No Dues process

This is probably my last blog in the IIT-G series. Feels quite nostalgic writing this.

Anyway, the procedure for no-dues is as follows -

1. Get the no-dues form from core-1 or print this - https://bit.ly/2jhMyaL

2. You need to get the following signatures -

Lab 1/2/3 -
EE102 Lab - From EE dept. You need to get this signed from the EE Lab itself. The dept. guard otherwise knows where to find the guy who needs to sign it.
PH110 Lab - Go to the 1st yr lab on the top floor. The lab assistant will sign it.
CH110 Lab - Get it signed from the Chem. dept office (It is in Core 3, not in Chem. dept.)

Mech. Workshop - Get it signed from the superintendent in the Workshop. He is generally there in the offices on ground floor.

CC - https://shilloi.iitg.ernet.in/nodues Go to this link and submit. Then go to the 2nd floor of CC and get it signed from the first cubicle on the right as you enter.

Library - Just go to the Library return desk. They will cancel your Library account and then sign it.

Student Affairs - Get it signed from the person in Old SAC office.

Hostel - Hostel has a subform which you can get from the care-taker's office. You need to get it signed by stationary, JC, canteen, mess and your security guard after which your caretaker/warden will sign the main form.

Department - Each department has its own no-dues sub form you can find in the dept. office. Get it signed from the respective profs. and dept. labs and finally get the main form signed by your HOD.
You also need to get the sign for the dept. library from the prog. in charge. You can find out who he is from your office. For CSE dept. it is Ashish Anand Sir.

Dept. No Dues form.

Thesis and Supervisor signs - Submit your thesis copies in your dept. office and also get the main form signed by your supervisor(s).


Finance Section - They will sign it after all the other dues are cleared and signed.


Finally submit it to AA.

Note -

Personally, I found it very quick to get the signatures and I got all of them in less then an hour. Aim for a time before lunch since some of these people go missing after lunch or come very late. 10:30 - 11 am is generally a good time to catch a hold of everyone.

Also, if you are finding it hard to get signatures from your dept. profs. go around in groups right after an exam finishes or while some other exam is going on. They will generally be there in their offices due to exam duty.


-------------

For CSE Dept. -

Get all the Lab signs -
CSE Lab - After returning your PCs and keys to 001.
Robotics Lab will be done by Bhrigu sir/ people in 001.
H/W Lab - Hemanta.
Server Lab - Nanu/Bhrigu sir.
CSE Library - Ashish Anand sir.

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500 Commits of Summer: My story of FOSS and GSoC

This story of summer started in a dull grey winter at home. Bored, I started lingering around IRC channels and much like the Alice of Wonderland, stumbled into the wonderful world of FOSS. Little did I know, it was gonna be one of the best things that happened to me. Below is a story of bugs, PRs , repos, commits, and some more commits. But it is also a story of curiosity, learning,  frustrations (a lot of it), resilience (more than you think) and some amazing amazing people of the community. If I have to sum it up for you, I couldn’t think of a way better than this. So here it goes..

Disclaimer: It was a long journey, hence the long blog. 

The Story

#1 PICARD-851: Correctly update parent items on save

I started out slow. Figuring things out. Picard has a nicely organized and pretty code-base in python. Something that I have always admired and what motivated me to contribute to this project. I went through the tickets and found something I figured I could fix. It took me a complete day to figure my head around the code. Although there was a time when I felt helpless and was about to lose my patience, I  was finally able to find where the logic broke and fix it. It felt amazing making my first contribution to Picard.

#7 PICARD-546,287: Add support for tag removal

My first big pull request, where I was actually implementing a feature rather than fixing a bug. The entire pull request took a week to complete including the code reviews. I had to delve and add code across the file and tag handling module of Picard.

