If you want information, e.g., the manufacturer, model, serial number, maximum resolution, display modes, etc. on a monitor connected to a Microsoft Windows system, you can use the free DumpEDID utility created by Nir Sofer of NirSoft. It's a command-line interface (CLI) utility, so you will need to run it from a command prompt. There's no installation process needed; you can extract the program from the downloaded zip file and then run it. Below is output from the program showing information for an HP S2031 monitor (the manufacturer and model number apear in the Monitor Name line) attached to a system running Windows 10.

C:\Program Files\NirSoft\dumpedid>dumpEDID
DumpEDID v1.06
Copyright (c) 2006 - 2017 Nir Sofer
Web site: http://www.nirsoft.net

*****************************************************************
Active                   : No
Registry Key             : DISPLAY\HWP2904\1&8713bca&0&UID0
Monitor Name             : HP S2031
Serial Number            : 3CQ0311PV2
Manufacture Week         : 31 / 2010
ManufacturerID           : 61474 (0xF022)
ProductID                : 10500 (0x2904)
Serial Number (Numeric)  : 16843009 (0x01010101)
EDID Version             : 1.3
Display Gamma            : 2.20
Vertical Frequency       : 50 - 76 Hz
Horizontal Frequency     : 24 - 83 KHz
Maximum Image Size       : 44 X 25 cm (19.9 Inch)
Maximum Resolution       : 1600 X 900
Support Standby Mode     : No
Support Suspend Mode     : No
Support Low-Power Mode   : Yes
Support Default GTF      : No
Digital                  : No

Supported Display Modes  :
     720 X  400  70 Hz
     640 X  480  60 Hz
     800 X  600  60 Hz
    1024 X  768  60 Hz
    1280 X  720  60 Hz
    1440 X  900  60 Hz
    1280 X 1024  60 Hz
    1600 X  900  60 Hz

*****************************************************************

*****************************************************************
Active                   : No
Registry Key             : DISPLAY\HWP2904\4&2199b20&0&UID16843008
Monitor Name             : HP S2031
Serial Number            : 3CQ0311PV2
Manufacture Week         : 31 / 2010
ManufacturerID           : 61474 (0xF022)
ProductID                : 10500 (0x2904)
Serial Number (Numeric)  : 16843009 (0x01010101)
EDID Version             : 1.3
Display Gamma            : 2.20
Vertical Frequency       : 50 - 76 Hz
Horizontal Frequency     : 24 - 83 KHz
Maximum Image Size       : 44 X 25 cm (19.9 Inch)
Maximum Resolution       : 1600 X 900
Support Standby Mode     : No
Support Suspend Mode     : No
Support Low-Power Mode   : Yes
Support Default GTF      : No
Digital                  : No

Supported Display Modes  :
     720 X  400  70 Hz
     640 X  480  60 Hz
     800 X  600  60 Hz
    1024 X  768  60 Hz
    1280 X  720  60 Hz
    1440 X  900  60 Hz
    1280 X 1024  60 Hz
    1600 X  900  60 Hz

*****************************************************************

C:\Program Files\NirSoft\dumpedid>

[/os/windows/software/utilities/nirsoft] permanent link

When you click on a file in Microsoft Windows, the operating system opens the file with whatever application, if any, that has been set as the default application to open files with the filename extension on the file. The file extension is a dot at the end of the file name followed by a sequence of other characters, often 3 characters, e.g. for myfile.doc, the extension is .doc. If some program has changed the default setting on a file type so that it now opens files with the relevant extension, but you want to revert to the application that previously opened those types of files, you can do so on a Microsoft Windows 10 system by taking the following steps:

1. Right-click on the Windows Start button, usually in the lower, left-h and corner of the screen, then click on Settings.
2. From the Settings window, click on Apps.
3. Click on Default apps.
4. In the Default apps window, scroll down until you see Choose default apps by file type and click on that text.
5. Scroll down the list of file types until you see the one for which you wish to change the default application, e.g., .doc.
6. Click on the the icon for the current default application shown to the right of the file type. You will then be able to choose another application to become the default application for opening files of that type, e.g., Microsoft Word for .doc files.
7. You can then close the Settings window by clicking on the "X" at the upper, right-hand corner of the window.

[ More Info ]

[/os/windows/win10] permanent link

Microsoft Excel supports formatting timestamps in a workbook as a date followed by a time with an AM or PM value, i.e., the times are in 12-hour clock format where noon is 12:00 PM and midnight is 12:00 AM. You can select that format for a cell or column in a worksheet by highlighting the cell(s) or column (a column can be selected by clicking on the letter at the top of the column) and then clicking on Format then Cells and then clicking on Date and selecting a type of "3/14/15 1:30 PM."

If you wanted to extract just the hour from the timestamp, you can use the HOUR function, e.g. =HOUR(A1) to extract the hour value from cell A1. The hour will be displayed in 24-hour clock format, aka military time, i.e., 7:00 AM is 7 while 7:00 PM is 12 plus 7, i.e., 19; 12:00 AM (midnight) is 0 and 12:00 PM (noon) is 12.

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[/software/office/excel] permanent link

I have a Python script that I use to process a copy of a webpage downloaded from a website and stored on my MacBook Pro laptop's hard drive to produce a CSV file from the data within that file. I was running the script from a command-line interface (CLI), i.e., a Terminal window, on the system by issuing a command like ./myscript.py inputfile outputfile where inputfile and outputfile were the file names and locations of the file holding the data and the output CSV file, respectively. I wanted to execute that script from a link on a web page, instead, so I needed a way to pass the arguments I had been passing on the command line to the Python script in the URL that I'd specify as the link on the web page. One way that you can do that for Python is explained at [Tutor] Passing Arguments to a Remote CGI Script where the following sample Python script is shown:

###
"""test.cgi  --- a small CGI program to show how one can pass parameters.
"""

import cgi
fs = cgi.FieldStorage()

print "Content-type: text/plain\n"
for key in fs.keys():
    print "%s = %s" % (key, fs[key].value)
###

[ More Info ]

[/languages/python] permanent link

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[/os/os-x] permanent link

I upgraded the version of DB Browser for SQLite on my MacBook Pro today to the latest version, 3.9.1v2. Before upgrading, I had version 3.8.0 on the system. When I checked the version from a command line interface, i.e., a Terminal window, using the system_profiler command, I didn't find any references to the program when I searched for "SQLite:", but I saw the version number listed for "sqlitebrowser."

$ system_profiler SPApplicationsDataType | grep -i "SQLite:" -A 2
$ system_profiler SPApplicationsDataType | grep -i "Browser:" -A 2
    sqlitebrowser:

      Version: 3.8.0
$ system_profiler SPApplicationsDataType | grep -i "sqlitebrowser" -A 2
    sqlitebrowser:

      Version: 3.8.0
--
      Location: /Applications/sqlitebrowser.app
      Get Info String: DB Browser for SQLite

$

[ More Info ]

[/software/database/sqlite/db_browser] permanent link

When I attempted to add a new entry with a new category to an ELOG logbook on a Linux system, I saw the error message below:

I checked the file permissions on the elogd.cfg configuration file and saw the following:

# ls -l /etc/elogd.cfg
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 785 Jul 16 14:47 /etc/elogd.cfg
#

So only the root account had write access to the file. I then checked to see which account elogd was running under. The program lisens on port 8080 on that system. If you don't know the port that is being used for ELOG, you can find it in the /etc/elogd.cfg file. E.g.:

[global]
port = 8080

[ More Info ]

[/network/web/blogging/elog] permanent link

If you need to burn a CD or DVD from an ISO file from the command line on a Linux system, you can use the cdrecord command. If you include the -v argument to the program, you will see verbose information on the actions performed by the utility and the progress as it writes to the optical disc. When the program is finished you can use the eject command to eject the disc.

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[/os/unix/linux/utilities/cd-dvd] permanent link

[/network/email/gmail] permanent link

I needed to remove an IP address from the "jail" it was placed in by fail2ban, which is intrusion prevention sotware, due to an incorrect password being entered too many times by a legitimate user of the system during attempts to log into a CentOS Linux system that runs fail2ban. The attempted logins were made via Secure Shell (SSH). After the number of attempts with an incorrect password reached the cutoff for fail2ban to automatically ban the IP address from which the login attempts were originating, the user then got the following error message on subsequent login attempts:

$ ssh jdoe@example.com
ssh: connect to host example.com port 22: Connection refused
$

The fail2ban log on the system is at /var/log/fail2ban.log. You can check that log to see which IP addresses were banned and the time any bans went into effect. So I first verified the IP address from which the login attempts were made.

# tail -n 3 /var/log/fail2ban.log
2017-07-13 21:59:06,304 fail2ban.filter         [1664]: INFO    [sshd] Found 192.168.1.21
2017-07-13 21:59:06,818 fail2ban.actions        [1664]: NOTICE  [sshd] Ban 192.168.1.21
2017-07-13 21:59:11,538 fail2ban.filter         [1664]: INFO    [sshd] Found 192.168.1.21
#

You can determine the name for the jail and IP address is in by issuing the command fail2ban-client status.

[ More Info ]

[/os/unix/linux] permanent link