I was having problems today when trying to build a package on my home Linux box, and the Putty ssh client was timing out on me, despite a KEEP_ALIVE setting of 60 seconds.

Thanks to Splatypus in #gentoo on irc.freenode.net, who told me to use “screen”. of course I had no idea what they meant, so they gave me the link to the project page on Freshmeat.net. From there I found the official gnu screen page, and then a quick search turned up a nice screen tutorial and developers project page.

The screen tutorial was a little intimidating at first, but after playing with it, I finally got it. The notation behind “screen” is that you can login via ssh to your server (start ’screen’), then create “windows” inside the shell, and then detach them from the current ssh session. Logout, and then reconnect anytime from anywhere later, and run ’screen -r’ to reattach all the windows to the current shell.

This is great, because I kicked off a build from a regular old ssh shell in Putty, and the darn thing timed out 2.5 hours into it. Now I can just detach the window, and reconnect at anytime later, preserving the output, state, etc.

You can also name your windows, and list them so you can see what all you got going on.

An excellent tool, and a must have for remote admins.

I got an email from a spammer one of my yahoo accounts, and saw that they were online (little yellow smiley next to email address in the From header)…so I started up Gaim, and proceeded to see if they’d ask me for personal info.

motiv8x: hello
odarowest: hi
motiv8x: you emailed me?
odarowest: when
motiv8x: just now
odarowest: was ur name
odarowest: pls identify urself?
motiv8x: you said your suffering from an illness? Married to the late ambassadar to africa?
odarowest: yes
odarowest: thats true
motiv8x: so….what do you want?
odarowest: but is not me
motiv8x: why did you email me
odarowest: is my boss who said i should email it out
motiv8x: well…what do you want?
odarowest: she is one giving out the offer
motiv8x: what is the offer?
odarowest: have,nt u read and understand the mail
motiv8x: i don’t understand what i supposed to do.
motiv8x: i want to help
odarowest: then email her on sigcau_2000@yahoo.co.in
odarowest: were are u from anyway?
motiv8x: Little Rock
odarowest: were is that located
motiv8x: Arkansas
odarowest: is in america
motiv8x: yes
odarowest: ?
odarowest: how old are u?
motiv8x: 68
odarowest: and are u a christian
motiv8x: yes
odarowest: was ur email address?
motiv8x: motiv8x@yahoo.com
odarowest: ok
odarowest: just email sigcau_2000@yahoo.co.in
odarowest: u will be told the proceedures to follow
motiv8x: ok
motiv8x: thanks
odarowest: mail her now ,so the whole thing will be done b4 this week end
odarowest: she will check her box later

If you have a heavily moded phpbb, then I suggest the “patch” method.

Read the INSTALL.html doc for further instructions.

Occassionally you will get a “hunk” error when running the patch command. Here’s how you resolve the errors manually found in the .rej files…

The first block of code will be the the “old code” that you should look for in your files. The second block of code is the new code that should replace/update the old code. You will see a few lines of code in each spot, and one or more of the lines for the new code will have something to the left of it. either a + for adding a line, - for deleting a line, or ! for updating a line.