Easy Way to Change Ubuntu Usernames

If you want to change your Ubuntu user name, a very fast way to do so is via the command line.

Just type the following:

sudo usermod -l newname currentname

For more options, just type man usermod

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Rails and Microsoft Sql Server

So you want to connect your rails application to Microsoft SQL Server. The following instructions will take you through setting this up quite simply. This setup is on a a Ubuntu 8.04 server connecting to SQL Server 2000 (we will use the Northwind sample database). The first thing you need to do is install the following gems:

$ gem install dbi --version 0.4.0
$ gem install dbd-odbc --version 0.2.4
$ gem install rails-sqlserver-2000-2005-adapter -s http://gems.github.com

More info can be found on the sqlserver adapter gem development page. This is just the first step. Read the rest of this entry »

Adjust What the History Command Shows

By default on OS X, the history command (accessed via the terminal) shows the last 500 commands including multiple entries that are the exact same. Just to find an old useful command, you may have to sort through 100′s of ls and cd commands. Wouldn’t it be nice to show only unique commands, and remove the duplicates, or store a larger history? Well you can and it is very simple to set the variables to control what the history command shows on the MAC terminal.

Launch a terminal, by default you should be put into your home directory. To make sure you are in your HOME, just type: Read the rest of this entry »

Updating Server Time on Ubuntu

A handy way to help keep a Ubuntu server’s date current is to add a daily cron job that runs the ntpdate command. To do this you just repeat the following in a terminal.
Create a file named ntpdate in /etc/cron.daily/ :

sudo nano /etc/cron.daily/ntpdate

Now add the following to this file:

ntpdate ntp.ubuntu.com pool.ntp.org

Save and exit, then make the job executable:

sudo chmod 755 /etc/cron.daily/ntpdate

Your server will now update once a day using either the ntp.ubuntu.com or pool.ntp.org time server. But there is a better way…
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Show System Uptime in XP

1. Open the Start menu and select the run command,
2. Type cmd to bring up a command prompt
3. Type systeminfo

This will show a list of your hardware and OS information. If you scroll to the 11th or so line you will see the uptime.

Windows Vista changed this information to System Boot Date, but you can get the uptime in hours by loading the Task Manager and selecting the Performance tab.

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