GNU-Linux howtos

Encrypt a Hard Drive - Lazy Guide

Published by manu

This is a lazy guide (mostly for me to refer to) on how to encrypt a hard drive on Debian GNU/Linux. What this lazy guide does not cover is how to make your machine bootable, so if you want to encrypt your whole system (very good practice), you s... .. .

Remotely Encrypt a Debian Server

Published by manu

These notes may help you in the case where you need to install a server without ever having access to the console. In this case the OS is also pre-installed, either by an automated system or by the server provider.

The plan is to get a b... .. .

OpenVPN

Published by manu
Updated

There are many tutorials about OpenVPN, the most I've found where either too detailed to get something running real quick or way to short to actually understand what's going on. I like finding docs that get the crap running real quick and then goi... .. .

XMPP with ejabberd

Published by manu

When I wanted to first install a jabber/xmpp server I started looking around and spent most of my time trying to figure out which server to install and that kind of discouraged me, as well I could not find any plug and play tutorial to get started... .. .

Debian Lenny on Aspire One

Published by manu
Updated

This page is complementary to the Debian Wiki page dedicated to this machine.. so here are some things that are not (yet) on that page and are maybe a tiny bit off topic (kde related) etc.. I mig... .. .

sshfs

Published by manu

Using SSHFS to mount distant filesystems

Sometimes you want ("need") to mount a distant filesystem but you don't want ("have the time") to install NFS or something like that just for this particular need. .. and then you also realiz... .. .

Trickle

Published by manu

Trickle is a program that can shape bandwidth of TCP traffic. I find it quite useful when I want to upload large files without eating up all the bandwidth, at least that is the most useful usage for me.

I have tried using trickled with t... .. .

replacing a hard drive

Published by manu

The idea is to totally replace a hard drive with a new one, this means copying all the data from each partition of the old hard drive to a new one. why? :

  • Your hard drive is old and/or "almost" broken (see

Smart tools - S.M.A.R.T.

Published by manu

Smart is a system for surveilling the health state of hard drives, for more info please visit wikipedia. In short it's a great tool that one should use.

What you need

  • ... .. .

GPS and Linux

Published by manu

so you have a bluetooth GPS reciever and you have a computer running linux with bluetooth capabilities, maybe you have not yet used them together. .. well here are a few things that may help. this tutorial has been written using Ubuntu, actually ... .. .

basic commands

Published by manu

i originally wrote this tutorial when i first started using linux, at the my debuts i suffered and so i decided to help myself and others by writing a little howto for the first (or almost first) steps with linux. . i started by writing some note... .. .

NFS

Published by manu

NFS stands for Network File System, and yes this does mean that you can share files over the network.. . basically what you do with this is mount folders from a server onto a client. NFS uses IP addresses for "authentication", also it uses the s... .. .

install debian via usb

Published by manu

this little howto shows how to get a usb stick to act like an install cd for debian.. .

need:

  • the image file: boot.img.gz (hd-media)
  • the iso image: iso debian-xxx-netinst.iso

kubuntu on acer aspire one

Published by manu

the acer aspire one is one of those new tiny laptops with an SSD disk drive, i got the one with linpus linux which of course is useless for someone who does "things" with his/her computer.. . so i decided to install linux.. :] instead of putt... .. .

Awstats

Published by manu

tis a small tutorial on Awstats, we suppose that you already have Apache installed and working on your serrver.

get and uncompress the program

you will need to get Awstats from

Munin

Published by manu

Munin is a program that gives you some graphs about your system that you can visualize from a web page.

there are two parts to this, the server and the client, you can have one server and as many clients (nodes) as you may need, and so fro... .. .

AutoFS

Published by manu

This program allows one to automate mounting and unmounting of different types of filesystems, be it a usb drive, samba share or nfs, and for sure others. It is like fstab but on demand.

What you will need

  • A kernel w... .. .