rgb.alpha: nram's tech blog

Strange “martian packets” on eth1

nram — Wed, 12 May 2010 22:44:38 +0000

I see tons of these errors on my laptop running PCLinuxOS 2010. Atleast in one occasion, I have seen the eth1 reset and the network disrupted.

[root@groundhog log]# ifconfig eth1
eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:12:F0:8E:4A:69
inet addr:192.168.1.113 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:132 errors:9 dropped:9 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:18 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:1
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:295924 (288.9 KiB) TX bytes:25656 (25.0 KiB)
Interrupt:11 Memory:c0210000-c0210fff

/var/log/messages:

May 12 18:30:37 groundhog kernel: martian source 255.255.255.255 from 192.168.1.101, on dev eth1
May 12 18:30:37 groundhog kernel: ll header: ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:00:0d:60:5d:dc:27:08:00
May 12 18:30:37 groundhog kernel: martian source 192.168.1.255 from 192.168.1.101, on dev eth1
May 12 18:30:37 groundhog kernel: ll header: ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:00:0d:60:5d:dc:27:08:00
May 12 18:30:37 groundhog kernel: martian source 192.168.1.255 from 192.168.1.101, on dev eth1

May 12 18:30:37 groundhog kernel: ll header: ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:00:0d:60:5d:dc:27:08:00

As I understand martian packets are unrecognized packets. Someone suggested this to supress them (not: not solve). Tried but didn’t work.
[root@groundhog log]# find /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/ -name “*martian*” -print
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/all/log_martians
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/default/log_martians
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/lo/log_martians
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/eth0/log_martians
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/irda0/log_martians
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/eth1/log_martians
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/tun0/log_martians
[root@groundhog log]# file /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/eth1/log_martians
/proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/eth1/log_martians: empty
[root@groundhog log]# echo “0″ > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/eth1/log_martians

That didn’t help. So for now Iam turning this interface off. (I have wired connection as well, so I can afford to turn this off for now). This is a topic for another day …

Goole Wave – more like a drop!

nram — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 01:41:28 +0000

On Fri evening I got an Google Wave invite that has taken the internet discussion forums by tide. Everyone seem to have gone hyper over it. So naturally I was very excited and accepted the invite and logged in right away. I was greated with an empty three panel screen… The welcome wave arrived few min later.. Clicked on my contacts. Empty! Tried to send a mail … well’ I can’t. I can send it to only those in my Contact!

Later I learn that I can communicate only within the wave community. Thats a huge restriction. It would take ages for everyone to get the wave invite and even longer for every one to be sufficiently interested to start using it. Since Wave is all on the cloud, many folks who are not online all the time will find it very unusable.

I tried to send a mail from my work Id and GMail, but they never show up in my googlewave a/c. Later I learn that no outside communication is allowed for now. Hope google fixes that first thing.

So, I decieded to form my cummunity and sent invite to some of my tech savvy and must be family members, including my 8 yr old daughter. Unlike the GMail invite, the wave invites are not sent right away. I don’t know if Google reviews the receipients for “wave worthyness”. So, two days into having wave a/c, I feel like an drop with no one to talk to. wired!

Tomorrow’s world

nram — Tue, 26 May 2009 17:44:54 +0000

Happen to catch this documentory on Discovery channel. Some of the techs covered ..

Realestate
- air and sea
Smart Dust : tiny computing, communicating devices all over the city
Personal long/short distance travel
- JetPack
- Viper
- Highways in Sky
- Underwater flying
- Squba car
Geo Browser
- Google Earth, street view
Telepresense
- Cisco Emerging technologies
- Cisco Health Presense
- Transporting presense
Alternate Power
- Pizo electricity
Water Purifier
- SlingShot
Alternate agriculture
- Skyfarm
Planet killers (asteroids)
- seed vault
Anti Aging
- Gene

ScribeFire

nram — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:24:06 +0000

While looking for some TB pluggins, stumbled on ScribeFire. Seem like a very promissing pluggin. I was able to connect to my tech blog within seconds and adding this post from ScribeFire.

Enabling Hibernate in Windows Vista

nram — Mon, 19 Jan 2009 17:53:45 +0000

Most popular tip seem to be to run powercfg /hibernate on from cmd (run as Admin). But this did n’t work for me.

However turning off the Hybrid mode worked.

Personalize -> Screen Saver -> Changer Power Settings -> Change when the computer sleeps -> Change advanced power settings -> Sleep ->Allow hytbrid sleep -> Settings [Off] .

Now did anyone say Vista was user friendly ?

Here is a blog with screen shots.

keeping track of personal finance

nram — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:49:42 +0000

Some of the tools that I had tried to keep my finances organized:

Desktop Tools

Microsoft Money: Remember trying it few times. I think this was the last one I tried before leaving US.
- Eye candy interface
- can download transaction from banks
- somewhat confusing interface
- overkill
Quicken: Somehow I never had plesant experience with Quicken. Iam sure its just me since it has millions of happy users.

DIY

Spreadsheet: Riight after moving to India, I used to maintain a spreadsheet with some formulas. Not to fancy and it did work for me for few months. Then I just got lazy.
- Simple
- Not shared.
Google SpreadsheetsThere are several innovative usages of google spreadsheet, including this one.
- work proxy blocks google docs. Sigh!
SimplePlanning:
- Excel based formulas ($10). have n’t tried.

Online Tools

ExpenseRegister
- simple interface
- supports categories
- supports sub catagories
- support type
- has several report types
ExpenseView
- Simple, clean web2.0 interface
- Supports categories
- No type (cash/debit/…)
- breakup, summary, etc.
- Integrates into igoogle
mint
- Interface looks polished
- has some positive reviews elsewhere
- requires to enter bank and card info. — skipping
Geezeo:
- a review here.
- signed up and it looks much too jazy for me.

More Info:

This blog has some reviews.

Using NTSV TV with PAL STBs in India

nram — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 05:26:31 +0000

After moving the TV from US to India, I faced the obvious question … how to connect it to the cable box? The TV supports only NTSC and the cable set to box (STB) gives out only PAL. After searching thru several blogs, electronic shops in Bangalore and talking to friends, these seem my likely choices.

Use an STB that gives NTSC. To my knowledege no cable or satellite TV operator has such a box.
Use a signal convertor that converts PAL to NTSC. These come in different prices and quality. They come in different connectors aswell. One popular choice is to take coaxial input and composite or componet video output. Based on most of the reviews, the signal quality seem to suffer on these boxes.
Use a signal convertor that gives SVGA. This is similar to option (1), except that the output is SVGA, meat for flat panel monitors. These boxes come in different output resolutions. I eventually picked one that claims to support 1600×1200. It does the job, quite poorly. Since the output is SVGA, I need to run seperate audio cable.
Use a PC as a convertor. Ofcourse you will need a TV Tuner card that takes PAL input and an external video out from the PC. In my case, the TV tuner card is NTCS only. Someday I will get a PAL TV Tuner card and try this.
Use an STB that gives SVGA. DishTV seem to have such STB. This seem like an acceptable solution. I have n’t tried this yet, since I have already invested quite heavily on the STBs and the convertors.

Zoundry

nram — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 18:18:13 +0000

Read about this Desktop blog management s/w in another blog and tried. Its quite handy and featurerich.

SuperNova

nram — Thu, 22 May 2008 12:55:08 +0000

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/080521-supernova-birth.html

Now thats some news … Sure we live in intersting times.

WiFi over 100km

nram — Thu, 22 May 2008 12:29:19 +0000

Read this blog on Intel’s Rural connectivity Project (RCP) initiated project to extend WiFi range. With MAC enhancements (and possibly radio and other software enhancements), Intel seem to have achieved 100km access range over WiFi… Now thats very comparable to WiMAX’s promissed 30km range.

Now this is still requires LOS (Line of Sight) and this possibly was tested on a terrain that was flat enough to achieve it. Depite that I think this is a breakthru.

Does this mean this will give WiMAX its run for the money? I don’t think so. Atleast not in the short run. WiMAX has gained enough traction of its own. Also Iam not sure about the path to standardization and availability of this WiFi extension into the market.

But given the overall price advantage of WiFi access points, this would be a great boon for last mile solution in rural areas and for MAN.