iPhone SSH screenshots

It's been some time the iPhone jailbreak is available, and there are many posts available online. But I wanted to boast about my jailbroken version. Here are a few screenshots.

First the unix version; uname -a

After that I wanted to use some standard linux commands, but they were not available. When using Cydia, I saw some apt-get being executed; so tried it and installed 'top'
I started MobileSafari to check if was realtime, or it popped up in ms on this screen.

I was bored over the weekend and decided to jailbreak it, and was wondering; "What kept me away from it!!"

Cheap Memory

Finally upgraded myself to 4GB of memory on my personal laptop. The price was so cheap just could not resist it :)

Other reasons I was waiting for was better 64-bit Ubuntu support. I still need to reformat my machine. Some of the issues resolved by 64-bit which I was waiting on;

• Flash browser support (had to use a 32-bit script)
  
• Video codecs (works like a charm, even apple trailers work)
• Open Office (the icons & menu was all messed up)
• Support for my wi-fi atheros chipset (8.10 cured the problem, no more ndiswrapper)

Hopefully this weekend, I should be able to make a transition. Only if I had 64-bit Windows, what the heck, will wait for Windows 7.

My first E-Book: Kick Start a software start-up

Ok after all the configuration and working of the VM server with 4 virtual machines, I found it too much info to blog (lazy me..) with all the steps and configuration (I have some 3 posts still as draft yet to be published). There were some random thoughts on how this process and infrastructure can be used by others (start-ups or low budgets) for thier benefit.

Since most of the blog postings are enlightenments that occured to time once in a while, I've decided to consolidate all this information and jott them down like a step-by-step guide on how can we use the VM infrastructure for small shops or small projects in large shops. The table of contents for this book will look something like this.

Table of Contents

• Preface
• Who should read this book
• What are the technologies we'll cover
• Introduction
• Analyzing & Building the server
• Software selection.
• RAID & LVM
  
• Setup & Configure your first VM
• VPN Applicance
• Creating more Appliances I: Webserver, Database
• Creating more Applicanes II: Version Control, Continious Integration Servers
• Timed VNC sessions (iTalc or vncthumbnailviewer)
• Appendix A: Configure your Linksys router with DDNS

If you have anything else you would like to consider let me know if practically possible I'll try to include it into the book. I hope to get the book out in 2-3 months (provided I can give it one hour a day). People volunteering for proof-reading are most welcome.

Setting up a PHP development environment on your local system

This is an old post I had written on google docs, before VMware Server was free for the general user. Thought could be still more relevant to the general developer for testing in Linux envoirment. VMPlayer I beleive is lighter than VMware Server.

There are 2 stages of setting up the development & testing environment for yourself. The preferred work environment is Linux. If you already on Linux then you can safely skip Stage I, you can directly proceed to Stage II, also if you have Linux already installed, just cross check if you have the LAMP (Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP) server installed.

Pre Installation Software Download Links

• http://www.vmware.com/download/player/ [VMPlayer]
• http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download [Ubuntu]

STAGE I: Setting up Ubuntu on VMWare.

• Download Ubuntu/Xubuntu/Kubuntu Desktop edition ISO, what ever you like... all the same just different filemanagers (Gnome/Xfe/KDE resp.). If you are comfortable with command line, then you can also install the Server edition with no XWindows and only commandline.
• Download and install VMPlayer for your system.
• Download qemu for your operating system and extract in any directory you like.
• Open your commandline to go ahead to bin folder of qemu and type

qemu-img create -f vmdk ubuntu.vmdk 3G

• Here we are creating a 3GB, virtual hard drive in VMWare format. This file will now act as our hard drive for VMWare to install an OS on it. The name of the file is ubuntu.vmdk, you can name it what ever you wish to.
• Now the main vmx file (The VMWare configuration file). change the highlighted paths as per your system.
  

 #!/usr/bin/vmware
config.version = "8"
virtualHW.version = "4"
ide0:0.present = "TRUE"
ide0:0.filename = "ubuntu.vmdk"
# The amount of RAM you want to allot to the Operating system. For Desktop use 512 and server just 256.
memsize = "512"
MemAllowAutoScaleDown = "FALSE"
ide1:0.present = "TRUE"

#ide1:0.fileName = "auto detect"
#ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-raw"

ide1:0.fileName = "ubuntu-7.04-server-i386.iso"
ide1:0.deviceType = "cdrom-image"

ide1:0.autodetect = "TRUE"
floppy0.present = "FALSE"
ethernet0.present = "TRUE"
usb.present = "TRUE"
sound.present = "TRUE"
displayName = "Ubuntu LAMP Server"
guestOS = "ubuntu"
nvram = "ubuntu-server-three.nvram"
MemTrimRate = "-1"

ide0:0.redo = ""
ethernet0.addressType = "generated"
uuid.location = "56 4d ce 99 e0 d2 2b bf-73 47 ac 62 65 13 57 86"
uuid.bios = "56 4d ce 99 e0 d2 2b bf-73 47 ac 62 65 13 57 86"

tools.syncTime = "TRUE"
ide1:0.startConnected = "TRUE"

uuid.action = "create"

checkpoint.vmState = "ubuntu-lamp-server.vmss"

isolation.tools.hgfs.disable = "TRUE"
virtualHW.productCompatibility = "hosted"
tools.upgrade.policy = "manual"

tools.remindInstall = "TRUE"

usb.autoConnect.device0 = ""

• After setting all the paths correctly, if you have VMPlayer installed, just save the vmx file, (call it ubuntu.vmx) and double click on the file.
• If all the paths are set correctly, the VMPlayer will boot up the virtual drive and show the ubuntu installation menu. This is easier than windows a million times.
• At the end of the installation (server or desktop) the process will ask you, if you want to install LAMP server. Select it and let it install the LAMP server.
• Reboot the system, and you are good to go. You have successfully installed Ubuntu on VMWare.

STAGE II: Check the configuration setup of Apache/MySQL/PHP

Now we'll check if PHP and Apache have been successfully installed on your system. Go the /var/www folder, you should be seeing a apache2-default folder out there. If you see these then apache seems to be installed. Just open the browser and type http://localhost you should be able to see the apache-default folder over there. If you a receive a page not found then apache is not running or installed properly.

If things look good, next stage is to check PHP installation. Create a file named index.php and type the following there.

 <?php phpinfo(); ?> 

Just refresh the localhost (place the file in /var/www) That should give you loads of PHP info on the screen in blue, purple and a huge table. If that happens you are good to go!!! Else something is wrong!!!.

MySQL Check
Open the command line and type

mysql -uroot

If it opens up with a mysql> prompt then it's good else something is wrong. Your mysql password is blank.

If all sounds good, now go to Stage III

STAGE III: Applications to setup.

Download

• JOOMLA
• WORDPRESS

Extract them to the /var/www folders and access them using http://localhost/joomla and http://localhost/wordpress respectively if you extracting them to the folders on these names.

How to go about setting them, start the index.php or read the readme file and you should be good to go.