Category: Linux

  • #TBT: Apt-get FTW or: How I learned to stop worrying and learned to love Ubuntu

    This post originally ran in May 2008. I am reposting it now, as part of my throwback thursday project, to give some of my older quality posts some love. While I still like Linux and, as I have written about last year still use Linux, it is not my main working platform.

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  • One important difference between Debian and Fedora

    Before starting out with Oracle Linux this summer, my experience with Linux had been more or less confined to Ubuntu, which stems from Debian. Oracle Linux, on the other hand, stems from the Fedora project and Red Hat. Though they both build on the same kernel, they diverge from each other in a few important aspects. Software available in the repositories for Debian are divided into free, non-free and contrib. All software available in Fedora’s repositories are free.

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  • Oracle Linux: Unable to connect to FTP server in terminal

    In order to keep the virtual harddrive on my VM as small as possible, I prefer keeping installers on a network share that I can connect to through FTP. The terminal command for connecting to FTP servers handily enough is ftp. When running that command, terminal returned “Command not found”. It turns out that FTP is not installed on Oracle Linux by default.

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  • Oracle Linux: Unable to connect to the internet

    When first installing Oracle Linux, you may run into being unable to connect to the internet. You may make the mistake of thinking that the problem is with the network settings on the host-side, and try to futz about changing what type of network connection the VM connects to. Don’t bother, it isn’t going to do any good, and you will only get annoyed.

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  • Oracle Linux: Insufficient memory to auto-enable kdump

    Remember how I said “you should be all set”, last week? Turns out, I was only partially right. After creating a local user account, Linux also configures kdump, the kernel crash dumping mechanism. When attempting to do so, it returned this error message:

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  • Starting out with Oracle Linux

    I have been wanting to learn more about Linux for some time now, and the time has come to transform a desire to action. I have landed on Oracle Linux, for reasons that will soon become clear. As I don’t have any machine to dedicate to this, and because I want to have the ability to take snapshots and revert to previous states, I will be running Linux as a virtual machine.

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  • Automatically unlocking the default Gnome-Keyring


    One of the things that really annoy me about Linux is the fact that every time I start my computer, I have to enter a separate password to unlock the Gnome-Keyring, so as to log on to my wireless network. While I appreciate the need for a keyring, I really think it should be unlocked automagically. Luckily; there’s a way.
     
    What we need to do is to install a package called libpam-keyring, which can be found in the package manager. Once installed, a little bit of configuration is needed, by way of adding a couple of lines to the configuration file. Follow this next step carefully. If you put the line in the wrong place it may cause problems with other parts of machine authentication.
     
    Edit the /etc/pam.d/gdm file and append the following line to the end of the file: @include common-pamkeyring
     
    Once this is done, the gnome-keyring will be handed your login password, and unlock at logon, provided they are the same. If your login password and gnome-keyring password are different this will not work. To resolved this, you will need to ensure that they are the same, either by changing your login password, or by changing the gnome-keyring password, as detailed here

  • Clearing or Resetting the Gnome-Keyring

    A few weeks ago, I needed to change the password for the Gnome-Keyring, as I wanted to lend my computer to a friend. This can be done using either the command line or through the GUI, the latter being the one I prefer for its simplicity. Here’s how:
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  • Unetbootin – Run Linux from a USB thumb-drive

    Many of you will be familiar of the concept of Linux Live CDs. For those of you who are not, I’ll say this: Most Linux distros are these days installed using a Live CD. You enter the CD into the CD-ROM drive, start the computer, and there you go. Your computer boots from the CD, and your are, effectively running Linux. From there, you can try out the distro, and install it if you want to.
     
    Unetbootin is a program that lets you do the same, only with a USB thumb-drive. The point is that not all computers have a CD-ROM-drive, but most have a USB-port. You simply plug in the thumb-drive, and there you go,
     
    Unetbootin supports the following distributions of Linux and BSD:
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  • Essential Console commands in Linux

    Having once again forgotten most of the commands I use in the command shell in Linux in general and Ubuntu especially, I did a quick google search, which turned up this thread at the Ubuntuforums. The thread had two amazingly useful links, both of which referred to quick reference cheat sheets provided by FOSSwire.com Here they are:
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  • Ubuntu: Reinstalling MadWifi

    I’ve been having some problems connecting my EeePC to wireless networks of late. The problem was that it didn’t detect available wireless networks, nor did it connect to the ones I’d already defined.
     
    It runs Ubuntu 8.04, and I originally had to fuss around a bit to get the Atheros WLAN card to work. After reading more than a few forum posts, I found that reinstalling MadWifi most likely would fix the problem. The fix is done solely in the command line shell. I ran the following commands, in succession:
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