Organizing Linux Information!

HOWTO: Compiling Intel Atom Poulsbo GMA 500 graphics driver on Debian

Admin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 09:20:32 +0000

Finally here is a step-by-step guide to get the Intel Poulsbo (PSB) GMA 500 graphics driver working under Debian testing/unstable. Over the last 3 months or so since I wrote an introductory post regarding this whole issue, I have got several emails and comments with a request to put up such a guide. Sorry I [...]

HOWTO: Enabling Kernel Mode Setting (KMS) in Debian Linux kernel

Admin — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:31:40 +0000

Purpose: So some of you must have heard about a new feature that got introduced since 2.6.29 Linux kernel known as Kernel Mode Setting (KMS).I will not go into the details about the benefits of KMS in this post but rather I will show you how to enable KMS on your Debian system. However I [...]

HOWTO: Tuning your MySQL database for indexing search results in MediaWiki

Admin — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:25:53 +0000

Purpose: The popular MySQL open source database suite is the back bone of a vast majority of LAMP type systems or rather system which requires web and database access. One such example is MediaWiki. Now MediaWiki has a very good default search engine including full-text search. However the other day, somebody informed me that they [...]

HOWTO: Installing, Configuring AWstats for Apache web server on Debian

Admin — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 08:23:53 +0000

Purpose: So I decided I need some kind of web statistics program for my Debian Lenny system which runs an Apache2 web server and a lot of other web-based application like MediaWiki, Mantis, etc. There are a lot of different programs that will let you view your web server statistics like Webalizer, AWstats, Visitors, etc. [...]

TIP: Resolving AWstats permission denied error by www-data cron job

Admin — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 05:08:48 +0000

So if you have installed AWstats, a web-statistic program, on your machine you would have noticed that the cron job that it sets by default does not work. Meaning that the statistics on your AWstats web page does not get updated. If you do a search on Internet, you will find that lot of Ubuntu [...]

HOWTO: Linking files from your Windows shared network drives in Wiki

Admin — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:47:52 +0000

Purpose: So let’s say that you have got your Linux based MediaWiki server going on your internal LAN in your office or corporate intranet. Let’s assume that your intranet is Windows server based which basically means that all the files that you access in your day-to-day work resides on Windows based server. Now one of [...]

Configure sendmail relay email server in Mediawiki on Debian

Admin — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 06:41:35 +0000

Purpose: So today we are going to learn how to configure the email relay server for your MediaWiki installation. There are many ways you can use the email feature in MediaWiki. We will take the simplest approach. But before we further dive into this topic we need to go over some basics of sending email [...]

HOWTO: Blacklisting kernel module from auto loading in Debian

Admin — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:58:35 +0000

Purpose: In this post we will how to prevent a kernel module (a.k.a blacklist) from auto loading during Debian Linux start up. You probably are thinking that you already know this (and you might), however there has been some change in recent kernels and you need to use a different method to blacklist a module [...]

HOWTO: Detecting serial port buffer overrun errors in Linux

Admin — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 00:05:09 +0000

Purpose: A common question that many people have who have been playing with serial ports under Linux is to detect serial overrun errors while debugging/testing their serial ports. Unfortunately, there is no utility that I know off which lets you measure the overrun error in real time. However this ability is in-built into the Linux [...]

HOWTO: Assign Static IP Address in Debian

Admin — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 07:06:52 +0000

Purpose: Most of the users, whether at home or at office, have some sort of DHCP server running which assigns IP addresses to the computer automatically. But sometime there are instances where you need to have your own static IP address. In this post we will how to assign a static IP address to your [...]

HOWTO: Integrate WYSIWYG editor FCKeditor in mediawiki on Debian

Admin — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 00:16:06 +0000

Purpose: A common complain from a lot of non-technical mediawiki users is the lack of WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. This basically means that user does not get to see in the final wiki page what they type in the “Edit” wiki page. There are various options to get a WYSIWYG [...]

INFO: GRUB2 – 101 Class

Admin — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:32:32 +0000

Purpose: Since the next generation of GRUB, GRUB2, is slowly trickling down to all major Linux distribution, I thought about writing a basic post regarding GRUB2, which discusses some of the fundamental change in GRUB2. Also the documentation on GRUB2 is not very extensive at this point of time. I am assuming that you have [...]

HOWTO: Embed MS Excel file in MediaWiki pages

Admin — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:14:20 +0000

Purpose: So once you have installed mediawiki and are up and running, you might want to learn how to embed a MS Excel file in your wiki page. In this blog post we will learn exactly how to do that. However note that you will be just displaying the excel file on your wiki page [...]

TIP: Resolve DPKG’s “extended_states” error message during upgrade

Admin — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 08:26:31 +0000

While doing an upgrade on your Debian or Ubuntu system, if you ever encounter the following error message: E: Unable to parse package file /var/lib/apt/extended_states (1) all you need to do is to rename that file to something else. For example: # cd /var/lib/apt/ # mv extended_states extended_states.tmp Now you can continue whatever you were doing with apt-get, aptitude or [...]

HOWTO: Create your own local Debian repository

Admin — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:02:53 +0000

Purpose: In this blog post we will learn how to create your own local Debian like package repository so that you can use apt-get install commands to install packages just like the way you install from Debian repositories. Let’s say you have created your own customized Debian packages and you would like them to install [...]