1. The first thing you have to do is generate the keys, this is done on the machine that will be connecting from:
   ssh-keygen -t rsa
   This will generate the private and public keys need, they will be put in “~/.ssh/” by default called “id_rsa.pub”(the public key) and “id_rsa” the private key.
2. Now you need to copy this public key, “id_rsa.pub”, to the machine you will be connecting to, choose what ever method your comfortable with, ssh, ftp, smb – what ever
3. Now all you need to do is add this key to the file “~/.ssh/authorized_keys2″, the easist way is:
   cat id_rsa.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys2
   Then your done, you should no longer be prompted for a password when connecting.

Note: if this is the first time you are connecting it will still prompt you to add the machine to known hosts.

This one is cross browser and will retrive and xmldoc from a given url:


function loadXMLDoc(url) {
req = false;
// branch for native XMLHttpRequest object
if(window.XMLHttpRequest) {
try {
req = new XMLHttpRequest();
} catch(e) {
req = false;
}
// branch for IE/Windows ActiveX version
} else if(window.ActiveXObject) {
try {
req = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");
} catch(e) {
try {
req = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
} catch(e) {
req = false;
}
}
}
if(req) {
req.open("GET", url, false);
req.send("");
}
return req.responseXML
}


This will send a doucment to a url and return a textstring responce:


function sendXMLDoc(url,doc) {
req = false;
// branch for native XMLHttpRequest object
if(window.XMLHttpRequest) {
try {
req = new XMLHttpRequest();
} catch(e) {
req = false;
}
// branch for IE/Windows ActiveX version
} else if(window.ActiveXObject) {
try {
req = new ActiveXObject("Msxml2.XMLHTTP");
} catch(e) {
try {
req = new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP");
} catch(e) {
req = false;
}
}
}
if(req) {
req.open("POST", url, false);
req.send(doc);
}
return req.responseText
}


Note: I can’t remember where these came from I don’t remember writing them.
So, if you think you did and you would like me to credit or remove please let me know.

Retrieve the query to recreate a table
This query is very useful when you just want to quickly copy a table structure from one place to another.
SHOW CREATE TABLE {tablename}

Get the list of tables in a database
I personally don’t use this one very often but when your stuck with the command line to access your database it proves very useful:
SHOW TABLES

Get back wasted space
If like me your host only offers a limited amount of space for you DB this is very useful. When you delete rows from MySQL it doesn’t automatically reclaim the space and instead just marks the row as deleted. Do clean out your tables and reclaim that space simply use this query:
OPTIMIZE TABLE

You can do in a few lines of code what it take pages to do in C or any of the scripting languages I’ve used in the past. Don’t get me wrong though it’s no replacement for C but if you want to manipulate data quickly and easily for one time use it’s the way to go. One more tool in the belt to up that productivity

From the brief look at the courses lists though, they do seem to be quite skewed in favour of the technical (with is understandable I guess given the medium). Lets hope that the balance gets restored as soon as possible…….then again thinking back I seem to remember spending far more time in lectures (Physics) then my arty brethren anyway.

Lets hope this trend continues with other universities and cources.