Would you like to update your Facebook status via the command line?
Check out fbcmd

A great article written by Kenneth Hess on installing and basic usage of fbcmd here on Linux-mag

fbcmd Syntax page

fbcmd Commands page

So how can I automate this?

SIMPLE!!

Well first I created a file called fbstatus.sh and filled it with the contents below

#!/bin/bash
CMD=`/usr/games/fortune -s drugs`
fbcmd status "$CMD"

make sure you run

chmod +x fbstatus.sh

then execute

sh fbstatus.sh

the add it to a cron job by executing

crontab -e

add

@hourly sh ~/fbfortune.sh

CTRL + o to save cron job
CTRL + x to exit editor

The simple script grabs a short fortune file from the drug fortune-cookies
saves it as a variable and sends it via fbcmd

Use your imagination.
here is a script to post your server’s uptime via facebook using fbcmd

CMD=`/usr/bin/uptime`

fbcmd status “$CMD”

I created the fortune script because my friends were complaining that I never update my Facebook status. So now my friends will get an hourly fb update from your’s truly…. my server ;)

ncdu is a text-mode ncurses-based disk usage analyzer. Useful for when you want to see where all your space is going. For a single flat directory it isn’t more elaborate than an du|sort or some such thing, but this analyzes all directories below the one you specify so space consumed by files inside subdirectories is taken into account. This way you get the full picture. Features: file deletion, file size or size on disk and refresh as contents change. Homepage: http://dev.yorhel.nl/ncdu

Manual :http://dev.yorhel.nl/ncdu/man

Initially if much space is taken up you will have to wait a while while it indexes your files.

This is a ncurses based application that means you have to use the keyboard to make your way around – not a mouse. The keys are fairly easy to learn and there is a very useful help screen should you need it

If you find a file or folder you no longer need while browsing with NCDU you can even delete it on the spot Hopefully you will find this application as useful as I did when a stray log file gets far too large :)

Are you in need of monitoring a Linux server for performance? These built-in command and add-on tools provide techniques which can be used to get useful information about a system’s activities. These tools will help find the possible causes of a performance problem. The commands I talk about below are some of the most basic commands when it comes to system analysis and debugging server issues.

top

Process Activity Command
The top program provides a awesome real-time view of your system for example actual process activity. Out the box, it displays the most CPU-intensive processes running on the Linux Machine and updates the list every five seconds.

vmstat

System Activity, Hardware and System Information

procs ———–memory———- —swap– —–io—- –system– —–cpu——
r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa st
0 0 0 2540988 522188 5130400 0 0 2 32 4 2 4 1 96 0 0
1 0 0 2540988 522188 5130400 0 0 0 720 1199 665 1 0 99 0 0
0 0 0 2540956 522188 5130400 0 0 0 0 1151 1569 4 1 95 0 0
0 0 0 2540956 522188 5130500 0 0 0 6 1117 439 1 0 99 0 0
0 0 0 2540940 522188 5130512 0 0 0 536 1189 932 1 0 98 0 0
0 0 0 2538444 522188 5130588 0 0 0 0 1187 1417 4 1 96 0 0
0 0 0 2490060 522188 5130640 0 0 0 18 1253 1123 5 1 94 0 0

w

Find Out Who Is Logged on And What They Are Doing

# w username
# w username

Sample output

17:58:47 up 5 days, 20:28, 2 users, load average: 0.36, 0.26, 0.24
USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT
root pts/0 10.1.3.145 14:55 5.00s 0.04s 0.02s vim /etc/resolv.conf
root pts/1 10.1.3.145 17:43 0.00s 0.03s 0.00s w

uptime

How Long The System Has Been Up

# uptime

output:

14:28:17 up 2 days, 3:53, 1 user, load average: 0.90, 0.46, 0.37

ps

Displays The Processes

# ps -A

Output:

PID TTY TIME CMD
1 ? 00:00:02 init
2 ? 00:00:02 migration/0
3 ? 00:00:01 ksoftirqd/0
4 ? 00:00:00 watchdog/0
5 ? 00:00:00 migration/1
6 ? 00:00:15 ksoftirqd/1
….
…..
4881 ? 00:53:28 java
4885 tty1 00:00:00 mingetty
4886 tty2 00:00:00 mingetty
4887 tty3 00:00:00 mingetty
4888 tty4 00:00:00 mingetty
4891 tty5 00:00:00 mingetty
4892 tty6 00:00:00 mingetty
4893 ttyS1 00:00:00 agetty
12853 ? 00:00:00 cifsoplockd
12854 ? 00:00:00 cifsdnotifyd
14231 ? 00:10:34 lighttpd
14232 ? 00:00:00 php-cgi
54981 pts/0 00:00:00 vim
55465 ? 00:00:00 php-cgi
55546 ? 00:00:00 bind9-snmp-stat
55704 pts/1 00:00:00 ps

free

Memory Usage

# free

Output:

total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1024768 316332 708436 0 34536 123616
-/+ buffers/cache: 158180 866588
Swap: 463868 176 463692

iostat

Average CPU Load, Disk Activity
The command iostat report Central Processing Unit (CPU) statistics and input/output statistics for devices, partitions and network filesystems (NFS).

The command iostat report Central Processing Unit (CPU) statistics and input/output statistics for devices, partitions and network filesystems (NFS).

output:

Linux 2.6.18-128.1.14.el5 (www03.nixcraft.in) 06/26/2009
avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle
3.50 0.09 0.51 0.03 0.00 95.86
Device: tps Blk_read/s Blk_wrtn/s Blk_read Blk_wrtn
sda 22.04 31.88 512.03 16193351 260102868
sda1 0.00 0.00 0.00 2166 180
sda2 22.04 31.87 512.03 16189010 260102688
sda3 0.00 0.00 0.00 1615 0

ss

Network Statistics
ss command is used to dump socket statistics.

FIN-WAIT-2 0 0 10.1.10.72:www 131.142.24.171:51858
ESTAB 0 0 10.1.10.72:ssh 10.1.10.157:35827
ESTAB 0 0 10.1.10.72:ssh 10.1.10.157:59810
ESTAB 0 0 10.1.10.72:www 131.142.24.171:51857
ESTAB 0 0 10.1.10.72:www 8.22.204.204:2336
FIN-WAIT-2 0 0 10.1.10.72:www 131.142.24.171:51860

iptraf

Real-time Network Statistics

tcpdump

Detailed Network Traffic Analysis
tcpdump is a simple command that dumps traffic on a network. You might need good understanding of TCP/IP protocol to use this tool. For example to display traffic info about DNS, enter:

# tcpdump -i eth1 ‘udp port 53′

To display all HTTP session to 10.1.10.12:

# tcpdump -ni eth0 ‘dst 10.1.10.12 and tcp and port http’

I know how much you love random linux commands so here I’ve compiled some cool random linux commands to copy, convert, limit,kill and redirect things.

Start COMMAND, and kill it if still running after 5 seconds

timeout 5s COMMAND

Convert Youtube videos to MP3

youtube-dl -t --extract-audio --audio-format mp3 YOUTUBE_URL_HERE
youtube-dl has this functionality built in. If you’re running an older version of youtube-dl, you can update it using `youtube-dl -U` (although if you have an older version, it probably doesn’t download youtube videos anyway.)

youtube-dl –help will show you other options that may come in useful.

Limit the cpu usage of a process

sudo cpulimit -p pid -l 50
This will limit the average amount of CPU it consumes.

Target a specific column for pattern substitution

awk '{gsub("foo","bar",$5)}1' file
Awk replaces every instance of foo with bar in the 5th column only.

Redirect tar extract to another directory

tar xfz filename.tar.gz -C PathToDirectory
The command extracting the tar contents into particular directory …

MySQL is the world’s most popular open source database. Whether you are a fast growing web property, technology ISV or large enterprise, MySQL can cost-effectively help you deliver high performance, scalable database applications. Check out this site MySQL Commands for a nice MySQL cheat sheet.
UrFix.com  however has created a list of commands I use almost daily when monitoring and maintaining my LAMP server. I hope you find these useful…

Monitor the queries being run by MySQL

watch -n 1 mysqladmin --user= --password= processlist

Watch is a very useful command for periodically running another command – in this using mysqladmin to display the processlist. This is useful for monitoring which queries are causing your server to clog up.
More info here: http://codeinthehole.com/archives/2-Monitoring-MySQL-processes.html

Backup all MySQL Databases to individual files

for I in $(mysql -e 'show databases' -s --skip-column-names);
do mysqldump $I | gzip > "$I.sql.gz"; done

I put this in a cron job to run @ midnight – “lazy back up”

Copy a MySQL Database to a new Server via SSH with one command

mysqldump --add-drop-table --extended-insert --force --log-error=error.log
 -uUSER -pPASS OLD_DB_NAME | ssh -C user@newhost "mysql -uUSER -pPASS NEW_DB_NAME"

Dumps a MySQL database over a compressed SSH tunnel and uses it as input to mysql – i think that is the fastest and best way to migrate a DB to a new server!

