Sify Broadband Client for Linux

I wrote about my home-grown Sify Broadband client some time ago. As with any program it needed some tweaks. Now it's pretty much stable. This is how now I connect to the Internet.

• Configuring the network: My laptop has to use a DHCP-based network in my office. Sify requires that I use a static IP address. I have added a virtual network interface to the computer by adding these lines to my /etc/network/interfaces file:

  iface sify inet static
  address 10.15.66.107
  netmask 255.255.255.0
  gateway 10.15.66.1
  dns-nameservers 202.144.10.50 202.144.13.50

  When I am at home, I activate this network settings on eth0 by running: $ sudo ifdown eth0 $ sudo ifup eth0=sify
• Signing into Sify network: $ sify.py i
• Signing out of Sify: $ sify.py o

Requirements For this script to work, you must have the following installed:

• Python 2.4
• BeautifulSoup (Python XML parser library)

Download and Install ** Update: This project is now hosted on Google Code. See http://code.google.com/p/msify/wiki/GettingStarted for more information and to download the latest version. ** Download the zip archive at http://www.megaupload.com/?d=QR5TC7DK. Extract the contents of the archive into a local directory in your computer. Edit the .sify file and specify your username, password, IP address etc. Then run sify.py to login or logout. Fine Print

• I developed and tested this on a Kubuntu Dapper machine. It works fine for my usage; but I cannot guarantee that this will work for you. I don't provide any warranty of any sort.
• This script is released under GPL V2. Feel free to change and/or redistribute.

Don't attach those Windoze Media format files, puhlease...

<rant> It's been more than two and a half years since YouTube was launched. It's the most famous video sharing service on the Internet today. I know a lot of people know about it. But the problem is they don't use it. Very often I get emails with a zip files attached to it. The zip file contains one single WMV file. Instead of taking all the pain to zip a WMV file (which results in almost no file size difference; but a hell lot of annoyance), if at all they upload it to YouTube or some other fancy video sharing program they like, it would be a pleasant experience for us to watch it. </rant>