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{"entries":[{"title":"First ever Linux Installfest in KGEC","url":"/blog/first-ever-linux-installfest-in-kgec.html","date":"2009-02-20 14:00:00 +0530","categories":["technology"],"body":"The Beginning : I Registered for MUKTI ‘09 and went to NIT Durgapur along with my friend. There we stayed 3 days and attended all workshops. We came closer to FOSS community and some of the organizers. We met Mr. Rangeen Basu Roy Choudhry and he gave us the idea of having an installfest in our college to create a Linux environment. The Growth : On 16th February, we decided to meet one of our CSE Faculty, Mr. Kaushik Das, whom we believed to be the most approachable person, but he was absent. On 17th February, we came to know that he is out of station. Then we met our Head of IT Department and he gave us the permission to conduct this event on the condition that it should not clash with regular classes. We only demanded a classroom with a projector. After getting the permission I contacted Mr. Choudhry (Fedora Ambassador) to help us conduct the installfest. He assured us of getting free DVD’s and we fixed the date – 21st February ’09. Working on the idea was really great and our seniors suggested to conduct this event better by changing the venue to Language lab (Seminar Hall) and getting lunch packs for guests. We submitted this proposal to our college and after some movement from door to door, we got some very good responses and our proposal was accepted. We also got the suggestion of conducting it in our CSE Lab. and even install ‘Fedora 10’ in those machines. We were getting things done as fast as we can but the load was getting heavier. The Support from college was really great and they made this event really big. They even wanted us to arrange for food packets for participants. The publicity of this event was also a great factor. We believed that the event can never get success if we can’t get participants and we should encourage participants to bring their laptops. So, we did exclusive publicity of this event and were also getting good positive responses. We set the max limit of participants to 150. The Management : I first announced the event officially in my class during our “control system lab”. The response really helped me to proceed further. Then I announced the event to all the 2nd year students of our hostel and took them into confidence. They helped me in every way and even bunked classes for me. For me, it was like taking a big responsibility with all positive attitude but my friends really helped me out to maintain it and took all pain to help conduct this event better. Few names which deserve special mention are Sunil Kr. Koiri and Avul Fazal. I was really surprised get so much support from them. All the management and smooth running of the event was in there hands and they did the job perfectly. I was busy receiving the guests and checking out what’s next and did not have to worry about anything regarding the smooth running of the event. Every credit goes to our volunteer team. The Response : To get a good response, we did exclusive publicity of this event. There were posters everywhere and we moved on from class to class and announced the event. We even gave out fliers as Xerox of the posters. Then we moved on to every hostel of our college and gave them even more detail. We expected good response but we had doubts in our expectations. On 21st February, we got the real response. I was surprised to see two participants reaching at 9:30 AM and many participants at 9:45 AM. Registration was supposed to start at 10:00 AM. We had some bad news of our guests getting late but the crowd was getting more and more. So, we started the registration at 10:15 AM and but restricted entry in the seminar hall because we needed volunteers in other areas. We opened the seminar hall at 10:40 AM and had to stop the registration after the hall was overcrowded. There were many who had to return back as the registration closed. There were about 135 to 140 participants inside the hall and many we had many volunteers. The program started at 11:30 AM with the speeches of Mr. Indranil Das Gupta and the participants were actually glad to hear him speak. The audience was really great and was curious about every session of the event. We expected very few participants in the 2nd half but to our surprise, our CSE lab was also overcrowded. There were about 80 participants during the installation session. It was like a crowd in a cinema hall as everybody watched in the projector screen and did exactly in their system. There were also pool of questions apart from how to install fedora like questions about contributing to FOSS. The Event : The event was started with the speeches of the heads of our college. Then the program started with Mr. Indranil Das Gupta’s (ilugcal) talk. He shared his excitement and enthusiasm towards Linux and how he managed to do stuffs during his days. He also deliberated on the need for LINUX, its applications in various fields. He told the students that they should have the urge for learning new things; and that the best way to learn LINUX is to play with it. After that, Arindam Ghosh gave a briefing on LINUX. It was followed by presentation given by Subhodeep Biswas on the myths about LINUX and showed how they were factitious. Then the participants of the seminar were given a demonstration on “HOW to install LINUX”. Each of them installed LINUX themselves on their system during the demonstration. Those who didn’t bring their system had the opportunity to do that in the LAB Computers. The questions that were raised by the participants were satisfactorily answered. All the participants were given a ‘fedora 10’ DVD. What went wrong : We had a power cut during Indranil ji’s speech and there was no arrangement for that. Our college had generators but the generator man was in leave and since it was Saturday, electricity office was also closed. There was complete uncertainty over the program as everything to be done was supposed to be done by presentation using projectors and the weather was also getting hot. Fortunately we had power just after the lunch and we were able to resume our program peacefully. The only damage we got was that few students who brought their laptops went home and came back again empty hand. Special Thanks : All the success of this event lies with the fedora Ambassadors and experts who took all pains to help us and guided us at every step. We had nothing to worry about the conduct of the event as it was all in their hands and they did a fine job. But there are specially two names that deserve special mention: Rangeen Basu Roy Choudhry (nitdgplug). He is the real man behind this event. He gave us the idea and was with us from beginning till the end. He made all contacts to the experts and arranged for all DVD’s to be given. There were problems he faced to organize this event but he did not revealed that and helped us to fully concentrate on our event. Indranil Das Gupta (ilugcal). He is one of the founders of ilugcal and a very busy man. I first saw him in MUKTI ’09 and was really impressed. On 20th February, he was not well and was supposed to take rest. Despite his bad health, he came to grace our occasion and helped us. We are really thankful to him for all his contributions to our college. Result : This is the beginning of Linux Environment in our college. We are getting very good responses from our college and we will definately create our own Linux User Group. "},{"title":"Starting KGEC LUG with FreedomFest '09","url":"/blog/starting-kgec-lug-with-freedomfest-09.html","date":"2009-04-22 14:00:00 +0530","categories":["technology"],"body":"The