#!/bin/bash

The web has become a wonderful channel for artists, photographers, journalists, and musicians to share their message with the world.  Being a long time fan of comic strips, I often find myself searching the net for new web-comics to check out.  I have found that a lot of them are horrible.  In fact, almost all of them are not even the least bit amusing.  However, a few great strips have emerged and here is my list of the 5 best web-comics on the internet.

5.  We The Robots

We The Robots is a clever toon from the mind of Chris Harding.  Harding has been an artist and an animator for many years now.  We The Robots almost never fails to make me laugh.

4.  Left Handed Toons

At first, I wasn’t a huge fan of Left Handed Toons (by right handed people).  Over time however, my opinion has changed.  Their zany humor has grown on me.  Whether or not others agree with this selection matters not, because I like it!

3.  Cyanide And Happiness

Cyanide and happiness is a daily webcomic that is drawn and written by several different contributors.  Some of the humor is very dark and disturbing, which is nice sometimes!

2.  xkcd

This is another one that I didn’t like at first.  It seemed very trendy and I was convinced it was only popular because it makes its readers feel smart.  I now spend a lot more time reading the comic though and I like it more and more.  The art certainly isn’t terrific, but the writing is top notch.  With an emphasis on math, physics and technology, this web-comic has quickly become one of the most popular comics on the net!

1.  Utopia Theory

Okay…Utopia Theory.  I absoulutely love this comic.  It is one of the only hand drawn web comics out there.  Created by Tom Duffy and Wes Hill, Utopia Theory is usually single panel comics with a bit of a Gary Larson feel.  The writing is original, the art is great…this is my favorite web-comic!

Well, that’s my list.  If you disagree please feel free to send all email complaints to /dev/null

Thanks!

by Tom Duffy

Today (July 31, 2008) at approximately 11:44am Pacific Time, Digg.com, the popular social bookmarking site temporarily went offline for some server maintainance.  At approximately 11:45am Pacific Time, a Digg user who has been desperate to get a few diggs decided he would blog about the outage and then submit the story to digg.com.  It wasn’t until he had finished his blog and tried to submit the story that he realized that the site needs to be up in order to submit a story.  Better luck next time digg noob!

by Tom Duffy

I can’t stand Microsoft.  I really can’t.  That being said, I have personally been Microsoft-Free for well over a year now.  This is truly a wonderful feeling!  I have four different computers that are all completely free from ANY Microsoft products.  I would like to share with you how you can become Microsoft-Free in 30 days or less!

First of all, let me share with you what I run:

Desktop: Intel Core2Quad dual booting Slackware Linux and Fedora 9 (Sulphur)

Laptop 1: Intel Pentium 4 running Xubuntu Hardy Heron

Laptop 2: AMD Athlon running usb boot Slax

Laptop 3: Apple PowerBook running OSX Tiger

It is important to note that just running Linux or OSX doesn’t free you completely from Microsoft.  A lot of Apple users run MS Office and other Microsoft products even though this is totally unnecessary.  So, now let’s talk about how to start freeing yourself from Microsoft.  Let’s take the following example:  A PC user is running Windows XP Professional with the following additional Microsoft products installed:  Microsoft Office 2007, Windows Media Player, and Microsoft Money.  Okay, now the most difficult Microsoft product to free yourself from will be the operating system itself.  So I recommend starting by replacing Office, Media Player, and Money.

In place of Office, you have some options.  My personal preference is OpenOffice which can be downloaded here. Once downloaded and installed, OpenOffice provides a feature-rich replacement for Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Powerpoint, and Microsoft Database.  It doesn’t however, replace Outlook.  For Outlook’s replacement, I recommend Mozilla Thunderbird which can be downloaded here.

To replace Windows Media Player, I recommend MPlayer which can be downloaded here. Don’t forget to download codecs from the site as well.  This is what will make it play all of your different media types.

To replace MS Money, I recommend GNUcash which can be downloaded here. GNUcash is a great piece of software that can handle personal and small business finances with a ton of cool features.

Now that we’ve replaced the software installed on your Windows computer with open source alternatives, let’s start the process of replacing Windows itself.  I personally recommend the Linux Distrobution called Ubuntu which can be downloaded here. Once you download the ISO file, go ahead and burn the image to a blank CD.

