Ubuntu on Amit Agarwal Linux Blog

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 🙂

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 :

Fedora/Ubuntu issue with assigned IP by dhcp server.

Fri, 13 Mar 2015 00:40:51 +0000

In the recent versions of Fedora/Ubuntu, I found that if the DHCP server assigns a reserved address, the address is not applied to the system. Finally I found that adding the below in /etc/dhcp/dhclient.conf, would fix the issue.

send dh-client-identifier = hardware;

x2go – possible replacement to VNC

Thu, 22 May 2014 00:31:47 +0000

If you are accessing you Linux machine from VNC then you can try x2go.

Pretty straight forward installation, with packages available for both Ubuntu and Fedora and most other common distros as well. Just install, change one line ( visit the link above) and you are done. Neat, I must say.

Do try it when you feel the need to do something new.

Raspberry Pi automate certain tasks – script example

Mon, 10 Mar 2014 01:41:45 +0000

Now, if you have followed these :

fetchmail

ssmtp

Then you already have a working system for sending and receiving mail. Now, you can set the mda in the fetmailrc to a script which can do few things for you. The script below will get a page and mail it to you, if you have the subject as “get” and send “wake on LAN” to desired PC if you have subject as “wol”. Cool 🙂

nautilis fork ( File manager ) with tree view in sidebar.

Sun, 09 Feb 2014 00:49:09 +0000

Was searching for this for sometime now, finally found it.

sudo yum install nemo
sudo yum list nemo*

First just install nemo. Configure nemo not to interfere with default desktop and also make it default handler. So, here are the settings that would do it.

gconftool-2 --set  /desktop/gnome/applications/component_viewer/exec --type 'string' 'nemo "%s"'
gconftool-2 --set  /desktop/gnome/url-handlers/trash/command --type 'string' 'nemo "%s"'
gsettings set org.nemo.desktop show-desktop-icons false

Now, if you need more functionality in file manager then check the list of nemo packages from the output of second command of yum. It has plugins like file preview and so on. Install and enjoy.

conky transparent window on Fedora with Gnome.

Mon, 22 Jul 2013 01:43:45 +0000

On Fedora with Gnome-shell 3, its been long time that I was not able to get transparent window. So, finally I thought to spend some time to try to fix that. Finally got that fixed with all the configurations below in the conkyrc. Here the default color is set to LightSkyBlue but feel free to change that.

I hope this helps fedora community who is struggling to get transparent window. And here is the code :

Ubuntu hushlogin

Wed, 27 Mar 2013 12:00:05 +0000

In Ubuntu, if you do not like all the information that comes when you do a remote login, then you just need to do this:

touch ~/.hushlogin

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:

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.

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.

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 :

Display X applications from virtual terminals

Thu, 03 May 2012 12:05:37 +0000

GNOME Session plugin (Photo credit: David Siegel)

Here is a script that can help you set the proper envirionment to start a gnome-shell from one of the terminals.

#!/bin/bash - 
#===============================================================================
#
# FILE: xenv.sh
# 
# USAGE: ./xenv.sh 
# 
# DESCRIPTION: http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Debugging
#
# 
# OPTIONS: ---
# REQUIREMENTS: ---
# BUGS: ---
# NOTES: ---
# AUTHOR: Amit Agarwal (aka), amit.agarwal@roamware.com
# CREATED: 09/14/2011 04:45:31 PM IST
# Last modified: Wed Sep 14, 2011 04:45PM
# REVISION: ---
#===============================================================================

gnome_session=$(pgrep -u $USER gnome-session)
eval export$(sed's/\o000/\n/g;' < /proc/$gnome_session/environ |grep DISPLAY)
eval export$(sed's/\o000/\n/g;' < /proc/$gnome_session/environ |grep XAUTHORITY)
eval export$(sed's/\o000/\n/g;' < /proc/$gnome_session/environ |grep DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS)

So, once you have done that you have the correct environment to use the X display and thus you can start the gnome-shell as well or do any other fancy thing that you want 🙂

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)

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.