Beginning : The preparations for forming a ‘GNU/Linux User Group’ in KGEC was started just after the Installfest ‘09. We created the Mailing List of our group on 23rd February and visited NIT Durgapur to come closer to what a 'GNU/Linux User Group’ is and its functioning. We also collected some resources from there like the fedora repo, different distributions isos and ideas to start the GLUG. The key people to help me was Mr. Debayan and Mr. Rangeen. The Ideas : The Mailing list of GLUG KGEC was ready but there was no awareness. The GLUG was there but no official existence. So, here came the idea of Publicity, Inauguration program and to create a awareness, the Inauguration should be followed by FOSS events. To have publicity, there should be also some activities and we installed Fedora 10 in Library Public access computer with a Poster as maintained by GLUG KGEC. There were lots of planning like this and a formal GLUG structure was formulated for the official record. The college supported the GLUG concept and we fixed 18th April as the inauguration date followed by FOSS events. The Growth : Our college authority helped us in every possible way, they could. They gave the permission, helped us for the event, became members and even gave donations. The event name ‘FreedomFest’ was suggested by Mr. Abhradip Mukherjee. Our Principal sir agreed to Inaugurate the GLUG KGEC on 18th. We invited Mr. Indranil Das Gupta as our chief guest, Mr. Abhradip to conduct the ‘Why FOSS’ interactive session and ‘Kalyani Linux User Group’ for conducting the ‘Fedora Workshop’ practical session. All the speakers gave the confirmation and we went ready for the event. Working on the idea was really great. We wanted to conduct this event as successfully as the InstallFest on 21st Feb. So, we arranged for all permissions and got the CSE computer Lab ready a day before the event. The publicity of this event was also a great factor. We did exclusive publicity of this event and were also getting good positive responses. We set the max limit of participants to 150. The Management : Since the GLUG KGEC already existed in mailing list and we had few much interested students, we were always in touch and went together. After the final draft, we even got some surprise names getting interested in GLUG KGEC and becoming member. Some of their names who gave immense effort are: Sunil Kr. Koiri, Md. Ekhlaque, Siddharth Lepcha, Mithun Sarkar, Amit Mandal, Mukesh Singh, Ramiz Raza, Sahel Mullick and Abu Sufian. There were even others who supported whenever needed.The event management and maximum effort for the event was given by Sunil Kr. Koiri. There were volunteers who helped conduct the event. All the management and smooth running of the event was in there hands and they did the job perfectly. I was busy receiving the guests and checking out what’s next and did not have to worry about anything regarding the smooth running of the event. Every credit goes to our volunteer team. The Event - FreedomFest ‘09 : The event was finally conducted on 18th April '09. The Event started at 11:30 AM with the inauguration of GLUG KGEC in the hand of principal. Then there were speeches of the the following persons: 1. Dr. Krishnendu Chakrabarty (the principal) 2. Dr. Santanu Das (ME HOD) 3. Mr. Mahadev Rana (Labrarian) 4. Mr. Kousik Dasgupta (Lecturer CSE & President, GLUG KGEC) 5. Mr. Rohit Gupta (Secretary, GLUG KGEC) 6. Mr. Paritosh (Secretary, Kalyani LUG) The even then followed the ‘Why FOSS’ interactive session by Mr. Abhradip Mukherjee. It started at 12:15 PM and concluded at 2:15 PM. He explained the philosophies behind ‘Free and Open Source Software’ and answered to the Questions of participants and cleared their doubts. The participants were all newbies to the concept and appreciated the philosophies. Then there was a FOSS quiz. The participants were asked different questions on FOSS and whoever answered the question got a Distribution (15 DVDs of different distributions) of GNU/Linux and fedora stikers. There were also 28 fedora 10 DVD’s distributed to all needed and goodies given to all. The FOSS quiz was really got participants interested and Abhradip got them important questions whose answers were important to know. Then there was a break and after that the Practical Workshop part was started. This was conducted by ‘Kalyani Linux User Group’ and every participant was given a computer to experiment and learn. The Lab computers were already installed with fedora 8. The event started at 2:35 PM and concluded at 5:50 PM. In this event, the participants were shown Linux administration and general solution to problems. Some of the topics discussed are – How to crack root password, how to work in CUI, how to configure grub.conf, xorg.conf, how to use multi-user interface and many more administrative and troubleshooting solutions. The participants were even encouraged to get their problems solved. Then I also conducted a small session on how to use a offline mirror and install, remove applications. We also showed some of very useful applications. The whole session was interactive. There were three people from Kalyani Linux User Group: 1. Biswanath Chakraborty 2. Mithun Pal 3. Jayanta Kumal Pal Every participant did exactly what was shown in the projector in the computers provided. Response : The registration started at 10:15 AM and preparations were on. The event viewed some very good responses from some of the faculty members of our college. There were some MCA faculty of our college who came even before registration started and were looking for registration. The students response was moderate. We had a total registration of 85 with 47 being members of GLUG KGEC. The There were this 85 participants in the starting of event who attended the ‘Why FOSS’ session apart from the volunteers managing the works. Some of the participants had to leave in the break in between because some had labs, some had Hall Day reunion in their Hostel (a annual event). The event viewed about 45 participants in the ‘Fedora Workshop’ session. There were participants from every stream and year. What went wrong : On 18th April, Mr. Indranil Das Gupta gave us a news of his bad health and said he will not be able to come. The date selection of the Event as April 18 also caused trouble. The event was conducted on Saturday because only first year had classes but there were extra classes on for every year, Labs and even class tests. The event also clashed with the dates of VC (a KGEC Hostel) annual Hall Day. This proved a low response from much interested students there. The train in which Mr. Abhradip Mukherjee (founder, p4f network) was coming also got delayed half an hour but his ‘Why FOSS’ session was supposed to be started earlier as Mr. Indranil Das Gupta’s speech was canceled. Special Thanks : The whole event “FreedomFest ‘09” was a success due to the hard word and responsibility taken by the following people: 1.Mr. Abhradip Mukherjee. He had WBUT 8th semester examinations starting from 20th April but even then he came to our rescue and helped us in the event. His contribution is really great for this event. 2.'Kalyani Linux User Group’. They conducted the practical workshop session in the lab and they conducted it so well that the participants understood even some of the administrative part (Many of them were newbies). 