Read this on a Python Mailing list and i thought it was quite insightful.

I don't know the context of the discussion, since I just joined the
list, but:
Ummm, if you are working with Unix and Unix-like systems, you should
know shell scripting. Work through that first and then when you find
that you can't get things done with a shell script, go with Python (or
failing that, Perl :) ).

Yep learn the basics first scripting will give you control over the box, Then start learning some other languages.

Back in the old days we all learn't basic then moved on, now days people have no idea of how to get the box to do what they want.

Try Bash, give it a bash and you will find it can do so much for you.

PHP, C++ , Python and C , SQL are i think required languages you must at least understand, and they are not in any order.

Just signed up to do two more exams for my LPI certification.

So i will be studying studying again. Oh what fun. It at least keeps my brain working correctly.

So i will not also be going out as much as i really want to get this easily and after doing the last set. I know that the questions will be quite varied and if you forget to study one section well then it is just a waste of money.

So off i go to study now.

Start the program i already have some accounts

Click on Settings then Configure



This screen will appear.

Select accounts and Press New





Select the type of account you want to create.

This screen will now appear.


Type in your yahoo YM name and click on Remember if you want the computer to remember your password.

Now you can select a color for your icons, You could have 2 or three accounts so it is nice to have the colors different.


Ok now you see im connected now and it shows my contacts and who is online or offline


If i right click on the icon in the bottom right of my screen i can select if i am online or  Busy


To add a Contact to me i can click on the Plus then select the account i want to add it too. Like My yahoo Account


It will then prompt you for the new contacts details.


To send a message click on the contact or right click and you will see this menu


Once this screen appears just type away you may notice i have the mouse on the Icon for my webcam


TO get their webcam it is this icon



If you want to send a file to them click this.



To Buzzz them  come on wake up hehehe




For those little icons click here if you don't know the shortcut.



Good Luck..

I am now Level 1 Certified LPIC

Took the test a couple of weeks ago and just got the results emailed to me, So now is to study and review for the next set of tests.

I cant wait for the card to arrive.

Now I have to get the staff ready also for the tests, i would like them all certified.

LPI ID: LPI000143791 CODE: 2f9jtvmejh

Lost the server list

so to reload you type in this

urladd servers.met http://www.peerates.net/servers.php 123

And it will download the servers list again..

the 123 is a period or time.

First time in a competition and she has made her daddy proud by just trying.


It was a good experience for her.
Click on the links to view the video.

I have added then to You tube.



First Fight First Half

Second Half

Getting her Bronze Medal


She is wearing the Blue amour and red head gear

I have decided to get certified in two areas first up is Linux, I will do the LPIC certification Track then i am looking at doing the CISSP. There is another one which i will look at doing is the SANS Secure Programming Exams.

I have avoided doing any certification for a long time as I know what I know. After being around computers for more than 25 Years I think it is time.

I can see two main areas where this will help me in the future first of all i can show that i have the Certificate to bolster all that experience I have. The other area is that when you speak to others or place your resume out there you find that they don't know you and so therefore don't know how much you do know.

The Main Areas i will be focusing on in the next few months is the LPIC then i will focus more on the CISSP, they say that without at least 6 Months study you will not pass but i have looked at some of the domains already and i have been, running my companies and making procedures, methods and policies which cover most of the items they mention so I don't see it being a great leap. Having said that I will probably need to eat my words later.

There is a forth area which i was looking at which was the MySQL Database Track. This track looks more expensive and quite comprehensive but I think it would be a good way for me to prove to myself that I do know what I know.

Looking further into this I have noticed that most of the companies that we end up having problems with, due to wrongly configured systems or failures, have no certified employees or just a single one so high up that you don't see them until disaster strikes.

I have placed my IT staff on a certification track also to push them to excel at what they do, but also show to them that they are quite good at what they do they just don't know it.

Most people after leaving school fear tests as they have not studied for a long time, being in the IT industry near the bleeding edge sometimes it is hard to do the study to look back at things which you have already done a while ago, or that is no longer done that way. This is one reason I have chosen the tracks I have as these change with the times and the technology and they are testing you on real world systems or standards not on an assumed system.

