TinyMCE Advanced A Plugin to improve WordPress Post editing options

In the past when creating posts with WordPress I always reverted to editing HTML code directly if I wanted advanced features in my posts like tables, font family and other features, but from time to time it is nice to just have the ability to click and add while in the editor. So after digging a bit in the plug-ins I came across TinyMCE Advanced.

TinyMCE adds 16 plugins to WordPress’ wysiwyg editor: Advanced hr, Advanced Image, Advanced Link, Context Menu, Emotions (Smilies), Full Screen, IESpell, Layer, Media, Nonbreaking, Print, Search and Replace, Style, Table, Visual Characters and XHTML Extras. Together these plugins can add over 40 new buttons to the toolbar, which is now two rows plus one hidden row. Some of the new features added by this plugin are:

Font size and font family selection.
Support for making and editing tables.
Advanced list and image dialogs that offer a lot of options.
Search and Replace.
Support for XHTML specific tags and for (div based) layers.
Support for adding and editing inline css styles to any element.

Installation was simple but, nothing is displayed in the editor. You have to go into the settings and add the options to the toolbar, which is simple as drag and drop.

Click on Settings > TinyMCE Advanced and you will be prompted with the screen to customize your toolbars. Now all that is left is to drag the features you want to add to an existing toolbar, or create up to two more toolbar’s. Once you are done click Save Changes and your done.

TinyMCE Settings

So now that I have my toolbar, the real test is how does it do when editing posts, well that is an easy one! Awesome, the tables editing is great, you can set any facet of the table without having to code, which I like coding but sometimes not coding is just as good.

TinyMCE Advanced Rating
Installation
Just click install now and off to the races

Configuration
Drag and Drop ease and click to save

Usage
Makes complex editing a breeze!

Overall
Average score from all categories.

Finding the World Wide Name (WWN) in Windows Server 2008 and 2008 R2

You know how it is, you just built that new server and you need to attach storage to the Qlogic or Emulex card and the storage guys are asking for the WWN (World Wide Name) and if this is a first time you start to scratch your head, no worries because Microsoft has added that little piece of info right at your finger tips.

In Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2, you can use “Storage Explorer” to show the WWN.

Open MMC (Microsoft Management Console)
Click File > Add / Remove Snapin.
Find Storage Explorer and double-click to add the snapin. Click ok to save and go back to the screen. The system will scan for adaptors.
Expand Servers > <Server Name>.
Click on the adaptor and the information will be displayed.

How To Read Windows Crash dmp Files

Recently had to figure out why a Windows 2008 R2 server was crashing. Which meant reading crash dump files and to read crash dump files you need the Debugging Tools for Windows.

Download and install Windows 8 SDK Debugging Tools Windows. The install will require and Internet connection to download the packages it needs.

All you need to install is the “Install Debugging Tools for Windows as a Standalone Component (from Windows SDK)” and during the install only select “Debugging Tools for Windows“. Everything else is used for more advanced troubleshooting or development, and isn’t needed here.

Next, from an elevated command prompt navigate to the debugging folder. For me with the latest tools on Windows 7 it was at C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.0\Debuggers\x64\.

Type the following:

c:\> cd "C:\Program Files (x86)\Windows Kits\8.0\Debuggers\x64\"

c:\> kd –z C:\Temp\memory.dmp (or the path to your .dmp file)

Type the following:

kd> .logopen c:\temp\debuglog.txt
 opened log fil `c:\temp\debuglog.txt`

Now we need to tell it where the symbols live at, type the following:

kd > .sympath srv*c:\symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols
 Symbol search path is: srv*c:\symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols

Expanded Symbol search path is: srv*c:\symbols*http://msdl.microsoft.com/download/symbols

No reload it and update the debuglog.txt, type the following:

kd> .reload;!analyze -v;r;kv;lmnt;.logclose;q

Review the results by opening c:\temp\debuglog.txt in your favorite text editor. Searching for PROCESS_NAME: will show which process had the fault. You can use the process name and other information from the dump to find clues and find answers in a web search.

How to Install WinFF on Fedora

WinFF is an open source and cross platform GUI video converter that takes the power of command line conversions and puts a GUI front end on it. I have used this on Windows for many years and it has always done well for me. So why not put it on Fedora and see how it does?

We can install the repository and install from the command line and have the ability to receive updates.

Let’s install the repository and then install it from the command line.

