Ori Idan's blog

git Source Code Management and git-web

Apr 262012

Note: This post is of technical nature, readers who are not interested in programming and computer hacking are invited not to read it.

GIT is a state of the art Source Code Management, this is not just a source code management it is distributed source code management designed for collaboration between many contributors. This is the system used by the Linux kernel.

I have set up local repositories for several of my projects, since I work on different computers and to some of the projects I have some contributors, I needed also a remote repositories.
For all of you who want to learn more about git, I would recommend the following book: http://progit.org/book/

I also wanted a way to view the repositories from the web so I have set up gitweb.
I found many articles on setting gitweb, each one is different from the other and most of them does not work so I decided to add my own post at this subject.

The first stage is install gitweb using the command:

sudo apt-get install gitweb

The second stage was copying the repositories to /var/git
Next I have set up a subdomain for the gitweb website. The DocumentRoot of this domain was set to /var/git where all the repositories will reside. The repositories will be copied there using scp.

The directives for this sub-domain are:

<VirtualHost *:80>
DocumentRoot “/var/git”
ServerName git.helicontech.co.il
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
Alias /gitweb/gitweb.css /usr/share/gitweb/gitweb.css
Alias /gitweb/git-logo.png /usr/share/gitweb/git-logo.png
Alias /gitweb/git-favicon.png /usr/share/gitweb/git-favicon.png
<Directory “/var/git”>
Options ExecCGI +FollowSymLinks +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all
AddHandler cgi-script cgi
DirectoryIndex /cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

This file resides under: /etc/apache2/sites-available

Then restart apache and that’s it, much easier then all other explanations I have found on the web.

Israel Apartheid Week

News & politics No Responses »

Mar 082012

Arab students started in 2005 in Toronto a week to note what they call Israel Apartheid week. To note the so called Aparheid in Israel.
While I have a lot of criticism about Israel and usually not support it’s way of handling disputes, I do want to say few things regarding the so called Apartheid and non democracy they call Israel.
First of all, look around Israel, do you see any democracy there? These days especially we see the massacre in Syria, and in my opinion this is a proof of a non democracy country. In egypt today what regime do we have? something unknown controlled by the military.
The Arabs claim Israel conquered areas from them, but a palestinian country never existed so how exactly did Israel conquer their areas?
Israel is willing to give them the areas they claim conquered, but they want all parts of Israel, this is against the united nations decision from 1948 that declared that Jews are entitled to have a country in Israel.
It seems the Arabs are trying to direct the attention to Israel instead of their own problems (mssacre in Syria, miliatry regime in Egypt, problems in Iran, Iraq etc.).
This is similar to the way Israel handles it’s internal problems, instead of admiting there are problems and making steps to solve them, they divert the attention to the defense problems and to the arabs around Israel.

Another piece of code released as free software

Computers & Software, Free software, Linux No Responses »

Nov 222011

During my work as a software consultant, I sometimes write code that is part of a bigger code and can be used for other purposes.

Recently as part of an automatic test equipment I am building, I implemented I2C communication (a communication protocol between electronic components).
Since I already got paid for this job and this is not the main part of the project, I see no reason why not release it as free software.

After I completed the implementation and tested it, my client said “Why don’t you sale it?”. Theoretically speaking, it might be sold but neither me nor my client have the contacts and ability to sale it, therefore it only natural so release it as open source (even if I would have sold it, it would be sold as free software). Anyway, the effort required to sale it is higher then the money I might get from selling it so why not release if as a free software and also free of charge?
In addition, since the code is released under GPL, if anyone makes any enhancements (or fix bugs) I can get his/hers code back and thus gain more myself.

The rest of the post is technical (as if the previous part was not…) and should be read by embedded Linux professionals only.

This code is for using the FTDI FT4232H chip in I2C mode for port 0 of the 4 ports this chip has (it should be fairly simple to enhance it and use all ports).

FTDI itself gives an example (in PDF file, not source file) of how to use the chip in I2C mode for controlling an I2C serial EEPROM. Their code is implemented using their own D2xx library that is available for both Linux and MS-Windows, however their library is free of charge but not free software (source code is not given). Installing this library on Linux is somewhat complicated.

I implemented the code using libftdi which is a free software library for FTDI chips. This library is in the software repositories of most Linux distributions so it is much easier to install it.

As much as I know, I am the first one who implemented it this way.

For more information refer to my company’s web site: http://www.helicontech.co.il/?id=ftdii2c

Apple iPad a computer or kids toy?

Computers & Software No Responses »

Nov 042011

When I first heard about the iPad, it sounded to me more like a feminine hygiene product then a consumer electronic product. It seems that I am not the only one who thought about it this way:

Recently I got an iPad from a customer, requesting me to review a software written for it. So I had a chance to try the iPad as a computer.

This is not a detailed review of the iPad, it is only my impression after using it for few days.

