If you use Tarball or Gzip file archives for storing your data, occasionally you may need to extract only a few select files or directories, rather than the entire archive file’s contents. Many people waste time, CPU, and drive space extracting the entire archive only to get access to a few of the contents, then to discard the rest of the data.

Why should one wait on files to extract that will just be deleted immediately after, without being used? Thanks to the great minds behind the tar application for Unix and Linux; we have been privileged with a solution. A little-known time saving tip is that extracting only specified directories or files from a tar gzip file is possible. Continue Reading

What’s a Ball of Tar and a Zipper Have to do with My Linux Box?

Tarball files ( .tar ) are file archives commonly used in Linux and Unix file systems to store data backups and to assist in transferring of multiple files and directories quickly. Usually, tarbal ( .tar ) files are compressed with the GZIP library in order to save space, and make transferring quicker. Gzip’d tarball files are often have a .gz or .gzip file extension succeeding the .tar, and in equal are commonly used to backup and store data, as well as for transferring multiple files and directories around on the internet quickly and easily.

Why View the Contents of an Archive Without Extracting It?

There may be occasions when you simply want to see what is inside of a tar gzip file without having to actually extract the contents. This is Continue Reading

Many Linux Based Operating System Distribution Variants will require a manual reboot or restart of the network interface card to apply any changes you have made to the networking configuration after you’ve completed your work.

So how do you quickly restart the networking interface card without bringing down the whole server for longer than necessary? Luckily, Linux allows us to easily restart the networking interface without having to reboot, meaning we can have your network connection back up in seconds rather than a few minutes due to rebooting.

Do I need to restart my NIC if I…

If you’re not sure if the changes you’ve made warrant a network restart, you can check this quick list I put together of common changes made to the networking interface configurations for Ethernet adapters. Continue Reading

Redirecting non-www to www for ALL of your domains.

This guide will quickly go over why you should not use both www and non www versions of your domain, but choose only one, and how this affects your search engine rankings for Google.

Why you should only have www or non www, but not both for your website and it’s search engine optimization.

Many people have made their website accessible both through http://www.domain.com as well as just http://domain.com. This is not generally a good idea for your SEO (search engine optimization). You’re asking “Why?”, and I will explain. Google “king of search engines” and the only search engine that really should be important to you, treats subdomains as separate domains than the main domain.

In Google’s eyes; www.domain.com, domain.com are separate websites. If you are thinking “Great! My website is then going to be listed twice at Google!”, you will now need to reconsider, Continue Reading

SSL Certificates are considered a necessity with any website which stores or transfers any personal information. Users visiting your website are looking for and expecting to see evidence that their data will be securely transmitted, and it is a webmaster’s responsibility to provide such protection to their users.

SSL Certificates are an excellent tool to maintain the trust of your new and current user base. Without such a prominent and industry standard security measure in place, many users will simply “bounce” off of your website, as for a majority of the users of the internet, it is not worth the unknown risk to them to transmit their personal information to a destination which has not invested in such security measures.

Now that you have gotten your SSL Certificate installed, your site is ready to be viewed via https:// . However, for users typing in your web address in a search engine or their address bar, https:// is not the standard URL prefix which will be applied when connecting to your website. By default, all web browsers automatically make an http:// connection, which is not encrypted. With that, your current dilemma is how to you force your web site users to automatically connect with the secure https:// protocol, rather than the default http:// .

This brief guide will help you easily enforce the usage of your SSL Certificate and help you maintain the trust and confidence of your userbase with your SSL encrypted connection. Continue Reading