April 5th, 2012 By Rudi Categories: Wordpress

I was looking for a way to move the search bar from the sidebar widgets in WordPress to the header and found this great article: http://reflectingthedesigner.com/wordpress/2011/03/09/adding-a-widgetized-sidebar-to-your-header/

This will allow you to add a widget into the header instead. Widgets allows you to add just about anything, including the search function.


May 12th, 2011 By Rudi Categories: Joomla

If you see a “JPAGE_CURRENT_OF_TOTAL” on your Joomla Sermon Speaker website then you probably don’t use the default English language file.

First check and see which language you use, then go and edit the corresponding language file (which would be in \language\af-ZA\af-ZA.ini) on the server and add the following line to the bottom of the file:

JPAGE_CURRENT_OF_TOTAL=Page %s of %s

Just translate it to your own language first.


January 25th, 2011 By Rudi Categories: General

Just a heads-up if you see the following AD, or get it on email:

Dear xxxxx ,

Your website could be on the first page of Google search results,
since that’s where everyone finds what they’re looking for.

Over 2 billion searches are conducted daily on Google.

89% of internet searchers go no further than the first page of search results shown for any given search.
Less than 5% of searchers go to page 2 or beyond, which means you’re losing money if you’re not on Page 1.

If your company has a website, we’ll get it on Google’s 1st page within 48 hours – guaranteed.

If you don’t have a website, we’ll design one and it will be on Google’s 1st page within 48 hours – guaranteed.
(Once website design is completed, of course.)

NO contracts!

Starting at R 1 500 per month – cheaper than running a monthly front page newspaper ad!

We handle all aspects of running your campaign and provide an analytical report at the end of each
month detailing what is working for you and what is not.

Contact Peter for a free analysis and obligation-free quote.

083 516 xxxxx or [email]xxxxx@mtnloaded.co.za[/email]

We specialise in SA and international search results for your product/service appearing on Google’s first page.
Within 48 hours – guaranteed.

OTHER SERVICES:

Logo Design
Corporate Identities
Business Cards
Brochures
Promotional Design & Branding
Printing
Photography
Apparel Graphic Design & Specifications
Animated Presentations in Keynote, PowerPoint & Quicktime format
WEB Html E-mailers
WEB Design

Why?

1. They, themselves can’t be found on Google (I searched upto page 7, was a bit lenient) by either searching for “Omega Services”, “Omega SEO Services”, ” on Google’s 1st page within 48 hours – guaranteed” and other SEO, Hosting, web design, etc related key words.

2. They don’t have a corporate identity themselves, yet they claim to offer such a service. Their email has no relation to their name.

3. No website. How do you design websites, without having your own?

4. No portfolio. This is a no-brainer, but if you expect me to pay you R1500pm for a services which I can’t even see any previous work of, then you’re either incredibly stupid or you hope your clients are.

P.S. I’m posing this here cause I often her horror stories from friends and clients who constantly fall into this same trap.


January 6th, 2011 By Rudi Categories: General

I was looking for a few decent Backup programs for a Windows network, and found these disk cloning programs to be useful as well:

Most of these will work on both Linux or Windows, or even as a live CD

  1. Macrium Reflect – Website
  2. DriveImage XML – Website
  3. CloneZilla – Website
  4. O&O Disk Image – Website
  5. Easy CD Clone – Website
  6. HDClone 4 – Website
  7. Mondo Rescue – Website
  8. R-Drive Image – Website
  9. Kleo Bare Metal Backup – Website
  10. FOG Project – Website
  11. G4L – Website
November 23rd, 2010 By Rudi Categories: Humor

1. We work weird (night) shifts…
Like prostitutes.

2. They pay you to make the client happy…
Like a prostitute.

3. The client pays a lot of money, but your employer keeps almost every
penny…
Like a prostitute.

4. You are rewarded for fulfilling the client’s dreams…
Like a prostitute.

5. Your friends fall apart and you end up hanging out with people in the same profession as you…
Like a prostitute.

6. When you have to meet the client you always have to be perfectly groomed…
Like a prostitute.

7. But when you go back home it seems like you are coming back from hell…
Like a prostitute.

8. The client always wants to pay less but expects incredible things from you…
Like a prostitute.

9. When people ask you about your job, you have difficulties to explain it…
Like a prostitute.

10. Everyday when you wake up, you say: “I’m not going to spent the rest of
my life doing this.”

Like a prostitute ……..

