Netcat + Tar for simple file transfers
This past week I spent 3 days watching a 3-thread sftp process transfer over a system backup of 53GB. This backup in particular had a ton of files and directories, and I suspect most of the actual time was spent querying and creating the files rather than the actual transfer itself. Now that everything is transferred over, I can rsync it against another machine, but that's another story.
In searching for a better way than what I did, I found this cool gem:
On the sender:
tar cf - directory_to_copy | netcat other_host 7000
On the receiver:
netcat -l -p 7000 | tar x
A Big Pet Peeve
One thing that absolutely drives me nuts is when other blogs, news sites, or other sources of information do not include the year of the entry, or even the entire date itself. What the heck?! Take this for example. I was searching for information about the AA/BA deal and Google gave me this site. Great, except how do I know how old this was? Maybe it was referencing another deal 4 years ago? Ugh. I had to dig into the -trash- comments for a datestamp.
I see this problem strewn everywhere especially with blog posts. Great that you published a few nice posts 3 days ago... or was it 3 days and 3 years? Always frustrates me.
Making Diffs
Because I always forget...
diff -rupN original/ new/ > original.patch
Just Because a Chair Is Expensive Doesn't Make It Good
Jeff Atwood (who I must admit I only really read when someone links to him) wrote an article awhile ago about his thoughts on the chair you use for work. He's a fan of Herman Miller, and for the most part this is rightly deserved. When I worked with Accenture, everyone had Aeron's, and while it is possible to be uncomfortable in them, most of the time I was very happy with it and didn't think anything of it.
Palm Pre Emulator on Linux (Networking)
I updated my Pre emulator to the 1.3.5 SDK, only to notice none of the Internet applications worked. I searched and found one post by a guy on Stack Overflow with an incredibly unhelpful answer of RTFM (which, TFM does not even apply here).
I spent some time and figured it out. So, if you run into this problem, solve it as follows:
Log into your emulator via novacom:
$ novacom -t open tty://
Show the network routes (note the default gateway):
$ ip route show
Edit /etc/resolv.conf and change the line there to the same one as the default gateway.
$ vi /etc/resolv.conf
NB you may need to remount the filesystem as readwrite. I forget if this is the case.
My resolv.conf was 10.0.2.3, when it should have been 10.0.2.2. If you've never used vi before, press "i" to begin edit mode, then when you're done, press the ESC key, and then press "ZZ" (upper case z twice).
You should notice your Pre emulator suddenly has network access again.
Getting Rid of X-Lite
At work we use SIP/VoIP, and since I'm the one without a hard phone (e.g., a real phone), I use a soft phone (e.g., software + headset) when I need to make or take a call. I've been using X-Lite for the past few months, which by all outward appearances is a solid, working softphone. However, it's become increasingly annoying to me since it:
- Likes to forget to make my headset the default audio device
- Refuses to allow me to use the "Transfer" feature (pay upgrade)
- Pops up that annoying as hell "Video" window on start
- Has an ugly interface
- Sometimes just freezes randomly
I've been trying to find an alternate softphone, and finally seem to have. 3CX Phone seems to work like a charm, doesn't nag me to pay for anything (I don't even think there is a paid version), and lets me easily transfer calls, etc.
We'll see how it goes on call quality, but so far, so good. Eat it, X-Lite.
