Notes: How to add ssl certificate for chrome on linux

So I finally got tired of constantly having to hit 'proceed...' when I access web services at work since I know and trust the servers so I finally took the 5 minutes to google....

solution can be found in the following links:

http://stackoverflow.com/a/12478732/658115

https://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/LinuxCertManagement

The also includes notes for other platforms, but I at this time only care about the linux tip.

solution:

1. click on the lock in the url bar and under the connection tab click the 'certificate information' link. 
2. export certificate (I selected 'pkcs #7 single)
3. ensure you have nss utils installed (deb: libnss3-tools; rpm: nss-tools)
4. certutil -d sql:$HOME/.pki/nssdb -A -t "P,," -n <filepath> -i <filepath>
5. restart chrome

and viola you are done.

cmdline find of the day: tee

I'm always amazed at how much of linux/unix I've never used. I've been working with unix and linux going on 17 years now and I've never used the command 'tee' but today while googling for a trick to trap the output of the command line to a file and pipe to the screen at the same time I came across it.

For years, I've been doing the following:

command >& log_name & tail -f log_name

or occasionally I substitute 'tail' with 'less' and press 'shift+f'... but today and for now on, I'm simply using tee:

command 2>&1 | tee log_name

Tee does just that, it captures stdout (and if you use 2>&1 stderr) and pipes to a file while printing to the screen.

and to make my life even easier.... the reason I was looking for this command was so that I could easily put together a simple bash function that would trap the output from 'make' add place it in a log file with a time stamp. Here is my simple function

MAKE()
{
   make $@ 2>&1 | tee ${!#}_`date +%Y%m%d%H%M`.log
}

 and if you are curious the '${!#}' part grabs the last argument on the command line so that if you want to use tools like '-j3' for multiple jobs or '-l3.9' to load management it won't get mixed into your log file name.

Netbook Redux: rescuing my Asus EeePC 1000HA

So a while back I killed the linux installation on my EeePC 1000HA Netbook. So this weekend I decided rather than fix it... I would just remove it. Well that was a good idea (sarcasm). Not the decision to leave linux off the netbook, that decision was okay... it was my hastiness in removing Linux... Needless to say, I forgot that I was using Grub as my boot loader, so when I removed my linux partition using the live Gparted USB... well bye-bye grub. So the solution....google, which resulted in the following site:

http://forum.eeeuser.com/viewtopic.php?id=59032

The site was very helpful and thankfully the other day I was cleaning up my tech supplies and located the DVD that came with the system. Anyways... I purchased a new USB drive [8GB] (I was surprised to find that my largest drive was only 1GB), and went to work. First I installed the live CD/USB version of Mint Linux on a 1GB stick, booted up the machine and backed up my files. Then I booted off the 8GB stick and followed the instructions on the above linked post. So after hours of prep and figuring out a solution it only took about 30 minutes to get the system restored to its original state. Then came 2 hrs of software updates.... and now the process of getting all my software all loaded up.

So what gets installed.... first off AVG (free), then Firefox (this time 4 RC1), and via the Google Updater: Chrome, Picasa, Gtalk, and updates of Skype, Real, and Acrobat Reader. Then the biggies... OpenOffice (well this time LibreOffice), Java, and Eclipse. Followed by the next item... the reason I decided I would remove the dual boot linux partition... Cygwin. Now I could go through and list what I installed in cygwin, but that would be a long list... but basically C++/GCC and Python plus SVN, then there are a bunch of libraries....

Now lets see how long before I decide to put linux back on my EeePC.

Stumbling into Tips: /etc/profile.d

Well I've been using Linux/UNIX a long time. I've been playing with cshrc, bashrc and profile files for a while to, but for the first time, today I stumbled across an interesting directory, the '/etc/profile.d' directory. Like all '.d' directories in the 'etc' directory this is a directory to put additional configuration files.

For sh-style shells (sh, bash...) /etc/profile.d/*.sh are read and run, for csh-style shells /etc/profile.d/*.csh are run. It's a great place and a clean way to easily plug settings (like $PATH) in and out for new programs you can't get RPMs for. In my case I did so to help setup my jboss installation.

Mobile Posting

Ever want to post to multiple blogger blogs at once? Well if so take a look at using the mail-to-blog option in your settings. Besides being more flexible than the go@blogger.com as typically used. Besides that, on my treo, I'm limited on the size of an image I can send via MMS, but no Email. As a suggestion, send via BCC that way there is a very slim chance that the address will get viewed. Also the beauty of email-to-blog is that you can actually send the post to people who don't typically view your blog by including them in the cc or bcc line.

Anyways... just thought I'd share the tip since I just used it. I sent a post to both my blog (the one you are reading) and to the blog that Lauren and I share.
http://nickc321.blogspot.com/2008/02/working-from-hotel-zaza.html
http://laurenandnick.blogspot.com/2008/02/working-from-hotel-zaza.html