Ceci n'est pas une pipe

It is available for download the new version of SystemRescueCd , the famous live distro based on Gentoo and designed specifically for data recovery and partition the hard disk. The new version released by the French team is 1.0.4, does not introduce major changes from the previous release but promises to solve some small (but very annoying) bug. Here is a summary of the news:

Updated the default kernel to Linux 2.6.25.7 with Reiser4fs; fixed problem with Samba to two bad houses in the UTF8 character set, fixed the LVM package - LVM 1.x support was broken, fixed the LVM service - now it starts after mdadm so That LVM on raid works; updated NTFS-3G to 1.2531 (NTFS full read-write support); updated the Btrfs file system support to 0.15 (kernel module and utilities); ability to boot Linux from an LVM disk; added option 'root = auto 'to boot the first Linux system found on the hard drive, added' MHDD 'boot floppy disk image (low-level hard disk diagnostic tool).

You can see the full changelog at this address .

RightLoad is a free program for Microsoft Windows context menu to add some very cool feature: Right-click on the icon of a file transfer is possible to launch the FTP server to a preset using the special administration interface.

The software offers many possibilities:

• ASCII extensions. When you choose "Auto" transfer mode by default, all files that have extensions like one of those listed will be moved precisely in "ascii", while for all other types of files are transferred in "binary".

• Master Password. With the master password you can set a password that will be used to make The encryption of login information to the server, so that they can not be "sniffed" from the bad guys.

• Automatic Updates. RightLoad automatically checks for updates by connecting to the server team that is overseeing the development.

• SFTP and HTTP transfers. In the "Server Type" you can choose whether to use a normal FTP session, or (selected by me highly recommended) a session SFTP (or FTP over SSH). You can also transfer files even upload via HTTP.

For any other information, are all on the official website of the project ( http://www.rightload.org ).

It is a period full of contradictions, one we are experiencing. Abandoned the illusion that the economic crisis was only an accident passengers, many of the people I know have begun to lose their points of reference.

It happens almost every day to exchange a few words with someone on the causes and possible developments of this mess: I realize that it is always going to reduce everything to market forces, the global economy, the new emerging economies. Almost not even our fault if we can put more money in your pocket - maybe with a little 'more trouble - loses value every day.

A few come to mind that the time has come to change our lifestyles, our goals and the ways to achieve them. Everyone looks back, to blaspheme those past mistakes and who made only for the splendor rimpiangerne. I heard thirties remember how you looked good in the eighties. People who had less than twenty years when raging Craxi - God rest his soul - Andreotti and Forlani . People of that age can not have regrets, because at that time their only concern was what to wear in the morning to make a good impression on the girl in the class next door. What this legitimate, when you have that age.

But who still wants to look forward not only to hope that things will be better able to be restarted indefinitely. He asks instead: what needs my time? I can understand the world in which I live and find a better location? What I can do? What should I learn? What do I learn to do?

Crisis is everywhere. But is this necessarily a bad thing? I say no ...

Postfix has long been considered one of the best MTA available. Initially written by Wietse Venema Zweitze and released under the IBM Public License , Postfix can boast a solidity and an ease of interaction found in other demons SMTP mail.

The decision to deploy its capabilities of different demons - each of which performs a specific function - and the award for minimum performance for each group, ensures that any bugs or exploits can not compromise the entire MTA. A single process must be run with root privileges, all other rights are minimal and often just a configuration file.

This distribution of tasks is also reflected in the availability of several tools specifically designed to perform functions of monitoring and administration of processes generated by Postfix. Some of these tools are part of Postfix, while others are accessory items - often developed by third parties - that interact with it at various levels.

The monitoring of the mail queues, for example, can be done with the `mailq`:

# mailq
-Queue ID- --Size-- ----Arrival Time---- -Sender/Recipient-------
6CC39230001* 1389 Wed Jun 25 01:17:51 5tanya.wuhc@msa.hinet.net
test@dominio.it

I refer the usual newbie `man` mailq for basic information on how the program works. What follows is an example of how you can best make use `mailq` to remove frozen mail from local spool:

# exim -Mg `mailq | grep frozen | awk '{ print $3 }'`

The normal use of `mailq` may be thwarted by the presence of very massive mail queues. In these cases it is good to deploy the script `` qshape to get a clear picture of what has led to the accumulation of messages and when it happened:

