Thursday, December 23, 2010
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Howto Export Emails from Thunderbird into html files, print all these files into readable text in a single file
Thought I'd share this with everyone. I wanted to filter my emails from a particular sender, export it and put it together in a text file for reading chronologically.
Here's what I had:
- Ubuntu Lucid (10.4) as OS
- Mozilla Thunderbird 3.1.2 as email client
- w3m as a text-only browser
ImportExportTools as a Thunderbird add-on
The first part was fairly simple, just filter based on sender. In the search results, select all and click on Tools-ImportExportTools-Export All Messages In Folder - HTML Format
Select the target folder (I created a new one called EmailArchive). Once the activity is completed, you get a folder full of exported html files with names that have the date and subject as filename (you can customize this in preferences too).
Now I created a small shell script to achieve the next (but most difficult) part (for me). The script has the following lines: -
#!/bin/bash
FNAME=Mail_Transactions.txt
for i in *.html
do
echo "Start of Mail ---" $i >> $FNAME
echo "------" >> $FNAME
w3m -dump "$i" >> $FNAME
echo "End of Mail ------" >> $FNAME
echo "------" >> $FNAME
done
When you run this script (in a terminal , cd to the directory that contains the html files), it will create a file called Mail_Transactions.txt that will contain the output of all the mails separated by the two blocks "Start of Mail" and "End of Mail".
Hope this helps!
Friday, July 30, 2010
Tethering your Blackberry Tour with Ubuntu 10.04
So I embarked upon a journey to tether the Tour to my laptop running Ubuntu 10.04. I had two options; USB cable or Bluetooth. I couldnt make the cable work using barry-utils though it helped me take backups etc. I then discovered that someone had found a way to make tethering work using bluetooth. I followed the instructions in this link--> http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1476009 . It involves installing an application called blueman. Once installed, the app lets you pair the Tour and also add enable dialup networking. Having done this, I created a new connection under Mobile Broadband in Network Manager and filled up the username + password (the reliance phone number itself). After saving, I could see the Connection available on Network Manager. On clicking, it immediately connected and I was ready to surf!
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
BSNL 3G in Chennai on a Samsung SGH-i780
Getting it to work was an adventure worth blogging!
I have a Samsung SGH-i780 Windows Mobile Phone with 3G. When I called up the customer care of BSNL, the lady at the other end asked me what phone I had. When I gave her the model number, she said shes never heard of it and wouldnt know if my phone would work!
I then turned to my good ole friend Mr Google. Surprisingly, the community around this is very large. There were people running the 3G service on their iPhones (jailbroken), and other such phones.
I got the information I needed in a matter of minutes. The steps are:-
a) Change the band in the phone's settings to WCDMA. This can be found under "Settings" --> "Phone" --> "More" --> "Band Selection"
Once I did this, I got a warning that wcdma works only in 3G coverage areas!
The moment I did this, I got a large 3G icon on the top status bar of the phone.
b) The next step was to set up the data service. For this I navigated to
"Settings" --> "Connections" ---> "Connections" ---> "Manage Existing Connections" --> "My WAP Networks"
c) Create New Connection by clicking on New in the "Modems" tab.
d) Enter a Name for the connection: "BSNL 3G"
e) Select a Modem: Cellular Line (GPRS)
f) Click Next
g) Access Point Name: "gprssouth.cellone.in"
h) Click Next
i) Leave all the fields in this screen blank (User Name, Password, Domain)
j) Click on Finish.
Open up Pocket Internet Explorer and type in any url say www.google.com
You can see the 3G data connection getting setup. once this happened, I got a small 3G icon sitting atop my signal indicator icon.
Voila... Im connected on 3G!!!
I tried the speed test at speedtest.dslreports.com/m and it showed an amazing 1mbps!
Youtube plays without buffering.
Way to go BSNL; if only they got their act together. I cannot seem to find out where and how to recharge the SIM. The call center lady asks me to go to ezreharge.in but they dont have BSNL as an option!!
But I am so glad that 3G has finally come into the country and it works well too!
