Digsby Review

News, Resources, Reviews
I tried digsby after looking at a Yahoo Ad. It took me half an hour to download, install, run, test and decide to uninstall it. It is really very heavy, takes too many notification icons in the system tray and takes LOTS of resources. One of the things that I didn't like was that it shows me more details then I need, e.g. one of my acquaintances got a post on their WALL (in FaceBook), like I care? It does not function like the normal FaceBook. My experience was not too good so I dont recommend it to anyone. But if you are an enthusiast like me, go ahead and test drive it today :) Here are a couple of screenshots of Digsby
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Using CPanel/WHM API to get detail list of all accounts

How to, Linux, Resources, Tips and Tricks, Tutorials, Ubuntu
Today I had this need to get a list of WHM Accounts using one of its APIs. I have never used it before but it was really simple to use. It returns an xml file that you can manipulate using your prefered language and store it in database for reporting etc. Here is what you need to do, connect to your server using SSH and run the following command [code lang="plain"]wget http://your-server-ip:2086/xml-api/listaccts --http-user=myuser --http-password=mypass --output-document=listaccts.xml[/code] Replace your-server-ip with your WHM's ip and myuser/mypass with the actual WHM/CPanel password. The resultant xml file will be saved as "listaccts.xml" in the same directory as you ran the command in. If you feel a bit insecure running these command over SSH then visit this page on your browser and save it as an…
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Intall Apache, MySQL and PHP on Ubuntu 8.10

How to, Linux, OpenSource, Resources, Reviews, Tips and Tricks, Tutorials, Ubuntu
WARNING: Please use this method to install Apache, PHP and MySQL because its more suitable for most of your needs and has options to auto-upgrade your installation. The following method is obsolete and not recommended. After trying to install Apache, MySQL and PHP on Ubuntu 8.10 via several methods listed over the web. I opted for xampp package for linux. It is as easy as ABC Download the xampp linux package from their official website [code lang="plain"]wget http://nchc.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/xampp/xampp-linux-1.7.tar.gz[/code] (I have selected NCHC, Taiwan as the mirror to download this package, you may try another) Extract the files [code lang="plain"]sudo tar xvfz xampp-linux-1.7.tar.gz -C /opt[/code] Chmod the files to have nobody ownership [code lang="plain"]sudo chown -R nobody:root /opt/lampp/[/code] Configure xampp security [code lang="plain"]sudo /opt/lampp/lampp security[/code] Start xampp with this command [code…
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Download files from a http authenticated directory using wget

How to, Linux, OpenSource, Resources, Thoughts, Tips and Tricks, Tutorials, Ubuntu
I wanted to download something off a sub-domain using wget that I have password protected using .htaccess so the following command was NOT working [code lang="plain"]wget http://secure.asim.pk/myfiles.tar [/code] Luckily, we can pass two arguments to the same command and tell wget what the username and password is [code lang="plain"]wget http://secure.asim.pk/myfiles.tar --http-user=myuser --http-password=mypass [/code] Works Great!! If you are using Ubuntu 8.10, have not enabled root user and trying to download to a directory that has "nobody" or "root" as owner then try pre-pending it with sudo [code lang="plain"]sudo wget http://secure.asim.pk/myfiles.tar --http-user=myuser --http-password=mypass [/code]
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How to Install Webmin in Ubuntu

How to, Linux, OpenSource, Resources, Reviews, Tips and Tricks, Tutorials, Ubuntu
From the little help that I can get over the internet, I found out that you need to install the following packages to prepare the system for Webmin installation. Run the following command over SSH or Ubuntu Desktop's terminal window (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal). [code lang="plain"]sudo apt-get install perl libnet-ssleay-perl openssl libauthen-pam-perl libpam-runtime libio-pty-perl libmd5-perl [/code] (Learn how to configure SSH on Ubuntu 8.10 if you want to have a remote access to your Ubuntu box). Download the latest version of Webmin by running the following command (visit webmin download section for newer versions) [code lang="plain"]wget http://ignum.dl.sourceforge.net/project/webadmin/webmin/1.500/webmin_1.500_all.deb [/code] Downloading Webmin After the package has been downloaded, run the following command to install it [code lang="plain"]sudo dpkg -i webmin_1.500_all.deb [/code] You should now be able to login to Webmin at…
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Configuring SSH on Ubuntu 8.10

How to, Linux, OpenSource, Resources, Tips and Tricks, Tutorials, Ubuntu
The first issue that I had after installing Ubuntu 8.10 was that I could not connect to SSH on it because SSH server is not installed on Ubuntu 8.10 and it never asked me if I wanted to make a selection of what software packages I need to have installed. I guess thats why they are making a less then 25 min install promise. Here's how you can enable / configure / install SSH on your Ubuntu 8.10 Open a terminal window by selecting the Applications menu and selecting Terminal from the Accessories menu. In the terminal window enter the following command and press enter to execute it [code lang="plain"]sudo apt-get install openssh-server[/code] It will automatically download and install the SSH serve and configure it to run on port 22…
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Ubuntu 8.10, Perfect Linux distro for PHP development

Linux, OpenSource, Resources, Reviews, Thoughts, Ubuntu
I recently felt the urge to have a development testing environment on Linux (LAMP). I tried CentOS first since it is one of the leading industry standard Linux server. I was disappointed to see that CentOS does not have a 5.2.x series of PHP that I could install via "yum" (am not a very advance user so does not wanted to build it by typing long queries in SSH just to find out that I left some core thing in the first place). I did a bit of research and found out that Ubuntu could be a better choice. Luckily I had the latest version of Ubuntu already shipped via Postal Mail (aka Snail Mail) and this time the CDs DID get through the customs. For those new to Ubuntu,…
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CakePHP – link / include JavaScript files in layouts

JavaScript Libraries, OpenSource, PHP, Resources, Tips and Tricks, Tutorials
Create (or modify the) file [code lang="plain"]app/app_controller.php[/code] add this code [php] class AppController extends Controller { var $helpers = array('Html', 'Form', 'Javascript'); } [/php] CakePHP 1.2 allows you to define a reference to a Javascript file which is then added to the head section of the generated code. For this purpose the variable $scripts_for_layout has to be added to the layout: [php] <head> < ?php echo $scripts_for_layout; ?> </head> [/php] In the view you can now link to the Javascript file with: [php] $javascript->link('script.js', false); // OR you can simply use $javascript->link('script.js'); [/php]
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