Syed Azher Ali

Imam Ali

syedaali — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 06:30:34 +0000

Imam Ali (peace be upon him) said:
Death is preferred to meanness and endurance is preferred to anxiety. This life consists of two days —one for you and one against you. On the day that is for you, you should not behave vainly, and on the day that is against you, you should not be grieved because both days are tests for you.

Ashoora

syedaali — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 06:10:04 +0000

O Allah! It is Thee in whom I trust amid all grief. You are my hope amid all violence. Thou are my refuge and provision in everything that happens to me. How many grievances weaken the heart, leaving me with no means to handle them, during which friend deserts me, and enemy rejoices in it. I lay it before Thee and complain of it to Thee, because of my desire in Thee, Thee alone. You relieve me of it and remove it from me. Thou are the Master of all Grace, the Essence of Goodness, and the Ultimate Resort of all Desire.” – Imam Hussain

Sunnyvale

syedaali — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 07:09:13 +0000

Having fun in Sunnyvale

Getting PID start time in Linux

syedaali — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 03:42:06 +0000

How to get the process start date and time

How can we determine when a running process was started?

The venerable ps command deserves first consideration.

Most Linux command-line users are familiar with either the standard UNIX notation or the BSD notation when it comes to specifying ps options.

If ps -ef is what you use, that is the UNIX notation.

$ ps -ef
UID PID PPID C STIME TTY TIME CMD
root 1 0 0 Sep20 ? 00:00:03 init [3]

peter 1218 1 0 Sep20 ? 00:21:35 /usr/lib/iceweasel/firefox-bin -a firefox

peter 4901 1 1 16:34 ? 00:01:12 /usr/bin/emacs-snapshot-gtk

The STIME column displays the start time or date. From the above, we can tell that process 4901 (emacs) began execution at 16:34 (4:34 pm). But on what day, today?

From the ps man page: ‘Only the year will be displayed if the process was not started the same year ps was invoked, or “mmmdd” if it was not started the same day, or “HH:MM” otherwise.’

So, emacs was started at 16:34 TODAY.

What is the start time for the other process, the firefox process with pid 1218?

The STIME for process 1218 reads Sep20 (which was yesterday). But what time yesterday?

The default ps -ef only tells you the start date but NOT the time if a process was NOT started on the same day.

If the BSD notation is more familiar to you, you will find that ps aux yields similar results.

$ ps aux
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
root 1 0.0 0.1 1576 540 ? Ss Sep20 0:03 init[3]

peter 1218 0.5 8.9 201252 45456 ? Sl Sep20 21:35 /usr/lib/iceweasel/firefox-bin -a firefox

The Start column in the above output only reveals the start date if the process is older than the current day.

There are (at least) 2 ways to determine the exact start time if the process was started before the current day.

Solution 1
Specify elapsed time in the ps output format.

$ ps -eo pid,cmd,etime
PID CMD ELAPSED
1218 /usr/lib/iceweasel/firefox-bin – 2-16:04:45

The above ps command specifies 3 fields to be included in the output: the process pid, the command, and the elapsed time, respectively.

etime is the elapsed time since the process was started, in the form dd-hh:mm:ss. dd is the number of days; hh, the number of hours; mm, the number of minutes; ss, the number of seconds.

The firefox command started execution 2 days, 16 hours, 4 minutes and 45 seconds ago. To find the exact time, you need to do some simple math.

If you prefer the BSD notation, issue this command:

$ ps axo pid,cmd,etime
PID CMD ELAPSED

1218 /usr/lib/iceweasel/firefox-bin – 2-16:04:57

Solution 2
Get the process pid and read off the timestamp in the corresponding subdirectory in /proc.

First, get the process pid using the ps command (ps -ef or ps aux)

Then, use the ls command to display the creation timestamp of the directory.

$ ls -ld /proc/1218
dr-xr-xr-x 5 peter peter 0 Sep 20 16:14 /proc/1218

You can tell from the timestamp that the process 1218 began executing on Sept 20, 16:14.

If you can think of another clever way to get the start time and date, please let us know.

(The above is a re-post of http://linuxcommando.blogspot.com/2008/09/how-to-get-process-start-date-and-time.html)

No sound in ubuntu

syedaali — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:58:57 +0000

I was not getting any sound in Ubuntu 64 bit 9.04 so I downloaded gnome alsa mixer using Synaptic package manager and that solved the problem. I am running Ubuntu on Lenovo X61 tablet.

Ubuntu PPTP Client Windows VPN

syedaali — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:36:33 +0000

Ubuntu 9.04 64 bit
Lenovo X61 tablet

First get the network manager pptp plugin:
apt-get install network-manager-pptp

Next create the VPN connection by accessing network manager.
You can do this by going to the System > Preferences > Network Connections > VPN.
Add a new VPN connection, and type in the remote VPN server, your username.
Click on IP 4 settings and if you want specific DNS server, type those in by selecting Automatic (VPN) Addresses only. Click on Advanced and uncheck PAP/CHAP/EAP. Check use MPPE. and leave the rest as is. Save this and restart your system. Also add any routes for the VPN network to /etc/ppp/ip-up.d/route-traffic file. You can create this file if it does not exist. An example entry would be ‘route add -net 192.168.100.0/24 ppp0′ if the corporate network is 192.168.100.

That’s it!

Book Reading

syedaali — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 03:49:20 +0000

A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook Bob Stahl, Elisha Goldstein Nov 2011

Blunder   Zachary Shore
Eat That Frog!   Brian Tracy
Made to Stick   Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Real Boys : Rescuing Our Sons from the Myths of Boyhood William Pollack
Difficult Conversations Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen
ScreamFree Parenting Hal Edward Runkel
Boys Adrift   Leonard Sax
A Whole New Mind Daniel H. Pink
Yes!   Noah J. Goldstein, Steve J. Martin, Robert B. Cialdini
Blink Malcolm Gladwell
How to Win Friends & Influence People Dale Carnegie
The Omnivore’s Dilemma Part 1 Michael Pollan
The Omnivore’s Dilemma Part 2 Michael Pollan