$ qshape -s deferred | head
T 5 10 20 40 80 160 320 640 1280 1280+
TOTAL 1250 0 1 2 4 5 22 34 118 242 822
spammer123.com 462 0 1 0 1 1 3 7 15 53 381
zzfinder.com 64 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 4 59
socket4you.biz 53 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 53
junglex.com 36 0 0 0 0 0 1 3 7 15 10
myemessage.com 36 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 36
stock911.us 35 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 35
linuxassistance.it 33 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 33
agliardi.biz 29 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 26

Here we see that there are 1250 messages in the queue for which was made ​​at least one attempt at delivery (deferred), of which 462 are routed to domain spammer123.com. Of emails sent to this domain 1 is in the queue for a period of time between 5 and 10 minutes, while 381 are waiting for more than 1280 minutes.

The following command is used instead to display statistics related to the number of recipients of mail in the queue "active" Postfix:

qshape active | less

In this way we can identify at any time any "bottlenecks", ie abnormal mailings that accumulate in the Postfix queue significantly degrade performance. Once identified similar processes, we can eradicate them using the command `` postsuper:

postsuper [-psv] [-c directory_file_conf] [-d][-h][-H][-r] [id_coda] [directory_coda]

To eliminate, for example, with the message queue ID 6CC39230001 (ie the one shown in the example above) is sufficient to run the command:

# postsuper -d 6CC39230001

If, instead, at your own risk, you want to completely empty the mail queue, you can always use the following command:

# postsuper -d ALL deferred

But if you ever lose email because of the use of this second example, do not you take it with me.

I took a couple of days off, to pull myself together and try to recover from a period working very, very heavy.

Do not tear your hair: I'll be back with you after Tuesday, June 24 next year.

Good things all.

There are scripts that you should always have on hand, because it ends up that you need in the most unexpected moments and occasions. This function in PHP, for example, saved me in many cases an unnecessary waste of time passing as argument a string that is the full path to scan the scan_directory_recursively function returns an array containing the complete structure of the specified directory.

You can indicate, as the second optional argument, an extension or a portion of text that will not necessarily appear in the file name. This is basically a filter to exclude a certain class of results.

For example:

$dirs=scan_directory_recursively('/home/ivan/Tempo');

returns an array of all directories and files in / home / ivan / time, while:

$dirs=scan_directory_recursively('/home/ivan/Tempo','.php');

returns an array of all directories and files in / home / ivan / time except for files with extension. php!

It is not my doing, why I ask those who make use in their projects do not remove references to lixlpixel, the Internet site from which they come.

Here's the function:

 <? Php

 / / Recursive PHP functions ------------- ------------ lixlpixel

 / / Scan_directory_recursively (directory to scan, filter)

 / / Expects path to the directory and an optional extension to filter

 / / Of course PHP has to have the permissions to read the directory

 / / Specify you and all files and folders inside this directory

 / / ------------------------------------------------ ------------


 / / To use this function to get all files and directories in an array, write:

 / / $ Filestructure scan_directory_recursively = ('path / to / directory');


 / / To use this function to scan a directory and filter the results, write:

 / / $ FileSelection scan_directory_recursively = ('directory', 'extension');


 scan_directory_recursively function ($ directory, $ filter = FALSE)

 {
    
 / / If the path has a slash at the end we remove it here
    
 if (substr ($ directory, -1) == '/')
    
 {
        
 $ Directory = substr ($ directory, 0, -1);
    
 }

    
 / / If the path is not valid or not is a directory ...
    
 if (file_exists ($ directory) | |! is_dir ($ directory))
    
 {
        
 / / ... 
 we return false and exit the function
        
 return FALSE;

    
 / / ... 
 else if the path is readable
    
 } Elseif (is_readable ($ directory))
    
 {
        
 / / We open the directory
        
 $ Directory_list = opendir ($ directory);

        
 / / And scan through the items inside
        
 while (FALSE! == ($ file = readdir ($ directory_list)))
        
 {
            
 / / If the filepointer is not the current directory
            
 / / Or the parent directory
            
 if ($ file! = '.' && $ file! = '..')
            
 {
                
 / / We build the new path to scan
                
 $ Path = $ directory. '/'. $ File;

                
 / / If the path is readable
                
 if (is_readable ($ path))
                
 {
                    
 / / We split the new path by directories
                    
 $ Subdirectories = explode ('/', $ path);

                    
 / / If the new path is a directory
                    
 if (is_dir ($ path))
                    
 {
                        
 / / Add the directory details to the file list
                        
 $ Directory_tree [] = array (
                            
 'Path' => $ path,
                            
 'Name' => end ($ subdirectories),
                            
 'Kind' => 'directory',

                            
 / / We scan the new path by calling this function
                            
 'Content' => scan_directory_recursively ($ path, $ filter));

                    
 / / If the new path is a file
                    
 } Elseif (is_file ($ path))
                    
 {
                        
 / / Get the file extension by taking everything after the last dot
                        
 $ Extension = end (explode ('.', End ($ subdirectories)));

                        
 / / If there is no filter in September or the filter is set and matches
                        
 if ($ filter === FALSE | | $ filter == $ extension)
                        
 {
                            
 / / Add the file details to the file list
                            
 $ Directory_tree [] = array (
                                
 'Path' => $ path,
                                
 'Name' => end ($ subdirectories),
                                
 'Extension' => $ extension,
                                
 'Size' => filesize ($ path),
                                
 'Kind' => 'file');
                        
 }
                    
 }
                
 }
            
 }
        
 }
        
 / / Close the directory
        
 closedir ($ directory_list); 

        
 / / Return file list
        
 return $ directory_tree;

    
 / / If the path is not readable ...
    
 Else {}
        
 / / ... 
 we return false
        
 return FALSE;
    
 }

 }

 / / ------------------------------------------------ ------------


 ?>

For your convenience, but also my own, I add here a version without the comments and ready for download:

• recursive_directory_scan.php.gz

I never tire of repeating that with the stable release of Debian you can do everything, absolutely everything you normally do with any other distribution less conservative. For everyday use, for the conduct of its business activities or just for the game, most users seem to prefer Linux distributions very little oriented to security and stability only for the fact that these are constantly updated to latest version any software.

I have already described in another post how you can benefit from the system of backports to update your favorite programs to a newer version of that inserted into the stable branch of Debian.

Debian Etch is ready to satisfy even though all of our natural temptation to turn to see the killer app for Microsoft on our Linux box. Take, for example, the case dell'odiatissimo and beloved Internet Explorer web browser. To see him turn on our Debian Etch there are at least two very valid solutions:

1. the suite Crossover Linux (aka: CXLinux) of CodeWeavers
2. script IEs4Linux Sérgio Luís Lopes Júnior

The first solution is not free, but it really costs a pittance compared to what offers:

CrossOver Linux allows you to install many popular Windows productivity applications, plugins and games in Linux, without needing a Microsoft Operating System license. CrossOver includes an easy to use, single click interface, which effectively Makes installing a Windows application simple and fast. Once installed, your application integrated seamlessly with your Gnome or KDE environment. Just click and run your application, Exactly as you would in Windows, but with the full freedom of Linux.

CrossOver Linux lets you use many Windows plugins Directly from your Linux browser. Plugins work on any x86 based Linux distribution and will integrated with most browsers Including Firefox 1.x, Netscape 6.x, Konqueror, Mozilla, and Opera. CrossOver Also Integrates with Gnome and KDE to let you transparently open any Word, Excel or PowerPoint files. But even better, you can open attachments These types Directly from any mail client.

I must admit, I have a particular affection for CXLinux, since for several years running on my Linux box (once called Crossover Office, aka: CXOffice) and often gives me enormous satisfaction.

The second solution is not at all be underestimated: just as CXLinux, the script uses IEs4Linux `` wine to simulate the functionality of a system of Redmond and makes us turn over a good number of applications.

Here's how to install Debian Etch IEs4Linux:

1. download and install (as root) the minimum dependencies:
   # apt-get install wine cabextract binfmt-support
2. download (as a normal user) the latest version of the installer script:
   ~ wget http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/downloads/ies4linux-latest.tar.gz
3. extract it with the usual command `tar`:
   ~ tar xvfz ies4linux-latest.tar.gz
4. navigate to the directory thus created:
   ~ cd ies4linux-*
5. run the script:
   ~ ./ies4linux

At this point you're done! You will see a gui where you can select a few simple parameters to pass to the script installation. Council to select only versions 6.0, 5.5 and 5.0 of Internet Explorer: While in the advanced options are given the opportunity to install version 7.0, this is a beta still very unstable and not recommended by the Sérgio.

I recommend to anyone who has benefited from the script Sérgio Luís Lopes Júnior made by pouring the appropriate handout, just a single euro with PayPal. Here is the address where to find more information about contributing to his great project:

http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/page/Contribute