Evernote works well with WINE

Installed Evernote on WINE, and it seems so far to be pretty stable and works well enough to grab my information.

Linux ping is it up?

if test 1 -eq `ping -q -c 1 ip.add.ress | grep "loss" | cut -d " " -f 4`; then echo "online"; else echo "offline"; fi

Updating smb SAMBA on Linux Ubuntu can't print

At a client's, I had a fresh install of Ubuntu and it could print to a network printer. I updated Ubuntu which included a new smbd install. Then I couldn't print. CUPS (http://localhost:631) told me that I have NT_STATUS_UNSUCCESSFUL.

What?

OK, ping "computername" comes up an ip address on the Internet. Yuck.

It turns out that the name resolve order changed from LAN (lmhosts? netbios?) to Internet DNS (smb.conf entry was comment out, actually). Solutions: edit /etc/hosts to include the ip/name combination of the hosting computer. Or perhaps change the computername to computername.local

Because it can be done. Part 2

The strange twist to me is that by the time I come up with a great idea, I don't always have a chance to implement it. Well, I guess like a lot of people, I have a desire to reinvent the wheel.

And, so I'm reading the man pages for beep and I realize beep is quite powerful in what it could do. Including different frequencies. Could MIDI be played through beep? ... Well, it appears, yes. Thanks to the MIDI Beeper.

What's all this obsession with beep?

It's pretty much so I could make an alarm, at first. Now I understand its potential to signal all types of things, including log warnings, etc. The other point is... without a sound card.

Because Linux can do it. That's why.

sudo apt-get install beep
sleep 5m;beep;beep;beep

My wife called. "Call the order in, but not for 5 minutes."

Sigh. So many different ways to handle this. I don't want to go to my microwave. or my stove. Besides, these things keep wanting you to turn off the beeper after they do it. I could open a calendar app. no. I just want to know when 5 minutes have passed.

And in 5 minutes, I get a beep. or whatever. And there ... it's done.

beep! beep! beep!

of course, I did it by intuition, not the right way. soo um.. beep -r 3 ok? fine.

The Death of Windows? Not by the hands of Cheap PCs

Sears Says, "Let the Games Begin!"
LinuxHow2 - Saturday, 26 January 2008

© LinuxHow2

Some people seem to think that Windows -- specifically, the larger hardware, and by proxy greater cost, exacerbated by the needs of Windows -- is getting hurt greatly by the cheap PCs.

I have to severely question that premise for some obvious reasons. One is the growth of Apple computer sales. In this case, Apple is enjoying growth in spite of (IMO) selling computers that are up to 5 times more expensive than a Dell or Systemax. Hey, It's ok. One can always get a Mac Mini...

The second reason to question the premise is the people who are putting Windows XP on all these low cost PCs. I don't care where one gets the license to do such things, but I'm certain it's still not hurting the pocketbook of those same people.

No, the market will still buy whatever the heck it wants, and those people who want only web, email, chat .... well, consider these cheap PCs to be the stepping stone to the next mid grade PC. Eventually, even the poor ailing college students will want more. Sub $200 PCs won't take over and squash Microsoft. It's just alternatives.

Watching MediaPlayer 11 on Linux

*Yawn*
VirtualBox + XP + WMP11 + Seamless + full screen = movies.

In my case, though, my 1650x1050 full screen seamless tended to drop a frame or two, but the audio was quite good, and didn't skip a beat.

Windowed Virtual seemed to be smooth and right on target.

If you want to watch Netflix Watch Instantly on Linux, why not give virtualization a try? It's not that hard.

Oh, and for the naysayers: Who cares? Chances are you bought a box with XP/Vista on it before you installed Ubuntu. Also, what do you think Parallels is?

PXE, DHCP, and no DHCP

I just read about Installing Linux with no CD and a comment asks about PXE without DHCP.

From other comments I've read, and my own personal experience, there just isn't a way to do PXE without DHCP. PXE is built into the network card's interface. It's pretty much as hard coded as the MAC Address (at least, until you boot your OS). At the risk of oversimplification... OK, I'm risking it... the basic operation of PXE goes like this:

1. Boot
   
2. Boot order...Network
   
3. PXE ... seek out BOOTP/DHCP broadcast offers
   
4. get an IP address
   
5. find out who handles tftp (perhaps from the DHCP server itself)
   
6. boot from the tftp server
   

No, seriously, read the link above.

In any case, one might cringe and say, "I can't have another DHCP server on my network!" Well, if you're actually attempting what is described in the above link, the thought in my head is simply that you probably don't need to worry about that.

In essence, there are only a few barriers, most can be summed up by creating a DHCP server in your zone.

The barriers (as I understand them):

• You have a router that doesn't pass DHCP
  
• You have an administrator who doesn't want another DHCP server on his LAN
  
• You feel that DHCP has its own administrative nightmare
  

It's ok. If you're already trying to install LINUX, chances are you probably are game enough to run your own DHCP server. But you don't have to do a big range. Just set it up with some settings like this:

host apxecomputer {
hardware ethernet 00:15:FF:FF:FF:FF;
fixed-address 192.168.1.49;
}


The point *is* PXE install of Linux, isn't it?

OK, if not, an alternate bet in this day and age is to boot locally with a Live USB Distro. What? You can't afford $10 for a 2GB USB flash drive?

ASSP Spam in Commission. A Search Open.

Some queries that I'm using to parse ASSP spam directory, just in case I need to look it up again:

grep "email@address" * | cut -d: -f1 | xargs grep "content"
Result: in all the spam emails that contain the email address, get the filename and in those files, look for "content"

ls -l | grep "Oct 10" | cut -c57-80 | xargs grep "email@address"
Result: for a specific day (or range of days/month), get the appropriate file names and in those files, search for email (or other criteria)

Seeking... POP3 to MySQL for an email client

It appears to me, in some strange way, that I'd benefit from a MySQL backend for an email client.

I'm not exactly sure how I think this is good, but it's something I was just thinking about.

I'll revisit this later.

RCS - Revision Control System. Everyone should use this.

Do you edit /etc files or .inis or .confs? If you're like me, you have tons of .old or .mmddyy or .1, .2, etc. files cluttering up your directory.

If you're further like me, you have trouble sometimes to determine which one of the filename.ext~ or filename.old or filename.old.2 that you'd need to go back to if you screw something up.

RCS helps this lots.



http://galton.uchicago.edu/~gosset/Compdocs/rcs.html

Is that process running?

Did you know you can query a process directly by pid and without grep?

I didn't.

ps -p `cat pidfile` -o args=

Returns something like

perl assp.pl


Is it running? Yes. Is it running the same thing as it's supposed to run? Yes.
An explanation:
ps show processes
-p show process of a specific id
`cat pidfile` the ` "backticks" mean to execute what's in between them and use it in the command line as text. cat means the same thing as type in Windows: output the contents of the file. pidfile is the filename that holds the pid/process ID of the application that's running.
-o show only what I want to show
args= show the full execution line of the process. The = is to give a column name to the "args" column. If you specify no column name, it doesn't list one.