Installing Icinga-2 Monitoring Tool on Ubuntu

In this tutorial, we will install an open source monitoring system ICINGA2, on ubuntu 14.04. Firstly we will configure some basic configuration to monitor network and services of host resources via the web interface.
We would be needing one server and no. of clients that we want to monitor. Here we are using Icinga version 2.x. Icinga Monitoring tool is completely plug-in based.

Why this tutorial?

I know there are some official tutorials available for its installation, but here are some tweaks which will make your work easier.

So lets begin.

Step 1: Add the Icinga repository and install icinga2.

# add-apt-repository ppa:formorer/icinga
# apt-get update
# apt-get install icinga2

Step 2: Install MySQL and client.

# apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client

Step 3: Install icinga database.

# apt-get install icinga2-ido-mysql

Step 4: Login in MySQL and create a database for storing data.

CREATE DATABASE icinga;
GRANT SELECT, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, DROP, CREATE VIEW, INDEX, EXECUTE ON icinga.* TO 'icinga'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'icinga';
quit 

Step 5: Enable livestatus feature and restart Icinga deamon.

# icinga2 feature enable livestatus
# service icinga2 restart

Step 6: Add user to the group for permissions.

# usermod -a -G nagios www-data

Step 7: Enable compat log and database feature and restart Icinga.

# icinga2 feature enable compatlog
# icinga2 feature enable ido-mysql
# icinga2 feature enable command
# service icinga2 restart

“Installation of Icinga is complete now we have to install web interface of Icinga.”

Step 1: Clone Icinga web repository from Github.

# git clone git://git.icinga.org/icingaweb2.git

Step 2: Move cloned directory to /usr/share/icingaweb and navigate to it.

# mv icingaweb2 /usr/share/icingaweb
# cd /usr/share/icingaweb

Step 3: Install lamp server

# tasksel install lamp-server

Step 4: Configure apache, run the following command and copy paste the generated output in sites-enabled.

# ./bin/icingacli setup config webserver apache --document-root /usr/share/icingaweb/public
# service apache2 restart
# a2enmod rewrite
# service apache2 restart

Step 5: Create a directory in which icinga web will keep all of its authentication files

# mkdir /etc/icingaweb2

Step 6: Change its permission to 777

 # chmod 777 -R /etc/icingaweb2

Step 7: Open your browser and navigate to localhost/icingaweb2/setup.

It will ask for setup token, you can  generate it by running the following command on the terminal.

su www-data --shell=/bin/bash -c "mkdir -m 2770 /etc/icingaweb2; head -c 12 /dev/urandom | base64 | tee /etc/icingaweb2/setup.token; chmod 0660 /etc/icingaweb2/setup.token;";

In next screen it will be asking to resolve some problems like, time zone and some php dependencies, change time zone to “Asia/Kolkata” in /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini file 

Step 8: Resolve php dependencies.

# apt-get install php5-ldap
# service apache2 restart
# apt-get install php5-intl
# apt-get install php5-gd php5-imagick
# service apache2 restart 

“Congratulations! You have successfully setup Icinga2 on your system.”

Now our main task is to check services running on our remote host(client), for that we can download require plugin from 

[1] : https://exchange.icinga.org/

[2] : https://wiki.icinga.org/

Download the require plugin and store it in /usr/lib/nagios/plugins.

Add execute permission to it

# chmod +x /var//lib/nagios/plugins/<filemame>

For using particular plugin, you have define its command in /etc/icinga2/conf.d/commands.conf

object CheckCommand "<identification name>"{
        import "plugin-check-command"
        command = [ PluginDir + "/<file name stored in plugin directory>" ]
        arguments = {
                /*define all require arguments*/
                "-H" = "$address$"
            }
    }

Configuring /etc/icinga2/conf.d/services.conf  for using it for the host you want to monitor.

apply Service "<name you want to display for this service on interface>" {
  import "generic-service"
  check_command = "identification name"
  assign where host.name == "icinga-3"
}

Now we have to define our host named icinga-3 in /etc/icinga2/conf.d/host.conf

object Host "icinga-3" {
        import "generic-host"
        address = "address of host"
}

Open your web browser and navigate to Icinga web interface and you can see the monitoring data on the interface 😉

Installing Icinga Monitoring Tool on Ubuntu

In this tutorial, we will install an open source monitoring system ICINGA, on ubuntu 14.04. Firstly we will configure some basic configuration to monitor network and services of host resources via the web interface.
We would be needing one server and no. of clients that we want to monitor. Here we are using Icinga version 1.x. Icinga Monitoring tool is completely plug-in based

With this guide we will end up with

• Icinga and the plugins will be installed underneath /usr/local/icinga
• Icinga will be configured to monitor a few aspects of your local system (CPu load, disk usage, etc.)
• The Icinga classic web interface will be accessible at http://localhost/icinga/ or http://yourdomain.com/icinga
• Icinga will be configured to monitor a few aspects of your local system and remote host (CPU load, disk usage, etc.)
• The Icinga classic web interface will be accessible at http://localhost/icinga/ or http://yourdomain.com/icinga

On Remote Host:

Installing require packages on server

#> apt-get install apache2 build-essential libgd2-xpm-dev
#> apt-get install libjpeg62 libjpeg62-dev libpng12 libpng12-dev
#> apt-get install snmp libsnmp5-dev
#> apt-get install openssl openssl-devel
#> apt-get install libssl-*
#> apt-get install libjpeg-devel libpng libpng-devel
#> apt-get install libjpeg-turbo

• Create account information:Become the root user.