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:


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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Add ssh key to remote host
Tue, 15 Nov 2011 08:00:01 +0000

  
    
Image via Wikipedia
  

If you are working on recent versions of the *nix OS like Fedora or Ubuntu then you would know about the commad ssh-copy-id. But if you land up using one of the older versions like Solaris or something where the command is not present, then probably you need a simpler solution to this. One of the simplest solution is with a lot of assumtions, simply copy the id_rsa file to remote server and hope it works. And here is  a script to do just that:


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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ss – utility to investigate sockets.
Wed, 07 Sep 2011 06:27:46 +0000

Sometimes, you find some interesting application/command by accident, and that is just what happened a few days back. Well, I was doing a ssh and as usual made my share of mistake in typing and missed the “h” from the ssh command and saw a list of options instead of my prompt on remote server.
Now, that set me thinking and fond that its a very interesting command that comes with iproute on Fedoara, so if you want this command, then install iproute like this


Screenshot of Gnome3 with awn
Thu, 25 Aug 2011 08:47:40 +0000

Here is another screenshot of my laptop desktop with Gnome 3 and AWN (Avant window Navigator) running. Looks beautiful, isn’t it?

  
     
  
  
     
<p>
  By the way, with this setup I have the <a class="zem_slink" title="Old Style and New Style dates" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Style_and_New_Style_dates" rel="wikipedia">old style</a> menu also just that instead of on the top it is on the bottom just like old RH9 🙂
</p>

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Gnome 3 screenshot with conky dock
Thu, 18 Aug 2011 17:06:20 +0000

Just to give you a idea of how beautiful it looks, here’s a screenshot 🙂
[][1]gnome3-desktop

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Gnome 3 shell themes
Fri, 12 Aug 2011 00:33:31 +0000

  
    
Image by grantc via Flickr
  


If you are using gnome-shell and are bored with the same default theme then read on…. 🙂
By default changing the default theme requires that you modify the files yourself or copy few files to the required directories. Well, if this is not in your scheme of things for changing the theme, a very simple task. Now, you can simply do this with gnome shell extensions.


GPG error on N900 when doing update on command line
Wed, 22 Jun 2011 01:57:01 +0000

  
    
Image via Wikipedia
  


If you have added some extra repositories to your Nokia N900 and are trying to do something ( like update, install or any other apt-get operation) you might see some errors or warnings related to the GPG keys. The errors would come because the Public keys for the reporisitories are not present in the gpg database 🙂


Deleting all mails in the N900 (Maemo 5) permanently
Tue, 14 Jun 2011 12:40:26 +0000

Well couple of days back, I checked the folder details of one of my accounts configured on the N900 (Maemo 5) and it was showing some 1000 or more emails, whereas I had only 4-5 emails in the Inbox so where are the other emails and how to I get rid of them. This was causing the mail application to become a little slower than usual so do I live with it, I decided not to do so and thus found out how to delete all the mails.


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.


Gnome Tips
Fri, 25 Feb 2011 13:03:43 +0000

Add/Edit GDM Sessions
Each session is a *.desktop file located at /usr/share/xsessions.
GDM appearance
You can change background image, gtk/icon theme by hands (as described at Gnome_2.28_Changes#Configuring_gdm_2.28), or you can use gdm2setup from the AUR.
Tweaking
If your gnome applications seem sluggish and gnome hangs at start-up after killing the previous session, it’s likely you haven’t set your /etc/hosts file correctly and your /etc/hosts file includes:
127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain     localhost      YOURHOSTNAME
Then run “/bin/hostname YOURHOSTNAME” and “/sbin/ifconfig lo up” as root.


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.


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

  Related articles


  
    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

  
    
      
        
      
  <dd class="wp-caption-dd zemanta-img-attribution" style="font-size: 0.8em;">
    Image via <a href="http://commons.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ubuntu_logo.svg">Wikipedia</a>
  </dd>
</dl>

  


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

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)

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.

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 🙂

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:

solang – Photo collection viewer.

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

: Image via Wikipedia

Name       : solang

Arch       : i686

Size       : 1.8 M

Summary    : A Photo Manager for <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/gnome" title="GNOME" rel="homepage" href="http://www.gnome.org/">GNOME

URL        : https://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/solang/

License    : <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">GPLv3+

Description: Solang is a <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/free_content" title="Free content" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_content">free photo manager that will act as a front-end for

directory based local storage as well as remote photo-storage

systems, as can be said, on the ”Cloud”. Basic editing support is

also planned as well as a small pipelaine for RAW processing.

