Archive: Linux

Recently I had the opportunity to work on an Acer Aspire One netbook. It's rare that I get the chance to work on a linux desktop system for a client. Most of my desktop users that I support run Windo…

Windows users know chkdsk, linux users know fsck... users of each MIGHT have heard of SMART. These are different ways of TESTING hard drives. Well, there's also a utility called TestDisk that looks p…

I'm tempted many times to setup an asterisk system at the house - and use VOIP for additional lines. Here's an article on asterisk the easy way., telaisp has good deals on residential voip service.

In ubuntu/debian linux software installs, there are such things as "metapackages" which is a package that just describes what OTHER packages it "needs". For instance in ubuntu, the kubuntu-desktop pa…

For years I've been using smartmontools on my linux-based machines. What I've absolutely LOVED about it is the advance notice I've had of hard drive failures. Two consecutive Decembers I received an …

I thought I had already posted this, but I looked the other day and didn't find the article, so I'm posting it now... if it's a duplicate, sorry... I'm still using Ubuntu's Dapper Drake 6.06(.1) as a…

In the last few days, I had to set up something a bit unusual with apache. Basically the goal was to have apache listen for connections on two different ports (the standard port 80 and an alternate p…

This is something that really looks interesting. Recently Linspire announced their intent to open source the CNR (Click N Run) concept for installing software, launching a wiki based web site that wo…

In the US and Europe and many more developed parts of the world we take our internet connectivity these days for granted. (And some go into panic attacks when it's not available...) In some parts of …

Haven't had the chance to try this one firsthand yet, although I've been watching for this. You may be familiar with ies4linux which is a script that uses wine to download/install multiple versions o…

I thought I had written about this once before, but when I searched the site to find the solution I had come across before, I couldn't find my post.... so, sorry if this is a duplication, but I've ru…

I ran into this some time back and found the solution a few months later and was reminded today to document it here.... The situation is this... Linux host for VMWare server, the guest machine has us…

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 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…

Yikes, what an evening..... it started innocently enough in the afternoon. I have an old Mandrake 10.0 server that I was upgrading clamav on (recent security update). While I was at it, I was reviewi…

Linux.com has a good explanation of using binfmt_misc to directly launch a windows (or java or python) application just by typing in the application name. *(without all the contortions of ... /home/u…

I've tried to ask myself if I'd trust someone enough to let them run a remote session on my own desktop to solve a problem. I think the answer is "it depends". If you think about it, I do tech suppor…

So, I had the script all ready, I've got my x11vnc custom compiled to be as widely compatible as possible, I've tested thoroughly on the internal network. The next step was to test my x11vnc "one cut…

Well, I've got a nice way of doing "easy" one click (or one cut and paste) light desktop support for windows or linux, one uses ultravnc sc, the other uses x11vnc with a special wrapper script. So, w…

I've got to say, one of the things I really like about linux are the myriad of options for remotely administering a system. SSH is the one I use the most, but for the graphical you have x (especially…

As I said in the earlier posts, I was essentially looking for a "Single click" solution for linux VNC remote desktop support. A solution that doesn't require the remote support client to change firew…

So, the idea is that I wanted something "like" the Ultranvnc Single Click download, only for linux. The main idea being is that if someone is looking for a bit of desktop tech support on linux, we do…

Ok, some time back I'd done a writeup on UltraVNC SC, which is a nice customizable (windows version) VNC server that essentially let's someone doing remote support build their own downloadable .exe t…

One of the things I've really admired about the Ubuntu project is that they will MAIL you REAL cds of their product for free. That can give a much more professional look for redistribution than a han…

I can't tell you how many times I've seen this complaint from the bash shell when trying to remove a bunch of files. In this case, I was trying to clear a directory where log rotating had run amuck a…

Since, I've still got a few older Mandrake 10 installs that I'm maintaining as mailservers, there aren't supported security fixes for various things anymore... Friday there was news of a new clamanti…

This is a good idea.... let's say you want a linux install, but you're very particular. You'd like to have a certain setup out of the box, say a basic desktop with OpenOffice and Firefox/Thunderbird.…

I've made quite a bit of use out of the wikipedia in recent years. I know it has it's flaws (I've run across some first hand), but I've found typos in textbooks as well. However that doesn't mean tha…

This really could be used to encyrpt web traffic over any "hostile" network. Here's what I'm talking about. Laptop using wireless. Within our internal network we would LIKE all our web traffic to be …

I've just been sitting down with the laptop for a while (Dell Inspiron 8000) it's an older laptop by current standards I guess, but it does well for me. The inspiron 8000 has some "hotkeys" for volum…

I really ought to find a way to alias "rm -f *" to "rm -i" IF the time is between 1 AM and 7 AM.... Last night I was working late (2:30AM or so when this happened). I had just made a few "refinements…

So, I've been looking back over my list of "scripts" that are pulling in audio from various news sources online for the onlineradiotv.com site. It's also got me doing a bit more spanish language list…

