Computers

by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Internet, Life, Linux, Mail Servers

Condition for a getting a degree

So far the day has been really frustrating for me. I WONDER how people really manage to get a graduate/postgraduate degree when they don’t even know how to use a browser or how to look up ip address of a domain name or how to write an email ??? The institute should consider putting up a course in the final sem in which they’ll check the following

  • The student knows how to use a browser.
  • He/she knows how to bypass the proxy server for an IP range or domain names.
  • He/she knows how to find out the IP address of a domain name.
  • He/she knows what is https.
  • He/she knows that if ssh is blocked it means if he/she tries to access the server via ssh access will be denied. And server can only display text and it will not cry/shout “Access denied”.
  • He/she can find out the IP address of his/her own machine.

This post was written after all the frustration caused by the reason you know. Never mind 😐

 
by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Fedora, Fun, Internet

Getting Crazy

This happens when you intend to do something positive and its result turns out to be entirely negative 😀 I turned on squid proxy authentication on my machine just for the sake of better security. Switched from Firefox 2 to Firefox 3. Firefox started checking for updates for extensions and now you can see what happened 🙁

Firefox gone mad due to squid authentication

 
by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Hardware

Feeling better

I wrote about my hard disk noise problem a few weeks back. I have been in a severe depression since then, praying all the time for my hard disk. Yesterday, I was listening to the same noise and I switched off my speakers. There was no noise after I disconnected the speakers. I was kinda surprised by the behavior. I connected speakers again and the noise was back. Eventually I realized that the hard disk was not making any sounds at all. The speakers were the culprits.

This is really a strange problem. Whenever there is a heavy load on the hard disk, speakers start making a noise. Anybody facing the same problem??

 
by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Fun, LAN, Life, Windows

Addicted to AOE once again

THE time when I say Microsoft rocks is when I play Age of Empires 2 with my friends on LAN. For the third time, I am addicted to Age of Empires. What a game!!! A brief overview of my addictions.

First Time : Sem 1 and 2

Before coming to IIIT, I never played Age of Empires. When I saw people playing AOE here in first sem, my first reaction was “What a crap game? How can you play a game like this? A lot of people/resources to manage and blah blah..”. I used to play all race games because of ease of playing. Just concentrate on your car and done!!

As a lot of people used to play this game all the time, I couldn’t stop myself from giving it a shot. But I didn’t know how to play. One fine day Ankush was playing AOE on his PC. I took a chair and just observed what he was doing. Then the other day he taught me few more steps and tips-tricks. And then started my gaming carrier with AOE. The next day I missed my English Literature (the first English class I missed) class because I was playing AOE.

And then I never looked back and played it for several hours a day. We started playing it on LAN by the beginning of the 2nd semester. We got a bit too serious about the game and managed to miss/bunk a lot of lectures just to play the god damn game. Workspace used to sound like a fish market “Ghode bhej … archer bhej … hathi bhej … gold de bhai plz … ek castle to bana de … “. Some people used to beg for the PCs to play. Luckily I had full control over my machine. There was a time when 3-4 games (with 8 players each) used to run at the same time in workspace.

We used to write mid sems in less than 40 minutes because we used to have plans for a game after the exam. And if we have 2 exams on the same day, an AOE game is sure between the two 😀

The extreme was when I started playing AOE even in my dreams. After end sems, everybody left for home. In the 3rd sem, I bought a desktop(which can’t be moved) and we didn’t get any lab and hence they killed my AOE carrier and hence the interaction among people. I loved the workspace life. I think I’ll never forget that holy place.

Second Time : Summer of 2007

A lot of friends opted to stay back in college during vacations. I was in BIRC (in main building) at that time. UG2 lab (beside server room) used to be full all the time with would be UG2 and UG3 students. Counter Strike and AOE all the time. Somani, Sachin, Ankush, Ojasvi used to play AOE a lot. I was a bit senti about Open Source and was busy exploring things. We used to discuss the good old time we had in workspace. And one day we planned an AOE game. I was damn excited. It was almost a year since I played AOE. I was wondering if I would be able to perform.