Okay, now all of the above can be done in a matter of hours.  So why does it take up to 30 days to become truly Microsoft-Free?  Well, it is because of the transitional period that comes with learning a new operating system.  The Ubuntu CD that you just burned can be used in many ways for you.  There are two transitional steps that I recommend before you actually format your drive and completely replace Windows.

The first step is to insert the CD while running Windows.  Ubuntu includes a cool new feature that allows Windows users to install Ubuntu as an application within Windows to try it out.  Go ahead and use the Wubi Installer to install Ubuntu on your Windows partition.  Spend some time using Ubuntu every day.  Get used to the differences.  USE GOOGLE TO GET ANSWERS!  I can’t stress this part enough.  When you transition from Windows to Linux, you are going to hit some walls.  There is a TON of help available out there.  Use google to find it!

After you have gotten used to using Ubuntu within Windows, it is time for the next transitional step.  This step consists of installing Ubuntu onto its own partition and dual booting between Ubuntu and Windows.  The reason that I recommend this is that when you are in the Ubuntu partition and you come across something that you can’t quite figure out, you can always reboot into Windows to take care of it.  This process is annoying though which will eventually lead you to trying harder to solve problems within Ubuntu rather than rebooting into Windows.

Now that you are fully comfortable in Ubuntu and have figured out how to take care of all of your daily tasks, it is time to back up all of your data for a completely clean Ubuntu only Install!  The partitioner within the Ubuntu installer is very straight forward.  Again, if you have problems, use google to get answers.  I also recommend joining the Ubuntu Forums.  There are some absolutely awesome people on there who are ready and willing to answer questions.  Of course, if you have questions, you can always just email me!  Send questions to tom (at) techremedy (dot) net.  I hope this helps at least ONE person become free from the Microsoft stranglehold!

by Tom Duffy

Okay, this is a subject that gets me going!  I am a bit obsessive about my network security and when WEP first became popular I began using it right away.  Then, as soon as I started hearing rumors about wireless sniffing, packet injection, and WEP cracking I immediately changed the way I look at wireless security.  Obviously, it is important to keep your network secure.  But at what cost?  Some of the security options out there are seriously more effort than they are worth!  Even setting up WPA on my home network was a hassle because I have 5 computers on the network.  Three are various Linux distros, 1 Mac PowerBook, and 1 Windows XP laptop.  I also have an Xbox 360 with a wireless adapter.  In order to get all of these devices connected with WPA, I had to jump through several hoops.  So what is a simple and safe way to secure my wireless network?  Well, in order to answer this, I decided to learn how to crack a WEP key and try to hack my network in various states with different security features.  Here are the results:

1.  64 Bit WEP Without MAC Filtering

This was scary…took me about 3 or 4 minutes to collect enough IV’s to crack the wep key.  If you don’t know what IV’s are, please read about cracking wep here.

2.  128 Bit WEP Without MAC Filtering

This one took a little bit more time, but once there was ARP requests from the router to my wireless adapter, the IV’s started pouring in.  Total crack time was 12 minutes.

3.  WPA Personal TKIP with a 6 character passphrase

Had to relearn the process a little for WPA, but once I got the hang of it this took me about 15 to 20 minutes.

4.  WPA Personal TKIP with a 20 character passphrase

I know that there are people who can crack this…but I simply couldn’t.

5.  WPA AES/TKIP With RADIUS

Couldn’t crack this either.

Okay, so my findings are that WEP is useless right?  Well, not entirely.  I found that by not broadcasting the ESSID and filtering MAC addresses, 128 Bit WEP was enough to make me feel kinda safe.  WPA Personal with a long passphrase was the best option for me.  This is because of the combination of ease of setup and good security.  The reason for the long passphrase is to avoid rainbow table cracking.

So what is the truth about WEP cracking?  Well, the truth is that there aren’t a whole lot of people out there who are any good at it.  A lot of people download BackTrack or another liveCD linux distro with wep cracking tools and they assume that the tools just crack wep for them.  The reality is that the tools that are used for WEP cracking are quite complex.  I personally am not concerned about someone trying to crack my wireless network.  However, I am concerned about my client’s networks.  Business networks should be as secure as possible.  Always.

So, if you just bought a new wireless router and are thinking that you’ve done the right thing by securing it with WEP, please reconsider, but let’s not get paranoid…there isn’t an army of hackers trying to crack your wep key.   I hope that this helps someone!

by Tom Duffy

I stumbled upon this awesome comic strip from www.utopiatheory.com.

by Tom Duffy

I have had a lot of experience trying to get clients to use secure passwords and the common problem that comes up is that secure passwords are often difficult to remember.  So, I came up with a simple solution to this.  Let’s get started:

First, we should pick our favorite song.  For the sake of this tutorial, I will use Stairway To Heaven by Led Zeppelin.  Now, pick a line from the song that is 6 or more words long.  I will use the line “And she’s buying a stairway to heaven”.

Next, take the first letter of each word in that line of the song.  Mine would be:

ASBASTH

Now, alternate between lower case and upper case:

aSbAsTh

Next we will choose a letter in this that can also be represented by a number.  Some examples of this would be to use a 5 instead of an S or a 1 instead of an I.  So, I will use a 5 instead of the capital S:

a5bAsTh

Next, we will add a character that is not alpha-numeric such as a $ or a # and add it to the beginning and end of the string.  I will use a $:

$a5bAsTh$

“$a5bAsTh$” is a very secure password.  A brute-force attack would take a LONG time to break this and a dictionary attack would simply fail.  The best part is that even though this password is very secure, all I have to remember is that line from the song with a “$” on either side of it and a “5″ instead of an “S”.  I recommend this to all of my clients now and it has convinced a lot of computer novices that they can have secure passwords without the worry of forgetting what they are!  I sure hope that this helps some people!

Impressive…Let’s see a Windows machine stay up for that long!

by Tom Duffy

Lately, I have been getting a lot of traffic to my blog from StumbleUpon. This is great! Welcome fellow Stumblers! However, a few Stumblers have complained about my choice in titling my last blog entry with the word “Advanced” claiming that the information I was providing was more “Intermediate” than “Advanced”. Okay…I agree completely. The information I was providing was not very advanced. The reason I chose to name it “Advanced” was because of the massive influx of new Linux users who are not used to this sort of thing. To them, deactivating their NIC from the command line is “Advanced”.

This is all fine and well, but now I have this strange feeling in my gut. It’s a feeling that I used to get when I was dared to do something in elementary school. A feeling that I get when my knowledge or experience is challenged. So, now I feel I must redeem myself with a tutorial on what I would consider a much more “Advanced” Linux topic. So, without further adieu, I give you…xargs.

xargs - silly noob, commands are for piping.

Usually in a Linux or Unix environment, we run commands in order to get information in the form of an output. This output might be a list of strings for example. Then we read that information from the output in order to do something with it. Or we copy and paste part of the output into a new command. Wouldn’t it be easier to just use one command to do all of this for us? Wouldn’t it be easier to have a command’s output automatically used as a parameter for another command? Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome xargs. xargs allows you to execute some other commands on the output. For example, lets say that we want to find files in a directory that are symbolic links or are compressed. Then let’s say that we want search those symbolic links and compressed files for the word “foo”. And then let’s say that we want to have the output of all of this display nice and neat in the form of the ls command. Let’s try this:

file -Lz * | grep foo | cut -d":" -f1 | xargs ls -ltr

Let’s dissect this command string. The first, file -Lz *, finds files that are symbolic links or compressed. It passes the output to the next command, grep foo, which searches for the string “foo” in them and produces the output similar to this:

auth.log:              foo.techremedy.net
auth.log.1.GZ:      foo.techremedy.net (compress'd data 16 bits)

Since we are interested in the file names only, we applied the next command, cut -d”:” -f1, to show the first field only:

auth.log
auth.log.1.GZ

Now, we want to use the ls -l command and pass the above list as parameters, one at a time. The xargs command allowed you to to that. The last part, xargs ls -ltr, takes the output and executes the command ls -ltr against them, as if executing:

ls -ltr auth.log
ls -ltr auth.log.1.GZ

So, as you can see, xargs isn’t so much awesome on its own, but when used with other commands, it’s awesome factor increases significantly.

