Posts Tagged ‘default behaviour’
Wednesday, April 18th, 2012
The default behaviour of lynx – console text browser on Linuces, BSD and other free OSes is to always ask, for the accept cookies prompt once an internet web page is opened that requires browser cookies to be enabled.
I should admin, having this "secure by default" (always ask for new cookies) behaviour in lynx was a good practice from a security point of view.
Another reason, why this cookies prompt is enabled by default is back in the days, when lynx was actively developed by programmers the websites with cookies support was not that many and even cookies was mostly required for user/pass authentication (all those who still remember this days the websites that requires authentication was a way less than today) …
With this said the current continuing security cautious behaviour in the browser, left from its old days is understandable.
However I personally sometimes, need to use lynx more frequently and this behaviour of always opening a new website in text mode in console to prompts me for a cookie suddenly becomes a big waste of time if you use lynx to browser more than few sites. Hence I decided to change the default way lynx handles cookies and make them enabled by default instead.
Actually even in the past, when I was mainly using internet in console on every new server or home Linux install, I was again making the cookies to be permanently accepted.
Everyone who used lynx a few times already knows its "annoying" to all time accept cookie prompts … This provoked me to write this short article to explain how enabling of constant cookie accepting in lynx is done
To enable the persistent cookies in lynx, one needs to edit lynx.cfg on different GNU / Linux and BSD* distributions lynx.cfg is located in different directory.
Most of the lynx.cfg usual locations are /etc/lynx/lynx.cfg or /etc/lynx.cfg as of time of writting this post in Debian Squeeze GNU / Linux the lynx.cfg is located in /etc/lynx-cur/lynx.cfg, whether for FreeBSD / NetBSD / OpenBSD users the file is located in /usr/local/etc/lynx.cfg
What I did to allow all cookies is open lynx.cfg in vim edit and change the following lines:
a)
#FORCE_SSL_COOKIES_SECURE:FALSE
with
FORCE_SSL_COOKIES_SECURE:TRUE
b)
#SET_COOKIES:TRUE
uncomment it to:
SET_COOKIES:TRUE
c) next, change
ACCEPT_ALL_COOKIES:FALSE
ACCEPT_ALL_COOKIES:TRUE
Onwards opening any website with lynx auto-accepts the cookies.
For people who care about there security (who still browse in console (surely not many anymore)), permanently allowing the cookies is not a good idea. But for those who are ready to drop off little security for convenience its ok.
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Tags: ALL, authentication, Auto, browser cookies, BSD, bsd distributions, cfg, change, convenience, Cookie, default behaviour, Draft, everyone, file, free oses, GNU, gnu linux, internet web, Linux, Lynx, lynx one, NetBSD, Onwards, OpenBSD, page, persistent cookies, point of view, programmers, quot, reason, security point, squeeze, support, text, text mode, time, TRUEb, TRUEc, TRUEuncomment, uncomment, using internet, vim, waste, waste of time, web page, writ
Posted in FreeBSD, Linux, System Administration | 1 Comment »
Saturday, April 7th, 2012
I've recently wanted to use PHP's embedded system(""); – external command execute function in order to use ls + wc to calculate the number of files stored in a directory. I know many would argue, this is not a good practice and from a performance view point it is absolutely bad idea. However as I was lazy to code ti in PHP, I used the below line of code to do the task:
<?
echo "Hello, ";
$line_count = system("ls -1 /dir/|wc -l");
echo "File count in /dir is $line_count \n";
?>
This example worked fine for me to calculate the number of files in my /dir, but unfortunately the execution output was also visialized in the browser. It seems this is some kind of default behaviour in both libphp and php cli. I didn't liked the behaviour so I checked online for a solution to prevent the system(); from printing its output.
What I found as a recommendations on many pages is instead of system(); to prevent command execution output one should use exec();.
Therefore I used instead of my above code:
<?
echo "Hello, ";
$line_count = exec("ls -1 /dir/|wc -l");
echo "File count in /dir is $line_count \n";
?>
By the way insetad of using exec();, it is also possible to just use ` (backtick) – in same way like in bash scripting's “.
Hence the above code can be also written for short like this:
<?
echo "Hello, ";
$line_count = `ls -1 /dir/|wc -l`;
echo "File count in /dir is $line_count \n";
?>
Tags: Auto, backtick, bad idea, behaviour, browser, code lt, command, command execution, count, default behaviour, dir, Draft, exec, execution, file, fine, function, idea, kind, libphp, line, online, order, performance, performance view, quot, solution, task, way
Posted in Programming, Web and CMS | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, March 13th, 2012
The default picture viewer on Xubuntu's XFCE is risterroro. Risterroro is quite lightweight, but anyways is lacking even basic functionality with reading a number of pictures in a directory and showing, them one by one lacks any picture automated slider. The lack of picture back/forward functionality makes picture viewing very inconvenient on those Linux distro.