Monday, February 15, 2010
Article in Hindu Businessline
http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/2010/02/11/stories/2010021150880900.htm
Saturday, January 30, 2010
Thursday, June 25, 2009
Howto connect to the Internet using ZTE AC 8710 USB EVDO modem and Reliance Netconnect Plus service in Ubuntu
Ive upgraded to Ubuntu Karmic Koala (9.10) and found to my pleasant surprise that I dont have to do the modeswitch as explained below... The kernel parameters are required to be passed at boot time but once you insert the modem, the switch happens automatically! Upon insertion, my dmesg shows this:
1781.557336] usb 4-1: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 7
[ 1781.728425] usb 4-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 1781.733527] usbserial_generic 4-1:1.0: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected
[ 1781.733858] usb 4-1: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB0
[ 1781.737839] usbserial_generic 4-1:1.1: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected
[ 1781.738124] usb 4-1: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB1
[ 1781.739791] usbserial_generic 4-1:1.2: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected
[ 1781.740855] usb 4-1: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB2
[ 1781.744782] usbserial_generic 4-1:1.3: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected
[ 1781.745112] usb 4-1: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB3
[ 1781.747243] usbserial_generic 4-1:1.4: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected
[ 1781.747527] usb 4-1: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB4
So I directly run wvdial cdma and connect.
Ps. I am still not able to use Network Manager which now includes an entry for Reliance in the Mobile Broadband section.
-----------------------------------------End of Update------------------------------------------------
The prerequisites to achieve the above are:
1. An activated Reliance Netconnect Plus EVDO service with the ZTE AC8710 EVDO modem.
2. A laptop/desktop with Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope (9.04); It could/should work with other flavors/versions too with minor tweaks.
3. The usb_modeswitch utility from here --> http://www.draisberghof.de/usb_modeswitch/
4. The wvdial package.
The steps:
1. First download the usb_modeswitch utility and either compile it or use the binary (this worked in my case).
2. This utility is required to switch the ZTE modem from mass storage mode to modem mode. This is because ZTE cleverly added a usb storage mode which could allow them to bundle the windows driver and utility along with the dongle thus ensuring that people using netbooks etc (those without CD-Rom drives) could install and work with the modem. Unfortunately in Linux (Ubuntu Jaunty in my case), this does not happen and the device shows up as a mass storage device always thus leading to an impasse.
3. The next interesting point to note is that with Jaunty, the usbserial module has got built into the kernel instead of being a loadable module (This is the primary difference when working with earlier flavors like Intrepid- 8.10 where this module has to be loaded with the modprobe command).
4. Hence the parameters to the usbserial module have to be passed at boot time. One needs to add the following two values (usbserial.vendor and usbserial.product) to the end of the kernel line in the /boot/grub/menu.lst for the default kernel. In my case it looks like this after modification ( I am making the assumption that people know how to edit files in Linux):-
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic root=UUID=61f8e10e-6e9f-44c9-8e41-43deb8589139 ro quiet splash usbserial.vendor=0x19d2 usbserial.product=0xfff1
5. The next step is to unzip (optionally compile ) and install the usb_modeswitch tool. This puts a binary called usb_modeswitch in /usr/sbin/usb_modeswitch and the configuration file in /etc/usb_modeswitch.conf
6. Edit the /etc/usb_modeswitch.conf file to reflect the modem type and other settings. In my case the relevant line numbers (582 to 591) look so: -
582 DefaultVendor= 0x19d2
583 DefaultProduct= 0xfff6
584
585 TargetVendor= 0x19d2
586 TargetProduct= 0xfff1
587
588 # only for reference
589 # MessageEndpoint=0x05
590
591 MessageContent="5553424312345678c00000008000069f030000000000000000000000000000"
7. The next step is to reboot after saving all changes to ensure that the usbserial module gets the required values.
8. After rebooting, we need to now switch mode. To do this, insert the USB modem, wait for it to get recognized as a mass storage device and then run the command (as root) usb_modeswitch. If one tails the messages file (tail -f /var/log/messages), one can see that new devices such as /dev/ttyUSB0 get created.