#120 Return empty metadata instead of empty dictionary

It was finally a month since I had started contributing to Picard. One of my biggest motivations to contributing regularly was this post by our org admin ruaok before the start of GSoC '15.  I wanted to hold myself to the same standard, and so I did, 1 PR a day. I was quickly fixing up as many tickets as I could, making sure I kept my mentor, zas' hands full with code reviews. Everyday was exciting for me as I would skim through Jira looking for tickets I could fix for the day. I managed to fix over 20 tickets in my first month.

#228 Add Picard 1.4 release notes

It was Valentine's Day and man o' man was it memorable day for my code-valentine - Picard. We finally released a major Picard version after more than 2 years and over 1000 commits. I also got featured on the release blog-post, something that made me feel really proud of all the work I had done so far. This was also the time that I had started to visualize how my GSoC project would look like. I started pitching proposals of a v2 for Picard and I got a lot of support for the direction that I wanted to head in. If you want a detailed look into what my final GSoC proposal looked like, click here.

#249 Merge pull request #632 from lalinsky/master

A few days, later another surprise awaited me - I finally got push access to the main Picard repo. This was the first pull request I merged. This pull request along with PR #633 was my first time foraying into the world of cross-platform issues. This I believe is the first OSX related bug I fixed, with help from luks and his trusty ol' Mac. After hours of remote sessions on the Mac that luks had setup for me, we were finally able to resolve a nasty bug that was affecting the OSX build.

#279 Update Qt5 port

This was around the time that I had started to work according to my proposal. We had already released Picard 1.4.1 to fix day 0 bugs that came with 1.4. The development efforts had started to shift toward Picard 2.0.

The first major GSoC task was up - Porting the entire code-base to Qt5.

It took a mammoth of a pull-request and multiple subsequent patches to finally have Picard up and running on Qt5. Major challenges to this port was the lack of documentation on porting for PyQt5. Apart from the PyQt porting guide, I also had to rely on the Qt5 porting guide written for C++ and figure out the equivalent python bindings. Lucky for me, the guys over at Riverbank (the people who made the PyQt bindings) have done a wonderful job at keeping the bindings as close to the C++ API as possible. This along with stack-overflow and the wonderfully documented Qt5 code, made the porting job much much easier.

Another challenge that I faced was making sure that the above code passed tests on our CI. Picard uses Travis CI, which uses Ubuntu 14.04 containers to build the code. Unfortunately, 14.04 does not have the PyQt5 package for Py2 and building it from source takes forever. As a result, I had to dockerize the repo and run the tests in Ubuntu 16.04 in docker in a Trusty container over at Travis CI. Talk about code-ception.

#280 Replace deprecated __builtin__

Next task on my GSoC checklist was equally big. I had to port all of the code to Py3. I was targeting Python 3.5 for the port. Of much help to me this time were the python tools, pylint and python-modernize. I used them to figure out the pieces of Py2 code that had been deprecated and to replace them with equivalent Py3 code. Major part of the problems I faced here were encoding issues. And believe me, they only get magnified if your app is cross-platform and multi-lingual.

Couple the above with PyQt5 behaving slightly differently for Py3, I had to plow through a lot of encoding/decoding/string/bytes issues. Pile Mutagen (a python audio tagging library that Picard depends on) on top of this mess and you have a recipe for an encoding-decoding disaster.

After lots of string/bytes fixes and banging my head against the wall porting this black magic code, I finally managed to port Picard to Py3 with all tests passing \o/.

You can find all the above commits in this massive PR.

#382 Update setup script to allow submitting pip packages

Next, to weed out further bugs, I wanted as many alpha testers as possible. To make their task easier, I packaged Picard into a pip package and released it on PyPi.

#393 PICARD-817: Enable high DPI support for Picard

I further tackled the issue of Picard not rendering properly on High-DPI screens. This issue mainly affected our OSX users and with the port to Qt5, it was easy to alleviate. Although not mentioned explicitly in the Qt5 documentation, I was able to find a couple of blog posts that helped me successfully implement it. Basically I needed to add up-scaled versions of the icons used by Picard in the Qt resources with a special suffix and Qt took care of the rest.

