It’s been 4 years since my last post – wow! 

Welcome to VirtJunkie! As the name implies, I want a place to write about things I’m looking at or am interested in relating to Virtualization (and automation).

A lot has changed for me since my last post. Shortly after my last post,  I started working for a large Swiss bank that prohibited me from contributing to a blog. I left that company and spent 3 years at Solarwinds where I should have been contributing to this blog more, but I didn’t. It’s my goal here to provide high quality, relevant content.

Anyhow, I’m back! I’ve got a new domain, a new job (I work for PCM as a solutions architect) where I specialize in Core Datacenter technology. 

Stay tuned – I’m about to be much more active here.

I’m a big fan of Bolthouse Juices. Up until today I’ve only tried the strawberry bananna flavor. Unfortunately, I’m getting sick of that one, so I tried a new flavor, the Green Goodness flavor.

It tasted pretty good, but it definitely looked disgusting, see for yourself:

Continue reading “Juice Experimentation”

Adding a feed

Click on the RSS button, then click Add. Paste in the feed URL and hit OK. If you want to name the feed, simply type the name in front of the URL, like so:
TV Feed|http://somesite.com/rss.xml (NO SPACE BEFORE OR AFTER THE | )

Note that the RSS Downloader will NOT consume any extra resources if you have no feeds present/enabled. Some feeds do not give direct links to the .torrent files (most notably Mininova) and as such won’t work, but you can use the MiniRSS feed fixer to modify those feeds to work properly. For Mininova’s feeds, you can use MiniRSS.org

Disabling a feed or filter

Simply uncheck the box next to the feed or filter, and it will no longer be used.

Renaming a feed or filter

You can rename a feed by selecting it, then single clicking or pressing F2. You can do the same thing for renaming filters.

Sorting filters

You can sort filters by drag and drop. Simply click, hold, and drag to wherever in the list you’d like it.

Using feeds that require HTTP authentication

For feeds that require HTTP authentication, simply use this format for the feed URL: http://username:password@sometorrentsite.com/rss.php

Using feeds that require cookies

To use feeds that require cookies, you must find the cookie for the site, and grab UID and pass from it.

* IE users will find their cookies in %UserProfile%Cookies
* Firefox users will find their cookies in Tools -> Options -> Privacy -> Cookies -> View Cookies
* Opera users will find their cookies in Tools -> Advanced -> Cookies, but they must scroll down manually, find doesn’t work
* Users of other browsers will have to consult their browser’s documentation

Once you have the appropriate information, use this format for the feed URL:
http://sometorrentsite.com/rss.php:COOKIE:…jh12378912y3lkj

Some sites do not use uid and pass as the variables, or use additional ones, so you MUST use the exact variable name and the extra variables they specify! For example, on a certain site, it uses id, password, and secure as the cookie variables you must use.

Automatically downloading torrents

To automatically download specific torrents from a feed, you can use Favorites to specify your own filters to grab torrents. It does NOT support regular expressions. Here’s a tutorial explaining the various options and how to use them (with examples).

* Hit Add, then type the name of the filter.
* Click on the editbox next to Filter: and add your filter. The allowed wildcards are * ? and |. An example of a filter you could use would be *MP3 Archives*
If you have a strange feed using underscores or something besides periods, you can also try something like *Go?Open*
You cannot specify the season or episode number in the filter if it is decoded by

So, as most people know, the Xbox360 was recently released. With this came the hope to upgrade from the Xbox to the newer version.

I’m not much of a gamer anymore, but I did always want an Xbox, (mainly for the opportunity to mod it). So, I went onto Ebay and found an Xbox in perfect working condition for under 100 dollars and purchased it.

We’ll see what happens with the modding part, because the Mod chip that I want to get runs around 75 bucks for a solder-less connection. I’m pretty sure that I could solder one on myself, but I don’t want to take the chance of messing up the first console that I’ve ever owned.

I’m a big fan of Netflix, and I was wondering if there was something similar for the gaming industry. Luckily there is one called Gamefly. I’m still looking into it, but it definitely looks good so far.

Later,
Jon Howe

The website that I mentioned earlier is almost done, all that has to be done is make a minor addition to it, which should be done by Friday.

Next week I’ll be doing some pretty heavy quality testing to make sure that everything works as it should. After that I’ll have a link up for you to check it out, and a temporary account for you to use.

I’m really liking web design / programming. I actually have another project in mind already. I really can’t talk about it, but here’s a hint and a request for help: “Does anyone know an aircraft pilot?”.

Later,
Jon Howe

This week’s command is: uname

This command is used to list out miscellaneous information about your system.
The syntax is as follows: uname [OPTION]...

I usually use this to find out exactly what kernel release I’m using. (no, I’m not geeky enough to memorize each kernel that I use)

Here’s the usage (taken from the console with modification):

-a, --all print all information, in the following order:
-s, --kernel-name print the kernel name (for me this prints Linux)
-n, --nodename print the hostname of your computer
-r, --kernel-release print the kernel release number
-v, --kernel-version print the kernel version
-m, --machine print the machine hardware name (for me this prints i686)
-o, --operating-system print the operating system
--help display this help and exit
--version output version information and exit


Beleve me, there will be times where you’ll want to find out what kernel you’re using. This is how.

More later,
Jon Howe

This week’s command is: useradd.

This command is used to add new users to your linux system. The syntax is as follows:
useradd [options] [user]

The following was taken from a great site for learning about linux commands(ss64.com) and will further explain the command:

OPTIONS
-c comment Comment field.

-d dir Home directory.
The default is to use user as the directory name
under the home directory specified with the -D option.

-e date Account expiration date.
date is in the format MM/DD/YYYY.
Two-digit year fields are also accepted.
The value is stored as the number of days since January 1, 1970.
This option requires the use of shadow passwords.

-f days Permanently disable account this many days after the
password has expired. A value of -1 disables this feature.
This option requires the use of shadow passwords.

-g group Initial group name or ID number.
If a different default group has not been specified using the -D option,
the default group is 1.
-G groups Supplementary groups given by name or number in a comma-separated
list with no whitespace.

-k [dir] Copy default files to user’s home directory.
Meaningful only when used with the -m option.
Default files are copied from /etc/skel/ unless an alternate dir is specified.

-m Make user’s home directory if it does not exist.
The default is not to make the home directory.

-o Override. Accept a nonunique uid with the -u option. (Probably a bad idea.)

-s shell Login shell.

-u uid Numerical user ID. The value must be unique unless the -o option is used.
The default value is the smallest ID value greater than 99 and greater
than every other uid.

-D [options] Set or display defaults. If options are specified, set them.
If no options are specified, display current defaults. The options are:

-b dir Home directory prefix to be used in creating home directories.
If the -d option is not used when creating an account, the
user name will be appended to dir.

-e date Expire date. Requires the use of shadow passwords.

-f days Number of days after a password expires to disable an account.
Requires the use of shadow passwords.

-g group Initial group name or ID number.

-s shell Default login shell.