Download – Download version 0.9.1 (visit http://www.swftools.org/download.html for latest)

wget http://www.swftools.org/swftools-0.9.1.tar.gz

Extract – Extract the newly downloaded files

tar xzvf swftools-0.9.1.tar.gz

Configure – Make sure the environment is setup

cd swftools-0.9.1; ./configure

Compile – Getting source to binaries

make config; make

Test Run – You should get a help menu

./src/pdf2swf

Install – Copy the binaries to proper locations on the system
(You won’t be able to run this step if you’re installing on a shared host. If that’s the case, copy the binaries of interest to ~/bin and add ~/bin to PATH variable)

make install

Usage – Run the program (Run man pdf2swf for more info)

pdf2swf myfile.pdf myfile.swf

That’s it! Open the .swf using your browser to see pdf2swf’s handywork.

As a side note, I ended up ditching the .swf method for embedding my document on my website and going with Google’s PDF viewer which is done with the following line of HTML:

<iframe style="width: 700px; height: 900px; border: 0px none;" src="http://docs.google.com/gview?url=http://mydomain.com/path/to/myfile.pdf&amp;embedded=true" width="320" height="240"></iframe>

#!/bin/sh

minutes=432

hrs=`echo "$minutes / 60" | bc`
min=`echo "$minutes % 60" | bc`
if [ $min -gt 0 ]; then
   if [ $min -le 2 ]; then hours=`echo "$hrs + .0" | bc`; fi
   if [ 3 -le $min -a $min -le 8 ]; then hours=`echo "$hrs + .1" | bc`; fi
   if [ 9 -le $min -a $min -le 14 ]; then hours=`echo "$hrs + .2" | bc`; fi
   if [ 15 -le $min -a $min -le 20 ]; then hours=`echo "$hrs + .3" | bc`; fi
   if [ 21 -le $min -a $min -le 26 ]; then hours=`echo "$hrs + .4" | bc`; fi
   if [ 27 -le $min -a $min -le 32 ]; then hours=`echo "$hrs + .5" | bc`; fi
   if [ 33 -le $min -a $min -le 38 ]; then hours=`echo "$hrs + .6" | bc`; fi
   if [ 39 -le $min -a $min -le 44 ]; then hours=`echo "$hrs + .7" | bc`; fi
   if [ 45 -le $min -a $min -le 50 ]; then hours=`echo "$hrs + .8" | bc`; fi
   if [ 51 -le $min -a $min -le 56 ]; then hours=`echo "$hrs + .9" | bc`; fi
   if [ 57 -le $min -a $min -le 60 ]; then hours=`echo "$hrs + 1.0" | bc`; fi
fi

echo "Minutes Entered: $minutes"
echo "$hrs Hours, $min Minutes ($hours Hours)"

Please let us know if you think you have a better solution or have a suggestion by using the commenting system below.

#!/bin/bash

BEGIN=$(date +%s)

echo Starting Stopwatch...

while true; do
   NOW=$(date +%s)
   let DIFF=$(($NOW - $BEGIN))
   let MINS=$(($DIFF / 60))
   let SECS=$(($DIFF % 60))
   let HOURS=$(($DIFF / 3600))
   let DAYS=$(($DIFF / 86400))

   # \r  is a "carriage return" - returns cursor to start of line
   printf "\r%3d Days, %02d:%02d:%02d" $DAYS $HOURS $MINS $SECS
   sleep 0.25
done

The previous script will allow you to track from the time you say “go” until you stop it. It’s also nice to the real-estate on your terminal and will use backspace to remove the characters printed from before to make room for the new ones.

If you’re not worried about starting it “now” or real estate in the terminal, you could always use uptime and throw it into a while loop like this:

#!/bin/sh

while true; do uptime | cut -d' ' -f2; done

Both are simple, both have their own advantages and disadvantages. Choose wisely.

Source: unix.com forums

I used the scripts to help me figure out how long it was taking my desktop to lock up so I could troubleshoot it better. Another use might be to keep track of how much time you’re spending on the computer vs the amount of time spent skiing! Have fun either way.

Edit
A subscriber, Jim, came up with a much better stopwatch script than my thrown together example. Jim sent it via email, but I’ll post it here for all to see.

