My Little Pocket Universe
When you install Ubuntu with the default partitions, for some reason, it uses only half of the available disk. If you forget to create a home/var/whatever partition during the install process, you can do it after the fact. To use all of the remaining space in a volume group, you can use the following syntax: … Read more
So you have your nice shiny linux box, and you are properly not allowing remote root logins, but you still need to be able to run X11 apps as root through ssh. But when you try, you get the dreaded error like: Gtk-WARNING **: 19:41:13.383: cannot open display: localhost:10.0 Well that is a pain. This … Read more
Sometimes you need things in life to slow down. Modern terminal emulators are great tools, and they can render text very quickly. This is usually the desired effect. But there are times when you need things to come at you a little slower. I have some old vt100/ansi animations that essentially do nothing when they … Read more
Sometimes you will end up with a linux host that is swapping, and many times it will be obvious which process has been chewing up swap (hint: it is always java). But in those cases where it is not as apparent, I whipped up a little bash script to walk the process tree and list … Read more
Sometimes it’s desirable to have a back door into a system that is behind a firewall. ssh is a security person’s best friend, and worst nightmare. This is more in the latter category, but as an admin, incredibly useful. I have a server that I can get outbound connections to anywhere, but do not have … Read more
For some strange reason, in the land of the internet when people create books with flowable text (i.e. novels), they use the PDF format, which is simply awful for the medium. Yet when they have a content that lends itself perfectly to the PDF format, like comics, they instead use an unnecessary made-up format that … Read more
Steps I do when I am setting up a new Raspberry Pi. If using the official LCD screen, for some unknown reason, it still defaults to an upside-down orientation when hooked up. This is simple to fix. Edit /boot/config.txt and add the following line: lcd_display=2 The 2 rotates it 180ยบ (the most likely choice for … Read more
For Ubuntu: Update /etc/default/grub and add the quoted text to whatever is already there. GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT=”consoleblank=0 vt.cur_default=6 vt.color=2″ This will also set it so the console never blanks; adjust “consoleblank” to your own tastes (in seconds). After updating, you need to run a command to commit the changes to the kernel at next boot: /usr/sbin/update-grub For … Read more