DigitFreak

Tag: command

  • [How To] trace the IP address of a website

    [How To] trace the IP address of a website

    Usually, You certainly don’t want to know the hidden IP address of a website, because it is too difficult to remember the long numeric address which leads to the information you sought on the internet. However, there are few cases where IP address of a website plays a crucial role.

    For instance, if due to some reason website’s DNS server is unable to link the IP address to the domain name, you cannot reach the website without knowing the IP address or,

    if you are migrating your website to the new web server and updated the nameserver for the same, you might not be able to see files until your DNS information has been propagated globally. To access the data on the new server temporarily you’ll have to use the IP address to make sure your website is working properly and files has been migrated as they should.

    Whatever is the case, we are here to help you determine the IP address of the website you want to gain access to — just follow the simple tutorial below.

     

    Instructions:

    1Simple “tracert” command

    z 00076z 004If you’re using a windows OS powered computer, you can simply perform a “tracert” in the command prompt. traceroute is a computer network diagnostic tool for displaying the route (path) and measuring transit delays of packets across an Internet Protocol (IP) network. I prefer “tracert” or “traceroute” to detect the IP address over “ping” command because it provide more detailed information and I like the way the information is displayed on the command prompt/terminal window.

    • Press Window+R > type “cmd” > Enter
    • In the Command prompt type – “tracert -h 10 digitfreak.com” or “traceroute -m 10 digitfreak.com” on linux system (without quotes and replace digitfreak.com with the domain address you want to look up).
    • The first IP adress displayed beside the domain name is the one you need.

     

    2Web application

    z 00077If you are not into all that do not rely on others thing, you would probably like to stick with the third party services. There are plenty of IP lookup services that is capable of performing the job we are seeking. It’s upto your personal taste to select one of the web services that you personally think is best suitable for your interest. Personally, I like who.is domain lookup website.

    • Just Go To > www.who.is
    • Enter the name of the website you want to search.
    • The search result will return the detailed information of the website, including whois lookup, website information, DNS records and diagnostics.
    • Don’t get distracted. We are looking for the IP address and you can find it under the “site status” block (see screenshot below)

    z 00078

    There are certainly many different ways to determine the IP address of a website, but we only need to get our work done and neglect the other detailed information or methods that can give the similar results.

    If you have other favorite method to trace the IP address of the website, simply mention it in comments. Maybe we will include it in this article.

  • Ubuntu 11.04 : Using source code for Offline package installation

    Installing software in Ubuntu is a piece of cake. Just launch the Ubuntu software center and type in the name of the software in the search bar; click on ‘Install’ and you have it. This all seems and sounds so easy. The part we miss is : there is an Internet connection involved. If you do not have an Internet connection, installing software on Linux machine does not remain easy. In most cases, you cannot simply download a .DEB (or even a .RPM) file and double click to install it! There are a lot of dependencies to be resolved. Unless dependencies are resolved, the software will not behave well. Even it’s running is under question.

    However, it is important to understand how to install software on Ubuntu without an internet connection.

    Compiling programs from source code 

    ubuntu terminal

    This is the way preferred by geeks because there is no other way which can give more control over software installations. However, it is also complicated because of the technical details involved. If you have never compiled anything, maybe this method is not for you. To follow this method, you must have the source code of the package you want to install. Let us take the example of compiling php on our computer.

     

    1. Download the source package. In our case we need to go tohttp://www.php.net/downloads.php and select the package we want. We assume the php-5.3.6.tar.bz2 package is being used for the installtion.
    2. Now open a shell and go to the directory where the file gets downloaded
    • cd ~/Downloads/
    1. Then unpack the file using the tar command. This will create the required files in the firectory php-5.3.6 and come back to prompt.
    • tar -xvf php-5.3.6.tar.bz2    <- Note:please replace the version number with the one you downloaded from the link above.
    1. Now change the directory to php-5.3.6 by using the cd command. Now run the command.
    • ./configure -help

    terminal

    1. This will list down the options which the software supports. You can add as many parameters as you want from the list (you should understand what they mean). Once you have done that, run the ./configure script again with the parameters you have selected beofre. Let us assume that we want to enable support for PostgreSQL. Since ./configure –help says : 
    • –disable-ipv6                       Disable Ipv6 support

    so we will run the command

    • ./configure –disable-ipv6
    1. The command checks whether the system meets the requirements or not. In the end it throws the error:
    • configure: error: xml2-config not found. Please check your libxml2 installation.

    Now, we have a problem. This command is a part of the package libxml2-dev. So we have to install that first. Only then shall we be able to compile the php program. Now, this is the most annoying part. The configure script does not report all errors in one go but stops at the first one. If you resolve the first one and then find another, it becomes much difficult. 

     
    A bigger problem comes when you are trying to install a dependency (in this case libxml2-dev) and you find that it too needs some other package. Now think of the situation when you hae multiple dependencies (say 7) and each dependency further relies on 4 other dependencies. So there are in total of 28 dependencies which you need to install, one after another. Since, we are talking about installing software on a machine with no Internet connection, and it is possible that you might be using the nearest cyber cafe or a friends’ computer to download packages (searching the right version is another problem rooted within this all), it will easily drive youmad! 
     
