Linux Blog

History is great. How does the saying go?

“Those who forget about history are doomed to repeat it?”

If that’s the saying I think it is more fitting to say that for those who forget the Linux History Command are doomed to repeat typing. A lot. Seriously, the history command can help you remember the exact Linux find command with the intricate search options you typed a while ago. It could help you open up your x2x or x2vnc sessions after a reboot. Who knows what you’ll use it for. All this comes at a little cost, you’ll have to know how to use it.

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How about a few geeky songs to liven up the dull workday? These are all pretty old as far as the internet goes, but they’re all goodies that can be fun to listen to every once in a while and I promise there will be none of Stallman’s doings after the jump.

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I went to the local library to pick up some books, this time I actually browsed the IT section. To my surprise I found some relatively (in library sense) new books, one of which was “Mashups: Strategies for the Modern Enterprise.” I wasn’t going to pick it up, but I saw it was from Addison-Wesley. Not only my favorite publisher because they publish decent books, but they also have a great logo (triforce anyone?) If that wasn’t enough to convince me, the cover certainly was. I mean come on its a pear-orange-lemon-plum-lime-apple I’d like to see what one of those tastes like. Essentially this is what this book is about; Mashups. Taking things that don’t necessarily belong together and bringing (mashing) them together to make something new and interesting.

I thought I knew a bit about mashups, which is why I was hesitant to pick it up. After taking it home I found it to be way more in depth than I first imagined. Explaining different models in depth really makes one think about the larger pictures. There is a whole chapter dedicated on how to create a sample mashup. It gives the principles and leaves the reader (in this sense me) with a better understanding of the inner workings of mashups. It even includes a portion on security that doesn’t just seem like it was added in as an after thought.

I may just have to pick up my own copy of this book because I feel bad that I’ve renewed it once already. I think other people could benefit from reading it. Who knows maybe they’ll read this review and use the recall function, its definitely worth the time and money.

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With the upcoming release of Tron Legacy I can’t help but play this game. Now if only a 3D version got released and a certain some one would stand inline to get me 3D television on Black Friday. Better yet, code the 3D version WHILE waiting in line for Black Friday sale. Odds are I’ll probably get a leaf blower, ladder or something with lesser or equal buzz killing potential.

Check out my GLTron skills. Make sure to watch it in 480p and take no notice of the number of “Player 1″ crashes in the top left hand corner, that obviously wasn’t me. There also is NO sound, but you can install it, play the soundtrack at the same time and get the same effect. I think the only time I’ve ever been more 1337 was when I hacked that Gibson, but that’s a-whole-nother story. Also take note of the length of this video, a total accident.

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So, you have a pesky DVD that you’d like to backup? The broader question is, do you have DVD ripper software? Well what is better than DVD ripping software? That’s right you guessed it FREE DVD ripper software!

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So, setting environment variables is a pretty easy task right? I thought so too but recently I was unable to read a variable I set from within a Tomcat application no matter what I tried. The problem turns out was easy to fix.

All I needed was to set an environment variable, I didn’t care who had access to it since it was just a path but whatever I did, it just wouldn’t stick. I quickly found out from a co-worker about a magical command that would have been a solution. Problem now was he couldn’t remember what it was. Well it turns out that it is a bash built in called source. Using this with the /etc/profile file as follows: “source /etc/profile” fixed the problem without a reboot.

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Emanuele gave me the heads up of a new release of Vatlator which is a live CD for anonymous browsing. This is the first I’ve heard of Vatlator so naturally I downloaded it to see what it was all about. After setting up a new virtual machine and disk it had no problems booting up and did it fast. From testing Firefox, tor is enabled by default and works well, although a little slower but thats expected from using Tor. You may want to note that that not all traffic is routed through Tor, it would be best test to make sure that what you need is before you need to use it.
I installed the Virtual Box add-ons, and after restarting X by logging out, then logging back in (took me a while to figure this out) the resolution was much better. By the way, the sudo root password is vatlator. Since it is based on Ubuntu installing software works with apt-get and has a great range of packages.

One thing that baffles me is the “F… the censorship” slogan, it just seems a little hypocritical, but I can relate to reasons behind it. I’m definitely going to keep it handy since it runs great in Virtual Box, boots up quickly and performs really well. Kudo’s Emanuele!

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While not exactly a shell script, I figured it would be worthy to post something rather than nothing and technically it is a script none-the-less.
I was experimenting with Asterisk AGI scripts and needed a project. I decided that an IP address lookup would be a good one. Sometimes my dynamic IP changes but my dynamic DNS doesn’t update. With this script, I should be able to dial into my Asterisk machine and get it to tell me the IP address. At least, that’s the plan.

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Did you remember to backup the files…?
All of them?
What do you mean *MOST* of them?
Well, you should have used one of these flippin’ utilities.
Off with his head!
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This has to be the coolest background for beginning Linux users. What a great idea. I could probably use one of these. Especially for emacs but thats because I’m church of Vi baby.
Source: http://www.tux-planet.fr/public/images/wallpapers/linux/shell/linux-wallpaper-for-beginners-1280×1024.jpg

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If you have ssh access to a remote machine and wish to browse the file system SSHFS is a great utility.
It can be easily installed by your favorite package manager, or compiled from scratch. It has been a dear friend of mine for at least a couple of years.

To mount a file system with SSH, it is almost simpler than making an SSH connection:

sshfs [user]@[host]: [mountpoint]

to unmount is just as simple. Either:

fusermount -u [mountpoint]

OR

sudo umount [mountpoint]

Once your remote file system is mounted, you may bask in its glory and take advantage of everything a local file system has to offer although you may notice a slight delay.

If you’re an mplayer user and wish to stream media, you can use the -cache option to give you a little bit of a buffer.

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