Posts Tagged ‘reason’
Tuesday, December 6th, 2011 Even though, I rarely use Windows to connect to remote servers using SSH or Telnet protocols in some cases I’m forced to do that (in cases I’m away from my Linux notebook). I’m doing my best to keep away from logging anywhere via SSH using Windows as when using Windows you never know what kind of spyware, malware or Viruses is already on the system, not to mention Microsoft are sniffing a lot if not everything which is typed on the keyboard… Anyways, usually I use Putty as a quick way to access a remote SSH, however pitily PuTTY lacks an embedded functionality for Tabs and each new connection to a server I had to run a new instance of PuTTY. This is okay if you need to access a single server but in some cases where access to multple servers is necessery lacking the tab functionality and starting 10 times putty is really irritating and one forgets what kind of connection is present on which PuTTY instance.
Earlier on, I’ve blogged about the existence of PuTTY Connection Manager PuTTY add-on program which is a PuTTY wrapper which enables PuTTY to be used with Connection Tabs feature, however installing two programs is quite inconvenient, especially if you have to do this every few days (in case if travelling a lot).
Luckily there is another terminal emulator free program for Windows called PodeRoSA which natively supports a tabbed Secure Shell connections.
If you want to get some experience with it check out Poderosa’s website , here is also a screenshot of the program running few ssh encrypted connections in tabs on a Windows host.
Another good reason that one might consider using Poderosa instead of PuTTY is the Apache License under which Poderosa is developed. Currently the Apache License is compatible with GPL free software license which makes the program fully free software. The PuTTY license is under BSD and MIT and some other weird custom license not 100% compatible with GPL and hence PuTTY can be considered less free software in terms of freedom.
Tags: apache license, blogged, BSD, connection, custom, everything, existence, feature, few days, free software license, freedom, functionality, good reason, host, instance, keyboard, Linux, linux notebook, Malware, Microsoft, multple, necessery, Putty, reason, screenshot, secure shell, servers, Shell, software, tab, tabs, telnet protocols, terminal, terminal emulator, Viruses, wrapper
Posted in System Administration, Windows | 2 Comments »
Thursday, December 8th, 2011 
I decided to start this post with this picture I found on onlamp.com article called “Simplify Your Life with Apache VirtualHosts .I put it here because I thing it illustrates quite well Apache’s webserver internal processes. The picture gives also a good clue when Virtual Hosts gets loaded, anways I’ll go back to the main topic of this article, hoping the above picture gives some more insight on how Apache works.;
Here is how to list all the enabled virtualhosts in Apache on Debian GNU / Linux serving pages:
server:~# /usr/sbin/ apache2ctl -S
VirtualHost configuration:
wildcard NameVirtualHosts and _default_ servers:
*:* is a NameVirtualHost
default server exampleserver1.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default:2)
port * namevhost exampleserver2.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default
port * namevhost exampleserver3.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/exampleserver3.com:1)
port * namevhost exampleserver4.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/exampleserver4.com:1)
...
Syntax OK
The line *:* is a NameVirtualHost, means the Apache VirtualHosts module will be able to use Virtualhosts listening on any IP address (configured on the host), on any port configured for the respective Virtualhost to listen on.
The next output line:
port * namevhost exampleserver2.com (/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default
Shows requests to the domain on any port will be accepted (port *) by the webserver as well as indicates the <VirtualHost> in the file /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default:2 is defined on line 2 (e.g. :2).
To see the same all enabled VirtualHosts on FreeBSD the command to be issued is:
freebsd# pcfreak# /usr/local/sbin/httpd -S VirtualHost configuration:
wildcard NameVirtualHosts and _default_ servers:
*:80 is a NameVirtualHost
default server www.pc-freak.net (/usr/local/etc/apache2/httpd.conf:1218)
port 80 namevhost www.pc-freak.net (/usr/local/etc/apache2/httpd.conf:1218)
port 80 namevhost pcfreak.afraid.org (/usr/local/etc/apache2/httpd.conf:1353)
...
