the fixing field trip

On turning up at office on Tuesday, after a 3 day holiday, heard about the problem blowing out here and there in our kiosks due to a broken package in our repository. Thankfully it was happening only with our ongoing new rollout image which was installed in around 80 kiosks in Karnataka. We decided to make a field trip and asses the situation, find a fix that can be executed in the affected kiosks with the help of the field engineers and operators itself. Our earlier plan of making the trip on Tuesday evening itself was dropped as it would have been too late when we could reach even the nearest affected kiosk.

We started the field trip around 8 a.m. on Wednesday, getting a cab to take us around. This will help us in visiting as many kiosk as possible in a day. We started with a 2 hour travel to Yadiyur near Kunigal falling under the Tumkur district. The cab driver suggested us a nice hotel in Kunigal, where we had plate-idlis, vada and tea before continuing our journey.

The Yadiyur kiosk is located right in front of the cattle market of the village. We started hunting for the bug which caused all the mess and soon found it to be an extra netmask line in the network interfaces file. Removing this line and rebooting the machine brought the network up and the machine started to operate normally. But when we tried the second machine, it was more than this. The firewall seemed to have messed up during the upgrade, so we needed to clean it, then clean the interface file and bring up the system back. We also started calling up the field engineers, asking them to go to the nearest problematic kiosk and guide them to perform the same fix we found.

Having found the fix, we wanted to test it again. So we next moved to our kiosk in Maisandra, which is some 20 Kms from Yadiyur. We had a bit of trouble in finding the kiosk as it is located in a building interior to the main road. The kiosk was small but neatly maintained. We fixed the first machine following the same procedure, but the second machine did not face the updates because of lack of network switch to connect both the machines and hence it was still unaffected. We finished our job and left to the next location, but it was already afternoon.

Our next location was Huliyurdurga, which is on the other side to Yadiyur and it took us almost an hour to reach. We again had problems locating the kiosk as the name board is not put on the building it is located at and people could not get a clue of what we were searching for. Thankfully the operator was standing out in front of the building, could spot our car and I could spot her waving. We quickly fixed the first machine, made it operational as customers were waiting and moved to the second machine. With some extra effort, we managed to fix it too.

We were hungry and decided to feed us with some snacks from the bakery. We decided not to visit the next kiosk Tiptur as it was very far and it was already 5 p.m. We started our way back to Bangalore and after crawling through the traffic around Nelamangla and Yeshwantpur, we reached office by 7.40 p.m.

We have learnt our lesson that we need more stricter Q.A. process and more rigorous testing before we update our stable repository next time. When we were in the kiosk, probably a hour or two at each location, there were indeed customers turning up at least once every hour On the whole, it was a nice day of traveling through rural Karnataka and visiting few more of our kiosks.

After a small break

Its going to be 10 days since I posted last and it seems to be long. I have been literally doing nothing and hence nothing much to post (though I have been reading a lot).

Tomorrow am leaving for a day’s trip to Coimbatore, participating in a workshop at PSG Tech. on FOSS. I will be joined by Aanjhan and Bharathi. I plan to talk on “GUI Development with Glade3″ (as Bharathi wants to talk on Qt Designer) and Collaborative development tools. Then we also plan to have a Panel discussion to end the week long things, organized by NRCFOSS. The audience are limited to 15 staff members from CSE|IT|EEE|ECE branches and 15-20 ME students.

This time am not blessed with luxury of traveling in train, as I was a bit lethargic in booking the tickets due to personal uncertainties and hence have ended up with traveling in the bus on both ways. The ticket cost, am afraid, is more than what would have been in an A/C chaircar (A/C Sleeper Volvo to CBE is 530 INR). This is going to trouble my back, even though I have booked only in A/C Sleeper Volvo bus. God save this poor soul

Flied to the west

It was a fun filled weekend at Pune, the Ubuntu Indian team meeting informally for getting together. 8 of us met - Aanjhan, Anurag, Barkha, Baishampayan Ghose, Gaurav aka tazz, Onkar Shinde, Sneha and me. We had nothing but fun, did not freak out much other than an afternoon at a mall.

