Leading the Lab Session

10 lab sessions passed and then we grabbed the chance to lead the 11th lab session. But we were disappointed to see very less students turning up for the lab and then leaving too early ('coz they have much more important work to do). We were to cover :

1.Video Editing (Which every one supposed they knew)

2.Photo Editing

3.SVN server

4.Remote Connection between computers.

Students were much interested in SVN servers and Remote connections. Nobody cared for Photo Editing/Video Editing. Overall it was good experience learning these things during training session on Saturday but equally bad were we in imparting the knowledge of the subject and we are not going to take blame for this.

Above all we are very thanks full to Dr. Amarjeet Singh Sir for providing us this opportunity.

Apoorv saini

2010020

Abhishek Gupta

2010004

Being A Leader

I along with Sahil Jain lead the lab on the topics Security in wireless routers, comparison of 802.11 a/b/g/n and configuring a wireless router.
The training session on saturday was a very bad experience. We came on time but as usual the lab leaders started late. Some of the topics like anti-virus had no content for the lab session. Even firewall was covered very vaguely.
But the lab hand-out was pretty well prepared and we could manage through.

The most interesting topic was WEP cracking. Everyone in the lab also enjoyed learning it. Another problem that came up during the lab hours was the inconvenience with the wireless router that did not work but thanks to our TA Arjun who came up with a solution and brought a wireless device. With the help of this device we were able to show WEP cracking and complete our lab successfully.

It was a very healthy experience and we look forward to lead such lab sessions again.

Sumit Aggarwal
(2009046)

Sahil Jain
(2010071)

Project--LaTeX...

first of all we would like to thank Amarjeet Sir for this project...as it made us learn something new...and learned to struggle and look out for information from other sources..and also thank the TA's for this as the initiation of this project was actually because of them giving us the relevant information about the project...

so when we firstly got to know about the software used to do the codings to make it a pdf document...we were shocked to see the number of commands in this project and looked like a full programming language...but then we asked TA's about this and fortunately they knew a lot about it...so we got an initial kickstart in the project...as we got a 30-40 page tutorial about LaTeX from them..

slowly and gradually we started to code some small programs...that took 10 lines coding even for a single page document...

we had options of using two softwares--TeXnicentre and MiKtex...but we eventually decided to carry on with MiKTeX as we found that easy to use than TeXnicentre....

we came along new things like using the mathematical formulas like the integrals and limits...summations..which we found interesting...but we looked for something like page designing like inserting bullets and include pics...
and eventually we got that also in the end...

we also faced many challenges as the content was huge and we had to decide a lot on what topics to include in the presentation....although that did not go well in the presentation as it took a lot of time...
secondly,all of us were at different places during the break..so only the facebook connection was there to communicate...
but in the end it was a nice experience learning new things and that too learning it all by yourself makes you feel really good....

AKSHAY RAJVANSHI
(2010011)
SAURABH YADAV
(2010077)
DEEPANKER AGGARWAL
(2010027)

doubt about RAM ...

hello guys,
                we often come with this confusion about the frequency of the RAM we use...suppose we want to add more RAM to our system...so if the RAM we are thinking to purchase is of different frequency than the RAM we already have..then what are the possible consequences...will it affect the computer in any way..in terms of speed if it works???

