Using diff to create batch files and subsequently running them against select files is such a convenient way to update, fix or change existing files, but many developers and system administrators simply don’t know much about them.

Here is a quick diff and patch example, how to use diff and apply changes for select files. Use diff –help to check out more options and flags.

NOTE: pay caution when using patching, any mistake or error are executed without warning or undo feature. ...

How to clean up and edit the Ubuntu Grub2 boot loader menu differs quite a bit from previous versions. As Ubuntu nominated the new version 2 of the Grub boot manager as of 9.10, so they did away wit the old and problematic menu.lst file.

Grub2 boot loader is a leap forward in many ways, and most of the annoyances from menu.lst are gone. Yet, if you don’t clean up old versions of kernel entries, the boot list can quickly get ...

There are many reasons why we want to install PHP 5.2 on Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx, the most prominent is that many web packages are not compatible yet with PHP 5.3. Drupal 6 being a prime example.

But there is no automated method out of the box, and there are now several scripts floating around the Internet that may work or just partially work. A major concern is the ability to update, easily switch to PHP 5.3 when the application is ...

With increasing popularity in Google’s Chrome browser, so increases the demand for extensions. This is especially true for Developers, as we are used to such a nice variety of high quality tools in Firefox. And the more tools are available on one browser, the more that browser is used in developing web sites, resulting in higher quality web experience for end users on that platform. Btw., did you know that Google Chrome surpasses Safari in US browser market (macstories.net)? The ...

Troubleshooting memcached is not so transparent as some other technologies, but testing memcached using telnet commands can give us quite some insight on what’s happening under the hood.

The following tutorial on testing memcached with telnet from the command line is a short list of useful commands to inspect a running memcached instance.

The above will give us the process running memcached, with listening ip address and port. If ...

If you’ve got some .vob files and wonder how to get those onto a DVD and actually play it on your DVD player, you may get or already have some strange results. The files might just be listed on the DVD, without the disc actually playing the movie as a DVD, or the disc may play the first vob section, then the second has no sound. And there is a plethora of issues and scenarios, just not the one you were ...

With the increasing buzz about Twitter and its messages, more web developers want to incorporate a stream of Twitter messages into their websites.

Ever wanted to listen, track and parse tweets from a Twitter stream from an individual user? It’s quite an easy task, if you know the right URL’s to parse. Curl is a great little tool to get sources from almost any web resource and Curl has roots in Linux command like and PHP, just to name a couple.

Let’s ...

Whether you’re a DBA or just host your own blog, database maintenance is a task you’ll have to perform sooner or later. Either the website gets slow, data becomes corrupt or worse, the server crashes, having a few commands handy will be golden. So how do we perform a mysql repair and optimize all databases?

Many MySQL GUI clients allow for analyze, repair and optimize functions, but they usually are limited to one table at a time, or to a maximum ...

Install true type fonts in Ubuntu is a rather easy task, but often we don’t take the time to look for nice fonts and install them. Whether for local use in out OS, or for graphic or web design, a nice font gives personality and character.

With literally thousands of free fonts available on the Internet, from sites such as 1001 Free Fonts or DaFont, who could resist to add that extra spice to their documents or websites. A carefully chosen ...

Forgot your root password? Nice going. What now? Reinstall the machine from ground up? Sadly enough, I’ve seen this happening all too often while it’s surprisingly easy to change the password knowing the correct procedure. While this doesn’t work in all cases (like if you secured your machine with a GRUB password and forgot that as well), but here’s the procedure in case of a CentOS Linux machine.

Start off by rebooting your system. At ...