Archive for October, 2007

Anatomy of the Linux file system

Date: October 31, 2007. Categories: docs. 0 Comments

Welcome to Linux Screw! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe our RSS feed.

ibmWhat I love IBM for is their DeveloperWorks :) Here is M. Tim Jones' latest publication exploring Linux filesystem. Respect to IBM and Tim!

When it comes to file systems, Linux is the Swiss Army knife of operating systems. Linux supports a large number of file systems, from journaling to clustering to cryptographic. Linux is a wonderful platform for using standard and more exotic file systems and also for developing file systems. This article explores the virtual file system (VFS)—sometimes called the virtual filesystem switch—in the Linux kernel and then reviews some of the major structures that tie file systems together.

Read more…

Share This

Linux Halloween! [pic]

Date: October 30, 2007. Categories: humour. 6 Comments

linux halloween

Share This

Switch to Ubuntu from different Linux distros or other OSes

Date: October 30, 2007. Categories: tips and ubuntu. 0 Comments

Few will deny that many people that use Unix-like Operating Systems or M$ Windows make the switch to Ubuntu these days or are considering it. The following links will show you Ubuntu equivalents of many traditional Unix applications, and tasks.

SwitchingToUbuntu/FromLinux
Switching to Ubuntu From Red Hat Enterprise Linux And Fedora
FromGentooToKubuntu
Switching to Ubuntu From Mac OS X
SwitchingToUbuntu/FromWindows

Share This

Fun: Chuck Norris vs. Linus Torvalds

Date: October 28, 2007. Categories: humour. 104 Comments

I'm sure everybody remembers facts on Chuck Norris, and here are Linus Torvalds facts!

Look at the picture, do you see any differences, don't you? :) ;) :)

Chuck Norris vs. Linus Torvalds

Linus Torvalds once found a segmentation fault in the universe.

Linus Torvalds can run kill -9 and kill Chuck Norris.

Linus Torvalds doesn't die, he simply returns zero.

Linus Torvalds first written program had artificial intelligence.

Linus can divide by zero.

Linus Torvalds runs Linux on his wristwatch and toster.

Linus Torvalds doesn't receive error messages.

There is no theory of probability, just a list of events that Linus Torvalds allows to occur.

Linus Torvalds does not sleep. He hacks.

Linus surfs the web using nothing but netcat.

Linus Torvalds can play 3D games in his head by interpreting the source code in real-time.

Linus made the red pill.

Linus Torvalds didn't learn from the University of Helsinki, the University of Helsinki learned from Linus Torvalds.

Linus Torvalds once developed a programming language so good that it makes python look like punch cards.

Linus Torvalds doesn't need to boot.

Linus is real, unless declared Integer.

Linus doesn't push the flush toilet button. He simply says "make clean".

Linus Torvalds has no dependencies.

Linus Torvalds takes one look at your desktop and knows which porn sites you visited. In the last ten years.

Linus Torvalds sleeps with nunchucks.

Linus can enrich himself simply by chowning your bank account. He does not do this because there is no challenge in it.

There are no man pages for Linus Torvalds, only god pages.

Linus Torvalds can do an infinite loop in five seconds… in his head.

Linus Torvalds doesn't wear glasses anymore not because he had laser eye surgery, but because he finally got his xorg.conf properly configured in his head.

Linus Torvalds can use a nice level lower than -20.

Linus Torvalds doesn't need to mount his drives.

Linus Torvalds doesn't debug. His programs are always perfect.

Linus Torvalds can install Linux on a dead badger.

Linus Torvalds doesn't need backups. He just uploads his files and lets the world mirror them.

Linus Torvalds is taking over the world. Microsoft is just a diversion so that no one would suspect a mild mannered Finnish programmer.

Linus Torvalds already has Linux 3.0. He is just keeping it to himself to build suspense.

Linus Torvalds didn't design Linux to run on the 386. Intel designed the 386 to run Linux.

People pray to Jesus, but Jesus prays to Linus Torvalds.

Linus need not worry about Microsoft patent crap, he simply do `sudo mv /tmp/ms /dev/null`.

Linus Torvalds is more powerful than root.