To me it seems more like a toy for 4 years old kids.
I tried using gmail from both the email application and safari browser, I got a trimmed down version of gmail that did not have a visual editor as I am used to in any other browser or email application (it seems as if we returned 10 years back in time).
This trimmed down version did not have an option to upload an attached file.

I tried facebook, this at least seemed like the facebook I am used to. Again I tried sharing an image and got an greyed upload button so that I could not upload an image.

I tried downloading an image and again did not have the option. even in gmail I did not even see the file so I can download it. I could only view it using gmail internal viewer, which opened a new safari window and showed the file..

Many people praised the apple store that have many apps, they don’t call it software, they call it apps, I was not impressed at all, my Linux netbook has much more software packages available for me to install and most of them are free.

So now after I did try it, I can say that although I never expected much of a closed proprietary product, in this case I was even disappointed.

The fact that so many people stood in line to buy this product and praised it so much, proves only one thing: Good marketing can show an inferior product as if it is the most advanced product in the world.

Evolution or underlying intelligence?

Philosophy No Responses »

Oct 102011

Yesterday I had a discussion with someone regarding the eternal question of god existence. In the past I have written a post in Hebrew regarding the same question. In this post I would like to discuss the same question from different angle.

My point of view is that the existence of god is an axiom, you don’t have to prove it. So you can say god exists or does not exists, however if you say there is no god, you will have to explain all the intelligence you see around you.

The guy I talked with, said that all we see around us is the product of evolution. My argument was that It still does not explain all we see around us. We see such a vast diversity around us that includes plants, animals and humans.

Evolution talks about the survival of the fittest. According to evolution the human being is an evolution of the monkey, but if evolution means survival of the fittest, how come we see both the monkeys and human beings co-exist in our planet?

Evolution also does not explains the fact that there are single cell organisms along with complex organisms such as humans.

Evolution also does not explain the human consciousness.

Therefore I think there is an underlying intelligence in the universe and this intelligence is what I call god.

In the Hebrew post I mentioned before, I also discuss what I call the second axiom.
The different religions all claim that its the will of god is that you do certain things. How do we know that this is what we really have to do or that this is god’s will?

I say, we don’t know, this is another axiom, we can except or not except it. Therefore I will never argue with a religious person that observes very closely certain religion commandments.

Viruses in Linux, Never been and never will be

Linux No Responses »

Sep 292011

Few days ago I visited one of my clients, to whom I built an electronic board functional tester. The tester was built using a Linux based computer controlling some standard test equipment.

During that visit I was asked by one of the employees there about computer viruses in Linux. My answer was of course that there are no viruses in Linux and there never be viruses in Linux. He said “but there are anti-virus software packages for Linux so there must be Linux viruses”
Well, this is a nice claim that proves nothing. There are anti-virus software packages for Linux, most of them remove other OS’s viruses, there are however few that claim they where able to produce viruses for Linux. This as I am going to show in this post is a false claim.

Before we talk about computer virus in Linux we first have to define what a computer virus is.

A computer virus is a piece of software that can distribute itself to other computer and usually does something malicious such as deleting files etc. Some viruses do nothing but transmit data (usually confidential data) to another server, in this case, they are called Trojan horse.

So we see, the first requirement from a virus is that it is able to spread itself and I might add “automatically spread itself”.
How does usual virus spread them self? The most common way is by an attachment to a standard mail message. When the receiver double clicks this file to open, they actually run the virus, which in turn tries to find out their address book and send itself to all their address book.
Such a scene is not easy to reproduce in Linux from several reasons: First of all there are many Email clients in Linux, each of them is using a different format of address book, and which is more, each distribution of Linux save the address book in a different place.
All this makes it much harder for the virus to spread itself.
Now suppose the virus maker was smart enough and found a way to overcome this problem. The virus sends an executable file (since a virus is a piece of software, it must be an executable file). The recipient must run this file so the virus will do something. Here again we see another advantage of Linux. It will not just run an executable file sent by mail. In order to run the file, you need to save it, change it’s permissions to executable and then run it. Novice computer users wouldn’t usually know how to do it and if you do know, you must be an Idiot if you do so. Therefore I guess you understand that it will be almost impossible to spread a virus in the normal way in Linux.

Now suppose someone did overcome these obstacles, though I haven’t seen anyone really doing this, The next thing to do is doing something to the recipient computer, after all a virus that does no harm it worthless.
In Linux most users do not run as administrators and only get administrator privileges for a limited time by executing a certain program. In Windows I hear (I don’t use it my self so I don’t know), it is not easy to switch from ordinary user to admin user, therefore most users are running always with administrator privileges.
So a virus can cause limited damage to the system itself. It can only cause damage to the user’s files.

So for the above reasons, you can see it is actually easy to build an Operating system that does not have viruses. So the question should not be “how come there are no viruses in Linux?”
It should be “How come there are operating system that can have viruses?”

