Yep, I made it.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Digital media is now the epitome of Information Technology since it is possible to store millions of data into a compact digital media. And people like me who consistently gather information from the Internet, storage space has become somewhat difficult to maintain. There is no (disk) space too large for me. That is why making data backups to a separate media like CD’s and DVD’s are next to cleanliness, which is next to godliness. Well, you get the point.

But digital media are not meant to stay forever. We all know that. Despite consistent manufacturer claims that their DVD’s are meant to last a lifetime, they are probably talking about the physical media, not the data that it carries. I have a lot of discs that looks like it is in good working condition, but is totally unreadable by the optical drive. God knows what data is inside since I have a bad habit of not labeling the discs properly.

So what if you have an important data to recover from a defective CD or DVD? I would have probably cried myself to sleep and pray that I still have my job the next morning. But some people find ways and information about data recovery but having your data extracted by someone else for you is expensive, not to mention unsafe especially if the data is confidential.

The safest and most convenient way is still having a data recovery software to get you through. One software that helps people recover their data from a damaged or defective DVD’s and CD’s is Recover Disc, which runs under Microsoft Windows. It supports CD and DVD media with ISO or UDF file systems, even discs with data from digital camcorders.

The software is available for download from the official website and evaluation period is 30 days.

Popularity: 7% [?]

If you ever needed to know which universal remote control suits you best, you would have asked your best friend, your spouse, even your kids. But what if none of the people you know can give advice?

Here comes Gadget Advisor. This new website, which I found while lurking the net for good websites that are worth my time, sports a great layout and focuses on product releases and gadget reviews. Let us say that you are wondering which network media player is best value for your money, Gadget Advisor has a nifty search bar to help you find your review in a snap. Not only gadgets are being featured, even business IT solutions like online backup services are reviewed and recommended. But only the notable stuff are honored so you are sure that you are reading pages and pages of reviews of a junk device. No one wants to flip pages and pages only to find out that they are reading a review of a gadget not even worth reviewing!

The site is full of fresh news so it is worthy of your time. Just read one review and you will know that you are reading quality review.

Popularity: 8% [?]

Hey guys!

Finally, I found time to update this lovely blog of mine. And luckily, I have one super cool simple script to share. This script will help a lot of system administrators in adding user accounts, very useful if you have about a hundred servers to login to and execute useradd and passwd again and again. This is a bash script, so no need to install packages and easy to understand.

Here goes the code.


#!/bin/bash

for USER in $(cat /tmp/users.txt) do
$(useradd $USER)
###Remove the space between 8 and )
PASSWORD=$(openssl rand -base64 8 )
###passwd [double dash] stdin
echo $PASSWORD | $(passwd –stdin $USER)
echo “$USER $PASSWORD” | mail -s “Your Account Info” $USER@company.com
sleep 3
done

Here is a quick summary of the code per line:

for USER in $(cat /tmp/users.txt) do
This line begins the for loop and /tmp/users.txt should be a text file containing the list of usernames to be added one username per line. The value of $USER

$(useradd $USER)
This line will begin by executing the command useradd. If the script fails at this point because the username already exists, it will proceed with changing the password of the username.

###Remove the space between 8 and )
###passwd [double dash] stdin
PASSWORD=$(openssl rand -base64 8 )
echo $PASSWORD | $(passwd --stdin $USER)
This line generates an 8-byte random password using openssl and pipes it to command passwd using –stdin option so the generated password can be passed.

echo “$USER $PASSWORD” | mail -s “Your Account Info” $USER@company.com
This line sends an email to the user containing the username and password, assuming that the email address is the same as the username.

This script can be further enhanced (imagination is limitless!) and feel free to share your script here.

Popularity: 15% [?]

It’s been a very busy month for me. I have two projects at work involving two top 10 sites of our company and it was very hectic. But, I am so glad that the projects are now over, both successful.

It may seem that I will have more time to blog but unfortunately, I will be taking a three-week course of trainings in preparation for the Red Hat Certified Engineer (RHCE) Certification Exam. I may post tips here from time to time to help aspiring Linux users but I cannot promise that it will be as it is written in the training manuals. Contents of training manuals are copyrighted and being a Linux user, we all know better what copyrighted means

Anyway, wish me luck in my training and exams. I need all the luck I can get

Popularity: 10% [?]