From the category archives:

Linux

Rapache on Ubuntu 9.10

November 15, 2009

I’ve just now stumbled across Rapache, a useful GUI tool that makes configuring apache easy. I found it by accident in the Ubuntu Software Center, but unfortunately it would freeze while trying to add a new domain. I searched the web for answers, and found a bug report.
This didn’t specifically reference Ubuntu 9.10 (rather, 9.04) [...]

Read the full article →

Default open action for Ubuntu

October 9, 2009

Something happened on my Ubuntu install sometime which meant that double clicking on an HTML file resulted in the file being opened by gedit. Not really what I wanted. I started looking through the GNOME system menu (Preferences and Administration) to find how to change the default action - but that turned out to be [...]

Read the full article →

Adding items to Gnome menus

July 10, 2009

I’ve always wondered how to add items to Gnome menus. Well, it turns out it is relatively easy - as you would expect - and its documented here.
It’s as simple as creating a text file in the right place - refreshing easy compared to the binary shortcuts in Windows.
When I was working on ToolInstaller, [...]

Read the full article →

Virtual machines with VirtualBox

May 17, 2009

I’ve found VirtualBox to be very easy to create virtual machines - it’s free, open source, and available on Windows, Linux, Macintosh and OpenSolaris. One of the features I particularly like is being able to create a virtual disk that grows as needed (dynamically expanding image). You can also mount an iso image for the [...]

Read the full article →

cp with force overwrite

April 13, 2009

I was recently trying to copy a directory over an existing one and kept getting prompted - asking if I wanted to overwrite existing files - even though I was using the force option:
cp -Rf dir1 dir2
I found the answer here - it was caused by an alias forcing the interactive mode.
Quick solution is to [...]

Read the full article →

Playlists with MythTV

March 22, 2009

I’ve been wanting a way to use playlists on my media center either from within MythTV or with any other player. The reason is I have a bunch of short videos (music and documentaries) that I’d like to be able to play consecutively.
It turns out to be a case of just RTFM. You can create [...]

Read the full article →

Hey! Where’d my swap go?

March 21, 2009

I’ve just noticed that I’ve got no swap space! (Dell 1525 running Ubuntu 8.10).
I first installed my laptop with Ubuntu 8.04, and later upgraded to 8.10. After the upgrade I noticed that hibernate no longer worked, and I think (from memory) I found an error message saying something about not enough swap space. I briefly [...]

Read the full article →

Set default browser in Ubuntu

March 17, 2009

To set the default browser, use update-alternatives as shown below:
paul@dell1525:~$ sudo update-alternatives –config x-www-browser
There are 2 alternatives which provide `x-www-browser’.
Selection Alternative
———————————————–
1 /usr/bin/firefox-3.0
*+ 2 /usr/bin/seamonkey
Press enter to keep [...]

Read the full article →

Podcatching solution

March 17, 2009

I’m getting closer to a podcatching solution with gpodder. Gpodder is a simple and easy to use podcatcher - and importantly, it can be invoked from the command line in a non-interactive mode. This is important because of my internet plan - I get twice as much download quota on off-peak times as I do [...]

Read the full article →

Extra Ubuntu Repositories

March 16, 2009

A friend put me on to this blog post about extra repositories for Ubuntu. This is a great resource which highlights some great (and possibly essential) software that you should know about if you are running Ubuntu (and possibly any linux flavour).
Have a look, you may find some software listed there of interest to you. [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries