How to make your Google+ status Bold, Italic or Strike through

Google+ Tips and Tricks

Styling Status Message

Unlike facebook or twitter, Google+ allows you to style your status messages .

• To make Bold : Use star(*) infront and back of the sentence . For example, to make my status as "Watched Skyfall" , you should type "Watched *Skyfall* "
• To Italicize : Use underscore(_) . For example, to make my status as "Watched Skyfall" , You should type "Watched _Skyfall_ "
• To Strikethrough : Use Hyphon(-). To get your status as "I Quit" , You should type "-I Quit-"
• You can also try the combinations also like for both Bold and Italics, *_Hello World_*

Author information in Google Search result

How to get your profile picture in google search result ?

This can be done in three steps :

• STEP 1:   Create a link to your Google plus profile from your website. The link should be of the form   <a href="http://www.blogger.com/[profile_url]?rel=author">Google</a>  .           For example:   <a href="https://plus.google.com/110500824120446601476?rel=author">My Google+ profile </a>
• STEP 2:   Edit the "Contributor To" section in your google+ profile  http://plus.google.com/me/about/edit/co to add    your website name also .
  
  
• STEP 3:  To verify that Google can verify your authorship now , Go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets and type your website address .

Delete lines inside a file matching a pattern

You can use pattern matching of sed to do so !

sed -i '/pattern/d' filename

Example: To remove the lines containing "server" from foo.txt ,do this

sed -i '/server/d' foo.txt

I felt this usefull often . For more SED tutorials , visit http://www.grymoire.com/Unix/Sed.html

Accessing Ubuntu server using XDMCP Clients

Disadvantage of VNC Server

VNC Server will just replicate the session which is already active on the server to be accessed remotely. But if say , you've logged out of the server , then you cannot use VNC server to start a new session. For that you can use any XDMCP clients like XManager or XMing. I will demonstrate here how to use XMing in Windows Vista to start a new remote sessions with Ubuntu Server.

Settings to be done in Ubuntu Server:

You must enable XDMCP server on Ubuntu. For that go to /etc/gdm folder and edit custom.conf file present there. If not present, Create a new custom.conf file. In this add as follows:

[daemon]
RemoteGreeter=/usr/lib/gdm/gdmlogin

[xdmcp]
Enable=true
DisplaysPerHost=2

Now restart your GDM using sudo service gdm restart or get a full restart of the server.

MRTG Start Up Script for Ubuntu

MRTG as a Start Up Service in Ubuntu

I am monitoring a lot of routers and switches of my organization using MRTG ( Multi Router Traffic Grapher ) . It is one of the best tools to give you an overview of bandwidth utilizations, CPU/Memory Utilizations etc. Here is a small bash script to make all these MRTG process act as a service which is automatically start up at reboot.

Details of MRTG

I am using MRTG with RRDTool using routers.cgi script. My MRTG configurations arrangements are like

• Location1 Folder
  • router.cfg
  • switch.cfg
  • servers.cfg
• Location2 Folder
  • router.cfg
  • switch.cfg
  • servers.cfg
• Location3 Folder
  • SubLocation1 Folder
    • router.cfg
    • switch.cfg
    • servers.cfg
  • SubLocation2 Folder
    • router.cfg
    • switch.cfg
    • servers.cfg
  • router.cfg

What is happening in GMAIL in the background ?

Do you wonder how this GMAIL works ? What is happening when you click the Send button in Gmail ? Here is the presentation from Google which is really informative . I would like to share this with you all . http://www.google.com/green/storyofsend/desktop/

Firewall in Ubuntu

How to set up a firewall in Ubuntu ?

Firewall is already in built into your Linux kernel. You just want to configure it properly for your needs !

Firewall is for filtering all the traffic which is headed into or out of your computer. In Linux Kernel , netfilter subsystem take care of this traffic. You just add the rules for accepting, rejecting or denying the traffic.

How to add rules into netfilter ?

 Use the IPTABLES . Iptables are really complex and flexible . See Basic How to of Iptables here https://help.ubuntu.com/community/IptablesHowTo  . 

UFW, Uncomplicated FireWall

There are many high level user interfaces for this Iptables. One is pre-installed with all Ubuntu distros higher that 8.04 , ie UFW or Uncomplicated FireWall . See more here https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UFW .  

GUFW, a Graphical Interface for UFW

GUFW is a GUI interface for UFW which is very easy to use and add rules .See more here https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Gufw

Keyboard shortcut to Open terminal in Ubuntu

CTRL + ALT + T

is the default key combination to open command line terminal ( BASH terminal ) in Ubuntu. This can be further changed by going to System -> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts