Catfish fails to update database

I have just tried Catfish for local files search. I am using it (at time of writing version 1.2.2) with Debian Jessie  and Xfce desktop.
Every time I opened catfish I was prompted to update the database as it was never updated. I was updating this with administrative rights, but after closing and opening the application the same message was displayed.

From the message prompt catfish looks for the database in /var/lib/locate.findutils/locate.findutils.db.
The catfish utility is based on locate and find and the locate database is updated by the updatedb command.
The man page of updatedb for my debian system says:

       --output=dbfile
              The  database  file  to  build.  Default is system-dependent.  In Debian GNU/Linux, the default is /var/cache/locate/locatedb.

ssh tunnels set up and port forwarding

SSH tunnels allow you to forward a local TCP port to a remote machine and vice versa. The tunnel option is available in many ssh clients. I will give the example here on how to create SSH tunnels with putty and the openssh-client.
I will consider in the below that we want to access the SERVER on port 80 (http server).

Scenario 1. SSH tunnel setup with local port forwarding.

The SSH tunnel is shown with the red arrow. In order to access the SERVER through the ssh tunnel the connection will have to be made on the CLIENT's local forwarded port (2000 in the example). The traffic between the CLIENT and SSH-HELPER is encrypted by ssh, the traffic between the SSH-HELPER and the SERVER is not encrypted.

SSH tunnel  is set up on the CLIENT:

openssh-client:

ssh -L *:2000:server:80 ssh-helper

The '*' before the local port to be forwarded 2000 denotes that the port 2000 should be listening on all available interfaces on the client. This goes according to the openssh-client configuration.

putty:

The tunnel configuration is done under Connection - SSH - Tunnels. Source port is the local port, destination is where the connection will be forwarded after exiting the SSH tunnel.
After you specify source port and destination, you need to click "Add" for the configuration to take effect.
If you want to access the remote server from other hosts, make sure you check the box  "Local ports accept connections from other hosts", otherwise the port 2000 will be opened only for the loopback address (127.0.0.1)

Connect Evolution email client to Exchange office365 server

Evolution is a personal information management application that provides integrated mail, calendaring and address book functionality.

To connect to office365 exchange you will need the evolution program and the evolution-ews plugin.

Installation:

% sudo apt-get install evolution evolution-ews

Account setup:

1. Obtain the information about your domain's office365 servers.

To find the exchange web services URL based on the verified answer on this office365 post:
-Logon to your e-mail account using Outlook Web App (OWA).

-Click Options > See All Options > Account > My Account > Settings for POP, IMAP, and SMTP access.

-In the list of entries, locate the server name. And the URL of exchange web service for your mailbox is the URL: "https://" + "Server name" + "/EWS/Exchange.amsx".

So, in my case the Exchange Web Services URL is https://outlook.office365.com/EWS/Exchange.asmx

2. In the evolution wizard enter the details.

Installing Debian wheezy from USB over serial console

I wanted to install Debian wheezy on a machine without a video card and no CDROM. I had a 1GB USB and I tried initially the easy way, as described in https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/amd64/ch04s03.html.en#usb-copy-isohybrid by just copying the cd image to my /dev/sda (USB stick) but I did not got any output on the console. I copied the iso file to another linux machine, mounted it as a loop device, made modifications in the isolinux.cfg file to redirect everything on the console, by adding the kernel parameters to look like below and then recreated the iso file but that still did not output anything on the serial console.

 isolinux.cfg

serial 0 9600
default install
prompt 0
timeout 100
label install
  kernel install.amd/vmlinuz
  append console=ttyS0,9600n8 initrd=/install.amd/initrd.gz --quiet

So I gave this up quite easy, and I took another approach. What I did next I followed the flexible way, as described in the debian documentation, but with some changes: 1/ I set up 2 partitions on the USB disk (/dev/sda in this example), both FAT16 (e code in fdisk), both 500MB and set the bootable flag on /dev/sda1 2/ pretty much followed the documentation and setup fat16 on /dev/sda1 and /dev/sda2:

mkdosfs /dev/sda1
mkdosfs /dev/sda2

3/ I installed the MBR on /dev/sda

install-mbr /dev/sda

4/ Installed the syslinux bootloader on /dev/sda1

syslinux /dev/sda1

5/ Copy the kernel and the initial ram image on /dev/sda1. This is done by mounting /dev/sda1 on let's say /mnt and the copying from the netinst cd vmlinuz and initrd.gz from the folder install.amd/ to /mnt (where I have /dev/sda1 mounted). Then I have created the syslinux.cfg file on /mnt according to the documentation and added the entries: