Google Drive is extremely cheap offsite storage, and it's even possible to get extra storage for free for two years.  You can use the free account 15GB, and if you have an Android device..when you install Google Drive for the first time it will give you a link to get 115 GB for free for two years.

It’s 2016. Password authentication should be dead — or at least close to dying. But, unfortunately, it has not traversed Quagga stage yet. Using password authentication is like laundering hotel guest linens with a washboard — it’s Passé.

I. Introduction

There's an interesting discussion going on now in an Experts Exchange Group — Attachments with no extension. This reminded me of questions that come up here at EE along the lines of, "How can I tell the type of file from its contents?", as well as, "What kind of file has the XXX extension?" Writing an article to address this has been on my to-do list for a long time — the group discussion has inspired me to do it.

II. Determine the type of file from its XXX extension

Here are four links that can help in determining what an XXX file is:

http://extension.nirsoft.net/XXX
http://www.fileinfo.com/extension/XXX
http://filext.com/file-extension/XXX
http://www.solvusoft.com/en/file-extensions/file-extension-XXX

Simply replace XXX with the file extension of interest. For example,

http://extension.nirsoft.net/TIFF
http://www.fileinfo.com/extension/AHK
http://filext.com/file-extension/xhtml
http://www.solvusoft.com/en/file-extensions/file-extension-opd

III. Determine the type of file from its contents

Now to the trickier question! An excellent file identifier application called TrID analyzes the contents of a file in an attempt to figure out what type of file it is. It comes in both a command line interface (CLI) version (for Windows and Linux) and a Graphical User Interface (GUI) version (Windows only) called TrIDNet…

Why snapshot as backup-strategy?

When working with large to huge databases it is critical to take a backup of the database for disaster recovery and data failures that application either cannot recover or regenerate corrected data. For a database of such size it is vital that backup time is as short as possible to minimize application downtime/disruption due to backups. Regular backups can take several hours or more to complete for very large to huge databases.
The fastest way today to take a database backup is using the snapshot technology (sometimes called FlashCopy) either on a filesystem level or if the database has such technology implemented.

ZFS filesystem and snapshots

ZFS uses copy-on-write transactional object model allowing old data to be retained as new data is written and allowing snapshot versions of the filesystem to be maintained.
Here I will demonstrate how you can use the Solaris zfs filesystem (ZFS on FUSE) to backup MySQL/MariaDB database in as short time as possible.

Preparing the VM

For this demonstration I'm using Centos 6.5 64 bit with zfs-fuse in a VirtualBox VM with 1 Core (2.3 MHz AMD A10 ) and 1GB RAM, even though recommended minimum for zfs-fuse is 2 GB.
The VM disks (VDI format) are as follows

• 20 GB disk with the Centos 6.5 system installed.
• Three empty 5 GB disks that will be under the zfs filesystem.  

First thing is to make sure the SELINUX is disabled and reboot the VM after editing the config file as root :

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The purpose of this article is to show how we can create Linux Mint virtual machine using Oracle Virtual Box. To install Linux Mint we have to download the ISO file from its website i.e. http://www.linuxmint.com. Once you open the link you will see a download option at the right side of the page, go to the download page from the menu :

You can download 32 bit or 63 bit image and I am using 32 bit as my system is with 32 bit OS . I have downloaded and kept it on my specific directory where I can map to my Virtual Box while installing it.
Now open the VMBox and click on New to create virtual machine and map the ISO image to proceed with installing.  Once you set up all the necessary settings on memory space and disk space you will see the screen like below and then you can click on start button to start the installation.

Follow below steps shown with screen shot to start the virtual machine creation: 
Cick on New and proceed next :
Give any name to the virtual machine and select the type and version , click Next:
 
Select the memory size you want the VM to have -  I am using 1GB of RAM i.e. 1024 MB approximately. 


Click on Create button.
Click Next. 

I am trying all default setting for installing the OS but you can choose as per your need. 
Here we can set the size of the virtual hard drive . Once filled click on Create button. 

 Now set the ISO file which was downloaded from Linux Mint website. 
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In this article, I'll explain how to setup a Plex Media Server on a Redhat (Centos) 7 based NAS with screenshots to help those looking for assistance.
 

What is Plex?

If you aren't familiar with Plex, it’s a DLNA media server that offers the ability to access your own music, photos, and video. In addition, it also gives you the ability to access these on any of your devices, including PC, Playstation, Xbox, Android phone and tablet, iPhone, iPad, Windows Phone, Chromecast, Roku / Now TV, and so on. Wherever you are, whether that be at home, work, a friends house, or even on a plane (watch your data costs with this one tough, as even a transcoded video will gobble GB's) it will allow access. 

In addition to your media, the service offers the ability to aggregate your own media with artwork, recomendations, and playlists from the web or friends. Essentially it’s a Spotify+Flickr for your content. So, if you’ve got many GB’s of media and are after a handy tool to order and access it, not to mention eliminating the need to physically swap CD’s (just define a few play lists first and control the playback from a phone), this is the perfect tool to help you do so.

In addition to covering the basics, this crib sheet will help you access and map any additional content you have stored in OS X Time Machine sparse bundles, Microsoft .vhd, VMware .vmdk and Oracle .vdi or .iso disk image files on …

Linux containers are abbreviated as LXC. They are the forms of lightweight operating system level virtualization for computers that are running Linux. Containers do not provide the virtual machine but provide a virtual environment where the containers share the same operating system as the host.

This is accomplished with some key features:

1. Chroot
2. Namespaces
3. Cgroups

These features create an environment that allowd the running of multiple containers concurrently on the same host. The idea behind a container is to implement a technology that would enable separate processes to run together without the requirement of any other operating system or hypervisor applications. Containers share the same kernel with anything else that is running on it, but they can have constraints on the usage of resources like CPU, memory, hard drive or I/O. This Linux feature has been out in the version 2.6.24 of the operating system.

Concept behind the Implementation of Linux Containers

Containers are considered a better alternative to the traditional hypervisors like ESXi, Xen and so on. The hypervisor is an emulated hardware for the virtual machine and on the top of these virtual machines. Users used to have memory and applications. With the help of a hypervisor, you can have multiple virtual machines on a physical server. It is effectively like virtualizing a system at the hardware level.

If you want to have multiple …

_{From Coral's  "So You Want To Play With Computers" Series}

A bit of background first, so this story will make a little sense.

One day, probably because he needed a good laugh, Finagle hooked me up with a church to upgrade/run their Media Booth. {Yeah, I know. I've been to "Hell and back" so many times, I already have my spot picked out and homesteaded}.
Anyhow, getting time to work on their system is hard to do, so I've been dual booting to a clone of their hard drive, so I can check the music, fix/add lyrics, and set up the music schedules, at my place. Then copy the schedules for a couple of weeks to a USB stick to take in with me, and copy to their computer.
But lately they have been throwing new music at me, and booting back and forth between Vista (nic is blocked) and W7, to go online to chase down lyrics, is getting to be a pita.

So I thought I would move Vista to a VM, then I could just toggle between them. Which brings me to what follows:

After firing up my Googlefu, and doing some research, I had a few points I wanted clarified, so I posted a Q on EE, which Finagle promptly kept the VM Gurus from posting in. Looks like I'm on my own.
That's alright. I can do this. After all, I'm a self taught computer geek. I've been mucking with computers for over 25 years. And I recently took a ComTIA  A+  Cram Course, and set the new high A+ test score for that class. As a bonus, it kind of irritated the college boys …

If you are at *nix system, whether you are System administrator, common user, programmer or whoever; you will surely need to find file using different criteria. For that *nix system has very powerful and efficient command called “find”.

The find command is a powerful *nix utility that allows the user to find files located in the file system through various criteria such as the file name, owner, group, size, inodes, when file was last accessed, when the file status was last changed, the file's permissions, even using regular expression pattern etc.

I will try to cover maximum usage of commands that you are gonna need for any such operations. I hope after reading those examples one will easily use find command for one's problem.

Syntax for find command:
 
      

find where-to-look criteria what-to-do 

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Instead of explaining each options and then showing you its uses with examples, better to see the use of all options while going through different examples based on various requirements.

Examples
1.       Find a file "alien.coders" that exists somewhere in the file system
      

$ find / -name alien.coders -print 

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If the file is found the path to the file will be printed as output. On most platforms the -print is optional, however, on some *NIX systems nothing will be printed without using print. If you don’t provide any arguments, find searches recursively through all the directories.

2.Find a file without searching network or mounted file systems
       

$ find / -name alien.coders -print -xdev 

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When you need to create an image of your computer, you usually have to store the image somewhere. Where did you leave that boot cd with your favorite image software and where to store the image? Store on NAS device, external USB device or DVD? You can use one device for both!

SSH (Secure Shell) - Tips and Tricks

As you all know SSH(Secure Shell) is a network protocol, which we use to access/transfer files securely between two networked devices. SSH was actually designed as a replacement for insecure protocols that sends information as plain text through the network. While using SSH, the entire session, including password transmission, is encrypted. Using SSH, we can access other systems remotely, execute commands, transfer/move files etc. SSH uses two major protocols. They are SSH1 or SSH-1 and SSH2 or SSH-2. Comparing both protocols, SSH-2 is more secure. SSH is available for Windows, Unix, Macintosh etc. In short SSH, is a powerful tool, and there are lots of possibilities. Here are some awesome tips and tricks on how to use SSH for daily administration duties.

Before we start let me brief some basic things regarding SSH.

To access a remote system using SSH, we need the following details.

1.A SSH client
2.Remote servername/IP
3.SSH Port number (By default SSH use port number as 22)
4.Username in remote server
5.Password of the user

If you are using a Unix/Linux machine, you can use Terminal as SSH client. Execute the following command in terminal section to access the remote machine using SSH.

ssh username@remoteservername/ip

eg:

ssh root@10.10.10.111

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This will prompt for password. Enter the password and you are in. For remote servers having custom ssh port, you need to mention the port number in the command line.

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