Since the upscaled version of the icons used by Picard were missing, I ended up designing the entire icon-set for Picard myself. This was my first time with tweaking with InkScape, but I think I managed fine. You can find the new icons here.

#404 Add coverage reports for codacy

Part of my GSoC project included testing the Picard code extensively. To help me get on with it, I setup Codacy on the Picard repo to display coverage and linting issues for all builds. This really helped with reviewing code and keeping contributions to the Picard repo clean and upto the quality that is expected. Coverage reports also allowed us to figure out which key pieces of Picard code was untested and target them to ensure there were as less regressions as possible.

#442 Migrate code to json API

My next big challenge was moving the webservice API calls from XML to JSON. Initally it meant refactoring the spaghetti code that was the Picard webservice module. I untangled the code and split it into an easy to add upon WebService and APIHelper classes.

Next came the actual porting part. I had to manually figure out the differences in the JSON and XML outputs of all the APIs used by Picard (mainly MusicBrainz API and AcoustID API).

This port also helped in figuring out the parts of MB JSON API that was missing or behaving differently than the XML API. Bitmap, our resident MB developer was quick to fix all the issues blocking the transition JSON API for Picard. Picard switching to the JSON API also served as a good way to test our upcoming MB WebService 2.5, that is supposed to be JSON only.

#485 Add appveyor config for windows tests

Testing a cross-platform app means you need to get your hands dirty on all 3 OSes. Primarily a Linux user, I had to blindly write CI configs for Windows and OSX. For Windows testing, I have not yet found a better platform than AppVeyor. It is free for FOSS projects and down-right amazing in terms of queuing and build speeds.

I didn't have any options when it came to OSX builds. Although Travis does provide the functionality, the number of OSX containers available are scarce compared to the number of jobs that get submitted. As a result, I faced long queuing times which made the blindly-writing-configs-and-using-Travis-to-test part very difficult. I managed to do it with a wee-bit of patience and the fact the OSX has bash.

#500 Add v2 plugin manifest compatibility

All was well and I was finally on the last step of my GSoC project. All that remained was tidying up the code, fixing any remaining bugs and switching to a more robust Plugin packaging and distribution API. I wrote a CLI tool for the same, which you can find here.

You can find all the above commits here.

Afterthoughts:

By some stroke of fate, my total commits to the Picard repo are exactly 500 in number as of this post. I shook my head in disbelief and amazement as I let it sink in. I have come a long long way. During this entire journey, I have learnt a lot of new things: version control, making cross-platform desktop apps, proper unit-testing, i18n, CI, making CLI tools, designing APIs, documenting and reviewing code and most of all writing modular, manageable and maintainable code.

Expectation

Reality

Frankly, I would've never expected last year that my GitHub would look so green. I have made over 1200+ contributions this year to FOSS. My coding skills have taken a giant leap from last year. I would recommend every coder to try and contribute to a large open-source project at least once during their  lifetime. It teaches you a lot of things that can frankly never be taught anywhere else, and the entire experience is totally worth it!

GSoC is a marvellous platform to incubate contributors to the open-source world. I want to thank my mentor zas (Laurent Monin), my org admin ruaok (Robert Kaye) for helping me throughout and making sure I had an amazing GSoC experience, and Google for making this possible.

This has been an amazing opportunity for me. MetaBrainz community has been nothing short of wonderful to me and I am looking forward to contributing more to MetaBrainz and exploring other FOSS projects.

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Free VPN(Unlimited connections)

So, one of the many benefits of being a student is that you get free access to a lot of stuff.

One of the best such student dev. kits is the Github Student Developer Pack.

It has lots of free goodies that you can go check out in detail.

One of the best things that is included in the pack however is 50$ of Digital Ocean credits.

And this is how we will setup our own private VPS that will give us free unlimited VPN connections for about ~12 months depending on your data needs.

Here are the steps to do so -

1. Make your GH account using a .ac or .edu mail id. (So that it is eligible for the GH student pack)
2. Get your GH student pack .
3. Make a new Digital Ocean account. (DO might ask CC info for verification purposes)
  Remember to use the following referral link while signing up to get free 10$ of Digital Ocean credits - https://m.do.co/c/0fb06a5c5cf9

4. Once you have created the account, create a support ticket to apply the GH promo code since only customer support executives can apply it to an account. Just keep the ticket title as "Help with applying GH student Promo code" and paste the promo code you got from GH student pack in the body asking them to apply the code for 50$ of credit. They will reply back in ~1 hrs with the promo applied.
5. Once you are signed up and ready to roll, create a droplet

6. Choose a config according to your needs, I prefer the 5$/pm droplet since it has about 1000gigs of bandwidth and running a VPN barely costs any RAM or CPU. Also choose a Data center region, I am using a US based data center since it allows me to access US only websites. You can choose Indian servers for better ping. Use Ubuntu 16.04 as your OS.

7. Once it is up and running, SSH into the droplet.
8. Run the following script in command-line -

wget https://git.io/vpn -O openvpn-install.sh && bash openvpn-install.sh

9.  Follow the interactive tutorial upon the execution of the above script. Use the default values except for the following options:
a. Which protocol do you want for OpenVPN connections?
  - TCP
b. What port do you want OpenVPN listening to?

  - 443

c. Which DNS do you want to use with the VPN?

 - Google

10. Copy the generated client.ovpn file to your client.

10. Install an open-vpn client (either on your phone or your Desktop) and run from the generated config.
 For ubuntu you can do this via -
sudo apt install openvpn network-manager-openvpn-gnome

11. Et. Voila, unrestricted unlimited VPN. (Also helps get past pesky proxy issues on your phone)


Have fun with your free VPN connection ;)

P.S. - You can also use the above droplet to host your own websites and other cool stuff. You basically have your own VPS! :D

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Auto-forward Webmails

After much toiling to get webmails to be pushed to mobile, I was still dissatisfied with it.

It only fetched mails if I was connected to the intranet.

So I figured since a lot of us have access to a work station that runs 24*7 and is connected to both the internet and the intranet, why not use it as a relay for webmails.


So here is a guide to do the same -

1. Make an account on mail-gun. Register for it using the email you want to forward your webmails to and verify your account to enable a sandbox domain.

We will be using mail-gun's https api to forward our mails ( Since our institute blocks all ports apart from 80 or 443, so no gmail pop3/imap to the rescue)

2. Once you have created an account and verified it go to the following link -
https://mailgun.com/app/domains

You will see a sandbox domain. Click on it and keep a copy of the domain and the api-key.

Your domain will look something like this -

sandboxd6eebfa15f55422ab904868718950d50.mailgun.org

Your api-key will look like the following - 

key-##################77ae

Be careful not to copy the spaces after the key or the domain.

3.  Now run the following commands - 

sudo apt-get install python-requests

4. Download the following script -  https://raw.githubusercontent.com/samj1912/scripts/master/mail.py

Right click on it and save it at an appropriate location.

5. Run the above script and fill in the appropriate values. ( Make sure the email-id you are forwarding to is the same as the one you registered for mailgun)

To run the script, cd to the appropriate directory and run "python mail.py"

6. The script will create the necessary files and send a few email depending on your input.

7. To auto-push the mails, add a cronjob for the above script.

If you configured the above script correctly, it should have displayed a line of code to configure the cronjob for your particular system.

8. Copy that line.

9. Run  the following command in terminal - 

crontab -e

Crontab should open with your default editor.

If you haven't picked one already, pick nano.

Paste the line copied in step 8 at the end of the crontab file that opened.

Press Ctrl+X and then Y to confirm the addition of the new cronjob.

Voila, enjoy.

If you know of a better method to forward webmails, please let me know in the comments :)

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Squid for Ubuntu, because proxies are too much of a hassle

EDIT : Added Authentication methods for dynamic ips

It has been more than a year since I have been using squid to mitigate all the proxy problems that come due to the proxy authentication.

