College Loan Consolidation

"mail" is a command to send and receive mail in Unix, Linux and BSD operating system. To initiate a mail sending process, just type in the following command:

mail recipient@domain.com

Replace recipient@domain.com with a valid email address.

The system will prompt for a subject of the email before allowing user to type in the mail message body.

# mail receipent@domain.com
Subject: For Testing Only
This email is for testing the mail delivery system only.
^D (EOT)
Cc:

Once finished typing the email message, press Ctrl-D (shown as ^D in example above), which represents End of Text (EOT). Depending on system, mail may or may not prompt another input request for any recipients to cc (carbon copy) to. Press Enter to skip or accept the input, and get the mail sent.

Tip: If the sender and recipient is on the same system, it’s possible to omit the domain (@domain.com) part of the address, leaving only user name.

It’s also possible to use mail’s arguments or switches to directly send mail without interactive input. For example,

mail -s Test address@domain.com < /dev/null

Command above will immediately send a blank email with empty body to the recipient address with the subject "Test". For more arguments, type "man mail".

HappY SurfinG!!! (:

Meiga is one of the best file sharing programs to share files across your network or over the Internet. It is available for Linux, and the best part is that you can access files from other operating systems as well. Download the deb packages for Meiga from here. If you use other non-debian based distributions, you would have to compile from source.

Once installed, fire up the GUI. (Applications > Internet > Meiga in Ubuntu). You would be greeted by a mini window like this.
Click on add and browse to the directory you want to share, then choose the share name, you'll have to remove any spaces and make the name as simple as possible.
That's it, you have shared the folder successfully. Isn't it easy?

The person on the other side doesn’t need to install anything as long as a web browser or an http download manager is available. He would have to know your IP address and the share name to be able to access the files. Meiga makes it easy by showing you the URL in the statusbar as you click on each share. This is the URL other person would need to visit to access the files.
If you are on a network like your home network, chances are you would be knowing the IP addresses on your machines, so getting a file simply means browsing to http://[ip address]:8001/[share name] and you would see a list of all the files and folders within the shared folder.
If you are sharing files across the Internet, then of course, you would have to communicate the share’s URL to the other end via email or chat.

While the ability to share files with ease is the stronghold of Meiga, it can certainly do with some basic features like password protection the ability to view all shares on a particular computer. All in all Meiga is great for easy, no fuss file sharing with minimal effort.

Do you know of any similar application? Share with us in comments.

HappY SurfinG!!! (:

Great News, as you know Linux Mint 7 (codename Gloria) was released last month and it has been a resounding success. Though initially it supported only 32-bit architectures, we are now happy to tell you that Clement Lefebvre has just released, the x64 version of Mint 7.
As expected, it has the same Ubuntu 9.04 base and the same features and improvements as its sibling, but especially built for 64-bit processor architectures, such as the Intel Core 2 Duo or AMD Athlon X2 64 ones.

Highlights of Linux Mint 7 (Gloria):

• Based on Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope);
• Linux kernel 2.6.28;
• X.Org 7.4;
• GNOME 2.26.1 desktop environment;
• New artwork featuring beautiful black and green colors;
• Improved boot speed;
• mintMenu now offers suggestions as you type;
• Improved mintInstall;
• mintUpdate now displays download sizes for each available update;
• Improved mintUpload for easier setup;
• Added mintWelcome for a quick overview of the operating system;
• Added apt version, inxi and rtfm command-line tools;
• Moonlight/Silverlight support;
• The Xchat-Gnome IRC client was replaced by XChat;
• Meta and virtual packages.

System Requirements:

• A 64-bit processor;
• 512 MB of RAM to install, 256 MB of RAM to run;
• 2.5 GB free hard disk space (for installation);
• VGA video card capable of at least 800x600 resolution;
• A CD-ROM drive.

Question: What is Linux Mint?
Linux Mint is an elegant, easy-to-use, up-to-date, 100% free and comfortable Linux desktop distribution based on the very popular Ubuntu operating system. It offers paid commercial support to companies and individuals. Also, free community support is available from the forums and the IRC channel.

Download Linux Mint 7 x64 now! (:

It’s always practical to have a gaming device at hand when your on the move It sounds little bit nerdy but true it is. You never know when you’re going to end up in line, stuck in traffic, or locked in an elevator for three days in a row.

However, before I switched Windows Mobile, getting some decent games on my pre-historic cellphone was pretty much impossible, and one doesn’t string a PSP around his neck all day and expect to be popular with the ladies. So, imagine my joy when I got to know that there are free games for iPod that I can download!

