This is a nice site that allows you to convert a file into a number of different formats. Can come in handy if someone sends you a file you cannot open because you do not have the right software.

I supports a lot of file formats including the Open Document standards. The one thing I didn’t like about it was that you couldn’t switch a file between type of document. For example, you can’t take an image (jpeg) and turn it into a document (Word) or vise versa. I don’t see why they couldn’t do it, it just seems like something they overlooked.

One other drawback is that they email you the converted file and sometimes it doesn’t come right away.

http://www.zamzar.com

This is a site that I have had on my list to checkout for a while. It is a site that is designed around searching for information on people by name.

I don’t know what is scarier about this site; how accurate it is at finding someone or how defaming inaccurate results can be.

Who would of thought that my brother has a MySpace page that he has never updated.

http://www.spock.com

I have been trying to get more serious about my personal backups lately and I have finally started to figure out a scheme. I have a primary machine that is setup as a RAID 1 with two drives such that it keeps two copies of every file. And then every once in a while I copy the home directory with all of my files from that computer to an external drive.

It takes forever to transfer my home directory full of files over to the drive, so I decide to try and use rsync to synchronize the drives by only copying, moving and deleting the files that have changed.

For those of you who have never heard of rsync, it is an Open Source utility that can be used to copy files from one place to the other while minimizing the amount of transferring by detecting differences between the source and destination and only transferring the differences. So if you are trying to archive or backup a lot of files this can save a lot of time.

rsync is a pretty advanced tool and it took me a while to get the command correct, so I thought I would share it here in hopes that it might save someone else some time.

# rsync -rptDuv -e ssh user@127.0.0.1:/home/user/* /media/backup

Let me explain this in detail. First you have the command itself.

# rsync ...

Then you have the options.

# ... -rptDuv ...

The ‘r’ is for recursive, which means that it will go into folders and copy those files as well. The ‘p’ keeps the file permissions in tact. The ‘t’ is for time, which means that the copied files will keep the same created and modified times as the original. The ‘D’ is to account for special files, I am not sure that this was needed for my purposes. The ‘u’ is for update, which means it is not to copy files that already exist on the destination. The ‘v’ is for verbose, which just means that it will tell you what it is doing as it does it.

The next part is the source folder (i.e. the files you want to backup). Since my source folder was actually on another computer I had to specify some extra stuff to connect to it.

# ... -e ssh user@127.0.0.1:/home/user/* ...

If you were just backing up a folder on the same computer you could just do something like this instead.

# ... /home/user/* ...

One thing to note about the source is that I had to specify the ‘*’ at the end to prevent it from trying to backup hidden files as well. Since most of these files were just random configuration files for the user, I didn’t feel I needed to back them up.

Last is the destination (i.e. where you are keeping your backups). I am transferring mine to an external hard drive so I can take it to another location.

# ... /media/backup

The first time you run the command it will transfer the whole set of folders and files to the backup drive. But after that it will only update the backup drive with the changes you have made.

Thanks to Chad from the Linux Basement for helping me work through this command over IRC.

I have a fourth generation iPod and I have always been generally pleased with it. It is the last generation that had a black and white screen and I was glad to have it because the thing will go weeks to months between charges (casual use).

However a little while ago it started having problems. At first I was able to reinstall the firmware and get it running again, however that did not last long. Soon it started having sync errors in the middle of a transfer and that would destroy the entire device and I would have to reload it.

So it ended up on a shelf for a while until I came across this article on CrunchGear that described a design flaw in the iPod shell that would cause a drive to stop working. Apparently the heat produced by running a iPod for long periods of time will warp the metal shell on the under side such that it releases the pressure on the hard drive inside, which causes the drive to stop working. Therefore, to get the drive working again, all you have to do is put the pressure back onto the drive.

I finally got around to trying it for myself. The article gives better instructions but I basically took a small screw driver and pried the iPod open at its seam. The I took a business card and folded it into fourths and placed it on the middle of the drive and then just snapped the iPod case back together. It worked like a charm. I could hardly believe it. I am still using it today.

Although, this fix is kinda hit and miss; because I recommended it to a friend to try as well and he had no luck.

Here is the CrunchGear that has good pictures and better instructions.
http://www.crunchgear.com/2007/03/05/crunchgear-how-to-fix-an-ipod-that-wont-boot

I found this site and while back and it is a neat tool to practice basic typing skills without installing any software. It is just a website that provides an on screen keyboard that provides text to type in order to practice your typing skills.

