Righteous Hack

For those that have never used crontab, it can be a daunting task to schedule a simple script. As with all things, I highly recommend that you learn the meanings of CLI programs and their usage etcetera. With that said, I wanted to check my crontab job against a generator of sorts just to be sure I had it right. If you want a simple click and go on crontab generator, I recommend using the one provided by HTML Basix. Enjoy!

–Himuraken

This week I joined the Ubuntu LoCo Florida Team and participated in last night’s team meeting (via IRC).  Seems like a great group of people AND an excellent way to get more involved with Ubuntu (and really any Linux).

In addition to the IRC meetings, there are scheduled meetups to perform various activities such as installing networks for youth homes/schools, bug testing, documentation writing, and just plain fun. Anyone out there enjoy bar-b-que and beer???

I look forward to greater involvement!

If you have no idea what IRC is and need a Linux client to get started, I recommend xchat (sudo apt-get install xchat)

For more information and to join:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoTeams
http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=225
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FloridaTeam
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat

- habanero_joe

Just wrapped up another Ubuntu LoCo meeting. The meetings are fun, informative, and full of ideas. I am still truly amazed by the community efforts in open source project and Ubuntu is no exception.

You can join your LoCo anytime or idle in ours on Freenode @ #ubuntu-us-fl.

–himuraken

I am still buzzing with joy over my recent Android phone purchase. The Android Marketplace has proven very useful, I have found many useful apps and wanted to share a few worth trying out.

1. Listen – This Google app is a must have if you listen to podcasts. Forget the old days of downloading them and syncing them to your mobile/DAP. With Listen, you subscribe, download, and stream right from your phone.

2. Seesmic – This great little app is for those Twitter users on the go. After installing and logging into my account, I was able to perform all of the tasks that I expect from a Twitter client. Simple and intuitive.

3. NewsRob – If you are a Google Reader user you probably are familiar with using GR from your mobile browser. It isn’t any fun. NewsRob is simple, fast, and free. With numerous options for reading and syncing, this app is great.

4. Advanced Task Killer Free – The name is pretty self explanitory, it kills running processes. This is especially useful on the Android operating system which seems to leave everything running in the background even though you think that you exited.

5. TorrentFu – This app is excellent for controlling Transmission and other torrent clients. Uploading, starting, pausing, and all the other basic controls are available. A neat feature is the ability to search for torrents right from the phone and submit them to any of your configured profiles for downloading. There is also a built-in barcode scanner which converts barcodes into torrent searches. Perfect for those times in the movie/music aisle.

6. Katawa – Web comics! If you are a fan of XKCD, Indexed, Dinosaur Comics, and the like, this app is for you. It pulls the latest strip on demand.

There are many others… far to many to list actually. Anyways, I hope that this short list helps out new Android users.

–himuraken

Happy New Year TwentyTen!

How many times have you “forgotten” a root password? Or been given control of a server set up by someone else? Hey it happens.

CentOS Password Reset

At the GRUB Loader, select the installation to reset, press A to append and press ENTER.
You will be presented with a prompt that looks similar to this: grub append> ro root=LABEL=/

Press the SPACEBAR once and type the word single and press ENTER. This will boot to single-user-mode.

You will then get the shell prompt (hostname)#

Change the root password using the normal command: passwd root

Reboot and login. That’s all there is to it!

Recently, I converted a decently spec’d terminal server into an ESXi server after doing a P2V on the TS. After that, it was time to play. I installed a fresh copy of Ubuntu 9.04 server and then installed FOG. If you don’t know what FOG is, you may want to read FOG’s overview here. Once I got it all installed I kept getting an error when connecting to the web-based management interface. I have pasted in the error and resolution below, including credit on the source of the resolution.

–Himuraken

Warning: mysql_connect() [function.mysql-connect]: Access denied for user ‘root’@'localhost’ (using password: NO) in /var/www/fog/management/index.php on line 34
Unable to connect to Database

I am not sure what else to tell you from here, I am at a standstill. Thanks for any help you can offer up.

RE: Problem with mySQL database after install
By: microleaks (microleaksProject AdminAccepting Donations) – 2008-02-06 15:52
All you need to do is go to /var/www/html/fog/commons/config.php and change the mysql password in that file you match whatever you set it as.

Firefox is a great browser, it really is. But I find that Opera just works better. I know that it isn’t open source, but it just has the features that I want. Plus, anyone that does research owes it to themselves to use Opera.

Although Opera tends to have sane defaults, I find its built in torrent handler to be useless. I poked around numerous places and never figured out a way to disable it. I hadn’t even took the time to Google for a solution. Well this morning I found it and man was it easy.

In your address bar enter in opera:config and press enter. Expand the BitTorrent section and then uncheck Enable. Done.

–Himuraken

Some time ago, I was looking for a simple way to backup my Linux desktop machines. I use to take the time and create my own rsync scripts etc, and get versioned snapshots. A few months back I found BackInTime. This tool makes backing up with snapshots easy. Check it out here: http://backintime.le-web.org/

–Himuraken