These games, which were mainly meant to be downloaded from the iTunes store, could help you kill that little time that was still moving, and although gaming sounds highly impractical with a scroll-click-weel and a center button, they’re great fun i must say.

However, paying for these games gets old quick. Especially because you’re paying 5 bucks (or 5 Euros - people really don’t seem to know how to convert prices) for games you’ve played in your browser a few years ago, like Tetris and music quizzes.

The problem with the iPod’s freeware games market is Apple’s overprotectiveness. It’s not easy to put games on your iPod that weren’t bought in iTunes. But today, we’re going to show you how it’s done.

Please Note: that the iPods supported by this tutorial are the iPod Video 5G and 5.5G (pictured above). Trying this with iPod Nano’s, iPod Classics, or any of the newer models will be bound to result in failure (and there is no other alternative but installing Linux on your iPod).

Either way, everything described in this tutorial, you do on your own risk. Everything 3.1 is not responsible for any potential problems, or damage to your iPod.

So let’s get started,

Prepping your iPod for free games

The process consists of three parts. First, we’re going to make sure iTunes won’t undo all our hard work with the next synchronisation. Then, we’ll need to copy the necessary files and folders to our iPod, and finally, we’re going to patch our firmware.

Configuring iTunes

First of all, let’s fire up iTunes and disable a few options. In Devices - iPod - Options in the Summary tab, make sure that Enable disk use is checked.
Also, go to the Games tab and disable the Sync games box.

Now, close iTunes and make sure your iPod is mounted. If not, remove it and plug it in again.

Moving the files

Next, configure Windows Explorer to display hidden files and folders. If you’re using XP, go to Tools - Folder Options. On Vista, this option can be found in Organize - Folder and Search Options.

In the View tab, make sure Show hidden files and folders is enabled.

Open your mounted iPod in Windows Explorer and navigate to iPod_ControlGames_RO and extract the hex folder of your downloaded games. Read more about where to get these games at the bottom of the article.

Patching your iPod

For this one, you’ll need to download iPodWizard (v1.3) and the right firmware file - 5G or 5.5G. If you don’t know for certain which you need, the 5.5G iPod is the one with search function.

Fire up iPodWizard and make sure the edit mode is set to Firmware File. Then, browse to the correct firmware. Finally, press Write to iPod and follow the directions on your screen.

Yo! Congratulations, you should now be able to find your games on your iPod under extras. Have fun!
Download Free iPod Games

If you do a quick Google search, a few sites will pop up where you can find free games for your iPod that you can download, one of those sites is Emobilez. This site offers a wide variety of free mobile/portable software, and has a healthy arsenal of games as well.

Although I’ve got my doubts with some of them (e.g. Lost and Zuma), all games are believed to be in the public domain.

Anyways, Happing Gaming!!! (:

I had an Ubuntu CD so passed it along and one of my friend(a big fan of linux) was able to install it just fine. The first thing he tells me is that there no icons on the desktop? How am I supposed to browse my files?

Some distros provide you with these icons on the desktop and some don’t. Having the icons on the desktop might be an overkill for the geeks. After all, the Places Menu works just fine. However, I guess new users still want those icons on the desktop (Ubuntu forums would attest to the fact). So, if you are looking to get the Home, Trash or the Computer icons on the desktop, it is very easy.

Follow along (works for all Gnome-based distros)

Hit Alt + F2, type in gconf-editor in the dialog box that comes up and hit Enter.
The Configuration Editor will open up. Navigate to Apps >> Nautilus >> Desktop.
Towards the right side, you'll see some options. Place a check against the icons you want to see displayed on the desktop. You can display the Computer, Home, Trash and Network icons from in here.
While you are there, you can also think about changing the names. If for example, if you want to change the name from “Computer” to “Varun’s Computer”, all you have to do is double-click on computer_icon_name, choose String as the type and then key in the name you want to give to it.
You can also uncheck volumes_visible option if you don’t want the mounted drives to appear on the desktop. I personally loathed them, could never get in terms with where they appear (on top of each other at times) and how to customize their positions.

That’s it! You can customize what to show up and what to not on your desktop very easily.

HappY SurfinG!!! (:

So you went ahead and purchased that System 76 laptop or you decided to finally install Linux on your laptop. You now have a Linux based laptop with a webcam. But how do you take advantage of this hardware? You want to be able to use that web cam to upload photos to facebook (or the like), but are not sure exactly how to use your hardware. It’s simple with a handy little tool called Cheese.

