Every current disk includes a built-in monitoring feature known as SMART that keeps track of faults. On Linux, there is a software package called smartmontools that may be used to query the SMART status of the disk to see if it will fail soon. Installation apt-get install smartmontools Usage First we need to know the ... Read more
It is important to keep your Linux server up to date with security updates. Linux distributions like Ubuntu and Debian release updates on a daily basis, so keeping the system up-to-date can become a tedious task. Fortunately, there is an option to install security updates automatically. Here are the steps to enable automatic security updates ... Read more
Sometimes you might have to work with the Spamassin Bayes Token database. This is the database that is used by the SpamAssassin Self Learning (Bayesian) Classifier to store the ham and spam tokens. This tutorial will show you how to make a backup of that database. E.g. when you want to move it to a ... Read more
FFmpeg has been removed from Ubuntu 14.04 and was replaced by Libav. This decision has been reversed so that FFmpeg is available now in Ubuntu 15.04 again, but there is still no official package for 14.04. In this tutorial, I will show you how to install FFmpeg from mc3man ppa. Add the mc3man ppa: sudo ... Read more
Just as in Windows you have the option to rotate your screen into any direction in Linux, too. While in Windows you only need to press some keys, a key combination is not configured in Linux by default. But as you may have figured out, there are some terminal commands that let you do the ... Read more
It may occur that by default your computer won't connect to wireless networks after starting up the system. A way to solve this might be to install the WICD network manager which is available in the Ubuntu repositories. Just fire up Synaptic Package Manager and search for WICD. During installation, you will be asked to ... Read more
Ubuntu: To uninstall VirtualBox Guest Additions on Ubuntu and similar operating systems, mount the virtual disk again that you used to install them - to do that, click on the Devices menu on the virtual machines top menu bar and select Install Guest Additions. If you get a pop-up about auto-start procedures just cancel it. ... Read more
Other than in Windows, the account picture in Ubuntu and Mint isn't displayed in the login-screen but everytime you enter your password for authentication as well as in the user selection applet in Ubuntu. To change it, open the main menu and type in user accounts. On the window that pops-up upon opening the application, ... Read more
Grub's default boot option is stored within a config file found on the partition where your Master Boot Record is located (if you had it installed previously, there may also be grub.cfg files on other partitions, but these won't effect boot sequence). Its direct path is /boot/grub/grub.cfg and it has to be opened as root, ... Read more
Resetting your systems root password may be a necessary step if you have forgotten it or have bought a used computer which you don't want to setup anew. Doing so without any installation medium saves you a blank CD and a bit of time. To start, restart your computer and get to the GRUB menu ... Read more