Support Vs Development
After working in support for more than 2 years, I am of the view that each developer should go through a support phase in his/her career. The support point of view of the application is not given the importance as the maintenance of code base is given. The support personnel toil to know the inner workings of the application and sometimes resort to round about methods to do their work. Sometimes the errors are vague and misleading. The error messages thrown should be clear and legible for the support to find out the issues. If a developer has got enough experience in support, then they will know what the support people need.
I am not talking about product maintenance here. It is the support of custom built applications with a company. These applications never help the support people enough to do their job effectively.
I am not putting enought points or evidence here and leave it as a seperate article.
Monday, January 31, 2005
Saturday, January 29, 2005
php bug
php bug has bitten me. Learning php and trying to write some scripts to automate my support work. perl is also getting mixed. It is a nice work and keeping me busy. Also planning to write a php interface to MQ. This will enable to administer MQ from the php enabled web front. It is in very nascent stage and the learning, implemetation curve is steep. This is currrently stopping me from reading my favourite books. Davinci Code is lying there in my table followed closly by Digital Fortress and yet to be read.
php bug has bitten me. Learning php and trying to write some scripts to automate my support work. perl is also getting mixed. It is a nice work and keeping me busy. Also planning to write a php interface to MQ. This will enable to administer MQ from the php enabled web front. It is in very nascent stage and the learning, implemetation curve is steep. This is currrently stopping me from reading my favourite books. Davinci Code is lying there in my table followed closly by Digital Fortress and yet to be read.
Saturday, January 22, 2005
DCE becomes free
DCE is now released under Open Source licensing. The news is here http://www.opengroup.org/comm/press/05-01-12.htm. It is good for the old enterprise proprietary market. If someone ports dce to linux, then linux can truly break into enterprise middleware. Eventhough most of the companies switched from DCE to other latest technologies, it still lives in the back yard of many fortune 500 companies. Let us wait and see.
When I am writing this, it is snowing in Bristol.
DCE is now released under Open Source licensing. The news is here http://www.opengroup.org/comm/press/05-01-12.htm. It is good for the old enterprise proprietary market. If someone ports dce to linux, then linux can truly break into enterprise middleware. Eventhough most of the companies switched from DCE to other latest technologies, it still lives in the back yard of many fortune 500 companies. Let us wait and see.
When I am writing this, it is snowing in Bristol.
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Boxing day nightmares
I dont know, when I actually wrote I was feeling peaceful about the Christmas day passing good. The next day huge waves struck south east asia and India and took away many lives. My home state (Tamil Nadu) was the worst affected and I remained glued to television, called up friends to check whether they are safe. It was really a nightmare. Not finding suitable words to explain the situation.
I dont know, when I actually wrote I was feeling peaceful about the Christmas day passing good. The next day huge waves struck south east asia and India and took away many lives. My home state (Tamil Nadu) was the worst affected and I remained glued to television, called up friends to check whether they are safe. It was really a nightmare. Not finding suitable words to explain the situation.
Saturday, December 25, 2004
Christmas Day
Christmas day remains peaceful till now with the systems I support are running quite good :-). Refreshing my knowledge and forgotten details of TCP/IP. Continuing reading hackers and painters. Having finished the chapter 1, I realise that I had come through almost the same path and Paul Graham managed to realise it fully. The nerds as always are not popular among students but are popular among teachers. But there are some students who neither belong to a group nor so intelligent rely on these students for continuous support for study. This also varies for the educational institutions based on the standard of teaching. In India, some schools admit only bright students and the situation is different there. Of course, there is continuous rivalry and occasionly a rich guy gets admitted somehow and plays the role of villain for the nerds.
I read SCO is coming to UK to threaten people about linux. Will those folks wont give up till they are completely annihilated
Christmas day remains peaceful till now with the systems I support are running quite good :-). Refreshing my knowledge and forgotten details of TCP/IP. Continuing reading hackers and painters. Having finished the chapter 1, I realise that I had come through almost the same path and Paul Graham managed to realise it fully. The nerds as always are not popular among students but are popular among teachers. But there are some students who neither belong to a group nor so intelligent rely on these students for continuous support for study. This also varies for the educational institutions based on the standard of teaching. In India, some schools admit only bright students and the situation is different there. Of course, there is continuous rivalry and occasionly a rich guy gets admitted somehow and plays the role of villain for the nerds.
