Category Archives: General

Finding the leaves in a tree

I often have deep directory trees where I am only interested in the deepest layers and not the supporting sub directories. An example of this might be a music collection where you have moved all your albums into directories based … Continue reading

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DNS working but not resolving

I’ve had a funny situation on a Solaris 10 box where DNS appeared to be working but domain names were not returning. I was able to configm DNS was working using dig $ dig www.google.com ; <<>> DiG 9.3.4 <<>> … Continue reading

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Quick and dirty filename cleanup

In a follow on from my last post, I want to talk about replacing spaces with underscores. To do this you can use the tr command. From the man page tr will “Translate, squeeze, and/or delete characters from standard input, … Continue reading

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Bash scripting and files with spaces in them

I’ve decided to post this one as it’s one of those things that I have come across so often but each time I froget the solution. The problem arises when you are trying to script using the for command and … Continue reading

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Use a different email alias for every company you deal with.

I got a email from a chap in dell telling me of a 10% offer on notebooks. This was strange as I had not given them permission to send me promotional emails. To make matters worse me email address and … Continue reading

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The Perfect XP Desktop

Start -> settings -> Control Panel Switch to classic view Sounds and Audio Devices -> Sound Tab -> No Sounds System -> Advanced Tab -> Performance -> Settings -> Adjust for best performance Taskbar and  Start Menu -> UNTICK: Lock … Continue reading

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Using faubackup to backup and ssh + tar to restore

I’ve been using faubackup eversince deepgeek recommended it in episode 85 of Hacker Public Radio. Basically there is a directory for every backup that shows all the files for each backup. If a file is the same across the backups … Continue reading

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Finding and printing eps files to big A0 posters

I needed an A0 poster of the USA for a family quiz and was a bit worried as to how I was going to go about it.The first problem would be getting an vector image given that a bitmap image … Continue reading

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Install Printer HP Color Laserjet 1600

Last year I needed to print of some colour booklets and the volume was so small that it worked out only €30 more expensive to buy a printer than get a print shop to print them. I had not a … Continue reading

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Rotating Text in an Ethernet Shape within Visio 2007

I often have to do network diagrams in Visio and one of the most common shapes I use is the Ethernet one. By selecting the shape and pressing F2, you can add text to the shape to add information such … Continue reading

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