Then started another series of online games. Playing AOE. Night outs etc. I remember writing a post about the exciting summer 2007 dedicated to AOE. One day this guy Hitesh, from UG2K6 came down to UG2 lab. People say he is damn good at playing AOE. We wanted to give it a try and thought of playing with him. The game was FIVE VERSUS ONE :O Hitesh Vs. five UG2K5 guyz. Sounds unfair?? We discussed a lot of strategies to beat him. And then started the game. He very easily erased all of us from the map. I was like WTF!!! Somani was way depressed. Probably he was just a kid at the time. We tried a lot of strategies but couldn’t manage to defeat HITESH.

Well, we never played against him after that. Somani tried a lot even after that but in vain. We switched back to UG3 only mode 😛 And played AOE for another 2 months or so. Vacations over, Game Over!!!

Third Time : Sem 7

Sachin, Atul, Sanket, Akshay, Manish “Sharma”, Ojasvi started playing AOE again since a fortnight or so. On lunch or dinner table, you can see them discussing night outs and AOE strategies. I didn’t pay attention to it. Four days back, I went to Sachin’s room and all of them were planning the next game. I wonder who and why said “Kulbir tu bhi khel na…”. I said “no no no no na .. nahin yaar ..”. I was afraid of getting addicted. But they kept forcing me and I agreed thinking that I’ll play tonight and will never think about it again. I played that night and played quite well.

Next night at about 1AM, I pinged all of them (why ?? :(( ) for playing. Everyone refused. But I was feeling restless. I couldn’t control myself anymore. After almost half an hour later, I got up and went to Sachin’s room and urged to play AOE. He and manish agreed for playing. Now I needed a laptop. I rushed to Atul’s room. He was sleeping. I woke him up and asked if he wants to play. He said, “NO!”. I said, “Gimme the damn laptop if you are not playing!!”. He gave it a second thought and immediately got ready for playing. Oh man!! Again the laptop problem.  I managed to get the laptop (thanks alok). We played up to 4:30AM. I felt a bit relaxed.

Yesterday night, everyone again got ready for playing. We five (sachin, me, manish, atul, akshay) were setting up to start the game that this guy Hitesh appeared. He wanted to play. I was a bit scared. But we decided to play. This time Five vs Two. Hitesh and one more UG2K6 guy and we five. The game started as usual. Me and manish was tower attacked by Hitesh. We had to run for survival. The game went on for almost 2.5 hours. A really hectic game. He was sweeping all my areas and I kept running. At the end we won!! Yes, we won!!!! OMG! The joy of winning the game against that guy can’t be expressed in writing. Then sanket appeared and said that he wants to play. Now it was five vs. three. Sanket, Hitesh and one more UG2K6 guy and we five. The match was pretty easy this time and we won without any difficulties. Sanket made it easier for us 😛 Just kidding. We thought of playing another match. And yes we played it. And that was the easiest match. We won for the three consecutive times.

It was 7:30AM. Breakfast. Sleep 😀

I don’t know whats going to happen today. I am too tired.

PS1 : Ranta is back, probably to complete his B.Tech.

PS2 : Writing long posts these days.

PS3 : I am lost somewhere. I don’t know what I do all the time. At the end of day, I feel sad 🙁

 
by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Fun, Hardware, Internet, Life, Servers

A visit to Dr. Reddy’s Labs

Yesterday, a team for five (four people from administration and me) visited Dr. Reddy’s Labs in Hyderabad for a live demo of two security products Linkproof and DefensePro from Radware. DefensePro is a firewall kind of thing (for lay man) which protects your critical servers and Intranet from internal as well as external attacks. Linkproof is a load balancer for outbound as well as inbound traffic in case of multiple (<= 3) ISPs. Linkproof also manages traffic in case one of the ISP fails.

We reached their office at around 2:40PM. The office looked just like another office of some IT company. Fully loaded with sensors. You need not push/pull the door when you enter the office. And everything that an enterprise office should have.

A few minutes later, one of the person from Radware accompanied us to their technical wing called “Information Systems”. Their we had a demo of both the products on consoles. Demo went on for almost half an hour. After the demo we asked if we can see the actual hardware they have deployed. Then the admin in DRL (Dr. Reddy’s Labs) accompanied us to their DMZ (DeMilitarized Zone, its a common term in security industry. Denotes a place where all your critical servers are placed. A highly secured zone basically). I was amazed by the hardware that I saw. I just can’t express my feelings. Though we were not allowed to enter the rooms but everything was visible through the glasses. Rack mountable servers everywhere. Racks, racks, racks and more racks. Awesome experience. I wanted to stay there forever and keep looking at the beasts but …

We headed back to IIIT after that. And yesterday night, in my dreams I saw I own a server farm which had uncountable racks of servers. Racks everywhere 🙂

PS : The above two products will be deployed soon in IIIT for testing purpose 😀

 
by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Fun, Hacking, Hardware, Internet, LAN, Life, Servers, Success

Three days with Fluctuating Internet

We had three days with totally fluctuating internet. The fluctuation was almost like a sine wave. Nobody could really figure out what went wrong and where the problem was.

NOTE : This post is not just another ‘masalla’ post. I am writing down the actual experience I had.

DAY 1 : August 26

All this started on August 26th sometime in the early morning hours when browsing speeds and the bandwidth usage touched the lowest levels in the last month. As I keep monitoring the bandwidth usage (bandwidth monitoring and download progress bars appeal me somehow for certain unknown reasons. I keep looking at progress bars when I download something. I just get lost  in kind of dreamworld while looking at them.), I was surprised to see the low usage because everyone was in the campus and usage should touch the peak levels. It returned to normal after a short period of time and browsing was normal. But this pattern kept repeating itself. I went to attend the class. I returned at 11:30AM and rushed to server room to checkout whats going on. By that time server room was swamped by the phone calls from different research centers.

Nobody was actually able to figure out what was going on. All that we knew was that there was heavy broadcast from a segment on the network. We suspected it as the same problem which we faced last week. But isolating the problematic area is heck of a job and nobody was ready to check the network devices at the leaf level because of following reasons (1) It’ll take almost a day to check individual NIC in all the labs, (2) There is no security that problem will be resolved.

We took a tough decision of shutting down the network in entire problematic segment. This worked and network was fine. No fluctuations. But it proved out to be a wrong decision. We didn’t inform the people in the affected network (which unfortunately consisted of major research centers at IIIT i.e. CVIT, CDE, CVEST, LTRC (temp) etc.) and immediately we had to face the phone calls from HODs. One thing that I learnt from this situation is that Internet connectivity is equally important for everyone at IIIT including faculty members. Though we keep blaming students for being addicted to internet. Internet here is not an addiction, its a need. We had to re-up the network. And the rest of the network started fluctuating again. Everybody left for lunch.

As the time passed, the frustration among the users grew and everybody was almost shouting. Everybody wanted to know why its was taking so long to solve this problem. After lunch one of the admins went to the problematic area and started debugging at the individual switch level. But he faced a real tough time as most of the switches at leaf level are unmanageable (you can’t see any error reports unless you plug into individual switch). And we have a lot of switches (by a lot I mean a real lot of switches). And the switches are cascaded in such a dangerous manner that isolating a problem becomes way difficult. By evening that day we could isolate two research labs and three other segments which were generating heavy broadcast. We shut them off and everybody left for the day. There was a kind of blackout in those segments. No internet, no LAN.

During the night, I kept monitoring the network. A lot of people pinged and complained about the DNS resolution problem. Web pages were loading at a high speed but the name resolution was taking a lot of time. I tried looking at the logs and the traffic. Everything was fine except that the nameserver was swamped by the mail servers for name resolution. I tried a few hacks but nothing worked.

DAY 2 : August 27

I didn’t have any class that day. Admin XYZ called me at around 10:30AM and requested to come to server room if possible. I was sleeping and I hardly wake up at that time. But I didn’t want to miss the opportunity. Got up quickly and rushed to server room wasting as least time as possible. I was in server room at 11:00AM.

Admins suspected some problem with proxy as the fluctuation persisted even after cutting off the problematic areas. By the time I reached server, admins switched over to the stand by proxy machine. And to get started from Zero, entire network except the main building was shut down. We waited for almost half an hour. Everything worked absolutely fine. No fluctuations at all. So, main building is fine.

At around 11:40AM, network was restored in all the hostels. We waited for another half an hour. No fluctuation yet. But hell lot of phone calls sensitizing the situation. Everybody including seniors members rushing to server room. We suspected some attacks from hostels on the server in labs. But we were wrong. The problem is in the library building. But where?

