Walker News » Tricks

How To Download Adobe Reader Full Installer From Official Site?

Walker — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 17:57:28 +0000

Since Linux users are allowed to get the latest PDF reader setup file in full, why can’t Windows users allowed to download Adobe Reader offline installer to facilitate multiple installations?

If you’re using Windows and desperately looking for the latest Adobe Reader X full installer, here is a trick to get it directly from official site:

Yes, by tweaking user agent string of web browser (or download manager)! For example:

Right click on Google Chrome shortcut and select Properties, go to Shortcut tab, then append --user-agent="Mozilla Linux" to the string in Target box:

Note, that UA am using is dummy. One of the proper UA of Linux Firefox is this:

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9b5) Gecko/2008042803 Red Hat/3.0b5-0.beta5.6.el5 Firefox/3.0b5

Just in case the dummy UA doesn’t work, change it with a proper UA and try again. Am using this to get Adobe Reader X 10.1.0 standalone installer for my 3 Windows machines (without having to download thrice!).

How To Delete 50000 Emails From Yahoo! Mail Inbox?

Walker — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 12:39:55 +0000

My friend possesses a Yahoo! Mail account for the past ten years but has not been actively using it after switching to Gmail that’s speedier and more secure (full HTTPS session from login till logout).

Now, he got a big problem – there are tens of thousands emails in the mailbox, which majority are sent by email subscription service of various “excited” Yahoo! Groups he used to engage during his younger age :)

As he no longer keen on these stuffs, so he decided to unsubscribe and clean up the mailbox for other serious emails. However, it’s a painful housekeeping job to delete that 50K+ unread messages kept in the Inbox, as Yahoo! Mail keeps on fail to response whenever all these tens of thousands of emails are selected at one go for delete button.

There is no luck even after upgrade to the latest Yahoo! Mail service that promises 2x faster email :(

When he asked me for help, I thought he could simply use filter to clean them up, but the Yahoo! Mail filter can only applied to new messages delivered to Inbox, i.e. no effect on those emails kept in Inbox prior to filter creation:

After discussion, he agrees to apply my trick (otherwise wait for filter improvement to process messages in Inbox):

Note, the risk of using this trick is you might lose some valid/wanted emails that kept in between the unwanted emails.

Firstly, go to “mail option” and click “General” on left pane. Next, make sure “Messages” option is set to “Show all messages in scrolling list (with Preview Pane option)” and click “Save Changes”.

Now, go back to Inbox, click the check box of first/latest email in Inbox to select it, hold down SHIFT key and pressing Page-down key repeatedly to select multiple emails. When the number of selected emails cross over 10000 mark, click “Delete” button in bid to move them to Trash folder – if it works (not hang), you may gradually increase the count of selected email and then click “Delete” button.

Simple Trick Used To Monitor Website Uptime

Walker — Sat, 07 May 2011 17:15:46 +0000

There are many sites offer service to check and track website uptime, but I haven’t found one that allows user to run check at every minute except the paid premium plan.

So, I make a simple Linux shell script (below) that uses wget to check website uptime (replace blue texts with your own value accordingly):

#!/bin/sh

DMSG="Unknown at "`date`
WGETLOG=$HOME/.wget.log

wget -O $WGETLOG http://www.walkernews.net 2>>$WGETLOG

[ $? -ne 0 ] && mail -s "$DMSG" email@example.com <$WGETLOG

If the Linux web hosting server allows you to schedule cronjob, send email, and run wget at command prompt, then configure crontab to auto execute the shell script every minutes:

If the website is down (caused by failure of web server/Apache, PHP, MySQL, etc), it will send an alert to notify you at the given email address.
If the Internet connection to the web hosting server is down, the shell script can’t detect it and thus can’t alert you :(

Alternatively, power on a Linux machine 24×7 at home or somewhere else to run the shell script. Though this way allows it to detect both Internet connection and website problem (therefore can notify you via email alert), but it can’t tell which side of the Internet connection is down (unless running another check using ping) and you’ve to find a Linux machine running 24×7 :(

If that is not your ideal solution, then go subscribe free service to track website uptime (at longer interval) or get a paid premium service with great features (e.g. email + SMS alert, monthly / daily reports, online statistics, multiple checks from different sites, etc).

How To Fix SCO OpenServer Slow Login Authentication Problem?

Walker — Mon, 07 Feb 2011 09:14:56 +0000

I guess not many people using SCO OpenServer, but my office stills running an outdated SCO Unix v5.0.6 to host a legacy system :(

Nobody, especially novice, dares to touch that bloody old “junk”. Luckily, it stills running fine except this harmless (low risk) glitch – slow login password prompt at console, which delays to about a minute after entering login ID.