   $> su -l

  Create a new icinga user account and give it a password:

   #> /usr/sbin/useradd nagios
   #> passwd nagios

  Make a new directory to keep all downloads underneath

  #cd Downloads

  Install nagios plugin

  #wget http://nagios-plugins.org/download/nagios-plugins-2.0.3.tar.gz
  #tar -xvzf nagios-plugins-2.0.3.tar.gz 
  #cd nagios-plugins-2.0.3/
  #./configure
  #make
  #make install

  The permission on the plugin directory  and the plugins will need to be fixed at this point, so run the following commands.

  #chown nagios.nagios /usr/local/nagios
  #chown -R nagios.nagios /usr/local/nagios/libexec

  Install xinetd

  #apt-get install xinetd

  Download, compile and install NRPE daemon

  #wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/nagios/files/nrpe-2.x/nrpe-2.15/nrpe-2.15.tar.gz -O nrpe.tgz
  #tar -xzvf nrpe.tgz
  #cd nrpe
  #./configure --with-ssl=/usr/bin/openssl --with-ssl-lib=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu --enable-ssl
  #make all -w
  #make install-plugin
  #make install-daemon
  #make install-daemon-config
  #vim /usr/local/nagios/etc/nrpe 
  allowed_hosts = 127.0.0.1 <server ip> 
  #vim /etc/xinetd.d/nrpe
  only_from = 127.0.0.1 <server ip> 
  #vim /etc/services
  nrpe    5666/tcp

  Open Firewall

  #iptables -I INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 5666 -j ACCEPT 
  #sudo iptables -v -n -x -L

On Server Side:

Installing require packages on server

#> apt-get install apache2 build-essential libgd2-xpm-dev
#> apt-get install libjpeg62 libjpeg62-dev libpng12 libpng12-dev
#> apt-get install snmp libsnmp5-dev
#> apt-get install openssl openssl-devel
#> apt-get install libssl-*
#> apt-get install libjpeg-devel libpng libpng-devel
#> apt-get install libjpeg-turbo

Become the root user.

 $> su -l

We will need to install Postfix for mail services, I suggest you go to though this guide to set up a mail server https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-and-setup-postfix-on-ubuntu-14-04

Create a new icinga user account and give it a password:

 #> /usr/sbin/useradd -m icinga 
 #> passwd icinga

On some distributions you’ll need to add the group in a single step:

 #> /usr/sbin/groupadd icinga

For sending commands from the classic web interface to Icinga, you’ll need to create a new group icinga-cmd. Add the webuser and the Icinga user to this group:

 #> /usr/sbin/groupadd icinga-cmd
 #> /usr/sbin/usermod -a -G icinga-cmd icinga
 #> /usr/sbin/usermod -a -G icinga-cmd www-data

(or www, wwwrun, apache, depending on the distribution)

Change to your local source directory i.e. /usr/src

 #> cd /usr/src

Get the current source from the Icinga Website.

Don’t forget to download the Monitoring Plugins.

or you can directly install by adding its ppa.

# add-apt-repository ppa:formorer/icinga
# apt-get update
# apt-get install icinga icinga-doc icinga-idoutils mysql-server libdbd-mysql mysql-client
or
# apt-get install icinga icinga-doc icinga-idoutils postgresql libdbd-pgsql postgresql-client

Now you will be presented with a series of prompts regarding your Icinga installation. Here is a list of the prompts, and how you should answer them:

• MySQL Configuration: Enter a new MySQL root user password
• PostFix Configuration: Select “Internet Site”
• PostFix Configuration: Enter your Fully Qualified Domain Name (example.com, for example)
• Configuring icinga-cgi: Enter “icingaadmin” user’s password (login to access Icinga).
• Configuring icinga-common: Enter “No” to enabling external commands
• Configuring icinga-idoutils: Enter “Yes” to configuring database for icinga-idoutils with dbconfig-common
• Configuring icinga-idoutils: Select “mysql” as the database type
• Configuring icinga-idoutils: Enter MySQL root password (that you just assigned above)
• Configuring icinga-idoutils: Enter a new icinga-idoutils database user password

Plugins

# apt-get install nagios-plugins

Download monitoring plugins, compile and install them.

