DMZ host : The secret to blazing torrents

The term DMZ comes from military origins, Demilitarized Zone, in netwoking terminology it essentially means an interface to the outside world which is free from all restrictions i.e all ports open, now torrents are community driven, so openess is very important. To enable DMZ on most modems follow the steps given below:

1. Go to network settigs-> local area connections and go to the properties of TCP/IP protocol and change your IP to any local address (192.168.1.XXX) and set your default gateway to your modems IP (in my case 192.168.1.1)

2. Go to your modem's configuration page (in my case http://192.168.1.1) you will be prompted for a username and password (usually "admin" "admin", if not contact service provider).

3. Here serarch for NAT settings, under which DMZ host will be there, set the DMZ host to your computers IP and reboot modem.

This method made my torrents continuos (reliable speeds) and increased speeds by about 40%.
Hope it works for you!!

Torrents taking forever: Improving torrent speeds

I was downloading this file with an availability of 15.33, yet no dowload speed. I was cursing the peers (who by coincidence were all Indians i swear!).

1.I enabled port forwarding on the comp by following instructions for my modem on

portforward.com

If u are an amateur at networking technologies do NOT try this at home. I had to reset my modem multiple times, but got it to work eventually.

2. Then I used the Azureus client on Debian Linux and Voila i was getting speeds in excess of 40 kB/s. USE TORRENTS ON LINUX, simplest solution.

3. But then i got to thinking what about the poor souls on Windows a.k.a voleware (I know a few hardened ones, who are like, aanithang dats freey is bad fer ya son), the difference turned out to be the no of connections that can be made to peers is limited in voleware by default. Use this "patch" to correct the problem, and your torrents will zoom.

http://torrentfreak.com/static/EvID4226Patch223d-en.zip

Ubuntu 9.04 live cd on acer aspire 4520, blank screen

This laptop has traditionally had compatibility issues with Linux, these issues have almost completly been ironed out in recent distros. Overall the most stable has been Debian lenny.

I decided to try the new ubuntu as ubuntu is generally known for its superior hardware compatibility. Was I disappointed.

I don't know how compatibility got reduced from the previous version. Ubuntu 8 effortlessly worked. This version however is error ridden.

If you still want to run it you will probably face the blank screen.

Press F4 during startup to boot in safe mode. Then there will be a screen with "Loading....", type

startx

and press enter, if it does not work use Ctrl+Fn keys to switch console then try.

After that I had a few missing icons, after this I gave up.

ipod not scrobbling: last.fm

I just reinstalled Itunes, and my ipod was not scrobbling. All you gotta do is either go to diagnostics -> ipod scrobbling and click manually scrobble or reinstall your ipod firmware by restoring in itunes. Beware this will erase all tracks, alarms, settings in your ipod. However you can back up ur tracklist on a playlist.

Google maps: Offline without an internet connection

Recently I went on a trip which required me to have interactive maps, but i did not have an internet connection, thats when I stumbled upon GMap Catcher, it is a python based application which allows offline caching AND backing up of the caches. You can even specify the level of zoom upto which the map should be downloaded, and both the road maps and sattelite maps are downloadable. Very useful tool indeed.

http://code.google.com/p/gmapcatcher/

To run the linux version, just extract
cd
python maps.py

Center the map to where you want it and just click download, the latitude and longitude are already set to the current center of the map, choose the zoom level and you are good to go. Just check the 'offline' button to view the downloaded content offline.

And yes to backup, just go to your home folder, view> show hidden files, and just copy the .googlemaps folder to back up the whole cache.

Recovering Linux installation after windows install

Since window does not detect GRUB, if you wanna add a windows installation later or recover your existing installation, you end up invariably losing your linux installation.

To recover it, insert the installation disk, enter the text based recovery, when the console opens up type
chroot /mnt/sysimage
This is where your system is mounted on the recovery console.
Then,
grub-install hd
like, hd0,hd1 etc. And reboot.

Nvidia Drivers: Debian Lenny on acer aspire

The following commands ought to help you out (First configure /etc/apt/sources.lst) based on the link in the previous post):

apt-get install module-assistant

apt-get install nvidia-kernel-common module-assistant

m-a -i -t prepare

m-a clean,a-i -i -t -f nvidia-kernel-source

depmod -a

apt-get install nvidia-glx nvidia-glx-dev nvidia-xconfig xserver-xorg

m-a auto-install nvidia-kernel${VERSION}-source

Then add this to /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "Module"
Load "glx"
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
Driver "nvidia"
EndSection

To the respective sections else,

Finally restart X server.