Recursively remove all .svn directories

find . -name .svn -print0 | xargs -0 rm -rf

Courtesy of http://codesnippets.joyent.com/posts/show/104

Apply multiple patches at once

cd /path/to/source
for i in /path/to/patches/*.patch; do patch -p1 < $i; done


Courtesy of http://serverfault.com/questions/102324/apply-multiple-patch-files/102328#102328

Open "*.docx" files as MS Word files by MS IE 8.0

Users of Microsoft Internet Explorer may face this weird issue - try to download or open any "*.docx" or "*.xmlx" file from any site in Internet and you'll see it opens as zip archive!

Well, and this is because MS employees involved in different projects have no idea about other projects within MS MS IE has this nice feature "Open files based on CONTENT, not FILE EXTENSION".  So just guess where to disable this USEFUL feature and you're good to go.

If you're not that smart (as I am for example) you may read through this step-by-step guidance:

If using IE8, you need to disable Opening files based on content rather than extension. Instructions -

1. In the upper-right corner of IE8, click on Tools to open the drop down menu;
2. At the bottom of the Tools menu, click Internet Options;
3. In the Internet Options dialog box, select the Security tab;
4. On the Security tab, select the Internet zone, then click the Custom Level button;
5. Scroll about 2/3 down the list to the option “Open file based on content, not file extension” and change the setting to Disable;
6. Click OK;
7. Repeat steps 4-6 for the Local Intranet zone and Trusted Sites zone;
8. Click OK;
9. Close all instances of IE8;
10. Reopen IE8 and it should now recognize Office 2007 and 2010 file extensions when saving email attachments.

via http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/ie/forum/ie8-windows_other/downloading-docx-documents-in-internet-explorer-8/4a32a125-127e-4055-b0b7-e8751e2899a7?page=4

The most funny part is any other browser on Earth opens files in question in proper application (MS Word or Libre/OpenOffice Writer) by default.

This issue has been known for years now and still MS ignores it. Well, it's their decision.

mount sshfs with access for all users

sudo sshfs user@host:/path mount_path -o allow_other

Add user in "vboxsf" group to access VirtualBox shared folder in Ubuntu guest

On Debian (Ubuntu and a like):
sudo adduser <username> vboxsf

On RedHat (CentOS):
sudo usermod -a -G vboxsf <username>

Slow boot of Ubuntu into Unity 3D with proprietary nVidia drivers

I have Ubuntu Oneiric Oncelot 11.10 with proprietary nVidia (nvidia-current: 290.10-0ubuntu1~oneiric~xup1) drivers.

And there're 2 things I'm tired of:

1. Slow boot. Mostly a black screen after nVidia drivers are already loaded.
   It turned out it lasts more then a minute (73 seconds for example, compared to booting into Unity 2D - 38 seconds).
2. Slow wake-up from suspend. Don't have precise numbers but Unity 2D wakes just immediately while Unity 3D shows me a black screen more then a minute.

So I decided to try "bootchart".
Installed it with: sudo apt-get install bootchart
And booted into:
Unity 3D - got 1:12.98 min

Unity 2D - got 0:38.66 min

Then looked if some processes related to nVidia differ in both boot logs.
And indeed I found out that "nvidia-settings" process was mentioned proc_ps.log in such proportion:
- 66 times for Unity 3D and
- 21 times for Unity 2D.

That lead me to conclusion that disabling "nvidia-settings" may improve boot performance.
So I did "sudo chmod a-x /usr/bin/nvidia-settings" and the next boot in Unity 3D took the same 37 seconds (0:37.76) as with Unity 2D.

For sure it is not the solution, but at least a direction to look.

Moreover this unfortunately has nothing to do with wake-up delay, so keep looking into it.

Anyway, hope this helps.

P.S. Make sure you know what are you doing while dealing with system files.

Fix FlexNET License Server Manager

For some reason in FlexNET tools version 11.4 license server manager application stopped working. Actually it won't start at all:
=========
 ./lmgrd 
bash: ./lmgrd: No such file or directory
=========

the most probable reason for such sort of problem is unavailability of some dependence (i.e. shared library).

So let's look at dependencies:
=========
$ ldd lmgrd 

linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0xb784b000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libpthread.so.0 (0xb781a000)
libm.so.6 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libm.so.6 (0xb77f0000)
libgcc_s.so.1 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libgcc_s.so.1 (0xb77d1000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (0xb7655000)
libdl.so.2 => /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libdl.so.2 (0xb7650000)
/lib/ld-lsb.so.3 => /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb784c000)

=========

The first suspect is definitely (for me at least it was so) "linux-gate.so.1"

But it turned out that it's ok: http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/linux-linux-gate-so-1-library-dynamic-shared-object-vdso/ refers to http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-lpic1-v3-102-3/

=========

This virtual library provides the necessary logic to allow user programs to access system functions through the fastest means available on the particular processor, either interrupt, or with most newer processors, fast system call.

=========

Others look pretty solid except the last one:  /lib/ld-lsb.so.3

=========

$ file /lib/ld-lsb.so.3

/lib/ld-lsb.so.3: ERROR: cannot open `/lib/ld-lsb.so.3' (No such file or directory)

=========

For some reason in some modern Linux distributions this symlink is not set by default and one needs to fix it whether manually or simply installing "LSB core" (Linux Standard Base core support package)  package.

In RedHat:
=========
yum install redhat-lsb.i686
=========


or for Debian/Ubuntu
=========
apt-get install lsb-core package

=========

Now it resolves correctly:

=========

$ file /lib/ld-lsb.so.3

/lib/ld-lsb.so.3: symbolic link to `ld-linux.so.2'

=========

And as a consequence lmmgr starts and acts properly now!