#wget https://www.monitoring-plugins.org/download/monitoring-plugins-2.1.1.tar.gz
#tar xvzf monitoring-plugins-2.1.1.tar.gz
#cd monitoring-plugins-2.1.1/
#./configure --prefix=/usr/local/icinga --with-cgiurl=/icinga/cgi-bin --with-nagios-user=icinga --with-nagios-group=icinga
#make
#make install
#setenforce 0

Once you have defined the necessary contexts you have to apply the settings:

#chcon -R /usr/local/icinga/sbin
#chcon -R /usr/local/icinga/share
#chcon -R /usr/local/icinga/var/rw
#update-rc.d icinga defaults

Enable ido2db Daemon

# vim /etc/default/icinga
IDO2DB=yes
# service ido2db start

In order to check the enabled status on ido2db startup, use

# sh -x /etc/init.d/ido2db start | grep IDO2DB

Enable idomod module

Check whether this has already been done in /etc/icinga/modules/idoutils.cfg. If not, copy the sample config over and restart Icinga to load the module. (Tip – if icinga.cfg does not contain cfg_dir=/etc/icinga/modules the config won’t be included!).

# cp /usr/share/doc/icinga-idoutils/examples/idoutils.cfg-sample /etc/icinga/modules/idoutils.cfg
# service icinga restart

Check your icinga log and/or syslog to verify that Icinga with idomod has been started, as well as idomod has successfully connected to ido2db.

Enable external commands

If you were not asked during package install, do it manually.

# vim /etc/icinga/icinga.cfg
check_external_commands=1
 
# service icinga stop
# dpkg-statoverride --update --add nagios www-data 2710 /var/lib/icinga/rw
# dpkg-statoverride --update --add nagios nagios 751 /var/lib/icinga
# service icinga start 
# update-rc.d icinga defaults

Classic UI Authentication

The authorization is stored within  /etc/icinga/htpasswd.users – new users can be added with the following command

# htpasswd /etc/icinga/htpasswd.users <username>

start icinga

#/etc/init.d/icinga start

Make sure your system’s firewall rules are configured to allow access to the web server if you want to access the Icinga classic interface remotely.

#iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT

Accessing the Icinga User Interface

Go to http://yourhost/icinga, and log in using the icingaadmin login that you set up during the Icinga installation.

You should see that Icinga is monitoring one host, localhost (your Icinga server), and seven services, like this:

The top row shows that the single monitored host is “Up”, and the bottom row shows that there are seven “OK” monitored services.

If the status of localhost is “Down”, you might need to change the permissions of your ping command. Run the following command to allow the nagios user to use the ping command:

sudo chmod u+s `which ping`

Let’s add more hosts and services to be monitored!

Congratulation! you are done with installation of Icinga on your server system. But you are not done yet. There is still more to go 🙂

Now on Monitoring Host (Server) we have to do following tasks:

• Install check_nrpe plugin
• Create Nagios command defination for using the check_nrpe plugin
• Create Nagios host and service definitions for monitoring the remote host

Installing NRPE addon:

Design Overview:

We can configure NRPE plugin on remote host using two ways:

• Download and compile tarball of nrpe plugin
• Install it from available packages

I have mentioned both the ways, go with one you like the most.

WAY 1:

make a Downloads directory anywhere in file system so that we can keep all downloads at same place. Suppose I have made a directory at /Downloads

#> cd Downloads

Instead of installing NRPE from scratch you may want to use a package which might be available for your OS.

If you are planning to install from source then please use the official release tarball using something like

#> wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/nagios/files/nrpe-2.x/nrpe-2.15/nrpe-2.15.tar.gz -O nrpe.tgz
#> tar xzf nrpe.tgz
#> cd nrpe
#> ./configure --with-ssl=/usr/bin/openssl --with-ssl-lib=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu --enable-ssl
#>  make all
#> make install-plugin

Test communication with the NRPE daemon

Make sure that the nrpe_check plugin can communicate with NRPE daemon on the remote host

#/usr/local/nagios/libexec/check_nrpe -H <remote host address>

 you should get back a string that will tell you what version of NRPE is installed on remote host

 Create a command defination

#vim /etc/icinga/commands.cfg

add the following definition to file

 

 define command{
        command_name check_nrpe
        command_line    $USER1$/check_nrpe -H $HOSTADDRESS$ -c $ARG1$
        }

now navigate to

#cd /etc/icinga/objects/
#cp localhost_icinga.cfg ./yourhost.cfg

localhost_icinga.cfg contains the definition to get status of services running on our localhost. We can use same configuration and modify them to get services status of our remote host.

#vim yourhost.cfg

replace host_name with your remote host name(any name), and address with IP address of the remote host which you want to monitor. And then define all services related to that hostname.

