When working as a systems administrator, you’ll always end up having to solve a file system full error in a hurry. Here are a few commands and hints to help you get out of it quickly on a UNIX like system.
Continue reading Linux / Unix : Disk usage and identifying biggest files
Tag: linux
Gentoo Linux / Portage : How to know which package provided an installed file
If there’s a file installed on your disk for which you’d like to know what package provided it, you can use the equery command like below :
Continue reading Gentoo Linux / Portage : How to know which package provided an installed file
Gentoo : Xorg X Server 3D hardware acceleration
You need to have read/write permissions to /dev/dri/cardX to benefit from 3D hardware acceleration in Xorg X Server. On a Gentoo linux machine, this file has the following permissions set by default :
ls -l /dev/dri/card0
crw-rw---- 1 root video 226, 0 2009-10-14 16:12 /dev/dri/card0
Continue reading Gentoo : Xorg X Server 3D hardware acceleration
Gentoo : Running Cacti with LigHTTPD
If you use Gentoo and tried to install Cacti with Lighttpd instead of Apache, chances are that you ran into this error message :
/usr/lib/python2.6/site-packages/WebappConfig/content.py:27: DeprecationWarning: the md5 module is deprecated; use hashlib instead
import md5, re, os, os.path
* Fatal error: Your configuration file sets the server type "Apache"
* Fatal error: but the corresponding package does not seem to be installed!
* Fatal error: Please "emerge >=www-servers/apache-1.3" or correct your settings.
* Fatal error(s) - aborting
HAL + Xorg X server : Using HAL to set hardware specific configurations for Xorg Xserver
The Xorg X Server can now rely on HAL to get information about the hardware the machine is running. This allows the X Server to auto-configure most of its components such as keyboard / mouse / screen / graphic adapter. But there is still room for tweaking it if needed.
This post explains how to configure extra properties for a keyboard at the HAL level, so that X Server will correctly auto-configure it for you.
rTorrent : Probing downloads status through XML-RPC
rTorrent is a very efficient BitTorrent client for linux. It has a very small memory footprint, a very customizable configuration file, and exposes it’s internals through XML-RPC. This is convenient to implement 3rd party GUI or web interfaces.
Let’s see how to setup and use XML-RPC to probe rTorrent downloads.
Continue reading rTorrent : Probing downloads status through XML-RPC
VIM: using the modeline for file based customized editing parameters
The “modeline” is a common way to set (or override) VIM settings on a file by file basis. Let’s see a few of the key concepts of the VIM modeline.
Continue reading VIM: using the modeline for file based customized editing parameters
Linux : SATA hot plug / unplug
I have 3 hard disks in SATA-to-eSATA external enclosure which I occasionally need to plug to perform backups and to unplug when done. I found it annoying to have to restart the whole computer at every turn, especially when SATA is supposed to bring hotplug abilities. If you mainboard / SATA chipset and disks support hot plugging and unplugging, you can do this by following those instructions.
Continue reading Linux : SATA hot plug / unplug
SSH : Multiplexing connections
There is a feature in OpenSSH since v3.9 which allows multiple SSH connections with the same caracteristics (host, port, remote login) to be made through a single TCP connection. This is useful because you’ll have to authenticate only once, and besides the new SSH connections will be much faster to establish.
Continue reading SSH : Multiplexing connections
Linux : Configuring a network bridge for your Virtual Machines
My new center of interest those days being virtualization, I tried quite a few software starting with Xen, then QEMU, then KVM, and finally VirtualBox. But as far as giving a network access to the VM is concerned, I’ve always sticked to a network bridge for the reason that this makes the VM appear on the network just like any other computer of your network.
This post provided a sample script to setup a bridge suitable to use with all of the named virtualization softwares.
Continue reading Linux : Configuring a network bridge for your Virtual Machines