I left to Pune by Indian Airlines on Friday evening and laned at Mumbai around 19.30 hours. Anurag, baks and tazz were there to welcome me and 4 of us rushed to Dadar to fetch a bus to Pune. After standing for 2.5 hours at the ticket counter, we managed to get into an A/C Volvo bus and started our journey towards Pune. We reached there around 2.30 a.m., having got down at a wrong place and waited till Onkar came up and guided us home. Tuxmaniac aka aanjhan arrived around 7.30 a.m. in the morning.

We started the day with a quick breakfast of dosas and watching few series of ‘The IT Crowd’. We then proceeded to a mall called E-Square. We got tickets for ‘Bheja Fry’ and had a nice dinner. It was an awesome movie which made us all laugh during the entire 1.5 hour duration (though tazz had a nice sleep and was waken up when the entire theater was in laughter). We returned back to be joined at home by G0SUB and June.

We went for dinner at “Horn OK Please”, after trying to fix with a restaurant for an hour. We returned back around 00.30 a.m. and crashed. We left for Mumbai the next day morning and me got a chance to spend a day at my brother’s place before returning back today morning by IC-0972. The route back to Mumbai was fantastic, as we missed it all during our way to Pune as it was pitch dark night.

Traveling by air has really made it possible for me to have a weekend in Western India, 100s of kilometers from my home, but still return back without feeling much tired of travel. I still wonder how I would have felt if the journey was by train instead. Next time, gotta make sure I stay at BOM at least for a couple of days, pre-inform my brother well before and see Mumbai more than a brief bike ride on my way to airport. Also, plan to trip to Lonavala

At last, I will be in Pune

Till yesterday evening, was feeling bad that I won’t be joining my buddies at the Ubuntu India Team meet at Pune the coming weekend. There were no tickets available in any of the 3 trains to Pune, with waiting list numbers around 240-280. Earlier searches for flight to Pune was found to be too costly for me to spend from my pocket (which is already empty). There is also no Volvo bus plying between Chennai and Pune. There were possibility for reaching Pune from Bangalore, but that would increase my expenses. So, I almost dropped the idea of going to Pune and was thinking of attending the Chennai LUG meet next week.

Thanks to tuxmaniac for giving me the last hopes of being at the meet. He found me Indian Airlines flights to Mumbai and said either baks or devmodem will pick me up from airport and proceed to Pune in volvo bus. The whole air travel cost me around 3000 INR (thanks to the additional discount if booked with ICICI credit card). This sound to be a good deal and a chance to travel by flight almost after 10 years. I booked tickets for Chennai–>Mumbai in 8th June evening IA flight, while am returning by the early morning IA flight on 11th from Mumbai. Nothing goes without a bit of confusion. I got a call from yatra.com informing me that the return ticket I tried to book was for last ticket in economy class in that flight and it unfortunately got booked before I could. So, I had two options of taking another flight or pay a 1000 bucks more and get a ticket in the executive class. He also said that there are no tickets in the morning flights, but only in an afternoon GoAir flight. As I need to be at Chennai for sure on 11th morning, I decided to pay a 1k more and come by the same morning flight in executive class.

Its going to be more than 10 years since I made an air travel. So, tuxmaniac briefed me about what I should do on entering the Chennai airport, till I come out at the Mumbai airport . I am not planning to take any luggage as my back pack can hold the necessary clothes for the 2 days, along with my laptop.

Looking forward to the journey and especially to meet all the buddies of Ubuntu India team. Another opportunity to match nicks/names with faces. This is a very informal meet of the team, just to get more closer with one another so we can work together in a more effective way. We have ideas of making half-a-day outing on 10th. I have to somehow return to Mumbai by night of 10th June, so I won’t miss my morning flight on 11th.

