IBM Platform LSF Batch Commands

Below is the list of commonly used LSF batch commands and a brief description :

1. bparams : Displays the parameters settings [Output of lsb.params file]
2. bugroup : Display the list of user groups
3. bmgroup : Display the list of host / machine group
4. bhosts : Display the summary of host state [ add -l for detailed]
5. bqueues : Display the summary of queue states in the lsf cluster. use -l for detailed
6. busers all : Display the per user breakdown of jobs currently in the lsf batch system
7. bjobs -u < all / user >  -a :  Displays information of the jobs which are current, recently completed 
8. bjobs -l < job id > : Display the information in detail of a particular job id
9. bhist : Display the time history of the job
10. bstop : Pauses the job 
11. bresume : Resume the job
12. bkill : Kills the job
13. btop : Move job in top of the queue of the user
14. bbot : Move the job in bottom of the queue of the user
15. bswitch : Switch the jobs from one queue to another
16. bmodify : Modifies the submission parameters of the jobs which are pending
17. bacct : Display accounting information of the tasks executed using LSF batch

Using Heimdall MacOS to Install Stock ROM on Galaxy S2

I have always played with my Samsung Handsets (Rooting, Multi-Booting, trying different ROMs) using the standard Odin software on Windows. Somehow have never loved the easy life on Windows and always fancied to work on the Macintosh OS (Being from a Unix Background, I liked it even more). I own an Apple MacBook Air, and have been doing a lot of stuff lately using it.

The latest was trying to install the stock rom on my Galaxy S2. The steps I followed will be briefed in the below blog.

Pre-requisites

1- Samsung S2 phone (Or any other phone model)
2- USB Cable
3- Battery at-least 50% charged
4- Download the required Stock Rom (can use http://stockroms.net)
5- Install heimdall-suite-1.4.0-mac.dmg on your Mac. Download here

In my case I downloaded ICS Stock Rom for Galaxy S2


Step 1 : Connect your phone

A- Open Heimdall
B- Connect the USB cable on the phone
C- Restart the phone in download mode (Vol Down + Power + Home)
D- Vol UP to continue download mode
E- In Heimdall GUI, click on Utilities
F- Click on detect on the top left. The output should say "Device detected", if not, repeat the steps again from B.

Step 2 : Download the current PIT file.

If you need to save your current partition instruction table, you have to create a PIT file of the current set up.

A - Follow step 1 to connect phone
B- Once device is connected, in Utilities screen, click on save as.
C- Give a path where you want to save the PIT file
D- Click on download. This will download the pit file on the location you mention. If it hangs in the process anywhere, repeat the steps and try

Output Screen Heimdall+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Successful Rom Updates using Macbok - Heimdall

Heimdall v1.4.0

Copyright (c) 2010-2013, Benjamin Dobell, Glass Echidna
http://www.glassechidna.com.au/

This software is provided free of charge. Copying and redistribution is
encouraged.

If you appreciate this software and you would like to support future
development please consider donating:
http://www.glassechidna.com.au/donate/

Initialising connection...
Detecting device...
Claiming interface...
Setting up interface...

Initialising protocol...
Protocol initialisation successful.

Beginning session...

Some devices may take up to 2 minutes to respond.
Please be patient!

Session begun.

Downloading device's PIT file...
PIT file download successful.

Output Ends++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Step 3 : Installing the ROM

The ROM you download, should have the below mentioned files to continue install

A - Follow Step 1 and Step 2 above

B- Click on Flash in Heimdall GUI frontend

C- Browse the PIT which you downloaded in Step 2, Once you do that the partition name field gets active

D- Select Partition name and assign respective files from the ROM which you need to install e.g

BOOT=boot.bin

CACHE=cache.img

FACTORYFS=factoryfs.img

HIDDEN=hidden.img

MODEM=modem.bin

PARAM=param.lfs

SB1=SbI.bin

KERNEL=zimage

E- Then click start. The magic will begin. Post install the phone will reboot, and Heimdall GUI fronted will look as below :

Output Screen Heimdall+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Successful Rom Updates using Macbok - Heimdall

Heimdall v1.4.0

Copyright (c) 2010-2013, Benjamin Dobell, Glass Echidna
http://www.glassechidna.com.au/

This software is provided free of charge. Copying and redistribution is
encouraged.

