/me on the net!

So, you've recieved an invite from one of your several friends about mGinger service that lets you do blah blah and blah with sms and all that.

Talking of imitations, move over mGinger. here comes mGarlic.

Flickr launched its video service with much fanfare yesterday. I decided to give it a spin with an old but lovely video clipping. What i like is the slight Flickrish touch given to video clip objects. The lesser known brother, Yahoo Jumpcut seems to be a good video finishing application. need to give it a try too.

Railways is running in profits since last couple of years and the feel good feeling is coming soon to Indian Railways website too. The recent tender notification from IR attracted almost everyone from the industry to apply for tender and profit! With TCS/CMC, Accenture, SISL India, Satyam, Wipro, Infosys, BEA, Broad Vision, IBM, HCL, DELL, HP and of course Microsoft applying for the tender and planning to use technologies as diverse as TIBCO, Biometrics and BS 7799 compliance - this surely is going to be a major face lift to Indian Railways.

Got a chance to watch Das Leben der Anderen. Story is set in East Germany, around and before the fall of Berlin Wall about how the Stasi agents used to control the private lives of people. Very well made movie i must say. It reaffirms the human ability to do the right thing, no matter how much wrong has already been done.

Looking for a way to generate a jigsaw puzzle from your photos? or a Polaroid style Hockney picture? a picture cube? or a original looking Flickr badge? Head over to Big Huge Labs and make your own nifty Flickr accessories.

Peth fort is a small garrison fort in the shape of a submarine, ~20 kms off from Karjat. We took a bus, and two autos to reach the highway near the base village. March being a hot month, made sure that we ran out of water sooner that we thought. We reached the base village of Ambivali by noon or so, and began climbing the hill.



In another hour we reached the cave carved out of the rock and relaxed for a while, and started cooking lunch. Some of us explored the garrison fort, while others cooked food. Peth fort is located at a strategic location and control over this fort meant having an eye over entire valley. That explains the several battles fought between moughals and marathas.



We descended down around 6PM and headed back to Karjat station and took a train back to Mumbai.

Pictures from trek to Peth fort

Unlike past two years, this new year was fantastic. We went for a two day trek to Kulang Fort. Located in the Sahyadri ranges near Igatpuri, Kulang fort can easily be classified as toughest to climb of all (took us close to 7 hours on foot from the base village).

To make sure we start up early in the morning from the base village and cover maximum distance of walking in plains, we reached the base village of Kaluste the day before by shared jeep from Ghoti town(located on Mumbai - Nashik highway, and reachable from Igatpuri station). We left the base village Kaluste by 6:45AM and headed towards Kulang hill. Crawling through jungle, eating and sweating, we reached the top by 2:15PM. Squatted the cave, ate some food and later shot the last sunset of 2007 from the highest point.

Kulang, due to its height, offers breathtaking views of all nearby mountain rangelets. And due to clean atmosphere and current season, night sky is awesome too with everything from shooting stars and satellites visible. Best time to visit is after monsoons(rock climbing becomes dangerous due to mud and slippery rock surface)

Pictures from trek to Kulang Fort

Apparently, there's an RFC on Choosing a Name for Your Computer - RFC 1178. Easily, one of the simpler to understand RFCs out there.

Couple of weeks back we went for a trek to Vitandgad, commonly known as Tikona Peth. Its called Tikona (Pyramidal) due to its peculiar conical shape. Trek to Vitandgad can be classified as an easy trek which can be completed in half a day.

Since we had some more time at hand, we visited Pavana Dam and nearby Bedse Caves. All in all, a day worth spent.

Pictures from Tikona and Bedse Caves trek

1. Introduction
A couple of weeks back we had to migrate a few mailing lists across to a new server. Migration was successful and we had minimum downtime, since no changes were done to the lists.

This HowTo assumes that the new server uses Postfix as an MTA. Using any other MTA is not a problem as long as it can read the Mailman generated aliases file.

Migrating mailman lists is a 3 step process.

2. Preparing New Server.

• 2.1 Installing Mailman.

Follow the official Mailman installation documentation given at http://www.list.org and make sure new server has python, Apache, and mod_python installed. Mailman's source tarball and distribution supplied packages are equally good. Depending on what you are using, mailman's installation directory would be /usr/local/mailman (in case of source install) or /var/lib/mailman (in case of debian package).


• 2.2 Configure Apache and Postfix.

If your mailing list uses a separate virtual host (highly recommended) then test out if Apache and postfix are correctly configured to serve a sample list.

3. Copying Data to New Server.
Copying data involves copying over three directories, which hold list configuration(lists), held messages/bounce stats(data) and list archives(archives).

• 3.1 lists

Mailman stores its list specific settings like passwords, subscribers, list settings as python pickels in lists directory. First step in migrating list is to rsync this directory to the new server. You may copy over few selected lists, or all the lists using any means.

For example, to copy all the lists from old server the new server, issue this command on the old server:

# rsync -avz /usr/local/mailman/lists root@new-server:/var/lib/mailman/

Note: Above command will also replace the site wide mailing list named Mailman. So take backups if necessary.


• 3.2 data

The data directory stores all the held messages and bounce events. This directory also contains site wide administrator password and an aliases file which is used by the MTA to identify available
mailing lists.

To copy data directory to the new server, issue this command on the old server.

# rsync -avz /usr/local/mailman/data root@new-server:/var/lib/mailman/

Note: Above command will also replace the site wide administrator password file. Backup the existing data directory if required.


• 3.3 archives

The archives directory stores mailing list archives if it is enabled(enabled by default).

To copy list archives, issue this command on the old server.
# rsync -avz /usr/local/mailman/archives root@new-server:/var/lib/mailman/

4. Post Migration checks.
After the data is migrated, check for any permission issues. Its possible that the new server is configured to run mailman with the user list or mailman. Change the ownership of the directories copied accordingly.

• 4.1 Regenerating Aliases

The bin directory present in mailman installation contains several command line utilities for managing mailing lists. First step after copying over all the data is to regenrate the ailases file. To generate aliases run:

# cd /var/lib/mailman/bin
# ./genaliases


• 4.2 Hostnames

This step is not required if domain name of mailing lists remain same. In case the mailing lists are also changing their domain names, a few changes need to be made in the mailing lists too. Every MailList object has two attributes named web_page_url and host_name. These two attributes determine how mailman will write the list urls in the web pages it generates.

To fix the URLs issue these commands.

# cd /usr/local/mailman/bin
# ./withlist -l -r fix_url -u new-domain.example.org


• 4.3 DNS Updates

After these steps are over, its time to do DNS updates. Move over to your DNS configuration options and point the list domain to new server's IP address.

5. Finalising
Try to send an email to any of the lists's -request alias, with `help' in the subject line. Mailman should immediately respond with a list of available commands.

6. Refrences
Mailman Homepage - http://www.list.org
Mailman Installation Manual -http://list.org/mailman-install/index.html