Veblog

IITB

The best part about my job is the IITB Campus. Reasons

• Regular stream of Who’s Who visits. I have spotted Ex. President of India Abdul Kalam, Ray Ozzie
• Lush green with vihar and powai lake. Once you get into the campus it feels like hogwarts if you ask me,
• It’s becoming the center of activities that interest me barcamp, opencoffeclubmumbai, seminars etc.

Simply put IITB Campus is Hip and Happening.

MySQL Installation – Issues

Here are few tips for MySQL installation, if the problem is of “mysql.host does not exist”.

Fatal error: Can’t open and lock privilege tables: Table ‘mysql.host’ doesn’t exist(we can find this info in /var/log/mysqld.log)

Follow the following steps, MySQL will be installed(all wrt Linux)

1. shell > rm -rf /var/lib/mysql

2. Install mysql rpms.

3. Go to directory where mysql binaries are installed(mysqld_safe, mysql etc)

4. ./mysql_install_db –user=mysql –ldata=/mysqldata (where mysqldata is my data directory for MySQL database. datadir can be specified in /etc/my.cnf file, then we can ignore here)

If it gives a message that hostname is not set or conflict in hostname, then use
./mysql_install_db –user=mysql –ldata=/mysqldata –force

5. MySQL is installed, start MySQL server now,
./mysqld_safe –user=mysql &

Congrats, MySQL is up and running….

When MySQL is Installed, MySQL client does not have any password. It will contain four users, root@localhost, root@localhost.localdomain, ”@localhost, ”@localhost.localdomain(” – anonymous user).
Delete all users at localhost.localdomain and all anonymous users. Set password for root@localhost using

shell > mysql

mysql > drop user root@localhost.localdomain;

mysql > drop user ”@localhost;

mysql > drop user ”@localhost.localdomain;

mysql > set password for root@localhost = password(‘mysqlroot’);

mysql > flush privileges;

mysql > \q

shell >

Flush Privileges will tell server that password is set for root.

MySQL is installed and password is set for mysql client.

Another feather in the cap … US Patent

Prof. Saraph was granted US patent on VS routing recently. Indeed it is a great personal milestone and acknowledgement of his innovation and expertise. But more so, it is a feather in the cap for Vegayan and its evolving story.

Value of intellectual property (IP) is often not adequately appreciated. Its potential for providing opportunities is rather underestimated and not typically seen in Indian Product Startups. It certainly gives us few bragging rights. The patent sends a clear signal that we understand the market dynamics and are among the first ones to innovate and offer the best solution.

So what is it worth?

Consider this, the capital and operating expenditures in core networks iswell over $100 billion globally. Any solution that brings efficiency in operation and resource allocation may bring substantial savings. Can this technology bring 5% or 10% savings? We have to see! But, even 5% reduction is huge! Can this enable better functionalities and services?

Again, time will tell!

Birdwatching @ IITB

I started birding in 2005. During 2005, I could not bird much as it required traveling to different habitats. However,after joining Vegayan Systems I could do birding as my office is located in IITB campus, which is very leafy in nature with a lake. There are very less vehicles around and probably this may be one of the reasons for good bird population in here.

I have seen many beautiful garden birds like Oriental Magpie Robins,Coppersmith Barbets and Purple-rumped Sunbirds, Rose-ringed & Alexandrine Parakeets, Redvented & Redwhiskered Bulbuls, Common Tailorbirds, Common Iora, Ashy Prinia, Greater Coucal, Common Myna, Asian Pied Starlings, Roc Pigeons etc along with ubiquitous Asian Koel and House Sparrows enroute to office in the morning.

I can see Palm Swifts fly around the Bottle Palm trees that dot the campus and few Dusky Crag Martins from our conference room. From my seat, I can watch, kites, rock pigeons and common mynas. This is a wonderful opportunity for a person like me as I am in the initial learning stage of birding.

My team members are very co-operative in my birding activities, Sometimes they join my bird walk, sometimes they lend their cameras, they helped in buying a binocular, they take pleasure in showing birds to me and even allowed me to set server hostnames with some of my favorite birds … it has been a great experience overall.

Evening I take my coffee from staff canteen. This canteen is surrounded with lot of green. This place is bit away from the office but I prefer to go there as on my way I get to see a flock of Jungle Babblers,Yellow-eyed Babbler,White-browed Bulbuls, tailor birds while, Spotted Dove in the shrubs, Coucals and Zitting Cisticola.

I have seen over 55 species during the course of a my rewarding stay here. You can see pictures of some of the birds at our campus here.

For a birder it is very important to watch birds of different habitats and so that was the reason I joined “Mumbai Bird Watcher’s” club. I also have a added advantage of learing about birds from experts. This birder’s club is great. We go for birding every weekend. I invited the bird club members to our campus for birding too. We have had 2 bird walks in our office campus so far.

You can read the IIT bird walk report and pictures here [ 1 / 2 ].

