Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

May 6, 2015

How to Root a second generation Moto x running Lollipop

Filed under: Knowledgebase,Tech Related,Tutorials — Suramya @ 11:22 PM

I got my new phone today and as usual the first thing I did was root it before I started copying data over so that I don’t loose data when I unlock the boot loader. The process required a bit of work mainly because I was following instructions for KitKat while my phone was running Lollipop. That caused the phone to go into this funky state where the Play Store API’s went MIA and the entire thing stopped working to the point that I had to do a hard reset to get back to a stable state.

BTW, before you continue please note that this will delete all data on the phone so you need to ensure that you have a proper backup before proceeding. Without further ado, here are the steps I followed to get things to work using my Linux (Debian) desktop:

Unlock the Bootloder

The first thing you have to do is unlock the Boot loader on the phone:

  • Install the Android SDK by issuing the following command: 
    apt-get install android-tools-adb android-tools-fastboot
  • Run the following command: 
    fastboot oem get_unlock_data
  • Take the string returned, which would look something like this: 
    (bootloader) 0A40040192024205#4C4D3556313230
(bootloader) 30373731363031303332323239#BD00
(bootloader) 8A672BA4746C2CE02328A2AC0C39F95
(bootloader) 1A3E5#1F53280002000000000000000
(bootloader) 0000000

    and concatenate the 5 lines of output into one continuous string without (bootloader) or ‘INFO’ or white spaces. Your string needs to look like this:
    0A40040192024205#4C4D355631323030373731363031303332323239#BD008A672BA4746C2CE02328A2AC0C39F951A3E5#1F532800020000000000000000000000

  • Visit the Motorola Website.
  • Paste the string you got in the previous step on the site, and then click on the ‘Can my Device be Unlocked?’ button and if your device is unlockable, a “REQUEST UNLOCK KEY” button will now appear at the bottom of the page.
  • Click on the “REQUEST UNLOCK KEY” Button.
  • You will now receive a mail with the unlock key at your registered email address
  • Start your device in fastboot mode by pushing and holding the power and volume down at the same time. Then release the power button followed by the volume down button. The device will now power up in fastboot mode.
  • Run the following command to unlock the bootloader: 
    fastboot oem unlock

    • If the code was correct then you will see a message confirming that your device was unlocked and the phone will reboot.

Enable Developer Options/USB Debugging

In order to proceed further we need to enable USB Debugging and in order to do that we need to enable Developer Options following these steps:

  • Pull down the notification drawer and tap on ‘Settings’
  • Scroll down to ‘About Phone’
  • Now scroll down to ‘Build Number’
  • Tap on ‘Build Number’ 7 times.

    • It’ll now say that you are a developer. Now press back, You should now see Developer Options above About Phone.

  • Click on ‘Developer Options’
  • Check the box next to ‘USB debugging’ and save

Root the Phone

First we need to download the correct image file for the model of your phone. I had to look up my model on Wikipedia because for some reason my phone decided not to share that information with me. Use the appropriate link for your model in the list below. I have a XT1092 but the XT1097 image worked fine for me.

After downloading the file, extract it. Run the following command:

adb reboot bootloader

This will restart the phone in the fastboot mode. Then boot using the image you downloaded in the previous step using this command:

fastboot boot /path/to/image/file/CF-Auto-Root-victara-victararetbr-xt1097.img

Once you run the command the Device will boot up, install su and quickly reboot (this is automatic, no user intervention is required). After the phone starts up, you need to install Chainfire’s SuperSU from the Play Store.

After that you are done and your phone is rooted. You can verify the same by installing a ‘Root Verifier’ application from the store.
Well this is all for now, will write more later.

– Suramya

April 30, 2015

Microsoft is becoming more and more OpenSource Friendly

Filed under: Computer Software,My Thoughts,Tech Related — Suramya @ 8:32 PM

Gone are the days when MS compared open source software as a cancer. If you are wondering what I meant by that statement then here’s a brief history lesson: Back in 2001 Steve Ballmer, then CEO of MS said that “Linux is a cancer that attaches itself in an intellectual property sense to everything it touches. He made other similar statements and accusations over the years during his time at the head of MS. Now that he is finally out of the picture MS has suddenly gotten a lot more friendly to the Open Source movement and over the past few months has made major announcements to woo developers back to the Windows eco system.