Syntax OK
On Fedora and the other Redhat Linux distributions, the apache2ctl -S should be displaying the enabled Virtualhosts.
One might wonder, what might be the reason for someone to want to check the VirtualHosts which are loaded by the Apache server, since this could be also checked if one reviews Apache / Apache2’s config file. Well the main advantage is that checking directly into the file might sometimes take more time, especially if the file contains thousands of similar named virtual host domains. Another time using the -S option is better would be if some enabled VirtualHost in a config file seems to not be accessible. Checking directly if Apache has properly loaded the VirtualHost directives ensures, there is no problem with loading the VirtualHost. Another scenario is if there are multiple Apache config files / installs located on the system and you’re unsure which one to check for the exact list of Virtual domains loaded.
Tags: apache, apache2, clue, com, config, configured, ctl, debian gnu, default port, default server, exampleserver, file, freak, freebsd, gnu linux, host, hosts, insight, ip address, life, Linux, lt, namevhost, NameVirtualHosts, onlamp, option, pcfreak, quot, reason, sbin, server pc, servers, someone, syntax, time, topic, Virtual, virtual hosts, Virtualhost, virtualhost configuration, VirtualHosts
Posted in Linux, System Administration | No Comments »
Friday, January 27th, 2012 By default latest Debian GDM does not provide an automatic way to login using user AVATARS (like Windows does).
This is pretty strange, especially if you compare to Ubuntu and many other Linux distributions which already has support for AVATAR login via GDM
The reason for this is that currently Debian is shipped with old version of gdm2 and this gdm version does not have support for clickable login avatars.
Debian looks by default like this:
Thanksfully this non-user friendly GNOME login screen behaviour can be changed by simply installing gdm3
root@debian:~# apt-get --yes install gdm3
...
This will remove the old gdm installed package as well as fast-user-switch-applet and install the gdm3.
Having installed the gdm3 with configured a background will look like so:
I was quite stunned that gdm3 does not have included support for themes . As far as I've spoken with some ppl in irc.freenode #gnome the reason for this oddity is it crashed a lot when a theme is configred.
By default the gdm2 themes are provided by a package called gdm-themes, since gdm3 does not support themes (yet), the package gdm3-themes is missing.
Tags: avatar, avatars, behaviour, Debian, debian gnu, freenode, GDM, Gnome, gnu linux, Linux, linux distributions, login, nbsp, non-user, oddity, old version, package, ppl, reason, root, screen, squeeze, support, support themes, Thanksfully, theme, Ubuntu, version, way
Posted in Gnome, Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, Various | No Comments »
Thursday, March 1st, 2012 I have a Godaddy account for already 4 years or so and with time I tend to login and use Godaddy to set DNS records or buy a new domain way more often if compared to the old days.
By default GoDaddy creates numeric accounts names (Customer Number as they call it), example:
Godaddy username: 1424915
Godaddy password: myVerySecretRandomPassword123
Being in necessity to often login to godady it started getting more and more annoying with every single day as it is pretty hard for me to memorize the not so intuitive 1424915, therefore everytime I had to login to Godaddy, I had to check in my notes again and again what is my Username
This costs me a lot of time, so finally in a quick chat with a friend today, he mentioned about having the same issue and explained he just recently changed his (Customer Number) numeric Username to a easy to remember login text string.
I know that changing the Username from an ID to a word in GoDaddy is possible for a long time and I even did it before for one Godaddy Account owned by a company. However just until today, I did not changed my GoDaddy Account number to intuitive text phrase for the simple reason I did not have time to check, how changing the account username and password in Godaddy could be done
Anyways today this friends small chat, triggered me to take few seconds and check in Godaddy's website navigation on how changing the ugly number ID to a shiny username was possible. This is how this little article got born 🙂
So enough jibberish, here is how I changed my Customer Number username to a desired easy to memorize:
1. Login to Godaddy with your Customer Number
2. Navigate to My Account -> Update Security Settings
My Account -> Update Security Settings
Fill in properly all the input (red start) fields seen on the screenshot and click Save Changes . Once you see a message settings are Saved. It is generally a good idea to open some different kind of browser and try logging in with the new set username and password.
Update Security Settings is also the place for people who would like to change Godaddy account password.
Be 100% sure to check the new username/password pair in another browser (without logging out with the one you just use) or you will end up unable to login to your godaddy account !!!
Its also a good idea in any case to, have written down somewhere on paper Godaddy's Call-in-PIN, this is just a precaution to assure yourself that you will be able to restore your account username/password in case if lost.
If you haven't used the Call In PIN, I hope you will never need to. Anyways just as a matter of info this PIN can help you in some cases where you have to identify yourself as the owner of your Godaddy account (Something like the Debit / Credit cards CVV code [positioned on the card back] ). I've only used the Call in PIN in few occasions by Godaddy's tech support, where I contacted them directly by email to ask some specific questions on how to do stuff inside my account.
I know this article, will be boring for some of my readers, so if this is the case please accept my humble apologies … anyways it will help me orient myself in the future if I forgot how I did it and hopefully will be useful to someone else.
Tags: account username, Auto, Call, Call-in, chat with a friend, company, customer number, default, DNS, dns records, domain, domain register, Draft, everytime, godaddy, info, INPUT, login, long time, navigation, number, number id, phrase, place, reason, screenshot, security, security settings, single day, Start, text, text phrase, text string, time, website navigation
Posted in Everyday Life, Various, Web and CMS | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, February 29th, 2012 
I hate facebook, from the deepness of my guts! However, unfortunately in one of the companies I'm employed, occasionally I have to use it as an advertisement media to improve the Search Engine visibility for their websites (gather them some more likes). As a not big lover of facebook, I'm also not a facebook-pro, anyways with this circumstances, I'm starting to learn basic tips on, making a facebook page / profile more user friendly and hence more attracting to facebook users.
From what, i"ve read there are plenty of factors that can affect on how attractive a facebook page / company profile , anyways some of the factors are more important to tamper than others. Such two factors of top importance are:
Let me evaluate a bit on each of the three aforementioned fb marketing weight factors.
1. Using Page likes for popularization.
– Lets say that you would like to make marketing to a company websites which is involved in Financial or Investment market.
Enter with the company created page or profile and facebook and think for and search for as many keywords related to the company business as possible.
Check each of the results if the Page / Group is liked by hundred thousands of other people, then just give it a like too.
By doing so for a couple of seconds all this (hundred thousands or millions) of people who has also liked it will see for a second (or less), what hangs on your Facebook profile 😉
The chance someone gets interested into what is your profile saying here is high especially if this pops up to a some 100 000+ of logged people who previously liked a fb page 🙂
2. Joining groups as a way to drive more visitors to a facebook profile
Joining big groups consisting ot thousands or millions's logic is the same like with the page likes. The only difference is some groups are kept private the so called (Closed Group).
Finding a number of similar (Open Groups) to your company activities and joining them will possibly display your company facebook profile to as many profiles as the group has.
Most of the groups are not too active therefore joing groups as a way to drive attention of facebook users to a desired profile is not so efficient as with Page Likes Adjusting a profile picture logo dimensions to a wide skyscraper.
It might seem strange but actually the size of profile picture set to pages or profiles in facebook matters, different profiles dimensions could have impact on Page Likes 🙂
The reason for the fb picture profile having influence on the marketing is very simple. If you have a wider picture you can graphically include more data visible for the user that is always stuck to the page and hence seen by the user.
I've realized this after, I've red few articles online on the same topic along with that I've noticed many big brand pages on Facebook like for instance BMW (Cars) with over 8 000 000 of likes, Adidas and Nike – with over 6 000 000 likes, have set up this wide skyscraper dimensions logos.
Here is a crop taken displaying the wide skyscraper profile picture set by BMW cars.The profile picture used by BWM (cars) has an image dimensions of: 180×500 heigh x widthAdidas's profile logo has a size of 180×489.
