Monthly Archives: November 2011

BlueIris – getting alerts sent via SMS

I used this and it worked fine: your10digitphone@txt.att.net Found at Camera > Alerts, then under ‘Using the internet’ there is a setting named ‘Send an SMS text message to a cell phone’ click the ‘Configured’ button next to it, then … Continue reading

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Observation on lowcost PTZ IP cameras (Foscam, Foscam clones et el – as found on

Many of you will be aware of the lowcost cameras on ebay, but I thought I’d offer up my observation, it may help somebody out. I bought 2 x IP PT cameras, the first one was a clone of the … Continue reading

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How to backup MySQL for free

I needed to backup a small MySQL database, wanted something robust, simple and free, previously I used a hacked together shell script which ran via cron. I briefly tried a few of the offerings out there, I then I came … Continue reading

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How to get Firefox over SSH using the command line

Do: ssh -X user@hostname firefox -no-remote As a side note, you have done a minimal install of CentOS,  and you try the above and get the following warning “(firefox:2740): Pango-WARNING **: failed to choose a font….”, well you need install … Continue reading

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Uninstalling/remove Xfce4

You tried Xfce4 and now you want rid of it but how? rpm -qa|grep xfce just lists a crap load of xfce4 dependencies, rpm -e didn’t work, neither yum remove xfce – the fix? This will remove all the dependencies, … Continue reading

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unRAID – low cost server solution

Great solution IMHO, if you fit with some the features below If you have old hardware you want to reuse (or new of course) Because of the above, can be inexpensive You don’t need fast write performance, good for archival, … Continue reading

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Fun and frolics configuring Openfire (XMPP)

Work in progress, but so far… CentOS 6.0 – 64bit — had to add libldb.i686 for JVM Openfire 3.7.0 Name : mysql Arch : x86_64 Version : 5.1.52 Release : 1.el6_0.1 Server set-up http://127.0.0.1:9090 for initial configuration, for admin GUI … Continue reading

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My Ubuntu version journey, 10.04, 10.10, 11.04 to 11.10, GNOME 3 and finally settling on KDE4.7

I have used many Linux distro’s and windows managers over the years, but for the last few years I decided to settle on Ubuntu, mainly because of the ease of installing software (apt-get) and it working with the laptops I … Continue reading

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