This is the most effective and hassle free way to set proxy in Linux.

Steps:

Note : Replace 'squid' with 'squid3' if you are not using Ubuntu 16.04

1. Install squid

sudo apt-get install squid

2. Edit the squid configuration file.

sudo vim /etc/squid/squid.conf

(for Ubuntu 15.10 and older)

sudo vim /etc/squid3/squid.conf

3. Delete all the contents of that file and replace them with the configuration given below:


Replace 10.0.2.21 with your own ip address/ other ip addresses that you want to access this proxy from.

Change 202.141.80.22 with your Proxy server address.

Change username:password to your proxy username and password.

4. Save the file ( Esc and ":wq" for vim noobs)

5. Restart the squid server.

sudo service squid restart

(for Ubuntu 15.10 and older)

sudo service squid3 restart

6. Edit your Proxy Settings from the network manager.

7. Open your bash profile.

sudo vim ~/.bashrc

Append the following to the end of the file.

export http_proxy=http://127.0.0.1:3128
export https_proxy=http://127.0.0.1:3128

The above two things should effectively resolve all proxy problems ( Environment Variables inclusive. )

8. Source the bashrc

source ~/.bashrc

And with that you are done!

You have your own personal proxy server!

Say goodbye to proxy problems.


PS - For those of you on the more geeky side of things, what we have done with the above is create our own proxy server that caches another proxy server with authentication.

The proxy server we have made is effectively a non authentication proxy server for the ips in the allowed_ips acl.

If used a bit cleverly it might also help you get around some other big-'time' restrictions ;) .

Use wisely!

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Psiphon Settings for Proxy

I have been searching for a good drony alternative for Lollipop for quite some time now.

Psiphon seems to be the best yet.

You can download it from here.

1. Go to your Wi-Fi settings and change the Proxy settings to None.

2. Open Psiphon and go to option and select the settings as given below. Go to More Options and configure it as follows.

3. In the More Options screen , configure Psiphon as shown below.
Replace 202.141.80.22 with the server address you use for your proxy authentication.
Port will be 3128.Username and PWD will the proxy username and passwords you use normally.

4. Start Psiphon and let it run. I found almost everything to be working (Chrome , Play store, whatsapp , Messenger, Facebook).
This is the best alternative to Drony I have found yet. If you know of something more seamless let me know.

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A Fresher's Guide to IIT-Guwahati

This post is an effort by me to solve a lot of the queries I encountered myself as a fresher coming to IIT-G.

You will find that most of your doubts will be solved if you go through it carefully.

I will be updating this blog with further details as more questions arise.

If you have any further queries you can comment below or ask them in the following group (Fresher's Forum IITG).

Important Dates:

1. Registration of New BTech/BDes Students: July 23, 2015, Thursday
2. Orientation for New BTech/BDes Students:  July 24, 2015, Friday
3. First Day of Instruction: July 28, 2015, Tuesday

Hostel allotment will be announced in the Institute’s website http://www.iitg.ac.in/ on July 22, 2015.
Students can also get the hostel allotment details at the entry gate of the Institute.

All students are requested to bring their own bedding and report at the respective hostels by July 22, 2015 evening.

Link to the academic calendar: Click here.

Documents needed:

