My iPhone and its bugs

Nothing is perfect. Its nature's rule but we can develop thing can be close to perfect.

People say Apple stuff is pretty perfect. Lets take example of iPhone - worlds dominant handset manufacturer and seller. Best in feature, app, look and usage. I see some of basic functionality are buggy here.

1. on iPhone4. iOS 5.
We use SMS messaging service as basic tool and way to communication.
Feature, group SMS.

I added some of my friends in sms "To" list.
Put some text.


If some of the text sms failed to deliver. It shows red estimations sign like !
Problem is we never come to know what all sent successfully and which all are failed.

This is strange bug from iOS 5.0.

2. Recently, I tried to delete some pics from photo stream. iOS don't allow you to delete files from your device. 

You have to connect to PC and backup photoes and resync to delete/modify pics on your device.


3. I also have got iPhone 3GS which sometimes have issue of picking up the call. Screen fails to recognize my touch while swapping and accepting the call.

How I carried the Swiss knife in cabin bag (unknowingly)?

How I carried the Swiss knife in cabin bag (unknowingly)?

It was Air France return flight to Mumbai AF 218. Departure time 10.50 hours, I was already late in dropping the baggage in. Police checking was bit tough & lengthy. Many passengers going to Africa were crying due to same “delay” reason. I was only late guy in queue who was supposed to be boarded at 10.10 am, time was 10.30am & I was still in Police cabin bag checkup. They were going in same lazy way at Paris airport.

Immigration aitport checkout stamping hardly took any time as my record was pretty clean. I asked a security guy to promote myself to go ahead as it was too late for me. French security guy told me straight way,”sir, its same for everybody, you have to wait!” Oops!

At Paris Airport bag checkup:

I was carrying a 2 bags, 1 bag has all cloths. Another had laptop & some art books to read on the way back. I really hate AF; I had really bad experience with AF, which you can read in my earlier blog. Coming back to cabin bag checkup, the bag which had Swiss knife!

Security guy said asked me to re pass the laptop bag. Security sensor has given him some indication that there is something fishy but he has still confused. I was still asking him to finish it fast as I had to catch the flight as soon as, it was just 15 min to take off!!! He rechecked my laptop bag, but couldn’t figured out what wrong. I had worn my belt & shoes, was ready to catch my flight. But, police man asked me to stay back to clear laptop bag.

I was opening all zips of laptop bag, policeman shouted, “Don’t touch your bag sir. Please stay away from bag. We need to check it”. I was bit confused, what’s wrong? I was still shouting I ‘ll miss my flight. C’mon ask someone to check my bag. I don’t anything wrong. I‘m just carrying some books & electronic stuff, nothing more! Pls make it quick.

Lady on next desk came to check my bag manually. I helped her to show the stuff. There was a towel, laptop charger & painting books. It was all packed up at last moment. I was still confused what’s wrong with my bag. I was carrying some eye drop medicines which I showed to police lady. She finally agreed & said “it’s alright!” They talked something in French & asked me to go. I run & catch my flight at gate C87; some guy was announcing my name & seat number L24. I ran on plan entrance & was on my seat just before 10 minutes before the take off. Cabin crew guy was happy to see me & said, “Mr. Tipale, you are welcome. We are happy to see you hear, whatever reason you are late, I don’t want to know.” I was muttering,” pardon, pardon!”

At Mumbai Airport bag checkup:

I had nice flight back to Mumbai. There is law by which your baggage came out from any Airport. It’s LIFO-Last in First out! First check-in remains the last. So, I got my bag at #1. I was happy to see my Blue colored Polo Star bag. I was first in custom checking queue. Custom guy was looking for liquor bottles in bag. I had nothing much catchy for him. He found something doubtful in same laptop bag,

he asked me,”wapas daal uss bag ko, kuch to bhi layer jaisa hai” (put that bag again, something like layers are there on laptop.)

I said,”okey, let’s check it again sir”

I pushed my bag to check again.

He wasn’t happy much. Shouted,”yaar, tera laptop nikal ke wapas daal. Thada clear ho jayega.” (Friend, remove your laptop & push the bag again.)

I just remove my laptop & pushed bag to recheck. People from back started shouting,”ab laptop bhi nikalana hai kya edhar.” I replied,”Nahi bhai, it’s for me only”

This time he was satisfied. He still wanted to see “thing which was looking like layers”. I just pulled out my art books to shown him. He understood. He asked me to go by saying,”Thik hai yaar, koi problem nahi. Ja sakate ho.” & I moved on.

At my home in Mumbai:

After coming to my place, I was searching for my key chain, which has all my keys (my flat, my room, office drawers, some more locks). After a day I found the key chain with Swiss knife was in my cabin baggage-Laptop bag’s side pockets. I was shocked!!!

At my Mind:

OMG, I carried a well known weapon in cabin. It helped me understood, “how gang of 4-5 terrorist can easily plan a complete hijacking of the flight?” No some seems to recognize the part of gun or knife if carried separately in large cabin bags.

Anyways I was in no mood to hijack AF flight. I just don’t hate them so much although they delayed my luggage by 3 days in Paris! I love them for providing only direct flight from Mumbai to Paris & back. Thanks for all. I wish they could add more security checks at airport. This is too easy for any terrorist to break airport security. Even they are working on things to work out with bio-weapons. It’s really scary but would be challenging to fight!

Here is picture of it:

VirtualBox by Sun

VirtuaBox :

Sun took over Innotek VBox. Master class product to use multiple OSs on Linux box. I have became huge fan when I tried it. Most imp thing is no sign up, trial version OR registration headache.. Goes very well as open source.

