A bash prompt with a visual indicator of the previous command exit code

Inspired by Lars Strand's blog post on the subject, I have taken the time to craft a solution for my .bashrc.

Feel free to check out the details which I shared on an existing thread on unix.stackexchange.

HOWTO KiTTY portable - cygwin support and import settings from PuTTY

SuperUser: Any simple way to add PuTTY settings to kitty?

PuTTYcyg FAQ: https://web.archive.org/web/20120619050045/http://code.google.com/p/puttycyg/wiki/FAQ

GTAIV command line arguments

One can use the commandline.txt with ths single line -help to get a pop up with the list of available options for launching GTAIV. I used SnagIt to capture the pop ups output.

This output is from GTAIV steam version 1.0.7.0 (the latest version as of writing).

LaunchGTAIV.exe [options]
Where [options] are one or more of:

==== [ Global ] ====
-adapter: Use the specified screen adapter number ?zero-based?
-disableimposters: Turn of the imposter rendering for vehicles
-noBlockOnLostFocus: Don't block the window update when it loses focus.

==== [AUDIO] ====
-fullspecaudio: Force high-end CPU audio footprint
-minspecaudio: Force low-end CPU audio footprint

==== [GLOBAL] ====
-benchmark: Determines if we run the benchmark immediately
-safemode: Sets graphics setting to lowest setting

==== [GRAPHICS] ====
-forcehighqualitymirrors: Enable 64 bit mirrors
-forcer2vb: force r2vb
-frameLimit: number of frames to limit game to
-framelockinwindow: Force framelock to work even in a window ?works best with
 60Hz monitor refresh?
-fullscreen: Force fullscreen mode
-gpucount: Lets you manually set the GPU count if query fails
-height:  Set height of main render window ?default is 480?
-managed: Use D3D runtime managed resources
-nominimize: Disables the ability to restore the game from minimize and
 changing resolutions - Reduces System Memory Footprint
-norestrictions: Do not limit graphics settings
-noswapdelay: Disable sleep delay before Present ?disable fix for hard Present
 stalls?
-novblank: Disable wait for vblank
-refreshrate: Set refresh rate of main render window
-stereo:  Set game to support stereo rendering mode
-unmanaged: Use application managed resources
-width:   Set width of main render window ?default is 640?
-windowed: Force windowed mode

==== [INPUT] ====
-usedirectinput: Allow DirectInput alongside XInput support.

==== [MEMORY] ====
-availablevidmem: Percentage of available video memory
-memrestrict: Set the restriction the amount of available memory for managed
 resources
-no_3GB:  Disable 32bit OS with /3GB
-nomemrestrict: Do not restrict the amount of available memory for managed
 resources
-noprecache: Do not precache resources
-percentvidmem: Percentage of video memory to make available to GTA
-reserve: Amount of memory to set aside for other applications
-reservedApp: Amount of memory to leave available within application space

==== [QUALITY SETTINGS] ====
-autoconfig: Automatically adjust quality setting to maintain desired frame
 rate ?15-120?
-detailquality: Set detail distance ?0-99?
-renderquality: Set anisotropic filtering ?0-4?
-shadowdensity: Set the number of lights that cast shadows
-shadowquality: Set the shadow quality ?0-4?
-texturequality: Set texture quality ?0-2?
-viewdistance: Set LOD view distance ?0-99?

==== [TIME] ====
-notimefix: Disable Time Fix

Props to:
mkey82 @ GTA Forums for publishing some great related info

Debian-Linux: start / stop / restart / status mingle init script

I have created and shared the following init script for Mingle 3.x

http://community.thoughtworks.com/posts/4c5c087474

Hope it helps :)

HOWTO: SSL your Mingle 3.5.x instance (including free SSL)

Following on from my self.documentation post on Java and its keytool, I shared a HOWTO on the mingle community for SSL'ing a Mingle instance.

HOWTO: SSL your Mingle 3.5.x instance (including free SSL)

Hope it helps someone and saves a little time!

