This post is my way of having a sticky to see how to extract initial RAM disk images.

1. Plain ol’ gzip – initrd.gz

Extracts the contents of the archive to the current directory.

$ gunzip initrd.gz

2. CPIO images – initrd.img

Extracts the contents of the CPIO image to the current directory.

$ cpio -idv -F initrd.img

tl;dr I have uploaded a mod for Proxmox+multibootusb to make Proxmox handle ISO install images.

This article is a brief look at my troubles with getting the Proxmox installer to work with MultiBootUSB, and, a solution that I cooked up to resolve it.

The conventional process of using the Proxmox VE installer ISO is to either burn it to an optical disk (guaranteed to work), or, use a tool like dd in linux to write the ISO image directly to a USB disk, and, hope it works.

I like using USB disks because they are compact, and, have faster reads, which means a faster installation. But, I don’t like the idea of using an entire drive dedicated to just the installer.

So, in comes MultiBootUSB. I use it because it is designed to help with this specific problem, except… nothing is easy.

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Note: This post was published with a date in the past. Feel free to post comments with this context in mind.

This post describes my experience shopping around for my first NAS. Maybe it will help someone looking to get a new NAS themselves.

It is not possible to go into excruciating details of every aspect of the device, but, I have tried to at least gloss over what I believe is important.

The need – A networked media/data server

I have been wanting to set up a home media network ever since I got out of college. The kind where my music, movies, and, TV shows were always available to playback across devices (and rooms). At one point, I had drawn up the layout of this hypothetical network for a colleague who was curious. This was way before consumer-grade Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices became mainstream.

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Whoa! Look what I found here. <blows over the dust-covered surface>… <cough>, <cough> <cough> It’s my blog! Hmm… Last post was more than 2 years ago. Gosh! What was I doing all this time? Oh wait, a lot has happened these past few years. I am a married man now. Got married to my sweetheart whom I’ve known for over 4 years. And there’s other big news too.

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Note: This article has been published with a date in the past.

Attraction, woo-ing, googly eyes… love is fascinating. In our 4 years of courtship, Rachana, and, I have been through ups-and-downs, yays-and-nays. On May 7, 2014, we put it all behind us, as we got married.

These four years have been a wild ride emotionally. I am writing this, to express the emotions leading up to this point.

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Portal 2 game cover

Valve logo

The Valve logo

Half-Life game coverI must say that I am a big fan of Valve games ever since I played Half-Life. I believe, till date, there have been few (if any) game developers who make games as immersive as Valve does. There is a continuous link to each campaign and prequels and sequels fall seamlessly into place. I had bought The Orange Box with the primary intention of playing Half-Life 2. Bundled with it came a new game, Portal, which initially seemed like the additional unwanted games that one usually gets with game bundles. I gleefully ignored it as I set out with my crowbar into the Half-Life 2 world.Continue reading

A beautiful quote to ring in the new year:

A beautiful year is waiting for you.
Walk with aims,
Run with confidence, and
Fly with achievements.

                                   – Anonymous

Wishing everyone a very happy and a prosperous new year 2012!

Hello! Well I am back from a long break to post the second part of this series. I got little, but valuable, feedback on my last post, mostly verbally and on twitter. I encourage you guys to leave feedback in the comments. Any questions are also welcome.

Last time we learnt about percent (%). Today we will learn about pixels (px).

2. Pixel (px)

Type: Absolute

Pixel stands for Picture element. Just as with the percent unit, all CSS properties that accept values of measurement support the pixel unit (this holds true for all CSS units of measurement actually, I won’t be repeating this henceforth).

The pixel is the most important unit in the computer graphics domain. Why? Well there are a couple of reasons, both scientific and human:Continue reading