If you appreciate this software and you would like to support future
development please consider donating:
http://www.glassechidna.com.au/donate/

Initialising connection...
Detecting device...
Claiming interface...
Setting up interface...

Initialising protocol...
Protocol initialisation successful.

Beginning session...

Some devices may take up to 2 minutes to respond.
Please be patient!

Session begun.

Uploading BOOT
0%
100%

BOOT upload successful

Uploading SBL1
0%
80%
100%

SBL1 upload successful

Uploading PARAM
0%
94%
100%

PARAM upload successful

Uploading KERNEL
0%
12%
25%
37%
50%
62%
75%
87%
100%

KERNEL upload successful

Uploading CACHE
0%
5%
10%
16%
21%
27%
32%
38%
43%
49%
54%
60%
65%
71%
76%
82%
87%
93%
98%
100%

CACHE upload successful

Uploading MODEM
0%
8%
16%
24%
33%
41%
49%
58%
66%
74%
83%
91%
99%
100%

MODEM upload successful

Uploading FACTORYFS
0%
1%
2%
3%
4%
5%
6%
7%
8%
9%
10%
11%
12%
13%
14%
15%
16%
17%
18%
19%
20%
21%
22%
23%
24%
25%
26%
27%
28%
29%
30%
31%
32%
33%
34%
35%
36%
37%
38%
39%
40%
41%
42%
43%
44%
45%
46%
47%
48%
49%
50%
51%
52%
53%
54%
55%
56%
57%
58%
59%
60%
61%
62%
63%
64%
65%
66%
67%
68%
69%
70%
71%
72%
73%
74%
75%
76%
77%
78%
79%
80%
81%
82%
83%
84%
85%
86%
87%
88%
89%
90%
91%
92%
93%
94%
95%
96%
97%
98%
99%
100%

FACTORYFS upload successful

Uploading HIDDEN
0%
1%
2%
3%
4%
5%
6%
7%
8%
9%
10%
11%
12%
13%
14%
15%
16%
17%
18%
19%
20%
21%
23%
24%
25%
26%
27%
28%
29%
30%
31%
32%
33%
34%
35%
36%
37%
38%
39%
40%
41%
42%
43%
44%
46%
47%
48%
49%
50%
51%
52%
53%
54%
55%
56%
57%
58%
59%
60%
61%
62%
63%
64%
65%
66%
67%
69%
70%
71%
72%
73%
74%
75%
76%
77%
78%
79%
80%
81%
82%
83%
84%
85%
86%
87%
88%
89%
90%
92%
93%
94%
95%
96%
97%
98%
99%
100%

HIDDEN upload successful

Ending session...
Rebooting device...
Releasing device interface...

Output Ends++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Enjoy Flashing your handset.... Cheers.

Wireless Festival 2014 - Birmingham

Ever since I have moved to UK have been planning to visit the music festivals...

I was just browsing the internet when I saw the line-up of Wireless Festival which was jaw dropping and irresistible. Bruno Mars, Ellie Goulding, Sean Paul, John Newman all together (Though I so wished if Ed Sheeran would have been there too..) .. Amazing isn't it ?

I booked my tickets and yayy waited for 05th of July 2014 !!

The day came when me and my wife travelled for the festival and it was one of the best events I have ever attended in my life, so well organised and with the best line-ups in the house.

The main stage was huge !! there were 2 other stages , the future stage and the bum bum stage.

John Newman showed some awesome moves !! This guy is talented, a good performer..