There is some good information out there about xargs. I recommend the man page. Just type man xargs and you can read it. One thing to point out is that white space, or blank spaces aren’t handled well by xargs at all. So, be sure to use the –null option or the -0 option to overcome this problem. I hope that this is helpful and “Advanced” enough for you fickle Linux folks out there. I will apologize for the unfortunate “Nitty Gritty Linux Hacking” part of the title on my last post. That was just uncalled for! :)

by Tom Duffy

There are so many Photoshop tutorials out there and many of them can be applied to Gimp if you spend some time, but there really aren’t many quality Gimp-Specific tutorials. The following is a tutorial on how to create cool looking Web 2.0 buttons with gimp.  Let’s Get Started!

First…

Open gimp and create a new document that is 200×100 with a transparent background.  Use 72dpi resolution for this document as it will be for the web.

Next choose the rectangle selection tool and create a box selection like so:

Now you will want to click the box next to “Rounded Corners” on your tool bar.  I used a rounded corner value of 15.0 for mine.  Play around with it to see what you like.  Here’s what your rounded selection should look like:

Now choose the paint bucket and fill the rounded rectangle with a bright obnoxious color such as #2f43ff.  Once the rounded rectangle is filled in it should look like this:

Now make a copy of the background layer by right clicking it and choosing “Duplicate Layer”.  Select the background copy and click on the gradient fill tool.  Select black as your foreground color and then choose the “Transparent To Foreground” gradient from the gradient menu.  Create a vertical gradient to your liking.  Mine Looks like this:

Now lower the layer opacity to 60%.  Here’s what it should look like now:

Now it is time to create a new layer and call it buttongloss1.  Now choose the rectangle selection tool again.  It should still have the same rounded corner settings.  Select the top inside portion of the button like so:

Now choose the gradient tool and pick white as your foreground color.  Now create a “Transparent to Foreground” gradient in the selection.  It should look like this:

As soon as we lower the opacity for this layer to about 35% it should look like this:

Next you will want to create a new layer and add dark to transparent gradients to your liking.  This is something that comes down to personal taste and how “3-D” you want it to look.  Just remember that “Transparent to Foreground” gradients coupled with adjusting the layer opacity is your best friend in Web 2.0!  Now create white text in font Sans Bold (in windows it would be Arial Bold).  Add your text and then add a drop shadow to the text.  The final result will look like this:

Well…I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.  If you have questions, please post them as comments and I will try to answer them.  Thanks for stopping by!

Tom

Cron

This file is an introduction to cron, it covers the basics of what cron does,
and how to use it. This was written by cogNiTioN <cognition@attrition.org>

What is cron?

Cron is the name of program that enables unix users to execute commands or
scripts (groups of commands) automatically at a specified time/date. It is
normally used for sys admin commands, like makewhatis, which builds a
search database for the man -k command, or for running a backup script,
but can be used for anything. A common use for it today is connecting to
the internet and downloading your email.

This file will look at Vixie Cron, a version of cron authored by Paul Vixie.

How to start Cron

Cron is a daemon, which means that it only needs to be started once, and will
lay dormant until it is required. A Web server is a daemon, it stays dormant
until it gets asked for a web page. The cron daemon, or crond, stays dormant
until a time specified in one of the config files, or crontabs.

On most Linux distributions crond is automatically installed and entered into
the start up scripts. To find out if it’s running do the following:

cog@pingu $ ps aux | grep crond
root 311 0.0 0.7 1284 112 ? S Dec24 0:00 crond
cog 8606 4.0 2.6 1148 388 tty2 S 12:47 0:00 grep crond

The top line shows that crond is running, the bottom line is the search
we just run.

If it’s not running then either you killed it since the last time you rebooted,
or it wasn’t started.

To start it, just add the line crond to one of your start up scripts. The
process automatically goes into the back ground, so you don’t have to force
it with &. Cron will be started next time you reboot. To run it without
rebooting, just type crond as root:

root@pingu # crond

With lots of daemons, (e.g. httpd and syslogd) they need to be restarted
after the config files have been changed so that the program has a chance
to reload them. Vixie Cron will automatically reload the files after they
have been edited with the crontab command. Some cron versions reload the
files every minute, and some require restarting, but Vixie Cron just loads
the files if they have changed.

Using cron

There are a few different ways to use cron (surprise, surprise).

In the /etc directory you will probably find some sub directories called
‘cron.hourly‘, ‘cron.daily‘, ‘cron.weekly‘ and ‘cron.monthly‘. If you place
a script into one of those directories it will be run either hourly, daily,
weekly or monthly, depending on the name of the directory.

If you want more flexibility than this, you can edit a crontab (the name
for cron’s config files). The main config file is normally /etc/crontab.
On a default RedHat install, the crontab will look something like this:

root@pingu # cat /etc/crontab
SHELL=/bin/bash
PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
MAILTO=root
HOME=/

# run-parts
01 * * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.hourly
02 4 * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.daily
22 4 * * 0 root run-parts /etc/cron.weekly
42 4 1 * * root run-parts /etc/cron.monthly

The first part is almost self explanatory; it sets the variables for cron.

SHELL is the ’shell’ cron runs under. If unspecified, it will default to
the entry in the /etc/passwd file.

PATH contains the directories which will be in the search path for cron
e.g if you’ve got a program ‘foo’ in the directory /usr/cog/bin, it might
be worth adding /usr/cog/bin to the path, as it will stop you having to use
the full path to ‘foo’ every time you want to call it.

MAILTO is who gets mailed the output of each command. If a command cron is
running has output (e.g. status reports, or errors), cron will email the output
to whoever is specified in this variable. If no one if specified, then the
output will be mailed to the owner of the process that produced the output.

HOME is the home directory that is used for cron. If unspecified, it will
default to the entry in the /etc/passwd file.

Now for the more complicated second part of a crontab file.
An entry in cron is made up of a series of fields, much like the /etc/passwd
file is, but in the crontab they are separated by a space. There are normally
seven fields in one entry. The fields are:

minute hour dom month dow user cmd

minute This controls what minute of the hour the command will run on,
and is between ‘0′ and ‘59′
hour This controls what hour the command will run on, and is specified in
the 24 hour clock, values must be between 0 and 23 (0 is midnight)
dom This is the Day of Month, that you want the command run on, e.g. to
run a command on the 19th of each month, the dom would be 19.
month This is the month a specified command will run on, it may be specified
numerically (0-12), or as the name of the month (e.g. May)
dow This is the Day of Week that you want a command to be run on, it can
also be numeric (0-7) or as the name of the day (e.g. sun).
user This is the user who runs the command.
cmd This is the command that you want run. This field may contain
multiple words or spaces.

If you don’t wish to specify a value for a field, just place a * in the
field.

e.g.
01 * * * * root echo “This command is run at one min past every hour”
17 8 * * * root echo “This command is run daily at 8:17 am”
17 20 * * * root echo “This command is run daily at 8:17 pm”
00 4 * * 0 root echo “This command is run at 4 am every Sunday”
* 4 * * Sun root echo “So is this”
42 4 1 * * root echo “This command is run 4:42 am every 1st of the month”
01 * 19 07 * root echo “This command is run hourly on the 19th of July”

Notes:

Under dow 0 and 7 are both Sunday.

If both the dom and dow are specified, the command will be executed when
either of the events happen.
e.g.
* 12 16 * Mon root cmd
Will run cmd at midday every Monday and every 16th, and will produce the
same result as both of these entries put together would:
* 12 16 * * root cmd
* 12 * * Mon root cmd

Vixie Cron also accepts lists in the fields. Lists can be in the form, 1,2,3
(meaning 1 and 2 and 3) or 1-3 (also meaning 1 and 2 and 3).
e.g.
59 11 * * 1,2,3,4,5 root backup.sh
Will run backup.sh at 11:59 Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday,
as will:
59 11 * * 1-5 root backup.sh

Cron also supports ’step’ values.
A value of */2 in the dom field would mean the command runs every two days
and likewise, */5 in the hours field would mean the command runs every
5 hours.
e.g.
* 12 10-16/2 * * root backup.sh
is the same as:
* 12 10,12,14,16 * * root backup.sh

*/15 9-17 * * * root connection.test
Will run connection.test every 15 mins between the hours or 9am and 5pm

Lists can also be combined with each other, or with steps:
* 12 1-15,17,20-25 * * root cmd
Will run cmd every midday between the 1st and the 15th as well as the 20th
and 25th (inclusive) and also on the 17th of every month.
* 12 10-16/2 * * root backup.sh
is the same as:
* 12 10,12,14,16 * * root backup.sh

When using the names of weekdays or months, it isn’t case sensitive, but only
the first three letters should be used, e.g. Mon, sun or Mar, jul.