Till lunch time, no network in areas except main building and hostels. As the time passed, the issue became more and more serious. It became difficult to answer phone calls from senior members as the word “Heavy Broadcast” now became irritating for them. They were listening to this since last two days.  But nobody actually knew the exact answer. The origin of the broadcast was still not known.

Admin XYZ rushed to the library switch. Now XYZ was in live contact with admin PQR in server room and restoring the network in research centers one by one. Restore network in one research center, wait for half an hour. If no fluctuation, proceed otherwise revert back. Using this technique (this was the only solution), we restored network in all the centers except two. Connections to these centers also cascade to other areas. Complete outage in the two research centers. Everybody left for the day, leaving the two research centers in dark.

Network stabilized a bit. And fluctuation was not frequent (almost none). I monitored the network up to 2AM. Didn’t sleep because had a class at 8:30AM.

DAY 3 : August 28

I had a class up to 10AM. Rushed directly to server room after the class. We already narrowed down to a smaller region. Now the problem was smaller and there were lesser number of people after us. Admin ABC with a student was sent down to inspect individual switches. Thats the problem with unmanageable switches. You have to go and check each and every switch for any error messages. Anyway we kept narrowing down the problematic area till lunch. I left for lunch and returned to my room as I didn’t sleep during previous night. I don’t know what happened in the afternoon. I missed that 🙁 At 6:30PM, I called admin XYZ and asked about the status. He informed that the problem has been isolated. Only two very small labs were left.

Three days and problem was still there. People were really out of control. Anyway network worked perfectly in other areas except those two labs. The good thing was that these labs were at the leaf level and they were not cascading connections further.

DAY 4 : August 29

I had a lab from 10AM-11AM. But it went up to 11:45AM. By the time, I reached server room, the problem was already resolved. Everyone was connected and no more complaints. Rawat sir updated me with a few decisions which are beyond the scope of this post. The problem was the routing queries from one of the ISPs connected to those labs at leaf level.

It really took almost four days to debug this problem. Debugging a network, especially debugging a network which is randomly cascaded, has more than one entry points, has no perimeter and has a lot of unmanageable switch is a real challenge.

Anyways it was again a learning experience for me. I used to blame people for not able to solve the network problems quickly. I just realized that its very easy to blame.

PS : Longest post on the occasion of bloggers’ day 🙂

 
by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Fun, Hardware, LAN

I need an Air Conditioner

Well, this is not really a want. This is my need. My room is damn hot these days. Why??? See the pics below.

Three Towers

Click the pics to have a clear look. I have these three machines which are continuously injecting heat in my 12×10 feet room. I can’t keep windows open to stop theft.

Dual Monitor

I am not sure if I’ll have a data center in my room by the time I’ll complete my b.tech. 😀

PS : If you have an old PC and looking for selling it, do contact me.

 
by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Fun, GSOC, Hacking, Hardware, Internet, Life, Mail Servers, Servers

Freaking 50 hours

All this started after returning from dinner at around 8:00PM on August 19.

August 19 – 08:30PM – 10:30PM : Slept.

I woke up at 10:30PM and started browsing random stuff. Gave a finishing touch to GSoC project – IntelligentMirror and announced the release for testing.

August 19 – 10:30PM – 12:30PM : Browsing + Blogging + Browsing.

After that its time for some refreshments.

August 20 – 12:30PM – 02:00AM : Snacks + Toasts.

Then started the same old thing. Browsing. Why the heck we have to browse all the stuff in this world which has no meaning 😐 Also, I had to prepare for my presentation about SMTP protocol in Topics of Information Security class. So, downloaded all the RFCs (thats what we do all the time. download all the academic stuff and feel good about it. Who has time to open and read them 😛 ). Read a bit of stuff from the RFCs.

August 20 – 02:00AM – 07:00AM : Browsing + Reading RFCs + Browsing.

If you are up till 7AM, breakfast is worth a try. Had a breakfast which was good eventually.

August 20 – 07:30AM – 08:00AM : Breakfast.

After that, I though I would go to bed and will sleep for sometime. But then Internet is a real devil which will not let you sleep. Started browsing again and checking everyone’s status message. Reading blogs and some more blah blah. For god sake, don’t put links like this in your status messages.

