Tips ‘n Tricks :: Page 9

Archive for Tips ‘n Tricks – Page 9

How to Find Hardware Devices in Ubuntu Linux with lshw

by Chris Jean

January 22nd, 2009

Don’t you hate when you need to know and exact model of a specific hardware component but don’t want to open up the machine or find the original documentation on it? Never fear, Linux has you covered.

There are a variety of ways to find out what kind of hardware you’re running, but one of the easiest ways that gives you large amounts of valuable data is to use lshw (Hardware Lister). I’m running Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex), and lshw is installed by default. You can test if you have lshw installed on you system by running the following command:

[chris@home ~]$ sudo lshw

If you get a large listing spewed out on your terminal, you’re good to go. Skip down to the Using lshw section. If you run the lshw command and get a “bash: lshw: command not found” error, you should be able to install lshw using your system’s package manager easily.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
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grep – Why I Love Linux

by Chris Jean

January 21st, 2009

This is part one of what will likely turn into a long running series of posts on Why I Love Linux (WILL). The idea of WILL is to share little bits of what makes me love working with Linux. These could be small simple things such as a little feature here or there, the design concept behind Linux, or some other random thing.

I hope that by sharing what it is that I love about Linux, readers can learn a thing or two along the way.

To kick off this new series, I’m going to talk about one of the first command line tools that you should familiarize yourself with in Linux: grep.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
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Using the Same Keyboard and Mouse for Multiple Computers

by Chris Jean

January 20th, 2009

I have a large number of computers. At my desk at home, I have two computers, Lumiere and Samus. I’ll often set up my office laptop, Rommie, on my desk as well.

I have a KVM hooked up between Lumiere and Samus, but I don’t use the video switching part as Lumiere has a dedicated 24″ LCD and Samus has a dedicated 24″ and 19″ LCDs. So, I use the KVM to do nothing more than switch the keyboard and mouse back and forth.

Things get more complicated with the addition of the laptop. Now I have another keyboard and a trackpad instead of another mouse. Thus, I’m always switching the KVM over between the two systems as well as moving my hand from the keyboard and mouse to the laptop and back again. There has to be a better way. Fortunately, there is.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
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Fix Backspace in VIM

by Chris Jean

January 19th, 2009

Here’s a quick tip for those who may use VIM to edit files locally or remotely. If you are having problems getting your backspace to work (I.E. backspace doesn’t work at all in VIM), then the following tip is for you.

I found out that this is really easy to fix. When you edit a document, type in the following:

:set bs=2

Then hit enter. Now try to use your backspace key while in insert mode.

Once you confirmed that this works for you, add this option to your .vimrc file:

```
vi ~/.vimrc
```
Add
```
set bs=2
```
Save and close file

This will set your user to have that option set by default when you edit documents.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
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Accessing Your Home Network Away From Home

by Chris Jean

January 18th, 2009

I wanted to be able to access my home network from outside the home. My internet connection has a dynamic IP. This means that my home’s IP address on the web can change at any time. So the question is how do you connect to something that is constantly changing location?

The answer is easy, use a Dynamic DNS service. There are a variety of these services: No-IP, DynDNS, zoneedit, FreeDNS, etc. Each of these sites that I’ve listed offers free Dynamic DNS service.

So what is Dynamic DNS? It would probably be best to first define what DNS is and then what makes Dynamic DNS different.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
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Flush DNS Cache in Ubuntu

by Chris Jean

January 16th, 2009

As a web developer, I’m always having to work with DNS. Anyone who has dealt with DNS will tell you that caching is simultaneously a great thing and a horrible thing.

Today, I made a mistake with the IP address of a new host, and I needed to flush my DNS cache so that my machine would go and grab the new IP address. I hadn’t done this in Ubuntu before, so I had to figure it out. Fortunately, it’s really easy.

Load Terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal)
Type in the following:
sudo service networking restart
Press the Enter key
Put in your password

Done. Enjoy your newly flushed DNS cache.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
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Firefox Titlebar Missing in Ubuntu

by Chris Jean

January 14th, 2009

I just experienced a very odd behavior with Firefox on my system. Somehow, my titlebar had disappeared. I chose to ignore this as an odd glitch, figured it would go away when Firefox was restarted, and went about my work.

Eventually, it started to drive me nuts. Not only was the titlebar missing, but I could not resize Firefox, could not move Firefox, and it kept stealing focus from other applications and obscuring new windows.

Even at this point, I did not want to restart Firefox yet, so I kept just ignoring it. Then, Firefox froze entirely. It seems like I could still interact with Firefox via the keyboard (since the titles in the Window List panel kept changing), but the rendered image of Firefox never changed.

Restarting Firefox didn’t work. Restarting the system didn’t work. Changing from Emerald to Metacity (run “metacity –replace”) didn’t work. Uninstalling some new packages didn’t work. I was at a loss.

I settled back into just dealing with the problem, when I happened to accidentally switch Firefox to fullscreen (F11). Amazingly, when I switched back to normal, the problem went away.

So, the quick way to fix the problem of a missing titlebar in Firefox with Ubuntu (this problem may be present in other distros as well) is to switch to fullscreen and then back. Basically, you can press F11 twice to fix it.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
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Adding SSL Support to Apache on CentOS

by Chris Jean

January 14th, 2009

This is going to turn into another one of my “I love package management” posts. When I first starting managing Linux servers with Apache, adding a new module to Apache required going back to the source code, remembering the configure parameters you compiled Apache with last time, configuring Apache again with the same parameters plus whatever changes need to be made, compiling, testing, and then installing. It took hours. Now, it takes a few minutes to add something like mod_ssl support to Apache without having to compile anything.

Categories Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
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Install FFmpeg and ffmpeg-php on CentOS Easily

by Chris Jean

January 13th, 2009

FFmpeg is an amazing collection of open-source tools that can record and stream video and audio. However, it can also transcode video and audio (convert the files to different formats), and that is what has me so excited. There’s also a great PHP package called ffmpeg-php that allows for easy use of FFmpeg from inside PHP scripts. Today, I’m going to see if I can’t help you get both of these set up on your system.

Admittedly, it’s been a while since I’ve tried to install FFmpeg, about two years. I recently thought up some ideas on how I’d like to use FFmpeg, so I thought it was time to give it a try yet again. Today, I’m proud to say that installing FFmpeg is so much easier to install compared to the past, that I dare say it’s simple.

Here is my experience with installing FFmpeg on my server and how to fix the pitfalls that I encountered.

Categories Development, Linux, Tips 'n Tricks
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Cleaning a Computer: A Story of Smoke, Viruses, and Love

by Chris Jean

January 9th, 2009

image from New Life Service Co.

I got an emergency call from a friend yesterday. His computer was totally eaten up by viruses and couldn’t function anymore. He’s a writer and doesn’t do backups, so he was naturally very afraid that he would lose the book drafts that he’s been working on.

I brought him and his ailing computer over to my place to give it some TLC and get it back in fighting condition. This system, Raine, is special to me as it was the second computer I built. That was way back in 2002, and when I cracked the case, horror itself greeted me. I could see that I had a long night ahead of me.

Categories Random Ramblings, Tips 'n Tricks
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