3.The students of KGEC who participated in volunteer work and helped conduct the event. Result : The event “FreedomFest ‘09” was an overall awareness program in KGEC and the participants came closer to the FOSS philosophy and GNU/Linux. The 'Why FOSS’ session gave them reasons and practical workshop part helped them technically. The participants stopped fearing GNU/Linux and even tried to apply what they learned in FreedomFest in their own computers. There were even some more GNU/Linux installations and interest in FOSS. Now, we are all set to get into the next level – becoming power users and contributors. "},{"title":"Innocent Love","url":"/blog/innocent-love.html","date":"2010-01-20 09:00:00 +0530","categories":["social"],"body":"When I hear your name, something happens, My heart misses a beat and then, doubles its speed Thats why I call you - \"MY DREAM GIRL\" I Wonder , I forget everything while I miss you But, I can’t forget a single thing about you.. I think , I get nostalgic while talking to you, Dream things like being forever with you!! Surprise , You have taken so much space in my heart, That even God seems inferior than you Bonding , I may need a psychiatrist for my madness, But forgetting myself seems easier than you Despair , If in reality, I get you never!! I believe: In love, A moment lasts forever Hope , But if dreams, do ever come true, I just wanna spend my life with you MY DREAM GIRL "},{"title":"Open Source changed my life!","url":"/blog/open-source-changed-my-life.html","date":"2012-07-16 03:14:00 +0530","categories":["social"],"body":"I started of with open source/linux in my first year of graduation and soon fell in love with it. It was my hobby. Now I am working for a open-source based startup: Plivo Inc. I came to know something called Linux exists from my friend, who was a studying in NIT Surathkal. His views on Linux was something like ‘Everybody uses windows, so whats the difference between them and me!’. That was a huge motivation for me to start off with Linux. Things were not smooth when I started. I believed there will be geeks & techies like him in my college. My hopes were soon shattered. In first year, I searched for a Linux CD in all senior hostels but ended up empty hands. Finally I got one from the library of our college (Digit DVDs). I experimented a lot and loved solving problems. I visited a open-source techfest in NIT durgapur called Mukti . It changed my whole thinking towards open-source. I came to know that it is developed by community and not big companies like Microsoft or Apple. It is mainly developed by hobbyist and not for profit. They do it because they love it. After attending the fest, I decided to create awareness about this in my college. I was blessed with the help of many batch-mates & seniors. We conducted a installfest on 21st Feb 09. It was a great success with over 150 participans. We gave fedora DVDs to all participants and had installed the same in over 30 systems. Then we conducted FreedomFest on 18th Apr 09 and formally inaugurated a Linux User Group. We did a seminar and boot-camp on KGEC techfest 2010. In 2011, new LUG members did a event hack the system . In these events, we promoted open source and created awareness. Everyone liked our initiatives but in the long run, only few members took it seriously. Now you may be wondering, how it changed my life? Let me repeat the line which inspired me: ‘Everybody uses windows, so whats the difference between them and me!’ So, I was different in the crowd. I came closer to the open source community. Interacted with people who were developers in industry working on open source. All my batch-mates studied theory about networking, OS, blah blah… I did things in practical. I had a different set of skills which are not as easily available in market. All these eventually paid off when I went for a interview at Plivo Inc. While I was reading Plivo’s job portal, I was surprised. There was a line saying: ‘Should be Linux or Mac user (Windows users, need not apply)’. I eventually got selected at Plivo and am working on things I love to do . A startup experience that really changed my life! "},{"title":"Introduction to python","url":"/blog/introduction-to-python.html","date":"2012-07-16 12:13:00 +0530","categories":["technology"],"body":"Heard about C, C++, java, .net, …? These are the popular programming languages extensively used in industry. Have you heard about python or ruby? These are also programming languages, pretty powerful & easy to learn. Python & ruby are also widely used, especially in startups. Python is also known as a language with batteries included because it has a very rich standard library and lots of third pary libraries. Learning python is easy. If you already know a programming language, it will take you 1-2 days to master basic python :) Here’s an example of hello world in python: >>> print ‘Hello World!’ Hello World! It is a language for lazy programmers. Write less code, less debugging, less maintenance, more fun! Installing python: Many linux distribution may have this as pre-installed. If not, you may use a GUI package manager or command prompt. Some examples to install python using command prompt: Fedora or any red-hat based system: # yum -y install python Ubuntu or any debian based system: # apt-get -y install python Open suse: # zypper install python You can also install it in windows or mac. Just google like this. I would also recommend to install ipython or bython. They have features like tab completion, code suggestions. It can be very helpful in initial learning. Starting python prompt is simple. Just type ‘python’ in linux console. If trying out ipython or bpython, type ‘ipython’ or ‘bpython’ respectively. Official documentation website : http://docs.python.org Some recommended tutorials by fossee group (IIT Bombay): http://rohit.io/res/posts/introduction-to-python/basic_python.zip Post your feedback in comments. Thanks for reading :) "},{"title":"Rakum School for the Blind","url":"/blog/rakum-school-for-the-blind.html","date":"2013-11-10 21:40:00 +0530","categories":["social"],"body":" Visited sometime back. It is a unique blind school at Indranagar, Bangalore, India . It offers free education from kinder garden to post graduation. I saw a group of sweet kids going back to their dorms after regular school exams. Contrary to the expectation, not every child is visually challenged. The school allows normal kids whose parents are blind. The school is small but beautifully maintained. Strength of this school is around 150, mostly small kids. The school also helps old women with no means of employment by organizing an event called the Seva Day. In this event, more than 200 old women from the neighborhood draw a monthly pension of Rs 100/- each along with food rations for a month. The training imparted includes reading and writing through Braille and mobility training for totally blind children. The school also encourages extracurricular activities like karate , yoga , music, dance, fine arts and crafts. ‘We live on what you give’ : We can clearly feel this motto while entering the school. The school runs on donated ration, clothes, stationaries, school uniform, desk, bench, old newspapers, etc. It also highlights the list of possibilities by which the society can help them create a bigger impact. I think, the easiest way to contribute is by donating newspapers and old clothes. Visitors can also sponsor breakfast, lunch or dinner at special occasions like birthday, anniversary or marriages. More info about the school: Wikipedia Facebook Twitter Official website Google Map location "},{"title":"Shinken mailgun plugin","url":"/blog/shinken-mailgun-plugin.html","date":"2014-02-06 02:40:00 +0530","categories":["technology"],"body":"Shinken is a modern open-source server monitoring tool written in python. It has a lovely feature rich UI and is highly scalable. The great thing about this project is its active community and frequent releases. Mailgun on the other hand, provides an easy to use API for