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Commands related to Process control

Here "PID" is refer to the process ID, that you can get from command "ps -aux"


fg PID
Bring a background or stopped process to the foreground.

bg PID
Send the process to the background. Opposite to fg. The same can be accomplished with z. If you have stopped jobs, you have to type exit twice in row to log out.

any_command&
Run any command in the background (the symbol "&" means "run the proceeding command in the background").

batch any_command
Run any command (usually one that is going to take more time) when the system load is low. I can logout, and the process will keep running.

at 17:00
Execute a command at a specified time. You will be prompted for the command(s) to run, until you press d.

kill PID
Force a process shutdown. First determine the PID of the process to kill using ps.

killall program_name
Kill program(s) by name.

lpc
(as root) Check and control the printer(s). Type "?" to see the list of available commands.

lpq
Show the content of the printer queue. Under KDE (X-Windows), you may use GUI-based "Printer Queue" available from "K"menu-Utilities.

lprm job_number
Remove a printing job "job_number" from the queue.

nice program_name
Run program_name adjusting its priority. Since the priority is not specified in this example, it will be adjusted by 10 (the process will run slower), from the default value (usually 0). The lower the number (of "niceness" to other users on the system), the higher the priority. The priority value may be in the range -20 to 19. Only root may specify negative values. Use "top" to display the priorities of the running processes.

renice -1 PID
(as root) Change the priority of a running process to -1. Normal users can only adjust processes they own, and only up from the current value (make them run slower).

c, z, s, and q also belong to this chapter but they were described previously. In short they mean: stop the current command, send the current command to the background, stop the data transfer, resume the data transfer.
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0

GUI for creating Firewall rules - Firestarter

Firestarter is an open source firewall for Linux with an easy-to-use graphical user interface. The software aims to combine ease of use with powerful features, therefore serving both Linux desktop users and system administrators.

It also enables Internet sharing and allows you to define both inbound and outbound access policy with the option to whitelist or blacklist traffic. You can easily watch the active internet connections including the traffic routed through the firewall.

Firestarter features
    * Open Source software, available free of charge
    * User friendly, easy to use, graphical interface
    * A wizard walks you through setting up your firewall on your first time
    * Suitable for use on desktops, servers and gateways
    * Real-time firewall event monitor shows intrusion attempts as they happen
    * Enables Internet connection sharing, optionally with DHCP service for the clients
    * Allows you to define both inbound and outbound access policy
    * Open or stealth ports, shaping your firewalling with just a few mouse clicks
    * Enable port forwarding for your local network in just seconds
    * Option to whitelist or blacklist traffic
    * Real time firewall events view
    * View active network connections, including any traffic routed through the firewall
    * Advanced Linux kernel tuning features provide protection from flooding, broadcasting and spoofing
    * Support for tuning ICMP parameters to stop Denial of Service (DoS) attacks
    * Support for tuning ToS parameters to improve services for connected client computers
    * Ability to hook up user defined scripts or rulesets before or after firewall activation
    * Supports Linux Kernels 2.4 and 2.6
    * Translations available for many languages (38 languages as of November 2004)

Installation on Fedora Core, Red Hat Linux, SuSE or Mandrake
Firestarter is conveniently available in RPM package format for RPM enabled Linux distributions like, Fedora Core, SuSE and Mandrake.

Once you have downloaded the Firestarter RPM specific to your distribution, open a terminal and change to the directory where you downloaded the RPM to. Type the following commands as shown in bold to install the package:

# rpm -Uvh firestarter*rpm

Installation on Ubuntu
Installing is very easy. Simply open your Terminal window, and type:

sudo apt-get install firestarter

Compiling and installing from source
Start by downloading the tar.gz version of Firestarter. Unpack the tarball and move into the newly created directory:

# tar -zxvf firestarter*tar.gz
# cd firestarter
# ./configure --sysconfdir=/etc
# make
# make install
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Themes for Ubuntu Linux

Murrina Triomphe

Ubuntu Theme Murrina Triomphe
Download

Hardy Theme 2.0

Ubuntu Theme Hardy
Download

Bamboo Zen

Ubuntu Theme Bamboo Zen
Download

Lux Theme

Ubuntu Theme Lux
Download

Burnt Orange Ice

Ubuntu Theme Burnt Orange Ice
Download

Creamy

Ubuntu Theme Creamy
Download

Glow

Ubuntu Theme Glow
Download

The rest of the list: SizzledCore 
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1

Useful Commands in Ubuntu

A comprehensive list of commands needed when using Ubuntu:

Command privileges.

    sudo command - run command as root
    sudo su – root shell open
    sudo su user – open shell as a user
    sudo -k – forget your password sudo
    gksudo command – sudo visual dialog (GNOME)
    kdesudo command – sudo visual dialog (KDE)
    sudo visudo – edit / etc / sudoers
    gksudo nautilus – root file manager (GNOME)
    kdesudo konqueror – root file manager (KDE)
    passwd – change your password

Command Network


    ifconfig – displays information network
    iwconfig – displays information from wireless
    sudo iwlist scan – scan wireless networks
    sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart – reset the network
    (file) /etc/network/interfaces – manual configuration
    ifup interface – bring online interface
    ifdown interface – disable interface

Commands Display

    sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart – reset X (Gnome)
    sudo /etc/init.d/kdm restart – reset X (KDE)
    (file) /etc/X11/xorg.conf – show Configuration
    sudo dpkg-reconfigure - reconfigure xserver-xorg-phigh - reset configuration X
    Ctrl+Alt+Bksp – X display reset if frozen
    Ctrl+Alt+FN – switch to tty N
    Ctrl+Alt+F7 – switch back to X display

Commands Service System.