My Guru got Married (Updated)

Last week I got a surprise mail from Suraj Kumar, the one person who should take a great part of the credit for getting me into GNU/Linux and FOSS and hence tagged my “Guru”, that he is getting married. First I thought it was a prank mail, as April had not still ended. But, reading the mail fully made me realize that I was wrong and indeed he was getting married.

Now, am ready to leave tonight and attend the marriage reception tomorrow at Bangalore. Sridhar Ratna is also coming with me to attend the reception and thus I have a company for the trip. Planning to stay in R T Nagar itself as the choultry is close to my grandpa’s house. As it happens to be a working day, I can not expect my buddies to spend time with me.

This is going to be a memorable trip and a more memorable meeting with my Guru. Will try to take some snaps and add it to this post with updates from the trip.

Updated…

It was one of the most memorable days in my life. We landed at Bengalooru in the early hours of Friday, at the cantonment station. As the autowalas asked almost 3 times the ideal fare, me and Srid decided to go by bus. We luckily got an auto from the bus stand who turned on the meter. we reached the choultry by 6 a.m. and Suraj was at the door welcoming us with a hug. We joined Suraj in the queue for the bathroom and all us were ready by 7.

We had the morning breakfast and left for the temple, where the marriage was supposed to happen, in batches using the couple of cars available. The actual marriage happened at the Kalyana Venkatesa Perumal Koil. Suraj and Deepti were wearing a tam-brahm attire (Panjakachham and madisar, respectively). The thirumangalya dharanam or the trying the knot of the holy thread as a symbol of marriage happened in the shrine. Then we returned to the choutlry for the rest of the customs surrounding a marriage.

Though Deepti was a North Indian, Suraj’s mother wanted her son’s marriage to happen in a perfect iyengarish manner. The ceremony took another couple of hours to complete. There were a lot of friends of Suraj, including me and Srid, that it was so fun being around. There were at least half a dozen cameras flashing and taking snaps of the couple.

We stayed in Suraj’s house for the afternoon and made him ready for the evening reception. This was the first time Suraj was wearing a formal dress and it began with a Suit. We were there with Suraj for almost 16 hours and came back home with memoirs of the day still in our eyes.

I have uploaded all the pictures to my flickr album, but still will put one snap which I will cherish for the rest of my life

FOSS.NITC Field Report

I am back from a weekend at Kozhikkode. It was a nice trip, nice experience and nice learning too. Let me drop my quick field report about FOSS Meet @ NIT Calicut, which we call as foss.nitc.

• The organizers, students belonging to various branches in NITC, did a very nice job. This is their 3rd year of conducting the FOSS meet and they did show signs of maturity.
• Though there were initial hiccups in speaker registration and their web site, they managed to have a nice band of speakers.
• We were accommodated in a nice guest house. Though I was lucky to get a room with A/C and TV, other rooms without those were no less than mine in comfort. But there were few not-so-lucky guys who stayed in the International hostel
• The food was good on all the 3 days, but eating North Indian food for 3 days made me run with problems.
• The days were long, starting from 9 a.m. and ending at 10 p.m. Think they can make this something like 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and having open sessions then.
• We all felt and suggested the need to have some open sessions and more BoFs.
• There were few troubles with the scheduling such that a few speakers were left with very meager listeners.
• My talk on Decorators in Python went very well, with a dozen people to listen. We got chairs and sat around. The session went for 1.5 hours.
• My second talk messed up as I did not really prepare and practice for it. Also, I was in a blank mood after listening to 3 hours of the previous talk And, whenever I looked the audience, they showed sign of disinterest so I felt like will end with a few topics than what I had planned for.
• Learnt more info on photography and after seeing Jace with his cam, am more serious about buying a pro cam
• The past one year had been a great time for me, attending 3 conferences (foss.in, Linux Asia and FOSS.NITC). And, I became a speaker in the last one.
• We have got an invitation from a college near Alleppy for a similar FOSS event sometime in mid August.
• Wipro had a talk about ‘TV in Mobile’, and they used a Windows system. We took a few snaps of it. But at the end, we were surprisingly called to present the mementos for the Wipro Guys :0
•  I have decided to really start preparing for talks in future, *I do not want to mess up again!*
• It was nice meeting some of my #linux-india buddies, though not many could make it.
• There were more talks and unconferences on Blogging. The first one by Kiruba was all fun, while Jace’s was more informative as well.
• NIT Calicut has really good facilities, at least for our eyes, comparing to the numerous colleges dotting around Chennai. If am not wrong, it has better facilities than what I have seen in MIT. May be am wrong!?
• Though I missed being at Carte Blanche this year, especially when we had Ubuntu-India stall there, but I feel content about being at FOSS.NITC and very much looking to be there next year too
• My train journey was tiresome, against my hope that second class sleeper will be at least comfortable. I got a slight fever and spent the whole of today sleeping.