sending, receiving emails. So, no more setting up SMTP servers and maintaing multiple accounts :-D Open-source : This project is fully open sourced and hosted in Github . Prerequisites: A working shinken setup installed in a server. Python >= 2.6 is installed on that server Ready to use in 3 simple steps: Create a Mailgun account: Sign up: https://mailgun.com/signup Update file: shinken_mailgun_plugin/util/email_settings.ini In ‘settings’ section, update the following variables: servername: Enter sandbox name (See image below) sender: Desired monitoring email ID recipients: Destination email ids separated by comma authorization: Mailgun API key (See image below) serverurl: Update this with your shinken http url. It helps in generating the exact host/service link in alert mails. Update shinken configuration: commands.cfg - /usr/local/shinken/etc/commands.cfg Update this file with contents from shinken_mailgun_plugin/commands.cfg Add python virtualenv location in resource.cfg. For example: $PYTHON_VENV$=/usr/src/python_env Add location details of nrpe plugin files. For example: $PLUGINSDIR$=/usr/local/nagios/libexec Update the as instructed in comments. templates.cfg - /usr/local/shinken/etc/templates.cfg Update notification command details in this file. Set the following as: host_notification_commands host_email_alerts service_notification_commands service_email_alerts Once configurations files are updated, restart shinken-arbiter to apply settings: Sample service check email alert: Service check alert for nginx crash in server: rohit.io. To customize message, edit file: email_settings.ini And as always, Thanks for reading :) "},{"title":"Simplicity","url":"/blog/simplicity.html","date":"2014-02-09 15:19:00 +0530","categories":["social"],"body":"Today, I changed the title of my blog to Simplicity . A simple thought, life, action and relation is somewhere lost in this complicated world! Simplicity is an aquired taste . A taste, which helped google dominate the web, Apple to be regarded as the biggest brand and Mahatma Gandhi to become the father of the Nation. The first thing to realize about simplicity is that, it does not mean LIMITED . Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious and adding the meaningful . The problem here is that the ‘obvious’ is not so OBVIOUS :( Simplicity also means, the achievement of maximum effect with minimum means. A absence of luxury or showiness, enjoying plainess. And as always, Thanks for reading :) "},{"title":"Setting up python vitual environment","url":"/blog/setting-up-python-virtual-environment.html","date":"2014-04-12 00:25:00 +0530","categories":["technology"],"body":"Using python virtual environment for development is highly recommended and is widely used by python programmers. Debian/Ubuntu commands to install python virtualenv are as follows: Install required packages: $ sudo apt-get install python-pip $ sudo pip install virtualenv Create a virtualenv: $ virtualenv [--no-site-packages] venv Activate virtualenv: $ source venv/bin/activate Once the virtualenv is activated, use pip to install libraries. For example: (venv)$ pip install gevent redis ipython The above example will install python packages: gevent, redis and ipython. To deactivate virtualenv: (venv)$ deactivate Virtualenv can help you maintain conflicting library dependencies, python versions for different projects, in the same system. It is commonly used in production systems even with a single python application. And as always, Thanks for reading :) "},{"title":"Why abolishing Income Tax makes sense in India","url":"/blog/why-abolishing-income-tax-makes-sense-in-india.html","date":"2014-04-14 00:21:00 +0530","categories":["social"],"body":"We all know, Income Tax is a major source of revenue for government expenditures. But, do we know the impact and effectiveness of Income Tax laws in India? Few basic questions, that will help us understand the situation: What is the revenue share of Income Tax? How many people pay Income Tax? Who pays Income Tax? What is the role of hawala agents/companies? Can we do away with Income Tax? Revenue share of Income Tax on total Tax collected: (As shown in Satyamev Jayate 2 - Kings Every Day) From the above stats, we notice that Indirect Tax generates more than twice the revenue collected through Income Tax. And yes, Indirect Tax is paid by all, including people below poverty line. Even a 1 rupee match box is sold inclusive of all taxes. How many people pay Income Tax? As per reports from the finance minister, less than 3% people file Income Tax return in India. To be precise: Only 3.5 crore people, or 2.89 percent of the country’s total population of more than 121 crore, file income Tax return . In contrast, 45% people in USA pay Income Tax. Who pays Income Tax and is it fairly divided? The poor does not earn enough to pay Tax, the elite/high earners hire chartered accountants (CA) to evade/avoid Tax. The middle class has taxable income and don’t have money to hire CA. Salaried class are even more affected because Tax is deducted at source (no scope for Tax evasion). A survey shows that “Salaried Indians pay more income Tax than high earners in US, China”. Income Tax, in a way, is a harassment Tax for honest people. If you notice, all pay your Tax advertisements is something like this: Pay you taxes for a peace of mind. If we catch you, you will be jailed or heavily fined. #TaxTerrorism People pay taxes because of fear and are not willingly. Corruption add to this by raising trust factors. Saving/Evading Tax is now socially accepted in general. Role of hawala agents/companies: Hawala agents have moved a step further and registered fraud companies to do money laundering. They play active role in Tax evasion for a small share in profit. The money saved is called black money (mainly in the form of cash). This money is either moved into foreign banks accounts, or invested within the country in black markets (parallel economy). Can we do away with Income Tax? Yes, we can. Even if the Government abolishes Income Tax, it has potential to recover the same through other forms of Tax. Few arguments: People will have more purchasing power and hence Indirect Tax revenue should increase. The stagnant cash (black money) will flow into banks in bulk. They are not being invested now to avoid taxes. More money in the mainstream economy will generate more Tax. No cost of running the Income Tax department. If the natural resources are used/sold efficiently (without corruption), it can generate huge revenue. (Remember 2G and Coalgate?) Eagerly waiting to hear your views in comments. And as always, Thanks for reading :) "},{"title":"An Adventure with Meditation","url":"/blog/an-adventure-with-meditation.html","date":"2014-04-27 19:35:00 +0530","categories":["social"],"body":"Today, I came back from a 10 day Vipassana meditation course, meditating 10 hrs per day. A great learning experience with purity from the age of Buddha - Render of Peace. Realizing that this experience can only be experienced , pardon me for just being able to present a brief outline about the same. The Idea The idea of doing this was more or less, experimental. I read an interview of Microsoft’s newly named ceo (in Feb, 2014), ‘Satya Nadella’ : Many who know me say I am also defined by my curiosity and thirst for learning. I buy more books than I can finish. I sign up for more online courses than I can complete. I fundamentally believe that if you are not learning new things, you stop doing great and useful things. - The Times of India Bangalore. Feb 05, 2014 This made a mark on me. I took it as an inspiration to broaden my views and take new steps, however small. The Search With a planned holiday in hand, I took it as an opportunity to do things that are not possible during regular & hectic work life. An ‘Art of Living’ course seemed the usual commercial option, but I decided to explore more options. I came across ‘Vipassana Meditation - As taught by S.N. Goenka’ , while searching on the Internet. I read more about this organization and reviews by independent Bloggers. Finally decided and registered for a 10 day course in ‘Dhamma Bodhi Bodh Gaya Vipassana Centre’ . The Course The purity and years of experience is reflected in each and every aspect about this course. Every Vipassana center is fully run by volunteers (not paid). The course is 100% free and available for all. Though entirely run on donation, donations are accepted only from old students (who has completed at least one 10 day course). Maximum utilization of time is ensured by a comprehensive, 4 am to 9 pm time table . Rules are Rules The first rule is to submit all objects of human distraction at the registration booth. This includes all your electronic items like mobile, laptop, camera, ipod, etc. Even books, paper and pen is not allowed during the course. Here is a brief list of rules applicable for 10 days: Noble Silence: All students must observe Noble Silence from the beginning of the course until the morning of the last full day. Noble Silence means silence of body, speech, and mind No Physical Contact with anyone The Precepts: to abstain from killing any being (Not even a mosquito) to abstain from stealing to abstain from all sexual activity to abstain from telling lies to abstain from all intoxicants Complete acceptance of the Teacher and the Technique Other Techniques, Rites, and Forms of Worship is not allowed Comprehensive details about the same can be found here . The Environment The Dhamma Bodhi Bodh Gaya Vipassana Centre is surrounded by large farm lands, free from noise. The campus is large and full of trees and gardens. Morning and evenings are refreshing with the chanting of birds. Human noise is hard to hear, except during daily evening discourse (by S.N. Goenka ji). The learning center has all essential facilities and services. Single rooms with attach bathroom, free laundry service, 24 hrs hot water facility, bell rings during each session are to name a few. The enthusiasm of servers, to serve, is really appreciative. Some of the facilities and services depend on the location of the Vipassana center. As of this writing, there are 154 Vipassana centers worldwide. Details about the same is listed here. People from different ethnic backgrounds, profession and country were present under the same roof to learn this technique of meditation. They all shared the same peace of mind, a thirst to learn and hard work to accomplish the same. The Experience On day 1 itself, it was clear that this is not a place for entertainment. In everyday life, we are surrounded with different kind of screens (Mobile, Laptop, TV, etc..). It seems very difficult to live without all of them. Submitting these during registration itself was like taking the first step. Strict rules and tight schedule made it difficult to think about anything else, but meditation. There were times, when it was difficult to concentrate, but as days passed, it became much easier than thought. Towards the end of training, how to apply the benefits into day to day life is also taught. On day 10, the rule of noble silence is removed to help students return back to normal social life. Today, was my first day after this course, and I do see some minor improvements and am optimistic about future with regular practice. A 10 day course is not enough to master this technique, but rewards are there at every step. Let me know, what do you think about this in comments. And as always, Thanks for reading :) "},{"title":"Ubuntu on a legacy laptop without HDD","url":"/blog/ubuntu-on-a-legacy-laptop-without-hdd.html","date":"2014-05-14 00:45:00 +0530","categories":["technology"],"body":"I have a 6 year old legacy laptop with impaired battery, DVD drive and hard drive . It lay unused for over a year, but recently, I decided to use it like a full fledge Linux laptop. Here’s the screenshot of my laptop running the latest version of Firefox in Ubuntu 12.04 : Available options Since the hard drive and dvd drive is absent, available options include booting through USB or Network (PXE boot). USB is the easy and portable approach among the two. An external USB hard drive works well, just like the internal HDD. However, my legacy laptop was not able to detect my external HDD during boot. There are many live USB Linux options available online, but they have their own limitations. Live Linux works well with default configuration, but it gets really messy when personalized settings are saved. Here are some of the problems: Slow: Personalized settings make boot really slow over time. Unstable: The system may become unstable even with minor changes. Space utilization: Since personal settings are saved as new files, removing pre-installed packages also need space. Recovery: Recovering data, in case of system errors, may be difficult. Full Linux installation on pen drives Unlike windows, Linux can be easily installed on any USB drive. However, a full Linux installation on a pendrive may be sluggish due to slow write speed. The performance is even worse in case of an OS because it needs to deal with large no. of small files. I installed Ubuntu 12.04 on a 4 GB pendrive and was able to get good performance with few optimizations. Here are the list of optimizations that worked for me: Device Selection: A pendrive with a higher speed rating can make or break the user experience. Speed rating is generally better on devices with less space. I had a regular 32GB and a 4GB pen drive. First, I installed Ubuntu in 32GB. It two hours to install and 10 minutes to boot. The system was too slow and froze often. On the 4GB pen drive, it took one hour to install, but boot time was just 1 minute . The system was still slow, but usable. No Swap Partition: Writes on a swap partition on the same device may further reduce the read/write speed available for regular operations. If you really need to use swap in case of less available RAM , mount it on a different device. Desktop Environment: A lightweight desktop environment performs much better. I uninstalled the default Unity desktop environment and replaced it with LXDE . Web Browser: I tried different browsers and found that google chrome and chromium works best . Firefox and most lightweight browsers, viz.: midori, are slow and freeze often. Easy instructions for Ubuntu 12.04 Install Ubuntu on the pendrive just like a regular ubuntu installation. Download and execute the following shell script: Let me know your experience in comments. And as always, Thanks for reading :-) "},{"title":"Dikhao - Quickly find all related AWS resources","url":"/blog/dikhao-quickly-find-all-related-aws-resources.html","date":"2014-05-14 13:10:00 +0530","categories":["technology"],"body":"Dikhao is an open source project ( hosted in github ), to cache every EC2 and route53 resource, find relations between them, and provide really fast lookups. It can be installed as a python command line utility ( pip install dikhao ), deployed in Heroku and has a ready to use hubot plugin. Example search CLI command: $ batao -i route53.rohit.io Hubot bot in hipchat: @hubot batao route53.rohit.io Heroku application: http://<app_name>.herokuapp.com/lookup/route53.rohit.io Note: Key ‘route53.rohit.io’ can be anything from the configurable list of indexed items (written below). Output Route53 Details (210 secs ago): Name ttl Type Value route53.rohit.io. 300 CNAME ec2-54-162-144-108.