I tried a test yesterday for another company and i stopped after four of the questions they asked had the wrong answers, yes they had typed in the wrong numbers, instead of 3510 it was showing 3150 for one of the multiple choice answers. How can you expect to run a testing company like that?

Anyway off to study some more, and refresh that gray matter.

What is it with web sites of companies. Take Jollibee for an example, I ring to order food but first check what toys i can get for my daughter and what food we will order off the menu.

So I order off the menu, The Girl nicely tells me it is no longer available then i ask for some thing else that also is not on the menu. What the **** is going on she then does not give me options just expects me to see their menu which is not posted on the Internet. Next we get to the ordering the Toy with the kiddie meal HA, well they have two different places Promo and kiddie meal area both the sets of toys advertised are so old...

IF you create a web site, For your company UPDATE IT... Include a Budget for the updates every month. And it it costs to much to change those flashy things then remove them and put a nice text item. We will appreciate it allot more than the wrong information..

Saturday was Software freedom day.

I went along to the event at the University of the Philippines.

Not a bad event. but we need more people to get involved from the ground up.

I dont know how to do this exactly but one thing is people love Celebs, there must be one or more we can get to support the event next year.

Thanks to all that did join us on the day also Thanks to the organizers.

Special mention to Rick..

The new laptop I have has two connectors at the back for displays, over the weekend I was unable to do a presentation on the screen until today.

Now I know why, It has a Dual screen setup.

What a setup I have now..

In grub I have three new items.
High Resolution 1400x900 single screen
Low Resolution 1024x768 Dual Screen Cloned
Low Resolution 1024x768 Dual Screen Side by side.

Easy as pie to setup..

First use the amdcccle to configure the screens the way you want.
Each time copy the xorg.conf file to a new file for use later

Create a script to change the xorg file on boot up.
#!/bin/sh
case $XORG in
single)
# if PARAM== single
cp /etc/X11/backup.single.xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf
echo "Single Screen Setup for KDE : Enabled"
;;
dual)
# if PARAM== dual
cp /etc/X11/backup.dual.xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf
echo "Dual Screen Setup for KDE : Enabled"
;;
dualright)
# if PARAM== dual
cp /etc/X11/backup.dualrs.xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf
echo "Dual Screen Setup for KDE : Enabled"
;;
*)
cp /etc/X11/backup.single.xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf
echo "Single Screen Setup for KDE : Enabled"
;;
esac
exit 1

place it in init.rd
make a link from each directory rc1.d rc3.d rc5.d
S01xorg to the file you created

Edit your /boot/grub/menu.lst so as it has the following. Note the XORG setting..

title linux single
kernel (hd0,4)/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux root=/dev/sda6 resume=/dev/sda8 splash=silent XORG=single
initrd (hd0,4)/initrd.img

title linux dual
kernel (hd0,4)/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux root=/dev/sda6 resume=/dev/sda8 splash=silent XORG=dual
initrd (hd0,4)/initrd.img

title linux dual right
kernel (hd0,4)/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux root=/dev/sda6 resume=/dev/sda8 splash=silent XORG=dualright
initrd (hd0,4)/initrd.img


Bang your done..

Need to get that Video on your computer or phone. Use this on Youtube and other sites.

http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php/FLVGET?content=33973

I was upgrading the Kernel of a server and ran into a real nice problem, during the install it removed the old kernel and also the old glibc and upgraded some files only.Now rpm does not work or other commands.

Now I know the server will not reboot, I have seen this before, so I spent hours reading on the internet to check the way to fix this, Result one person said they did recover the rest just said full reinstall.

I was not going to do that.

So how did I fix it. Get Prepared..
I have a Mandriva DVD available and a DVD drive which has been tested and works.(You need all the files for the install available easily in one directory, remember you have no network)

You will need about two or so hours to do this I practiced with a spare PC first.

Start the rescue procedure from the DVD.

Select mount my partitions.

Now go to the console.

All your old files are nice and neatly in the /mnt/ directory.

do not chroot /mnt/ yet it is still broken..