Triple Booting My PC

Life at IIIT-D is sort of weird when there are no holidays, we feel we have no time to relax, and when we have holidays we feel we are wasting our time.During the CWG break, I too got this feel and decided to do something exciting.
Before I begin I would like to apologize to Amarjeet sir, for this late blog.I am sorry sir.
Now, lets get down to work.Just a day before the break I had taken a copy of the so much in demand "Ubuntu installation CD" from Arjun bhaiya.I intended to install it on VMware and practice some shell scripting(that still does not give me a homely feeling :-) ). But somehow I did not like the feel of it and decided to dual boot my laptop.I did install Ubuntu,giving it a 8Gb partition.
I began using Ubuntu and felt good about it.So I decided to increase its size. So I went to windows and without giving a thought just messed up with disk management and ended up deleting grub. :-(
In went the Ubuntu CD again and another installation with 20 GB partition space was done.Good.Cool.Well done Yash.Finally, I was satisfied and promised not to mess around with disk management again.
Now, I being a frequent Windows user,wanted to make it my default OS,and also I didnt want Grub to take so much time in selecting the default choice.So in went a few hours of fruitful research and here we go all is well.
Well, promises are meant to be broken but not intentionally...
I decided to exchange my 4.5kg "heavyweight laptop" with my didi's 2.35 kg one. So firstly I was ordered to remove Linux, now how to do it without the windows CD... Good question!!! If there is a question,google has the answer.This task was done.
So once again I dual booted my system,did all the settings once again.God it was exciting.
Now,suddenly something came to my mind and I said to myself "Lets back the Mac"...
How about triple booting my system.Some more research and I felt I was ready to try it out. I downloaded Snow leopard from a torrent and after 3 days, I attempted to install it. But could not do it. I returned to windows created some free space.Boom Linux gone...
Once again :-(
Somehow I thought lets proceed with Mac.Great the trick worked.I formatted the free space,installed mac.Now, all that was required was to restore grub.In went the Ubuntu CD and restoration was done.
Using Mac,OH BOY,I was so excited. Hackintosh finally in my hands. I started the 64 bit version to find net not working.It was not detecting my wireless card.I returned to windows downloaded the required kext file(drivers) and tried again, but failed.Then I tried the 32 bit version and yes it worked there perfectly fine.
"Snow leopard is good,lets give it more hard disk space".Bad idea I ended up doing the above from scratch,but the result was sweet, I had a laptop with working Win 7 Ultimate, Snow Leopard, and Ubuntu...
I just need to thank the Ubuntu CD.... Had not that been with me,my holidays would have been a nightmare. :-) I ended up deleting ubuntu so many times.
Thank you also to Ankit bhaiya(Ankit Sarkar) for his help when I wasn't able to make net work.And finally Amarjeet Sir, who showed me the way regarding the wireless driver problem.
Next mission:-Quadbooting the machine..Ubuntu CD I am coming :-D

SM group project - what we did and how we did it...

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our SM profesor Dr. Amarjeet Singh for providing us with an opportunity to present a group project. We would also like to thank the creators of wikipedia without which, our project would not have been possible.

We would like to share with you, our experience while preparing this project. Our project was "Data recovery from mistakenly formatted hard-drive" and frankly speaking, when we read this topic in the list of projects, we didn't even know that anything like that was possible. Curiosity is the mother of all creations and the precise reason why all 3 of us, me, Karan Gupta and Mithil Gupta chose this topic.

Since we had no idea what our topic was all about, the first thing that we had to do was find out how is data stored in a hard drive, how is data recovery even possible and how does a utility or a software recover data. Then our task was to gain hands on experience on such utilities and share them with our class.

As far as data storage was concerned, we had been taught in class about file systems and how a file is stored in a hard drive. Still, we went through a number of sites to further strengthen our knowledge of file systems and how they manage data on the hard drive.

Next we had to find out what exactly happens during data recovery or how are various data recovery tools able to recover data from a formatted hard drive. To answer this question, we had to first find out what exactly happens when a drive is formatted. Again, another round of browsing through the net followed. We realised that data is not removed from the clusters of the hard disk but just enabled to be overwritten when new data is to be stored on the hard disk after format. Hence, even if after a disk is formatted, data recovery is possible if the previously stored data has not been over written by newly entered data. We also addressed questions like "is data recovery possible if a partition has been formatted in a different file system than the 1 that existed before? and if yes, how and why?" We learned a lot while making this project and surprisingly, none of us ever felt it like a burden on us. 

The final part of our project involved gaining hands on experience on such utilities and this was the most time consuming and tiring part of the project. There were just way too many utilities. Some links to such utilities are listed as follows:-

PC inspector file recovery. 

             http://www.pcinspector.de/Default.htm?language=1

Pareto data recovery.  

http://www.paretologic.com/products/datarecovery/pro/index.aspx

Disk doctors. 

http://www.diskdoctors.net/data-recovery-software.html

Ease US. 

http://www.easeus.com/download.htm

Stellar Phoenix data recovery(linux)

http://www.data-recovery-linux.com/

We didn’t count but I believe we installed and tried around 10-15 such utilities.  A few didn’t work, others worked but not to our expectations and a few recovered data more or less the way we had expected them to. Above mentioned sites are links to only those that worked really well. There were many utilities which weren’t available for free but we saw their online demos they were much stronger than the ones that we could try for free.