    start service – service to start work (Upstart)
    stop service – service to stop working (Upstart)
    status service – check if service is running (Upstart)
    /etc/init.d/service start – start service (SysV)
    /etc/init.d/service stop – stop service (SysV)
    /etc/init.d/service status – check service (SysV)
    /etc/init.d/service restart – reset service (SysV)
    runlevel – get current runlevel

Commands for Firewall.

    ufw enable – turn on the firewall
    ufw disable – turn off the firewall
    ufw default allow – allow all connections by default
    ufw default deny – drop all connections by default
    ufw status – current rules and
    ufw allow port – to allow traffic on port
    ufw deny port – port block
    ufw deny from ip – ip block

Command System.


    lsb_release -a – get the version of Ubuntu
    uname -r – get kernel version
    uname -a – get all the information kernel

Commands for Package Manager.


    apt-get update – refresh updates available
    apt-get upgrade – update all packages
    apt-get dist-upgrade – version update
    apt-get install pkg – installing pkg
    apt-get remove pkg – uninstall pkg
    apt-get autoremove – removing packages obsotletos
    apt-get -f install – try to fix packages
    dpkg –configure -a – try to fix a broken package
    dpkg -i pkg.deb – install file pkg.deb
    (file) /etc/apt/sources.list – list of repositories APT

Special Packages For commands.

    ubuntu-desktop – Setting the standard Ubuntu
    kubuntu-desktop – KDE Desktop
    xubuntu-desktop – desktop XFCE
    ubuntu-minimal – core earnings Ubuntu
    ubuntu-standard – the standard utilities Ubuntu
    ubuntu-restricted-extras – not free, but useful
    kubuntu-restricted-extras – ditto KDE
    xubuntu-restricted-extras – ditto XFCE
    build-essential – packages used to compile
    linux-image-generic – latest generic kernel image
    linux-headers-generic – latest headlines

Applications commands.

    nautilus – File Manager (GNOME)
    dolphin – File Manager (KDE)
    konqueror – Web browser (KDE)
    kate – text editor (KDE)
    gedit – text editor (GNOME)
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Quick Guide to compress / decompress files

tar (tar)
tar Packaging
tar cvf archive.tar / archive / May / *
Unpack
tar xvf archive.tar
See the content (not extract)
tar tvf archive.tar
tar.gz -. tar.Z -. tgz (tar with gzip)
Pack and compress
tar czvf archive.tar.gz tar / archive / May / *
Unpack and decompress
tar xzvf archive.tar.gz
See the content (not extract)
tar tzvf archive.tar.gz
gz (gzip)
Compress
gzip file-q
(The file compresses it and rename it as "archive.gz")
Unzip
gzip-d archive.gz
 (The file unzip it and leave it as a "file")
Note: gzip only compresses files, not directories
bz2 (bzip2)
Compress
bzip2 file
bunzip2 file
(The file compresses it and rename it as "archive.bz2")
Unzip
bzip2-d archive.bz2
bunzip2 archive.bz2
(The file unzip it and leave it as a "file")
Note: only bzip2 compressed files, not directories
tar.bz2 (tar with bzip2)
Compress
tar-c files | bzip2> archive.tar.bz2
Unzip
bzip2-dc archive.tar.bz2 | tar-xv
tar jvxf archive.tar.bz2 (recent versions of tar)
View content
bzip2-dc archive.tar.bz2 | tar-tv
zip (zip)
Compress
zip archive.zip / May / files
Unzip
unzip archive.zip
View content
unzip-v archive.zip 
rar (rar)
Compress
rar-a archive.rar / May / files
Unzip
rar-x archive.rar
View content
rar-v archive.rar
rar-l archive.rar
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LXDE, A stable and lightweight desktop environment.

LXDE is the abbreviation for Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment. LX also stands for LinuX. You will find it different from other desktop environments, due to its discrete components, which can be used independently and with few dependencies.


The LXDE project aims to provide a desktop environment which is intuitive, lightweight and useful, while also keeping system resource demands low. Development focuses on a balance of usability, speed, and memory usage.

LXDE has number of advantages and excellent features:
    * Lightweight, runs with reasonable memory usage (After X11 and LXDE are started, the total memory usage is about 45 MB on i386 machines.)
    * Fast, runs well even on older machines produced in 1999 (The hardware requirements of LXDE is similiar to Windows 98)
    * Good-looking, gtk+ 2 internationalized user interface
    * Easy-to-use, the user interface is simple, intuitive and functional.
    * Desktop independent (Yes! Every component can be used without LXDE)
    * Standards compliant, follows the specs on freedesktop.org
    * Suitable for old machines ( Though LXDE itself has low hardware requirements, other X applications have higher resource demands. For example, Firefox and OpenOffice.org 2 are quite memory-hungry. It is therefore recommended that you have more than 128 MB RAM.)

Components:
    * PCManFM: File manager, provides desktop icon
    * LXPanel: Feature-rich desktop panel
    * LXSession: Standard-compliant X11 session manager with shutdown/reboot/suspend supports via HAL and gdm
    * LXAppearance: LXAppearance is a new feature-rich GTK+ theme switcher able to change GTK+ themes, icon themes, and fonts used by applications
    * Openbox: Lightweight, standard-compliant, and highly-configurable window manager (This is not developed by LXDE Project, but it's used as default window manager). This can be replaced by any other window manager like icewm, fluxbox, metacity, ...etc.
    * GPicView: A very simple, fast, and lightweight image viewer featuring immediate startup.
    * Leafpad: Lightweight and simple text editor(This is not developed by us, but we suggest using this as default text editor).
    * XArchiver: Lightweight, fast, and desktop-independent gtk+-based file archiver (This is not developed by LXDE Project, but you are suggested to use this as default archiver).
    * LXNM (still under development): Lightweight network manager for LXDE supporting wireless connections (Linux-only)

Installation:
OpenSuSe 11.1
Use "1 click" installer to install LXDE: here

OpenSuSe 11.0
Swyear from Taiwan provides a SuSE repository with LXDE packages in it.

