Category Archives: Tech Notes

Tech Notes and How-to Guides

Activate Oracle on XAMPP for Windows

Posted on August 22, 2009 by Nimal

PHP has got the OCI8 extension, which provides Oracle connectivity to PHP application, and OCI8 uses Oracle Instant Client Package to get Oracle specific functions. Continue reading →

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Free calls to US using Google Voice & Gizmo (with IPKall or a Friend in US)

Posted on August 20, 2009 by Nimal

So how did I get my Google Voice number from outside US… Yeah I live in Sri Lanka, and I have registered my Google Voice number and use it without any restrictions…! Continue reading →

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Using the ‘exclude’ option with ‘tar’

Posted on August 10, 2009 by Nimal

The meanings of –exclude and –exclude-from are always confusing to me. I’m always confused with the use of ‘exclude’ options with ‘tar’. Continue reading →

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Being Nice on a Linux Box – Process priority with ‘nice’ & ‘renice’

Posted on July 18, 2009 by Nimal

VirtualBox can be given higher priority using nice command. Also renice command can be used to change the priority of a running process. Continue reading →

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Shell – How to get surrounding lines of grep result?

Posted on April 15, 2009 by Nimal

Problem:I'm using grep to search for an error and want to display the surrounding lines also as they contain related information. How to do that? Solution:Using grep -C <# of lines to show above and below> <search> <file> The following … Continue reading →

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