HackNBlog @ Salamanteri Server

Advanced users (and some regular desktop users too) have a need for process viewer (for those who don’t know what I mean, it’s equivalent of process lister that you get with ctrl-alt-del in windows) - and while some are happy or even insist on using nothing but graphical application for this (’gnome-system-monitor‘ in Gnome), some of us prefer to use one that is console based or prefer having both depending on situation so there is a big demand for a good console based process viewer for *nix systems.

The old ‘top’ and way more advanced alternative

Many people know ‘top‘ to be such tool - unfortunately many don’t know other interactive ones - there is non-interactive ‘ps‘ for getting process list, but it just prints process list (with information and formatting according to parameters) while interactive process lister lets you view the list, send signals to processes (ie. to kill a process) or to change their priority (’nice’ value). There however is much more advanced application than ‘top‘, yet very much like ‘top‘ in having all that is good in ‘top‘, but replacing many UI parts with better functionality. The app is called ‘htop‘.

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Someone had googled the text in title of this article on google and end up on my site.

To restart sshd on Fedora just run (as root on console): /etc/init.d/sshd restart

I hope that clears things up.

Perhaps you, like many *nix users, like to remotely connect to your desktop and/or servers and thus are propably running an ssh-server. If so and you have ever checked logs for failed attempts to log in then you know that attempts to login with random usernames and passwords are made constantly. And finally, if you are like me, you are constantly worried that your username and the password, even though naturally a hard one to come up with, might one day be entered by person - or rather a brute force password cracking script - and thus your system getting compromized. There is a simple tool to deny hosts from connecting the ssh-server (couple tools even, but here is one) after failing defined number of times - and if configured to, the program will send email report of new denied hosts and suspicious connection attempts. denyhosts is the program I use for this, and here is how to set up it:

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I’m proud to have released my first WordPress plugin, phpinclude… It allows to include any file apache can access into your post or page. Including PHP files it also executes them. Naturally there is some security settings to make sure that only editors authorized for that can do it. You can check the overall info, view syntax highlighted source and download the plugin at Software / Wordpress Plugins / phpinclude page. Naturally it’s released under GNU GPL license.

Also, if you havent glanced the “Quick News” list on the left of the posts you might want to know that I have released a proramming example of DOS tree command implemented for *nix bash shell in Shell Scriping subsection. So to check tree.sh, go through any of those or go straight to tree.sh for full info and that syntax hihlighted fabulous source (I make a joke, hehe).

This package is obsolete unless you still use Debian Etch

Edit: This release of Worker file manager is obsolete since February 14, 2009 when Lenny became the current stable Debian version - unless you have configure your APT to stay at Etch or have not ran apt-get dist-upgrade or some other packet managers update routine since by default it upgrades automatically to current stable. Lenny currently has this same version of Worker in Debian repository.

Ok, I’ve added a software download archive here some days ago already. Software page lists software I’ve made available with download links to them and Download archives just plainly lists the packages/files available for public. In future I will also provide, among other files, my own software creations, but lets start with Debian package of something not yet available on stable/etch:

Worker 2.16.5 for Debian etch/stable (i386)

I made this package when I noticed that the version of Worker available for stable branch of Debian is dated back in 2005 - and among other things lacks the support for UTF-8 encoding. There was more fresh package available for testing-branch (lenny) but installing that would require installing other library dependencies from “testing”. I did not like the idea of that so I compiled my own deb-binary package that does not depend on anything not available for current stable branch of debian (as side note, it propably runs fine on ubuntu too, please confirm if you try it).

Here’s copy of original package description of this software (because I’m too lazy to describe with my own words):

highly configurable two-paned file manager for X

Worker is a file manager much like the Amiga’s DirOpus. It can be controlled with mouse or keyboard. There is no restriction on the number or type of button functions. Files are recognized by both extension and content, content by recognizing common bytes in the sample files you show it. Drag & Drop is supported.

If xli or imagemagick is installed, it quickly previews pictures in the opposite pane. If x11-utils is installed, xmessage is used to display some informative messages.

If at all interested read the rest of this post or just head to the software download page for binary .deb and source files for building your own package or if you just want the binary, just down it right here:

  worker_2.16.5-1_i386.deb (1.1 MiB, 261 hits)

A friend noted me today that it’s funny that I carry all my posessions with me wherever I go… I found the comment amusing, specially because it’s partially true.

I decided to tell what is so special in it. I’m a punk rock-like person and a hacker and what I always carry on my bag is following:
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