A lot of people especially Linux die hards will believe this is a waste of time and why bother,  just run a full Linux distro and forget Windows.  I was a bit the same at first,  but them I thought about it and realised at work I am forced to used Windows and find I still want to use Linux to do some tasks.  With a laptop that isnt the most powerfull thing out there Virtualisation isnt an option,  so I tried Portable Ubuntu and works pretty well.

The Installation is very easy, all you need is a minimum 2Gig USB flash drive or similar.  The HowTo is here:   http://www.pendrivelinux.com/colinux-portable-ubuntu-for-windows/#more-1476

Enjoy

Ok,  Ive started again and finished a detailed list of all the main commands,  hope you find it usefull.

FILE COMMANDS

ls – directory listing
ls -al – formatted listing with hidden files
cd dir – change directory to dir
cd – change to home
pwd – show current directory
mkdir dir – create a directory dir
rm file – delete file
rm -r dir – delete directory dir
rm -f file – force remove file
rm -rf dir – force remove directory dir *
cp file1 file2 – copy file1 to file2
cp -r dir1 dir2 – copy dir1 to dir2; create dir2 if it doesn’t exist
mv file1 file2 – rename or move file1 to file2 if file2 is an existing directory, moves file1 into directory file2
ln -s file link – create symbolic link link to file
touch file – create or update file
cat > file – places standard input into file
more file – output the contents of file
head file – output the first 10 lines of file
tail file – output the last 10 lines of file
tail -f file – output the contents of file as it grows, starting with the last 10 lines Process Management

PROCESS CONTROL

ps – display your currently active processes
top – display all running processes
kill pid – kill process id pid
killall proc – kill all processes named proc *
bg – lists stopped or background jobs; resume a stopped job in the background
fg – brings the most recent job to foreground
fg n – brings job n to the foreground

FILE PERMISSIONS

chmod octal file – change the permissions of file to octal, which can be found separately or user, group, and world by adding:
● 4 – read (r)
● 2 – write (w)
● 1 – execute (x)
Examples:
chmod 777 – read, write, execute for all
chmod 755 – rwx for owner, rx for group and world For more options, see man chmod.

SSH

ssh user@host – connect to host as user
ssh -p port user@host – connect to host on port port as user
ssh-copy-id user@host – add your key to host for user to enable a keyed or passwordless login

SEARCHING

grep pattern files – search for pattern in files
grep -r pattern dir – search recursively for pattern in dir

command | grep pattern – search for pattern in the output of command

locate file – find all instances of file

SYSTEM INFO

date – show the current date and time
cal – show this month’s calendar
uptime – show current uptime
w – display who is online
whoami – who you are logged in as
finger user – display information about user
uname -a – show kernel information
cat /proc/cpuinfo – cpu information
cat /proc/meminfo – memory information
man command – show the manual for command
df – show disk usage
du – show directory space usage
free – show memory and swap usage
whereis app – show possible locations of app
which app – show which app will be run by default

COMPRESSION

tar cf file.tar files – create a tar named file.tar containing files
tar xf file.tar – extract the files from file.tar
tar czf file.tar.gz files – create a tar with Gzip compression
tar xzf file.tar.gz – extract a tar using Gzip
tar cjf file.tar.bz2 – create a tar with Bzip2 compression
tar xjf file.tar.bz2 – extract a tar using Bzip2
gzip file – compresses file and renames it to file.gz
gzip -d file.gz – decompresses file.gz back to file

NETWORK

ping host – ping host and output results
whois domain – get whois information for domain
dig domain – get DNS information for domain
dig -x host – reverse lookup host
wget file – download file
wget -c file – continue a stopped download

INSTALLATION

Install from source:
./configure
make
make install
dpkg -i pkg.deb – install a package (Debian)
rpm -Uvh pkg.rpm – install a package (RPM)

SHORTCUTS

Ctrl+C – halts the current command
Ctrl+Z – stops the current command, resume with fg in the foreground or bg in the background
Ctrl+D – log out of current session, similar to exit
Ctrl+W – erases one word in the current line
Ctrl+U – erases the whole line
Ctrl+R – type to bring up a recent command
!! – repeats the last command
exit – log out of current session

* use with extreme caution.

In a previous post I discussed how to set your NIC to 100Mbs Full duplex using ethtool.  The downside with that is once you reboot the setting will be lost,  so here is a simple script to make it permenant.

Note this is for Debian or Ubuntu.

Create a new script as follows:

$ sudo nano /etc/init.d/100Mbs

Add the following lines to the new file:

#!/bin/sh
ETHTOOL="/usr/sbin/ethtool"
DEV="eth0"
SPEED="100 duplex full"
case "$1" in
start)
echo -n "Setting eth0 speed 100 duplex full...";
$ETHTOOL -s $DEV speed $SPEED;
echo " done.";;
stop)
;;
esac
exit 0

Save and close the file.

To make the file executable change the permission with:

$ sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/100Mbs

Now, to make the script run when the system boots up. Use update-rc.d command install System-V style init script links:

# sudo update-rc.d 100Mbs defaults

You shoild see an output like this :

 Adding system startup for /etc/init.d/100Mbs ...
   /etc/rc0.d/K20100Mbs -> ../init.d/100Mbs
   /etc/rc1.d/K20100Mbs -> ../init.d/100Mbs
   /etc/rc6.d/K20100Mbs -> ../init.d/100Mbs
   /etc/rc2.d/S20100Mbs -> ../init.d/100Mbs
   /etc/rc3.d/S20100Mbs -> ../init.d/100Mbs
   /etc/rc4.d/S20100Mbs -> ../init.d/100Mbs
   /etc/rc5.d/S20100Mbs -> ../init.d/100Mbs

Either reboot the system or restart to process to take effect with:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/100Mbs start

Check your interface settings with ethtool

ethtool eth0

All done,  you will never have to set your interface speed and duplex again

Sockso is a cross platform music server and requires no installation. It runs on a standalone PC or Server. This guide is for running Sockso on a Server platform,   to install and run with a GUI on a PC refer to the Sockso Web site.

Sockso gives you the ability to stream all your music  – Supports MP3, OGG Vorbis, Flac and WMA,  anytime, anywhere via a web interface through your browser.  All that you require is Flash on your client end and a decent internet connection minimum should have at least IEEE 802.11g (54M) Wifi connection for smooth operation.

Sockso requires Sun Java only, no Apache or other web server is require to run.

So,  lets start:

1 )

Sockso requires Sun Java to work. You should install the following packages.

sudo apt-get install sun-java6-bin sun-java6-fonts sun-java6-jre unzip

2 )

Download the latest version of Sockso. The current version is 1.2 at the time of this writing.

wget http://sockso.googlecode.com/files/sockso-1.2.zip

unzip sockso-1.2.zip

sudo mkdir /usr/share/sockso

sudo cp -R /home/user/sockso-1.2/* /usr/share/sockso/

sudo mkdir /var/sockso
sudo chmod -R 0755 /var/sockso

Step )

Run the Sockso at command prompt.

sudo sh /usr/share/sockso/linux.sh --nogui --datadir /var/sockso

To add your music collection, enter the directory path for all you music.  You can enter multiple paths eg. If you had to different directories with music, /home/user/music and /home/user2/mp3, just run the following command to populate your collection:

#SockSo#>coladd /home/samiux/music
#SockSo#>coladd /home/mary/mp3

To list all collection directory paths, use the following command.
collist

To delete a directory from the collection, use the following command.
coldel

Adding users to Sockso.

#SockSo#>useradd samiux <your_password_here> samiux@gmail.com

To exit the #SockSo#> command prompt.
exit

4)

Copy the init.d script to /etc/init.d/

sudo cp /usr/share/sockso/scripts/init.d/sockso /etc/init.d/sockso.pl

Create a sockso script file.

sudo nano /etc/init.d/sockso

-------- CUT HERE ---------
#!/bin/bash

perl /etc/init.d/sockso.pl $1

exit 0
-------- CUT HERE ---------

Edit the sockso.pl as the following.

sudo nano /etc/init.d/sockso.pl

system( 'sh linux.sh --nogui --datadir /var/sockso > /dev/null 2>&1 &' );

use constant SOCKSO_DIR => "/usr/share/sockso/";

5)

Make the scripts executable:

sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/sockso
sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/sockso.pl

Now, you can start the sockso with the following command

sudo /etc/init.d/sockso start

You can also stop the sockso with the following command.

sudo /etc/init.d/sockso stop

To connect to your Sockso Web Interface enter the IP or FQDN of your server.

http://192.168.0.1:4444

6)

To run the script automatically after reboot update the rc.d with.

sudo update-rc.d sockso defaults

Using MySQL as a backend

By default Sockso uses the Java database engine HSQLDB. This provides a nice fast easy way to get a database up and running in an application and works excellently for most uses of Sockso.

With a very large collection you may run into some performance problems and possibly “out of memory” errors when accessing some of the pages.   In these cases you have the option of changing the database engine Sockso uses, and for this MySQL support is available.

NB: Sockso requires MySQL 5+

1) Download Sockso’s Optional Components

You will need to install the optional components first to use MySQL.

2) Create the database

You  will need to create a MySQL database for Sockso to use. It doesn’t need to have any tables in it, Sockso will create all of these when it starts up, but the database does need to exist.

3) Start Sockso with MySQL

When the database is created, start Sockso with the following command line switches (changing the values to match your set up obviously) which tell it to use MySQL, and the connection information for the database.

$> java -jar sockso.jar --dbtype=mysql \

      --dbhost=localhost \

      --dbuser=myuser \

      --dbpass=secret \

      --dbname=socksodb

Sockso will now be running with MySQL.

NB: This will be a completely blank database.

NOTEs :

• Make sure you have stopped the Sockso before reboot or shutdown; otherwise, the mp3 databases would be corrupted. If so, you should delete everything inside /var/sockso and redo the Step 3.
• · Broadcasting copyrighted music can lead to heavy fines or even lawsuits.
• For more detailed information and questions refer to the Sockso Website http://sockso.pu-gh.com/ or forums http://forums.pu-gh.com/

This is the quick and easy way,  compared to going to the Java website downloading then installing etc etc etc.

sudo apt-get install openjdk-6-jre
sudo update-alternatives –config java
java -version

All done

Ever had the issue with which you wish to send a file to someone when you are chatting via IM or in the middle of a gaming session etc and find its too big to send via your IM client and emailing is too much trouble at the time.  Well this small application is for you.  Its quick, efficient and easy.

There are a lot of tools to tackle this problem. For large scale communities there are dozens of   networks. However, they don’t work for small local networks. One way is to put your stuff  on a local  server to share, but maintaining this can be tedious. Tools like the ingenious npush/npoll are extremely helpful, provided that both parties have it installed, SAFT/sendfile also aims to solve this problem, but needs a permanently running daemon…

Woof (Web Offer One File) tries a different approach. It assumes that everybody has a web-browser or a commandline web-client installed. Woof is a small simple stupid webserver that can easily be invoked on a single file. Your partner can access the file with tools he trusts (e.g. wget). No need to enter passwords on keyboards where you don’t know about keyboard sniffers, no need to start a huge lot of infrastructure, just do a

     $ woof filename

and tell the recipient the URL woof spits out. When he got that file, woof will quit and everything is done.

And when someone wants to send you a file, woof has a switch to offer itself, so he can get woof and offer a file to you.

Prerequisites and usage

Woof needs Python on a unix’ish operating system. Some people have used it successfully on Windows within the cygwin environment.

    Usage: woof [-i <ip_addr>] [-p <port>] [-c <count>] <file>

           woof [-i <ip_addr>] [-p <port>] [-c <count>] [-z|-j|-Z|-u] <dir>

           woof [-i <ip_addr>] [-p <port>] [-c <count>] -s

    Serves a single file <count> times via http on port <port> on IP

    address <ip_addr>.

