More and more web hosting providers are offering SSH(Secure Shell) access to their customers now, if you are one of them, put this advantage to good use will make your online life a lot easier. Don’t worry, we are just going to deal with just a few more than 15 shell commands, pretty much those used most frequently, with the most favored switch options by most people.
We have assumed that you are normally computer- and internet- literate, at least aware of directories and files that facilitate the organization of data on computers, knowing what it is like to travel within a file system tree structure.
First off, you are to log in to the host with your SSH privilege by means of a SSH client, like Putty. Download and launch it on your local machine. The interface should look like this:
Enter the host name or IP address supplied by your hosting provider in the Host Name box and click Open.
Supply your SSH account username and password so as to be logged in. Once acknowledged by the remote system, it is ready to accept your commands, and you should be in your home directory which can be referred to as ‘~’ or ‘/home/username’ (username here is a placeholder for your own SSH username) in SSH commands. Now let’s see in detail what you can do in this tiny terminal window.
ls -o : List files and directories in the current directory. ls -ao : List files and directories in the current directory, including hidden ones.
cd [dir-path] : Change to, or change current directory to the directory indicated by [dir-path]. cd ~ : Change to your home directory, which in most cases would be /home/yourusername. cd .. : Change to the parent directory of the current one. cd - : Change to the last directory you are in.
pwd : Show the full path to the current directory.
mkdir [dir-path] : Create an empty directory in the specified directory indicated by [dir-path].
rmdir [dir-path] : Delete an empty directory in the specified directory indicated by [dir-path].
rm [file-path] : Delete a file indicated by [file-path]. rm -f [file-path] : Forcibly delete a file indicated by [file-path], that is, without having to confirm before deletion. rm -r [dir-path] : Delete a directory indicated by [dir-path] and everything underneath it. rm -rf [dir-path] : Delete a directory indicated by [dir-path] and everything underneath it, without having to confirm before deletion.
mv [file-path]/[dir-path] [dir-path] : Move a file or directory indicated by [file-path] or [dir-path] to the directory indicated by the latter [dir-path]. mv [file-path] [file-path] : Rename the file indicated by the first [file-path] to another indicated by [file-path]. Or. Move the first file to a different location and rename it as specified in the second [file-path].
cp [file-path] [dir-path] : Copy the file indicated by [file-path] to the directory indicated by [dir-path]. cp [file-path] [file-path] : Duplicate the same file indicated by [file-path] with another name indicated by the second [file-path]. Or. Copy the first file to another location and rename it as specified in the second [file-path]. cp -r [dir-path] [dir-path] : Copy a whole directory including everything underneath it indicated by the first [dir-path] to another directory indicated by the second [dir-path].
tar -zxf [file-path] : Extract all things in an archive extensioned with .tar.gz indicated by [file-path] to the current directory. tar -xf [file-path] : Extract all things in an archive extensioned with .tar indicated by [file-path] to the current directory. tar -cf [file-path] ([file-path]/[dir-path], … ) : Create an archive indicated by the first [file-path] of the files indicated by [file-path]s or/and directories indicated by [dir-path]s.
gunzip [file-path] : Decompress a zipped file extensioned with .gz to the current directory. unzip [file-path] : Decompress a zipped file extensioned with .zip to the current directory.
chmod [xxx] [file-path]/[dir-path] : Change the privileges of a given file or directory indicated respectively by [file-path] and [dir-path] to xxx. chmod -r [xxx] [dir-path] : Change the privileges of a given directory indicated by [dir-path] to xxx.
more [file-path] : Display the content of the given file indicated by [file-path], one screen at a time.
ln -s [file-path] [file-path] : Create a symbol link for the first file, so that everything you do to the symbol link, a.k.a the second fake file, is reflected to the real file, except for when you delete the symbol link, the real file remains intact.
touch [file-path] : Create an empty file indicated by [file-path].
du -sh : Show disk usage of the current directory. du -sh * : Show disk usage of the current directory plus the statistics of all the files and directories underneath it.
grep [text] [file-path] : Search the file indicated by [file-path] with the text in [text].
mysqldump -h [hostname] -u [username] -p [password] [database] > [databasefile.sql] : Dump or backup the selected database on the selected host privileged by selected user identified by corresponding password to a SQL file. mysql -h [hostname] -u [username] -p [password] [database] < [databasefile.sql] : Restore the data in a SQL file to the selected database on the selected host privileged by selected user identified by corresponding password.
clear : Clear the screen so that you feel neat.
exit : Terminate the SSH dialogue and close the Putty window.
