Category: Linux
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Debian on self-encrypting drive using cryptsetup OPAL support
Context For a long time, I have been using a hard drive with cryptsetup LUKS software encryption for my desktop. However, I recently decided to purchase a new hard disk and this time went for SSD instead of HDD. Interestingly, the SSD came with built-in support for hardware encryption. What this meant was that instead…
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Lesser Know Useful SSH Features
I had given a small presentation in my organization on five of the lesser known useful SSH features. I am uploading the presentation here. Her is an interesting link I came across talking about the same topic – http://blog.tjll.net/ssh-kung-fu/
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Configuring Thunderbird As KNotes Mail Action
The steps are really simple. Save the below script to /usr/local/bin/knotes-mail-wrapper.sh #!/bin/bash set -eu # See /usr/share/doc/util-linux/examples/getopt-parse.bash for getopt example TEMP=$(getopt –name “$0” –options s:,b: –longoptions “subject:,body:” — “$@”) # Bad arguments, something has gone wrong with the getopt command. if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then echo “Termintaing …” >&2 exit 1 fi #…
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Setting up SSH and OpenVPN on Netgear WNDR4300
Introduction Unknown to many, the official Netgear WNDR4300 firmware is based on OpenWrt. The procedure described here involves making use of the OpenWrt repos to have openvpn up and running. It also involves recompiling the official firmware. So, this is certainly not for the faint hearted and expects you to have a good knowledge of…
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Linux Backup Solutions
In an earlier post, I spoke about the need for backup. However, I hardly spoke about the available backup solutions in Linux and just mentioned about a software that I no longer use. In this article, I will primarily focus on some of the popular linux backup solutions. Factors to consider There are many questions…
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Setting up hourly backups in Deja Dup
Déjà Dup is an excellent graphical backup solution for the GNOME Desktop environment. However, it is limited by that it does not provide backup frequency higher than a day through its graphical interface. So, we will leverage cron to achieve this for us. Adding a simple cron job with the command “xvfb-run deja-dup –backup –auto”…
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Super Grub2 Disk
The primary purpose of Super GRUB2 Disk is to help you boot into an OS whose bootloader is broken. Documentation for Super GRUB2 Disk can be found at http://www.supergrubdisk.org/wiki/SuperGRUB2Disk. I had an old system with Intel YM430TX motherboard lying around which would not boot from its hard disk. So I decided to patch Super GRUB2…
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Convert HTML to PDF using wkhtmltopdf
wkhtmltopdf is an excellent utility for converting an URL or HTML file to PDF. Kindly note that the current version of wkhtmltopdf in Debian, as of today, is 0.9.9, which is outdated. I highly recommend that you download the latest featured version from http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/downloads/list and use it instead. Here are some examples for using wkhtmltopdf.…
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Screencast in Linux
After trying out various screencasting applications in Linux, I figured out the below set of applications are the best for creating, modifying and editing screencasts. Kindly note that all the below mentioned software are available in the Debian main repository. recordMyDesktop: recordMyDesktop is a free and open source desktop screencasting software application written for GNU/Linux.…
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Reducing VirtualBox Dynamic VDI Size
Detailed instructions for reducing a dynamic VDI size can be found at http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?p=29272 (FAQ entry “How can I reduce the size of a dynamic VDI on disk?”). Reducing the size of a dynamic VDI is mainly a two stage process: Fill the filesystem free space with zeroes The mentioned way in the FAQ is to…