For anyone who might receive such a call and think it could be legitimate, Publishers Clearing House states on their Fraud Protection page that "Our major winners are notified by mail or in person (at our option) and we never phone ahead to disclose that someone has won a major prize."

I filed a complaint at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Consumer Complaints website as I usually do when I get calls from such scammers intent on defrauding those they call. I also filed a complaint at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Complaint Assistant site at where you can select the "Rip-offs and Impostor Scams" option.

[/security/scams] permanent link

Security number is used for some fraudulent activities and due to that we have in order to suspend your social security number right away from the Law and enforcement Department and also to freeze your bank accounts before we go ahead and do that. If you need any further information about it kindly call back at 210-361-8678. Once again that's 210-361-8678. Thank you.

There were numerous other people reporting similar calls where someone was referencing a problem with the person's SSN and advising the person to call 210-361-8678. The call is obviously an attempt to defraud those called. I went to the FCC Consumer Complaint webpage and filed a complaint. I received an email response to the form I submitted with a ticket number. The email response from the FCC stated "The FCC is committed to doing what we can to protect you from these unwelcome interruptions to your day. Unwanted calls, including illegal and spoofed robocalls, are the largest category of complaints the FCC receives." It is troubling, though, that some fraudster has been engaged in this activity using the 210-361-8678 number for a year with no action taken against him. The first report I saw on the Whycall.me site was on July 16, 2018, but I saw others reporting the same issue on that webpage from that date through July 15, 2019. The Whycall.me site allows one to search for reports filed by other people on calls from telemarkers and scammers. The site describes itself thusly:

Whycall.me is a consumer complaints board used to report telemarketers, robocallers, scammers, and debt collectors that violate the law. We receive more than 6,000 complaints each month, which helps potential victims identify and avoid answering calls from problematic phone numbers. Our global phone book of numbers is powered by crowdsourcing and online data sources.

The site's homepage advises users of the site to also report the calls to relevant government agencies, which it lists. For the number that called me, the site listed the following information:

San Benito, Texas
Its exchange 361 is managed by SOUTHWESTERN BELL - TX
The number is currently on switch number SNBNTXSBDS0 (switch is a technical specification, provided here for phone hobbyists)
Around 20% of people reported it as "Recorded Message"
You are the 2nd person to search for it here.
There has been a total of 30 comments left about the number.
Latest people reported the number as that of "SCAM, "Social Security'"

I registed an account at the site and posted a note about the call I received today.

[/security/scams] permanent link

You can use the PyMuPDF module with Python to extract images from a PDF file. You can install PyMuPDF using the pip package manager with the command pip install PyMuPDF . You can determine if it is already installed with the command pip list | grep PyMuPDF or pip freeze | grep PyMuPDF.

# pip list | grep PyMuPDF
DEPRECATION: Python 2.7 will reach the end of its life on January 1st, 2020. Ple
ase upgrade your Python as Python 2.7 won't be maintained after that date. A fut
ure version of pip will drop support for Python 2.7.
PyMuPDF                          1.14.13
# pip freeze | grep PyMuPDF
DEPRECATION: Python 2.7 will reach the end of its life on January 1st, 2020. Ple
ase upgrade your Python as Python 2.7 won't be maintained after that date. A fut
ure version of pip will drop support for Python 2.7.
PyMuPDF==1.14.13
#

The code for the file is in extract-PDF-image.py.

[ More Info ]

[/languages/python] permanent link

When I attempted to copy an Outlook .ost file to an external USB flash drive, I saw the message below:

I didn't have Outlook open and didn't know what other process was using the file. One way to find out which process has a lock on a file is to use the Process Explorer utility provided by Microsoft. The program is free and you don't need administrator rights on a system to use it. To determine a process that is using the file, you can hit the Ctrl and F keys simultaneously, which will bring up a search box where you can type the name of the relevant file. When you click on the Search button, you should be able to see the name of the process that has a lock on the file as well as the process ID (PID) for that process. E.g., in this case I could see that lync.exe was using the file.

[ More Info ]

[/os/windows/processes] permanent link

I upgraded a MacBook Pro laptop that was running OS X El Capitan to macOS High Sierra (10.13.6) this week. The laptop was running Apache webserver software. After the upgrade, the system wasn't listening on port 80 for HTTP connections, but I was able to start it listening again with sudo apachectl start.

$ netstat -a | grep http | grep LISTEN
$ sudo apachectl start
Enter PIN for 'Certificate For PIV Authentication (JAMES CAMERON)': 
$ netstat -a | grep http | grep LISTEN
tcp46      0      0  *.http                 *.*                    LISTEN     
$

I was then able to access the default webpage at http://localhost which displayed the page contained in index.html.en file in the DocumentRoot directory at /Library/WebServer/Documents, but whenever I attempted to display pages I had created elsewhere, I kept getting a "404 Not Found" page indicating the requested URL was not found on the server. When I checked /private/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf, I found it had a April 4, 2018 timestamp, but no longer had the virtual host information I had previously put in the file.