With reference to SCO technical article, this is a known issue caused by a bug in the bundled telnet server (but surprisingly it affects the console login too) and you might find some of these entries on /usr/adm/syslog:

failed to read terminal control database entry
can’t rewrite terminal control entry
cannot obtain database information on this terminal

To fix it, the official SCO reference suggests to install Release Supplement rs506a or create a shell script to execute tcbck (make this script to run automatically after system boots up):

while [ true ]; do
   if [ -f /etc/auth/system/ttys-t ];
   then
      tcbck
   fi
   sleep 5
done

Well, we opt to do nothing at this moment, as long as it running fine until we convert and dismantle it eventually – why bother to fix such a low risk problem encountered on an outdated system that has no secondary support we (administrators) can escalate to?

Note, if it is not caused by bug in telnetd, it could be due to DNS or network-related issues, as noted in this SCO article.

How To Bypass ISP DNS Server That Block Access To Legitimate Domains Accidentally?

Walker — Mon, 27 Dec 2010 09:13:04 +0000

If your ISP accidentally blocks access to some legitimate websites or URLs via DNS server, you can fix it in no time without using VPN connection to access from another computer with different DNS server or waiting ISP to fix the unauthentic name server.

Yes, the trick is simple as you think, just drop that unauthentic name server given by ISP and replace it with bona fide public name server. However, how do you know the public DNS servers are reliable?

There is security risk of using public DNS server that you should aware of, especially for novice users. An unreliable public name server might direct users to phishing websites.

So, the key point to note if you desperately want to refer a public DNS server, is make sure you are using a reputable, trustworthy public name server, for example Google Public DNS.

The benefits of using Google Public DNS include but not limited to speed up browsing experience (supported by low DNS latency and wide geographical coverage of Google advanced data centers) and improved security.

So, if you’re interested to experience better web browsing performance, or think that your ISP DNS server suffers high latency, try the one provided by Google Inc!

Best of all, the Google Public DNS server IP addresses, both primary and secondary, are darn easy to remember once you peek at it:

8.8.8.8
8.8.4.4

For most Chinese, 4-digit with all 8 is mean of fortune. Good luck!

Another Trick To Open Elevated Command Prompt On Windows 7

Walker — Thu, 23 Dec 2010 09:29:04 +0000

Instead of tweaking or creating a special Command Prompt shortcut, you can use keyboard shortcut or hotkey to open and run Windows 7 Command Prompt with elevated (real administrator) privilege.

Starting from Windows Vista, all Windows user accounts of Administrators group do not inherit full set of administrator privileges, except for the built-in Administrator account.

There are two types of application shortcuts on Windows 7, each uses different hotkey to open elevated Command Prompt window:

Taskbar button

Pin Command Prompt to Taskbar, i.e. create the Command Prompt button on Windows 7 Taskbar, if it is not there:

Locate Command Prompt shortcut from Start menu: Click Start button, type cmd.exe
Right click Command Prompt shortcut (cmd.exe) on Start menu and select “Pin to Taskbar”

Now, press CTRL+SHIFT+Click on Command Prompt button, Windows 7 will prompt you to open a new instance of cmd.exe with elevated / administrator’s privilege.

Conventional Windows shortcut

Locate Command Prompt shortcut from Start menu and select (highlight) it, then hit CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER key.

Direct Download Windows Live Messenger Beta 2011 Full Offline Installer From Microsoft Server

Walker — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 05:25:30 +0000

The Windows Live Essentials Beta 2011 full offline installer includes complete setup files for all Windows Live beta programs, such as Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Photo Gallery and Movie Maker, Windows Live Mail, etc.

Microsoft has just updated the previous beta version 2010 which is now as Windows Live Essentials Beta version 2011 (build 15.4.3002.810).

With reference to users’ feedback, Windows Live Essentials 2011 beta has significantly improved the performance and quality of services, which include quicker Messenger, more efficient video chat (harness GPU power and thus lower CPU utilization), better facial recognition in Photo Gallery, Movie Maker supports high bit-rate video content, etc.

If you are interested to have all Windows Live programs installed on multiple computers that sharing a slow broadband and yet limited by monthly bandwidth quota, I suggest you to directly download Windows Live Essentials 2011 Beta full offline installer from Microsoft servers (or the Live.com)- since it is directly from Microsoft servers / domain, the installer should be genuine, reliable and original (and thanks God as it is still working)!

Check out my earlier posts on this subject if you are interested on how I get this direct download link. Good luck.