Every once in a while it is handy to be able to access an Amazon RDS Database Instance remotely from a desktop.

ssh -i <strong>YOUR-AMAZON-PRIVATE-KEY</strong>.pem -l <strong>YOUR-AMAZON-RDS-USERNAME</strong> -L 33060:<strong>YOUR-AMAZON-RDS-PRIVATE-IPADDRESS</strong>:3306 -N ec2-usr@<strong>YOUR-AMAZON-EC2-INSTANCE-PUBLIC-ADDRESS</strong>

Note: YOURAMAZONRDSPRIVATEIPADDRESS needs to be the AWS internal RDS IP Address – not the external hostname

You can then connect to RDS using mysql commands or any GUI tool such as MySQL Workbench via localhost:33060

Thanks to: Dirk Taggesell via AWS Forums

Just a short note on Wireshark install (needed to beat an Asterisk SIP install into submission)

sudo apt-get install wireshark
sudo useradd -U -M -s /bin/false wireshark
sudo chgrp wireshark /usr/bin/dumpcap
sudo chmod 754 /usr/bin/dumpcap
sudo setcap 'CAP_NET_RAW+eip CAP_NET_ADMIN+eip' /usr/bin/dumpcap
sudo gpasswd -a YOURUSERNAME wireshark

Source: http://wiki.wireshark.org/CaptureSetup/CapturePrivileges

Having seen more and more articles on the use of micro-blogging tools in educational and corporates settings, I am constantly surprised that one of the most useful options from my point-of-view seems to be constantly overlooked. Micro-blogging is like Twitter, but private to your organisation. It is a great way to capture those more informal internal discussions. It can help distribute useful information (such as links) throughout your organisation or help kick-start conversations.

I sometimes have time to read RSS feeds when I have no Internet connection. Granted this is happening less often these days with wireless connectivity pretty much ubiquitous, but I frequently have that need. Most often it’s in an air-plane when you want to catch up on non-essential news and don’t have any connectivity.

This is where Lightread comes in handy. It synchronizes your Google Reader Account with excellent integration into the Ubuntu UI (desktop notification of new items …).

Installing CoffeeScript on Ubuntu 12.04 is a complete no-brainer by the looks of it (since both node.js Core as well as Node Package Manager are in the Ubuntu repos).

sudo apt-get install nodejs npm
sudo npm install -g coffee-script

To check the installation

coffee -v

Just as a reminder for myself & in case it helps somebody …

Flash Media

rtmpdump

apt-get install rtmpdump
rtmpdump -r "rtmp://domain.tld/video_name.flv" -o video_name.flv

Docs: http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu/rtmpdump.1.html

Windows Media

mimms

apt-get install mimms
mimms mms://domain.tld/video_name.wmv

Docs: http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/precise/man1/mimms.1.html

mplayer

mplayer -dumpstream -dumpfile video_name.wmv mms://domain.tld/video_name.wmv

I recently had a need to install a VPN service in a OpenVZ container. Since I normally only use Hardware emulating VM’s I ran into quite a few issues in terms of low-level networking support on this Container Virtualisation System. Turns out that you are stuck with a TUN/TAP solution as most services won’t enable PPP services on their infrastructure. Also Ethernet bridging is not available (at least on the service I used) so you’re stuck with NAT IP masquerading. Considering the options I thought best served with using OpenVPN server.

For roaming mobile clients PPTP (Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol) is still the quickest way to get VPN connections to tunnel traffic over a secure link.

Installation

I always prefer installation via a yum repository as this will ensure patches are applied during regular system updates

sudo rpm --import http://poptop.sourceforge.net/yum/RPM-GPG-KEY-PPTP
sudo rpm -Uvh http://poptop.sourceforge.net/yum/stable/rhel6/pptp-release-current.noarch.rpm
sudo yum install ppp pptpd -y

Configuration

Note: replace $USERNAME and $PASSWORD with actual values

IP configuration

echo "localip 192.168.0.1" >> /etc/pptpd.conf
echo "remoteip 192.168.0.100-199" >> /etc/pptpd.conf

DNS configuration

To keep my desktop (notebook) machine light and responsive I don’t want unnecessary services starting on boot-time. Turns out Ubuntu is surprisingly cumbersome to configure in this area (compared to RedHat / Fedora).

Two services I need on my notebook, but don’t want them to start unless I require them running are MySQL and Apache. But it looks like some services are started using upstart init daemon and it appears there is no management tool for this. Services can pe prevented from auto-starting either by renaming the config file or commenting out the start line in the config file

As a Galaxy Nexus Owner I have been waiting for months for an OTA (over the air) upgrade to the factory installed Firmware (4.0.2). I am finally sick of waiting and complaining to Google (an absolute lost cause).

After some research it turns out that (contrary to popular opinion) not every unlocked Google Nexus actually has the ‘official’ Google Firmware. Some of them have a Samsung variant (WTF !?) of the firmware. Now I really don’t want to get off the technical topic, but I personally think that this means Google is misleading their most loyal customer base. The reason I chose a Nexus device over the (from a hardware perspective) superior HTC One X was the fact that they were supposed to have the official Google Firmware and I did not have to wait forever for bugfixes from the manufacturers.

Since I am tired to constantly recite this list whenever one of these designer-type people tells me that they need Adobe’s Whatever Suite to do some basic task here is a summary that I can point them to.

Vector Graphics

Inkscape (http://inkscape.org/)
Xara Extreme (http://www.xaraxtreme.org/)

Raster Graphics

Gimp (http://www.gimp.org/)

Desktop Publishing

Scribus (http://www.scribus.net/)

Photo Editing

Gimp (see above)
Darktable (http://www.darktable.org/)
RawTherapee (http://www.rawtherapee.com/)
Luminance HDR (http://qtpfsgui.sourceforge.net/)
Layout Tools (DTP): Scribus (http://scribus.net/canvas/Scribus)

If you really need Oracle Java (some applications seem to insist on it) on Ubuntu here is the procedure using a PPA.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java

sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install oracle-java7-installer`

HT to WebUpd8 http://ppa.webupd8.org/