Before switch the log looks so: -
usb-storage: device scan complete
[ 2326.587996] scsi 6:0:0:0: CD-ROM ZTE USB Storage FFF1 2.31 PQ: 0 ANSI: 2
[ 2326.656896] sr0: scsi-1 drive
[ 2326.657023] sr 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0
[ 2326.657121] sr 6:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg2 type 5
After switch it is:-
usb 2-2: new full speed USB device using uhci_hcd and address 10
[ 2328.646405] usb 2-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[ 2328.649209] usbserial_generic 2-2:1.0: generic converter detected
[ 2328.649622] usb 2-2: generic converter now attached to ttyUSB0
[ 2328.652650] usbserial_generic 2-2:1.1: generic converter detected
[ 2328.653049] usb 2-2: generic converter now attached to ttyUSB1
[ 2328.655786] usbserial_generic 2-2:1.2: generic converter detected
[ 2328.656234] usb 2-2: generic converter now attached to ttyUSB2
[ 2328.658435] usbserial_generic 2-2:1.3: generic converter detected
[ 2328.658781] usb 2-2: generic converter now attached to ttyUSB3
[ 2328.661470] usbserial_generic 2-2:1.4: generic converter detected
[ 2328.661814] usb 2-2: generic converter now attached to ttyUSB4
9. Once this is done, we now need to run the wvdialconf tool to create the wvdial.conf file. In my case, it could detect the ZTE modem and detected a 9600 baud capable modem.
10. We can now edit the /etc/wvdial.conf file to add other values including the username and password (the reliance number associated with the EVDO service is both in this case). After it is done, my wvdial.conf looks so: -
2 [Dialer cdma]
3 Stupid Mode = 1
4 Inherits = Modem0
5 Password = 93xxxxxxxx
6 Username = 93xxxxxxxx
7 Phone = #777
8
9 [Modem0]
10 Init1 = ATZ
11 Init2 = ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
12 SetVolume = 0
13 Modem = /dev/ttyUSB0
14 Modem Type = Analog Modem
15 ;Baud = 9600
16 Baud = 115200
17 FlowControl = Hardware (CRTSCTS)
18 Dial Command = ATDT
19 ISDN = 0
Pl note that I added the [Dialer cdma] part and also changed line 15 from 9600 to 115200 and it works just fine!
11. Once this is done, just run the command wvdial cdma and if all goes well, you should be connected. my final output, once connected looks so:
--> WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.60
--> Cannot get information for serial port.
--> Initializing modem.
--> Sending: ATZ
ATZ
OK
--> Sending: ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
ATQ0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
OK
--> Modem initialized.
--> Sending: ATDT#777
--> Waiting for carrier.
ATDT#777
CONNECT
--> Carrier detected. Starting PPP immediately.
--> Starting pppd at Thu Jun 25 09:52:01 2009
--> Pid of pppd: 11296
--> Using interface ppp0
--> pppd: ��[06][08]0�[06][08]
--> pppd: ��[06][08]0�[06][08]
--> pppd: ��[06][08]0�[06][08]
--> pppd: ��[06][08]0�[06][08]
--> pppd: ��[06][08]0�[06][08]
--> local IP address 115.240.46.196
--> pppd: ��[06][08]0�[06][08]
--> remote IP address 220.224.141.129
--> pppd: ��[06][08]0�[06][08]
--> primary DNS address 202.138.97.193
--> pppd: ��[06][08]0�[06][08]
--> secondary DNS address 202.138.96.2
--> pppd: ��[06][08]0�[06][08]
--> pppd: ��[06][08]0�[06][08]
--> pppd: ��[06][08]0�[06][08]
12. Thats it!! Fire up your browser, email client etc etc and happy surfing. I am getting 500 Kbps in Chennai and Hyderabad.
ps. i found out that i hadnt had pppd installed so had to install that as well.
I know that there might be a more elegant GUI way of doing this but this is the best I could do after reading a lot of stuff that other people had done.