Android Smart Phone

There you go, bought a HTC Hero for the price of RM2000 (CNY promotion, with 8GB microSD). I can finally strike out one of the wishlist, and moving on next.

Oh, I have rooted this phone (since I am not satisfied with the current HTC “customised” Android) and replaced it with MoDaCo’s custom Hero ROM. Worth the risk, not to mention I have the access to Android Market (HTC has remove the Android Market for Asia region, I wonder why). If you are brave enough to flash your Hero, feel free head on to MoDaCo’s Custom ROM for the guide and ROM download.

Having said I have rooted my phone, I of course have tested out the leak version of Android 2.1 (aka Éclair) for HTC Hero. Verdict? Definitely not practical for day to day usage, although I love the enhancements made by Google to address certain issues that is being faced by CupCake (1.5) and Donut(1.6) users. But it is too buggy for my normal SMS/ phone calls.

Why HTC Hero? Well, first of all, I don’t know when will the Motorola Milestone hit our stores (even though it has been released in Hong Kong a couple of weeks ago). Google Nexus One? They only ship it to Singapore, and is not that cheap (plus minus the shipping fee from Singapore).

Summary

I had been bashed pretty hard for not update my blog frequently, sorry about that. Kind of “busy” attending/ finalizing some stuffs that had been lingering around my folk’s house. You name it, renovation, household cleaning, reposition few furnitures, clean up unwanted materials, entertaining my distanced cousins and etc.

2010 is here, so here is the summary of the my 2009:

2009 is a blessing year, I managed to secure a job from a reputable semi-government sector, excellent working environment and best of all, free parking 24/7. Hahahahaha.

Also, I managed to obtain all of my 2009 wishlist’s items. They are:

  1. Motorola RAZR v9
  2. Wireless N router
  3. Network Attached Storage (NAS)
  4. Eee netbook
  5. PS3 slim
  6. Network printer

With this items, I am able to execute my plan of redesign the home’s network, minus the handphone and netbook that is. Some might wonder, why is these stuffs has got to do with redesign home’s network? Simple, centralizing.

When the Internet is getting more blooming than ever, so does the bandwidth consumption and power usage. And to make matter worst, my brothers will leave their computer on 24/7 just to download their favorite TV show and etc. Anyone will scream whenever they experience sluggish connection, even I myself will curse all the way to my old modem + router to restart it.

Also, I have notice there are redundancy of downloading the same materials and the inabilities to share within the same goddamn house! Not to mention the needing of extra storage just to store those stuffs!

This is where you need a superior router to manage those kind of excessive activities, and a centralized mini-server or set-top box to manage the download and store it.

I bought a Linksys wireless N router and a Buffalo NAS 500GB storage (this should be plenty enough to store crap). Both have been customized to cater what I need. The router original firmware had been upgraded to an alternative open source firmware (dd-wrt), and the NAS had also been hacked and installed extra packages.

I have set up torrent application at NAS and disabled all p2p wise connection except NAS at the router.

You might want check out the posts at:

  1. http://granite.my/?tag=linksys-wrt310n
  2. http://granite.my/?tag=ls-chl

Then, I could concentrate on setting up media center and bridging two different “continent” wirelessly. PS3 will do just fine to be functioned as media center. When I said PS3 as media center, I meant it. Some may not know that PS3 can seamlessly stream any media server that support DLNA standard. In other words, you download any TV show (DivX format of course) at your NAS that support DLNA and play it using PS3. No more hooking up your laptop to LCD TV with VGA/ HDMI cable. Pretty neat huh?

An extra router is needed to bridge between the network printer and the main router, eliminating the way-too-long LAN cable (yeah, you guessed it, this router firmware also been upgraded to dd-wrt).

There shouldn’t be much of connectivity problem by now. Thus, chapter “Network” is closed and moving on with others.

So my 2010 wishlist?

  1. Razer Mako 2.1 speaker to functioned as home theater system
  2. Superior desktop which going to cost me up to RM8k
  3. Android based smartphone
  4. Punching bag, yes, I need one
  5. DSLR camera

Oh, happy new year btw!

Busy Schedule

Sorry folks for not updating the blog frequently, especially comments on various entries, I seek for forgiveness on that.

My hands are tight up with the organisation’s Staff Performance Management System (SPMS) and few other projects, where one of it will be publish anytime soon and another of it must be completed by end of November.

It is pretty much hectic and I don’t get the times to upload few pictures of what I did in this couple of months that I have been gone.

But rest assure, new year, there is going to be a lots of hardware/ software hacking entries, detailed reviews, tutorials and etc.

Oh, not to mention, I am planning to reopen back the neural network analysis. It is going to be awesome personel + open source project.

On extra notes, Devtar had attended the GSOC Mentor Summit at San Francisco and came back with the latest news, it seems Nmap Fyodor had been keeping up with our d3vscan project status when we started it. It is good to know that our project is being recognised by the open source societies.

Oh, another thing, I might change my domain name. I am a bit of lazy to type long address, so might shorten it become somewhat like http://x.my domain. Wouldn’t it be cool?

Until then, toodles for now.

Android Battle

I would like to get my hands on Motorola CLIQ! Too sexy to be true!

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/10/android-battle-cliq-edition/

rTorrent + rtGui (or any) + ipkg HowTo

After a tedious hour of research and testing (which cost me around 10 hours of “labour” work, I have finally able to incorporate rTorrent with rtGui (or any other GUI/ web that you are trying to).

It was not easy to incorporate these, lots of issue keep on popping up here and there even with numerous guidance (including official). But here is the fact, most of the guidance are meant for servers or PCs, not devices powered by ARM processor, like Synology/ Buffalo/ Linksys/ etc NAS (Network Attached Storage).

Knowing how freaking hard to get these up and running, here I compile the howto:

You need an access to your device, head on to ipkg + transmission-daemon + LsLivev3 for more details (before transmission part).


Update and install

ipkg update
ipkg install wget nano xmlrpc-c php-xmlrpc rtorrent php php-fcgi php-curl libcurl lighttpd screen

Configure your rTorrent

nano /opt/etc/rtorrent.conf

And below is my configuration:

min_peers = 100
max_peers = 300
min_peers_seed = 100
max_peers_seed = 100
max_uploads = 2
download_rate = 0
upload_rate = 0
directory = /mnt/disk1/storage/Download/
session = /root/.rtorrent/
schedule = watch_directory,5,5,load_start=/mnt/disk1/storage/torrent/*.torrent
schedule = untied_directory,5,5,stop_untied=
schedule = low_diskspace,5,60,close_low_diskspace=100M
schedule = ratio,60,60,"stop_on_ratio=50,5M,100"
port_range = 44444-44444
use_udp_trackers = yes
encryption = allow_incoming,try_outgoing,enable_retry,prefer_plaintext
dht = auto
dht_port = 6881
peer_exchange = yes
scgi_port = localhost:5000

Some argue on having

scgi_port = localhost:5000

instead of

scgi_local = /root/.rtorrent/rpc.socket
schedule = chmod,0,0,"execute=chmod,777,/root/.rtorrent/rpc.socket"

and some say other wise. But what ever it is, it is up to you which you choose.
If you going to use scgi_port, please use that, else, use the scgi_local and its schedule setting.

Once done, move it:

mv /opt/etc/rtorrent.conf /root/.rtorrent.rc

Configure Lighttpd

nano /opt/etc/lighttpd/lighttpd.conf

Basically, this is all you need for this part:

server.modules = (
"mod_access",
"mod_scgi",
"mod_fastcgi")
scgi.server = (
"/RPC2" =>
( "127.0.0.1" =>
("host" => "127.0.0.1", #I am using scgi_port
"port" => 5000, #I am using scgi_port
"check-local" => "disable",
#"socket" => "/root/.rtorrent/rpc.socket", #Uncomment this if using scgi_local
"disable-time" => 0)))

And please note this setting!

server.port = 8081

Configure rTorrent initializer

nano /opt/etc/init.d/S99rtorrent

Please check your first line!

##/opt/bin/sh
#!/bin/sh
#dirlayout="RTORRENT_DEFAULT"
dirlayout="CUSTOM"
#Your device user, should be "root"
user = "root"
#config="/opt/etc/rtorrent.conf"
config="/root/.rtorrent.rc"
#logfile="/opt/var/log/rtorrentInit.log"
logfile="/root/rtorrentInit.log"
#SCRIPTNAME=/etc/init.d/$NAME
SCRIPTNAME=/opt/etc/init.d/$NAME
#at checkcnfg(), line 94
#for i in `echo "$PATH" | tr ':' '\n'` ; do
#       if [ -f "$i/$NAME" ] ; then
                exists=1
#               break
#       fi
#done
#at d_start(), line 120
if [ -e /root/.rtorrent/rpc.socket ] || [ -e /root/.rtorrent/rtorrent.lock ] $
      echo "."
      echo "rtorrent has not been properly stop."
      echo "Deleting locked files ..."
      rm -rf /root/.rtorrent/rpc.socket
      rm -rf /root/.rtorrent/rtorrent.lock
      echo -n "Done"
fi
if [ -e /root/.rtorrent/rpc.socket ] || [ -e /root/.rtorrent/rtorrent.lock ] $
      echo "."
      echo -n "Locked files not deleted, please check .."
fi

stty stop undef && stty start undef
# this works for the screen command, but starting rtorrent below adopts scree$
# even if it is not the screen session we started (e.g. running under an unde$
#su -c "screen -ls | grep -sq "\.${srnname}[[:space:]]" " ${user} || su -c "s$
#su -c "screen -S "${srnname}" -X screen rtorrent ${options} 2>&1 1>/dev/null$
su -c "screen -d -m rtorrent ${options} 2>&1 1>/dev/null" ${user} | tee -a "$$

Configure rtGui

cd /opt/share/www/
wget http://rtgui.googlecode.com/files/rtgui-0.2.7.tgz
tar xvzf rtgui-0.2.7.tgz
cp config.php.example config.php
nano /opt/share/www/config.php

Make sure your rpc_connect is refering to the same port as per server.port

$rpc_connect="http://localhost:8081/RPC2";
$watchdir="/mnt/disk1/storage/torrent/";
$downloaddir="/mnt/disk1/storage/Download/";

Last Step

Do not forget to chmod 777 on your rtGui and chmod a+x on /dev/null

chmod 777 /opt/share/www/rtgui -R
chmod a+x /dev/null

References:

  • http://granite.my/?p=96
  • http://libtorrent.rakshasa.no/
  • http://code.google.com/p/rtgui/
  • http://forum.synology.com/wiki/index.php/RTorrent_wTorrent_HowTo