grep is a great tool to search for certain information in text files – but it can also exclude certain pieces of information which can be equally as useful.

So, for example, if I want to watch a log file using tail -f, but exclude any information relating to the IP address “192.168.1.101″ then we can use the grep -v switch:

tail -f access.log | grep -v "192.168.1.101"

What this will do is show everything, apart from a line with that IP address in.

Of course, this works with any other command with text being piped into grep:

cat file.txt | grep -v "heh"

This would output the contents of file.txt but remove any lines with “heh” in them.

You can find out more about the various grep options in it’s man page (man grep from the command line)

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Can I use Aero Glass on a remote Terminal Services/Remote Desktop session?

Well, with Windows Server 2008 R2, Yes you can!

It’s basically replicating the user experience you get locally of Aero Glass, on remote sessions.  It may be useful for task switching etc. Check the guide out below:

http://blogs.msdn.com/rds/archive/2009/06/23/aero-glass-remoting-in-windows-server-2008-r2.aspx

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The “Who’s PC has been on the longest without a reboot?” sort of challenges.

Well, finding out the uptime on an OS X machine is quite easy!

If you open a Terminal (by using Spotlight, then searching for Terminal or open Applications/Utilities and double click Terminal) and then type:

uptime

… so it looks something like this:

user@mac:~$ uptime
23:46  up 11:55, 3 users, load averages: 0.17 0.21 0.23

There is multiple parts of information from this command.  The part we’re focusing on is the second part:  ”up  11:55″.  This means that the machine I’m currently on has been booted up for 11 hours and 55 minutes.

So, what’s your uptime?  How often do you manually restart your computer?  Let me know via comments below!

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servermanagercmd -install powershell

Why use the GUI when the command line is much quicker?

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I use irssi for connecting to IRC – it’s an extremely configurable text based client, so I wanted a way to just ignore these DCC requests – I’ve never, ever used DCC in the 11 years I’ve used IRC, and, well, I can’t see myself starting either… so I might as well just ignore them all.

To ignore all DCC commands from anyone (*!*@*), simply type:

/ignore * DCC

And you should receive the message:

(11:24:00) Ignoring DCC from *

What this will do is ignore any DCC from anyone – you just won’t see the request coming in, which makes for a much tidier status window/channel window when someone starts getting a bit silly on IRC!

You may find that this command works in other IRC clients too – it’s a pretty standard feature, but exact syntax may vary.

You can also have exceptions if you want certain nick and hostmasks to be able to still send DCC (from your trusted sources).  More information is available here: http://static.quadpoint.org/irssi-docs/help-full.html#IGNORE

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No related posts were found, so here's a random post instead: Todo/Task Management and Organiser for GNOME.

You can, of course, right click on the application from the start menu and run as Administrator, but there’s also a keyboard shortcut:

Ctrl + Shift + (Click Mouse)

If you hold down the control key, the shift key and then click the application, it’ll run it with administrator privileges – you’ll probably get a prompt from User Account Control, letting you know what’s happening.  This works from both the start menu, the taskbar, and any icon.

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To access the command history of your current session, press “F7″ and you’ll be presented with a prompt containing the last commands you’ve executed.

Please note that it only shows you the command history from the current session.

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If you go to Start and search for “System Repair Disc“, it should find “Create a System Repair Disc”.

If you open the application, you’ll get a prompt box to burn the image to CD/DVD.  Choose your CD/DVD burner and click “Create disc”

If you do have any problems with your Windows 7 installation, booting from this disc allows you to perform a whole range of  features such as:

• Startup Repair
• System Restore
• System Image Recovery
• Windows Memory Diagnostics
• Command Prompt

So, for the cost of a single disc, you can have another option to help repair any future problems you may encounter.  Create one now!

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C:\> systeminfo | find "System Boot Time"
System Boot Time:          17/12/2009, 23:09:04

You will then be shown the date and time the server was booted (as seen in the example above).

You can just run “systeminfo” on it’s own (with no ‘| find “System Boot Time”‘), and you will be presented with a lot of other information such as Hotfixes, Network Connections, etc.

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There may be times when you have multiple, or even a single, screen session which you want to kill without attaching to it and ending it as you normally would.

You can kill a screen session using the session ID or the name (if the name is unique enough).

Warning: Both ways end all processes within the screen session, so if you have any open files/applications, make sure you don’t need/want them – they’ll be kill’d along with the session.

Killing by session ID

First, run screen -list to get the id of the current sessions (we use the id to kill the screen session)

daz@scampi:~$ screen -list
There are screens on:
11493.irssi     (04/01/10 16:25:44)     (Detached)
30784.newapps   (01/01/10 19:42:38)     (Detached)

As you can see in this example, I have two sessions, a session called “irssi” with id 11493, and a session called “newapps”, with an id of 30784.

So, to kill the “newapps” session, I’d run:

daz@scampi:~$ screen -X -S 30784 kill
daz@scampi:~$

.. and the session will now be gone.  You can verify that by running screen -list again.

Killing by session name

If your screen session name is unique enough (for example, if you have one called “newapps” and another called “irssi” as per my example) you can kill by name:

daz@scampi:~$ screen -X -S newapps kill
daz@scampi:~$

The reason I say unique enough –  if you have a session called “newapps” and one called “newapps1″, you will need to use the ID to end “newapps” before “newapps1″ – you’ll simply be asked to specify the session again otherwise.