    * http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/swyear/

Installation via zypper is available for Open SuSE 11.0.

# zypper ar http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/swyear/openSUSE_11.0/ swyear
# zypper in lxde-desktop


Fedora 9
Install LXDE with

# yum install lxde-common

This will install the LXDE core components: lxde-common, lxpanel, lxsession, pcmanfm and openbox. You might also want to install additional applications:

# yum install gpicview leafpad lxappearance lxtask lxterminal xarchiver
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Convert Gmail account into Web based file server

PhpGmailDrive (PGD) turns your Gmail account into a Web based file server. You may add more than one Gmail account, arrange attachments in multiple folders, and apply themes to the interface. It can be embedded into any HTML page.

PhpGmailDrive is a new type of file sharing utility. Unlike typical file servers (say xDrive) it uses Gmail as backend file server. You can enjoy it simply by hosting a small PHP script in your web site without any database.
Gmail file space is more than 2GB, so you can imagine you already have such a big space on internet. However, you will require a Gmail account (If you don't have any Gmail address, go GmailSwap or ask your friends.).

PGD automatically connects Gmail server and fetches list of all attached files and generate downloadable links in a tree like view. If you are looking for a file server to upload your music or notes without any hassle, PGD is ideal for you. Technically speaking PGD is wrapper of Gmailer .
Thought there is no need to know hecks of PHP or Gmailer. Just you have to check that your PHP hosting service provider has curl extension of PHP to handle HTTP/HTTPS traffic.

Here are some key features of "Php Gmail Drive":
* Successfully connects to Gmail and only grabs list of Attachments in Gmail messages.
* List of attachments are displayed with inbuilt Javascript engine. You can customize output to any other formats.
* 100% compliant to GMAILFS. So you can upload with Windows Gmail Shell extension or Linux GmailFS utilities..
* Supports Multiple Gmail accounts in the same script .
* Supports all browsers.
* Total size is less than 100 KB.

Requirements:
* GMailer should works well with PHP >= 4.
* Also it requires the curl extension.
* Because GMailer ALWAYS connects to GMail via SSL, you may need OpenSSL for curl to talk SSL.
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3

Tools for creating TCP/IP packets

hping (http://www.hping.org/)

hping is a command-line oriented TCP/IP packet assembler/analyzer. The interface is inspired to the ping(8) unix command, but hping isn't only able to send ICMP echo requests. It supports TCP, UDP, ICMP and RAW-IP protocols, has a traceroute mode, the ability to send files between a covered channel, and many other features

Features include:
    * Firewall testing
    * Advanced port scanning
    * Network testing, using different protocols, TOS, fragmentation
    * Manual path MTU discovery
    * Advanced traceroute, under all the supported protocols
    * Remote OS fingerprinting
    * Remote uptime guessing
    * TCP/IP stacks auditing
    * hping can also be useful to students that are learning TCP/IP

Hping works on the following unix-like systems: Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, Solaris, MacOs X, Windows.

Nemesis (http://nemesis.sourceforge.net/)

Nemesis is a command-line network packet crafting and injection utility for UNIX-like and Windows systems. Nemesis, is well suited for testing Network Intrusion Detection Systems, firewalls, IP stacks and a variety of other tasks. As a command-line driven utility, Nemesis is perfect for automation and scripting.

Nemesis can natively craft and inject ARP, DNS, ETHERNET, ICMP, IGMP, IP, OSPF, RIP, TCP and UDP packets. Using the IP and the Ethernet injection modes, almost any custom packet can be crafted and injected.

Features include:
    * ARP/RARP, DNS, ETHERNET, ICMP, IGMP, IP, OSPF, RIP, TCP and UDP protocol support
    * Layer 2 or Layer 3 injection
    * Packet payload from file
    * IP and TCP options from file

Scapy (http://www.secdev.org/projects/scapy/)

Scapy is a powerful interactive packet manipulation program. It is able to forge or decode packets of a wide number of protocols, send them on the wire, capture them, match requests and replies, and much more.

It can handle most classical tasks like scanning, tracerouting, probing, unit tests, attacks or network discovery (it can replace hping, 85% of nmap, arpspoof, arp-sk, arping, tcpdump, tethereal, p0f, etc.).

Features include:
    * Port Scanning
          o SYN Scan
          o Other TCP Scans
          o UDP Scans
          o IP Scan
    * Host Discovery
          o ARP Ping
          o ICMP Ping
          o TCP Ping
          o UDP Ping
    * OS Fingerprinting
          o ISN
          o nmap_fp
          o p0f
          o queso
    * Sniffer - includes powerful facilities for traffic capture and analysis
    * Wireless - can not only sniff and decode packets but also inject arbitrary packets
    * Traceroute - standard ICMP Traceroute can be emulated
    * Firewall/IDS Testing
          o TCP Timestamp Filtering
          o NAT Detection
          o Firewalking

Yersinia (http://www.yersinia.net)

Yersinia is a framework for performing layer 2 attacks.

It is designed to take advantage of some weakeness in different network protocols. It pretends to be a solid framework for analyzing and testing the deployed networks and systems.

Features include:
    * Attacks for the following network protocols are supported
          o  Spanning Tree Protocol (STP)
          o Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP)
          o Dynamic Trunking Protocol (DTP)
          o Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)
          o Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP)
          o 802.1q
          o 802.1x
          o Inter-Switch Link Protocol (ISL)
          o VLAN Trunking Protocol (VTP)

SendIP (http://www.earth.li/projectpurple/progs/sendip.html)

SendIP is a command-line tool to send arbitrary IP packets. It has a large number of options to specify the content of every header of a RIP, RIPng, BGP, TCP, UDP, ICMP, or raw IPv4/IPv6 packet. It also allows any data to be added to the packet. Checksums can be calculated automatically, but if you wish to send out wrong checksums, that is supported too.

packETH (http://packeth.sourceforge.net/)

packETH is a Linux GUI packet generator tool for ethernet. It allows you to create and send any possible packet or sequence of packets on the ethernet.