Note: When something is specified in brackets, such as [file-path] or [dir-path], it is used to indicate that you must input your desired information here, which, in this case, are the path to a file or a path to a directory respectively. NO brackets in your command.
When you have a VPS or dedicated server to manage, typically you’d have a bunch of different mysql users granted the privileges of every particular database for the sake of security. While this works well in segregating the privileges and preventing hackers from gaining access to all databases upon the compromise of only one mysql user account, it means much more work when you are backing up all those databases on the server.
The solution is to use the mysqldump command as root. To backup all databases on the mysql server no matter which users they belong to, try the following via SSH:
mysqldump -u root -p --all-databases > all.sql
It’d then prompt you for root password. After successful authentication, the mysql server will start dumping all databases into a text SQL file: all.sql. After it’s done, you cancompress (“tar zcf all.tar.gz all.sql”) and put all.sql somewhere safe for backup.
Chances are you have a bunch of different hosts that are housing your website files, for the sake of data safety (never put all eggs in a single basket) and possibly some SEO advantage. If that is the case, you will infrequently come to the need to move some files from one host server to another. How does one do that?
Well the straight answers include downloading the files from the source host and then uploading it to destination one via FTP. It’s not much of a time-waster with small number of files, especially those small in size. However, if it’s an impressively large chunk of package, say, 4GB, or thousands of files, this’d be quite a daunting job that may very well take the better part of your day or even a few days.
The shortcut is to transfer those files directly from the original host to the other, via SSH. That is of course, if you have both hosts enabled with SSH.
Log into the destination host via SSH and try the following command:
Wherein remote.host.com is the address of the source host and remoteuser is the SSH user account that can read the remote directory to be transferred, namely/home/remoteuser/dir-to-be-transferred. The last argument is the local path that’s receiving the incoming files / directory.
As a matter of fact, scp works the exactly same way as an ordinary cp command except it’s able to copy files back and forth remote hosts. The “s” of “scp” stands for safe, because all the data transferred is encrypted on SSH.
It’s a great way to back up your valuable website data across multiple different hosts that are physically far away from each other. With the help of crontab jobs that do the regular backups automatically, this is even better than some of the commercial backup services.
The command of rsync is a more preferable option to scp for synchronizing stuff across different hosts because it works incrementally, thus saving bandwidth, especially with large backups.
To check whether you are one of the victims that are dwelling on oversold web hosting servers, you need to have SSH access to your server. Now perform the following commands:
cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep processor | wc -l Which will usually return thenumber of the CPUs of the current server: 2 Then, display the server load by uptimeWhich outputs a single line of information concerning the server load and how it is doing its jobs: 08:44:12 up 11:09, 2 users, load average: 1.91, 2.37, 2.09
Bad economy or not, smart shoppers are always looking for an easy way to save a buck or two. If you’ve heard of this thing called the Internet (and you must have because you’re reading this blog), then you probably know one of the best ways to save money (and time) is to make your product purchases online. Online shopping makes it easy and simple to find exactly what you want, and to get it for a cheaper price.
Why does online shopping save you so much money? One of the major reasons is because it’s so easy to search for the same item offered by different merchants: stores can no longer expect that once you’re there, you’ll buy from them; so they have to sell items at highly competitive prices or employ other sales tactics such as price matching to keep you from purchasing elsewhere.
You can take advantage of this new climate of transparent, competitive pricing by using online price comparison shopping services. As you can see from the list below, a large number of sites offer an interface and search engine that allow you to search hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of different merchants at once, finding you the best price in town or the entire galactic. Some sites even leverage the power of the crowds (crowdsourcing) to find you the best price around (a.k.a. “social shopping”).
So to make the most of your money, we recommend that use one of the price-comparison sites below next time you go to buy something. And pass the word along to the self-anointed shopping genius in your family that he or she doesn’t need to waste time driving around to 15 different stores to find the best price anymore. Just fire up the Internet instead.
Become.com
AllBookStores.com — Need a new or used book or college textbook? Self-proclaimed as the “world’s greatest place to buy books,” this site compares prices at 34 different online book retailers, including Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble, to get you the best deal.
AnandTech.com — On the web since 1997, this site focuses on computer hardware products, offering price comparisons via its “RealTime Price Engine” as well as product news and reviews.
BeatThat.com — Community-driven site where users are paid to find better deals. The site guarantees the lowest prices for its products (camcorders, digital cameras, GPS devices, printers,TVs, and MP3 players), or it’ll pay you for alerting the site to a better deal. Product stores are rated green/yellow/red based on their customer service and track record of delivering what they promise, so try to buy from only the green-rated stores.
Become.com — Allows you to shop from over 25 million products and 5,000 stores, and to conduct product research (product reviews, buying guides, and other shopping advice) from 5.6 billion shopping-related web pages. This site is a complete portal to search, decide, and purchase what you want. Here are some shopping categories in which you can search for cheap prices on this site: automotive; electronics; baby; flowers & gifts; books, music & movies; health & beauty; business & office; home & garden; clothing & accessories; jewelry & watches; cameras; sports & outdoors; computers & software; and toys & video games.
BestBuyAll.com — This site offers a software download that searches other price-comparison sites (such as mySimon, DealTime, CNET, Pricewatch, Walmart, Yahoo, Google, Amazon.com, MSN, PriceSCAN, and others) simultaneously so you can find the cheapest price. There are two versions of this software: a free version and a Pro version for $29.95.
BigLion.com — This site claims to offer “everything you need to shop online:” directory of online stores, comparison shopping, coupons (free shipping, coupon codes, clearance centers), and more.
BizRate.com — One of the most popular sites on this list, BizRate is known for its merchant review services: search for a merchant (such as Amazon.com) and see what users have to say about the company. The site also offers price-comparison shopping, among other shopping tools. Here are some shopping categories in which you can search for cheap prices on this site: babies & kids; clothing & accessories; computers & software; electronics; health & beauty supplies; home & garden; furniture; jewelry & watches; sports & outdoors; toys & games; automotive; gifts, flowers & food; musical instruments & accessories; pet supplies; and video games.
BookFinder.com — Allows you to compare prices on over 150 million books (seriously?) for sale — new, used, rare, out-of-print, international, textbook, and signed — from booksellers in 50+ countries.
BookHQ.com — Obtains and compares book prices from multiple stores, and includes sales tax and shipping cost in the final price.
DealTime.com
BottomDollar.com — This site aggregates a lot product items, and allows you to compare prices, rate products, and read reviews.
Bountii.com — Allows you to subscribe to a daily newsletter containing the best deals of the day. This site has an excellent design, and lets you know exactly how much you’re saving.
Calibex.com — Member of the NexTag family, this site allows you to search for items in hundreds of different categories: computers; electronics; video games; office products; books; baby; clothing & accessories; collectibles & art; flowers & plants; food & wine; gifts; health & beauty; home & garden; jewelry & watches; magazines; musical instruments; sports & outdoors; toys; accessories; parts; hotels; and more.
Ciao.com — Offering product reviews and price comparisons, this popular site has portals to different countries around the world.
Citibay.com — This site is more of a general Internet search engine than it is a product search engine; nevertheless, it does allow you to search for prices and tons of other categorical things.
Dealighted.com — This site has a powerful, customizable search engine that allows you to compare prices. (The site’s look and feel is very similar to Kayak.com). Dealighted also shows you the hottest deals around, which are either posted by site users (who can earn up to $300/mo. posting deals) or through a search filter that discovers the best deals from over 25 deal forums such as FatWallet.com.