Cheese is not one of those applications that is going to make or break your desktop experience. But it certainly will enhance it. You can take standard pictures and even add effects to those pictures And Cheese doesn’t just do pics, it can do videos as well.


Getting and installing

Even though Cheese is a part of the GNOME desktop, it isn’t always installed by default. To install Cheese open up your Add/Remove Software utility, search for “cheese” (no quotes), select the results, and click Apply. To start Cheese look in the Graphics submenu of the Applications menu.

When you fire Cheese up it will instantly start seeing you. Figure 1 shows me stalking a penguin through the eyes of Cheese. You will also see two photos I have already taken of myself.

To snap a photo of yourself place yourself in the position (or goofy face) you want and press the Take A Photo button.

When the photo is snapped it will appear in the lower pane of the application.

Now those photos you have taken have not been saved. You must actually save them before you can use them. To save a photo right click the photo and select “Save As”. By default photos are saved in the ~/Pictures/Webcam directory and can only be saved in .jpg format.

From that same right menu you can choose to send a picture to a removeable device, import the photo into F-Spot, open the photo, or send the photo to the trash. There is one other option “Set as Account Photo”, which is supposed to set a photo to your About me and your login photo. I have yet to get this to work.

Effects

You can even add effects to a photo. You actually add the effects before the photo is taken, and you can add more than one effect if you like. To add effects click the Effects button to list all of the possible effects.


As you click on an effect it will be highlighted. Click on as many effects as you like, but know that the more effects you add the slower Cheese will get (especially when adding effects like Vertigo and Warp.)

After you select the effects you want click the Effects button again and you will be returned to the normal screen, only now your photo will be “enhanced” by the effects you have chosen.

You can see the right photo of me was with the Vertigo and the Warp effects running.

Countdown

You will notice, in the Cheese main menu, a Countdown entry. If this entry is checked there will be a delay in the photo taking (so you can make yourself as photogenic as possible.) If you would prefer instant results uncheck that entry and photos will be snapped as soon as you hit the Take a Photo button.

Final thoughts

Cheese is not going to make you a more productive worker. In fact, it’s just fun enough that it might make you a less productive worker. But when you need that interface to your trusty webcam, just say “Cheese” and you’ll be ready every time.

Are you paranoid? Are you afraid that someone is going to get ahold of data they sholdn’t have? I am. And because of that I often encrypt files with a gpg key that was given to no one. With those encrypted files I know they are secure to most of the general public. And because I tend to use lengthy passkeys for gpg, cracking them is a challenge.

Naturally I use gpg for all of this. And when I am using gpg I am using it from the command line. It’s actually quite easy to use. In this article I will show you how to create a gpg key, encrypt, and decrypt a file. You will find this such an easy task you’ll be using it more than you think. Must I install?

More than likely, if you have a modern Linux distribution, gpg is already installed. If you issue the command which gpg and you get something like /usr/bin/gpg returned, you know you have gpg installed. If you don’t see that you can install it by issuing one of these commands:

sudo apt-get install gnupg

or

yum install gnupg

Once installed you will first have to generate a key. This, too, is done from the command line.

Generate your key

To generate a key issue the command:

gpg –gen-key

Once you enter that you will be asked a number of questions pertaining to your key. These should all be fairly obvious. After you complete the generation of your key make sure you remember the username for the key as well as the passphrase.

Encrypting files

Now let’s get into the good stuff - encrypting files. To encrypt a file with gpg you will use the command structure:

gpg OPTIONS FILE

Because you are encrypting you will have to use the e option. And because you will want to encrypt the file with a specific users’ gpg key you will use the r option. So let’s say you are going to encrypt the file TEST.tgz with the gpg key of user jlwallen. To do this you would issue the command:

gpg -e -r jlwallen TEST.tgz

The resulting file would be TEST.tgz.gpg. If you tried to view the file you would instantly see it is now a binary file. If you try to untar the file you would be informed the file is not in gzip format.

Decrypting the file

Decrypting the file is just as easy as encrypting the file. We’ll stick with the same example. To decrypt the file TEST.tgz.gpg issue the command:

gpg -d -o TEST.tgz TEST.tgz.gpg

You will be prompted for the passphrase associated with the user encryption key used on the file. The d option indicates you are decrypting the file and the o option indicates what file to output the results to. After this command is issued you will be back to the TEST.tgz file.

Final thoughts

Sure there are plenty of gui tools that will make this job even easier. But there are too many instances when needing the command line will enable you to do things you can’t do with a gui.

