Geeking it up in Passara

Once apon a time Yours Truly made a promise that if any school wanted me to come talk to them about Linux, all they have to do is ask me, and I will come. This offer has led to many strange and fun events. Buttala - where I ate clams straight from the lake, Mahavilachchiya where I meditated on Linux under a tamarind (siyambala) tree, and many other places.

They have always been interesting and fun. And sometimes I feel that what I got back from them is far greater than what I gave them.

When the kids from the Gurukula LUG called for people to join up for a training tour to Passara, YT was the first to jump on the bandwagon (even if I was in dotyoukay at the time).

With the Mad Monk and I doing the planning, things .. escalated. What started off as a simple four-day run by bus to one school soon became a rather more elaborate plan to take the van and hit a few more schools if we could. Funding was requested from foss.lk and approved immediately, and RedHat Sri Lanka agreed to donate a version of the latest RHEL Client Edition.

Monday, 7th

On the morning of the 7th May, we all headed off to Passara. Actually, calling it morning is a bit of an overstatement. It was past noon when we finally left, after picking up the RHEL CDs and everything else.

The crew from Gurukula were Kasun, Isuru, Thomitha (whose father organised the stay for us), Nalaka, and Thomitha's father. We took the Avissawella road because it was the fastest and most comfortable road to travel on. The views were spectacular, and we had to stop from time to time to take pics of the view. And then there was the time we all stopped to wash our feet in a waterfall.

We took the road from Bandarawela, through Ella, and then on to Passara via Namunukula. Dropped off the Mad Monk at the local temple and went off to Meedumpitiya. It was an interesting trip. The guys from the G-LUG (Gurukula LUG) were very enthusiastic. It is a way of that age I guess that they all want to travel in the back of the van instead of in the seats. We finally got to Meedumpitiya about 2100, had dinner and collapsed.

Tuesday, 8th

On Tuesday we went off to the school, Passara Central College, in order to start the installations. The teacher at the Computer Lab (a Mr Rathnasiri) found some kids for us to train and to help us do the installation. Thomitha was an old student of the school, so there were a lot of his friends among the people who came to do the installations.

The lab itself was over 5 years old, with P3-1000s with 128mb RAM. Since we had just about every distro with us, we managed to make installations of Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and Edubuntu in addition to the RHEL5 Client Edition. I was amazed to see that they all managed towork quite well even on those machines.

After the installation session, which took most of the day, we took a slow drive back down to the place we were staying for our meal of the day. It may seem strange, but when you are working on something like this, you lose track of all time and even food.

The paranoia that has infested the country came to bite us in the ass when we hit Passara that first day. I hopped out of the van in Passara town to take a picture of an interesting shop, and there were many people watching me and the kids, because we were all in black. Ah paranoia, paranoia.

That night we met Mr Manoharan. The Additional Director, Tamil Division of the local Reigional Education Office. He met Kasun and was most impressed by him and his dedication to Linux. This developed into an invitation to come and meet him and the local Director of Education.

Wednesday, 9th

After the install party of Tuesday, Wednesday was our teaching day. With Mettavihari invited by the principal to speak a few at the Student Assembly we decided we should be there by 0700. This, of course, meant that we woke up at 0645. In a frenzy of dressing and washing up we were out of the house and rolling by 0715, making it to the school by 0725, making it to the school by 0720. Amazng what a little stress will do ya

We started the event, I did my usual song and dance and then handed it over to the G-LUG guys to take over. After all, its their project and I'm just the adviser. This meant that I could take the time to go and speak to Mr Piyasena, the Education Director for Passara. This was the start of an insane run into the bowels of Sri Lankan Government Bureaucracy. Everyone was supportive of what we were doing. The problems came when they wanted written authorisation for us to do what we were doing. The problem was, we didn't have any with us. Most of our work is done on the unofficial, word of mouth system. This was not helped when we found that our initial contact at the SEMP project had left the project, and there was a lot of friction between the MoE and SEMP. This meant that there were a lot of people who wanted us to stop what we were doing, simply because the right "process" hadn't been followed.

Unpleasant, but we can deal. And the way to deal with it was to go to the top. Spoke to the Director of the SEMP, and the word was filtered downwards that we are known people and are to be allowed to do what we wanted to. When in doubt start at the top and work your way down. Much easier than the bottom up approach.

Obviously, being known from on high changed our reception a lot, and we were allowed and even encouraged to do installs everywhere we could go.

By the time all this happened, it was too late to go anywhere else, and so we headed out to Badulla town to see the sights. We were joined by the kids who came to do the installation, so we had 12 people in the van heading out to Badulla. And as usual everyone was fighting to get into the back of the van.

We took some time to head to Badulla, stopping along the way. Did a round in Badulla, visited the Katharagama (Murugan) Temple in Badulla. There was lots of walking around, and most of the kids got used to going around barefoot. Then we finally left around 1900, getting to Passara very late.

Thursday, 10th

Day four, and the pace is getting heavier. We have a Linux instalation to do at the local ZICTEC (Zonal ICT Training and Education Center). In order to make sure this happens, our team splits up. Metta and I take two of the Passara Central students and two G-LUG students with us to the ZICTEC to do the installations. The others will conduct the classes at the school. The guys at the school were happier because on this day all the students happened to be of the female sex.

The ZICTEC, it turned out, was managed by a student of mine from the SEMP training project. This made life that much easier. We managed to get 6 Linux installs going before the power went out. But the students and the teachers got an education in installing Linux, so they should be able to handle the rest of the machines

The ZICTEC also gave me a chance to try out the Ophcrack LiveCD on a few Windows machines they had. Some wiseguy had locked the administrator accounts and left, leaving them no way to log on to the admin accounts. Ophcrack found the passwords with the greatest of ease.

After the power went, we headed back to the school to see the students again. The earlier batch had left, and there was a new batch of students from grades 5 and 6 there. All interested in learning Linux and "computers"

Since this was the last da, we got back to Meedumpitiya to find that there was lots of food waiting for us. I was also invited to a side to try out some fresh Kitul toddy, which means that I have managed the kitul trifecta - coconut, thal and kitul. we were so exhausted that we all fell asleep almost immediately after dinner.

Friday, 10th

After his time at the Trojan War, Odysseus took 10 years to get back to Ithaca, having many adventures along the way. We too ended up taking the scenic route. Thanks to a guy we met on the road in Badulla who pointed us in the wrong direction.

Our first stop was in Badulla for supplies and directions to Nuwara Eliya. Going on the road he pointed out, we got to Dunhinda Falls. This should have been our first clue that we had been given wrong directions, but paying it no heed, we visited the falls and then continued downhill.

We went further until we realised we were well and truly lost, so we asked a roving army patrol which way to Nuwara Eliya. Turns out we were on the Nuwara (Kandy) Road. Just great.

So our route takes us around the Randenigala Reservoir, and up past the Kirindi Oya (I think) where we have our first and only waterfall bath of the entire run. A bit more pushing gets us to Nuwara Eliya through Kandapola. With time to kill, we take a run down to Hakgala Gardens to see the flowers.

On the way back up, we stop at the Seetha Eliya temple to hear the story of the Ramayana and the history of the temple itself, buy veggies, walk around Lake Gregory and finally head for home via the Kandy Road.

All in all the event was a massive success. The effort paid off the creation of a LUG in Passara Central, and some of the kids there coming to The Linux Center for a weekend to learn Linux.