• One copy of Provisional Seat Allocation letter [to be downloaded from the JoSAA portal].
• Original receipt of proof of payment for seat acceptance fee of Rs.45,000 (for GEN, OBC-NCL and Foreign) OR Rs.20,000 (for SC, ST, GEN-PwD, OBC-NCL-PwD, SC-PwD, ST-PwD) in State Bank of India using E-Challan [to be downloaded from the JoSAA portal].
• Filled-up Undertaking by the candidate [as per Annexure 9 given in JoSAA website].
• Duly certified original medical report [as per Annexure 8 given in JoSAA website].
• Two Passport size photographs of the candidate. 
• Original and one photocopy of Admit Card of JEE (Advanced) 2015.
• Original and one attested photocopy of Birth certificate or equivalent original certificate as proof of date of birth.
• Original and one attested photocopy of Certificate as proof of Name [to tally with the entry in JoSAA database] (example: Marksheet or Certificate of Xth Exam).
• Original and one attested photocopy of Category (SC / ST) certificate, if applicable, in the format given in JoSAA website (Issued by competent authority).
• Original and one attested photocopy of Certificate of category of OBC-NCL (central list of NCBC), if applicable, is to be issued by the competent authority in the prescribed format given in JoSAA website and should clearly mention that the candidate belongs to Non Creamy Layer. The certificate should have been issued after 1st June, 2014.
• Original and one attested photocopy of valid Disability certificate (if applicable) for PwD candidates.
• Original and one photocopy of valid Nationality certificate/document/passport (if applicable) for candidates with nationality as Foreign, OCI and PIO card holders.
• Original and one photocopy of valid Class XII marks sheet.
•  Along with above original certificates, candidates are advised to bring the following,a. Printout of locked choices and terms and conditions taken from the JoSAA website and duly signed by the candidate.b. One set of self-attested copies of all the documents listed above. The originals will be returned after verification and self-attested copies will be retained by the Reporting Centre.

The above are the minimum required documents as prescribed by JoSAA. I also suggest carrying more than just a couple of photographs as they will be needed, a lot. Also keep a digital copy of the same along with that of your signature handy. It will help you later.

What you will get in Hostel Room:

A good thing that differentiates IIT-G from other IITs is students get single rooms right from the beginning(except girls which are twin sharing for the first year).  They come along with the following things-

1. Bed

2. Table

3. Chair

4. Almirah

5. Book Shelf

6. Ceiling Fan
7. A Lan-port

You will be assigned your hostels before coming to IITG. (I will update this post with a link to the same as and when it gets released.).

The rooms however will be assigned to you when you reach IITG itself.

Hostels:

There are a total of 11 hostels for U.G. students ( Manas, Dihing, Kapili, Dibang, Siang, Kameng, Umiam, Barak, Lohit for U.G. boys and Dhansari and Subansari for U.G. girls)

All the hostels have a Canteen (Open generally from 9:30 am to 2:30 am) , a juice center and a stationary shop.

You can get most eatables at the canteen (Biscuits, chips, chocolates).
The canteen also serves typical fast food items like chowmein, pav bhaji, burgers etc.

The juice center has various soft-drinks/milk products/soups available.

The above two will mostly be able to satisfy your daily food needs apart from mess.

The stationary shop carries general daily use items like deos, soaps, buckets etc. apart from the stationary items. It is more of a convenience store.

You can also get your xerox/print outs done at the stationary shop.

Apart from that each hostel has multiple lobbies ( a group of 7-8 rooms) and each lobby has a common bathroom which is adequate and fitted with a 24 hr working geyser.

You will also find wash-rooms equipped with washing machines ( Yes, students generally wash their own clothes). There are however alternatives available and you can find a laundry guy.

There is also a T.V. room in each hostel as well as a reading room/library and a sports room which has T.T. and carrom boards.

Wi-Fi is available in some hostels, though not all. The academic block however has full Wi-Fi coverage.

What you will need in here:

1. Mattress

2. Quilt

3. Pillow

4. Scientific Calculator [Casio fx-991ES, preferable]

5. Umbrella

6. Rain Coat

7. Bi-cycle

8. Buckets
9. Home-made food stuffs (Believe me you'll miss them the most)

10. Sports items (in case, such as swimming costume,racquets etc.)

11. Personal medication(if you have any problems like asthma)

12. Extension box

A temporary and adequate market is setup at a community hall near the boy's hostel every year at the starting of the odd semester, where you can find all the useful things of day to day life. The market is usually functional for a week.

You can buy bicycles, mattresses, pillows, buckets, stationary items, sim cards and other general daily use items from the market or the stationary shops in each hostel. Availability of the same is no issue so don't worry about them. No need to bring these items from your home.

