ssh -- Industry guru Dave Taylor answers questions about a wide variety of technical topics, including HTML, online advertising, Cascading Style Sheets, Web design, Unix, Linux, search engine optimization, Mac OS X, shell script programming and Microsoft Windows.

"ssh" Help and Information



Does anyone make a bluetooth pen device?

I am a law student and have completely switched over to a laptop for all of my notes. My laptop is bluetooth and I use a bluetooth mouse. My question is do you know of any bluetooth pen devices?...

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Can I Spy on Another Mac User?

I have been an avid reader for some time but I have a question. The kids all have computers now (we all have macs) and I was wondering if there was a way to check up on them every once...

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What's the difference between BitTorrent, Limewire and Kazaa?

I've been starting to delve into peer to peer (p2p) networking and am trying to figure out what the difference is between Limewire, Kazaa, BitTorrent and similar. Can you explain how they work?...

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Where can I find historical stock data?

I've been doing some research on long-term stock pricing trends and need to find data on publicly traded companies. Any clues on where I can find this sort of information back for the last decade or so?...

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Why do people buy company stock?

What is the reason people buy stocks from a company. I know the obvious reason is to make money, but there is more. So just "why do people buy stocks"? thank you....

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What's a "joe job" and why are spammers using my domain?

In the past 3 days I've received dozens of returned e-mails that appear to be sent by my domain name but that are not valid email addresses. For example I received a returned e-mail today that was "sent" from nvsnx@mydomainname.com...

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Can I change VNC on Ubuntu to use a different port?

I have 2 Ubuntu Dapper machines at home. One is going to a college dorm with may daughter in a couple weeks. I can get her desktop on my computer through VNC here at home. It's using port 5900....

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Why is Mailman complaining "Site list is missing: mailman"?

I've been running the Python-based "mailman" mailing list management program for quite a while with good results, but all of a sudden when I try to start it up I get the error "Site list is missing: mailman" and it...

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How can I check disk quotas on my Verio VPS account?

I have a couple of clients who are on the same Verio/NTT Virtual Private Server (VPS) system, and I want to have some simple script to check their disk usage. It's not a simple "du" sort of task, however, because...

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How can my server be DNS spoofed?

Help! For some reason when I try to use "ssh" to connect to my server from my Mac, it fails and is saying that I might be a victim of a "DNS Spoof"? What's going on, and how do I...

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Former admin is hacking into our Mac server, help!

Dave, we have a server security problem in Mac OSX, it is being remotely accessed by a former sys admin who has been stealing our business and the webfiles that go with them. Could you work with me to help...

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Automating SSH with a shell script

I am trying to write a shell script for automated ssh. vairable user and passwd have initialized correctly, but when I use the following it still prompting me for the password. ssh -l $user cisdevapp1 $passwd uptime exit I have...

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How do I enable root login with ssh?

Dave, I've been using ssh like a good Internet citizen to connect to my remote server, but for security reasons the ISP has disabled root login from ssh on every server. Problem is, I really need to be able to...

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Can I use Firefox with AOL?

Dave, can I use America Online (AOL) as my Internet Service Provider, but actually use a different web browser -- Firefox -- rather than the browser that's included with the AOL software suite? Also, how about email programs?...

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SSH Tunnels? How do I use an ssh tunnel to secure my email?

Dave, I was talking with my ISP and he suggested that I use an "ssh tunnnel" when I use my email program, Microsoft Entourage, on any public wireless networks to avoid exposing my account and password to anyone who...

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How do I change my default shell in Mac OS X Panther from tcsh to bash?

Hi Dave! I'm running a 500 MHz Titanium Powerbook with 512MB of memory, Mac OSX 10.3.7. I recently had to do a clean install on my powerbook and my shell is defaulting to the tcsh instead of the bash....

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What capabilities does the Lynx text-only Web browser offer?

In case you don't get this magazine -- and you should if you're responsible for administering even a single Unix or Linux system -- I'm republishing the article here for your reading pleasure.
Take a deep breath and let’s go back in time a few years, back to Windows 95. Think about people saying “Leenucks? What’s that?” and just maybe imagine being in a public place without 10% of the people chatting away on cellphones. Remember an upstart company called Netscape and a browser formerly known as NCSA Mosaic. And let’s go back just a little bit further…

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What capabilities does the "cat" command have?

A reader writes: I had taken an intro course to UNIX a few years ago, but have found your book Teach Yourself Unix in 24 Hours MUCH more comprehensive and user-aware! I have hit a stumbling block in Chapter 16...

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How do I get SSH & X Windows working?

A reader sent in an appeal for some Linux help this morning: I have your book Teach Yourself Unix System Administration in 24 Hours, but still have some questions: I have root access to a remote server which is limited...

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How to use Apache htaccess to password protect a directory

In a rather lengthy email message, a reader writes to me that:I am following your book Creating Cool Web Sites with HTML, XHTML and CSS and am trying to protect a subdirectory on my website. The following is the .htaccess...

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