November 23rd, 2010 By Rudi Categories: General

October 20th, 2010 By Rudi Categories: Linux

If you need to hot swap SATA / SAS / SCSI HDD’s on Linux (like for example when using software RAID on a chassis with hot swap drive bays) then you’ll need to manually tell Linux to rescan the SCSI bus for changes.

This can be done as follows:

echo "0 0 0" >/sys/class/scsi_host/host<strong>X</strong>/scan

where X is the bus you want to scan. For example, on my own server I have the following buses:

Let’s see what drives I have in the system right now:

[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l
 
Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160040803840 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
 
   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1          13      104391   83  Linux
/dev/sda2              14       19457   156183930   8e  Linux LVM
 
Disk /dev/md0: 500.1 GB, 500105150464 bytes
2 heads, 4 sectors/track, 122095984 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 8 * 512 = 4096 bytes
 
Disk /dev/md0 doesn't contain a valid partition table
 
Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
 
   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1               1       60801   488384001   fd  Linux raid autodetect
 
Disk /dev/sdc: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

So, there’s a 160GB a 500GB SATA HDD. I just put in another 500GB SATA HDD, and rescanned my SCSI bus as follows:

First I want to see how many buses the system has:

[root@localhost ~]# for i in $(ls /sys/class/scsi_host/); do echo "0 0 0" > /sys/class/scsi_host/$i/scan; done
[root@localhost ~]#

Generally there’s no output.

Running “dmesg” I noticed the following:

ata2.00: detaching (SCSI 1:0:0:0)
  Vendor: ATA       Model: ST9500420AS       Rev: 0002
  Type:   Direct-Access                      ANSI SCSI revision: 05
SCSI device sdd: 976773168 512-byte hdwr sectors (500108 MB)
sdd: Write Protect is off
sdd: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
SCSI device sdd: drive cache: write back
SCSI device sdd: 976773168 512-byte hdwr sectors (500108 MB)
sdd: Write Protect is off
sdd: Mode Sense: 00 3a 00 00
SCSI device sdd: drive cache: write back
 sdd: unknown partition table
sd 1:0:0:0: Attached scsi disk sdd

which indicates that /dev/sdd was added to the list. As a side note, I took out /dev/sdc earlier on for this test. Since /dev/sdc is part of a RAID 1 group, the kernel assigned the drive as /dev/sdd – even though they’re in the same drive slot and it should have been called /dev/sdc as well. – If anyone knows why this happens, please let me know.

On some systems though you may need to use this command:

echo "- - -" >/sys/class/scsi_host/host<strong>X</strong>/scan

Please note: there’s a space between every “-” (dash / minus sign)

October 11th, 2010 By Rudi Categories: Humor

October 7th, 2010 By Rudi Categories: General

You can register on this site if you use linux on your desktop, to prove that we have at least more than 1% market share today :-)

http://www.dudalibre.com/gnulinuxcounter?lang=en

September 1st, 2010 By Rudi Categories: General

What are the odds. We wanted to goto the shops to get some material for my wife to make some stuff. It’s after 3PM already and the material factory is a good 45minutes drive away with all the robots and traffic into town.

We can’t drive my car cause it’s empty and I know the garage will be a bit busy right now. Ok, no problem, use the other car.
Neither can we drive my wife’s car since the battery is flat. oh boy…
Luckily my mom’s 4×4 is still here, but doesn’t want to start. what now? I pop open the bonnet and see the battery terminal came loose. Fixed it, started the car, ready to go.
The gate won’t open. I’m sure I put in a new battery a few months ago, and the light comes on. Call the cleaning lady, her remote doesn’t work either. I still used my remote yesterday. And to top it off, I can’t find the key for the gate motor so I can’t even override the motor. AARRRGG!!!! Something tells me we shouldn’t go out today