PuTTY is a
free and open source network utility that allows you to establish
Telnet and
Secure
Shell (SSH) connections to servers. It is commonly used on Microsoft
Windows systms, but is also available for
Linux and
Apple OS X
systems. You can use it for interactive SSH logins where you provide a
userid and password to authenticate with an SSH server, but you can also use
it for public key-based logins where the server has a public key
that is matched against a private key stored on the system from which you
are connecting. By a mathematical calculation based on large
prime
numbers, the public key and private key can be matched with one another
as a means of authenticating the login.
The rsync utility, which
is available for Unix, Linux, OS X, and Microsoft Windows systems, can be
used to synchronize files and directories on two systems. Rsync is widely used
for mirroring one system to another, for backups, and for copying files
and directories. If files to be transferred already exist at the destination
system, but are older versions, the tool contains a delta-transfer algorithm
that reduces the amount of data that needs to be sent over a network when using
it to transfer files to another system over a network; the algorithm allows
rsync to send only the differences between source and destination files rather
than entire files. By default, rsync determines if files need to be transferred
by using a "quick check" algorithm that looks for files that have changed in
size or in last-modified time. The utility will copy links and devices and
will preserve owner and group permissions on files and directories. Rsync
also has an option to exclude specified files and directories from the
synchronization operation. It can can use any transparent remote shell,
including
Secure Shell (SSH) or remote shell (rsh).
After a specified period of time Windows 10 will put the monitor to
sleep, so the display will go black and you will need to re-enter your userid
and password to get access to the system again. This behavior can be
changed either via a
graphical user interface (GUI) or by using the command line utility
powercfg. For the GUI method, right-click on the desktop and
select Display Settings then click on Power & Sleep and
then change the value for "When plugged in, PC goes to sleep after". For
the command line method, from a command prompt enter the command
powercfg -change -monitor-timeout-ac x where x
is the timeout value in minutes. E.g, for a timeout value of one hour, you
could use powercfg -change -monitor-timeout-ac 60. If you use
zero for x, that is the same as setting the value to "Never" via the GUI method.
This morning at 8:12 AM my time I received a call from someone speaking
with what sounded like an Indian accent who claimed to work for the
U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) asking me if I was aware
that a warrant had been issued in the state of Maryland by the IRS for my
arrest. Since I have not received any correspondence recently from
the IRS by postal mail and it seemed unlikely an IRS employee would call
me to notify me that a warrant was issued for my arrest, I was angered,
but not worried by the call. I asked the caller where he was calling from
and he said he was located in Washington D.C., which is, of coure, the location
for the IRS. I asked for the calling phone number and he told me
1-800-829-1040. I was so irked by what seemed like an obvious
scam attempt that I didn't let him go through his whole spiel
to learn the details of how the scam was conducted. Instead, I
simply told him that the call seemed like a scam and he seemed
like a fraudster. He immediately responded with profanity and
hung up; his knowledge of American profanity at least seemed good.
Section 10
Taxpayer Contact of Chapter 1 of Part 5 of the Internal Revenue
Manual states that it is a violation of IRS policy for an employee to
use "obscene, profane, or abusive language", so that was only another
indicator that the call was fraudulent.
After he hung up, I used *69 on my phone to see what calling number was
reported. The calling number reported was 1-800-829-4933. That number and
the one he gave are actual IRS numbers. The 1-800-829-4933 number is the
IRS main taxpayer assistance line listed at
How to Get Tax Help from the IRS and the 1-800-829-4933 one is the
one listed on that same page for taxpayers to call with small business-related
questions. However, it is common for telemarketers and scammers to spoof
the calling number. Unfortunately, it seems that is fairly easy for them
to do. E.g., often when I receive telemarketing calls to my mobile phone I
notice that the first six digits of the calling number match those of my
phone, but if I call the number back, the person who that phone number
actually belongs to will answer and knows nothing about such calls.
Telemarketers spoofing calling numbers is a common way to make it more
difficult for people to identify the actual originating phone number when
they file a complaint, but also telemarketers will spoof a calling number
to make it more likely that the callee will think that he/she is receiving
a local call and thus answer the phone. Con artists will spoof a calling
number from a legitimate business, organization, or government agency
to dupe a callee into thinking the call is legitimate.