I made a temp mount to the dvd.
You will need to know where the DVD is in the devices.

mkdir /tmp/dvd/
mount /dev/hdb /tmp/dvd/

once this was mounted I could now traverse the media on the DVD

cd /tmp/dvd/i586/media/main/
rpm -iv -r/mnt/ rpm-4.4.1.mdk.rpm

The Rpm command is running off the DVD not the harddisk so it still works. But we have to tell RPM to change where it is reading the DB and writing to. this is the -r option.

Now it will tell you all these files are needed, slowly add each file that is required to the rpm command.

It will be a long command dont worry, this is the fun bit.

To help remember the tab key helps you expand the file names for you.

This will take a while to get all the correct files listed then installed, I also did the urpmi rpm file install to make it easier later when all installed.

If you really cannot find a file you can do a --nodeps which may help.

you may also have to use the option --force to allow overwriting of files.

Some files maybe hiding in the contrib directory.

nice to have two consoles open so you can do a search on one console and the command on the first console.

Once you have done this one you can try a reboot.

If it does not reboot like ours, because of faults in the lilo configuration go back in using the rescue, mount the partitions, go to console.

Make sure the right lilo is installed, do the rpm trick above for lilo (We are not using grub..)

Now you are sure the correct lilo is there,

cd /mnt/etc/
vi lilo.conf
check this file is correct.
we had a problem where the root was pointing to no hard disk.
root=/dev/sda1
i edited the line to look like above then i did the chroot.
chroot /mnt/
now run the lilo command
lilo
it will check the config file and set up lilo for you correctly.

Now you can reboot again.

Now the lilo prompt should be correct select the linux of your choice and it should start.

Now you can continue with your upgrade of other packages in a working environment.

Rescue DVD does work when you know what your doing. It just does not do it itself.

Just to help libssl is provided by the file called libopenssl.XXXXX.rpm

After we did this our Apache and other services ran fine so we could then take our time to upgrade the other packages.

Been looking for this for so long so i have to post it here so i dont forget later.


mplayer -noframedrop -dumpfile out.rm -dumpstream rtsp://site.com/file.rm

http://colemichae.googlepages.com/nmea_info1.py

I have not cleaned it up at all so have a look, the import function locks up at the moment not sure why i think it could be the size of the files.

have fun...

Will get back to working on it soon been busy with the new laptop.

Super Cool desktop now.

With my SuperKaramba Monitors monitoring the systems and my laptop.

I can see right now what is going on in the server room.

Maybe add some more sensors to detect network loads.

there are many pages which describe part of the process but not all the process clearly enough.

I have over 10 servers to deal with on a daily basis which i would like to monitor with out all the hassle of logging on check the details log off, also how often does the question come up are we having any problems with this or that server. I dont get to see all the reports every day.

So i downloaded BuildAMon from kde-look.org and modified it to monitor my computer, and then built a new one using the same parts to monitor all the servers.

So now I have superkaramba on my desktop giving me all the information I need, instantly.

Now i do not need to go to the server room and ask if the servers were working this morning, i have it displayed instantly as i log on.

Next is to build it to monitor all the servers from home.

This is the steps you need to follow for the ssh logins.

First install the ssh client and make sure all the servers have the ssh server installed and starting on startup.

Make sure you can connect to each one using your password.

If you need to work out why it does not connect try
ssh -v test.test.com
the test.test.com can be an ip address like
ssh -v 192.168.1.1

now siting at the computer you will use to connect to the other machines create your keys.

ssh-keygen -t rsa1
press enter for the filename prompt
type in your phrase make it something easy to remember but hard enough. you will need to use it every time you start your computer later.
ssh-keygen -t dsa
press enter for the filename prompt
type in your phrase make it something easy to remember but hard enough. you will need to use it every time you start your computer later.
ssh-keygen -t rsa
press enter for the filename prompt
type in your phrase make it something easy to remember but hard enough. you will need to use it every time you start your computer later.

now we have our keys open the three files they will be in
/home/yourusername/.ssh/
id_rsa.pub
id_dsa.pub
identity.pub

copy all the stuff in there and make a new file called
authorized_keys
so it will look like below three really long lines i trimmed it ok

ssh-dss u9KXmYBvNYlG97E== user@computer
2048 35 28264185551616043486171 user@computer
ssh-rsa AAAAB3NzaC1yc2EAAAABIwAAAQEAwIBtS== user@computer

save this file somewhere you will need it.

open a connection to the computer you want to add this file to using fish if you can. Else just a normal ssh session.