Then it was Ellie Goulding time... I have been following her since quite a long time when she was more into vocals for trance music.. she rocked the stage !!

I also took a video of her, performing the starry eyed.. her oldie track..

Then it was time for the headliner act, there were more performances in between, including OutKast, don't follow them to be honest, so just headed far from the stage and rested for a while to rush back to the main stage for Bruno..

Bruno arrived, with a massive entry, he nailed it totally as every single person in the festival just couldn't stop dancing ! He was supported by some good moves by his team on stage and splendid fireworks and lights ..

Thanks to the British Weather all this while.. The Rain God was kind, scared us for a bit, but eventually was an awesome weather throughout the day !!!

A glimpse of the performance of Bruno Mars .. 

Overall, this has been the best ever experience of my lifetime.. and I surely look forward for it next time.. Psst.. next year please get Rihana, Katy, Eminem, Ed Sheeran :P

Cheers..

Custom Nagios Scripts

If you are into systems and datacenter's and are using Nagios as your monitoring tool then this article will be useful for you.

During my stint with one of the organisations I worked with, there were situations where we need to perform certain tasks like

- Enable / Disable Notifications for hosts
- Enable / Disable Notifications for all the services of a particular host.
- Deleting Scheduled downtimes for services.
- Deleting Scheduled downtimes for hosts.
- Disable Notifications for host group
- Enable Notifications for host group

What you need to do is

• Login with root / Nagios user
• Ensure that the nagios command file is at the below location :  /usr/local/nagios/var/rw/nagios.cmd
• If its not there, find the appropriate location and edit the scripts accordingly.

The scripts can be found here
Link to scripts

Your feedback is welcome and let me know incase it doesn't work for you.

ASUS Transformer TF300T not powering on

Incase you own an ASUS Transformer (probably should be applicable on other android tabs as well) , and wondering why your tab doesn't power on when you left it unused for a while, then this is how you can fix it.

You need to follow the hard reset procedure to get it back alive.

Steps to reset :

1. Press the power button (Top Left)
2. Press the volume rocker (down) which is on the Left side of the tab when you are looking at the screen.

Keep holding 1 & 2 for a couple of seconds, and then you should soon see a booting screen of ASUS showing up on the screen.

I am not sure of why this happens though, but my understanding is that it happens generally when there is some corrupt data loaded in the cache of the tablet.

Hope this helps.

Understanding Android / S2 Camera Settings

Below is what all I learn't & read exploring different options in my Samsung Galaxy S2 (ICS).

Sharing it with you guys as this might be helpful. Let me know if you have anything more to share as tips and tricks or also if you have anything else to add below.

Below are some options which are used in S2 phones / rather are common with most of the camera's so are basics :

1. ISO Settings  : Higher ISO setting in darker Light, you get faster shutter speeds.
2. Auto Contrast : Should be ON when you are capturing pictures in bright day.
3. Outdoor Visibility : Should be ON when you are capturing pictures in bright day.
4. Exposure Value : Refers to the total amount of light that hits the image sensor when taking a photo. This can be tweaked as per you desire and experiment
5. Resolution : Keep resolution highest for high quality images, downside is the image size is more, but who cares, we already have alot of space on our phone ';-)
6. Metering : Metering is helpful if your subject is lighted differently than the rest of the shot, such as if your subject matter is in bright light while the rest of the shot is in shadows.
7. Tap To Focus : When shooting into a crowd or other busy backgrounds, zero in on your “target” to capture precise focus on your subject matter. Locking in focus with the green square indicator will also help you avoid blurry images.

Full HD Videos :

You might or rather would say I am sure many of the android users, specially on Galaxy S2, are facing issues creating full HD videos using the stock camera.

While making your video, you will see your video going blurred many times in between in dim light, the reason of this blurness is actually that the autofocus tries to focus back again and again in dim light.This lead to an intermittent blurness in the video, and frustration that you never get a clear HD video.