Comments are allowed in crontabs, but they must be preceded with a ‘#’, and
must be on a line by them self.

Multiuser cron

As Unix is a multiuser OS, some of the apps have to be able to support
multiple users, cron is one of these. Each user can have their own crontab
file, which can be created/edited/removed by the command crontab. This
command creates an individual crontab file and although this is a text file,
as the /etc/crontab is, it shouldn’t be edited directly. The crontab file is
often stored in /var/spool/cron/crontabs/<user> (Unix/Slackware/*BSD),
/var/spool/cron/<user> (RedHat) or /var/cron/tabs/<user> (SuSE),
but might be kept elsewhere depending on what Un*x flavor you’re running.

To edit (or create) your crontab file, use the command crontab -e, and this
will load up the editor specified in the environment variables EDITOR or
VISUAL, to change the editor invoked on Bourne-compliant shells, try:
cog@pingu $ export EDITOR=vi
On C shells:
cog@pingu $ setenv EDITOR vi
You can of course substitute vi for the text editor of your choice.

Your own personal crontab follows exactly the same format as the main
/etc/crontab file does, except that you need not specify the MAILTO
variable, as this entry defaults to the process owner, so you would be mailed
the output anyway, but if you so wish, this variable can be specified.
You also need not have the user field in the crontab entries. e.g.

min hr dom month dow cmd

Once you have written your crontab file, and exited the editor, then it will
check the syntax of the file, and give you a chance to fix any errors.

If you want to write your crontab without using the crontab command, you can
write it in a normal text file, using your editor of choice, and then use the
crontab command to replace your current crontab with the file you just wrote.
e.g. if you wrote a crontab called cogs.cron.file, you would use the cmd

cog@pingu $ crontab cogs.cron.file

to replace your existing crontab with the one in cogs.cron.file.

You can use

cog@pingu $ crontab -l

to list your current crontab, and

cog@pingu $ crontab -r

will remove (i.e. delete) your current crontab.

Privileged users can also change other user’s crontab with:

root@pingu # crontab -u

and then following it with either the name of a file to replace the
existing user’s crontab, or one of the -e, -l or -r options.

According to the documentation the crontab command can be confused by the
su command, so if you running a su‘ed shell, then it is recommended you
use the -u option anyway.

Controlling Access to cron

Cron has a built in feature of allowing you to specify who may, and who
may not use it. It does this by the use of /etc/cron.allow and /etc/cron.deny
files. These files work the same way as the allow/deny files for other
daemons do. To stop a user using cron, just put their name in cron.deny, to
allow a user put their name in the cron.allow. If you wanted to prevent all
users from using cron, you could add the line ALL to the cron.deny file:

root@pingu # echo ALL >>/etc/cron.deny

If you want user cog to be able to use cron, you would add the line cog
to the cron.allow file:

root@pingu # echo cog >>/etc/cron.allow

If there is neither a cron.allow nor a cron.deny file, then the use of cron
is unrestricted (i.e. every user can use it). If you were to put the name of
some users into the cron.allow file, without creating a cron.deny file, it
would have the same effect as creating a cron.deny file with ALL in it.
This means that any subsequent users that require cron access should be
put in to the cron.allow file.

Output from cron

As I’ve said before, the output from cron gets mailed to the owner of the
process, or the person specified in the MAILTO variable, but what if you
don’t want that? If you want to mail the output to someone else, you can
just pipe the output to the command mail.
e.g.

cmd | mail -s “Subject of mail” user

If you wish to mail the output to someone not located on the machine, in the
above example, substitute user for the email address of the person who
wishes to receive the output.

If you have a command that is run often, and you don’t want to be emailed
the output every time, you can redirect the output to a log file (or
/dev/null, if you really don’t want the output).
e,g

cmd >> log.file

Notice we’re using two > signs so that the output appends the log file and
doesn’t clobber previous output.
The above example only redirects the standard output, not the standard error,
if you want all output stored in the log file, this should do the trick:

cmd >> logfile 2>&1

You can then set up a cron job that mails you the contents of the file at
specified time intervals, using the cmd:

mail -s “logfile for cmd” <log.file

Now you should be able to use cron to automate things a bit more.
A future file going into more detail, explaining the differences between
the various different crons and with more worked examples, is planned.