I have posted the photos from FOSS.NITC and will try to add more, as well as a lot of my buddies have. Please check flickr.com under the tag foss.nitc if you are interested. There are really cool pictures, believe me

Delhi Chalo!

It was during my 8th standard, sometime in 1997, that I went to the capital of India. It was actually preceded by a high drama. I had my quarter-early exams yet to finish, but the Annual Integration Camp of Bharath Scout association was to start. At that time, I was a more passionate scout than a student. The reason my principal was also a member of scout movement helped in getting permission to take up the exams earlier than my class mates (but with the same question paper and a promise to keep the questions secret). It was a wonderful 2 weeks trip, with 10 days of camping with scouts and guides from all over India and a couple of days of sight seeing in Delhi. A team of 10 people with a scout master, out of which only 3 could speak some Hindi, went to Delhi.

Now, after almost 10 years, am making my next trip to that great city, this time though not as a scout or NCC cadet but as a representative of NRCFOSS. I am going to participate in a highly commercial event, hosted with a title of ‘Linux Asia‘. The weirdest thing about the conference, which has even pissed off a great % of the community, is that it is being sponsored by Microsoft. M$ is called as the ‘Interoperability Partner’ for this event, which has raised too many eyebrows and that’s one thing I will be sniffing max in this event.

If you infer that am looking for this conference, am sorry. I would rather personally prefer to go to Pune for GNUnify or Mumbai for SELF. But, I am taking up orders and making myself to Delhi. But, off late I have hit with a good news. Thanks to the Delhi Linux User Group buddies, its almost sure that there would be a kabab-and-beer meet on 3rd February and I will be meeting many of IRC buddies whom I missed at foss.in.

Am landing along with two of my colleagues on a day before the event, which spans for 3 days. Then, one of my colleagues will go to Kanpur, while two of use are left in Delhi for a couple of days. On 3rd, I have asked my colleague to go for a day tour to Agra. I have seen Taj in my life and not very much interested to see it again. But for my colleague, this is his first trip and why he got to miss this chance. So, while I will be hanging around with my buddy Nishant, he will enjoy Agra. The final day, I wish to stay in the room and watch TV if there is one. Else hang around the place and get some cool Delhi air.

If you want me to say a word about this trip, its “a week escape to a cold Delhi, before getting fried in hot Chennai summer”

The Silk Clouds

Went out to catch some fresh air this morning and looked at the skies to find out how thick the rain clouds were. What I expected was presence dark clouds, instead there was this white cloud, as white as silk. It was like some one had gone over the skies and dumped a huge lump of silk over there. The some one may be mother nature

Will I leave such a sight ?! Ran back, got my Digicam and took a few snaps of it. It would have been great if I had some green around, instead of concrete structures. Anyway, here is one of the snaps, which I felt was better than the others.

There is one good news to add on. I have recieved a lot of appreciation for this picture, thanks a lot for every one who spoke back to me about this. One of my friends Mrugesh Karnik ,aka floyd_n_milan as people in #linux-india knows, has ideas to make a sketch of this drawing. Its going to be either a pencil sketch or an oil painting. Hope to see it soon and its the main reason I went for a Creative Common License for this picture.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 License.

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