The Internal Revenue Service today warned consumers about a
sophisticated phone scam targeting taxpayers, including recent immigrants,
throughout the country.
Victims are told they owe money to the IRS and it must be paid promptly
through a pre-loaded debit card or wire transfer. If the victim refuses to
cooperate, they are then threatened with arrest, deportation or suspension
of a business or driver’s license. In many cases, the caller becomes
hostile and insulting.
The article notes "that the first IRS contact with taxpayers on a tax
issue is likely to occur via mail", which is what I would expect and lists
the following characteristics for the scam:
Scammers use fake names and IRS badge numbers. They generally use
common names and surnames to identify themselves.
Scammers may be able to recite the last four digits of a victim’s
Social Security Number.
Scammers spoof the IRS toll-free number on caller ID to make it
appear that it’s the IRS calling.
Scammers sometimes send bogus IRS emails to some victims to support
their bogus calls.
Victims hear background noise of other calls being conducted to
mimic a call site.
After threatening victims with jail time or driver’s license
revocation, scammers hang up and others soon call back pretending to be
from the local police or DMV, and the caller ID supports their claim.
The article notes that you can file a complaint with the
Federal Trade
Commission (FTC), a consumer protection agency, regarding such
calls:
You can file a complaint using the
FTC Complaint Assistant; choose “Other” and then “Impostor Scams.” If the
complaint involves someone impersonating the IRS, include the words “IRS
Telephone Scam” in the notes.
Note: I found that I needed to select "Scams and Rip-offs" and then
"Impostor Scams", which is for "Someone posing as a well-known business,
a family/friend, or a government agency". After that I made the following
selections (it didn't sem to be as obvious as I would have expected how
one should file a complaint regarding someone pretending to represent
a U.S. federal government agency):
How were you contacted? Phone
Are you contacting us to complain about the company’s telemarketing
practices? No
Did the person: Pretend to be a representative or employee of a
local, state, or federal government?
You will then be taken to the "Information Collection" step where
"In just a few moments you will be able to tell your story in your own
words. But first we would like to collect some information." After I
completed the complaint submission process, I saw the following information:
Thank you for submitting your complaint to the Federal Trade
Commission. Based on the information you have given us, we believe the
following links to our consumer website may be helpful to you:
Sometimes I'd like to be able to save a list of what web pages are open
in the Safari browser's tabs. Using Apple's
AppleScript
scripting language it is possible to record that information to a text
file. The following script will create a text file that lists each Safari
browser window that is open and for each tab within a window, the title for
the webpage and the URL. The script will prompt for the location and name
for the file where you wish to store that information
(example output
file).
tell application "Safari"
set myFile to open for access (choose file name) with write permission
set windowNumber to 1
repeat the number of windows times
set myTabs to every tab of window windowNumber
write "----- Window Number " & windowNumber & " -----
" to myFile
set tabNumber to 0
repeat with aTab in myTabs
set tabTitle to name of aTab & "
"
write tabTitle to myFile
set tabURL to URL of aTab & "
"
write tabURL to myFile
set tabNumber to tabNumber + 1
end repeat
write "Window Number: " & windowNumber & " Number of tabs: " & tabNumber & "
" to myFile
set windowNumber to windowNumber + 1
end repeat
close access myFile
end tell
I often have a number of browser windows open with many tabs open in the
windows and wanted a way of producing a list of the open windows and the
tabs within each with the title and URL for each tab. I had a simple
AppleScript
script that will display Firefox
windows titles, but that just lists the active tab in each window whereas
I wanted a list of every tab's title and URL, so I created a new script for
Chrome that will create a text file containing that information.
On my prior MacBook Pro laptop running OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.5), there
was a speaker icon in the menu bar at the top of the system's screen which
appeared between the battery status indicator and the day and time display.
I could click on the icon and a slider bar would appear that would allow
me to adjust the volume or mute the audio by moving the slider to the bottom
position.