Now the question that arose was that which utility is better than the other, on what basis we should compare and how exactly are they different from each other. The question’s answer lied in the algorithm that each utility used to recover data. There are broadly 2 ways in which data recovery is possible:-

1.      

     One way is to rebuild the data from scratch. This method recovers the files with their original file names. This method of data recovery is usually more useful in case of hard disk crash or any other physical damage to a hard drive but works for a formatted drive as well. It is a very efficient method of data recovery. Hence, most utilities that implemented this type of algorithm weren’t available for free.

2.       An alternate way is that the disc is scanned through, and data is recovered as objects from clusters and linked together. The utilities that we found on the net mainly followed this method. In this method, data is recovered but the original file names are lost. This works well as long as the hard disk has only been formatted and no cluster has been over-written. Moreover, this method is not of any help during hard disk crash or and physical damage to a hard drive.

From a list of more than 10 utilities we chose 3 utilities for our project and did detailed study on them. The main criteria for selecting them was ease of use but since that is relative, we also went through their online reviews and ratings and realized that what we feel about those utilities is also felt by many others. The utilities we chose were PC Inspector file recovery, PareTodata recovery and Stellar Phoenix data recovery, the last one being a tool for data recovery from a linux partition.

Overall, it was a very enlightening experience. We enjoyed it thoroughly and it took our understanding of  a computer’s function of data storage to a whole new level.

Sushant Mehta

2010088

Karan Gupta

2010037

Mithil Gupta

2010049

Since childhood, we always wondered why the teachers gave us so much work and apparently did nothing themselves… but NOW, we understand that it’s the other way round! Teachers work so much harder just to prepare the topics and questions for the students and we just have to simply answer them! This we got to know only when we got the chance to lead the lab session 9 and we are sharing our experiences with all of you.

Since no one volunteered from group 4 to lead the lab session, thus, Saurabh Yadav and I(Shayan) volunteered to lead the lab session as Saurabh was part of the latex project and I was part of the webcrawling project, thus, we thought we would pool our knowledge together to lead the lab session. We covered BACKING UP OF DATA, DATA RECOVERY, LATEX AND WEBCRAWLING.

Backing up of Data

We explained how one can backup their data using the inbuilt backup tool available in Windows 7. Then we explained how we can do the same in linux by installing the sbackup package. But there were problems with 1 or 2 computers in which the package was not getting installed correctly. This was a minor hiccup that we faced with this section.

Data Recovery

We covered how one can recover their data in Windows and Linux. The Windows part would have taken a long time, so it was not covered in the lab. In linux, we used the photorec command (after installing the testdisk package) to recover mistakenly deleted data from a pendrive. We used pendrives with small storage size for this purpose as it would have taken too long for the photorec to recover data deleted from a hard disk partition.

Latex

Although this part was to be done in Windows environment using Miktex but since the administrator password was not available so we worked in linux. It took about 15-20 minutes to install the latex package for linux. So we had initially asked people to install latex first and while the installation was being done in the background, we planned to cover the other topics. But unfortunately when the installation was happening, we found that we could not install any other package. Thus we could only use half of the computers in the beginning (the one’s which had latex installed already).Initially it was hard to create interest in this topic but Saurabh did a good job of getting people interested in the topic! I was left marveling at his skills :P

Webcrawling

In the last 15 minutes of the class, we covered a webcrawling tool, websphinx. In the lab computers, we did not have the permission to install JAVA, so we had asked everyone to get their laptops with them for the demonstration. But in the lab, we found out that most people did not have the correct version of JAVA installed, so instead we demonstrated it on my laptop. Saurabh noted that while I was giving the demonstration, people enjoyed watching the formation of the tree graph of the web pages that had been crawled and which were being displayed on the websphinx interface.

Most people were keen to just get over with the lab, in fact one person kept on asking me how long the lab would take to end :P I was asked at 2:15, 2:45 and again at 3:15 this one particular question!

All in all, it was a unique as well as a good experience leading the lab session. We got to appreciate the problems that the previous lab leaders had faced especially in finishing off their portion within the required time

Shayan Lahiri
2010078

Saurabh Yadav
2010077