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Archive for June, 2009

HTML E-mails And Mutt

June 27th, 2009 2 comments

I find myself regularly using terminals and thus have grown to love any tool that allows me to remain in terminal. Mutt is only of those, a fantastic terminal mail client. The only issue is that most people these days send HTML e-mails rather than plain text. This means that when I open them in mutt it is very unreadable. However there is a very simple solution.

First off lets make a simple script to convert the HTML into text. Several terminal based browsers exist and these can do the conversion for us (make sure to place it in your PATH somewhere).

#!/bin/sh

if [ ! -z `which links | grep -v 'no links'` ]
then
  links -html-numbered-links 1 -html-images 1 -dump "file://$@"
elif [ ! -z `which lynx | grep -v 'no lynx'` ]
then
  lynx -force_html -dump "$@"
elif [ ! -z `which w3m | grep -v 'no w3m'` ]
then
  w3m -T text/html -F -dump "$@"
else
  cat $@
fi

Add this to your ~/.muttrc:

auto_view text/html
alternative_order text/enriched text/plain text text/html

And then this to your ~/.mailcap:

text/html;html2txt %s; copiousoutput

Start up Mutt and get nothing but text e-mails.

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CentOS NetInstall

June 7th, 2009 No comments

I recently reinstalled my CentOS (to upgrade to 5.3) and this time I decided to use a netinstall method. The netinstall can be very useful if you have a local repository of RPM files and even then it can be nice to download a very small ISO (only 8.3Mb).

So here is how you can do it for yourself. If you require to setup any partitioning scheme before hand, I highly recommend Partition Logic as a good run-from-CD partitioning tool. You will also need to download the small CentOS NetInstall ISO.

  • Boot from the ISO
  • Type linux askmethod at the boot prompt
  • Select the required network setup. Normally DHCP is good enough, disable IPv6 unless you plan on using it.
  • Select HTTP as the installation method.
  • If you have a local web server with your RPM’s on it then put in the information there. Otherwise use: mirror.centos.org and centos/5.3/os/i386.
  • Finally start the installation process.

The whole thing should take no more than a couple of hours to complete. This method allows you to quickly start an installation of CentOS without the need to download all 6 of the CD’s or the DVD image.

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Error Codes

June 1st, 2009 No comments

I recently came across this caused me to smile if not giggle.

ENOTOBACCO		Read on an empty pipe
EBEFOREI		Invalid syntax
ECHERNOBYL		Core dumped
ECRAY			Program exited before being run
EDINGDONG		The daemon is dead
EFLAT			System needs tuning
EGEEK			Program written by inept Frat member
EIEIO			Here-a-bug, there-a-bug, ....
EIUD			Missing period
ELECTROLUX		Your code could stand to be cleaned up
EMILYPOST		Wrong fork
END.ARMS.CONTROL	Silo overflow
ENOHORSE		Mount failed
ENONSEQUETOR		C program not derived from main(){printf("Hello, world");}
EWATERGATE		Extended tape gap
EWOK			Aliens sighted
EWOK			Your code appears to have been stir-fried
EWOULDBNICE     	The feature you want has not been implemented yet

Not to be out done, a new signal:

SIGNUKE     	Nuclear event occurred (cannot be caught or ignored)
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