Features:
 * you can create and send any ethernet packet. Supported protocols:
      o ethernet II, ethernet 802.3, 802.1q, QinQ
      o ARP, IPv4, user defined network layer payload
      o UDP, TCP, ICMP, IGMP, user defined transport layer payload
      o RTP (payload with options to send sin wave of any frequency for G.711)
 * sending sequence of packets
      o delay between packets, number of packets to send
      o sending with max speed, approaching the teoretical boundary
      o change parameters while sending (change IP & mac address, UDP payload, 2 user defined bytes, etc.)
  * saving configuration to a file and load from it - pcap format supported

Mausezahn (http://www.perihel.at/sec/mz/)

Mausezahn is a fast traffic generator which allows you to send nearly every possible and impossible packet. Mausezahn can be used, for example, as a traffic generator to stress multicast networks, for penetration testing of firewalls and IDS, for simulating DoS attacks on networks, to find bugs in network software or appliances, for reconnaissance attacks using ping sweeps and port scans, or to test network behavior under strange circumstances. Mausezahn gives you full control over the network interface card and allows you to send any byte stream you want (even violating Ethernet rules).

Mausezahn can be used for example:
    * As traffic generator (e. g. to stress multicast networks)
    * To precisely measure jitter (delay variations) between two hosts (e. g. for VoIP-SLA verification)
    * As didactical tool during a datacom lecture or for lab exercises
    * For penetration testing of firewalls and IDS
    * For DoS attacks on networks (for audit purposes of course)
    * To find bugs in network software or appliances
    * For reconnaissance attacks using ping sweeps and port scans
    * To test network behaviour under strange circumstances (stress test, malformed packets, ...)

...and more. Mausezahn is basically a versatile packet creation tool on the command line with a simple syntax and context help. It could also be used within (bash-) scripts to perform combination of tests. 
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0

LDAP Client Authentication

  1. This file "/etc/ldap.conf" is the 1st file that has to be modified as this is the file that tells the system which ldap server to authenticate too.

    host yourdomain.com
    base dc=yourdomain,dc=com
    uri ldap://yourdomain.com/
    ldap_version 3
    rootbinddn cn=Manager,dc=yourdomain,dc=com
    scope sub
    timelimit 5
    bind_timelimit 5
    nss_reconnect_tries 2
    pam_login_attribute uid
    pam_member_attribute gid
    pam_password md5
    pam_password exop
    nss_base_passwd  ou=People,dc=yourdomain,dc=com
    nss_base_shadow  ou=People,dc=yourdomain,dc=com
    
    
    
  2. Now we have to add the passwd in this file "/etc/ldap.secret" so that we can authenticate to the ldap server

    password
  3. Now we have to modify this file "/etc/nsswitch.conf"

    passwd:         files ldap
    group:          files ldap
    hosts:          dns ldap
    services:   ldap [NOTFOUND=return] files
    networks:   ldap [NOTFOUND=return] files
    protocols:  ldap [NOTFOUND=return] files
    rpc:        ldap [NOTFOUND=return] files
    ethers:     ldap [NOTFOUND=return] files
    netmasks:   files
    bootparams: files
    publickey:  files
    automount:  files
    sendmailvars:   files
    netgroup:   ldap [NOTFOUND=return] files
    
    
    
  4. Now it is time to modify the files in /etc/pam.d/ directory.
    First file to be modified is "/etc/pam.d/login"


    auth
    sufficient pam_ldap.so
    account sufficient pam_ldap.so
    password sufficient pam_ldap.so
    session sufficient pam_ldap.so
    auth            requisite       pam_securetty.so
    auth            requisite       pam_nologin.so
    auth            sufficient      pam_ldap.so
    auth            required        pam_unix.so use_first_pass
    auth            required        pam_tally.so onerr=succeed file=/var/log/faillog
    account         required        pam_access.so
    account         required        pam_time.so
    account         required        pam_unix.so
    account         sufficient      pam_ldap.so
    password        sufficient      pam_ldap.so
    session         required        pam_mkhomedir.so skel=/etc/skel/ umask=0022
    session         required        pam_unix.so
    session         required        pam_env.so
    session         required        pam_motd.so
    session         required        pam_limits.so
    session         optional        pam_mail.so dir=/var/spool/mail standard
    session         sufficient      pam_ldap.so
    session         optional        pam_lastlog.so
    
    
    
  5. Now we modify "/etc/pam.d/shadow"

    auth sufficient pam_ldap.so
    account sufficient pam_ldap.so
    password sufficient pam_ldap.so
    session sufficient pam_ldap.so
    auth            sufficient      pam_rootok.so
    auth            required        pam_unix.so
    auth            sufficient      pam_ldap.so use_first_pass
    account         required        pam_unix.so
    account         sufficient      pam_ldap.so
    session         required        pam_unix.so
    session         sufficient      pam_ldap.so
    password        sufficient      pam_ldap.so
    password        required        pam_permit.so
    


  6. Now we modify "/etc/pam.d/passwd"

    password sufficient pam_ldap.so
    password        sufficient      pam_ldap.so
    password        required        pam_unix.so shadow nullok
    


  7. Now we modify "/etc/pam.d/su"

    auth sufficient pam_ldap.so
    account sufficient pam_ldap.so
    session sufficient pam_ldap.so
    auth            sufficient      pam_ldap.so
    auth            sufficient      pam_rootok.so
    auth            required        pam_unix.so use_first_pass
    account         sufficient      pam_ldap.so
    account         required        pam_unix.so
    session         sufficient      pam_ldap.so
    session         required        pam_unix.so
    


