How to recover/repair lost/damage partitions

TestDisk is a powerful free data recovery software

! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table). Partition table recovery using TestDisk is really easy.


TestDisk can:
    * Fix partition table,

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How to recover deleted pictures and Video files

PhotoRec is file data recovery software designed to recover lost files including video, documents and archives from Hard Disks and CDRom and lost pictures (thus, its 'Photo Recovery' name) from digital camera memory. PhotoRec ignores the filesystem and goes after the underlying data, so it will still work even if your media's filesystem has been severely damaged or re-formatted.

PhotoRec is free

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Ubuntu Karmic : Changes between Grub 1.x and Grub2

Grub Legacy is not present in Karmic. People who upgrade from earlier versions may have the option of keeping Grub Legacy or upgrade to Grub2.

If you upgrade from Jaunty to Karmic you may get an option to keep Grub Legacy.

If you do a new install of Karmic you may install it (Grub2) on the partition instead of MBR and chainload it from existing Grub Legacy.

But I suggest everyone to just learn

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Which Linux Distribution to Choose?

Linux Distribution Chooser is an on line application where you have to answer series of questions, these sets also includes questions on your knowledge on Linux and type of OS you are look for and depending on your answers the application will gives you a list of recommendations on the Linux distributions that best suits your needs.




Do check this out, it's really useful.

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What is Btrfs?

Btrfs (B-tree FS or "Butter FS") is a new copy on write filesystem for Linux aimed at implementing advanced features while focusing on fault tolerance, repair and easy administration. Initially developed by Oracle, Btrfs is licensed under the GPL and open for contribution from anyone.

Linux has a wealth of filesystems to choose from, but we are facing a number of challenges with scaling to the

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How to enable quota on OpenSuse

Quota allows System Administrator to specify limits on two aspects of disk storage: the number of inodes a user or a group of users may possess; and the number of disk blocks that may be allocated to a user or a group of users.

The idea behind quota is that users are forced to stay under their disk consumption limit, taking away their ability to consume unlimited disk space on a system. Quota is

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How to create an Encrypted Partition (local or removable disk)

Attention: following this tutorial will wipe all data from the partition or device you write it to. You cannot encrypt your file system after-the-fact using this method. Be sure you have backups or don’t care about the data being lost if you follow these steps!!!


Step 1:
The first step in the tutorial is installing the cryptsetup utility, which is part of the cryptsetup package. You can search

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Encrypt-Decrypt file using OpenSSL

The OpenSSL Project is a collaborative effort to develop a robust, commercial-grade, full-featured, and Open Source toolkit implementing the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL v2/v3) and Transport Layer Security (TLS v1) protocols as well as a full-strength general purpose cryptography library. The project is managed by a worldwide community of volunteers that use the Internet to communicate, plan, and

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Running Linux on Windows XP

"If Linux runs on every architecture, why should another operating system be in its way? "

Cooperative Linux is the first working free and open source method for optimally running Linux on Microsoft Windows natively. More generally, Cooperative Linux (short-named coLinux) is a port of the Linux kernel that allows it to run cooperatively alongside another operating system on a single machine.

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React Operating System - Another Windows in making

ReactOS is a free, modern operating system based on the design of Windows XP/2003. Written completely from scratch, it aims to follow the Windows architecture designed by Microsoft from the hardware level right through to the application level. This is not a Linux based system, and shares none of the unix architecture.

The main goal of the ReactOS project is to provide an operating system which

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ntop (Monitor Network Traffic) installation/configuration on OpenSuSe

ntop is a network traffic probe that shows the network usage, similar to what the popular top Unix command does. ntop is based on libpcap and it has been written in a portable way in order to virtually run on every Unix platform and on Win32 as well.

ntop users can use a a web browser (e.g. Firefox) to navigate through ntop (that acts as a web server) traffic information and get a dump of the

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Speeding up Linux Using hdparm - Optimize Hard Disk

hdparm is a command line utility for the Linux operating systems to set and view SATA and IDE hard disk hardware parameters. It can set parameters such as drive caches, sleep mode, power management, acoustic management, and DMA settings.

