ajaypal.com

This is amazing, atleast for me, my three and a half years old (now almost four in about four months), can use GNU/ Linux fairly well (for a kid of his age and fairly well than many older windoz guyz I have seen around). This is what he can do after about ten minutes of coaching.

1. Powers on the monitor, powers on the Desktop.
2. Waits for GNU/ Linux to load.
3. On GDM Login screen enters his username, sometimes selects his username from the user list displayed by GDM (I have set his password to blank for his convenience).

UPDATE: Now mutt.in is freeshell.in Got a shell account at mutt.in thanks to Anand V. Avati. Thanks Avati.

Maybe you maybe able to find something here http://mutt.in/~ajaypal my web account at mutt.in. Or mail me at ajaypal[at]freeshell.in, no promise that I may check that regularly.

And I am happy! Why, not because I have got a free shell account on someones server, I can have as many shell accounts as I like, as I am my self running a number of GNU/ Linux servers (including this one). But I am happy that someone is offering no frills free as in freedom shell accounts :-), hope google and yahoo notice this, maybe free shell accounts can be the next big revolution after free email (now free 1GB email accounts). I can safely predict this after reading this nice book In the Beginning was the Command Line, you can find a copy of the same here.

Hey in case you need a shell account, do send a request to Avati at root[AT]mutt.in. He is a nice guy.

Meanwhile see what I have been upto at mutt.in. Here is the finger to mutt.in for ajaypal

Ok I am running a local finger server behind IPTables, you can check what I am doing on my server here:

Whats in My .plan and .project:

My .plan contains IP addresses of machines that connected to the server ajaypal.com, created using a cron job. This list is truncated every one hour. And may not show all IP/ Hostnames. My .plan on mutt.in has a random fortune, updated once everday. My .project has a trace route to mutt.in from this server and vice versa. Again updated once everday using a cron job.

I have been using FLOSS (GNU/ Linux) and related software on our servers for around 5 years now. Most of the servers face Internet.

As is the case with any evolving software even in GNU/ Linux(s)
vulnerabilities are discovered and ofcourse patched form time to time.

But alas we ppl who manage servers are sometimes lazy, or forget and do not patch servers in time. My excuse we are only human. And in general act as open invitations/ sitting ducks to crackers and
malicious ppl around the word.

I have seen this happen to a lot of ppl around, same has happened to me as well, sometimes we are made to realize, by the crackers, that we havn't been vigil in our duties. And whatever experience I have in managing server i still cant deny this fact that this can happen to me, that will hurt my ego.

27th September was the 20th anniversary of Richard M. Stallman's orignal posting describing his viasion of GNU. The vision to create a free UNIX. The vision which has lead to the development of so many great software GCC, GNU/ Linux, etc.

The orignal post is available here.