A while back I talked about Google Earth under Codeweavers wine almost working (or at least I think I mentioned it here, I KNOW I tried it...) Well, I tried with vanilla wine as well and couldn't get…

Dealing with text.... we've looked at a couple of basics on logging in and starting to use the command line and hopefully not feeling too helpless there... we've seen ways to navigate directories and…

Now that we've logged in and learned how to move from one directory to another (and find where we are if we get lost...) it's probably time to start learning how to find out about other commands. Wel…

This is part two in a series of "how to use the command line in linux" style articles.... these are intended to be quite basic for those that have not used a command line before.... In part one we lo…

I know many people get intimidated with a black screen, white text and blinking cursor. No mouse, not knowing where to start.... well, I'm going to spend a bit of time in this article trying to help …

I did an article a while back about cron and scheduling tasks in linux (I also mentioned kron which is a graphical interface for cron scheduling...). That works well and good for things that happen o…

Not long ago, I switched from Evolution to Kontact as my primary mail/calendar/addressbook/etc.... program under linux. One of the nice things about the Kontact suite is that you can either open up t…

I've posted several things over at the onlineradiotv.com site. For starters I've got links to a few international (shortwave) broadcasters live audio streams and where available their "latest" englis…

Mandriva 2006 released without Mozilla Firefox 1.5, it came with 1.0.6 (which included security fixes and other patches from 1.0.7).... anyway, source rpm's for Firefox 1.5 became available in cooker…

For several years now, I've used Mondorescue as a backup solution for those customers with a Linux server. It makes for a nice, easily scriptable backup that can go ahead and burn to disc, *(or tape …

I've got a couple of older Mandrake 10.0 servers that I'm still maintaining. They're systems that it hasn't been practical (yet) to do an upgrade to a more recent release of the base operating system…

There has been a bugfix release to Crossover Office, released by Codeweavers. Crossover Office is an offshoot of the Wine project, which is a windows compatibility suite for Linux, to allow Windows a…

I started using this program after frying a hard drive in 6 months. It was on the server and serving up Audio 24/7 and it was sandwiched between a cdrom drive and another hard drive. There was no air…

After several weeks of good behaviour from Evolution 2.4 since the Mandriva 2006 upgrade, I started getting a wierd error on sending messages *(Mail From response Error Unknown). Nothing within my se…

I'm putting this under the Windows tech support category because I've used this on a boot cd before to do the same for Windows as I'm about to describe for Linux. I need to clean up and organize my h…

So after installing the php-pcre package, I restart httpd and reload the mythweb page and find another error message. Very similar to the first, but slightly different. "Fatal error: Call to undefine…

After the Mandriva 2006 upgrade I've still been looking to find if there is anything 'not quite right'.... anyway, I've run into an issue with mythweb. Mythweb is a web-based interface for the mythtv…

So, I've spent a bit of time talking about flightgear. Here are a couple extra resources that I want to "bookmark" here. There is a Good unofficial how-to here. (Mostly linux flightgear oriented. Als…

I don't know if kcron deserves a seperate entry for scheduling tasks under linux. Cron is what I typed on last time and it's the daemon that controls scheduled tasks. The method for scheduling tasks …

So, when I did the laptop upgrade I formated the root partition which means that working mythtv frontend was erased and it had to be set up from scratch. I had been running version 0.16 of mythtv on …

This should probably go in the Windows tech support category too... but, as I've talked about before I've spent a good amount of time using different linux livecd's. I've even made a few livecd's of …

Windows has scheduled tasks which most people are only halfway aware of. Linux has very powerful scheduling capabilities coming from it's unix heritage. cron is the daemon that deals with scheduled t…

I support a few linux systems outside my own group. Those systems are not as quick to get upgraded to the latest and greatest version of Mandrake - now Mandriva as my home systems. But, I occasionall…

I don't know off the top of my head of a graphical joystick calibrator for linux, but there is a command line utility that's dead easy to use.... jscal I found the tip in a flightgear mailing list af…

Again - I'm NOT an expert on the subject, but have had some success with building rpm's from either src.rpms (covered last time) and building from tarballs... This entry will talk about the simplest …

Linux supports long file names, in some (many?) ways better than windows. However, when I moved over to linux I had tons of files with spaces in the name. This isn't really a problem usually, but it …

Linux systems give you many possibilities and one of them is good scheduling (cron), another is good scripting capabilities. I've done things with linux fairly easily that with Windows would have bee…

Let me start by saying I am FAR from being an expert on the subject of building rpm's... RPM's are binary packages for use in red-hat based distributions. They are used (*in my case on Mandriva) with…

Ok - so now post upgrade to Mandriva 2006 I sit down to try something out. Put a dvd in the drive and see what happens. I rarely sit and watch dvd's on the desktop, but it's always been a possibility…

