Linux on Amit Agarwal Linux Blog

nmap_cheatsheet.md

Sat, 31 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0530

I used zapgpt to create a nmap cheat sheet that you too can follow. Just follow the following steps:

Fist save the output of nmap help command to a file. You can also try with nmap man page but that is too huge :(

`1`	`nmap -h > /tmp/nmap.txt`

Now you have the nmap help output, you can use zapgpt to create the cheatsheet :

zapgpt -p openrouter -m moonshotai/kimi-k2.5 -f /tmp/nmap.txt "Create a 2 page cheatsheet (nicely formatted) for this content. I want you to provide the output in dvi and tell me how to convert that to pdf?"

This will provide you with a text file and how to convert the text to pdf file. I had to use the following commands for converting the tex file to pdf.

Convert Man Pages to ASCII, HTML, Markdown, and PDF (Groff + Pandoc)

Fri, 02 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0530

Man pages don’t have to stay trapped in your terminal. Here are the clean, reliable ways to convert any man page to ASCII/text, HTML, Markdown, or PDF—with one-liners and gotchas covered.

Golden Ticket Attack: Exploiting Kerberos from Linux

Thu, 30 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0530

Explore how to execute a full Golden Ticket attack on Active Directory using Linux tools. Includes practical, field-proven Impacket command examples and focuses on technical accuracy for red team and security professionals.

Working with Gzip Files in Linux: Seamless Integration with Popular Tools

Wed, 21 May 2025 00:00:00 +0530

Working with Gzip Files in Linux: Seamless Integration with Popular Tools

Gzip is a widely used compression tool in the Linux ecosystem, offering efficient file size reduction for storage and transfer. But did you know that many Linux applications can work directly with .gz files—no manual decompression required? This capability streamlines workflows and saves disk space.

Why Use Gzip?

Reduces file size for faster transfers and less storage.
Preserves file integrity during downloads and uploads.
Widely supported across Linux distributions and tools.

Using Gzipped Files Directly

Many popular Linux applications can open and process gzip-compressed files transparently. Here are some notable examples:

Anonymous AI Chat with different models

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0530

If you ever wished that you did not have to login or could use AI chat with anonymity, then you are in luck and right place, read on.

Head over to DuckDuckGo search. Click on the Hamburger menu in the right hand top side. In the drop down, select AI Chat, you will see it somewhere in middle of the menu.

Now, you can click “Get Started” (after reading the information on the page).

Why Ptyxis is a Game-Changer for Embedded Terminal Emulation

Fri, 01 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0530

Why `Ptyxis` is a Game-Changer for Embedded Terminal Emulation

When you’re building applications that need terminal-like functionality, embedding a full terminal emulator can feel like overkill. Enter Ptyxis—a lightweight, versatile tool for integrating terminal emulation directly within your application. Here’s a breakdown of why Ptyxis might be the perfect fit for developers looking to add a terminal without the bloat.

What is `Ptyxis`?

Ptyxis is designed for embedding terminal emulation into applications, especially those built on GNOME or GTK. Rather than a one-size-fits-all terminal emulator, Ptyxis focuses on the essentials, delivering streamlined, customizable terminal functionality.

recover-disk-space

Sat, 05 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0530

Recovering Disk Space by Reducing Reserved Block Count on Linux

Introduction

In Linux systems, disk space management is crucial, especially when storage is running low. One often-overlooked aspect is the space reserved by the filesystem, known as reserved blocks. These blocks can consume a significant amount of disk space. In this post, we’ll explore what reserved blocks are, why they’re important, and how you can reduce the reserved block count to free up space.

Short url to full url

Wed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0530

Most of the Social sites will shorten the links. There are a lot of ways to check the url before you go to the url and get phished :)

For example, for bitly you can just add a ‘+’ at the end of the url. For example, you can enter the following in url bar https://bit.ly/2KEOXNx+ and see the details of the where the url takes you. This is just a example url that I got from google but you get the idea.

Bash script performance issue and remediation

Mon, 17 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0530

I was looking at writing some output to files. The output did not vary much but the number of lines was huge. It was long time back so I dont remember the context of the requirement but I needed to write few million lines of text. The quickest way to do this was bash so I wrote a simple script that could do this. To my astonishment, I could see the script much more time than expected, so here is how I debugged the issue and fixed it.

Run X11 applications on docker or podman

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0530

Found x11docker project in github. This is a very nice project if you are trying to run GUI applications in dockers. It takes the hassle out and helps you run the GUI applications very easily in docker.

Whats more, if you are on Fedora, you are in luck. You can install this tool with

`1`	`sudo dnf install x11docker`

and if you are not on Fedora, then head over to their github. Some other distributions also have it packaged but otherwise also it is very simple to install.

Show Local IP

Sat, 23 Dec 2023 00:00:00 +0530

Show local IP

You can see the local IP of the machine with the command - ip a. However if you have to use the address in some variable in a scrit. It becomes little tricky, something like

Show the interfaces in one line with ‘-o’
Show only IPv4 address’s with ‘-4’

and the command looks like

`1`	`ip -4 -o a show dev eth0\|awk '{gsub(/\/.*/,"",$4);print $4}'`

Replace eth0 with then correct interface name.

Openvpn files to nmcli connection

Sat, 12 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0530

Openvpn files to nmcli connection

Many times you get openvpn file and when you want to connect to the VPN server, you have to start the vpn client from the cli. How you wish that this was added to NetworkManager so that you could connect to it with one click. If this is the case, then you can use these commands to do the same ane enjoy :)

1
2

nmcli connection import type openvpn file test.ovpn
nmcli connection modify test vpn.secrets 'password=mypass' vpn.user-name 'username'

You will need to modify few things in above command

GREP_COLORS – change the colors in the GREP output.

Mon, 22 Apr 2019 01:00:59 +0000

Today we will look at the variable GREP_COLORS. This variable determines the colour that is used with the grep command. You can look at the man page of the grep command to see what the various options mean. Here is the excerpt from the man command:

GREP_COLORS

          Specifies the colors and other attributes used to highlight various  parts  of  the
          output.   Its  value  is  a  colon-separated  list of capabilities that defaults to
          ms=01;31:mc=01;31:sl=:cx=:fn=35:ln=32:bn=32:se=36  with  the  rv  and  ne   boolean
          capabilities omitted (i.e., false).  Supported capabilities are as follows.

          sl=    SGR  <a class="zem_slink" title="Substring" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substring" rel="wikipedia">substring</a>  for  whole  selected lines (i.e., matching lines when the -v
                 command-line option is omitted, or non-matching lines when -v is specified).
                 If however the boolean rv capability and the -v command-line option are both
                 specified, it applies to context matching lines  instead.   The  <a class="zem_slink" title="Default (finance)" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Default_%28finance%29" rel="wikipedia">default</a>  is
                 empty (i.e., the terminal's default color pair).

          cx=    SGR  substring for whole context lines (i.e., non-matching lines when the -v
                 command-line option is omitted, or matching lines when -v is specified).  If
                 however  the  boolean  rv capability and the -v command-line option are both
                 specified, it applies to selected non-matching lines instead.   The  default
                 is empty (i.e., the terminal's default color pair).

          rv     <a class="zem_slink" title="Boolean data type" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_data_type" rel="wikipedia">Boolean  value</a>  that  reverses  (swaps)  the  meanings  of  the  sl= and cx=
                 capabilities when the -v command-line option is specified.  The  default  is
                 false (i.e., the capability is omitted).

          mt=01;31
                 SGR  substring  for  matching  <a class="zem_slink" title="Empty set" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empty_set" rel="wikipedia">non-empty</a>  text in any matching line (i.e., a
                 selected line when the -v command-line option is omitted, or a context  line
                 when  -v  is specified).  Setting this is equivalent to setting both ms= and
                 mc= at once to the same value.  The default is a bold  red  text  foreground
                 over the current line background.

          ms=01;31
                 SGR substring for matching non-empty text in a selected line.  (This is only
                 used when the -v command-line option is omitted.)  The effect of the sl= (or
                 cx=  if  rv) capability remains active when this kicks in.  The default is a
                 bold red text foreground over the current line background.

          mc=01;31
                 SGR substring for matching non-empty text in a context line.  (This is  only
                 used  when  the -v command-line option is specified.)  The effect of the cx=
                 (or sl= if rv) capability remains active when this kicks in.  The default is
                 a bold red text foreground over the current line background.

          fn=35  SGR  substring  for file names prefixing any content line.  The default is a
                 magenta text foreground over the terminal's default background.

          ln=32  SGR substring for <a class="zem_slink" title="Line number" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_number" rel="wikipedia">line numbers</a> prefixing any content line.  The default is a
                 green text foreground over the terminal's default background.

          bn=32  SGR substring for byte offsets prefixing any content line.  The default is a
                 green text foreground over the terminal's default background.

          se=36  SGR substring for separators that are inserted between selected line  fields
                 (:),  between context line fields, (-), and between groups of adjacent lines
                 when nonzero context  is  specified  (--).   The  default  is  a  cyan  text
                 foreground over the terminal's default background.

          ne     Boolean  value that prevents clearing to the <a class="zem_slink" title="Newline" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newline" rel="wikipedia">end of line</a> using Erase in Line
                 (EL) to Right (\33[K) each time a colorized item ends.  This  is  needed  on
                 terminals on which EL is not supported.  It is otherwise useful on terminals
                 for which the back_color_erase (bce) boolean terminfo  capability  does  not
                 apply,  when  the  chosen  highlight colors do not affect the background, or
                 when EL is too slow or causes too much flicker.  The default is false (i.e.,
                 the capability is omitted).

copy /proc folder

Mon, 18 Mar 2019 01:03:37 +0000

Other day, I was trying to copy the proc folder with following command:

tar cvzf /tmp/proc.tgz /proc

and I found out that all the files in tar were empty. Strange it may seem but lot of people are facing this as /proc is not a regular filesystem, so I wrote a quick script to copy the proc folder. Here is the script:

cd /
mkdir /tmp/proc
[[ -z $1 ]] && exit -1
find /proc/$1/ -not -name pagemap | while read F ; do
    D=/tmp/$F
    if [[ -d $F ]]
    then
        echo "$(ls -ld $F) => Directory"
        mkdir -p $D
    fi
    if [[ -L $F ]]
    then
        echo "$(ls -ld $F) => copied"
        cp -P $F /tmp/$F
        
    elif [[ -f $F ]]
    then
        echo "$(ls -ld $F) => Cat"
        cat $F > /tmp/$F
    else
        echo "Dont know $F"
    fi
done

xev – Check the X keyboard events

Mon, 19 Nov 2018 01:00:26 +0000

xev man page

xev – print contents of X events

So other day I was checking why my play key was not working and wanted to check if it maps to one of the X default mappings for the keyboard and was stuck on how to check this. And finally found that I can try this:

xev -event keyboard

Pretty neat 🙂

Get to your ebooks quickly

Mon, 12 Nov 2018 01:05:03 +0000

So this is going to be a little longer post than usual.

To begin with, here is screenshot of how it would look like finally:

systemctl enable and start service

Mon, 10 Sep 2018 01:04:04 +0000

Most of the times when I want to enable the service, I find myself enabling it immediately or it is vice versa. So, the commands I used to use were:

systemctl enable sshd.service
systemctl start sshd.service

But recently I learned that I do not need the 2 commands and this can be done in single command like below

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systemctl enable --now sshd.service

Display IP address in console login screen

Mon, 30 Apr 2018 01:02:44 +0000

Here is one liner that will add the current IP address in the console login screen (if you are not running X as is case for servers):

(ip -o -4 a| awk '$2 !="lo" {print "\nIP Address ::"$4}' |tr '\n' ',';echo)>>/etc/issue

Just execute the above command as root. It will add the required code in “/etc/issue” to display the IP address. BTW, you can also use “\4” or “\6” instead of that command to get the IP but that will not work with some old versions of Linux.

Linked clone with qemu-img

Mon, 09 Apr 2018 01:00:45 +0000

As you would have seen in Virtualbox or vmware, there is option to create a linked clone. I wanted to use the same feature as “Snapshot” feature anyway does not look/work so great with virt-manager. So, I created a script to create a linked clone VM and here it is :

#!/bin/bash - 
#===============================================================================
#
#          FILE: qcow2-linked-clone.sh
# 
#         USAGE: ./qcow2-linked-clone.sh 
# 
#   DESCRIPTION: 
# 
#       OPTIONS: ---
#  REQUIREMENTS: ---
#          BUGS: ---
#         NOTES: ---
#        AUTHOR: Amit Agarwal (aka)
#  ORGANIZATION: Mobileum
#       CREATED: 01/05/2018 09:54
# Last modified: Wed Feb 28, 2018  04:39PM
#      REVISION:  ---
#===============================================================================

set -o nounset                              # Treat unset variables as an error
UP="amitag:amitag" #Here you need to put your username and group.

if [[ $# == 0 ]]
then
    read -p "Enter the source path :: " spath
    read -p "Enter the source disk :: " sdisk
    read -p "Enter the destin path :: " dpath
    read -p "Enter the destin disk :: " ddisk
    read -p "Enter new VMName :: " vmname
else
    spath=$(dirname $1)
    dpath=$spath
    sdisk=$(basename $1)
    ddisk=$2.qcow2
    vmname=$2
fi


sudo chown $UP "$spath/$sdisk"
qemu-img create -f qcow2 -b "$spath/$sdisk" "$dpath/$ddisk"

virt-install --disk $dpath/$ddisk --ram 512 \
    --virt-type kvm --vcpus 1 --name "$vmname" --import

The script will create a linked qcow2 and then create a VM with that image. Running it is simple, either provide command line options or just run and it will ask you for details.

Battery life on laptops

Mon, 05 Feb 2018 01:00:06 +0000

To improve your laptop battery life, just do the following:

sudo dnf install tlp tlp-rdw
systemctl start tlp
systemctl enable tlp

Fix weird flux menu

Wed, 03 May 2017 02:03:27 +0000

Some distro’s just add all the items under single menu and thus the menu itself becomes unusable because of the number of items in the submenu and this I did not like and hence ceated this simply python script to fix that. For using the script, back up you “menu” file, redirect the output of this script to ‘menu’ file again.

#!/bin/python

F = open("~/.fluxbox/menu", "r")
count=0
mkc=1
started=0

for line in F:
    print line.rstrip()

    if '[submenu]' in line.lower() and started == 1:
        print '[end]'

    if '[end]'  in line.lower():
        count=0
        mkc=1
        if started > 0:
             started=0
             # print "Count is {}".format(count)
             # print "Started is {}".format(started)
             print '[end]'
    if '[exec]'  in line.lower():
        if count > 15 :
            if started > 0:
                started=0
                print '[end]'
                # print "Count is {}".format(count)
                # print "Started is {}".format(started)
            print '[submenu] ({})'.format(mkc)
            started=1
            mkc+=1
            count=0
        # print count
        count+=1

Windows Vs Linux – One more time

Fri, 07 Apr 2017 07:07:25 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

One of the most written and commented articles has to be Linux vs Windows (of course there are competitors like vim vs emacs) but none has been covered so much as Linux vs Windows. So, what am I going to write here which is not covered earlier in so many other posts. Well a little different perspective 🙂

Celebrating 25 Years of Linux Kernel Development

Mon, 03 Apr 2017 01:12:39 +0000

Linux is now 25 years old, but it’s no hipster. It’s not chasing around Pokemon, and it’s not moving back in with its parents due to crippling student debt. In fact, Linux is still growing and evolving, but the core ideas of the Linux State of Mind remain the same.

You see, Linux is much more than an operating system, it’s a mindset. Even if you don’t agree with its philosophy, you can’t afford to ignore it.

flatpak – get latest libreoffice

Mon, 20 Mar 2017 01:03:17 +0000

flatpak is tool similar to 0install. You can find more details here.

# Get the gnome-sdk gpg keys
wget https://sdk.gnome.org/keys/gnome-sdk.gpg
# Add the keys to trusted keys
flatpak remote-add --user --gpg-import=gnome-sdk.gpg gnome https://sdk.gnome.org/repo/

# Install pre-requisite gnome
flatpak install --user gnome org.gnome.Platform 3.20

# Download the flatpak file and install it. Or you can follow the next step.
wget 'http://download.documentfoundation.org/libreoffice/flatpak/latest/LibreOffice.flatpak'
flatpak install --user --bundle LibreOffice.flatpak

# Install flatpak without downloading
flatpak install --user gnome org.gnome.Platform.Locale 3.20

# Run you brand new shiny latest libreoffice
flatpak run org.libreoffice.LibreOffice

# At a later date, when you want to update libreoffice.
flatpak update --user org.libreoffice.LibreOffice

systemd – start service when you enable it

Mon, 13 Mar 2017 00:57:24 +0000

More often than not for any service, I end up doing :

systemctl enable <service>
systemctl start <service>

But there is shorcut to this. In systemctl command when you enable the service, you can use “–now” to start the service as follows:

systemctl enable --now <service>

quite a timesaver 🙂

Linux Best Practices and Tips

Mon, 06 Mar 2017 00:45:50 +0000

Linux is powerful, flexible, and can be adapted to a broad range of uses. While best practices for administrating Linux servers are not hard to find due the popularity of the operating system, there is always a need for up-to-date Linux advice, along with the best tips, from our experienced Toptal Linux administrators.

How to Avoid Frustration After Forgetting To Use Sudo Command

<p>
  Have you ever typed a command in your terminal, only to find out you forgot to prefix it with the
</p>

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          sudo
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  command? You have to retype the whole command again just to add the
</p>

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          1<br />
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          sudo
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<p>
  in front of it. Frustrating!
</p>

<p>
  Well, you can add this simple alias to your
</p>

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          .bashrc
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<p>
  to help you reduce the frustration:
</p>

<pre>

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      alias argh='sudo $(history -p \!\!)'
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bash ansi codes to html for html reports from shell script

Mon, 20 Feb 2017 01:00:58 +0000

How many times you have felt that there was some simple way to convert bash ansi escape sequences ( colors as well in terminal ) to html equivalent so that you can send the same as html report in email. Here is simple solution. One way is to use ccze if you are using this for logs – colorize your logs and for more generic solution.

dnf install python3-ansi2html.noarch

after this is installed, you can use something like this:

Get kernel function name from kernel address.

Mon, 13 Feb 2017 01:14:01 +0000

If you are using pmap or using strace and want to covert kernel address to function name then you can use the following technique.

First you need to install elfutils, if not installed.

dnf install elfutils

and after this you can use the following command

eu-addr2line -f -e /boot/vmlinuz-$(uname -r) <addr>
#Example
eu-addr2line -f -e /boot/vmlinuz-$(uname -r) 00007f36a8045000

Separation Anxiety: A Tutorial for Isolating Your System with Linux Namespaces

Mon, 06 Feb 2017 01:08:32 +0000

With the advent of tools like Docker, Linux Containers, and others, it has become super easy to isolate Linux processes into their own little system environments. This makes it possible to run a whole range of applications on a single real Linux machine and ensure no two of them can interfere with each other, without having to resort to using virtual machines. These tools have been a huge boon to PaaS providers. But what exactly happens under the hood?

Fix fonts quickly with auto-hinting

Fri, 30 Sep 2016 01:04:16 +0000

Very quick hack to fix the font hinting automatically. Just execute the below:

sudo ln -s /usr/share/fontconfig/conf.avail/10-autohint.conf /etc/fonts/conf.d/10-autohint.conf

After this you should see the font hinting enabled and thus better experience with fonts.

Get your local IP address like pro

Sun, 10 Jul 2016 00:37:44 +0000

In shell scripts if you need to get you local IP address corresponding to your hostname then you can use this command

hostname -i

web services in c with cgi

Mon, 13 Jun 2016 00:45:41 +0000

I was trying to setup a simply webservice to reply to POST requests. Earlier this was being done in tomcat which seem a little overkill to me since I already had a webserver up and running. So, a quick c program to respond to request is all that I needed. And here is the result.

/*
 * =====================================================================================
 *
 *       Filename:  Login.cpp
 *
 *    Description:
 *
 *        Version:  1.0

 *       Revision:  none
 *       Compiler:  gcc
 *
 *         Author:  Amit Agarwal (),
 *   Organization:
*
* == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == == =
    */
#include <stdio .h>
#include <stdlib .h>
#include <string .h>


#define MAXLEN 1024

#ifdef DBG
#define DEBUG(a,b) fprintf(stderr, a, b);
#else
#define DEBUG(a,b) 
#endif

#define HEAD "n"
#define TAIL ""

int main(void)
{

    char input[MAXLEN];
    char * data;
    char*lenstr;
    long len;


    printf("%s%c%cnn",
           "Content-Type:text/xml;charset=iso-8859-1", 13, 10);

    // len = getenv("QUERY_STRING"); // This is for GET
    lenstr = getenv("CONTENT_LENGTH");
    DEBUG( "Length string is %sn", lenstr);

    if(lenstr == NULL || sscanf(lenstr,"%ld",&len)!=1 || len > MAXLEN)
        printf("Error in invocation - wrong FORM probably.");
DEBUG( "Length is %ldn", len);
{
int count=0;
while ( count < len )
input[count++] = getchar();
input[count]='?';
DEBUG ( "Read characters = %dn", count)
}

//fprintf(stderr, "VAlue is %sn", input);
///unencode(input + 5 , input + len, data);

data = input;
DEBUG("Data value is %sn", data);

printf(HEAD);
printf("Everything else goes heren");
printf(TAIL);

fprintf(stderr, "Sent resp: tid[%s], eaid[%s], tcode[%s]n", tid, eaid, tcode);
}
</string></stdlib></stdio>

Additionally, the makefile:

firewalld – enable logging

Mon, 16 May 2016 01:06:06 +0000

firewalld by default does not allow packets that are dropped. In some cases, you need to find out if some packet is being dropped or not. For doing so you may want to enable logging of dropped packets with the following command:

sudo firewall-cmd  --set-log-denied=all

This will enable logging all the packets and help you figure out if firewalld is dropping the packet.

Disk usage by file type

Mon, 30 Nov 2015 00:51:20 +0000

Trying to find the total usage for each of the file types by extension, then here is a quick bash function for you :

disk_usage_type () 
{ 
    find . -name '*'$1 -ls | awk '
    BEGIN{
        a[0]="Bytes";
        a[1]="KB";
        a[2]="MB";
        a[3]="GB";
    }
    {sum+=$7; files++;}
    END{
    print "Total sum is ::\t" sum;
    print "Total files  ::\t" files;
        while (sum > 1024) {
            sum=sum/1024;
            count++;
            };
        print sum" "a[count];
    }'
}

Just define the function in one of your bash startup files. After that to use the function pass in the extension for which you would like to find the total size. Output should be something like below:

Get count of lines in scripts (shell)

Thu, 15 Oct 2015 00:41:52 +0000

If you have tried to get the count of lines in file, the you would know about “nl” or “wc -l”. But as you are aware these give you number of lines with other details as well and you need to post process the number to make sure that you have only number and nothing else. In such cases, it is useful to use the count feature of grep and here is a shorthand to get the count of lines in any shell script:

evvsubst – substitute variables in text in shell

Thu, 09 Jul 2015 00:45:47 +0000

First you need to install gettext, which by the way might be already installed, however you can install with

dnf install gettext

Details of the package:

Name        : gettext

Arch        : x86_64

Epoch       : 0

Version     : 0.19.4

Release     : 4.fc22

Size        : 4.6 M

Repo        : @System

Summary     : GNU libraries and utilities for producing multi-lingual messages

URL         : http://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/

License     : GPLv3+ and LGPLv2+

Description : The GNU gettext package provides a set of tools and documentation for

producing multi-lingual messages in programs. Tools include a set of

conventions about how programs should be written to support message

catalogs, a directory and file naming organization for the message

catalogs, a runtime library which supports the retrieval of translated

messages, and stand-alone programs for handling the translatable and

the already translated strings. Gettext provides an easy to use

library and tools for creating, using, and modifying natural language

catalogs and is a powerful and simple method for internationalizing

programs.

Usage examples:

Easily monitor and archive your system log reports.

Mon, 29 Jun 2015 01:15:56 +0000

If you want to monitor your server logs and also like them to be emailed then just Logwatch may not be sufficient. It sends you a mail but does not archive them, so head over to epylog

Name        : epylog

Arch        : noarch

Epoch       : 0

Version     : 1.0.7

Release     : 9.fc22

Size        : 151 k

Repo        : fedora

Summary     : New logs analyzer and parser

URL         : https://fedorahosted.org/epylog/

License     : GPLv2+

Description : Epylog is a new log notifier and parser which runs periodically out of

cron, looks at your logs, processes the entries in order to present

them in a more comprehensive format, and then provides you with the

output. It is written specifically with large network clusters in mind

where a lot of machines (around 50 and upwards) log to the same

loghost using syslog or syslog-ng.

To install :

tracer – trace outdated files on your system

Thu, 30 Apr 2015 14:17:43 +0000

Tracer finds outdated running applications in your system.

Home page : Tracer Home page.

To install :

sudo dnf install tracer

Once you have done that, after every dns update/upgrade you would see a list of process’s that need to be restarted. If you want to find manually, then just :

sudo tracer

tlp – optimize and maximize your battery power.

Mon, 30 Jun 2014 00:30:53 +0000

If you are concerned about the battery life on your Linux laptop, then you should consider using tlp. tlp customizes your Linux distribution for maximum battery life and thus helps improving battery longevity when on Linux.