# 

define host{
        use                     generic-host            ; Name of host template to use
        host_name               remotehost
        alias                   icinga-2
        address                 <remote host IP address>
        }

# Define a service to check the disk space of the root partition
# on the local machine.  Warning if < 20% free, critical if
# < 10% free space on partition.

define service{
        use                             generic-service 
        host_name                       remotehost
        service_description             Disk Space
        check_command                   check_all_disks!20%!10%
        }



# Define a service to check the number of currently logged in
# users on the local machine.  Warning if > 20 users, critical
# if > 50 users.

define service{
        use                             generic-service 
        host_name                       remotehost
        service_description             Current Users
        check_command                   check_users!20!50
        }


# Define a service to check the number of currently running procs
# on the local machine.  Warning if > 250 processes, critical if
# > 400 processes.

define service{
        use                             generic-service 
        host_name                       remotehost
        service_description             Total Processes
                check_command                   check_procs!250!400
        }



# Define a service to check the load on the local machine. 
define service{
        use                             generic-service 
        host_name                       remotehost
        service_description             Current Load
                check_command                   check_load!5.0!4.0!3.0!10.0!6.0!4.0
        }

copy all code inside it and paste same code at the end of same file, here the code you have copied is giving you details of your localhost and now we will modify it to give us information regarding our remote machine.

Restart your xinetd and icinga service

#service xinetd restart
#service icinga restart

WAY 2

We will be using NRPE as our agent to gather remote host data for Icinga.

Installing NRPE on a Remote Host:

#sudo apt install nagios-plugins nagios-nrpe-serve

and modify it with same aforementioned procedure.

===========================================================================================

References:

https://wiki.icinga.org/display/howtos/Setting+up+Icinga+with+IDOUtils+on+Ubuntu

Click to access NRPE.pdf

Webathon @ ACEIT Jaipur

‘’Gaining knowledge is the first step to wisdom. Sharing it, is the first step to humanity’’ with this idea in minds, our team at Arya College of Engineering & I.T. heralded the first ‘Hands on session’ workshop on  HTML, CSS and brief about JS.

The workshop was suddenly announced for all the students of CS-A(II yr.).

The students were filled with joy and happiness, when they told that they are going for the exciting and learning session instead of their boring lectures. All the students gathered in the computer lab, switched on their terminals and were ready to experience a roller-coaster ride with the team. This event was done with the collaboration with Google Club at Arya College. The session started at around 9 A.M. with little briefing about the Google Team and the agenda of workshop.

Starting with the workshop me and Ashwin introduced students to Google Club and Firefox Club i.e OpenMoz and informed them about various opportunities that they can gain with the help of this club. Students were very excited to know about various internship and scholarships program provided by these organization. Team told them about all the internship programs and all the opportunities they can receive from Google and also informed them about all the skills they needed to have benefits of these internship programs. I also told them about that how this workshop can help them to contribute in Firefox OS, in continuing with that I give them a brief about Firefox OS and show them how awesome things can be done through Web Technologies. Students were really excited to create their application for Firefox OS so that all users can use their apps. But for that they must have some knowledge of web Technologies.

So me along with Ayush started introducing them with HTML. Students really showed their interest in learning HTML throughly. The most important thing was that the participant were really very interactive so they cleared all doubts at instance.
As it was a completely Hands On Session so they loved it to implement what they had learned and made their own web pages with their own design.

The session became much more interactive and interesting when they were presented swags and gifts for being inquisitive towards HTML. All the volunteers were very helpful during the entire session.

Interest among students was boost up when we showed the magic of CSS in workshop. The student implemented all concept and loved CSS too much that they were not willing to leave class as there is no end of CSS.

The best thing about the workshop was that all the students felt relaxed, free and were at ease to ask any kinds of doubts from the seniors while they are always a bit hesitant in front of the teacher. We also provided them many more tutorials for further more depth knowledge about the topics. Some practice links were provide to students so that they can work on it and also promise them to have a session on Firefox OS application Development as soon as they got much familiar with Web tools.

The session wrapped up at around 4PM, with the promise of meeting soon to learning many new things in the future because we must “Never stop learning because life never stops teaching”.

In the end I wanna Thanks my team for making it a great success, because without their help this event was not possible.

 

Doing Good Is Part Of Our Code

Glance of GSA Summit India

“Sometimes we dream beautifully but sometimes life becomes a beautiful dream”

177 GSA’s from all across India experienced something akin. When we backpacked our little knowledge of the world and embarked the enlightening journey of GSA-PUNE SUMMIT 2014.

Selecting as a Google Student Ambassador is as a dream come true. The day I got a confirmation mail on selecting as a GSA 2014 I was surprised and kept on confirming with other that whether this mail was authentic or not? 😛 . Seriously I was at cloud no. 9 when I got assured about my selection. The Journey begins with the Google India Summit at PUNE from 28-31 August 2014.

Day 1:

It was the day I woke up early (I usually don’t wake up early unless there is an exam.) as I was too excited to meet other GSA from north India at Delhi Airport. I reached airport early in the morning and met all GSAs from different places who were having boarding from Delhi and after sometime we all departed for Pune. Google India has managed our stay at Infosys campus, Pune. Thanks to SaltMarch team for providing such awesome facilities.

We all were welcomed and team provided us our Ids and key.

We all checked in our room at campus, like the campus room were awesome too. Here is a glimpse of my room.