Java Key and Certificate Management - Using an existing private key

problem: You want to use your existing private key and cert

It is not immediately obvious how to do this with Java's keytool. It took me a good while to figure out, so I'm documenting here.

solution: Java 6 can treat a PKCS12 file as a keystore

With Java 6 keytool, one can import a PKCS12 file as a keystore, here are the steps I used.

First, convert PEM format key/cert to a PKCS12 format cert

$ openssl pkcs12 -export -in thedomain.com.crt -inkey thedomain.com.key -out thedomain.com.p12

Then use keytool to import the PKCS12 cert

$ keytool -importkeystore -destkeystore thedomain.com.keystore -srckeystore thedomain.com.p12 -srcstoretype PKCS12 -alias 1

My understanding is, that if you have access to a version 6 keytool, then one can use the generated file keystore from 6 on older Java versions, but don't quote me on that.

Related: Generating a 2048 bit RSA private key and CSR

It worth mentioning that, if your just looking to generate a 2048 bit key/cert with keytool, to get a CSR for an SSL certificate authority, then you'd want to use something like this:

$ keytool -genkey -keyalg RSA -keysize 2048 -keystore thedomain.com.keystore -alias thealias

Then to get the CSR:

$ keytool -keyalg RSA -keystore thedomain.com.keystore -alias thealias -certreq -file thedomain.com.csr

Then when you get the cert back from the CA, import with keytool:

$ keytool -importcert -trustcacerts -keystore thedomain.com.keystore -alias thealias -file thedomain.com.crt

Free class 1 SSL

I have used these methods to get free SSL class 1 protection from http://www.startssl.com.

citation:

Props to:
NCSA CyberSecurity @ University of Illinois
Graham Leggett @ Cunning blog
Knowledge Base @ Comdo

Windows 7 taskbar pinned items stop working (after windows update?)

problem: After a few windows updates this week and the subsequent reboot, none of my taskbar pinned shortcuts or items worked!

The message was "Can't open this item" for each one of my pinned taskbar items.

The icons displayed just fine and the right click function worked as expected but launching the pinned items with left click gave the aforementioned message :(

Did I just get hit by a Microsoft's Patch Tuesday drive-by?

Feel free to skip right to the solution, the rest of the info is background/context.

Further reading

As a disclaimer, I have been getting weird issues with missing dll's of late, and have been forced to use the sfc /scannow command a few times in recent weeks. At first I thought this was after a few blue screens, due to playing with my RAM voltages, to ensure they were as low as possible... however now I'm wondering if there is a bigger issue somewhere.

Its possible that the so far unknown issue that has been causing these dll's to go missing or get corrupt, could of also hosed my taskbar items? I'm not sure, I would of imagined if I had an issue like that, things would be blowing up all over the place? It might not be related.

Worthy of note, a item in my Library also vanished at the same time as my pinned items... which was easily enough restored, but definitely odd.

In recent weeks, I've started to use Windows 7 Sleep function, e.g. at night when I have a lot open or if I know I'm walking away for a while. Since forever I've avoided sleep/suspend mode on windows because its always caused issues that need a reboot to fix. Perhaps sleeping is still a major no-no?

My main OS drive is also an SSD, so I'm wondering if there is something up with that, or perhaps SSD's don't like sleep mode, because up until now, the SSD has been working exactly as expected.

Oh the joys! I will post an update if anything worthwhile should arise on any of that.

solution: make shortcuts in \User Pinned\TaskBar

What I ended up doing to fix things, after not finding much help via the search engines:

1. Locating where the taskbar stuff is kept
   %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch\User Pinned\TaskBar
2. This location was empty for me :(
3. So I manually created program shortcuts with the same names as my pinned items.
4. Things started to magically work again.

To get the exact name of the pinned item, I SHIFT+RIGHT CLICKED a pinned item and chose properties, to see the name of the item. Then copy & pasted that as the name of the related item in the aforementioned path.

Hope that helps someone out!