Thursday, August 30, 2007

Enjoying the new responsibility

First of all , Welcome back. I know it is long time. I was too busy with installations, system fixing and all those dirty stuff. Now everything is in ok now atleast for the moment. We are having exams this week so not much time spend in the lab. One system with failed harddisk is still there. It needs to be replaced and one system have network problem need to be fixed. Now everything is running smooth i suppose.

The next job is fix time on all machines. I am planning to use a NTP server for time keeping. I hav scheduled a shutdown at midnight in most systems thats the reason for time keeping. Thats is the job after exams....

Wednesday, May 2, 2007

Small mistake Big data loss

I was reinstalling the comps in the lab last week. I set up an installation server through which nfs installation can be done. I was working all through last Monday to learn unattended installation. Finally i succeeded in the morning next day. As it is very installation is very easy unattended setup i tried installing on as many systems as I can. I have to go home on the next day.

In one of the systems FMB's project was there. And simply the unattended installation destroyed all those. really inattendly. The hell is that he doesn't have enough backup of those materials in the system. After an hour after this 'cleaning up' job phone call came from fmb.

The comp had about 2 GB of code. Their project is planned to be carried over to the next batch., ie, our batch. All of that is lost. I didn't ever think they had data on that comp. Anyway it made me really upset. I have been playing around with computers for about 5 yrs and this is the first time some thing wrong really happened.

Anyway there is nothing I can do now. So the installation process was postponed to June.

Monday, April 23, 2007

New Responsibility New Problems

I got a new responsibility. There is a Server called Tux. It is on which our ragam , tathva and some other websites are hosted. Handed over the root password from aswin the previous admin.

Even though it is a 'server' the machine is an old one running on Deabian 3.x version. I think aswin didn't play with that system for long. Other wise he may have replaced OS. He might be busy.

I found the system has got a high speed internet. So browsing in it has been easy.
I went to browse looked at couple of conf files and that all

On the second i made the system horrible.

The system had only Mozilla installed on it. I want to install firefox. I use the debian apt-get tool. It replaced many gnome and kde files but failed to install firefox !!!!. I felt something. Actually four websites are running inside this server and if any harm done I will have to answer many phone calls.

I restarted the machine stuck with command line. The X is continuously restarting ; problem with gdm. I uninstalled gdm installed xdm somehow solved the problem. 5 hours is all that took for making the system at least usuable.

I think I have to install it with some new OS soon.

Wednesday, April 4, 2007

A day to remember

"Have you paid for the 'ilaneer'"?, Subramanian asked me. "No", I replied. "You paid right?", "No" either. "People here are recovering after that tsunami" Sub told. "I will pay him tomorrow morning", I said. It was at 2am on 01-04-2007 and we were on the 16 th floor of ashramam; I was at Amrita Vidyapeedam Kollam for the NetBlitz program conducted by Cisco academy there on Networking.


Networking is my favourite subject. I found troubleshooting OS and networks very interesting even more interesting than coding. So when Sub first told me about the program; I registered. I found that only network Quiz interests me. I don't know java much. My java experience was a netbeans experience. May be I will have some time to burn rubber playing NFS MW.

Even though I confirmed the registration on the next day, My schedule was so tight that I found no way to prepare for the event. Somehow I finished the work; cut Friday's classes. I reached home only on Friday morning. I was very tired I slept for the whole day.

Sub called me in the evening and told me that he paid the registration fees. He told me that there are many good talks about everything on networking and it will be useful for you to manage networks in the coming year. I called my friend midhun who is promised to accompany me but found him in sick bed with fever. I was not ready to spend another hectic day. I was very tired I decided to relax. I promised Sub to come. But my mind was that "see it tomorrow". I browsed very long that night up to 3.15 am on 31/03/2007. Then I slept. My father called me in the morn. I decided to go and I just want to spend a day at Sub's college.


