Airtel IP TV

Sometime back I got the Airtel IP TV installed, since then I was thinking of writing a review.

Now I think I can write the review in just one line.

It really SUCKS bigtime.

Bhrigu Lake

This trek looks good and on 2nd day you reach altitude of about 4300mtrs.

This write-up on IndiaMike  has all the details. Briefly:

Day 01: Manali-Gulaba
Day 02: At Bhrighu Lake
Day 03: Bhrighu – Vashisht
Good camping sites – Pandu Ropa and Rola Kholi.

I will definitely do this if I am going to Manali.

Poles & Fabrics used in Tents

While searching the specs for a old Mountain Hardwear 3.1 Arch 4 season tent I came across many useful information about the material used in tents like poles, fabrics etc.

Poles

Main Manufactures

DAC (Dongah Aluminum Corporation): Used in TNF, Hilleberg & Seirra Design tents.

Easton: 7075-T9 Aluminum Tent Pole used in earlier Mountain Hardwear tents like Trango 3.1 Arch. Easton poles used by US army and in all expeditions on everest.

Yunan Aluminium: Atlas Tent poles used in all Mountain Hardwear tents.

More brands changed from Easton to DAC. Hilleberg changed from Easton to DAC. The specs of DAC are also slightly better than Easton. But just slightly… Scandium poles of Yunan have better specs than DAC but are a bit more heavy. Here’s a comparison chart from Mountain HW brochure:

Source for Tent Poles

Shelby for DAC, TentPoles Technologies for Easton, Quest Outfitters for Poles & other misc. items.

Now something on the Fabric used in the Tents

Nylon and Polyster are used for the fabrics. Tent Fabrics can have the following characteristics:

Denier (d): measures the weight of fabric in grams per 1000-meter length. So for instance, 60d signifies a weight of 60 grams per 1000 meter of the thread used in the fabric. Lightweight fabrics would be about 50d.

Water resistance (psi): measures the weight of water that can exert pressure on a square inch of the fabric without leaking. It is measured in pounds per square inch (psi). A good fly sheet would be 80psi.

• Denier (d): measures the weight of fabric in grams per 1000-meter length. So for instance, 60d signifies a weight of 60 grams per 1000 meter of the thread used in the fabric. Lightweight fabrics would be about 50d.
• Water resistance (psi): measures the weight of water that can exert pressure on a square inch of the fabric without leaking. It is measured in pounds per square inch (psi). A good fly sheet would be 80psi.

Tent covers/Fly sheet:

• Polyurethane Coating: This is coating applied on the tent fabric to make it more durable and waterproof. Multiple number of coatings or ‘passes’ determine the added protection but at the cost of extra weight.
• Waterproof/breathable laminates: Tent cover uses a layering system of different materials to form a strong and waterproof but breathable fabric. Common laminates are GoreTex, ToddText, Klimate, and MemBrain.
• Ripstop: This is a polyester taffeta with thicker threads weaved into the material at regular intervals. Thicker threads will prevent small rips in the Tent to get worse.
• Clear Film: This is a see through material often used for windows and skylights.

This link has some details on the tent material.

Nylon or Polyster:

Polyester fabrics perform better than nylon for moisture management because polyester is more hydrophobic. Nylon threads will absorb more water than Polyester, water requires more heat energy to warm than does air, so nylon will feel colder when wet, and stay wet longer, and when saturated impede breathability.

Mountain Hardwear uses Polyster in Fly Sheets, Seirra Designs uses Nylon more information on Fabrics at Seirra Designs

BTW: Mountain Hardwear was founded by people from Seirra Designs.

More on the trekking stuff later.

Testing a Website-Sandcat

I am doing a WebApp PenTest. I read in one post on Securitylemon about Sandcat scanner, I have worked on other commercial scanners like Appscan, Acunetix but thought of trying it.

After about ~2 hrs from starting the scanning (free edition) no vulnerabilities! What the hell! I did scanning from Appscan and Acunetix there were some vulnerabilities but none in Sandcat.

Why they make such crappy softwares?