Dealio.com — Offers a great list of coupons, deals, and price comparisons. Dealio also offers a toolbar to make bargain hunting a breeze.
DealTime.com — Displays most popular items of the day, and offers product reviews, store directory, and price comparisons.
DVDPriceSearch.com — Price-comparison site aimed specifically at DVD movies. Also offers coupons for DVD-related purchases.
Ebates.com — Different stores pay Ebates a finder’s fee commission, and Ebates shares that commission with you. In addition, Ebates gives you a gift just for signing up — a $10 gift certificate or $5 cash.
Like.com
Expedia.com — Popular website destination for price-hunting travelers looking for the best prices on airfare, car rentals, hotel reservations, and more.
Froogle.Google.com — Froogle, which is Google’s search portal, provides a very simple and easy-to-use interface to find cheap prices on items all over the web.
Frucall.com — Frucall is an online price comparison shopping service for mobile phones. With Frucall, you can compare prices while you’re physically in stores by either: calling 1-888-DO-FRUCALL and entering the product’s barcode or ISBN; texting FRU11 with the product’s barcode, ISBN, or brand and model; or visiting www.frucall.com /m via your mobile browser. This site also includes social-networking features such as “buddy lists” and various shopping tools such as “price alerts.” Frucall’s service has potential uses, but I don’t recommend doing your price-comparison shopping while you’re actually at the store; do it beforehand so you know exactly which store offers the best price, thereby avoiding unnecessary travel.
Hawkee.com — Self-described as a “technology social network,” this site offers deals on technology-related items (computers, electronics, software, and video games). Also offers access to programming code and technology resources.
Hotels.com — Popular for its hotel reviews, Hotels.com allows you to find and compare hotel prices.
Hotwire.com — Allows you to price-hunt for the best travel deals, and to compare its prices with other sites like Expedia.
Jellyfish.com — Social-shopping service that allows users to set the selling price on items and try to bid on the purchase price. Check it out — it’s a unique way to shop.
Kayak.com — This well-known site allows you to compare airline ticket, hotel room, vacation package, cruise, and rental car prices using a robust search engine and intuitive interface. Kayak mines price data from over 100 travel sites. Sure beats visiting each one.
LendingTree.com — Allows you to solicit and compare the prices of financial products — such as personal and home loans — offered by a multitude of competing lenders.
Like.com — Visual-search engine that allows you to find and compare shoes, handbags, and more.
Mpire.com
LivePersonalShoppers.com — This site provides free, live online shopping help. While it doesn’t offer a price-comparison search engine like the other sites on this list, Live Personal Shoppers does connect you with expert shoppers who can offer deal advice. Interesting.
MonsterMarketplace.com — This site offers a shopping search engine that features over 2.5 million products in a variety of shopping categories. It also provides shoppers valuable product details and price-comparison indexes, so you can effectively comparison shop in one, convenient location.
Mpire.com — This site allows you to shop, compare, research, and find the best prices and deals online from “the world’s best auction and retail sites” such as eBay, Amazon, Best Buy, Target, and more. It provides a handy price trend graph so you can see whether a product’s price is trending up or down, indicating when it’s a good or bad time to buy. The site also uses price graphs to show you whether you’re over- or under-paying for an item. (Coupons are available on the site as well.)
mySimon.com — One of the granddaddy’s of price-comparison sites, mySimon searches through thousands of vendors to find you the cheapest price possible.
NexTag.com — NexTag takes price-comparison shopping to the next level. In addition to allowing searches for different consumer products, you can also search for the best prices on mortgages,travel, degree programs, real estate, and more.
Octopart.com — This site offers a search engine for electronic parts. If you need a resistor or a capacitor, here’s the place to find it.
Orbitz.com — Orbitz compares hotel room, airline ticket, vacation package, cruise, and car rental prices.
Price.com — This site allows you to compare the best prices on the web, and also provides a vast repository of vendor ratings.
PriceAdvance.com — PriceAdvance is a toolbar for your web browser that automatically searches for cheaper prices on items while you’re shopping online. Whenever you’re looking at an item on any shopping site, PriceAdvance will let you know if the same item can be found cheaper at a different store.
PricingCentral.com — According to the site’s description, PricingCentral is a portal that indexes all the best price search engines and online shopping bots into a comprehensive directory to help you find the right price comparison shopping agents each time you shop. This allows you to quickly compare prices and find the lowest prices on anything, no matter what you’re looking for each time you shop.
PriceGrabber.com — In addition to price comparisons, this site offers reviews & ratings, rebates, and merchant coupons.
PriceRunner.com
Priceline.com — Travel service that allows you to dictate your exact flights and times for substantial savings or “Name Your Own Price,” which can potentially save you even more.
PriceRunner.com — PriceRunner’s intuitive interface allows you to price-compare products easily. It also offers other shopping resources such as buying guides, coupons, and merchant rebates.
PriceSCAN.com — In addition to its price-comparison search, PriceSCAN allows you to view price trends, vendor ratings, and product ratings.
PriceSpider.com — This site provides a powerful search engine that constantly crawls over 100 online merchants to keep prices updated on a near real-time basis (no more than 30 minutes old).
Pricewatch.com — Focusing largely on technology products, this site has been providing a price-comparison service since 1995. In addition to your desktop browser, you can also accessPricewatch via your mobile phone.
PriceTool.com — Owned and operated by Epinions, PriceTool provides a comprehensive price-comparison service.
PriceV.com — PriceV offers an “unbiased” price-comparison service that helps you get the best and least expensive products and where to buy them.
Progressive.com — Allows you to compare auto insurance price quotes.
Pronto.com — This social-shopping site lets you search for items by navigating through different shopping categories. Pronto also allows you to create, maintain, and share your shopping lists.
Retrevo.com — This search aggregator provides consumer electronics reviews, manuals, guides, and prices.
SaveCrazy.com — This company’s singular mission is to save you money. Its price-comparison search engine and intuitive shopping-category navigation allows you to find the best prices on products from hundreds of online merchants. SaveCrazy.com also provides several other useful shopping tools, including a browser toolbar, coupon list, and article directory.
Shopping.com
Search.Live.com/Cashback — Microsoft’s search portal offers a powerful search engine for prices and has a proprietary “cashback” program that lets you actually earn money by shopping through the site.
ShopLocal.com — This site allows you to search for products in specific cities. If you’re looking for deals and prices on items, but you want to be able to enter the store before making a decision, try this site out.
Shopper.CNET.com — CNET’s shopping portal allows you to run price-comparison searches for electronic and computer products.
Shopping.AOL.com — AOL’s shopping portal allows you to compare prices and provides oft-updated articles about shopping.
Shopping.com — Owned by eBay, Shopping.com offers price comparisons, product reviews (provided by Epinions), and online store reviews as well as a list of “hot” shopping items.
Shopping.MSN.com — MSN’s shopping portal offers some great categories to search in such as specific sales of the day/week, great gifts under $25, and a holiday gift finder.
Shopping.Yahoo.com — Yahoo’s shopping portal lets you search by merchant or by brand and shows a specific deal of the day.
ShoppingAisles.com — Offers a basic interface, allowing you to compare prices from hundreds of different merchants.
ShoppingSpot.com — This site doesn’t offer a price-comparison search engine of its own, but it links to several others that do. Similarly, it links to sites that provide consumer opinions, product reviews, store ratings, and other shopping-related resources.
ShopWiki.com — Allows individual users to edit the results of searches, so much of the content is user-generated. I had some trouble with the search feature, however, so your mileage may vary.
Smarter.com
Shopzilla.com — This site has been saving shoppers on prices since 1996. It receives over 10 million unique visitors per month. Shopzilla allows you to search for prices by keyword, popularity, and shopping category.
SmartCarFinder.com — This site helps you find the cheapest prices and best deals on new and used cars and trucks.
Smarter.com — In addition to price comparisons, this site also offers reviews, featured merchants, product videos, and deals on all sorts of items all over the web.
