Netrecon 1.78 has been released. New in this version is experimental passive scanning, arpsniff and now a integrated front end to all of netrecons programs. A lot of the syntax has been changed up. This should be the last of the major changes as 1.80 (the hopefully gold) release is approached. I also dropped the second n on the name. Lets see how long it takes before the lawyers call....

Many Linux users use the ‘find’ utility when searching for files using the command line on their system. They’ll do a simple:

find / -name 'pattern'

Really though, the power of find isn’t just in finding names of files but rather specific details about those files. For example, if you wanted to find files which are writable by both their owner and their group:

find / -perm -444 -perm /222 ! -perm /111

or perhaps find any file that’s been altered in your Download directory in the past 24 hours:

find /home/user/Downloads/ -mtime 0

As you can see, the find command is very versatile and can be used to find an array of different attributes of files.  There are times though where I’m just looking for something and I don’t want to have to wait for the command to scan the entire directory tree in order to track it down.  That’s where locate comes in with quick and simple results.

Using the Locate Command

Using the locate command can only be accomplished if you install the mlocate package.  Most major distributions have this available.  If not, head over to the mlocate homepage and install manually.  Once that is accomplished, you’ll need to manually run a command to index your filesystem with it…otherwise, you’ll have to wait for the command to run automatically as it registers with cron to do so on a system level.  Open an terminal and change to your root user, then execute the following:

updatedb &

This updates the mlocate database that indexes your files and forks it to the background (the ‘&’ forks it to the background).  You can now logout of the terminal as root and the process will quietly work in the background.

After the command completes, using mlocate is as easy as using the locate command:

locate firefox | less

The command above will look for all files with firefox in the name and pipe the command through less so you can use the spacebar or enter key to scroll the file buffer.  Of course, the reason we pipe it through less is because any file that resides in the ‘firefox’ directory will be reported in the output.  While this tool isn’t as granular as the find command, it is a quick way to track down paths, directories, and files you know should exist.  Since the data is indexed using the updatedb command (by cron) the results are very quick and the command does not have to scan through the filesystem to return the results.

There are plenty more advanced options via flags (such as following symbolic links, making search term case sensitive, and even using regexp).  See the man page for details on how each of these options work.  Play around with locate and see what you can do!  It’s a powerful and quick search command!

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Finding Files with locate originally appeared on Yet Another Linux Blog on September 7, 2010.

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I don't know why it took me so long to get this rolling...part of it was the logistics, the other part was just being slammed with work.  Some recent and significant publicity gained us a ton of great equipment donations.

It also caused a huge influx of requests for computers.  But we have that handled, at least for now.

On top of the busiest time we've ever encountered, we need to move from our current digs.  On September 18th, we are having a recycle day out at our shop in Lakeway.  We tentatively have a Boy Scout troop coming out to help but that is not yet nailed down.  If you have some time to come out and help us sort through the mountain of stuff to get recycled, I would appreciate your participation.

So, as you all know, this is going to cost us some money.

Instead of just posting our current needs, we've decided to open a store of sorts to raise the money we need.  We have some cool and useful stuff and more will be added in the next two weeks.

We recently received a huge donation from Dell.  It wasn't computers or monitors but boxes and boxes of stuff we probably will never use.  But that's not to say that it isn't valuable to someone else.  With that in mind, The HeliOS Project has established a presence on Amazon and Ebay.  Since Ebay and Paypal are joined at the hip, our preferred way of doing business is through Amazon.

I despise Paypal and their horrible business practices but they are a necessary evil for many so I held my nose and had Diane set up a store on Ebay.  However, I will only talk about the Amazon store and let you know what we have.  Some of it is pretty cool stuff.  You can click the appropriate links to see about each of the items.  Make sure the one you click is being offered by The HeliOS Project.





Belkin Surge Protectors:  When we got the 9 pallets of the Dell donation into our warehouse, we found boxes and boxes of these.  Most are 9 or 10 outlet protectors.  These have the phone/cable/LAN protectors included in the build.  They were all used for Dell kiosk openings but you know how long those lasted...about as long as it takes to order a cup of coffee at Starbucks.





Dell 2216 PowerConnect 10/100 Switches.  We have a few of these as well.  Some have minor surface scratches but are all tested and work.  We're offering a pretty good price on these but we only have about 20 of them so it's first come first served.


Aten 4 port DVI Video Splitter:  This is probably a special-use item but we have 7 more of them and Aten makes the top-of-the-line model.  These allow you to show what you have on your computer or projector on 4 other monitors or screens.  They sell new for 300-400 dollars but because they are used, we are letting them go for a fraction of that.

Dell Multimedia Keyboard:  We took enough to last us the next three years, based on the past two years numbers and are offering the rest for sale.  What surprised me most about these keyboards was that the function keys actually open what they are supposed to open in Linux.  The home button opens Nautilus or Konqueror, the mail opens whatever client you have installed, (tested on Evolution, T-bird and Claws) and the sound knob works to adjust your system volume.  We've cleaned these inside and out and they all test to work perfectly.


 Laptop RAM - DDR2 PC5300  When we did our bi-weekly pickup at I-Tech Electronics, we found half a shoe box full of donated DDR2 PC5300 laptop RAM.  This is great RAM but honestly, we've only just begun getting laptop donations that take this DDR2.  Most of the laptops we get still demand DDR PC2100, 2700 and 3200.  I don't think you'll find a better deal on used RAM.  We will test each piece as we get the shipment order.



We still have several HeliOS Project t-shirts available for sale at 12.00 per shirt.  Contact Skip Guenter at skip at skipsjunk dottt net to make sure he has your size and color. 


At any rate, thanks for looking at what we have.  If you rather deal with Ebay, email me as stated below and I will send you the links.  If you want to be updated on new items, email me via the contact us page at http://www.heliosinitiative.org and let me know.

And as always...thanks for helping us do what we do.

All-Righty Then