A taste of Linux.

Having decided that i wanted an external hard drive for my backups i looked around at various sites and settled on a 250gb 'mistral' by CnM from SVP.co.uk. Its an ultra light drive which could fit quite happily inside a paperback novel, its that small! It came with several programs for doing various security type things on your machine, but only for MS windows. So I ordered it from SVP and paid for it online and sat back for the courier to deliver it, and it arrived two days later, just when I was beginning to give up hope of not seeing it before the weekend.

Once it was unpacked and i set it all up I read the instruction manual that came with it, and none of it was relevant to linux, it was all for MS windows. But once plugged in a window popped up on my machine saying that it had detected a new device did i want to open a window for it? I clicked yes and it opened up a window, and i then set about finding out what device it was and how to get my backup program of choice [rsnapshot] working on it. But whatever option I gave it it failed at, but i eventually found out that I was missing NTFS support, so a quick yum download and installation from rpm forge and I was in business.

The command "mount" showed me that it was on /dev/sda1, whilst "df -h" showed that it had 233gb available to be used. So I then configured rsnapshot to save its backups to /dev/sda1 and did a backup from the CLI, and then tweak the configuration because I hadn't got the frequency that I wanted, so I then set it as good to go by fitting it into roots crontab and then I just let it alone to see how it would go. And it works beautifully and I'm now confident that if I have something go wrong with my system I wont lose everything as I've got good backups that I know that I can restore from if necessary.

At long last I've been able to get a spell checker for xchat, my favourite program for IRC [Internet Relay Chat], and its called 'Enchant' and is in the rpmforge repo. Once installed you need to restart xchat, but then it all just works and highlights words that it thinks that you've misspelt. Its worth a look I think.

Santa should change his image: he should get off his sleigh and walk, lose weight, eat the carrots children leave out for the reindeer and forego the sherry and mince pie, and generally stop promoting obesity, drink driving and unhealthy living, suggests a public health expert from Australia.

Writing in the British Medical Journal, BMJ Christmas issue, Dr Nathan Grills, from Monash University asks "is Santa Claus a public health pariah?"

Grills writes that:

"Santa only needs to affect health by 0.1 per cent to damage millions of lives."

We should be using his popularity to promote healthy living urges Grills, who backs up his argument with a review of literature and web-based material on the jolly fat man's potential negative impact on public health (funnily enough he found no peer-reviewed papers on this).

Grills concluded there is a high level of awareness of Santa among children: for instance he is more familiar to American schoolchildren than Ronald McDonald, an image that is heavily promoted in US and other countries to make children associate McDonald's food with happiness.

Santa's image is also used to sell, and sometimes he is depicted promoting products that cause harm, says Grills, and the impact is global.

"Like Coca-Cola, Santa has become a major export item to the developing world", he writes.

Grills also points out that:

* Christmas cards often portray Santa smoking a pipe or cigar.

* Santa promotes drink-driving: since he must sup gallons of brandy as he does his rounds on Christmas Eve.

* Despite portraying himself as a high speed air traveller, you never see him wearing a seat belt or helmet.

* As well as high speed travel, Santa could be accused of promoting other dangerous activities such as roof surfing and chimney jumping.

* The jolly man spreads diseases: assuming he sneezes or coughs around 10 times a day, think of how many children may end up with swine flu after sitting on his lap making their Christmas wishes.

Grills suggests it's about time we update Santa's image and start portraying him differently: how about walking on a treadmill?

Should Santa be thinking about retiring Rudolph, Donner and Blitzen, donning a track suit and cycling his way across the skies?

Source - "Santa Claus: a public health pariah?" Nathan J Grills and Brendan Halyday. BMJ, 2009;339:b5261; Published online 16 December 2009

10. Engineers would rather take their phone apart.

9. It’s OK to call an engineer when you have a cool science or math question because they will surely know the answer. WRONG! Google knows too.

8. Because YOU can… make sure stuff’s plugged in, unclog a drain, tighten a screw, remove string from the vacuum, reboot your computer, replace the batteries, or take your car to a mechanic all by your freakin’ self.

7. Engineers have lots of hobbies. Waiting by the phone for it to beep, ring, buzz, or sing is not one of them.

6. Engineers like to concentrate really hard on one activity without interruption. Try watching a whole movie, going for a walk, driving somewhere, or just having a complete conversation without answering, or even bringing, your phone. If people in 1995 could do it, you probably can too.

5. The internet doesn’t mind when you stop in the middle of an article and change subjects. People get mad when you hang up in the middle of a conversation and call someone more interesting.

4. Because engineers are always thinking about something else while people talk at them, they rely on visual cues to know when it’s their turn be polite and respond. The phone makes this REALLY awkward.

3. Phone Call = Obligation to Talk = More Work = More Opportunity for Blame for Helping Someone Else

2. Without a doubt, whatever an engineer is currently doing is vastly more interesting than talking to you on the phone … unless it’s a girlfriend or wife calling. Tricked you. Engineers don’t have those.

1. No one calls an engineer to catch up. People only call engineers to ask for things. Therefore, answering the phone is always the wrong thing to do.

Source = http://industrialinterface.com/blog/2009/09/03/10-reasons-engineers-hate-the-phone/

KDE as default desktop. /etc/sysconfig/desktop

DESKTOP="KDE" And this gives you the option of shutting down easily DISPLAYMANAGER="KDE"

RPM matters. You [i]nstall when you don't have that package (whatever version) installed.

You [F]reshen when you want to update an installed package.

You [U]pgrade when you want to freshen, but also install any new rpms in the argument list.

Change /etc/sysconfig/init # Turn on graphical boot GRAPHICAL=yes to "GRAPHICAL=no"

Add the following line into your .bashrc file before fi PS1="[\u:\d \t @\w]$ " then save and open a bash window, and you've got the date and time showing.

Atomic clock time syncing. Add the following line to your root crontab at a time of your choice. rdate -s clock-1.cs.cmu.edu && hwclock --systohc

RONNIE BARKER'S TOP TEN JOKES.

1. The search for the man who terrorises nudist camps with a bacon slicer goes on. Inspector Lemuel Jones had a tip-off this morning, but hopes to be back on duty tomorrow.

2. Have you heard the one about the retired general who said he had not had sex since 1956? His friend said: "`That's a long time ago." "I don't know," the general replied, "it's only 20.27 now."

3. The man who invented the zip fastener was today honoured with a lifetime peerage. He will now be known as the Lord of the Flies.

4. In a packed programme tonight we will be talking to an out-of-work contortionist who says he can no longer make ends meet.

5. The toilets at a local police station have been stolen. Police say they have nothing to go on.

6. A new publishing venture was announced today, the Stock Breeders Gazette and Playboy magazine are to get together to produce the Farmer Sutra.

7. Arnold Crump, a 6ft 9ins, ham-fisted, hairy drunk with a short temper, bad breath, acne, dandruff and fleas, was named by Scotland Yard today as Britain's most unwanted man.

8. A famous Spoonerism from sitcom Open All Hours: "Don't just crit there siticising."

9. George Mumble the Bodmin man who swallowed 200 weight of laxative for a bet on coronation night has celebrated his Silver Jubilee. He's been on the throne for 25 years.

10. As prisoner Norman Stanley Fletcher in Porridge, when playing a game of Monopoly: "Would you Adam and Eve it? Go to jail!!!

Much essential information is held in 'man pages' which are essentially information about a program which may also contain command line instructions, and any other relevant information, and is usually accessed in a console terminal. I have found that it is awkward to read these pages and remember the information because of the difficulty in scrolling within it.

But now this seems to have been resolved by using Konqueror ... all you need to do is to put 'man:/' into the location bar and it then displays the 'UNIX Manual Index'. However, this is still a bit of handful to find your way around, but, if you know the name of the program or command that you need information on then you can just put 'man:/????' into the location bar where '????' is the name of the command or program. And it is so easy to scroll up or down, or find the information that you want using the find command [Control + f].

Foiling the Phishers.

Phishing is a growing form of online fraud. It blends old-fashioned confidence scams with innovations in technological trickery. The best way to avoid becoming a victim is to remember that real companies almost never send email asking you to submit any personal data.

Phishers use "spoofed" [fake] emails and fraudulent websites designed to fool you into divulging personal financial data such as credit card numbers, account usernames and passwords, and in America your Social Security numbers, etc. By hijacking the trusted brands of well-known banks, online retailers and credit card companies, phishers can fool you.

They often include fancy graphics, trademark symbols, and an authentic-looking email address in the "from" line, but all of these things can be faked easily. One of the easiest ways to tell that it comes from a phisher is if the message tries to scare you into giving up personal and financial information by saying that your account needs to be verified, updated or confirmed. If you think a message might be legitimate, contact the organization by phone or open a new Internet browser window and type in the company's Web address. Do not cut and paste material from suspicious email messages and never reply to a suspected phisher.

Be smart. Be safe.

Nigerian Scam.

On another fraud front, many people have been contacted by perpetuators of what's known as the Nigerian Advance Fee Fraud or "4-1-9" scheme -- so named after the section of the Nigerian penal code that addresses fraud schemes. These are often quite creative as people are discovering.

A large number of victims are enticed into believing they have been singled out from the masses (often by using your family names) to share in some multi-million dollar windfall profits. Don't fall for such frauds either.

Promise yourself to be so strong that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. To talk health, happiness and prosperity to every person you meet. To make all your friends feel that there is something in them. To look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimisim come true. To think only of the best, to work only for the best and expect only the best. To be just as enthusiastic about the success of others as you are about your own. To forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. To wear a cheerful countenace at all times and give every living creature you meet a smile. To give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others. To be too large for worry, too noble for anger, too strong for fear and too happy to permit the presence of trouble.

Recently two drives on the computer got confused and started spilling out error messages when I rebooted. Eventually I tracked it down to this;-

fsck ext3. no such file or directory while trying to open /dev/hdf1. The syperblock could not be read or does not describe a correct ext2 filesystem. If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2 filesystem and not swap or ufs or something else, then the superblock is corrupt and you might try running e2fsck with an alternate superblock

The exact message that was being shown at the start of this saga was

buffer i/o error on device hda1, logical block 0

and then the logical block would increase by one until I switched the machine off. This was looking serious so I started asking questions in the forums and chatrooms in irc and came across RIP [Recovery Is Possible]. but to recover a hard drive I'd need a new one to recover onto, so off I toddled to get one.

Back home and thinking about it, I'd better partition this drive before I use it, so into the machine it went and I loaded up knoppix, set the root password,and then formatted it using gparted. Came out of knoppix which had now done its job and went back into RIP. Both drives were unmounted and i was able to use ddrescue to copy information off the dodgy disk onto a brand new disk.

It was rather scary doing it, but having done it successfully once I feel confident about doing it for the other three drives in the box, once I've got the new hard drives that is :).