I use many of these commands quite often. They’re immensely helpful when one wants to do a lot of remote work on a computer, or simply access resources on a remote machine (Linux or otherwise). (FYI: OpenSSH may be installed on Windows machines if anyone does not have a home Linux box to receive SSH sessions, and may [...]

[Read more →]

40 years ago today at about 9pm on October 29, 1969 , two programmers sat 400 miles apart and sent information between their two computers. The first word, “LOGIN” was sent at that time. Well, actually only “LO” was sent, before the Stanford Research Institute computer crashed. They worked on the problem and about 90 [...]

[Read more →]

When you want the current weather conditions without having to visit a graphically busy weather website, or without the benefit of a GUI (say working a shell), a great app will give you the weather conditions in no time, just by typing weather at the command prompt. Simply sudo apt-get install weather-util, and set up [...]

[Read more →]

For those that prefer detachable Screen sessions with multiple windows in shell and want to run instant message chat sessions in CLI without the hassle of Xwindows … CenterIM is for you. CenterIM is a pretty robust instant messaging client that runs entirely out of your command prompt. Simply sudo apt-get install centerim and you’re [...]

[Read more →]

With modern filesystems securely deleting files isn’t always easy, but one approach which stands a good chance of working is to write random patterns over all unused areas of a disk – thus erasing the contents of files you’ve previously deleted. We all know that when you simply delete a file, it’s possible to recover [...]

[Read more →]

Ext2Read is an explorer like utility to explore ext2/ext3/ext4 partitions. It also supports Linux LVM2. It can be used to view and copy files and folders. It can recursively copy entire folders. It can also be used to view and copy disk and file system images. It also supports external USB drives. Works on all [...]

[Read more →]

CPULimit is an application for Linux that can limit the CPU usage of a process. It is useful if you want to restrict a particular application from taking up too much CPU resources and thereby crashing the system. This can also be useful when you need to run several intensive programs simultaneously. This application runs [...]

[Read more →]

I found this thoroughly hilarious: Reason #43 why I use Linux. From Cup(Of T). Look, it’s really not that hard. Programs are still in the same place, in %ProgramFiles%, unless you need the 32 bit version, which is in %ProgramFiles(x86)%, except on a 32 bit machine, where it’s still %ProgramFiles%. All those dll’s are still in [...]

[Read more →]

Many administrators must work in multiple operating systems, such as Windows, Linux, Solaris, Unix, etc, one of the most common among them being Windows. As I’ve often stated I prefer Linux, using Windows only when I must. However, from an administrative perspective it’s really helpful if while using Linux for various administrative tasks, one can [...]

[Read more →]

An extremely easy to use application, BleachBit will scan your Linux system for thumbs.db files, system and various application cache directories, old log files and will also wipe empty space if you so choose to ensure privacy. It is aware of many applications and knows exactly where their cache files are located. I found it [...]

[Read more →]

I came across an interesting service for educators and students: Flatworld Knowledge. Creative Commons licensed textbooks for students, allowing professors to edit and adopt textbooks to their own needs and requirements. Also a lot cheaper than classic textbooks, these are available for reading online, or for low priced printing in hardbound editions, or printable via [...]

[Read more →]

When a PC or server is running Linux, you often want to know exactly what sort of hardware is actually running inside the box and more importantly whether it is supported by the kernel. Here is a list of commands which should help you to learn about your system and some of its specifications. In [...]

[Read more →]

Web based, easy to save videos from sites like Youtube, Dailymotion, Metacafe, Veoh, Flickr, Google, Blip.tv. http://savevideo.me/ Saves the movie as a .FLV (Flash Video) file.

[Read more →]

Many people don’t know that there are hard drives in many photocopy machines today, especially in any office style photocopier made within the last 5 to 7 years. These hard drives often retain scans of old documents. This matters when an office disposes of an old copier, as it’s been a treasure trove for identity thieves and other [...]

[Read more →]

As part of my continuing Command Line Magic series and many of the other Command Line oriented posts I’ve made (click here for category-summary of Command Line oriented posts, or just click the Command Line tag in the tag cloud to the right), I’m happy to post another set of highly useful commands. As always, the context [...]

[Read more →]

. . . So Bill Gates & Steve Jobs both threatened to sue the former standard bearer of the Open Source movement, SUN Microsystems (before it was whisked away from us by Oracle). The CEO at the time was Jonathan Schwartz, who by waving the banners of Unix and JAVA in front of both Bill [...]

[Read more →]

Source: The Original Developer. (Launchpad link): A dynamic tunnel SSH multiplexer. When heavily using a Dynamic SSH tunnel, this application will open concurrent SSH tunnels to multiplex the load. This is useful when using torrent connections locally, or when using your computer to share internet access via the dynamic proxy. To install on Ubuntu Karmic: [...]

[Read more →]

For $100/year CrashPlan will store an *unlimited* amount of data and keep it for you in case of local failure of your storage devices. The excellent feature here is that they support Linux (rare for online storage offerings), Mac as well as Windows. If you plan to backup more than 100GB, they offer and recommend [...]

[Read more →]

By default, the newer versions of Ubuntu (9.04 and up) now auto-edit the MOTD. This annoyed me, so I researched how to stop that, since I prefer my own MOTDs and I’m quite particular about what I am presented with when SSH’ing into a box. Ubuntu is running an application called “landscape-common”. More on this [...]

[Read more →]

I have tried many types of encryption, and I’ve had issues with them all. For many reasons, some programs make it too complicated to access the data, while others require special software to be made available on the system so that the data could be accessed. Others require that fixed-size containers be used, which can [...]

[Read more →]

I use this command to change the resolution of my EEE 1000HE from 1024×600 to 1024×1024 which allows me to work well with large web pages, though I must pan-n-scan the desktop (which runs past the borders of the monitor), it’s worth it. Not every EEE PC is built the same, nor do they use [...]

[Read more →]

This is a good Linux site and has a good collection of shell scripts. Enjoy. They’re sorted newest-first, so click the <previous entries> at the bottom of the page to see the prior scripts. Here’s also a few links on learning the basics of shell scripting: IBM’s extensive site on the subject. Linuxcommand.org

[Read more →]

For Debian-based distros, this utility (not related to the ‘nice‘ command) will limit the cpu usage of a program. It works with multiple cores as well. Simply sudo apt-get install cpulimit. More info can be found here.

[Read more →]

Ctrl+Alt+Backspace (the shortcut which was used to restart the X server) has to be enabled in a different way starting in Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala). Using GNOME Get to the System->Preferences->Keyboard menu. Select the “Layouts” tab and click on the “Layout Options” button. Then select “Key sequence to kill the X server” and enable “Control [...]

[Read more →]

Pretty straight forward stuff in this article, but it’s a good reference on how to use the most-excellent tools in an Ubuntu Live-CD to recover drives (whether they be Windows hard disks or Linux-flavored data) with damaged data or corrupted boot sectors and easily make it bootable and/or usable again. I recently had to run [...]

[Read more →]