We kept our luggage in room and rush towards dining area and had an awesome food of Pune (I am bit foodie :P) with variety of dishes and sweets (Yummy!). Then moved towards Seminar Hall, and everyone was pleased to see the beauty of the place. See it for your own eyes 🙂

Today,  I realized how self obsessed we are about photography and that  when it comes to taking “pics” one is either a professional model with a pose for every click or a professional photographer with greed to capture each moment. My favorite photography spot was the bean bag area and the youtube cut out. How perfectly was all that crafted and designed. Or rather how “Googly” was everything, even the Gmail bags that we received.

The cosy room  and gorgeously delicious food was enough to make me fall in love with the place. But as the saying goes: it was just the trailer, because what followed was really encapsulating. And to spice things up was Kenny’s humor sprinkled with the maddening excitement of our GSAs!!

The sessions introduced us to various Google oriented groups and communities available to help us. From what and how they are formed to how they conduct events in GDGs, GBGs, GEGs etc. The heart of day’s session was the 10x thinking talk by William. A guy whose energy and ease of communication is something to reckon.The manner of his  delivering  the need and implementation  of Big ideas made me feel on how less I have been thinking on thinking Big.

The day ended with yet another of their great dinners. Followed by chit chats with my newly found friends. And could there have been a better way to ease out than to sit under night sky and have long  conversation with people who are nearly stranger but became friends in a very short period.

Day 2:

We woke up and had a lavish breakfast once again and moved towards learning hub for a power packed sessions.

First inspirational keynote was given by Mr. Rajan Anandan (the Head of Google India), he told us the insights of Google’s User First Policy  and its approach towards trending projects and innovations. The best policy of success being WHY->HOW->WHAT, this was followed by a very interactive session by Gururaj Ravi who left us tips on need for capitalizing one’s idea and whom to approach for the same.

Next session was taken by Jade Bessiere, she described about Top Contribution Program where how an individual can help a lot of peoples around the world by answering them on Google Forums.

Next we were humbled by Mr. Rahul Kulkarni, he gave us a must know tools deployed by industry and demanded highly , categorized as Deployment,Storage,Computing and Designing.He covered a lot of features that can add value to one’s skill set provided we dedicate time doing hands on projects on them.

The evening set in soon and all were exhausted but then Carson Page brought in so much energy in his presentation that we were on the edge of our wits, brainstorming the problems and solutions for enhancing the “First time online shopper’s experience”.His practical methodology of teaching us the baby steps of prototyping will help me in many more aspects of life.  The cycle being gauged by degree of empathy, definition, brainstorming, prototyping and testing again and again until failure turns into success. He left with the alchemy of converting a base idea into a revolutionary product.

And on that high note the day ended.

As they say life completes its full circle, so did we get to enjoy the dinner as good as the breakfast we had. Oh! how much I wish I could afford an extra pair of sweet tooth !! .

Day 3:

Continuing with the learning process , the day kicked off on a technical note.

Before that there was a punishment time for late comers. Thank God I woke up early that day too.

Ok, back to session. The first session on android helped us understand the setting up of emulators and deploying some basic applications through it. Moving on with the technical wagon the next session staged by Patrick Martinet; took us through a “cloudy” ride. He simplified the definition of cloud computing, making cloud deployment a child’s play, when in reality it is not. But then we have Goggle at our service, with storage and security integrated at place, we as developers need concentrate only upon design and usability.  Not to forget the ever powerful user scripts that can be tapped in with little code to enhance and automate user tasks.

These two sessions were followed by a brief questionnaire put up by the students facing issues with the work they are currently doing in the field of app development. The most profitable outcome of all these sessions was the chance to view and hold the Google Glass. Yes, indeed it was for real and closer than belief !!!

The next two sessions were oriented towards Digital Marketing .It started off with sharing of success stories by ex-GSAs on how they got people involved into the exciting field of Social Media Marketing via training and certification and participation in the Google Online Marketing Challenge. The Hangout session with Aida further elaborated the program.

What followed next were insights into how the whole framework works so effectively keeping up the challenges of legal policies, punched by rule books from time to time. Also to add to the knowledge the whole cycle of product design was seamlessly explained , highlighting at core the importance and kind of work done by the developers and testers at the days end.

The final set of session wrapped up in form of the most lucrative sessions we have had over the days. This is the dream that every CS graduate secretly craves for, wanting to be part of the Google family. And so Sagari outlined the various technical and non technical opportunities available at Google. From  various scholarships to women oriented events to sitting through codejam for placement . She laid out the importance of practical knowledge and a well balanced CV. And although being a  GSA might not land me at Google but nevertheless it has opened new doors for me.

Carrying the determination in heart we went to prepare for the Bollywood Theme Party organized at J.W Marriott.

