Author Archives: bolt

irssi auto-connect and auto-identify

There are loads of irssi scripts which do this, but the truth is irssi actually supports these things very well out of the box. Here’s how. Start up irssi, then: /connect irc.freenode.net /nick MyIRCNick /SERVER ADD -auto -network freenode irc.freenode.net 6667 <password> (you may have to shutdown and restart irssi at this point for it […]

Screen size calculator

Today I found out I want to replace one of my 20″ 4:3 LCD screens with a widescreen, to watch movies on a bigger surface. However, I didn’t want to reduce my vertical screen space. What I mean is that a 20″ widescreen is, necessarily, shorter vertically than my 4:3 screen, meaning I get to […]

How to move a mysql database from one box to another

Simple reference, moving a mysql database: mysqldump -h <oldhostip/name> -u username -p[<password>] <databasename> > <dumpfilename>.sql mysql -u<username> -p[<password>] < <dumpfilename>.sql Note: The lack of spaces in some places of the commands. They are intended. Note: Specifying the password after -p is []’d, which means it’s optional. Note: If you do enter a password on the […]

CIFS VFS No response for cmd n mid…

On a few systems, I’ve noticed CIFS mounts have a tendency to lock up the system when transferring large files, or a shitload of small ones in quick succession. When this happens, the system may or may not completely lock up, and lines like these will appear in your syslog: Aug 1 22:58:16 dreadnought kernel: […]

Hardware clock fix for Debian on Mac Mini

On my Mac Mini, the hardware clock was seriously screwed up under Debian. The clock would set itself 1 hour back for each boot and cause all kinds of strange issues with cron when corrected. A small fix will remedy this situation. sudo vim /etc/init.d/hwclock.sh change ‘HWCLOCKPARS=‘ to ‘HWCLOCKPARS=”–directisa”‘ (note: that’s two dashes before directisa, […]

Disable Debian’s motd on login

Tired of seeing this? Linux ***** 2.6.18-6-686 #1 SMP Fri Jun 6 22:22:11 UTC 2008 i686 The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software; the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright. Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by applicable […]