WMV files on Fedora 10-No audio

I was trying to watch some wmv file on VLC in Fedora 10 but no audio. Googling for solution and found MPlayer. I copied the binary codecs to /usr/local/lib/codecs/ but still no audio, it seems codecs should be in /usr/lib/win32/ and then there was audio!

WEP cracking on Fedora 10 & T61

FIrst thing that came to my mind was Kismet, but didn’t work for me. Then the aircrack-ng. I checked the supported drivers and iwl3495 is supported and injection is possible, no need to patch. Here’s what you need to do:
-> airmon-ng start wlan0 # put card in monitor mode
-> airodump-ng mon0 # start looking for networks

Above you can see my output. Then you can zero in on a AP based on signal strength (PWR, Beacons). Next is sniffing IVs:
-> airodump-ng -c 11 –bssid 00:1E:40:10:20:3F -w dump mon0 #sniff on channel 11
You will need about 50,000 different IVs. After you have enough IVs use the following command to crack it:
-> aircrack-ng -b 00:01:02:03:04:05 dump-01.cap #mac is BSSID of the target.
Sometimes, if there are not many clients connected to AP collecting IVs can be time consuming. To shorten it we need injection:
1. Arp replay
2. Deauth
3. Fakeauth
Guide at aircrack site is great for starting.

Vista deactivated-What to do?

There is vb script that can extend trial period for 30 days. The “slmgr.vbs” in C:\Windows\system32 will rearm your Vista. Command is “cscript slmgr.vbs -rearm” using privileged command prompt. More information at technet here.

SMC 2802W on Fedora 10

The installation was smooth but my SMC PCI wireless card won’t work with ndiswrapper. There are two solutions:

1. Spend $20 and buy driver loader from Linuxant.

2. Recompile the kernel and comment out the CONFIG_4KSTACKS.

I tried the first option because recompiling the kernel is really pain. Driverloader installed but it won’t accept the WPA key and no FAQs or troubleshooting on this. So, let’s take the hard way.

1. Download latest kernel from kernel.org, and place it in /usr/src/kernels
2. copy old .config from previous version to current directory & "make oldconfig" (comment out CONFIG_4KSTACKS)
3. make
4. make modules_install
5. make install
6. Change the timeout in /boot/grub/menu.lst
7. Reboot, rebuild ndiswrapper (make uninstall, make clean, make, make install)
8. Configure ndiswrapper, eg, ndiswrapper -l, ndiswrapper -i <driver file>

It works!!!

Buying Tent – Hard to find

Before heading for my Pangu Top trek, I thought of buying a tent. After all the googling and contacting some shops who stock trekking gear I finalised Lafuma Alpine 3. Available around Rs.11.5k in India, its the cheapest option. According to their website Adventure 18 in Satya Niketan has it. I went to the shop but they didn’t had it and no idea when it will be available in the future.

They have other Lafuma tents but only 2-men, so I thought why don’t try them out. They pitched it inside the shop, it turned out to be too small I mean its little tight for even 2-men. I tried two tents and they were at least a year old, the white tag had turned yellow and I doubt they might have used it for their own treks. The price is Rs.10.5k which insanely high for an old tent and above all its a 3-season tent. Lafuma doesn’t make 4-season tent.

I tried to negotiate it but no success. So, I just wasted my 2 hrs.

In India choices are limited but if you search there are options. Like BlackDiamond will ship to India, try the ebay (US) you may get good deals and shipping will be around $80 via USPS. I have zeroed in on North Face VE 25 which is 3-person, 4-season tent, just waiting for the right price on ebay.

Windows XP on Compaq CQ40

Two days back I bought a Compaq CQ40 Laptop for my father. It comes with FreeDOS no Windows, so I thought I will just pop in a XP cd and that’s it.

But because of the new SATA interface XP won’t recognise the Hdd and there’s no way to disable SATA in BIOS. Vista will install just fine including the drivers.

The trick is to slipstream SATA drive into XP and then install. Use nLite for slipstreaming and here are all the drivers. I used XP with SP2 cd for slipstreaming. All the drivers will work except modem, I am sure there is updated driver available, but enabling audio is tricky.