Starting point for research

Simple Spark is the best source for online applications. It is a newcomer for me, but it’s a clear winner. Second one is Listio, good enough to be mentioned.

Time tracking applications

Toggl » It looks like a perfect one. Everything I wanted plus some advanced functions on desktop (Autopilot).

Personal Finances

Foonance » Simple and straightforward, but lacks multiple currency support. This can be solved with different “Money Stores” for every currency, but this is not a perfect solution.

Thrive » Nice design with couple of problems. Too American - does not allow an account of non-existent bank, or any other currency. I could not test it because of these facts (I have no account in US).

Rudder » Probably a good solution for US users, but for users with unknown banks outside US, it’s useless. Not too much sense because of no possibility to add an account (outside the predefined banking institutions). Anyway, US dollar is the only currency, so the target audience is fairly obvious. Looks simple, straightforward and promising.

Gezzeo » Very wierd. It does not allow you to enter transaction manually, at all. The only way is to automatically check from bank account, or to upload OFX data. This OFX format can probably entered in many applications (Quicken, MS Money or so), but this is not what I was looking for. I wanted online solution.

Expensr » The real winner for now. Has everything recurring, has different currencies (not multiple, but nice anyway), has transaction auto-categorisation based on filters, etc. I really like it. THe only thing I dislike is the fact that company has been sold to a bigger company, and that they are developing new online service that will replace this one. I just hope it will be better or at least the same.

Plan2spend » Russian.

Moneytrackin » xxx

Buxfer » xxx

FinancyFY » xxx

Small Business Finances

Less Accounting » Simple and intuitive. Multiple currencies, recurring sales invoices and recurring expenses, no inventory.

Just set Temp variables to %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\Temp.

In Advanced System Settings » Environment Variables (buton at the bottom) » You can figure it out.

I had to re-install a computer form my friend. Since he had a lot of viruses on system, we agreed to delete the entire hard disk, and start again, from the beginning.

He regularly had the CD media and the sticker (with Product Keys) that is legally bought together with the computer. It is Prefessional OEM Windows XP and Microsoft Office Small Business 2007.

However, he did not have the CD media for Office, because it is a so-called Medialess Kit. That means that you get, you will not believe, a blank CD box without any CD on which is written: “No disk is provided in this package”. Really funny (Why a CD box when there is no CD).

I expected that I should go to some site and easily download software. Then I would be able to activate that downloaded software with the OEM serial number that I have purchased. But, it is not so easy.

After 4 hours lost, here’s how to proceed.

As written in a package, you should visit this site. There you will enter any information, because that does not matter at all. Don’t be afraid of the price for sending a CD that will be displayed later - actually you will not order anything. Our goal is to find some download option. So, click Order Now.

The system will ask for the serial number of Office products that you own. Enter it. Based on this input, Microsoft knows what product you need to order. Then system displays something very similar to an invoice, which lists the price of products ordered (Backup CDs). It is not, in any way, specified that it is possible to download the files. But, be brave, feel free to select the Order Now button, again.

Only then, the system asks for your data. Well, that’s the screen that needs our attention. In the bottom of the screen you’ll see the possibility to Download - Download option. With this link, you are taken on an entirely different site, where you’re asked for your email again and for the selection of Office version that you want to Download. After the confirmation, you’ll receive an email (wait for it, it should be a little more time). E-mail messages in your inbox will have the following contents:

Thank you for ordering backup discs for your copy of Microsoft® Office. You indicated you would like to download the version of Microsoft Office that was preinstalled on your PC. Please click here to access the download site. You will be required to enter your email address on this site to validate your identity.

Go to the specified link, your email is a need again, and then you can finally download a so-much-beloved Office backup. And that’s it.

I know they are big. Huge. But being big does not assume being stupid. Or does it?

Shorter way

The sam ething can be achieved in another way (with a little referer-fakeing). It looks like the site that is letting you download a file is using only referer to check if you commed from Microsoft site. Because changeing referer is easy, I wrote a small proxy script to shorten the process of getting the Office download. Just click here, and follow the instructions.