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Whenever an OS X machine accesses a network share, it creates a .DS_Store file for it’s own use (on SMB/CIFS, AFP, NFS, and WebDAV servers).  These files are invisible to the OS X user, but will show up to anyone else using other operating systems such as Windows or a Linux distribution.

Turning them off is easy though, by running the following command:

defaults write com.apple.desktopservices DSDontWriteNetworkStores true

You will need to either log off or restart the computer for the changes to take affect.

For more information, please see the official knowledge base article here:  http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1629

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But what if you remove that package at a later date that needed all of those dependancies?  You’ll probably find it’s left the dependancies installed.. and if you’ve not installed any other packages which also need those dependacies, they’re just taking up hard drive space.

It’s easy to remove them, though – after all, you no longer need them so why keep them?

The command is simple (and needs to be run as root):

apt-get autoremove

… and that’s it.  The man page entry for this command:

“autoremove is used to remove packages that were automatically installed  to satisfy dependencies for some package and that are no more needed.”

So the next time you install a package which needs lots of dependancies, and you decide you want to remove it for whatever reason, remember to run apt-get autoremove afterwards!

Warning: You do need to be careful when running this – always check which packages it’s proposing to uninstall before confirming.  I have seen reports of random packages being removed, breaking the entire system – even though it is an officially supported feature of apt-get, and it can be very useful, use it with caution.

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I’ve been running an Asus Seashell 1005HA (6-Cell Battery, 63Wh) with Windows 7 for some time now, and use it as my main machine 90% of the time.

Just as a side note, the only thing I have done is upgraded the RAM to 2GB (from the standard 1GB) by adding a single 1GB SO-DIMM to the Netbook.  For the cost and how easy it was, it was well worth the upgrade!

The Windows 7 Experience Index is often a good guide to see how a machine will perform (processor, memory (RAM), graphics, hard disk) – the results for this Netbook are below:

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I personally SSH to my remote servers and use command line tools such as Vim to edit files.  But you may not have SSH access, and only FTP access – in that case, you’d need to edit the files locally, open another application and upload them manually.

There are times though, when I like to use desktop applications such as Textmate to edit files remotely on various servers via SSH – but, of course, Finder and the applications on my computer wouldn’t be able to see them – until now!

Macfusion solves this problem.  Along with MacFUSE, it allows you to “mount” the remote server space you have as a normal network drive.  What this means is, if you go to File -> Open in any application locally, you’ll see the remote drive.  You’ll be able to see, copy, move, and even create new files directly on the remote server – infact, it acts exactly like any other drive would.

I’d highly recommend you take a look – both tools are free to download (the GUI and the underlying daemons) and I’ll guarantee once you start mounting your remote server space, you’ll wonder how you ever managed with older methods!

Macfusion: http://www.macfusionapp.org/about.html
MacFUSE:  http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/

You’ll need both of the above.

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Of course, you could trawl through auth logs, but there is a quicker way by using “lastlog“.

lastlog is a command which shows you the last login time and also from where (if it was a remote session, it’ll show you the IP/Hostname) a user logged in.

If you log into the machine and at a terminal run, you’ll get the information:

droptips@server:~$ lastlog
Username         Port     From             Latest
root                                       **Never logged in**

(I’ve removed all of my information for security reasons)

droptips@server:~$  man lastlog

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We’ve all had applications which seem to start loading then close instantly.. but what if they are all doing it?  The default Apple applications work fine, but your downloaded ones don’t.

I’ve seen this on a couple of iPhone’s now, and the standard “turn it off and on again” doesn’t seem to work, nor does doing a soft reset by holding the Home and Power button.  However, there is hope, and this has worked both times for me:

Go to the AppStore, download any application you want, free or paid for.  It doesn’t matter; I’ve downloaded whatever was first in the Top Free section on both occasions.  Let it download and install, and, once that is complete, you’ll probably find that all of your other apps start working too.

If this works, then awesome… if it doesn’t work, then, at least you’ve tried!  I tried this out of pure luck the first time, and it’s now worked twice for me.

If you come across this problem, and the above has worked for you, let me know in the comments below!

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You can, of course, just drag the window to the side you want, but what if you don’t want to use the mouse?  Well, there’s a keyboard shortcut for that!

Windows Key + Left Arrow

Windows Key + Right Arrow

By pressing the Windows Key with either the left arrow or right arrow, the current window will snap to whichever side you select!
If you keep pressing the same keyboard combination, it will go round in a circle.  So, if you keep going left, it’ll snap to left, then right, then back to normal again.  If you’re lucky enough to have a multiple monitor setup, it’ll cycle through all of the monitors in turn.

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Microsoft have removed the default e-mail client found in Vista, Windows Mail, from Windows 7 – no longer is it installed by default. But what if you need to check that POP3 or IMAP account? Well, you have to install a client manually.

If you’ve been used to Outlook Express in Windows XP or Windows Mail in Vista, you’ll probably be most comfortable with “Windows Live Mail“. This application is part of the Microsoft Live set of applications, which also includes Messenger. You can download Windows Live Mail here:

http://download.live.com/wlmail

Once you download the package, select the applications you want, and let them install. After a short while of downloading and installing, you’ll now have Windows Live Mail installed, ready for your e-mail account!

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Personalise your desktop today at:

http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/downloads/personalize

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Code below:

$in = fopen('php://stdin', 'r');
while(!feof($in)){
    $text = $text . fgets($in, 4096);
}

What this will do is read from STDIN, and create a $text variable of the contents.  It does this until the whole of STDIN has been read.

So:

cat file.txt | php my-php-file.php

… will put the contents of file.txt into the variable $text for use within the PHP script.

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