The fool that I am, instead of copying the full profile directory I ended up backing up just the Mail subdirectory in the profile directory. It took me a while to figure out how to restore the backup, so I thought I would share it with you.

The first thing you do is install Thunderbird (if you haven’t already). Now Run( Windows : Start->Run or press Win key+r ; Mac/Linux – you’re smart enough to know ) this command “thunderbird.exe -profilemanager”. Create a dummy profile – just have some dummy email address in there. Now exit Thunderbird.

Next step is to find your newly created profile directory. Locate the Mail directory in there. Now you have to copy 2 files from your backup – both have the same name. One has a .msf extension and the other has no extension. I had created a separate thunderbird mail folder with a filter and I needed to backup just that one alone. So I just copied those 2 files (from the Inbox.sbd directory) and put them in the Local Folders subdirectory in the Mail directory (which already had empty files like Trash and Trash.msf).

The file without extension – this is the actual mail file. It’s in the mbox format. The other is an index file.

Acknowledgements :

I posted a question on Aardvark – http://vark.com/t/eee11d. I got replies from Shel and Moez. I would like to thank both of them for helping me out.

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2. Hoax mail from “Microsoft”
3. Copying files from one unix box to another with scp

<br />
$ dig @208.67.222.222 gingerjoos.com</p>
<p>; <<>> DiG 9.4.2 <<>> @208.67.222.222 gingerjoos.com<br />
; (1 server found)<br />
;; global options:  printcmd<br />
;; Got answer:<br />
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 1273<br />
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0</p>
<p>;; QUESTION SECTION:<br />
;gingerjoos.com.                        IN      A</p>
<p>;; ANSWER SECTION:<br />
gingerjoos.com.         14400   IN      A       208.113.199.196</p>
<p>;; Query time: 751 msec<br />
;; SERVER: 208.67.222.222#53(208.67.222.222)<br />
;; WHEN: Fri Dec  4 09:13:58 2009<br />
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 48</p>
<p>$ dig @8.8.8.8 gingerjoos.com</p>
<p>; <<>> DiG 9.4.2 <<>> @8.8.8.8 gingerjoos.com<br />
; (1 server found)<br />
;; global options:  printcmd<br />
;; Got answer:<br />
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 2594<br />
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0</p>
<p>;; QUESTION SECTION:<br />
;gingerjoos.com.                        IN      A</p>
<p>;; ANSWER SECTION:<br />
gingerjoos.com.         14400   IN      A       208.113.199.196</p>
<p>;; Query time: 616 msec<br />
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8)<br />
;; WHEN: Fri Dec  4 09:14:09 2009<br />
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 48</p>
<p>$ dig @8.8.4.4 gingerjoos.com</p>
<p>; <<>> DiG 9.4.2 <<>> @8.8.4.4 gingerjoos.com<br />
; (1 server found)<br />
;; global options:  printcmd<br />
;; Got answer:<br />
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 34741<br />
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0</p>
<p>;; QUESTION SECTION:<br />
;gingerjoos.com.                        IN      A</p>
<p>;; ANSWER SECTION:<br />
gingerjoos.com.         14321   IN      A       208.113.199.196</p>
<p>;; Query time: 123 msec<br />
;; SERVER: 8.8.4.4#53(8.8.4.4)<br />
;; WHEN: Fri Dec  4 09:15:28 2009<br />
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 48<br />

Dig allows you to directly query a DNS server and get its reply. It shows stats from that query – response. The stat we’re interested in is this one

;; Query time: 123 msec

The IP 208.67.222.222 is the address of the OpenDNS server. Let’s try one more query

</p>
<p>$ dig @208.67.222.222 mec.ac.in</p>
<p>; <<>> DiG 9.4.2 <<>> @208.67.222.222 mec.ac.in<br />
; (1 server found)<br />
;; global options:  printcmd<br />
;; Got answer:<br />
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 44308<br />
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0</p>
<p>;; QUESTION SECTION:<br />
;mec.ac.in.                     IN      A</p>
<p>;; ANSWER SECTION:<br />
mec.ac.in.              604800  IN      A       210.212.232.132</p>
<p>;; Query time: 389 msec<br />
;; SERVER: 208.67.222.222#53(208.67.222.222)<br />
;; WHEN: Sat Dec  5 12:38:57 2009<br />
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 43</p>
<p>$ dig @8.8.8.8 mec.ac.in</p>
<p>; <<>> DiG 9.4.2 <<>> @8.8.8.8 mec.ac.in<br />
; (1 server found)<br />
;; global options:  printcmd<br />
;; Got answer:<br />
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 56600<br />
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0</p>
<p>;; QUESTION SECTION:<br />
;mec.ac.in.                     IN      A</p>
<p>;; ANSWER SECTION:<br />
mec.ac.in.              160448  IN      A       210.212.232.131</p>
<p>;; Query time: 121 msec<br />
;; SERVER: 8.8.8.8#53(8.8.8.8)<br />
;; WHEN: Sat Dec  5 12:39:06 2009<br />
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 43</p>
<p>

You can try more queries and see for yourself. At least as of now Google DNS seems to be faster.