  8. Now we modify "/etc/pam.d/sudo"

    auth sufficient pam_ldap.so
    auth            sufficient      pam_ldap.so
    auth            required        pam_unix.so use_first_pass
    auth            required        pam_nologin.so
    
    
    
  9. In this file "/etc/pam.d/sshd" you have to add 3 entries, one for auth, one for account, and one for session.
    auth sufficient pam_ldap.so
    account sufficient pam_ldap.so
    password required pam_ldap.so


    auth            required        pam_nologin.so
    auth            sufficient      pam_ldap.so
    auth            required        pam_env.so
    auth            required        pam_unix.so use_first_pass
    account         sufficient      pam_ldap.so
    account         required        pam_unix.so
    account         required        pam_time.so
    password        required        pam_ldap.so
    password        required        pam_unix.so
    session         required        pam_mkhomedir.so skel=/etc/skel/ umask=0022
    session         required        pam_unix_session.so
    session         sufficient      pam_ldap.so
    session         required        pam_limits.so
    
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0

How to use cron scheduler

Every user as well as administrator of the linux system very often needs to execute some programs on regular basis. For example administrator needs to monitor a disk usage of a system. In this case cron scheduler is very handy tool to achieve this. For example if root needs to execute /usr/local/sbin/backup.sh script every Sunday at 2:36AM he would edit his crontab file as shown on the figure below:

# crontab -e

Source: http://www.linuxconfig.org/Main_Page
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1

Monitor Network data transfer using Vnstat

If you want to monitor and manage your Internet bandwidth, perhaps to make sure your ISP is not overbilling you, try vnStat, an open source, Linux-based application that gives you a clear picture of your bandwidth usage. This utility got the command-line options and also got the UI part which give the output in form of a graph and is simple to install and easy to use.

vnStat is a network traffic monitor for Linux that keeps a log of daily network traffic for the selected interface(s). vnStat isn’t a packet sniffer. The traffic information is analyzed from the /proc filesystem. That way vnStat can be used even without root permissions

Installation/Configuration

1) Download the source - here
2) Untar - # tar -zxvf vnstat-1.6.tar.gz
3) Compile/Install the source

    # ./configure
    # make
    # make install

4) To create a database for vnstat type in vnstat -u -i interface (ie, eth1), after the database is created, which is the first thing to do after a fresh install of vnstat, allow some time for the database to populate with information. After some time just type in vnstat to get a summary of your daily traffic. The database is stored in a file in the /var/lib/vnstat/ directory in a small binary file, you can sets up a cron job that refreshes the bandwidth consumption data on the eth0 port every five minutes

# vnstat


If you're not satisfied with the appearance of vnStat's command-line interface, you can install  PHP-based Web front end for vnStat, which takes the data collected by the command-line vnStat and displays it in tables and graphically in your browser. The front end requires a Web server configured with PHP.

Download the tarball, extract the files into a subdirectory of your Web server's document root directory -- most likely /var/www/ or /var/www/html -- and give it the right permissions so the Web server can write to it:

# mkdir /var/www/vnstat
# tar -zxvf vnstat_php_frontend-1.4.tar.gz -C /var/www/vnstat/
# chown -R www-data.www-data /var/www/vnstat

Launch your browser and visit the vnStat page at http://localhost/vnstat to see something like ...

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How to mount Linux filesystem under FreeBSD

Do the following steps to enable ext2fs support in the FreeBSD kernel:

# cd /usr/src/sys/modules/ext2fs
# make
# make install

You can use ‘kldload‘ to load the ext2fs module in to the kernel.

# kldload ext2fs
Then you will be able to mount your linux partitions by giving a command like:

# mount -t ext2fs /dev/ad1s1 /mnt

to unload module use

# kldunload ext2fs

To load the module automatically on system startup

add the following line in to /boot/loader.conf

ext2fs_load=”YES”

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Information about the Hard drive and list all PCI devices

$ hdparm /dev/hda

                  /dev/hda:
                   multcount    = 16 (on)
                   IO_support   =  0 (default 16-bit)
                   unmaskirq    =  0 (off)
                   using_dma    =  1 (on)
                   keepsettings =  0 (off)
                   readonly     =  0 (off)
                   readahead    = 256 (on)
                   geometry     = 16383/255/63, sectors = 234375000, start = 0

or for SCSI - $ hdparm -i /dev/sda

/dev/sda:

 Model=ST3802110A , FwRev=3.AAJ, SerialNo=9LR2AE39
 Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs RotSpdTol>.5% }
 RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
 BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=2048kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=?1?
 CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=156301488
 IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:240,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
 PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
 DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
 UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5
 AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled
 Drive conforms to: Unspecified:  ATA/ATAPI-1,2,3,4,5,6,7

 * signifies the current active mode
               
How fast is your drive? - $ hdparm -tT /dev/hda

                /dev/hda:
                Timing buffer-cache reads:   128 MB in  0.41 seconds =315.32 MB/sec
                Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in  1.19 seconds = 53.65 MB/sec

Need to find your device?

$ mount
or
$ cat /proc/partitions
or
$ dmesg | egrep '^(s|h)d'

                      hda: IC35L120AVV207-1, ATA DISK drive
                      hdc: Lite-On LTN486S 48x Max, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
                      hda: max request size: 1024KiB
                      hda: 234375000 sectors (120000 MB) w/7965KiB Cache, CHS=16383/255/63, UDMA(100)

If you want to turn on dma - $ hdparm -d1 /dev/hda

                   setting using_dma to 1 (on)
                   using_dma    =  1 (on)

List all PCI devices - $ lspci -v

         00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Xpress 200 Host Bridge (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device d600
        Flags: bus master, 66MHz, medium devsel, latency 64
        Memory at (64-bit, non-prefetchable)
        Kernel modules: ati-agp 


              ... lots more ...

