Category Archives: Session/Workshop/Talk

Bangalore IndiBlogger Meet – 2009

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This post is coming in a bit late. Infact too late. But hey, better late than never.

Ok here is the detail,  today, i.e., 28th Feb 2009, IndiBlogger is holding a bloggers meet at the Microsoft Signature Building at Embassy Golf Links, Domlur. For outstation guys who are wondering where Domlur is, its in Bangalore.

Details

Scheduled: 28/02/2009 at 15:00
Venue: Microsoft Signature Building, Microsoft India Pvt. Ltd., Embassy Golf Links, Intermediate Ring Road, Domlur, Bangalore – 560071

More details at this link..

There is going to be a discussion on Blogging rights driven by Mutiny.in. This should be interesting, given the fact that there is a lot of activity revolving round the latest ruling by the Supreme Court.

28/02/2009 at 15:00
blogger meeting Bangalore IndiBlogger Meet 2009
Bangalore IndiBlogger Meet 2009

proto.in – Breeding the New Indian CEOs

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logo proto.in Breeding the New Indian CEOsLast day me and Ujj, a fellow mutineer, was at the Nimhans Convention Center for Proto.in, the startup event. The reach that event had on each of the participants and the people gathered there was quite profound. I have been to quite a lot of conferences and un-conferences, but this one was nothing like the ones i had ever been to. The talent that this event show cased, the ideas that flowed, the success stories that were shared, the new avenues that were opened up for many was quite, let me say it this way, impressive!!!

I vividly recollect telling Ujj, after the event that, i quite didnt know that there were so many smart geniuses in India. Generally when i hear the word start-up the picture that i frame is one of a bunch of people who are sitting in a room and rolling out a service on the internet and minting money(well, if they are lucky). So i wanted to see if there was anyone else who was running a non -IT based, non-internet business. Yes indeed there are, and as it turns out the Healthcare and Wellness sector in India is yet to be tapped to its potential.

I was in for “The Proto.in ShowCase”, where a bunch of start-ups, that were selected on the basis of their trend-setting status, were asked to showcase their product in 6min. Here is a list -

  • Nualgi – Kadambari Consultants.
  • Remindo – an office social-networking site
  • Ooha Kiosk Infrastructure – Ooha Services Pvt. Ltd.
  • InkFruit – Fingerprints Fashions Pvt. Ltd
  • Fachak – Youtube, Flickr, Scribd, Slideshare searches all rolled into one
  • Taroby – Advanced Millennium Technologies – Web 2.0 based Messaging Solution

So if u thought it was all about show casing you company and product, you’re wrong. The day’s keynote address was by Bob Young, and yes it was really interesting to hear him speak and the way he ended up in having the worlds largest collection on bad poems online icon smile proto.in Breeding the New Indian CEOs . Sandeep Singhal, Nexus Capital, had a very interesting conversation with the audience on – Thinking Beyond Mobile and Internet. It was here that he pointed out that, yes there can be successful startups outside the mobile and internet sphere.

At the end of the day as i was leaving i realized that, what we need is not more and more conferences on diverse topics, but conventions like Proto.in, where the best in everyone, from the organisers, to the speakers, to the participants, to the techies like me (to the good food and the crowd), are exposed.

I’m looking forward for the next Proto.in.

Telnet Scripting Tool a.k.a TST10.exe

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I have been thinking for a long time that i need to write about this tool that i found. Its quite interesting that this tool is really helpful in automating many of the routine sessions that i as a tester came across. This is by far the best automation tool that i found for telnet sessions.

Imagine these scenarios :

  • You need to do BSO authentications frequently when you switch networks
  • Get intermittent logs from the server for analysis
  • Run automated tests on remote systems (something which i have started to call as run-and-forget)
  • stuck in traffic…no way

Lets get into what this tool is and how to use it.

The tool is for windows (one of the things that i felt bad). To make use of this tool, u will need the exe file, i.e., tst10.exe and an input commands file. The input file will has the first line as the hostname/IP and port, which is followed by alternating SEND and WAIT commands.

Consider this example. I need to connect to a server of IP – 192.168.1.100, where a telnet service is running at PORT – 2300. This is how my script/input file will look like :

192.168.1.100 2300
SEND "\m"
WAIT "login:"
SEND "admin\m"
WAIT "Password:"
SEND "admin1\m"
WAIT "s1#"
SEND "co\m"
WAIT "s1(config)#"
SEND "show load; show cpu\m"
WAIT "s1(config)#"

“\m” = \n in C/PERL/Java/most programming langunages = CR or in non-techie terms “Enter”. SEND, sends the commands to be executed and the WAIT that follows tried to match the string in the output of the SEND commands before it.

How to run it?. There are 2 ways to do it. You can open up the command prompt navigate to the directory where the files are and then issue this command -

tst10.exe /r:IN /o:OUT

where IN is the input file and OUT stores the complete output of the session, so that you can skim through the file and have a look at what happened. OR, put the command in a batch file and double click it every time you need to run it.

Here is the screen capture -

tst10 Telnet Scripting Tool a.k.a TST10.exe

TST10 Screen Capture

How is it different from Net::Telnet module of Perl or something similar in TCL or Python? Think about it.

  • Time to write the code – 30min to ? depending upon how complex the situation is
  • Trying to match the output to with REGEX, which means that you need to spend time in coming up with the right regex. Now you have 2 problems in hand
  • Testing time to make sure that the script is robust enough

So this is perfect! NO. This doesn’t work for ssh sessions. Since telnet is getting substituted by ssh in most of the servers due to the secure nature of the connection its kind of difficult to fit it in a normal installation of Linux. I’m not sure about the telnet-ssh thingie happening in Solaris or any of the other servers.

Is there something like this for Linux? icon sad Telnet Scripting Tool a.k.a TST10.exe No. Hey, but look at it this way. Its some relief for us on windows platform for scripting.

You can build complex automatons with this combined with a little bit of Perl and Outlook. Here is one typical scenario that i made and which i have presented as a white-paper.

  • Outlook has a setting that detects for incoming mails with a specific subject line.
  • When the mail comes it evokes a Perl script.
  • The Perl script will go ahead an call the TST’s batch file, which initiates the TST10 session, connects to the remote server starts/runs the automation. The output will be stored in OUT file
  • The Perl script will skim the OUT file for any errors reported during the run.
  • Then it calls an FTP script that will go ahead and get the log files from the remote system
  • The log files are read, the results extracted and neatly formatted into mail and send to the required email-ids

icon smile Telnet Scripting Tool a.k.a TST10.exe sounds complex, but this script gave me enough time to hut for a new job and quit the previous employer.

Who wrote this? Someone by the name of Albert Yale. His home page is – http://ay.home.ml.org/, sadly the site is no longer online.

What happened to the white-paper? It got rejected icon wink Telnet Scripting Tool a.k.a TST10.exe , humor was not the order of the day.

Download TST10 : tst10.exe | tst10.zip