Fix the encoding of the Linux in text mode

You may found that some Linux text programs cannot work with UTF-8 (unicode) encoding. For example Midnight Commander (mc) has a lot of problems. Also text configurations tools in Debian have a lot of problems with unicode.

I found that we can change the unicode to en.US ISO to solve these problems by running this command:

dpkg-reconfigure locales

Note in batch files

There is a tricky difference between commands run in console and commands reside in a batch file. The typical example is the variable definitions. Compare these 2 cases:

Correct in console: for %i in (*.exe, *.dll) do cmd.exe %i
Correct in batch file: for %%i in (*.exe, *.dll) do cmd.exe %%i

Batch file needs double %.
Special thanks to TechRepublic.

Removing Mailman Archives

The mailman web interface is so unfriendly and unable to do lots of works. For example you can't edit the email archives. This is a great reference to overcome this problem:
http://wiki.list.org/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=4030681
Please note that this command may not work for you:

  cd ~mailman

Instead, you should go to '/var/lib/mailman/bin' directory. Also note that, 'arch' is a utility offered by mailman not your Linux distro. So you must enter ./arch instead of arch alone.

Avoiding to remove /tmp automatically

In my Debian etch server, the /tmp was deleting after each restart. I was looking for some schedule task or some trojan/rootkit in the kernel that can delete /tmp without any authorizing.

At last I found /etc/default/rcS which has some jobs scheduled after each system boot up. According to its man page:
rcS - variables that affect the behavior of boot scripts

This file had some entry about TMPTIME:
On boot the files in /tmp will be deleted if their modification time is more than TMPTIME days ago. A value of 0 means that files are removed regardless of age. If you don't want the system to clean /tmp then set TMPTIME to a negative value (e.g., -1) or to the word infinite.

I change my TMPTIME to -1 and everything became natural :D
Thanks to this mailing list.

WSUS Logs on Clients

I installed WSUS 3 on Windows 2003 SP2 and configured my Windows XP Professional SP3 clients to use it to update. (I defined this in Group Policy of windows)

But after that I need a way to test whether it works or not. At last I found a log file located at: %Windir%\WindowsUpdate.log

This file contains a lot of useful information about the client and server interaction. The sample log is here:


+++++++++++ PT: Synchronizing server updates +++++++++++
+ ServiceId = {SomeID}, Server URL = http://MyServer/ClientWebService/client.asmx
WARNING: Cached cookie has expired or new PID is available
Initializing simple targeting cookie, clientId = SomeID, target group = , DNS name = MyPC
Server URL = http://MyServer/SimpleAuthWebService/SimpleAuth.asmx
* Added update {11D06C29-6F79-4843-AF63-02811FF01887}.100 to search result
* Added update {AE9F992A-D0A6-44FF-BFC2-CB87ACCF701B}.100 to search result
* Added update {D1F84C75-F914-4FC7-94D5-446DC7987844}.102 to search result
* Added update {79AE03DF-D6EB-4DE2-B59F-37E963D7A69E}.100 to search result
* Added update {E174AF91-A808-44CE-8936-B425F4581B03}.100 to search result
* Added update {26DA5716-5999-4AB2-8806-800F7AF93C93}.107 to search result
* Added update {D3AC165E-D7C4-4BDF-83F0-E249ECBE873B}.104 to search result
* Added update {2BE6143C-5547-4FEE-AFC6-37CD3D2D585D}.101 to search result
* Added update {ED0D8850-60F4-48FC-BD76-49EED8A6F341}.106 to search result
* Added update {278BB66C-CE54-40FB-A5A2-AE55804C3917}.106 to search result
* Added update {70D41FF9-0796-4EB6-A699-61C04CB395FE}.100 to search result
* Added update {27D0A4B7-77C3-48A9-90D3-F67368BB0E37}.107 to search result
* Added update {EDABB0FE-1B6A-478B-806B-7FFFD044B2EE}.100 to search result
* Added update {44F3BFC5-1C64-41E2-839D-A91407634BAB}.101 to search result
* Added update {D5EADB3B-4FD7-4087-8B9D-4ACB2B41210E}.109 to search result
* Found 15 updates and 46 categories in search; evaluated appl. rules of 545 out of 776 deployed entities
*********
** END ** Agent: Finding updates [CallerId = AutomaticUpdates]
*************

Thanks to WSUS wiki for its good article.

Making ISO Images in Linux

Traditionally I used UltraISO to make my ISO images in Windows. As a linux power user, I needed a way to directly making my ISO images in it. Hopefully linux has a good tool called: mkisofs
My system hadn't it so I needed to install it first:

MyServer:~# aptitude install mkisofs

After that I typed this command to make an ISO file:

mkisofs -o /tmp/cd.iso /tmp/directory/

But it has a weak point! mkisofs, by default doesn't go deeply in directories. So you must force it to do by "-D" switch:

mkisofs -D -o /tmp/cd.iso /tmp/directory/

Also we can make an ISO image directly from CD, DVD or our SCSI optical drive:

dd if=/dev/dvd of=dvd.iso # for dvd
dd if=/dev/cdrom of=cd.iso # for cdrom
dd if=/dev/scd0 of=cd.iso # if cdrom is scsi

That's it :D. Thanks to Scott Granneman for his guide.

Administrating Mailman from Shell

Some useful commands for administrating mailman from shell:

1. add_members -> Add members to a list from the command line.
2. check_db -> Check the integrity of a list's database file
3. check_perms -> Check permissions of Mailman's files
4. clone_member -> Clone a Mailman subscriber address
5. config_list -> Configure a Mailman list from a text file description
6. find_member -> Find all Mailman lists that a member's address is on
7. list_admins -> List all the owners of a Mailman mailing list.
8. list_lists -> List all Mailman mailing lists on this host
9. list_members -> List all the members of a Mailman list
10. mmarch -> Rebuild a Mailman list's archive.
11. mmsitepass -> Set the Mailman site password, prompting from the terminal.
12. newlist -> Create a new, unpopulated mailing list.
13. rmlist -> Remove the components of a mailing list with impunity - beware!
14. remove_members -> Remove members from a list.
15. sync_members -> Synchronize a mailing list's membership with a flat file.
16. withlist -> General framework for interacting with a mailing list object.