Tag Archives: Partitions

6 Things I like about Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

Posted on by
4

With the new release of Ubuntu 10.04 LTS many changes comes up, using it for 3 days so far and it’s working great, even after I installed many applications still working great, really nice looking themes with it ” Radiance and Ambiance “.

so here are things I like about Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

1. Nautilus upgrade comes with Gnome 2.30

that help you to split your windows. using extra pane to activate it press F3 or go to view and choose extra pane.

The good thing about it you use it to easily move or copy files and folder form pane to other.

2. Social Drop down menu

a quick access to change your empathy or Pidgin status, also access your empathy accounts, Gwibber accounts and ubuntu one.

also you update your twitter, facebook, or any other social media by typing there any thing there it will be automatically updated by Gwibber to you active accounts there.

3. Gwibber Social broadcast messages

you connect to your social websites easily using Gwibber such as Facebook, Twitter, Identi.ca, Flickr, Digg, Feedfriend,….

I had a lot of problem with in ubuntu 10.04 beta 1, but now it working great. I love it.

4. Ubuntu one Music Store

Ubuntu one Music store integrated with Rhythmbox, really cool you can listen and download music using it.

5. Themes and background

” Radiance and Ambiance ” new themes comes with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, both of them looks really good. comes with a really cool wallpapers collection. this link for who want to download ubuntu 10.04 LTS wallpaper.

6. Booting time and ext4 performance

Really awesome booting time, even after I installed many applications still booting time is great. processing time for many applications is quick. installed on ext4 formate partition. I used to use ext3 on ubuntu 9.10. but with this release ext4 performing really well.

That’s it for now. enjoy Ubuntu 10.04 LTS it’s for HUmans :)

[Books Directory]: 10 free Linux Administration Books

Posted on by
1

10 free GNU/Linux Administration Books

Linux based distributions have a lot of different administration options and privilege options, Books listed here will help you with administrations privilege for different distributions debian, fedora, redhat, ubuntu, gentoo, opensuse, mandriva, …..

Also other books for security administrations, and files system directory hierarchy, software help you to secure you system, securing VPN servers,…

## so here we go…

1. Linux Administration Made Easy

This documentation will attempt to summarize the installation and configuration, as well as the day-to-day administrative and maintenance procedures that should be followed to keep a Linux-based server or desktop system up and running. It is geared to an audience of both corporate as well as home users. It is not intended to be a full overview of Unix operations, as there are several good texts available as well as on-line documentation which can be referred to in cases where more detailed information is required.

2. The Linux System Administrator’s Guide

The Linux System Administrator’s Guide, describes the system administration aspects of using Linux. It is intended for people who know next to nothing about system administration (those saying “what is it?”), but who have already mastered at least the basics of normal usage. This manual doesn’t tell you how to install Linux; that is described in the Installation and Getting Started document. See below for more information about Linux manuals.

3. Filesystem Hierarchy Standard

The filesystem standard has been designed to be used by Unix distribution developers, package developers, and system implementors. However, it is primarily intended to be a reference and is not a tutorial on how to manage a Unix filesystem or directory hierarchy.

4. Linux Administrator’s Security Guide

There are numerous definitions for “computer security”, and most of them are correct. Essentially computer security means enforcement of usage policies, this must be done since people and software have flaws that can result in accidents, but also because someone may want to steal your information, use your resources inappropriately or simply deny you the use of your resources.

5. Debian GNU/Linux System Administrator’s Manual (Obsolete Documentation)

This manual assumes the reader is familiar with using a Unix system and/or understands Debian User Reference Manual. Additional reading for System Administrator is Debian GNU/Linux Network Administrator’s Manual. Both of these are available from the Debian Documentation Project. Another useful book is “Linux System Administrator’s Guide” by Lars Wirzenius, available from Linux Documentation Project, http://metalab.unc.edu/LDP/ .

6. Forensic Discovery

The target audience of the book is anyone who wants to deepen their understanding of how computer systems work, as well as anyone who is likely to become involved with the technical aspects of computer intrusion or system analysis. These are not only system administrators, incident responders, other computer security professionals, or forensic analysts, but also anyone who is concerned about the impact of computer forensics on privacy.

7. Best Practices for Managing Linux and UNIX Servers

Call it the Linux fallacy. It’s the conventional wisdom that says Linux/UNIX gives you lots of power and reliability in exchange for far more complex and costly systems management. But in fact Linux/UNIX shouldn’t be a tradeoff–as long as you also implement a set of proven best practices.

8. GNU/Linux Advanced Administration

The GNU/Linux systems have reached an important level of maturity, allowing to integrate them in almost any kind of work environment, from a desktop PC to the sever facilities of a big company.

