April 26, 2009 by Kulbir Saini on Computers, Fun, Hardware, Linux, Review, Servers

Farewell Speech (Tech Issues)

Below is the soft copy of my farewell speech on tech issues.

Good evening everyone. Carry forward the legacy left by one of our seniors, I am going to narrate a short story.

There was a boy, by name OMI, who came to IIIT without having any background in computers. He used to spend all this time in workspace exploring Linux usually at the cost of missing his lectures and even meals. Inspired by the works done by Nirnimesh, SMR etc., over a period of two years, after struggling, only as he could have done, he climbed onto the post which he always wanted, the sysadmin of IIIT.

Today I would like to speak about a few topics. The first one among them is my experiences as a sysadmin.

Our network is not ready to take the ever increasing load. The old wifi infrastructure has already crossed its End Of Life period. Also, the network is not properly planned which increases the time required to solve the issues. For example, it took several days to fix the network loop problems in different research centers last year.
Though we use open source to cut down our IT budget, we don’t make the best use of it.
The process of getting things done is slow. For example, we have not been able to narrow down on buying a firewall since last six months.
Now coming to the people part of it, the server room staff is generally co-operative but the problem lies with the administration mostly because of the slow decision making.
Within the administration, there is lot of interference by the people who don’t have adequate background in related fields.
Most of the time server room staff do the work they should not like asset management. Why a person who spent all his life in exploring technology should count number of computers in your lab?

Now, I’ll talk about the changes I tried to bring about and problems I faced.
There has always been an invisible gap between students and server room server room administration. It wasn’t very easy to convince people to stop treating the other end as enemy.
It was my top priority to restore the faith of administration in students so that more students can be brought into administration process.
Different research centers manage their own servers which poses a great difficulty for the server room staff to assist them. Everybody having their own network eventually increases the security loopholes as well. We tried to reduce the decentralization. Research centers are not usually ready to give up the rights easily but slowly things are changing and we have already moved few servers back to server room.
Since our network is growing, the policies that have been in place for past few years are becoming obsolete. We are in process of revisiting the different policies.

I’ll conclude by mentioning few key points. We urgently need to renovate the existing infrastructure otherwise there will be chaos. There is a need to invest more funds in IT infrastructure as its the backbone of the institute and it should not be seen as a burden. Gear up the approval process. We should be more transparent with students while forming the new policies.

I would like to thank IIIT for giving the students an opportunity to be involved in system administration and I hope the future batches will take this up as a serious job.

Thank You!

March 16, 2009 by Kulbir Saini on BC, Computers, Fun, Hardware, Internet, Life

Mouse Middle Click Not Working

Its very easy to hop from one website to another with the help of a middle click while continuing with reading the current website especially when you have to follow the references. Browsing wikipedia is very easy when middle click work. But my mouse’s middle click is not working since last two weeks. I tried to open and check for any physical flaws but it didn’t help at all. I have a wireless mouse also which doesn’t work(i think because of power problems). I opened it to check if there the middle click logic is same and if there is some component which can be interchanged. But the middle click logic turned out to be really different.

Microsoft Wired and Wireless Mouse

So, here I am browsing web in a lot of miseries 😛

Browsing websites was never this miserable (have a close look)

December 3, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on BC, Google, Hacking, Hardware, Hosting, Life

Quick updates

Super busy with my VPS adventures. Updated VPS to 512MB RAM and 20GB HDD. Its super fast now at a cost of $50/month 😀 Learnt a heck of technology in past week.
76 downloads of my software videocache in last two days 😀
Thinking thinking thinking and so on.
Future still uncertain.
Had a real tough time making the resume. Wasted others’ time as well while building it.
Fooling Google is on my hobbies list now 😛
Exams have started yet another time.
Feeling discontent with whatever I know.
Watched Dasvidaniya, Oye Lucky Luck Oye and Sorry Bhai. Watched sorry bhai thrice in three days. Something driving me nuts for the second time in life [snip..].
Rest laterz.

