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tcpdump – dump all the packets
I too always forget the parameters for this and have to look them up in the man page, so:
tcpdump -nnXSs 0 ‘port 80′
How to shrink an ibdata1 file with minimal MySQL downtime
The default mySQL configuration for InnoDB database tables creates a massive storage file called ‘ibdata1′. Basically, the ibdata1 file contains the table data of your InnoDB tables. In large production environments, this file can grow to be extremely large. On some of the servers I administer, I’ve seen this file exceed sizes of 30GB. Fixing the file size obviously has the effect of limiting the total amount of data which can be stored in InnoDB tables, so that’s not a viable option.
Gnome3: replace gnome-screensaver with xscreensaver
GNOME 3′s “screensaver” leaves much to be desired, and if you’re an old school X user like myself, you probably just want the good ole’ screensaver back. Here’s how to install it using the following commands (this will also remove gnome-screensaver):
sudo apt-get remove gnome-screensaver
sudo apt-get install xscreensaver xscreensaver-gl-extra xscreensaver-data-extra
Then search for “Screensaver” in the menu and tweak its settings to your needs.
To add Xscreensaver to startup, open Startup Applications and add “xscreensaver -nosplash”.
Source control != File system
If you find yourself wanting or considering checking binary files into your source control system (Git, SVN), you’re doing it wrong.
Source control is optimized for tracking changes to source files. When you have multiple revisions of a source file, the system has stored the original file and the changes between revisions. This is good.
Mozilla Firefox 12 released, upgrade your Ubuntu today “unofficially”
Mozilla Firefox 12 has not yet been released, it is in Beta state at the moment, but it will bring features such as the ability to paste URLs in the download manager window, line numbers for the Page Source viewer, the title attribute supports line breaks, Find in Page improvemens to center search results, added column-fill CSS property, added support for the text-align-last CSS property, added experimental support for ECMAScript 6 Map and Set objects.
Validating Package Consistency by md5sum for Linux
Occasionally you just want a bit of piece of mind about your server or Linux install. You may suspect there is somebody who has hacked your server or even something changed by a package install that shouldn’t have been. Heres a couple of ideas on how to do a quick ‘health’ check on he md5sum of binary packages.
Debian based people should install dlocate and use that
apt-get install dlocate
dlocate -md5check openssh-server
To force a fail try something like this:
Linux Protip: How to make a patch file
I’ve been doing Linux system administration for well over ten years, and I’ve used patch files often. I’ve never actually had the need to create one until today. To my surprise, I discovered how blatantly simple and easy it is. I’ve always assumed it was some sort of black magic involving unicorns and rainbows. Sure, there are more complex ways to do this but for most needs this will work for you.
Whats a patch?
unhackable.org offers legacy KSplice protection
Unhackable Security is a Linux security consulting firm specializing in a wide array of technologies and proven practices which make your server virtually unhackable.
Ksplice is an extension of the Linux kernel which allows system administrators to apply security patches to a running kernel without having to reboot the operating system. Ksplice takes as input a unified diff and the original kernel source code, and it updates the running kernel in memory.
Firefox 9 Released – How to install on Ubuntu
Firefox 9 is now available — but unlike its previous rapid release forebears where not a lot changed, a huge feature has landed with the new version: the JavaScript engine now has type inference enabled. This simple switch has resulted in a 20-30% JS execution speed increase (PDF), putting JaegerMonkey back in line with Chrome’s V8 engine, and even pulling ahead in some cases. If you switched away from Firefox to IE or Chrome for improved JS performance, now is probably the time to give Firefox another shot.
Repositories:
Writing Python code to use MySQL
Python is a programming language that lets you work more quickly and integrate your systems more effectively.
I’ve been programming primarily in Python lately, and had the need to open a socket to a MySQL database to pull data. By default, older versions of Python does not currently have a mySQL library that can easily interact with MySQL databases. Rather than upgrading Python and possibly breaking your existing scripts, this article will teach you how to open a MySQL socket using MySQLdb from the DB-API.