I read SCO is coming to UK to threaten people about linux. Will those folks wont give up till they are completely annihilated
Saturday, December 11, 2004
Friday, November 05, 2004
Alternate Power
There is a burning need to find an alternate source of energy now. And that has to be found out before the oil storages expire. The level sophistication reached in storing and using electricity at this stage is immature and not powerful enough for our even day to day travel. Hydrogen abundant but hard to control, produce as well as consume. No way we cant replace every engine with a nuclear reactor. What is the way to go?
Science fiction most of the times, paves way for the actual discovery. But psychic teleportation is something that only magical folks (Harry Potter kind) can only do as far as our knowledge and experience with physics goes. But is there any possibility, if we think by shedding our inhibitions and firm belief on the laws of physics which we have formulated albeit incomplete ones. True, the unifying theory is yet to come. There are many things in this world which we cant see and they will fall outside of our visibility range in the electromagnetic spectrum. Long way to go...
There is a burning need to find an alternate source of energy now. And that has to be found out before the oil storages expire. The level sophistication reached in storing and using electricity at this stage is immature and not powerful enough for our even day to day travel. Hydrogen abundant but hard to control, produce as well as consume. No way we cant replace every engine with a nuclear reactor. What is the way to go?
Science fiction most of the times, paves way for the actual discovery. But psychic teleportation is something that only magical folks (Harry Potter kind) can only do as far as our knowledge and experience with physics goes. But is there any possibility, if we think by shedding our inhibitions and firm belief on the laws of physics which we have formulated albeit incomplete ones. True, the unifying theory is yet to come. There are many things in this world which we cant see and they will fall outside of our visibility range in the electromagnetic spectrum. Long way to go...
Tuesday, November 02, 2004
Come back
Well after a long hibernation. I am back to reading Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick. It is a very good book in its own sense, explaining the nuances and the way crackers work. Actually that book made me so security conscious and made me a non believer of people (in the right way :-)).
Reading Six Easy pieces by Feynman where he explains about the relation between bilogy and physics. Still wondering how that complex DNA manages itself and reproduce on certain patterns more complex in combinations than a chess board. The relation between astronomy and physics brought me back my good old days where I keep on gazing at the sky for stars and constellations. The birth of physics came from astronomy and later on astronomy grew with the help of physics. You cant really differentiate astronomy and astrophysics (if you include mathematics with astronomy, you get astro physics.)
This was a great site which I came upon and a lot of books to read. http://www.techbooksforfree.com/linux.shtml
At the time of this writing, USA is in the process of electing its leader. Fingers crossed.
Well after a long hibernation. I am back to reading Art of Deception by Kevin Mitnick. It is a very good book in its own sense, explaining the nuances and the way crackers work. Actually that book made me so security conscious and made me a non believer of people (in the right way :-)).
Reading Six Easy pieces by Feynman where he explains about the relation between bilogy and physics. Still wondering how that complex DNA manages itself and reproduce on certain patterns more complex in combinations than a chess board. The relation between astronomy and physics brought me back my good old days where I keep on gazing at the sky for stars and constellations. The birth of physics came from astronomy and later on astronomy grew with the help of physics. You cant really differentiate astronomy and astrophysics (if you include mathematics with astronomy, you get astro physics.)
This was a great site which I came upon and a lot of books to read. http://www.techbooksforfree.com/linux.shtml
At the time of this writing, USA is in the process of electing its leader. Fingers crossed.
Sunday, September 26, 2004
Unix Haters
There is one handbook for unix haters. I have never heard of that. My friend forwarded this link http://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf. But that is full of spate and repeated glug. I am reading through it. The fact is it is all from learned(!!!) persons who behave like laymans and who are more interested in the world of colours and graphics. Thus said, they should have gone ahead and created their own OS. Who stopped them??
There is one handbook for unix haters. I have never heard of that. My friend forwarded this link http://web.mit.edu/~simsong/www/ugh.pdf. But that is full of spate and repeated glug. I am reading through it. The fact is it is all from learned(!!!) persons who behave like laymans and who are more interested in the world of colours and graphics. Thus said, they should have gone ahead and created their own OS. Who stopped them??
Tuesday, September 21, 2004
Sports Day
It was good fun. I broke my leg when playing football. Was in hospital for 2 days (50 hours) and didnt touch my laptop during that period. Used that time to read Feynman's book and Eric Raymonds book on Art of unix programming. More to put my thoughts on above.
My friends here are taking a good care of me. I am deeply indebted to them. I can payback this gratitude in any way.
It was good fun. I broke my leg when playing football. Was in hospital for 2 days (50 hours) and didnt touch my laptop during that period. Used that time to read Feynman's book and Eric Raymonds book on Art of unix programming. More to put my thoughts on above.
My friends here are taking a good care of me. I am deeply indebted to them. I can payback this gratitude in any way.
Saturday, September 11, 2004
Weekend update
Birthday reminder script is complete. For the current month, the script generate messages and sends it to my gmail account. I configured my anacron to do the job.
Updated http://www.geocities.com/nsupathy/Redhat_9_0_Linux_on_Dell_Inspiron_8600.html with ACPI details, which I worked on last week.
Birthday reminder script is complete. For the current month, the script generate messages and sends it to my gmail account. I configured my anacron to do the job.
Updated http://www.geocities.com/nsupathy/Redhat_9_0_Linux_on_Dell_Inspiron_8600.html with ACPI details, which I worked on last week.
Friday, September 10, 2004
linux users
Was reading through this article http://www.desktopos.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=33. Agree with the author completely. Whatever I think of linux, he has put in words completely. I am also a second generation linux user, who strive to be part of that powerful first generation user, but missing those vital knowledge spanning the history of linux development. Nice one to read.
Was reading through this article http://www.desktopos.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=33. Agree with the author completely. Whatever I think of linux, he has put in words completely. I am also a second generation linux user, who strive to be part of that powerful first generation user, but missing those vital knowledge spanning the history of linux development. Nice one to read.
Thursday, September 09, 2004
good, bad and ugly
I got the dvd as a bday gift. It was cool. When tried to play on the gxine, it was reporting for encrypted dvds. Downloaded libdvdcss, installed and sorted the issue. I am waiting to see the movie.
It was a fun filled bday party. Most of the friends around. I am in the process of uploading photos to http://community.webshots.com/user/nsupathy
I got the dvd as a bday gift. It was cool. When tried to play on the gxine, it was reporting for encrypted dvds. Downloaded libdvdcss, installed and sorted the issue. I am waiting to see the movie.
It was a fun filled bday party. Most of the friends around. I am in the process of uploading photos to http://community.webshots.com/user/nsupathy
Relaxed
Today was reading the sample chapter from Linux Unwired on wardialing, wardiving. Excellent piece of chapter.
I am completing 27 years today and looking back, I havent achieved much in life. Lot of road to cover. Tomarrow full of planning for the next complete year.
I completed nearly 90% of my birthday reminder script. A few refinement needs to be done.
Today was reading the sample chapter from Linux Unwired on wardialing, wardiving. Excellent piece of chapter.
I am completing 27 years today and looking back, I havent achieved much in life. Lot of road to cover. Tomarrow full of planning for the next complete year.
I completed nearly 90% of my birthday reminder script. A few refinement needs to be done.
Tuesday, September 07, 2004
Back to Physics
Physics is a wonderful subject. One who studies physics and nature will be able to see all the faces of a matter. Physics taught me to think and think abstractively. Physics gives room to use all your imagination powers. Eventhoug mathematics is good, it only helps, aids in problems for physics. There is no abstract, imaginative thinking behind mathematics. Chemistry is a very good subject in its own sense, but it too has its boundry as far as thinking is concerned. From physics only numerous branches came out.
Physics is some kind of astrology. Yes, it also watches the nature for a long time and try to deduce/predict the behaviour of nature for a particular stimuli. The randomness associated with one event (for example a crowded street in which the participating matter behaviour can be predicted) is actually a perfect sequence on its own. Suppose, we are passing across a crowded street, the behaviour w.r.t ours is sequential and flawless as we move through the space with time. We influence the participating factors and vice versa. If we take into account the commuters in the whole city, deduce who will potentially cross our path, calculate their time, distance, speed and we can approximate the people whom we will crossing at a particular point. Eventhough uncertainity comes into picture in the form of accidents, the probability of deducing the above is quite good provided we take into account the complexity of the process involved.
Physics is a wonderful subject. One who studies physics and nature will be able to see all the faces of a matter. Physics taught me to think and think abstractively. Physics gives room to use all your imagination powers. Eventhoug mathematics is good, it only helps, aids in problems for physics. There is no abstract, imaginative thinking behind mathematics. Chemistry is a very good subject in its own sense, but it too has its boundry as far as thinking is concerned. From physics only numerous branches came out.