Samsung is aware of the issue, but still couldn't come out with a fix yet. I ain't aware if it did recently.

You can fix this by installing "lgCamera" app on your mobile, and use it over stock for recording videos. I tested it, it works fine.In fact the video quality, I found it better using this app.

Just try and post your experience.

Missing eth0

You might face issues that when you restart / clone / change nics of your linux box and run the ifconfig command checking interfaces, you will see eth0 missing.

The reason of this is that the old MAC address is cached by the network configurations in some distribution on linux..

The file which has the cached entry is  : /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
You can follow the below 2 methods to fix this problem.

1. Edit the above file, remove the old entry of "eth0" , change "eth1" reference to "eth0"
2. Move this file in /tmp as a backup, and reboot the system. [ You have a backup, incase this doesn't work,playing safe ]

Check your NIC Driver in Linux

You may follow the below steps / commands when checking your ethernet drivers etc loaded on your linux box :

1-  You should know your interfaces name, you may use ifconfig command to check that, generally its eth0.

2- To know what driver / make is your network card, give the below command, you will fetch the module name as the output in first coloumn, in below example is e1000

grep eth0 /var/log/dmesg

3- Now you need to check the version of the drivers installed, use the modinfo command, it will show you the output as below :

$modinfo e1000 [Output below is truncated]

To be more specific about the version, you can give command as below :

$modinfo e1000 |grep version

Car Mix Dec 2012

It will get interesting towards the end... Check it out !

Car Mix Dec 2012 by Djshivash on Mixcloud

Memorable evening with LUCKY ALI ..

Date :: 17th March 2012
Time :: 16:45 HRS
Venue :: HUDA Ground, Leisure Valley , Gurgaon

The legendary soulful singer, whom I have been following since 1996 (when was in school) when he came out with "O Sanam" ,  defining a different class/genre of music...  "Lucky Ali" was in town, and how could I miss his performance. I always wanted to see him performing LIVE and 17th March 2012 was the day !!

The stage all set for Lucky Ali

The best part of the event was that majority of the people attending the concert knew about his music, I met people who were travelling from Chandigarh and Bareilly just to see him live, that is the level of craze people have for him, and he completely deserves it.

Personally I have never seen such a humble & soft spoken celebrity. He was so good on the stage, that no one even uttered a word when he was on the mic saying anything and people wanted more of LUCKY around and on the mic.

Lucky Ali on Stage

The crowd was mesmerized when he started singing his numbers, naming some - O Sanam , Teri Yaadein, AKS,Kitni Haseen Zindagi ,  Kabhi Aisa Lagta, Tere mere saath jo hota, Naa tum jaano Na hum, Tu kaun hein and all of his hit numbers from his solo or movies.

Performing on Stage

I just wish that he doesn't stop now, as he is making a comeback after a long while, by touring 25 cities and promoting is home production album "Raasta Mann", and keep rocking planet earth.

Thanks Lucky Ali and Respect !

  

"sysprep" tool on every Startup

Sysprep tool is "System Preperation Tool" used for deployment of windows PC's. This helps in rolling out installations of windows OS over multiple hosts with minimal intervention of the administrator.

But in some cases where you purchase branded PC's like Dell, HP and you re-install it using recovery disks, when you start using your PC after the complete installation / recovery , you will see the sysprep tool popping up everytime on your screen on every reboot.. which becomes very annoying. You might think to get rid of it using the "msconfig" and removing from startup OR by checking the Start -> Programs -> Startup folder , but that might not help.

A solution which worked for me is as below:


1. Go to Start -> Run -> Regedit
2. First things first, take a backup of your registry.
3. Now go to HKLM -> SYSTEM -> Setup.

4. Double click the "CmdLine" key and make it blank.
5. Similarly edit "AuditInProgress" "FactoryPreInstallInProgress" "SetupType" and make the value "0"
6. Reboot your host.

You should not see the annoying sysprep window now..