Tips ‘n Tricks :: Page 4

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Run Virtual Machines Without the Host OS

by Chris Jean

March 14th, 2009

These days, I really want to dabble around more with virtual machines. They have a lot to offer for benchmarking and failover protection. However, I always thought that you needed a host OS to run the virtual machines in. In my experience, this was clunky at best and riddled with problems such as automatted startup of virtual machines, stability of the host OS, and degraded performance.

I’ve used virtual machines lately with Sun’s VirtualBox, a free virtualization platform that can run virtual machines. This has been valuable for testing different distros, but wouldn’t suffice for running virtual servers. At least, it wouldn’t based on my experiences.

I have a friend that has worked professionally with virtualization technology for a few years, and he pointed me to a VMware product called ESXi. Not only is ESXi free, it runs as the native OS in which other OSes can run virtually.

I have yet to test it out, but it shows great potential. If you have any experience with ESXi, I’d love to hear it.

Categories Development, Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
Comments (2)

Press This 404 Error with WordPress

by Chris Jean

March 12th, 2009

I just started using the Press This feature of WordPress, and I quickly ran into a problem. Each time I’d try to use it, I’d get a 404 error page.

I’m not sure exactly what the issue is, but there is an easy fix that you can find here.

Categories Tips 'n Tricks, WordPress
Comments (1)

Updating Daylight Saving Time on Linux

by Chris Jean

March 10th, 2009

A few days ago, I blogged about changing the timezone on a Linux server. In the post, I mentioned how the zoneinfo files needed to be updated in 2007 due to congress expanding the number of days that Daylight Saving Time covers. However, I did not go in depth about how to update the zoneinfo files.

Since then, I’ve received many search queries from people looking for information about why their server did not properly update when the Daylight Saving Time change hit. For instance, I got queries of “is daylight savings default in centos”, “daylight savings time didn’t change centos”, “dst timezone change centos”, and many more. It’s clear that there are server administrators out there that are very confused about the Daylight Saving Time situation on their server.

Today, I hope to remedy that problem and give server administrators the information they need to update these zoneinfo files. I typically focus in on specific platforms, but today, I’ll try to cover as many distros as I can as well as provide a universal solution.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
Comments (3)

Command Line History in Ubuntu Terminal

by Chris Jean

March 9th, 2009

I’ve had a lot of fun recently posting about how to do stuff on the command line in Linux. My focus is specifically for Ubuntu users, but the information and techniques can be used for any Linux distro.

Since I’m probably going to end up with a lot of content under this topic, I’ve decided to create a dedicated tag: Mastering the Command Line. I’ve gone through my older posts on this topic and tagged them as well. So, make sure to check out Mastering the Command Line if you want to know how to become a command line power user.

Back to today’s topic. You’re starting to learn how to use the command line, but it’s annoying to always have to type in similar commands over and over. If only there were a way to pull up commands that you’ve already run to run again as is or to quickly modify. Today, I’m going to teach you how to do exactly this.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
Comments (4)

Convert DOS-Formatted Files to Unix-Format in Ubuntu and CentOS

by Chris Jean

March 8th, 2009

Have you ever seen a bunch of ^M characters in a text file? This odd character at the end of a line can also be represented as a Ctrl+M or <CTRL>M. You don’t know what it is, and you want it to go away.

Today, I’ll help you understand what that odd ^M character is, why it is in some of your documents, and how to get rid of them.

Categories Development, Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
Comments (0)

Food For Thought

by Chris Jean

March 7th, 2009

I’m more or less taking the night off. I’ll leave you some good reading material that should cover just about any reader that comes here.

Make Linux: Harder – Better – Faster
This page is a great compilation of links on how to improve security, speed, functionality, or appearance of your Linux system.
Firefox Minefield
Very interesting version of Firefox that is in development. Apparently, it is capable of massive speed and gives Chrome a run for its money.
Conky
A highly-customizable graphical system monitor for your Linux desktop.
Armed and Dangerous
A blog I just happened upon today that has many great reads. The topics are varied, but there should be a little something for everyone. I was hooked with the My comment to the FCC on DRM post, as I share many of the feelings that the author does on the subject.
Swift Weasel
This project builds Firefox from source to provide optimized builds for the Linux platform. It’s still in the early stages but has potential.

I hope that my big post yesterday makes up for my weak one today.

Categories Linux, Random Ramblings, Tips 'n Tricks
Comments (0)

Multitasking from the Linux Command Line + Process Prioritization

by Chris Jean

March 6th, 2009

Did you know that you aren’t limited to working on one thing at a time while on a Linux command line? You can actually “minimize” a program that you are in, get back to the command line, and then return to the program whenever you’d like.

When you run a program or script on the Linux command line (from now on referred to as the shell), you are creating a new job. For those that are used to GUI environments, each of these jobs is somewhat like a window on the desktop. Just as you can have multiple windows and switch between them, the shell is capable of managing multiple jobs and allows you to switch between them.

There is a lot to cover, so let’s start simple by describing what states a shell job can be in.

Categories Development, Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
Comments (21)

Cleaning Out Old Linux Kernels in Ubuntu

by Chris Jean

March 5th, 2009

Without the Linux kernel, Ubuntu (and all the other Linux distros) would not exist. Despite this, most Linux users don’t know what a kernel is nor understand that the reason that Ubuntu is a Linux distro is because the kernel is Linux. All most users of any Linux distro is likely to know is that they will eventually have a large number of kernels installed on their system cluttering up their boot menu.

Describing what a kernel is and what it does is beyond the scope of this post. I do highly recommend that you first read the Wikipedia article on computer kernels followed by the article on the Linux kernel itself. I’d really like to do a post explaining what a kernel is in simple terms so that readers can gain a better appreciation for it and what it does for your distro. Please leave a comment letting me know if you are interested in this writeup.

Anyways, back to the topic at hand. What do we do with all these kernels that litter our boot menu? How do we remove them not just from our boot menu but from our file system as well?

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
Comments (1)

4 Great Tools to Find Files Quickly in Ubuntu

by Chris Jean

March 4th, 2009

Many of you fellow Ubuntu users will be familiar with the “Search for Files” tool that allows you to look for files. As is true with most things in Linux, there are great desktop tools, but more power can be found in Terminal than any streamlined desktop tool can match.

Today, I’d like to introduce you to a few tools that can turn a chore of finding files into an easy process.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
Comments (6)

Change Timezone in CentOS

by Chris Jean

March 3rd, 2009

You just got your new CentOS dedicated server, and you notice that times in your logs aren’t quite right. You check the time from the command line (run “date”), and find that the timezone is set to US Eastern or some other timezone. How do you get this changed?

Unfortunately, this is not an easy thing to figure out. Fortunately though, it’s not hard to do with the right directions.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
Comments (27)

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