I set up domain mapping in subdomain Wordpress MU installation. Domain mapping is the ability for every blog in the system to have a totally independent, separate domain name. This was achieved with a plugin called WordPress MU Domain Mapping.

Almost everything is nice - the only thing that was not satisfactory is the fact that plugin developers assumed that I don’t like the www prefix, and that I want it to be removed. This is not true - I want my blog to work the same no matter what visitor enters in the browser address bar: domain.com or www.domain.com).

Solution is to change two files:
In line 55 of file domain_mapping.php, change:

$domain = $wpdb->escape( preg_replace( "/^www\./", "", $_POST[ 'domain' ] ) );

to

$domain = $wpdb->escape( $_POST[ 'domain' ] );

And in line 112 of the same file, change
echo "http://www.<input type='text' name='domain' value='' />/";
to
echo "http://<input type='text' name='domain' value='' />/";

In line 10 of file sunrise.php, change:
$wpdb->escape( preg_replace( "/^www\./", "", $_SERVER[ 'HTTP_HOST' ] ) );
change to
$wpdb->escape( $_SERVER[ 'HTTP_HOST' ] );

Anyway, when you do that, you just add two domains (www and without-www) for the same blog.

Type in address bar: <a href=”http://kb.mozillazine.org/About:config”>about:config</a>.

Then, after the warning screen, start typing in “Filter” field: mousewheel.withcontrolkey.action

The value of this field was, by default 3 (look at the <a href=”http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_:_FAQs_:_About:config_Entries#Mousewheel..2A”>explanation</a>), and you should set it to -1 to disable any functionality. This “Disable” value was not so obvious at first look. SO, to summarize:
<pre><code class=”php”>mousewheel.withcontrolkey.action = -1</code></pre>
Oh. I just found out that <a href=”http://gmckinney.blogspot.com/2008/01/firefox-scroll-wheel-font-size-changer.html”>someone is having the same problem</a>. Their solution is not really exact, but it will do the job.

Some time ago a stumbled on sites like myIPneighbor, YouGetSignal or Domain Tools. They provide you with the ability to show you a list of all websites that are hosted on some specified IP. This can be useful in lot of occasions. But I couldn’t figure out how they are getting these results. It’s not simple Reverse IP and I was sure that it was not possible to do that, really. I believed that Domain Tools company wich looks big enough for that, are having a huge database of all the Website-IP data. And I tought that other are getting data from them.

I was right about the huge database - it is the only way of having this kind of list. But, provider of this data is much bigger - it’s some search engine. And, the proof of that was found in one sentense on YouGetSignal: “Data is gathered from search engine results, which are not guaranteed to be complete.”. That’s it. They are getting data from search engines.

And the responsible is probably Microsoft, because theis MSN Search has an IP search functionality. Besides them, only a small GigaBlast engine is offering it, too. So, the right waz is to query both of them, mix results, and show them in cleaner way.

We are in posession of couple of great network cameras from Vivotek: SD6112 TPZ and Vivotek FD6112. I am a great fan of them, because almost everything in them is almost perfect.But, as always, there are a problems. So, lets mention the smaller one:

It is impossible to update firmware remotely. Not a big dial, but the reason is really stupid. On their site, they say it’s possible to do it via FTP. I downloaded the firmware, set up an FTP connection, and after successful connect I realized that I need a .BIN firmware, not the .PKG that I downloaded. Considering that PKG is the only one available, and there is no”Update” button Web interface - no solution - dead end.

Can’t see a camera video stream in any version of Firefox. No solution here (besides IE Tab add-in for Firefox which executes IE inside Firefox). The reason is in that these cameras use VATDecoder Codec. I noticed that some D-Link Cameras are using the same codec, too (just google for VatDec.cab). This ActiveX is on camera itself, and is installed when you request a video from camera. So, there is no way to install it in Firefox - dead end.

Can’t see anything in Internet Explorer 7. Well, this problem is because of a poor web HTML programming, and can be easily solved. Simplest - manual way is just to press F5 (Refresh) twice, and then right click on left part of screen and then Refresh, and on right part of screen and then Refresh. Basically, we are refreshing the whole, then left and right part of a screen. And, more elegant solution is to change just remove Microsoft Silverlight from your system.

