The Helpdesk For I.T. Administrators
The ‘notify-send’ package can be used to send custom notification messages to the Ubuntu desktop. These messages will pop-up on the screen, and shouldn’t get in the way of what the user is currently doing.
To send a custom notification:
$ notifiy-send "This is a test"
Sample pop-up notification window:
This can be used within background scripts to display notifications to the desktop user.
Since upgrading my Ubuntu desktop from 12.10 to 13.04, my workspaces disappeared. It turns out that Ubuntu 13.04 disables workspaces by default. Thankfully it can easily be enabled again. Follow the steps below to enable workspaces on Ubuntu 13.04. Continue Reading…
The ‘makepasswd’ package on Ubuntu can be used to easily generate random passwords. This package is part of the Ubuntu repositories, however probably wont be installed by default. It also has the ability to generate MD5 hashes of the random passwords.
Install makepasswd:
$ sudo apt-get -y install makepasswd
Generate a random password:
You can now run makepasswd to generate a random password.
$ makepasswd
Example output:
$ makepasswd 6HL5y9F9sC
Generate 5 random passwords:
$ makepasswd --count=5
Example output:
$ makepasswd --count=5 50MgAYqgr RMWtg0pB VtPyKoC0F GHIhF4N7T oTLDeCGPVW
Generate MD5 hashed passwords:
$ makepasswd --crypt-md5
Example output:
$ makepasswd --crypt-md5 1D84KuJVP $1$fGLlRs3L$ONJ5Kr65zNIbum0TGUpxy.
A default installation of PHP and Apache on a Ubuntu 13.04 will set a maximum upload limit of 2MB. Quite often you will want to increase this to a larger size. How high you set this limit will depend on your requirements.
This howto guide will step you through the process to increase the PHP upload limit.
Continue Reading…
By default, Ubuntu 13.04 doesn’t enable the rewrite engine module after installing Apache. The rewrite engine for Apache allows for on-the-fly URL rewriting/changing. This allows for the use of urls that are human readable, and SEO friendly. The rewrite engine is capable of capturing a website request, running it through a series of expression checks, and if a match is found, it will pass on the rewritten request to the web server. The end user would not notice anything different within their web browser, other than perhaps easier to read urls. The rewrite engine is great for re-directions, and is a requirement for some CMS packages such as Drupal.
This guide assumes that Apache is already installed on your machine. If it not installed, please install it first using the command “sudo apt-get install apache2”
Follow the steps below to enable the rewrite engine.
Enable the rewrite module using the command “sudo a2enmod rewrite”
Depending on which website you want the rewrite engine to work on, you may need to modify the Apache configuration files some more.
For the default website, open up the “/etc/apache2/sites-available/default” file in your favorite editor. I am using “nano” for this example
The file should look something like the image below. The lines you will need to focus on are the ones that start with “AllowOverride”.
You need to change the “AllowOverride None” to be “AllowOverride All” for the directories you want the rewrite engine to work in. There are other options that can be used for the AllowOverride feature, but I won’t be going into the details of those in this article.
Exit the editor, and Save the file.
Restart Apache using “sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart”
If Apache hasn’t been configured for a ServerName option yet, you may get the above error message, or something similar. This isn’t a huge concern, and can be resolved later.
You should now be able to create .htaccess files, and use them how you want.
This “how to” guide will step you through the process of setting up Nginx, PHP, and MySQL on Ubuntu 13.04.
Continue Reading…
You often need to know what physical drives are attached to a system, how many drives are connected, or even what device names match up with which physical drive. Ubuntu comes with a handy tool called ‘lshw’ which is used to extract detailed information on the hardware in the PC.
To view a listing of all disks in the system:
$ sudo lshw -class disk -short
This will list all disks and storage devices. This includes DVD drives, USB card readers, etc.
Example output:
$ sudo lshw -class disk -short H/W path Device Class Description ======================================================== /0/100/7.1/0.0.0 /dev/cdrom2 disk DVD-RAM writer /0/100/10/0.0.0 /dev/sda disk 250GB WDC WD2500SD-01K /0/1/0.0.0 /dev/sdb disk 2TB SCSI Disk $
This “how to” guide will step you through the process of setting up Nginx, PHP, and MySQL on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.
Continue Reading…
A default installation of PHP and Apache on a Ubuntu 12.04 will set a maximum upload limit of 2MB. Quite often you will want to increase this to a larger size. How high you set this limit will depend on your requirements.
This howto guide will step you through the process to increase the PHP upload limit.
Continue Reading…
This howto guide will go through the process of adding a new drive to a LVM array.
Continue Reading…