Diwali– Festival of what ?

Had a grand diwal… it was a lot of fun and enjoyment with lots of freinds, neighbours and relatives coming and we going their for sharing sweets and fun…. But as the day progressed, I got one serious doubt….usually, diwali is called a festival of lights…. but does that really hold now? Do we celebrate it like that any more???This year I found Diwali, more noisier than ever before… 😦
The govt. is repeatedly announcing that crackers producing high noise levels have been banned.. But to the contrary, I find that such crackers are on the rise…. And with so many factors already contributing to the noise levels, should we add more to it ? And then about the smoke and pollution…. I still feel the smell of sulphur and other stuff in my nostrils, a day after diwali …. Even though all forms of media are repeatedly showing the present poor state of the atmosphere and the seriousness of global warming…. people pay no heed to it….. Do we really need such noise and pollution to celebrate diwali….

Hope people realise that each cracker they burst and each firework that they enjoy takes our mother earth one step closer to its destruction, and it may soon go out of our hands to rescue earth…. So freinds, please be reasonable and celebrate diwali happily without destructing our beautiful earth….. Enjoy diwali as a festival of light and not as a festival of sound and pollution…. I am not asking anybody to give up crackers altogher or all of a sudden, but please do so gradually…. and save mother  earth….

BSNL broadband on GNU/Linux

Finally I am browsing with GNU/Linux fro my home. I got a ethernet card and got it configured in linux and now i blog this from my linux destop at home.

Now, broadband from BSNL is working fine and I am having a good time browsing without worrying about possible virus attacks and unwanted pop-ups( I dont know how i dont get any here.Even with mozilla, I used to have a lot of pop-ups in WIN-XP.).

A rare photo of my seniors

I got a rare photo of a few of my seniors from senthil anna’a site. It shows a group of TCENet developers with Dr.Shalini maam. The names were added with the help of Balamurugan anna. It includes great people like Joe, SAP, Stylesen, Balamuruagn etc.

From the bottom left to top, Arun Ponniah (sap), Subramani (lion) , Amalan Joe Steeve (Da’Rodent), Praveen (pravs), K.N.Karthik (KNK), Balamurugan (Bams) , Sri Ranjani (Ranju), Senthil kumaran (stylesen), Sriram (ram), Senthilkumaran (se-ku-ju), Venkatesh (venky), Subramanian (subbi).

Hope i get more pics…..

The Microkernel approach

     I did some homework on microkernels and got some baisc concepts clear.Basically, a microkernel is a type of design where only certain parts of the code is in kernel space and the remaining go to the user space, as servers. What is to remain in the kernel space and what in the user space is the decision of the developer.But one thing that always remains in the kernle space is the process management and IPC related stuff.

     Other common features like memory management, file system and the I/O handling etc. can be put up as servers in the user space. It is also possible to bring the file system in to the kernel space for a faster approach.In microkernels, the major way of message passing is through Inter-Process Communication(IPC).

    Coming to the concept of servers, they are like any other programs with some extra privileges, to access the memory, granted by the kernel.There are two types of approaches in implementing the kernel. They are monoserver and multiserver systems. In monoserver systems, all the device drivers(called tasks), file system handling, memory management etc that are to be put up in the user space are put as one single module and is linked to the kernel.

    In the multiserver approach, each of these are put as separate servers and interconnected and connected to the kernel. The way they are split in to is decided by the designer.One approach is to put all the device drivers into one server, file system in to one server and memory management in to another server and connect them all.

The major downside of the microkernel design is its performance. Because of the necessity for IPC for interacting with the kernel, these are generally slower than monolithic kernels.The advantages include maintainability, reliability and improved security.

Ignited minds– a must for every Indian

Finally, I could lay my hands on a copy of Ignited Minds by president Dr.A.P.J.Abdul Kalam. It is a must for every indian.It shows not only how patriotic our president is, but also gives lots of examples substantiating the great indian’s statement “dream, dream, dream. Dreams change into thoughts and thoughts result in action”.

It gives good descriptions about our glorious past and the great people who made India a proud nation  around the world. The chapter on teachers and… shows how important teachers and mentors to the students. It goes to explain how a teachers thought and preaching can make great leaders from young children.

The book also gives lots of instances where we had shown our technical expertise. Much descriptions have been made about our first satellite launch- SLV-3 carrying the satellite Rohini. He also talks about the great sages anf saints of various religions who have made the country a great land.

Finally he gives is wake up call to the children of the nation, to act now and to do proud to the nation. HE firmly believes that the future of India could be bright only if the proper seeds are sown in the minds of the young children right from a tender age.

YAOS — Our new venture

Atlast, my dream has come true. We ( a group of 7 friends) will be developing a new operating system,  a small one with minimal features… but still…. We had a meeting at our classroom A16 at about 10:00 am. We met and talked about our operating system kernel. Both microkernel and monolithic type were discussed. Also something on ring structure was discussed.

 We all decided that we will study the basics of different types of kernel archi. and meet again to make design decisions by December.Then we created a google groups for our new venture. The site is http://groups-beta.google.com/group/yaos/ . The group mailing list is yaos@googlegroups.com .

Exams…. tiresome exams

We are having our third revision/model exams now. And that makes a person damn tired. What with Three hours of exam daily? Also we have got to read the entire syllabus over night( thats my habit unfortunately) and get prepared for the exams. But luckly this time we have got the week end holidays and so back to blogging 🙂 Hope we get holidays inbetween exams for model exams too. It would not only help us in studying well but also will help us from being tired. Also we get time to understand the concepts while studying. Hope we get such cool conducted exams soon.

Starting the design… at last

Finaly, it is being done. The OS is to be designed.Had a lengthy discussion with ananth and krithika and will have a meeting tomorrow.The developers have been finalised.It will be myself, Balachander, Ananth Arumugam, Krithika and Agalya. We may have more developers later. The discussion were about the type of kernel tobe used and the File System Support.It wouldbe really great if a ZFS support is possible.But as of now we may settle for a UFS support.
Tomorrow’s meeting will center around the modules that are to be implemened and the type of the kernel that will be implemented.I expect a hybrid kernel.Also much discussion was made on security and the problems we may face with each type of kernel. Will summarise tomorrow and make a final decision.

But still, the project has begun. It may be yet another revolution like the one Mr.Linus Torvalds brought about a decade and half ago. We are a serious gang bent on making it successful.

make and Makefiles

I Tried to write a hello world kernel. The coding as most people know is a child’s play. But since what we write is a module to be attached with the kernel, it has to compiled differently. The usual gcc filename.c wont help. So i wrote a Makefile for that and tried the GNU make command. I got nothing but a errors stretched over a couple of screens. I was totally devastated… for it was my first attempt and a very simple one at that and yet i could not do it succesfully…. 😦 :-S hope i do it properly soon

Back after long time

So, i am back to blogging after a long time. End of the semester works finishing up the records, lab exams etc.  kept me away from the blogosphere. That too we had our symposium close to the end of the semester.So concentrated more on that.Now all that’s over.But still i think I cant blog for another week from now as we will be having our model exams from tomorrow 😦 i really hate these exams  …