I tried everything instead of removing Silverlight, but nothing helped. I edited html pages (hexedit-ed Vivotek’s some strange .VSPX files instead of html - Vivotek server script executable), i tried commands like iexplore -extoff, i tried disabling silverlight, i tried a lot of wierd stuff. And nothing helped - Silverlight must be removed.

I found a lot of articles on the internet telling me that I should do a Tools / Deactivate. But, because I changed a system and I changed a serial number, I could not do that. Deactivate option was not available because all the time CS3 asked me to re-activate. And, I just wanted to start activation from beginning, with Activation Type: normal, not: Activation Type: Repair.

I did not found the solution right away, and that is the reason I am writing this post. So, just delete two files, and when you start some CS3 application, it will ask you for a serial number in the same way it asked you the first time. The two files that should be deleted are:

c:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Adobe PCD\cache\cache.db
c:\ProgramData\FLEXnet\adobe_00080000_tsf.data

This is for Microsoft Windows Vista. On Windows XP these files can be fount at:

c:\Program Files\Common Files\Adobe\Adobe PCD\cache\cache.db
c:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\FLEXnet\adobe_00080000_tsf.data

First of all, the site Hacking WD MyBook World it the best place to start. Follow the manual for first steps, and be aware that in order to successfully complete the most important 1.st step (Enabling SSH with Method 1) - your router must have internet access (not only your computer from which you are accessing the router).

Again, finish the second step - install Optware Package Management (package manager, similar to Yum).

And, now, for Midnight Commander  type:

/opt/bin/ipkg install mc

ldconfig(must execute this)

/opt/bin/mc

And, it’s working!

And, at the end, disable Mionet. You could install nano with: /opt/bin/ipkg install nano, and alternative Web interface on port 8080 as explained here.

And, because I want to change Port on which ssh deamon is listening, I had to change nano /etc/services (not /etc/sshd_config), because sshd is started throe inetd.

Now I find it obvious, but at first, it was not.

I am using a OpenLDAP for Linux user authentication, and I am using Web based tool for editing LDAP entries called phpLDAPadmin. I needed to add a user to a group in phpLDAPadmin, but it was not obvious to me.

Click on the group on the left part of a screen (in a tree structure) . Then, in right half, click on a Add new attribute, then select memberUid and enter some username. After you press Add or Save Changes couple of times, you will notice a new link under memberUid called (modify group members), which allows you to edit members in a more user friendly way.

I need a tool for backing up a directories on a server. The problem in Linux it that you have too much solutions for that specific task, and you need a time to research and figure out which one is the best.
I will backup my data on the same server, only on a different disk. CPU utilization is not a problem, and primary goals are small footprint (to be able to have the longest history), and to have reasonable easy way of retrieving data from backup archive.
So, first, let me list all the solutions.

Based on rsync:

• rsnapshot : Written in Perl, using rsync and hard links, it is possible to keep multiple, full backups instantly available
• rsback : Written in Perl, I am not sure what are the differences from rsnapshot
• ccollect : Written in simple sh-script.
• fwbackups : Installable with yum (yum install fwbackups).
• flyback : Python based.
• Dirvish : I believe it is not maintained anymore.
• rsync-backup : Perl script.
• RIBS (Rsync Incremental Backup Script) : Written in PHP.
• rsnap : Python.

Based on rdiff:

• rdiff-backup : Python & C written. Best documentation at this wiki. Can be installed with yum.
• SafeKeep : Python / based on rdiff-backup. Installable on Fedora 9 via yum (–enablerepo=rawhide list safekeep*)
• Backupninja : centralized way to configure and schedule many different backup utilities.
• pybackpack : Python, based on rdiff-backup. Basic usage at howtoforge.com. Can be installed with yum (yum install pybackpack). But, it has a big problem in not possible to start it from the commandline or cron.
• rBackup : Written mainly in PHP. Not in repository.