I reached Vallikkavu by 10. After Registration there was inauguration. The speeches were pretty long and I found it very boring, true NITC style may be. I slept very little last night. "I may sleep any time soon" I told sub. Then the first program started. It was a talk on future techs by (I forgot his name) .... Manager corp. relations cisco south asia, I think. It was ok. The ppts were pretty long hard to keep track. And then after a short break the next talk started. I was about network security. He found the many don't know networking , so he started from scratch. And he took a lot of time. So my first program Quiz prelims was postponed to 1pm . Then we had lunch and food was good. The session seemed to be boring I didn't go back to the hall again. I went through corridors talked with Manesh , Amar, Jaya Shankar, Jayasree, Sreedevi and Anoop. It was at that time I heard an interesting truth. " My reg fee was paid by Anoop!!!!!!!!! and Sub is a good friend.

I registered for the quiz and I got login id candidate130. It was very hot there. I drank water from one of the taps. 'Hard water', it took a long time to drink it. And I had to take one gelusil to prevent vomiting. Already my stomach was upset and this added further irritation.

This time the quiz started on time at 3.00 pm. I was presented with 45 questions 15 mins. The exam was like a formula 1 grandprix and I was very quick in a Michael Schumacher time. I finished the 44 question in 14:55 and 45 in 15:29 . Yaa I exceeded the time limit.

I want to go home as early as possible. I planned to return to calicut on Sunday itself. So I asked them about the results. They said we can't disclose it now. OOPS!!!!!

I and Sub then went to ashramam, the beach and in the flat he arranged me a room for 30
minutes to take rest as my stomach was upset and I was very tired. I told him we can go may be in vachinad express. We returned to the venue. Sub was trying to call navya but never attended the call. I then saw her at college. She and deepa was there. We chatted for some time. Navya seemed to be married to assignments at the moment.

The exam was not a good one for me. I was not satisfied. So I was pretty sure that I won't get selected for the finals. I needed to go home. I asked Sreedevi about the results, She asked Anoop, He asked Praveena ma'am and she returned a null pointer. She told that result will be announced only at the start of the final round and I was irritated. I told Sub to pack bags so that we can leave after hearing the results . I was sure that I won't get selected because the competition was huge; 65 participants 4 finalists.

And the competition started at 7 pm. The arrangements were superb and stage was arranged with a projector in the middle. They shortlisted 16 and from them they select 4. They started to call the names; the countdown started.... I told Sub as there are 16 I have a chance. But by it reached 3 name i was sure that i may not be there. I told Sub that we can pack bags. And they called the final name,The numero Uno slot..... And to my surprise I am the numero uno for qualifying. Really delighted....

That means there are two rounds now. A single round with 4 of them to reach final; if it is possible. And the final round. The next round started. There were 3 questions for each of 20 30 40. The round started. The girl who sat opposite to me got first question right got 30 points. In that round i got 1 question wrong. That means 0 points. In the next turn I got 30 points. And now tied with the girl. The other tow guys still have to open their accounts. And last and final turn came. She got wrong so I have to hit this question to win. The question came and I don't know answer............OOPS it is the only question that I don't know answer in round asked to anybody... I guessed and I got it right!!!!!!! So no need to tie breakers into final round with 70 points...Actually it was then only nervous moment in the quiz..

And into the final round... One guy got ahead of me early with 40 points. I tried only for 30 points got that answer right. He again tried with 40 pointer to put pressure on me. He got that wrong. Got -10 . I got the next right and lead the round. I was able to lead all rounds and finished with a final score of 210 . 100 points ahead of second place. Clean sweep......

The prizeless watch. Seeing the logo is great..


Sub seemed to be very happy with the performance. And there were congrats from everyone around. Sreedevi told me she need special treat as she was writing the score!!! And karthika gave me a couple of Ubuntu CDs from shipit.

As it was 10 pm I have to stay there. After the dinner; Sub promised to arrange accommodation. The food was not very good. Karthika told it is the best they got after a long time, especially salad.