TLP brings you the benefits of advanced power management for Linux
without the need to understand every technical detail. TLP comes
with a default configuration already optimized for battery life.
Also an optional install of the smartmontools package enables hard
disk SMART data in tlp-stat (smartctl).

unrar or unar – go open source way

Thu, 15 May 2014 00:15:40 +0000

Recently there was a utility released called unar, a open source replacement for unar.

Description::

The command-line utilities lsar and unar are capable of listing and extracting
files respectively in several formats including RARv3. unar can serve as a free
and open source replacement of unrar.

To install on fedora:

yum install unar

The utility provides 2 commands called lsar and unar, which can be used to list and extract rar archives.

terminal in browser.

Fri, 09 May 2014 00:55:48 +0000

Quite a lot of time, we are spending most of the time on Browsers and during this time, leaving the browser just to do some ls or some command for quickly checking something does not look productive and here is where butterfly is useful.

Just install butterfly with:

pip install butterfly

and then head over to :

http://localhost:57575

and voila you have a terminal in your browser.

Some nice linux tutorials

Mon, 05 May 2014 00:45:28 +0000

Some very nice articles and tutorials on Linux, find here. Pretty nice collection.

Sandbox Firefox – First step to security

Wed, 19 Mar 2014 01:21:04 +0000

First we will setup cgroup to limit cpu and memory usage, so here we go:

Add the configuration in /etc/cgconfig.conf

#------start cgconfig----------------
#new group
group firefox {
    perm {
        task {
#user your login id and group here, so that you can control this group
        uid = amitag;
        gid = amitag;
        }
        admin {
# same as above, set to your login id and group.
           uid = amitag;
           gid = amitag;
        }
    }
# set the limits for cpu.. by default there are 1024 shares of cpu with no other groups,
# so share of 102 would be around 10% .
    cpu{
        cpu.shares="102";
    }
# limit the cpus to be used to only 0-1
    cpuset{
        cpuset.cpus=0-1;
        cpuset.mems=0;
    }
# limit the maximum memory to 700Mb.
    memory {
        memory.limit_in_bytes="700M";
        memory.max_usage_in_bytes="0";
    }
}
#------end cgconfig----------------

mpd – change the music directory context for selinux.

Fri, 10 Jan 2014 01:15:37 +0000

For running mpd with different use, you may find necessary to change the SELinux context of your music directory. For this, you would need to run the below command:

chcon -R  -t mpd_user_data_t Music/

cgroups – use to control your cpu and memory

Mon, 06 Jan 2014 00:33:23 +0000

cgroups is a kernel feature and with userspace utilities, we can use the feature to control the cpu and memory for per process. So, lets first install the required tools.

sudo yum install libcgroup-tools

Now, we need to enable the service.

sudo systemctl enable cgconfig.service
sudo systemctl enable cgred.service

cgconfig.service is to enable configuration for cgroups and
cgred.service is to enable configuration for cgroups for processes depending on the name.

get systemd journal entries on web interface.

Thu, 12 Dec 2013 01:19:50 +0000

Just in case you need it, you can get the journalctl entries from systemd in the web page.

First install :

yum install systemd-journal-gateway

Once you have done this you can get the journal entries with wget as well with

wget http://localhost:19531/entries

or if you prefer, you can browse with a browser at http://localhost:19531/. It has a nice little interface for browsing the entries, nothing too fancy but just sufficient.

cvs add files recursively – not already in repository

Tue, 12 Nov 2013 01:25:03 +0000

When you have a lot of files in some repository and you have added a couple of new, in CVS there is no command to add just the new ones to the repository, so here is a workaround for that.

cvs status 2>/dev/null | awk '{if ($1=="?")print "cvs add -kb " $2}'

Well, if you are adding text files then you might want to remove the “-kB” in the cvs command above.

Home grown mail scheduler with bash script and cron

Fri, 04 Oct 2013 01:04:35 +0000

If you are using Linux (Fedora/Ubuntu or anything else) then you do get a lot of tools and one of them is cron. Very very useful. Just write some script that can do the task for you, put it in cron and forget it. So, here is a home grown way to schedule mails.

First, copy this script below:

#!/bin/bash -
#===============================================================================
#
#          FILE: sched_mail.sh
#
#         USAGE: ./sched_mail.sh
#
#   DESCRIPTION:
#
#       OPTIONS: ---
#  REQUIREMENTS: ---
#          BUGS: ---
#         NOTES: ---
#        AUTHOR: Amit Agarwal (aka), 
#      REVISION:  ---
#===============================================================================

mailfile="~/mail"
if [[ $(wc -l $mailfile|awk '{print $1}' ) -ge 5 ]]
then
    to=$(grep ^To: $mailfile|sed 's/To: //')
    echo "Good to send mail... to = $to"
    sendmail -t <$mailfile
    echo "once mail is send, delete the contents of file"
    echo "sed -i '4,$ d' $mailfile"
fi

Now, create a file called mail in your home directory, with the following contents:

force recheck on reboot – fsck

Fri, 27 Sep 2013 00:34:48 +0000

If you want to force a fsck re-check on reboot, then just

touch /forcefsck

find more information on ext2/3/4 filesystem

Fri, 20 Sep 2013 00:45:11 +0000

English: Ext3 & Ext4 file systems: fsck time vs Inode Count (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

In my previous post on check filesystem regurlarly, I mentioned tune2fs. That tool give quite a lot of information. But just in case, you did not find what you are looking for in the output, then you can get much more information on these partitions with the dumpe2fs command.

findmnt – find all the mounts and their source

Mon, 16 Sep 2013 01:17:43 +0000

If you are looking for the source of a mount and the various options used in the mount, then the quickest way to get that is ::

findmnt

By default, with no parameters, it lists all the mounts in a tree like view and all the options used to mount the path. It also lists the source of the mount.

By default again, it uses some capabilities of the terminal to show the tree which you can disable with the option “-a”.

Set some disk params to be safe

Thu, 05 Sep 2013 01:20:52 +0000

It is always “Better safe than sorry” so, here are some things you
should do..

First check fstab, if you have partitions other than root then use UUID instead of device:

UUID=a8f13a0d-3f1f-42e4-b076-f44b4163306c /mnt/Backup     ext4 defaults,relatime 1 2

Then entries for all your mounts should be like above.
Points to note here :

Disk is mounted using the UUID and not with /dev/sdXX. This ensures
that even if your disk ids change, you will be able to mount them. To
get the partition UUID, you can execute :

pkgwat -search packages for Fedora.

Fri, 23 Aug 2013 00:52:44 +0000

pkgwat is a nice utility to search the fedora packages websearch.

Description : Pronounced "package WAT", pkgwat is a fast CLI tool for querying
: the fedora packages webapp.
: https://apps.fedoraproject.org/packages/
:
: You can make its search even better by helping us tag packages.
: https://apps.fedoraproject.org/tagger

And to search for a package, you can use ::

pkgwat search 
pkgwat -h # get help on package.

power save mode for battery in Fedora 19.

Tue, 20 Aug 2013 00:41:21 +0000

I was getting really bad battery life on my Fedora 19 system, and did not find much on how to tune it. Finally I found something that just does not need much configuration but works pretty well. So, here is what you need to do:

sudo yum install tuned tuned-adm

The second package, tuned-adm installs additional themes for power saving. It is optional and not mandatory. Once you have installed these, you can do the following:

Fedora – Ramdisk creation

Fri, 10 May 2013 00:40:07 +0000

In Fedora, ramdisks are not created by default as is the case with RHEL. So, if you need to get Ramdisks on Fedora, then you can do this:

sudo yum install MAKEDEV

This will create some default Ramdisk’s in the “/dev” directory. Now, if you need to change anything then feel free to go to “/etc/makedev.d” and feel free to change these files.

The Fedora Project logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Manage your servers the easy way with perl script over ssh with no remote client.

Mon, 06 May 2013 01:16:23 +0000

For a long time I have not posted any script. So, its not that I have not written anything new, but just that did not put them here in lack of time. So, here is one interesting one. The original idea came from one posted in one of the interesting blog here. But the problem with this one was that for every time, it ran in the cron, it would make multiple entries in the “last” output (about 10 or more with my modifications for differentiating between solaris and Linux). This is something which is not quite desirable. Hence I came up with this script which is based on html template and hence the output is also easier to manipulate. BTW, just the below script will not help, you would need to download the template files as well. In the list.txt file, you will have to put the usename, password and the server IP to monitor. The server could be any Linux or Solaris host.

cksum – compare for multiple files.

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 01:15:30 +0000

If you have to compare cksum for couple of files, the you know how cumbersome it is. So, I wrote a simple script, wherein you can create a file called cksums in the current directory and copy paste the result of “**cksums ***” into this file, and then run this script. Cool 🙂

#!/bin/bash -
#===============================================================================
#
#          FILE: checkcksums.sh
#
#         USAGE: ./checkcksums.sh
#
#   DESCRIPTION: Compare cksums of multiple files.
#
#       OPTIONS: ---
#  REQUIREMENTS: ---
#          BUGS: ---
#         NOTES: ---
#        AUTHOR: Amit Agarwal (),
#  ORGANIZATION:
#       CREATED: 02/22/2013 09:12:17 PM IST
#      REVISION:  ---
#===============================================================================

file=cksums
while read line
do
    a=( $(echo $line) )
    if [[ -f ${a[2]} ]]
    then
        b=( $(cksum ${a[2]}) )
        if [[ $a == $b ]]
        then
            echo "Cksum for ${a[2]} = ${a[0]} matches"
        else
            echo "Failed ::Cksum for ${a[2]} = ${a[0]} matches"
        fi
    else
        echo "Failed :: file ${a[2]} does not exist"
    fi
done < $file

configure firewall – the easy way.

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 00:50:17 +0000

It is good practice to keep iptables/firewall enabled. But configuring it is difficult, do you agree. Not any more 🙂

Install firewall-config

sudo yum install firewall-config

This will install a GUI application, which you can run with “Firewall” application in the dash or with “firewall-config” in terminal. It is pretty straight forward to use this tool, even if you don’t have much knowledge on Firewall/iptables.

ss – anothre utility to investigate sockets.

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 01:42:04 +0000

ss is :

ss is used to dump socket statistics. It allows showing information similar to netstat. It can display more TCP and state informationsthan other tools.

This comes in iproute package in Fedora. So, to install this you would need to install “iproute” if not installed already.

sudo yum install iproute

Now, once you have done that you can look at the man page to check what all you can see with ss. but here are some examples:

steam on Linux – for Fedora

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 00:35:25 +0000

The Fedora Project logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I was trying to get steam on linux on my Fedora box. Headed over to steam website, but was astonished to find only Ubuntu client over there. A little googling presented me with the developer website blog of valvesoftware.com. So, here is the link for you, just in case you are searching for the same:

Allow incoming/outgoing ports on iptables

Tue, 27 Nov 2012 00:22:23 +0000

Schematic for the packet flow paths through Linux networking and Xtables (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Last couple of years, I just used to disable iptables on my system, this time I decided not to disable it and keep it enabled.

So far so good, now comes the tricky part, I have http server enabled on my system and since this is on local network with already firewall and other security in place so I can allow all incoming to my system and similarly I need to enable XDMCP outgoing. So, I can add the rules like this :

Xnest – XDMCP protocol and virtual DM

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 00:50:21 +0000

An IceWM Xephyr session is running inside a Fluxbox Xephyr session, which is running inside another IceWM Xephyr session, which is running under Linux Mint 8. (Note that Fluxbox is also licensed under the MIT license by the Fluxbox developers, but IceWM is released under the GPL and LGPL by Marko Ma?ek.) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

XDMCP is protocol that allows remote connections and provides you with a working Display Manager like KDE, GNome, et al. Its a remote connection protocol that is mostly enabled on Solaris and disabled on most Linux boxes. If you need to have a remote session where you need the X Display to open some GUI applications then you can have a connection with the remote server with XDMCP.

Ubuntu – Really force remove a package.

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 02:30:35 +0000

I was trying to remove a package on one of the Ubuntu installations the other day and was not able to do so. I tried google and tried all the options mentioned in various forums like “-f”, purge, reinstall and few others but nothing helped. I kept getting some errors about some files being already deleted. I also tried “set -e” in the prompt but the only result I got was terminal also getting killed.

using iTerm color schmes with gnome-terminal.

Wed, 29 Aug 2012 00:40:02 +0000

the OS X Lion install key (Photo credit: blakespot)

Found this great page and thought of sharing this:

http://www.sharms.org/blog/2012/08/using-iterm-2-themes-with-gnome-terminal/

When using this, you will need to install :

https://github.com/caseyhoward/nokogiri-plist

and when you install this, you will find that the permissions for the files are not appropriately set, so go to your ruby gems directory or the installation directory for nokogiri-plist and change the permissions.

script for changing gnome-terminal color schemes.

Sat, 25 Aug 2012 00:31:51 +0000

This is the Gnome-Logo made with vectors. GNOME and the foot logo are trademarks of the GNOME Foundation. Español: Éste es el logo de Gnome hecho con vectores. GNOME y el logo del pie son marcas registradas de la Fundación GNOME (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Earlier I had posted this. So, if you want to try all of these schemes, then you need not have to copy paste the schemes from the web page, you can try the below script.

gnome-terminal color schemes.

Tue, 21 Aug 2012 01:23:17 +0000

Colours (Photo credit: CherrySoda!)

I was looking for a way to set the terminal colors for gnome. There is a GUI way to change the same by going to the Preferences->Colors. And then you can change the colors that you see in the color pallete in the bottom of the dialog box.

But I was looking at doing it faster and better, and finally I found this page.

procinfo and procinfo-ng : Get system information from /proc.

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 06:45:37 +0000

The Fedora Project logo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Install procinfo or procinfo-ng. The procinfo contains three programs :

/usr/bin/lsdev
/usr/bin/procinfo
/usr/bin/socklist

and procinfo-ng contains ::

/usr/bin/procinfo-ng

The description for both of them is similar ::

Name        : procinfo-ng
Version     : 2.0.304
Release     : 5.fc17
Architecture: i686
Install Date: Tue 24 Jul 2012 05:45:10 PM IST
Group       : Applications/System
Size        : 140366
License     : GPLv2 and LGPLv2
Signature   : RSA/SHA256, Mon 12 Mar 2012 09:56:55 PM IST, Key ID 50e94c991aca3465
Source RPM : procinfo-ng-2.0.304-5.fc17.src.rpm
Build Date : Wed 29 Feb 2012 02:30:54 AM IST
Build Host : x86-06.phx2.fedoraproject.org
Relocations : (not relocatable)
Packager    : Fedora Project
Vendor      : Fedora Project
URL         : http://sourceforge.net/projects/procinfo-ng/
Summary     : Console-based system monitoring utility
Description :
Procinfo-NG is a complete rewrite of the old system monitoring application
procinfo. The goal is to make more readable (and reusable) code and to
restore broken functionality.

Music players on Linux – the poor mans random song player.

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 06:06:43 +0000

If you have more applications running on your system then your system can handle them then you know what I mean when I say that the Music Players take a lot of CPU. Otherwise harmless, but when you are doing too many things, then lot of times you would feel that probably stopping the Music player might help. But then Linux is all about alternatives. So, there is a command line player called mpg123, which does not use so much CPU. But what about playlist 🙂

Ubuntu setup – post installation script

Tue, 03 Jul 2012 05:25:15 +0000

My iPhone apps as of February 2010 (Photo credit: dougbelshaw)

If you have done a new installation of Ubuntu or Fedora, then yuou know you have to search all kind of blogs to find out what all to install. So, here is a easier way to do that. Just run this script, it will install some applications which are mostly a “MUST” for all the installations. And the list of applications that are installed are :

tora installation on Fedora 17.

Fri, 22 Jun 2012 01:35:21 +0000

Here are the previous links on Tora:

Tora on F16

Tora on Fedora

And if you are interested in installing from source then you can always use this link:
http://blog.amit-agarwal.com/2012/02/06/tora-fedora-16-mysql-oracle/

And if you are interested in just installing it then you can always do:

rpm -ivh "http://amit-agarwal.co.in/mystuff/tora-2.1.3-1.fc17.i686.rpm"

Upgrade to Fedora 17 from 16.(amit-agarwal.co.in)
Fedora 17 warning: kernel panic after upgrade (part 2)(kparal.wordpress.com)
Fix Fedora 17 Kernel Panic after Preupgrade(loviniltra.com)

unable to browse windows network with samba4

Sun, 27 May 2012 15:40:58 +0000

I use Fedora 17 on my work laptop and thus need to connect to windows share sometimes. After I upgraded to Fedora 17 some time, I was unable to browse the windows network. I would get all kind of errors and warnings and tried everything that I knew about Samba to fix the issue. Tried searching through all the forums to figure out what was wrong but nothing helped. And suddenly today I resolved it and guess how:

Upgrade to Fedora 17 from 16.

Tue, 15 May 2012 15:31:50 +0000

As usual time in couple of days to upgrade to Fedora 17. Release schedule is for 05/22 and so its just around the corner. So, if you are looking at upgrading using yum, then make sure that you visit this page.

There are some changes in latest version that will not allow you to upgrade without executing few commands manually and that page lists them. And if you are too brave and just want the steps and the command then here it is:

systemadm – simpler way to manage the service files for systemd

Tue, 17 Apr 2012 02:43:09 +0000

Once the systemd unit and service files have come into being, understanding of the system services have changed a little bit and it might require some time to understand the cli tools for managing these services and units. That being the case, systemadm comes to rescue. This is a simple tool which :

Graphical front-end for systemd.

For installation :

sudo yum install systemd-gtk

And here’s a screenshot::

uptimed – keep track of your system uptime.

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 07:34:34 +0000

Uptimed is an up time record daemon keeping track of the highest
up times the system ever had.

Uptimed has the ability to inform you of records and milestones
though syslog and e-mail, and comes with a console front end to
parse the records, which can also easily be used to show your
records on your Web page

Installation :

sudo yum install uptimed

Once installed, you will have to first create the boot id with this command:

15 Linux Bash History Expansion Examples You Should Know

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 11:41:20 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

Here is a nice link on BASH History Expansion. There are lot of examples in this page and some of them might be quite useful. But here are my list of favourites:

!!

This is probably the most used one by me. This will repeat the last command. And this works even in conjunction with other commands like

Check out all the colors on you X window system.

Fri, 24 Feb 2012 05:12:52 +0000

If you ever wondered what combination of some colors would look like but did not really feel like setting them in your xterm just to check them out. Or if you wanted to know about all the colors on you X window system then you can install this utility called xcolorsel.

[][1]

xcolorsel

You will need to setup the rpm-shere repo for this.

Get yourself som new themes for vim

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 06:18:53 +0000

Well, you would already have some themes for your vim, by default. And if you did not like them then you would have added some of your own too (downloaded from vim.org). But, those are something, that you might not still like and want to make some changes.

Here’s, a new way to do it. Just go to the link mentioned below and click on Generate Dark or Generate Light. You can generate as many as you like and once you like the theme, simply click on vim in the bottom and download 🙂 BTW, you can generate textmate and Emacs theme as well.

Tora installation on Fedora 16 with rpm

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 05:47:04 +0000

[][1]

Image via Wikipedia

Last article I talked about tora installation from the sources, but if that is too much for you then you can use this one liner:

rpm -ivh "http://amit-agarwal.co.in/mystuff/tora-2.1.3-1.fc16.i686.rpm"

But if you like the hard way out, then you can always try this.

Unrar in Fedora… (gryphon143.wordpress.com)
Fedora Utils just got easier (funsurf.wordpress.com)
rpmorphan – deborphan for the rpm based distros. (amit-agarwal.co.in)

tora on Fedora 16 for mysql and Oracle.

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:30:45 +0000

Sometime back I had posted a article on Tora on Fedora. But that was a while back and things have progressed and we already have Fedora 16 (aka Verne).

So, awhile back I installed Tora on my Fedora 16 and here are the steps to do so:

First get the Tora sources from sourceforge.net . Download the source tar file and extract the same.

Set gnome-shell to start in fallback mode without GUI.

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 13:05:25 +0000

If you run into issues with gnome-shell then gnome-shell should allow you to disable all the plugins and get the gnome-shell. But since gnome-shell is still evolving, you might run into issue where the shell does not come up. What to do in that case. You can set the shell to start in fallback mode, where there are more chances that it will come up.

Alas, but you don’t have a shell or desktop session to do that. Simple, start the gnome-shell and before it is killed, do this:

Color disk usage on Fedora

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 12:43:40 +0000

For this tip, you would need to setup the rpm-shere repository. You can get the information here. Once you have done that you need to install the cdu package with the following command:

sudo yum install cdu

And then you can use “cdu” to view the disk usage in all beautiful colors with the command:

cdu

and the output looks like this:

[][2]

cdu screenshot

Quickly install most of the things that you need on Fedora. (amit-agarwal.co.in)
Upgrading Fedora using yum – FedoraProject (fedoraproject.org)
Consistent ethernet device names in Verne (amit-agarwal.co.in)

Interesting repository for Fedora.

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 08:11:19 +0000

Here is one repository that you can add to your Fedora to give it a few more hundred packages:

cat >/etc/yum.repos.d/rpm-sphere.repo <<EOF
[rpm-sphere]
name=RPM Sphere
baseurl=http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/zhonghuaren/Fedora_16/
gpgkey=http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/zhonghuaren/Fedora_16/repodata/repomd.xml.key
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
EOF

conky script used to monitor server status remotely.

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 07:48:00 +0000

[][1]

Image via Wikipedia

I was looking for something to monitor few details on the server. I thought about quite a lot of applications, some open source and some scripts developed in house. But my requirements were quite petty and the scripts and applications were quite heavy. So, I thought why not conky :).

So, with some quick work on conky script, I was able to get what I wanted and here it is for all of you.

qemu manager for Windows to run your linux distribution

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 06:33:49 +0000

If you are into virtualization, then you must have heard about Qemu. And if you are on windows then this is a must:

http://www.davereyn.co.uk/download.htm

Political Hotsheet Herman Cain drops out 1 of 9 – CBS News (cbsnews.com)
Romney, Gingrich Proceed Carefully in GOP Showdown – ABC News (abcnews.go.com)
Wisconsin rallies to beat Michigan State in Big Ten title game – Chicago Tribune (chicagotribune.com)

Rekursive Grep on Solaris or AIX Systems without GNU egrep -r funcionality

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 03:00:27 +0000

If you work regularly on a Solaris or systems which do not have the “-r” (recursive grep) for grep, then you know what a lifesaver this command can be.

Here is one from command line fu:

find . -type f -exec awk '/linux/ { printf "%s %s: %s\n", FILENAME, NR, $0; }' {} \;

The benefit of using awk here is that you can print the line number also 🙂

Consistent ethernet device names in Verne

Tue, 13 Dec 2011 02:50:54 +0000

[][1]

Image via Wikipedia

Fedora now supports consistent device names across the network with bios device names for the ethernet devices. If you upgraded your earlier version of Fedora then you may need to go to root access to get this working.

Here is what you need to do:

rpmorphan – deborphan for the rpm based distros.

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 11:02:15 +0000

Lets first install the rpmorphan package:

    <td>
      <div class="bash codecolorer">
        &nbsp;<span class="kw2">sudo</span> <span class="kw2">yum install</span> rpmorphan
      </div>
    </td>
  </tr>
</table>

and here is the description of the package:

rpmorphan finds "orphaned"[1] packages on your system. It determines
which packages have no other packages depending on their installation,
and shows you a list of these packages.  It intends to be clone of
deborphan Debian tools for rpm packages.
It will try to help you to remove unused packages, for example:


Backup of files in the directory.
Thu, 01 Dec 2011 11:39:24 +0000
I was working on some scripts and the changes that I was making in the scripts was very dynamic, which I did want to keep backing up in the version control system. But for the peace of my mind, I wanted to keep a copy of the scripts, whenever it was in working state.
Since I had multiple files, so it would make more sense to have a script that could copy all the files in the current directory to “old” directory without over-writing the existing files. So, I wrote a script that would postfix the files with a number. With this approach, finally what I had was the following:


Linux hardware details.
Mon, 28 Nov 2011 11:20:25 +0000
Here is one of the scripts that I found on the net while searching for something … Note the URL for the script in the Description.
#!/bin/bash -
#===============================================================================
#
#          FILE:  linux_hw.sh
#
#         USAGE:  ./linux_hw.sh
#
#   DESCRIPTION:  http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/solaris/get-the-processor-type-on-solaris/
#
#       OPTIONS:  ---
#  REQUIREMENTS:  ---
#          BUGS:  ---
#         NOTES:  ---
#        AUTHOR: Amit Agarwal (aka), amit.agarwal@roamware.com
#       COMPANY: Roamware India Pvt Ltd
#       CREATED: 09/13/2011 03:57:34 PM IST
# Last modified: Sun Oct 30, 2011  04:59PM
#      REVISION:  ---
#===============================================================================

function linux_hw_CPU {
	typeset num=0
	typeset name=""
	typeset cores=""
	name="$( cat /proc/cpuinfo | awk -F: '
/vendor_id/ { vendor=$2 }
/model name/ { model=$2 }
/cpu MHz/ {
if( model ~ "Hz" ) {speed=""} else { speed=$2? MHz" };
print vendor, model, speed; }
		' | tail -1
	)"

        num=$(if [ -r /proc/vmware/cpuinfo ]; then awk '/pcpu/ { print NF-1 }' /proc/vmware/cpuinfo; else cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep processor| wc -l; fi)

	# ESX: mas info sobre logical/cores/packages
	if [ -r /proc/vmware/sched/ncpus ]
	then
		cores=$( echo $( cat /proc/vmware/sched/ncpus ) )
	fi

	echo $num $( echo "$name ($cores)" | enclose )
}

function enclose {
	tr -s " " | sed -e "s/^/\"/; s/$/\"/; s/\"\ /\"/; s/\ \"/\"/"
}

function linux_hw_CPU {

	typeset num=0
	typeset name=""
	typeset cores=""

	name="$(
		cat /proc/cpuinfo | awk -F: '
/vendor_id/ { vendor=$2 }
/model name/ { model=$2 }
/cpu MHz/ {
if( model ~ "Hz" ) {speed=""} else { speed=$2" MHz" };
print vendor, model, speed; }
		' | tail -1
	)"

	num=$(
		if [ -r /proc/vmware/cpuinfo ]
		then
			awk '/pcpu/ { print NF-1 }' /proc/vmware/cpuinfo
		else
			cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep processor| wc -l
		fi

	)

	if grep -q "physical id" /proc/cpuinfo || grep "siblings" /proc/cpuinfo
	then
		chip_count=$( grep "physical id" /proc/cpuinfo | sort -u | wc -l )
		chip_core=$( grep "siblings" /proc/cpuinfo | tail -1 | cut -d: -f2 )
		cores="($chip_count chips x $chip_core cores)"
	fi

	# Blades HP con
	if [ -x /sbin/hpasmcli ]
	then
		chip_name=$( /sbin/hpasmcli -s "SHOW SERVER" | grep "Name" | head -1 | cut -d: -f2 )
		chip_speed=$( /sbin/hpasmcli -s "SHOW SERVER" | grep "Speed" | head -1 | cut -d: -f2 )
		chip_core=$( /sbin/hpasmcli -s "SHOW SERVER" | grep "Core" | head -1 | cut -d: -f2 )
	fi

	# ESX: mas info sobre logical/cores/packages
	if [ -r /proc/vmware/sched/ncpus ]
	then
		cores="($( echo $( cat /proc/vmware/sched/ncpus ) ))"
	fi

	# Linux Itanium IA64
	if grep -q -i itanium /proc/cpuinfo
	then
		name="$(
		grep "vendor" /proc/cpuinfo | cut -d: -f2- | tail -1 ) $(
		grep "arch " /proc/cpuinfo | cut -d: -f2- | tail -1 ) $(
		grep "family" /proc/cpuinfo | cut -d: -f2- | tail -1 ) $(
		grep "cpu MHz" /proc/cpuinfo | cut -d: -f2- | cut -d. -f1 | tail -1 ) Mhz"

		chip_count=$( grep "physical id" /proc/cpuinfo | sort -u | wc -l )
		chip_core=$( grep "siblings" /proc/cpuinfo | tail -1 | cut -d: -f2 )
		cores="($chip_count chips x $chip_core cores)"
	fi

	echo $num $( echo "$name $cores" | enclose )
}

linux_hw_CPU

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using `!#$’ to referance backward-word
Thu, 03 Nov 2011 07:20:20 +0000

  
    
Image by jeffalldridge via Flickr
  

Here is something that I found on the commandlinefu
cp /work/host/phone/ui/main.cpp !#$:s/host/target
Ah well…its very interesting and very useful.
Some explanation:
!# – means the current command (similar to !! being the last command)
$ – represents the last parameter
:s – is used for substitution.

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Quickly install most of the things that you need on Fedora.
Sun, 30 Oct 2011 12:57:45 +0000
easyLife is a user friendly program that installs packages on Fedora as well as adjustments most users want. It makes new users’ experience easy and fun, providing the means to set the OS up quickly and painless.
 
 This app does not really require any more introduction. 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/easylife-linux/
[][1]Easy Linux for Fedora

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gnome-tweak-tool gets a fantastic new Font Selector window
Thu, 27 Oct 2011 12:47:11 +0000
Here is the quick look at how the Font Selector looks like now. And its not just for the gnome-tweak-tool, its for all the places for font selection. I really loved it. So intuitive to use and amazingly good to look. This is what a good design and thinking can do. Kudos to Gnome team for coming up with this.
[][1]Font Selector for Verne

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Fedora 16 screenshot with conky and bmpaenl2
Fri, 21 Oct 2011 10:34:30 +0000
For all those who used to keep complaining about the bottom panel of Gnome which used to show a list of windows, you can get it back with bmpanel2 (there are lot of other options too, but this one is light.). You can have themes for the panel also.
And the best part about using gnome-shell is that I always getting a feeling that I now have more space on the Desktop. And, thus conky looks good too on the Desktop. Here’s a screenshot.


Cont: Get yourself some more conkyrc files.
Wed, 12 Oct 2011 11:03:40 +0000
Last time we got ourselves some conkyrc files from the ubuntu forums. But that scripts gets the files only from the First page of the thread. Lets extend this further and get the script to get all the conkyrc files.
There are some 1048 pages in the thread, I am showing pages 1 to 3 but you can change 3 to whatever number you want 🙂
count=0
for i in {1..3}
do
    >.test
    >conkyrc
	echo "Getting page $i"
	curl http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=281865\&page=$i |\\
         sed -n '// d'|\
         sed 's##\n-----------------------------------\n\n\n#' \
         >conkyrc
	dos2unix conkyrc
	cp conkyrc .test
	while [ $(wc -l .test|sed 's/[^0-9]//g') != 0 ]
	do
		sed -n '1,/------------------------/ p' .test|sed '$d' >conkyrc.$count
		diff .test conkyrc.$count |sed 's/^<.//'|sed '1, /---------------------/ d;2d'>.test
		((count++))
	done
	echo "Files so far are : $count"
done

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Get yourself some conkyrc files.
Wed, 05 Oct 2011 15:18:56 +0000
If you are looking for some nice conkyrc files, then you can head over to :
Ubuntu Forums
In this thread you can see some very nice conkyrc files with screenshots. You can browse through the thread and get the one that you like. But if you are like me and would like to download all of them to see the features and commands in each of them then you would need to copy each of these files and paste them separately. But if you have to do everything manually then there’s not much of being on Linux 🙂


some interesting alias
Tue, 27 Sep 2011 07:43:01 +0000
For this time, I will just give you a link to to bashrc file.
http://hayne.net/MacDev/Bash/aliases.bash
Head over there and see some very interesting aliase’s.

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Creating a chroot environment – the script.
Fri, 23 Sep 2011 09:47:48 +0000
Here is the script, very simple and effective 🙂
#!/bin/bash -
#===============================================================================
#
#          FILE:  mkchroot.sh
#
#         USAGE:  ./mkchroot.sh
#
#   DESCRIPTION:  Make a  chroot environ and cd to it
#
#       OPTIONS:  ---
#  REQUIREMENTS:  ---
#          BUGS:  ---
#         NOTES:  ---
#        AUTHOR: Amit Agarwal (aka), 
#       CREATED: 09/03/2011 02:53:37 PM IST
# Last modified: Sat Sep 03, 2011  03:11PM
#      REVISION:  ---
#===============================================================================

 binaries=( bash2 ls cat vi vim sudo)
#===  FUNCTION  ================================================================
#          NAME:  copy_binary
#   DESCRIPTION:  copy binary to chroot
#    PARAMETERS:
#       RETURNS:
#===============================================================================

copy_binary ()
{
   cmd=`which $1`
   echo $cmd
   cp $cmd bin/
   ldd $cmd
   while read line
   do
      while read ld
      do
         if [[ -f $ld ]]
         then
            echo copy $ld
            cp $ld lib/
            if [[ -L $ld ]]
            then
               ld1=$( ls -l $ld |sed 's/.*> //')
               echo "  copy $ld1"
               cp  /lib/$ld1 lib/
            fi
         fi
      done < <(echo $line|sed 's/.*> //'|sed 's/ .*//')
   done < <(ldd $cmd)
}	# ----------  end of function copy_binary  ----------

#===  FUNCTION  ================================================================
#          NAME:  init
#   DESCRIPTION:  Do the required initialization
#    PARAMETERS:
#       RETURNS:
#===============================================================================
init()
{
   mkdir -p {root,home,dev,etc,lib,usr,bin}
   mkdir -p usr/bin
   mkdir -p libexec/openssh



   mknod -m 666 dev/null c 1 3

   cd etc
   cp /etc/ld.so.cache .
   cp -avr /etc/ld.so.cache.d/ .
   cp -avr /etc/ld.so.conf.d/ .
   cp /etc/ld.so.conf .
   cp /etc/nsswitch.conf .
   cp /etc/passwd .
   cp /etc/group .
   cp /etc/hosts .
   cp /etc/resolv.conf .
   cd -
}
cd $1
if [[ -f .status ]]
then
   cat .status
   echo "Not running now"
else
   init
   for i in ${binaries[*]}
   do
       copy_binary $i
       cp -avr /etc/${i}* etc/
   done
   ln bin/bash2 bin/bash
   echo "complete" > .status
fi
cp -avr ~/bin/automation root/automation
sudo chroot .


.


Creating a chroot environment in Fedora with bash and other utils.
Mon, 19 Sep 2011 14:59:23 +0000
[ad#ad-2]
I am testing some of my scripts to work on a very old system and there the versions of the most popular applications are very old, real old :(. So, some of things that I am very used to since last couple of years, do not seem to work as expected and I need to keep verifying a lot of things on the server, very inconvinient to keep testing the script on the server (need to connect on VPN) just to test some very simple things.


Total upload and download on any interface.
Sun, 05 Jun 2011 01:29:21 +0000

Something that I have been searching for a long time, finally some look inside the <a class=“zem_slink” title=“Procfs” rel=“wikipedia” href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procfs" _mce_href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procfs">/proc got me what I wanted. Hope this will save someone’s day. So far, the only option I could think of was to run conky which becomes a little heave on some of the very old laptops I have to use sometimes 🙁

  <td>
    <div class="text codecolorer">
      &nbsp;cat /proc/net/dev|grep eth2|awk '{print $2/1024/1024"&nbsp; "$10/1024/1024}'
    </div>
  </td>
</tr>

CPUSPEED Slowing you down? (jarneil.wordpress.com)
Interface Curmudgeons versus Gestures (lingpipe-blog.com)
Alias in .bashrc (michaeldaranto.wordpress.com)

Solaris dump analysis

Wed, 18 May 2011 14:16:18 +0000

I had to debug a solaris crash dump and had no ides. Google search wasn’t much useful until finally I found this article:

http://cuddletech.com/blog/?p+AD0-448

have a look at this article, this suggests how to debug the core and find the offending process and root cause of the core in case of kernel panic.

install all solaris software from http (amit-agarwal.co.in)
Oracle puts out Solaris 11 compatibility tester (go.theregister.com)
Solaris CineBistro in Vail – A Great Way to See the Opera (beavercreekvoice.com)
Change Hostname in Solaris 10 (unixrain.wordpress.com)
sun, 310-202 , 310-203 – Lahore, Pakistan (travelpod.com)

Unix shell script for removing duplicate files

Mon, 16 May 2011 14:07:33 +0000

The following shell script finds duplicate (2 or more identical) files and outputs a new shell script containing commented-out rm statements for deleting them (copy-paste from here):

::: updated on 02 May 20121, seems like wordpress did not like it so well so reformatting the code :::::::

#!/bin/bash -
#===============================================================================
#
#          FILE:  a.sh
#
#         USAGE:  ./a.sh
#
#   DESCRIPTION:
#
#       OPTIONS:  ---
#  REQUIREMENTS:  ---
#          BUGS:  ---
#         NOTES:  ---
#        AUTHOR: Amit Agarwal (aka), amit.agarwal@roamware.com
#       COMPANY: blog.amit-agarwal.co.in
#       CREATED: 02/05/12 06:52:08 IST
# Last modified: Wed May 02, 2012  07:03AM
#      REVISION:  ---
#===============================================================================

OUTF=rem-duplicates.sh;
echo "#!/bin/sh" >$OUTF;
find "$@" -type f -exec md5sum {} \; 2>/dev/null | sort --key=1,32 | uniq -w 32 -d |cut -b 1-32 --complement |sed 's/^/rm -f/' >>$OUTF

Pretty good one line, I must say 🙂

10 Useful Sar (Sysstat) Examples for UNIX / Linux Performance Monitoring

Fri, 22 Apr 2011 02:20:48 +0000

10 Useful Sar (Sysstat) Examples for UNIX / Linux Performance Monitoring

by Ramesh Natarajan on March 29, 2011

Using sar you can monitor performance of various Linux subsystems (CPU, Memory, I/O..) in real time.

Using sar, you can also collect all performance data on an on-going basis, store them, and do historical analysis to identify bottlenecks.

Sar is part of the sysstat package.

This article explains how to install and configure sysstat package (which contains sar utility) and explains how to monitor the following Linux performance statistics using sar.

Results of Fedora 16 Release Name Voting

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 02:17:48 +0000

Fedora 16 is codenamed Verne. Here are other details:

The voting has concluded for the Fedora 16 release name, and the
results are in! Thank you to the Fedora community members who made
name suggestions and participated in the voting.

The Fedora 16 release name is: Verne

Voting period: Tuesday 2011-04-05 00:00:00 to Monday 2011-04-11 23:59:59
Number of valid ballots cast: 421

Using the range voting method, each candidate could attain a maximum
of (421*9) = 3789 votes.

The Ultimate Guide to Getting Support on Linux-use empathy to login to IRC….

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 12:14:49 +0000

The Ultimate Guide to Getting Support on Linux
Installing Linux has become effortless to the extent that anyone with a little knowledge of computers can get a Linux machine up and running instantly. However, many of them throw in the towel when faced with even the slightest of glitches. The main reason for this is the belief that Linux doesn’t offer any kind of support.

Other problem users face is that the regular technician who repairs their computer refuses even to touch a machine that’s running Linux. So, if you are one of those users disgruntled after encountering a multitude of problems with a fresh Linux install — don’t panic and read on to know some ways in which you could get support for your Linux installation.

Introducing /run – what is this directory doing in my root directory?

Wed, 13 Apr 2011 22:01:25 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

http://lwn.net/Articles/436012/

There is a suggestion to add /run directory that will be mounted as tmpfs. This directory will be mounted early in the boot process and can be used in various scenario’s. I hope this will improve few things in the linux world.

How to find the number of files inside the directory in linux (manivasagan.wordpress.com)
How do you reset your Ubuntu password (wiki.answers.com)
Finding Files using – locate – on Linux (galigio.org)

Slackware Linux 13.37 RC 3.1415926535897932384626433832

Sat, 02 Apr 2011 15:56:02 +0000

Slackware released the next version a few days back and guess the complete name : Slackware Linux 13.37 RC 3.1415926535897932384626433832. You must be crazy to tell the complete version to anyone.

Development Release: Slackware Linux 13.37 RC 3.1415926535897932384626433832 More fun with Slackware’s version numbers as Patrick Volkerding announces the latest release candidate for the upcoming Slackware Linux 13.37: +ACI-There have been quite a few changes so we will have one more release candidate: Slackware 13.37 RC 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716. Very close now+ACE But we’ll likely hold out for….

sakura – Reaaly good terminal with very few dependencies.

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 17:43:35 +0000

I was searching for something in the Fedora repos and found a really good terminal, sakura. Its very much like Gnome-terminal. I did not find much difference other than using less memory.

To install:

  <td>
    <div class="text codecolorer">
      sudo yum install sakura
    </div>
  </td>
</tr>

and the details of the package:

Name        : sakura

Arch : i686

Version     : 2.3.8

Release     : 1.fc14

Size        : 137 k

Repo        : installed

From repo   : fedora

Summary     : Terminal emulator based on GTK and VTE

URL : http://pleyades.net/david/sakura.php

License     : GPLv2

Description : Sakura is a terminal emulator based on GTK and VTE. It’s a terminal emulator

with few dependencies, so you don’t need a full GNOME desktop installed to

have a decent terminal emulator.

Zephyr Announces Support for Internet Explorer 9 (prweb.com)
Vintage Terminal Emulator (adafruit.com)
GNOME Terminal tricks and tips (ghacks.net)

use finch, less memory and cpu usage, in replacement for pidgin.

Sun, 27 Mar 2011 06:50:14 +0000

Well, if you are on linux then you have options – is a known fact. But how those options help?

I was working on a machine which had very less RAM and was quite old system and it was running F14. Guess what would be the state of the system with pidgin, xmms, firefox, evolution and couple of terminals. Now, this is where if you could save a few cycles of CPU then you can actullay see the difference in sluggish GUI and and an okay sort of GUI. So, first off, kill pidgin and use finch.

Try all colors in xterm with script before setting the color

Fri, 18 Mar 2011 07:41:39 +0000

If you are looking for testing the colors on how they would look like in the xterm before you set the color then here is a small script for you.

  <td>
    <div class="text codecolorer">
      #!/bin/bash -<br /> #===============================================================================<br /> #<br /> #          FILE:  xterm_colors-test.sh<br /> #<br /> #         USAGE:  ./xterm_colors-test.sh<br /> #<br /> #   DESCRIPTION:  Test all the colors for xterm bg<br /> #<br /> #       OPTIONS:  ---<br /> #  REQUIREMENTS:  ---<br /> #          BUGS:  ---<br /> #         NOTES:  ---<br /> #        AUTHOR:   Amit Agarwal (amit.agarwal@amit-agarwal.co.in), aka<br /> #       COMPANY:  Individual<br /> #       VERSION:  1.0<br /> #       CREATED:  02/18/2011 01:02:51 PM IST<br /> #      REVISION:  1.0<br /> #===============================================================================<br /> <br /> cat /usr/share/X11/rgb.txt |sed 's/\([0-9]\{1,3\}[ \t]*\)\{3\}//'|sed 's/^ *//' >~/rgb.txt<br /> while read line<br /> do<br /> bg=$(echo $line)<br /> echo $line<br /> echo "Trying $bg color"<br /> xterm -bg "$bg"&<br /> sleep 5<br /> kill -9 $!<br /> done < ~/rgb.txt
    </div>
  </td>
</tr>

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30

This can be used in various ways but I will leave the choice to you. One option that I should probably still tell is :

cd across parallel directories

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 15:37:55 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

Here is a simple and fast way to cd across parallel directory.

  <td>
    <div class="text codecolorer">
      cd ${PWD/test/actual}
    </div>
  </td>
</tr>

Linux command line tips: wget (ghacks.net)
Article Directory Submissions (tjantunen.com)
Article Directory Submissions (cash-bandit.com)
Create a repository from your fedora DVD (annupandey.wordpress.com)

Using ssmtp to send mail using gmail.

Sat, 19 Feb 2011 15:18:03 +0000

First install the package ssmtp using the command:

  <td>
    <div class="text codecolorer">
      sudo yum install ssmtp
    </div>
  </td>
</tr>

Open the configuration file for ssmtp as root user:

  <td>
    <div class="text codecolorer">
      vim /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf
    </div>
  </td>
</tr>

Make the following changes to the configuration file:

root=**username**@gmail.com
mailhub=smtp.gmail.com:587
hostname=**username**@gmail.com
UseSTARTTLS=YES
AuthUser=username
AuthPass=password
FromLineOverride=yes

In order to make the default (root) “from” field be the server name,
edit the /etc/ssmtp/revaliases file as root user :

vino – connect to running GNome session like RDP

Fri, 04 Feb 2011 00:31:48 +0000

One thing that all of us Linux users have probably missed is connecting to the running GNome session to see what is going on in the running session. This can be quite handy in couple of situations:

Debugging remote sessions – where you do not want a new session, instead want to connect to running session.
Maintaining running session from another PC. If you are running some applications on some Linux box and want to gracefully stop it using some commands other than kill -9 then it is best that you connect to the running session, if you are not using screen.

shopt causes bash completion to stop working.

Tue, 25 Jan 2011 02:35:15 +0000

Couple of days, I added some scripts to my bash startup and suddenly realized that bash completions stopped working. This is tricky situation in bash to figure out what went wrong. So, I set my foot down to make sure that I find out the culprit. Thus I started with method of elimination. So, I started with nothing in .bashrc and kept adding my stuff in batches, until the said feature was broken. Once that happened I started removing the added ones, one by one, until my completion started working again.

Linux humour – tar is coward

Tue, 18 Jan 2011 06:06:54 +0000

Some errors are too good and though you would have seen them couple of times you don’t realize until sometimes it just hits you, like the one below:

tar: Cowardly refusing to create an empty archive

Tar Tricks on Linux (descentintodarkness.wordpress.com)

New feature in Nautilus – resize icon on desktop.

Mon, 10 Jan 2011 15:36:25 +0000

On Desktop on Gnome using nautilus, now you can resize individual icons. Just right click on the icon to resize and in the menu you will get a resize icon :

[][1]

Resize icon

and then you can resize the icon from the borders:

[][2]

Resize icon

“Where is this icon?” Nautilus script is incredibly nifty (omgubuntu.co.uk)
Use Nautilus’ Emblems feature to keep your home folder organised (omgubuntu.co.uk)
Screenshots: Desktop Unity in Natty (omgubuntu.co.uk)
Add a quick-access shortcuts to the GNOME right-click menu (ghacks.net)

Shell Scripting

Wed, 05 Jan 2011 15:08:44 +0000

Here are some links for bash programming that you may find useful.

http://tips-linux.net/en/content/pro-bash-programming

http://tips-linux.net/en/content/expert-shell-scripting

http://tips-linux.net/en/content/beginning-linux-command-line

http://tips-linux.net/en/content/bash-pocket-reference

http://tips-linux.net/en/content/linux-command-line-and-shell-scripting-bible

Linux – Learning the Shell (edugeek.net)
10 Useful Tools, Websites And Tricks to Help You Master Linux Command (maketecheasier.com)
lf-submit.sh – Bash mplayer Last.fm scrobbler (yjl.im)
Linux command line tricks you need to know: IO redirection and piping (interstellr.com)
imabonehead: Houcem HACHICHA’s Blog: My top ten shell/bash tricks! (houcemhachicha.blogspot.com)

Execute a command with a timeout

Wed, 29 Dec 2010 15:03:18 +0000

Execute a command with a timeout

  <td>
    <div class="text codecolorer">
      &nbsp;timelimit -t100 somecommand
    </div>
  </td>
</tr>

I found this in Ubuntu repos, and consider it better than timeout.

* View this command to comment, vote or add to favourites * View all commands by CodSpirit

write the output of a command to /var/log/user.log… each line will contain $USER, making this easy to grep for.

Tue, 28 Dec 2010 15:00:24 +0000

write the output of a command to /var/log/user.log… each line will contain $USER, making this easy to grep for.

  <td>
    <div class="text codecolorer">
      &nbsp;log() { (echo "$ $@";$@) | logger -t $USER; }
    </div>
  </td>
</tr>

This command is useful if you want to copy the output of a series of commands to a file, for example if you want to pastebin the output from ‘uname -a’, ‘lspci -vvv’ and ‘lsmod’ for video driver trouble-shooting on your favorite Linux forum.

Empty a file

Sun, 26 Dec 2010 14:56:13 +0000

This one is for those who know the “touch” command. Hope all of us do not follow a command just because it is on one of the popular site without trying to understand the command and the output.

Bash Script Beautifier

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 14:51:01 +0000

Today I was working on a bash script written by someone else. And the script was maintained since long and had actually become quite big and there was no indentation followed. So, you can understand how difficult it was to understand the script. So, I set my foot forth to first find a beautifier for the bash script before I fixed it and my search ended here.

List all installed rpm packages and it’s size

Thu, 09 Dec 2010 03:12:44 +0000

If you are looking for a command to see the disk usage by each of the rpm‘s then you can use this command:

  <td>
    <div class="text codecolorer">
      &nbsp;rpm -q --queryformat "%10{SIZE}\t%{NAME}\n"
    </div>
  </td>
</tr>

And if you use this command very regularly then you can create an alias like

  <td>
    <div class="text codecolorer">
      &nbsp;alias rpm_size='rpm -q --queryformat "%10{SIZE}\t%{NAME}\n" '
    </div>
  </td>
</tr>

and use it like

New feature in Gnome/Nautilus

Sun, 05 Dec 2010 01:39:10 +0000

One of the things that I never realized that I am missing in Nautilus until they put the feature in was this. When a file is being copied and there is conflict, there should be option to rename the new file being copied. Also, if the file being copied is image then a small preview/thumbnail would be good.

Yesterday while copying some files, suddenly I noticed that this feature is there now. Pretty useful feature to have. Here’s the screen-shot.

Make any command read line enabled (on *nix)

Thu, 25 Nov 2010 04:02:18 +0000

Make any command read line enabled (on *nix)

  <td>
    <div class="text codecolorer">
      rlwrap sqlite3 database.db
    </div>
  </td>
</tr>

Enable readline even if the command line application is not using it.