[ More Info ]

[/os/macOS] permanent link

If you need to rip a CD from a command-line interface (CLI) on a CentOS Linux system, cdparanoia will allow you to do so. The cdparanoia CD ripper program will allow you to produce Waveform Audio File Format, i.e., .WAV, files from the tracks on a CD. You can use the yum package management software to install the software with by issuing the command yum install cdparanoia from the root account.

[ More Info ]

[/os/unix/linux/centos/music] permanent link

Sometimes you may find that a software package that you would like to use on a CentOS Linux system is unavailable from the default software repositories, aka "repos." In such cases adding alternative repos, such as Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL) or RPM Fusion may allow you to locate the desired package. E.g., the VLC media player is available in the RPM Fusion repository, but not the default ones nor in EPEL. RPM Fusion has two separate software repositories, one that contains free and open-source software (FOSS) and another named "nonfree". Packages in the "nonfree" repository still won't cost you anything, but there may be restrictions on the use of the software, e.g., you may be forbidden from using the software for commercial use. The RPM Fusion site defines the nonfree repo as being 'for redistributable software that is not Open Source Software (as defined by the Fedora Licensing Guidelines); this includes software with publicly available source-code that has "no commercial use"-like restrictions.'

[ More Info ]

[/os/unix/linux/centos] permanent link

I wanted to try the Pale Moon web browser, which is free and open-source software (FOSS) on a CentOS 7 Linux system, but when I tried installing it with yum, the package was not found.

# yum install palemoon
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, langpacks
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
 * base: centos-distro.1gservers.com
 * epel: archive.linux.duke.edu
 * extras: centos.host-engine.com
 * updates: centos.den.host-engine.com
No package palemoon available.
Error: Nothing to do
#

I was able to resolve the problem, by adding the Pale Moon repository.

[ More Info ]

[/network/web/browser] permanent link

If you want to monitor file changes in a directory on an Apple OS X/macOS system, one way to do so is using fswatch, a cross-platform file change monitor. The utility will allow you to monitor which files in the directory have been changed, though it doesn't report on the particular changes made to the content of the files. You can track the addition and deletion of files or whether files in the monitored directory are modified. On a Mac OS X system, you can install the software using the Homebrew package management system - see Installing Homebrew on Mac OS X for instructions on installing the software. Once Homebrew is installed, you can install fswatch using the command brew install fswatch in a Terminal window, which provides a command-line interface (CLI). The program will be installed in /usr/local/bin. Once it is installed, you can view help information by typing fswatch -h at a Terminal window shell prompt.

[ More Info ]

[/os/os-x/homebrew] permanent link

I have a number of log directories where I store log files where the directory name is the current year. On the last day of the old year, I want to create new directories named for the upcoming year. I use the following Bash script to create those directories. Since I have several email log directories, I use a for loop to create a directory named after the upcoming year in each one.

#!/bin/bash
#
# Create a new directory corresponding to the upcoming year on December 31 of
# every year

newyear=$(date --date=tomorrow +%Y)
echo $newyear

# Apache logs

# Check on whether the directory for the current year exists and, if it doesn't,
# create it.
if [ ! -d /home/jdoe/www/logs/apache/"$newyear" ]; then
   mkdir /home/jdoe/www/logs/apache/"$newyear"
   chown apache /home/jdoe/www/logs/apache/"$newyear"
   chgrp apache /home/jdoe/www/logs/apache/"$newyear"
fi

# Email logs 

# Create an array holding the names of the 4 directories within which
# subdirectories will be created using the name of the new year. E.g.,
# /home/jdoe/www/logs/mail/sendmail_stats/2019

logdirs=( "dnsbl_count" "sendmail_stats" "smlogstats" "smreject"  )

for i in "${logdirs[@]}"
do :
   # Check on whether the directory for the current year exists and, if it 
   # doesn't, create it.
   if [ ! -d /home/jdoe/www/logs/mail/$i/"$newyear" ]; then
      mkdir /home/jdoe/www/logs/mail/$i/"$newyear"
      chown jdoe /home/jdoe/www/logs/mail/$i/"$newyear"
      chgrp jdoe /home/jdoe/www/logs/mail/$i/"$newyear"
   fi
done

I then have a crontab entry containing the following line that will result in the Bash script above, named end-of-year-dirs, being run at 7;00 AM on December 31 of each year.

0 7 31 DEC * /root/bin/end-of-year-dirs

Related articles:

1. Loop through an array in Bash
2. CRONTAB
3. crontab -e
4. smlogstats

[/os/unix/bash] permanent link