Sub and I went to ashramam. It is situated between kayal and sea. The bridge from college to ashramam is very beautiful. The whole surrounding of the ashramam is quiet and very beautiful. I love that peace. Sub tried to arrange a room. I got one with a staff. We went to see him. I was bit terrified seeing him. He seemed to be irritated by us. I told Sub arrange a room for us otherwise we can stay in hostels. We went down talked with the one who is in charge and he showed green flag handing us key of room no 312.. Life here is all about negotiations Sub commented.

"I would like to see the sea from top. I may not get many chances like this" I asked and Sub agreed. It was about 12 am on April 1 st. We went to 16 floor. Went to a side where I can watch both sea and kayal. We sat there watching a ship going past the horizon... It was a nice experience....

On the next day i wake up at 9 pm early by my hostel standards. I had only one aim. Collect prize money and go home. I have to reach calicut by next morning. Anyway this time they distributed early. I just have to wait only for 15 minutes to a talk to complete. Sub went to hostel to pack his bag at that time.

The prize money was 5000 rupess and a watch from cisco . I like the watch..I then went downstairs to wait for Sub. I chatted with a girl who was there in registration desk previous day. I just want to asked her whether she is a staff or a student.. But I didn't ask.. that seemed to be a stupid question for me..

Oops!!! it seems to be too large for my small wrist..

And I made the final mistake of the weekend. I went back to see Anoop to thank him and say good bye. And he asked 200 rupees he paid for registration!!!!!! OOPS...

And it was the end of weekend there for me. It was actually first time after my +2 I was participating in a competition. And I won!!!

The people at Amrita are very good; especially staff, praveena ma'am. I missed her talk. And guys are cools and girls are beautiful...

I left with a happy note..

Thursday, March 22, 2007

Trying out with Beryl


All the computers in the lab have beryl installed except this one. I want to work more time with this Opensuse to test whether it is suitable for lab. This is particularly needed as 2nd yrs and 1 yr MCA students may find some distribution easier to work than other. So I decided to start my installation try out by beryl a xgl fork for desktop effects. This tryout seemed to be important to me because any way I have to install many packages in every system.

I came to the lab by 8.30 pm. Only 3 were there. Aishwarya on the right busy with her project. Dev in the corner trying out his project so do Yadu. Usually our lab gets crowded at night. Everyone seems to enjoying world cup. So luckily I got the computer I have to test on. I opened firefox googled beryl on opensuse. I got the page. I found the ways to install on it.

I first tried the straight forward way installing from yast2. Yast is suse's hardware and software manager. The main problem the lab facing now is the slow internet connection. It is not too slow but the speed is not consistent. So simply yast failed.

Meanwhile Dev was downloading some java parser, jdk packages. He told me not to delete any because he already have about 4 GB of software in that computer.

Then i tried rug, zypper and yum ; all failed. Then I read about smart a new package manager. I installed it from CD and tried. And after a couple of attempts everything was installed. You can read about smart here.

I tried to start beryl. I didn't install gnome.; so I am not able run beryl yet. But I got xgl running. I am satisfied with it for the moment.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Playing around with the Suse..


And this is the first post from the Suse Linux i installed in the lab on Monday. I had some more things to fix on it like screen resolution. I came to the lab in the afternoon yesterday and something funny happened.

It was about 3 pm and Data Structure lab exam for S4 was going on in the lab. So the lab was full with faculties and the students. I found no vacant seats but one next to a girl. The exam really seem to be a tough one as her face told well about it. The machine was on which DNS is running. That may be the why it is left vacant. I took the seat opened the console sshed to the previously installed machine. I logged as root and opened Opera. I was typing quickly. Somehow a pen fell down from her table. I took the pen without looking to her face placed on the table. Looking really serious. She was wondering what this guy is frantically doing?

Within 15 minutes Shaneed and Yadu came so did Priya ma'am came. Shaneed and Yadu started talking to me may be a bit loud. Usually Priya ma'am don't like students from other batches during lab exams. I was about to load blogger. Suddenly a voice came from back "They are having lab exams it is better not to disturb them" to Yadu and Shaneed. They suddenly left. So i can't stay there longer either. So I suddenly closed the windows and left off quickly without looking to anything.