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com elb1-dns.rohit.io. 600 A (Alias) blog-elb-993346533.us-west-1.elb.amazonaws.com. elb1-dns.rohit.io. 600 A (Alias) web-elb-1401441163.us-west-1.elb.amazonaws.com. EC2 Instance Details (265 secs ago): Property Value Instance ID i-e68e0cca State running EC2 DNS ec2-54-162-144-108.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com IP address 54.162.144.108 Region us-west-1 Zone us-west-1b Instance type m1.large Private IP address 10.201.136.202 Private DNS ip-10-201-136-202.us-west-1.compute.internal ELB names blog-elb,web-elb Elastic IP Details (261 secs ago): Elastic IP Instance ID 54.162.144.108 i-e68e0cca ELB Details (266 secs ago): Name ELB DNS Instance ID State blog-elb blog-elb-993346533.us-west-1.elb.amazonaws.com. i-e68e0cca InService i-e68kkbba InService i-52641cad OutOfService web-elb web-elb-1401441163.us-west-1.elb.amazonaws.com. i-e68e0cca InService i-e68kkbba InService i-52641cad OutOfService Installation CLI Tool dikhao is available for installation using PyPi. Once installed, it provides two commands: padho and batao . padho syncs all AWS details into redis and batao can be used for searching the same. (venv)$ pip install dikhao Heroku App Clone respsitory and use the automated install script install.sh . Manual install instructions: $ git clone git@github.com:rohit01/dikhao.git $ cd dikhao $ heroku create {app_name} -s cedar $ git push heroku master $ heroku addons:add rediscloud --app {app_name} $ heroku ps:scale web=1 #### Add credentials: #### $ heroku config:set AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID='<ACCESS-KEY>' $ heroku config:set AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY='<SECRET-KEY>' $ heroku config:set REDIS_HOST='<rediscloud-hostname>' $ heroku config:set REDIS_PORT_NO='<rediscloud-port>' $ heroku config:set REDIS_PASSWORD='<rediscloud-password>' $ heroku config:set PORT='80' Hubot Agent: Deploy dikhao as a Heroku app Add the Heroku application url in coffee script Integrate the coffee script in your existing hubot setup Current features Supported AWS services: EC2 - Instance, Elastic IP and ELB Route53 - All DNS types Search input value can be any one of the indexed item. Dikhao supports indexing based on the following ( configurable ): Route 53 - DNS record name Route 53 - DNS record value EC2 Instance - ID EC2 Instance - IP address EC2 Instance - Private IP address EC2 Instance - Public DNS EC2 Instance - Private DNS EC2 ELB - Name EC2 ELB - DNS EC2 - Elastic IP Provides many syncing options to help cater different needs. Few notable configurable options: NO_EC2 - If True, EC2 details will not be synced. Default: False NO_ROUTE53 - If True, Route53 details will not be synced. Default: False HOSTED_ZONES - List of comma separated hosted zone names to be synced. Default: all REGIONS - List of comma separated EC2 region names to be synced. Default: all EXPIRE_DURATION - Duration for which details are cached. Default: 86,400 seconds (1 Day) And as always, Thanks for reading :-) "},{"title":"Ansible is Awesome","url":"/blog/ansible-is-awesome.html","date":"2014-07-30 10:30:00 +0530","categories":["technology"],"body":"Since a couple of weeks, I have started using Ansible and am amazed with its awesomeness. In this short duration, I automated a bunch of items, read about best practices and found a lot of batteries/community projects. So, what really makes Ansible awesome? Features: Agentless : Unlike Puppet, Chef or Saltstack, there is no need to run an agent on the clients Secure : Uses native SSH for all communications between master and client Scalable : ‘ansible-pull’ is an advanced feature which has potential for very large deployments Ansible Facts : Systems data, such as IP address, OS, Disk space, etc. are available by default in the form of variables. It makes custom configuration and cloud deployments super easy Ansible Playbooks : Playbooks are like ansible code, usually writen for orchestration. These are YML files - Powerful and easy to understand Role : Ansible framework for writing playbooks in an organized structure Super Easy to get started: Installation: Using PyPI: (env) $ pip install ansible Pakage Manager: $ apt-get install ansible Hello world with ansible in just two steps: $ echo \"127.0.0.1\" > ansible_hosts $ ansible all -i ansible_hosts -m ping Batteries Included - Ansible modules Open-source project and under active development Change management: Ansible is intellegent in making changes only if it is necessary. This means, when you ask ansible to install a software, it will install it only if it is not installed. It also provides a special register method to trap the result in a variable. This variable can later be used in conditional statements to act differently. My playbooks written as per guidelines on best practices Github repository: https://github.com/rohit01/ansible-playbooks . This project provides a basic layout for building configuration management system using Ansible. Would love to hear your feedback in comments. And as always, Thanks for reading :-) "},{"title":"Contributing to Ansible is Super Easy","url":"/blog/contributing-to-ansible-is-super-easy.html","date":"2014-08-05 13:23:00 +0530","categories":["technology"],"body":"Just three days back, I thought about writing a SMS notification module and bingo, I was able to send a pull request , same day. I submitted a module named ‘plivo’ which allows sending SMS notification using Plivo services. The playbook examples are hosted here: https://github.com/rohit01/ansible-plivo-example . Writing an Ansible module, is pretty much a straight forward approach. Though ansible modules can be written in any language, I will stick to Python in this post. In Python, a module is generally a single file with 3 different parts: Documentation : This usually takes up the most number of lines Logic : The real programming logic to perform the task Ansible framework : Ansible provides some really useful classes and functions to help you in this process Documentation Ansible is designed to read two global variables and generate documentation. These are: Documentation : A multiline string literal and a valid YAML document. It contains the detailed description of module we see using the command ansible-doc <module_name> or at docs.ansible.com . Examples : A multiline string literal and a valid YAML document. It demonstrates the sample usage of module. Logic Logic is the programatic way to perform the task. It uses various resources provided by Ansible. These resources may include the arguments passed to module, ssh connection to host, cloud resources such as AWS, GAE, and many more. Ansible will connect to the host only if logic requires the same. For example, a notification module does not connect to the host for sending SMS, email, etc. Ansible Framework Ansible modules usually import a bunch of utilities to perform its task. The basic utilities are generally imported by all modules using the following import statement: from ansible.module_utils.basic import * Lets write a simple module Module to return a configurable string and control success status: And the examples to use this module is also simple: - echo: name=\"Hello World!