One of the features of bash I’ve too long overlooked is its history expansion. In this post I’ll show a few examples to get a grip at it.
Continue reading Bash / zsh : Using the history expansion
Category: Systems
All systems related posts
AIX : Use sar to check cpu usage
If you’re looking for CPU usage statistics and system performance on IBM AIX, sar might just be the tool your looking for. It’ll display information for 5 minutes intervals from midnight to current time. The output looks like this :
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Linux / Unix : Disk usage and identifying biggest files
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.
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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 :
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VirtualBox : Cloning a virtual hard disk
If you’ve got a VirtualBox VM already installed and you wish to clone/copy it, follow the steps below :
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OpenSolaris : Exporting a ZFS filesystem with CIFS
If you need to export ZFS volumes through CIFS, follow this simple step by step procedure.
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OpenSolaris : Switching to the /dev development branch
In OpenSolaris, switching to the /dev development branch is a bit like switching to the testing branch for some linux distros. So you might want to think twice before doing so, as it might sometimes break things.
If you still want to do that, follow those instructions :
Continue reading OpenSolaris : Switching to the /dev development branch
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
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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.
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.
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