Monthly Archives: May 2011

Linux continues to please

It seems like the more you figure out linux, the more you just love it. It is truly amazing at what you can do with it. When I found the screen program, that made me very happy when dealing with servers and SSH, now I’m happy about finding update-rc.d. This handy system prog allows you to run scripts on startup under a runtime level. If you don’t care to know too much about it, simply create your script, give it execute permissions and put it in /etc/init.d/ and run “sudo update-rc.d script defaults” (assuming your script name is “script”). Wala, it will now run automatically for you on boot. pretty spiffy eh? I just used it to bind some directories from my windows partition to my Ubuntu folders so my files stay up to date on either end, but you can do much more then that.

Kootenay Network cooperation

I had this idea a little while back about getting the kootenay area computer techs together to share knowledge, idea’s, tips and tricks. I had just recently finished my all in one USB installer for windows and such as well, so I was eager to share that and help techs save literally hours of work every time they wanted or needed to reload a system. So I changed my other website (kootenay-networks.com) from my main business website, to a mix of business and the Kootenay Network cooperation. This was all done a few weeks ago.

So I fired off a bunch of emails to all the computer companys I could find online and in the phone book in the immediate kootenay area, as well as posted some free ad’s around the net. After two weeks, guess how many new members I had on the forums? … that’s right, 0. I saw a few views on the things I posted, but nothing major. I did however get a few emails of people thinking it was a great idea, but they just didn’t have the time to be a member, let alone a active one. This actually did make sense, because when I was working full time as a tech for another company, I did not have any time to learn new things during work, and sure didn’t want to spend all my free time doing more work… although I actually did 😛 but only cause I’m a major geek when it comes to computers and do really enjoy working with them. So this is where I am at. I’m just wondering how I could do things a bit different to make it easy for people to find information, so they don’t have to spend much time. I was thinking something more like a wiki as well as the forum, so people could at least get quick answers and then actually contribute / converse if they like on the forums.

If any one actually reads this, I would love to get some idea’s on getting more techs in a co-operative spirit to help better the standards of every one in the area.

Linux Screen application

Wow, how have I not found the program “screen” until now? It allows you to manage multiple terminal sessions in one. Very useful, especially when your going through SSH and have frequent connection issues. Here’s a quick word from some other random dude who loves it.

Screen is best described as a terminal multiplexer. Using it, you can run any number of console-based applications–interactive command shells, curses-based applications, text editors, etc.–within a single terminal. The desire to do this is what gets most people hooked on screen. I used to start a half-dozen terminal emulators when I logged into my machine: I wanted one to read my email, one to edit my code, one to compile my code, one for my newsreader, one for a shell into my web host, and so on. Now I start one terminal emulator, and run screen in it. Problem solved.

The other main cool feature of screen is its ability to decouple the terminal emulator from the running programs. This means that you can use screen to keep programs running after you accidentally close the terminal emulator, or even after you log out, and later resume right where you were. It means that the idea of a “session” in which you are running a number of console programs is a free-floating entity that you can bind to any terminal anywhere, or no terminal at all if you want.