August 20 – 08:30AM – 12:30PM : Browsing + Fantastic Contraption + Browsing

If you are up till 12:30PM, its good to have lunch before you go to bed 😀

August 20 – 12:30PM – 01:30PM : Lunch.

After lunch, I was desperate to sleep. But then I had this class called “Music Appreciation” at 5PM. I was afraid of losing an attendance and didn’t sleep. I read RFCs in the meantime. No browsing this time 😀

August 20 – 02:00PM – 04:30PM : Reading RFCs. No bc.

At around 4:45PM we rushed to coffee shop and then to class. After reaching the class, we realized that prof will not turn up and class stands canceled.

August 20 – 04:30PM – 05:20PM : Coffee shop + Class.

While returning from class, I just wanted to visit server room to see whats going on (actually the network was fluctuating really badly and just wanted to know what exactly is going on. I am a student sysadmin, so kinda concerned about these issues). But I came to know, some serious problem has occurred due to real heavy broadcast from few research labs. Sysadmins were zeroing on the problem. I suddenly forgot about sleeping and all. There may not be a better opportunity to learn how to configure a switch and how to debug a network problem. I was lost somewhere in the switches and servers and I realized it was 7:00 by the time admins sorted out the problem.

August 20 – 05:30PM – 07:00PM : Server room (real good experience. Learnt a bit about how to configure switches 😀 )

By the time, I left server room it was almost 7:30PM. So just rushed to Yuktahaar to have food. Had some good food. Yuktahaar is probably the only mess in the campus where you can actually eat something.

August 20 – 07:30PM – 08:00PM : Dinner.

As I had to give the presentation on SMTP the next morning, thought of reading some more stuff quickly. Read up to 9:00PM. At this time, I was *REAL* desperate to go to bed. But at about 9:19PM, Himank called up and told about bloggers meet. I was like WTF. Well I wanted to attend the meeting and rushed to main building. Meeting went upto 10:30PM. The meeting was real fun and it was a good experience to meet all the bloggers from my batch. We decided few things to promote blogging in IIIT. Find the details in the link in next line.

August 20 – 08:30PM – 10:30PM : Reading RFCs + Bloggers Meet.

After returning from the meeting, I though of finishing the RFCs and preparing the presentation. But RFCs was a lot more than I assumed, so reading went upto 1:30AM. Prepared the presentation.

August 20 – 10:30PM – 01:30AM : Reading RFCs + Preparing presentation.

I was about to sleep and suddenly Rishabh appeared and now there is something with proxy 🙁 We discussed about the proxy and other misconfigurations for almost 1 hour.

August 21 – 01:30AM – 02:30AM : Discussion about proxy.

I went to bed at 2:30AM. Felt a bit relaxed. But couldn’t sleep. Why?? I was feeling hungry 🙁 Get up at 2:45AM and rushed to Deepak’s room for having some snacks.

August 21 – 02:30AM – 03:00AM : Snacks + Toasts.

I was in my room at 3:00AM trying to analyze the situation. “If I go to bed now, I’ll not be able to wake up for 8:30AM class and the whole idea of preparing the presentation will be wasted. Should I sleep or not??” Went to bed but got up again in 15 minutes thinking that its impossible to wake up for the class(lack of confidence??). Browsed stuff for sometime and then had a look at the servers. And this time mailman was not working on the students server. Mails to students mailing list was not being delivered. Tried to debug that for almost 2 hours, but all in vain. Monitored servers for sometime and some more browsing. Please forgive me for sending all the test mails 🙂

August 21 – 03:00AM – 06:30AM : Mailman debugging + Server monitoring + Browsing.

By 6:30AM, I was like “I’ll die if I don’t sleep. But if I sleep, I’ll miss the class. WTF :(( “. I finally decided to sleep. But scheduled alarms at full volume on my computer. Scheduled high beat songs(shell scripting rocks 😀 ). And decided to sleep on the chair itself as its difficult to get out of bed.

August 21 – 06:30AM – 07:45AM : Sleeping (on chair 🙁 )

Woke up at 7:45AM and rushed to mess at around 8:00AM.

August 21 – 08:00AM – 08:20AM : Breakfast. OBH mess serves the worst breakfast you can have. They server chowmin in breakfast. I AM NOT KIDDING.