Physics is some kind of astrology. Yes, it also watches the nature for a long time and try to deduce/predict the behaviour of nature for a particular stimuli. The randomness associated with one event (for example a crowded street in which the participating matter behaviour can be predicted) is actually a perfect sequence on its own. Suppose, we are passing across a crowded street, the behaviour w.r.t ours is sequential and flawless as we move through the space with time. We influence the participating factors and vice versa. If we take into account the commuters in the whole city, deduce who will potentially cross our path, calculate their time, distance, speed and we can approximate the people whom we will crossing at a particular point. Eventhough uncertainity comes into picture in the form of accidents, the probability of deducing the above is quite good provided we take into account the complexity of the process involved.
Monday, September 06, 2004
Six easy pieces by Feynman
After a long gap, it was refreshing to read something on physics. I was reading Richard Feynman's Six Easy pieces chapter 1 Atoms in motion. Long back, I deduced it that everything we calculate is approximate. But the way Feynman explains is incredible and flawless. I am just taking a relaxed approach to my first love.
Birthday Reminder
Its a long pending task to write a simple perl script to monitor birthdays and mail people, which I have started today. Hope I will finish it my tomarrow.
After a long gap, it was refreshing to read something on physics. I was reading Richard Feynman's Six Easy pieces chapter 1 Atoms in motion. Long back, I deduced it that everything we calculate is approximate. But the way Feynman explains is incredible and flawless. I am just taking a relaxed approach to my first love.
Birthday Reminder
Its a long pending task to write a simple perl script to monitor birthdays and mail people, which I have started today. Hope I will finish it my tomarrow.
Sunday, September 05, 2004
Weekend buzz
The weekend was very good with lots of people around. Lots of work finished. Did shopping for my upcoming birthday.
acpi on
Fedora updated with 2.6.8-1.521 kernel. The usual nvidia installation and ndiswrapper followed suit. I started the kernel with acpi=on. I see only ac, battery and button loaded modules. The rest fan, processor and thermal are missing. Need to look into that. Dell laptops are very popular for broken BIOS. I need to update the BIOS and DSDTs before proceeding any further. The cpu-freq scaling and disk spin down are the other options that need an immediate look.
With battery
cat /proc/acpi/ac_adapter/AC/state
state: off-line
cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state
present: yes
capacity state: ok
charging state: discharging
present rate: 21537 mW
remaining capacity: 39770 mWh
present voltage: 11241 mV
With the power on
cat /proc/acpi/ac_adapter/AC/state
state: on-line
cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state
present: yes
capacity state: ok
charging state: charging
present rate: 32702 mW
remaining capacity: 39750 mWh
present voltage: 11755 mV
When I press the button, the kernel goes off graciously shutting down all the services.
The weekend was very good with lots of people around. Lots of work finished. Did shopping for my upcoming birthday.
acpi on
Fedora updated with 2.6.8-1.521 kernel. The usual nvidia installation and ndiswrapper followed suit. I started the kernel with acpi=on. I see only ac, battery and button loaded modules. The rest fan, processor and thermal are missing. Need to look into that. Dell laptops are very popular for broken BIOS. I need to update the BIOS and DSDTs before proceeding any further. The cpu-freq scaling and disk spin down are the other options that need an immediate look.
With battery
cat /proc/acpi/ac_adapter/AC/state
state: off-line
cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state
present: yes
capacity state: ok
charging state: discharging
present rate: 21537 mW
remaining capacity: 39770 mWh
present voltage: 11241 mV
With the power on
cat /proc/acpi/ac_adapter/AC/state
state: on-line
cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/state
present: yes
capacity state: ok
charging state: charging
present rate: 32702 mW
remaining capacity: 39750 mWh
present voltage: 11755 mV
When I press the button, the kernel goes off graciously shutting down all the services.
Friday, September 03, 2004
Xine build
Fedora lacks a good player for movies. May be I dont know. I like xine for its cool features. I got xine from sourceforge.net. Built the binaries. But strangely enough, when I go for a full screen mode, it gets a segmentation fault and dumps. Need to look into that.
Surviellance in brittain
Read about an article about the same topic. It is good in many cases, even though privacy is at stake. In spite of large number of cameras, some petty thefts for bikes are still happening around. Also, these cameras are widely used to control speed on motorways. Also, there is a widespread concern that lot of money is being sucked out from public citing speeding. So a proposal has come out for varying speed limits for different time periods. Good to see constructive criticisms are accepted.
Fedora lacks a good player for movies. May be I dont know. I like xine for its cool features. I got xine from sourceforge.net. Built the binaries. But strangely enough, when I go for a full screen mode, it gets a segmentation fault and dumps. Need to look into that.