It doesn’t start counting till you press the spacebar, pressing the
spacebar again pauses it counting, until the spacebar is pressed to
continue counting.

Press ‘q’ to quit
Press ‘r’ to reset to zero

#!/bin/bash

# sets stdin to no echo and give a char every tenth of a sec.
stty -echo -icanon time 1 <&0

chkspace () {

  if ! read -t 0 ; then return 1 ; fi    # no char pressed
  read -n 1 ans
  if [ "$ans" = " " ]; then return 0 ; fi
  case "$ans" in
  r|R)  COUNT=0 ; BEGIN=$(date +%s)
        printf "\r%3d Days, %02d:%02d:%02d" 0 0 0 0
        ;;
  q|Q)  stty echo icanon <&0
        echo ""
        exit 0
        ;;
  [1-9]) echo " - $ans" ;;
  esac
  return 1
}

echo "Stopwatch: to start and stop press the SPACEBAR..."

printf "\r%3d Days, %02d:%02d:%02d" 0 0 0 0

COUNT=0
IFS=
while true ; do

  while true; do
    if chkspace ; then break; fi
    sleep 0.1
  done

  BEGIN=$(date +%s)
  while true; do
    NOW=$(date +%s)
    let DIFF=$(($NOW - $BEGIN + $COUNT))

    let MINS=$(($DIFF / 60))
    let SECS=$(($DIFF % 60))
    let HOURS=$(($DIFF / 3600))
    let DAYS=$(($DIFF / 86400))

    # \r  is a "carriage return" - returns cursor to start of line
    printf "\r%3d Days, %02d:%02d:%02d" $DAYS $HOURS $MINS $SECS

    if chkspace ; then break; fi
    sleep 0.1
  done

  COUNT=$DIFF
done

Note: I dug this one out from my post drafts from April, 2010, so I’m not sure how relevant the information is now. It looks like enough to get somebody heading in the right direction though, so I’m going to post it. I have a related guide here (Guide on TFTP Server Setup in Fedora).

Install

su -c 'yum install -y vsftpd'

Setup

gedit /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf

The above steps will get you started with a FTP server in Fedora (may work in other distros such as Ubuntu as well). It will allow you to immediately start sending files via FTP as a local user. So, if my username on my FTP server was ‘derek’, I could use

ftp <em>ip_address</em> -user derek"

Here’s an example config file:

# Example config file /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf
#
# The default compiled in settings are fairly paranoid. This sample file
# loosens things up a bit, to make the ftp daemon more usable.
# Please see vsftpd.conf.5 for all compiled in defaults.
#
# READ THIS: This example file is NOT an exhaustive list of vsftpd options.
# Please read the vsftpd.conf.5 manual page to get a full idea of vsftpd's
# capabilities.
#
# Allow anonymous FTP? (Beware - allowed by default if you comment this out).
anonymous_enable=YES
#
# Uncomment this to allow local users to log in.
local_enable=YES
#
# Uncomment this to enable any form of FTP write command.
write_enable=YES
#
# Default umask for local users is 077. You may wish to change this to 022,
# if your users expect that (022 is used by most other ftpd's)
#local_umask=022
#
# Uncomment this to allow the anonymous FTP user to upload files. This only
# has an effect if the above global write enable is activated. Also, you will
# obviously need to create a directory writable by the FTP user.
anon_upload_enable=YES
#
# Uncomment this if you want the anonymous FTP user to be able to create
# new directories.
anon_mkdir_write_enable=YES
#
# Activate directory messages - messages given to remote users when they
# go into a certain directory.
dirmessage_enable=YES
#
# Activate logging of uploads/downloads.
xferlog_enable=YES
#
# Make sure PORT transfer connections originate from port 20 (ftp-data).
connect_from_port_20=YES
#
# If you want, you can arrange for uploaded anonymous files to be owned by
# a different user. Note! Using "root" for uploaded files is not
# recommended!
#chown_uploads=YES
#chown_username=whoever
#
# You may override where the log file goes if you like. The default is shown
# below.
#xferlog_file=/var/log/vsftpd.log
#
# If you want, you can have your log file in standard ftpd xferlog format.
# Note that the default log file location is /var/log/xferlog in this case.
#xferlog_std_format=YES
#
# You may change the default value for timing out an idle session.
#idle_session_timeout=600
#
# You may change the default value for timing out a data connection.
#data_connection_timeout=120
#
# It is recommended that you define on your system a unique user which the
# ftp server can use as a totally isolated and unprivileged user.
#nopriv_user=ftpsecure
#
# Enable this and the server will recognise asynchronous ABOR requests. Not
# recommended for security (the code is non-trivial). Not enabling it,
# however, may confuse older FTP clients.
#async_abor_enable=YES
#
# By default the server will pretend to allow ASCII mode but in fact ignore
# the request. Turn on the below options to have the server actually do ASCII
# mangling on files when in ASCII mode.
# Beware that on some FTP servers, ASCII support allows a denial of service
# attack (DoS) via the command "SIZE /big/file" in ASCII mode. vsftpd
# predicted this attack and has always been safe, reporting the size of the
# raw file.
# ASCII mangling is a horrible feature of the protocol.
#ascii_upload_enable=YES
#ascii_download_enable=YES
#
# You may fully customise the login banner string:
#ftpd_banner=Welcome to blah FTP service.
#
# You may specify a file of disallowed anonymous e-mail addresses. Apparently
# useful for combatting certain DoS attacks.
#deny_email_enable=YES
# (default follows)
#banned_email_file=/etc/vsftpd/banned_emails
#
# You may specify an explicit list of local users to chroot() to their home
# directory. If chroot_local_user is YES, then this list becomes a list of
# users to NOT chroot().
#chroot_list_enable=YES
# (default follows)
#chroot_list_file=/etc/vsftpd/chroot_list
#
# You may activate the "-R" option to the builtin ls. This is disabled by
# default to avoid remote users being able to cause excessive I/O on large
# sites. However, some broken FTP clients such as "ncftp" and "mirror" assume
# the presence of the "-R" option, so there is a strong case for enabling it.
#ls_recurse_enable=YES
#
# When "listen" directive is enabled, vsftpd runs in standalone mode and
# listens on IPv4 sockets. This directive cannot be used in conjunction
# with the listen_ipv6 directive.
listen=YES
#
# This directive enables listening on IPv6 sockets. To listen on IPv4 and IPv6
# sockets, you must run two copies of vsftpd whith two configuration files.
# Make sure, that one of the listen options is commented !!
#listen_ipv6=YES

pam_service_name=vsftpd
userlist_enable=YES
tcp_wrappers=YES

for i in *; do echo $i | sed -e 's/.*[.]\(.*\)/\1/'; done
for i in *; do echo $i | awk -F. '{ print $NF }'; done

This command will grab the first dot extension even if there are two (it will return tar for file.tar.gz).

for i in *; do echo $i | cut -d'.' -f2; done

I’d love to hear your suggestions in the comments if you have a better, more optimized way of doing this.

Step 1: Create a blank/empty tarball in our home directory to add to

tar cvf ~/php_backups.tar --files-from /dev/null

Step 2: Add/append folders to tarball

The following will search for all files ending in .php, pipe those results into xargs which feeds into the tar command to add to our directory.

find ~/ -type f -name "*.php" | xargs tar rvf ~/php_backups.tar

Step 3: Compress the archive

gzip ~/php_backups.tar

Step 4: # Take a look at the archive to verify the directory structure

tar tzvf backup.tar.gz

From here, you can untar the file to whatever directory you want. Keep in mind that it will overwrite any existing files. You can combine other commands (like for or ls) to get a list of files that you’re interested in. You could also save all of the files with the directory path into a file and use cat to pipe into the xargs command.

chmod 700 $HOME/.ssh
chmod go-w $HOME $HOME/.ssh
chmod 600 $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys
chown `whoami` $HOME/.ssh/authorized_keys

This is what got things to work for me after fighting with it for a while. I hope it helps somebody else out there too. Also, if there’s any room for improvement, let me know. I wasn’t looking for an optimized solution at the time because I was tired of fighting.

Best Regards,
Derek

Best Regards,
Derek