Changing hardware parameters from suboptimal conservative defaults to their optimal settings can improve performance greatly. For example, turning on DMA can in

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File Access Permissions on Linux

File protection with chmod chmod 400 file    To protect a file against accidental overwriting.chmod 500 dir     To protect yourself from accidentally removing,  renaming or moving files from this directory. chmod 600 file    A private file only changeable by the user who entered this command.chmod 644 file    A publicly readable file that can only be changed by the issuing user.chmod 660 file   

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How To Write, Compile and Execute C Programs under Linux

Most Linux and Unix programs are written in C. When you download source for a project, it will often be C or C++ source code. You don't necessarily need to know a darn thing about C or anything else to compile the source if you aren't changing it. It may be helpful for you to understand a bit if you are having problems with the compile, but even that isn't really necessary.

You can type you C

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HowTo Get ClearType like Smooth Fonts in Ubuntu Linux

Turning on ClearType mode if you’re using an LCD monitor helps a lot in improving readability. Ubuntu, by default, doesn’t have ClearType turned on. However, you could achieve really nice font smoothing by just choosing an option in the settings.

In order to turn text smoothing on in Ubuntu, do the following:

    * Go to System > Preferences > Appearance
    * Go to the Fonts tab
    * Under

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Goggles Music Manager (GMM) - Jukebox & Complete Multimedia Player

Goggles Music Manager (GMM) is a free opensource (licensed under GPLv3) music collection manager and player that automatically categorizes MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, and Musepack files based on genre, artist, album, and song. There is no need to create playlists of any kind. Just select one or more artists and albums to start playing your music.

It supports gapless playback and features easy tag

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Centos 5 Multimedia Howto

Step 1: Add the Rpmforge Repo

rpm -Uhv http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el5/en/i386/RPMS.dag/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm

Step 2: Add the Macromedia Repo

rpm -Uhv http://linuxdownload.adobe.com/adobe-release/adobe-release-i386-1.0-1.noarch.rpm

Step 3: Install Multimedia Applications

yum -y install libdvdcss libdvdread libdvdplay libdvdnav lsdvd mplayerplug-in mplayer mplayer-gui

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Backup & Restore MySQL Databases - MySQLDumper

MySQLDumper is a backup & restore management script for MySQL Databases, written in PHP and Perl, which fills this gap and offers a complete control over the databases.

MySQLDumper uses a proprietary technique to avoid execution interruption. It only reads and saves a certain amount of commands and then calls itself via JavaScript and memorizes how far in the process it was and resumes its

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Monitoring Apache Server

Apachetop is a curses-based realtime utility to display information from a running copy of Apache.It is modelled after the standard 'top' utility, and displays information such as the requests pers second, bytes per second and the most popular URLs displayed.It must be run from a machine running Apache, as it works by processing the logfiles found in /var/log/apacheUsing Apachetop:ApacheTop

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Installing Ubuntu without external media

The below method is only applicable if you alread have Linux (any) running, here I am using OpenSuSe 11.1 to install ubuntu-9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) also you need a seperate partition to install ubuntu. you can also use gparted to create some space for ubuntu.The benefits of installing without external media are that it can save you time if you are already familiar with the process, and you get a

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Monitoring MySQL servers using mytop

MySQL is one of the most important programs on a server, unfortunatly it is also pretty resource intensive. One a server it is not uncommon for a single user or even a query to take up the bulk of the servers cpu cycles. Mytop is a very useful program to see what queries a server is currently processing as well as which user is executing them. Think of mytop as top for mysql. If you see a lot

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Iptraf - Ncurses based LAN monitor

IPTraf is a network monitoring utility for IP networks. It intercepts packets on the network and gives out various pieces of information about the current IP traffic over it. Information returned by IPTraf include: * Total, IP, TCP, UDP, ICMP, and non-IP byte counts * TCP source and destination addresses and ports * TCP packet and byte counts * TCP flag statuses * UDP source and

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Transferring audio/video to iPod

gtkpod is a Graphical User Interface (GUI) for Apple's iPod. It supports the first to fifth iPod generations including the iPod mini, iPod Photo, iPod Shuffle, iPod nano, and iPod Video.It allows you to import your existing iTunes database, add songs, podcasts, videos and cover art, and to edit ID3 tags.The latest version has added a raft of new features including: preliminary support gapless

