Linux Blog

It’s that time of year, tree’s, plants and animals doing there thing. The time of the year where other wildlife and beings start cleaning up since the weather is nice. I guess it’s time for a post on some spring cleaning for the Linux folk

We will start off with a classic, sure to give you a clean start:
rm -rf .
Best done from root, just remember to press CTRL+c and/or reboot as quickly as possible when you realize what you have done.

On a serious note, I had a bunch of annoying hidden files in backup directories I wanted to get rid of. This did the trick.

find . -iname ".*"
find . -iname ".*" | wc -l
find . -iname ".*" | while read i ; do echo rm "$i" >> possibly_remove; done;

The above is conservative. ‘chmod 755 possibly_remove’, verify there are no files in there you actually want, you are in the correct directory then ‘./possibly_remove’ and you’re golden. Mmm. Spring freshness.

Since I like to live on the wild side, I run it without creating a file of files to delete that can be executed like this:

find . -iname ".*" | while read i ; do rm "$i"; done;

This will also work to cleanup nasty files that may have been accumulating a while that may be have left behind. It can be used to find and delete all Thumbs.db files by doing this:

find . -iname "thumbs.db" | while read i ; do rm "$i"; done;

The above is pretty careless, in most cases it probably wouldn’t hurt.

That is all the spring cleaning I have done, except for some random fsck’ing’ that was long overdue.

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It’s been a while. A while since I’ve had to actually had to manually edit the /etc/fstab to automount a partition. So long, that I searched my blog trying to find out how to do it. To my surprise, I’d never actually written one. If I had, I couldn’t find it. Here’s to you, memory:

According to /etc/fstab this is how it’s done

# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>

For those of us that are human, that can mean very little. What you can do, in hopefully slightly more understandable terms is add a line that looks like this:

/dev/sd[a|b|c][x] /mnt/[location] [filesystem] defaults 0 0

What that looks like in my case is:

/dev/sda5 /mnt/sda5 ext4 defaults 0 0

Save, exit and reboot. Hope for the best :)

Disclaimer – I did manage to find the man page for fstab while searching!

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Today we have a guest article submitted by Jesse L. on OpenStack. Enjoy!

Open source solutions, while certainly nothing new, have exploded into the consciousness of IT departments around the world over the past few years. Sensing an opportunity to move cloud computing forward, Rackspace introduced an open source cloud computing solution, OpenStack. The move was a risky one, but now it appears to be paying off as the technology has attracted supporters from around the IT industry.

OpenStack Origins
The origins for OpenStack date back to the summer of 2010 when Rackspace Hosting and NASA teamed up to create an open source project. The first release, code named Austin and released under an Apache License, was written in Python and designed to allow any organization to create a cloud solution for their clients. The original code included components for computing, object storage and image service, with security management and a user interface to be developed later. The software was initially well-received, and after a little more than a year it has attracted a number of major players in the cloud space, including HP, Citrix, Dell and AMD. In late 2011, Rackspace handed OpenStack over to a not-for-profit organization, which will support its continued development while attracting Rackspace’s competitors to use the solution.

The Risk of OpenStack
For a company that had cloud computing pretty well figured out, launching an open source product could have some serious drawbacks. But at the time, the future of cloud computing in general was at risk as vendor lock-in prevented many organizations from fully exploring cloud options. Once they chose a provider, companies simply wouldn’t have the option of an easy migration to another service. OpenStack aimed to become an open source solution that would do for the cloud what Android did for mobile devices, essentially becoming a base on which other companies could build and innovate. Rackspace considered the risk worth it, and if its collaboration with NASA paid off, the company would position itself as an industry guide for years to come. Almost two years later, that’s exactly what happened—and now Rackspace, and the cloud computing sector in general, are reaping the benefits.

OpenStack Benefits
The major benefit of OpenStack is that organizations can build on a technology that is quickly becoming an industry standard, making it easier to fully explore cloud computing options from a variety of providers. Since OpenStack is open source, it also benefits from the culture of open source software with people viewing, updating and perfecting the code. Since industry experts from around the world are involved in the project, OpenStack is poised to become stronger and more dominant as time moves on.
While not all open source software gambles pay off, OpenStack looks like a winner for Rackspace. From being little more than an interesting piece of open source news last year, the technology has grown and gathered the attention of most of the major players in the cloud computing industry. While there will always be vendor-specific cloud options available—especially from major vendors who already have tons of support and investment in their architecture—OpenStack is on its way to becoming an industry standard. A few hurdles still stand in the way, and only time will tell if the OpenStack Foundation can properly shepherd the technology into the future. But for now, Rackspace’s experiment looks like a success.

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was given an opportunity to review The Linux Command Line, a Complete Introduction, by William E. Shotts, JR from No Starch Press and decided to give it a go. Being somewhat of a command line geek, I’m always on the lookout for good material to learn new and interesting things, and perhaps recommend to others. This is one of the better books I’ve read on the Linux Command line. It is easy to read and users with a little experience will find it has straight forward descriptions and examples. The book contains a lot of information and the only thing I’ve found lacking is diagrams, but if you’re not a particularly visual learner, this may work for you.

The book is intended to be read from cover to cover, which is exactly what I did (very rare for me, I tend to jump around.) It is not supposed to be a reference work, but more of a story. The story starts off basically enough, moving on to more advanced topics, finishing with shell scripting, though there may be some squabbling over the order in which it is presented. The gentle introduction to vi gives enough information on how to use it without being too overwhelming, and to be honest it covers just about everything I can remember how to do with vi without picking up a reference. Pretty much everything I’ve ever written in the Shell Script Sundays could be explained in this book, but as it wasn’t written as a reference, it doesn’t really work well as one.

If you’re new to the Linux command line you’ll walk away knowing what it is capable of; how to do all kinds of stuff that the “experts” do on a daily basis and probably more. For example, I can’t remember the last time I printed something from the shell. There is so much information contained within this book, you’re almost guaranteed to learn something, I did.

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When re-installing or performing a fresh installs of Linux, I’ve found that packages often disappear from default installations. These are the tools I install from the get-go. I’m sure there is more that I’m missing, next time I re-install I’ll update the list. Feel free to contribute your favorites to the list in the comments!

(Read on …)

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Below, I review CVS, Subversion, and GIT; three popular open source version control systems. Version control systems are an organizational necessity for any software development project. During the software development process, multiple developers are often working with varying versions of the same code. One version may have a particular bug, while another version may have a particular feature. Essentially, a development team begins developing code, creating the first version. From that original trunk, there are various branches where the same versions of the code may be worked on at the same time, perhaps one team working on one particular bug, while another team works on a different one. Once changes are made, they are then committed back to the repository, the repository being where all past and current versions of the code is kept. Keeping track of which version has what is an incredibly important part of the process that allows developers to track bugs, implement new features, and keep the project moving forward. (Read on …)

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With my new Acer Aspire Netbook, it occured to me that it had been a long time since I’d installed Linux on a system without a CDRom. This post outlines some methods you can use to get it installed

(Read on …)

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I recently got a new computer. Part of the upgrade process was backing up and moving a large amount of data off of my old PC and onto my NAS so that I could sort through it later. One of the annoying things about copying files is it’s difficult to really know how long its going to take, either way I still like to monitor progress when copying or rsyncing data. This post shows two methods of checking your transfer status without the GUI. (Read on …)

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Here is a picture of Sir Billiam Gates kissing Claire Danes, Who is supposedly in Charlotte, NC right now filming or something. After making it I thought to myself
well, it doesn’t really fit the whole “Dual Boot” theme.
So I gimped another one up with Richard Stallman as Claire Danes (warning: may scare anyone with a soul…and small children). I am actually somewhat freaked out by the Stallman version and prefer Clare Danes to represent Linux sorry GNU/Linux, so thats the one I included. Two weeks after its creation and after disturbing friends and random old people on the street with it, I decided it was time to write a bit about dual booting. (Read on …)

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Earlier this year, I was shopping around for Netbooks and purchased the Acer Aspire One Netbook. I was specifically looking for a Netbook that was fairly small and portable, but with a keyboard that was actually usable. BestBuy had a few, a nice HP with an awesome keyboard…but it only came in hot pink… Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but as I’m not a 13 year old girl, it wasn’t really for me. The oh so helpful sales clerk informed me that, if I really wanted it, I could pay the extra $100 for the exact same thing in blue, but I’d have to wait for as it was out of stock. No thanks. There was a Toshiba with decent specs, but the keyboard wasn’t that great so I skipped on that one too.

The next day I checked out another BestBuy store since that’s all we really have around here, no Fry’s, Nothing! While I was out, I had to pick some stuff up from the nearby Walmart. Yes, yes, I know, I’m fueling the destruction of small businesses, but there are incredibly few options around here. After watching some People Of Walmart candidates, I decided to check out the electronics department. It seemed rather small for a Walmart, tucked right at the back or the store with a TV to employee ration of 50:1. I found the Netbooks, well, one Netbook, The Acer Aspire One, near the other computers. It was $260 which seemed pretty reasonable. When asking the clerk if I could get one unlocked, he told me they had the same one but in black in the storage area for $199. Sold! Most Helpful Walmart Employee Ever.

After removing it from its lunch box sized container, the first thing I noticed was how it looked like Acer had taken notes from Apple with their fancy packaging. That’s cool I suppose. It comes with Windows 7 starter. You’ll probably want to fix that. I tried calling Acer about the refund (hey I didn’t accept the EULA guys) but they didn’t understand my question and tried to step me through reinstalling Windows without a CD Rom. Apparently you have to request the CD from them and buy an external optical drive. I should have messed with them and asked them how to plug my parallel CD burner in, as there is no parallel port.

After booting up and getting thoroughly frustrated with Windows 7 Starter (What the hell, only 3 processes and you can’t change the background), I decided to give that Ubuntu Netbook edition a go. It was only slightly more bearable than Windows 7. Once it was installed, I booted and gave it about five minutes before deciding to install a non netbook specific distribution.
For the size and price, the specs are pretty decent:

10.1″ LED (1024×600)
Intel Atom N450 1.66Ghz, 512KB Cache – Dual Core!
1GB Ram
160GB HD
Intel Chipset
Atheros AR9285 PCI-Express Wireless network adapter

These serve me well for its intended purpose and actually exceeded my expectations. It is perfectly capable of running Virtual Machines with VirtualBox without any noticeable decrease in performance. Pretty much everything worked right out of the box with two exceptions. First, the Ethernet adapter (with Linux) and second, the built in microphone doesn’t work with Skype (on Linux), however an external does. Suspend and Hibernate even work!

Battery life is amazing for the standard 3 cell battery that comes with it. You can buy one with more cells, but I can normally find a power source in the four or more hours I manage to squeeze out of it. Powertop FTW! With the stock battery, it doesn’t weigh too much and is perfect to carry around all day without being a burden. The charger is somewhat small and has a click/snap plug on it. You can position it so that the adapter goes left to right, or top to bottom. The changeable tips also means you can swap them out to use the adapter in different countries (you have to buy them separately though.) Since I couldn’t find the tips I didn’t buy any, but to be honest I didn’t really look. After travelling with it I think the interchangeable tips would be well worth the investment, as it just doesn’t work well with a travel adapter. In England, it worked all-right as long as it was plugged into a surge, but if you plugged it into the wall, it would fall out of the adapter. In France, it didn’t fall out of the travel adapter but rather the travel adapter fell out of the wall. It wouldn’t charge via the adapter in a regular wall outlet, but if I propped it up in the bathroom into the shaver plug it would. I could blame this all on the plug, but to be honest the click/snap tips probably would have fixed it all.
Really, the only things I don’t like about it are the microphone and Ethernet issues (though I think those can be fixed), and the touchpad is entirely too sensitive when typing. You kind of have to type palms up, or be very careful not to touch it or you’ll end up typing somewhere else. You can fix that by getting a USB mouse or by turning the touchpad off temporarily (FN F7). Overall I’m very happy with it and would recommend it to anyone looking for a decent reasonably priced Netbook that can pack a punch.

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As many kids do, I grew up playing with Lego’s, there is something magical about building  with the little plastic bricks. One day I was bored so I Googled Lego Tux’s and found an awesome Lego Tux. It has been around for a while but is still really cool. I don’t have enough bricks to build one and even though there is a Lego store near by, I don’t think that I have the skills to make one without an instruction manual.

Check out: http://www.ericharshbarger.org/lego/penguin.html for more pictures and details!

Those who also love Legos and want to learn about design classes should look into an online degrees in design via www.GuidetoOnlineSchools.com.

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