20 years of Linux

Computers & Software, Free software No Responses »

Aug 262011

The Linux foundation (http://www.linux.com) is now celebrating 20 years of Linux history. The operating system that started as a hobby and soon changed the world, I will my hobbies will change the world as Linus Torvald’s Linux.

This is a good time to tell the story of how I started with Linux and free software.

It was around 1994 at that time I was managing a small software company that I established in 1991. I rad about free software and corresponded with the free software foundation. My main concern was then, how can people make living out of free software. I then made all my living writing software, which was something I wanted to do ever since I left my service at the Israel Air-Force. I as most people confused freedom with free of charge. In Hebrew (and I heard that also in Spanish) there are two different words for free as in free speech and free as in free beer.

It seemed that me and the FSF (Free Software Foundation) where transmitting on parallel lines that will never meet. I did not understand them and they did not understand me so I discontinued this email exchange. At that time I thought that the concept of Linux and Open source/Free software will never work.

However I did try to use Linux and in 2000 I established another software company, this time it was a small start-up that developed an innovative development tool for micro-controllers software development.
We needed a server that would be strong but cheap as we did not have a lot of money at the time.
At that time I went to an International embedded software convention in San-Francisco, many people there where talking about Linux as a platform for embedded systems, so it seems I was wrong at 1994 when I thought Linux and free software are not going anywhere. Actually I was happy to be wrong this time as the way of free software is the best way to improve the software world.

I then installed Linux as a server and liked it very much. I also installed it at home and started using it as my desktop. I then started to find other people in Israel that where using free software and Linux. In 2003 Richard Stallman the man who started the Free Software Foundation, came to Israel to give few talks. I attended one of them at IBM’s facility in Petach-Tikva.

This talk literally changed my life. I heard every word of what he said and said he is right about everything. When I came out of this talk I decided that I want to make all my living out of free software and not use proprietary software at all. This was a bold decision at the time since I was relatively new to free software development and I was unemployed (My start-up did not make it and I was left unemployed at a time of hi-tech recession in Israel. So at that time of recession I put on myself one more employment restriction, I want to work only with free software.

The good thing about being unemployed is that you have time. I used that time creatively and learned to use free software development tools and free software languages. I started by giving myself few tasks and as always , these where not easy tasks. The fist task was writing a full blown web based forum (message board) using PHP and mySQL.
I also tried to write some C software using GTK (GNU Tool Kit for graphical user interface).

In the future it seemed to be a very good decision. I found few jobs of Linux consulting mainly in embedded and real-time Linux. I also started developing web software using PHP and perl.

Today, I think free software is much more then software only. It is a philosophical approach that talks about freedom of speech and collaboration in order to develop a better world. Yes , a better world and not just software. Free software philosophy says that information should be free and that keeping away knowledge will stop man kind evolution.

Apple is not going to change?

Computers & Software, Marketing No Responses »

Aug 262011

Steve Jobs one of the founders and current CEO of Apple computers is finally leaving the company, well not exactly leaving he will stay there as chairman of board but will not be active as the CEO.

Apple has a honorable place in computer history, however in recent years it started to think more of itself then of it’s users and clients and delivered innovative but restricted products. It is strange that phones and computers made by Apple can not interface with other computers in the world, people find it hard to do even simple tasks as transferring files to other computers. You can not install software from 3ed party sources, only software approved by Apple and they will not approve for example another browser why? simply because they have their own browser. That shows that Apple may think of anything but their user’s freedom and convenience and yet, many people would swear that Apple products are the most user friendly products in the world and that no other company think of it’s uses like Apple.

How can that be?
I think that this phenomena shows just one thing – The power of marketing.
This actually shows us that good marketing can make bad things into good things and/or to make people blind so they don’t see the obvious things such as how their freedom is being taken away from them.

I recall that in the first clip of Macintosh advertising, Apple showed part of the film 1984, it seems as if Steve Jobs knew he is going to become the big brother as described by George Orwell in his book 1984. But instead of forcing people as described in 1984, Steve Jobs uses the power of marketing and it seems he is very good in this. He is better then former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates who used marketing power to turn trashy operating system and software into gold and become one of the richest people on earth.

For some reason instead of condemning people like Jobs or Gates, people seem to admire them.
We became a society that admires money no matter how this money was earned.

Hello world!

Uncategorized No Responses »

Aug 222011

This is my new blog in English. I have written several blogs and stories in Hebrew. However, not many people in the world know or read Hebrew so in order to reach a bigger audience, I have started this Blog. I have also started a new website for my stories in English: http://eng.thestries.org Currently there is only one story there. I hope later to either finish translating the other stories and/or write new stories in English.
I have also started a project to translate the many stories I have written in Hebrew. The translation project can be seen in: http://translate.thestories.org This is a Wiki so everyone can help.

This blog will contain some of my opinions about Free software, sailing etc. I am not sure I will update it regularly, however fill free to contact me and ask questions about what I do write…