Category: Ubuntu
Securing Drives With TrueCrypt
I synchronize everything in my documents folder on Linux to a 16 gigabyte SD card on a daily basis. That way, I can have all my homework, assignments, and other assorted school materials with me while I'm am at school, but still be able to keep up-to-date versions on my...
Speed Up Audio Files
In the recent article about [extracting the audio from videos](/extracting-audio-videos.html) I detailed a method to get the audio track from a video. One use for this is extracting the audio of recorded lectures that universities or professors have placed online and are made freely available. Many of these lectures can...
Scanning Windows from Ubuntu 10.10 LiveCD (ClamAV)
Recently I was working with someone who suspected that their laptop had a virus, and so wanted to do a virus scan. Needless to say, I recommended to them a couple of freely available virus scanners for Windows, but I also recommended that they boot up a LiveCD and run...
My New Desktop
After quite some time of suffering with my desktop flirting with failure, the sales on Black Friday finally opened up an opportunity for me to upgrade to an i-series Intel CPU on my budget. My desktop now consists of a new motherboard, running an i3 CPU, 8 gigabytes of RAM,...
Update Ubuntu With Aptitude
For some reason, trying to update my Ubuntu server with `apt-get upgrade` often fails to install all the available updates. In a similar quirk, the default update client for Ubuntu on my laptop usually fails to install updates. After experimenting with various methods for updating a bit, I finally discovered...
Ubuntu Failure on My Laptop
Adding to a list of gripes about Ubuntu that I already have, my laptop, running Ubuntu 64 bit, suffers from a strange problem that makes the machine hang in a very strange way - in which nothing works, but the cursor can still be moved around. Research makes it apparent...
Manual Network Configuration for Ubuntu (Command Line)
When using that desktop of yours, how often do you need to change networks? Probably not much - I hope you've managed to get a wired connection to that machine, but even if you haven't, you should be on the same wireless network all the time. So why use the...
Ubuntu and Problems with Gigabit Ethernet Cards
Last night when I booted up a LiveCD of Ubuntu on my HP I found that Ubuntu wouldn't work with my Intel Gigabit Ethernet card. To be sure, this may be a hardware problem, but when I installed the same model and make of card on my server, when replacing...
Ubuntu Server Boot Leaves Blinking Cursor Then No Signal - Grub2
Today I went to boot up the back up server I created from the Dell [recently introduced](/introducing-two-new-computers.html) only to discover that it wouldn't boot. After hooking a monitor to it I discovered that BIOS had held it back because the time wasn't set (the motherboard battery needs to be replaced),...
Why I Don't Like Grub2
Every Ubuntu installation since Ubuntu 9.10 installs Grub2 by default. In many ways this is great - Grub2 has a number of new features, and has become more portable and modular than older versions of Grub. The catch is, if you don't need the new features that it provides, it...
Moving Drupal Between Two Servers
Although this guide is targeted towards being used with an Ubuntu server, it should be easy to adapt it to other distributions assuming the same basic components are in place (a server running Apache, Mysql and PHP), and if the reader understands any difference in file locations on their distribution...
Preparing Ubuntu Server for Drupal
In light of my recent experiences with moving Drupal onto a backup server, it seems like a good time to do a short write up of the things that are required to get Drupal up and running on Ubuntu Server - not the actually installation of Drupal on that server...
My New Backup and Testing Server
A few weeks ago, a stray lightning bolt managed to create a power surge through our cable - and through that our network - damaging three unfortunate pieces of networking equipment. Two gigabit switches, a cat6 Ethernet cable, and a gigabit card fell before this power surge, of these one...
Ubuntu Server Installation - Using USB Instead of CDROM
If every time I installed a Linux distribution I burned a CD, I would go through CDs at a prodigious rate. Fortunately, USB drives are now large enough to hold a CD's - or even a DVD - data on it, and by making the drive bootable (and having a...
DVD Drive Autoclose edev Bug
Since my switch to Gentoo, my DVD drive has decided that it really prefers to stay closed. In order to further its goals in this area, it was closing seconds after opening, making swapping out disks nigh impossible. After a substantial amount of work to make Google return a result...
My Linux Printing Struggle
I've been staving off doing it in the weeks since I installed Gentoo, but I finally was forced to configure my system to work with my printer. In a normal system, this might not leave an administrator filled with a feeling of dread, but I print over the network to...
So far in Gentoo - Part 1
With my old Ubuntu installation on my desktop beginning to show signs of implosion (probably a result of the server software that had been installed and then removed once i setup my real server) I felt like trying something new. I've managed to come to grips with Ubuntu over the...
EEE PC Fn Lock Tip
Use the key combination Fn and F11 to toggle the Fn lock on and off. I only brought this up because every once in a while, my netbook gets some of its keys locked in to the secondary set of keys, which are the ones printed in blue. This results...
New Server
After a couple of months running this website and associated services on my desktop, I finally put together a low end server (a desktop without a monitor running Ubuntu server 64 bit). In addition to the reduced downtime this should result in, its also provided me with increased material for...
How to Create a Software RAID Array in Linux with mdadm
##This tutorial requires sudo or root privilleges. ##BACKUP ALL DATA ON YOUR DRIVES BEFORE ATTEMPTING ANYTHING ON THIS TUTORIAL. IF YOU LOOSE YOUR DATA, I CANNOT BE HELD RESPONSIBLE. IF YOU DO NOT BACKUP YOUR DATA, PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK. Mdadm is a software raid solution for Linux. While...