Convert all MySQL tables and fields to UTF8

mysql --database=dbname -B -N -e "SHOW TABLES"  | awk '{print "ALTER TABLE", $1,
 "CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8 COLLATE utf8_general_ci;"}' | mysql --database=dbname
&

Backup a remote database to your local filesystem

ssh user@host 'mysqldump dbname | gzip' >
/path/to/backups/db-backup-`date +%Y-%m-%d`.sql.gz

I have this on a daily cronjob to backup the urfix.com database from NearlyFreeSpeech.net (awesome hosts by the way) to my local drive. Note that (on my Ubuntu system at least) you need to escape the % signs on the crontab.

Export MySQL query as .csv file

echo "SELECT * FROM table; " | mysql -u root -p${MYSQLROOTPW}
databasename | sed 's/\t/","/g;s/^/"/;s/$/"/;s/\n//g' > outfile.csv

This command converts a MySQL query directly into a .csv (Comma Seperated Value)-file.

Create an SSH tunnel for accessing your remote MySQL database with a local port

ssh -CNL 3306:localhost:3306 user@urfix.com

Count the number of queries to a MySQL server

echo "SHOW PROCESSLIST\G" | mysql -u root -p | grep "Info:" |
awk -F":" '{count[$NF]++}END{for(i in count){printf("%d: %s\n",
count[i], i)}}' | sort -n

dump a single table of a database to file

mysqldump -u UNAME -p DBNAME TABLENAME> FILENAME

And there you have it, a nice list of hopefully useful commands that you can inspect and learn from.

The SCP protocol is a network protocol, based on the BSD RCP protocol, which supports file transfers between hosts on a network. SCP uses Secure Shell (SSH) for data transfer and utilizes the same mechanisms for authentication, thereby ensuring the authenticity and confidentiality of the data in transit. A client can send (upload) files to a server, optionally including their basic attributes (permissions, timestamps). Clients can also request files or directories from a server (download). SCP runs over TCP port 22 by default. Like RCP, there is no RFC that defines the specifics of the protocol.

SCP is an awesome tool. Learn it, Love it, Use it….

Edit a file on a remote host using vim

vim scp://username@host//path/to/somefile

Colored diff ( via vim ) on 2 remotes files on your local computer.

vimdiff scp://root@server-foo.com//etc/snmp/snmpd.conf scp://root@server-bar.com//etc/snmp/snmpd.conf

Restrict the bandwidth for the SCP command

scp -l10 user@urfix.com:/home/urfix/* .

the command is obvious, I know, but maybe not everyone knows that using the parameter “-l” you can limit the use of bandwidth command scp.
In this example fetch all files from the directory zutaniddu and I copy them locally using only 10 Kbs

Compare a remote file with a local file

vimdiff  scp://[@]/

Easily scp a file back to the host you’re connecting from

mecp () { scp "$@" ${SSH_CLIENT%% *}:Desktop/; }

Place in .bashrc and invoke like this: “mecp /path/to/file”, and it will copy the specified file(s) back to the desktop of the host you’re ssh’ing in from. To easily upload a file from the host you’re ssh’ing in from use this:

ucp (){ scp ${SSH_CLIENT%% *}:Desktop/upload/* .; }

scp file from hostb to hostc while logged into hosta

scp user@hostb:file user@hostc:

While at the command line of of hosta, scp a file from remote hostb to remote hostc. This saves the step of logging into hostb and then issuing the scp command to hostc.

Copy something to multiple SSH hosts with a Bash loop

for h in host1 host2 host3 host4 ; { scp file user@$h:/destination_path/ ; }

Just a quick and simple one to demonstrate Bash For loop. Copies ‘file’ to multiple ssh hosts.

scp with compression.

scp -C 10.0.0.4:/tmp/backup.sql /path/to/backup.sql

-C is for compression.

