Auto Emails from Linux

I recently needed to find out the IP address of a test machince on the network.

The machince was set up DCHP and every time it rebooted I needed to know what the IP was, so I wrote this little script.

What this script does is send me an email with the IP address and some other information I found useful.

A coulple of things you need, Mutt installed and fuctioning and access to the /etc/rc.local file.

Copy this script into a file  called rebootscript.sh

#!/bin/bash

echo "Reboot from Test Machine" > /tmp/rrmessage.txt 

echo -e >> /tmp/rrmessage.txt 

hostname >> /tmp/rrmessage.txt 

echo -e >> /tmp/rrmessage.txt 

/sbin/ifconfig eth0 >> /tmp/rrmessage.txt 

uname -a >> /tmp/rrmessage.txt 

echo -e >> /tmp/rrmessage.txt 

cat /etc/issue >> /tmp/rrmessage.txt 

mutt -s "Reboot Report" YourEmail@YourServer.com < /tmp/rrmessage.txt

Then chmod +x rebootscript.sh

Now move the rebootscript.sh to where ever you keep your startup scripts.

Now gedit /etc/rc.local and add the /path/to/scripts/rebootscript.sh to the end of the file.

Every time the system reboots you will get a nice little email like this.

Subject: Reboot Report

Reboot from Test Machine

TESTcentos64-bit

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 90:24:55:5A:2A:4D  

  inet addr:192.168.1.101  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0

  UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1

  RX packets:32 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

  TX packets:35 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

  collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 

  RX bytes:4311 (4.2 KiB)  TX bytes:3250 (3.1 KiB)

  Interrupt:169 Memory:fe8f0000-fe900000 

Linux TESTcentos64-bit 2.6.18-194.8.1.el5 #1 SMP Thu Jul 1 19:04:48 EDT 2010 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

CentOS release 5.5 (Final)

This will also let you know when the server has had an unplanned reboot.

Enjoy,

Flash for Fedora 12 64bit

I spent a lot of time searching and trying different methods and processes for getting Flash to work on Fedora 12. I finally found a method that works. This is a rpm for the 64bit alpha flash, keep in mind this is an Alpha.

Here are the steps on the command line to get Flash working on Fedora 12:

#su


#yum erase flash-plugin nspluginwrapper*


#cd /etc/yum.repos.d/


#curl -O http://www.dfm.uninsubria.it/compiz/fusion-testing/flashplayer.x86_64/flash.repo


#rpm –import http://www.dfm.uninsubria.it/compiz/fusion-testing/flashplayer.x86_64/RPM-GPG-KEY-leigh123linux


#yum install flash-plugin


For more Fedora 12 tips and tricks go to http://www.Crackednoodle.com

Enjoy,

Update Older RHEL with YUM

I had a running version RHEL 3 WS that had not been updated in a while (more than a year). I found out that it was no longer getting updates from Redhat because the update contract was not renewed. I needed more current software on it to perform software testing. I like to do my updates with YUM which was not available on Redhat EL3, but here is how I got the updates I needed using YUM.
The first problem I encountered was that there is no public repository to update RHEL machines i.e you have to pay for it. I have used CentOS and know that CentOS offers public repositories and they work with RHEL as well. After struggling for some time, I discovered that I was accessing older version of repos through the latest yum, that was not working. I had to use an older version of yum with RHEL 3, since old repos do not support xml based updating.

Now I have a fully updated system. Here is how I did it.

1) Since I needed a older version of YUM I had to looked all over the web for the needed version, once I found it I saved it so you could find it more easily.

2) Download yum-2.0.8-1.noarch.rpm (for RHEL 3) from
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/7936116/yum-2.0.8-1.noarch.rpm

3) Install it using
rpm –i yum-2.0.8-1.noarch.rpm

4) Configure your yum.conf to look like this:

[main]
cachedir=/var/cache/yum
debuglevel=2
logfile=/var/log/yum.log
pkgpolicy=newest
distroverpkg=redhat-release
tolerant=1
exactarch=1
[base]
name=CentOS-$releasever – Base
baseurl=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/3/os/i386/
gpgcheck=1

[updates]
name=Red Hat Linux $releasever – Updates
baseurl=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/3/updates/i386/
gpgcheck=1

5) Download the gpg key for CentOS rpm packages from
http://mirror.centos.org/centos/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-3
6) Import the key like this:
rpm –import RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-3

7) Run “yum update”.

