An xbox way...

I had a lil problem this weekend. This might be of interest to geeks who play on consoles.

My roommate left for India this Friday & I finally got an opportunity to hookup my XBox 360
to his HDTV. Since I had been playing on my SDTV till then, the difference was ...lets just
say... noticeable :) I could actually read the handles of my team members !!

My problem came when I tried to go online. Since I had been using the XBox downstairs
where my wireless router & cable modem also reside, it was straight enough to plugin
the internet cable into my console & the router. But there is no cable point on the first floor
of my home (Or I am too lazy to look for one)... so the problem was to get internet
working ...

One solution could be to move his rather big HDTV downstairs ... but nah ... I am too lazy
for that. Another solution could be to buy a wireless addon for my XBox. Nah .. I am too
cheap for that. Then suddenly *it* dawned on me. Read on.

I had installed ubuntu on my laptop recently (dual booting with Vista). I thought it
might be possible to use that laptop as a router for my internet connection. I could use
that cable to connect the console to the laptop and then use the wireless connection
of the laptop to login to XBox live.

It turns out that this is indeed possible. All you have to do is install dhcp server on linux.
You can use the synaptics package manager to look for something like dhcp3.
Once the server is installed you will need to make changes to 2 configuration files.
One is /etc/default/interfaces (I think). It contains the name of the interface on which
your DHCP server listens. Look for a line that starts with interfaces (the file is a simple
name value pair). The value for this key will most likely be empty. Just add the interface
name within quotes. In my case it was "eth0". You can also add multiple interfaces as long
as they are separated by space. Like "eth0 eth1"....

The other file you will need to change is /etc/init.d/dhcp.config (I think).
I am not that good at remembering these names. There are a lot of tutorials on the net
that tell you these specifics.
Basically, you will need to add details like the range of IP that can be handed down to
clients by your dhcp server and some other details. But HERE IS THE PART that is missing
in those tutorials. I was not able to get the dhcp daemon up & running till I made these
changes. First part is that you HAVE to have a valid DNS server name in this config file.
Following most tutorials, I was just adding some random DNS servers or the ones that
are already present in my resolve.config file. Since you can add multiple DNS servers
separated by space, it is important that you add the IP address of the interface that
you earlier marked for listening by DHCP. You can get the inet address by simply typing
$ ifconfig
on your bash shell. (or whatever shell you use).

The second major part is that you have to include another section called "name server"
in this same file where you specify the fixed address of the DNS machine. Since you
already marked the inet address (above) as a valid DNS machine, you can simply
add a section that maps the inet address to the MAC address (also retrieved using ifconfig)
in this file.

Thats it you should be done. You can run the dhcp daemon without fear. Your XBox will
connect with internet allowing you the immense pleasure of shooting people between
the eyes on XBox live.


Happy gaming !!

why does linux suck...

Why. The question comprises 3 letters. W-H-Y.

So I think I would be able to contribute the latest, greatest application to Open source movement & I download Hardy Heron to be dual booted with my Vista business.
I download Eclipse too and see if I can get it to work with Subversion.
No dice.
God knows how many things I have tried, but I still keep getting the "Cannot load default SVN client".

This whole usability is where commercial desktops win over open source.
And that shall remain the case in the foreseeable future.