Did you root your Android-based smartphone or tablet, thinking about it? Well I present you seven free network apps that take advantage of the superuser permissions. In the list I’ve composed , you’ll find apps that help with the network configuration and security of your device, apps to do sharing and sniffing on networks, and apps that demonstrate network hacking and security risks.

DroidSheep by Andreas Koch

What is this about?
If you know Firesheep or Faceniff, you probably know what this is about – one-click session hijacking using your android smartphone or tablet computer.
You can use DroidSheep to demonstrate to yourself or others of how easy it is to take-over other user’s unsecured web sessions. You just open the app, agree to their disclaimer, and tap Start. You’ll start seeing the list populate once users on the network login to unsecured sites, displaying their URLs and session IDs. Then you can tap on an entry to open the site in full or mobile view, save the cookies, or export the cookies via email.

Samba File Sharing by funkyFresh

Shark for Root by Elviss Kuštans

Traffic sniffer, works on 3G and WiFi (works on FroYo tethered mode too).his network sniffer is based on tcpdump and is basically a simple version of the popular WireShark application. It captures packet information from the Wi-Fi or 3G interfaces and automatically saves them to a .pcap file on the SD card. You can input tcpdump parameters to customize the sniffing sessions. You can view the dumps on your Android if you install another app (Shark Reader) or transfer the .pcap file to another computer to open in an application such as WireShark.

SSH Tunnel by Max Lv

This app helps you surf the web privately and securely, for instance, to encrypt your traffic from local eavesdroppers at Wi-Fi hotspots or to bypass filters and geographic restrictions. It’s a SSH client that can proxy the Internet connections for the entire Android system or individual apps through a SSH server. Its DNS Proxy feature can also solve the DNS pollution problem in places such as China by using the pre-defined HOSTS information from the developer’s site to counteract any DNS tampering by the authorities or ISPs.

WiFi Key Recovery by alt236

Android lets you modify the settings for Wi-Fi networks you’ve saved, but doesn’t show you the existing passwords, similar to Windows XP. However, this simple app reveals the login credentials for Wi-Fi networks stored on your device, useful if you forget the password to a network. It also demonstrates one of the security risks if you’re Android gets lost or stolen; someone can potentially get the credentials to log onto your home or work network.

Wireless Tether by Müller, Lemons, Buxton

This lets you share your Android’s Internet connection with other computers or devices equipped with Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. It’s great if your Android version or mobile service provider doesn’t support tethering. For most Android devices, this app’s Wi-Fi sharing creates an ad-hoc (peer-to-peer) network. Some devices support the regular infrastructure-mode, which appears to look like a real Wi-Fi router or access point to the other devices. For either mode, it takes care of handing out IP addresses to clients via DHCP.

This morning Facebook announced Timeline, an awesome look at everything that has  happened in your Facebook lifespan. It’s like a story book of your online life.

Facebook is enabling Timeline early for open graph developers. As a reader of UrFix Blog you’ll learn how to get started today.

1. Log into Facebook

2. Enable developer mode, if you haven’t already. To do this, type “developer” into the Facebook search box, click the first result (it should be an app made by Facebook with a few hundred thousand users), and add the app.

3. Jump into the developer app (if Facebook doesn’t put you there automatically, it should be in your left-hand tool bar)

4. Create a new app (don’t worry — you wont actually be submitting this for anyone else to see/use). Give your shiny new app any display name and namespace you see fit. Read through and agree to the Platform Privacy agreement. This is the step you need to be verified for.

5. Ensure you’re in your new app’s main settings screen. You should see your app’s name near the top of the page

6. Look for the “Open Graph” header, and click the “Get Started using open graph” link.

Create a test action for your app, like “read” a “book”, or “eat” a “sandwich”
7. This should drop you into an action type configuration page. Change a few of the default settings (I changed the past tense of “read” to “redd” — again, only you can see this unless you try and submit your application to the public directory), and click through all three pages of settings

8. Wait 2-3 minutes

9. Go back to your Facebook homescreen. An invite to try Timeline should be waiting at the top of the page

Only developers and yourself will be able to see your new profile till September 29th.

here is what mine looks like

and even a map of places I’ve check in….

Have fun, and remember this is still in beta so you are bound to find a bug or two.

