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How to get package info (including version and dependancies) on just about anything in Ubuntu

25. September 2008

6 Comments

How to get package info (including version and dependancies) on just about anything in Ubuntu

Do you know how to find out what version of SSH is running on your Ubuntu box?  How about what version of apt?  Would you like to see what certain packages depend on to run?  Or find the MD5 hash for already installed packages?

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Ubuntu Rdesktop vulnerability - pretty easy fix

19. September 2008

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Ubuntu Rdesktop vulnerability - pretty easy fix

Just noticed that there was a vulnerability found with rdesktop in Ubuntu (and probably other systems as well). For 99% of the people, running a software update or typing the following will fix it

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How to get a cool, ray-traced animated screen saver for your Ubuntu Linux box

8. September 2008

4 Comments

How to get a cool, ray-traced animated screen saver for your Ubuntu Linux box

I stumbled on a beautiful screen saver for my Ubuntu box today called Eternity which features several flavors of Ubuntu plus a default animation as well.  The screen saver is called Eternity and the flavors are plain old vanilla Ubuntu, Ubuntu Studio and oddly enough, the Ubuntu Satanic release.

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Things you should never EVER type in Linux. Ever!

28. August 2008

83 Comments

Things you should never EVER type in Linux.  Ever!

I feel that I need to put a warning at the top of this post because try as I might in the subject to be clear about what I mean, I know that someone will go and type/execute one of these things into their production server at work and then be horribly distraught and/or cause some sort of power grid catastrophe across the Pacific Northwest or something. So DO NOT, DON'T, NEVER EVER EVER EVER run these commands in a terminal session.  If you do you will render your system anything from useless without a forced reboot to devoid of any useful purpose ever.

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Ubuntu security notice - kernel vulnerabilities found in all supported releases

26. August 2008

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Ubuntu security notice - kernel vulnerabilities found in all supported releases

There's an important security notice from the Ubuntu folks.  A kernel vulnerability was found.  It's pretty much only vulnerable to local attacks but it's always a good idea to update your boxes to the latest versions of the kernel (as noted in the below announcement) so that you reduce your vulnerability to threats.

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How to get updated world weather maps as your desktop background in Ubuntu

20. August 2008

24 Comments

How to get updated world weather maps as your desktop background in Ubuntu

I also like to see what's going on with the world, particularly the weather but often find myself not in orbit so I'm unable to track worldwide weather patterns like I want to. Then a though occurred to me - what if I set up one of my Ubuntu boxes to have a map of the world with clouds overlayed, updated every hour?  Neat!  I now have a map of the world with cloud overlays updated hourly for my background.

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How to run a dedicated Steam server on your Ubuntu box - Countestrike style

18. August 2008

16 Comments

How to run a dedicated Steam server on your Ubuntu box - Countestrike style

For a while now Valve through Steam have had a dedicated server for Linux from which you can launch your multiplayer fragfests.  I've recently started messing about with it and I've gotten Counter Strike, Counter Strike Source and Half Life multiplayer to launch off of it.  I'm still mucking about with server settings and finding statistics for it however I did not find a ton of documentation on this through Google so I decided to put up my notes here.

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How to delete stuck folders and files from your trash in Ubuntu

5. August 2008

13 Comments

How to delete stuck folders and files from your trash in Ubuntu

Every now and again, I’ll find myself with some files sitting around in my trash that I can’t delete.  This can be particularily problematic when I’ve got several gigs worth of stale ISOs sitting there giving me an error like Error removing file: Permission denied I like computers but I’m not a big fan of when they [...]

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Readyboost for Linux - a quick how to on getting more speed from a USB flash drive

24. July 2008

11 Comments

Readyboost for Linux - a quick how to on getting more speed from a USB flash drive

Readyboost for Vista is a feature added to the OS where you can encourage your limping Vista install to jog a bit faster by essentially using a smallish USB drive as disk cache.  There's also some Vista Voodoo with Superfetch going on there. While Ubuntu (the distro that I use) and other distros don't really use Superfetch, you can still get an advantage using the disk cache functionality - particularily if you're running on a system that doesn't have a ton of RAM available.

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How to rip, store, tag and enjoy MP3s on your Ubuntu install

16. July 2008

13 Comments

How to rip, store, tag and enjoy MP3s on your Ubuntu install

A short while back, I decided I needed to get a handle on my music collection.  I've got random MP3s from years back, purchased MP3s, CDs and even an old 8 track or two.  There are many ways to do go about this, but after throwing out the 8 tracks, here's what I did to get organized.

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Get Google Gadgets up and running on your Ubuntu install

7. July 2008

1 Comment

Not to long ago Google released their gadgets for Linux.  Those fine folks at GetDeb.net have compiled an easy to use .deb file for us Debian based Linux folk to use.  It’s quite simple - here’s what you do. First, download this .deb file (or this one if you’re on a 64 bit Ubuntu install). Once you’ve [...]

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Ubuntu Hardy Heron enters Beta 1 today

21. March 2008

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  The Heron is on the way.  This release looks like it’s going to be big!  Lots of new things, like Xorg 7.3 with an improved GUI for setting up resolution and refresh rates on more than one monitor.  A new Kernel (2.6.24), new Gnome (2.22) with GVFS backend so you can do things like restore [...]

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Amazon music downloader now available for Linux

3. March 2008

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Holy mother of MP3’s - Amazon.com has thrown out not one, but four Linux version of it’s music download software.  Here’s where you can get them for Ubuntu 7.10, Debian Etch 4, Fedora 8 or OpenSUSE 10.3.  You of course have to agree to a terms of use statement before downloading. Finally I can download The [...]

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Ubuntu Brainstorm - Submit and vote on ideas for Ubuntu

29. February 2008

1 Comment

Similar to the campaign Dell runs, you can pop on over to Ubuntu Brainstorm and both propose and vote on ideas for upcoming Ubuntu releases. Click the icon, share the link:

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Use your Ubuntu partition to fix a corrupt registry on a Windows XP partition

27. February 2008

15 Comments

Here’s the scenario. You have a dual boot machine, Ubuntu on one side, Windows on the other. You’re tooling around, doing your thing and then one day you boot into Windows and get this: Windows could not start because the following file is missing or corrupt: \WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\CONFIG\SYSTEM. That’s a bummer because it generally means [...]

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