I'm going to do a few articles on building RPM's as much for my own reference as anyone elses. I'm not an expert on the subject by any means... I do this from time to time, rebuild an rpm for an olde…

OK - so as I have mentioned after upgrading to Mandriva 2006 I was looking at the possibility of moving from Evolution to Kontact as the main mail client. I moved contacts and got things massaged qui…

I REALLY like secure shell (SSH) for remote access to linux machines. You can do more than just a "telnet" like remote shell with it. (Port forwarding.) However, the default configuraton for the open…

I've toyed around with the idea of migrating everything over to Kontact for my mail. I've used Evolution since moving over to linux, but there are some things about Kontact that just seem slicker to …

Incidents.org writes to remind as that bot's aren't just for Windows. The recent PHP exploits have seen the use of the "kaiten" bot. After infection on the system it connects to an IRC server. It wou…

I think it's time to wrap things up. The KDE start new session option is back after the changes I mentioned to the /etc/kde/kdm/kdmrc file I mentioned in a previous post. There are no outstanding iss…

Still running the qemu image (and downloaded another image from the freeoszoo while I was waiting for the installer.) Anyway... I've turned my attention to mythtv and since it's the same version went…

There are lots of ways to get a remote desktop under linux, remote X, nxserver, vnc. One of the problems though is the most common configuration doesn't let you connect to a running desktop session. …

Ok - tv card - no name brand is now working... it was a bttv compatible card but it's always been "strange" for lack of a better word. NOTHING under linux has seemed to correctly detect it. Sometimes…

One of the things about running KDE in linux is it can be a big resource grabber and be slow starting. By contrast "light" window managers can be up and running in a relative flash (xfce). OSnews has…

Ok - Nvidia driver was an easy one, download the latest from nvidia.com stop the X server, run sh NIVIDIAlongfilename.run, hit enter a few times, wait and eventually.... restart the X server log in a…

OK - there may be those that read the last entry and had some obvious "oh, you ought to look in the ***** directory for menu information." On the issue I ran into with missing menu items after the up…

Well, where are things? The gui installer did a good job, got the system up and running. The biggest initial problem is that it didn't change the default boot entry in lilo, which meant the system tr…

There are acouple situations where my systems memory needs have exceeded the supply. The most likely cases are running virtual machines and building cd/dvd images. Those things realistically take LOT…

Sendmail is not my favorite MTA. I really prefer Postfix, but... I have to use sendmail in a few situations. I've run a little script on the web server for a good while to monitor the mail queue. I w…

Linuxgangster.org (??) has a good article up on the powerful grep command. GREP is one of the most useful command line tools in linux (really, there are so many it's hard to choose, but this is one I…

Enterprise Linux has a good article on some handy aliases under linux that can make CLI usage much more handy. The only warning I would have is to be careful that an alias you want to create doesn't …

This article from enterprise.linux.com is the second on those essential linux command line utilities for system administrators. Covered this time around are netcat, tcpdump, ethereal, nmap, MultiTail…

Database replication is one of those useful things that can really make your life simpler. It's not really a way of backing up the data in a MySQL database, because if you inadvertently issue a comma…

How-to forge has what they describe as a copy and paste how-to up on the Perfect setup for Mandriva 2006 to meet the needs of ISP's and hosters. It's copy-paste because they suggest copying the comma…

Linux.com is running an article on easy automated backups with a new program called sbackup. Sbackup is a product of Google's summer of code and is a GUI to pick and choose what to backup and when to…

Ok, one of the first things that I got annoyed with in the new Mandriva 2006 install on the laptop was the event triggered sounds. Popup notification window one sound, error message - glass breaking,…

There's another great article at newsforge this evening. I remember seeing some time back a camera which took panoramic pictures. The photographer would hold it steady over his head and the camera wo…

There are a number of Windows applications that may not have suitable replacements under linux. I know a lot of people that have considered switching, but there was "one program holding them back." F…

No, not red or white. I'm talking Wine (Wine Is Not an Emulator) , which allows windows applications to run under linux. One of the sites that I've found that has some great tips regarding Wine is Fr…

Tux magazine has a comparison of su and sudo as ways to administer a linux system. Many people are under the mistaken impression that you just login as root (gui or otherwise) and that's the only way…

Sorry, VERY bad pun but I couldn't resist. I mentioned that I was having tun difficulties that kept me from playing around with anything fancy networking-wise with qemu. For starters let me see if I …

This is going to be a reference to a really great site. I've used this several times and it's wonderful. ss64.com Is a reference site that gives you a command lookup for Windows, Linux, Apple OS X, a…

As background for this, I've used Mandrake Linux (now Mandriva) for my main desktop since around 8.2 I can't remember quite how long ago that's been, but around 3 to 4 years I think. The why is somet…

This is going to explain some ideas for a really simple way to make your own backup routine. This isn't very fancy and in some ways it's not the best backup solution. Let me explain what to use this …