It supports three levels of difficulty, the ability to upload your own lesson text and a progress report in the form of a graph. Definitely worth bookmarking for casual practice.

http://www.keybr.com

I ran across this tool the other day. It is a free piece of software that assists in removing unwanted adware, spyware and software that normally comes installed on a new computer. This software is commonly known as bloatware and can significantly reduce the performance of a new machine and only offers features that a user would not typically want or need.

This utility searches the computer and identifies pieces of bloatware and reports them to the user and then removes them as requested.

I have not yet tried it myself. It is for only Windows XP and Vista, and I have not run a computer with Windows in years (well at least a primary machine).

http://www.pcdecrapifier.com

Email has become one of the cores of communication for any business and is one of the quickest, most cost effective ways for a business to get things done. However, email does suffer from some limitations.

One of the most common struggles I see small (and large) businesses facing is being able to send files to others over email. With the growth in size for the average file attachment and the advancing technology in email filtering, it is becoming harder and harder to get a file through to someone over email.

One way to overcome this issue is to host the file on a server somewhere and have the intended recipient download the file themselves from the Internet. However this option presents its own issues considering many small businesses may not have a server to host the file. Another issue with this is how to protect the file such that only the intended recipient gets access to the file.

Thankfully there are many free and low cost options provided by third party companies to over come these issues. Below is a short list of some free and low cost options.

drop.io - This one is quick, free and easy. It also supports password protection for your dropped files. You can mange your files and others can retrieve the files through a web browser.

DropSend - This one offers a little application that you can download and run on your computer to send files. Recipients can get their files from a web browser. They have a free package which allows you to send a limited number of files a month.

youSENDit - This one seemed a little complex but it offered a way for others to send files back to you using your account as a drop box. However they only offer a temporary free trial and then you have to start paying if you want to keep the service. On the other hand this one boasts itself as being HIPAA compliant.

pando - This is more of a full featured file sharing application that you download and then share files over their servers. They have a free package and you can upgrade as you need.

Any one of these options can make it possible for you to get documents where they need to go regardless of the limitations of email.

- - - - -

This is an article I originally wrote for COSE Mindspring. I have posted it here for personal archival purposes. You can find the original article here.

I have been playing around with setting up a home server and one thing I learned is that my current ISP does not allow an SMTP server to send out mail. This meant that any of the random web applications or server software I installed was unable to to generate and send an email that would actually be received to an email account in the outside world.

I imagine that my ISP does this to cut down on the amount of SPAM that is generated from their network (through virus infected computers and such). Thankfully my ISP also offered a SMTP server that I could forward mail through, however it requires authentication.

I am using an Ubuntu server and it runs Postfix as the default MTA, so I figured I would just use it to forward the mail from my home server, through my ISP’s server and then out to the world.

Here is what I had to do to get it working.

First I opened up the main.cf file for Postfix.

# sudo vim /etc/postfix/main.cf

Add these lines to the file. The ‘relayhost’ line might already be in the file. Set that line equal to the server you intend to relay through. I saw some examples that didn’t include the brackets (’[]’), but mine wouldn’t work without them.

relayhost = [smtp.my.isp.com]

smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl/sasl_passwd
smtp_sasl_security_options =

After you save that file, create a directory to store your password files in.

# sudo mkdir /etc/postfix/sasl

Next you need to create your password file.

# sudo vim /etc/postfix/sasl/sasl_passwd

Inside that file you need to add one line that defines the username and password for the smtp server you want to relay through.

smtp.my.isp.com username:password

Once you create the password file, you need to create a hash of it.

# postmap /etc/postfix/sasl/sasl_passwd

This should create a file called sasl_passwd.db in the same directory. At this point you can either change the permissions on the file ’sasl_passwd’ to protect your login information or I think you can just get rid of it.

After that all you have to do is restart the daemon.

# sudo /etc/init.d/postfix restart

Now your server should be able to send mail out the the real world by relaying it through the other server.

This article below helped me greatly in figuring out how this is done.
http://ben.franske.com/blogs/bensbits.php/2005/09/06/postfix_smtp_auth_support_for_relayhost

I have been asked to write a column on Internet technologies for a small business website. This is part of the reason that updates have been so slow to come lately on this site (however I am working on improving that). The site is a small business resource site sponsored by COSE, which is one of the largest chambers of commerce in the nation. Anyway, I am going to post copies of the articles I write for the site here to store them for historical purposes.

You can keep track of my column here.
http://www.cosemindspring.com/technology/internet-technologies

This is a great article that compiles over fifty references for both Linux and Unix. It pretty much all command line references, which can be really handy.

Thanks to Scott Klarr for compiling this list of references.

Linux-Unix cheat sheets - The ultimate collection