For a more comprehensive list you can check this amazing guide.

Reaching the campus: 

Getting to Guwahati

Guwahati is well connected to India with rail and air travel. There are trains from all over the country to reach Guwahati (visit the Indian Railways official site http://www.indianrail.gov.in/ for complete information). There are direct flights from all major cities offered by Indian Airlines, Indigo, Spice, GoAir and Jet Airways. Connecting flights via Kolkata are also available. 

Coming a few days before the date of registration will help you settle down in your hostel rooms and meet a few people. Also you will need to buy things and you can also pay a visit to the city if you want to.

Sometimes there are train/plane delays due to rains, so just as a precaution it will be better if you arrive a couple of days before hand, because as of now there is no provision for late admission for new students.

Reaching the Campus: 

From the airport a pre-paid taxi is the best way to reach IITG. Fares have to be negotiated and the ongoing rate is around Rs.500-600/- .

From the railway station, as soon as you step out, look for our students carrying ‘IITG’ placards, or their identification cards on the platform. In case you miss them, go to the parking area of the railway station and look for buses with “ON IITG DUTY” written on the bottom corner of their windshield. 

If you cannot locate any of the above, you have other options too. You can take an auto or a taxi from the station itself. The fare may be around Rs.350/- for an auto and Rs.450 to Rs.500 fora taxi. Ask to be dropped off at the hostel gate. Another option is to catch a rickshaw at Pan Bazaar. Also, opposite to the Don Bosco School are IIT buses parked that depart for the campus every hour. Parents are advised to book their return tickets in advance at least 2-3 days after registration.

Bus timings (Note- Additional Buses may ply during the registration for convenience. The timings regarding the same will be updated in case it happens.)

Upon reaching the Campus:

Link to the Campus map - Click here. (You can obtain the printout of the same at your hostel's respective security desks.)

All the students will have hostels allotted to them by the time they reach the campus. Your first job will be to locate the hostel you have been allotted. This inquiry can be done at the railway station/ airport from the students of IITG or from the help desks setup near the various entry-gates. 

For the parents, accommodation can be booked in the institute guest house by mailing an application to guesthouse@iitg.ernet.in specifying the duration of stay, number of people visiting and the reason for visit.

Since the number of rooms in the Guest House is limited (they have a first-come first-serve policy) you will be at an advantage if you book your rooms as soon as possible. I suggest mailing them immediately. The response confirming your booking should come within 1-2 weeks.

There are hotels available in the city too, in case accommodation is not available at the Institute guest house. Here's a list of some hotels in the Guwahati city - Click here.

After Locating Your Hostel:

After locating your hostel, you will meet your care-taker/warden.You will be allocated your room and given info on the basic structure of the hostel. ( Canteen, mess, stationary shop, juice center etc.)

I will make a post detailing the same later.

For freshers the rooms are allocated on the ground floors and they are grouped separately from the seniors just so that they are comfortable. ( I can speak from personal experience that you need not fear interacting with your seniors at all. All of them are very friendly and helpful and IIT-G has a very strict anti-ragging policy) 

You will also be asked to fill out a few forms which will help you procure your local sim-card/ open your bank account. ( A local bank account in one of the 2 banks inside (Canara or SBI) is needed for fees and other college related transactions and is mandatory.)

If you arrive a couple of days early, before the registration, I suggest buying the items mentioned in the above list and getting a sim-card and opening the bank-account and exploring the campus.

The registration usually takes place in one of the lecture halls, so familiarize yourself with the campus so that finding places is hassle free.

All of the above are simply tips from personal experience and they will smooth-en the transition and it won't feel hectic to you or your parents.

After the registration, there is a general orientation the next day, at the Institute Auditorium where you will be introduced to IIT-G as a student.

There will also be a departmental orientation where-in you will be introduced to the departement professors and your future opportunities in the same. They will also inform you about the various courses you will be taking in your first semester.

For further details on your Course and Syllabi you can check the following link.

For more info check this.

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