As IT professionals, there are plenty of times when we're asked to write technical documentations or presentations. Soon you start to realize that keyboard commands like 'Print Screen' or 'Alt+Print Screen' are indeed very handy tools to have at your disposal. However, if you've used these enough, you know that these keyboard commands are pretty limiting, especially when it comes to capturing things like:

• Taking a 'complete' screenshot of a window which has a vertical scroll as it's too big to fit in a screen
• Capturing contextual drop-down menus (such as right-clicks)
• A freehand region (any region) of your desktop

Enter TechSmith's SnagIt. If you've 39 bucks to spare, SnagIt is a really handy tool to have. You can even take this for a test-drive for 30 days before putting a 39 dollar hole in your pocket.

Here are some samples of the amazing things I was able to do using this tool:

Taking a 'complete' screenshot of a window which
has a vertical scroll as it's too big to fit
in a screen

Capturing contextual drop-down menus
(such as right-clicks)

A freehand region (any region) of my desktop (including cursor)

I am sure this tool has plenty more surprises provided I give it the time that it deserves. However, the features listed above were enough to convince me that this tool deserved to have it's own special place in my IT toolkit, that is, until I lay my hands on a "free" alternative ]]>

As IT professionals, there are plenty of times when we're asked to write technical documentations or presentations. Soon you start to realize that keyboard commands like 'Print Screen' or 'Alt+Print Screen' are indeed very handy tools to have at your disposal. However, if you've used these enough, you know that these keyboard commands are pretty limiting, especially when it comes to capturing things like:

• Taking a 'complete' screenshot of a window which has a vertical scroll as it's too big to fit in a screen
• Capturing contextual drop-down menus (such as right-clicks)
• A freehand region (any region) of your desktop

Enter TechSmith's SnagIt. If you've 39 bucks to spare, SnagIt is a really handy tool to have. You can even take this for a test-drive for 30 days before putting a 39 dollar hole in your pocket.

Here are some samples of the amazing things I was able to do using this tool:

Taking a 'complete' screenshot of a window which
has a vertical scroll as it's too big to fit
in a screen

Capturing contextual drop-down menus
(such as right-clicks)

A freehand region (any region) of my desktop (including cursor)

I am sure this tool has plenty more surprises provided I give it the time that it deserves. However, the features listed above were enough to convince me that this tool deserved to have it's own special place in my IT toolkit, that is, until I lay my hands on a "free" alternative ]]> http://indrayam.com/archives/how-do-i/000814.php/feed/ http://indrayam.com/archives/how-do-i/000813.php http://indrayam.com/archives/how-do-i/000813.php#comments Thu, 18 Nov 2004 18:08:53 +0000 anand http://indrayam.com/?p=813 If you've ever tried capturing a still image from a Windows Media Player (WMP), you know it's not as simple as pressing 'Print Screen' or 'Alt+Print Screen' button while the movie is playing. If you've no clue what I am talking about, here's a little test you can run yourself.

Assumptions:

1. You're on a Windows platform
2. You've your browser configured with Windows Media Player (8.x/9.x) plugin
3. You're connected to the Internet

Steps to perform the test:

1. Open your favorite browser
2. You can go to your favorite multimedia site (Music video site, News.com etc.) and play a movie using your WMP plugin or you can go to CBS MarketWatch. Over to the right-hand side, you will notice a TV & Radio section with a bunch of movies to play. Pick one and when prompted for player preferences, select WMP.
3. When the movie starts playing, click on 'Print Screen' or 'Alt+Print Screen'
4. Open Paint program from the Accessories folder of your Start Menu ('Start | Programs | Accessories | Paint')
5. Click on 'Edit | Paste' in the Paint program.

Do you see the problem? It literally embeds the movie (I guess as an OLE object) into the Paint software. Result: You see the movie playing within Paint!. Trying to close WMP or hit the pause button on WMP before taking a screenshot would really delay the inevitable. You would soon notice that the best that you can get is this:

Solution:

1. As soon as the Windows Media plugin loads in your browser and starts playing, hit pause, right-click on an empty region of the skin of the Windows Media player. You should see a drop-down menu similar to the one shown below. Even if it's not exactly same, as long as you see the 'Options...' menu option, you'll be fine:

2. Click on 'Options...' menu option which will open the Options dialog window looking something like this:

3. Notice the 'Video Acceleration' section. It's set to 'Full'. Drag the slider back so that it's set to 'None'. It should look like this:

4. Click on Apply. You may have to close the browser window and do the whole thing again or if you're lucky, after churning your CPU cycles for a bit, the Windows Media player plugin will start playing the movie from the beginning with the new settings.

5. With the movie playing, click 'Print Screen' or 'Alt+Print Screen' at the point in the movie where you would like to capture a still image

6. Open the Paint program (as explained previously) and paste the content from the clipboard. Voila! The result would be something like:

7. When you're done capturing your still image, do not forget to reset your WMP 'Video Acceleration' settings back to 'Full'. It's the recommended mode.

Goal:

Rename a group of files in a folder (and possibly sub-folders)

Example:

You've a folder which has files looking like this:

[user@myhost tmp]> ls
test1.txt  test2.txt  test3.txt readme.txt

Solution:

Approach 1: Using 'rename' command

In RedHat distribution, there is a utility called rename. You can use it as follows:

[user@host tmp]> ls
test1.txt  test2.txt  test3.txt readme.txt
[user@host tmp]> rename test blah test*.txt
[user@host tmp]> ls
blah1.txt  blah2.txt  blah3.txt readme.txt

1. pattern of the filename that needs to be replaced/changed (in our example, test)
2. pattern that #1 (found above) will be replaced with (in our example, blah)
3. all files that need to be considered for such renaming (in our example, files matching the pattern test*.txt)

Approach 2: Using a shell script

In case you don't have the rename utility on your flavor of Linux/Unix, you can use this simple bash script:

#!/bin/bash

for cur in $(find . -name 'test*.txt'); do
   new=`echo $cur | sed 's/test/blah/'`
   mv $cur $new
done

The advantage here is that this will traverse the sub-folders as well (unlike rename).]]> Found myself confronted with another pesky problem this morning.

Goal:

Rename a group of files in a folder (and possibly sub-folders)

Example:

You've a folder which has files looking like this:

[user@myhost tmp]> ls
test1.txt  test2.txt  test3.txt readme.txt

Solution:

Approach 1: Using 'rename' command

In RedHat distribution, there is a utility called rename. You can use it as follows:

[user@host tmp]> ls
test1.txt  test2.txt  test3.txt readme.txt
[user@host tmp]> rename test blah test*.txt
[user@host tmp]> ls
blah1.txt  blah2.txt  blah3.txt readme.txt

1. pattern of the filename that needs to be replaced/changed (in our example, test)
2. pattern that #1 (found above) will be replaced with (in our example, blah)
3. all files that need to be considered for such renaming (in our example, files matching the pattern test*.txt)

Approach 2: Using a shell script

In case you don't have the rename utility on your flavor of Linux/Unix, you can use this simple bash script:

#!/bin/bash

for cur in $(find . -name 'test*.txt'); do
   new=`echo $cur | sed 's/test/blah/'`
   mv $cur $new
done

The advantage here is that this will traverse the sub-folders as well (unlike rename).]]> http://indrayam.com/archives/how-do-i/000401.php/feed/ http://indrayam.com/archives/how-do-i/000361.php http://indrayam.com/archives/how-do-i/000361.php#comments Tue, 06 Jul 2004 21:40:07 +0000 anand http://indrayam.com/?p=361

Was assigned a simple task this morning:

...
<a href="http://indrayam.com">Back to Home</a>                      
</body>
</html>

Sounds like a fairly common and simple problem. However, I soon realized that I did not have a canned utility or shell script that I could quickly use. After some googling around, here's what I came up with:

Bash/Sed version:

#!/bin/bash

for i in $( ls *.html ); do    
   sed "s/\"http:\/\/indrayam.com\"/\"http:\/\/indrayam.com\/it\/\"/g" $i > $i.new
   mv -f $i.new $i
done

If you want to peruse through content a few levels deep, try this:

#!/bin/bash

for i in $( find . -name '*.html' ); do   
   sed "s/\"http:\/\/indrayam.com\"/\"http:\/\/indrayam.com\/it\/\"/g" $i > $i.new
   mv -f $i.new $i
done

Here are a few pointers, in case you do decide on using the script:

1. For starters, restrict the $(ls *.<file-extension>) section of the shell script to a single file by replacing it with $(ls <filename>). In other words, test the script out on a single file first.

