Archive for Notes
How to determine DST time changes
Posted by: | CommentsHere’s how to determine the dates when the Daylight Savings Time changes for a given year (I keep forgetting how to do this.):
zdump -v /etc/localtime|grep 2008
/etc/localtime Sun Mar 9 06:59:59 2008 UTC =
Sun Mar 9 01:59:59 2008 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=-18000
/etc/localtime Sun Mar 9 07:00:00 2008 UTC =
Sun Mar 9 03:00:00 2008 EDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-14400
/etc/localtime Sun Nov 2 05:59:59 2008 UTC =
Sun Nov 2 01:59:59 2008 EDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-14400
/etc/localtime Sun Nov 2 06:00:00 2008 UTC =
Sun Nov 2 01:00:00 2008 EST isdst=0 gmtoff=-18000
Obviously, change 2008 to whatever year you want.
Uninstall Perl Module
Posted by: | CommentsHere's how to cleanly uninstall any Perl module:
#!/usr/local/bin/perl use ExtUtils::Packlist; use ExtUtils::Installed; $ARGV[0] or die "Usage: $0 Module::Name\n"; my $mod = $ARGV[0]; my $inst = ExtUtils::Installed->new(); foreach my $item (sort($inst->files($mod))) { print "removing $item\n"; unlink $item; } my $packfile = $inst->packlist($mod)->packlist_file(); print "removing $packfile\n"; unlink $packfile;
Find Out the Top 10 CPU Hogs
Posted by: | CommentsI found this command useful in finding out which top 10 processes are hogging my CPU resources. Note that this command is specific to the Red Hat flavor of Linux. See the man page for ps for the correct output format to use for your specific platform:
ps -eo pcpu,pid,user,args | sort -k1 -r | head -11
Substitue pcpu above with pmem to see the memory hogs instead.
Bourne Shell Logging Routine
Posted by: | CommentsHere’s another logging routine, this one is written in Bourne shell:
#!/bin/sh log_message() { echo `date "+%m/%d/%y %H:%M:%S %Z"` "$1" | tee -a aaa.out } log_message "Hello there" log_message "Goodbye"
Sample output:
08/28/07 23:16:13 EDT Hello there 08/28/07 23:16:13 EDT Goodbye
Setting MySQL Password
Posted by: | CommentsTo set up root password the first time:
$ mysqladmin -u root password NeWPasSwORd
To change an existing root password:
$ mysqladmin -u root -p oldpassword newpass Enter password:
To change a normal user password:
$ mysqladmin -u dbuser-p oldpassword newpass
Sorting IP Addresses
Posted by: | CommentsThe following will sort an array of IP addresses in @in and the sorted IP addresses will be in @out.
@out = sort { pack('C4' => $a =~ /(\d+)\.(\d+)\.(\d+)\.(\d+)/) cmp pack('C4' => $b =~ /(\d+)\.(\d+)\.(\d+)\.(\d+)/) } @in;
What this does is it forms a string of four bytes out the IP address octet using the pack() function then sorts it lexicographically.
See also Sorting Section Numbers
Determining the External IP Address
Posted by: | CommentsHere’s how to find out your external IP address courtesy of this hint:
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20060602180942480
curl --silent http://checkip.dyndns.org | awk '{print $6}' | cut -f 1 -d "<"
If you are using Apple's Airport Extreme Basestation (mine is particularly the Time Capsule and this is where I have tested this), and you have the SNMP interface enabled, you can run the following command
prompt$ snmpwalk -Os -c public -v 1 192.168.63.1 ipAdEntAddr IpAddress \
| grep -E -v '(127.0.0|169.254|192.168.63.1)' \
| cut -d : -f 2 | sed 's/ //g'
Write a Daemon in Perl
Posted by: | CommentsThe code below is a template for a daemon written in Perl. Use the code below as a starting point when you have to write a program that has to persist in the background to do its things and without a gui.
use POSIX qw(setsid); chdir '/' or die "Can't chdir to /: $!"; umask 0; open STDIN, '/dev/null' or die "Can't read /dev/null: $!"; #open STDOUT, '>/dev/null' # or die "Can't write to /dev/null: $!"; open STDERR, '>/dev/null' or die "Can't write to /dev/null: $!"; defined(my $pid = fork) or die "Can't fork: $!"; exit if $pid; setsid or die "Can't start a new session: $!"; while(1) { sleep(5); print "Hello...n"; }
Note that one of the lines above is commented out to let the output print to the screen. Uncomment this in the final code to silence your program. For more on this code, see this tutorial: http://www.webreference.com/perl/tutorial/9/.
Line Terminations
Posted by: | CommentsLine terminations for different operating systems:
| unix | 0×0a | LF |
| Classic Mac | 0×0d | CR |
| Windows | 0×0d 0×0a | CR LF |
To convert a text file with DOS line termination to UNIX line termination:
tr -d '\015' < winfile.txt > unixfile.txt
or
sed s/.$// winfile.txt > unixfile.txt
To convert a unix file to a DOS file:
sed s/$/\x0d/ unixfile.txt > winfile.txt
Run Periodic Maintenance Scripts Manually
Posted by: | CommentsMac OS X has to run some maintenance scripts in the middle of the night to do some important housekeeping tasks. If you have a Mac that sleeps in the middle of the night, as you do, you need to run these manually by running this from the shell:
sudo periodic daily weekly monthly