SmartHealthBuyer.com — Price comparison engine for health services — acupuncture,chiropractic, cosmetic surgery, dental, hypnotism, massage therapy, naturopathy, optical, andskin care — that allows you to read doctor reviews and compare treatments and prices. Covers over 300 metro areas in the U.S, including New York, Los Angeles, San Diego, Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, Phoenix, San Antonio, Dallas, San Jose, Detroit, Indianapolis, and San Francisco. So if you need a good Botox price, give this site a spin.
Sortprice.com — Allows you to search products and compare prices from thousands of stores. You can search for prices by keyword, shopping category, or featured merchant.
StreetPrices.com — Lets you leave notes to yourself on your searches, so you can keep track of items you found and make a decision later.
TheFind.com — Offers a price-comparison search of online merchants, but also allows you to search for items from stores near you. Additionally, it shows a list of the most recent searches by other users on the site.
Travelocity.com — This popular site for bargain-hunting travelers allows you to get the best prices on airfare, car rentals, hotel reservations, and more.
Well the first thing you need to do is download FireFox, if you are a opera, or IE 7 user (Don’t tell me your still using IE 6) your missing out on a lot of tools and extensions that enhance your productivity.
ScribeFire needs no introduction it was previously called Performancing for Firefox. This is a full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog.
Screengrab! is an extension for FireFox that makes it easy to save a web-page as an image. With it, you can save anything that you can see in a browser window - from a small selection, to a complete page.
As the name says, this FireFox extension allows you to upload/download files from any website using a friendly interface. Upload files/photos/videos to Flickr, Picasa, Youtube, Box.net(1GB of free space), Facebook, Webshots and OmniDrive in this version. Next versions would support other websites like Google Videos etc. You can add multiple files to the queue at a time. Extension will take care of uploading them for you.
Tired of Filling the the same details while commenting on different blogs? Autofill Forms enables you to fill out web forms with one click or a keyboard shortcut. A set of customizable rules is used to determine the input for each form element. You are able to edit, remove, enable/disable the provided rules and to add your own ones. You can configure the order in which the rules are to be applied and define site specific rules.
Resize crop, alter, refine make a collage etc all can be down with this simple but powerful picture manager from Google.
Best RSS Readers
Google Reader The best Web based Rss reader, some people prefer netvibes or pageflakes.
RSS Bandit The best Free Offline Desktop Reader. I like the Inbuilt support for Wordpress comments without the need for going to the post to read comment, unfortunately it works only for Wordpress blogs.
You've found out how to write a blog, you've decided on the content you want to put in, and you have a fair idea of what you want your blog to look like because you've been visiting other blogs. But have you decided on the best blogging tools to use? Do you even know which blogging tools will serve you best? Well, that's what this article intends to tell you.
The secret to good blogging, as every expert blogger knows, is to find the bets blogging tools. Often, this involves quite a bit of research, that is, if you're serious about blogging as a regular activity. Even for amateur bloggers, however, blogging tools are an important part of the process, so to speak. So when you select a blogging platform, you have to gauge whether you have acquired the skills to set it up, whether you can post on it fairly easily, whether it can accommodate relatively heavy matter such as images, and audio-visual data, whether it can filter comments and check spam, whether it offers you enough customizing options, and whether you can track the number of hits.
Think about it: you should neither expect too much, nor too little, from blogging tools. Their primary aim is to help you create, and operate, your blog, and it's fairly obvious that the requirements of a business blogger, for instance, will be different from those of a personal blogger. But the basics remain the same: easy posting, all-round interface that includes text and multimedia, a tracking system, links to subscription enhancing tools such as RSS feeds, variety of layouts, and a well-entrenched support system (whether on the platform itself or on forums that link to it).
Whatever you do, don't get short-changed. Your blog is, or ought to be, an extension of your personality at the very least, and an important professional asset for many. How can you allow it to get lost among the crowd for want of the best blogging tools? So I ask you to compare the features offered by all major blogging platforms and only then to arrive at a decision.
