Moodle Password Hash Structure

I was working with Moodle Learning Management System as part of my work
and was able to figure out the Hashing of passwords in moodle available in
users table. I am sure there are programmers who would want to know this.

Moodle uses MD5 Hashing to protect the passwords of the moodle users.

But it uses a salt value which is suffixed to the actual password before MD5 hashing algorithm being applied. Salt values are used to prevent Dictionary attacks. This salt value can be found in a file called config.php in the moodle file structure.

So the structure is MD5([Actual User Password] + [Salt Value])

First Class

After 4 years of determination and hard work, with the help of god I made to get a First Class Honours in my BSc (Hons) Software Engineering degree. Feels so happy and humble proud to have achieved this.

Once again Thanks to god.

Sri Lanka Vs India, A lot more than just World Cup Final.

In two days time, the Cricket World Cup 2011 final will be played in Wankade Stadium, Mumbai, India.

Sri Lanka will be facing off the home team India in a thrilling match which will decide who is the World Champion of Cricket.

India is a country said to be sixty times larger than Sri Lanka. With a daunting population of 1200 Million people. If India has 2 percent of its people playing cricket, It will be more than the total population of Sri Lanka which is around 20 Million. India is far superior when it comes to financial capabilities as BCCI the controlling body of Cricket in India being the richest in the world.
One would think that with all these resources Indian team should be the best team in the world. But they aren't. Four years ago they were kicked out of the World Cup 2007 in the first round itself by Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.

So people would ask what does Sri Lanka have? Well compared to India, Sri Lanka is far behind in terms of resources. But Sri Lankan cricketers have unmatched courage, unparalleled skill and unforgiving competitiveness.

It is not numbers that count but the attitude of cricketers and their devotion for what they believe in. For that Sri Lankan cricket team can be given a full hundred because they never thought that they were underdogs. They played their hearts out in crunch games in this world cup and got into the final for the second consecutive time showing consistency.

Furthermore winning this world cup means a lot to Sri Lanka because it will definitely bring in peace and friendship amongst Sri Lankans. Just like the 1995 Rugby World Cup win solved all the ethnic conflicts between blacks and whites in South Africa.

This country needs greatness to heal the wounds of the past and I am sure that our team would be able to deliver that greatness. The greatness which will unite Sinhalese, Tamils, Muslims, Catholics and would heal all the wounds of the past.

So lets join our hands together and wish our lions victory. Go Sri Lanka!!!

Nearing End of My Degree Studies

It has been quite sometime since I last blogged. I was/am busy neck deep with my final year project work and studies and didn't get much time to blog. So far everything is going smoothly. Hope I would be able to finish off well.

Last year Participating in Google Summer of Code changed my life completely. I was a part time student before I took part in GSoC and had 2 more years of academic studies left. But with GSoC I managed to cut it 1 year. Thanks to almighty god.

Hoping that everything goes well as planned.

Deleting All .svn directories from a SVN Local Copy

I have been puzzled for sometime on how to recursively delete all .svn directories from a local copy of a particular SVN checkout. I was searching through the net and found a solution but sadly it didn't work so I had to make some minor modifications to make it work. Now all you have to have to do is copy and paste the following code in a notepad and save it as "delete_svn.reg" and double click it and allow it to create a registry. Then you can right click on the root directory of any SVN local copy checkout and select "Delete SVN Folders" from the context menu to delete .svn metadata directories.


Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Folder\shell\DeleteSVN]
@="Delete SVN Folders"
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\Folder\shell\DeleteSVN\command]
@="cmd.exe /c \"TITLE Removing SVN Folders in %1 && COLOR 9A && FOR /r \"%1\" %%f IN (.svn _svn) DO RD /s /q \"%%f\" \""


Nearing End, New Beginning..

Officially Google Summer of Code comes to an end this week, but the lessons learnt from it will continue forever.

It was a very informative learning experience so far. I learnt how to work in a team and get the work done. I am very happy and honored have got selected to Google Summer of Code. All praises should go to God and God Alone. I have given my best during Google Summer of Code. I had to do Google Summer of Code as well as My Academic Project simultaneously. I managed to get them both done while switching on and off between the two.

Even though the summer is over I am hoping to continue the contributions whenever I can to the opensource community. I will be doing my final year from September 2010 and hoping to graduate in 2011 if God Wish th.

I would like to thank my Mentor Burke Mamlin and my backup Mentor Ben Wolfe for all the help throughout this summer. Really was lucky to have you guys as mentors.

Working Hard..

As end of Summer of Code 2010 is nearing, I can say that I have given my best to achieve the required goals of my project and I have achieved most of the goals that were in my project description.

I am happy to say that while achieving those goals, I learnt quited a lot too. It was a very challenging and fun experience for me thus far.

As we are nearing the end of Summer of Code, Last Week I started the Documentation and managed to get some documentation in the online wiki pages.

Some community members praised my early documentation and gave some feedback to make it better.

I have been given some minor tasks to be done by my mentor and I am hoping to finish them off as soon as possible.

Hope everything goes smoothly and god will be with me as always.