Monitor Web page changes

Posted on April 30th, 2008 in Applications by admin

Specto is a OpenSource WebPage update/monitoring program - it saves you time and keeps you updated by automatically checking web pages (static or dynamic)to see if they have changed also helps to check it at time when someone is trying to change your page.

You can configure Specto to monitor changes to wiki pages, blog posts, forum threads, your email inbox, and even files and folders on your own system. An unobtrusive pop-up from its system tray icon informs you of all changes, so you don’t have to hop around looking for updates.

You can install it from the compressed tarball if you want the most recent release. First explode the tarball with the tar zxvf specto-0.2.2.tar.gz command. Next, browse into the specto-0.2.2/ directory. You don’t have to install Specto to begin using it; the command ./launch.sh launches Specto. But Fedora and Ubuntu users can respectively use the su -c “python setup.py install” or sudo python setup.py install command to install Specto.

Colored ls Output

Posted on April 15th, 2008 in Commandline Tools, Tweaks by admin

Unix uses the ls command to list the contents of a directory. By default ls displays all directories and files the same way, leaving you without the ability to quickly determine what type of files you are looking at (in Unix everything is a file).

Customizing Your Bash Prompt

Posted on April 15th, 2008 in Commandline Tools, Tweaks by admin

Customizing the default shell prompt not only makes the terminal that much more exciting, it will also help you remember which system you are currently on and the directory you are about to run a command in (Yea!, no more incessant pwd commands). This is especially useful for those late night pesky phone calls letting you know that you have to come into work early, really, really early; to fix the server that the underpaid incompetent third string sysadmin was supposed to be watching! Arriving on site with multiple windows open mixed with sleep deprivation can have some very devastating results. Running shutdown or init in the wrong window can really hurt.

Discover the possibilities of the /proc directory

Posted on April 15th, 2008 in Basics, Linux+ by admin

The /proc directory is a strange beast. It doesn’t really exist, yet you can explore it. Its zero-length files are neither binary nor text, yet you can examine and display them. This special directory holds all the details about your Linux system, including its kernel, processes, and configuration parameters. By studying the /proc directory, you can learn how Linux commands work, and you can even do some administrative tasks.

Under Linux, everything is managed as a file; even devices are accessed as files (in the /dev directory). Although you might think that “normal” files are either text or binary (or possibly device or pipe files), the /proc directory contains a stranger type: virtual files. These files are listed, but don’t actually exist on disk; the operating system creates them on the fly if you try to read them.

Most virtual files always have a current timestamp, which indicates that they are constantly being kept up to date. The /proc directory itself is created every time you boot your box. You need to work as root to be able to examine the whole directory; some of the files (such as the process-related ones) are owned by the user who launched it. Although almost all the files are read-only, a few writable ones (notably in /proc/sys) allow you to change kernel parameters. (Of course, you must be careful if you do this.)

ip command cheat sheet

Posted on April 12th, 2008 in Commandline Tools, Networking by admin

I really do think that ip is a big improvement from ifconfig , route , ifup , ifdown , and the other commands it replaces. Still I seem to have trouble remembering which commands you need to use the word “dev” and which ones you don’t and similar minor semantic issues (like parameter ordering). So I decided to try and compile a list of commands I commonly use to be used as a reference for studying.

Install OpenSuse Tutorial in Video

Posted on April 10th, 2008 in Basics, OpenSuse by admin

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

source 

Secure your system with Tripwire

Posted on April 10th, 2008 in Security by admin

Tripwire is a security tool that checks the integrity of normal system binaries and reports any changes to syslog or by email. Tripwire is a good tool for ensuring that your binaries have not been replaced by Trojan horse programs. Trojan horses are malicious programs inadvertently installed because of identical filenames to distributed (expected) programs, and they can wreak havoc on a breached system.

Delete Files Permanently & Securely with Shred & SecureDelete

Posted on April 10th, 2008 in Commandline Tools, Security by admin

We all know that when you simply delete a file, it’s possible to recover it later. Sometimes this is useful, if you accidentally delete something important; but usually this is a problem, and you really want that file gone forever. This howto will explain how to delete a file in linux securely and permanently, so it can never be recovered.

Hard drives store data magnetically; when you delete a file in Linux (on the ext3 filesystem), that area of the hard drive (the “inode”) is overwritten with zeros (this isn’t the case with the older ext2 filesystem, or with the Windows filesystems; see the section below on “passes and filesystems”), but the magnetic traces of that section’s previous contents remain lingering until it is overwritten many times. These tools work by writing lots of random data and zeros over your old file[s], making sure that even the most advanced recovery methods aren’t able to read what was once stored in that part of the hard disk.

Recover Deleted Files with Foremost

Posted on April 10th, 2008 in Applications, Commandline Tools by admin

Ever deleted an important file? I haven’t recently done this on Linux, but when I used Windows I had a utility for recovering deleted files.

Foremost is a command line utility for finding and recovering deleted files based on their type. It was origionally developed for the US Air Force Office of Special Investigations.

How is this type of data recovery possible? When you delete a file, the data is not really overwritten. The pointer in the filesystem to the file is simply removed so the disk area can be overwritten when necessary. The more the disk is written to after the file is deleted, the larger the chance it will be overwritten and become unrecoverable.

NSA Guides for Securing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

Posted on April 9th, 2008 in Redhat, Security by admin

These are some decent guides for securing your Red Hat Linux 5 system provided by the US Government’s NSA. Enjoy

Hardening Tips Pamphlet for the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

Guide to the Secure Configuration of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

Source 

Next Page »