           Note, there is also lspci -vv for even more information.
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Squid proxy Cache Result Codes

TCP_HIT
A valid copy of the requested object was in the cache.

TCP_MEM_HIT
A valid copy of the requested object was in the cache, AND it was in memory so it did not have to be read from disk.

TCP_NEGATIVE_HIT
The request was for a negatively-cached object. Negative-caching refers to caching certain types of errors, such as "404 Not Found." The amount of time these errors are cached is controlled with the negative_ttl configuration parameter.

TCP_MISS
The requested object was not in the cache.

TCP_REFRESH_HIT
The object was in the cache, but STALE. An If-Modified-Since request was made and a "304 Not Modified" reply was received.

TCP_REF_FAIL_HIT
The object was in the cache, but STALE. The request to validate the object failed, so the old (stale) object was returned.

TCP_REFRESH_MISS
The object was in the cache, but STALE. An If-Modified-Since request was made and the reply contained new content.

TCP_CLIENT_REFRESH
The client issued a request with the "no-cache" pragma.

TCP_IMS_HIT
The client issued an If-Modified-Since request and the object was in the cache and still fresh.

TCP_IMS_MISS
The client issued an If-Modified-Since request for a stale object.

TCP_SWAPFAIL
The object was believed to be in the cache, but could not be accessed.

TCP_DENIED
Access was denied for this request

UDP_ codes

"UDP_" refers to requests on the ICP port (3130)

UDP_HIT
A valid copy of the requested object was in the cache.

UDP_HIT_OBJ
Same as UDP_HIT, but the object data was small enough to be sent in the UDP reply packet. Saves the following TCP request.

UDP_MISS
The requested object was not in the cache.

UDP_DENIED
Access was denied for this request.

UDP_INVALID
An invalid request was received.

UDP_RELOADING
The ICP request was "refused" because the cache is busy reloading its metadata.

ERR_ codes

"ERR_" refers to various types of errors for HTTP requests. For example:

ERR_CLIENT_ABORT
The client aborted its request.

ERR_NO_CLIENTS
There are no clients requesting this URL any more.

ERR_READ_ERROR
There was a read(2) error while retrieving this object.

ERR_CONNECT_FAIL
Squid failed to connect to the server for this request.
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dotnet on Linux

Mono  provides the necessary software to develop and run .NET client and server applications on Linux, Solaris, Mac OS X, Windows, and Unix. Sponsored by Novell (http://www.novell.com ), the Mono open source project has an active and enthusiastic contributing community and is positioned to become the leading choice for development of Linux applications.

Frequently Asked Questions
Contacting the Mono Team
Bug reporting
Articles and Tutorials on Mono.


Mono is a cross platform, open source .NET development framework.



Mono allows your existing binaries to run on Linux with copy-deployment.

Features
Multi-platform.
Based on the ECMA/ISO standards .
Runs ASP.NET and Winforms applications.
Can run .NET, Java, Python and more .
Open Source, Free Software.
Commercially supported.
Comprehensive  technology coverage
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Encrypt CD/DVDs

This guide can be adapted to any distro, its not Ubuntu specific.

Installing necessary tools
sudo apt-get install aespipe mkisofs loop-aes-utils

Chose a password
You need to chose a 20+ character password and DO NOT FORGET IT, you will NEVER get your data back if you forget the password.

Creating the CD/DVD image
Make a directory called backup then copy the files you want to burn into the backup directory.
We are using AES encryption, you can chose from 128 or 256 bit key lengths, I recommend 256.

mkisofs -r backup | aespipe -e aes256 > backup.iso

or for 128 bit key length
mkisofs -r backup | aespipe -e aes128 > backup.iso

Mounting the image
First we need to load some modules

sudo modprobe aes
sudo modprobe cryptoloop

For 128 bit key lengths:
sudo mount -t iso9660 backup.iso /mnt/iso -o loop=/dev/loop0,encryption=aes128

For 256 bit key lengths:
sudo mount -t iso9660 backup.iso /mnt/iso -o loop=/dev/loop0,encryption=aes256

This will mount the image in /mnt/iso (make sure you have the directory before you try to mount)

Burning
You can burn the image with your favorite program (gnomebaker, k3b), you might get some warnings about the image but you can ignore them.

Mounting the new CD/DVD
First make sure you loaded the aes and cryptoloop modules (see above)
sudo mount -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt/iso -o loop=/dev/loop0,encryption=aes256


Reference: Here 
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Kernel parameters for enhance security

The following list shows tunable kernel parameters you can use to secure your Linux server against attacks.

For each tunable kernel parameters you need to be add it to the /etc/sysctl.conf configuration file to make the change permanent after reboots. To activate the configured kernel parameters immediately at runtime, use:
# sysctl -p

Enable TCP SYN Cookie Protection

A "SYN Attack" is a denial of service attack that consumes all the resources on a machine. Any server that is connected to a network is potentially subject to this attack.

To enable TCP SYN Cookie Protection, edit the /etc/sysctl.conf file and add the following line:
  net.ipv4.tcp_syncookies = 1

Disable IP Source Routing

Source Routing is used to specify a path or route through the network from source to destination. This feature can be used by network people for diagnosing problems. However, if an intruder was able to send a source routed packet into the network, then he could intercept the replies and your server might not know that it's not communicating with a trusted server.

To enable Source Route Verification, edit the /etc/sysctl.conf file and add the following line:
  net.ipv4.conf.all.accept_source_route = 0

Disable ICMP Redirect Acceptance

ICMP redirects are used by routers to tell the server that there is a better path to other networks than the one chosen by the server. However, an intruder could potentially use ICMP redirect packets to alter the hosts's routing table by causing traffic to use a path you didn't intend.