Today MS made two major announcements at it’s Build Developer Conference that mark another step in the right direction for the company. The first was the Launch of Visual Studio Code, A Free Cross-Platform Code Editor For OS X, Linux And Windows.

This is the first release of a cross-platform code editor from Microsoft as till now all of their offerings required you to be running Windows. Which immediately prevented all developers running Linux or Mac OS from using their software. This is no longer the case, however it still remains to be seen how many folks switch to this new editor from their existing favorites. As you know that arguments/discussions on which editor is the best for development is akin to a religious war for developers. So not sure how many will switch to the new IDE.

Please note that this is a Preview release so is not ready for prime time yet and that also means that the software sends data back to MS. From the download site: “When this tool crashes, we automatically collect crash dumps so we can figure out what went wrong. If you don’t want to send your crash dumps to Microsoft, don’t install this tool. “. Don’t think they can be clearer than that about what they are up to.

Visual Studio Code offers developers built-in support for multiple languages and as Microsoft noted in today’s Build keynote, the editor will feature rich code assistance and navigation for all of these languages. JavaScript, TypeScript, Node.js and ASP.NET 5 developers will also get a set of additional tools.

The editor features all of the standard tools you would expect from a modern code editor, including syntax highlighting, customizable keyboard bindings, bracket matching and snippets. It also works with Git out of the box

The IDE is available for download at this site.

The second announcement was the release of their .NET Distribution For Linux And Mac. This is a follow up to their promise back in Nov 2014 to release the core features of their .NET platform for Linux and Mac.

Microsoft says it is taking .NET cross-platform in order to build and leverage a bigger ecosystem for it. As the company also noted shortly after the original announcement, it decided that, to take .NET cross-platform, it had to do so as an open source project. To shepherd it going forward, Microsoft also launched the .NET Foundation last year.

You can download the Preview builds for the .NET core from their site.

Additional details on their announcement and other things in the pipeline are available on their blog: .NET Announcements at Build 2015.

Well this is all for now. I just finished downloading their new IDE so I am going to go try installing it and see how it looks/works. Who knows I might actually like it. 🙂

– Suramya

April 26, 2015

How to create Electric Ink for projects

Filed under: Interesting Sites,Knowledgebase,Tech Related — Suramya @ 9:48 AM

At times using wires in a project might not be the most practical option because of space/weight limitations. If that is the case then you should take a look at Electric Ink for creating cheap circuits. In fact you can make your own Electric Ink using a process which is quite simple. The good folks at the Popular Science site have provided us with an instruction guide that I am reproducing here so that I don’t loose the instructions in case PopSci decides to reorg their site:

Materials:

  • Powdered graphite
  • White vinegar
  • Syringe
  • Elmer’s clear glue (I think any clear glue should work)

Instructions

  • To make the ink, put powdered graphite in a cup, cover with vinegar, and stir. Let it sit for a few minutes.
  • Once the graphite settles on the bottom of the cup, remove the clear liquid on top with a syringe.
  • Stir in about a teaspoon of glue to keep the graphite suspended. A thick line of paint has a resistance of a few kilohms per inch.
  • Draw the circuit, wait for it to dry and then you can test it out.

I was wondering if this would work on T-Shirts, under a laminate or other such protective coating to prevent the circuit from getting washed out. Maybe I should try this out over the weekend on one of my old T-Shirts. Wonder what kinds of design’s I would be able to make before hitting issues if this works.

