Computer Tips -Tech Info

Category: Linux Tech Support

  • Linux software raid notes

    Here are a few other notes on linux software raid. I created a directory called raidinfo to keep information in to make it easy to maintain the raid array. First… from the software raid howto, I’ve done the following….

    sfdisk -d /dev/hda > /raidinfo/partitions.hda
    sfdisk -d /dev/hde > /raidinfo/partitions.hde

    So…. I’ve now got a good snapshot of the partitioning data. When I hooked up an external usb drive to add to the array, all I needed to do is this…

    sfdisk /dev/sda < /raidinfo/partitions.hda (more…)

  • Mail command missing in ubuntu by default

    Not really, news, but I was reminded again this evening that mail is not available at the command line in recent default installs of Ubuntu (or kubuntu /xubuntu). If you’re like me and make use of this for scripting notifications…. you’ll need to sudo apt-get install mailx (and a MTA like postfix.) Mailx requires postfix/sendmail/qmail and that’s why it’s not installed by default so users don’t have an MTA sitting on their system for no good reason.

  • Live filesystem “capture” into a virtual disk image

    ah… the joys of *nix utilities…. I’ve just successfully tested a “capture” of a live, running system into a virtual disk image. No, I don’t mean that I booted up with an imaging utility. I took a live, booted and logged in system and imaged the primary hard drive that it was living on, into a file on another machine. (Yeah, I know, there are probably a few people reading this and saying they’ve done that and most people that would need to do this already know how…. sorry I missed the memo.) Not too long ago, VMWare released a tool to do something like this (that tool is for windows…) This should work on any platform that supports dd and netcat (although I’m not sure if piping output from one program to another works with a dos command shell – maybe cygwin would be a good environment to accomplish this with.) Anyway… here are the details.

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  • Firewire/USB card and ethernet incompatibilities on Ubuntu 6.06

    I’ve had a machine for quite a while that I’ve been working on as a “backup server”. My goal with it is to have a RAID1 setup with two 250GB drives and I also wanted USB2/firewire functionality so that I could even add a USB drive to the array for the purpose of having a hot-swapped spare drive that could be taken offsite. Well, the biggest frustration I’ve had has not been with software raid, or any of the rest of the software setup, but that something about the firewire/usb card didn’t like the built in ethernet. I FINALLY got things working… let me document what I went through.

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  • Lightscribe writing under linux

    Lacie has released a tool to write the back of cds using HP’s lightscribe technology under linux. I seem to recall there being a possibility of future support in k3b, but I don’t think that has been done yet. From what I remember about lightscribe is that it would require that you buy specially made cds that support being written using lightscribe. They were a bit more expensive than a standard cdr, but it is an impressive effect.

  • Ubuntu Edgy Eft 6.10 out…

    The newest Ubuntu (K/X/Edu as well) is out, Edgy Eft 6.10 is finalized and will be supported for 18 months. (Longer support/users seeking stable proven base should stick with Dapper Drake…) One of the biggest changes I can see from reports is the init process replacement. It sounds like they’ve yielded some good bootup improvements and I’m looking forward to downloading and trying it out. I found it interesting to see that the plan for the 7.04 release of Ubuntu is to include native support for Autopackage which is another approach to making “just any” old program trivial to install on any linux variant.

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  • Cutting Short, splitting or truncating mp3 files…

    from the command line in linux… or generating them from Wavs…. So, I’ve got this CD that I’ve made and is up for sale at lulu.com traditional hymns done as “chimes”. I’ve spent quite a bit of time recording to hard drive, editing and getting the wav files as good as possible and I’ve uploaded them, but I also want to make the individual songs available as mp3 downloads too. AND I want to give a preview, either a low quality mp3 of the whole, or a high quality 30 second clip…. Hmmm… how to do it.

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  • Flash Player 9 for Linux

    Now… available in Beta form… The Linux version of the Flash player has been stuck at 7 for some time, while many sites require flash 8 for video/etc… (The page to find the beta download is here.)

  • Ebay “sell your item” upgrade leaves linux behind?

    Ebay is apparently aware of some problems with their new “Sell your item” tool and linux web browsers. The linux.com article above says that they tried with several browsers windows/linux/mac and the common denominator was linux. Even firefox on linux failed where firefox on windows worked (and the user agent switcher tool caused things to work if the agent was spoofed as being firefox on Windows.)

    Ebay says they are aware and working on a solution and suggest linux users to use the 2.0 version of the sell your item tool.