You can change the 3 in the conf files to what ever version of RHEL you are using.

Enjoy!

How to Clear your Flash Cache

If you use your computer for web browsing and for watching Flash content. There is a good chance you have a lot of flash information cached on your machine. This can cause you not to see updates on flash enabled sites. Just cleaning out your web cache is not enough, your Flash Media Cache can still have information in it. Here is how to clean out your Flash Cache:

Point your browser to:
http://www.macromedia.com/support/documentation/en/flashplayer/help/settings_manager07.html

You should see a screen like this:



Now click on the site you want to want to clean up and click on Delete Website, or you can just click on Delete all sites.

You are all set to get the new version of the flash video or flash game you were looking for.

Thanks to the team at BlindValet.com for the tip.

Enjoy,

Install Handbrake on Ubuntu 10.04

Handbrake is a great DVD ripper. Unfortunately the version on theHandbrake website is not working. Here is a ubuntu how to for installing Handbrake on Ubuntu 10.04.
First we need to get DVD playback enabled:

sudo aptitude install ubuntu-restricted-extras

sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

Next we need to add the PPA for the Handbrake Snapshots:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:stebbins/handbrake-snapshots

Your system will now fetch the PPA’s key. This enables your Ubuntu system to verify that the packages in the PPA have not been interfered with since they were built.

Then do and update of the Apt repos lists:
sudo apt-get update
Next you need to install the software. Use the Ubuntu Software Center to install Handbrake. Do a search for Handbrake and install the GTK GUI.
After it installs you should have Handbrake working in Ubuntu 10.04.
Now Start Ripping!
This is a great tool for ripping data for your PS3 Media Server or your Xbox Media Server.

Keeping your family safe online can be a hard. There are some great tools out there, but you need one that is easy to use and cost effective

A great solution is OpenDNS. I have been using OpenDNS in my home for the last 2 years. It is easy to set up and works on your whole network and best of all it is free. OpenDNS has Award-winning OpenDNS Parental Controls that divides the Internet’s content into more than 50 categories. Simply choose your desired filtering level, from “High” to “Minimal,” and check a box. Your filtering preferences take effect in just minutes. Further customize your preferences by adding additional categories like “Social Networking,” “Hate” and “Gambling,” or individual Web sites like MySpace.com that are problematic or unsafe for your household. Also since using OpenDNS my computers have been virtual free of spyware!

Read how to set it up at http://www.crackednoodle.com

Antivirus 2010 Removal

Antivirus 2010 is a rogue anti-spyware program from the same family as Antivirus 2008 and Antivirus 2009. Like its previous incarnations, Antivirus 2010 is advertised through the use of advertisements on the Web pretending to be online anti-malware scanners. These advertisements pretend to scan your computer and then state that your computer is infected and that you should download and install Antivirus 2010 to remove these infections. These rogues are also known to be advertised and installed through Trojans that display fake security alerts in your Windows taskbar stating you are infected. Once you click on one of these alerts, it will bring you to the download page for Antivirus 2010, or even download and install it without your permission.

Read how to remove this nasty virus at http://www.crackednoodle.com

DVD Playback for Ubuntu 10.04

DVD playback in Ubuntu has always been a little bit of a pain. Here is how to do it in a couple of easy steps.

First you need to make sure you have all the goodies that were not included in Ubuntu 10.04.

# sudo aptitude install ubuntu-restricted-extras

This will give you the codecs you need and some other goodies. Next you have to manually set up the ability to read DVDs.

# sudo /usr/share/doc/libdvdread4/install-css.sh

Now just pop in your DVD and you should be all set.

Read the full article at http://www.crackednoodle.com

PS3 for all your Home Media

The PS3 is more than just a game console it is the controller for all of your home media. Ps3mediaservers.com will teach you how to utilize your PS3 to it’s full capacity.

Take a look at the PS3 media server guidethat will serve your data to the PS3 and the Media Server Comparison Chart.

Read the full article on your PS3 as a media player at Crackednoodle.com.

Enjoy

Moved the Blog!

I have moved the Blog and will be putting all new posts on my new Blog at:

http://www.crackednoodle.com

Thanks,
Brad

Linux to Xbox 360 Media Sharing

Like most people I have a couple TVs in my house. One of the TVs has the MythBox on it and the other has the Xbox 360. Now I keep all my movies on the MythBox (all legal backups of course). I wanted to play these on my Xbox on the other TV. I noticed that after the Xbox 360 dashboard update the Xbox saw my shared drive and I could browse to my media directories. When I tried to Play one of these I got some cryptic Microsoft error code. So I did a little research and found out that Xbox media streaming uses the DLNA protocol to receive content from a peer on a network. Great, does Linux have a DLNA protocol server, YES, it is called uShare.

