Natarajan's blog

I have moved to Livejournal. My journal link is http://www.livejournal.com/users/knutties.

Hi All,

Back after a long time and that too with some great news. My mom literary talents are out for everyone to see. She has contributed 3 articles to Mangayar Malar over the past few months. So happy for her. She used to write essays for all the oratorical and essay competitions that I took part in school. I used to feel her language was too simple and would not fetch me a prize. But I was mistaken most of the time. It has taken me quite a while (about 20 years) to understand how important it is to write in simple language.

So if anyone of you get a chance to grab a Mangayar Malar of February, turn to page 157 for the article by Uma Kannan (my mom). This article was written based on the day today happenings in my home when my Patti (grandmother) was alive. Amma has been receiving numerous phone calls from relatives, congratulating her and thanking her for bringing fond memories of my grandmother.

Hope she keeps writing and maximizes her literary potential.

Natty

Today was my second trip to Walmart. I had just heard of Walmart being a big retail store chain. The store we went to was huge. I was told this was the one of their smaller supermarkets. Only then I realised the truth in the statement "Everything is big in Texas". Everything is really big in Texas.

During a drive with my friends, I got to see some really weird cars on the road. There was a car mounted on truck wheels. Bikes are such a rarity here. It seems like there is a statutory warning that "Bikes are risky for life". With so many cars whizzing past on the highways, driving a bike is really tough, dangerous and life threatening over here.

It looks like my cooking has just got better after coming to the US. My room mates like the sambhar and rasam that I make.

I am in office on a Saturday today and there is not a single soul except for the security personnel. It really feels lonely in a such a big building as I am in. Every key stroke of yours seems amplified. After this I might not come to office again on a holiday without company.

I am yet to take snaps after reaching here. Will upload some of the snaps that my friends took over the last two weeks soon.

Natty

I am posting this from the Richardson, Texas, US of A. For those of you wondering what I am doing here, I am here on an official assignment. This blog just about sums up my first week impressions about US.

Pluses

• The level of automation in dispensing goods is mind boggling. You put money in slots and get things done. This must have cost them a lot of jobs than outsourcing I suppose.
• Great working atmosphere. You are hardly interrupted during your work.

Minuses

• The extent of your mobility is severely limited by the availability of a four(or greater) wheeler at your disposal.
• Malls are the only places where you get stuff. I am sorely missing the petty shops back home and the provision stores at street corners.

I don't think I can write more as I have not explored the place yet. I will be posting more of my experiences here.

Natty

I was at the Chennai West, Road Transport Office (RTO) today to get my learner's licence for driving Light Motor Vehicles(LMV). My college mates will remember that I took quite a few attempts to get my two wheeler licence.

When I was applying for the two wheeler licence I did not have any address proof documents with me. So I had to file for an affidavit and get it attested by a notary. This time around I had the ration card. So I expected the whole affair to be smooth.

I took an extended weekend last week and visited the RTO on Friday, September 17th. I paid the fees (Rs. 30) and submitted the completed application forms. I was turned off by the inspector with the reason that people should either apply for LMV through a driving institute or
have the documents of a vehicle on which the driving test will be conducted. This was not mentioned in the application forms for the Learner's licence. Naturally, I was quite peeved. I thought my visit to Chennai had gone waste. Actually that was not to be, I had a great time the following weekend with my family, visting the Elliots beach and the Fruit Shop on Greams road (Besant Nagar).

Luckily I did not have to wait for long before I had another go. I had an appointment at the American Consulate for my visa on September 28th. I decided to take another day off and visit the RTO with all the necessary documents. This time around i.e. September 27th today, I was successful. I took copies of documents of my neighbour's car. I got my Learner's licence.

A few tips for people going to the RTO office for the Learner's licences for LMV. This should be applicable for two wheelers also.

• Completed application for Learner's licence, this includes a doctor's attestation that your general health is sound


• Proof of address - any of the following
  
  
  
  • Ration Card
  
  
  • Passport
  
  
  • For any other document, please get in touch with your local RTO offices
  
  
  
  
• Proof of age
  
  
  
  • Your school mark sheets (10th, 12th) should suffice
  
  
  
  
• You would not need the above documents (proof of address and proof of age) if you already have a driving licence for a different category vehicle


• Any of the following
  
  
  
  • A driving institute's certificate
  
  
  • or
  
  
  • Documents of the car you are going to drive during the driving test
    
    
    
    • Registration Crtificate (R.C. book)
    
    
    • If you are not owner of the vehicle, then an authorisation from the vehicle owner
    
    
    • Vehicle's insurance papers
    
    
    • Vehicle's tax papers
    
    
    • Vehicle's emission certificate
    
    
    
    
  
  

You would be submitting copies of the document along with your Learner's licence application form. The inspector will check the originals and return them to you. You do not have to undergo the written test if you already have a licence issued by the same RTO for a different category of vehicle than the one you are applying for now.

Another general tip, reach the RTO as early as possible. Being among the first applicants has its advantages. The officers are less irritable and you are more likely to meet honest, punctual officers if you are early and on time. Have all documents in place, you are less likely to be turned away if you have all the necessary documents. Do not give the officer a chance to turn you off. (some of them love doing so)

I got to read one of O Henry's short stories - The Last Leaf. It is nice little short story with a twist. No doubt O Henry is regarded as a master of twist. You can read the online version of the story at The Last Leaf.

Natarajan

Access Control Lists (ACL from now on) is a mechanism by which you can have fine grained file access permissions.

A scenario to explain the utility of ACL

How many times you wanted two users to have access over a particular file, and you had to create a group with the concerned users as members? ACL comes to your rescue in such a situation. You can just give the multiple users permissions for the file without having to create a group.

Pre-requisites for ACL

• Your filesystem has to support ACL extensions. Kernels configurations that come with latest distros have the ACLs enabled by default. If not, you would need to have the CONFIG_EXT2_FS_POSIX_ACL, CONFIG_EXT3_FS_POSIX_ACL, CONFIG_REISERFS_FS_POSIX_ACL (in the filesystem configuration section of your kernel) selected depending on which filesystem you use. Mandrake 10 official on which I tried using ACL had these configurations turned on by default. But I had to remount my filesystem with the acl option
• You filesystem must be mounted with the acl option.
• # mount / -o remount,acl
• You could set this option on in fstab to have it turned on at boot. For this add acl to the option section in the fstab line

Example

I have a directory natty_kumar for which users natty and kumar need to be given read/write/execute access.

total 8

drwxr-xr-x  2 natty natty 4096 Sep 25 23:27 natty_kumar

-rw-r--r--  1 natty natty 1406 Sep 25 23:28 acl.html

To see the current access control list for the directory natty_kumar use the following command

[natty@localhost linux]$ getfacl natty_kumar/

# file: natty_kumar

# owner: natty

# group: natty

user::rwx

group::r-x

other::r-x

Now I need to give permissions to user kumar for this directory

[natty@localhost linux]$ setfacl -m u:kumar:rwx natty_kumar/

You can see the new access permissions for the directory with

[natty@localhost linux]$ getfacl natty_kumar/

# file: natty_kumar

# owner: natty

# group: natty

user::rwx

user:kumar:rwx

group::r-x

mask::rwx

other::r-x

Now user kumar has read/write/execute permissions on the natty_kumar directory.
To revoke all ACL permissions given, you can use

[natty@localhost linux]$ setfacl -b natty_kumar

This is a small intro to ACLs. For further reading:

• $ man acl
• $ man setfacl
• $ man getfacl
• The Linux ACLs pages, at http://acl.bestbits.at

Hope you found it useful.

Natarajan