If you could read Linus Torvald’s mind, you'd find that his stream of conciousness is entirely in binary.

Linus scared A and B away, so they had to make C.

Linus only has 2 buttons on his keyboard '1' and '0'

Linus’s kernel never panics.

Linus does not use the GCC, he _writes_ binaries.

Share This

Adjust LCD brightness from command line

Date: October 25, 2007. Categories: tips. 17 Comments

dell 1501As many other Ubuntu users several days ago I've upgraded my Feisty to Gutsy at my Dell Inspiron 1501.

Unfortunately many things that worked for me in Feisty doesn't work in Gutsy just after upgrading. Among them are: suspend/hibernate and brightness adjustment. At this moment I'm trying to get these features working and certainly share results here but not workable brightness adjustment really disturbed me. So, until I didn't find a solution how to adjust LCD brightness with keyboard, there is nice workaround: execute the following command with root rights (sudo -s to get it):

echo -n 100 > /proc/acpi/video/VGA/LCD/brightness

This will make you LCD screen as bright as possible and you can proceed with your work (like me :) ). To lower brightness just replace 100 with another value like 62 and watch the results.

Hope it helps!

Share This

Eject/Close CD or DVD media with shell command

Date: October 24, 2007. Categories: tips. 0 Comments

cuckoo clockShell command eject that is available by default in most of Linux distributions, allows to open and sometimes close removable media tray (usually it’s CD-ROM or DVD media).

To eject media:

eject /dev/cdrom

or

eject cdrom

As you see the name of device can be a device file or mount point, either a full path or with the leading "/dev", "/media" or "/mnt" omitted. If no name is specified, the default name "cdrom" is used. With -c option a CD slot can be selected from an ATAPI/IDE CD-ROM changer.

To close tray:

eject -t cdrom

Dear reader, I hope you know what use eject command for if you came here, but let me suggest one more application. You can use this command to make your own cuckoo clock! :)

Just put little shell script opening and closing cdrom or dvd tray into cron…

Share This

Get uptime/loading/logins information remotely

Date: October 24, 2007. Categories: docs. 0 Comments

There are two utilities available in Linux and Unix that provide information about remote user logins. These are rusers and rwho, which are backed up by corresponding daemons, rusersd and rwhod. These daemons share login information over the network allowing sysadmins to monitor login activity on different hosts.

Once the daemons are installed and running (sudo apt-get install rwho rusers -y in Ubuntu, yum install rwho rusers in Fedora and etc.) at different hosts across the network, you can use several tools to get login information about all of these hosts. One of them is rwho that is the remote and network-enabled version of the well known who tool.

viper@viper-laptop:~$ rwho
tesadmin tes1000_v203_1322_tst0:pts/1 Oct 24 10:25
viper viper-laptop:pts/0 Oct 24 10:24
viper viper-laptop:pts/1 Oct 24 10:26 :01
viper viper-laptop:pts/2 Oct 24 10:25
viper viper-laptop:tty7 Oct 24 09:11

Another one is rusers tool that broadcasts over the network for the rusersd daemon on the other hosts to return the information about the users currently logged in:

viper@viper-laptop:~$ rusers
Sending broadcast for rusersd protocol version 3...
192.168.0.1 tesadmin
viper-laptop. viper viper viper viper

Another tool available when rwhod is running is ruptime that outputs the loading and uptime information for all servers running rwhod in the LAN.

viper@viper-laptop:~$ ruptime
tes1000_v203 up 14+19:00, 1 user, load 0.59, 0.47, 0.46
viper-laptop up 1:39, 4 users, load 0.40, 0.52, 0.45

This is really nice tool to monitor status of servers without need to log in to them.

You can read more information about these tools and related ones here (IBM’s doc).

Share This
« Previous Entries

Information Improvisation: Operating system is the backbone for every organization. Having professionals with CISSP certification in organization ensures the life running through its networks. Organizations manage tremendous amounts of traffic due to the use of pc phone and people with 646-058 certifications are ideal for this job. They can also manage online networks which can be hosted on lunarpages, which also provides free email hosting. With the company's logo design every page and a well crafted web template the site can be given a graceful look.