From least to most global:

1. Add the option on the command line:

ssh -o ServerAliveInterval=10 keepsdroppingme.com

2. Add the option to your personal ssh config by creating/editing ~/.ssh/config:

# This is ~/.ssh/config
# For all hosts
ServerAliveInterval 10
# For a selection of hosts
Host keepsdroppingme.com alsokeepsdroppingme.com
  ServerAliveInterval 10

3. Add the option to the system-wide ssh config by editing /etc/ssh_config. (Syntax the same as above.)

Also because of read/write cycles are high i couldn’t imagine this would be good for my flash drive HDD and therefore decided to move it!

Stop MySQL

/etc/init.d/mysql stop

Move existing data directory (which is located in /var/lib/mysql) to new dir /usr/new_datadir

mv /var/lib/mysql /usr/new_datadir

Create symlink from new dir to old one

ln -s /usr/new_datadir /var/lib/mysql

Don’t change /etc/mysql/my.cnf

Ubuntu uses some security software called AppArmor that specifies the areas of your filesystem applications are allowed to access. Unless you modify the AppArmor profile for MySQL, you’ll never be able to restart MySQL with the new datadir location.

In the terminal, enter the command

vim /etc/apparmor.d/usr.sbin.mysqld

Duplicate the lines beginning with /var/lib/mysql and replace duplicated strings with /usr/new_datadir

In my case it was:

.........

/var/lib/mysql/ r,

/var/lib/mysql/** rwk,

#

/usr/new_datadir r,

/usr/new_datadir** rwk,

........

Restart the AppArmor profiles

/etc/init.d/apparmor restart

Restart MySQL

/etc/init.d/mysql restart

MySQL should now start without any errors, have fun!

The first method uses the cURL utility, which is basically a command-line utility for retrieving data using URL syntax. In Ubuntu or Debian, you can install cURL from the repositories using the command:

sudo apt-get install curl

After installing cURL, just run this command to get your external IP address:

curl ifconfig.me/ip

You can replace ifconfig.me with other service hostnames/URLs, such as:
whatismyip.org
icanhazip.com
tnx.nl/ip
myip.dnsomatic.com
ip.appspot.com
checkip.dyndns.org:8245
whatismyip.com
jsonip.com

The second method is really a variation on the one above and uses the wget command. You can use the same hostnames/URLs as above with this command:

wget -qO- ifconfig.me/ip

Have fun! And let me know your tips for this in the comments.

I have recently been migrating all of my browsing, email and communications etc through the Tor Network.

One of the cool features of the onion router is the ability to setup what is referred to as a hidden service. This is just what it sounds like, a domain (16characters.onion) randomly generated and completely anonymous through the Tor network can be configured to point to a local service port. (Apache, SSH, SMTP etc)

To do this on my Ubuntu server all i had to do was the following…

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install tor

Now that tor is installed we can create the hidden_service folder.

sudo mkdir /var/lib/tor/hidden_service
sudo chown debian-tor:debian-tor /var/lib/tor/hidden_service

This folder is where the private_key and hostname files will be created and stored.

We now want to add our hidden_service to our torrc file (tor config file).

sudo nano /etc/tor/torrc

And un-comment the following lines (remove the # from the start of each line)

HiddenServiceDir /var/lib/tor/hidden_service/
HiddenServicePort 80 127.0.0.1:80

The above two lines tell tor where to store the files as mentioned above and also what service you want to map to. In my case port 80 (Apache Web Server) and it is running on the local server (127.0.0.1)

CTRL+X to quit nano and hit Y to save the file.

Now we want to reboot the tor service so it can pick up the new settings and generate our hostname.

sudo /etc/init.d/tor restart

Tor will restart and the private_key and hostname files will be generated in the folder as above. You can now open your hostname folder to retrieve your 16character.onion domain name and put it to good use.

I was looking for a way to backup my wallet in case i need to format my machine or things go south.

First quit the Bitcoin application and then move the wallet.dat file from the Bitcoin folder located at “~/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin” and put it in your Dropbox folder as below.

mkdir -p ~/Dropbox/Bitcoin
mv ~/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin/wallet.dat ~/Dropbox/Bitcoin

Secondly i now needed to create a link from the location that the Bitcoin application looks at to where the wallet file now resides.

ln -s ~/Dropbox/Bitcoin/wallet.dat ~/Library/Application Support/Bitcoin/wallet.dat

Now start the Bitcoin application and your address’s should all be there and correct.

Acquire::Languages "none";

You may also need to remove existing translation files in /var/lib/apt/lists/
I personally just empty the lists folder and do an apt-get update

Even if you are a geeky Terminal fan, there are always times that you start up Finder, and you need to get faster to your important files. Most of the times I am looking for something in the Documents folder/subfolders, so here is how I have set it as the default Finder directory:

Go to Finder, main menu -> Finder -> Preferences… -> General -> and select your favorite folder in “New Finder windows show” option as shown in the screenshot below.

You can also remove “All My Files” from the Finder’s sidebar as well, just right-click and remove it, or uncheck it from Preferences -> Sidebar.

defaults write com.apple.dock itunes-notifications -bool TRUE;killall Dock

Now, when you’re playing a track a small pop-up will show in your dock for a few seconds with information on the currently-playing track. If you decide you don’t like it, disabling it is simple. Back in Terminal, type:

defaults delete com.apple.dock itunes-notifications

For ways to customise the pop-up, hit up the post linked below.

One thing i wanted to do was change the default wallpaper for the DeployStudioRuntime.nbi that is created and used as a windows Pre Environment equivalent.

I achieved this by going into the DeployStudioRuntime.nbi folder located on the server at:

/Library/NetBoot/NetBootSP0

I then mounted the ‘DeployStudioRuntime.sparseimage’ file and then navigated to the bellow folder inside the image and replaced the file ‘DefaultDesktop.jpg’ with my custom wallapper.

/System/Library/CoreServices

I made sure the image i created was a high res image to make it look nicer.