While some articles may be timeless, depending on the type of content being published, many posts have a definite expiry date. It is the double edged sword of rapidly evolving technologies – they improve swiftly, but articles written about them become outdated just as fast. This site, for instance, is primarily about cloud computing and… Continue reading Adding a Notification to Old WordPress Posts
Category: Software
Easy Windows-Linux File Sharing with a LiveCD
The intent of this article is to address a very specific case – it is not meant as a best practices guide. Scenario: A. You have a windows computer (Computer 1) with files that are remotely accessed from second windows computer (Computer 2). B. Access from Computer 2 is via a program that expects the… Continue reading Easy Windows-Linux File Sharing with a LiveCD
Capturing Termination Signals in PHP
Consider the scenario of a PHP script which can be run for a period of time, stopped, and continue its task later on. A common necessity for such a script may be to detect when the script is terminated, and perform some functions at that time. This can be accomplished by having the script capture… Continue reading Capturing Termination Signals in PHP
Missing mail command on Amazon’s Linux
I recently noticed that the mail command is not available by default on the latest version of Amazon’s Linux AMI (v2011.09). This functionality is available in the mailx package, which can be installed with the following: yum install mailx
Showing the Firebug icon
While it is easy enough to use F12 to display Firebug in Firefox, I just like the status bar icon. Unfortunately, it has been hidden in the last few releases of Firebug. To display it, open about:config, and set extensions.firebug.showStatusIcon to true.
Optimize all MySQL Tables
A one-liner to optimize all MySQL tables, in all databases. Be advised that running optimize on InnoDB does a ‘recreate and analyze’. Run as root in the example below. mysqlcheck -o -u root -p –all-databases
Updating the Flash Plugin
Adobe’s Flash plugin (v10.3) is setup to check for updates on restart. However, at least recently, on my setup, there have been a couple of little annoyances. Either it launches and tries to check for updates before my wifi connects (rare) or it tells me that it must be run with administrator permissions. The end… Continue reading Updating the Flash Plugin
Verify that SSL caching is working
To verify that SSL caching is on, check the Session-ID across multiple sessions (i.e. resume/reconnect) – they should be the same: openssl s_client -host HOSTNAME -port 443 -reconnect | grep ‘Session-ID:’ The equivalent, using gnutls-cli should be: gnutls-cli -V -r HOSTNAME |grep ‘Session ID’
Rotating EBS Snapshots: ec2-prune-snapshots
Following the significant disruption of EBS volumes in April, the importance of backups was once again brought to the forefront. Amazon’s method of generating EBS backups is the ‘snapshot’ – a differential backup stored in S3. While Amazon provides tools for creating snapshots (either command line, or via their API), a script that is quite… Continue reading Rotating EBS Snapshots: ec2-prune-snapshots
Rebuild Icon Cache
Recently, after upgrading a program (FileZilla in this case), the program’s icon would not display on the desktop (Windows 7). Even deleting and recreating the shortcut resulted in a broken icon (although, the shortcut itself worked fine). No amount of refreshing the desktop made a difference. The quick fix was to rebuild the icon cache,… Continue reading Rebuild Icon Cache
Prime Factoring with PHP
A surprisingly large number of math based computer problems appear to require factorization, finding prime number, or prime factoring. Presented below is a reasonably fast algorithm for prime factoring a number – it is limited to the integer size on PHP (231-1). It should be a fairly trivial exercise to modify the function below to… Continue reading Prime Factoring with PHP
Setting Windows’ Time Service’s Update Frequency
There are some instances when it is desirable to change the default interval between synchronizations by the Windows Time Service (i.e. NTP). For instance, I recently encountered a computer where the clock would run a few seconds fast each day (it was not a battery problem), for a quick fix, it was easy to simply have the… Continue reading Setting Windows’ Time Service’s Update Frequency
Using Telnet with an SMTP Server
Despite having been around for a long time, telnet is an invaluable tool for testing a mail server. It allows one to pinpoint errors in the process – some which are not logged – and to quickly validate that things are working. Moreover, it enables one to get a better understanding of what their mail… Continue reading Using Telnet with an SMTP Server
Merging Videos of the Same Type
While modern computers have greatly advanced in their ability to handle video editing, it remains one of the slowest commonly performed operations. Within the realm of video editing, common tasks include: splitting a video (e.g. into two files to fit onto a disk) merging a video (e.g. combining two videos into a single file) splicing… Continue reading Merging Videos of the Same Type