Here's what to do when the Windows Explorer does not show in the Taskbar.  We've tried to reboot and maximize and minimize but no luck.  In this case one only has to press SHIFT + LEFT CLICK on the taskbar then use the keyboard arrow keys to move the window back into the viewable screen.  

The alternative is the ALT + SPACE method but the menu will show up relative to the Windows Explorer window which if off the screen.  That won't be too helpful in this case.

And we're good!

Cheers,
TK

dd is a great unix and linux utility with many purposes and uses.  It is simply low level I/O that can ge used to generate files, convert files, wipe disks, recover disks and then some.  We've used dd quite extensively in our other posts to get work done and to recover data or disk metadata.  In this case we're looking to generate a large file in small chunks and wish to dig deeper into the inner workings of this command.  In this post we wish to demonstrate a couple of key features only.  We'll touch on a few of it's options.  We'll start with a simple file of 16 zeros:

# cat zero.txt
0000000000000000
#

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Setting the Static IP on your Samsung Ace 2X S7560 has a very short solution:  can't be done from the GUI the device offers, OOTB.  The way to do this is to set a Static DHCP IP on the router.  Since we have DD-WRT on ours, the process is fairly straight forward though I had to part with my purely static IP configuration. The MAC filter as long as it's active does it's bit to limit WIFI connections as is.  The list is fairly straight forward to maintain.  

So what we'll implement here is Static DHCP IP Addresses through the Services tab of the DD-WRT.  

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To prevent hotlinking, which is direct linking to another site's content such as images, videos, documents without actually storing them on your own hosting account often happens on the web and is generally frowned upon.  To prevent this, we include the following in our .htaccess file to prevent image / media hotlinking.  This is because the bandwidth taken up by hotlinking is incurred against the host that hold the media item and counts towards the remote source bandwidth.  Here's what a sample look like to protect against this on our site and can be customized towards any other site:  

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In AIX Maintenance mode, /dev/random and /dev/urandom are not configured.  This can be done manually like this to help recover the functionality though it's not readily available to start with:

# [[ -r /dev/random ]] && rm -rf /dev/random;
# [[ -r /dev/urandom ]] && rm -rf /dev/urandom;
# mknod /dev/random c 39 0;
# mknod /dev/random c 39 1;
# mkdir -p /etc/security;
# randomctl -l;

As a one liner:

# [[ -r /dev/random ]] && rm -rf /dev/random; [[ -r /dev/urandom ]] && rm -rf /dev/urandom; mknod /dev/random c 39 0; mknod /dev/random c 39 1; mkdir -p /etc/security; randomctl -l;

This is normally for the enhanced maintenance mode so you can perform more advanced OS tasks in helping system recovery.

Cheers,
TK

This is a short Screen for Unix and Linux: HowTo and Reference for everyday use.  This quick screen tutorial and reference guide aims to provide the most commonly used features of this very useful utility.  When working with multiple ssh terminals it's handy to save a session especially where typing passwords is required often or you need to jump a number of places to reach your target host.  

This is where screen comes in handy.  Screen creates a terminal that's detached from your current session so the screen can be connected to or reconnected upon exit from screen.  To start a session in screen, enter the following:

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Depending on your provider, the Motorola Surfboard download and upload speeds are well documented on the technical specs for the Motorola Surfboard SB5101.  Don't forget to do a speedtest as well.  Some claims from ISP's come in that the modem is limited to 12-10Mbps Download and 500-512Kbps Upload speeds.  This doesn't necessarily corrolate with numbers you could be getting in real time so check with speed networks available online (google search string: upload speed test). Though it is a DOCSIS 2.0 the PDF clearly states 30Mbps (Max) Upload (Upstream) and 38Mbps DOCSIS 2.0 (EuroDOCSIS 2.0 51Mbps ) download good for up to and a bit over the mid range packages.   If you get less then what your subscribed package claims, it might not be the modem but other factors within your neighboorhood.

In other words, before you sign up for any new plans or purchase new modems be sure to check your modem limitations and current speeds.

Cheers,
TK

Your akismet stats will report caught spam over time.  However this can start to number in the thousands.  You can block wordpress spammers using .htaccess IP blocks.  This had a dramatic effect.  This post is an extension of WordPress: Dealing with Comment and User Registration Spam. where we describe how to identify spamming IP's to your blog or site and how to use the caught Akismet spam attempts and to identify IP's that send that out.  Here are the relevent lines in the .htaccess file to do this with:

.htaccess

<Limit GET POST>
order deny,allow
# offending-site-or-IP.com
deny from 1.2.3.123
</Limit>

Happy Hunting!  Questions? Suggestions?  Leave a reply.
?
Cheers,
TK

When you see this:

[root@localhost eth1]# yum search udev
Error: Cannot retrieve metalink for repository: fedora/19/i386. Please verify its path and try again
[root@localhost eth1]#

it likely means you have't got a network connection problem.  See this post for resolving.

Cheers,
TK

So once our upgrade to FC19 was done, we notice we haven't got a network connection anymore.  This is because we try to use yum and get a bunch of error messages.  Here's how to solve it on the new system through a debugging session into the issue.  

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