With my new MacBook Pro laptop running OS X Yosemite (10.10.5), there
was no speaker icon on the menubar that would allow me to adjust the
volume. I could adjust the sound volume or mute the audio from a command
line interface, i.e. a Terminal window using the AppleScript
osascript utility - see
Muting audio on OS X
from a Terminal window. But sometimes it would be easier to adjust
it the way I had before. The speaker icon representing a volume control
can be put on the menu bar at the top of screen by clicking on the Apple
icon at the top, left-hand corner of the screen then selecting System
Preferences, then selecting Sound. At the Sound window,
simply check the box next to "Show volume in menu bar".
Once I checked the check box, the speaker icon appeared between
the icon for WiFi conenctivity and the battery status indicator.
If you have a Microsoft Windows domain and want to determine the groups to which
an account belongs from a
command line interface (CLI), aka a command prompt, you can do so using
the DSQUERY and DSGET commands. The dsquery
command allows you to query the
Active Directory (AD) service according to specified criteria. E.g. the
dsquery user command finds users in the directory. By adding a
user name at the end of the command, you can view information for that user.
I needed to have a password reset email for an online account sent to an email
address other than the one designated for that account, so I set up
forwarding on the server where the designated account resided by using a
.forward file to forward the message on to the email address where
I wanted it to go as I've done
in the past when I needed to forward mail from a Linux system
that uses
Sendmail email program.. I wanted the email to go to
the inbox for the account it would normally be delivered to, but also be
forwarded to another account as well, but the email message wasn't forwarded.
I had created the .forward file in the home directory for the
relevant account with a command similar to the following:
I created the forward file while logged into the relevant user account,
so the file was owned by that account. The \jdoe ensures that
the email goes to the inbox for the account itself. Following it by a comma
and another email address results in the email also going to that second
address.
However, the email reset only went to the inbox on the system where I
created the .forward file. So I used the mailx
command to send some test messages. You can use the following syntax
to send messages with mailx: mailx -s subjectemail_address where subject is the subject you want
the message to have and email_address is the email address you
wish to use for the recipient. When you hit Enter, you can enter
text for the body of the message. Hit Ctrl-D to complete the
message. You will then see "EOT" and the message will be sent. E.g., I used
the following:
$ mailx -s 'Email forwarding test' jdoe
Just a test
EOT
You can also put whatever text you wish to put in the body of the message
in a text file and include it with < file where
file is a text file you wish to use for the body of the message. E.g.:
mailx -s 'Forwarding Test' jdoe < mymessage.txt.
But the test messages I sent didn't reach the forwarding address. During
testing, I realized that because I hadn't changed the default permissions for
the .forward file, forwarding wasn't actually occurring. When I
looked at the permissions on the file, I saw the following:
$ ls -l .forward
-rw-rw-r--. 1 jdoe jdoe 28 Feb 21 22:21 .forward
The file permissions
should be 644 whereas they were 664. I.e., not
only did the owner have read and write permissions, but so did the group. If
group has write permission rather than just read permission, then email
will not be forwarded by sendmail. When I changed the permissions with
chmod 644 .forward, forwarding worked and I was able to
receive test messages in the inbox for the account on the system, but
also at the remote inbox.
The VLC media player, which is a
free and open-source media player available for the
Windows, OS X, Linux, BSD, Solaris, Android, iOS, Chrome OS, Windows Phone,
QNX, Haiku, Syllable, and OS/2 operating systems provides a
convenient means to acces free music from
Jamendo,
a community of independent artists and music lovers that bills itself as
"the world's largest digital service for free music".
As of January 2015, Jamendo listed 460,000 tracks with more than 250 million
downloads since the launch of the platform. Jamendo is a
portmanteau
of "jam session" and "crescendo".
The music provided through Jamendo is free for personal use, so you can
download songs musicians have provided through the service legally. Jamendo's
goal is to link artists who want to share their music and music lovers around
the world. Jamendo provides an opportunity for the musicians that provide
their music to Jamendo to obtain revenue from
music synchronization licensing, i.e., the licensing of the right to
synchronize the music with visual media, such as film, television shows,
advertistements, video games, website music, movie trailers, etc., and through
licensing the music to be used as
background music
for films, TV, Internet video, such as
video
logs, aka vlogs, etc.
When I set up another website on a Linux host to use
Blosxom,
a Perl-based blogging system,
I encountered a few problems initially. I've been using Blosxom for this
site for twelve years now - I posted the first entry
Identifying a Motherboard from the Award BIOS String to the site on
February 22, 2004. It appealed to me because it was simple to set up and
use. Posts are just text files you can create in any text editor. But it
has been a long time since I set up a site using Blosxom and, though it is
fairly straight-forward to set up and configure, I had a couple of issues
to address after installing blosxom, one of which was just due to a
misconfiguration I made in
Apache's
/httpd/conf/httpd.conf file.
For webpages on this site, I used the following HTML code to center a
div on
the pages:
<div id="header" align="center">
That didn't produce any error messages when I used the
HTML 4.01
document type (doctype) declaration below as the first lines
in the HTML file when I checked the page for errors using the
W3C Markup Validation
Service.
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
However, when I wanted to convert the pages to make them valid for HTML 5
and put
<!DOCTYPE html>
as the first line in the file, instead, I saw the following error message
reported by the validation service:
Thealignattribute on thedivelement is obsolete.
Use CSS instead.
From line 20, column 1; to line 20, column 32
↩↩<body>↩↩<div id="header" align="center">↩↩<scr
If you have an Apple system running Apple's OS X operating system, e.g.,
a MacBook Pro laptop, etc., the operating system already includes the
software needed to configure the system to function as an SSH server. You
merely have to enable the Remote Login feature under System
Preferences. Once you've accessed System Preferences, click on
Sharing and then check the check box for Remote Login and
decide which accounts should be granted SSH access to the system.
A serious vulnerability in the
GNU C Library,
commonly known as glibc, were widely reported today. The GNU C
Library is widely used on Linux systems and is used within routers
that rely on Linux for their firmware. The vulnerability is within the
getaddrinfo
function that converts domain names, hostnames, and IP addresses
between human-readable text and the structured binary formats
used by the operating system. The vulnerability permits a buffer overflow
attack to potentially allow the execution of arbitrary code on an affected
system by an attacker.
An attacker could take advantage of the vulnerability through a lookup on
an attacker controlled domain name or through compromised
Domain Name System (DNS)
servers, or via a
man-in-the-middle
attack where an attacker has the capabililty to alter DNS data flowing to/from
the vulnerable system and DNS servers.
The vulnerability has been given the
Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) designation
CVE-2015-7547. The issue was detected by Google researchers investigating a
segmentation fault
issue they encountered with a
Secure Shell (SSH) application. The researches traced the issue to a buffer
overflow inside glibc. When they reported the issue to the glibc maintainers,
they found that the maintainers had been informed of the vulnerability in July
and that individuals involved with the
Red Hat distribution of
Linux had also discovered the vulnerability and were working on a fix for it.
The Google researchers disclosed the vulnerability today.
If you are responsible for a Linux system or other equipment that uses
glibc, you should update the software as soon as feasible. If you have a system
that uses the RPM
Package Manager, you can see what version of glibc is installed and the
build date for the package with rpm -qi glibc. On systems that
use the open-source command-line package-management utility
yum,
you can issue the command yum update glibc from the root account.
The currently available version for
CentOS Linux systems is glibc 2.17. CentOS is functionally compatible with its
upstream source,
Red Hat Enterprise
Linux (RHEL)
When I attempted to update a
Simple Machines Forum (SMF) site from version 2.0.8 to 2.0.9 by choosing
SMF 2.0.8 to SMF 2.0.9 upgrade,
for the "Package to
Upload" under Upload a Package on the Package Manager
page for the forum, whch is reachable from the Admin menu, I saw the
error message below:
An Error Has Occurred!
Package upload failed due to the following error:
"The package you are trying to install cannot be located. You may want
to manually upload the package to your Packages directory."
The Wi-Fi
network adapter in a Microsoft Windows system may support
dual
band wireless connections, i.e, both the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz bands for a
wireless local area network (WLAN), or it may only only support the older
2.4 GHz standard. A
radio
frequency (RF) band is is a group of frequencies containing many channels.
To determine if a wireless adapter can support both the 2.4 and 5 GhZ Wifi
standards, you can obtain a command
prompt and type the command netsh wlan show drivers. If
you see 802.11a listed on the "Radio types supported line, then the adapter
supports the 5 GHz as well as the 2.4 GHz bands.