* View this command to comment, vote or add to favourites * View all commands by pykler

commandlinefu.com

by David Winterbottom (codeinthehole.com)

URL: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Command-line-fu/~3/mKEgYoyHCMA/make-any-command-read-line-enabled-on-nix

Use the last command’s output as input to a command without piping and bind to it to a key sequence in bash. (amit-agarwal.co.in)
DTerm: A command line anywhere and everywhere Oh, man. DTerm =… (kungfugrippe.com)
Python command line = Linux Bash command line (hackerz4u.com)
Data Hacks: Command Line ASCII Bar Charts (infosthetics.com)
Hack of the Day: commandlinefu – Linux Command Heaven (readwriteweb.com)

Screen enable/disable logging in all windows

Fri, 19 Nov 2010 15:13:30 +0000

If you use screen command a lot then this is something that you will like 🙂

Screen enable/disable loggin in all windows

  <td>
    <div class="text codecolorer">
      bindkey ^l at "#" log on<br /> <br /> bindkey ^o at "#" log off
    </div>
  </td>
</tr>

1
2
3

The command when added in screenrc enables logging all open windows by using the C-l (control-l key combination) and disable by C-o . The lines need to be added in separate lines .

OpenLDAP and SSL – some links

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 14:51:49 +0000

Here are some of the links that may be of great help to you if you are having issues with setting up SSL and OpenLDAP. I was having some issues with this setup and these links helped me fix the same.

http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-HOWTO/SSL-RedHat-HOWTO.html

http://www.tc.umn.edu/~brams006/selfsign_redhat.html

http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/Red_Hat_Directory_Server/8.1/html/Using_Red_Hat_Console/Starting_the_Server_with_SSL_Enabled-Enabling_SSL_in_the_DS_Admin_Server_and_Console.html

http://directory.fedoraproject.org/wiki/Howto:SSL http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_books//network_administration_guides/ldap_administration/appendix-common-errors_Common_causes_of_LDAP_errors.html

Stephan Hermann: Ubuntu 10.04 LTS and OpenLDAP (shermann.name)
Exploring LDAP SASL Authentication With Ruby (intridea.com)
Stephan Hermann: [SOLVED] OpenLDAP, passwd and CRYPT passwords (shermann.name)
Moodle – Slow LDAP Login (edugeek.net)

Fundraising for Linux Foundation.

Sat, 13 Nov 2010 14:20:47 +0000

All of us have been benefited by Linux in some way or other and this is due to all the work that is being done by so many organizations and people around the world. I would like to spare some time to tell you about my initiative to raise 100$ for Linux Foundation. Please visit my donation page or click donate on the widget in the bottom of the page. The Linux Foundation will highly appreciate it and so would I.

Print all environment variables, including hidden ones

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 14:46:15 +0000

Print all environment variables, including hidden ones

  <td>
    <div class="text codecolorer">
      for _a in {A..Z} {a..z};do _z=${!${_a}*};for _i in `eval echo "${_z}"`;do echo -e "$_i: ${!_i}";done;done|cat -Tsv
    </div>
  </td>
</tr>

This uses some tricks I found while reading the bash man page to enumerate and display all the current environment variables, including those not listed by the ‘env‘ command which according to the bash docs are more for internal use by BASH. The main trick is the way bash will list all environment variable names when performing expansion on ${!A*}. Then the eval builtin makes it work in a loop.

Announcing the release of Fedora 14 and upgrade procedure.

Wed, 03 Nov 2010 14:44:02 +0000

Before you read the release announcement, you can update/upgrade to F14 with :

  <td>
    <div class="text codecolorer">
      &nbsp;sudo yum upgrade --releasever=14
    </div>
  </td>
</tr>

Note : You might get some un-resolvable dependencies, you can remove those pakages and continue and it should be a smooth migration.

It’s here! It’s here! It’s really here! Fedora 14 has been officially released! Fedora is a leading edge, free and open source operating system that continues to deliver innovative features to many users, with a new release approximately every six months.

Photo Editing with nice border and preparing for print.

Tue, 02 Nov 2010 09:43:36 +0000

Working with photos in Linux is very easy with lots of viewers/editors/managers and what not. Not that there are not many options in Windows but most of them are not free. BEST case scenario is that you might get a evaluation version (i.e. if you do not use pirated/cracked version) of software‘s. Me, being completely against pirated and cracked version or evaluation version (if not, planning to buy the same) like the freedom of choice with Linux.

Linux>1% Campaign. Prove that we are more than 1% !

Mon, 25 Oct 2010 13:46:18 +0000

Linux>1% Campaign. Prove that we are more than 1% !

At http://www.dudalibre.com they are running a campaign to make every owner of computers running Linux register. The aim is to prove that the general assumption, that only 1 % of all computers run Linux is wrong. Everyone is needed if this effort is going to succeed.

http://www.dudalibre.com/en/gnulinuxcounter

The page can also be displayed in Spanish and French

I voted for my distro Fedora, hope you do the same for your linux distribution and prove that Linux does run on high number of desktop.

Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat 10.10 Post Installation Guide

Tue, 12 Oct 2010 09:42:40 +0000

Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat 10.10 Post Installation Guide ubuntu.jpgUbuntu 10.10 codenamed Maverick Meerkat is released. As you all know Ubuntu is the most popular Linux distribution since it aims on usability and ease of installation. The new version of Ubuntu comes with Gnome 2.32 and Linux kernel 2.6.35. Of course all software is updated with new versions. The installation has also become very easy and fast. The user has to do only a few clicks until he boots up to his new Ubuntu desktop. Download Ubuntu 10.10 install it and let’s see a few tips and tricks!

http://ninite.com/linux/makeuseof – very good collection of utilities for .deb based distro’s

Fri, 08 Oct 2010 02:53:22 +0000

Head over to http://ninite.com/linux/makeuseof and you will find a nice utility created by the makeuseof guys. This will allow you to select the applications that you want to install and once you have made the selection you can download the unattended installer.

Well, to be frank with you I really do not see the need for this unless you don’t know how to add repositories or install simple stuff. Most of this (no, actually all of this except dropbox in my Fedora setup with the repositories that I have set). Now for one application why would I do that if that was available for Fedora. Any-ways pretty good for newbies, still.

bash script to run a command and take screenshot in every loop.

Fri, 24 Sep 2010 16:02:14 +0000

Couple of days back, I had posted a command to display a stop timer with bash and echo. There I had also put the following gif file:

Here the tricky part was to capture the jpg’s to create the gif file.

Preparation:

Rename the terminal to aka – amit-capture

Execute the command once with the import command and check the output and jpg’s

Hard and Software requirements… can you beat this.

Thu, 23 Sep 2010 14:01:31 +0000

The other day, I was looking at OTRS Documentation and guess what, I found a requirement that I could not full-fill. The requirement was for “Hard and Software”.

OTRS Documentation

Can you full-fill this requirement?

15 (More) Awesome Conky Configurations

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 07:17:02 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

15 (More) Awesome <a class="zem_slink" title="Conky (software)" rel="homepage" href="http://conky.sourceforge.net/">Conky Configurations You may have already seen our list of awesome Conky scripts or configurations, and perhaps applied or used some of them on your own <a class="zem_slink" title="Linux" rel="homepage" href="http://www.kernel.org/">Linux desktop. Since that collection was quiet popular, I decided to scour the web once again to gather more Conky scripts that I could share with all of you. Now, here is another list of some of the most excellent and unique conky configurations that you could freely use. Enjoy!

Fedora Linux – Display information about users currently logged on – whowatch

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 19:01:14 +0000

Here is description of program/utility to display the currently logged in user in a Linux box (tried on Fedora 13 Goddard):

Whowatch is an interactive console utility that displays informations about the users currently logged on to the machine, in real time. Besides standard information (login, tty, host, user’s process) you can see type of login (ie. ssh, telnet). You can also see selected user’s processes tree or all system processes tree. In the process tree mode there is ability to send INT or KILL signal to selected process.

Remove some path from the PATH variable temporarily.

Sat, 04 Sep 2010 15:02:08 +0000

How many times has it happened to you that you are working on some linux platform (like Fedora/Ubuntu/CentOS etc) and suddenly you see that you need to remove some path from the PATH variable so that a script is executed from some other path. It really difficult to do this if the path is too long and if you end up doing this couple of times. If that is the case, then the below script is for you 🙂

Speed up mkat with no md5sum for the files.

Thu, 02 Sep 2010 14:47:48 +0000

mkat details:

mkat is a set of <a class="zem_slink" title="Command-line interface" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command-line_interface">command line tools to burn, catalog <a class="zem_slink" title="Data" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data">data CD/<a class="zem_slink" title="DVD" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD">DVD, <a class="zem_slink" title="Compact Disc" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Disc">audio CDs and then search the catalog <a class="zem_slink" title="Database" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Database">database, e.g. check whether you have a certain file or audio CD in your collection. Tags can be used to categorize CDs, e.g. <a class="zem_slink" title="Comedy" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comedy">comedy, <a class="zem_slink" title="Drama" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drama">drama, etc. Audio CD support is very rudimentary though.

Zabbix error\’d — just for fun

Sat, 28 Aug 2010 18:27:49 +0000

I was woking on Zabbix some days back and here’s a screenshot that I took from Zabbix running on <a class="zem_slink" title="Red Hat" rel="homepage" href="http://www.redhat.com">Red Hat Enterprise <a class="zem_slink" title="Linux" rel="homepage" href="http://www.kernel.org/">Linux 5. Pretty interesting to see that there is a graph with all the values on the <a class="zem_slink" title="Cartesian coordinate system" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cartesian_coordinate_system">Y-axis as 3.26GB and still there is a trend on the graph. How many times did you get such graph 🙂

Gmail Videochat Comes to Linux

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 18:24:40 +0000

?Gmail Videochat Comes to Linux
”The long wait is over and Linux users can finally use the Gmail
Videochat! The <a class="zem_slink" title="Gmail" rel="homepage" href="http://gmail.com">GMail team recently announced the availability of voice
and <a class="zem_slink" title="Videoconferencing" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videoconferencing">video chat on Linux. This feature is currently supported on <a class="zem_slink" title="Ubuntu (operating system)" rel="homepage" href="http://www.ubuntu.com/">Ubuntu
and other <a class="zem_slink" title="Debian" rel="homepage" href="http://www.debian.org/">Debian-based <a class="zem_slink" title="Linux distribution" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_distribution">Linux distributions. <a class="zem_slink" title="RPM Package Manager" rel="homepage" href="http://rpm.org/">RPM Support for <a class="zem_slink" title="Fedora" rel="homepage" href="http://fedoraproject.org/">Fedora Linux
and other <a class="zem_slink" title="Red Hat" rel="homepage" href="http://www.redhat.com">Red Hat based distributions (like <a class="zem_slink" title="CentOS" rel="homepage" href="http://www.centos.org/">CentOS) is going to be added
soon.” Some screenshots of GMail Video Chat on Linux in action

gphotoframe Free digital photo frame for your desk.

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 02:46:01 +0000

First install the gphotoframe application with the command :

sudo yum install gphotoframe

and if you want gnome-screensaver compatibility then install the package gphotoframe-gss also.

Gnome Photo Frame is a photo frame gadget for the <a class="zem_slink" title="GNOME" rel="homepage" href="http://www.gnome.org/">GNOME Desktop. Let’s see how this works.. run the command gphotoframe from a terminal:

Here is what you will see :

Don’t panic on seeing the blank/black page. You need to add the source first. So <a class="zem_slink" title="Mouse (computing)" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mouse_%28computing%29">right click on the window and go to preferences:

Shape Collage – Simple software to create collage with a java application.

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 03:16:34 +0000

Download from <a href="http://www.shapecollage.com/download.html">here.

Very useful utility to create collage in variety of ways. Here are some screenshots to give you a idea of how this works.

Auto Key press fill forms through simulating key presses | Linux.com

Sat, 31 Jul 2010 03:16:33 +0000

This script can be used to repeatedly press <a class="zem_slink" title="Electronic keyboard" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_keyboard">keys on the <a class="zem_slink" title="Keyboard (computing)" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_%28computing%29">keyboard, it was used to fill out 100 odd entries on a <a class="zem_slink" title="Web page" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_page">web page while testing without having to physically enter the data.

Save the code below some where like <a class="zem_slink" title="Filesystem Hierarchy Standard" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_Hierarchy_Standard">/usr/bin/ with what ever file name you like, set the file to be <a class="zem_slink" title="Executable" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executable">executable with <a class="zem_slink" title="Chmod" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chmod">chmod +x /usr/bin/keyrepeat

Find who is using my network – top for network utilization

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 04:09:37 +0000

Ok here is something that I have been looking for something. Now that I have conky installed, so I can see the bandwidth usage on my desktop but was wondering for sometimes, where actually so much is being used. So did some quick search to see if I can get that info and did not have to go too far 🙂

There is s utility called iftop in the Fedora repo and at the <a href="http://www.ex-parrot.com/~pdw/iftop/" target="_blank">URL. Oh and how to use it, just type sudo iftop or if you have multiple network interface then you can do ”iftop -f ”. Thats pretty simple and cool.

importing outlook pst files in evolution in Fedora 13 ( Goddard)

Sun, 25 Jul 2010 03:53:09 +0000

If you were using outlook and moved to some other <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/e-mail_client" title="Email client" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_client">mail client then you know the pain of moving the mails from outlook mail from outlook to any other client.

If you are using evolution on <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/fedora" title="Fedora" rel="homepage" href="http://fedoraproject.org/">Fedora, then you are in luck. Just install the plug-in and select the file to import as simple as that.

sudo yum install evolution-pst

Get the information on all the rpms installed on the system

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 04:04:32 +0000

Here’s a one-liner to get the info on all the packages installed on your system.

rpm -qa –info |tee All_rpms_Info

This is what it does, when you query the rpm database with the –info parameter, then the output looks something like the below, which is quite helpful.

Name        : rpm                          Relocations: (not relocatable)
Version     : 4.6.0                             Vendor: Fedora Project
Release     : 0.rc3.1.fc10                  Build Date: Sat 13 Dec 2008 12:38:24 AM IST
Install Date: Tue 13 Jan 2009 09:22:50 PM IST      Build Host: x86-5.fedora.phx.redhat.com
Group       : System Environment/Base       Source RPM: rpm-4.6.0-0.rc3.1.fc10.src.rpm
Size        : 3662666                          License: GPLv2+
Signature   : DSA/SHA1, Tue 06 Jan 2009 08:20:24 PM IST, Key ID bf226fcc4ebfc273
Packager    : Fedora Project
URL         : http://www.rpm.org/
Summary     : The RPM package management system
Description :
The RPM Package Manager (RPM) is a powerful command line driven
package management system capable of installing, uninstalling,
verifying, querying, and updating software packages. Each software
package consists of an archive of files along with information about
the package like its version, a description, etc.

How To Install Ailurus 10.05 On Fedora | HowtoForge - Linux Howtos and Tutorials

Fri, 23 Jul 2010 04:04:31 +0000

For those of you who don’t know about ailurus:

Ailurus is cross-<a class="zem_slink" title="Linux distribution" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_distribution">Linux-distribution <a class="zem_slink" title="GNU General Public License" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License">GPL <a class="zem_slink" title="Computer software" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_software">software, which aims at making Linux easier to use, for newcomers.

And the features include:

Ailurus can …

display Linux skills

install popular software

change <a class="zem_slink" title="GNOME" rel="homepage" href="http://www.gnome.org/">GNOME settings

display <a class="zem_slink" title="Hardware" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware">hardware information

enable some third party repositories#

clean apt/yum cache#

backup and recover apt/yum status#

the features marked with ”#” support Ubuntu/Fedora only

strings linux command

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 03:47:14 +0000

Ever wondered what's inside some of those binary files on your system (binary executables or binary data)? Several times I've gotten error messages from some command in the Solaris system, but I couldn't tell where the error was coming from because it was buried in some binary executable file.

The Solaris "strings" command lets you look at the ASCII text buried inside of executable files, and can often help you troubleshoot problems. For
instance, one time I was seeing error messages like this when a user was trying to log in:

Kernel ata exception — found workaround.

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 03:47:13 +0000

I have been getting the below errors in my system for quite sometime now, I think since F9 or before that. The offending hardware is CD drive. I looked all around the net for a solution but did not find anything. Will keep looking to solve the problem. I found various solutions being suggested like adding noirq or nobiosirq or noacpi and such. None of this helped. So for now I am happy with turning off the haldaemon as soon as the system comes up. Problem: it takes lot of time to go down 🙁

Raw file format support in Rawstudio for Linux for FujiFilm cameras.

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 03:47:12 +0000

Finally <a href="http://rawstudio.org">Rawstudio has decided to add the support for FujiFilm raw file format. The support for FujiFilm cameras was not there in the rawstudio but now the bug reported on the same is marked as fixed and in the next few release, we should see the support for the same. Good going guys.

About Rawstudio:

To get the best quality out of your digital camera, it is often
recommended that you record your pictures in RAW format. This format
is mostly specific to a camera and cannot be read by most image
editing applications.

Linux command to repeat a string n times - Super User

Tue, 20 Jul 2010 03:47:09 +0000

I was working on something and needed to output the string n times. I have required this even to print a line with ’-’ or ’=’ but this time I badly wanted it in bash. So I searched google and found this:

printf ”Amit Agarwal%.0s” {1..5}

Explanations and other examples: <a href="http://superuser.com/questions/86340/linux-command-to-repeat-a-string-n-times">http://superuser.com/questions/86340/linux-command-to-repeat-a-string-n-times<h6 class="zemanta-related-title" style="font-size: 1em;">Related articles by Zemanta <ul class="zemanta-article-ul"> <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.rateitall.com/i-3177235-flat-rate-us-terminations.aspx">1 reviews of Flat-Rate US Terminations (rateitall.com) <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.brighthub.com/computing/linux/articles/75743.aspx">Top Linux GUI (brighthub.com) <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/tour/">A guided tour of Emacs (gnu.org) <div class="zemanta-pixie" style="margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" title="Enhanced by Zemanta" href="http://www.zemanta.com/"><img class="zemanta-pixie-img" style="border: medium none; float: right;" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/zemified_e6.png" alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" /><span class="zem-script more-related pretty-attribution">

Adding border to images.

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 13:38:52 +0000

A very simple script to add border to images :
**
**

*for i in .jpg; do montage -geometry 720×576 -background black -quality 100 $i conv-$i; done

This is one line that you can run the directory containing all your images and all the files with extension of ”jpg” will be assumed to be images and the command run on them to add the border. The border is black in color and quality of the border is 100%.

Try a live Distro without burning on CD or running in VM

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 13:38:51 +0000

I keep trying a lot of distributions and mostly I try them once and get the configurations and put them on my box :), this works best for me so that I dont have to keep re-configuring my system again and again. So, burning the disc for one time use is overhead and wastes a lot of time for me.

Why burn a disc when GRUB is there to help. So today we will try to use the installed grub run a extracted iso image. Lets go step by step:

Beldi – The way to go to try linux distributions.

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 13:38:50 +0000

I know people in the Linux world always want to try different distributions, but problem is maintaining them and tracking them, so what is the solution?

Found a nice solution called <a href="https://belug.de/~beldi//distributions/fedora.xml">Beldi

This sofware is in the fedora yum repository so if you are running Fedora you can simply install the application by running

”<span style="color: #ff00ff;">yum install beldi”

Now the interesting part, it supports to download and autoupdate the distributions of about 16 odd distributions. What you did not find your distro in the list but want to add it, I hope one option is to write to BeLUG and ask them to add it. But better yet is to update the xml files in the <span style="color: #00ffff;">~/.beldi directory.

Enlightment Desktop.

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 19:16:51 +0000

Enlightenment window managet I just chanced upon today while browsing the list of packages in fedora repository and thought might as well try it for sometime. For sometime now I had shifted to LXDE in favour of its being light weight but was serving well to my purposes and was quite happy with its performance.

So i just installed Enlightenment:

sudo yum install enlightenment

and selected yes for downloading the dependencies to too. This took me to a great new world of GUI. This is a really great Desktop manager. Seems to be quite okay in terms of using the CPU. The looks are completely configurable. Menus are configurable and if you dont like the default theme then there are lot to choose from at various location some of which I have mentioned in below.

vi reference links

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 19:16:50 +0000

<a href="http://www.lagmonster.org/docs/vi2.html">http://www.lagmonster.org/docs/vi2.html
<a href="http://www.venukb.com/2007/01/28/vivim-graphical-cheat-sheet/">http://www.venukb.com/2007/01/28/vivim-graphical-cheat-sheet/
<a href="http://www.viemu.com/a_vi_vim_graphical_cheat_sheet_tutorial.html">http://www.viemu.com/a_vi_vim_graphical_cheat_sheet_tutorial.html
<a href="http://www.eng.hawaii.edu/Tutor/vi.html#commands">http://www.eng.hawaii.edu/Tutor/vi.html#commands

Hotmail login from Linux machine using Firefox.

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 02:10:30 +0000

Today I learnt two things. One is that Hotmail has changed the look of the email on the web. Quite good change. Looks good.

Second is that when loggin in to the hotmail using my Fedora box with Firefox, I was always getting the annoying, you are not on supported browser and saw the fix on <a href="http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-newbie-8/hotmail-problems-683894/?posted=1#post3345089" target="_blank">this link. The solution is as simple as changing the ”general.useragent.vendor” for firefox. The way to do this is :

New GNOME 2.24 is an incremental improvement

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 02:10:29 +0000

<a href="http://www.linux.com/feature/149081">Link

Quite good details on the new improvements.. Currently I am installing empathy which looks quite interesting. Screenshot for empathy available <a href="http://linux.softpedia.com/progScreenshots/Empathy-Screenshot-27288.html">here.

Configurable Linux Distro You Might Want To Try – Fedora

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 01:06:33 +0000

Rounding out the fall releases from the big cheeses in Linux comes <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/fedora" title="Fedora" rel="homepage" href="http://fedoraproject.org/">Fedora 12. <a href="http://fedoraproject.org/">Fedora is a popular <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/linux_distribution" title="Linux distribution" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_distribution">Linux distribution funded by <a href="http://www.redhat.com/">Red Hat, the most profitable Linux <a class="zem_slink freebase/guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000006ae3af5" title="Company" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company">corporation active today. Fedora usually sits within the top three or four most popular distributions at <a href="http://distrowatch.com">distrowatch.com.

Much of the company and community work that goes into Fedora will find its way into <a href="http://www.redhat.com/rhel/">Red Hat Enterprise Linux, the commercial Linux version used by governments and <a class="zem_slink freebase/guid/9202a8c04000641f800000000004e02d" title="Business" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business">businesses around the world. You might compare the relationship between Red Hat and Fedora to <a href="http://www.novell.com/linux/">Novell and <a href="http://www.opensuse.org/en/">openSUSE.

Unixmen - Tips to reduce memory usage on Firefox

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 01:06:32 +0000

A nice aritcle on reducing the memory usage of firefox on <a class="zem_slink" title="Linux" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux">Linux.

There are some things in life everyone is looking for and no one ever finds and there are other things that people keep finding and re-finding and inventing and re-inventing. Reducing memory usage for <a class="zem_slink" title="Firefox" rel="homepage" href="http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/">Firefox and speeding it up is one such thing. So, here is another story to reduce the memory usage of firefox.

Are you swapped? Increase the performance of Linux machine.

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 01:06:31 +0000

With the ever increasing cost of the Hardware, the amount of physical RAM available on the system is increasing day by day. For example, couple of years back, I had a system which was very high end Desktop with 256MB RAM and today I have a 2GB RAM Desktop. So, whats the point.

The Linux systems (right word should be kernel) are desiged to use both RAM and swap partition. Swap partition is a partition on Hard disk and is used mostly like RAM. Problem is that HDD access is always slower than RAM access and hence inherently, the system will work little slower even if you have enough RAM not to use swap. The term ”swappiness” is used to determine how the kernel should try to seam-balance between the use of RAM and swap. By default, most of the distro’s have a swappiness of 60. A higher value of swappiness means that the RAM will be swapped out faster.

A Five-Way Linux Distribution Comparison In 2010

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 01:06:30 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

<a href="http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=linux_2010_fiveway&num=1" target="_blank">A five way linux comparison.

A very good comparison of the most common and famous distributions of <a class="zem_slink freebase/guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000000dafbd5" title="Linux" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux">Linux. Very comprehensive and detailed. Love this guy.<h6 class="zemanta-related-title">Related articles by Zemanta <ul class="zemanta-article-ul"> <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://lifehacker.com/5585048/spotify-streaming-music-player-comes-to-linux">Spotify Streaming Music Player Comes to Linux [Downloads] (lifehacker.com) <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://sathyasays.com/2010/07/13/spotify-for-linux/">Spotify for Linux (sathyasays.com) <div class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" title="Enhanced by Zemanta" href="http://www.zemanta.com/"><img class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/zemified_c16.gif" alt="Enhanced by Zemanta" /><span class="zem-script more-related more-info pretty-attribution paragraph-reblog">

blogtk — Unsupported XML-RPC protocol

Tue, 29 Jun 2010 12:23:07 +0000

Earlier I had talked about this blog client, did I. If not then there is a nice blogging clinet called BloGTK, which can be used directly to post into the blog.