– Suramya

April 25, 2015

There is no such thing as a completely secure OS

Filed under: Computer Security,My Thoughts,Tech Related — Suramya @ 1:47 AM

Every once in a while while talking to folks about computer security I am told that I should switch to Mac’s because they don’t have security issues or viruses. I find that very amusing and I think the following comic sums up the ‘apple fanboi’ thinking quite succinctly:

Even though it is funny, unfortunately a whole lot of folks still believe in the Myth that Apple computers/devices are secure/don’t get viruses. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of good points for the Mac OS and they just work for some people. I am not one of them but that doesn’t mean that I ‘hate’ Mac OS or Windows for that matter. I like Linux, others don’t. That is their choice and this is my choice. This post is to talk about computer security and high light some of the major flaws that have hit Apple computers over the past few months:

Firmware Boot kit: Thunderbird

This was discovered by Trammell Hudson back in Jan 2015. It allows a user to quietly, persistently and virally compromise Apple Macs from boot. Since the code is stored in the firmware it is very difficult to detect and remove. It works against all Macbooks released since 2011. Apple has released a fix but it is hard to ensure that your computer isn’t already infected before applying the patch.

Details are at: Thunderstrike shocks OS X with firmware bootkit.

Shellshock: Mac’s are vulnerable

Shellshock allowed attacker’s to insert malicious pieces of code from a remote location and get full system control of a victim’s machine. The scary part of the story wasn’t that Apple computers were vulnerable (plenty of systems were), it was the fact that Apple refused to acknowledge the issue and took over 15 days to release a patch for the problem, even though it was being actively exploited in the wild. Their justification was that “The vast majority of OS X users are not at risk to recently reported bash vulnerabilities… With OS X, systems are safe by default and not exposed to remote exploits of bash unless users configure advanced UNIX services”.

So basically if you don’t use your computer to do anything other than the default configuration you are good. (for the most part) Those of us who use Mac’s to actually code or develop stuff are not a priority for Apple.

Bypassing OS X Security (Gatekeeper & xProtect)

Patrick Wardle, director of research at Synack spoke at the RSA conference a few days ago about OS X security and as per him getting around the restrictions put in by the OS X Security tools is trivial.

“Gatekeeper doesn’t verify an extra content in the apps. So if I can find an Apple-approved app and get it to load external content, when the user runs it, it will bypass Gatekeeper,”

More details on the issue are at: Researcher Discloses Methods For Bypassing All OS X Security Protections

iOS WiFi Bug Allows Remote Reboot of All Devices In Area

This one is my favorite. It allows an attacker to cause all iOS devices (iPhones/iPads) in a particular area to Crash and/or reboot. It involves setting up a rogue wireless access point (WiFi hotspot) and manipulating the traffic to it to cause all apps and iOS devices in range to crash. The best part is that there is no fix for it. The only way to resolve the issue is to move out of range of the Access Point. Even putting your phone in Airplane mode doesn’t work. Which is scary on it’s own because that means that even when you are in Airplane mode the phone is still transmitting/receiving data from wireless networks.

Since there is no fix for it yet, the researchers have not released a lot of details on the exploit but once Apple releases a fix they will give more details it. Then I can just imagine someone setting up one of these using a Raspberry Pi at a conference hidden under a table causing a whole bunch of people a whole lot of pain/annoyance.

Additional details of the issue are at: Evil Wi-Fi kills iPhones, iPods in range

There are a whole lot more where these came from. So the moral of the story is that there is no system that is 100% secure. If you want to stay safe, follow best practices, update frequently and pray.

– Suramya

April 17, 2015

How to find information when Google can’t find it

Filed under: Computer Tips,Interesting Sites,Knowledgebase,Tech Related — Suramya @ 10:36 PM

For most people if you can’t find something on Google then it’s not there on the internet. However that is not true and there are other ways to find the information you are looking for even if Google can’t find it. Now some of you might be wondering, how can something be online without Google knowing about it because don’t they index everything? Unfortunately, that is not true. According to studies there are a lot of sites out there that are not indexed by any search engine. This part of the internet is called the Deep Web. Deep web is not to be confused with Dark Net which contains sites that can’t be reached via the regular internet. Deep Web sites are accessible via the regular internet and it is a lot bigger than the visible internet. In-fact some estimates suggest that the deep web is 400 to 550 times larger than the surface web.

So how do you find something that is in the Deep web or just not indexed by Google? Well, you can always try one of the following options depending on what you are looking for.

Wolfram Alpha

For example, if you are making factual queries about data (e.g. facts, figures, etc) then you should take a look at Wolfram Alpha. Their Wikipedia page explains how the engine works:

Users submit queries and computation requests via a text field. Wolfram Alpha then computes answers and relevant visualizations from a knowledge base of curated, structured data that come from other sites. The curated data makes Alpha different from semantic search engines, which index a large number of answers and then try to match the question to one.