Yesterday I sat down at my main desktop PC to do some work and, out of nowhere, error message after error message popped up informing me the hard drive was at 100% capacity which meant the operating system had no room to write to. This baffled me as I was 100% sure there should have been over 60 gigs of space available. My first inclination was to search for larger files that might have grown out of hand - torrents especially.

After much searching I saw nothing. I even started at the / directory and was coming up with nothing. So naturally I went right to the log files. Believe it or not, it was not in the log files that I discovered where the problem was. Of course I thought I should share this experience with ghacks in order to illustrate how troubleshooting a Linux machine can go.

After the futile manual file search for files I went to the logs. The first log I went to (which is the first log I always turn to) dmesg which prints the message buffer from the kernel. To view this you just type dmesg at the terminal window. This was my first strike as the kernel buffer knew nothing of my capacity drive.

My next step was to head on over to /var/log and take a peek around any of the log files that might offer up a clue as to why my hard drive was maxed out. My instincts always take me to /var/log/messages first. This particular log file keeps track of general system information regarding boot up, networking. Another strike.

At this point I realized I had to take a break and clear some space because the warnings wouldn’t stop. I doubled checked to make sure the reports were correct by issuing the command:

df -h

which confirmed that /dev/sda1 was at 100% usage. I managed to free up a couple of gigs of space by deleting some torrents. The errors went away and I could continue working.

My next step was to check the size of my proxy logs and Dansguardian logs. I had to move both systems over to my main desktop and had a feeling those logs needed to be rotated. I was right, but it didn’t solve my problem. The tiny prox logs weren’t huge (by any stretch of the imagination), but they were many. So I deleted the older logs and moved on.

I was running out of log files to check and nothing had given me any idea what was going on.

Search and destroy

It was time to go back to the search method. But instead of using the manual method (how long would it take to weed through the ENTIRE Linux file system - I didn’t want to know) I opted to employ a little help thanks to the find command. The find command allows you to add switches to your search to indicate file size. In my case I wanted to first see if there were any files larger than 100 MB in size. To do this I will issue the command:

find / -size +1000000k -print0 | xargs -0 ls -l

as either root or using sudo. What this command does is tell find to search for files > 1000MB and send them to the standard output (that’s basically the terminal window), and pipe them to xargs so that you can see the detailed list (using “-l” of ls). Because I was starting at the root directory, I knew this would take some time.

It did. But after some time I discovered five files that were each 12 gigs in size in /var/cache/. These files were from a backup program I was working with and forgot to disable. So once a week my entire /home directory was being backed up. I deleted the files (recovering sixty gigs of space) and disabled the backup program. Problem solved.

Final thoughts

There are times when even the best logging system available will not tell you what you need to know. At those times you have to employ your best sluething techniques. Fortunately the Linux operating system encourages these types of administration tricks.

The team that is developing the Open Source version of the Google browser for Linux has finally released the alpha version of the Internet browser. The Chromium for Linux version was in pre-alpha stage for quite some time. Even the pre-alpha versions of the Chromium web browser were fairly stable but the alpha release marks a new milestone in the development.

The new version of the Google browser is still lacking several features of the Windows counterpart. Some of the most important features that are still missing are plugin support, printing, complex tab dragging, complex text and Google Gears support. The release notification contains a notice that additional parts of the web browser are incomplete and that users should keep this in mind before installation.
Interested users find information on how to add the Chromium builds to their Linux distribution at the official Ubuntu Chromium Daily Builds website. Let us know your opinion on the new version of the web browser if you are a Linux user and installing the Chromium build on your operating system.

HappY SurfinG!!! (:

After using Linux for a while you will eventually find yourself needing to create a bash script. And just what is a bash script? A bash script is a script that is run through the bash shell. Usually a bash script is a user-generated script that serves a specific purpose and combines numerous commands into one convenient script.

I am a big fan of bash scripting. I use them frequently to create backup scripts, scripts that are used via cron, and much more. But before I could write even a simple bash script, I had to understand the basics. And that’s what you will learn here - the very basics of bash scripting. This will be a foundation you can build upon so that your bash scripts can get more and more complex.

The structure

A bash script consists of just a few pieces. First and foremost you have to actually create the file. This file will contain all of your scripting and will have to be made executable by the user. Once the file is complete and saved you will make this executable with the command:

chmod u+x FILENAME

Where FILENAME is the actual name of your file.