Nike uses a bit of unstandard 390×720 (but while uploaded facebook website automatically crops the image to a size which is fittable for a wide skyscraper) with dimensions like (200×400)Another franchising company with big likes base, I've seen is McDonald's with 19 900 000+ likes! again with a banner logo consisting of wide scraper with picture dimenions (180×439 – height / width )There are some comparatively big user base facebook pages, like Ubuntu's non-profit organization with 555 000+ thousands of likes, and their logo has dimensions of 180×181 pixels.
Not all of the highly liked (visited) facebook pages however use a wide skyscraper as a profile logo and still has enormous number of likes.
One contra-example showing that there is no clear relation between facebook profile picture dimensions and page popularity (number of likes) is Metallica (Musician/Band) fan page – (http://www.facebook.com/Metallica), which as of the time of writting this article has the UNIQUE HIGH NUMBER of 23,725,897 LIKES! 🙂
As far as, I've further red on many blogs, there are two general facebook standard banner profile picture recommendations:
1. One is facebook square like profile picture
– (this is the classics), if you just place a picture that is not too wide automatically facebook upload scripts will tailer the picture to have dimensions like: 180×180 pixels
The other recommended facebook pictures size is the wide wide-scraper and it should possess an image dimensions size similar to:
width x height -180×500 pixels
This is pretty much the few basics I so far, know of can help to easily gather a custom fb company Page Likes.
As facebook is really HUGE nowdays fb marketing has advanced tremendously.
I'll be glad to hear some cool tips & tricks you know? which can help a facebook page / profile popularity rise up.
Looking forward to hear for your good or bad facebook experiences 🙂
- Likes of pages, which are liked by thousands of hundreds or millions of people
- Belongings to groups / Membering to big groups (consisting of thousands)
which hold similar interest or business activity - Profile picture logo dimensions
Tags: activity profile, advertisement, Auto, belongings, business activity, BWM, chance, circumstances, company business, company websites, crop, deepness, Draft, facebook, Group, guts, heigh, height, Image, instance, interest, investment market, Likes, logic, logo dimensions, logo size, lover, marketing, marketing tips, nbsp, Open, page, page company profile, page group, page profile, quot, reason, Search, search engine visibility, SEO, someone, topic, visibility, weight factors, width
Posted in Everyday Life, Various, Web and CMS | 3 Comments »
Friday, February 24th, 2012 There two main reasons which cause incorrect clock settings on Slackware Linux.
One common reason for incorrectly set time is improper clock and timezone settings during Slackware install.
On install, one of the ncruses install menus asks an ambigious dialog question reading
HARDWARE CLOCK SET TO UTC?
Is the hardware clock set to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC/GMT)?
Some newbie Slackware users make the mistake to choose YES here, resulting in incorrectly set clock.
Second possibility for improper time is incorrect time on BIOS level. This is not so common among laptop and modern desktop PCs. However in the past impoper system BIOS hardware clock was usual.
In any case it is a good practice to check the system PC BIOS clock settings.
To check BIOS battery hardware clock from command line use:
bash-4.1# hwclock --show
Fri 24 Feb 2012 01:24:18 AM EET -0.469279 seconds
The system clock on Slackware is set via a script called timeconfig. To fix slack's incorrect host time run:
bash-4.1# timeconfig
Running timeconfig once should configure a proper timezone to be set on next system reboot, however the system time will probably still be not ok.
To manually set time to right time, use date command. To set manually the system wide time to 12:00:00 with date:
bash-4.1# date -s "12:00:00"
Anyways for time accuracy the ntpdate should be used to feth time from NTP internet time server:
bash-4.1# ntpdate time.nist.gov
...
Finally to make the new set right time permanent also for the BIOS battery clock issue:
bash-4.1# hwclock --systohc
By the way its curious fact Slackware Linux is the oldest still existent GNU / Linux based distribution. Its up and running since the very day GNU and Linux came to merge at one Free OS 😉
Tags: ambigious, Auto, bios clock, clock settings, configure, Coordinated, coordinated universal time, curious fact, Desktop, distribution, Draft, EET, feth, free os, Fri, gnu linux, hardware, hardware clock, host, host time, hwclock, improper time, incorrect time, internet time server, laptop, level, Linux, ntpdate, possibility, quot, reading, reason, script, show, slack, slackware linux, slackware users, system bios, system clock, systohc, time, time accuracy, time run, timezone, timezone settings, Universal, UTC, YES
Posted in Linux, System Administration | 6 Comments »
Thursday, February 23rd, 2012 1. Install the slackware binary package xfce4-screenshooter.
