Repair windows xp MBR

- insert bootable windows xp cd.
- select 'repair windows xp'
- fixmbr
- fixboot
- exit
Machine will reboot.

view only dir in console (linux)

$ cd dir
$ ls -d */

it will only list directories present in the current dir and neither files nor contents of subdirs.
It is useful if a dir contains many files and you need to print the list of subdirs only.

using mailx from command line

*) Using mailx for sending mail:

echo "this is a mail body\n~c other@example.com" | mailx -s "my subject" user@example.com

This will send mail
To: user@example.com
Cc: other@example.com
Subject: my subject

this is a mail body
-------------------------------------------------
the '\n~c other@example.com' will add the recipient to Cc list, as '~' tilde option only recognized by mailx cmd if present at start of line

Backup utility in Bash Shell Script

save following bash shell script as mybackup.sh
#!/bin/bash
#
# Filename: mybackup.sh
# Author : Simrat Pal Singh
# Email : simrat.khokhar@gmail.com
#
# Modified: 02-03-2011
# to even work with paths having space
#

if [ $# -ne 2 ];then
echo "Wrong number of arguments"
echo "Usage: $0 /path/to/source /path/destination/"
exit 1
fi

input=$1
backupdate=$(date +%d%m%Y)
foldername=$(basename "$1")
inputpath=$(dirname "$1")
outpath="${2}"
output="${2}${foldername}_${backupdate}"

case ${foldername} in
*.tar.bz2)
[ "${inputpath}" = "" ] && inputpath="."i
bzip2 -dck "${inputpath}"/"${foldername}" | tar -C "${outpath}" -x
;;

*)
counter=0
while [ -f "${output}.${counter}.tar.bz2" ]
do
counter=$(expr $counter + 1)
done

output="${output}.${counter}"

# run tar and bzip2 command to make backup
tar -C "${inputpath}" -c "$foldername"|bzip2 -cz >"${output}.tar.bz2"
chmod -x "${output}.tar.bz2"
;;
esac

#--------------------- END ------------------------


execute with two arguments as:
sh mybackup.sh /path/source /path/destination/

it will create 'source_ddmmyyyy.x.tar.bz2' at /path/destination/
where 'x' is integer value, ie if you run it twice on same day for same source folder, it will automatically incremented.

if source folder is .tar.bz2, then it will unzip the contents at the destination path

To set default workspace in eclipse on linux

Following trick works on ubuntu

cd /use/lib/eclipse/configuration
sudo gedit config.ini
find 'osgi.instance.area.default' and set its value accordingly
save and close