To disable ICMP Redirect Acceptance, edit the /etc/sysctl.conf file and add the following line:
  net.ipv4.conf.all.accept_redirects = 0

Enable IP Spoofing Protection

IP spoofing is a technique where an intruder sends out packets which claim to be from another host by manipulating the source address. IP spoofing is very often used for denial of service attacks. For more information on IP Spoofing, I recommend the article IP Spoofing: Understanding the basics.

To enable IP Spoofing Protection, turn on Source Address Verification. Edit the /etc/sysctl.conf file and add the following line:
  net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter = 1

Enable Ignoring to ICMP Requests

If you want or need Linux to ignore ping requests, edit the /etc/sysctl.conf file and add the following line:
  net.ipv4.icmp_echo_ignore_all = 1
This cannot be done in many environments. 

Enable Ignoring Broadcasts Request

If you want or need Linux to ignore broadcast requests, edit the /etc/sysctl.conf file and add the following line:
  net.ipv4.icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts = 1

Enable Bad Error Message Protection

To alert you about bad error messages in the network, edit the /etc/sysctl.conf file and add the following line:
  net.ipv4.icmp_ignore_bogus_error_responses = 1

Enable Logging of Spoofed Packets, Source Routed Packets, Redirect Packets

To turn on logging for Spoofed Packets, Source Routed Packets, and Redirect Packets, edit the /etc/sysctl.conf file and add the following line:
  net.ipv4.conf.all.log_martians = 1

References: Network Security with /proc/sys/net/ipv4 
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How to install an RPM Package on Ubuntu Linux

Installing software on Ubuntu usually entails using Synaptic or by using an apt-get command from the terminal. Unfortunately, there are still a number of packages out there that are only distributed in RPM format.

There's a utility called Alien that converts packages from one format to the other. This doesn't always mean that an rpm will work on your system, though. You will need to install some prerequisite software packages in order to install alien, however. These packages include gcc and make.

Run this command to install alien and other necessary packages:

sudo apt-get install alien dpkg-dev debhelper build-essential

To convert a package from rpm to debian format, use this command syntax. The sudo may not be necessary, but we'll include it just in case.

sudo alien packagename.rpm

To install the package, you'll use the dpkg utility, which is the internal package management tool behind debian and Ubuntu.

sudo dpkg -i packagename.deb

The package should now be installed, providing it's compatible with your system.
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How to change GRUB Menu Timeout on Ubuntu

When Ubuntu boots, grub gets loaded and will display the OS for only 3 sec, now suppose you want to increase this amount… or you may even want to decrease it.

Open up the /boot/grub/menu.lst file in your favorite text editor. you can use gedit:

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Now find the section that looks like this:

## timeout sec
# Set a timeout, in SEC seconds, before automatically booting the default entry
# (normally the first entry defined).
timeout 3

The timeout value is in seconds, specify the time you required. Save the file, and when you reboot you will have that many seconds to choose the menu item you want.

There are many other options avaliable in Grub -- check here
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How to create command aliases

Aliases in the Unix/Linux operating system provide shortcuts that can save you typing, let you build your own powerful commands, and make your command line life easier.

Background
I've found it very helpful to create aliases to make my command line Unix/Linux life easier. For instance, instead of always typing

ls -al

to get a directory listing, I've created an alias so I only have to type this: "l" (That's the lower case letter "L".)

Using aliases like this you can create anything from simple shortcuts like this to powerful custom commands.
How to create aliases

Creating aliases is very easy. You can either enter them at the command line as you're working, or more likely, you'll put them in one of your startup files, like your .bashrc file, so they will be available every time you log in.

I created the l alias above by entering the following command into my .bashrc file:

alias l="ls -al"

As you can see, the syntax is very easy:

   1. Start with the alias command
   2. Then type the name of the alias you want to create
   3. Then an = sign, with no spaces on either side of the =
   4. Then type the command (or commands) you want your alias to execute when it is run. This can be a simple command, or can be a powerful combination of commands.

Sample aliases
To get you going, here is a list of sample aliases I use all the time. I've pretty much just copied them here from my .bashrc file:

alias l="ls -al"
alias lm="ls -al|more"
alias html="cd /web/apache/htdocs/devdaily/html"
alias logs="cd /web/apache/htdocs/devdaily/logs"
alias qp="ps auxwww|more"
alias nu="who|wc -l"
alias aug="ls -al|grep Aug|grep -v 2002"

As you can see, you can get as creative as you want, and pipe commands together to do just about anything. In the last alias shown I've actually combined three Unix commands in a row into one alias to get the output I want.

Because the Unix shell is very programmable and because the output of commands is very consistent and reliable, you can create your own aliases (or macros if you prefer) to do just about anything.

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Top OpenSorce Groupware

eGroupWare (www.egroupware.org)


 eGroupWare is many things. It is a very flexible pluggable framework capable of hosting applications like a group calendar, AddressBook, Email, accounting ledger, inventory, and whatever else your can think of. These applications can share a common user store, and a flexible Access Control List (ACL) system to control access and information sharing. At it's core there is the phpgwapi, an API written for php, that provides some very useful functions and tools for developers, including the user store, which has several back ends, database abstraction, and a flexible templating system. Applications are then written using the phpgwapi and phpgw framework to provide web based tools to users.

phpGroupWare (http://www.phpgroupware.org/)


phpGroupWare - formerly known as webdistro - is a multi-user groupware suite written in PHP.

It provides about 50 web-based applications, as there are the Calendar, Addressbook, an advanced Projects manager, Todo List, Notes, Email, Newsgroup- and Headlines Reader, a Filemanager and many more Applications. The calendar supports repeating events and includes alarm functions. The email system supports inline graphics and file attachments.

