Recursively Download Folders using FTP with wget in UNIX (even SSH)

Okay, so you don’t have SSH access to your server, but you do have FTP access to it, and you need *all* the files in a folder.

Worse, your directory structure is many levels deep, and extremely messy. Normal FTP won’t cut it, because command-line FTP doesn’t do recursive downloading of folders. Turning off interactive mode and using mget doesn’t work too.

The easiest solution? Use wget to recursively download folders using FTP. Here’s the wget command:

wget -r ftp://username:password@yourftphostname.com/directory1/directory2/

You can replace yourftphostname.com with an IP too. So with wget, and the -r flag (for Recursive) that’s all that you need to recursively download folders using FTP. Took me a while to figure that out, but what a relief when I finally discovered how to

wget -r -c ftp://username:password@yourftphostname.com/directory1/directory2/

And if you happen to get disconnected, don’t fret, because wget has the -c flag too, which probably stands for Continue. This useful wget flag actually provides a resume function, which is very handy when you are transferring large files!

(Of course you really shouldn’t be running plain old insecure ftp when sftp is available…)

Subscribe to my blog: RSS reader    Email

Windows CMD Command Prompt Windows Keep Closing (Or Doesn’t Stay Open)

I was having a hard time with command prompt windows when I created and ran my batch files - they wouldn’t stay open and kept closing before I could see its output.

Then I discovered the PAUSE command - by adding this command to your batch file, you’ll pause the window for as long as you want, keeping it open so that you can read the output it generates!

So if you want your command prompt DOS window to stay open, then use this following piece of code in your batch file:

@ECHO OFF

REM Put your main code here

ECHO Halting operation. Please press enter to continue.
PAUSE>NUL

PAUSE>NUL means that the output of PAUSE will be redirected to the NUL device. This command allows you to replace the default PAUSE message with your own, using an ECHO command before it. In this example, the user will see the message “Halting operation. Please press enter to continue.” Once the user presses enter, the command window will close.

Subscribe to my blog: RSS reader    Email

Recover Lost Windows XP Passwords Free!

Windows NT stores its user information, including crypted versions of the passwords, in a file called ’sam’, usually found in \winnt\system32\config. This file is a part of the registry, in a binary format previously undocumented, and not easily accessible. But now this software author has made a program that understands the registry.

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/

This is a utility to (re)set the password of any user that has a valid (local) account on your NT system (Windows XP is an NT system). You do not need to know the old password to set a new one.

This free program works offline, that is, you have to shutdown your computer and boot off a floppydisk or CD. In addition, it’ll detect and offer to unlock locked or disabled out user accounts!

Subscribe to my blog: RSS reader    Email

Make Open Office Start Faster With This Speed Boosting Tip!

Open Office is a great piece of software - and at its price, it’s pretty hard to beat! The default settings for Open Office might cause it to have a slow start-up speed though, but no problems! This tip will help you speed up Open Office’s start-up time instantly!

1. Start either Write or Calc
2. From the menu, go to >> “Tools”, then “Options”
3. From the left menu, select “Memory”. Then on the right, follow these settings:

   Number of steps is set to 20.
   Graphics Cache for Open Office is set to 128 MB.
   Memory per object is set to 20.0 MB.
   Enable systray quickstarter is checked.

4. Next, simply hit OK and exit the program

That’s it! The next time you run any application of the Open Office suite, you’ll realise that they will start up much faster!

Subscribe to my blog: RSS reader    Email

Default Mozilla Firefox Bookmarks Location - Windows XP

I was setting up an automatic backup process for my system, and one of the things that I wanted to backup was my Mozilla Firefox bookmarks. So I dug around and found out where they were. They’re all contained in a single bookmarks.html file, located here:

C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR_USERNAME\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\

Subscribe to my blog: RSS reader    Email

Windows Password Recovery / Reset

These are the things needed to edit the passwords on most systems. Fits on a single CD or floppy!

Tested on: NT 3.51, NT 4 (all versions and SPs), Windows 2000 (all versions & SPs), Windows XP (all versions, also SP2), Windows Server 2003 (all SPs), Vindows Vista 32 and 64 bit.

Note: If used on users that have EFS encrypted files, and the system is XP or Vista, all encrypted files for that user will be UNREADABLE! and cannot be recovered unless you remember the old password again. If you don’t know if you have encrypted files or not, you most likely don’t have them. (except maybe on corporate systems)

http://home.eunet.no/~pnordahl/ntpasswd/bootdisk.html

Subscribe to my blog: RSS reader    Email

Windows Backup with Acronis Review

As I just found out, Acronis True Image is an excellent tool to backup your system with! I thought that Norton Ghost was the industry standard, but Acronis just blew me away with its ease of use and powerful feature set.

With Acronis, you can backup either individual files and programs (even preferences) or backup your entire hard drive. And on top of that, you can also make incremental or differential backups. These are very useful features that allow you to save either space or time.

Click to see an enlarged screenshot

What’s the difference? Well in any case, you’ll need to make a full system backup initially. But in the future, any changes will be compared with the full system backup, and the differential or incremental backup only includes the changes since then. As you can expect, this is much faster than doing a full system backup everytime, and saves you tonnes of backup space.

However, you might face a higher risk of data corruption if you do too many differential or incremental backups. So you might want to do a few diffferential or incremental backups, then have a full system backup done as well, every once in a while.

The best thing about Acronis is that I am now protected against data loss from a system or hardware failure. If I keep to my regular backup schedule, it means that I only need to pop in my system backup disc to restore my computer system to its original configuration almost instantly.

And in Acronis, it’s really easy to create a system backup disc. Just select the “My Computer” option, and Acronis will guide you through the recovery process. Acronis True Image also gives you the power to specify the compression level of the backup - you can choose either normal, high, or maximum compression. Normal compression takes the most storage space while maximum compression takes the least space - but the drawback is that the backup process will take longer. If you need extra security, you’ll be pleased to know that Acronis also allows you to set your own password.

One very unique feature about Acronis True Image is that it will create a secure zone on your hard drive. This is a partition on your hard drive set aside specifically for backup and recovery, in the case of a system crash. It contains your bootable rescue data, and to make it secure, this partition is hidden, so no other software can access it. This secure zone backup feature is unique to Acronis - no other backup program has this, and I find it really useful to have.

Click to see an enlarged screenshot

If the world was perfect, Windows would never crash, viruses and spyware can be removed with one click, and installing new programs will never cause irreversible damage to our systems. But the world isn’t perfect - which is why the premium PC protection that Acronis True Image offers is something that absolutely no computer user should be without.

Millions of users have been using Acronis True Image, and that’s what started me on it. Now I’m a fan of it! You should try it out for yourself - there’s a free trial available, so there’s zero risk.

Note: Some of you have asked me about the difference between Acronis True Image 10.0 Home and Acronis True Image 9.1 Workstation. Well the main difference between Acronis True Image 10.0 Home and Acronis True Image 9.1 Workstation is that the latter provides you with the ability to manage backup/recovery process remotely. Generally, Acronis True Image 9.1 Workstation is meant for use in business and networked environments allowing IT staff to manage backup tasks and protect employee laptops and desktops throughout the organization from one central location.

Try Acronis True Image 10 Home (Free Download and Trial Version!)

Buy Acronis True Image 10 Home (Instant Download!)

Subscribe to my blog: RSS reader    Email