Now within the file you will have to at least have two minimal pieces:

• Shell declaration
• Script
  

The shell declaration is a statement that declares what shell you are to use. For nearly all of your Linux needs you will use the bash shell. To declare the bash shell being used your declaration will be:

#! /bin/bash

With that declaration all commands will be run through the bash shell.

The script is the contents of the shell script you will write. The script will most often consist of commands.

Hello world

Ah hello world! Who hasn’t or used this as an example. Let’s take a look at what an Hello World script wold look like. We’ll add a few variations to highlight some of the subtle differences.

The basic Hello World! script would look like:

#! /bin/bash
echo "Hello World!"

Once you save it (we’ll call it “hello”) and make it executable you can run it by issuing the command:

~/hello

and you will see the output:

Hello World!

Now let’s use variable declaration in this script. Using variables will make your scripting much more versatile.

#! /bin/bash
STRING1="Hello"
STRING2="World!"
echo $STRING1 $STRING2

Now let’s modify this to use a global variable. One useful global variable is USER. At the bash prompt enter echo $USER and bash will return the username that is currently logged in. So change your hello world script to look like:

#! /bin/bash
STRING1="Hello"
echo $STRING1 $USER

When you run this script you will see:

Hello USER

Where USER is the actual username logged in. You can test this by su’ing to a different user (such as root) and running the script. If you are root (make sure you su to root with the command su - or you won’t have root’s prompt, only root’s privileges) you will see:

Hello root

Final thoughts

And there you have the very fundamentals of bash scripting. Hopefully you can see how to build on the Hello World! example.

For those who are not familiar with Linux, Ubuntu is one of the most popular and most widely used Linux distributions.

Over the years that I have used Ubuntu, other than the usual Ctrl + C (copy) and Ctrl + V (paste) shortcuts, I have discovered quite a number of keyboard shortcuts that are very useful, but seldom used by many. If you are looking for more keyboard shortcuts to add to your collection, I am sure you will be able to find some new tricks here.

1. Switch to the next/previous workspace
If you make use of the workspace very frequently, you can easily switch between different workspaces by pressing Ctrl + Alt + Left/Right Arrow. The Left key brings you to the previous workspace while the Right key brings you to the next adjacent. If you have enabled Compiz, you can even get it to show all the workspace by pressing Super + E on the keyboard.

2. Move the current window to another workspace
By pressing Shift+ Ctrl + Alt + Left/Right Arrow, you can easily move your current window to another workspace in the specified direction. This keyboard shortcut works very well with the one mentioned above. If you have the habit of opening many applications/windows when doing your work, but don’t like to see your desktop and menubar cluttered with all the application windows, you can use this shortcut key to move your applications to another workspace and get your desktop organized.

3. Show the desktop
Ctrl + Alt + D enables you to quickly minimize all windows and give focus to the desktop. When all windows are minimized, this shortcut can also maximize all the windows to their previous state.

4. Keyboard shortcut for the mouse right-click
In most applications, you can always right-click on the mouse to access the options menu. On the keyboard, you can simply press Shift + F10 to achieve this ‘right-click‘ effect

5. Restart session and recover from crashes
There are very few instances where Ubuntu will crash totally. But if it does, you can press Ctrl + Alt + Backspace to restart the session, and 90% of the time, it will recover from the crashes.
6. Lock the screen quickly
If you need to leave your workstation for a while, you can quickly lock up your screen by pressing Ctrl + Alt + L and prevent unauthorized access by others.

7. Switch between windows in the reverse direction
Alt + Tab is a common shortcut key that allow you to switch between open windows. But do you know that by including the ‘Shift‘ button, you can reverse the windows switching direction? This is useful when you press Alt + Tab too fast and passed the window that you want to switch to. Simply press down the ‘Shift‘ button to go back to the previous window in the switch cycle.

8. Move windows with arrow keys
Press Alt+F7 to activate the Move window function and use any arrows key (up, down, left, right) to move the window around the screen.

9. Show hidden files
Most of the time, you won’t need to view the hidden files in your home folder, but in the event that you need to, you can press Ctrl + H inside the Nautilus (the file manager for Ubuntu) to show all hidden files.

10. Show file properties without right-clicking the mouse
The conventional way to view a file/folder properties is to right-click the mouse and select ‘Properties‘. Now you can just press Alt + Enter to get the Properties window to appear.

If you run a dual-boot system with Linux and Windows, this has happened to you. You had to do your monthly reinstall of Windows, and now you don’t see the linux bootloader anymore, so you can’t boot into Ubuntu or whatever flavor of linux you prefer.