As Linux user, I had limitation while using Microsoft supported stuff. As company intranet & many websites are still IE crazy. I installed Xp with Vbox on my Linux FC6.
Product site Download Page
ScreenShot

Win Xp on Linux Box :



Its was of great use when I started playing Counter Strike. I can start Vbox & play CS. Only you need to care is space & physical memory allocated should be good enough to do your stuff on VBox.

If you go for multiple OS on Vbox.. Physical memory allowed to allocate reduces as underlined OS need to have enough memory..

Guys you can enjoy all your games, movie, other utils of Win environment which may not work in Linux with WINE. Most of n/w stuff don't work with WINE.

Enjoy !
Keep posted if any issue.

kudzu FC8 Eth1 Linux

Another post on linux after long time.

My friend Chinmay had issue with RealTek NIC on FC8. This guy had already destroyed 2 NIC on same machine. After opening the box, he placed the NIC on 2nd Ethernet slot on mother board. Rebooting machine didn't showed the eth1.

Followed the below steps to add the device :

1. First command to run after new h/w addition in any linux box : kudzu

2. kudzu detected the Ethernet card and added it in but couldn't show it when seen with ifconfig as eth1 config file was not on place.

3. I checked MAC of card with ifconfig -a , device was with name tmp_sakjdh132 ..
4. Created copy of eth0 /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcnf-eth0.conf to /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcnf-eth1.conf

5. Changes MAC in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcnf-eth1.conf .

6. /etc/init.d/network restart solved all issue.

ifconfig showed eth1 with valid IP

Thats all !
Chinmay was than back to work. Trying to damage 3rd NIC card on his machine ;)

Formating a undetectable flash drive

Here some more recent RnD done on one of flash drive of friend - Rishit. He was about to dump harddisk data to professional data recoverer.. Eventually settled down on party ;-)

A Transiant flash drive of 120GB space, which was undetectable on WindowsXp.
Condition :

• Drive undetected on Windows
• Mounted on Linux-FC6, but could not delete dirty partition sectors
• Nor move corrupted data to other location.
• Drive was almost in condition to dump

===========================================
[root@localhost ~]# df
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00
23520588 20259704 2046832 91% /
/dev/sda3 101105 16544 79340 18% /boot
tmpfs 512748 0 512748 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda2 30701264 25927728 4773536 85% /home/mahendra/D_drive
/dev/sda1 20972824 15270744 5702080 73% /mnt/c
/dev/sdb1 117218240 3006620 114211620 3% /media/Rishit Shah
[root@localhost ~]# mkfs /dev/sdb1
mke2fs 1.39 (29-May-2006)
/dev/sdb1 is mounted; will not make a filesystem here!
[root@localhost ~]# mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdb1
mkfs.vfat 2.11 (12 Mar 2005)
mkfs.vfat: /dev/sdb1 contains a mounted file system.
[root@localhost ~]# mkfs -t vfat /dev/sdb1
mkfs.vfat 2.11 (12 Mar 2005)
mkfs.vfat: /dev/sdb1 contains a mounted file system.
[root@localhost ~]# mkfs /dev/sdb1
mke2fs 1.39 (29-May-2006)
/dev/sdb1 is mounted; will not make a filesystem here!
===========================================

[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 2611 20972826 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 2612 6435 30716280 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda3 6436 6448 104422+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 6449 9729 26354632+ 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 6449 9729 26354601 8e Linux LVM

Disk /dev/sdb: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 14593 117218241 7 HPFS/NTFS
[root@localhost ~]# fdisk /dev/sd
sda sda1 sda2 sda3 sda4 sda5 sdb sdb1
[root@localhost ~]# fdisk /dev/sdb1

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 14592.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)

Command (m for help): p

Disk /dev/sdb1: 120.0 GB, 120031478784 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14592 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

This doesn't look like a partition table
Probably you selected the wrong device.

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1p1 ? 13578 119522 850995205 72 Unknown
Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb1p2 ? 45382 79243 271987362 74 Unknown
Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb1p3 ? 10499 10499 0 65 Novell Netware 386
Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sdb1p4 167628 167631 25817+ 0 Empty
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Command (m for help): d
Partition number (1-4): 1

Command (m for help): d
Partition number (1-4): 2

Command (m for help): d
Partition number (1-4): 3

Command (m for help): d
Selected partition 4
Command (m for help): w
The partition table has been altered!

Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.

WARNING: Re-reading the partition table failed with error 22: Invalid argument.
The kernel still uses the old table.
The new table will be used at the next reboot.
Syncing disks.

===========================================
Tried deleting all partitions but w command in fdisk dosnt work. Its bad man.

[root@localhost ~]# mkfs.vfat -F 16 /dev/sdb1
mkfs.vfat 2.11 (12 Mar 2005)
mkfs.vfat: /dev/sdb1 contains a mounted file system.

Final try for umounting & then formating the drive

umount -f /dev/sdc1
[root@localhost ~]# mkdosfs -F32 -I /dev/sdc1
mkdosfs 2.11 (12 Mar 2005)
[root@localhost ~]#



Wow !!! I removed the drive & reconnected

[root@localhost ~]# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00
23G 20G 2.0G 91% /
/dev/sda2 30G 25G 4.6G 85% /home/mahendra/D_drive
/dev/sda3 99M 17M 78M 18% /boot
tmpfs 501M 0 501M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda1 21G 15G 5.5G 73% /mnt/c
/dev/sdc1 112G 16K 112G 1% /media/disk-1

It works !