Thanksfully this kind of unconfortable default behaviour on Xubuntu can easily be changed to use a handy picture viewer program called gpicviewxubuntu-linux:~# apt-get install --yes gpicview
Gpicview is a good minimalistic program which has all the functionality of the default GNOME picture viewer program eog – (eye of the Gnome). If you're aaccustomed to GNOME's eog you can always install and use eog instead
Tags: Auto, behaviour, default, default behaviour, directory, distro, Draft, eog, functionality, Gnome, gpicview, gpicviewGpicview, kind, Lack, Linux, linux distro, minimalistic, number, picture, program, Risterroro, slider, Thanksfully, viewer, XFCE, Xubuntu
Posted in Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, System Administration | No Comments »
Monday, January 9th, 2012
I've recently had to set up a backup system to synchronize backup archive files between two remote servers and as I do usually with this situation I just set up a crontab job to periodically execute rsync to copy data from source server to the destination server . Copying SRC to DEST is the default behaviour rsync uses, however in this case I had to copy from the destination server to the source server host (in other words sync files the reversely.
The usual way to copy with rsync via SSH (from SRC to DEST) is using a cmd line like:
debian:~$ /usr/bin/rsync -avz -e ssh backup-user@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:/home/backup-user/my-directory .
Where the xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx is my remote server IP with which files are synched.
According to rsync manual, the proposed docs SYNOPSIS is in the format;
Local: rsync [OPTION...] SRC… [DEST
Obviusly the default way to use rsync is to copy source to destination which I used until now, but in this case I had to the other way around and copy files from a destination host to the source server. It was logical that swapping the SRC and DEST would complete my required task. Anyways I consulted with some rsync gurus in irc.freenode.net , just to make sure it is proper to just swap the SRC, DEST arguments.
I was told this is possible, so I swapped args;
debian:~$ /usr/bin/rsync -avz -e ssh . backup-user@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:/home/backup-user/my-directory
...
Surprisingly this worked 
Anyways I was adviced by by a good guy nick named scheel , that putting -e ssh to command line is generally unnecessery except if there is no some uncommon used SSH port over which the data is transferred. An example case in which -e 'ssh is necessery would be if transferring via lets say SSH port 1234;
rsync -avz -e 'ssh -p1234' /source user@host:/dest
In all other cases omitting '-e ssh' is better as '-e ssh' is rsync default. Therefore my final swapped line I put in cron to copy from a destinatio to source host with rsync looked like so:
05 03 2 * * /usr/bin/ionice -c 3 /usr/bin/rsync -avz my-directory backup-user@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:/home/backup-user/ >/dev/null 2>&1
Tags: archive files, Auto, avz, backup system, case, cmd, cmd line, copy, copying, cron, default, default behaviour, destIn, destinatio, destination, destination host, destination server, docs, Draft, example, example case, few words, format, gurus, host, job, nbsp, necessery, nick, option, port 1234, remote server, rsync, scheel, server host, server ip, source host, source server, ssh port, sync files, system, usr bin
Posted in FreeBSD, Linux, System Administration | No Comments »
Thursday, June 2nd, 2011
he Joomla CMS default behaviour is that Page titles of the Joomla Articles created are always set to the page Title assigned to each of the articles.
This is not very good behaviour in terms of SEO, as the page title of each link on the main page is different and there is no continuous repeating pattern in all of the joomla pages.
Everyone that has even basic idea of SEO knows that page titles are very important weight factor to make indexing inside Search Engines succesful.
There is a well know SEO rule which is the more reoccuring pattern one has in his page titles, more is stressed on the keywords contained in the title.
As I said for some weird reason Joomla has no common page Title for all my the created Article pages linked via the Main Menu*
Thus in order to improve this bad default Joomla SEO behaviour one has to change the default auto assigned titles for created pages, manually.
Two things are necessery to change each of the joomla already existing TITLES.
1. Go to each of the pages (.e.g. Home etc.) and change the Parameters System Page Title settings
After logging in with administrator in Joomla, navigate to Menus -> Main Menu*
Further on choose a menu item from all your existing items, let's say Home and click on it.
On the left side below the Save, Apply, Close and Help buttons you will notice the menus:
Parameters (Basic), Parameters (Component), Parameters (System)
When clicked on Parameters (System) a submenu will appear:
Above is a screenshot of the up-described Parameters (System) [Page Title] location
You need to change where it reads on the screenshot CHANGE THE TITLE HERE !!!!!!
After entering your own desired page title go and save the article via the Apply or Save button (also visible in the screenshot).
Now as the custom Page Title is set, next step is to enable the custom Page Title for the respective Article in Article Manager
2. Enable custom Page Title for created pages in Joomla
Go to the Article Manager by following the menus:
Content -> Article Manager
Select the Article of which you want to change the Page Title to some custom text and click over it.
As the article opens for edit in an html editor, navigate to Parameters (Advanced) tab and therein change the Show Title from default setting value:
Use Global
to
Yes
Once again use the Save or Apply button to confirm the new settings and open your website in a new tab, try to browse and check the title of the articles parameters just edited. It should show up in the Title (page heading) the custom input Title.
Now repeat the same procedure for all pages (Articles), existing in Joomla to attune the Page Titles to some Google friendly strings and enjoy the better Search engine indexing which should likely follow.
Tags: article manager, Auto, Button, cms, Component, component parameters, custom, default behaviour, Draft, everyone, Global, good behaviour, home, indexing, location, menu, menus, necessery, page, page titles, Parameters, reason, screenshot, Search, search engines, SEO, show, submenu, tab, text, value, weird reason
Posted in Joomla, Various, Web and CMS | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, April 12th, 2011
Until recently, I have used a default wordpress theme which historically is a bit old and used to be a default theme to the older versions of wordpress.
Since however, I've went to many updates and on the other hand I do like and enjoy the template I have decided to continue use it for my blog until this very day.
However this nice theme's default behaviour is a bit weird, since by default the Single opened posts are configured in a way that the usual index page sidebar is missing.
As in the sidebar there are plenty of navigation buttons and search in the blog button, at a certain moment I have realized it's probably not a good idea that the single.php (single blog posts) open up with the right sidebar missing.
Thus I've decided to put back the missing sidebar in the single posts, with a hope that this will be helpful to my readers and hence have positive impact on the overall blog user experience.
Doing so prooved to be rather easy, here is how I added back the right sidebar to my wordpress single posts :
1. Edit blog/wp-content/themes/default/single.php
debian:~# vim /var/www/blog/wp-content/themes/default/single.php
2. In the single.php look up for the code:
<div id="content" class="widecolumn">
Substitute this html code with:
<div id="content" class="narrowcolumn">
3. Next find the code: <?php get_footer(); ?>
Right before the get_footer(); php function add in the function;
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
Tadam! Refresh a single post in Firefox and you should see your blog index.php sidebar to show up.
Tags: behaviour, blog, Button, code lt, content themes, default behaviour, default theme, div, div id, Firefox, footer, function, gt 3, hand, idea, impact, index page, moment, navigation buttons, older versions, page, php, Search, Single, substitute, Tadam, use, user experience, var, vim, way, wordpress blog, www
Posted in Web and CMS, Wordpress | 1 Comment »
on 
How to permanently enable Cookies in Lynx text browser – Disable accept cookies prompt in lynx console browser
Wednesday, April 18th, 2012The default behaviour of lynx – console text browser on Linuces, BSD and other free OSes is to always ask, for the accept cookies prompt once an internet web page is opened that requires browser cookies to be enabled.
I should admin, having this "secure by default" (always ask for new cookies) behaviour in lynx was a good practice from a security point of view.
Another reason, why this cookies prompt is enabled by default is back in the days, when lynx was actively developed by programmers the websites with cookies support was not that many and even cookies was mostly required for user/pass authentication (all those who still remember this days the websites that requires authentication was a way less than today) …
With this said the current continuing security cautious behaviour in the browser, left from its old days is understandable.
However I personally sometimes, need to use lynx more frequently and this behaviour of always opening a new website in text mode in console to prompts me for a cookie suddenly becomes a big waste of time if you use lynx to browser more than few sites. Hence I decided to change the default way lynx handles cookies and make them enabled by default instead.
Actually even in the past, when I was mainly using internet in console on every new server or home Linux install, I was again making the cookies to be permanently accepted.
Everyone who used lynx a few times already knows its "annoying" to all time accept cookie prompts … This provoked me to write this short article to explain how enabling of constant cookie accepting in lynx is done
To enable the persistent cookies in lynx, one needs to edit lynx.cfg on different GNU / Linux and BSD* distributions lynx.cfg is located in different directory.
Most of the lynx.cfg usual locations are /etc/lynx/lynx.cfg or /etc/lynx.cfg as of time of writting this post in Debian Squeeze GNU / Linux the lynx.cfg is located in /etc/lynx-cur/lynx.cfg, whether for FreeBSD / NetBSD / OpenBSD users the file is located in /usr/local/etc/lynx.cfg
What I did to allow all cookies is open lynx.cfg in vim edit and change the following lines:
a)
#FORCE_SSL_COOKIES_SECURE:FALSE
with
FORCE_SSL_COOKIES_SECURE:TRUE
b)
#SET_COOKIES:TRUE
uncomment it to:
SET_COOKIES:TRUE
c) next, change
ACCEPT_ALL_COOKIES:FALSE
ACCEPT_ALL_COOKIES:TRUE
Onwards opening any website with lynx auto-accepts the cookies.
For people who care about there security (who still browse in console (surely not many anymore)), permanently allowing the cookies is not a good idea. But for those who are ready to drop off little security for convenience its ok.
Tags: ALL, authentication, Auto, browser cookies, BSD, bsd distributions, cfg, change, convenience, Cookie, default behaviour, Draft, everyone, file, free oses, GNU, gnu linux, internet web, Linux, Lynx, lynx one, NetBSD, Onwards, OpenBSD, page, persistent cookies, point of view, programmers, quot, reason, security point, squeeze, support, text, text mode, time, TRUEb, TRUEc, TRUEuncomment, uncomment, using internet, vim, waste, waste of time, web page, writ
Posted in FreeBSD, Linux, System Administration | 1 Comment »