Tip

While transferring a file to a remote server is pretty easily done using PuTTY's sister program, pscp, sometimes one finds oneself to be too lazy to go through the steps required. Shouldn't it be possible to simply copy and paste the (text) file into a remote editor via PuTTY? It is and it works a peach. However, it does crack the shits every now and then complaining about the length of the clipboard (paste).

Earlier today, I wanted to recover some files that I'd added to version control (for safe keeping). However, I did not want to retain the pesky .svn files that plague every directory in the tree (unlike the wonderful git). GOOG directed me to solutions that all rely on Linux tools to do the trick. The following does work admirably:

find . -type d -name '.svn' -print -exec rm -rf {} \;

Some documents contain paragraphs which are wrapped often at the 80 character mark to help with formatting and readability. This is sometimes accomplished using forced line breaks which can be quite annoying especially when you want to reverse it as I did earlier today. Rather than messing with regex and weird edge cases, use Vim which provides a lovely solution! Here it be:

The latest version of Picasa (v3.9) is armed with Google Plus support. I suppose that this is fine even though Google Plus is inherently evil (albeit not as evil as Facebook). However, the application's camera support is lacking and Google has officially stopped supporting the product under Linux. They've also pulled many of the links and even download sites and archive sites are oddly only providing v3.9. However, Google's own servers continue to (knowingly or unknowingly) host to install file for the admirable robust v3.8. Here it is:

I tried installing the Twitter module for a client and ran into the following error during authentication (oauth):

PDOException: SQLSTATE[23000]: Integrity constraint violation: 1048 Column 'twitter_uid' cannot be null: INSERT INTO {twitter_account} …

Here are some postfix queue management commands that I find myself using regularly (on an Ubuntu server):

Fresh install of Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS: After installed SSHD, I found that logging in remotely was a time-consuming process as the password prompt took ages to pop up after the username prompt. Binging about, I found that this was due to SSHD performing a reverse DNS lookup of my IP to potentially check if all is kosher. Turning this check off fixes the issue:

All those who SSH into servers ought to use GNU Screen. The following is some additional configuration that can be added to a .screenrc file in your home directory. These lines do wonders to the usability of the system:

caption string "%?%F%{= Bk}%? %C%A %D %d-%m-%Y %{= kB} %t%= %?%F%{= Bk}%:%{= wk}%? %n "
hardstatus alwayslastline
hardstatus string '%{= kG}[ %{G}%H %{g}][%= %{= kw}%?%-Lw%?%{r}(%{W}%n*%f%t%?(%u)%?%{r})%{w}%?%+Lw%?%?%= %{g}][%{B} %d/%m %{W}%c %{g}]'

Installing Aegir 2 on a fresh install of Ubuntu Saucy in a Virtualbox, I ran into the following message:

The drush command '@hostmaster pm-enable hosting_queued' could not be found.

To fix this run, sudo mysql_secure_installation and ensure that you remove anonymous users. This should do the trick.

Using Virtualbox (4.3.6) on an XP64 machine, I ran into the following error while trying to install a 64-bit version of Ubuntu:

this kernel requires an x86-64 CPU, but only detects an i686 CPU, unable to boot

This happens even if the host machine is a 64-bit machine. To fix this, reboot the box and enter the BIOS. Look around for a virtualisation setting and enable it. Save and exit the BIOS configuration screen.