9. COIT13146 Systems Administration

In the course Systems Administration.  It is an attempt to give you an overview of the course and more importantly of computing, Linux and Systems Administration.

Many students commented that they felt lost in the detail of Linux without having an overall picture of how it fits together.  Hopefully this chapter will go some way towards solving this problem, and will provide some sort of small map and compass so you have an idea of where you are and where you are going.

10. GNU/Linux Desktop Survival Guide

The aim of this book is to get you up to speed with GNU/Linux and to deliver a fun and productive environment. It guides you through the many different regions of a GNU/Linux system with a focus on getting your desktop environment to do what you want it to do. It is comprehensive with basic support for the user who installs and maintains the system themselves (whether in the home, office, club, or school). It provides insights and step-by-step procedures that deal with specific tasks in setting your system up and maintaining it. The book covers many of the core features of a GNU/Linux system and you will gain the knowledge to enjoy and use one of the most comprehensive and useful developments in the history of computing.

Ubuntu 10.04 beta 1 Review

Posted on by
3

Hello guys,

Already reviewed ubuntu 10.04 alpha 3 here, as you will see in this post a big difference between ubuntu 10.04 alpha 3 and beta 1 version, New default theme that mentioned on ubuntu fresh look post ….

Release notes & Download Release announcement

Hardware specification:

this is the hardware specification used to run this version of ubuntu 10.04

  • 1 core processor 2.1 Ghz
  • 1 GB of ram
  • 12 Mb of video memory

with this hardware spec it was working great guys, so i believe if you have a decent machine it will work better.

Installation process :

Installed on Virtual machine “sun virtualbox”

First Boot after completing the installation

“Close, minimize, maximize” button in the left side of the title bar

More option added to right click menu for sharing to ubuntu one, moving to and copy to even it’s  a file or folder

Pitivi default video editor

New look for Ubuntu software center

Yahoo is the default search engine for firefox 3.6, but it’s up to you can change it later to any other search engine

Terminal background color looks really good specially with this theme, also it’s up to you can change it later.

New menu to control your chat account what ever it’s ” pidgin or empathy” , controlling Gwibber, and ubuntu one

Gwibber works really good here , I faced many problem with using it on ubuntu 10.04 alpha 3 version. but it’s working great now even it’s a development version till now.

Sound preference with better control access menu.

Overall after the installation:

It was working really good, much better than the older version “alpha 3″

Ubuntu 10.04 beta 2 will release at 8th of April, and the final version will release 29th of  April.

with first installation on virtualbox with 16 mb of video memory it was working a little bit slower.


Please guys leave your feedback, try to install it in your machine and report any bugs you faced so the development community able to fix many bugs for next release.

Thanks guys,

Common Problems with Linux First use

Posted on by
Reply

Hello guys,

This is your first time you use any linux Distribution “Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, Fedora, ….”
Some users have a lot of problems when they just starting to use any distributions, beginning with hardware problems, Drivers, Booting, dual Booting, Grub, package dependencies, NTFS mounting for removable hard driver, Graphics card “Nvidia, ATI”, resolutions,………………

so here will mention quickest resources it might help you out with those problems.

1. Display Resolution.

This is really common problem with most old machines, first time you use this distribution even it’s a live session or installed version, maybe you will find you display resolution is 640X400
with this resolution will be really difficult to use.

How to fix it?

  • Installing your graphics card driver. “Nvidia, ATI“
  • Modifying “xorg.conf” this helps if you want to use dual screens, CRT Display, LCD, for editing resolution
EX.   Section "Monitor"
	Identifier "Monitor0"
	VendorName ""
	ModelName ""
	HorizSync 30 - 70
	VertRefresh 50 - 160
        Modeline "1024x768_75.00"   82.00  1024 1088 -hsync +vsync
     EndSection

2. Grub , Dual boot

this is one of the most common problem happen after installing Linux distribution specially with users already using windows operating system or other operating system on the same machine.

usually using grub version 0.97 , but with the new release grub version 1.97 beta faced a lot of problem, then stable version 1.98 working really good with new features for customization. much more multi booting option.

Problems

  • Dual Boot, disappear older operating system already installed after installing new distribution
  • Modifying menu timer for auto select
  • visual customization for the grub

How to fix it?

Grub documentations and wiki are really useful. and really easy to use  Here

3. Mounting point, NTFS, FAT, Removable media, Fstab

“Understanding Fstab” post Thanks to bodhi.zazen

This is really useful post, I believe it cover all point about Mounting point, removable media, mounting for NTFS, FAT.

That’s it for now.

:)

Ubuntu Swap

Posted on by
1

Hello guys,

In this post will talk about Swap, how to improve your machine performance using swap, and how to manage it.