For the latest Slackware Linux release which as of time of writting is 13.37 xfce4-screenshooter-1.7.9-i486-3sl.txz can be download from here
Install of xfce4-screenshooter-1.7.9-i486-3sl.txz is done with slackware's usual installpkg package manager command:
bash-4.1# /sbin/installpkg xfce4-screenshooter-1.7.9-i486-3sl.txz
By the way, I haven't used slackware for a long time so in the mean time since Slackware 13, the default slackware packages format .tgz is now substituted with the newer .txz (better compressed .txz). The old .tgz was simply a tar archive with DEFLATE gzip. The newer .txz packages bundled with newer slackware releases are using the LZMA2 (XZ) chain algorithm for compression. LZMA implies higher compression than even bzip2 and this is the reason why Patrick Volkerding – the one man army man behind Slackware decided to use it.
The reason Vollerding choose using .txz is slackware network distribution will load up less the networks and will take less time for downloading extra slackware packages via the internet. The .txz also reduces slackware main CD size so more packages can be contained in the same 700MB sized slack install CD.
Anyways now back to the installation of xfce-screenshooter.
Once installed to runit use the Xfce menus:
Xfce Menu -> Accesories -> Screenshot
Next you will see the xfce-screenshooter program to pop-up:
To take a snapshot of the screen use:
Entire Screen -> Save
Tags: algorithm, army man, Auto, binary package, compression, distribution, download, Draft, format, graphical environment, gzip, Install, installation, Linux, long time, LZMA, man army, manager, mean time, menu, menus, nbsp, network distribution, package, reason, screen, size, slack, slackware packages, snapshot, tar archive, tgz, time, txzBy, Vollerding, writting, XFCE, xfce4
Posted in Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, System Administration | 2 Comments »
Monday, January 23rd, 2012 Every now and then my gnome keyboard layout switcher hangs. When my keyboard switcher hangs I can't switch between my two defined languages English and my native Bulgarian
The hang up of the language switcher is makes switching between my two defined languages impossible until I logoff and login again or kill the current GNOME session with CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE.
Sometimes logging off again is not necessery so I have to logoff and login to GNOME few times until finally the gnome keyboard layout switcher reacts to an issued change language via Alt+Shift or by clicking on it.
Unfortunately the gnome keyboard layout switcher is not available as a process so there is no way to simply kill -HUP the process responsible for it.
Just until today I couldn't find a way how to restart the gnome keyboard layout switcher when it hangs.
Now today I finally found a way to restart it without restarting the whole gnome session or killing completely the Xorg server.
To "fix" up the keyboard switcher when its not responding, I had to issue in gnome-terminal or via ALT+F2:
hipo@noah:~$ gnome-keyboard-properties
As you can see in the screenshot below, one has to press the Move Up button to switch the default order of languages. Once this is done the keyboard layout switcher starts working again. Once working I just used the move up once again to revert back my default language order as it used to be.
I'm not sure what exactly is causing the GNOME 2 keyboard layout switcher to hang (when it does), my guess is it is due to some kind of version incompitability between gnome versions or configurations specific to my computer. In the past I was running Debian Testing/Unstable and then downgraded back to Debian stable, probably this is the reason of the language switcher hangs.
Tags: Button, change, change language, Computer, default language, f2, Gnome, guess, hipo, HUP, incompitability, keyboard layout, keyboard switcher, kind, languages, layout, login, move, necessery, noah, order, reason, revert, screenshot, switch, switcher, testing, today, Unstable, version, way
Posted in Gnome, Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, Linux Audio & Video | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010 My blog’s index has suddenly started redirecting to my last post. That was rather strange, since I haven’t done anything special, all I did before the problem occured was a change in wordpress wp-admin to my latest post.