\" - echo: name=\"Success is Yes\" success=yes - echo: name=\"Success is No\" success=no Write your own module Now that you know some basics, why not write something on your own. For more details on developing modules, I highly recommend the following: Check some real module related to the one you are writing. Ansible modules are hosted here Visit the Ansible documentation on developing modules Find Ansible utilities you may like to re-use. You can find them here Share what you want to write and feedback in comments. And as always, Thanks for reading :-) "},{"title":"Not Just Another Independence Day","url":"/blog/not-just-another-independence-day.html","date":"2014-08-18 03:35:00 +0530","categories":["social"],"body":"My alarm rang with a musical note, I turned it off and saw it’s 4:15 in the morning. Surprisingly, my friend was already awake and I wished him Good Morning , he replied Jai Hind . This was the start and it certainly set the mood for making it Not Just Another Independence Day ! It was 5:20 and we, the three idiots, were out in a patriotic mood to celebrate the national festival. We reached the MG Road metro station and found it already awake before 6 AM. My friend asked for a ticket to Chandni Chowk but instead, received a free travel coupon. The person at the ticket counter said that today the ride to Chandni Chowk is Free . It was 5:52 and we boarded the metro, but got no seats. It was easy to spot people with tricolor badge, traditional dress and young groups discussing national policies. I felt that my nation is now awake and ready to change. We reached Chandni Chowk at 6:45 and contributed to the queue, already too long. CRPF jawans were deployed at the station and were managing the crowd really well. Someone screamed, Bharat Mata ki and everyone replied Jai . This slogan continued throughout our way to Red Fort. I was like, wow ! As we moved out of the Metro station, we saw the security arrangements. On our way to Red Fort, I saw Delhi police, CRPF jawans, SWAT team, NSG Black Cats, Snipers on roof tops and many more. They seemed to outnumber the number of civilians attending the event. At around 7:20, we were at the gallery and as expected, the seats were already full. I took a look around and saw that the Red Fort looked really beautiful, our national flag was flying all over the place, four giant screens displayed the venue live, Doordarshan had built high bamboo towers to cover the event live. Then, I heard someone saying, “Aaa gaya” (he came), I looked at the screen, our PM was here. People started clapping. Our PM was here with a style. The Jodhpuri turban was not less than a fashion statement. He gradually reached the stage. An army official shouted something really loud. I heard it clear at a distance of about 500m. Moments later, the PM pulled the rope and our National Flag was flying. But wait, something exploded, something really loud on my right. Is it a bomb?… Everyone trying to see. Phew, it is part of the 21 Gun Salute (Ekkess Topon Ki Salami). I was wondering, if this is the situation here, what would be like to be on a battlefield. After an awesome flag hosting moment, the PM reached the Mic. No bullet proof glass on his front, no scripts to read, the gallery is waiting silently, more than a million eyes glued to the television, birds flying above the fort, the tail of his turban flying like a flag and he starts his speech. An hour long speech, and what a speech. There was total silence among the audience and when someone spoke, it was to clarify his last words - Kya bola? ( What did he say? ). The audience also acknowledged most of his statements with a round of applause. The speech ended with loud, energetic slogans of Bharat Mata ki Jai and Jai Hind . Post this, the national anthem was played. This concluded the event, but we decided to leave a little late and saw the PM among cute children. After some time, we left the venue at around 9 AM and decided to try out the paratha from the world famous parathe wali gali . As we headed towards the same, we wondered if it was open. Most of the shops were closed and some people said the paratha shop usually opens at 10 AM and today, it might be closed. Determined to taste the lovely parathas, we moved against all odds. And finally, we were at the historic parathe wali gali . The paratha shops were open and the fragrance in the air was making us hungry. But wait, we need to wait… The shop is already full and there is a queue outside the shop. The board at one of the shops, reads - Oldest and famous, serving parathas through 5 generations. There were pictures of many famous personalities like Lal bahadur sastri , Indira Gandhi , Ranbir Kapoor , Akshay Kumar , Sheila Dikshit and many more. In the pictures, parathas were being served to all, but… we need to wait!! Finally, hamara number aa gaya (it was our turn). The menu looked like a sabzi market with paratha after every vegetable name. You name it and it’s there. Aloo, tomato, gobi, muli, etc + some strange ones too like rabri paratha. The menu also revealed, its India at its best with the most affordable rates . The table had some free munchies and parathas were served well on time. We ate like pigs and then ordered lassi from another shop. The lassi was served on a kulhad (glass made of clay) with a slice of Malai (cream of milk) on top. It was the best Lassi I ever had in my life. Post this we headed towards the metro station. It was again, over crowded, but CRPF jawans managed it really well. In the metro, a person caught our attention as he was carrying a box of Bengali sweets. He was formally dressed in grey pants and light colored shirt. After some time, he joined our conversation about PM’s speech. I asked him if he went to the Red Fort and he replied, “ No. I went to the office for the flag hosting ceremony. This time, everybody was present. Instructions were given that if anyone is absent, his/her accountability will be checked ”. He cherished the PM’s initiative on punctuality but revealed that some government officials are unhappy about it. Once we reached home, we saw the news channels analyzing independence day speech, but we crashed on the bed sooner than expected! How did you celebrate the National Festival? Waiting to hear your answer and feedback in comments. And as always, Thanks for reading :-) "},{"title":"PythonExpress @ DSCE","url":"/blog/pythonexpress-dsce.html","date":"2014-09-08 01:45:00 +0530","categories":["technology"],"body":"Spent an exciting weekend with college students of Dayananda Sagar College of Engineering (DSCE), Bangalore. They conducted a python workshop on 6-7 Sept, 2014 and invited me as a trainer (Thanks to pythonexpress ). Slides Python basics Data structures and functions Python development Thanks for Reading :-) "},{"title":"Why static blog site is a good idea!","url":"/blog/why-static-blog-site-is-a-good-idea.html","date":"2014-12-08 20:40:00 +0530","categories":["technology"],"body":"Starting a blog is fairly easy. There are many free blog hosting providers in the internet. However, each of them has some limitation on the level of customization. So, I decided to host it myself and figure out the best alternative. First Steps These were the first steps, I took while starting my blog - Simplicity : Domain : Domain is the most important identity of a blog. Free domains are mostly bound to a hosting provider and help them more than the owner. So, I decided to get a personal domain - rohit.io . Static vs Dynamic : Personal blogs are mostly static. Only blog posts get added every few days and comments by visitors. So, I decided to go with a static website generator - Jekyll . For comments, I added the Disqus plugin. Hosting provider : Github has support for hosting Jekyll websites. Plus, it’s highly reliable, zero maintenance and free. Problem solved! Design : The inbuilt theme of Jekyll is very basic. I searched few Jekyll websites and decide to reuse this one: http://rsms.me / https://github.com/rsms/rsms.github.com . Source code was under creative commons license (friendly). Search : Google custom search engine was already configured in the code. I updated the same to point to Simplicity blog. Google Analytics : This was, again, already configured in the code. Updated the same with the ID generated for Simplicity . Next Steps I had a decent blog site. However, there were some unsolved problems like SEO, social plugins, link share previews, etc. Since, the website source code was not mine, it was difficult to fix. I did a complete revamp of the website to fix this. Post this, I was able to solve the following problems: SEO : Learned about SEO stuff and handled most of the meta tags as per standard. Page Speed : Google PageSpeed Insight tool is a fantastic tool. It helped me to improve the website structure. I also integrated cloudflare CDN to improve latency. The score of Simplicity in PageSpeed Insight tool is now 96/100 :-D Twitter card : Added twitter card support for previews in twitter for links. The Open Graph protocol : Added open graph related tags. This is used by Facebook and Linkedin for generating link previews. Search : Google CSE depends on Google indexing + the search results were displayed at google website. I wanted to have an in-house search feature. I found this awesome Jekyll plugin: jekyll lunr js search Google Analytics : The bounce rate at home page was reduced to almost half. This was a bonus :-) Gyaan : Static websites are great. Page load times are great. Hosting is free, reliable and scalable. 100% customization is possible. Basic dynamic features can be worked out using javascript. However, in the initial stages, it require’s a lot of development effort. Changing themes is also a pain. The source code of Simplicity is available here . And as always, Thanks for Reading :-) "},{"title":"RIP Nagios. Hello Docker Shinken!","url":"/blog/rip-nagios-hello-docker-shinken.html","date":"2014-12-18 18:00:00 +0530","categories":["technology"],"body":"Nagios is a great IT infrastructure monitoring tool. Some people still consider it as an IT standard for monitoring. But as with any software, there is always competition. I personally find Shinken to be one of the most compatible, modern and dare I say, a better alternative to Nagios. In this post, I will do a quick comparison between the two tools, show you reasons to migrate and more importantly how to migrate your current Nagios setup to Shinken in less than 10 minutes! No, seriously! Quick Introduction to Shinken : Shinken was written by Jean Gabès as a proof of concept for a new Nagios architecture. He proposed it as the new development branch of Nagios 4. When this proposal was turned down by Nagios authors, Shinken became an independent network monitoring software application compatible with Nagios. Shinken is basically a Nagios Core replacement written in python. Shinken vs Nagios: At Knowlarity , we did the big switch from Nagios to Shinken for our complete infrastructure in just about a week. Having used both Nagios and Shinken now, I can tell you how Shinken has helped solve some of the fundamental problems which we faced using Nagios. Reliability : I was working on a NRPE notification plugin and deployed it in Nagios. I turned down a service to test it, but to my surprise Nagios was showing the status as OK (green). The last executed time got updated in the UI but nothing happened under the hood. It was a random issue and I suspect it could have been because of a old version of Nagios 3.x. I have been using Shinken for a while now (even before the migration in Knowlarity), and I have never once faced these sort of issues. The UI always displays the truth. Active Development : I updated Nagios to the latest 4.x. The first impression was that nothing had changed except for the colors in the user interface. In contrast, the complete architecture of Shinken 2.0 has been revamped. It has a modular design, and easy installation, and configuration features. Kudos to the Shinken community. Multi DC deployment : At Knowlarity, we have data-centers in multiple cities across multiple countries. It is a known fact that multi-DC deployment using Nagios is first of all difficult, and looks like a hack when deployed. In comparison, Shinken’s distributed architecture is amazingly simple. All of Shinken’s configuration is still managed in a single place. Here you just add a new shinken-poller in all your data centers and voila, you’re done. Performance : Nagios is written in C and is a lot faster than Shinken. However, Shinken has some exciting performance improvement modules like booster-nrpe . Modern : As opposed to Nagios tired old features, Shinken has support for dynamic configuration, AWS hosts, a module installer and many more rich support features. The Shinken community is very active and responsive. User Interface : The Nagios UI, albeit old, is very feature rich. Shinken has a sleek and modern interface - WebUI. WebUI is really easy to use but lack features. However, there are many third party interfaces available. I like to use WebUI and Thruk at the same time. Thruk interface is similar to that of Nagios. So hardcore Nagios users will still feel at home. Easy Switch : Probably the best thing about shinken is that it is like a plug and play replacement of Nagios core. Almost 100% compatible. Just dump your Nagios configuration in Shinken and it works. Take a look at their documentation for more details: Feature comparison between Shinken and Nagios Switch to Shinken in 3 easy steps: Install docker . Select and pull one of the following docker image: Shinken : It has basic shinken installation along with few must have modules like WebUI (Web Interface), standard nrpe plugins plus a few extra ones, nrpe-booster support and a lightweight web server (nginx). Link: https://registry.hub.docker.com/u/rohit01/shinken/ Shinken Thruk : Shinken (as written above) + Thruk web interface. Internal web server nginx is replaced with apache2. Link: https://registry.hub.docker.com/u/rohit01/shinken_thruk/ Shinken Thruk Graphite : Shinken Thruk (as written above) + graph support in WebUI. Graphs are stored and served using graphite. Retention is configured for 1 month on a per 2 minute basis. Link: https://registry.hub.docker.com/u/rohit01/shinken_thruk_graphite/ Sample execution: $ sudo docker pull rohit01/shinken Clone project docker_shinken . You will see three directories corresponding to the docker images mentioned above. Go inside the directory corresponding to your selected image. You will see a directory named: custom_configs/ . Dump your Nagios configuration here. A default configuration for monitoring docker host is already defined. User login details can be updated in file: htpasswd.users . File contains the documentation in comments. Run the docker image. Expose TCP port 80 to the base machine and mount custom_configs directory to /etc/shinken/custom_configs. Sample execution: $ git clone https://github.com/rohit01/docker_shinken.git $ cd docker_shinken/shinken_basic $ sudo docker run -d -v \"$(pwd)/custom_configs:/etc/shinken/custom_configs\" -p 80:80 rohit01/shinken Open your browser and visit these urls (Default credential - admin/admin): WebUI : http://localhost/ . Available on all three images. Thruk UI : http://localhost/thruk/ . Available on shinken_thruk and shinken_thruk_graphite images. Graphs : http://localhost/service/docker_shinken/http_port_7770#graphs . Available only on shinken_thruk_graphite image. Please Note: Configuration changes are required only in one place/directory: custom_configs The nrpe plugins installation directory is /usr/lib/nagios/plugins. If you are using custom NRPE plugins, mount your plugins directory inside docker container at /usr/local/custom_plugins. Modify the resource path accordingly. If you have any question, I will be happy to answer them in comments. And as always, Thanks for reading :) "}]}