If you want to update all entries in a
MySQL or
MariaDB
database table for entries that meet a specific criterion, you can use a
Structured Query
Language (SQL) command like the one below:
Update table_name
SET column_name = "new_value"
WHERE colum_name = "old_value";
E.g., suppose I have a table named "Students" in a database I'm currently
using with a column in the table named "LastName". Suppose, there are students
named Smith whose last name has changed to Lamb and I want to change all
instances where an entry in the table has "Smith" in the LastName field to
"Lamb". I could use the following SQL command:
Update Students
SET LastName = "Lamb"
WHERE LastName = "Smith";
If you want to change every entry in a table, simply leave off the
WHERE clause.
If you want to change multiple fields/columns in a table at the same
time, you can separate them with commas in the SET statement,
i.e., SET column1=value1,column2=value2,.... E.g., suppose all of
the students with a last name of Smith are also undergoing an address change as
well as a change to their last name.
Update Students
SET LastName = "Lamb", Address="1234 Cherry Lane"
WHERE LastName = "Smith";
When I attempted to forward an email message I received in the
Microsoft Outlook Web App (OWA), which I had accessed in the
Firefox browser on a MacBook Pro laptiop, I found that the text I was
typing was not wrapping, but kept extending across the window where
I was typing additional information I wanted to add to the message. I
copied the text I was typing and closed the window and then attempted
forward it again. When I pasted the text I had been typing into the
message, the same problem occurred. Microsoft has an article titled
Wordwrapping
does not work in Outlook or in OWA email messages that describes
the problem.
Symptoms
When you compose email messages in Microsoft Office Outlook or
in Outlook Web Access (OWA), you notice that the wordwrapping
functionality does not work as expected.
The Microsoft article states the problem can occur if there are extra space
characters in the message, i.e., if you have two or more spaces right after
one another, e.g., if you type fast and inadvertently type an extra space or
more. The solution listed in the article is to compose the message as plain
text rather than HTML or to remove the extra spaces. Since I was using an Apple
OS X system, I hit command-F to search for " ", i.e., two spaces.
OWA reported that there were such instances in the message. In this case,
I simply discarded the message I had been typing and opted to start fresh
with the foward process for the message, retyping the text I had intended to
add to the forwarded message and the problem didn't occur this time.
If, instead, you wished to opt for the alternative of composing the email
as a plain text message, you can look to the right of "Options" in the window
where you are composing the message. You will see "HTML" there; you can change
the selection to "Plain text", instead.
Though, when I tried to recreate the problem by forwarding the message
again and purposefully typing extra spaces at verious points in the text
I was adding, the text wrapped as I expected. I.e., I could not recreate
the problem.
You can obtain information on the
Basic Input/Output
(BIOS) in a system running the Linux operating system, e.g., CentOS Linux,
Ubuntu or another Linux distribution, using the dmidecode command.
E.g., you can use dmidecode --type bios to obtain such
information:
[root@localhost ~]# dmidecode --type bios
# dmidecode 2.12
SMBIOS 2.3 present.
Handle 0x0000, DMI type 0, 24 bytes
BIOS Information
Vendor: American Megatrends Inc.
Version: 0601
Release Date: 11/30/2006
Address: 0xF0000
Runtime Size: 64 kB
ROM Size: 512 kB
Characteristics:
ISA is supported
PCI is supported
PNP is supported
APM is supported
BIOS is upgradeable
BIOS shadowing is allowed
ESCD support is available
Boot from CD is supported
Selectable boot is supported
BIOS ROM is socketed
EDD is supported
5.25"/1.2 MB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
3.5"/720 kB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
3.5"/2.88 MB floppy services are supported (int 13h)
Print screen service is supported (int 5h)
8042 keyboard services are supported (int 9h)
Serial services are supported (int 14h)
Printer services are supported (int 17h)
CGA/mono video services are supported (int 10h)
ACPI is supported
USB legacy is supported
AGP is supported
LS-120 boot is supported
ATAPI Zip drive boot is supported
BIOS boot specification is supported
Targeted content distribution is supported
BIOS Revision: 8.10
Handle 0x002D, DMI type 13, 22 bytes
BIOS Language Information
Language Description Format: Abbreviated
Installable Languages: 1
en|US|iso8859-1
Currently Installed Language: en|US|iso8859-1
[root@localhost ~]#
Alternatively, you can use the --sring parameter and
specify a particular option, such as BIOS vendor, as shown below:
[root@localhost ~]# dmidecode --string bios-vendor
American Megatrends Inc.