2. Always run the "double-whammy" test - Run the shell script once and then run the script again without any modifications!. If the targetted file looks ok after this double execution, you have wisely selected your initial-pattern and new-pattern in sed's s/<initial-pattern>/<new-pattern>/g expression.

   For example, let's say the sed expression in the shell script shown above looked something like this instead:

   sed "s/http:\/\/indrayam.com/http:\/\/indrayam.com\/it\//g" $i > $i.new
   

   Do you see a problem here? Since our initial-pattern is now http://indrayam.com (as opposed to "http://indrayam.com" in the shell script above), executing the script against the same file twice will result in href looking something like:

   <a href="http://indrayam.com/it//it/">Back to Home</a> 
   

   Of course, this double-whammy problem will bite you primarily if your initial-pattern is a subset of the new-pattern

3. Only after you've tested for these two things should you consider opening up the spigot by resetting $(ls <filename>) to $(ls *.<file-extension>)

#!/bin/bash

for i in $( ls *.html ); do
   cp $i $i.bak
   sed "s/\"http:\/\/indrayam.com\"/\"http:\/\/indrayam.com\/it\/\"/g" $i > $i.new
   mv -f $i.new $i
done

Perl One-liner:

If you like Perl, here's a really, really neat one-liner:

(unix prompt)>perl -i.bak -p -e 's#"http://indrayam\.com"#"http://indrayam\.com/it/"#ig' *.html

If you want to peruse through content a few levels deep, try this:

(unix prompt)>perl -i.bak -p -e 's#"http://indrayam\.com"#"http://indrayam\.com/it/"#ig' {.,*,*/*,*/*/*}/*.html

For more information, check out this site Thanks to MS (see comments below) for pointing this out.

Here's what I intend to do:

1. Install the various MySQL instances from source so that they can happily co-exist in their logically and mutually exclusive world
2. Facilitate easy stopping and starting of the services
3. Set up the various instances in a way that makes installing newer versions alongside the others is a trivial task

The directory structure that I prefer is as follows:

Installation file/folder(s): 
------------------------------
/usr/local/mysql/4.0.20
/usr/local/mysql/4.1.2-alpha
/usr/local/mysql/5.0.0-alpha

Configuration file/folder(s):
---------------------------------
/etc/mysql/4.0.20/my.cnf
/etc/mysql/4.1.2-alpha/my.cnf
/etc/mysql/5.0.0-alpha/my.cnf

Data and Log file/folder(s):
--------------------------------
/dbroot/mysql/4.0.20/data, /dbroot/mysql/4.0.20/logs, /dbroot/mysql/4.0.20/var
/dbroot/mysql/4.1.2-alpha/data, /dbroot/mysql/4.1.2-alpha/logs, /dbroot/mysql/4.1.2-alpha/var
/dbroot/mysql/5.0.0-alpha/data, /dbroot/mysql/5.0.0-alpha/logs, /dbroot/mysql/5.0.0-alpha/var

Service startup/shutdown executable(s):
----------------------------------------------
/etc/rc.d/init.d/mysql4
/etc/rc.d/init.d/mysql41
/etc/rc.d/init.d/mysql5

Before we start with the usual steps of compiling and installing MySQL, let's first do a few pre-installation steps:

1. Create a /downloads folder and download the 3 binaries: 
   mysql-4.0.20.tar.gz
   mysql-4.1.2-alpha.tar.gz
   mysql-5.0.0-alpha.tar.gz

2. Untar/Unzip it using the following commands:
   (prompt)>tar -xvzf mysql-x.x.x.tar.gz
   This step should create 3 seperate folders in /downloads for the 3 different binaries

3. Download and save customized 'configure' scripts in the path shown below:
   /downloads/mysql-4.0.20/mysql-configure
   /downloads/mysql-4.1.2-alpha/mysql-configure
   /downloads/mysql-5.0.0-alpha/mysql-configure

3. Create a unix account called mysql:
   (root-prompt)>useradd -s /sbin/nologin -r -d /dev/null mysql

   Note:
   ------
   I tend to use the same unix id for all 3 MySQL instances.

4. Setup the following folders:
   (root-prompt)>mkdir -p /etc/mysql/4.0.20  
   (root-prompt)>mkdir -p /etc/mysql/4.1.2-alpha
   (root-prompt)>mkdir -p /etc/mysql/5.0.0-alpha

5. Download and save the service startup/shutdown files in the path shown below:
   /etc/rc.d/init.d/mysql4
   /etc/rc.d/init.d/mysql41
   /etc/rc.d/init.d/mysql5

6. Set up the services:
   (root-prompt)>chkconfig --level 345 mysql4 on
   (root-prompt)>chkconfig --level 345 mysql41 on
   (root-prompt)>chkconfig --level 345 mysql5 on

7. Download and save mysql configuration files in the path shown below:
   /etc/mysql/4.0.20/my.cnf
   /etc/mysql/4.1.2-alpha/my.cnf
   /etc/mysql/5.0.0-alpha/my.cnf

Here's a quick look at the steps (using mysql-4.0.20.tar.gz as an example). You will repeat the same steps for 4.1.2-alpha and 5.0.0-alpha. Just replace 4.0.20 with 4.1.2-alpha or 5.0.0-alpha in the steps outlined below:

1. (prompt)>wget http://mysql.mirrors.pair.com/Downloads/MySQL-4.0/mysql-4.0.20.tar.gz
2. (prompt)>cd mysql-4.0.20
3. (prompt)>./mysql-configure
4. (prompt)>make
5. (root-prompt)>make install
6. (root-prompt)>scripts/mysql_install_db
7. (root-prompt)>cd /db/mysql/4.0.20/data
8. (root-prompt)>chown -R mysql.mysql *
9. (root-prompt)>service mysql4 start

    Note:
    ------
    Replace "mysql4" with "mysql41" or "mysql5" depending upon whether you're attempting 
    to start MySQL version 4.1.2-alpha or 5.0.0-alpha instance

10. (prompt)>/usr/local/mysql/4.0.20/bin/mysqladmin -u root password "<root-password>"
11. If you would like to enable access to root account of your MySQL from other hosts, 
    run the following:
    (prompt)>/usr/local/mysql/4.0.20/bin/mysql -u root -p
    (mysql)>use mysql;
    (mysql)>GRANT ALL ON *.* TO root@"%" IDENTIFIED BY "<root-password>";
    (mysql)>exit;

    Security Note:
    ----------------
    You might want to enable root to access the MySQL instance from 
    'a' host and not 'any' host (%)
12. To confirm that things actually did work as per plan, you can run the ps -aux command 
    and look for mysql entries. You can also check the /dbroot/mysql/4.0.20/logs/error.log file 
    for startup messages.

After repeating the steps for MySQL 4.1.2-alpha and MySQL-5.0.0-alpha, if you're lucky and patient, you should have all three MySQL versions (and the goodies that come with it) ready to serve you

alias wgrep='find . -type f -print|xargs grep -i $1'

(bash-prompt)>wgrep test

(bash-prompt)>wgrep <folder-name> <pattern-name>

In Unix, thanks to 'find' and 'xargs' this thing is fairly simple in Unix:

Assuming name of the folder is 'cvsapp', the command would look something like:

(unix prompt)>find /foldername | xargs rm -r

In Windows, it's not too bad either:

Needless to say, each of the approaches can be tweaked for your specific needs (which might have nothing to do with CVS folders). Here's an exercise for you (and me) and maybe I will talk about it my next HOWTO assignment:

What if you wanted to search for all files or folders starting (or ending) with 'evil' and wanted to trash those?