Install Linux development man pages in Ubuntu
By default Ubuntu doesn’t install the manual pages used for Linux software development which is an invaluable reference for any system developer. These man pages describe the Linux programming interface including Linux system calls as well as system library calls.
To install these man pages simply install the manpages-dev package.
$ sudo apt-get install manpages-dev
You can [...]
Setup user login restrictions with SSH
At various times it is necessary to restrict the users which can access a certain host. If your network relies on SSH it is as simple as changing an option in the sshd_config configuration file. You will of course need root access to make the necessary changes to this file and eventually reset the SSH [...]
Skip network filesystems when searching with find
When you run the find command on the root directory of a system you may want to exclude all network filesystems and confine your search to only your local machine. The benefits of this are obvious as it will save you a great amount of time especially if the mounted filesystem is very large.
Luckily [...]
View process environment details with proc
The process environment consists of all the individual environment variables which are passed on to the program by the shell when the program is launched. This environment can be read and changed by the program during its execution, and can affect how a program is linked or how it executes. For all these reasons it [...]
View system information with /proc/cpuinfo and /proc/meminfo
There are 2 files available on a Linux system which will give a user a wealth of information about a system. These files, /proc/cpuinfo and /proc/meminfo are written by the Linux kernel and tell you important details about your cpu and memory.
Both files are read-only and can be viewed with any text editor. [...]
How to X session forwarding over SSH
SSH allows secure (encrypted and authenticated) connections between two hosts. These connections include terminal sessions, file transfers, TCP port forwarding, as well as X window forwarding which I will be covering here. X forwarding is a form of tunneling that allows you to run a GUI application on a remote machine but let you [...]
Best Firefox 3 keyboard shortcuts
This is the list of the best Linux Firefox 3 keyboard shortcuts. These are shortcuts that I use on a day to day basis. It is amazing how much more efficient you can be when your not always reaching for your mouse.
Controlling Tabs
New Tab - Ctrl+T
Close Tab - Ctrl+W or Ctrl+F4
Next Tab - Ctrl+Tab or [...]
Install the GRUB boot loader to the MBR
You might need to reinstall the boot loader to the master boot record (MBR) if it becomes corrupted or erased. This can occur for example if Windows is installed on another partition which overwrites the MBR.
There are two ways to reinstall grub, automatically using grub-install, and manually through grub itself. grub-install is a script which [...]
Free ext3 reserved blocks with tune2fs
As a security measure the ext3 file system reserves 5% of device space for administrative processes. This protects the system by allowing root processes to continue using the disk if a user process runs wild and fills it up. With today’s larger disk capacities, 5% equates into gigabytes of arguably wasted space. Thankfully with the [...]
Change MIME settings in Firefox 3
In Firefox 3 it is easy to edit the MIME settings. These settings are used to control what program is used by default to open each file type you encounter while browsing.
To edit these settings in Firefox 3 navigate these menus:
Edit -> Preferences -> Applications
For each file type on the left you can designate [...]