Tag Archives: bash

Bash script to backup my configs (dotfiles)

I needed some script to take care of my config files and put them in a single directory. So here it is.

Search and remove duplicate files

Here a small piece of code which will search for the duplicates in the path you supply. It will generate a new file which contains the commands for deleting those duplicates.
Make sure you double check the resulting file!
The script requires that you have fdupes installed.
Install it in Ubuntu/Debian by running the following command in your terminal:

Fix Google Earth 5.0 user interface font on Linux

I installed Google Earth 5.0 and the ugly UI font from the beta is still here.
Based on the comments from Google Earth Help page from here I’ve created the following script wich will fix the user interface font issue.

View Config Files Without Comments

Use this grep invocation to trim comments out of config files. Comments are great but can get in your way if you just want to see the currently running configuration. I’ve found files hundreds of lines long which had fewer than ten active configuration lines.
It’s really hard to get an overview of what’s going on when you have to wade through hundreds of lines of comments.

The regex ^[^#] matches the first character of any line, as long as that character that is not a #. Because blank lines don’t have a first character they’re not matched either, resulting in a nice compact output of just the active configuration lines.

Random crash of the X server in Jaunty

I experienced a lot of random X server crashes using the proprietary driver for the NVIDIA graphic card on my Thinkpad T61 running Ubuntu 9.04 x86 with Compiz activated.
I managed to fix the problem by installing the lastest NVIDIA driver. I wrote a little script to automate the process and save time. I recommend you to run this in command line mode. Here it is:

Auto update for Debian/Ubuntu

I use the following script to automatically update my Ubuntu box.
I don’t recommend using this on your production servers!

Note that there are some dangers regarding automatic updates. You can read more about it here.

My custom bash prompt (PS1)

Pimp out Linux / UNIX shell prompt!
You can find a nice guide here, and a nice collection here.
Here is mine:

Have fun!

Sample firewall script for Ubuntu

I just thought that you might be interested in a small script you can use in Hardy Heron.

It uses the new UFW (Uncomplicated firewall) introduced in this new Ubuntu distro.

The script is well commented, so everything is easy to understand.

Here is the script:

You can modify it by adding/removing rules accordingly.

Backup your MySQL databases automatically with AutoMySQLBackup

If you are a MySQL user and you want to have a disaster recovery solution, or even as a simple backup, you can write small shell scripts based on mysqldump tool.

For this, you need AutoMySQLBackup. It doesn’t have any real requirements (mysqldump of course is needed – in any mysql client package – and gzip or bzip2 to compress the resulting file) and has all the features I was looking for in such a script.

AutoMySQLBackup has all the features I needed: it can backup a single database, multiple databases, or all the databases on the server; each database is saved in a separate file that can be compressed (with gzip or bzip2); it will rotate the backups and not keep them filling your hard drive (as normal in the daily backup you will have only the last 7 days of backups, the weekly if enabled will have one for each week, etc.). It has also some other features (check the project homepage for full details), that I am not using myself (like email logs for example), but other peoples might find interesting.

All you have to do is to modify a few things:

# Username to access the MySQL server e.g. dbuser
USERNAME=dbuser
# Username to access the MySQL server e.g. password
PASSWORD=password
# Host name (or IP address) of MySQL server e.g localhost
DBHOST=localhost
# List of DBNAMES for Daily/Weekly Backup e.g. "DB1 DB2 DB3"
DBNAMES="all"
# Backup directory location e.g /backups
BACKUPDIR="/var/backup/mysql"
# Mail setup
MAILCONTENT="quiet"

You can run the script manually but you will want to enable it in cron
and run daily.

HOWTO make DVD and CD .iso images using dd or cat in Linux

Please note that making security backups of your DVD/CD:s may be illegal in your country.

for the purpose of making these backups, the programs you need are standard, *NIX programs, and it is a safe bet that you wont need to install anything.
You may also need to have root permissions in able for you to access the DVD or CD devices.

Heres how to back up the device:

with cat:

with dd:

replace /dev/dvd0 with what ever device it is corresponding with your CD/DVD rom player. If you’re unsure, you might find that $ cat /etc/fstab might provide you some useful information.

The two commands above copies the CD rom or DVD to the home folder. Making a image file with the iso 9660 or the Universal Disk Format file system. Please note that neither cat nor dd cares about file system. Dd copies blocks, and cat prints a file to stdout.

I have heard that cat does not copy the mbr record of the devices copied with it, but I know that dd does.

Note that if you’ve made the image file as the root user, you might have to chmod the file, and it might also be nice to change the files ownership

how to loopback mount the .iso file:

replace iso9660 with udp if your mounting a dvd image.

and how to umount it:

or

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