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/new/
Firefox 6 is officially out, however the final build for all the platforms are now available for download from the official FTP channels. Much like the previous release, the changelog for Firefox 6 is quite flimsy, and the new build doesn’t feature any major new user facing feature. This is of course the side-effect of following a rapid release cycle. While it makes it easier for Mozilla to stick to the schedule, it also makes version numbers insignificant and immaterial. GHacks reported yesterday that Mozilla is planning on hiding the version number from normal users by removing it from the ‘About’ box. Of course, that would be an incredibly lame and stupid way to tackle the issue. The sensible thing for Mozilla would be to label these releases as minor version updates, and have one or two scheduled major updates per year that will actually deliver new features. Anyways, there is no point in blaming Mozilla alone. Google is the one who started this madness with their Chrome release cycle.

There are as many as 1,300 changes in Firefox 6. However, almost all of them are bug fixes. When it comes to delivering new features, Firefox 6 disappoints, once again. If you have used Firefox 5, or even Firefox 4, you already know what to expect. If you liked either of those two releases, you will like Firefox 6. If you didn’t, then Firefox 6 will not change your opinion.

source http://techie-buzz.com/browsers/firefox-6-review.html

$ echo “Hello world”
Hello world

Urfix has compiled a sweet ass list of random stuff you can do from the command line. Hope you enjoy.

Fry: Make up some feelings and tell her you have them.

1 Multiple variable assignments from command output in BASH

read day month year <<< $(date +'%d %m %y')

This version uses read instead of eval.

2 Generate an XKCD #936 style 4 word password

shuf -n4 /usr/share/dict/words | tr -d '\n'

4 random words are better than one obfuscated word

http://xkcd.com/936/

3 All IP connected to my host

netstat -lantp | grep ESTABLISHED |awk '{print $5}' | awk -F: '{print $1}' | sort -u

find all computer connected to my host through TCP connection.

4 Ask for a password, the passwd-style

read -s -p"Password: " USER_PASSWORD_VARIABLE; echo

You can ask repeatedly for a non-blank password using this function:
function read_password() {
while [ ! -n "$USER_PASSWORD" ]; do
read -s -p”Password: ” USER_PASSWORD
if [ ! -n "$USER_PASSWORD" ]; then
echo “ERROR: You must specify a valid password, please try again”
fi
echo
done
}
Also you can set a time out (in seconds) to write the password
read -t 10 -s -p”Password: ” USER_PASSWORD_VARIABLE
if [ ! $? -eq 0 ]; then
echo “Time out!”
fi

5 Check syntax for all PHP files in the current directory and all subdirectories

find . -name \*.php -exec php -l "{}" \;

6mkdir & cd into it as single command

mkdir /home/foo/doc/bar && cd $_

The biggest advantage of this over the functions is that it is portable.

7 Merge PDFs into single file

gs -q -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=output.pdf input1.pdf input2.pdf ...

8 Create a QR code image in MECARD format

qrencode -o myqr.png 'MECARD:N:Daprophet,Isaiah;TEL:8881234567;EMAIL:isaiah.daprophet@urfix.com;;'

Add the QR code image on your webpage, business card ., etc, so people can scan it and quick add to their Contact Address Book. Tested on iPhone with QRreader.

9 Chmod all directories (excluding files)

find public_html/ -type d -exec chmod 755 {} +

+ at the end means that many filenames will be passed to every chmod call, thus making it faster. And find own {} makes sure that it will work with spaces and other characters in filenames.

10 List only the directories

find . -maxdepth 1 -type d | sort

11 copy with progress bar – rsync

rsync -rv   --progress

-r for recursive (if you want to copy entire directories)
src for the source file (or wildcards)
dst for the destination
–progress to show a progress bar

12 Find all files of a type and copy them elsewhere while keeping intact their full directory structure using find and cpio

find . -iname "*.flac" | cpio -pdm /Volumes/Music/FLAC

.flac is the filetype.
/Volumes/Music/FLAC is the destination.

13 Share a screen session

screen -x 

14 Backup entire system through SSH

ssh -C USER@HOST tar -c --exclude /proc --exclude /sys / | tar -x

15 Find the package a command belongs to on debian-based distros

apt-file search iostat

16 View files opened by a program on startup and shutdown

sudo lsof -rc command >> /tmp/command.txt

Run this before you run a command in order to see what the command does as it starts.
The -c flag is useful here as the PID is unknown before startup.
All config files, libraries, logs, ports, etc used by the command as it starts up, (and shuts down) will be captured at 1s intervals and written to a file.
Useful for debugging etc.