/me on the net!

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

Pradeepto and his team have come up with kde posters for Foss.in.



Posters were announced today morning, and within 20 hours 917, 1237, 689, 869 visitors viewed the posters respectively. I hope we'll do a re-run of some new posters for spring '08 collection too

A few IRC idlers met up at Pizzeria for a round of pizzas, since BigBeard was in town. And make no mistake, BigBeard knows more about food places than all of us localhosts combined

As with all such unplanned BoFs, it went very well. Let's just hope Pradeepto will find his way, and become a Page 11 Celebrity.

And as for Green Chili Icecream, head over to marine drive and look for Bachelorr's

After attending Freed.in, we took a bus and ran away to Manali to escape the delhi heat. The 19 hour bus journey started around 4PM in the evening with everyone buying random stuff to eat and drink, fixing the music system, clicking pictures of random people and objects, listening to gora crack random jokes and searching for a good dhaba to have dinner.



Next morning we all woke up in himachal pradesh, drooling at the awesome himalyan mountains and the gorges. Next day was the trip to Rohtang pass to see the fresh snowfall. High altitude (well, compared to Mumbai), freeezzzzing atmosphere, super chilled breeze, it was all there.



Solang valley is a small place 18Km up the hills from Manali city, with half a dozen resorts and facilities for rope-way and para gliding.

After taking a dip in near boiling sulphur smelling ground water at vasistha, it seems my hair fall has come down considerably - or is it just my figment of imagination



Trip to manali was sure fun. Now let us see when do i get to go to laddakh.

Pictures from Manali trip

Kind of funny - but there's an engineering college in Andhra Pradesh named Anurag Engineering College.

There was a time when i used to have a watch, a bedside alarm clock, deskside calendar, el-cheapo calculator, a camera, a paper address book. And i was planning to buy a digital diary too.

Now i just use my cell phone to do all that. Wonder which other daily life gadget is the cellphone going to replace.