updated 07-25-2020 If your database is becoming very large “Help, my moodle database is huge!” How to delete old records in a huge moodle database How to clean moodle database tables. How to keep a moodle database clean and trimmed How to delete old log table records from a moodle database Moodle has “Site administration” settings to “Moodle keeps extensive logs of user activity....
bash sub-stringing to put creation dates on .jpg and other files
to rename all my camera photos I need some string functions, to put the creation date on all the jpg files I need … jhead. Linux does not keep the creation date; it keeps the modified date. The date on the file changes as soon as you copy or edit it, like with a photo editor. if you have not modified the image so...
ILLEGAL CHARACTERS in Filenames
There are a lot of existing Unix/Linux shell scripts that presume there are no space characters in filenames, including the default setting of the Bourne shell “IFS” variable. Each pathname component is separated by “/” therefore, filenames cannot contain “/”. Neither filenames nor pathnames can contain the ASCII NUL character (\0), because that is the...
Internet Hacking 101, with PHP
The point is, a web site (blog?) with an option or requirement to login before commenting (or blogging) and no captcha, may be easy to get into as an admin. Make sure your web site is secure. Micah Lee, in 2600, The Hacker Quarterly tells how to “write code that automatically loads web pages, submits forms, and [can create an admin user-id in WordPress...
quiz yourself on PHP
PHP 1.) The eregi() function is deprecated in PHP 5.3+ A. TRUE B. FALSE 2.) Which of the following will be most likely to work as intended: A. mail($headers, $body, $subject, $to); B. if ($i = $item) C. foreach ($i=0;$i $v) E. none of the above 3.) Which of the following is a valid php statement A. print ("<p> Hello World </p>"); B. echo...
Clean up WordPress
There are some problems with WordPress which can be easy to fix if someone would just tell you how. Some issues involve portability: when you change internet hosting providers, and when you have a copy of your web site, certainly your wordpress blog, on your pc, it is a backup copy, and a place to safely try out things like new plugins and themes...
Caching, the ultimate speed-up for wordpress
All dynamic web sites are built from server side programs accessing databases, and the more code, the more it is broken up – into separate files, the slower the access. Starting with the index.php, there are well over 2 dozen php programs that have to be accessed from the disk, and the fastest SCSI hard disks are still 1000 times slower than RAM. One...
Browser Hacking; Firefox and Google Triumph
2011 Hacking Contest Browser Results Wednesday, March 16, 2011 Pwn2Own, now in its fifth year, is a hacking competition divided into two areas: web browsers and mobile phones. This year’s Pwn2Own contest has come and gone with February, leaving in its wake 3 exposed browsers. Vupen (a French security firm) hacked the Apple Saffari browser version 5.0.4 earning $15,000 from TippingPoint. The Google Chrome...
I got a “grub>” prompt and NO operating systems
updated 2021-10-26 I had windows and an old copy of Fedora on my first of 2 hard disks and wanted to install the latest Fedora on the second one. The first time, I did not give it permission to touch my 1st hard disk containing windoze and fedora 13, which I did not want wrecked. Problem was, the new one, on...
Open Source LMS, MOODLE, ATutor, Sakai, Canvas, and others
Because moodle has abandoned so many of its installed client base with the release of moodle version 2.0, it’s seems to be the right time to look at the alternatives. Moodle has only about 10% of the on-line education market. “Moodle has been in a downward spiral for a few years” – educhalk.org ATutor ver. 2.0 PHP 5 meg tar.gz Claroline ver. 1.10 PHP...
How to Find Linux CPU Usage
To find what is soaking up your cpu How do I Find Unix-Linux CPU Utilization System Monitor on your desktop, you can find all that and more at Applications -> System Tools -> System Monitor. There, you will find each processor, RAM, your operating system, its version, kernel, hard disk space, cpu load averages over the past 1, 5, and 15 minutes, processes running,...
CRON JOBS; crontab, cron tables
Your crontab editor The default editor for the ‘crontab -e’ command and many others is vi. On Ubuntu, it is the nano editor. To change it to something else, like emacs, or gedit, for instence, use the commmand $ export VISUAL='gedit' (or whatever editor you like) $ export VISUAL='emacs' To see your crontab editor What is your crontab editor? to see what your crontab...
how to get linux to recognize your modem or router, internet connection
2009 – 2010 – 2011 How to get Fedora to recognize your internet connection. I installed Fedora and it will not recognize my cat5 (cat5e) ethernet, internet, connection. I installed linux on my pc (Fedora 11, then a year or 2 later, 13, and now fedora 14) and, each time, everything was fine except that Fedora would not communicate with the internet, even-though the...
help! wireless network not active
updated 2017-06-09 Laptop with wireless is disabled. I did a reset of the Belkin-n router, and the modem, and now the wireless does not work. On the laptop, I had accidentally and unknowingly slid a wireless on-off switch to the OFF position! I did not even know there was a switch! fedora: how to “re-enable” wireless NIC ? fedora: (re)activate wlan0 “Operation not possible...
PHP Fatal error: Cannot redeclare
” Fatal error: Cannot redeclare () … ” I defined a function (fff) in the top of my pgm. (not in a loop) it spanned from line 5 to 11 and used it in the program, later. I got this error msg: Fatal error: Cannot redeclare fff() (previously declared in /…/xxx.php:5) in /…/xxx.php on line 11 clearly, I only defined it once in the...
hints to a few 2 and 3-dimentional puzzles & Tetris
For those who don’t want the answer handed to them, but do want a hint. “Block By Block” ThinkFun games – thinkFun.com Block by Block 3D Puzzle a 7-piece stacking puzzle that asks you to match 60 different three-dimensional patterns! Block by Block helps players sharpen their spatial thinking skills and have fun at the same time The puzzle pieces are the same as...
a few Puzzles, Mazes, and Sudoku
1. what is the minimum height of a mirror that lets you see a full head-to-toe view of yourself? (“relatively speaking”) 2. Two identical wooden wheels carry a 10 lb weight. One weight is a disk at the center of the wheel; the other weight is a ring attached near the rim of the other wheel. If the wheels are released at the same...
change root password in MySQL
how to change / fix the root password in MySQL First: If you install MySQL through an X-window GUI application, like System >> Administration >> Add-Remove Software, then, it will install without prompting, and the one mysql user that is created, “root” will have a blank password. From a terminal command line, type $ mysql -u root -p Enter password: [just hit enter...
two online PHP tests
This is information for some on-line PHP tests: Even when you’ve been developing in PHP for a few years, a valid concern is whether an exam asks questions that are tricky or obscure. If so, you can miss questions on topics that you understand very well. Here are some obscure bits of information from just such a php test. int xml_parse ( resource $parser,...
Function: Convert Numbers to Words
This little, recursive, script is to convert a number, an integer, to words. It has an upper limit of 999,999,999 but you can expand or reduce it from there. Put the function in your include file and try it out. /* * Function: number_to_words * Description: recursive numerics to words function * Converts a given integer (in range , inclusive) into * alphabetical format...
SQL: from WHERE to HAVING
WHERE filters results before they are grouped. HAVING filters results after they are grouped. correct: count players by team: SELECT COUNT(*) count, plheight_ft FROM ALplayers WHERE plheight_ft = 6 GROUP BY plheight_ft ORDER BY count error: SELECT COUNT(*) count, plheight_ft FROM ALplayers WHERE count = 6 // 1 ORDER BY ckname ( — o.k. — I saw 7 dups.(2 each) ) now, to see...