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"Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/20090729 Firefox/3.5.2 GTB5"

And here’s another Firefox without it :

"Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; en-GB; rv:1.9.1.3) Gecko/20090824 Firefox/3.5.3 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)"

Also, if you plan to capture the UA string in the Apache logs, make sure that feature is turned on. Your LogFormat directive must have something like \"%{User-Agent}i\" in it. For eg,

LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined

You can check the Apache documentation on custom log formats for more info. If you’re using XAMPP/LAMPP, you might want to comment out

CustomLog logs/access_log common

line in your httpd.conf and uncomment

CustomLog logs/access_log combined

line.

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He’s just completed a see-your-visitors-on-a-map feature. Here’s what it looks like for this blog.

visitors to gingerjoos.com blog

He has very kindly provided a limited-time special invitation code for Gingerjoos.com visitors Use the invitation code iwantitbadly to sign up for the service at Kitiyo stats.

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Using scp is simple. It works almost like the regular cp command. The basic syntax is
scp SOURCE DESTINATION
In order to specify the SOURCE or DESTINATION we have a special syntax.
USERNAME@HOST:PATH

Let me give you an example :
$scp anirudh@box:/var/www/html/test.html gingerjoos@linux:~/test_dir/
Copy /var/www/html/test.html in the machine called “box” as user “anirudh” to the box called “linux” as user “gingerjoos” to the path HOMEDIR/test_dir/

That’s it Simple, right?

To copy the file to our localmachine, we could do this
$scp anirudh@box:/var/www/html/test.html ~/workarea/

This would copy the file test.html in the machine called “box” (as user anirudh) to the localmachine at path HOMEDIR/work_area/

Interchange the source-destination to copy file in your localmachine to the remote machine.

If you want to copy whole directories, use the ‘-r’ flag(recursive copy)
$scp -r ~/workarea/ anirudh@box:~/workdir/

Since scp is tied to the ssh program, the keys you use to set up passwordless login with ssh works for scp as well.

Got questions? Got something to add to this? Post your comments below

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If you’re into 8085 programming, do try it out and let me/Arun know.

http://labs.kitiyo.com/8085/free-online-assember-simulator-8085.html

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To start off using vim, let me give you a very quick and dirty first few steps. To open a file, simply use vim <filename>. You most likely have vi pointing to vim. Plus, most of these commands work with other vi’s anyway. So I’ll be using vi instead of vim henceforth.

Now that you have a file open, you would like to enter some stuff in? The basic thing you need to know about vi is that it has many modes. From the default mode(command mode) you need to press ‘i’ to enter the insert mode. In this mode you can type stuff in and it will show up on the screen. The command mode is where you issue commands to vi (But you can’t enter text). To go back from the insert mode to command mode press the escape key.

Now that you’ve typed some random stuff in, escape to the command mode. Now try pressing ‘:w’ i.e. (shift+;)w. W is for “write”. This saves the file and leaves you still in the editor. If you want to get out of the editor, you type in one more command ‘q’ so it becomes ‘:wq’. In case you want to get out of it without saving, use ‘:q!’. The other way to save and quit is to go to the command mode and hit shift+z+z.

With vi, the traditional way to navigate (in command mode) is to use l,k,j,h keys(right,up,down,left). That’s like the a,w,s,d in gaming. It’s a timesaver for people who are comfortable with it. Vim allows you to use the arrow keys as well, which is a real convenience.

That covers the bare minimum basics for us.

Once you start using vi you start looking for ways to accomplish tasks using it. There is a whole lot of material out there in the World Wide Web which will help you out. Google is your friend, use it

I will tell you some of the frequently used options/shortcuts I use with vim.

Going to a specific line : Type in ‘:25′ to go to line number 25 (in command mode). You can open a file at a specific line by typing

$ vi +25 FILENAME

This will open the file and take you to line 25. Now that you’re there, perhaps you would like to delete the next 5 lines? No problem – just hit d5d. The 5 in the middle says 5 and dd is for deleting lines. You will find this a common pattern with most vi commands. Just hitting dd will remove a single line. Similarly you can do d5w to remove 5 words and dw to remove a single word.

Copy paste is a walk in the  park. Hit y7y to copy 7 lines. Now press p to paste. That’s it. Cut paste? Hit d7d and then press p to paste after navigating to where you want to paste it.

The other approach to doing all this is to send a command. Hit ‘:201,225y’ to copy lines from 201 to 225. Similarly ‘:201,225d’ deletes lines from 201 to 225. To jump to a line you can use ‘:25′. This jumps to line number 25.

One useful shortcut when you don’t want to remember the line numbers is the use of markers. I can mark any 2 lines , say line numbers 201 and 225, and perform an action on them by using the name of the markers. Go to line number 201 and hit ‘ma’. This will mark that line with the marker ‘a’. Do the same with line 225 and mark it with ‘b’. Instead of uisng ‘:201,225d’ to delete lines 201 to 225, now you can use the a and b markers to delete the lines thus – “:’a,’bd”.

That was just a small snapshot of the commands that I use on vi. You can use a lot other features, like for instance macros, and enhance your editing experience. This should help you get started though. Let me know if this has been useful. Good luck and happy hacking

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Why would anyone display the captcha as text ready for a bot passing by to read? (It’s even got a nice class – captchas – wrapping it) Is that some kind of a honeypot? Is that a dummy form? Does the site admin feel lonely because no one sends him/her mail and is hoping to at least read spam?

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In case you have any news, do leave them as comments

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