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Certification authority and applying certificate to your domain

Generating a Certificate Signing Request and applying the certificate is  very frequent. Some companies require 2048 bit signatures. The following steps will create certificates with 2048 bit and later apply to relevant httpd (apache) server. Certificate Hierarchy Creating a CSR Values Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:GB State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:London Locality Name (eg, city) []:Croydon Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:My company Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:diaryfolio.com Common Name (eg, YOUR name) []:subdomain.diaryfolio.com Email Address []: Things to remember In most cases, ensure "Email address is left blank". But consult your certificate signing authority on this. Ensure "Common Name" matches exactly the "ServerName" specified in your httpd.conf (or httpd/conf/extra/httpd-ssl.conf) Actual Creation Below creates CSR with 2048 bit # CSR Key generation # Generate a ...

Dawn of Satellite Communication (Sat phones)

With the aftermath of MH370 flight, it has become clear how important is to deliver communication at a much robust & reliable levels. It is essential to use satellite communication as primary mode rather than tower/cell based telephony. inmarsat isatphone2 coverage Some of the ideas we want to explore are Crowd funded satellite communication Reduced cost of satellite based communication More competition among satellite based operations Apple and Google similar companies into Satellite phones manufacturing and publicity Inmarsat IsatPhone v2 Highly dependendable (reliable & robust) phones Satellite coverage upto 99.9% of land area

Chromecast vs Miracast and Miracast devices review

Many of you would have seen Google announcing "Chromecast" device across many countries. You might also have seen references of "Miracast" too in many blogs. So what are they and how they differ? Chromecast is a hardware device (dongle shaped) developed and marketed by Google. The device plugs into the HDMI port of your television/projector and, plays audio/video pushed via Wifi from a limited set of support devices and softwares/apps. The apps are limited and following link shows supported apps . Miracast is a wireless screen-mirroring/casting standard using Wifi. This can be equated to bluemooth media transfer which you might be familiar already. Miracast thus is NOT a hardware, not a software , but just a standard so that corporations/developers can build their devices (laptop, smartphone, tablets etc..) to push media content to your Television or projectors. Miracast can be better compared to Airplay rather than Chromecast . Thus Chromecast and Mi...

Create your own United States Passport , India OCI photo using GIMP

Folks, this is in continuation to existing article of how to create UK passport photo (3.5cm x 4.5cm) using GIMP . Please read that article for full understanding of how to take photo/lightings etc. American Passport Photo requires 50.8mm x 50.8mm (2" x 2") photos. So do Overseas citizen of India application ( OCI photo ). As you are all aware, GIMP is very powerful too for image editing.  This article provides a very cost effective way to print   (2" x 2")  photos from nearby print enabled stores (like Boots in the UK etc..) for less than 30pence (40 cents approx) !!  For further details on United states photo requirement, please read this article Pre-requisite Read main article of taking photography and software requirements Step by step method of editing photo From your gimp “ Toolbox ”, click the “ Rectangular Select ” tool. (Ensure that the ”Fixed Aspect Ratio” is unticked).  Draw a small rectangle surrounding your face. In the left hand-pa...

NRE vs NRO vs FCNR Calculator

Transferring Money to India Many Non-Resident Indians (NRI) transfer/wire their money to India. But many of you are unaware that you are loosing money by just transferring money , paying income tax on your interest rates and also loosing monetary value. This article summarises various non-equity bank accounts and a calculator to show which account to choose (especially in case of a Rupee devaluation). This calculator/guide will help you to choose the best NRI account in Indian banks based on length of deposit, rate and rupee value. Sample NRO vs NRE vs FCNR Calculator. (Please wait as it might take time to load .....) Loading plunk... Comparing NRI accounts would help you to decide which type of account to choose. Below Table shows a summary of the various accounts available. (Please refer to individual banks for accurate data) NRO vs NRE vs FCNR NRO NRE FCNR Definition Non Resident Ordinary Rupee Account Non Resident External Rupee Account Foreign Currency De...

Intranet Single SignOn (SSO) and Trusted URIs for locked Firefox

Firefox can be customised to any extend using config files. Hence your corporate admin would be playing with certain files as mentioned in this post  (and this ). In Summary, they edit "local-settings.js" or "channel-prefs.js" file. They add an entry to link to a mozilla.cfg file (or any config file), to put all the settings. pref("general.config.filename", "mozilla.cfg"); You could manipulate the "mozilla.cfg" file of your own (but next update from your company would wipe it down) or override those updates. A  simple way to update & enable Single Sign-on on my Company's internally locked firefox.  Steps to follow.. about:config Search and add/edit following "network.negotiate-auth.trusted-uris" =  "google.com,sso.department.abcd.com:443"      #<list of your exceptions comma separated> "network.negotiate-auth.delegation-uris" =  "google.com,sso.department.abcd.com:443"   ...

Arithmetic/Math calculations using shell script & Perl

Unix Shell scripts are perfect when it comes to simple automation tasks. But the in-built calculations are quite poor compared to rest of its functionality. The main issues I've faced using out-of-box shell script functions like expr, bc, echo are Unable to calculate decimal places correctly Error handling very poor (even divide by 0) and goes out of control. Hard to control precision Escape characters and regex increases complexity with formula Object Oriented programs like Java/Python/.NET are excellent for arithmetic calculations. But this involves another level of coding and program installation. The trick I used is to use PERL which is built in almost all *nix distributions. Some of the advantages of using PERL within shell script are Easy to embed Perl commands into shell scripts Most of *nix distro have PERL inbuilt Reduced regex or escape character usage Can put formulae into config file and can loop them into the shell script precision, error handling...