$ sudo yum install http://winff.org/docs/rpm/fedora/winff-repo-1.0-1.noarch.rpm

$ sudo yum update

Now install it

$ sudo yum install winff

One thing to note is that the latest version may not be installed, but if you are daring install the testing release

$ sudo yum --enablerepo=winff-testing install winff

Start up WinFF from the menu KDE > Applications > Multimedia > WinFF

Or from the command line

$ winff &

How To Install WordPress on Fedora 18 / 19

Looking to start working on WordPress sites, developing new themes or just want to hack around on it? Well what better place to start then on your system. This post covers how to install WordPress on your Fedora 18/19 install. So let’s get started!

First we will need to install the dependencies for WordPress which comprise of,httpd, PHP 5.2.x, mysql-server and eventually WordPress itself. With the PHP installation I am adding a bit more than needed.

First we need to install MySQL server, this is MariaDB for Fedora 19 users. For Fedora 18.

$ sudo yum install mysql mysql-server

For Fedora 19

$ sudo yum install mariadb mariadb-server

Then we create the system startup links for MySQL (so that MySQL starts automatically whenever the system boots) and start the MySQL server:

For Fedora 18 / 19:

$ sudo systemctl enable mysqld.service
 $ sudo systemctl start mysqld.service

Next we need to configure MySQL and set the admin password using mysql_secure_installation, type:

$ sudo mysql_secure_installation

Next piece of the puzzle is Apache2 which is available as a Fedora package called httpd, type the following command:

$ sudo yum install httpd

Make a change to the /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf and uncomment and edit the ServerName value to your systems name or set it to localhost if you have a default Fedora installation. Now configure your system to start Apache at boot time and start it.

$ sudo systemctl enable httpd.service
 $ sudo systemctl start httpd.service

We can install PHP5 and the Apache PHP5 module as follows:

$ sudo yum install php php-mysql php-gd php-imap php-ldap php-odbc php-pear php-xml php-xmlrpc php-magickwand php-mbstring php-mcrypt php-mssql php-shout php-snmp php-soap php-tidy

We must restart Apache afterwards:

$ sudo systemctl restart httpd.service

APC is a free and open PHP opcode cacher for caching and optimizing PHP intermediate code. It’s similar to other PHP opcode cachers, such as eAccelerator and Xcache. It is strongly recommended to have one of these installed to speed up your PHP page.

APC can be installed as follows:

$ sudo yum install php-pecl-apc

Now restart Apache2:

$ sudo systemctl restart httpd.service

Create the WordPress Database

$ mysql -u root -p

create database wordpress;
 grant all privileges on wordpress.* to wordpress identified by 'my_super_password';
 flush privileges;
 exit;

Now install WordPress

$ sudo yum install wordpress

Now we need to make a few changes to the wp-config.php file to connect to the database.

$ sudo vi /etc/wordpress/wp-config.php

// ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** //
/** The name of the database for WordPress */
define('DB_NAME', 'database_name_here');

/** MySQL database username */
define('DB_USER', 'username_here');

/** MySQL database password */
define('DB_PASSWORD', 'password_here');

Change the values for database_name_here, username_here and password_here to what you created earlier in the database and save the changes.

Open browser and go to http://localhost/wp-admin/install.php to start the configuration process. A configuration page will appear, fill in the Site title, set your admin password and email address and click Install WordPress.

How To Install Silicondust HDHomerun on Fedora 19

HDHomeRun is a TV tuner for computers – Ethernet attached. Once connected to your home router you can access the HDHomeRun Tuners from any computer, anywhere in your home. Watch / Record TV from anywhere you have a computer.First, you have to install some per-requisites to build the dvbhdhomerun drivers needed on Fedora.

$ sudo yum -y install asciidoc binutils-devel cmake elfutils-devel gcc-c++ hdhomerun hdhomerun-devel kernel-devel newt-devel python-devel perl-ExtUtils-Embed redhat-rpm-config rpm-build zlib-devel xmlto hmaccalc bison pciutils-devel audit-libs-devel pesign

Then, you should grab the source code from Download latest CVS fromhttp://dvbhdhomerun.cvs.sourceforge.net/viewvc/dvbhdhomerun/ Next, run the following commands to download the kernel source and install it. Replace the kernel/linux directories and filenames to match the ones that you have. At this point become root.

# yumdownloader --source kernel
# rpm -ivh kernel-$(uname -r).src.rpm
# cd ~/rpmbuild
# rpmbuild -bp --target $(arch) --rmsource --rmspec SPECS/kernel.spec
# cd BUILD/kernel-3.9.fc19/linux-3.9.9-301.fc19.x86_64
# cp configs/kernel-3.9.9-x86_64.config .config

Now, in the directory that you are in,do a uname -a and copy the second dash to the end, then open the Makefile with vi or another editor and paste into the EXTRAVERSION line. My paste was “-301.fc19.x86_64″. Then do the next commands, changing the kernel to match your version.

make oldconfig
cp /usr/src/kernels/3.9.9-301.fc19.x86_64/Module.symvers .
make prepare scripts

Now, change back to the directory where you downloaded the dvbhdhomerun source package and run the following commands to unbundle it.

tar -xvzf dvbhdhomerun_0.0.15.tar.gz
cd dvbhdhomerun-0.0.15/kernel/

Then, edit the Makefile in that directory with vi or whatever you prefer and change the KERNEL_DIR line to ~/rpmbuild/BUILD/kernel-3.9.fc19/linux-3.9.9-301.fc19.x86_64/ changing the kernel and linux versions to match your systems. Then run this to get to the next directory you need.

cd ../userhdhomerun/

Then edit CMakeLists.txt with vi or whatever and change SET(LIBHDHOMERUN_PATH /usr/lib/libhdhomerun) to SET(LIBHDHOMERUN_PATH /usr/include/hdhomerun)

Now, do the following to compile everything.

cd ../kernel/ && make && make install
cp ../debian/dvbhdhomerun-utils.udev /etc/udev/rules.d/
systemctl restart systemd-udevd.service
modprobe dvb_hdhomerun
cd ../userhdhomerun/
make
make run

After the last command, you should see some lines you can CTRL+C to stop this. Run the next line to install it.

make install

That should have all you need to get going. You will need whatever user you want to run the service as to be a member of the video group. You can start the daemon with the command line if you have a mythtv user or as root if you are not running MythTV. The syntax is:

/usr/local/bin/userhdhomerun -f -u mythtv 
/usr/local/bin/userhdhomerun -f -u root

Next we want to load the module at start., in /etc/sysconfig/modules/ create a file called hdhomerun.modules with the following content.

#!/bin/sh
exec /sbin/modprobe dvb_hdhomerun >/dev/null 2>&1

Save the file and set the permissions to 755. This will load the module at reboot. After rebooting you can verify the modules are loaded by executing

$ lsmod | grep dvb_hdhomerun
dvb_hdhomerun 20053 0
dvb_hdhomerun_core 14646 1 dvb_hdhomerun
dvb_core 114934 1 dvb_hdhomerun

Next we need to do a little work with firewalld to allow the system to see the HDHomerun device.

If you have firewalld running you have to to stop and disable it or make a port exception for UDP 65001.

$ sudo sudo systemctl stop firewalld.service

To disable the service

$ sudo sudo systemctl disable firewalld.service

If you want to add the port run the following commands, with the firewalls service still running.

$ sudo firewall-cmd --permanent --zone public --add-port=65001/udp
$ sudo firewall-cmd --reload
$ sudo firewall-cmd --list-all

Now that we have it installed we need to run discovery and then configuration. Running the hdhomerun_config command without any parameters will give you the usage.

 $ sudo /usr/bin/hdhomerun_config

Usage:
hdhomerun_config discover
hdhomerun_config <id> get help
hdhomerun_config <id> get <item>
hdhomerun_config <id> set <item> <value>
hdhomerun_config <id> scan <tuner> [<filename>]
hdhomerun_config <id> save <tuner> <filename>
hdhomerun_config <id> upgrade <filename>

$ sudo hdhomerun_config discover
hdhomerun device 10329610 found at 192.168.1.121

Now we have the device id, in this case 10329610. Let’s set the channel map

$ sudo hdhomerun_config 10329610 set /tuner0/channelmap us-cable

Run a channel scan

$ sudo hdhomerun_config 10329610 scan /tuner0 scan.txt

Check the signal strength using the following command:

hdhomerun_config 10329610 get /tuner0/status

Viewing Programs Using Kaffeine

Kaffeine is a KDE TV viewing program. It is in the normal Fedora repositories. First we need to install it and enable the rpmfusion repositories if they are not already on your system.

$ sudo yum -y install kaffeine xine-lib xine-lib-extras-freeworld xine-ui

Next open Kaffeine and click on the Television > Channels > Start Scan. After the scan is completed select the stations you want from the discovery and click Add Selected and click OK. You can now click on the stations and watch TV.

How To Manually Uninstall Oracle Client on Linux

You know how it goes, you try running the uninstall process and no matter how hard you try it just doesn’t go as planned. So, it is time to get the hammer. Well it just happened to be one of those moments with trying to remove a botched Oracle 11g client install on RHEL 6. Needed it removed so a clean install could be performed, but needed to know where all the hiding places were.

First stop any running Oracle processes on the system.

Remove the oraInventory directory, check /etc/oraIns.loc for the location.

$ sudo cat /etc/oraInst.loc 
inventory_loc=/app/oracle/app/oraInventory
inst_group=oinstall

$ sudo rm -rf /app/oracle/app/oraInventory

Next we will need to delete the $ORACLE_HOME. Typically /opt/oracle or /app/oracle maybe ORACLE_HOME.

$ sudo rm -rf /app/oracle

Remove all other traces of Oracle configurations and binaries from the server.

$ sudo rm -f /usr/local/bin/oraenv

$ sudo rm -f /usr/local/bin/coraenv

$ sudo rm -f /usr/local/bin/dbhome

$ sudo rm -f /etc/oraInst.loc

$ sudo rm -f /etc/oratab

$ sudo rm -rf /var/tmp/.oracle

Now you are ready to re-install Oracle or not.

How to Install Ardour 3.2 on Fedora 18

Ardour 3 is the latest version available for the premier DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) for Linux. Unfortunately due to Ardour recently changing to a payment oriented package distribution the Fedora repositories are at release 2.8.6. This is for the built packages, you can build it yourself, which is what we are going to do.

There are a few dependencies we need to install as well as a realtime kernel. Luckily PlanetCCRMA ans RPMFusion exist that gives us the needed packages and kernels. So lets get moving and install some packages and compile some code.

First let’s add the rpmfusion and planetccrma repositories to our installation. Open a terminal session and add the free and non-free rpmfusion repositories.

$ su -c ‘yum localinstall –nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm’

Now that we have rpmfusion added let’s add PlanetCCRMA repository.

$ sudo rpm -Uvh http://ccrma.stanford.edu/planetccrma/mirror/fedora/linux/planetccrma/18/i386/planetccrma-repo-1.1-3.fc18.ccrma.noarch.rpm

Next we need to install the realtime kernel and alsa libraries that is available from PlanetCCRMA. While still in the terminal session.

$ sudo yum install planetccrma-core

No reboot your system and make sure to select the new kernel from the grub menu. Next install a few dependencies needed for the build.

$ sudo yum install git jack-audio-connection-kit-devel libsndfile-devel liblo-devel aubio-devel cppunit-devel cwiid-devel liblrdf-devel libsamplerate-devel lv2-devel serd-devel sord-devel sratom-devel lilv-devel flac-devel gtkmm24-devel libgnomecanvas-devel libgnomecanvasmm26-devel suil-devel libcurl libcurl-devel uuid uuid-devel libuuid libuuid-devel lib fftw3 fftw3-devel liboggz liboggz-devel qjackctl jack-audio-connection-kit boost boost-devel libxml2 libxml2-devel

Now it is time to download Ardour from GIT and install it in your home directory or another of your choice.

cd ~
mkdir ardour
cd ardour
git clone git://git.ardour.org/ardour/ardour.git 3.0

Once the download has completed we need to compile it.

cd 3..0
./waf configure
./waf

Compile is done and you can now start it. Add your id to the “jackuser” group and then start QJackCtl then you can start Ardour from the terminal.

cd ~/ardour/gtk2_ardour
./ardev

That’s all you need and now start recording!

Monitoring Filesystem Events with incron on RHEL 6

Have you ever wanted to know when a file is changed or accessed by the system or user? There is a program that does just that task called Inotify cron (incron).

Incron is for monitoring filesystem activity. It consists of a daemon and a table manipulator. You can use it a similar way as the regular cron. The difference is that the inotify cron handles filesystem events rather than time periods

incron provides a simple way how to solve many and many various situations. Every time when something depends on file system events, it’s a job for incron.

Here you can see a few examples where incron is a good solution:

Notifying programs (e.g. server daemons) about changes in configuration
Guarding changes in critical files (with their eventual recovery)
File usage monitoring, statistics

First we will need to install incron:

$ sudo yum install incron

Make sure we set it to start on reboot:

$ sudo chkconfig incrond on

And now to start incron:

$ sudo service incrond start

incrond uses inotify. So to use it effectively we need to have it act on inotify events which are:

IN_ACCESS         File was accessed (read) (*).
 IN_ATTRIB         Metadata  changed,  e.g.,  permissions,  timestamps, extended attributes, link count (since Linux 2.6.25), UID, GID, etc. (*).
 IN_CLOSE_WRITE    File opened for writing was closed (*).
 IN_CLOSE_NOWRITE  File not opened for writing was closed (*).
 IN_CREATE         File/directory created in watched directory (*).
 IN_DELETE         File/directory deleted from watched directory (*).
 IN_DELETE_SELF    Watched file/directory was itself deleted.
 IN_MODIFY         File was modified (*).
 IN_MOVE_SELF      Watched file/directory was itself moved.
 IN_MOVED_FROM     File moved out of watched directory (*).
 IN_MOVED_TO       File moved into watched directory (*).
 IN_OPEN           File was opened (*).

The incron table manipulator may be run under any regular user since it SUIDs. For manipulation with the tables use basically the same syntax as for the crontab program. You can import a table, remove and edit the current table.

The user table rows have the following syntax (use one or more spaces between elements):

<path> <mask> <command>

Where?

<path> is a filesystem path (each whitespace must be prepended by a backslash)
<mask> is a symbolic or numeric mask for events (see man inotify for more details)
<command> is an application or script to run on the events

The command may contain these wildcards:

$$ - a dollar sign
 $@ - the watched filesystem path (see above)
 $# - the event-related file name
 $% - the event flags (textually)
 $& - the event flags (numerically)

Now with all that information, what can I do? Say you want to be notified each time /etc/hosts is modified and email us. Open incrontab make sure you are root for this example:

# incrontab -e

/etc/hosts IN_MODIFY mailx -s "Hosts file Has Been modified" mymail@mymail.com

Save the changes and open /etc/hosts and make a change and you should receive an email in your inbox.

At this point we have covered just the basics of what is possible with incron. Experiment with incron and see what other items you can monitor and what other commands you can execute on filesystem actions.

How To Securely Delete Files on Windows

When you delete a file on your Windows system is it really deleted? The answer is no, except if the file is on a SSD (Solid State Drive) which the file is deleted immediately. When you delete a file, it isn’t removed from the hard drive immediately. Instead, the computer marks the area as usable and it can be overwritten in the future. This means that your personal files may remain accessible, even after deleting them. For the files to be removed completely you will need to use a tool to securely delete them. With tools like Recuva , Undelete Plus, PhotoRec (command line), PC File Inspector and others the files can be restored.

Complete OS / File Deletion

So say you want to completely erase the OS and files on your system as you are donating it or disposing of it. You can do this a few ways. One is using DBAN (Darik’s Boot and Nuke) which is a bootable CD that will overwrite the drive with nothing multiple times so there is nothing recoverable on the drive.

According to the site “DBAN is a self-contained boot disk that automatically deletes the contents of any hard disk that it can detect. This method can help prevent identity theft before recycling a computer. It is also a solution commonly used to remove viruses and spyware from Microsoft Windows installations. DBAN prevents all known techniques of hard disk forensic analysis. It does not provide users with a proof of erasure, such as an audit-ready erasure report.” It is very effective and time consuming.

Once the drive has been completely wiped you can reinstall the Windows OS using the recovery disc provided by the manufacturer.

Secure File Deletion

Say we just want to make sure the files we deleted are truly gone and no chance of coming back. One such tool is CCleaner from Piriform. Download and install CCleaner and click on Tools link in the left Windows pane. This will present a few new links in the main screen area. Click on Drive Wiper, select the drive to clean and click Wipe.

At this point your files have been securely deleted from the drive with no chance of recovery.

Another tool is Eraser from Heidi Computers. Eraser is also Freeware and runs on Windows. Download and install Eraser from here. Open the utility after installation and make the selection and let it run.

These are just a few of the applications available for securely deleting files from your Windows system and should be something to get you started. Look for future posts to cover some basic data recovery techniques!

Life of a Geek Admin

The Daily adventures of a true geek administrator