    However, for sake of simplicity, let us consider for the time being that we have to deal with only one single dependency – libxml2-dev and that we have installed it.
     
    Now run the command again and you should have a long output and the end of it should say “Thank you for using PHP.”
     
    This indicates that the PHP package is ready to be installed .
     

    Note: At this point of time, it has been verified that PHP can be installed on any system because the package was most probably tested by the developers). The only job the configure script does is to check whether the system satisfies the requirements and create other files called ‘makefiles’. A makefile is once again a type of configurationfile. It contains instructions for the compiler. 

     
    Now we have to actually compile the package. So call the program ‘make’ by typing the same at the command line. This will call the compiler for every file individually and compile the whole package. Make should produce a lot of output and then get ready with the command line once again. Do notice the last few lines though. If they mention that there was an error then you should ask the community for help (make help). If make did not report error, it’s time to finally install the package. Just say :
     
    • sudo make install

    Your software should be installed after ‘sudo make install’. But wait do not delete the php-5.3.6 directory. If later on, you want to remove PHP from the machine, you can go back in to the same directory and run ‘sudo make uninstall’ and the software would get removed from your system in an easy way. Otherwise, removing files individually is a real tough challenge, and one with no benefits in almost all cases.

     
    While all this might seem quite easy, the most difficult part of installing software by compilation is where you have to resolve dependencies. It is this part which make the task challenging and geeky. Keeping that part aside, there is almost nothing to be afraid of when it comes to installing software by compilation.
     
    Also, you might be wondering why we are providing with all this extra bit of information and getting you all confused and scared of the steps involved. The main motivation of doing this? We want you to know your Ubuntu better. However at the end it’s you who are going to use it and if you don’t know how Ubuntu works and how to make it do things it’s hard for a user to adopt it. At first it might be look like a little fuss but at the end it’s you who will be benefited the most.

  • how to install software on Ubuntu using command line | for dummies

    Ubuntu is a Linux distribution and as they say, Linux is for geeks. Although Ubuntu makes it too easy on you by offering you really nice and cool ways to search and install software, there always is a more sophisticated way to search and install software, there always is a more sophisticated way to do it. To install software from the terminal, you should know the right commands to be used. Before installing the software however, you must get the updated list of software from the Ubuntu servers, at least once. Performing any software install using built in commands for package

    management would require internet connection (except when you are removing them).

    The most used command for installing software from the command line is ‘apt-get’.

    To get the updated list of packages from the Ubuntu servers, run :

    sudo apt-get update

    This will make Ubuntu contact the servers and fetch the list of software packages and consider them the next time when installing software. So if it happens that someone says that a particular software or some specific version of it is available in the Ubuntu repos but your system does not agree, run an update. Remember however that an update is different from an upgrade. While an update gets only the list of software from the servers, an upgrade will actually get those packages and install them on the machine.If you wonder what the ‘sudo’ command does, it makes you the root user when you enter the command. If you do not use ‘Sudo’ in the begin

    ning of the command, the command will fail because it requires admin privileges on machine to install software.

    Installation of programs on Ubuntu is also a simple job. You just have to change the action for the apt-get and add in the package name of the software which you want to install.

    To install gimp, for example, type this into the terminal:

    sudo apt-get install gimp

    The above command will automatically find out whether gimp is already installed or not. If it is installed, you will be notified. If it is not installed, apt-get will find out how much data it needs to download in form of software and dependency packages, how much space will it consume on disk after installation and then prompt you if you want to continue. If you think that it is fine to go with, just confirm and it will automatically download, install and update the menus to reflect the changes.

    Now if you wonder what if the internet connection break down while downloading packages, let us tell you that you will have to type in the same command again to make Ubuntu complete the installation. Be not worried however because the download will resume exactly from the point where it broke down from.

    Another question that would come up when installing software from command line is : How do i search for a particular software package? There is no search bar! Well, as a surprise to many, apt-get does not help you search for packages in Ubuntu repositories, but aptitude does. So install aptitude first.

    sudo apt-get install aptitude

    After aptitude gets installed, you can search for packages by using the command in format :

    aptitude search <package_name>

    For example, if you wanted to install chromium but ‘apt-get install chromium’ is saying that the package name is incorrect, you should first search for the exact package name. Once you get to know the name, install the package using apt-get.

    sudo apt-get install chromium-browser

    Even if every graphical program is failing, you can make use of the terminal and install something new on the machine.

    How to update your Ubuntu using terminal aka command line :

    If you want to update your Ubuntu in terminal you need to remember a simple command line.

    first you need to update the list of new updates available officially by Ubuntu. to do this type :

    sudo apt-get update

    it will refresh your Ubuntu update list with newly available updates. Then you need to finally run a command to update the system.

    sudo apt-get upgrade

    you will be asked a confirmation whether you want to update the system along with the information about how much data will be downloaded and what space it will consume on your HDD.

    press ‘y’ if you want to update or type ‘n’ (without quote) if you don’t want to update Ubuntu at that time.

    Note: when you enter password in terminal, it doesn’t show up like it does in GUI mode (the ” *** “) however the terminal is accepting your inputs it doesn’t show up any significant characters.

    Please click on pictures to enlarge