I recently tried to use pv in a bash script so that it wouldn’t interfere with my concept of communicating overall progress to the user. When I usually like to do is to echo -n a description of the current task and then later echo either “Done.” or “Failed!” (or something similar). Obviously, that somewhat [...]

While working on a bash script, I wanted to check if I could rm -rf a folder before actually attempting it and flushing the console with tons of write permission error messages. Upon failing to find what I wanted online, I constructed this beauty: find . \( -exec test -w {} \; -o \( -exec [...]

While working on the typo3scripts project, I wanted to implement a self-updating feature into each of the scripts as that seemed most convenient for where these scripts would be used. My initial approach was OK but left me wondering. So, here is the revised approach for a bash script that has the ability to update [...]

Someone complained to me about the following error message when trying to use OpenVPN to connect to a VPN: All research regarding the matter pointed to a broken certificate. But even after re-exporting it and comparing the contents, we could not find any problem. I had the client repeat several parts of the certificate over [...]

I often run Ubuntu server installations in VirtualBox. Sadly, this only provides you with the default console window. So most of the time I would additionally connect with Putty into the same VM, so that I can make use of a larger console. But recently it pissed me off so badly that I went hunting [...]

You know how everyone would tell you to not use RAID0 unless the data you store on it is worthless? And do you know how the same people would most likely tell you to never put your operating system on a RAID0 volume? Well, I ignored those people and did it anyway. And what did [...]

This almost feels too simple to even mention it. But I guess it doesn’t hurt putting it our there. Someone might hit it in a desperate Google hunt. So this is the deal. You have a device on your network that controls another device by means of sending out simple TCP payloads. Now you want [...]

When I wanted to build the latest PHP for a server I found several guides online. Sadly none of them worked right away. So after finally getting it all to work like I wanted to, I decided to quickly write up this guide. I start with a clean Ubuntu 8.04 install. So, first things first: [...]

This is a little introduction to the latest version of my steam and hlds frontend bash script. I will demonstrate it’s use by setting up a new Team Fortress 2 game server with it. This tutorial assumes an Ubuntu 8.04.2 x86 server system. I set up a VM for the sake of this tutorial. It [...]

For a while now I have been running some dedicated servers for Source games. Primarily Team Fortress 2. I lately switched those off in favor of Left 4 Dead servers. I was always looking for a way to improve my setup. At some point during my initial googleing I came across this article. I based [...]