Now starts the actual hectic session. Continuous class upto 1:00PM. whoaaaa!!!!!

August 21 – 08:30AM – 10:00AM : Topics of Information Security Class.

August 21 – 10:00AM – 11:30AM : Systems and Network Security Class.

August 21 – 11:30AM – 01:00PM : Numerical Analysis. This class may be suicidal if you haven’t slept for almost 36hours. Caution next time.

Time for lunch.

August 21 – 01:00PM – 01:30PM : Lunch @ Yuktahaar.

I would have gone to room for sleeping now. But mailman is still not working and students are missing their mails 🙁 Went back to server room. Did ad-hoc management to bypass mailman for temporary mail delivery. Fixed few other things.

August 21 – 01:30PM – 03:30PM : Server room.

Now we had a Infrastructure team meeting at 3:30PM. Was good. Discussed about a lot of issues and how do we replace old infrastructure in a systematic manner.

August 21 – 03:30PM – 04:30PM : Infrastructure Team Meeting.

As its almost 5PM again, time for three hours long “Music Appreciation” class.

August 21 – 04:30PM – 07:00PM : Coffee shop + Music Appreciation class.

Enough is enough. I *MUST* sleep now. Returned to room quickly ignoring the dinner and went to bed thinking that I’ll sleep for at least 14-16 hours (normally I sleep for 12-14hours at a stretch). But who knew that its not possible. I wake up at 12:30.

August 21 – 07:30PM – 12:30AM : Sleeping (in bed 😛 )

Woke up at 12:30AM. And Internet is here again. Browsing. Browsing. Browsing. Browsing. Browsing. And blogging. BTW, a newer version of youtube cache is available now.

August 22 – 12:30AM – 01:30AM : Browsing + Blogging.

Was feeling real hungary. Rushed to Deepak’s room for snacks and toasts.

August 22 – 01:30AM – 02:30AM : Snacks + Toasts.

Browsing again. And I have been writing this god damn post since half an hour. Its almost 3:30AM now and I am thinking of going to bed again. Hopefully I’ll sleep well this time 😀

August 22 – 02:30AM – 03:30AM : Blogging.

Previous two days was really hectic. No? Well, I can’t really take more than that. I think my biological clocks are out of synch. Need a break.

PS1 : Change your status messages frequently. Don’t bore me.

PS2 : Need to blog more frequently. Have a lot of stuff to blog about. This sem is real happening.

PS3 : Have two courses on security this sem. Wish me luck 😀

 
by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Google, GSOC, Internet, LAN, Life, Linux, Yum

Recent Happenings

  1. Entire wifi was down for almost two hours today. Emergency situation. I called whoever I could but just wasted time and money. Wifi admin would have felt totally surprised after getting 25-30 missed calls from my number 😛 Pinged back after an hour and things were back in tune. Thank god!!
  2. Celebrated Yum Bug Day today. We fixed and closed a lot of bugs. Was a very good experience.
  3. GSOC project is going fine.
  4. IntelligentMirror is now hosted on fedorahosted.org 🙂 Checkout the source code here.
  5. Hooked to Gossip Girls 🙂
  6. Playing cricket at 6AM after night out is now becoming a habit. Will post about it sometime 🙂
  7. Duration and frequency of BC sessions is on the rise. OBH really rocks 🙂
  8. Intake of caffeine is on the rise as well. Thanks to OBH coffee machine 🙂
  9. Chatting a lot these days. Don’t ask why ? 😛
  10. Blogged a lot this month 🙂

🙂

 
by Kulbir Saini on Computers, LAN, Linux, Servers, Success

Students Lab Comittee Meet – 1

Students Lab Comittee had a few meetings with Rawat sir before he joined IIIT. A lot of things were discussed and things finally started moving when he joined IIIT.

Past week we had a meeting with Rawat sir where a lot of things were discussed. We finally decided to pick up problems one by one and kill them to restore the system health. We picked up proxy for this week. Our task was to analyze the hardware, software, load, performance and configuration files on the machine and suggest improvements. Well, I did that and have already submitted a report to Rawat sir. The details are beyond the scope of this post. Once approved, these improvements will be deployed this Sunday.

I am pretty much excited about the near future 🙂 Hope the system will be in good health soon.