How to colorizing cat command output or files using ccat app on Linux or Unix system

Posted on in Categories Command Line Hacks, Howto last updated August 30, 2017

The [nixcmd name="cat"] (short for concatenate) is one of the most frequently used flexible commands on Linux, Apple MacOS X, *BSD (FreeBSD / OpenBSD / NetBSD), Unix-like operating systems. It is useful to display text files on screen, copy text files, combine text files, create new text files and more. If you cat command with colours, try ccat app.

The Librem 5: Your Ultimate GNU/Linux FLOSS Smartphone

Posted on in Categories Linux News, Mobile Devices last updated August 24, 2017

Purism is well known for Linux based laptop with Coreboot. Now they started a crowdfunding campaign today for its smartphone called Purism Librem 5. What is so special about this phone? It is 100% powered by GNU/Linux. You can run any Linux distro on it. The phone provides high security and privacy features, i.e., it does not track you. This seems like an excellent device. One that I would certainly purchase or recommend to a privacy-conscious person.

I put a cronjob in /etc/cron.{hourly,daily,weekly,monthly} and it does not run and how can I troubleshoot it?

Posted on in Categories Cloud Computing, Howto, Open Source, Web Developer last updated August 27, 2017


Recently I created a simple shell script called backup.sh in /root/scripts directory to just backup MySQL database and dumped it to /nfs/mysql/ directory. I put a file (more like used the ln command to create a soft link ) in /etc/cron.hourly/ and it doesn’t run. There was no error in systemd log or cron log. Why is my cron job was not working, and here is how I troubleshoot it.

Linux/Unix desktop fun: Bastet Tetris(r) clone with block-choosing AI for console

Posted on in Categories Linux Games, Open Source last updated August 18, 2017

Xkcd - hell
Do you love the puzzle and Linux/Unix-like system? Command line? Try ncurses based Tetris clone which is harder than every other Tetris out there. From the project home page:

Have you ever thought Tetris(R) was evil because it wouldn’t send you that straight “I” brick you needed in order to clear four rows at the same time? Well Tetris(R) probably isn’t evil, but Bastet certainly is. >:-) Bastet stands for “bastard tetris”, and is a simple ncurses-based Tetris(R) clone for Linux. Unlike normal Tetris(R), however, Bastet does not choose your next brick at random. Instead, Bastet uses a special algorithm designed to choose the worst brick possible. As you can imagine, playing Bastet can be a very frustrating experience!

OpenSSL drops TLS 1.0/1.1 support for Debian Unstable and what does it mean for Debian sid users?

Posted on in Categories Debian Linux last updated August 7, 2017

From the announcement mailing list:

I’ve just uploaded a version of OpenSSL to unstable that disables the TLS 1.0 and 1.1 protocol. This currently leaves TLS 1.2 as the only supported SSL/TLS protocol version.

This will likely break certain things that for whatever reason still don’t support TLS 1.2. I strongly suggest that if it’s not supported that you add support for it, or get the other side to add support for it.

OpenSSL made a release 5 years ago that supported TLS 1.2. The current support of the server side seems to be around 90%. I hope that by the time Buster releases the support for TLS 1.2 will be high enough that I don’t need to enable them again.

5 Awesome Open Source Groupware Software Suite

Posted on in Categories Open Source last updated August 3, 2017

Groupware (also known as “Collaborative software”) is nothing but an app that helps users in everyday tasks such as calendar/scheduling, address books, email, forums, mailing lists, IM, wiki and more. The use of collaborative software in the work space creates a collaborative working environment. You can synchronize and share your files and photos easily using your hardware while maintaining privacy and security. Here is a list of 5 of them that you must know.

Increase your Linux server Internet speed with TCP BBR congestion control

Posted on in Categories Cloud Computing last updated July 22, 2017

I recently read that TCP BBR has significantly increased throughput and reduced latency for connections on Google’s internal backbone networks and google.com and YouTube Web servers throughput by 4 percent on average globally – and by more than 14 percent in some countries. The TCP BBR patch needs to be applied to the Linux kernel. The first public release of BBR was here, in September 2016. The patch is available to any one to download and install. Another option is using Google Cloud Platform (GCP). GCP by default turned on to use a cutting-edge new congestion control algorithm named TCP BBR.