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[ How to ] Use CentOS repos in RHEL-5 Server

1. Remove "yum-rhn-plugin" package from RHEL, this is used to check
the activation in RHEL.

# rpm -e yum-rhn-plugin

2. Remove the "redhat-release" related packages, this is used to check
the repositories compatibility. usually we can't remove these packages
because they are used by other packages of the system for proper
fuctioning. so we'll use the "--nodeps" parameter to forcely remove
them

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How to allow access to the mail server by individual domains - Sendmail

The access database (normally in /etc/mail/access) allows a mail administrator to administratively allow access to the mail server by individual domains. Each database entry consists of a domain name or network number as the key and an action as the value.Keys can be a fully or partly qualified host or domain name such as host.subdomain.domain.com, subdomain.domain.com, or domain.com. The last

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Gnome 3.0 Reviews – Coming on Ubuntu 10.04, Fedora 13

Gnome 3, which will be available to install in Ubuntu 10.04, Fedora 13 will mark the first radical change to the Gnome Desktop since it’s inception, thanks to it’s “new” interface ‘Gnome-Shell’.
Doing Things BetterOn first glance, the Gnome 3 Desktop doesn’t seem all that different from the current default Gnome set-up.
Gnome 3 Desktop
You’ll notice there is no bottom taskbar and the top panel

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How to set Access/Restrictions on users logins

Time Based RestrictionsThese examples will limit the login times of certain users. See /etc/security/time.conf for more information/examples. In order to place time restrictions on user logins, the following must be placed in /etc/pam.d/login:account required /lib/security/pam_time.soThe remaining lines should be placed in /etc/security/time.conf.1. Only allow user nikesh to login during on

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Free Disk Space by Reducing Reserved Blocks Percentage

In a default install Linux

reserves 5% of the disk space for privileged processes. It is a precautionary measure on part of Linux to keep up even after the file-system is filled up.

With this approach it allows root to conduct administrative activities on the partition and perhaps move some data off. However, this is most critical when the partition contains / or home directories. For pure

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How to set Cron/At Access Control

Cron stores it's enteries in the crontab (cron table) file. This is generally located in your /etc directory. As well, each user on your system can have their own crontab which would be stored in /var/spool/cron/. To edit a users crontab entry, simply log into your system for that particular user and type crontab -e. The default editor for the 'crontab -e' command is vi. Below is the simple

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Fighting Spam mails

Spam is flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it. Most spam is commercial advertising, often for dubious products, get-rich-quick schemes, or quasi-legal services. Spam costs the sender very little to send -- most of the costs are paid for by the recipient or the carriers rather than by

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Download/Upload files from torrents/Rapidshare or Videos from Youtube using FatRat download manager

FatRat is an open source download manager for Linux written in C++ and built on top of the Trolltech Qt 4 library. It is rich in features and is continuously extended.Features: * HTTP(S)/FTP/ downloads * FTP uploads * RSS feed support + special functions for TV shows and podcasts * BitTorrent support (including torrent creating, DHT, UPnP, encryption etc.) * Torrent search * Support

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Next Generation of the Fastest P2P Program - FrostWire

FrostWire is a peer-to-peer file sharing program for the Gnutella and BitTorrent protocols. FrostWire is written in Java, and is a fork of LimeWire, another popular Gnutella client. Released under the GNU General Public License, FrostWire is free software.Features: * As with LimeWire, FrostWire is written in Java, and is therefore capable of supporting multiple platforms. * While LimeWire is

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How do I add jobs to cron under Linux or UNIX oses?

Cron job are used to schedule commands to be executed periodically i.e. to setup commands which will repeatedly run at a set time, you can use the cron jobs.
crontab is the command used to install, deinstall or list the tables used to drive the cron daemon in Vixie Cron. Each user can have their own crontab, and though these are files in /var/spool/cron/crontabs, they are not intended to be

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Slackware: The boot process

Slackware's boot process maintains the logic of the typical Linux boot sequence, but uses BSD style init scripts instead of the SystemV style more common in other mainstream Linux distro. The main boot sequence actors are always:
- Linux Loader (Lilo by default)
- Kernel (2.4 in Slackware 10)
- Init and its initialization scripts.
Let's explore the involved components in a Slackware 10 boot