Here’s the quick and easy way to re-enable Grub.

1) Boot off the Live CD

2) Open a Terminal and type in the following commands, noting that the first command will put you into the grub “prompt”, and the next 3 commands will be executed there. Also note that hd0,0 implies the first hard drive and the first partition on that drive, which is where you probably installed grub to during installation. If not, then adjust accordingly.

> sudo grub

> root (hd0,0)

> setup (hd0)

> exit

Reboot (removing the live cd), and your boot menu should be back.

Only read below if Windows is now missing from the boot menu

If you installed Ubuntu before you installed Windows, then Ubuntu will not have anything in the grub configuration for Windows. This is where you’ll have to do a bit of manual editing to the grub boot menu file.

If you open the file /boot/grub/menu.lst with the following command:

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

You’ll see a sample section for Windows, which you’ll want to uncomment and add to the boot menu list in whatever position you want it in. (uncomment by removing the #’s)

# title Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP/Vista
# root (hd0,0)
# makeactive
# chainloader +1

Note that you should also verify that hd0,0 is the correct location for Windows. If you had installed Windows on the 4th partition on the drive, then you should change it to (hd0,3)

Do you use Fedora? Do you have Fedora tweaked to the point you would like to either share your vision of this distribution? Or would you like to have an image of your tweaks so that the next time you need to install you won’t have to go back, after the basic install is done, and install all the apps and tweaks? It’s possible with Revisor. This handy tool from Fedora allows you to create your own “respin” of Fedora Linux with the ease of a graphical wizard.

Not only is Revisor easy to use, it’s easy to install. But you do need to make sure you have plenty of space available on your hard drive. You are, after all, creating a a complete iso image. Or, thanks to Revisor, you might be splitting a DVD image into a CD set.

Unfortunately Revisor hasn’t reached a point (and may never) where it will be a tool that will allow you to create your own flavor of Linux (it is a Fedora tool after all). But you can customize the packages you include in your respin. You can even customize the iso itself which requires making major changes to a kickstart file (that goes beyond the scope of this article.) But for creating a LiveCD with the most updated packages and even user-specific packages. With all of that said, let’s see how Revisor is used.

Getting and installing

Since Revisor is a Fedora tool it will be in the Fedora repositories. Installing this tool is simple. Open up a terminal, su to the root user, and issue the following command:

yum install revisor

You will have to accept the installation of the dependencies before Revisor will install. Once it is installed you can start Revisor with the command revisor. You will also find a Revisor entry in the GNOME desktop menu Applications. Look in the System Tools sub menu and you will find an entry for Revisor.

Using Revisor

Revisor is basically a wizard that walks you through the steps of creating your iso. The first screen of the wizard is just a welcome screen. On this screen click Get Started to begin.

The next screen requires you to choose the type of media you will be creating. There are two types: Installation media and Live media. Within each media type you can select either DVD, CD, optical, or USB (NOTE: USB will be disabled because it is still experimental.)

Once you choose your media type click Forward to take you to the next screen of the wizard. The next screen requires you to make configurations and add/remove repositories for your iso image.

You can use the defaults in the upper section. In the lower section you will want to select the repositories and add any third party repositories you will want. These third party repositories are required if there is software you want to include that is not standard fare for the Fedora distribution. If you do decide to add repositories you will need to know:Base URL, Mirror List, and GPG Key File. You can also choose to include/exclude any packages from the repository, as well as give the repository a name and description. Make sure you save this to configuration if you know you will be creating more respins based on this setup.

The next step in the wizard is for adding a kickstart file (should you want to use one) as well as taking care of a few advanced options regarding your kickstart file.

Now Revisor will load up your repositories. Once the repositories are loaded you can add or remove any packagees to be included in your respin.

Make note that you have to go through and select every package you need. This includes the base packages, networking packages, etc. If you don’t add it, it won’t be on your system.

You can also add optional packages by highlighting the category and clicking the Optional Packages button.

After you have selected all of your packages click Forward and you will see a screen that indicates how many packages and the size of the build. If you are okay with what you see click Forward which will take you to the final configuration steps. Included in these final steps are the root user password, default language, keyboard type, target architecture, and time zone. Click Foward when you have completed these options.

You are now ready to add any kernel boot parameters. Generally speaking you should be fine with the defaults. But if you know that you will need a different boot parameter, add it here.