November 11, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on Camera, Google, Hacking, Hardware, Life, Tips n Tricks

Camera Recovered

My new camera fell down on Nov 5, 2008 from a height of almost 5 feet in switched on condition while clicking random pictures. The shock caused a severe damage to the lens cover. The dented lens cover didn’t allow the lens to come out of the camera. It was a shocking moment for me as I purchased it only a month ago.

Today, I gathered some courage and took the camera to Sony Service Center near Hyderabad Central knowing the fact the damages caused by dropping are not covered under warranty. The guy at the service center after inspection for few minutes said, “The entire lens has to be replaced”. I was shocked as only the lens cover was damaged and not the lens itself. I asked the approximate cost knowing the fact that it would be damn costly affair. He said gracefully, “Only 4500/- plus service charges and service tax”. I was dumbstruck. WTF!!! I moved out of the service center to breathe some fresh air.

I decided to check out the price at another Sony Service Center. There is another Sony Service Center near Hotel ITC Kakatiya (thanks to google local for the location 🙂 ) which is at a walking distance from Hyderabad Central. When I inquired the price for lens replacement there, the guy said, “8000/- to 10000/-“. I said, “f**k off”!!!. I would buy a new one for ten grands. Then I told him about the offerings by the other service center. He checked some details on Center’s LAN and found out that it would cost 6000/- including everything.

Pissed off by the price, we (Mahaveer was with me) started moving back towards central. I was left with no option other than spending a nice amount of 5000/- for the camera repair. But I thought of trying my luck yet another time (Linux has taught me this “don’t give up policy”). This time I approached the shop Third I Digital in Hyderabad Central. I bought the camera from that shop. When I told the guy there about the happenings. After checking the camera, he suggested, “Try to fix it yourself. Take a needle or something with a pointed edge and remove the dent. Lens will open and camera will work fine. Otherwise you’ll have to spend 5000/- anyway. Just give it a shot”. Something sounded good to ears after a long time. Packed my camera and we left for City Center. Had burgers there and returned to IIIT.

At room, I took a blade (shaving) and fixed the dent. And the camera is working fine now. I am feeling releived now 🙂 A blade worth five thousand.

October 9, 2008 by Kulbir Saini on BC, Camera, Google, Graphics, GSOC, Hardware, Photography, Sony

My new Sony Cybershot DSC W110 Digital Camera

Finally after a long wait, I bought this Sony Cybershot DSC W110 Digicam from Hyderabad Central yesterday. Actually Deepak came to my room and said there is huge offers on Digicams in Hyderabad Central. I didn’t think twice and me, Pankaj, Bansi and Deepak headed to Central. But we found that there were no offers on Sony. But I had already decided to buy this model. So who cares for the offer. After a few minutes of bargaining ( i suck at bargaining ), I bought it for Rs. 9600 ($210).BTW I bought it from Third I Digital shop.

Features : 7.2 Megapixels, 4x Optical Zoom, High Sensitivity ISO3200, 2.5″ LCD Display, Face Detection, Smile Shutter, Full HD.

Accessories : Camera + 1GB Memory Card + Battery Charger + Battery + USB, Audio/Video Cable.

Gift : The shop keeper offered a scratch card with the camera. And I won three days and two nights holiday anywhere in India 😀 Nice.. aint it 🙂

We clicked some shots in Central. Here are few.

Left to right : Kulbir Saini, Nitin Bansal

Deepak Vig

Pankaj Saini

Then We headed to my favorite destination in Hyderabad, City Center. We had burgers as usual. Pankaj did some shopping while we “ogled” at few “good looking” girls. We moved to crossword (a boook shop in City Center). We decided to leave for home. As we came out of Crossword, there were some dandia performance by some group. We captured some shots there as well.

Left to right : Nitin Bansal (Welcome to Sajjanpur wala Bansi :P), Kulbir Saini, Deepak Vig

Few more shots and we headed back to the divine place .. IIIT Hyderabad 🙂

We forced Pankaj to go for Dandia but unfortunately he couldn’t find a funti as only couples were allowed 😛

A big thanks to all the people who provided their views and helped me to by this cam 🙂

PS : Thanks to Google for all the dollars.

September 4, 2008 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??

August 30, 2008 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 😀

August 30, 2008 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 🙂

August 23, 2008 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.

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.

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.

August 22, 2008 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 😀