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Building My Own Ubuntu
Photo by OpenClipartVectors You probably don’t need to build your own distribution of Linux. There are already so many to choose from and with a bit of research, I bet you can find one all prepackaged...
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Web Server File Permissions Mystery Solved
Photo by Bonnybbx Ever wonder if this whole Linux thing is actually unholy devil worship? If you’ve ever worked on web server file permissions, you might think so. They take the right amount of...
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Sharing Files with Samba the Easy Way
Yeah, I hear you talking but I don’t believe a word. “You say you’re gonna keep it simple.” “You say you’re gonna stick to just having one Linux machine to play around with and you’re not gonna need to...
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The X First Aid Kit For Linux
If you spend some time on Linux-based social media sites or forums, you inevitably see posts where a user is having trouble logging into their desktop. Either the boot finishes and they’re left looking...
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Schedule FiOS Router Reboots with a Pogoplug
There are few things in life more irritating than having your Internet go out. This is often caused by your router needing a reboot. Sadly, not all routers are created equal which complicates things a...
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Using Command Line Aliases – Frequently
Back in 1994, when I had been using SunOS for three years and Linux for almost two years, people started talking about how you could make DOS command line abbreviations. What swill. By that time, I...
View ArticleManaging User Accounts and Passwords
Back when I was just another user…. While reviewing the video that goes along with this article, my mind drifted back to my first real paying job in radio. It was a big station with a big news...
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Bashing Your Shell: Shell Scripting Boot Camp
Spend enough time on the command line and you’ll eventually want to do many tasks…that take some intricate commands…repeatedly. A good example of this, is making thumbnails of photos. Basically, our...
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Recalbox Raspberry Pi Retro Gaming
I’ll be first to admit that I’ve been putting off setting up a Raspberry Pi for my wife to use for retro gaming. I knew there were a few games she missed but Mario Kart 64 was the big one. I’ll also be...
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What Are Linux Meta-packages?
I was recently in a discussion about meta-packages, and realized many users don’t know what they are or what they do. So, let’s see if we can clear-up the mystery. Meta-packages in a nutshell A...
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Speeding Ahead with ZFS and VirtualBox
In total, I have about 20 virtual hosts I take care of across a few workstations. On one system alone, I keep five running constantly, doing builds and network monitoring. At work, my Ubuntu...
View ArticleLearning The Linux File System
Before we get started, let’s avoid any confusion. There are two meanings to the term “File System” in the wonderful world of computing: First, there is the system of files and the directory structure...
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Extracting and Organizing with Bash
Long week? Yeah, me too. I have my heavy metal Linux band in the motel room and no customers to attend to at the moment…let’s do some Bash scripting! Remember the “thumbnailing” script I did a few...
View ArticleSkimming Files Before You Grep Them
Grep is a utility to find string patterns in text files. I cannot show you all the magic that grep can perform. Often the stuff you want to find in a file is buried in a lot of crud you don’t want in...
View ArticleKeeping Linux Clean
One of the great things about Linux is how stable it is over time. The biggest challenge with Linux is getting it installed, finding and configuring the software you need to get stuff done. Once you...
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Boost Your Hard Drive with Bcache
Made by Albert Westra using with MyPaint and Gimp/Gmic A few weeks ago I converted my friend’s Chromebook from its stock ChromeOS to Ubuntu. As payment, he let me keep the Kingston 16GB M.2 SSD which...
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Backup Plex For Ubuntu Reliably
It’s no secret that I like watching TV. From movies to TV shows, I like ’em all. I’m also a very happy cord cutter. This means I use a combination of services ranging from Netflix to Amazon Prime for...
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Finding Recent Files
Finding Recent Files Gnarly Backup School Series Before you suggest that it is better to use a backup program like Bacula or Amanda, I shall insist that making backups from the command-line is mighty...
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Finding the Offending Directories
Gnarly Backup School Series We have washed up on the shores of find…all these files drifting around us in the surf. Remember: In the last article I asked you to try finding all the files in your home...
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Cleaning Linux: Jed’s Nappy /boot
My home NAS machine is an Ubuntu 14.04 machine with a ZFS volume. I need the linux-headers packages in order to compile my ZFS dkms modules. Those take more space than the kernels tend to, so I try and...
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