The next screen allows you to add a network device. Don’t worry, this isn’t about adding the specific hardware. This section allows you to add an interface (such as eth0 using DHCP). Make sure you at least add one interface so networking will be enabled (especially with a Live CD).

Click Forward and you will see the Authentication window. This will be of use if you know you are going to be needing to add any particular authentication such as LDAP, SMB, Name Switch Cache, NIS, etc. If you do not need any authentication click Foward to move on to the Firewall configuration.

In this window you can set up a default firewall. This section should not be overlooked. If you are creating a respin of Fedora you want to keep security in mind, so make sure you aren’t creating a wide-open respin for people to install.

Last Figure shows the firewall setup window. As you can see you can set this up to allow specific services through. Choose wisely. Click Forward when you are finished to take you to the X Windows configuration. In this window you are going to set up much of X including which graphical environment starts up by default. You can also set up the display options as well.

Complete this section, click Forward, and you will find yourself on the user customization. Here you can add a user to the respin. If you add a user you can set it up to automatically log in with this user.

That’s the last step. Once you click Foward here Revisor will set out to create your respin, which might include a lot of downloading. This final step can take quite some time, depending upon how many packages you have included.

Once Revisor has completed you will find your iso image in the destination directory you configured during the setup process. Burn that iso with your favorite burning software and you now have your very own respin of Fedora Linux!

The first thing I do, when I install a linux will be making the machine look good. One of which is selecting a good theme. The theme plays a very important role in making a system user friendly especially when you install debian. The fresh installed system will have a classic look which is not much accepted by a person who is using windows xp or vista. I had an experience once. I was installing debian and after installation one of my friend who was watching the installation said "Oh GOD linux!!!" . Then I changed the themes and the looks of task bar, my friend said "wow Linux looks so great!!! "

The wallpaper plays an important role in looks. Get an eye freshening wallpaper on to your desktop or laptop.

The theme includes how the system should look like. The color of the window borders, task bar, the icons, all can be changed while setting the theme. The Themes can be access by:

Desktop --> Preferences --> Theme

There you can try selecting different themes which will change the task bar, icons and window borders.You can save new themes by changing the parameters. The parameters can be accessed by selecting the Theme Details. For deifferent combinations you can save themes.

Also you can download debian themes from sites and you can install it from the Theme window through install .

As on the figure you can get a nice task bar at the bottom by simply customizing the task bar. For this first you better add the windows list to the upper panel by right clicking on it and selecting Add to Panel . Then you can add show desktop to your upper panel. Now delete the lower panel and create new one by right clicking on the upper pannel, by selecting the New Pannel. 

Now from the bottom new pannel select Properties .
Make the Size 50 , untick Expand, Autohide and Show hide buttons. Now select Background tab and select Solid Color sliding the Style to the left will make it transparent. Then add different applications by adding to panel which will list on your panel as icons. This will give a good look which is something similar to MAC os eventhough it is not a dock.

If you are interested in playing more with display effects you can get compiz-fusion installed on your machine.

How can you increase your swap space?

For some application sometimes you will need more swap space than that what you have now. In my case I was having only 840 MB and when I tried to install Oracle 10g server i couldn't install it as it requires more swap space. So I had to increase my swap space. First you have to see how much swap space you are having now. For that go to terminal and type swapon -s which will show you the swap space and it will show you something like this

asha@asha:~$ swapon -s
Filename
Type                   Size           Used               Priority
/dev/sda4
partition           979956      313344               -1

Now you can take some space from one of your partitions. And if you are having another partition other than / then better to take from that. And one warning is there.If you have some important data you better back up.

In order to create supplementary swap file you are using dd (data dump) command.You have to do it in the root.

So type in the terminal

dd if=/dev/zero of=/extra-swap bs=1M count=1024

We'll use the mkswap command to make our file swap-consumable for the Linux kernel.

mkswap /extra-swap

To turn on the swap file run

swapon /extra-swap

Now swapon -s will show the new file also.

And to make this swap on even after booting your machine you have to

cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.mybackup

Now its done. And you can continue with the installation.

Ok, just a quick note, if you’re tryin to unrar an archive thats been corrupted or been split up into multiple parts, keep the broken parts using unrar.

