The Bits 2.0

cron is probably one of the most useful services in the UNIX world. It is a time-based scheduling service that executes commands at a set interval.

Most flavours of Linux should have cron bundled. Unfortunately, not every distribution has the same method of configuration. The following example is based on CentOS 5, a popular enterprise web server distribution based on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

The configuration file for cron is stored in /etc/crontab. This file stores a list of commands to execute at a certain time interval you set.

(more…)

Migrating UTF-8 encoded WordPress database can be a real headache using conventional methods where characters appear garbled. Here’s a quick and dirty solution that though crude, it just works:

(This article applies to UNIX-like systems running MySQL > v4.1 only!)

(more…)

Election Time in Malaysia…a cloud of uncertainty and unrest looms over… 

Anticipating severe load, MalaysiaKini.com created mirror sites to provide live election results. But at around 3pm British Time, MalaysiaKini.com, one of the most popular sources of independent news in Malaysia went offline.

(more…)