[root@localhost ~]# dmidecode --string bios-version
0601
[root@localhost ~]# dmidecode --string bios-release-date
11/30/2006
Note: you need to run the commands as root. On a Ubuntu system, you can run
the commands by prefixing the commands with sudo, e.g.,
sudo dmidecode --type bios or sudo dmidecode
--string bios-version, and provide your password when prompted.
Otherwise you will get a "Permission denied" message.
Dmidecode is known to work on the following systems:
Linux i386, x86-64, ia64
FreeBSD i386, amd64
NetBSD i386, amd64
OpenBSD i386, amd64
BeOS i386
Cygwin i386
Solaris x86
Haiku i586
If it isn't available on your system, you can download the source code
at dmidecode.
On an Apple OS X system, you can reduce the size of an image by using the
sips command with the -Z size parameter where size
is the maximum value you want for either height or width. E.g., suppose I
have a PNG file named system_preferences.png", which
is 1,560 pixels wide by 1,604 high. The image height is greater than the image
width and I want the maximum dimension to be 780 pixels. By opening a
Teminal window - the Terminal utility is found in the
Applications/Utilities directory - I can get a command line interface
(CLI), aka a "shell prompt", that will allow me to enter the command
sips -Z 780 system_preferences.png. The command will ensure
that neither dimension will be greater than 780 pixels. In this case the
height will be set to 780 pixels and the width will be adjusted to maintain
the current aspect ratio, so the new dimensions will be 758 pixels wide
and 780 pixels high.
Since today is the yearly
Safer Internet Day,
you can get a free, permanent additional 2 gigabytes (GB) of storage on
Google Drive today just
by checking the security settings for any Google account you
may have, e.g., a Gmail account. If you are signed into your Google account
in your browser, when you go to
www.google.com, you should see "It's #SaferInternetDay. Stay safe online
with a 2-minute Security Checkup". If you click on the
"Security Checkup" link you will be prompted to verify your security settings.
If you are not signed in, you will see
"It’s #SaferInternetDay.
Explore tips to help
you stay safe online", instead. You can also start the process by going to
Security Checkup and signing in to your Google account from that page.
If you missed the storage upgrade opportunity on February 9, Valentina
Palladino notes in
Today you can get 2GB of Google Drive storage for free that
"There's no word on when this 2GB offer will expire, but you have at
least one week to complete the security check-up."
It should only take about a minute to complete the process.
At the first step of the process you will be prompted to
"Check your recovery information" for your account.
Help us get in touch with you if there’s unusual activity in your account or
you accidentally get locked out. Don’t worry, we’ll only use this info if we
need to reach you about your account.
You will be asked to verify that your recovery phone number,
recovery email address, and security question are correct. At the next
step you will be asked to "Check your connected devices"
Next, please review the devices connected to your Google Account. Let us know
if any of these devices look unfamiliar to you, and we'll work together to
ensure no one else has access to your account.
You will be shown a list of devices identified as "Windows", "Linux",
etc. depending on what devices you use to access your account, and a city
where that device was used to log into your Google account. If they look
ok to you, you can click on "Looks good" and proceed to the next step,
which is "Check your account permissions". E.g., if you use Google Drive,
you may see it listed with "Has some account access, including Google
Drive, Google Hangouts". You will see other services listed to which
you've given permission to access some information associated with your
Google account. You will see the date authorization was granted to a
service and you have the opportunity to remove access to Google account
information by that service. If they all look ok, you can click on "Done"
to complete the process. If you click on "Continue to account settings",
if you click on "Your Google Drive storage" under "Account preferences"
on the left side of the browser window, you should see that you've been
granted another 2 GB of storage on Google Drive.
The files that you store in Google Drive are always encrypted in transit
between your systems and Google's servers and also while stored in Google’s
data centers. By confirming the settings for your account, also, you help
to ensure the security and privacy of the data that you store using Google's
services.
If you wish to view documentation for commands and utiilties on a system
running Apple's OS X operating system, or Linux, you can use the man
command to view the manual page, aka a
"man
page" for the command/utility. If you want to convert the man page to
a HyperText Markup
Language (HTML) document, you can use the
groff
text formatting utility. You can find man pages beneath the
/user/share/man directory in subdirectores named manx where x is a number, e.g. man1, man2,
etc. E.g. under OS X, if you wanted to view the documentation for Apple's
AppleScript
scripting language osascript
utility, you can find the man page on an OS X system at
/usr/share/man/man1/osascript.1. To format it as HTML,
you can pipe the contents of the file into groff as
shown below:
If you wish to be able to easily distinguish
Secure Shell (SSH) sessions to a particular
server when using PuTTY,
a
free and open-source SSH and
Telnet
client application available for Microsoft Windows, OS X, and Linux
systems, you can change the background color used for connections
to a particular server through PuTTY's "Change Settings" option,
which will allow you to change the background and foreground colors
(the foreground color is used for text). Colors are specified by
RGB value.
If you use a desktop version of Intuit's Quicken 2015 for managing
your personal and/or business finances and have also installed the
mobile application, Quicken 2014/15/16 Companion, on your phone, but
find that certain accounts that are present in the desktop version are
not appearing on the mobile version, then check the
"accounts to sync" settings within the "Intuit ID, Mobile &
Alerts" preferences within Quicken on the desktop system to ensure that
Quicken on the desktop is configured to syncrhonize those particular
accounts with the Quicken app on a mobile device.
If you want to check or set audio settings, such as the volume level
or whether sound is muted, from a command line interface (CLI), aka
"shell
prompt", on an Apple OS X system, you can do so by using
Apple's
AppleScript scripting language utility,
osascript.
To check the current volume setting, you can use the following command:
$ osascript -e 'output volume of (get volume settings)'
54
To check whether audio is muted, use the following command:
$ osascript -e 'output muted of (get volume settings)'
false
The osascript -e 'set volume output volume x', where
x is a number between 0 and 100, can be used to change the sound
level, i.e., to make the sound softer or louder:
You can provide a number less than zero or more than 100 when issuing the
set command, but the volume setting will never be less than 0 nor more than
100.
When I received a new MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2015) laptop running
OS X Yosemite (10.10.5), I found that there were no scrollbars in
Windows, e.g., within a Terminal or browser window. I could scroll
through a page in a browser window using the up and down arrow keys; a
scroll bar would appear on the right of the window as I was moving up and
down with the arrow keys, but if I tried moving the mouse pointer over to
where the scrollbar was appearing, it would disappear and I couldn't move
up or down using the builtin by moving the mouse ponter to the right to a
scroll bar using the touchpad on the laptop. I could scroll up and down in
a web page or a Terminal window by putting two fingers down on
the touchpad and then moving them up and down, but I liked having the
scroll bar at the right side of a window to use for scrolling.
I was able to have a scroll bar appear by clicking on the Apple icon at the top
left-hand corner of the screen, selecting System Preferences,
View, then General and changing the option for "Show
scroll bars" from "Automatically based on mouse or trackpad to "Always".
The other option was "When scrolling".
The meaning for the settings is as follows:
Automatically based on mouse or trackpad - see scroll bars based on the
device you are using. If your device allows gestures, scroll bars are
hidden until you start scrolling. Otherwise, they are visible.
When scrolling - hide scroll bars until you start scrolling.
Security software firm
CheckPoint says eBay usually filters out scripts and iFrames from item
descriptions or online stores, but only strips alphanumeric characters
from these HTML tags.
CheckPoint claims that by using those non-alphanumeric characters,
malefactors could pull code from a remote server that would allow them to
trick an unsuspecting eBay user visiting a eBay store listing where the
nefarious JavaScript is posted into agreeing to install software that the
user may incorrectly assume is being provided by eBay.
CheckPoint stated it informed eBay of the potential issue on December 15,
but on January 16 was informed that eBay would not be providing a fix for
the issue because active content is allowed on eBay's website.
eBay's
HTML and JavaScript Policy page has the following guidelines on what
sellers aren't allowed to do on their listing pages:
You can't use HTML or JavaScript that:
Calls remote scripts and pages automatically, such as JavaScript
"includes" or "iframes."