All the way to the hotel we enjoyed and sang along, while photography followed without saying. Each one dressed to the best, eager as to what surprise Kenny holds for us. His opening performance if not for the laughs taught us to compose songs out of any crap we are capable of producing. And making it sound “beautifully romantic”. The surprise soon followed in form of stand up by Kannan. We could barely breath from laughing , each of the situation he described was just so true, pathetically true to be honest. His understanding of underlying behaviour and highly spirited imagination made us forget which century we are in. For once each one laughed to their hearts content and even more. The shrill laughter rented the air for long. Until it was subdued by the the loudness of the DJ. Here once again we got an opportunity, the golden one, to groove it up on latest numbers and literally burn the dance floor. As if the Gods wanted to be more generous, we were offered  one of the best dinner we shall ever have. The taste shall linger on for long.

And even though each datum of the body wanted to just catch up, the mind was still pumping adventures which continued late until night with friends ,back at Infosys.

Oh! it almost 3 A.M must try sleeping.

Day 4:

“What life can carry is a mystery,rest is a sweet journey”

And I am back home at Delhi.

Morning I was away  in Pune, enjoying my last day of summit, observing as much as I could of the awesomeness that the oozed around me. I work up a bit late , owing to the last night’s party. But nevertheless was on time to enjoy a full fledged breakfast.

The session as usual begun at the auditorium but with a twist . For the next few hours that followed the top three teams selected for prototyping , presented their innovative solutions to the audience and the panel of judges. It came as  a great learning experience for us, from teaching us how to  project ideas and pitch it in favourable manner  to pointing out the dos and don’ts of communication skills. As time was running out , no winners were declared. What followed was a short message of appreciation by Deepak, Kenny and the ex-GSAs, all of whom graced the stage with their heart touching and inspiring words of wisdom.

After settling the backpack and reimbursement for travel we sat for our last set of meal at Infosys. I cherished each bite of it knowing sadly that this opportunity and this food will not be back again. Filling my soul with the last dessert of luxury.

And yes, as per tradition we went for our final round of photography.

While waiting for our buses to arrive goodbyes were shared with all the GSAs. And soon the calmness and gloom of Infosys transformed into rush of Airport. As we managed to catch the flight just on time. Not having anything else to do, I compiled my photo album and as I scrolled through the pictures, it seemed so ethereal. True they say ,the most beautiful experience in life are ephemeral. You are one moment appreciating the colorful intricacies and next moment life as black as monotonicity.

As I clicked our last group photo and said my last goodbyes at the back of my mind something whispered “Alas, its over!!” .But as I walked out through the airport I remembered the faces of our speakers, of the 10x thinking, of all success stories people shared.For the fact that I am a GSA and have my chance to prove my worth . I smiled at myself with hopeful pride.

“The journey has hardly begun.There are milestones to achieve and revolutions to seek.”:)

MiniCamp Jaipur

Mozilla Community, Rajasthan have always been a budding, ebullient community of Mozilla India. The community’s recent event, the Mini Camp at Jaipur have risen the bar for future events. The warm feeling of having more people in the family is always a treat, and all the community members joined together to welcome the new, exciting and passionate youngsters into the team.

The amazing participants.

Vineel anna’s intro. session

The best part of the camp is the participants. They are the best set of participants any event organizing team can imagine. They were brimming with passion and a willingness to learn about the Mozilla Mission and eagerness to contribute towards it.

The event started at around 10:30, where we had the Mozilla India’s back-bone Vineel Reddy as the chief guest. He started the camp with an awesome story of Mozilla India, it’s journey and Mozilla’s plans forward and how do volunteers around India, are steering them.

All the participants were welcomed warmly and Entered the venue by marking their attendance 😛

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MAY THE SOURCE BE WITH YOU!

Then, the hacking began. There were black screens with a lot of code , on one table and the other, filled up with vibrant webmaker tools. People were hacking their dream apps, bringing them into reality, conjuring up awesome popcorn makes, tweaking around with the X-ray goggles. The entire lounge was a developer’s delight.

Amongst the ones with whom I have interacted is Ayush. He is a third year Mech. undergrad. But, lack of background have never really managed to take him down. Let me cite my conversation with this amazing guy:

Me — Hi Ayush, so what have you built? Can you explain it to me?

Ayush — I have built an app, which would help ensure the safety of women. (His App)

Me — Wonderful, any ideas for extension or some more cool features you’d like to add?

Ayush — Yes definitely, I want to implement stuff like Geo-location, etc for this app.

Frankly speaking, he has been an inspiration for me.

The other brain behind this amazing app is Sachin Goyal.

Another example would be Vidhi Mittal, a fresher from the Arya College. Her lack of experience, didn’t stop her from conjuring up a wonderful webpage on Thimble, which would brief starters about the Mozilla Project and ways of getting involved.

These two examples were just a small subset of the amazing pool of participants.

All of them have been a source of inspiration for the entire organizing team. With such an awesome additions, the Mozilla Rajasthan, and most importantly the Mozilla India team would really grow strong.

On other side of table we had App Development Session which was taken by Lavish Aggarwal (me), I teach them about development of Firefox Apps from root to tree. and had a special session on HTML who weren’t aware of it but wanna know about the app dev.

These were the ideas which have been turned into realities. Each one of them, was a brain-storming idea, and all of them have taken the form of a web-make or a Firefox OS app. There have been some awesome efforts and guidance of the mentors too, who have helped the participants throughout the camp.

Finally, the camp have been wrapped up at around 5:30 pm, with some really wacky photo session, and with a satisfaction of introducing around 15–20 contributors to Mozilla.

Finally, a huge thank you for Vineel anna, Anju, Chandan and Gautam. It was a wonderful experience hanging out with you guys.

Finally, let’s not forget the captains of MCR, Dron and Ram, who have been driving us behind the scenes. This event wouldn’t be even close to possibility without you guys.

And dear Mozilla India, we made our captain dance.

I tell you, his dance is a must-see, and you would be missing something, if you don’t have this in your event(s). <wink>

Android Session

“Sharing is the first stage to the evolution of the intellectual” this was the idea when we thought of extending the reach of the knowledge brook that we have created in the openmoz club with others. And as a result we brought out a session on Android in ‘Arya College of Engineering and I.T.’.

The session was started with a clippings from Google I/O 2014 on the new design concept which is to come with new Android L followed by an short intro. on android it’s history and it’s versions by Aditya Shubham.

Then the session was taken over by Hitesh Verma on Android rooting, where he told students about how to root their android phones?, what is custom ROMs and Stock ROMs and how to install ROMs into their android devices?, he ended his session by telling student how to unroot their devices if needed.

Then the stage was in the hands of Lavish Aggarwal(me) for an introductory briefing on android app development  where I told students about development of Android Apps and how to set-up environment for developing android apps that included installation of ADT bundle, plug-ins, etc. And a quick demo of app was given.

Then the next session was taken by Khushbu Parakh and Aditya Shubham where they informed students about top utility and technical apps that are basic necessity and an idea was given that how they can develop such apps. At the last final end-note given by Ashwin Devarajan.

Group picture in the end of session.

This workshop was suddenly planned and maximum output was given by each member of the club to make this workshop a success. Thanks to each member of OpenMoz.

Doing good is part of our code

Flash Firefox OS 2.1 into your Tablet

Excited about flashing 2.1 into your device? Well am too excited!

Flashing can be done via Windows as well as Linux and I will be explaining both the ways:

Point to be remember:

1: You have remote debugging enabled on your device.

2: Screen lock should be disabled, because when screen is off, device is disconnected.

For Linux user:

Step 1: Navigate to this link and select stable build. you can check build status to flash stable build.

Step 2: Download all files and extract all files into home directory.

Step 3: Open your terminal and navigate to your home directory by this command.

$ cd

Step 4: Install adb and fastboot package into your system.

$sudo apt-get install android-tools-adb
$sudo apt-get install android-tools-fastboot

Step 5: connect your device through usb and type $adb devices in terminal.

$ adb devices
List of devices attached 
FLATFISH_123456    device

it would show your device name.

if it doesn’t echo anything then try running these commands

 $sudo killall adb

$sudo adb devices

Step 6: Final Step, remember that you are in the same directory where you have extracted your downloaded zip files i.e home directory, now run this command.

In this command we have to run script named flash-flatfish.sh with two command line argument i.e. <path_to_images> ,<path_to_b2g_root> Basic syntax of this command is :

$sh [script_name.sh] [<path_to_images> [<path_to_b2g_root>]]

and we have extracted all images and scripts file in same directory i.e home directory so we will run this command where ~/ represents current directory.

$sudo sh flash-flatfish.sh ~/ ~/dev_fxos/a31-b2g

most probably it will complete without any error. If any error occurs ping me anytime because I have gone through many ups n downs while doing so.

If there is an issue like “the udev rule for the device may not be well configured. Will request the user to run in sudo mode“, then you can add udev rules to your devices (use idVendor 18d1 and 0bb4). For that open your editor and edit file which is at path /etc/udev/rules.d/android.rules , Here I am using vim editor.

$vim /etc/udev/rules.d/android.rules

add these two lines in this file

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="18d1", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev"

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="0bb4", MODE="0666", GROUP="plugdev

Once you’ve saved the file, and closed it,  make the file readable:

sudo chmod a+r /etc/udev/rules.d/android.rules

Now that the udev rules have been updated, restart the udev daemon.

Ubuntu

sudo service udev restart

Fedora 20

sudo systemctl restart systemd-udevd.servic

Now you can repeat Step 6 again, now that issue will not arise.

You can also leave comments if any issue exists.

For windows user:

There is a post written by Caspy, I would recommend to follow those steps.

Here is the link to his post : Flashing the Flatfish bootloader

And this is how your home screen will look like after flashing.

Hell yeah its damn sexy!

Don’t forget to comment on this post if you got stuck any where or find an issue. I will surely help you out.

Bugs you will face:

Bug 1: screen will quickly turn off, so try to set screen time out from setting > display.

Bug 2: After installing new application from marketplace, screen one icon will overlap screen second icon, so try restarting your device, it will properly align all the icons.

I have reported all the issue in bugzilla, and will be fixed soon.

“DOING GOOD IS A PART OF OUR CODE”

Mozilla Dev Meetup @ Jaipur

A small Dev-Meetup@Jaipur,

The plan was to share and gain the approaches and techniques for the APP development, agenda Included :

HTML5 – The real power of HTML5 was unveiled. Our HTML5 knowledge stack was updated with

• In-browser Database – We all new that we have in browser database in HTML5 browsers, but the day we actually used it and tested it cross-browsers, also covered window.localStorage and window.sessionStorage tweaks. Ref : http://www.tutorialspoint.com/html5/html5_web_sql.htm
•  Various Input types which removed the necessity of validations mainly number, URL, email. The highlight to me was RANGE( woah HTML5 creates slider for U)
• Geolocation – Getting your current location in terms of latitude and longitude

CSS3 – The CSS3 seriously somehow reduces basic requirement of JS, it provides an awesome UI itself. The tech stack included

• Transforms – Awesomeness  of CSS3, various transforms as rotate, scale, matirx etc.
• Transition – The smoothing element.
• Keyframe Animation – This bowled me over, completely eliminating JS for continuous animations.

JQM – The marvelous tool for creating apps, adorned with en-numbered features, this equips a developer with ready to use elements like, list views, slide transitions, popups, dialog boxes, forms, etc. Ref : http://www.w3schools.com/jquerymobile/

And Finally master stroke to an awesome meet (required a sacrifice of a night)

FIND ME GOOGLE – A firefox app which tracks your current location and retrieves the nearest cafe, bar, hospital, mall, ATM etc. on google map. An Awesome GUI.

MozExplore @ ACEIT

After covering school, now its time to spread “Mozilla” word in my college “Arya College of Engineering & I.T.”, this time again Mozilla Community Rajasthan organize another workshop on mozilla in ACEIT. Over 300+ students participated in workshop. Speakers of this workshop were:

• Osho Parth
• Varun Kaushik
• Lavish Aggarwal

Workshop was started sharp at 10:00AM, all speakers were welcomed and workshop was initiated by Mr. Osho Parth. He told student about Open Source, FOSS, how they can get code of any open source softwares and can work on it, he also told them how mozilla is part of open source and what students can do for mozilla.

Next session was taken by Mr. Lavish Aggarwal (Me), introducing mozilla, its mission and other products of mozilla which were new to students as they were only aware about Firefox Browser continuing with this they were also told them about Open Web and philosophies of Open Web.

Putting the next step forward, next session was taken up by Mr. Varun Kaushik. He told students about SUMO covering AOA, ln10, QA, Support Forums and writing an article. Students were keen to know about such convenient way of contributions.

Keeping the continuity of workshop, me and Osho introduced students about one of the sexiest tool of mozilla i.e; Mozilla Webmaker. Students were amazed by seeing online editing of websites using X-Ray Goggle, live rendering of html pages using thimble and video mixing tool i.e; Popcorn.

MozIgnite @ Sri Ganganagar

28th March 2014
So this time its Sri Ganganagar my Home Town, spreading the word Mozilla. Mozilla Community Rajasthan this time organized a workshop at Nosegay Public School, Sri Ganganagar. Audience of this workshop was 12th Class and Speakers was:

• Dron Rathore
• Lavish Aggarwal
• Osho Parth
• Adit Bharadwaj
• J. Raj Rohit
• Ashish Seervi

Workshop started sharply at 10:00AM, and was started by School Director Mrs Rachna Ma’am introducing all speakers and telling student about agenda and main purpose of this workshop.

First session was taken by Mr. Dron Rathore informing student about what are the benefits of this workshop and how they can be a part of this community by doing awesome work and contribution. He told them about mozilla credits page and how they can add their name in that credit page. He also told them about mozilla, its mission and products of mozilla.

 

Students were eager to see their names in credits page ASAP 🙂

Next session was taken by Mr. Osho Parth introducing students about Open Source, realizing them to feel true freedom than their actual freedom in this tech world. He also told them about Linux OS and its power rather than other OS. He also told them about FOSS and mozilla as a part of it.

Next session was taken by Mr. Raj Rohit, telling students about BugZilla and how to make products better through simple steps of bugzilla. He also tell them about Data Science and other Open Source project in which interested students can contribute.

Next session of Webmaker was taken by Mr. Lavish and Mr. Adit, they told students how easy it is to edit any website or create new website through live rendering of the code and video mixing by the awesome tools of mozilla i.e. X-Ray Googles, Thimble, Popcorn. Students were amazed by live editing of website through these tools.

Last session was taken by Mr. Ashish Seervi, he told them about how to get involved in mozilla community through SUMO contribution and also told them about FSA program.

Had a great time with these school students and also had great response from them.

Group pic with team 🙂

Doing good is a part of our code