Using the Mathematica toolkit, Wolfram Alpha can respond to natural language questions and generate a human-readable answer.

Topsy

Topsy maintains a comprehensive index of tweets and since Twitter is the best place for real-time sharing of thoughts/news then it is a good place to search for current events/trending topics. I just tried it out and it looks to be pretty effective and efficient.

Image Search

If you are trying to identify an image, or find more information about a particular Image then you can always try Google image search. However if that doesn’t return any relevant results then you should try out specialized Image search engines like Tin Eye or yandex.ru. I use a Firefox Extension called Who Stole my Pictures that lets you search across multiple engines in one shot from your context menu. Side note: This also search on Bing but 99.99% of the time Bing doesn’t return any results no matter what you search for.

On the other hand if you are just searching for images you should try PicSearch.com which is a image search service allowing a user to search across over 3 billion pictures (as per the site).

WebForums and Discussion boards

Another great way to find answers is to search on enthusiast forums and discussion boards. These forums have a whole community of folks who are passionate about that particular topic and would love you to point you in the right direction or walk you through figuring out the solution. Just ensure that you are asking Questions The Smart Way.

BoardReader.com allows you to search across multiple discussion boards and forums available on the net. StackExchange.com has multiple sub sections on hundreds of topics, Reditt.com has subreddits that focus on thousands of topics and most of them have actual relevant information as not all of the site is dedicated to cat video’s.

IRC

IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat and is designed to facilitate group communication in discussion forums, called channels hosted on IRC servers. There are channels dedicated to pretty much any topic you can think of on some IRC server somewhere and you can get answers to questions or help with a problem in real time.

The difficult part is finding the appropriate channel to ask your question.

I have used IRC Search in the past to find channels with a good success rate. Another option is ixirc.com/.

In addition to the options listed above, you should also check out the following resources for additional information and search options/methods that you can try out when searching for data:

That pretty much covers what I wanted to talk about in this post so this is all for now. Will post more later.

– Suramya

April 15, 2015

Please defend Internet Freedom in India

Filed under: Computer Related,Interesting Sites,My Thoughts,Tech Related — Suramya @ 1:34 AM

Not content with watching the US and certain other countries screw around with net neutrality the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has decided to pitch in and make a mess of things (again) in India. These are the same brilliant folks who decided in 2007 that an entire IRC network (undernet.com) should be blocked in India because there are a few channels on it that promoted piracy. It took a few years for the stupid ban to get lifted. Even now a bunch of URL’s are blocked but for the most part things are ok.

Unfortunately that is not going to be the case for long if the telecom lobbyist’s have their way. They want to break up the internet access to Paid and free access with the Telecom’s deciding what content should be available to a user. If a site doesn’t pay then they would either get blocked or get put on a ‘slow-lane’ where traffic to the site is artificially slowed down to give more bandwidth to paying sites. In short they want to take away net neutrality. So what exactly does net neutrality mean? In short it means:

  • All sites on the internet must be equally accessible (that means that no site’s traffic is given priority)
  • The same access speed at the telco/ISP level for each (So assuming all else is the same then all sites will be accessible at the same speed)
  • The same data cost for access to each site (per KB/MB). (No reducing of data cost to sites that pay Telecom’s money)

TRAI has released a consultation paper with 20 questions and wants you to send them an e-mail by 24th of April, 2015. Please visit Save the Internet to submit your responses to TRAI. It is as simple as going to the site, reviewing the email with the answers and then sending it out. Your 5 mins just might save the net in India.

More information on this issue is available at the following sites:

Once you have emailed your responses please help in spreading the word to others via Social Media/Email/Smoke Signals.