More Description:

4 Rar files, part1-4, 3 fails becuase of a crc check issue, so you can recover part of the archive using the keep broken flag for unrar ‘-kb’

mnk0@tree:~/downloads$ unrar x -kb Bleach_Naruto Shippuuden 98 - 720p.rar
UNRAR 3.80 beta 2 freeware Copyright (c) 1993-2008 Alexander Roshal
Extracting from Bleach_Naruto Shippuuden 98 - 720p.rar
Extracting Bleach_Naruto Shippuuden 98 - 720p.rar 99%
Calculating control sums of all volumes.
Cannot find volume Bleach_Naruto Shippuuden 98 - 720p.rar
Bleach_Naruto Shippuuden 98 - 720p.mkv - CRC failed
Total errors: 1
mnk0@tree:~/downloads$ ls Bleach_Naruto Shippuuden 98 - 720p.mkv*
Bleach_Naruto Shippuuden 98 - 720p.mkv
mnk0@tree:~/downloads$

Enjoy Linux!!! (;

Save precious CPU and memory by using mplayer to play mp3s, also keep your playlist file up to date with all your mp3 media files.

First and foremost we need to have mplayer installed, if your on a ubuntu-debian based system use the following command

to install mplayer, if not then you can download the appropriate packages and install them.

apt-get install mplayer

Lets make a home for our script file, and set the appropiate permissions!

mkdir ~/scripts; touch ~/scripts/playme.sh; chmod +x ~/scripts/playme.sh; gedit ~/scripts/playme.sh

Paste the following code into your new script file, if you keep your Music files in a different location then change the variable musdir to match your setup.

#/bin/bash
# VARS ##########################################
tmpdir='/tmp'
musdir='/home/osamad/Music'
filename='playlist.m3u'
# CODE ##########################################
find $musdir -name '*.mp3' -o -name '*.ogg' 2>/dev/null >> $tmpdir/$filename
mplayer -playlist $tmpdir/$filename -shuffle -loop 0 -radio volume=80

Using find we build a list of all our mp3s, in this case we have multiple types of media files we want to play so we can specify that by adding the -o -name flags and add them in.
-playlist ;flag we set the playlist file we just created
-shuffle ; enables shuffle mode
-loop 0 ; enables loop 0=forever
-radio volume=80 ; set the default volume to 80% (use * or / to adjust when playing)

RunTime
Push ALT+F2 or launch from a terminal

./scripts/playme.sh

MORE

To find out more information, or to customize your mplayer settings..

man mplayer

Create a custom launcher and run your script from the gnome-panel

If you have this problem you know how frustrating it can be. Every time you fire up Firefox it wants to start in offline mode. To get around this you have to go to the File menu and uncheck the Work Offline box.

How Can I Make the ntfs file system writable? 
The ntfs file systems were read only on Linux. On the 14th of July 2006, a developer of the linux-ntfs team, Szabolcs Szakacsits, revolution this area by releasing a new driver ntfs-3g which claimed to provide full read/write support for all NTFS partition. After months of successful testing by hundreds of thousands of users in beta status, ntfs-3g is now fully stable. 

For mounting NTFS you can use one small tool called NTFS-3G this is very powerfull and simple tool. 

For those who are using Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn 

Open the terminal and type $ sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g ntfs-config. This will make your windows ntfs partitions writable. 

For those who are using Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Ft. 

Go to CLI . Then there type $ sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list 

Then the gedit will open and there you have to add teh following lines in the last. Then save the file and exit. 

deb http://givre.cabspace.com/ubuntu/ edgy main

deb http://ntfs-3g.sitesweetsite.info/ubuntu/ edgy

main

deb http://flomertens.keo.in/ubuntu/ edgy main

Now update the source list by using the command $ sudo apt-get update 

If you want to install ntfs-3g run the following command from your terminal $ sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g

Ever wanted to access a service behind a firewall that has port 22 open for ssh connections? This is a common setup known as using a jump-box for security access and to be successful at this we your firewall must allow port 22 traffic to your ssh jump-box. We can test our if port 22 is open by typing the following line.

telnet ssh-jump-box 22

If all is good then we should see something like

Trying 192.168.1.200...
Connected to ssh-jump-box.
Escape character is '^]'.
SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_4.7p1 Debian-8ubuntu1.2

In this example we’re going to create a tunnel for port 3389 windows rdekstop and we’ll begin by creating a local loopback port 3390 that ssh will tunnel from myMachine to myFireWalledMachine on port 3389

ssh -L 3390:server-behindFirewall:3389 user@ssh-jumpbox -N

Now we can access the service on port 3389 that was previously inaccessible through the firewall by pointing our connection to the local loopback port we just created through ssh. In this case we’ll use rdesktop to hit that port as we are trying to remote desktop to a firewalled machine.

rdesktop localhost:3390

Enjoy Linux!!! (: