enabling NTP on our servers

While checking bounce processing, found that krishna's time was off by five minutes. Installed ntp as given here,

sudo apt-get install ntp

I guessed that the firewall might cause problems, and sure enough, checking the status with
ntpq -p
found that the peer was not being contacted, the reach was 0. Added a firewall rule for NTP for the DMZ, and all was well.

krishna bounce processing again

Nowadays I keep checking krishna's bounce processing by seeing the phplist messages page - if messages don't show bounces, that means the bounce processing has stopped. And most of the time it is cured by a simple flush of the mbox as given here. Today had to do a flush, after the day of that post - five months.

creating DiscourseStream schedule

Guest post from PB about creating DiscourseStream on schedule page:

Steps:

1. Added new BC Broadcast Center Name: DiscourseStream Bcid: 9

2. Modified the changeover time from 5:00AM to 7:00AM to avoid import issues for the schedule database

3. Modified Playlist import script for Discourse Stream and commented out Asiastar

4. Added SIGNATURE_TUNE to the beginning of playlist files that were already created.

5. Modified the cron for changeover in the remote server from 5:00AM to 7:00AM

6. Added two hrs of DD to today's playlist so that the changeover takes place tomorrow without a break and reuploaded.

7. Modified the csv script to generate csv for Discourse stream

8. Skipped the instrumentals being listed in the csv for DD

9. Modified the schedule database for discourse stream to have the changeover @ 1:30 GMT (7:00 am IST)

10. Added a single program item to start the 27th csv import (NOTE: It can be done only through IE)

11. Uploaded the csv for 27th Sep 2011

12. Modified the DD making script to add signature tune in the beginning of the playlist.

fixing problems with Listen Now page and IE

Newer versions of IE were not displaying the "Listen Now" page with the jplayer audio player. Found that the page was loading when "compatibility mode was turned on - the broken page icon on the right side of the addressbar.

Looking into the code, found a possible culprit in the Twitter embed code. It just said



in the body, put



in the head of the document.

And all was well again with IE.

more about the iphone and farewell to it as well

Following up on my previous post, finally got it to do almost everything using a combination of tools. Almost everything, except one of my essentials - call recording. It seems to be impossible to do call recording on the iPhone without third party services calling out to their server due to hardware level limitations imposed by Apple. And apparently Android is also the same. So, I'll have to stick to my old Windows Mobile 5 phone!

Coming back to this iphone, installed the following from iTunes on the PC:


Battery Magic - uninstalled due to a startup screen which could not be removed due to non-working touchscreen portion

Planets

Compass Free - uninstalled as the iPhone 1st gen doesn't have GPS

Remote Desktop Lite

GPS Tracker  - uninstalled as the iPhone 1st gen doesn't have GPS

Battery LED!

Teamviewer

APPZILLA

EasyWriter

iTalk Recorder - uninstalled as phone call recording needs paid service.

Got Veency in Cydia installed through iSpirit which was mentioned at this forum page. Then onwards it was fairly straightforward to do anything on the phone, since the VNC client could click even in the places where the touchscreen wasn't working. Mobile Terminal was one of the nice apps loaded through Cydia.

working around a broken iphone

Got a used iphone for Rs. 4k - reason it was going cheap was that part of the touch-screen was not responsive. This happened to be the part just above the lowest line. So, the Call soft-button in the phone keypad does not work! And so on.

Trying to get ebooks into it. SSH not working - probably not installed, though Cydia is present. Trying to install SSH gave an error message in Cydia about being unable to download files - probably an old repository. But cannot click on the OK button for the message. That was in the bad portion, and landscape mode is not available for that screen.

Tried to use the Kindle app - it needs registration, and in portrait mode, which does not work with the keypad. I did not try copy-pasting the username and pw - that might have worked. But anyway, went on to try iBooks. Unfortunately iBooks needs iOS 3.2 and higher, and this is a 1st gen iPhone with iOS 3.1.3. Then tried Stanza, that one works.

Transferring files to Stanza - all the methods seem to need Stanza to pop up a confirmation dialog asking if I want to download - and the Download confirmation button comes up in the non-working part of the screen! Finally got books to transfer using iPhone Explorer.

DD-WRT and Dlink DIR615 revE4

As mentioned in an earlier post, tried out DD-WRT on the Dlink DIR615. What we got was hardware version E4.

Quite simple procedure as given at the dd-wrt wiki. Ours was E4 and not E3. Read somewhere on the forums that changing the last number from 0 to 1 in the E3 firmware with a hex editor makes it work with E4. Tried that, it works. Did the Hex editing of the firmware using Free Hex editor Neo on Windows.  The firmware labelled as E4 in the dd-wrt site has 5 as the last digit - that apparently makes it not compatible with our E4 version.

But plugging it in our network, it didn't work. At first I thought it might be a MAC address caching issue, and tried cloning the old router's MAC address. That also did not work. Then did some tests and found that it was just not routing - logging into the router, ping works in both directions LAN and WAN. But the LAN can't ping the WAN and vice-versa.

Tried posting on the dd-wrt forums, here and here, but finally did not get any solution. Assuming that some hardware limitation prevents it from working as a router without NAT. And the google answers page recommended routers seem to be scarce. The Linksys WRT54G is superseded by the WRT54GH which doesn't support routing mode, for example.