So today I reinstalled it and I was completely at loss with the client being unable to start with the error below:

/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/blogtk/BloGTK.py:407: GtkDeprecationWarning: gtk.TRUE is deprecated, use True instead
self.publishCheck.set_active(gtk.TRUE)
Traceback (most recent call last):
File ”/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/blogtk/BloGTK.py”, line 1244, in module
blogtk = BloGTK()
File ”/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/blogtk/BloGTK.py”, line 138, in __init__
self.grabConfig()
File ”/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/blogtk/BloGTK.py”, line 426, in grabConfig
self.rpcServer = proxy.get_xmlrpc_server(self.url)
File ”/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/blogtk/proxy.py”, line 66, in get_xmlrpc_server
return server(url)
File ”/usr/lib/python2.5/xmlrpclib.py”, line 1414, in __init__
raise IOError, ”unsupported XML-RPC protocol”
IOError: unsupported XML-RPC protocol

wordpress blog stats monitoring from remote using curl and bash and send it in mail.

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 11:47:20 +0000

Here’s something that I had been planning to do for sometime now. I have my blog on wordpress and have Statpress plugin installed. The plugin does give me a good idea of the visits to my site. Now, I have to keep logging in every now and then to check the stats. Also since I did not want to spend some more amount 🙂 so I do not have the shell access to the server, too bad 🙁

MySQL tutorial and reference manual

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 11:47:15 +0000

The refence for the mysql could be found at

<a class="aligncenter" title="MySQL Help" href="http://http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/index.html" target="_blank">MySQL Help

Useless use of cat awards

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 11:47:15 +0000

<a href="http://partmaps.org/era/unix/award.html#cat">Here you will find some useless use of cat command in linux. Really interesting and quite informative.

Useless Use of Cat Award

If you’ve been reading <a href="news:comp.unix.shell">comp.unix.shell or any of the related groups <a href="news:comp.unix.questions">(comp.unix.questions inter alia) for any amount of time, this should be a familiar topic.

I made this web page on the topic primarily so I’d have a simpler URL than one of those ghastly Deja News searches to hand to people. I’ve tried to reconstruct Randal’s standard form letter from looking at his postings <a href="http://partmaps.org/era/unix/award.html#forms">(see end) and added some comments of my own.

Getting the list of IOCTLS in the kernel.

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 11:47:14 +0000

Sometime back I was helping one of my friends in looking for all the IOCTLs supported by the kernel. Well we did not find the info we were looking for and thus thought to write a perl script to get all the IOCTLS supported by the kernel. Here it is, simple script to scan through the code and give you a list:

#!/usr/bin/perl —

@files = `grep -r ” _IO” /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES/linux-2.6.20/* |grep define ioctls_grep`;
open (DAT, ”ioctls_grep”) ||die ”could not open ioctls_grep”;
@files = DAT;
close(DAT);
my %ioctls_numbers;
print ”Grep completed..\n”;
open (DAT, ”ioctls_numbers_found”);

5-reasons-i-like-linux-and-5-why-i-dislike-it

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 11:47:12 +0000

Last couple of days I was quite busy and thus could not catch up with my bloglines account. Today finally I got some time so am catching up on them and found some interesting things to share with you. Actually wanted to write them myself long time back but still thinking about it. And since someone has already done that, I will link to them. The first one for today is <a href="http://tech.shantanugoel.com/2008/04/20/5-reasons-i-like-linux-and-5-why-i-dislike-it.html" target="_blank">5-reasons-i-like-linux-and-5-why-i-dislike-it. This was not in the list that I was planning to write but some thing similar in line was pending after the distro comparisions I did some time back.

Linux Advertisement – So linux finally decides to do some marketing.

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 11:47:09 +0000

Its been quite some time that people started saying that this is the year of linux, and Linux (like in the Turtle and Hare story) has been growing steadily. There are advocates and critics for the Linux. I sometime think what are the advocates or critics thinking when they are commenting. But let me not get into that. There are circumstances where you would have to stick with windows wheather you like it or not and similar is the case with Linux in this corporate world. Anyway, here is the link to the advertisements:

rpmsave and rpmnew files.

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 11:47:06 +0000

When upgrading an rpm based Linux System, all of us would have seen ”*.rpmsave” or ”*rpmnew” files being created. These are the config files in the rpm that rpm utility thinks should be overwritten (creates a *.rpmsave for the earlier file) or should not be overwritten (create *.rpmnew with the new file).

If you ever wondered what to do with these files then you can use this small script that would show the diff between the two files and you can decided which to keep or which to delete.

Viewing archive without extracting.

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 11:47:03 +0000

I was looking for this option and searched the net to find quite some utilities to do this.

gvfs-archive — Select the file in nautilus and select ”Archive Mounter” .. simple isn’t it. Supposed to work but didn’t work for me.. Though that may be because I am on rawhide.
<a href="http://www.onicos.com/staff/iz/release/mi-arcfs/">mi-arcfs is another kernel dependent module to achieve this.
<a href="http://code.google.com/p/fuse-zip/">fuse-zip from google code is another nice option.

And a nice article on this this is <a href="http://osdir.com/ml/gnome.usability/2003-01/msg00092.html">here.
Technorati Tags: <a class="performancingtags" href="http://technorati.com/tag/gnome" rel="tag">gnome, <a class="performancingtags" href="http://technorati.com/tag/archive" rel="tag">archive, <a class="performancingtags" href="http://technorati.com/tag/mount" rel="tag">mount, <a class="performancingtags" href="http://technorati.com/tag/file%20system" rel="tag">file system, <a class="performancingtags" href="http://technorati.com/tag/fs" rel="tag">fs

A Unix/Linux cheatsheet complete in most respects.

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 11:46:57 +0000

Find <a href="http://cb.vu/unixtoolbox.xhtml" target="_blank">here. This is a very nice tutorial all in one page and browsable.

It covers :

1.   System
2.   Processes
3.   File System
4.   Network
5.   SSH SCP
6.   VPN with SSH
7.   RSYNC
8.   SUDO
9.   Encrypt Files
10.   Encrypt Partitions
11.   SSL Certificates
12.   CVS
13.   SVN
14.   Useful Commands
15.   Install Software
16.   Convert Media
17.   Printing
18.   Databases
19.   Disk Quota
20.   Shells
21.   Scripting
22.   Programming
23.   Online Help

Fri, 25 Jun 2010 11:46:53 +0000

Note: I am using this and definately this is a big improvement over the previous versions. Here is the blog from gnome blog:

After more than a year of heavy development, <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/networkmanager" title="NetworkManager" rel="homepage" href="http://www.gnome.org/projects/NetworkManager">NetworkManager 0.8 was unleashed on the world a few weeks ago. While we obviously couldn’t make everyone happy just yet, this release includes a ton of great stuff. Much of it is under the hood, so while it won’t dazzle you in a blinding flash of light, it should still make your head explode.

Linux is just too open

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 20:51:32 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

The Problem with Linux is that it is forthright, open and honest. Now I know how much the editors here hate when I anthropomorphize an operating system, but it is fundamentally true.

Linux, in my view, remains almost too honest and too open.

Check file usage using fuser

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 20:51:30 +0000

There is a package called psmisc that provides a useful application fuser. The package provides the below (on fedora):

/sbin/fuser
/usr/bin/killall
/usr/bin/peekfd
/usr/bin/pstree
/usr/bin/pstree.x11

There are couple of options you can provide on the terminal to fuser. The main purpose of the binary is to check the process id of the process using the file. This can be useful if some file operation on a file is blocking something for you 🙂

Linux:Please Don\’t Show the Command Line to the Uninitiated (via postie)

Thu, 24 Jun 2010 20:51:29 +0000

<a href="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/category/linux/">Bookmark this category

Not long ago I had the opportunity to show off GNU/Linux to a friend. She’s been a lifelong Windows users and is just your average, non-technical computer user. She’d heard of this thing called “Linux,” but had never seen a Linux distro in use. So, I gladly booted up my laptop and also the desktop (we were at my house, my wife and I having one of our many cookouts) and showed her Linux Mint 7 via a live CD and also Ubuntu 8.10, which is installed on my family’s desktop.

Customize Your Firefox Browsing Experience On Your Favorite Websites

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 04:33:20 +0000

<a href="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/category/linux/">Bookmark this category

<img SRC="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/screenshot.151.jpe" ALIGN="bottom" ALT="screenshot.15"/>Did you know that you can customize the way you see a website in your browser? We’ve all heard of the <a HREF="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/greasemonkey-firefox-addon/">Greasemonkey add-on for Firefox, right? If not, check out the articles <a HREF="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/20-must-see-greasemonkey-addonsno-technical-knowledge-req/">that <a HREF="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/6-cool-greasemonkey-scripts-to-rock-your-friendfeed/">have <a HREF="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/how-to-turn-greasemonkey-scripts-into-firefox-extensions/">been <a HREF="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/top-ten-flickr-greasemonkey-scripts/">written here on MakeUseOf and you’ll be sure to find out some neat stuff about it.

Basically, Greasemonkey allows users to write and implement scripts that customize the way you interact with websites.

Oracle GUI client on Linux with mysql support

Tue, 22 Jun 2010 02:37:46 +0000

I was looking for some nice client for Oracle and mysql. I did find mysql-administrator and navicat to be useful but this is much better. <a href="http://sourceforge.net/projects/tora/" target="_blank">Tora is the client that I am talking about. Installation did not take much time for me..

downloaded the instant client from oracle.com and then the tora rpm from sourceforge.net. Also downloaded the tora-mysql from http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/21/year/2002/month/01/day/28

Then tried to install all the rpms found the rpms that were missing and installed them using yum. Once this is done install the downloaded rpms with ”–nodeps” option of rpm.Put the entries in bashrc

concatenate compressed and uncompressed logs

Mon, 21 Jun 2010 12:58:46 +0000

<span style="font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Command-line-fu/~3/iwFUyltYgjM/concatenate-compressed-and-uncompressed-logs">concatenate compressed and uncompressed logs

$ find /var/log/apache2 -name 'access.loggz' -exec <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/gzip" title="Gzip" rel="homepage" href="http://www.gzip.org/">zcat {} ; -or -name 'access.log' -exec cat {} ; This command allows you to stream your log files, including gziped files, into one stream which can be piped to <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/awk" title="AWK" rel="homepage" href="http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/awkbook/index.html">awk or some other command for analysis.

Note: if your version of ’find’ supports it, use:

Linux command to repeat a string n times

Thu, 17 Jun 2010 15:56:50 +0000

There are more than one situation where you wished that there was a simple way to print a character n number of times. At least I face that quite often, especially when you want to print a menu. I found this post today which has pretty good solution and also the way how it works :
<a href="http://superuser.com/questions/86340/linux-command-to-repeat-a-string-n-times">http://superuser.com/questions/86340/linux-command-to-repeat-a-string-n-times

Linux Version Of Unreal IRC Servers Contained Trojans Since 2009 (techie-buzz.com)
Does Linux need to be defrag\’d? (ghacks.net)
000-856 Exam Pdf Demo (slideshare.net)
The power of find command in Linux – advanced. (amit-agarwal.co.in)
GNU/Linux: The Name Game (omgubuntu.co.uk)

17 Cool firefox tweaks.

Wed, 16 Jun 2010 02:17:02 +0000

A very nice article on firefox can be found here. Though written for Ubuntu should be applicable to all distro’s.

<a href="http://www.ubuntu-inside.me/2009/07/17-cool-firefox-aboutconfig-tricks.html">http://www.ubuntu-inside.me/2009/07/17-cool-firefox-aboutconfig-tricks.html

Most of it was done in my machine even before I read the article but good to see all of them together 🙂

GCompris — Kids games and learning activities and hacks.

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 14:20:18 +0000

I found a nice game and learning software for Kids yesterday. It is called <a href="http://gcompris.net/" target="_blank">GCompris. Details of the software as in their website is<div class="contenu">

GCompris is an educational software suite comprising of numerous activities for children aged 2 to 10. Some of the activities are game orientated, but nonetheless still educational. Below you can find a list of categories with some of the activities available in that category.

IRC on Linux de-mystified for new users only

Tue, 15 Jun 2010 14:20:17 +0000

The other day, I was trying to fix something in my firefox and found that the way to go was to login to IRC and go to the mozilla <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/server" title="Server (computing)" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_%28computing%29">server and join #firefox.

Though IRC is quite native to <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/linux" title="Linux" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux">Linux, I did not know where to start. So, I noted down the list of steps that need to be done to get you started. (Note this may not be new to most of you).

Default files and settings for new users on most Linux distribution – Linux Ubuntu

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 16:57:09 +0000

For most common distributions of Linux the default settings for the newly created user with GUI or useradd command is taken from the directory /etc/skel

All the files (including the hidden files) are copied to the newly created users home directory. This can be used to modify the defaul .bashrc .vimrc and other such files in the users home directory. You can copy the files in ”/etc/skel” the files that you want to keep in the users home directory. This can contain soft links or hard links also (Be careful to link to the full path in this directory).

Verify all the paths in the PATH directory

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 09:13:35 +0000

Here is the command to test that all the directories in your path actually exist.

(<a class="zem_slink freebase/en/internal_field_separator" title="Internal field separator" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internal_field_separator">IFS=:;for p in $PATH; do test -d $p || echo $p; done)

And the explanation :

Set the IFS to ”:”

now we loop through the PATH variable

and test all the directories with ”test -d”

Here is another version without IFS:

for i in ${PATH//:/ };do test -d $i || echo $i;done

Play media files in fedora.

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 20:58:12 +0000

Found <a href="http://fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=100206">here .<div class="smallfont">

Media (DVD, web content, video & audio) playback in Fedora <hr style="color: #d1d1e1; background-color: #d1d1e1;" size="1" />

Note: This howto has been transferred to my blog here. (Instructions for Fedora 7+ can be found here)

Hello,
There have been many complaints about media not working in Fedora – MP3s, DVDs, etc. So, I decided to make this guide to help out – By installing a few packages, you can get the codecs for these media or media formats, and solve the problem.

PuTTY ssh without password

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 02:08:36 +0000

you can do a ssh without password.. Today we will see how to do this with putty.

Generate public/private (DSA)key pair using puttygen.
copy the public key to ~/.ssh/authourized_keys on your server (moonware/sunware/skyware). Same key can be used on all the servers.
make sure that your home directory permissions are 755
directory permission for .ssh is 700
file permission for authourized_keys is 600
now login using putty and specify your private key in the configuration of putty and also specify your username.

How To Install Ailurus On Fedora

Sat, 05 Jun 2010 02:08:34 +0000

For those who have not yet heard about ailurus:

<img src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/ailuruslogo.png" alt="" width="24" height="24" />What is Ailurus?

Ailurus is cross-Linux-<a class="zem_slink freebase/en/linux_distribution" title="Linux distribution" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_distribution">distribution <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/gnu_general_public_license" title="GNU General Public License" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License">GPL <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/computer_software" title="Computer software" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_software">software, which aims at making Linux easier to use, for newcomers.

<img src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/ailuruslogo.png" alt="" width="24" height="24" />What does Ailurus hope to do?

Ailurus hopes to reduce the difficulty which newcomers encounter when they are using Linux.

Security — Installing and monitoring snort logs.

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 02:06:49 +0000

Snort is a very good security tool to install if you are concerned about the security of your system. I find it really useful but the problem is I keep forgetting to monitor the logs so what did I do, I installed snort and configured cron to send to logs everyday, here’s how.

On fedora, snort is available in the repository but the rules are not. So to install snort just type in the following in a terminal:

Linux Community\’s unoffical mascot taken by Microsoft

Fri, 04 Jun 2010 02:06:47 +0000

Ok, this is mostly a Linux advocacy and I kind of completely agree with <a href="http://linuxlock.blogspot.com/2008/11/congrats-linux-community-youve-been.html" target="_blank">this.

Here’s the main text, but dont forget to go to the page to read the comments( quite good and interesting thoughts by lot of people).

OK group…let’s see a show of hands…

How many people believe that the current way Linux markets itself is sufficient? That would be the combination of apathy, inertia and a smattering of guerrilla marketing.

Modifying the bashrc or bash startup files.

Thu, 03 Jun 2010 02:00:24 +0000

Find the article <a href="http://blog.infinitered.com/entries/show/4">here.

Copy here:<div class="entrybody">

If you’ve been learning the <a set="yes" linkindex="8" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_line_interface" title="Wikipedia Entry: Command line interface">command-line and you have the basics down (you should be, as the most effective way to use a computer is a combination of a GUI and command-line), the next step is to customize your environment.<div class="info_box">

<span class="info_box_title">Beginner’s Tip: ”command-line” and ”shell” are often used synonymously. In unix, technically speaking, the shell is what processes the command-line, but usually, they mean the same thing

The ability to fully customize your <a set="yes" linkindex="9" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_shell" title="Wikipedia Entry: Unix Shell (computing)">shell is one of the most powerful things about the command-line. It’s a dry subject, and mastering it won’t get you favors from the opposite sex (although it should), but it can be very useful.

There are many ways to customize your shell, but the first one you should learn is modifying your <a linkindex="10" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bash" title="Wikipedia Entry: bash">Bash startup files (assuming your shell is Bash, which is the default in OS X, Linux, and many other unices).

When I first learned how to customize bash, I found an overwhelming amount of information and opinion, which made it difficult. This article is intended to give you the fundamental concepts so that you can create your own startup files, and understand how they work. To give you an example, I go through a subset of my own files, section by section.

Let’s install the example startup files<div class="info_box">

<span class="info_box_title">Beginner’s Tip: Directory and folder are synonymous. Often folder is used in Windows and OS X and directory is used in Linux, however even Linux represents a directory as a folder graphically

Below are the two example startup files: .bashrc and .bash_profile.

If you would like to use these as your startup files, follow the following directions for your OS.

OS X:

If you want a backup of your existing files, use the following commands (if the files don’t already exist, you will get an error. The files will be named .bashrc_ORIGINAL and .bash_profile_ORIGINAL in your home folder):<pre class="textmate-source">cp ~/.bashrc ~/.bashrc_ORIGINAL ; cp ~/.bash_profile ~/.bash_profile_ORIGINAL
Copy <a linkindex="11" href="http://www.infinitered.com/settings/dotfiles/osx/.bash_profile">.bash_profile and <a linkindex="12" href="http://www.infinitered.com/settings/dotfiles/osx/.bashrc">.bashrc to your home folder.
There are a variety of ways to do this, but the simplest is to use the <a linkindex="13" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/cURL" title="Wikipedia Entry: cURL">curl command:<pre class="textmate-source">curl -o ~/.bash#1 "http://www.infinitered.com/settings/dotfiles/osx/.bash{rc,_profile}"
You do not need to log out, just create a new window or tab in iTerm, or a new window in Terminal.

Linux and other unices:

If you want a backup of your existing files, use the following commands (if the files don’t already exist, you will get an error. The files will be named .bashrc_ORIGINAL and .bash_profile_ORIGINAL in your home folder):<pre class="textmate-source">cp ~/.bashrc ~/.bashrc_ORIGINAL ; cp ~/.bash_profile ~/.bash_profile_ORIGINAL
Copy <a linkindex="14" href="http://www.infinitered.com/settings/dotfiles/generic/.bash_profile">.bash_profile and <a linkindex="15" href="http://www.infinitered.com/settings/dotfiles/generic/.bashrc">.bashrc to your home directory.
There are a variety of ways to do this, but the simplest is to use the <a linkindex="16" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wget" title="Wikipedia Entry: Wget">wget (or curl for BSD and others) commands:<pre class="textmate-source">wget -O ~/.bashrc "http://www.infinitered.com/settings/dotfiles/generic/.bashrc"

wget -O ~/.bash\_profile \"http://www.infinitered.com/settings/dotfiles/generic/.bash\_profile\"</pre> 
**or** <pre class=\"textmate-source\">curl -o ~/.bash#1 \"http://www.infinitered.com/settings/dotfiles/generic/.bash{rc,_profile}\"</pre>

Log out then log back in in order to load .bash_profile. Alternatively, you can do a source ~/.bash_profile to run the files.

What the heck are bash Startup Files?<div class="info_box">

<span class="info_box_title">Beginner’s Tip: ~ represents your home folder, it is short-hand notation so that you don’t have to type the whole thing; it is also used when you don’t know the home folder; for example, my code above works, no matter where your home folder/directory is.

<a linkindex="17" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/bash" title="Wikipedia Entry: bash">Bash, as well as other <a linkindex="18" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_shell" title="Wikipedia Entry: Unix shell">unix shells, have files that run when they start. You can modify these files to set preferences, create aliases and functions (a kind of micro-script), and other such fun.

When you start an interactive shell (log into the console, open terminal/xterm/iTerm, or create a new tab in iTerm) the following files are read and run, in this order:

/etc/profile
/etc/bashrc
~/.bash_profile
~/.bashrc (Note: only if you call it in .bash_profile or somewhere else)

When an interactive shell, that is not a login shell, is started (when you call ”bash” from inside a login shell, or open a new tab in Linux) the following files are read and executed, in this order:

/etc/bashrc
~/.bashrc<div class="info_box"><span class="info_box_title">Beginner’s Tip: Normally you can’t see the . files (files that start with a period) because they are hidden. Depending on your OS, you can simply turn on hidden files. Another option is to open the file in the command-line. Here are a few examples:

In shell: pico .bashrc
In shell: vi .bashrc
In OS X: open .bashrc
In GNOME: gedit .bashrc

/etc/profile and /etc/bashrc are run for all users on the system. Often on your workstation, there is only one user, you. But in systems with more than one user, these files can be used to set generic settings for all users. The files in your home folder, ~/.bashrc and ~/.bash_profile, are only for your particular user (since /etc/bashrc is run before ~/.bashrc, you can override anything in /etc/bashrc by simply setting it again in ~/.bashrc). Normally I only change these, since they are in your home folder, and only you have rights to them, you can change them without worry of affecting anyone else.

When your session starts, these files are run, just as if you typed the commands in yourself. Anything that normally works in the shell works in these files. Since .bash_profile only runs when you first login, you set very little there; the only important thing is your <a linkindex="19" href="http://www.linfo.org/path_env_var.html" title="Path definition">PATH. bashrc is where the meat goes, and will be where you spend all your time.

Logwatch for Linux Systems.

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 01:53:36 +0000

On my personal <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/client" title="Client (computing)" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Client_%28computing%29">desktop at home, I like to see the <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/statistics" title="Statistics" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics">statistics at least once a day, for what was installed, what was run with <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/sudo" title="Sudo" rel="homepage" href="http://www.sudo.ws/">sudo and other such details like <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/kernel" title="Kernel (computing)" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kernel_%28computing%29">kernel errors.

Running this monotonously every day is quite boring, so comes to rescue is logwatch. I have <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/fedora" title="Fedora" rel="homepage" href="http://fedoraproject.org/">Fedora <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/installation" title="Installation (computer programs)" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Installation_%28computer_programs%29">installation so I will talk about the location with respect to that so for your distribution it might be a little different.

phpMan: Unix Man page/ Perldoc / Info page Web Interface

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 01:53:35 +0000

<a href="http://phpunixman.sourceforge.net/">Link

A web interface to browse the man pages along with perldoc or info pages for all the Linux commands.

Quite useful if you are on windows and want to quickly look at some reference for Linux command. Otherwise too quite intuitive and interesting and easy to browse.

Google staff dropping Windows for Macs, Linux PCs

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 01:53:34 +0000

For those who keep saying this is not the year of linux and probably it will never be 🙂

Google is abandoning the use of Windows by its staff as it\’s too much of a security threat, multiple staffers said Monday night. Recent concerns about Chinese hacks have the search firm requiring either a Mac or Linux for all new recruits to provide better security. Those who want Windows now often require explicit approval from executives and may not have any choice on desktops where it\’s only an option for notebooks.

[link to original | source: LXer Linux News

Google said to be moving away from Windows internally, Mac and Linux systems on tap instead (engadget.com)
Google revamps new employee computer policy; Windows now out of the equation (edibleapple.com)
Who Needs Windows? Google Starts Putting Their Computers Where Their Mouth Is (techcrunch.com)

Key bindings for screen command

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 02:15:13 +0000

Key bindings

screen commands consist of a command character (Ctrl-a by default) followed by another character. For many of the commands, you can also specify the character as Ctrl-character–e.g., Ctrl-a Ctrl-d as well as Ctrl-a d. The default key bindings are listed here. You can change the bindings for yourself in the $HOME/.screenrc configuration file, or for all users in /etc/screenrc. The term in parentheses that follows the description is the equivalent configuration-file command for changing the key binding.

UFRaw – Open open format raw images in Linux.

Thu, 27 May 2010 20:26:36 +0000

<a class="zem_slink freebase/en/ufraw" title="UFRaw" rel="homepage" href="http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/">UFRaw is quite an essential program if you are using <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/linux" title="Linux" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux">Linux and have a camera that supports <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/raw_image_format" title="Raw image format" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_image_format">raw format.

UFRaw is a tool for opening raw format images of <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/digital_camera" title="Digital camera" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_camera">digital cameras.

UFRaw supports a long list of camera’s. You can see the list of supported camera’s <a href="http://ufraw.sourceforge.net/Cameras.html">here.

vim – get the list of all the scripts available.

Thu, 27 May 2010 20:26:35 +0000

To get a list of all the scripts in the vim.sf.net project, you can run the following command. This will list all the scripts with the script id.

wget -O – ’http://www.vim.org/scripts/script_search_results.php?&show_me=4000&result_ptr=0’ -o /dev/null | <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/grep" title="Grep" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grep">grep width| grep script_id= |<a class="zem_slink freebase/en/sed" title="Sed" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sed">sed ’s/.*script_id=//’|tr -d ”””|tr ”>” ” ”|sed ’s/< .*//’ | tr -d ’\001’-’\011’’\013’’\014’’\016’-’\037’’\200’-’\377’ |sort -n<h6 class="zemanta-related-title">Related articles by Zemanta <ul class="zemanta-article-ul"> <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.slumpedoverkeyboarddead.com/2009/09/17/use-curl-to-monitor-your-vonage-phone-bill/">Use curl to Monitor Your Vonage Phone Bill (slumpedoverkeyboarddead.com) <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://securewebs.com/yum-updates/">Yum Updates (securewebs.com) <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.gubatron.com/blog/2009/10/10/ubuntudebian-quick-reference-how-to-change-your-servers-utc-timezone-on-the-command-line/">Ubuntu/Debian Quick Reference: How To Change Your Server’s UTC Timezone on the command line (gubatron.com) <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/2009/11/22/short-information-about-loaded-kernel-modules/">Short Information about loaded kernel modules (amit-agarwal.co.in) <div class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" title="Reblog this post [with Zemanta]" href="http://reblog.zemanta.com/zemified/b22b2e85-8107-4f9b-9130-85a8e8ae370b/"><img class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/reblog_b52.png" alt="Reblog this post [with Zemanta]" /><span class="zem-script more-related more-info pretty-attribution paragraph-reblog">

command not found – packagekit plugin

Thu, 27 May 2010 11:44:42 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

If you run into problems where you run some command and the command is not found and you have to install it and run the program again then why not use the command not found <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/plugin" title="Plug-in (computing)" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plug-in_%28computing%29">plugin for Packagekit. Here is the description:

mussh - Multihost SSH wrapper

Tue, 25 May 2010 11:33:59 +0000

Description:

Mussh is a <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/shell_script" title="Shell script" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_script">shell script that allows you to execute a command or script over ssh on multiple hosts with one command. When possible mussh will use <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/ssh-agent" title="Ssh-agent" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ssh-agent">ssh-agent and RSA/DSA keys to minimize the need to enter your password more than once.

It is a utility for <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/system_administrator" title="System administrator" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_administrator">system administrators maintaining more than one hosts. The utility will help the admin to execute the same command on multiple hosts with a single command.

The power of find command in Linux – advanced.

Mon, 24 May 2010 16:25:40 +0000

Generally whoever uses Linux, would know about the find command. Find the man page <a href="http://amit.themafia.info/phpMan.php?parameter=find&mode=man" target="_blank">here.

There are also lots of blogs, tutorials and other articles on find command on the web, so why write another one. Because it’s worth every word spent on it 🙂
find is a very powerful command, let’s see how (options for find command from man page and usage):

–depth — Process each directory’s contents before the directory itself.
–maxdepth — Descend at most <span style="text-decoration: underline;">levels (a non-negative integer) levels of directories below the command line arguments.
–xdev — Don’t descend directories on other filesystems.
–executable — Matches files which are executable and directories which are searchable (in a file name resolution sense).
This takes into account access control lists and other permissions artefacts which the -perm test ignores.
–iname — Like -name, but the match is case insensitive.
–nogroup — No group corresponds to file’s numeric group ID.
–nouser — No user corresponds to file’s numeric user ID.
–fls <span style="text-decoration: underline;">file — True; like -ls but write to <span style="text-decoration: underline;">file like -fprint.
–ok <span style="text-decoration: underline;">command — Like -exec but ask the user first (on the standard input);
–print0 — True; print the full file name on the standard output, followed by a null character
(instead of the newline character that -print uses).
–printf <span style="text-decoration: underline;">format — True; print <span style="text-decoration: underline;">format on the standard output, interpreting ’’ escapes and ’%’ directives.

Inotify Example - Introduction to Inotify with a C Program Example

Mon, 24 May 2010 16:25:39 +0000

<a href="http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2010/04/inotify-c-program-example/">Inotify Example: Introduction to Inotify with a C Program Example:

<a class="zem_slink freebase/en/inotify" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inotify" title="Inotify" rel="wikipedia">inotify utility is an effective tool to monitor and notify <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/file_system" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_system" title="File system" rel="wikipedia">filesystem changes. You can specify a list of files and directories that needs to be monitored by inotify. This <a class="zem_slink freebase/guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000000023d0f" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library" title="Library" rel="wikipedia">library is used by various other programs. For example, <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/cpan" href="http://www.cpan.org/" title="CPAN" rel="homepage">CPAN module Linux::Inotify is developed based on this library.
iNotify Execution Flow

Working with FTP Directories.

Wed, 19 May 2010 16:38:46 +0000

If you have to manage some ftp site, I can understand you pain in managing the site with FTP. Specially if you are managing a site where you need to edit the files. Without shelling out some decent amount of money you will not get decent editor which can help you edit the files directly over ftp. So today I spent my time looking for a good solution and UREKA I found it.

Disk identification by UUID in Fedora.

Wed, 19 May 2010 16:38:41 +0000

Yesterday I managed to delete my complete /usr directory and thus had to re-install my OS but I learned something new yesterday which I didn’t know earlier or actually never bothered to find out.br /br /All the partitions are mounted by udev using the UUID or label now. Finding the label of setting the label is easy but that was not the case with UUID (at least till you dont know how to do it). So finally I set my foot to search it. Heres some of the things that I found:br /br /bblkid/b – Gives you a list like below for all your partitions:br //dev/sda6: UUID=”8D8A-6CF1” TYPE=”vfat” LABEL=”Backup” br /So this is sufficient to modify your fstab to refer to the UUID or label instead of the drive. So whats the change in fstab. If the earlier entry looks likebr //dev/sdb6nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; /media/Bkup3nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; vfatnbsp;nbsp;nbsp; uid=500,nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; 0 0br /then you can change this to :br /UUID=”8D8A-6CF1”nbsp;nbsp; /media/Bkup3nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; vfatnbsp;nbsp;nbsp; uid=500,nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; 0 0br /What is the benifit:br /———————br /When you re-format your Hard Disk there is a likely possibility that the dev name could well change and thus completely changing the mount points for all your fstab entries. This is really a pain if you have 10 or more partitions like the way I have. So if you use label or UUID then they never change and your mount points remain the same.br /br /Effective use: Use autofs package to automatically mount all your partitions. Autofs mounts the package at /media/LABEL, so before you hit to start your autofs label all your disks.br /br /Other ways to find the disk labels and UUID’s:br /ls /dev/disk/by-uuid –gt; simplest way. :)br /br /Will get back to this later with more details.br /br /

How to write a Linux virus – well or a trojan.

Tue, 18 May 2010 16:35:20 +0000

<a href="http://www.geekzone.co.nz/foobar/6229" target="_blank">How to write a Linux virus

and the folloup thereof

<a href="http://www.geekzone.co.nz/foobar/6236" target="_blank">Follow up: How to write a Linux virus

Thats quite a lot of discussion and an interesting one too. I too liked the point that the authour is trying to make, that is Linux too is not completely safe. I would rather like to put it as not ”Fool Proof”.

But no one is fool. Its just the matter of time when you do something foolish. People do keep thinking about various things and keep working. That being the case, it is not too difficult that someone would actually run the program. But the caveat is that the program/virus/trojan would still show up at some places. So you need to do few more things for this to work. If you are keen on doing this, then you need to atleast add these:

Linux EBook

Tue, 18 May 2010 16:35:19 +0000

My own book.. Though not too good but might be useful.

<a class="aligncenter" title="Ebook" href="http://amit-agarwal.co.in/mystuff/LinuxBook.pdf.bz2">Free Ebook

Leave a comment or send a mail to wordpress@amit-agarwal.co.in to get the password

command line cheat sheet for begineers.

Mon, 17 May 2010 15:59:22 +0000

A list of commands with some examples posted by Ian <a href="http://ardchoille42.blogspot.com/2009/08/command-line-cheatsheet.html" target="_blank">here. Looks good for new comers to Linux OS 🙂

Contd:: Evaluation of Distro\’s

Mon, 17 May 2010 15:59:21 +0000

<a href="www.foresightlinux.org/" target="_blank">Foresight

Foresight is a desktop operating system featuring an intuitive user interface and a showcase of the latest desktop software, giving users convenient and enjoyable access to their music, photos, videos, documents, and Internet resources.

I liked their logo. Quite simple and intutive.

Logo goes quite well with the Foreground image. Both are same in color and hence it gives you a feeling of theme and not just ramdomly selected foreground.

SendEmail using perl script in Windows or Linux using any SMTP account.

Sun, 16 May 2010 15:53:17 +0000

Technorati Tags: <a class="performancingtags" href="http://technorati.com/tag/email" rel="tag">email, <a class="performancingtags" href="http://technorati.com/tag/sendEmail" rel="tag">sendEmail, <a class="performancingtags" href="http://technorati.com/tag/Perl" rel="tag">Perl

There is a very nice little utility or rather SMTP client program called sendmail (<a href="http://caspian.dotconf.net/menu/Software/SendEmail/">Link — http://caspian.dotconf.net/menu/Software/SendEmail/).

This can be used in Windows or Linux or any other OS with perl installed and few other perl modules installed. Its quite easy to use and comes in quite handy to send emails.

In later posts we will see how we can use this in various ways : sending mail from your browser, from your editor or even from the command line or shell script.

Downloading all related videos from youtube with youtube-dl

Sun, 16 May 2010 15:53:16 +0000

How many time did you want to see all the videos (related) to the one you were watching on youtube but decided otherwise as the downloaded was not fast enough. Or has it happened to you that you wanted to <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/uploading_and_downloading" title="Uploading and downloading" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uploading_and_downloading">download all the related videos, in either case you can use the youtube-dl utility I blogged about some times back. First you need to get all the <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/uniform_resource_locator" title="Uniform Resource Locator" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniform_Resource_Locator">URL’s in a <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/text_file" title="Text file" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_file">text file, and the simplest way to do this is :

6000+ truetype fonts for Linux

Thu, 13 May 2010 17:04:33 +0000

Found a huge collection of fonts for linux. These are true type fonts and really a huge collection.

<a href="http://thelinuxbox.org/downloads/fonts/fonts.tar.gz">get here

updated: Forgot to mention that you can update the font cache without restarting the font server by executing the below command:

fc-cache -fv

Removing duplicate RPMS.

Wed, 12 May 2010 17:01:26 +0000

Got the script mainly with google search on the <a href="http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-Lists/Fedora/2006-12/msg04156.html">link.

Nice trick..

Get the list of rpms with just the names
rpm -qa –queryformat ’%{name}\n’ > pkglist

Get the non-uniques list.
sort -g pkglist | uniq -d > duplicates

Get the versions of the duplicate files:
for pkg in `cat duplicates`; do
rpm -q $pkg » removelist
done

Now keep the rpms that you want to delete in the removelist

vi – the powerful Linux/Unix text editor

Wed, 12 May 2010 17:01:25 +0000

We will talk about some vi stuff today:

Some fun first–>
1) <a href="http://www.vim.org/tips/tip.php?tip_id=664">http://www.vim.org/tips/tip.php?tip_id=664
2) help 42

Ok, coming to serious things-
References:
3) Linux cheat sheet:
<a href="http://www.lagmonster.org/docs/vi2.html">http://www.lagmonster.org/docs/vi2.html
4) <a href="http://www.venukb.com/2007/01/28/vivim-graphical-cheat-sheet/">http://www.venukb.com/2007/01/28/vivim-graphical-cheat-sheet/
5) <a href="http://www.eng.hawaii.edu/Tutor/vi.html#commands">http://www.eng.hawaii.edu/Tutor/vi.html#commands

Commands and tips:
6) Something that is difficult to find on the net is : how to create a numbered list in vi/vim? Simple, we will use macro's
To do this:
a> type number and terminatory ex: 1)
b> start recording using qa . This will record the macro in a.
c> yank the line with yy
d> goto next line
e> press a to increment the number
f> End the macro recording with q
g> Play the macro with numner of times to repeat the actions. Example press 11@a
7) For repeating the last command you can use
8) You can put your vim settings in ~/vimrc and this can containg things like "set nu" and any other configuration.
9) Adding date in vi : :r! date
10) There is a variant of vi known as elvis which is quite nice
11) Similarly for viewing binary file there is a variant called bvi

Firefox 4.0 mockups for LInux/Windows and Mac

Tue, 11 May 2010 16:27:47 +0000

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/Projects/3.7_and_4.0_Theme_and_UI_Revamp

The link above will take you to the Mozilla wiki for the UI and theme mockups for the Firefox 4.0 release. Quite interesting but what I did not like is that the Linux mockup looks more like chrome. Not sure why mozilla would want to do that 🙂

Tabs-on-top: Defaut tabs to top of UI.
Hiding the Menu Bar: Hide the menu bar and add Page and Tools buttons.

The post is brought to you by <a href="http://fedorahosted.org/lekhonee">lekhonee-gnome v0.9<h6 class="zemanta-related-title">Related articles by Zemanta <ul class="zemanta-article-ul"> <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.engadget.com/2010/05/10/mozilla-shares-tentative-vision-for-firefox-4/">Mozilla shares tentative vision for Firefox 4 (engadget.com) <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/05/11/1222211/Mozilla-Reveals-Firefox-4-Plans?from=rss">Mozilla Reveals Firefox 4 Plans (news.slashdot.org) <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.techmeme.com/100511/p7">Mozilla’s Plans for Firefox 4: Faster, Sleeker Interface & Better Privacy Controls (Frederic Lardinois/ReadWriteWeb) (techmeme.com) <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.techmeme.com/100510/p67">Firefox 4: fast, powerful, and empowering (Mike Beltzner/beltzner) (techmeme.com) <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://blogs.chron.com/techblog/archives/2010/05/firefox_4_coming_soon_beta_as_early_as_june_1.html">Firefox 4 coming soon; beta as early as June (blogs.chron.com) <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://r.zemanta.com/?u=http%3A//www.cbsnews.com/8301-501465_162-20004666-501465.html&a=17869870&rid=73c491d4-0778-448a-ba05-b7758f91e1c9&e=e813a95fa56524108572b5f7c80e8075">An Early Look at the Next Version of Firefox (cbsnews.com) <div class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" title="Reblog this post [with Zemanta]" href="http://reblog.zemanta.com/zemified/73c491d4-0778-448a-ba05-b7758f91e1c9/"><img class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/reblog_b85.png" alt="Reblog this post [with Zemanta]" /><span class="zem-script more-related more-info pretty-attribution paragraph-reblog">

75% of Linux code now written by paid developers

Thu, 06 May 2010 13:31:21 +0000

<a href="http://apcmag.com/linux-now-75-corporate.htm">75% of Linux code now written by paid developers:

Oh well, and who is gaining… 🙂

Linux Contractor Fired for Using Firefox/Linux

Mon, 03 May 2010 17:38:09 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

This is a complicated story but one that must be told. I’m not sure there is anything that can be done about it except rage at the moon…

But it needs to be told none the less.

Did I mention it gets complicated? It does, but it does so for a reason. Let’s introduce the starting lineup.

AndreaMosiac.. The way to create a mosaic.

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 14:01:55 +0000

<a href="http://www.andreaplanet.com/andreamosaic/download/" target="_blank">Download from here, AndreaMosaic. It us cinoketekt free for personal use and does just what the name says, creates mosaic. I tried this on Linux and was flawless with wine. Good show 🙂

Here’s how to use it:

Start AndreaMosaic

<img class="size-full wp-image-657" title="andreamosaic" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/screenshot-andreamosaic2.jpg" alt="andreamosaic" width="585" height="477" /><div class="zemanta-pixie">and select your base file by clicking on the ”+”:<img class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/pixy.gif" alt="" /> <div class="zemanta-pixie">

<img class="size-full wp-image-658" title="andreamosaic" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/screenshot-andreamosaic.jpg" alt="Base image" width="585" height="477" /> <div class="zemanta-pixie">And now select the images that would tile to give you the base image. Click on select tiles: <div class="zemanta-pixie"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-659" title="tiles" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/tiles.jpg" alt="tiles" width="602" height="452" /> <div class="zemanta-pixie"> <div class="zemanta-pixie">To start off, click on ok and then create mosaic on the initial window and you get your first mosaic. Here’s an example: <div class="zemanta-pixie"><img class="alignnone size-full wp-image-660" title="mosaic" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/mosaic.jpg" alt="mosaic" width="450" height="319" /> <div class="zemanta-pixie"> <div class="zemanta-pixie">There are various settings you can tweak to get different effects, so enjoy 🙂

Local DNS Server for faster DNS response time

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 14:01:54 +0000

Here’s a quick tip for faster DNS response time. I installed a local DNS server which can contact the remote DNS server and enabled caching for the local DNS server. This ensures that the response time for the DNS queries is much faster.

I am on Fedora 10, so here’s what I was required to do:

yum install dnsmasq

After this I created a file called /etc/resolve.dns with the nameserver address’s and heres what it looks like:

Setup of gdm

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:46:35 +0000

gdmsetup is the command you are looking for… Just run gdmsetup and you get a whole lot of configurations that you can modify.

Building Your Own Linux Kernel, part 1

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:46:34 +0000

<a href="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/category/linux/">Bookmark this category

There are a lot of reasons to customize your own Linux kernel: better performance, bugfixes, try out new features, and earn valuable geekcreds. In this new series Akkana Peck introduces us to the fundamental steps of building a Linux kernel.

URL: <a HREF="http://lxer.com/module/newswire/ext_link.php?rid=125920">http://lxer.com/module/newswire/ext_link.php?rid=125920

25 Awesome GIMP Brush Sets (Download 1000+ FREE Brushes)

Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:46:31 +0000

Tech Source From Bohol: ”To help you further enhance the functionality of GIMP, I have here a huge collection of awesome, high-quality brushes that can be utilized for whatever projects you may have.”

URL: <a href="http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2009-10-11-005-35-MM-SW">http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2009-10-11-005-35-MM-SW<h6 class="zemanta-related-title" style="font-size: 1em;">Related articles by Zemanta <ul class="zemanta-article-ul"> <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.slumpedoverkeyboarddead.com/2009/10/10/five-super-simple-photo-fixes-with-the-gimp/">Five Super Simple Photo Fixes with The GIMP (slumpedoverkeyboarddead.com) <div class="zemanta-pixie" style="margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" title="Reblog this post [with Zemanta]" href="http://reblog.zemanta.com/zemified/a5cb830f-a1ff-41d0-b3e7-27bd261ff52c/"><img class="zemanta-pixie-img" style="border: medium none; float: right;" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/reblog_e12.png" alt="Reblog this post [with Zemanta]" /><span class="zem-script more-related pretty-attribution">

String and Array Creation

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 14:23:03 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

<img src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/perl-one-liners.jpg" alt="Perl One Liners" align="bottom" />This is the fourth part of a nine-part article on famous <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/perl" title="Perl" rel="homepage" href="http://www.perl.org/">Perl one-liners. In this part I will create various one-liners for string and array creation. See <a href="http://www.catonmat.net/blog/perl-one-liners-explained-part-one/">part one for introduction of the series.

Famous Perl one-liners is my attempt to create “perl1line.txt” that is similar to “<a href="http://www.catonmat.net/blog/awk-one-liners-explained-part-one/">awk1line.txt” and “<a href="http://www.catonmat.net/blog/sed-one-liners-explained-part-one/">sed1line.txt” that have been so popular among Awk and Sed programmers.

Upgrade to Fedora 13 from your existing version using yum.

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 15:47:06 +0000

Well. this time it seems to be very simple :

yum –releasever=13 upgrade

update 22/April/2010:
The key file will not be there so there are two options for you in this case:

Install the following rpms from the downloaded rpms with ”yum –nogpg localinstall”
a) fedora-release
b) fedora-release-notes
Run the whole upgrade with –nogpg option.

Issue observed after the upgrade:
The new kernel was not added in the grub menu and I had to manually add the below entry in the <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/gnu_grub" title="GNU GRUB" rel="homepage" href="http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/">menu.lst file:

Liquid rescale and remove objects from the images.

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 02:38:01 +0000

Ever wanted to remove some unwanted object from an image. Wonder how many thinkgs you have to do, clone and delete and what not:)

There is a simpler way, just paint it in foreground color. Does that sound ridiculous, not any more with Liquid Rescale. First install the plugin for liquid rescale for gimp.

yum install gimp-lqr-plugin

Now, just follow simple instructions below:

in the menu, choose Layer and then Liquid Rescale

click on the New button in the Discard features section on the right: a new layer will be created

put the plugin window on one side of the screen without closing it, and go back to work on the gimp main windows

choose the paint tool and paint over the area you wish to remove

go back to the plugin window

click the Refresh button at the bottom: you should see your discard mask appear in the preview

optionally, in the Mode box on the left choose Lqr + scale back or Lqr + Lqr back

click the Auto size button at the bottom of the Discard features section (optionally choose the scaling direction in the box at the side of the button before clicking it).

click OK

Could it get any simpler.

Linux Advocacy and cool things to do with Linux.

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 02:38:00 +0000

I have heard a lot of Linux advocacy and read probably a couple of artilcles also on them but they lack one thing : the end user perspective. Linux is great no doubt, but there are far too many things to confuse people at all levels. For example, if you do a google search for which distro is good for me, you will find different sites giving you different results. So, whats my point?

recursively add directory and files to cvs from Linux.

Mon, 12 Apr 2010 02:37:59 +0000

Go to the directory which you want to add to cvs and execute the following:

cvs login

find . -type d -exec cvs add {} \;

find . -type f -exec cvs add {} \;

cvs commit

That was simple 🙂

Linux Shell Scripting Tutorial – A Beginner\’s handbook

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 09:11:57 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

<a class="zem_slink freebase/en/unix_shell" title="Unix shell" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_shell">Linux Shell Scripting Tutorial – A Beginner’s handbook —

This book is for students and Linux System Administrators. It provides the skills to read, write, and debug <a title="Linux" href="http://bash.cyberciti.biz/guide/Linux">Linux <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/shell_script" title="Shell script" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_script">shell scripts using <a title="Bash" href="http://bash.cyberciti.biz/guide/Bash">bash <a title="Shell" href="http://bash.cyberciti.biz/guide/Shell">shell. The book begins by describing <a title="Linux" href="http://bash.cyberciti.biz/guide/Linux">Linux and simple scripts to automate frequently executed commands and continues by describing conditional logic, <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/interactivity" title="Interactivity" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactivity">user interaction, loops, menus, traps, and functions. Finally, book covers various sys admin related scripts such as making a backup, using <a class="zem_slink freebase/guid/9202a8c04000641f80000000045c9c5b" title="Cron" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cron">cron jobs, writing interactive tools, web based tools, remote login, ftp and database backup related scripts. This book is intended for Linux <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/system_administrator" title="System administrator" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_administrator">system administrators or students who have mastered the basics of a Linux Operating System. You should be able to:

Another nice utility for blogging from within firefox.

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 09:11:56 +0000

Scribfire is another nice utility for blogging withing firefox. Nice features and quick and easy to configure and use ..

Advanced Sed Substitution Examples

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 09:11:48 +0000

This article is part of the on-going Unix Sed Tips and Tricks series. In our previous sed articles we learned — sed printing, sed deletion, sed substitute , sed file write, and sed multiple commands. In this article, let us review some interesting workarounds with the “s” substitute command in sed with several practical examples. I. […]

Read More: <a href="http://www.thegeekstuff.com/2009/10/unix-sed-tutorial-advanced-sed-substitution-examples/">Unix Sed Tutorial: Advanced Sed Substitution Examples

URL: <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheGeekStuff/~3/uN-cE6UOvfA/">http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheGeekStuff/~3/uN-cE6UOvfA/<h6 class="zemanta-related-title" style="font-size: 1em;">Related articles by Zemanta <ul class="zemanta-article-ul"> <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.slumpedoverkeyboarddead.com/2009/08/06/vim-video-tutorial/">VIM video tutorial (slumpedoverkeyboarddead.com) <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.slumpedoverkeyboarddead.com/2009/08/22/turn-vim-or-emacs-into-and-ide-with-exuberant-ctags/">Turn Vim or Emacs Into and IDE With Exuberant-Ctags (slumpedoverkeyboarddead.com) <div class="zemanta-pixie" style="margin-top: 10px; height: 15px;"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" title="Reblog this post [with Zemanta]" href="http://reblog.zemanta.com/zemified/0d68ebaf-6fc5-419a-a31c-7d31bc55ab3f/"><img class="zemanta-pixie-img" style="border: medium none; float: right;" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/reblog_e8.png" alt="Reblog this post [with Zemanta]" /><span class="zem-script more-related pretty-attribution">

Linux Links — collection of universe.. all links on everything about linux

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 09:11:46 +0000

<a href="http://loll.sourceforge.net/linux/links/">LoLL is a sourceforge project which maintains a well commented and categorized list of links on linux. This is a very nice list and has very nice links. Probably there is nothing that you will not find here which do not interest you. Definately worth a look.

Bugzilla Automation with perl — add, update or query any bug in Bugzilla using perl and www series modules for perl.

