Blogs

Server Environment Variables

One of the methods that the web server uses to pass information to a cgi script is through environmental variables. These are created and assigned appropriate values within the environment that the server spawns for the cgi script. They can be accessed as any other environmental variable, like with %ENV{'VARIABLE_NAME'} (in Perl). Many of them, contain important information, that most cgi programs need to take into account.

To get a list of such environment variables, use the below script:

#!/usr/bin/perl
foreach $value(keys %ENV) {
  print "$value: $ENV{$value}\n";
}
exit;

The Power of Find !!

find is one of the most usefull and important utilities any *NIX has. We will try to demonstrate you with some find basics.

find begins at a specified point on a directory tree and searches all lower branches for files that match a given set of parameters.

$ find path operators

path is the directory in which find will begin to search. Any number of directories can be specified. The search is recursive.

opeators/options tells find which files you are interested in.

Advanced Bash Scripting Guide

Advanced Bash Scripting Guide - The Advanced Bash Scripting Guide is both a reference and a tutorial on shell scripting. This comprehensive book (the equivalent of about 556 print pages) covers almost every aspect of shell scripting. It contains 293 profusely commented illustrative examples, and a number of tables. Not just a shell scripting tutorial, this book also provides an introduction to basic programming techniques, such as sorting and recursion. It is well suited for either individual study or classroom use.

ClamAV - Antivirus for Linux

Clam AntiVirus is a GPL anti-virus toolkit for *nix. The main purpose of this software is the integration with mail servers (attachment scanning). The package provides a flexible and scalable multi-threaded daemon, a command line scanner, and a tool for automatic updating via Internet. The programs are based on a shared library distributed with the Clam AntiVirus package, which you can use with your own software. Most importantly, the virus database is kept up to date.

  • command-line scanner
  • fast, multi-threaded daemon
  • milter interface for sendmail

Cerberus Helpdesk

Cerberus Helpdesk is an email response system built to diminish the need for redundant, time-consuming human interaction with your customers. The system is built to allow your support/sales/billing/etc. department to react quickly to inbound customer email inquiries. It was written originally as a trouble ticket system.

Cerberus delivers a highly-customizable, intuitive interface packed with an abundance of powerful features, such as:

  • an exceptionally adaptive anti-spam system
  • comprehensive search and customer history functionality

Learning Tcl with Tcl Tutor

TclTutor is a Computer Aided Instruction package that teaches the basics of the Tcl programming language.

The 40+ lessons in this package can be completed in under 10 minutes each. You'll be ready to start simple programs after the first half dozen lessons.

WiX - Microsoft's first OSS project

The Windows Installer XML (WiX) is a toolset that builds Windows installation packages from XML source code. The project, originally developed internal to Microsoft, was released under the Common Public License (a first for Microsoft). With this release developers outside Microsoft can take advantage of the same toolset being used today to create the installation packages for products like Microsoft Office, Microsoft SQL Server, and many others. More information about the toolset and its OSS release can be found at: http://blogs.msdn.com/robmen/

libmsn

libmsn is a reusable fully documented C++ library for connecting to Microsoft's MSN Messenger service. It provides a high-level interface that allows an application to access instant messaging features with ease.

Cooperative Linux

Cooperative Linux is the first working free and open source method for optimally running Linux on Microsoft Windows natively. More generally, Cooperative Linux (short-named coLinux) is a port of the Linux kernel that allows it to run cooperatively alongside another operating system on a single machine. For instance, it allows one to freely run Linux on Windows 2000/XP, without using a commercial PC virtualization software...

Mondo to the Rescue

Mondo is reliable, comprehensive and free (GNU Public License) disaster recovery software and backs up your GNU/Linux server or workstation to tape, CD-R, CD-RW, NFS or hard disk partition. In the event of catastrophic data loss, you will be able to restore all of your data (or as much as you want), from bare metal if necessary. Mondo runs on all major [Linux] distributions and is getting better all the time. You may even use it to backup non-Linux partitions, such as NTFS.

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