========================================================

1. What’s Swap?

it’s a part used on your hard drive to be  as virtual memory combined with your random access memory (RAM), and it’s a customizable space can be changed any time “will get to this point in no.4″

2. What’s the idea of using Swap?

Using swap improve your distribution performance and you will notice that if you didn’t used swap before. running time of big application which has many dependencies such as Gimp, Open office, …..

also it will help with processing application specially video editing applications.

I didn’t use swap in my laptop when I installed ubuntu 9.10 and this really make big difference specially with running openoffice and video editing applications. Otherwise my desktop with same distribution “ubuntu 9.10″

with swap and nearly same hardware specifications it was working great with all these applications.

3. How to manage Swap before the installation?

This is the easy part. In preparing partition window  add new partition and set it as swap volume.

For example : you have 2 GB of RAM installed, you have to make swap size equal your installed RAM at least, and make it bigger it’s up to you. ” You can make the swap lower than installed RAM if you have low hard disk space it’s okay”

4. How to manage Swap after the installation?

  • Creating a file the size you want.
  • Formatting that file to create a swapping device.
  • Adding the swap to the running system.
  • Making the change permanent.

For Adding a 512 MB swap

  • Creating a file for 512 MB size you want:

We will create a /mnt/512Mb.swap swap file.

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/512Mb.swap bs=1M count=512

Here count=512, means we want our file to contain 512 blocks of bs=1M, which means block size = 1 MegaBytes. Be careful *not * to do this dd of=/mnt/512Mb.swap bs=1M seek=512 count=0 Though the file grows to 512Mb immediately, it will have holes that makes it unusable.

  • Formatting that file to create a swapping device:
sudo mkswap /mnt/512Mb.swap
  • Adding the swap to the running system:
sudo swapon /mnt/512Mb.swap

The additional swap is now available and can be seen by “cat /proc/meminfo”

  • Making the change permanent:

Edit the /etc/fstab:

gksudo gedit /etc/fstab

Add this line at the end of the file:

/mnt/512Mb.swap  none  swap  sw  0 0

Save and reboot.

Resource helped in this post   1

That’s it for now.

Files System Directories “Hierarchy” Part 2

Posted on by
6

Hello guys,

here is the second part of Files system Directories

so here we go:

5. lib

The /lib directory contains those shared library images needed to boot the system and run the commands in the root filesystem, ie. by binaries in /bin and /sbin.

File Description
libc.so.* The dynamically-linked C library (optional)
ld* The execution time linker/loader (optional)

6. media

/media This directory contains subdirectories which are used as mount points for removeable media such as floppy disks, cdroms and zip disks.

Historically there have been a number of other different places used to mount removeable media such as /cdrom, /mntor /mnt/cdrom. Placing the mount points for all removeable media directly in the root directory would potentially result in a large number of extra directories in /. Although the use of subdirectories in /mnt as a mount point has recently been common, it conflicts with a much older tradition of using /mnt directly as a temporary mount point.

Directory Description
floppy Floppy drive (optional)
cdrom CD-ROM drive (optional)
cdrecorder CD writer (optional)
zip Zip drive (optional)

On systems where more than one device exists for mounting a certain type of media, mount directories can be created by appending a digit to the name of those available above starting with ’0′, but the unqualified name must also exist.

7. mnt
Mount point for a temporarily mounted filesystem

/mnt  This directory is provided so that the system administrator may temporarily mount a filesystem as needed. The content of this directory is a local issue and should not affect the manner in which any program is run.

This directory must not be used by installation programs: a suitable temporary directory not in use by the system must be used instead.

8. opt

/opt is reserved for the installation of add-on application software packages.

A package to be installed in /opt must locate its static files in a separate /opt/<package> or /opt/<provider> directory tree, where <package> is a name that describes the software package and<provider> is the provider’s LANANA registered name.

9. root

/root     Home directory for the root user

The root account’s home directory may be determined by developer or local preference, but this is the recommended default location.

10. sbin

/sbin    System binaries

Utilities used for system administration (and other root-only commands) are stored in /sbin, /usr/sbin, and /usr/local/sbin. /sbin contains binaries essential for booting, restoring, recovering, and/or repairing the system in addition to the binaries in /bin. Programs executed after /usr is known to be mounted (when there are no problems) are generally placed into /usr/sbin. Locally-installed system administration programs should be placed into /usr/local/sbin.

11. srv

Data for services provided by this system

/srv contains site-specific data which is served by this system.

This main purpose of specifying this is so that users may find the location of the data files for particular service, and so that services which require a single tree for readonly data, writable data and scripts (such as cgi scripts) can be reasonably placed. Data that is only of interest to a specific user should go in that users’ home directory.

