I’ve recently started using some select Ubuntu ppa repos with debian, and once you know how it is extremely easy to set it all up and get working. So, heres how to do it, using “Homebank” as an example.

Currently in the debian repos, Homebank is showing as stable ...

For a long time I’ve been using an alias to shortcut the usage of apt-get show, but I wasn’t happy with it. So today I’ve written a new script that shows a description of the programme you’re interested in, and then shows whether you’ve already ...

Obnam restore

Having done a restore and re-install recently of my Debian wheezy box, I made notes on what exactly I did. This was a ‘planned’ restore in that I decided at about 1430 to start the restore now rather than wait for doing it tomorrow. Whilst Obnam was completing ...

Protecting files from unwanted deletion is very important security on the tasklist of Unix Administrators. On Linux boxes you can use the chattr command.

Let’s give you some examples how chattr work under Linux -

To make a folder undeletable, run -

sudo chattr +i -R foldername

After that, you can ...

If you want to have a system menu that is generated by the system rather than you, it is possible like this -

You need to move the current fluxbox menu out-of-the-way so that you don’t overwrite it, and you can save it with today’s date so it’s ...

Has my backup succeeded?

At the end of ‘obnamhome.txt’ there is a block of text which is very interesting to see how your backup has gone -

2013-09-04 16:31:48 INFO Backup performance statistics:
2013-09-04 16:31:48 INFO \* files found: 163789
2013-09-04 16:31:48 INFO \* files backed ...

Sooner or later you will need to restore from your backup, and it doesn’t hurt to create a situation where you do need to restore a file. I am going to show how I restore files which does work as I have had to use it for real.

Restore ...

My scripts continue to grow and improve, and these are just the most recent additions -

# for setting history length see HISTSIZE and HISTFILESIZE in bash(1)
HISTSIZE=1000
HISTFILESIZE=2000
export HISTTIMEFORMAT="%a %h %d – %r # "

bind "set completion-ignore-case on"
This is part of my .bashrc, and the export command ...

Finding information about your mobile phone

Open the dial pad and type the following -

*# *#4636# *# *

And you’ll see various hidden things about your mobile.

Convert a .mkv file to a .avi

Command line to convert a MKV file to a smaller xVid AVI file, by reducing the video bit ...

To create a new backup file for burning to dvd, use this command line tool -

tar cvzf 20120115.tar.gz 20120115

which is very effective and quite quick too.

To log the output use the following command -

tar cvzf 20120116.tar.gz 20120116 >> /home/boztu/cron/log.txt 2>&1 ...

When running top from the command line, the process GTK-gnash always showed up usually with three instances of it. Killing it didn’t seem to make much difference, it just reappeared again, and the killed ones became zombies. So, how to get rid of it?

The answer is to use ...

By default under KDE, Debian 6 indexes files using nepomuk which can be suspended on the desktop, but that is only valid for one session. If you reboot then you have to suspend it again, so I’ve been looking for a way of turning it off completely.

And here ...

A new addition to my root.crontab is -

00 3 * * * /home/boztu/cron/cache.sh

which calls the file ‘cache.sh’.

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#!/bin/bash -x
 #shell script for use with rsync in root crontab
 /usr/bin/rsync -av /var/cache/apt/archives/ /media/disk/cache/ >> /home/boztu/cron ...

I’ve just discovered that you can kill any PID from TOP whilst its running by just entering k and then the PID number. Sweet!

I’ve just updated my entry with the linux counter http://www.counter.li.org to show that I’m now using Debian in place of Centos, and whilst I was there I noticed that I’ve been using linux since the 3rd November 2003! I didn’t realise it ...

Firefox has an option to add a Close button to each tab; so does Konqueror but it replaces the website icon. To get the best of both worlds - a site icon that turns into a Close button when the mouse is over it - load ~/.kde/share/config/konquerorrc into kedit ...