In the recent past I am spending more time on exploring and understanding the bird nests. On the other day I saw common iora’s nest in the garden here, it was a wonderful craft with camouflaged in the greenery !!!.For the first time I also saw a black drongo sitting in its nest in the branches of a high Rain Tree. Just outside of our office building, there is a black kite’s nest …. it is a wonderful experience of watching a young ones in the nest. Last winter some of us watched the coppersmith barbet building it’s nest just outside our building near the tea shop. I changed my tea time to suit the nest-building time of this bird. It usually appeared around 11:00AM. There use to be a couple of them, they took turns in building/pecking their nest on a dry stem of the tree.

Snippets from Workshop at Reliance

We visited Reliance Tech Innovation center at DAKC Campus for a workshop. I have been at the campus before, however this time I also visited their lab testing facilities. What a testing facility ? Mind-blowing !. Believe me it’s one sight , array of servers, routers, switches all stacked up and cabled. Definitely at par with the best of best by global standards.

The workshop was given by Dr. Saraph, it covered Enabling QoS and Operational challenges for MPLS networks.

We had interesting exchange of ideas and information. For me technical discussions post workshop were more informative mainly because of it’s one to one nature. We definitely gained more insight into how things works at NOC, as they addressed our specific queries. I thank the folks at Reliance for this opportunity and their hospitality.

New Hacker Dictionary….

This is “hacker dictionary” it’s really tome of knowledge….

Really cool stuff about "Coding Style"

Hi folks , Straight from “Linus Torvalds” right in Linux Source Tree ….

Pros and Cons of Working in a Start-up

Its been more than one year now working for Vegayan Systems, a start-up in IIT B, Mumbai.

Some times, One Year seems to be very big, but some times, I feel, its OK. Here, are two sides of working in a startup company.

Pros

1. Scope to learn/work (as much as you can – there is no question that, you are not given any work, especially in product development companies)

2. Chance to learn about Resource Management. Team will be small, so you see how they are handled.

3. Growth factor - Here also, willing to learn plays major role.

4. Ownership of module – You are given a module, You are sole proprietor of module. You are free to design in whichever way you like, as long as you are good enough to make people to buy your design.

5. You develop more than one skill in a start up and you become master in your specialization.

6. Better rapport with team members as team is small.

Cons

1. Getting a Leave every now and then is Tough.

2. Have to Google for many things. ( Train yourself )

3. Some times, get bugged with work.

I am both In (70%) and Out (30%) for working for a start up.

Relevant to the above is this blog post by Kamla bhatt. Make sure you do read the comments too.

MySQL Error 2013

Of all MySQL errors, Error Number 2013 is most frustrating and annoying.

MySQL Errors like 1062(Duplicate Entry), 2002(Server is not started), 2006(Server has gone away) are easy to identify and solve. 2013 signifies lost connection to server in midst of query execution.

2013 is frustrating because, you can’t produce it again for same sequence of actions. So you never know when it will come or when it won’t.

Finally, I have come up with few points to look for when MySQL Error 2013 occurs.

1. check for MySQL Status
shell> mysql -u root -p -e “\s” | grep Uptime

It will give uptime of MySQL Server. If it is less than 1 min, then server must have gone down and started again. So, you have look for Status Variable wait_timeout. By default, wait-timeout will be 28800 sec (8 Hours). Developer can change it while starting a server(change has to be done in my.cnf file) or by setting parameter “CLIENT_INTERACTIVE” in “mysql_real_connect()”. If Uptime is not less than a min, then there is a problem with Query.

Query can be too long or it is syntactically correct but not semantically.

Example: I am running a stored procedure spLogin(uname, pword, status). Here uname and pword are input parameters and status output parameter. To supply input to this stored procedure, I use user defined variables.

So, order of queries will be
mysql > SET @user = ‘sarma’, @passwd = ‘sarma’;
mysql > call spLogin(@username, @password, @status);
There is a chance that it will give an error 2013, as query is syntactically correct, but values passed to query are garbage.

Remedy will be
mysql> call spLogin(@user, @passwd, @status);
query Success(if stored procedure is correct).

But as I said earlier, it is tough to reproduce Error 2013. Care should be taken in passing inputs to either Queries or Stored Procedures and wait_timeout should be atleast 4 Hrs.

Why Startup ?

Many of my friends ask me why Did you choose a start up when you have offers from some other MNCs.

I question them what is the advantage of working in a MNC which is not in a start-up. They told me that when you are swicthing from one job to other job, there will be less risk and you need not to advertize about your company, you carry a brand name, if you work in a MNC. My reasoning to them is, Why should I think of swicthing my job before joining in that? If I am not satisfied with the work I am doing or If I am not fit into the team , then only I think of swicthing job. So doing work is my priority, which I certainly get in a start-up. I am not sure whether I’ll be assigned work from Day 1, if I join in a MNC. I am not against working in MNCs, they have their own headaches. Its true that Resource Management is the toughest thing. The reason, I opted for start-up is if I work for some time, then I can get job in MNC at any time. But if join in a MNC and happened to be on bench (or member of Freepool), then it would be tough.

Working in a start-up gives you the next best chance to see how a company shapes up.(Best chance to see is to start a company). Working in a start-up has other advantage, you can watch the building process of a company very closely,you know ups and downs in making it Big. More importantly, every one’s voice is heard in a start-up, so u can raise your voice, you can take part in design discussions, brain storming sessions. This is all happens in MNCs also, but you need to gain some experience, before raising your voice.