Ubuntu on Sirius Stuff

Why I hate Ubuntu sometimes - crontab not enabled

Thu, 09 Aug 2007 08:08:08 -0700

I’m trying to set up cron to run jobs for me. I have to go look up the weird syntax but OK. Found it. Everything looks fine but the jobs don’t work. Go on vacation. Come back and try again. Syntax is OK. Everything looks fine but the jobs don’t work. Dig, dig, dig. Find this Unix Crontab - setting up cron jobs using crontab

You can execute crontab if your name appears in the file /usr/lib/cron/cron.allow. If that file does not exist, you can use crontab if your name does not appear in the file /usr/lib/cron/cron.deny.
If only cron.deny exists and is empty, all users can use crontab. If neither file exists, only the root user can use crontab.

Feisty Performance - “Fly Like A Butterfly” Ubuntu

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 07:07:07 -0700

Haven’t implemented all of the things here but this looked promising on speeding up Ubuntu: Feisty Performance - “Fly Like A Butterfly

SSH your Debian servers without password - sftp

Sun, 01 Jul 2007 07:07:07 -0700

I was looking to do an unattended backup of some important files and found this very helpful: SSH your Debian servers without password

HowTo Mount NTFS Filesystem Partition Read Write Access

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 06:06:06 -0700

Found this article on HowTo Mount NTFS Filesystem Partition Read Write Access very helpful as I continue to dig out from under the Feisty Fawn -> Gutsy Gibbon explosion … er, upgrade.

The key thing here is the ability to mount the files so that they’re readable and writeable by an ordinary user. I am in the process of moving photos and music off my second NTFS-formatted drive. I may reformat it as ext3 or I may not but I want to know that I’ve got copies on my first NTFS-formatted drive (which is split with an ext3 partition) and my SimpleShare NFS NAS.

Ubuntu Linux, SimpleShare NAS, and NFS

Wed, 27 Jun 2007 06:06:06 -0700

Had an upgrade to Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon go badly. Now I’m digging out from under. Part of what was lost was my /etc directory getting scrambled so I couldn’t read my old /etc/fstab entry. Been fighting to remember how things worked to mount my SimpleShare for backup and access to my ripped CDs. I finally found this article on Ubuntu Linux, SimpleShare NAS, and NFS which includes this key part:

mediaserver:/shares/SimplePool/Photos/ /mnt/photos nfs rsize=8192,wsize=8192,timeo=14,intr

Local DNS Cache for Faster Browsing using dnsmasq

Tue, 26 Jun 2007 06:06:06 -0700

Looking for a way to speed up recurring DNS lookups on my Ubuntu box. I found a reference to Local DNS Cache for Faster Browsing on Ubuntu Blog. Works like a champ.

I like that dnsmasq allows me to configure the size of the cache easily. I don’t like that I had to chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf to make it immutable so that the system wouldn’t drop looking at 127.0.0.1 (localhost) first. I tried using the package resolvconf but it caused all lookups to fail. So I used apt-get again to remove it and stayed with just the dnsmasq package.

How to create a PDF printer (print to PDF) in Ubuntu

Sun, 17 Jun 2007 06:06:06 -0700

I found printing to a PDF file useful occasionally useful under Windows. Neat to have a way to do it in Ubuntu: 5 steps to create a PDF printer (print to PDF) in Ubuntu

How to change the root password on Ubuntu

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 06:06:06 -0700

This is one of the things I meant to investigate. I know I have a password and can use sudo to do almost anything … but what’s root’s password? How to change the root password on Ubuntu was one of those “duh” moments but I’m glad to have this as a prompt to change the password. You should, too.

Set Gmail as Default Mail Client in Ubuntu

Sat, 09 Jun 2007 06:06:06 -0700

As much as I love Thunderbird with IMAP, I’m finding that I’m making mistakes because of using Linux and Google Reader more and more. I use vim and both it and Google Reader use the vi-style commands of the j key for down, k key for up, etc. I can’t find a way to re-map the keys in Thunderbird to do the same under Linux. Also, using Thunderbird means keeping two addressbooks instead of one.

Things I can do in Linux that I can't do on Windows. | dmartin.org

Fri, 18 May 2007 05:05:05 -0700

This article lists some of the things I can do in Linux that I can’t do on Windows.

Nice article.

You Can Switch to Linux! - willsmith - Maximum PC

Fri, 18 May 2007 05:05:05 -0700

Apparently it’s Ubuntu day for me. Wondering if you can switch to Linux? Here’s a nice article on how to do so. Published in Maximum PC magazine, it’s clear and current with Feisty Fawn, released just less than a month ago. Good stuff.

How to choose the right screenshot program

Mon, 07 May 2007 05:05:05 -0700

I need to get pictures of screens for reporting problems. I don’t usually want to take the full screen or even a window - I want the smallest section that will show the problem. Using Ubuntu, I wasn’t able to find anything that would do it as easily as I would like. I’m guessing with some certainty that I could have rigged The Gimp or something to capture the screen but then I would have to work at reducing the size, etc.

What’s With the Ubuntu Version Number Scheme?

Tue, 01 May 2007 05:05:05 -0700

One thing that was kind of exasperating about Ubuntu was the (weird( version numbers. The successor to 6.06 was 6.10? The next version was 7.04? Huh?

Fortunately, somebody finally blogged about this: What’s With the Ubuntu Version Number Scheme? – Johnny’s Thoughts

No big secret: the first number is the year and the second is the month. So 7.04 translates as 2007 and April or month 04.

Now I can sleep at night.