As Lenovo resolves the Superfish bloatware scandal from 2015, a surprising detail has emerged from the fine print of the settlement. Consumers who bought Lenovo laptops with “man-in-the-middle” Superfish adware (by a company called VisualDiscovery) likely fell for a trick later made infamous by Microsoft: clicking the “X” to dismiss the program actually opted them into it.
Lenovo’s Superfish bloatware scandal reveals a sneaky tactic we thought Microsoft had started
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Categories: General.
MySQL: how to delete all records from a table
There can be many reasons to delete all records in a MySQL Database table and there are two ways you can acheive this using the “truncate” command or by using the “delete” command. While the ultimate net result is the same, there are differences you should know.
Key differences are
1. “truncate” uses DDL and is fast while “delete” doesn’t and hence slower (depending on the number of records).
2. “truncate” resets the auto increment counter while “delete” doesn’t.
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Categories: General.
How to enable/disable Right-click paste in PuTTY
In PuTTY, right-click on the mouse is configured to automatically pastes the contents from the clip-board. While this is a great convenience, it is equally dangerous when you are logged onto live production systems. Have you pasted “reboot” and pressed enter without realizing what you’ve done??
The following procedure will help you change this default behaviour to prompt to paste than pasting automatically when you right-click.
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Categories: General.
Python: Remove last ‘n’ characters of a string
To remove the last ‘n’ characters of a string
'string'[:-n]
or
stringVariable[:-n]
For example, to remove the last character (n=1)
[sai@c7test ~]$ python Python 2.7.5 (default, Nov 20 2015, 02:00:19) [GCC 4.8.5 20150623 (Red Hat 4.8.5-4)] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> 'python'[:-1] 'pytho' >>> >>> tmpVar = 'Python' >>> tmpVar[:-1] 'Pytho' >>>
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Categories: General.
How to block select in PuTTY
In PuTTY, left-click and drag normally selects and copies the entire line content. However, you can change this behaviour to block select like in a MS DOS window.
To make a block select in PuTTY, click and hold “ALT” and then left-click and drag on your mouse. This will make block selection.
If you want to make this the default behaviour,
- Load a saved session or load “Default Settings”.
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Categories: General.
How to change the HOST key in Oracle Virtualbox Manager
Oracle Virtualbox by default has Right CTRL key assigned as the HOST key. HOST key is a special key on your keyboard which Virtualbox reservers to return ownership of keyboard and mouse to your host operating system. This however can be changed to the one you prefer. Say for instance, if you want to change it to Left ALT (same as VMWare).
To change the HOST Key,
- Launch Oracle Virtual\box Manager.
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Categories: General.
FileZilla FTP Client configuration through BlueCoat proxy
If you are attached to a corporate or an enterprise network and connect to internet from behind a BlueCoat proxy which proxies FTP connections then FileZilla FTP client needs needs to be configured accordingly to get it work properly. There is an FTP proxy configuration and a Generic Proxy configuration that can be set in FileZilla client.
Using a Generic Proxy forces it to use Passive Mode connections.However, if you need to use Active mode FTP connections then FTP Proxy should be configured.
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Categories: General.
How to capture text, backup configuration (Cisco,Juniper or anything)with Putty
I dont think we need an introduction to the most widely used Remote console utility, PUTTY. Putty support SSH, Telnet, RLogin & RAW connections.
If you telnet or SSH to your Cisco IOS routers or switches or Juniper Firewalls and ofcourse anything that support CLI and SSH or Telnet then one of the things you would prefer to do is to take a backup of the config (Running or Startup) or even capture session text including logs tech information etc. We discussed here about using Hypereterminal to capture text and hence backup and restore config on Cisco IOS Routers and Switches.
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Categories: General.
Allow user view Running/Startup-Config (red-only) in Cisco IOS
If you want to allow a low-priviledged user on a Cisco router or a Switch to view the Startup Config then this can be done in Routers and Switches running Cisco IOS.
This infact is a simple 2 step procedure as follows:
Set Privileges to view Startup Config
From the Global configuration mode, set the permissions for the privilege level 3. This should allow the users set with privilege level 3 to view the startup config.
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Categories: General.