Check your computer’s RAM type and speed

If you want to know which RAM is installed in your PC (DDR, DDR2…) and its speed, type this command:

$ sudo dmidecode --type 17

Remember that dmidecode can provide additional (useful) information about your HW.

Verilog plugin for Eclipse

If you are going to develop Verilog/VHDL code using eclipse I’ve got good news for you. Veditor provides a nice environment to work with Verilog. To install it click Help->Install new software. The repository URL is at:

http://veditor.sourceforge.net/update

Be sure to uncheck Group items by category, otherwise Veditor won’t show up.

Installing Sun’s JRE on Fedora Core

First go here and choose your operating system and architecture. Download the corresponding jre.

$ chmod +x jre-6u16-linux-i586-rpm.bin
$ sudo ./jre-6u16-linux-i586-rpm.bin

Probably your system has another java version already installed:

$ java -version

If this is the case select the new jre using alternatives:

$ sudo alternatives --install /usr/bin/java java /usr/java/jre1.6.0_16/bin/java 2
$ sudo alternatives --config java        #choose 2

To check that the selection has worked:

$ alternatives --display java
$ java -version
 Installing Suns JRE on Fedora Core

HP Invent

LOGO HP INVENT HP Invent

Manage VMware virtual machines from the command line

To control VMware Workstation Virtual Machines from the command line use the vmrun utility. For instance, to stop a running virtual machine use this command:

# vmrun stop myvm.vmx

For a comprehensive guide on vmrun take a look at this document.

Indent first paragraph of the section in Latex

By default Latex indents all the paragraphs except the first paragraph of the section. To modify this behavior include the indentfirst package in your document’s preamble:

 \usepackage{indentfirst}

Send mail from the command line on Mac OSX

I’ll be using my Gmail account to send mail. The first step is to configure the local Postfix server as a relay. Edit /etc/postfix/main.cf:

sudo vim /etc/postfix/main.cf

Search for a “relayhost=” line and add the following after it:

relayhost = smtp.gmail.com:587
smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
smtp_sasl_security_options =
smtp_sasl_local_domain = yourdomain.com
#smtpd_sasl_application_name = smtpd
broken_sasl_auth_clients = yes
smtpd_pw_server_security_options = noanonymous
smtp_use_tls=yes
smtp_tls_security_level=encrypt
tls_random_source=dev:/dev/urandom

Next create /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd and add the following (replace username and password accordingly):

smtp.gmail.com:587 username@gmail.com:password

Next run the following commands:

$ sudo postmap hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_passwd
$ sudo chown root:wheel /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd.db
$ sudo chmod 600 /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd /etc/postfix/sasl_passwd.db

You should be able to send mail from the command line now:

$ mail -s "Test" username@domain.com

You can check mail’s log file at /var/log/mail.log

To be able to send attachments from the command line (true attachments that graphical mail clients understand) install mutt:

$ curl -O ftp://ftp.mutt.org/mutt/devel/mutt-1.5.20.tar.gz
$ tar xfzvv mutt-1.5.20.tar.gz 
$ cd mutt-1.5.20/
$ ./configure
$ make
$ sudo make install

To send attachments use the following command:

echo "text body" | mutt -s "subject" -a file.dat -- username@domain.com

Or even better:

for i in {1..1000}; do echo "text body" | mutt -s "subject" -a file.dat -- username@domain.com; done

Happy mailing!

First registered domain name

Have you ever been curious about the first registered domain name? Well, it was symbolics.com.

Setting up OpenSSH public key authentication

First upload your public key to the server you want to log in:

scp .ssh/id_rsa.pub user@1.2.3.4:/home/user

On the server, add the public key file to the authorized_keys file:

cat id_rsa.pub >> .ssh/authorized_keys

Now you can login using public key authentication and you don’t have to enter a password anymore.

DNS query to find mail servers

To find which servers handle mail for a particular domain use dig:

# dig google.com MX
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;google.com.			IN	MX
 
;; ANSWER SECTION:
google.com.		561	IN	MX	100 google.com.s9a1.psmtp.com.
google.com.		561	IN	MX	100 google.com.s9a2.psmtp.com.
google.com.		561	IN	MX	10 smtp1.google.com.
google.com.		561	IN	MX	10 smtp2.google.com.
google.com.		561	IN	MX	10 smtp3.google.com.
google.com.		561	IN	MX	10 smtp4.google.com.