Articles in SysAdmin
Bad iPhone Apps
Oh quit your whining, you will say, they are just a couple bucks each, so no big loss if some iPhone apps turn out to be trash. True, but they are so addictive. My first …
iPhone: No Clicking Sound
Many long-time iPhone users are familiar with the mystery of disappearing keyboard clicking sounds (among other sound effects). Here are a few things you can try before you take your fruity phone back to the …
The Follies of Traffic Driving
Imagine a busy street in the city with sidewalks packed with pedestrians. Hundreds of people are pushing and shoving, eating, arguing, talking on their cell phones and not paying any attention to each other. Suddenly, …
Testing Filesystem Performance with Bonnie++
Bonnie++ is a benchmark utility designed to test performance of hard drives and filesystems by simulating various types of disk I/O. Bonnie++ may be used to test local disks as well as network-mounted filesystems. It …
Tracking Prices of Hard Drives
It seems that only a year ago terabyte hard drives were a novelty item. Today they are on clearance at computer stores trying to free up the shelves for 1.5Tb drives and the 2Tb hard …
Wget and User-Agent Header
As you may already know, Wget is a popular (particularly in the Unix world) command-line downloader and Web crawler application. You can read more about Wget in one of my earlier posts on the subject. …
Numeric File Permissions in Unix
Suppose you are working with a Web server and your task is to make sure that no files or directories have permissions “777”. It would be easy to just recursively change permissions for all files …
Duplicating WordPress Installation
Whenever you upgrade your WordPress installation or do development work, it is always a good idea to be working on a copy of your main site and not on the real thing. Copying WordPress installation …
Restart Apache, MySQL When Low on Memory
Heavy traffic, hungry SQL queries, leaky applications will eventually leave your server low on memory. Apache will go on a hunt for swap space and MySQL will start freezing in thoughtful contemplation. Your hard drives …
MySQL Global Search and Replace Script
A day will eventually come when your need to find and replace a string of text in your database. You don’t know which row, or which column, or which table. Heck, you may not even …
Passing MySQL Commands from Shell Script
Running MySQL commands from a shell script is a relatively simple task that has a lot of people baffled. Some say its too complicated and suggest using PHP or Perl, others claim doing so is …
WordPress Directory Listing Risk
A large number of WordPress directories do not have an index file. This is particularly dangerous in case of the plugins directory. If your server allows directory listings, a potential attacker may see which plugins …
DownThemAll! “No free space” error
DownThemAll! is a popular download manager for Firefox Web browser supporting multi-part downloading with ability to pause and restart downloads without losing data. A common problem encountered while using DownThemAll! is the dreaded “no free …
Controlling Process CPU Utilization
Let’s say there is a process on your Unix/Linux system that sometimes tends to consume all CPU resources and become unresponsive. At the same time, you do not want to terminate the process at the …
Encoding Videos for XBox 360 and PS3
Both Xbox 360 and PS3 support a variety of video codecs and are capable of playing high-definition video files. One of the most popular formats for HD video files is Matroska (MKV), which provides excellent …
Linux and High I/O Wait
When you look at the CPU activity of your computer, one of the parameters is the iowait. This value shows how much time your CPU wastes while it is waiting for I/O operations for complete. …
Sharing Videos from Linux to Xbox 360
Xbox 360 uses UPnP protocol to stream multimedia files from computers on your home network. Normally, you would have a Windows PC running WMP and sharing files. But what if you have a Linux box …
What’s the Best CMS
Content management systems are sprouting up like mushrooms after a warm April rain. If your job is to find the perfect CMS for your needs, you can spend weeks analyzing and comparing features of various …
Partitioning System Disk
When performing a new Unix OS installation you are usually presented with a choice of accepting the default partitioning layout or going into advanced settings and defining your own partitions. The default layout will normally …
Google Tips and Tricks
Google offers a remarkable set of powerful features. Unfortunately, most people are not aware of these possibilities. They use only the most basic functionality offered by Google and then waste their time on weeding out …
Convert Images to PDF
Converting sets of images into multi-page PDF files makes it easier to organize and share them. All you need for the conversion is the free that will run on your Windows, Linux, MacOS and many other operating systems. If you are running a recent version of Linux, chances are that ImageMagick is already installed on your computer (just type “which convert” to check).
Best of Web Design
As more Web surfers get high-speed access, Web designers are tempted to go overboard with multimedia sites that waste your time and distract you from the content. This little collection of Web designs is proof …
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