This week’s techmail is Learn more about how you can use SQLite which is a bit of a primer on how you can use SQLite to create your own little SQL databases, or how you can use it to manipulate the data stored in SQLite databases found in other programs, like Firefox. I pretty much focus on how you can get information out of the Firefox SQL databases, but it comes with plenty of shiny illustrations for how you can do this yourself on any other SQLite database. Because SQLite is so well-used in many applications, being able to get into your data with a wee bit of knowledge can prove to be useful or just plain old fun for people who like to tinker.
Tag Archives: Linux
DNS querying with dig
Last week’s techmail was DNS querying with dig which is a little bit of a primer on an indispensable tool called dig. dig is a DNS querying tool that can look up all kinds of handy DNS-related information, and is useful for helping to diagnose networking issues.
How to pre-upgrade Fedora 13
This week’s TechMail is How to pre-upgrade Fedora 13 which shows how to use PreUpgrade (great tool). I used it to upgrade an F12 box and it worked flawlessly, despite the small /boot size. More information on how to use it is also on the Fedora wiki.
Monitoring MySQL with mytop
This week’s techmail is Monitoring MySQL with mytop which looks at the mytop perl tool that can help monitor and diagnose problems with MySQL (mytop is essentially a top for MySQL).
Set up Dropbox on a GUI-less Linux server
Last week’s techmail was Set up Dropbox on a GUI-less Linux server which takes you through the necessary steps of setting up Dropbox on a GUI-less Linux box. I use Dropbox here for keeping certain files in sync between systems, but I also am connected to a secondary Dropbox to act as a remote backup for a long-standing client of mine. It works great; they have two systems that share data (encrypted disk images), and I’ve also had to run a second copy of Dropbox on my system here to keep a copy of that data, but I was then rsyncing it to my remote backup server as well. With this, I can skip my system at home as being the “middle man” and get that remote backup server (headless CentOS 5) linked to the Dropbox instead. Saves bandwidth and headaches.
For anyone who uses runit, the following is a script to supervise dropboxd as a specific user. With runit I can connect to as many independent Dropbox accounts as I like, running each under a specific user.
#!/bin/execlineb # $Id: run 849 2009-04-19 21:33:01Z vdanen $ /bin/fdmove -c 2 1 /bin/export PATH "/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin" /bin/export HOME "/home/vdanen" /bin/cd /home/vdanen/.dropbox-dist /sbin/chpst -u vdanen /home/vdanen/.dropbox-dist/dropboxd
Read the tip for how to get it all setup.
Firewall configuration with system-config-firewall
This week’s techmail was Firewall configuration with system-config-firewall which discusses the niceties of using Fedora’s system-config-firewall to configure iptables. I’m not much of a GUI guy, but the interface for the firewall configuration is really slick. Will it replace my use of editing iptables rules in /etc/sysconfig/iptables? Probably not. But if you were afraid of editing a text file to setup your firewall rules, then using system-config-firewall will be welcome for you.
