Twitter Updates for 2009-05-06

• KB: command to sync the time in Linux (Fedora/CentOS) ntpdate -u asia.pool.ntp.org #
• finally have the Windows 7 RC downloaded over the night. Thanks to MS servers for not breaking and to non-breaking wget #
• Mysql server on windows crashed during data import. What worked was using “mysql -n” during the import. -n = flush buffer after each query #

A Perfect Integration of WordPress and Twitter

I have been tweeting and I have been blogging. My blog is powered by WordPress. Integrating the blog and micro blog (Twitter) makes sense and recently I made Twitter and WordPress talk to each other, using WordPress plugins. I used not one, not two but three plugins to perfect the integration as per my taste.

Here is how it started. My initial wishlist from this integration was as follows:

1. Whenever I write a new blog post, it should be automatically posted (or tweeted) to Twitter
2. My tweets should get posted on my Blog

Referring to the second point, I did not want a blog post each, for every tweet. Instead I wanted a single blog post with all my tweets – say, for the day. Read the rest of this entry »

Secure File Transfer without Secure Shell

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is the de-facto but unsecure method to transfer files. SSH (Secure Shell) and its family of services like SCP (Secure Copy) and SFTP (Secure FTP) allows you shell (telnet like) access as well as file transfer via SCP and SFTP, securely. By “securely” I mean the data is that flows across is encrypted including the username and password. SSH is a popular protocol for shell access and file transfer in the Linux world.

So given a choice, SCP/SFTP is a better option in terms of “security”. But enabling SFTP/SCP enables, by default, shell access too. Recently for one of my clients, the requirement was to use SCP instead of FTP while blocking shell access so that no user is able to login, in curiosity, nor could execute any program/script on the server, even by mistake. All they could do is to copy files across – from their desktop to the server and vice versa.  But, I could not find anything in  SSH configuration that barred SSH, while still allowing SCP. Read the rest of this entry »