There in I changed the post Visibility from Public to Private
Right after this my blog’s home started redirecting to the blog post where the changes was made.
This was really strange, so I reverted back the changes in Post’s Publish Visibility to the default setting.
Though the change the redirect to the latest post by accessing my www.pc-freak.net/blog/ was still there.
I tried completely wiping out the post by sending it to Trash and issuing the same post again, but now things became even worser.
Accessing my blog was opening 404 not found error message . Everything seemed fine in wordpress admin and therefore I suspected the redirect is being applied from info read in my wordpress database in MySQL.
A bit of investigation prooved my guess was correct, for some reason a record was made to the MySQL blog database in table wp_redirection_items.
The incorrect redirection wihtin the database looked like so:
| 4 | /blog/ | 0 | 2 | 0 | 0000-00-00 00:00:00 | 2 | enabled | url | 301 | /blog/how-to-change-from-default-main-menu-to-other-text-in-joomla/ | url | NULL |
Removing the incorrect redirect was kind of easy and came to simply issuing:
mysql> delete from wp_redirection_items where id='3';
Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)
This fixed the redirection issue and opening my blog main page started correctly opening the main page again! 🙂
Tags: blog, change, error message, everything, fine, freak, guess, home, How to fix wordpress blog sudden redirection to present post problem, info, investigation, issue, kind, null, page, private right, Public, Publish, Query, read, reason, redirect, redirection, visibility, wihtin, worser, www
Posted in Joomla, Various | 3 Comments »
Tuesday, May 31st, 2011 
It’s a wise idea that every website has a address location map on it’s website, for that reason Google maps is just great.
To install Google maps capability to joomla one can use a plugin called Google Maps .
You can straighly download Joomla’s Googlemap plugin from here
Afterwards use Extension Manager to install the plugin e.g. follow:
Extensions -> Install/Uninstall (Choose File)
and click on Upload File & Install button.
To further enable and configure the Joomla Googlemap plugin you will have to go to the location:
Extensions -> Plugin Manager
Therein you will have to find and enable the Google Maps plugin which is to be found in the column named Plugin Manager
On my Joomla installation the plugin was located in the second page with modules, so if you don’t find the module on the listing with modules on the first page, make sure you scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Next button.
Therein in the list you will most likely notice Google Maps use the Enable button to enable it.
Next step is to configure the plugin, to do so press on the plugin name Google Maps
All configuration necessery here is to place Googlemaps API Key in the respective field (you will see it among config options).
Issuing a new Google Maps api key takes just few seconds, if you already have a gmail account just go to http://code.google.com/apis/maps/signup.html and take few seconds to issue the key.
You will get the key right on your gmail account after being issued (to repeat myself issuing takes few seconds so no worrier here).
Once having the key place it in the Googlemaps API Key field and configuring Address (which is one of the list of many options the plugin provides) you will be done with configuration.
To display a google map the location you just configured go to the Article Manager , select the article where you want the google mapslocation picture of your address to appear and type in the Article something like:
{mosmap|text='Exact street address location'|zoom='15'|zoomType='Large'|zoomNew='0'}
After you saved the article a very nice Google map showing you the location’s streets will appear on your web page in the article link where placed.
You can further conifgure a number of things related to the google maps just embedded into joomla, one thing you might want to play with is the zoom level.You see in below’s code is equal to 15, e.g. zoom=’15’
Set it to another one if you want to regulate your googlemaps zoom level.
For more thoroughful options take a look at the extensive plugin documentation and play with the many settings
Tags: address location, amp, article manager, Button, capability, config, config options, download, Extension, Gmail, gmail account, google, google map, google maps, Googlemap, Googlemaps, Install, installation, key, key field, level, location, ManagerTherein, Maps, necessery, page, plugin, plugin name, reason, street, type, upload, wise idea, worrier
Posted in Joomla, Various, Web and CMS | 2 Comments »