– Suramya

March 29, 2015

Rosetta Stone for Unix/Linux

Filed under: Knowledgebase,Linux/Unix Related,Tech Related — Suramya @ 9:53 PM

If you have been in the industry for a while then you have been in a situation where you need to do something on the server but have no idea what the appropriate command is because you always worked on a different variant/version of the Operating System. Think having to work on Solaris or Linux when all you have worked on is the Mac OS. To make things easier for the poor admins that have to keep switching OS’s, Bruce Hamilton has created a site he calls the ‘Rosetta Stone: A Sysadmin’s Universal Translator‘. This site has a list of tasks and the corresponding command that you would have to run for each of the OS’s. The Stone supports the following OS’s:

  • AIX
  • A/UX
  • DG/UX
  • FreeBSD
  • HP-UX
  • IRIX
  • Linux
  • Mac OS X
  • NCR Unix
  • NetBSD
  • OpenBSD
  • Reliant
  • SCO OpenServer
  • Solaris
  • SunOS 4
  • Tru64
  • Ultrix
  • UNICOS

and covers tasks in the following categories:

  • hardware
  • firmware
  • devices
  • disks
  • kernel
  • boot
  • files
  • networking
  • security
  • software
  • patching, tracing, logging

Check it out, bookmark it. It will save you some grief down the line the next time you are in this situation.

– Suramya

January 8, 2015

Microsoft Office now available for Android tablets

Filed under: Computer Software,Tech Related — Suramya @ 11:35 PM

MS is spending a lot of time and effort trying to overcome the cloud of their previous actions where they did their level best to eradicate their competitors by any means necessary, even if they were morally in a grey area. The latest volley in this effort is their move to make MS Office available on the Android tablets for free. They have MS Word, MS Excel and MS Powerpoint available and the reviews so have have been very good even though the apps are technically still in Preview mode.

Today, we are excited to announce that we are further expanding the preview. We want more feedback from more users to ensure that Office apps work well on a range of different Android tablets before launching the official apps. To participate in the preview, you can use an ARM-based Android tablet running KitKat or Lollipop, with a screen size between 7″ and 10.1″. Starting today, anyone can go to Google Play and download the Word, Excel and PowerPoint preview apps. No waitlist. No requesting access. Just go and download the apps!

Office apps are one of the apps that need to be there on every OS. I have tried a lot of the alternatives like OpenOffice and other clones but I keep coming back to MS Office because of the stability and compatibility that it gives me with other Office users. On my Linux machine I use Crossover to have a native install of Office and it works great. When I get some time and restore Android to my Tablet (I am trying to install Kali Linux on it) I will try Office out on it even though I don’t see myself editing a lot of documents on the tablet.

Well this is all for now. Will write more later.

– Suramya

Source: androidcentral.com and Microsoft Blog Announcement

January 7, 2015

Over 2,400 classic DOS games now playable in your web browser for free

Filed under: Computer Software,Interesting Sites,Tech Related — Suramya @ 11:28 PM

Last year the Internet arcade released over 900 classic arcade games playable in a browser to the public. Not satisfied with that accomplishment they topped it by releasing the over 2400 classic DOS games to the public and as before they are all playable in your web browser. The list of games include classics like Prince of Persia, The Oregon Trail, Castle Wolfenstein and many many more. This collection sure brings back a lot of memories for me.

If you’re a PC gamer of a certain age (cough), you’ve probably lamented that many of the titles you played as a kid are hard to use on modern systems without downloading emulators or waiting for special re-releases. Well, it just got a lot easier to relive your gaming glory days. The Internet Archive’s growing collection of web-based retro games now includes roughly 2,400 MS-DOS classics

I think I am going to be spending some time ensuring that the games function correctly in a browser. Purely for verification of the work done here of-course 🙂

– Suramya

Source: engadget.com

December 28, 2014

Update/Patch multiple Windows software in one shot

Filed under: Computer Software,Tech Related — Suramya @ 11:53 PM

One of the many downsides of using Windows is that there is no central way of updating all software installed on the computer in one shot. In Debian I can do an ‘apt-get upgrade’ and it will upgrade all the software installed on the system to the latest versions available. Patch my PC attempts to give you the same functionality on a Windows system. It has support for around 100 different applications and it can install or update them automatically when you run a scan.

I haven’t tried it out because I don’t have a Windows machine, but it is recommended by the folks at Lifehacker so it should be stable and work as advertised.

However please use it at your own risk, I am not responsible if this manages to destroy your computer or summon an imp.

– Suramya

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