None of the above:

• Areca : Written in Java, supports everything I need. Not available in any Fedora repository. Good tutorial and manuals, but still the problem that it is not diff-based (the whole file is written). Good solution is because it has a compression.
• RESTORE-EE (Enterprise Edition) : Complicated and nice, but not impressed. Tutorial at howtoforge.
• Duplicity : Very good, only with no GUI or other tool for restoring data. Probably the only viable solution if you backup data is on a public server, because supports encryption right from the start.
• Backerupper : To me, it looks that is not maintained anymore. Written in Lazarus-Freepascal (Delphi for Linux)
• Bacula : Really heavy.
• Amanda : Heavy too.
• Mondo Rescue : Really a recovery solution, but just to mention it.
• afbackup : Written in C. Very odl and mature, but none of the documentation.
• BackupPC : Configuration seemed very strange to me.

BackupPC

BackupPC

	cat /etc/httpd/conf.d/BackupPC.conf</pre><br />htpasswd -c /etc/BackupPC/apache.users backuppc<br /><pre><br /> nano /etc/BackupPC/hostsThat worked http://localhost/BackupPC (note the letter case)<br /><br />chkconfig --list backuppc<br /><br /></pre><br /><br /><h2>rdiffWeb</h2><br /><br />Web interface for retrieving a rdiff-backup data. Two are available (<a target="_blank" href="http://www.rdiffweb.org/">rdiffWeb</a> and <a target="_blank" href="http://rdiffbackupweb.sourceforge.net/">rdiff-backup-web</a>) - with same function. The first one is nicer to me, and installation was the following:<br /><pre><br />yum install python-cherrypy<br />wget http://www.rdiffweb.org/releases/rdiffWeb-0.6.3-1.noarch.rpm<br />yum localinstall --nogpgcheck rdiffWeb-0.6.3-1.noarch.rpm<br />rdiff-web-config<br />service rdiff-web start<br />

And in browser: http://localhost:8080/. Beautifull. To add it permanently, just: chkconfig –add rdiff-web.

Some notes: Somehow, my instict told me that I will be needin a compression file system, and best I found was FuseCompress (the older, perfectly stable version is found here). Btw. it is available in Fedora 9 with yum (–enablerepo=rawhide list fusecompress). The other solution - patched kernel for ext2 called e2compr, was not acceptable because I do not want to patch kernel after every kernel update.

I just had to quote these 16 fantastic simple rules. More practical and more simple than any that I found before. This is copied from Bob Parsons blog which I don’t fancy very much.

1. Get and stay out of your comfort zone. I believe that not much happens of any significance when we’re in our comfort zone. I hear people say, “But I’m concerned about security.” My response to that is simple: “Security is for cadavers.”

2. Never give up. Almost nothing works the first time it’s attempted. Just because what you’re doing does not seem to be working, doesn’t mean it won’t work. It just means that it might not work the way you’re doing it. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it, and you wouldn’t have an opportunity.

3. When you’re ready to quit, you’re closer than you think. There’s an old Chinese saying that I just love, and I believe it is so true. It goes like this: “The temptation to quit will be greatest just before you are about to succeed.”

4. With regard to whatever worries you, not only accept the worst thing that could happen, but make it a point to quantify what the worst thing could be. Very seldom will the worst consequence be anywhere near as bad as a cloud of “undefined consequences.” My father would tell me early on, when I was struggling and losing my shirt trying to get Parsons Technology going, “Well, Robert, if it doesn’t work, they can’t eat you.”

5. Focus on what you want to have happen. Remember that old saying, “As you think, so shall you be.”

6. Take things a day at a time. No matter how difficult your situation is, you can get through it if you don’t look too far into the future, and focus on the present moment. You can get through anything one day at a time.

7. Always be moving forward. Never stop investing. Never stop improving. Never stop doing something new. The moment you stop improving your organization, it starts to die. Make it your goal to be better each and every day, in some small way. Remember the Japanese concept of Kaizen. Small daily improvements eventually result in huge advantages.

8. Be quick to decide. Remember what General George S. Patton said: “A good plan violently executed today is far and away better than a perfect plan tomorrow.”

9. Measure everything of significance. I swear this is true. Anything that is measured and watched, improves.

10. Anything that is not managed will deteriorate. If you want to uncover problems you don’t know about, take a few moments and look closely at the areas you haven’t examined for a while. I guarantee you problems will be there.

11. Pay attention to your competitors, but pay more attention to what you’re doing. When you look at your competitors, remember that everything looks perfect at a distance. Even the planet Earth, if you get far enough into space, looks like a peaceful place.

12. Never let anybody push you around. In our society, with our laws and even playing field, you have just as much right to what you’re doing as anyone else, provided that what you’re doing is legal.

13. Never expect life to be fair. Life isn’t fair. You make your own breaks. You’ll be doing good if the only meaning fair has to you, is something that you pay when you get on a bus (i.e., fare).

14. Solve your own problems. You’ll find that by coming up with your own solutions, you’ll develop a competitive edge. Masura Ibuka, the co-founder of SONY, said it best: “You never succeed in technology, business, or anything by following the others.” There’s also an old Asian saying that I remind myself of frequently. It goes like this: “A wise man keeps his own counsel.”

15. Don’t take yourself too seriously. Lighten up. Often, at least half of what we accomplish is due to luck. None of us are in control as much as we like to think we are.

16. There’s always a reason to smile. Find it. After all, you’re really lucky just to be alive. Life is short. More and more, I agree with my little brother. He always reminds me: “We’re not here for a long time; we’re here for a good time.”

I needed to make a fancy signatures for some clients, in RoundCube Webmail. For that, I wanted an inline image in a HTML signature - something that is not possible to achieve in current Roundcube. So i made a some changes, and come up with a solution:

Every change is in

\program\steps\mail\sendmail.inc

and \program\lib\stringstream.php is needed.

I am lazy to write this… Finish whenever you want.

Reverse IP tools, in order of quality:

http://whois.webhosting.info/

http://www.yougetsignal.com/tools/web-sites-on-web-server/

http://www.myipneighbors.com/

And, not free ones:

http://www.domaintools.com/reverse-ip/

http://www.securityspace.com/bizintel/reverse-ip.html

And, it can be done on Fedora / CentOS in an easy manner.

The best tutorial is this, and a good ones are these and these.

Greylisting is very effective in reducing spam - almost 90% of servers contacting our mail system are illegitimate, and greylisting reduces the noise from them. Some of the best products is milter-greylist (it is still not aware that postfix is milter compatible). For postfix, there is a similar solution called postgrey.

Postgrey - this one I choose.  Best tutorial I found for installing on my CentOS was here.

Milter Greylisting solutions: milter-greylist, milter-gris, Scam-grey milter.

These are only basic limits, that are valid for entire host-domain. These can be set fairly high, if you really need that. Later on, you can impose other limits with some milter filters.

Current values can be seen with:

postconf  | grep 'mailbox_size_limit\|message_size_limit\|virtual_mailbox_limit'

Default values are:

postconf -d | grep 'mailbox_size_limit\|message_size_limit\|virtual_mailbox_limit'

Edit values with:

postconf -e 'message_size_limit = 104857600'

This changes /etc/postfix/main.cf confguration file. Mine values are:

# 100 Mb
message_size_limit = 104857600

# 1 Gb
mailbox_size_limit = 1073741824
virtual_mailbox_limit = 1073741824

Milters I’ve found while looking for mail throttling

Best milters that I found, excluding the ones that provide graylisting functionality, were:

• j-chkmail: Multipurpose mail filtering software.
• Milter-regex: Reject mail matching regular expressions. Simple and can be usefull.
• Mailfromd: General-purpose mail filtering daemon. It looked too complicated for me.
• milter-limit: Limit number of mails, per sender. Looks like it has not enough documentation.
• milter-length: Limiting mails by message size.

But, milters are native for Sendmail, not Postfix (but they work in latest Postfix). Analog solution for Postfix is to use some Policy Daemon:

• postfix_policy: It has a web interface as a plus. This looks logical to me, because it allows a administrator to configure in an easy way.
• postfwd: The configuration looked the simplest to me. S I decided to go with this one.
• ACL Policy Daemon: Apolicyd (Python) does have message size limiting, but does not have message count (rate-limiting or throttling) control. And, according to this post, it is very heavy on the server load. So, it’s out.

These are actively maintained, and Policyd-weight is not active anymore. Finally, I decided to go for Postfwd.

I just stumbled on a post that I just had to contribute mine photos. Here they are…

Great tool - everything that I wanted. So check out the http://www.intodns.com/

One month after, the server is out of reach. Just in case - I found another comparable one: http://dnssy.com/

YUM Repositories

Fedora has 2 repositories named ‘fedora’ and ‘updates’. To use them and not get errors about unsigned packages you must import their GPG keys.

Install additional repositories with:

rpm --import /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/*
sisa

Livna

rpm -hiv http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-8.rpm
rpm --import http://rpm.livna.org/RPM-LIVNA-GPG-KEY

Information about the Tigro repository. It is compatible with Livna, but not with Freshrpms repository. Non-free version contains couple of usefull utilities
as VirtualBox (Sun’s open source VMware pandan), Skype (not to go directly and add a repository), etc.

http://tigro.info/blog/index.php?id=483

rpm -hiv ftp://ftp.msiu.ru/pub/fedora/tigro/tigro-release-8-1.i386.rpm
rpm -hiv ftp://ftp.msiu.ru/pub/fedora/tigro/nonfree-release-8-1.i386.rpm

Tigro repository

rpm -hiv ftp://ftp.msiu.ru/pub/fedora/tigro/tigro-release-8-1.i386.rpm

Install nice and sharper fonts in Gnome

1. Sharp fonts / core fonts

http://www.howtoforge.com/sharp_fonts_gnome

http://txt.binnyva.com/2007/04/installing-ms-core-fonts-on-linuxfedora/ (fali repository, http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?p=1016903)

yum install freetype-freeworld (if you have livna or tigro repository)

http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/ (This does not have Tahome, so I use the following instead)

http://www.sharpfonts.com/

yum install cabextract

mkdir -p /tmp/fontscd /tmp/fonts

wget --recursive --level=1 --no-parent --no-directories --accept "*32.exe" http://www.sharpfonts.com/fonts/

mkdir -p /usr/share/fonts/truetype/

cabextract -d /usr/share/fonts/truetype *32.exe

wget http://www.sharpfonts.com/fontconfig.tbz

tar xvjpf fontconfig.tbz -C /etc/fonts/

Now, restart X with <Ctrl><Alt><Backspace>

Final tweaks

As user (not root): echo "gtk-menu-popup-delay=0" >> ~/.gtkrc-2.0

I wanted to have an automatic installation of multiple workstations, and automatic updating of them, from local source, via yum. First goal was achieved via Kickstart utility that is included in Fedora. If not installed, you could install it with yum install system-config-kickstart. The second goal is accomplished with utility called reposync that is part of an yum-utils (yum install yum-utils).

Automatic installation options with Kickstart utility

When installed, Kickstart is found in Applications -> System Tools -> Kickstart. With this utility, you create the options file for unattended installation. Basically, I followed the instructions from this link, but I decided to use a standard CD as a source (not NFS), and just to use a Kickstart as the fastest way to select the applications.

Local repository

You should install all the repositories that you will need.

Create a directory (mine is /home/shared/yum.local.repo). Then, execute yum install yum-utils to surely have a reposync utility.

Then copy the DVD content to the local repository.

mkdir /mnt/cdrom

mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

cd /mnt/cdrom/Packages

cp -r . /home/shared/yum.local.repo/fedora/Packages/

cd /
eject cdrom

To synchronize every repository, execute reposync -n --download_path=/home/shared/yum.local.repo. For specific repositories, execute:

reposync -n –download_path=/home/shared/yum.local.repo
–repoid=livna –repoid=remi
–repoid=utterramblings
–repoid=tigro
–repoid=freshrpms
–repoid=updates –repoid=fedora

Then, share that with the world…

chkconfig –list nfs

service nfs status

chkconfig –level 235 nfs on

service nfs start

nano /etc/exports

/home/shared/yum.local.repo 192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0(ro)exportfs -r

Sources of information are:

http://www.howtoforge.com/setting-up-a-local-yum-repository-fedora8,

http://www.howtoforge.com/creating_a_local_yum_repository_centos

http://www.howtoforge.com/nfs-server-and-client-debian-etch