If you spend much time at all coding or scripting you realize that you often do some of the same things over and over. That’s where functions and libraries come in. Having a library of commonly used functions handy helps speedup the coding process quite a bit. Usually I prefer to use the best tool for the job. That means using Perl, PHP, C, C++, BASH, or any other language suited for the task. However, lately I’ve been using BASH more than usual. Primarily because it’s pretty much guaranteed to be on just about ever, non Windows, system that I touch. Unfortunately, while I have an...

Often I find that I am needing to determine a) if an O/S install is 32bit or 64bit and b) if the CPU will support 64bit. I run into a lot of Linux boxes that have 64bit CPUs but the 32bit version of the distribution was installed. Here are a few quick ways to tell. For the O/S: The architecture should be listed as x86_64 for 64bit or i686 for 32bit. Using uname (-m or -p): 64bit $ uname -m x86_64 $ uname -p x86_64 32bit $ uname -m i686 $ uname -p i686 or using lscpu: 64bit $ lscpu | grep -i arch Architecture: x86_64 32bit $ lscpu | grep -i arch Architecture: i686 or using getconf: 64bit $ getconf...

Well, in the name of security, it seems Java 7 has broken a whole lot of apps. I will not bother with the pros and cons of this, but will simply address how to get things working again. Java 7, by default, blocks “untrusted” and “self-signed” applications. In addition, it is 64 bit and will not work with Chrome on Macs, which is 32 bit. Trying to run such an app results in this annoying dialog: There are a couple ways around this. The most simple is to use the Java Security Preferences to lower the Security Level. This can be done by: Select “System...

Just recently I finally tired of putting up with my old Thinkpad. It was just too slow. Well, technically I have three of them. One runs Windows 7, one runs Ubunutu and one is dual boot Windows 8 and Ubuntu. The problem is that on the Windows side they just haven’t been reliable for running Word, Excel, and Project. I’d be fine at home. I’d fire up Windows, make sure there were no pending updates to drag me down and make sure that SugarSync and Dropbox were synced in advance. But it never failed I’d get into a meeting and it would often take 15-20 minutes to get booted, loaded,...

With RPMForge you have access to over 5,000 additional packages, including  wine, vlc, mplayer, xmms-mp3, and other popular media tools. It is not part of CentOS but is designed to work with it. Installing RPMForge: Download the Package Install the GPG Key Verify the Package Install the Package Enjoy I generally prefer to work out of an “install” folder, it makes it easier for me to cleanup my mess and/or retain stuff that I install for later use elsewhere. $ mkdir install $ cd install/ $ wget http://pkgs.repoforge.org/rpmforge-release/rpmforge-release-0.5.3-1.el5.rf.x86_64.rpm $ sudo rpm...

When digging an old computer out from under a desk, for the simple purpose of playing around with a new O/S, make sure you are not trying to boot a 64-bit O/S on a 32-bit computer… before you get too involved in troubleshooting things.