• msttcorefonts: the Microsoft-like fonts. If you have those installed, Firefox will use them and you will get ugly windows-like font on most websites which I personally hate.
• wine: Application to run windows programs on linux. For security reasons.
• postfix: a mail server. Just because I do not want to run a mail server on my netbook.
• ...and some other

The best way to restrict those packages from being installed is through Apt Pinning.

Apt pinning

It is very easy to pin packages and restrict them from being installed.
You will need to edit /etc/apt/preferences and add something like this:

Package: msttcorefonts
Pin: version  0.0
Pin-Priority: -1
 
Package: ttf-liberation
Pin: version  0.0
Pin-Priority: -1
 
Package: ttf-mscorefonts-installer
Pin: version  0.0
Pin-Priority: -1
 
Package: wine
Pin: version  0.0
Pin-Priority: -1
 
Package: postfix
Pin: version  0.0
Pin-Priority: -1

Pin-Priority: -1 restricts the given version from being installed, and the version 0.0 does not exist and should be a lower version than any versions of the given packages. As a conclusion, they will never be installed.

Be careful what you pin, though, as you might be too restrictive and could prevent installing or upgrading other useful packages.

In this post I will show how to create a simple approval queue in Request Tracker 3.8.

The General queue will be used as the approval queue.

Here are the different entities (groups) we will create:

• Submitters: they can submit new tickets only to the General Queue.
• Approvers: they can approve tickets (move them from the general queue to another queue)

I will also show how to add a new dashlet ("RT at a glance") containing all the tickets the user created ("My issues").

Permissions and Rights

In preferences, make sure the General queue is the default queue.

Create your other queues as needed.

First, we'll allow all requestors (person who created/initiated a new ticket) to see all tickets they created and also be able to reply to them. In Configuration > Global > Group rights, for the Requestors group add the following rights:

• ShowTicket
• ReplyTicket

Submitters

In Configuration > Groups > Create, create a group called "Submitters".

To allow the submitters to create new tickets to the general queue, go to Configuration > Queues open the General queue, click on Group Rights (top menu), add the following rights to the "Submitters" group:

• SeeQueue
• ShowTicket
• CreateTicket

For the submitters to be able to see their tickets (which they created) after they have been moved to another queue, they need some READ rights on all other queues. Go to Configuration > Queues, for each queue, add the following Group Rights to the Submitters group:

• SeeQueue
• ShowTicket

Approvers

In Configuration > Groups > Create, create a group called "Approvers".

We need to allow the Approvers to see and create tickets in every queue, go to Configuration > Queues and for each queue click on Group Rights (top menu), add the following rights to the "Approvers" group:

• SeeQueue
• ShowTicket
• CreateTicket

Now they need to be able to modify tickets that are in the General Queue, go to Configuration > Queues > General click on Group Rights (top menu), add the following rights to the "Approvers" group:

• SeeQueue
• ShowTicket
• CreateTicket
• ModifyTicket

Dashlet for "My Issues"

Now we allow the privileged users to use saved searches and dashboards: in Configuration > Global > Group Rights, find the "Privileged" group and add the following rights:

• LoadSavedSearch
• ModifyOwnDashboard
• ShowSavedSearches
• SubscribeDashboard

In Tickets go to Advanced (top menu), copy and paste the following query in the first textfield:

(Creator = '__CurrentUser__')

Click on Edit Search (top menu), tweak the search as necessary. When done, save it as an RT's system saved search (in the dashlet called "Saved searches"). Pick a name ("My Issues" for example).

Then we need to the change the default RT at a glance, go to Configuration > Global > RT at a glance

In RT at a glance: body, on the left column select your saved search ("My Issues") and click the right arrow. Then in the right column, you can move your dashlet up and down.

Conclusion

Now you can add new users and assign them to the Submitters group or the Approvers group, or even both.
Submitters can create new tickets and still see them if they are moved to another queue or changed ownership.
Approvers can move tickets from the General queue to other queues.
Every privileged user should now see the "My issues" dashlet on their dashboard.

Of course, I am giving the strict minimum amount of rights necessary to achieve this, but you are free to add more rights (e.g. add the Watch right, or ReplyTicket right to Approvers) if you need them

Apache2 offers this feature through its mod_expires module. Note that this module is usually disabled by default, meaning your visitors would download all the files over again each time they change the page.

• First, to activate mod_expires, type this in a terminal:

  sudo a2enmod expires

• Then, we need to tell Apache2 which files can have an expire header. You can add this in your vhost configuration or your main apache2 configuration file you want it to apply to every vhost:

  ExpiresActive On
  ExpiresByType image/gif "access plus 7 days"
  ExpiresByType image/jpeg "access plus 7 days"
  ExpiresByType image/png "access plus 7 days"
  ExpiresByType image/x-icon "access plus 3 months"
  ExpiresByType image/ico "access plus 3 months"
  ExpiresByType text/css "access plus 2 days"

• Remember to restart Apache2:

  sudo service apache2 restart

• You can look at the headers sent by your webserver using HEAD (on a linux machine) like so:

  HEAD http://www.codealpha.net/wp-content/themes/notso_freshe/images/header.gif

This tutorial is targeted to Ubuntu systems, but can easily apply to Debian or other distributions.

Please also note that this should only be used as a guide, I do not guarantee that this will save all of your configuration. NO WARRANTY !

• First, make sure you execute each command as root, or use sudo.
• Make a secret temporary folder to store your backup and cd into it:

  cd "$(mktemp -d)"

• The /home folder: just tar everything, as root type:

  tar --preserve -cvjf home.tar.bz2 /home

• Backup /root

  tar --preserve -cvjf root.tar.bz2 /root

• Backup users, passwords and groups:
  • users are in /etc/passwd and /etc/shadow
  • groups are in /etc/group and /etc/gshadow,

  JUST take the lines containing users/groups that YOU created (usually they have a uid >= 1000)!

• Backup crontabs, and atjobs:

  tar --preserve -cvjf etc_crontab.tar.bz2 /etc/crontab
  tar --preserve -cvjf spool_crontabs.tar.bz2 /var/spool/cron/crontabs/
  tar --preserve -cvjf spool_atjobs.tar.bz2 /var/spool/cron/atjobs/

• Backup users' email:

  tar --preserve -cvjf email.tar.bz2 /var/mail/

• Websites:

  tar --preserve -cvjf www.tar.bz2 /var/www/

• Backup needed config files in /etc/:
  • Apache2 vhosts:

    tar --preserve -cvjf vhosts.tar.bz2 /etc/apache2/sites-available/

  • Networking configuration:

    tar --preserve -cvjf network.tar.bz2 /etc/network/interfaces /etc/hosts*

  • Postfix configuration:

    tar -cvjf postfix.tar.bz2 /etc/postfix/*.cf

  • Anything else you see in /etc/ and you wish to keep...
• Backup MySQL databases, users and privileges:

  mysqldump -uroot -p --databases mydb1 somedb2 anotherdb3 > db.sql
  mysqldump -nt -uroot -p -w"User NOT LIKE 'root' AND User NOT LIKE 'debian%'" mysql user db > users_privs.sql

I'm sure you can figure out where to put everything back on the destination server.

I wanted to take screenshots of about 15 Websites, but didn't want to install any plugins as I wouldn't use them often. I saw a lot of how-to's using import from Imagemagick but they capture the whole screen, not clearly what I was looking for.

Using chromium, xwininfo (from X) and import, I made this bash script which captures only the webpage. See below for the Source code.

How it works

Upon calling chromium-capture:

• it finds every running chromium browser using xwininfo,
• gets the window's id of each browser's currently opened tab (because hidden tabs cannot be accessed using xwininfo/import)
• takes a screenshot of each webpages using import and the windows' ids.
• saves the screenshot in the current directy as chromium-WINDOWID.png (with WINDOWID = id of the respective window)

You get a screenshot of only the website. All of the arguments and options given to chromium-capture will be used as arguments and options when calling import.

Usage Examples

Every argument or option given to chromium-capture will be given to import when called with every capture.

#do a simple capture
/path/to/chromium-capture
 
#capture and resize to a width of 300px
/path/to/chromium-capture -resize 300
 
#capture and rotate the image 10degres
/path/to/chromium-capture -rotate 10
 
#resize to a maximum width of 550px and reduce the number of colors to 16
/path/to/chromium-capture -resize 550 -colors 16

Source Code

This code is licensed under the GPLv3.

You can download the source code from here (md5) or copy it from below.

chromium-capture

#!/bin/bash
#
#    Version: 201001081150
#
#    Copyright © 2010 Arnaud Soyez (contact me at codealpha.net)
#
#    This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
#    it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
#    the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
#    (at your option) any later version.
#
#    This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
#    but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
#    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
#    GNU General Public License for more details.
#
#    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
#    along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
 
echo '`import` will be called with these args: '$@
echo
 
CHROMIDS=$(xwininfo -root -children\
 | grep ' - Chromium": ("chromium-browser" "Chromium-browser")'\
 | awk '{ print $1 }')
 
function getViewableId ()
{
  WINID=$(xwininfo -id $1 -children\
 | egrep -i '^ +0x[0-9A-F]+'\
 | fgrep -v '1x1+'\
 | awk '{ print $1 }'\
 | xargs -n 1 xwininfo -id\
 | egrep '(xwininfo|Map State)'\
 | sed 'N;s/\
  Map//'\
 | grep IsViewable\
 | awk '{ print $4 }')
 
  echo $WINID
}
 
for CHROMID in $CHROMIDS; do
  echo -n 'Capturing window id '$CHROMID' ...'
  FILENAME=chromium-$CHROMID.png
  import -window $( getViewableId $CHROMID ) $@ "$FILENAME"
  echo ' saved as '$FILENAME
done
 
echo 'Done'