The aim of this project is to break the performance charecteristics

of current popular photo management <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/computer_software" title="Computer software" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_software">softwares and provide a fast

and reliable alternative that does not place humongous demands on

user’s <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/hardware" title="Hardware" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardware">hardware resources even to meet basic functionality.<h6 class="zemanta-related-title">Related articles by Zemanta <ul class="zemanta-article-ul"> <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/2010/04/ubuntu-1010-to-be-codenamed-maverick-meerkat.ars">Ubuntu 10.10 to be codenamed Maverick Meerkat (arstechnica.com) <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://www.howtoforge.com/the-perfect-desktop-fedora-12-i686-gnome">The Perfect Desktop – Fedora 12 i686 (GNOME) (howtoforge.com) <li class="zemanta-article-ul-li"><a href="http://boycottnovell.com/2009/12/19/euphemism-for-lobbying/">Why GNOME Funding is Equivalent to Lobbying and Why Novell is Likely Against GPL Enforcement (boycottnovell.com) <div class="zemanta-pixie"><a class="zemanta-pixie-a" title="Reblog this post [with Zemanta]" href="http://reblog.zemanta.com/zemified/bb959a48-b5f0-4e5f-8997-6c86961e6eff/"><img class="zemanta-pixie-img" src="http://blog.amit-agarwal.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/reblog_b11.png" alt="Reblog this post [with Zemanta]" /><span class="zem-script more-related more-info pretty-attribution paragraph-reblog">

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.

LPI Certification help and tutorials

Thu, 20 May 2010 16:43:32 +0000

For the last couple of days I have been very busy but not too away from my desktop. Though I did not get time to publish anything. Here’s one of my other favourite distributions. Its known as elpicx. This distribution is oriented towards LPI certification exams and contains some documents and links that are quite helpful.

Good thing is now it supports F9 with KDE.

I found that the documents in the distro are GPL and thus I dont think that there should be any issue in re-distributing the pdfs and the links, so <a href="http://amit.with-linux.com/elpicx/" target="_blank">here it is. If you find anything in these docs or links that I should not link or upload them, let me know. I wil remove them.

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:

Create your own splash screen for gimp

Mon, 05 Apr 2010 02:36:26 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

Gimp allows you to set the <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/splash_screen" title="Splash screen" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Splash_screen">splash screen very easily. All you need to do is copy the image to ~/.gimp-/splashes/. There is <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/betting" title="Betting (poker)" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betting_%28poker%29">no limit on the size or color. You just copy all the images you like to have as splash and one of them would be randomly picked up from the said direcotory for the splash image.

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.

OpenDNS and Proxies: Putting it All Together on Ubuntu Karmic

Tue, 16 Mar 2010 02:25:41 +0000

: Image via Wikipedia

I’ve been running <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/ubuntu" title="Ubuntu (operating system)" rel="homepage" href="http://www.ubuntu.com/">Ubuntu as my laptop <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/operating_system" title="Operating system" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operating_system">operating system for quite some time (year or more) and find it to be quite wonderful. However, recently I had some nasty times getting everything to work with OpenDNS.

The easy thing to do is change /etc/<a class="zem_slink freebase/en/resolv_conf" title="Resolv.conf" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolv.conf">resolv.conf to contain the OpenDNS entries. However, this was complicated by my use of <a href="http://www.pps.jussieu.fr/~jch/software/polipo/">polipo (web cache), <a href="http://www.phys.uu.nl/~rombouts/pdnsd/">pdnsd (<a class="zem_slink freebase/en/name_server" title="Name server" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_server">DNS cache), and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resolvconf">resolvconf (a resolv.conf file manager) – not to mention the use of <a href="http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/ddclient">ddclient to update the dynamic <a class="zem_slink freebase/en/internet_protocol" title="Internet Protocol" rel="wikipedia" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol">IP on the laptop, and the Gnome <a href="http://projects.gnome.org/NetworkManager/">NetworkManager.

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

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.

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.