Jagadeesh N Malakannavar

From First Boot to Alumni Meet: My 28-Year Journey with CSIBER

Sat, 09 Aug 2025 15:04:23 +0000

On 9th August 2025, we had our alumni meet at CSIBER, Kolhapur. This time, I decided to travel by public bus. As soon as my journey began, memories from nearly three decades ago came flooding back.

Twenty-eight years earlier, I had boarded a bus to Kolhapur for my master’s studies in Computer Applications. Until then, I had been a physics and electronics student, but with PCs gaining popularity, I grew curious about computers, cleared the entrance exam, and joined the course. On that three-hour ride, I was full of dreams about my career—though a small part of me worried if I had made the right choice. My thoughts were interrupted by the conductor calling out, “Shivaji Vidyapeet… Shivaji Vidyapeet…”—my stop. I got down, collected my luggage, and took an auto rickshaw to the CSIBER campus. Marathi was unfamiliar to me, but the driver spoke Kannada, so we managed fine.

By 3 PM, I had checked into the hostel—Room 17. I was the first to arrive, with no familiar faces around. The room was modest. Soon, I stepped out to explore, noting landmarks to find my way back. I wandered around campus, read the notice board about classrooms and labs, and eventually went outside in search of food and an STD booth to call home. I met some students near roadside tea stalls—Suresh’s and another I can’t recall. I found Gangaram’s STD booth, where the owner spoke Kannada and shared his number so I could call my family.

I was introduced to a group of Kannada-speaking students who guided me to Sheetal Mess, run by “Mama.” I bought a month’s meal tokens and promised to come for dinner. Later, I visited Guru Hotel for snacks—also run by Kannada speakers—and strolled along Rajarampuri Road, soaking in the atmosphere. That night, back at the hostel, I met more students, some warning of a snake that could enter ground-floor rooms like mine. I shut the windows, kept the light on, and stayed awake most of the night.

The next morning, I visited Mahalakshmi Temple, had breakfast near Bhavani Mandap, and returned for my first day of class. The classroom was lively, with students speaking English, Marathi, and Hindi. The first lecture was in an unfamiliar subject, and I understood little. My excitement peaked when it was time for the computer lab—finally, I would touch a computer! But my enthusiasm quickly deflated when I didn’t even know how to switch it on. My neighbor demonstrated, but the screen showed a “login:” prompt instead of my name. I left feeling humiliated and decided to quit and return to physics.

That plan changed when a senior MCM student befriended me, took me for tea, and explained the basics—booting a computer, using commands, and exploring DOS. Commands like tree fascinated me, and help opened a new world. I stayed in the lab practicing until late, forgetting all about leaving. Over time, with help from seniors like my hostel neighbor, Nana Mane, I became deeply interested in DOS 6.22, Novell NetWare, and more. By the end of the first year, I was comfortable in the computer world, ready to tackle challenging subjects in the second year—x86 programming, complex algorithms, operations research, and more.

My career later spanned multiple domains, but even now, I still use the same style of text-based tools—back then it was edura, today it’s mutt and pine.

Back in the present, the conductor’s call—“Shivaji Vidyapeet… Shivaji Vidyapeet…”—snapped me out of my reverie. This time, the road to CSIBER was familiar, the campus no longer new. Many old friends were there, and though no one used my nickname, it felt just like the old days.

That’s been my journey.

Welcome to Jekyll!

Thu, 01 Feb 2018 16:04:23 +0000

8 Apr 2018 • on devops

Start-BitsTransfer: Tool that downloads very quickly!!

I was working on a puppet module that downloads a file of size over 3GB, unzips it and update database.Puppet master setup is on CentOS 6.8 and agent running on Windows 2012R2. I used nginx to serve files. As usual, I used puppet protocol to download file.

This setup was working as expected. The whole process use to complet in about 50 minutes.

