backuppc/htgroup
AuthUserFile /etc/backuppc/htpasswd
AuthType basic
AuthName "BackupPC admin"
require valid-user


the first problem that i ran into after installing Ubuntu 9.04 is that I could not start my django application and it threw error.

i had followed the django installation instructions available at its website and had made a symbolic link of my svn check out of django source to /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages

later I realized that the default python with jaunty is 2.6 and hence decided to change it to 2.5 (also i could not find site-packages directory under /usr/lib/python2.6/ but did found dist-packages under it.)

here is all that i did to change the python’s default version to 2.5 from 2.6

i removed the symbolic link /usr/bin/python and linked it to python 2.5

$ sudo ln -s /usr/bin/python2.5 python

later i edited /usr/share/python/debian_defaults file and changed the default-version to python2.5

and started my django app successfully..

recently I upgraded my RAM for virtualization reasons and installed all related packages.. but when i tried starting the virt-manager, it threw error ‘No module named libvirt’

again it was due the version change that I did with regard to python, and I did the following for the virt-manager to work properly from the /usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/ directory,

sudo ln -s /usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/libvirt.pyc .
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/libvirt.py .
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/libvirtmod.so .
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/python2.6/dist-packages/gtkvnc.so .

amachu has been unique in google search’s first page results until yesterday when i found this blogger getting into top ten of search results using the very same nick amachu http://www.blogcatalog.com/user/amachu

Welcome to amachu nick name club

Hope she becomes a ubuntu member and fight with me over the nick name

We had a Stall for people who visited FossConf-2009 held at Thiagaraya Engineering College, Madurai from Feb 27 to Mar 01. Padmanathan of our Team was there fulltime for all three days explaining all that we do. I was there for the second day. And we shared Fedora DVDs too for the participants. Thanks to Fedora Indian Team.

The conference was divided into three categories – Stalls, FOSS Project Demos and Talks. We took the Stall and most Stalls around were also using Ubuntu

Best Talk, Best Project were chosen and were rewarded with prizes. The Tamil Spell Checker project initiated by us and is taken up by Selvam Siva got the best Project Award and a Student Talk on Virtualization got best Talk prize. Notable in the conference was the enthusiasm shown by kids from TVS Schools of Madurai. It was a wonderful event Organised by TCE and hats of to the Organisers.

Getting engaged Full time into FOSS Services Business from today fulltime, based at Chennai in the name of fossgemini

Dec 21, 2008. The IT Association of  Vellore(1), the fort City of Tamilnadu, had organized a day of ‘Ubuntu Dawn’ for its members and general public on at Hotel Aavana Inn, Vellore. More than forty people from Vellore, Aarani and other places of Vellore district got benefitted as a result of this event.

Different modes of Ubuntu installation, Package handling techniques, Tamil features in Ubuntu, Fonts installation, Installation of Windows based applications using Wine were among various topics covered at the event.

While the proprietary accounting application Tally got installed and ran successfully using Wine, it was suggested by Ubuntu Tamil Team that, as a first Step, the resellers and users of Tally Solutions, compel the Tally Corporation to provide them a debian installable also(1).

We expressed hope that alternatives are being looked at by the Community and soon a Free Software replacement would emerge for Tally. A handbook on Ubuntu Basics was also provided(2).

Siva and Sri Ramadoss from Ubuntu Tamil Team conducted the event. We thank Sairam, other office bearers and members of Vellore IT association for providing us with this oppurtunity. Photos will be shared soon..

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vellore
(2) Ubuntu Tamil Team also requests, if you are an existing User of Tally, to compel Tally Solutions to provide a debian installable for its releases. You can write to support@tallysolutions.com. Website: http://www.tally.co.in/
(3) http://ubuntu-tam.org/avanam/nigazhchi/2008/dec/vellore/