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Reducing load on web server by using reverse proxy - squid

Many large organizations use caching proxy servers to save on network bandwidth utilization (and costs) and improve browsing response times. In fact, an entire industry has grown up around caching proxy appliances. But in the open source world, we’ve had one of the most advanced proxy servers for many, many years. Squid (http://www.squid-cache.org) is to caching proxy servers as Apache is to web

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How To Connect To A WPA Wifi Using Command Lines On Debian

First install the package wpasupplicant


aptitude install wpasupplicant


Then we will configure a network, so we create and modify the configuration file:



vim /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf


Complete the file to make it look like that (replacing wifi_name and wifi_key by their real values of course). Press "i" to be able to edit.


network={


ssid="wifi_name"


psk="wifi_key"


}

Then exit and

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How to Connect Wifi card using Command line

To scan wireless networks

sudo iwlist scanning

then change the mode to "managed"

iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed

then to set SSID

iwconfig wlan0 essid your_essid_in_double_quotes

For WEP encryption:

iwconfig wlan0 key wep_kep

And finally,tell the card to request an IP address from the router:

$ sudo dhclient wlan0

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Appnr – Install Ubuntu Applications from your Firefox browser

http://appnr.com/

Installing applications in Ubuntu is getting easier and easier. First there is the command line interface, next is the Synaptic Package Manager, followed by Gnome Installer (Add/Remove). Now there is Appnr, a web based tool where you can search and install applications directly on your Firefox.
Appnr makes use of the apturl protocol to initiate the installation process. Since

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How to Easily Mount Your iPhone As An External Drive in Ubuntu

For those who own an iPhone/iPod Touch and at the same time is an Ubuntu (or Linux) users, here’s is a good news. You can now easily mount your iPhone in your Ubuntu without having to jailbreak your phone.
In the past, the dirty but effective way to access the iPhone from your Linux system is via SSH. This requires you to jailbreak your phone and it voids the warranty. With iFuse, you can now

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Visual Browser for Wikipedia

No matter what you think about the quality and nature of Wikipedia articles, there is no denying that the encyclopedia provides an immense knowledge repository full of exciting facts and information.And while you can quickly find an article about a particular topic using Wikipedia’s search capabilities, there are other ways to explore Wikipedia that break away from the traditional search box

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10 Interesting but Lesser known facts about Google

Fact No.1 In 1997, Google’s prototype was named “BackRub” and had this “logo” adopted.Here is the full text of the research paper by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page



Fact No.2Google.com – The domain was registered on 15 September 1997 (WebArchive info)
Fact No.3The first ever review of the Google Search Engine was done by Danny Sullivan of Search Engine Watch on August 4, 1998. It was titled “

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Data Backup and Synchronization using Conduit

Conduit is a synchronization application for GNOME. It allows you to synchronize your files, photos, emails, contacts, notes, calendar data and any other type of personal information and synchronize that data with another computer, an online service, or even another electronic device. There is no command line required. You are good to go as long as you know how to drag and drop.Installing

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Amarok 2.2 (Sunjammer) released

Amarok 2.2 comes with an almost completely new look and feel. It now has a new layout for the Browser Pane on the left and an easier navigation using "bread crumbs" on top. All elements, the Browser Pane, Context View and the Playlist are dockable widgets, which you can place how and where you like. It is even possible to stack or remove them. Of course it's up to you to change the position,

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Data Encryption With JavaScript: jCryption

Normally if you submit a form and you don’t use SSL, your data will be sent in plain text.In short words jCryption is a javascript HTML-Form encryption plugin, which encrypts the POST/GET-Data that will be sent when you submit a form.jCryption uses the Multiple-precision and Barrett modular reduction libraries for the calculations and jQuery is used for the rest. jCryption is completly free and

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Stop Reinventing Wheel ; Reuse it !!

Don't reinvent the wheel.  It's a cliche for a reason.  And it's true in most aspects of life, especially business.  Very rarely will you want to start from scratch - with anything.
When launching a product or starting a business, would you like to invent plastic again?  How about paper?  The pen?  Of course not.
And yet with web development, many desire to do just that.  They desire to throw

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