    When a directory is specified, an tar archive gets served. By default

    it is gzip compressed. You can specify -z for gzip compression,

    -j for bzip2 compression, -Z for ZIP compression or -u for no compression.

    You can configure your default compression method in the configuration

    file described below.

    When -s is specified instead of a filename, woof distributes itself.

    defaults: count = 1, port = 8080

    You can specify different defaults in two locations: /etc/woofrc

    and ~/.woofrc can be INI-style config files containing the default

    port and the default count. The file in the home directory takes

    precedence. The compression methods are "off", "gz", "bz2" or "zip".

    Sample file:

        [main]

        port = 8008

        count = 2

        ip = 127.0.0.1

        compressed = gz

It can be downloaded from HERE

After years of using SME server – I really like SME for its simple but effective package, and Clarkconnect – never again, I decided to take a big step and build a custom server from scratch built on Ubuntu Server 8.10, which turned out to be alot easier than expected. I had all services – File Sharing, SSL, Web server, mysql, FTP and torrent engine (see my torrentflux tutorial) up and running smoothly in about an hour. The only thing that stopped my in my tracks was setting up an email server…..

I searched the net for days reading a number a tutorials all saying something slightly different. I made several attemps to get the all the required applications working together with no success, and eventually gave up. I found that all the tutorials have some niggling problem that none of the forums could workout completel or made dodgy work arounds. Or they just plain didnt work.

So I have devised my own setup, which admittedly is a little more bulky but a hell of a lot easier to get up and running. For all the people that have given up try this.

Firstly, I am running Ubuntu 8.10 server Ed, so I cannot vouch for this elsewhere although it should work on all distros without hitch.

So the quick and simple solution I put together was to create a Virtual machine with VMware2 -a better version for server as it has a web interface ( see my VMware tutorial). With that in place I installed an SME server setup to be only an email server.

This will give up a functioning email with webmail with only a small and easy configuration on installation.

The Next step is to link the two with LDAP…

To be continued.

Yes I know its a big call, but… read on.

In my search for an Open Source firewall software package for my company network I looked at Smoothwall, IPcop and Monowall to name a few. Then I came across Vyatta.

This software is tauted as better than Cisco and its free. Admittedly, you will need to have a certain level of networking knowledge to configure it and there is a great deal of documentation on their site as well as community forum.

For a business solution to your firewall and networking needs definatly look at Vyatta . I am extremely impressed and happy with the product and stability.

VMware Server is a proprietary virtualization software package made available for no cost from the VMware website. VMware Server allows you to run entire operating systems in a virtual machine, which run on top of Ubuntu. This guide provides instructions on installing, configuring and running VMware Server and VMware Server Console on Ubuntu. VMware server may be used on Desktop and Server editions of Ubuntu.

Installation and Quick Start

Ubuntu 8.10 (VMWare Server 2.0.0 Build 122956)

There is no package yet available. You can download it athttp://www.vmware.com/go/getserver

1. Get a serial number (displayed at the download page link received by email as part of the registration process)
2. Download the tar.gz file to your home directory
3. Install required packages

sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`

1. Download the required patch athttp://ubuntuforums.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=94477&d=1227872015 and save in your home directory

2. Unpack, apply patch and run vmware-install.pl

cd ~

tar zxvf VMware-server-2.0.0-122956.i386.tar.gz

cd vmware-server-distrib

sudo patch ./bin/vmware-config.pl ~/vmware-config.pl.patch

sudo ./vmware-install.pl

1. Follow the settings displayed at your screen and don’t change default values if not necessary. Be sure to add your normal username as VMware Server administrator

2. Enter the serial number when prompted

3. Vmware2 has a web interface. Browse with Firefox to http://localhost:8222.

4. Log in with your normal username and password

Note: You can also access the web interface via SSL at https://localhost:8333. You will probably need to add this site to your SSL Exception sites on your browser.

Installing VMware Tools on an Ubuntu VMware guest system

Installing VMware Tools inside your virtual machines can improve their performance. For information about speeding up your Ubuntu virtual machines see VMware/Tools