Category: How-Tos
How To Remotely Decrypt LUKS Encypted Partition Over SSH
Some Linux distributions allow you to install all of your partitions, save the boot partition, onto encrypted partitions. Doing this can be a big increase to the security of your data, should your computer be stolen, but can be an inconvenience when installed on a server that has no input...
Set a Static IP in Initramfs
[Initramfs](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Initramfs) (wikipedia) is a temporary filesystem that can boot a Linux system. Using initramfs allows you to use complex file partition schemes for your root directory, such as storing your root on a raid array, or on an encrypted partition. Because it is designed to do such complex tasks, it...
Creating and Deploying a SSH Key
A SSH Key allows you to log into a remote server without ever having to enter the password for you user on that server. In some situations, you can use this to increase security, by configuring the remote host to only allow SSH to be used when the client has...
How Image Your Operating System for Free
Whether you have a OEM edition of Windows installed on your computer and you don't have an install disk, or you have finally gotten your Gentoo system up and running, it's a good idea to make a complete backup of your operating system. Although you can generally simply copy the...
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...
Mount a Windows Share Folder As a Drive
For most purposes, the built-in features of Nautilus to browse and mount smb shares will suffice. But in some cases, such as when you wish the folder to be automatically mounted, or need to have another application read from the folder, it needs to be mounted differently. In my case,...
Set Unified Inbox for Thunderbird
For anyone with multiple email accounts that they regularly check, being able to view all of the contents of every inbox at one time is a great boon, and is one of the few reasons that email clients are still more worthwhile then the web interface. To find a way...
Fix Missing Dependencies in Gentoo with revdep-rebuild
This morning I updated my desktop. When I returned, I soon discovered that wmv files would no longer play in VLC or Mplayer. Apparently the file libx264.so.78 no longer existed. Thus began one of those searches that Gentoo sometimes subjects me to, a search to find out why something no...
Change the Word Completion Accept Key
OpenOffice has a helpful feature which suggests possible endings to a word that you are typing, something that can really come in handy if you have regular difficulty spelling the word. However, the default key to accept one of these suggestions is the Enter key. I find this to be...
Securely Browse the Web with SSH and a Static IP
Connecting an open network and then sending out confidential information over that said network is an invitation to having your information compromised. The best way to ensure that your data is safe is to encrypt the data, but not every site is set up to allow encryption. However, assuming that...
Safely Reboot a Hung Linux System
Sometimes a Linux system has a serious problem while running, preventing you from issuing a halt or reboot command to the system, meaning that you will have to force the system to reboot. However, using the power button to forcibly reboot isn't the best thing to do to the system...
Don't Autocheck Root
Last night I had one of those little crisises that computer users tend to run into. You know what I mean - when something breaks randomly and the computer decides that it will drop you into a repair shell and from the cryptic messages that it left during the boot...
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 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),...
NoScript Pings My Site Fix
After the 2.0 version of [NoScript](http://noscript.net/) installed on my desktop, I began noticing a curious event repeatedly occurring in my Drupal access logs. Every few minutes I would get a hit on the main page of this site from my IP, despite the fact that I wasn't visiting the site...
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...
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...
Path and Pathauto Modules in Drupal
Minutes before moving my thoughts blog to a new directory, I configured the pathauto module to automatically rename the path to each story to reflect its title rather than reading node/#. I had been meaning to do this for quite a while, and it turned out to be quite simple...
Weird Ebuild Problem
Today I was battling with my system again, in my attempt to make my dvd drive automount. At one point, I needed to recompile my system, to allow a new use flag to be compiled into my system. Too bad I hit an error, specifically `ERROR: dev-python/libgnomecanvas-python-2.28.0 failed:`. This error...
A Crontab Alarm Clock
At first glance, the idea of setting up a alarm clock in Linux using cron probably seems very simple to most long term Linux users, and for the most part it is an easy and simple project. Unfortunately, there are a few hangups to creating the system, the main one...
Settings Keybindings in Gnome
For most people, the default key bindings in their system might be more than adequate. But for others, whether it happens to be because your mulitmedia keys don't work with a certain player, or there is a command that you run over and over again and want to program it...
Images in Posts in Drupal Tutorial
This guide walks the reader through the steps of configuring a Drupal installation to allow Drupal users not only have images displayed within posts but also to configure the position and size of the images. First download all the required modules to your webserver, these modules are: * [Image](http://drupal.org/project/image) module...
Dealing alsa defaults and a second sound card on Gentoo
My motherboard has an onboard sound card using the AC97 chipset, which not only has crappy sound quality, but also has often proven to be rather unstable on my system. As a result, I ended up installing a (very) old Sound Blaster Audigy 2 card onto my system. Unfortunately alsa,...
Installing Adobe Flash on Gentoo
To successfully install Adobe Flash into Gentoo Linux I took the following steps. 1. Added the line `www-plugins/adobe-flash` to the file `/etc/portage/package.keywords` 2. Added the line `www-plugins/adobe-flash nsplugin` to the file `/etc/portage/package.use` 3. Added the line `www-plugins/adobe-flash AdobeFlash-10` to the file `/etc/portage/package.license` Steps 1 and 2 may not be necessary,...
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...