Surviellance in brittain
Read about an article about the same topic. It is good in many cases, even though privacy is at stake. In spite of large number of cameras, some petty thefts for bikes are still happening around. Also, these cameras are widely used to control speed on motorways. Also, there is a widespread concern that lot of money is being sucked out from public citing speeding. So a proposal has come out for varying speed limits for different time periods. Good to see constructive criticisms are accepted.
Sunday, August 22, 2004
Kernel 2.6.8.1 on going compile and build
I compiled the latest 2.6.8.1 for my Inspiron 8.6K. Mine is a lvm based file system. So the LVM info is embeded within the kernel. The following errors appeared when loading the kernel for the system.
Refusing to enable local APIC.
Dell Inspiron with broken BIOS detected.
Fatal: Module pcmica_core not found
fstype vfat not supported by kernel
Module ip_tables not fount
i8k: unable to get SMM Bios Version
i8k: Unable to get SMM Dell Signature
vesafb: probe of vesafb0 failed with error -6
mdmpd failed.
After loading the new kernel, I installed the modules which fixed most of the problems. I recompiled and reinstalled ndiswrapper for 2.6.8.1.
The Dell BIOS needs to be updated which is in the next plan. i8k is popular for not working with all Inspiron models. I need to check that.
mdmpd is something to do with RAID. I right now dont know much about that. I simply ran
chkconfig mdmpd off
which will switch off the loading of that module with the current runlevel.
vesafb is to with X and loading and rendering of X. For me the Xorg/GNOME works fine. So I am ignoring this error for at present.
Finally got the nvidia drivers on to my new kernel. I downloaded NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-6111-pkg1.run from the nvidia site and installed on my 2.6.8.1 kernel. It was a breeze. I changed the /etc/X11/xorg.conf as below.
Load "dri" commented out
Load "nv" commented out
Load "nvidia" added new
Option "NvAGP" "1" added as new on Device section under Nvidia
I compiled the latest 2.6.8.1 for my Inspiron 8.6K. Mine is a lvm based file system. So the LVM info is embeded within the kernel. The following errors appeared when loading the kernel for the system.
Refusing to enable local APIC.
Dell Inspiron with broken BIOS detected.
Fatal: Module pcmica_core not found
fstype vfat not supported by kernel
Module ip_tables not fount
i8k: unable to get SMM Bios Version
i8k: Unable to get SMM Dell Signature
vesafb: probe of vesafb0 failed with error -6
mdmpd failed.
After loading the new kernel, I installed the modules which fixed most of the problems. I recompiled and reinstalled ndiswrapper for 2.6.8.1.
The Dell BIOS needs to be updated which is in the next plan. i8k is popular for not working with all Inspiron models. I need to check that.
mdmpd is something to do with RAID. I right now dont know much about that. I simply ran
chkconfig mdmpd off
which will switch off the loading of that module with the current runlevel.
vesafb is to with X and loading and rendering of X. For me the Xorg/GNOME works fine. So I am ignoring this error for at present.
Finally got the nvidia drivers on to my new kernel. I downloaded NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-6111-pkg1.run from the nvidia site and installed on my 2.6.8.1 kernel. It was a breeze. I changed the /etc/X11/xorg.conf as below.
Load "dri" commented out
Load "nv" commented out
Load "nvidia" added new
Option "NvAGP" "1" added as new on Device section under Nvidia
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
Curry night and wireless connection complete.
I went for a curry night with friends/managers. It was fun and wonderful. It was more of a session explaning about India to others.
On the linux front, the wireless connection is complete with encrypted key. My /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1 reads like this
ONBOOT=yes
PEERDNS=yes
USERCTL=no
TYPE=Wireless
DEVICE=eth1
HWADDR=00:90:4b:1b:9f:6b
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
ESSID=
CHANNEL=1
MODE=Managed
RATE=54Mb/s
NETMASK=
DHCP_HOSTNAME=
IPADDR=
DOMAIN=
GATEWAY=
IPV6INIT=no
I went for a curry night with friends/managers. It was fun and wonderful. It was more of a session explaning about India to others.
On the linux front, the wireless connection is complete with encrypted key. My /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1 reads like this
ONBOOT=yes
PEERDNS=yes
USERCTL=no
TYPE=Wireless
DEVICE=eth1
HWADDR=00:90:4b:1b:9f:6b
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
ESSID=
CHANNEL=1
MODE=Managed
RATE=54Mb/s
NETMASK=
DHCP_HOSTNAME=
IPADDR=
DOMAIN=
GATEWAY=
IPV6INIT=no