Here are the easy steps to set it up.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ushare

Configuration

Once finished, you’ll have uShare installed and ready for configuration. Out of the box, it won’t work for our purpose. You’ll need to edit /etc/ushare.conf to enable Xbox compatibility as well as define the standard port - 49200. Open /etc/ushare.conf as root and change the following lines:

USHARE_PORT=49200
USHARE_DIR=/path/to/your/media
ENABLE_XBOX=YES

Before these changes will take effect, you’ll need to restart ushare using its init script. However, an issue I’ve noticed is that the last line (’ENABLE_XBOX=YES’) does not always work. So before we restart uShare, we’ll need to make a small change to the init script that resides under /etc/init.d/ to force Xbox compatibility:

sudo vi /etc/init.d/ushare

and add the following line at the beginning of the script:

USHARE_OPTIONS=-x

This tells uShare to start with Xbox compatibility. Now restart uShare using the init script:

invoke-rc.d ushare restart

Now you are finished. You may need to restart the Xbox. Now navigate to ‘My Xbox’ and then select ‘Videos’ and finally you should see ‘uShare’ at the bottom (computer icon). Selecting that will connect to your Linux box and you’ll be able to browse your media just as you would on your PC.

When I tried to play a xvid file it said I needed a download to play this file. I sure it was the codec, but it was free and worked great. Now I have another TV with a HD feed that can Play all the movies on my MythBox .

I love technology!

Blind Valet Tournament Clock and Linux

Like I said before I like to play poker online or play real games. When we play real tournaments it is always hard to set up the blind structure, when the blinds go up and how much they go up. We never know how long the tourney is going to last. It becomes almost a full time job just managing the tournaments, you don't have time to play or at least to play well. So I went out looking for a tool to help. My requirements:

1. Takes care of the blind structure.
2. Keeps track of time and when the blinds go up.
3. Runs on Linux ( the only real desktop OS).
4. FREE!

I did find "The Tournament Director", which seems to do everything I need, but it does not run on Linux and you have to pay for it. Also, I tried creating a couple structures with it's blind structure creator and they were awful. Completely unusable. There were a couple of others that I saw. Mostly clocks and blind structure generators. Then I found one that fits all my needs, Blind Valet. This is a Flash Application that runs in your Browser (tested on Firefox 3.0 and Ubuntu). It does everything. You can set up your blind Structures change them and play around with the time of the tourney. You can also set up re-buys and configure the colors and sounds. Then it launches the clock and away you go. During the tourney you tell it when a player is out by clicking down the number of people and it makes all the calculations to figure out average stack. This little tool does everything and it is FREE!

Setting up the Structure.


The Clock Running


Here is the customized clock. That is what makes this clock great.


Now this is a must for any home Tourney! Works great on Linux and I even have used it on my Blackjack 2 Cell using the Skyfire Browser.

Fedora Core 10 Review, Part 1 - The Install

Fedora 10 (codename Cambridge), released 25 November 2008 has been hyped to be as good as Fedora 6. Now I loved Fedora 6 and used it as my primary desktop for a long time. Then I "upgraded" to 8, that was a huge disappointment. I skipped even trying 9 after the headaches with 8. When I heard all the talk about Fedora 10 I thought I should give it a try.

I downloaded the DVD ISO and burned it. It is available at http://fedoraproject.org/en/get-fedora.
Put the disk in and booted from it. Here is the first screen.

The Fist thing I thought was "great no stupid balloons" The install
screen looked good. No surprises on the options, pretty standard for a Fedora distro, or any distro of Linux for that matter.
Hit enter and away I went.

This was new, not very flashy but functional, at least you know it is
doing something. Although not sure why they didn't go with a a nice
splash screen? Then I got the familiar Anaconda screen.

Anaconda 11.4.1.62 to be exact. No surprise here. It seems to be quick to load although I did not put a clock on it.

The new theme looked great on the installer. Looked fresh and new. I
just went through the standard steps to install Fedora. I will just
give you some screen shots so you can get the feel of it.



The whole install took about 27 minutes start to finish. Everything
went smooth with no issues. The anaconda installer performed as
expected, and I really liked the new theme. What can you really say about a Fedora/Anaconda install, if it doesn't fail it did its job. Looking forward to working with Fedora Core 10.

In Part 2 I will get into the real meat of the Review. Thanks.

Linux and Online Poker

I am a poker player, not a great one, but a poker player. I am also a Linux user. This causes a small problem. Most of the online poker places are windows only. I spent a little time trying to find some good online poker sites that are linux friendly. I used to play a lot at Pokerroom.com, until they changed the laws and I was forced to cash out ( my $26.56). So the on went the search. Now if you don't mind using Wine then that opens up some more sites for you. If you just want to stay away from windows all together stick to Java or Flash sites. Here is my short list of Linux friendly poker sites.

These are also some of the sites you can play with real money. After all whats the point playing for points?


Pokerstars.com
This one runs with Wine.

FEATURES:
- Largest Poker Room on the Internet
- Deposit Bonuses
- Excellent VIP program!
- Great Freerolls (Free Tournaments with Real Money Prizes)

INSTRUCTIONS (how to get started):
1. Go to PokerStars.com
2. Download software
3. Install & run software (use WINE)
4. Sign up (takes 1-2 minutes)
5. Start playing...

AbsolutePoker.com
JAVA

FEATURES:
- Deposit Bonuses
- Nice Graphics!
- Good Customer Service

INSTRUCTIONS (how to get started):
1. Go to AbsolutePoker.com
2. Click the "No-Download - NEW Feature!" link (left side)
3. Now click the "Check out Instant Play" button
4. In the pop-up window that opens, go to "New User"
5. Sign up (takes 2-3 minutes)
6. Start playing...


Just as a note here is an online Casino for more than just poker.

ClubUSACasino.com
Flash based

INSTRUCTIONS (how to get started):
1. Go to ClubUSACasino.com
2. Click the green "Insant Play" button
3. Register by clicking "New Account"
4. Begin playing...

Enjoy and Good luck!

Atari 2600 Games on the Blackjack

I am old school, I love the Atari 2600 games. I know that Stella is a good EMU for Linux, I was happy to find that they have a version for Windows Mobile.
Go to the Stella site and download the version for Windows Mobile. Then unzip it in your phone. and copy over your roms. If you don't have any Atari 2600 games do a Bittorrent search and you will find some.

Then start the program and Enjoy.

Here is a little movie of my Blackjack.

Here is some more info on BlackJack II must have software.

BlackJack II must have software

I recently got myself a Samsung Blackjack II (AT&T). I love the phone, but noticed right away that it needed more. So I started finding all the software that worked well. I tested a lot of crappy programs, hope it saves you some time. I have a nice little list of software that makes this phone much nicer. Hope it helps.

1. The Explorer that comes with Windows mobile 6 sucks. Get yourself the Skyfire Browser. the Skyfire browser is currently in Beta but seems to work great. WIth Skyfire you can watch any video (yes including http://www.youtube.com), listen to any music, socialize on any network and browse whatever you want. It is the best browser I have found for the moble platform. Get it at http://www.skyfire.com/.
2. Get yourself a big micro SD card. 2 gig or better. 4 gig is a nice price point. The phone allows you to use it as a USB drive also.
   
3. Get a the Divx player for the mobile platform. This allows you to play all those divx movies you have at home on your computer. I don't even bother making the files smaller, thats why I said go with the bigger card. It is a free download http://www.divx.com/mobile/
4. Dowload Google Maps, it might just keep you from getting lost.
5. GPS, here is the fun part. Now AT&T would have you think that you can only use the GPS on the phone if you pay an extra $9.99 a month. Not true! Here is how you unlock your Samsung Blackjack II GPS.
6. You also may want a better GPS app. Check out Noni GPS Plot.

While I set up this stuff on the Blackjack II, most of it will work with any Windows Mobile device. You can also set up some games, I installed Atari 2600 Games on the Blackjack.
You can read more at http://www.crackednoodle.com

Currently working on my Reveiw of Fedora Core 10

I am currently writing a review of Fedora Core 10. After a reading a couple of the other reviews I had to spin a copy and load it, and review it for myself. Let's see if it lives up to the Hype.

My review will be a little deeper then the guys who just tell you how it looks, or that that color scheme is better than the last one.

Look for Cracked Noodle: Fedora Core 10 Review, Part 1 - The Install in the next couple of days.

Thanks,
Brad