Linux Indya - Linux is not only for Geeks!

HOWTO create an ISO Image

ravisagar — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 03:04:58 -0700

Today I am testing Sun Virtual Box. I want to install windows xp on Fedora but I don't like installing Operating Systems from DVDs or CDs. I thought I should create an ISO Image from the Windows CD. Here is the simple command to create an ISO from the CD ROM.

[ravi@localhost e]$ dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/home/ravi/windows/e/windowss.iso

Simple!

Project Management Open Source Softwares

ravisagar — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 23:36:22 -0700

Yesterday I was searching for Open Source Project Management softwares and found OpenProj.

To my surprise it is very much like Microsoft Project. I don't know how good it is, I will try it. In the mean time I have to try other Open Source PM Tools.

KDE - Do not show windows from all the Desktops

ravisagar — Sat, 17 May 2008 20:24:56 -0700

By default the Windows from all the Desktops are displayed in all the KDE Desktops. You can disable this feature by following the below mentioned step.

1. Go to Control Center > Desktop > Taskbar
2. Under Taskbar section uncheck the checkbox "Show windows from all desktops"

IP Tables - Secure your Linux computer

ravisagar — Sun, 04 May 2008 03:15:28 -0700

Secure your computer using IP Tables. Click on the link below. It has a nice tutorial on IP Tables.

http://www.itech7.com/Security/Secure-your-Linux-Box-using-IPTables-Fire...

Re-Mount /etc/fstab without Restarting

ravisagar — Sun, 04 May 2008 01:05:47 -0700

You have added new entry in your /etc/fstab file to mount a drive or partition. To mount those new partitions you would normally reboot your PC. There is a simple way which will Re-Mount the drives in your /etc/fstab file. Run as root.

mount -a

BASH - Display date/time, hostname and current directory

ravisagar — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 01:32:24 -0700

To display date/time, hostname and current directory use the following command in your BASH prompt and press enter.

PS1="[\d \t \u@\h:\w ] $ "

After pressing enter your BASH prompt will look like this.

[Mon Apr 28 14:04:48 ravisa@incgnddw0062:/cygdrive/e/myfiles/] $

I used this command on Cygwin running on Window XP. The hostname and current directory will be different in your case.

Current working directory in BASH

ravisagar — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 23:31:08 -0700

For all those newbies in the world of Linux here is a very useful linux command.

[root@localhost practice]# pwd
/home/ravi/windows/d/myfiles/tutorials/c++/practice

pwd will print the current working directory in the konsole.

fdisk in fedora 8

ravisagar — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 08:36:52 -0700

I installed Fedora 8 last week on my computer. After installation I wanted to mount one windows FAT32 partition, before mounting the partition I fired fdisk command to check the partition letters. To my surprise fdisk command was not there!

But there was nothing to worry about. I found this tool icommand /sbin/ folder

So if you are using fedora 8 and want to use fdisk then use....

/sbin/fdisk

uname - print system information

ravisagar — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 20:28:51 -0700

If you want the know your system information like the Kernel name, Kernel Release, Kernel Version etc then you can issue uname command.

Here is the details of the command along with the arguments. This information is fetched from manual pages.


NAME
       uname - print system information

SYNOPSIS
       uname [OPTION]...

DESCRIPTION
       Print certain system information.  With no OPTION, same as -s.

       -a, --all
              print all information, in the following order, 
              except omit -p and -i if unknown:

       -s, --kernel-name
              print the kernel name

       -n, --nodename
              print the network node hostname

       -r, --kernel-release
              print the kernel release

       -v, --kernel-version
              print the kernel version

       -m, --machine
              print the machine hardware name

       -p, --processor
              print the processor type or "unknown"

       -i, --hardware-platform
              print the hardware platform or "unknown"

       -o, --operating-system
              print the operating system

       --help display this help and exit

       --version
              output version information and exit

5.1 Sound on Fedora 7

ravisagar — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:08:03 -0800

I am using Linux for so many years now but I also keep windows installed on my PC. I need windows just for one damn single thing, 5.1 sound! I was never able to enable 5.1 on fedora. I have been searching on internet, sending mails to mail groups and asking every other Linux geek but none helped. I guess today is my lucky day :)

I came across this page on the internet ALSA Multi-channel Audio mini-HOWTO by Uday Bondhugula. I followed the instruction given by him on this page. After following each and every step carefully I was able to get all my 5 speakers and Sub-woofer working!! But when I ran speaker-test -c 6 -D surround51 command I realized that my center and LFE speakers are actually swapped :( then I quickly mailed Uday asking for help and not hoping for his reply. To my surprise he replied soon (God bless you Uday) and asked me to run cat /proc/asound/card0/id command. He then asked me to make the changes in my /etc/alsa/cards/ATIIXP.conf file. Actually earlier I was struggling with /etc/alsa/cards/ICH4.conf file.

Now everything is great. I can hear sound from all my speakers on fedora 7. I am using MSI RS480-IL motherboard. Which has an on-board sound card.

If you find any difficulty enabling 5.1 on your Linux then let me know. May be I can help you :p

Happy Dolby!!