After few days, I received a file size of 5GB. For this size, may times, puppet was failing to download it. I started evaluating best available tools. First in the list was powershell’s curl. Curl was better but not quite satisfactory. While looking for some of the better utilities, I stumbled upon MicroSoft’s new utility called ‘Start-BitsTransfer’. Its syntax is very simple and easy to use. Syntax:

D:> Start-BitsTransfer -Source “http://server.localtion/file.txt”
-Destination “D:\install_folder\file.txt”

With Start-BitsTransfer download time has come down to 4 minutes. I am now using Start-BitsTransfer extensively to improve download times. Well Done Microsoft.

Morse Code Song

Thu, 01 Feb 2018 15:04:23 +0000

Here is an interesting song that helps learning morse code: Morse Code Song

I could able to remember about 7 letters during my first watch. :-) Hope it will help you learning morse code.

Deployment Automation

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 19:04:23 +0000

Couple months back I was asked to look into deployment process of a software developed using zope, the open source web framework for python. Deployment of this product is a quite complex process. The complete installation of this product on 6 servers takes about 5 days. It has 34 components to deploy.

Product is deployed using puppet master and puppet agent setup.

The puppet master runs on CentOS 6.8. This server has 8 cores and 8G memory. Puppet agent nodes run Windows 2012 R2. Deployment process involves setting up puppet master, puppet agents, prepare configuration files, extracting artifacts. Then log on to each windows machine to run start deploy each component.

This process is fine if there are 5 to 6 servers. But it will not scale up and becomes laborious work as number of servers increase. Growing business needs more efficient, robust and scalable product deployment solution.

Another challenge is to reduce deployment time and make it easy to deploy.

I started analyzing each process to understand pain area. I quickly learnt that activities like setting up puppet master, puppet agents, prepare configuration files, extract artifacts are all manual processes. After puppet infrastructure setup, deployment engineer manually logs on to each server using tool like remote desktop to setup puppet agents.

First , I decided to automate the manual processes. But I was told not to introduce any new technology and tools unless absolutely necessary. Since it is a python shop, I have chosen python for scripting, Jenkins for deployment automation and nginx is used as local package server.

I chose Jenkins to run slaves on each puppet agent node. Also I automated installation and setup puppet master and nginx. Jenkins job will pull the nginx, puppet master software and install them.

But setting up puppet agent and remote execution, I have to install jenkins on each windows server. Admin has to log on to each windows server at least once to setup jenkins slaves. To avoid this I chose to use winrm. Configuration is simple and done remotely. Pywinrm helped remote login to windows. This allowed me to download puppet agent software to each windows server, install them and handshake with puppet master remotely. Puppet agent setup and configuration also programmed to run in parallel. Python multiprocessing module was used to achieve this. This save good amount of time and effort. This whole activity was talking about 6 to 8 hours for an expert deployment engineer. Setting up of puppet agent on 6 servers has been reduced now to 3 mins.

For puppet master, yaml is used for configuration. Editing yaml was another area of concern. Only experienced deployment engineer used to edit those huge configuration files. I decided to generate these configuration file using spreadsheet, so that editing is simple and syntax can be verified as they are generated.

Now a job need to simplify yaml and puppet config generation. I captured information like servers and component mapping in a spreadsheet to generate yaml and puppet config needed for puppet. Thus editing spreadsheet is made easy and this spreadsheet is read using xlrd module. This job will now generate yaml and puppet config file in about few minutes.

Now I had to extract artifacts. In the manual process, artifact was extracted just before starting deployment. With concurrent process, this process is reduced to 10 minutes to extract all 34 components.

I grouped independent components and dependent and sub dependent components. I installed all independent components in parallel and then dependent components and worked on this order of installation and generated groups.

At this time everything is setup to start installing product components using pywinrm.

Jenkins job started, all processes spawned, logged onto windows as expected. Almost in first two minutes seen component started getting deployed. For my great surprise, all components deployed and application has come up in about 5 hours.

I did many testing, everything is working as expected and installation time is reduced by about 90%. This whole process is greatly simplified. Now anyone can edit spreadsheet to change configurations and install product.

With this I will have to look for optimization now. I will have to optimize database setup, zope setup.

