Copyright

Two Links about Copyright in Germany:

German Law
German Creative-Commons-Homepage

The Power of Touch

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If you are using Linux or some kind of Unix you properly have noticed the command touch.

touch [-acm] [-r file] [-t [[CC]YY]MMDDhhmm[.SS]] file [...]

Mostly it is used to create empty files, e.g. to create an empty file called new.txt:

touch new.txt

But it can much more. Originally it was build to manipulate the modification and access times of files. E.g. if you want to trick make to recompile a project just touch a file:

touch project.c

Sometimes if you work with NFS drives of servers with asynchronous time stamps, some applications do not recognize updated files and will work with a cached version for some time. Then you can use touch as dirty work around, e.g.:

touch -m 209901018000 cachedfile.txt

Or give a whole folder identical timestamps.

Have a look at the man page for more information.

Konquerer Shortcut

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If you use Linux KDE with Konquerer you can just type

gg:linux

into the address line if you what to google for "linux". Or

wp:linux

if you want to look for "linux" in wikipedia.

This seems to be around for quite a while but I did not know it.

How long does it take to setup a Virtual Server?

For a new project we needed a new web server. Finally we had to choose between a dedicated server from a budget hosting company and a virtual web server from a reputable hoster.

Because we wanted to try something new, and we needed some features which a normal virtual web server does not provide. We decided to choose the budget company. Unfortunately it is situated in a neighbor state. This seems to be a bureaucratic obstacle. They could not accept our order. However, one day later they called to tell us it will be possible end of this year. We heard a lot of horror stories about this company. But after all their support was really professional and we will test it as soon as it possible.

So we went for the reputable hosting company based in our own country. Basically the same price but for a different product with less features. We have already other projects on their site so it should be no problem.

day 1

They had a nice web interface with a shop to choose your needs. We selected the virtual server, entered a domain name which comes for free (it's included in the price). Then we entered our customer ID, some additional information, and clicked on the continue button. A new window opened saying:

Please fill in all fields marked with *

Strange thing because there was no input field at all.

Well could be the interface does not like Safari. So we tried again with Firefox. Same result. Switched to another computer using Windows and Internet Explorer. Same result.

Fortunately there was a special support button for shop issues. Clicked. You had to be logged in to reach the support. We logged in. A new window appeared saying the requested page is unavailable.

So we clicked on the technical support button, described the problem and submitted the form.

day 2

We got an answer saying, they saw that our order could not be processed, but they didn't know why. However we could order by phone.

Perfect, so we called. Nice music. Quite fast we heard a human voice. We got a name of the selling man. Nice music. More music. A human voice. The responsible employee could not be reached. We got a phone number which would allow as to call directly.

Three phone calls later - Mr X was still unavailable - a nice man told us we can order by fax. He would send us the necessary forms by email.

A couple of seconds later we had the forms. Filled them in and returned them to a magical fax number.

day 3

nothing

day 4

nothing

day 5

Perhaps we used the wrong telephone number for the fax? Well, we called again. Mr X was again not available. After some music be were connected to Mr Y who told us that they received the fax and that our server would be available the very same day.

day 6

nothing

day 7

nothing

day 8

We received a mail that the domain had been registered.

day 9

We received the login data.

In German we have a proverb:

Good things take time.

The strange thing: Last year we ordered a server at the same company on the 24th of December (yes it is a working day in our country) and had it ready to go on next working day the 27th.

SpamAssassin

If you have not known SpamAssassin yet:
As it name might already say, it deals with spam (unwanted emails).

It can (and actually does quite often without your knowledge) run directly on your mail server. This has the big advantage that the spam mails can be eliminated already on your server and you do not have to download it to your computer.

However, it is very flexible. E.g. you might also want to receive spam, which SpamAssassin has marked as such and move it manually to your trash can.

More about SpamAssassin at its homepage.

train SpamAssassin

If you want to teach SpamAssassin and you are using pine, create two new folders e.g.

train-spam
train-ham

save the spam to train-spam and the non-spam mails to train-ham.

And tell SpamAssassin:

sa-learn --mbox --spam ~/mail/spam-train
sa-learn --mbox --ham /var/mail/{username}

use grep as search function

If you are looking for a file containing a certain string and want only the filenames as result, try:

grep -r -c theStringYouWantToFind * | grep -v :0

The first grep looks for your string theStringYouWantToFind in all files * and folders -r and returns how often -c the string has been found in each file.
The second grep shows only the files where the search result was higher then 0.