I got some time to play with OS now. Now everything seems to work properly. And I found out one thing. LCD in wrong resolution is horrible. I first put 1024x768 and start menu ( the one in previous post) took more than half of the screen. I was really irritated by that at that time. Now fixed this everything seems to be running fine. I have to install beryl on this. This is my next adventure..

Monday, March 19, 2007

First Installation in the Lab


I talked to Dal in the evening. He told me to use any distro you like. But use only one distro other it won't be easy to manage. And I know that very well. All girls are not same so are linuxes. I am now using OpenSuse in my comp so I decided to give it a try.


I came to lab in the afternoon and it was full. Jam packed; I found the target machine with Debian installed. I tried to boot it and it failed very simple. I Don't have any DVD's with me at that time. My OpenSuse and Fedora Core 6 DVDs are in BS's table. So I decided to come at night to have my first try in the lab.

It was 10pm when I reached the lab and FMB is here. Fine. If I have any doubt I can ask him. I poped the DVD into the drive and rebooted. And no tinkering with bios, it booted from the CD.

I chose the default installation and dialog lauched loading Linux kernel and then .......... nothing happened. What? Suse failed?

I tried once again. Still same result. I was frantically pressing the power button. I tried again chose the safe setttings and then again with acpi off and nothing happens. And all on a sudden my love with OpenSuse 10.2 seems to end and already started thinking about another distros. So i decided to give a last try.

I poped the DVD to drive choose the default installation. Then i went to the next PC fired up firefox and started browsing. It took 3 minutes i think. After 3 minutes of inactivity the first welcome screen is reached. And i am relieved. I partitions removed all partitions. Created partitons and chose KDE. I just want to try on this system so i chose only one desktop environment and I always prefer KDE to gnome because of its features.

And all this time I type installation is going on. And now it is completed and rebooted for initial configuration. It is downloading some packages from suse repos. It is almost 20 minutes and still not complete. i would have skipped this step. And OOPs there is no cancel button either. The net is very slow so i had no option buit to wait. It is already 11:15 pm and lab closes by 11:45. So i have to do something. I pressed Ctrl+Alt+F1 for the prompt. Stopped the yast using Ctrl+C and rebooted. To my surprise it picked by saying previous installation failed. I just have configure again. Done that now. And installation is complete now.

I don't have time to play with the system now. May be tomorrow.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Choosing the right penguin



Dal was reminding me of reinstallation of two machine for the past 2 weeks. I , Daniel and Yadhu decided to go to the lab only after Ragam. Dal and FMB previous admins are their final two weeks of classess in our college. They will be handing over the lab to us next academic year by the way. As it is told to me i have to manage or maintain around 40 systems.

All of them currently have Fedora Core 6 installed in them. Most of them have beryl also. I am already thinking of the distro of the next year. And i want to try it on the two non OS systems now. I prefer OpenSuse 10.2 ; to me it was perfect in my laptop. It gave me the first trouble free installation of the linux I ever had. May be I will try with them tomorrow.

I know installation in 1 or 2 machines is ok. But for a large deployment i need to consider other options like installation from network through nfs or http. I am also considering the possibility of unattended installation. I tried to learn from the autoyast manual but it is not pefect. Still how to do section is not there. I know , yaa I tried with kickstart of fedora. It is perfect.

Even though the performance of OpenSuse in my laptop is fine it is taking too much resources. I don't know how lab machines cope with its requirements. They have 2.8 Ghz 512 MB processor and memory. But the hardisk are very slow due to constant read and write cycles.

My other option is some different. Going to an unknown territory. It is slackware. I have been for playing around with linux for the last 5 yrs. But never tried slackware based distros. This may be a perfect ocassion for trying it out. But for the first i will play safe. Another option is debian or ubuntu. Unless you run into problem they are perfect. But i don't think i will have so much time to tinker with the conf files of linux.

Opensuse, ubuntu, fedora? I haven't decided yet.

Yaa, it is like choosing the right bride. Because i have to play,share,fix,suffer with her for the next whole year!!!!