Tim's Computer Web Site

MySQL is a free database available from My SQL AB (www.mysql.com). This database is a fully relational database environment and there are several tools available to help you manage the database.

User Management

I'm frequently asked about "utilities" to help solve some computer problem. I've always defined a utility as some small (hmmm...another relative term) piece of software to help accomplish a task. Usually the size is on the order of less than a floppy (the old 5 1/4" 360K floppy disks) but with changes in software and the use of graphical components, I've considered it a little larger. I guess I would have to describe them as something outside the normal realm of major busuiness class software (even though anti-virus and Spyware removal apply here as well!).

Rarely, do you need a list of Modem commands. (For that matter, how do you even send these when troubleshooting a modem? Oh, wait - that's another document I need to produce. How to use the tools that come with Microsoft Windows or Linux to actually send the commands.)

At any rate, if you find the need to actually send commands when troubleshooting a modem, here is a list of some of them.
 

AT Commands

Occasionally I've need a list of the web "safe" colors. But instead of a simple list, I wanted to display the actual color so I might have an idea of what it looks like. This is not expected to be the "real" color, as people who do color matching and typesetting know that your monitor and graphics card(?) have to be setup for the "real" colors to match professional printing. However, this will represent the colors and show relationships for the kind of work I do (i.e., It's good enough).

This article only covers backing up from the Command Linux (i.e., the shell, usually bash or korn (ksh) shells).

If you wanted to back up the database timsdata, you would simply use a command like:

mysqldump -c -u tim -p timsdata > timsdata.sql

This would create a file called timsdata.sql in the current directory. You should be aware that where I've entered the name tim in italics, you should specify another authorized user for the database.

Debian is a great Linux distro, and I'm not the only person who believes this to be true. I am not willing to discuss whether Debian is better or worse than any other linux distribution as that debate will take months or longer, and there are shortcomings of Debian like any other distribution.

That said, there is an easy way to ensure your copy of Debian is kept current with the latest security patches.

Sometimes when you're building a system, you want to be able to close the list of packages that are installed on another system.
 

Debian provides some great utitlities to manage their packaging system (apt, synaptic, etc). They also provide the dpkg suite of utilities as well. In this case, the command:

dpkg --get-selections

will return a list of packages that are currently installed on the system.