IF using fish, you may not have the .ssh directory under your user on the other computer so make the directory and make it read-write only to the user no access for group or others.
Copy the file to this directory and make it read-write only by the user no access to the group or others.

if using ssh.
you are connected try
cd .ssh
if the directory exists ok else
mkdir .ssh
chmod 700 .ssh
cd .ssh
vi authorized_keys
press i
copy the data from the other file copy - paste
press ESC
press w
press q
now you back to console.
make sure the properties on the file are correct
chmod 600 authorized_keys

now you are half way there.

Check the server supports the keys, open file /etc/ssh/sshd_config
look for these lines
RSAAuthentication yes
PubkeyAuthentication yes
AuthorizedKeysFile .ssh/authorized_keys

make sure they have no # infront of them if they do edit the file.
then restart the sshd service
service sshd restart

to edit that file if you are new.
su
type in the root password
vi /etc/ssh/sshd_config
scroll down to the lines arrow keys
press i
edit the lines
press esc
press :w
press :q

now exit this session
exit
exit


next is to setup keychain
this will prompt you for the password and make it available for all your sessions while you are logged on to the computer.


edit the file .bashrc file in your home directory.
/home/username/.bashrc

add these lines
keychain ~/.ssh/id_rsa
source ~/.keychain/'computerhostname'-sh

so it could look something like this
keychain ~/.ssh/id_rsa
source ~/.keychain/michael-sh

now when you start your computer it will prompt you for your rsa password just after you login but then not again.
You can now restart your computer and try to log in to the other computers using ssh

if it prompts you then there is a problem use the ssh -v

also check the /var/log/messages file on the server you are connecting too it could be the permissions on the file or directory on the server being wrong.

You can ask me questions if you need to.

You may notice i made three keys but im only using the rsa key above.
just add the other files if you want, remember these files are the private ones they dont have the .pub

You can copy the file also to a usb drive if you want and point the keychain command to the right place.

Good Luck..

Got a bit side tracked will upload this week.

Been really busy, and not made much progress.

I have had my Laptop die, and today it was my backup hard disk, At least I have another copy of all the important data at home.

Took a week to get back up and running on the laptop, Purchasing was slow..

So back on and alive.

I was playing with the program and editing it all for the import functions i have built the Geo Names system and the GPX Waypoints system so far.

I was intending to make the menus more specific but after finding out i could not go three menus deep i gave up and made it easier.

When you select import GPX it will prompt if it is a Waypoint, POI, or Track, or Map that you want to import, from the file.

Waypoints and Poi are both Waypoints in the file but POI will be more for the mapping functionality where as the Waypoints will be for navigation.

The same happens with the Tracks, or Map both are actually written as tracks but one is where you intend to go and the other is the roads you could be using.

So after a couple of hours last night i have the GPX file being split for WPTS and then extracting the data for each one out, I will now insert these into the DB and do the displaying of these on the MAP screen.

If you import Waypoints as Waypoints they will use the same system as Nick has devised.(Waypoints will only use the lat,long,name)

If you import Waypoints as POI they will be placed into a DB for lookup during map display.(Points of interest will use lat,long,name,desc,cmt,sym,type,importID if available.)

I have captured the Copyright from the file and will assoicate the Copyright with the Wpts or Tracks, When you export you will not be able to export a mix of files as i think this could cause copyright problems, for some users later.

Still having fun... I need Keyboard and a longlife battery..

Main Screen as you can see no changes.


Menu modified to be expandable as it was getting too long, Played with this further you can only go two steps.


The Bottom of the menu top items have moved off the menu.


Screen Menu item expanded to show which screens are available.
New one to be added Sun Rise and Sun Set screen for the week, May help people plan their trips when out and about.


Map Screen with no roads but present location zoomed to 1000m and red dot is the past track.


Map Screen Still zoomed to same scale but waypoint changed and now appearing. Green Dot.


Points menu expanded.