Ubuntu/Debian specific info/posts
Speedtest.net is the de facto internet link speed testing tool out there. Some people might argue that it is not accurate, but it’s still the most popular tool of it’s kind out there.
For us geeky individuals that have only the command line (cli) available to us in Linux but still want to test our link speed to the internet, there is a solution. speedtest-cli
To use, do the following (Tested in Ubuntu)
Step 1: Install GIT (git-core)
user@techedemic:~$ sudo apt-get install git-core |
We all know that browsers change more often than is really necessary. Firefox are pumping out new versions at the speed of light and with every version comes a new set of challenges. While general web browsing is often unaffected, enterprise applications designed for the web more often than not have compatibility issues with the latest and greatest browsers.
The solution – Use the Firefox Extended Support Release (“Firefox ESR” in short) version and you get to use a single version, with only bug-fixes in the updates, for 54 weeks at a time. Unfortunately, the apt repositories don’t have anything you can use to install the ESR version of Firefox (weird, especially on the LTS versions) at this stage.
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It really cannot be simpler… simply run the following command to set up LAMP and phpMyAdmin with one command in Ubuntu 12.04
sudo apt-get install lamp-server^ phpmyadmin |
The caret at the end of ‘lamp-server’ is explained here
If you administer a lot of Ubuntu machines in many different locations, odds are you’ve been in the situation where you need to install a package,
and in this case more specifically openjdk-6-jre, withou access to the internet or any apt repository.
The simplest way to do this is to manually install using a .deb package (syntax: sudo dpkg -i package_name.deb ), although that will mean you will have to meet some strict dependencies, which in itself can become a nightmare to figure out.
There is another way and it’s simpler than you think – although some functionality might not be available. If you simply want to be able to execute ‘java’ with some parameters, for example generating reports from your web application, then read on..
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By default, when you install snmpd (this was tested on Ubuntu 10.04, not sure about other Linux variants), the daemon is set to listen only on 127.0.0.1 (localhost)
If you run chech the process, you can see this:
techedemic@demo:/etc/default$ ps awux | grep snmp snmp 32753 0.3 2.0 47916 4948 ? S 09:29 0:00 /usr/sbin/snmpd -Lsd -Lf /dev/null -u snmp -g snmp -I -smux -p /var/run/snmpd.pid 127.0.0.1 sintrex 32757 0.0 0.3 7624 904 pts/0 S+ 09:29 0:00 grep --color=auto snmp |
To allow access to any machine from outside (make sure your company security policies allow for this), you need to edit the /etc/default/snmpd file as follows:
I use Adaptec (More specifically, the Adaptec 5805) RAID cards on a daily basis. Apart from the long(ish) boot times, they perform great once booted up and I’d recommend the cards any day. I also use Ubuntu predominantly as a server OS, so in order to manage my arrays, I need to be able to use the Adaptec Storage Manager (ASM for short). Unfortunately, Ubuntu is NOT officially supported, so you need to do a little workaround to get it to work.
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Sometimes you might have to activate some interfaces in your Ubuntu Server (or desktop for that matter) that you could use for your VMWare server, or to do a tcpdump for some promiscious traffic coming from a mirrored port…or hell’s bells, whatever…you just need it active without any IP assigned – and you need it to be up even if the box restarts.
If you want to do it, here’s how …
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Adobe AIR gives us some awesome looking cross-platform desktop apps. Everything looks and works the same, be it on a MAC, Linux Desktop or Windows machine. There is a slight problem though, 64-Bit editions of Ubuntu/Debian is not ‘officially’ supported. As such, there is no 64-bit .deb package to download and your average home user will just give up on trying to install AIR.
There is a workaround though. Just follow these steps (courtesy of this blog, but with a personal touch here and there) and you’ll have it working in no time.
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1. Install smartmontools and smart-notifier and accept all dependencies:
sudo apt-get install smartmontools smart-notifier |
2. Enable smart features on each drive. First list all the drives with:
df |
If the drives are part of a linux software raid array issue this command first:
mdadm –detail /dev/md0 |
Assuming your array is /dev/md0 or it could be any number you set. Adjust as necessary. After you get a listing of all the drives you want to monitor enter the following command for each drive:
smartctl --smart=on --offlineauto=on --saveauto=on /dev/sdb1 |
This assumes there’s drive /dev/sdb1 that you want to enable smart status on it. You can check the smart status for each drive you enabled smart status on by using this command:
smartctl --all /dev/sdb1 |
4. Edit your /etc/smartd.conf file:
sudo vi /etc/smartd.conf |
Replace the “root” entry right after the “-m” with the email address that you want the notifications to go on the “DEVICESCAN” line:
DEVICESCAN -m email_notify@yourdomain.com -M exec /usr/share/smartmontools/smartd-runner |
5. Configure smartd to start automatically. Edit the “/etc/default/smartmontools” file:
sudo vi /etc/default/smartmontools |
Uncomment the “start_smartd=yes” line and save the file.
Restart smartmontools:
sudo /etc/init.d/smartmontools restart * Restarting S.M.A.R.T. daemon smartd [ OK ] |
Ensure service is running:
ps -A |grep "smart" |
You should get a result similar to below:
1700 ? 00:00:00 smartd |
If the service fails to start, check out /var/log/messages for any errors and correct them. It’s also a good idea to reboot your machine and verifying that the “smartd” service started automatically.
Thanks to this guy for the help!
We can all use programs of many flavours to monitor, plot and manage temperatures in our boxes. Sometimes however, you just want to see ‘What is the temp NOW?’. lm-sensors makes this extremely easy. Simply do the following to get a quick view of your temps (Tested on Ubuntu 10.04 and 8.04 LTS).
# Log in as ‘root’ sudo bash # Install the lm-sensors package apt-get install lm-sensors # After the install completes, run the following command and answer YES to all questions sensors-detect # You can now view temperatures for your machine by typing the following sensors |
Obviously, lm-sensors can do waaaaaaay more than only this. For more info I suggest looking at the documentation.
Cheers peeps,