The methodology used to name subdirectories of /srv is unspecified as there is currently no consensus on how this should be done. One method for structuring data under /srv is by protocol, eg. ftp, rsync, www, and cvs. On large systems it can be useful to structure /srv by administrative context, such as /srv/physics/www, /srv/compsci/cvs, etc. This setup will differ from host to host. Therefore, no program should rely on a specific subdirectory structure of /srv existing or data necessarily being stored in /srv. However /srv should always exist on FHS compliant systems and should be used as the default location for such data.

Distributions must take care not to remove locally placed files in these directories without administrator permission.

12. tmp

The /tmp directory must be made available for programs that require temporary files.

Programs must not assume that any files or directories in /tmp are preserved between invocations of the program.

IEEE standard P1003.2 (POSIX, part 2) makes requirements that are similar to the above section.

Although data stored in /tmp may be deleted in a site-specific manner, it is recommended that files and directories located in /tmp be deleted whenever the system is booted.

FHS added this recommendation on the basis of historical precedent and common practice, but did not make it a requirement because system administration is not within the scope of this standard.

13. usr

/usr is the second major section of the filesystem. /usr is shareable, read-only data. That means that /usr should be shareable between various FHS-compliant hosts and must not be written to. Any information that is host-specific or varies with time is stored elsewhere.

Large software packages must not use a direct subdirectory under the /usr hierarchy.

14. var

/var contains variable data files. This includes spool directories and files, administrative and logging data, and transient and temporary files.

Some portions of /var are not shareable between different systems. For instance, /var/log, /var/lock, and /var/run. Other portions may be shared, notably /var/mail, /var/cache/man,/var/cache/fonts, and /var/spool/news.

/var is specified here in order to make it possible to mount /usr read-only. Everything that once went into /usr that is written to during system operation (as opposed to installation and software maintenance) must be in /var.

If /var cannot be made a separate partition, it is often preferable to move /var out of the root partition and into the /usrpartition. (This is sometimes done to reduce the size of the root partition or when space runs low in the root partition.) However, /var must not be linked to /usr because this makes separation of /usr and /var more difficult and is likely to create a naming conflict. Instead, link /var to /usr/var.

Applications must generally not add directories to the top level of /var. Such directories should only be added if they have some system-wide implication, and in consultation with the FHS mailing list.

——————-

that’s it for now

and i will include graphic chart later

Files System Directories “Hierarchy” Part 1

Posted on by
3

Hello Guys,

In this article I will explain what’s files system directories also it know as Hierarchy.

This article will be really helpful for beginners to know what’s the purpose of each directory and command inside Hierarchy.

So let’s begin,

Directory Description
bin Essential command binaries
boot Static files of the boot loader
dev Device files
etc Host-specific system configuration
lib Essential shared libraries and kernel modules
media Mount point for removeable media
mnt Mount point for mounting a filesystem temporarily
opt Add-on application software packages
sbin Essential system binaries
srv Data for services provided by this system
tmp Temporary files
usr Secondary hierarchy
var Variable data

1. bin

/bin contains commands that may be used by both the system administrator and by users, but which are required when no other filesystems are mounted (e.g. in single user mode). It may also contain commands which are used indirectly by scripts.

2. boot

/boot This directory contains everything required for the boot process except configuration files not needed at boot time and the map installer. Thus /boot stores data that is used before the kernel begins executing user-mode programs. This may include saved master boot sectors and sector map files.

3. dev

The /dev directory is the location of special or device files.

Devices treated like files to read and write it

Example:

  • /dev/cdrom
  • /dev/hda                       for first hard driver IDE

If it is possible that devices in /dev will need to be manually created, /dev must contain a command named MAKEDEV, which can create devices as needed. It may also contain a MAKEDEV.local for any local devices.

If required, MAKEDEV must have provisions for creating any device that may be found on the system, not just those that a particular implementation installs.

4. etc

The /etc hierarchy contains configuration files. A “configuration file” is a local file used to control the operation of a program; it must be static and cannot be an executable binary.

It can be edited by hand :             ex:

  • /etc/fstab
  • /et

No binaries may be located under /etc.

The following directories, or symbolic links to directories are required in /etc:

Directory Description
opt Configuration for /opt
X11 Configuration for the X Window system (optional)
sgml Configuration for SGML (optional)
xml Configuration for XML (optional)

Will explain other ten directories on next post

Hide mounted partitions for ubuntu 9.10

Posted on by
5

Many people like to have clean desktop without any icons for mounted partitions or trash icons all these stuff


So we will user here configuration editor or “gconf-editor” then using nautilus on apps directory then Desktop

Here you can modify many options like Hiding and showing ” computer icon, trash icon, network icon, home icon”