Essentially:

1. Go to System->Preferences->Preferred Applications
2. For "Mail Reader" choose "Custom" and enter this (we'll create the script later):

   /home/username/bin/open_mailto.sh "%s"

3. The above script will be triggered anytime you click on an email link.  Now, let's create the actual script.  Note: This is a modified script from the above web site.  It is based on some of the comments posted about the artice and then refined a little.  This script will properly handle subject, cc, to, body, and most any proper email tag that you can throw at it.  One other difference is that it can handle parenthesis.

   #!/bin/sh
   uri=`echo "$1"| sed -e 's/subject=/su=/' \
        -e 's/^mailto:\([^&?]\+\)[?&]\?\(.*\)$/\1\&\2/' \
        -e 's/(/%28/g' -e 's/)/%29/g'`
   firefox -remote "openurl(https://mail.google.com/mail?\
   view=cm&tf=0&to=$uri,new-tab)"

4. Finally, change the mode of the script so that it can execute:

   chmod 755 /home/username/bin/open_mailto.sh

Hopefully that will work for you without problems.  In my tests so far it has worked great.

alter user user_name identified by new_password;

For example, during my lunch break at work I will often work on personal projects. One of my projects right now is a suite of programs and libraries generically called Mr. Morse. These projects are all related to Morse Code in some way. What's strange is that my employer blocks outbound SSH (port 22) connections, but not telnet (port 23) connections. Don't ask, because the answer is weird. Anyway, I use github.com to host my source code and Sourceforge to host the software releases and bug tracking. Because I am blocked at work from outgoing SSH connections I can't directly connect to github and push/pull my source code.

SSH to the rescue! Fortunately, a solution exists that once set up is totally transparent to you. Unfortunately, this requires access to another machine outside of the firewall that you control. In my case I have a machine running at home with the SSH daemon running on port 23 instead of the normal port 22. My employer does not block outbound port 23 connections, so this works. From work I can SSH to this machine.

Once this machine was set up there were two options for bouncing a SSH connection through this machine to github. One, I could create a SSH tunnel and leave it running on my machine. This is the "typical" way I see it done on the internet, which works fine, but if your machine is rebooted you need to remember to start the tunnel again. It also makes the remote server look like it is attached to your local machine ports, which may or may not be desirable. For reference, here is how I would do this tunnel to github through my personal remote machine.

#!/bin/sh
# Explanation of command:
# * Disable TCP Keep Alive.  This can be spoofed.
# * Send an encrypted message to the other end every 60 seconds. This
#   should keep the tunnel open
# * The -L creates the tunnel. How this reads is open a tunnel from
#   localhost port 65321 through remote.machine.com to github.com
#   port 22.  Strange, I know.  But, it works.
# * -p 23 because the ssh server at remote.machine.com is on port 23
# * -N don't execute a shell at the other end
# * -f fork into background
# The combination of -N and -f will open the tunnel but we won't
# get a shell and the tunnel will just sit in the background.
ssh -o TCPKeepAlive=no -o ServerAliveInterval=60 -L 65321:github.com:22 \
  -l user remote.machine.com -p 23 -N -f

That's not too bad, but like I said, you need to remember to open the tunnel every time you reboot. Also, the remote machine looks like it is attached to your local machine at port 65321 with this command. The second and preferred method for remote github connection is a SSH config item. This has the advantages of working transparently and still looking like the machine is remote, not local. Simply add this to your .ssh/config file:

Host github.com
     ProxyCommand ssh -p 23 -l user remote.machine.com exec nc %h %p

That's it. Now all git pulls/pushes will automagically be routed through the remote machine without you having to do a thing. So, when you clone my repository all you will have to do is:

git clone git://github.com/wg3i/dit-n-dah.git

and things will just work.

yum install xauth

fixed the problem and now my SSH happily sets the DISPLAY variable.

bash-3.00# format
Searching for disks...done

AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS:
       0. c1t0d0 <SUN72G cyl 14087 alt 2 hd 24 sec 424>
          /pci@1c,600000/scsi@2/sd@0,0
       1. c1t1d0 <SUN72G cyl 14087 alt 2 hd 24 sec 424>
          /pci@1c,600000/scsi@2/sd@1,0
Specify disk (enter its number): 0
selecting c1t0d0
[disk formatted]
Warning: Current Disk has mounted partitions.
/dev/dsk/c1t0d0s0 is currently mounted on /. Please see umount(1M).
/dev/dsk/c1t0d0s1 is currently used by swap. Please see swap(1M).
/dev/dsk/c1t0d0s6 is currently mounted on /var. Please see umount(1M).
/dev/dsk/c1t0d0s7 is currently mounted on /sdh_home. Please see umount(1M).

FORMAT MENU:
        disk       - select a disk
        type       - select (define) a disk type
        partition  - select (define) a partition table
        current    - describe the current disk
        format     - format and analyze the disk
        repair     - repair a defective sector
        label      - write label to the disk
        analyze    - surface analysis
        defect     - defect list management
        backup     - search for backup labels
        verify     - read and display labels
        save       - save new disk/partition definitions
        inquiry    - show vendor, product and revision
        volname    - set 8-character volume name
        !<cmd>     - execute <cmd>, then return
        quit
format> inquiry
Vendor:   SEAGATE
Product:  ST373207LSUN72G
Revision: 045A
format>

Now that you have the disk info you can go to the manufacturers web site and look up the drive information. In this case the model number is ST373207L, which turns out to be a 10k RPM 73GB SCSI drive.

Good luck drive hunting.

Where this would be useful is your "log interceptor" program could do a multitude of different things with this stream of log data. For example, it could push it into a database which could later be searched by developers to narrow down time windows or look for specific error messages. Another really useful thing to do would be to have the log interceptor do basic log rotation. This could keep the log file size manageable. Or, maybe you want the log file emailed somewhere every 100k or whatever. There are a lot of uses I could see for something like this.

Has anyone written or seen such a program? Am I the only one that thinks this would be useful? Post a comment and let me know what you think.

From my reading this seems to be related to version 2.6.24 of the Linux kernel. The solution to this problem is actually quite easy...if you are willing to edit one of the VMWare header files. A blog post pointed me to the solution. Here is what you need to do:

1. cd /usr/lib/vmware/modules/source
2. sudo cp vmmon.tar vmmon.tar.orig
3. sudo tar xvf vmmon.tar
4. cd vmmon-only/include/
5. sudo vi vcpuset.h
• Line 74 needs to be changed from: #include "asm/bitops.h" to: #include "linux/bitops.h"
6. cd ../../
7. sudo rm vmmon.tar
8. sudo tar cvf vmmon.tar vmmon-only/
9. sudo rm -rf vmmon-only/
10. sudo vmware-config.pl

Things should work now. Good luck.

Linux LAN card: Find out full duplex / half speed or mode

# *     *   *   *    *  command to be executed
# -     -    -    -    -
# |     |     |     |     |
# |     |     |     |     +----- day of week (0 - 6) (Sunday=0)
# |     |     |     +------- month (1 - 12)
# |     |     +--------- day of month (1 - 31)
# |     +----------- hour (0 - 23)
# +------------- min (0 - 59)

Here is a good reference link for all things crontab: Unix Crontab - setting up cron jobs using crontab