it.megocollector.com – Page 15 – The information technology compendium

Install OpenVZ and a CentOS Container

May 5, 2015

OpenVZ (Open Virtuozzo) is an operating system-level virtualization technology based on the Linux kernel and operating system. OpenVZ allows a physical server to run multiple isolated operating system instances, called containers, virtual private servers (VPSs), or virtual environments (VEs). OpenVZ is similar to FreeBSD jails and Solaris Containers. Download the OpenVZ repo. wget -P /etc/yum.repos.d/ http://ftp.openvz.org/openvz.repo Import OpenVZ GPG key….

Install Rainloop Webmail on CentOS 6

May 1, 2015

Rainloop is an attractive webmail with a nice clean modern feel to it. After following several different installation procedures, I finally got a working copy. Assumptions: Apache has already been installed. Sendmail or Postfix is already installed correctly. Install Rainloop mkdir /var/www/html/rainloop cd /var/www/html/rainloop curl -s http://repository.rainloop.net/installer.php | php find . -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \; find ….

Command Line Testing Internet Bandwidth Using Python

March 12, 2015

Speedtest.net is a go to site for testing Internet speeds, which is usually accomplished through a web browser. There is a command line utility that offers the functionality without the need of a GUI or the web browser. cd /opt wget https://github.com/sivel/speedtest-cli/archive/master.zip unzip master.zip cd speedtest-cli-master/ chmod +x speedtest_cli.py ./speedtest_cli.py mv speedtest_cli.py /usr/bin/ To run the utility, type speedtest_cli.py. Here…

Thunderbird Backup Automated [Resolved]

February 8, 2015

Mozilla Thunderbird is a free email application. MozBackup is a utility for creating backups of Thunderbird and other Mozilla applications. It can backup and restore everything from your bookmarks, history, plugins, mail, to contacts. MozBackup offers command line functionality which supposedly allows for command line backups, however, I have encountered it to loop repeatedly, and endlessly. Backing up a profile,…

Network Speed Test for Linux

November 26, 2014

Have you ever wondered at what speed your network is really operating? There are several programs and utilities that are readily available. I have tested a couple, however, this one seems to be the easiest and very efficient. This was tested on a CentOS 7 server. From the server, which in this case is 10.10.10.10. nc -lk 2222 >/dev/null From…

VMware Expand Hard Drive Size and Extend in CentOS Linux

October 6, 2014

One approach to adding space to an existing Linux hard drive that is using Linux LVM is to add space to the drive. This can easily be accomplished in VMware. This has been tested using VMware Workstation 9.0 for Windows with CentOS 6.5 (minimal install). To demonstrate a before and after, here are a few commands that can be used…

Linux: The Bash Bug Test and Fix

October 1, 2014

A bug which could allow for arbitrary code execution has been discovered, Red Hat alerted, and patches exist. So, I simple yum update should take care of things. However, Red Hat offers command line arguments which may be used to test for the vulnerability. Using the command issued below, different warnings may appear, however, the following result is one of…

One Way to “sysprep” a Linux Template to Clone

October 1, 2014

An anoyance with cloning a Linux virtual machine is that the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 file may contain a UUID and HWADDR which can be removed and the /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules can be deleted or zero’ed out. So, here are the steps I use to create a “template”. Remove the UUID and HWADDR lines from the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 file. > /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules to zero it out. Run…

Remove passwords from protected Microsoft Word documents

September 26, 2014

Having to make modifications to a Microsoft Word document, it became painfully clear that there were modifications that could not be made as there were restrictions imposed on to the document and password protected. Not having access to the password, a solution to remove the password became known to me and after having applied it, it worked successfully and painlessly….

Event ID 2017 Fills the System Logs

August 25, 2014

Event ID 2017 is “The server was unable to allocate from the system nonpaged pool because the server reached the configured limit for nonpaged pool allocations.” This identified on a Windows 7 workstation. The resolution is a couple of registry changes. Here is a screenshot of the System log file filtered for Event ID 2017. Here is the fix. Windows…

Radio Shack EC-4019 Calculator Problem and Solution

August 17, 2014

The Radio Shack EC-4019 is a great calculator. I have had it since the late 1980s since it was new. It has worked flawlessly up until about 2012, when a new battery was needed. Yup, it took over 20 years to finally have the need to replace the battery. Not to suggest that it is being used on a daily…

Configure a Public Share with Samba on Centos 7 Linux

August 16, 2014

A CentOS7 Linux server was used to create Samba shares so that Windows clients of a home network may back up their stuff, resulting in one share with read write access. The ultimate goal was to create a Samba share that would act as if it were one of those off-the-shelf “solutions” like a Buffalo Linkstation, where no user password…

Microsoft Windows 7 Hidden Modes

June 24, 2014

Microsoft has a little gem some have called “GodMode“, but there are actually 16 of them. These modes are easy to add to your computer. Simply create a folder and name them with a specific name. Setup GodMode From the desktop: Right-click on the the desktop Create a folder with New > Folder. Name the folder with anyname.{xxxx-xxx-xxx-xxx} and press…

Use grep or awk to eliminate blank lines and comments

June 5, 2014

A configuration file, specifically, the /etc/samba/smb.conf file contains many lines of comments using both the simi-colon (“;“) and the hash (“#“) as well as many empty lines that are either blank or contain whitespace. Using grep to view the file without these lines is one way to do so. To write the correct command can be a bit more challenging….

Set the Envionrment Variable in CentOS through Best Practice

June 4, 2014

In the past, to make an environment variable perminant, I would append to the /etc/profile file the environment variable for JAVA_HOME for example and update the PATH. While this does work, it has recently come to my attention that a more appropriate and easier method exists which does not involve editing the /etc/profile file. For this example, the environment variable,…

Linux Centos 6 PYCURL ERROR 6 error RESOLVED!

May 26, 2014

A particular virtual machine running Linux CentOS 6.5 had been problematic when it came to yum updates. The result always ended with a PYCURL ERROR 6 – Couldn’t resolve host. After spending way too much time towards resolution, a solution finally came to light. The configuration of the system is a Linux CentOS 6.5 build with two network cards. One…

Enable or Disable Javascript in Firefox

April 28, 2014

For some time, the option to enable or disable javascript from within Mozilla Firefox was relatively easy to find. Although the option moved from place to place on the tool bar and in the menu options, the option was there. Since Firefox 23, this option was removed from an obvious place to the obscure. It has been suggested that this…