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 09:11:43 +0000

Today I was trying to do some queries and see if I could create a new bug or update a existing bug in the Bugzilla. The one that I was trying to access was on version 2.0 and not on 3.0. This being the case, the XMLRPC interface was not working properly and to top it all, I was wanted to query quite a lot of bugs. So, I went out to evaluate how to avoid the manual work and get this done faster. Here’s some of my findings:

bash script to change vim colorscheme based on the available themes

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 09:11:41 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

Here’s one script that you may find useful. A little variation or wrapper for this script can make your life colorful 🙂

You can write a wrapper to this to take one of the inputs randomly and then use it in alias to start <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/vim" title="Vim (text editor)" rel="homepage" href="http://www.vim.org/">vim.

wine-doors – door to wine with applications like photoshop and lots of windows games.

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 07:56:14 +0000

wine is the project to natively support the Windows application on the Linux platform. But people who have tried to use it know that there are lot of dependencies on the Windows programs which cannot be resolved so easily :). There is a project called <a href="http://www.wine-doors.org/wordpress/" target="_blank">wine-doors. Here is the screen shot of wine-doors. When you start wine doors for the first time, the application will install the necessary dependency and not only that when you are installing any of the other applications then too it will install all the other required dependencies and its like working with windows without affecting the stability of your OS 🙂

Adding date to Photographs.

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 07:56:12 +0000

This is one of the common things that I want to do when I want to print the photos and its truely boring job to do given the fact that the Date Photo taken is already in the image taken by the Digital Photos. So finally I wrote a simple script to do this. Here it is for anyone who might be interested:

(Note you will need the program called anotate, written by me, posted earlier and exiftool)<pre style="padding-left: 30px;">

My project in sourceforge.net gnomedesktopwal

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 07:56:11 +0000

My project is accepted in sourceforge.net and I have a stable version released today in sourceforge.

The link for the project is :
<a class="aligncenter" href="https://sourceforge.net/projects/gnomedesktopwal/" target="_blank">Gnome Desktop Wallpaper changer

This is a simple command line application to change the desktop wallpaper in gnome. This version has the capability to recurse directories and put the images in the directory as wallpaper. <a name="more">

Python program to download youtube video

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 07:56:10 +0000

#!/usr/bin/env python

# Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
a
# copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
”Software”),
# to deal in the Software without restriction, including without
limitation
# the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute,
sublicense,
# and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
# Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

l-exp listrs – A new look at linux blogs and sites

Wed, 07 Apr 2010 07:56:08 +0000

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/73645804@N00/466188059"><img id="kwiclick-temp-0" title="gigantic apple final cut studio software sign …" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/466188059_ca5f73a0a9_m.jpg" alt="gigantic apple final cut studio software sign …" />

GNOME 2.28 released

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 01:43:22 +0000

<a href="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/category/linux/">Bookmark this category
< !DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 TRANSITIONAL//EN">
GNOME 2.28 is released now, just a week after the release of the release candidate. This release includes several bugfixes & enhancements for included components.

URL: <a HREF="http://lxer.com/module/newswire/ext_link.php?rid=125905">http://lxer.com/module/newswire/ext_link.php?rid=125905

Difference between unix and linux.

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 01:43:21 +0000

Find the article <a href="http://docs.hp.com/en/5971-3502/5971-3502.pdf">here.<div class="question"> <div style="margin: -5px 0pt 15px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(244, 247, 222); position: relative; border-top-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; background-position: 0px -8px;" id="question_title"> <table style="margin: 0pt; padding: 0pt;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">

What is the difference between Linux and Unix

There is only one reason left why Windows exists

Thu, 01 Apr 2010 01:43:20 +0000

: Image via CrunchBase

<span style="background-color: #ffffff;"><span style="font-size: small;">156 minutes of pain compared with 26 minutes of success. That’s the difference between a Windows installation and a Linux installation. After two and a half hours fiddling with a Windows install on my Toshiba laptop, it became pretty obvious what is one major reason why Windows remains a viable operating system.

vim scripts and tips

Mon, 29 Mar 2010 07:01:07 +0000

Here are few of the links for vim that you can use. It consists of the link to vimrc, colorscheme, syntaxcomplete and zzsplash.
<a href="http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/User:Tonymec/vimrc">http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/User:Tonymec/vimrc
<a href="http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/User:Tonymec/almost-default.vim">http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/User:Tonymec/almost-default.vim
<a href="http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/User:Tonymec/syntaxcomplete.vim">http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/User:Tonymec/syntaxcomplete.vim
<a href="http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/User:Tonymec/zzsplash.vim">http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/User:Tonymec/zzsplash.vim<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" width="100%"> <h6 class="zemanta-related-title">Related articles by Zemanta <ul class="zemanta-article-ul"> <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/2010/02/02/bash-script-to-change-the-vim-colorscheme-from-the-list-of-locally-available-schemes/">bash script to change the vim colorscheme from the list of locally available schemes (amit-agarwal.co.in) <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.prweb.com/releases/2010/03/prweb3740684.htm">Wikia Introduces New Tools For People to Create Wiki Answer Sites on Any Topic (prweb.com) <div class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" title="Reblog this post [with Zemanta]" href="http://reblog.zemanta.com/zemified/a04b9f08-df03-476c-b6d3-a1d32078cb64/"><img class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/reblog_b68.png" alt="Reblog this post [with Zemanta]" /><span class="zem-script more-related more-info pretty-attribution paragraph-reblog">

Change cursor and couple of other settings in window managers like fluxbox and fvwm (except gnome and KDE)

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 11:58:34 +0000

First off, get cursor theme from <a href="http://gnome-look.org/index.php?xsortmode=high&page=0&xcontentmode=36" target="_blank">here. You can download the one of your choice. Now create a directory ”~/.icons” if it does not exist. Extract the file you just downloaded in this directory. [If you are using GNome then you could have dropped the tar file itself in the Desktop properties window and selected the theme from there. I have since the days of RH9 not used KDE and so am not sure how to do this in KDE, sorry guys.]

Break Free and let firefox remember all the passwords even the ones that are not saved by default

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 11:58:33 +0000

Here we go against one more security policy of most of the sites like Bank and paypal and so on. These sites do not allow Firefox or any other browser to save the password. This is using some tags in the html/code of the page that would mark the field as not completeable or savable. So, what do you do?

I am on a home computer to which no one has access so why not save the password!! Let do it. There are couple of hacks that have been found to make firefox remember all the passwords. Here are a few of them (but Linux is not covered in any of them).<h1 id="article-title"><a title="Permanent Link to Tweak Firefox’s Password Saver Without An Extension" rel="bookmark" href="http://cybernetnews.com/2006/06/07/tweak-firefoxs-password-saver-without-an-extension/">Tweak Firefox’s Password Saver Without An Extension <h1 id="article-title"><a title="Permanent Link to Make Firefox Remember Passwords without a Bookmarklet" rel="bookmark" href="http://cybernetnews.com/2009/02/13/firefox-remember-passwords/">Make Firefox Remember Passwords without a Bookmarklet

Linux Malware – Proof that Linux is not as secure as we all think

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 02:30:50 +0000

<a href="http://www.foogazi.com/2009/12/01/linux-malware-proof-that-linux-is-not-as-secure-as-we-all-think/comment-page-1/#comment-48243">Linux Malware – Proof that Linux is not as secure as we all think<h6 class="zemanta-related-title">Related articles by Zemanta <ul class="zemanta-article-ul"> <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.lockergnome.com/it/2010/03/18/windows-vs-linux-web-hosting/">Windows Vs Linux Web Hosting (lockergnome.com) <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://boycottnovell.com/2010/03/19/linux-foundation-and-swpats/">Linux is Not Against Software Patents (and Why Linus Torvalds Should Speak Up) (boycottnovell.com) <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://blog.blacknight.com/awstats-now-available-on-linux.html">Awstats Now Available On Linux! (blacknight.com) <div class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" title="Reblog this post [with Zemanta]" href="http://reblog.zemanta.com/zemified/aa7b20f2-237e-4b76-80ab-f0a2a5dbd7df/"><img class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/reblog_b29.png" alt="Reblog this post [with Zemanta]" /><span class="zem-script more-related more-info pretty-attribution paragraph-reblog">

gnome-blog — Deskbar applet for blogging

Thu, 25 Mar 2010 02:41:30 +0000

: Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Chanced upon utility called gnome blog. A nifty nice deskbar applet that can be used to post your blogs quickly.<h6 class="zemanta-related-title">Related articles by Zemanta <ul class="zemanta-article-ul"> <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/03/gnome-music-applet-dead-long-live.html">GNOME Music Applet dead, long live PanFlute (omgubuntu.co.uk) <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/03/docky-session-applet-video-shows-its.html">Docky Session Applet Video shows it’s made of win (omgubuntu.co.uk) <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.ghacks.net/2009/12/23/manage-your-secure-shell-connections-from-the-gnome-panel/">Manage your secure shell connections from the GNOME panel (ghacks.net) <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.ghacks.net/2010/03/02/connecting-to-a-microsoft-vpn-with-linux/">Connecting to a Microsoft VPN with Linux (ghacks.net) <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2010/03/gnome-media-player-adds-volume-control.html">GNOME Media Player Adds Volume control; 2nd release in 2 days (omgubuntu.co.uk) <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://geek.co.il/wp/2009/11/27/my-desktop-in-a-gnome-shell">My desktop in a GNOME shell (geek.co.il) <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://castrojo.wordpress.com/2010/03/25/become-a-friend-of-gnome/">Jorge Castro: Become a Friend of GNOME (castrojo.wordpress.com) <div class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" title="Reblog this post [with Zemanta]" href="http://reblog.zemanta.com/zemified/e1cc81d7-8946-4ce2-9d56-306b35747d8a/"><img class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/reblog_b100.png" alt="Reblog this post [with Zemanta]" /><span class="zem-script more-related more-info pretty-attribution paragraph-reblog">

Add a image to the list of background files in gnome

Tue, 23 Mar 2010 03:29:10 +0000

In Gnome, when you right click on the desktop background you will get a menu for ”Change Desktop backgound. The images displayed in this menu are quite a few but if you want to add your own (read: more than some 5-6 files) then it takes really some time in using the GUI to add them. And if you want to add a few 10’s of file, like say 50 then you are done.

More windows Microsoft like openoffice and keet it working.

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 03:11:42 +0000

Some people say that <a href="http://www.openoffice.org/" target="_blank">OpenOffice doesn’t completely suit their requirement as compared to the Microsoft Office. Though most of the times I do not have that problem 🙂 But there are still couple of things that do not work with OO seamlessly and thus if you want better OO (with respect to working with MS files more seamlessly) here’s something worth a try.

You can try the <a href="http://go-oo.org/" target="_blank">go-oo OO.

Cool OpenOffice.org Easter Eggs

Sun, 21 Mar 2010 13:05:23 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

Since it’s almost <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/easter" title="Easter" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter">Easter Sunday, I will be sharing with you several cool <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easter_egg_%28media%29">virtual Easter eggs hidden inside some of our favorite <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/application_software" title="Application software" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_software">software applications. Today, we will take a look at some Easter eggs inside <a href="http://www.junauza.com/2009/05/8-essential-openoffice-extensions.html">OpenOffice.org so get ready to have fun or be amused.

Quick tip to change parameters in different files

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 02:25:49 +0000

for i in *.cfg; do mv $i $i.bak;sed \’s/a/b/\’ $i.bak > $i; done

The above command is very useful to change certain regular expressions in couple of files in one directory. This can be used in variety of ways to achieve a lot of things which would normally take some time to do manually.

Linux find command – Find file and directories faster and easier

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 02:25:48 +0000

This command is very powerfull when used with combination of filters and pipes and RE.

I will give some example:

find . -type f –» List all files
find . -type f -exec rm {} <a class=“zem_slink” title=“Path (computing)” href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_%28computing%29" rel=“wikipedia”>\; –» Delete all files
find . -type d -exec rm {} \; –» Will through some common errors 🙂
find . -name "name" –> find files containing name in the filename
find . -atime 12 –> Find files accessed 12 days ago

Edit a File When You Are Viewing It Using more / less Command

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 02:25:47 +0000

<a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/edit-file-when-youre-viewing-withmore-less/">Aritcle here.

<span style="color: #ff0000;">Question: I can use <a href="http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/less-is-more-the-hidden-treasure-of-less-command.html">less or more pagers to view a file. How do I start an editor (such as vi or other text editor) to edit the current file without leaving the less or more pager command?

Ubuntu Sucks Like a Shopvac and Other Linux Rants

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 02:25:46 +0000

Almost 100 articles and blogs on the topic of “ubuntu sucks” were published in the past month alone, and about as many were published that unequivocally state Windows is better than Ubuntu.<table border="0">

<span style="font-size: x-small;">
But upon closer examination, I found that a substantial portion of these negative reactions to Ubuntu stem from unrealistic comparisons.

Almost all of the hurdles people seem to have when switching from Windows to Ubuntu appear to be errors in judgment and assessment, rather than actual problems with the OS.

Putting Linux on Parental Control

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 02:25:45 +0000

<a href="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/category/linux/">Bookmark this category
Putting Linux on Parental Control
Over the years I?ve witnessed desktop Linux distros evolve
dramatically ? change the very core of the way we look at how an
operating system interacts with its users. However, I still find plenty
of forum posts on the Web stating that Linux as a

URL:<a href=" http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?r2243375620&w=2390512"> http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?r2243375620&w=2390512

prepend to a file with sponge from moreutils

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 02:25:42 +0000

<a href="http://bashcurescancer.com/prepend-to-a-file-with-sponge-from-moreutils.html">A few weeks I wrote about a tool, which helps you easily prepend to a file. I submitted prepend to moreutils and Joey was kind enough to point out this could be done with `sponge’.? sponge reads standard input and when done, writes it to a file:
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KDE For Windows – An Overview

Sat, 13 Mar 2010 02:48:57 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

<a class="zem_slink freebase/en/kde" title="KDE" rel="homepage" href="http://www.kde.org/">KDE is turning out to be a fabulous Desktop. The latest version – KDE 4.4.0 aka Caikaku is choke full of features which gives the term ”Desktop <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/usability" title="Usability" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usability">usability” a new meaning all together. What makes KDE all the more appealing is the plethora of well designed <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/application_software" title="Application software" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_software">applications that come bundled with it.

How to Install KDE in Windows]

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:24:32 +0000

: Image via CrunchBase

For over a decade, <a class="zem_slink freebase/guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000000021de6" title="KDE" rel="homepage" href="http://www.kde.org/">KDE has supplied Linux and <a class="zem_slink freebase/guid/9202a8c04000641f800000000003e17c" title="Unix" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix">Unix users with a graphical <a class="zem_slink freebase/guid/9202a8c04000641f800000000007eda2" title="Desktop environment" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desktop_environment">desktop environment and a suite of useful <a class="zem_slink freebase/guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000000254091" title="Application software" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application_software">applications. It has become one of the most popular desktop environments and is the default on many <a class="zem_slink freebase/guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000000024e02" title="Linux distribution" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux_distribution">Linux distributions. With the coming of KDE 4, developers promised native KDE applications running on <a class="zem_slink freebase/guid/9202a8c04000641f8000000000025fe8" title="Windows" rel="homepage" href="http://www.microsoft.com/WINDOWS">Windows. While the current release is still not ready for production, as of KDE 4.3.3, it is coming closer and worth trying. What follows is a brief guide to getting KDE running on Windows.

Fedora 12 Released

Fri, 12 Mar 2010 13:24:31 +0000

: Image via CrunchBase

Fedora 12, the latest version of the popular open-source operating systems for desktops and servers, has been released: ”The Fedora Project, a Red Hat, Inc. sponsored and community-supported open source collaboration, today announced the availability of Fedora 12, the latest version of its free, open-source operating system distribution…..

Build custom KDE ditro online in minutes with your selection of packages

Wed, 10 Mar 2010 12:49:37 +0000

There’s a new guy in the block and its called NimbleX. From various sources, I have found that this is quite fast. I am downloading this currently. The main advantage is that the distro is of just 200MB with most of the day to day utilities available in the distro by default.

And if you think that this is just not for you as you like some package and its missing from NimbleX, no problem. Just go <a href="http://custom.nimblex.net/ " target="_blank">here, and create your own live distro withing minutes with custom package’s that can be used as Live CD or can be installed on the HDD/USB. Now that’s generations ahead of Windows or any other OS. What do you say?

101 Linux hacks – free Linux Ebook

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 03:52:05 +0000

Go and grab your copy of the free <a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheGeekStuff/~3/KNUpyY4YE9c/" target="_blank">ebook.

Quite nice book with small little hacks but sometimes the details are too much, specially the one on the cd command. I think there was no need for 3-4 examples of the same thing, but then nice collection and nice ebook.

Bash histoy – common history in different terminals

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 02:04:42 +0000

I have been looking to do this for sometime. The bash history is per
session basis and the last session to quit overwrites the bash_history
file and thus all other terminals started between the time last terminal
lasted does not get to write the commands in the history file. Secondly
the history gets cluttered with lot of duplicate entries and entries
with ls and cd commands. So finally I added these to the bashrc file:

Bash Sub Shells

Tue, 02 Mar 2010 02:33:08 +0000

Taken from <a href="http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/bash-sub-shells" target="_blank">here.

<span class=\"c\">#!/bin/bash</span>

<span class="nv">server_cmd</span><span class="o">=</span>server <span class="nv">pid_file</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="k">$(</span>basename <span class="nv">$server_cmd</span> .sh<span class="k">)</span>.pid <span class="nv">log_file</span><span class="o">=</span><span class="k">$(</span>basename <span class="nv">$server_cmd</span> .sh<span class="k">)</span>.log

<span class="o">(</span> <span class="nb">echo</span> <span class="s2">"Starting server"</span> <span class="nb">echo</span> <span class="s2">"Doing some init work"</span> <span class="nv">$server_cmd</span> <span class="c"># server becomes a daemon</span>

&lt;span class=\"k\">while &lt;/span>&lt;span class=\"nb\">true&lt;/span>

<span class="nb"> </span><span class="k">do</span> <span class="k"> if</span> <span class="o">[[</span> -f <span class="nv">$pid_file</span> <span class="o">]]</span>; <span class="k">then</span> <span class="k"> </span>sleep 15 <span class="k">else</span> <span class="k"> </span><span class="nb">break</span> <span class="nb"> </span><span class="k">fi</span> <span class="k"> done</span> <span class="k"> </span>mail -s <span class="s2">"Server exitted"</span> joe@blow.com <<<CRAP

Annotating the photograph with comments.

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:19:46 +0000

There is a nice Linux command called convert. This command can be used in various ways to do image manipulation. One of them is to embark your image with some text. Here is how to do it.

**echo ”Annotating the image ”$2” with $1”
convert -font Verdana -pointsize 40 -fill red -draw ”text 100,100 ”$1”” ”$2” ”$2”
**

It will be good idea to save this as ”annotate” as we will use this later too.

Script to Watch for Ubuntu 9.10 Launch – can be used in other scenarios.

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:19:45 +0000

I know ubuntu is out already but this is something that you can use to monitor a webpage.

This script will run check a for the Ubuntu 9.10 launch once every 5 mins and let you know when it’s available:

while [ 1 ]; do if [ -z \"`curl -I \"http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/9.10/release/\"|grep \"404\"`\" ]; then kdialog --msgbox \"9.10 Released\"; exit; fi; sleep 300;  done

How To Build A Self-hosted WordPress Blog For Free

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:58:44 +0000

A blog is a layman-friendly variation of a website, and having a blog is one of the many ways to state your presence in the virtual world. While there are many hassle-free blog services out there that will take care of everything except automatically blog for you – like <a href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/blogger">Blogger and <a href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tags/wordpress">WordPress, nothing can beat a self-hosted blog in the terms of customization and self pride.

The problem is, the process of building your own self-hosted blog is (almost always) not free and is considered complicated. So most newbies will choose the easier path and never give themselves a chance to experiment.

Top 3 Sites To Help You Become A Linux Command Line Master]

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:58:33 +0000

: Image by fogus via Flickr

The truth about Linux today is that one may never have to actually <a class="zem_slink" title="Spice Girls" rel="homepage" href="http://www.thespicegirls.com">touch a terminal or issue a single Linux command in order to run some versions of this flexible alternative <a class="zem_slink" title="Operating system" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system">operating system. While there are times when using the Linux <a href="http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/an-introduction-to-the-linux-command-line/">command line could be expeditious and the benefits of possessing the ability to use it are numerous, many users can be intimidated by the prospect.

Damn Vulnerable Linux – DVL review

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:58:32 +0000

Today morning I got a chance to look at one of the other less commonly known Linux Distribution and out of the line distribution, very good for Learning purposes. The distribution is known as DVL (Damn Vulnerable Linux). As the name suggest this is for people looking at developing their skills in Security and Penetration testing. Quite a lot of good and interesting tools are included. More is left for users to experiment but I definately liked the distribution. Here is the <a href="http://www.damnvulnerablelinux.org/" target="_blank">homepage.

chfn – Change finger information

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:58:31 +0000

Finger is a nifty nice utility to get the information on the user. A sample output of the command is as below:

-0-(ak) ~ > finger ak
Login: ak Name: Amit Agarwal
Directory: /home/amitag Shell: /bin/bash
Office: MGL
On since Sun Oct 19 13:50 (IST) on tty7 from :0
On since Sun Oct 19 13:50 (IST) on pts/0 from :0.0
No mail.
No Plan.
All this information can be changed with the command chfn. No hassles, just type in the command it does the rest, asking you for the information whatever required. You can also specify the details in the command itself with the below mentioned parmateres:

Color output from ls – based on file type

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:58:29 +0000

Threre are certain default variables which control the color of the output from the ls command, so we will talk about them today.

The first one is to get the color output from the ”ls” command. We will look at the various ways to do this:

First is to use this with default colors:

ls –color=auto

Now this will use the default colors which might not go with your liking 🙂 So if you want to change the colors you can use the variable called LS_COLORS.

Crossfire game server.. free connection.

Thu, 04 Feb 2010 15:58:27 +0000

I have setup a Free to use Crossfire game server. If you want to play the game, you can connect to amit.themafia.info

For playing the game you would need the client to connect to it which you can install with

yum install crossfire-client

then you can run the game with ”cfclient” and then connect to amit.themafia.info.

Gentoo, Knoppix and Linux Console Screenshots

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:49:37 +0000

Finally I decided to try a few distro’s that I downloaded with Beldi.

Gentoo: Quite Small distribution. Did not configure my DHCP address and also did not start a X window also so did not try too much.

Knoppix: Well known for its recovery functions, the Live CD does discover all the hardware and boots pretty nicely to the X windows directly with the ethernet configured.
I specially liked the fact that the boot up to X window theme looked quite similar and the background did not change which is quite soothing. And no doubt the desktop background included by default is quite good.

Installing Sofware on Linux, easier and finding alternates.

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:49:36 +0000

There are already some great blogs on this, why write another one. Let me just point you to the best one <a href="http://http://blogs.computerworld.com/installing_linux_software_101_for_windows_users" target="_blank">here.

Here are sites that will help you find the alternative to your favourite Windows programs:

<a href="http://www.osalt.com/" target="_blank">http://www.osalt.com/
<a href="http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Linux_software_equivalent_to_Windows_software" target="_blank">http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Linux_software_equivalent_to_Windows_software
<a href="http://www.linuxalt.com/" target="_blank">http://www.linuxalt.com/

Last access time for file

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:49:34 +0000

The C program will print the last access time for the file.

This is quite helpfull program when you want to find old files. Modifying the source to take the filename as argument and take multiple arguments is left as an exercise.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <sys/stat.h>
#include <sys/types.h>
#include <fcntl.h>
#include <time.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
int main(void)
{
    char datestring[80];
    struct stat a;
    //int fd = open("ak",O_RDONLY);
    if (stat ("iptc.c", &a) == -1) {
        perror("stat");
        printf (" Error");
        return;
    }
    printf (" Last Access Time is %s", ctime(&a.st_atime));
    printf (" Last Access Time is %s", a.st_atime);
}

Built-in lists in vim

Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:49:32 +0000

<a class="zem_slink freebase/en/vimscript" title="Vimscript" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vimscript">Vimscript provides excellent support for operating on collections of <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/data" title="Data" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data">data, a cornerstone of programming. In this third article in the series, learn how to use Vimscript’s built-in lists to ease everyday operations such as reformatting lists, filtering sequences of filenames, and sorting sets of line numbers. You’ll also walk through examples that demonstrate the power of lists to extend and enhance two common uses of <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/vim" title="Vim (text editor)" rel="homepage" href="http://www.vim.org/">Vim: creating a <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/user_defined_function" title="User-defined function" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-defined_function">user-defined function to align assignment operators, and improving the built-in text completions mechanism.

Understand Awk Variables with 3 Practical Examples

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 08:02:21 +0000

<a id="aptureLink_CLV4LbC1Dr" style="padding: 0px 6px; float: right;" href="http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/mawk.htm"><img style="border: 0px none;" title="Mawk for Windows" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.com/wp-content/uploads/img.zemanta.com/ph/400x270_WebClip" alt="" width="400px" height="270px" /> This article is part of the on-going Awk Tutorial and Examples series. Like any other <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/programming_language" title="Programming language" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Programming_language">programming languages, Awk also has user defined variables and built-in variables. In this article let us review how to define and use <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/awk" title="AWK" rel="homepage" href="http://cm.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/awkbook/index.html">awk variables. Awk variables should begin with the letter, followed by it can consist of alpha numeric characters or underscore. Keywords […]

statifier — Dynamic to Static

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 15:45:58 +0000

<a href="http://statifier.sourceforge.net/">Homepage of statifier.

<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Statifier create from dynamically linked executables and all it’s libraries one file.
This file can be copied and run on another machine without need to drag all it’s libraries.

<span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Dynamically linked executables are smaller then statically linked.
From the other side dynamically linked executables use shared libraries compiled in PIC (position independend code) which is slower than ”normal” one.

Short Information about loaded kernel modules

Sun, 24 Jan 2010 15:45:57 +0000

There are couple of ways you can find the information on the <a class="zem_slink" title="Loadable kernel module" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loadable_kernel_module">loadable kernel modules. All these would always involve calling <a class="zem_slink" title="Lsmod" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lsmod">lsmod to get the loaded kernel modules and then calling modinfo to get the info on the loaded modules. I will show you with examples:

$ lsmod
Module                  Size Used by
cdc_acm                19616 0
vfat                    8744 9
fat                    41836 1 vfat

Copy temporary evolution images downloaded for messages

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 12:08:05 +0000

cd ~/.evolution
cd cache
cd http
find . -name ”*.jpg” -exec cp {} /tmp/newfolder \;

Simple to understand, so no explanation 🙂 <a name="more">

sed tutorial and help

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 12:08:01 +0000

A very nice turorial and help <a href="http://sed.sourceforge.net/grabbag/tutorials/">here.

Useful link for grep

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 16:17:34 +0000

<a href="http://lifehacker.com/398441/get-to-know-grep">http://lifehacker.com/398441/get-to-know-grep

Viewing log files without using vi or any other text editor

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 15:52:19 +0000

This is quite useful for viewing files without opening them.. Saves quite a lot of time in viewing the logs 🙂

Want to see the first 5 lines of the /etc/passwd file? Pretty easy, just use the "head" command:

head -5 /etc/passwd

Want to see the last 20 lines of the /etc/passwd file? Again, pretty easy, just use the "tail" command:

tail -20 /etc/passwd

But what if you only want to see lines 10-15 of a given file? Neither the "head" nor the "tail" commands alone will do. Instead, use the "sed" command to print the range of lines you want to see:

View information on all the rpms installed.

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 15:52:17 +0000

This post if applicable to all the distro’s which are based on rpm.

If you look at the number of rpms installed on your system, you will see it somewhere around 500-2000. Noe thats a pretty huge number. So sometimes I keep wondering what are these rpms for. Heres a command that can help you figure out what these rpms are for:

rpm -qa –info

And if you want to find info on all the files and put it in a file too:

Browser and OS stats on my blog

Sat, 16 Jan 2010 15:52:15 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

I have been thinking of posting this for some time, but here are some stats from my <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/website" title="Website" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Website">website:

OS Stats :

Remove Invalid characters in Filename.

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 16:31:10 +0000

Sometimes I end up having some invalid characters in filename like ? & and so on.

So simple bash script to get rid of them:

for i in `find . -type f`
do
echo $i
mv $i `echo $i |tr ? _|tr = _ |tr ’&’ ’_’`
done <a name="more">

Sendmail host map failure issue with sendmail.

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 02:31:17 +0000

I was having this issue for long time with sendmail and not getting time to fix this. Finally today I found the solution.
<span style="font-weight: bold;">define(`confBIND_OPTS’, `WorkAroundBrokenAAAA’)dnl
Add the above line in the sendmail.mc file and rebuild sendmail.cf.

Done. Quite simple but really took some time for me to fix.<span style="font-weight: bold;">
Technorati Tags: <a class="performancingtags" href="http://technorati.com/tag/Linux" rel="tag">Linux, <a class="performancingtags" href="http://technorati.com/tag/sendmail" rel="tag">sendmail, <a class="performancingtags" href="http://technorati.com/tag/AAAA" rel="tag">AAAA, <a class="performancingtags" href="http://technorati.com/tag/failure" rel="tag">failure

Finding all the executables/binary in Linux rpm based distro.

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 22:40:14 +0000

I have been thinking about this for quite sometime now, how to find all the executables on the linux system. One of the way is to do a ”ls” on all the directories in the PATH variable. But that will not list the executables that are outside of the PATH. So, I wrote this one liner :

rpm -qal |agrep ”bin\/” > all_execs

This will list all the files in the Linux system in bin or sbin directory and that should be pretty much all the binaries in the system.

Fedora 12 demonstrates sandbox for desktop applications

Sun, 03 Jan 2010 02:34:30 +0000

<a href="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/category/linux/">Bookmark this category
Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux) specialist and Red Hat developer Dan Walsh has souped up the security mechanisms in Fedora and SELinux by adding a desktop sandbox which he’s calling “sandbox -X”. Users can run desktop applications of their choice inside his sandbox, which then protects the underlying system from any possible damage.

A browser started inside the sandbox is unable to damage the host system.
SELinux extends the standard Unix privileges concept to add a role-based privilege model which, in principal, allows a user to forbid a PDF viewer from, for example, sending email. Currently, however, SELinux is mainly used to wall off server services.
<a HREF="http://www.h-online.com/security/Fedora-12-demonstrates-sandbox-for-desktop-applications–/news/114298">read more <table CELLSPACING="0" CELLPADDING="0" WIDTH="100%">

Some Rather Old But Still Funny Anti-UNIX Jokes (One Liners)

Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:02:25 +0000

<a href="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/unix-jokes1.jpg"><img src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/unix-jokes1.jpg" alt="" align="bottom" />You may have heard a lot of anti-<a class="zem_slink freebase/en/microsoft" title="Microsoft" rel="homepage" href="http://www.microsoft.com">Microsoft jokes before since you can read them everywhere. However, it’s pretty rare to find anti-UNIX/Linux jokes. So I would like to share with you some pretty old but still funny anti-UNIX one-liners. Enjoy!

If <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/unix" title="Unix" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix">Unix is the answer, then it must have been a stupid question.

Nifty Things to Do with GIMP

Sat, 26 Dec 2009 18:56:38 +0000

Nifty Things to Do with GIMP Some of us are probably addicted to capturing moments in pictures. I can understand why. It’s one of those things that help us go back to the good old days, so to speak. It’s also something that creates a ‘time machine’ for us because those pictures show us what things looked like, not just remind us of the feeling but give us the atmosphere all over again.

query and downgrade selected packages based on version or repository

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 07:37:11 +0000

If you have worked on rpm based distro then you know how difficult it is to downgrade packages. And unluckily I upgraded some packages to fc12 and was still on FC11. Completely my mistake while doing some R&D. Anyway to downgrade I had to device some mechanism and here it is:

rpm -qa –qf ”%-30{NAME}%-20{RELEASE}\n” |grep fc12 |awk '{print $1}’|tr ’\n’ ’ ’ >downgrade

yum downgrade `cat downgrade`

EncFS – Simple article to use Encrypted filesystem in Linux

Thu, 24 Dec 2009 07:37:10 +0000

A nice article here

EncFS is an easy-to-use, command-line tool for storing information in encrypted form. It’s not really a file-system, but it pretends to be one at the CLI. If you’ve been searching for a means of encrypting and decrypting your sensitive data easily, here it is.
User Level: Intermediate
EncFS is included with the distribution I’m using on the desktop, Ubuntu Dapper, so all I needed to do to install it was a few clicks in Synaptic. Look for the encfs package, and select if for installation. It should pull down all of the dependencies for the system. If you’re not so lucky, and your distro doesn’t include EncFS packages, you can download the latest tarball from a here and build it from the source. See the EncFS site for a dependencies.

Initialization or clearing of log files

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 07:58:52 +0000

Like all Unix file systems, open log files can cause a real problem when they get too large and need to be deleted. The problem is, if you delete an open file, the link is removed, but all of the inodes are lost. Even worse, if the program continues to log to the file, the link never re-appears, and additional inodes are lost and are unrecoverable. I suggest two solutions to the above problems.

7 Examples for Sed Hold and Pattern Buffer Operations

Tue, 22 Dec 2009 07:58:50 +0000

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/35237104750@N01/259102613"><img id="kwiclick-temp-0" title="txt e-book" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/259102613_bd9628c791_m.jpg" alt="txt e-book" />

Change information for the user on Linux machine.

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 07:51:54 +0000

Today I have couple of hours to spare and thus thought might as well spend it on my blog. The finger command in *nix systems is used to display the information on the users. This information is taken from the /etc/passwd file. You can use the chfn command to change the information. Man page for <a href="http://amit.themafia.info/phpMan.php?parameter=chfn&mode=man" target="_blank">chfn.

Chrome – Chromium on Linux (repo)

Sat, 19 Dec 2009 07:51:51 +0000

Fedora people put up a repo for the chrome web browser and it is quite frequently updated. All you need to do to install the browser is following:

sudo vi /etc/yum.repos.d/chrome.repo

and add the following lines

name=Chromium Test Packages
baseurl=http://spot.fedorapeople.org/chromium/F$releasever/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0

Once this is done, you can install the browser with yum as follows:

sudo yum install chromium

[[danscartoon]]

Tip: Using find Command in Linux

Thu, 10 Dec 2009 02:58:24 +0000

Ok this I was planning for quite sometime.. but found this <a href="http://www.pinoytux.com/linux/tip-using-find-command-in-linux" target="_blank">here. Worth reading for people who want to start off using find command.

Doing command-line stuff in Linux is fun. It may be intimidating for some at first, now that we are in the age where GUI is no longer an option. But with CLI, we can do so many things that can be accomplished faster if we know how to utilize the features of a certain command.

One click install for Linux systems.

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 10:51:17 +0000

There has been this concept for quite sometime that there should be one click install for the applications in Linux. This applies to the themes and widgets of wordpress too 🙂 and quite some applications are taking it seriously (like wordpress for example).

But how about the application to do one-click install, there are couple of issues with that but still there exists at least one way. A nice blog <a href="http://www.linux.com/feature/49328">here.

Pipeing linux commands and their output

Tue, 08 Dec 2009 10:51:14 +0000

As a system administrator, I always worry about certain things, like who's doing what, what processes are running, what the network traffic looks like, etc. One day I decided to create a simple alias that would combine all the commands I wanted into one big chunk of information. Then I realized that it wouldn't all fit into one screen.
Fortunately I knew how to group all of the commands together, so the "more" command could handle them as one set of input.

Linux Installation Guide

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 15:49:53 +0000

Paradise for Linux Installation Guides on laptops is <a href="http://tuxmobil.org/mylaptops.html" target="_blank">here. Can you imagine that this tuxmobile page hosts around 8,000 guides on Linux Installation on Laptops. I assume that this will be probably the biggest list on single page for Linux installation. The page lists various hardwares of laptop where you can install linux and how to install it.

So what are you waiting for … got a laptop, see if yours is listed here.

Some good and nice open source books worth downloading.

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 15:03:46 +0000

There is a nice article <a href="http://www.tectonic.co.za/?p=4491" target="_blank">here b<span class="byline">by Alastair Otter. He has given links to different Books that are worth reading. These include:

<span class="byline">1)<a href="http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596517984/" target="_blank"> http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596517984/

<span class="byline">2) <a href="http://en.flossmanuals.net/DigitalFoundations" target="_blank">http://en.flossmanuals.net/DigitalFoundations

<span class="byline">3) <a href="http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Tutorials/Animation/BSoD/Character_Animation" target="_blank">http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:Tutorials/Animation/BSoD/Character_Animation

<span class="byline">4) <a href="ftp://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/debian/pool/non-free/r/rutebook/" target="_blank">ftp://ftp.heanet.ie/pub/debian/pool/non-free/r/rutebook/

<span class="byline">to name a few, along with others. Its worth reading the article. While you are at it don’t forget the gems known as comments.

5 Sites To Find Free Alternatives To Popular Software

Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:13:26 +0000

And sometimes there are software you find irksome and think things could have been better. In any case, I always like to try out a few alternative software choices before I settle with any particular application mainly for two reasons: One, you would never know how good or bad the one you are using is until you try some alternatives and two: a bit of choice and competition can only be for the good of us users! Your motivation might be different: perhaps you want to find a free software that does the same task as the paid software you are using or maybe your favorite Windows application is not available on Mac or Linux.

Add current date and time in vim

Fri, 20 Nov 2009 02:10:40 +0000

Last few days I was quite busy. So this time very quick tip 🙂

Add the following to the ~/.vimrc file

imap dt :r! dateA

And now whenever you type dt in the insert mode in vi, date will be inserted.

Multiple search in vim

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 02:02:19 +0000

I was looking at a log file and needed to highlight multiple search items to make the logs more readable. I got into multiple threads suggesting various cryptic vim commands but I was in no mood to remember them. So, I finally hit <a href="http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=479" target="_blank">this.

This is a cool vim script which you can use to highlight multiple search patter. You can simply add a search term by doing

Linux xdg-open — replacement for start in windows

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 03:56:30 +0000

if you want to open any document with the default document handler from the bash prompt or command prompt in linux then the simplest way to do that is use ”xdg-open”.

This can also be used in bash scripts to allow users to select which document to open without worrying about if a particular application is installed or not. Example could be where you have list of documents in the current directory (same kind or of different format.) and you want the user to select the document. In such a scenario you can take the user input for the filename and user ”xdg-open filename” to open the file irrespective of the file type or worrying about if xpdf is installed or abiword is installed or not.

Photo Resizing

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:12:05 +0000

for i in *
do
mogrify $i -resize 640×480 i
done

Citibank Doesn\’t Want Your Business, Linux Users

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 02:36:24 +0000

This is an article from the Citibank customers in US.

The Consumerist: ”Citibank won’t let customers using Linux computers log in to their online accounts. Adam argues that in 2009 this doesn’t make sense, especially when no other major corporate website blocks him like this.”

URL: <a href="http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2009-10-31-001-39-IN-BZ-SW">http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2009-10-31-001-39-IN-BZ-SW

But in India too we don’t have much too different environment. Though I do not have any issues with the Citibank site, but I have HDFC Insurance. I always pay the premium online. This time the payment failed couple of times and the amount was deducted from my account. When checked with the Customer Service Desk, the confirmed that the payment option does not work on Firefox with Linux. For this time I have made the payment using Cash, but why should there be OS discrimination.

Using autologin for ftp sessions.

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 07:45:10 +0000

A simple example of the .netrc file. Keep this file in your homedir and then chmod to 600.

machine skyware login raj password ********

macdef init

ls -lRt

macdef hello

bye

cups web interface.

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 03:38:02 +0000

Today I found an interesting piece of information. I was trying to debug a problem with the cups service and found that cups offers a web administration.brbrThe server is running at port 631. So point your browser to browser with <a href="http://localhost:631">link and happy digging.

Vi/VIM and Unix/Linux cheatsheets.

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 06:59:25 +0000

I found quite a lot of good information today morning.

Some really good info on vi/vim. I liked the this one:”Also, you don’t have to use the / command as a separator. Anything typed after s will become the separator”

<a href="http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/06/206213&from=rss" target="_blank">http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/06/206213&from=rss

Some of the best collection of vi/vim tips: (though a lot of them do not have explanations)

<a href="http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Best_Vim_Tips" target="_blank">http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/Best_Vim_Tips

Top 10 Best Cheat Sheets and Tutorials for Linux / UNIX Commands

Adding dates to your photos.

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 14:44:33 +0000

Add date in the photograph with a perl script.

#!/usr/bin/perl

if ($#ARGV < 0 )
{
print ”$#ARGV \n”;
print ”Usage $ARGV[0] filename/dir\n”;
exit -1;
}

@files = `find ”$ARGV[0]” -iname ”*jpg” -print`;

if ($#ARGV > 3 ) { $cmd = 1;}
$count = 1;
foreach $file (@files) {
chomp ($file);

root shell auditing and syslog entry for all commands of shell

Thu, 08 Oct 2009 02:28:51 +0000

A lot of times there is a need to log all the messages and the output of the shell to the file or syslog. Sometimes I need that for some user too. script command can be used to do this but then sometimes you cannot tell the user the session is logged or you can ask the user to run this command and it should be automatically done. And sometimes there is a need put the output in the syslog so that the root user has more control and also mail for syslog is sufficient to be analyzed rather than looking for other files. Finally I found this :

Boot Linux Over HTTP With boot.kernel.org (BKO)

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:57:09 +0000

<a href="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/category/linux/">Bookmark this category

<font SIZE="6"><a HREF="http://www.debianhelp.org/node/15823">Boot Linux Over HTTP With boot.kernel.org (BKO)

This tutorial shows how you can <a HREF="http://www.howtoforge.com/boot-linux-over-http-with-boot.kernel.org-bko">boot Linux over HTTP with boot.kernel.org (BKO). All that users need is Internet connectivity and a small program (gpxe) to boot the machine. This gpxe program provides network booting facility. BKO allows you to boot into the following distributions: Debian, Ubuntu, Damn Small Linux, Knoppix, Fedora. BKO provides gpxe images for USB sticks, CDs, and also for floppies, i.e., you can boot from a USB sticks, a CD, or a floppy.

7-deadly-linux-commands

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 12:21:53 +0000

You want to learn about Linux, start from learning what not to do. <a href="http://www.junauza.com/2008/11/7-deadly-linux-commands.html" target="_blank">Here is one for the starting point.

So moral of the story is if someone asks you to do something and you dont know what that command will do, then dont do it. If your inner thing does not allow you not to do it, do it with all the care you can take. May be a backup and most importantly ”DONT USE ROOT LOGIN IF U DONT HAVE REASON TO USE IT”. BTW there are couple of more articles on these kind of advices but the best way to save yourself is to educate yourself on the outcome of the command you are executing.

Configure sendmail for SMTP relay with your ISP

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 12:21:51 +0000

http://cri.ch/linux/docs/sk0009.html

I have copied the document from the above link without modifications

Author: Sven Knispel
Updated: 05-01-2005
Feedback welcome: <a href="mailto:linux@cri.ch">linux@cri.ch
Free service provided by: <a set="yes" linkindex="2" href="http://cri.ch/">www.cri.ch

The following article explains the setup of sendmail for forwarding mails to your ISP’s smtp server.
It is assumed that you have sendmail up-to-date and configured properly.
_Note: this setup does not work properly for smtp-server using

  <td>
    <div class="text codecolorer">
      SASL
    </div>
  </td>
</tr>

(e.g. like

Script to generate a html file with link to all files in directory

Sat, 26 Sep 2009 03:19:10 +0000

ls -1 |awk -F”.” '{print ”

”,$2,”.”,$3,”

” ;}’ > index1.html

And if you want to do it recursively

ls -1R |awk -F”.” '{print ”

”,$2,”.”,$3,”

” ;}’ > index1.html

top command with rc to make it more useful and beautiful.

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:28:48 +0000

Just for fun, somedays back I was reading the top command. This command is something that I have been using since long time and have never read the man page so I thought let me do that. And yes, it was worth while to look at that page. I came to know that top supports toprc file and that it can be used to configure the way top looks. So:

Diff Linux command — Find the difference in files the easier way.

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 16:12:24 +0000

In Linux you can use diff command to find the differences in file.

What is interesting is that you can use ”diff -u” to list the differences with ’+’ and ’-’ rather than sometimes confusing ’>’ and '<’.

Running the regular diff between two text files to see the differences is not so elegant for the human eye to decode. Luckily there are plenty of tools out there to make this easy.

Consider your account to be for you then use Linux

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:58:11 +0000

Found <a href="http://www.esecurityplanet.com/features/article.php/51671_3834031_1/Consider-Linux-for-Secure-Online-Banking.htm" target="_blank">this nice article today, may be it will save someone his lifetime earning.

[[danscartoon]]

bash tutorial for begineer and experienced.

Mon, 20 Jul 2009 15:42:22 +0000

I having been looking for something like this for sometime. Found <a href="http://beginlinux.com/desktop_training/comm/shells/232-bash" target="_blank">this while searching.

A very good thing about this tutorial is its comprehensiveness and the details. A lot of examples are gives which too are quite useful.

MinGW – compile windows software on Linux

Sun, 15 Feb 2009 12:52:37 +0000

For all the windows developer out there, it is impossible to switch to Linux just because someone is looking for the Windows exe. Sooooooo bad. Not any more. There has been the MinGW compiler (and others) to compile the C programs on Linux box to run on Windows box. These cross compilers create windows exe and thus these can run on Windows natively without additional dll’s. That’s quite good, so how to do it.

12 Wallpapers in which linux criticizes windows.

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 03:03:14 +0000

Just for FUN. Some cool wallpapers.

<a href="http://www.bablotech.com/2009/01/26/12-wallpapers-in-which-linux-criticizes-windows/">12 Wallpapers in which linux criticizes windows.

Add border to images from command line using montage.

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 02:36:07 +0000

Adding a border to the images from command line is quite simple. But if you have couple of images in a directory that you want to add border to then it may become quite painful 🙂

So what is the solution. You can simply use a one liner to do the job for you.

for i in *.jpg; do montage -geometry 720×576 -background black -quality 100 $i conv-$i; done

go-oo.org Startup and better integration with MS Products.

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 02:49:36 +0000

Today I found a nice link on the startup speed of Openoffice and better integration with go-oo.org

<a href="http://gotsource.blogspot.com/2008/11/openoffice.html" target="_blank">Link Here.

So what are you waiting for go and get it <a href="http://go-oo.org/" target="_blank">here.

jatss – nice utility for time tracking.

Tue, 14 Oct 2008 09:15:57 +0000

Found a nice utility on sourceforge called jatss

URL: http://sourceforge.net/projects/jatss/

Description: JATSS Time Sheet is pile of Perl code hastily thrown together to provide a simple to use time tracking tool for small groups.

Pros: Simple Web UI.

Fast to setup and fix issues.

Cons: Not too many features.

Scratch — Programming for kids

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 14:53:07 +0000

Scratch <a href="http://scratch.mit.edu/about">website.

Description from their site:

Scratch is a new programming language that makes it easy to create your own interactive stories, animations, games, music, and art — and share your creations on the web.

Scratch is designed to help young people (ages 8 and up) develop 21st century learning skills. As they create Scratch projects, young people learn important mathematical and computational ideas, while also gaining a deeper understanding of the process of design.

Linux awk command

Mon, 15 Sep 2008 07:58:46 +0000

Have you ever had a column-oriented text file, similar to a spreadsheet, but the columns weren't in the order you wanted? For instance, suppose you
had the following information in a file named "checkbook.orig":

COST         DATE            BALANCE
10.00         040198           1000.00
20.00         040298             980.00
30.00         040298             950.00

The information is good, but you'd prefer to have the DATE column first, followed by the COST information in the second column, and the BALANCE column third.

Linux on Amit Agarwal Linux Blog

nmap_cheatsheet.md

Convert Man Pages to ASCII, HTML, Markdown, and PDF (Groff + Pandoc)

Golden Ticket Attack: Exploiting Kerberos from Linux

Working with Gzip Files in Linux: Seamless Integration with Popular Tools

Working with Gzip Files in Linux: Seamless Integration with Popular Tools

Why Use Gzip?

Using Gzipped Files Directly

Anonymous AI Chat with different models

Why Ptyxis is a Game-Changer for Embedded Terminal Emulation

Why Ptyxis is a Game-Changer for Embedded Terminal Emulation

What is Ptyxis?

recover-disk-space

Recovering Disk Space by Reducing Reserved Block Count on Linux

Introduction

Short url to full url

Bash script performance issue and remediation

Run X11 applications on docker or podman

Show Local IP

Show local IP

Openvpn files to nmcli connection

Openvpn files to nmcli connection

GREP_COLORS – change the colors in the GREP output.

copy /proc folder

xev – Check the X keyboard events

Get to your ebooks quickly

systemctl enable and start service

Display IP address in console login screen

Linked clone with qemu-img

Battery life on laptops

Fix weird flux menu

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Windows Vs Linux – One more time

Celebrating 25 Years of Linux Kernel Development

flatpak – get latest libreoffice

systemd – start service when you enable it

Linux Best Practices and Tips

How to Avoid Frustration After Forgetting To Use Sudo Command

bash ansi codes to html for html reports from shell script

Get kernel function name from kernel address.

Separation Anxiety: A Tutorial for Isolating Your System with Linux Namespaces

Fix fonts quickly with auto-hinting

Get your local IP address like pro

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web services in c with cgi

firewalld – enable logging

Disk usage by file type

Get count of lines in scripts (shell)

evvsubst – substitute variables in text in shell

Easily monitor and archive your system log reports.

tracer – trace outdated files on your system

tlp – optimize and maximize your battery power.

unrar or unar – go open source way

terminal in browser.

Some nice linux tutorials

Sandbox Firefox – First step to security

mpd – change the music directory context for selinux.

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cgroups – use to control your cpu and memory

get systemd journal entries on web interface.

cvs add files recursively – not already in repository

Home grown mail scheduler with bash script and cron

force recheck on reboot – fsck

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find more information on ext2/3/4 filesystem

findmnt – find all the mounts and their source

Set some disk params to be safe

pkgwat -search packages for Fedora.

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power save mode for battery in Fedora 19.

Fedora – Ramdisk creation

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Manage your servers the easy way with perl script over ssh with no remote client.

cksum – compare for multiple files.

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configure firewall – the easy way.

ss – anothre utility to investigate sockets.

steam on Linux – for Fedora

Allow incoming/outgoing ports on iptables

Xnest – XDMCP protocol and virtual DM

Why `Ptyxis` is a Game-Changer for Embedded Terminal Emulation

What is `Ptyxis`?