V Dipole Antenna

Mon, 08 Feb 2016 15:04:23 +0000

V Dipole Antenna

Here is my V Dipole antenna for weather.

Pic:

Why we are still known as VUs?

Mon, 01 Feb 2016 15:04:23 +0000

I was searching for origin of VU, a prefix used for Indian hams, I stumbled upon

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amateur_radio_in_India

It says VU is “Indian amateur radio operators are allotted only the VU call- sign prefix. The V or Viceroy, series prefix was allotted to British colonies.”

Some senior ham was telling me it was for Viceroy’s Unit.

Now we are close to celebrating 70th year of Independence of India, why still we be known as VUs? Can’t that be changed? What is there to be proud of?

Welcome to Jekyll!

Fri, 08 Jan 2016 15:04:23 +0000

You’ll find this post in your _posts directory. Go ahead and edit it and re-build the site to see your changes. You can rebuild the site in many different ways, but the most common way is to run jekyll serve --watch, which launches a web server and auto-regenerates your site when a file is updated.

To add new posts, simply add a file in the _posts directory that follows the convention YYYY-MM-DD-name-of-post.ext and includes the necessary front matter. Take a look at the source for this post to get an idea about how it works.

Jekyll also offers powerful support for code snippets:

def print_hi(name)
  puts "Hi, #{name}"
end
print_hi('Tom')
#=> prints 'Hi, Tom' to STDOUT.

Check out the Jekyll docs for more info on how to get the most out of Jekyll. File all bugs/feature requests at Jekyll’s GitHub repo. If you have questions, you can ask them on Jekyll’s dedicated Help repository.

New experiment with Reiki.

Mon, 04 Jan 2016 15:04:23 +0000

New experiment with Reiki.

This is my very recent experiment that I wanted to share with you all. Last Sunday about 10 cyclists had trip to Turahalli forest. Ride started from Nagarabhavi. We started around 6:00 AM and back to home by 9:30 AM.

I returned home, I was too tired. Had to lot of weekend work to finish. Thought of postponing all of them but I could not. Then just a thought came to my mind to use reiki to recharge myself. I was excited to see effect.

I gave a reiki to myself for about 45 mins. Result was amazing. I was totally refreshed and turbo charged.

Just sharing this incident if anyone else had this kind experience too OR willing to have it.

Build a product with git Hook !!

Sun, 03 Jan 2016 15:04:23 +0000

I noticed that few products have very complex building system. Even experienced engineers spend good amount of time understanding the build system. Based on complexity of the build system, it may take few weeks to be productive. It might take months in some cases. Initial experience will not be smooth for them.

On the other hand, resources are needed to create and maintaining document about building product. It involves cost and effort.

Build team finds difficulty updating a system, making any modification, adding any new features. Because it involves, sometime extensive, training and documentation.

I was thinking to find an alternative, effective way. My initial idea was to choose popular tool that is almost known to everyone. Just to avoid additional effort of training.

My obvious first choice was to make use of Jenkins. But Jenkins needs JRE and a network port to run. Again, not sure if everyone can use Jenkins. I have seen few folks who are reluctant to use it.

During this time, I was fine-tuning git hooks. I personally use hooks for mutt, emacs, version control systems. I got an idea if git post-checkout hook can be used for to build the product. Idea is automating all tedious manual steps.

To experiment this idea I chose a small project built using [buildout][http://docs.buildout.org/]. It is a just simple CRUD application built using python and zope and MSSQL as backend database.

This application is little complex to set up. It makes use of various third party components like RabbitMQ, Memcache and many other python modules. The buildout configuration is slightly complex and takes about 50 minutes to complete build. Configuration involves setting network port, database info and many other values. Different version of product branch use different database version. One has to obtain this information from DB team.

First step is automated manual steps with a python script in post-checkout, updated ~/.gitconfig to make hooks to reflect new hook on next clone. Cloned repo of product. After successful Cloning, defaulted branch was checkedout. At this point automagically, post-commit hook started executing. It did update buildout configuration, executed buildout successfully. Product installation is successful, I could see login page.

Since all steps were executed in machine time, complete build took considerably less time.

Next step is start considering different use cases.

For a new engineer, it takes good amount of time to collect required information needed to update build configuration.

I have created separate branch specific configuration files so that it is easy make available up-to-date and accurate configuration. These configuration files will be maintained by build team.

If system breaks during setup then either user has to investigate and fix issue or wait till expert comes for rescue. I noticed that many times it takes too long to understand root cause of the issue. Much time is spent collecting logs and additional data about build break.

This use case is handled by adding additional logging in a file. Build engineer can inspect this file to understand what went wrong.

This also address issue of announcements and educating users. Apart from general usage, developers can consult manual pages for certain flags. This reduces lot of ping-pong used to happen.

Then to make it more effective, added few auto healing techniques. So that, known issues used to be fixed automatically. If new issue is encountered, ticket will be filed appropriately with adequate log. Fix for this new ticket is made as known solution for auto healing.

After few days, keeping hooks up-to-date was a challenge. Then I moved heavy lifting part of installer to a separate script to root folder. Now, Git post commit hook invokes this script. This set up is going well for now.

Most of the engineers are familiar with git and its configuration.

I found it simple and effective solution to solve a challenge. It is just an attempt to make happy starting for new engineers with decreased churn.

If you get any questions, clarifications please leave a comment. I will reply.

My Bicycle Journey!

Sun, 03 Jan 2016 15:04:23 +0000

I had a great dream to cycle everyday to work which was about 50 kms round trip. I bought Cannondale Trail 6 bicycle in 2012.

But soon I realized that taking cycle on Bangalore road to work is not a fun but quite risky. This was proved couple times when I was riding bike on ring road. Quite a bad experience clubbed with unwillingness.

Then started using car again. Continued with car till 2015. My bicycle was just lying in garage. It accumulated lot of dust.

Last november I decided to pay attention to my health and decided to use cycle for fitness. As I live very near to Bangalore University, I thought of riding bicycle one hour whenever it is possible. This plan worked well and I started of getting lot of interest in Cycling. On 26th January 2016 Republic day of India, I thought of taking cycle to work once in a week at least one way. Next day morning I took my cycle to work. I carried fully charged cellphone, wouxun radio for communication. I added all ID cards to wallet too. Thinking if something goes wrong then someone can inform family.

To my surprise, ride was so well and it has become one of the life time finest memory for me.I just told about my new adventure in office, my colleagues were impressed too. Many did not believe till I show my cycle in the parking area. Many colleagues were asking me how I could do it. People know me closely were just stunned how could a guy who always drove a premium car with AC on all time with quite loud music, travelled 25 km on shiny sunlight that too in peak hour traffic?

And is continued about a week. After a week of cycling, I announced that if I could cycle for 21 days without a break I would gift new bicycle myself.

To my surprise I magically reached 21 days goal and I just walked in to “Livenup Concepts” bicycle showroom. Met Makarand, store owner, now very good friend of mine. I told him about this change in me. He initially could not believe it but looking at my small weight loss, just he looked agreed.

Then I told that I need a new MTB. He suggested to go with Montra and bought new one. Now I am using Montra for all travelling need.

So far I have travelled 1400 km.

It is about three months now and gifting myself new hybrid bike. Going to buy Schiwnn Searcher 3(2016). And a change I am planing is to use MTB and hybrid bike on alternate days [OR even-odd formula?]. Will post about it.

For my Montra high end cycle I attached APRS so that dear ones can see me travelling. I have b’twin count 4 computer attached to check speed and distance I travel. Sometimes I use “sport tracker” android application to record speed, distance and calorie burnt. I am busy building “intelligent indicators” which I will write in detail later.

This write up will be incomplete if I do not mention my health benefit. Now I do not suffer with neck pain and back pain. I am getting very good sleep for about 5 hours. Which was hardly couple hours. Cycling also reduces anxiety. Big gain is I lost about 3 kgs weight.

I will keep telling you my cycle story.

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