Changes registry entries or otherwise writes to another person's computer
hard drive.
Creates automatic pop-ups except for links that open in a new window
when clicked on.
Is used to drop or read a cookie on any eBay page.
Loads any binary program on another person's computer automatically,
except for Flash content.
Launches a song or video when a listing is opened.
Overwrites any area in the listing outside of the item description area.
Manipulates areas outside the listing description, including changing
fonts, colors, and backgrounds in areas such as eBay headers and footers.
Posts to scripts on eBay automatically.
Redirects the user from eBay to another web page, such as using the
"replace" script.
I.e., the above guidelines do not seem to preclude the use of any
JavaScript on a listing page. And there are sites that provide scripts
to be used in eBay listings, e.g.,
Script Snips at Auction Repair
.
On an Apple OS X system, such as a MacBook Pro laptop, the command pmset
-g rawlog displays an ongoing log of battery state as read
directly from the battery. When the system has external alternating
current (AC) power, the value for external connected
is "yes". If the battery is 100% charged, battery charging
is "no".
$ pmset -g rawlog
pmset is in RAW logging mode now. Hit ctrl-c to exit.
* Battery matched at registry = 12803
external connected = yes
battery present = yes
battery charging = no
cap = 3839/3839
time remaining = 1092:15
current = 0
cycle count = 194/1000
location = 0
If I disconnect the power cable, pmset will periodically update its
display showing me the current status for the battery, including the estimated
time remaining on battery power.
$ pmset -g rawlog
pmset is in RAW logging mode now. Hit ctrl-c to exit.
* Battery matched at registry = 12803
external connected = yes
battery present = yes
battery charging = no
cap = 3839/3839
time remaining = 1092:15
current = 0
cycle count = 194/1000
location = 0
2/2/16 9:45:29 PM EST
external connected = yes
battery present = yes
battery charging = no
cap = 3839/3839
time remaining = 1092:15
current = 0
cycle count = 194/1000
location = 0
2/2/16 9:46:24 PM EST
external connected = no
battery present = yes
battery charging = no
cap = 3839/3839
time remaining = 1092:15
current = 0
cycle count = 194/1000
location = 0
2/2/16 9:46:54 PM EST
external connected = no
battery present = yes
battery charging = no
cap = 4209/4209
time remaining = 3:03
current = -1377
cycle count = 194/1000
location = 0
2/2/16 9:47:25 PM EST
external connected = no
battery present = yes
battery charging = no
cap = 4209/4209
time remaining = 2:47
current = -1509
cycle count = 194/1000
location = 0
2/2/16 9:47:55 PM EST
external connected = no
battery present = yes
battery charging = no
cap = 4209/4209
time remaining = 2:45
current = -1528
cycle count = 194/1000
location = 0
In the above output I can see that the estimated time remaining for
battery power doesn't necessarily match the amount of time that has
elapsed since the last update was displayed. E.g. at 9:45:25 the time
remaining value was 2 hours and 47 minutes, yet at 9:45:55, 30 seconds
later, the estimated time remaining has been decreased by 2 minutes. The
above readings where the "cap" value was x/x, e.g., 4209/4209, were
displayed at times the battery capacity display at the top of the screen
was reading 100% When the value displayed at the top of the screen
for the OS X GUI
dropped to 95%, I saw the following:
2/2/16 10:01:06 PM EST
external connected = no
battery present = yes
battery charging = no
cap = 4004/4209
time remaining = 2:20
current = -1716
cycle count = 194/1000
I.e., the capacity reading was then x-y/x. Plugging the power cable
back in changed the battery present and battery
charging values to "yes".
The pmset command, which is used to manipulate power management
settings, can be used on a Mac laptop running Apple's OS X operating
system to obtain information regarding the
alternating current (AC) adapter being used to power the laptop.
-g ac / adapter will display details about an attached AC
power adapter. Only supported for MacBook and MacBook Pro.
E.g., the output below is from a MacBook Pro laptop with an Apple 85W MagSafe
Power Adapter model number A1343 plugged into it.
$ pmset -g ac
Wattage = 85W
Revision = 0x0000
AdapterID = 0x0100
Family Code = 0x0085
Serial Number = 0x00981dc6