The system as a whole supports user preferences, themes, user permissions, multi-language support and unser groups. It includes modules to setup and administrate the working environment. The groupware suite is based on an advanced Application Programming Interface (API).

PHProjekt (http://www.phprojekt.com/)


PHProjekt is a modular application for the coordination of group activities and to share informations and document via the web. Components of PHProjekt: Group calendar, project management, time card system, file management, contact manager, mail client and many other modules.

Group-Office (www.sourceforge.net/projects/group-office)


It offers a very wide variety of features that matter. Features you don't need won't be installed. Group-Office stands out when it comes to user friendliness combined with powerfully features. It was developed with the following goals in mind:

Speed
The World Wide Wait bugs us all every day and the critical business applications that Group-Office provides can't be hindered by being slow. Group-Office is specifically designed to perform tasks as quickly as possible.

Simplicity
The Graphical User Interface is designed in a way that everybody intuitively finds the functions they are looking for. Group-Office strives to be as simple as possible without losing functionality.

Modularity
As an ever-changing software product, upgrades should be as painless as possible. This means that good code design is critical. Group-Office is designed in a modular way that makes upgrades easy and painless.

Scalability
Group-Office is designed to be usable for 1 to thousands of users.

WebCollab (http://webcollab.sourceforge.net/)


A collaborative web-based system for projects and project management; WebCollab is easy to use, and encourages users to work together. The software is functionally elegant and secure without being cumbersome for users, or graphically intensive.

The software is ideally suited to tracking multiple projects and innumerable small tasks across an organisation of any size. If you have reminder notes stuck all over your desk, then you need WebCollab!   


    *  Easy to read and intuitive screen layouts. Most users can use WebCollab without training.
    * Individual users are assigned rights and permissions. Users can also be put into groups with controlled rights and permissions.
    * Projects and tasks progress and approaching deadlines are graphically highlighted.
    * Changes are personally highlighted for other users to see.
    * Changes and new items can be emailed to affected users.

And the software is based on mature code base:

    * WebCollab is fast and stable
    * Secure - particular attention has been paid to security. No security scares to date.
    * Robust and scalable. Several years of daily production use.

OBM (http://www.obm.org/)

 
OBM is a groupware, email, LDAP, Windows PDC, CRM, and project management application. It is mainly used as an Exchange or Notes/Domino groupware and mail server replacement, as an LDAP directory, as a Windows PDC, as a contact and customer database, as a project management tool, or as any combination of these functions. It provides groupware (calendars, contacts, and tasks) connectors for Outlook, Thunderbird/Lightning, and PDAs. It supports internationalization and themes. It is highly scalable, and is used by sites from five to many thousands of users.

Teamwork (http://www.twproject.com)


Teamwork is a Web-based groupware for project management. It supplies groupware, issue tracking, cost control, and document and project management features with fine-grained security in a friendly interface. Agile methodologies such SCRUM are supported. Teamwork is easy to integrate with your IT infrastructure. Supports multiple databases (via hibernate), browsers, and languages.

TWiki (http://TWiki.org/)

TWiki is a flexible, powerful, and simple Web based collaboration platform. It is suitable for dynamic intranets and knowledge bases, and for sharing and managing documents and collaborative projects. It resembles a normal Web site, but every page can be changed from a browser. It features automatic link generation, full text search, group authorization, Web forms, reporting, change notification, file attachments, revision control of pages and attachments, a modular templating system with skins, hierarchical navigation based on the topic parenting feature, and more. Plugins can be used to enhance the program and build groupware applications.

Horde Groupware (http://www.horde.org/groupware/)


Horde Groupware is an enterprise ready browser-based collaboration suite. Users can manage and share calendars, contacts, tasks, and notes with the standards compliant components from the Horde Project. Horde Groupware bundles the separately available applications Kronolith, Turba, Nag, and Mnemo. It can be extended with any of the released Horde applications or the Horde modules that are still in development, like a file manager, a bookmark manager, a forum, or a wiki.
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Top Download Manager

d4x (Here)

Downloader for X is a powerful graphical download manager. It supports both HTTP(S) and FTP protocols and has nice graphical user interface, though some actions can also be performed using the command line.

Among others, its key features include proxy and SOCKS5 support, recursive downloading, wildcard matching, download scheduler, multiple download queues and more...

Using the D4X is very simple, copy the url to the file to be downloaded, Click the + icon in the software and paste the URL and click OK. Quite interesting features in D4X are sound effets on completion, ftp access, simple usage, logs, setting limits on download size etc… Use D4X for your downloads and Enjoy…

KGet (http://kget.sourceforge.net/)

KGet is a download manager similar to GetRight or Go!zilla.

It keeps all your downloads in one dialog and you can add and remove transfers. Transfers can be paused, resumed, queued or scheduled. Dialogs display information about the status of transfers - progress, size, speed and remaining time.

The program supports drag & drop from KDE applications and Mozilla Firefox.
KGet is an advanced download manager with support for Metalink and Bittorrent. Downloads are added to the list, where they can be paused, queued, or scheduled for later.


Features include:
    * Downloading files from FTP and HTTP(S) sources
    * Pausing and resuming of downloading files, as well as the ability to restart a download
    * Provides lots of information about current and pending downloads.
    * Embedding into system tray
    * Integration with the Konqueror web browser
    * Metalink support which contain multiple URLs for downloads, along with checksums and other information

doKa (http://doka.sourceforge.net/)

doKa is a download accelerator/manager for KDE, with the beauty of KDE. It supports various connections that divides the file. It'll have the feature of add new connections on the "fly".

It's made with Kdevelop, C++ and Qt, it uses multiples connections to download a file. This way you can speed up your download. The goal of this project is to make a downloader with the beauty of Kde and with more features than the main downloaders for Linux has.

KMAGO (http://kmago.sourceforge.net/)

KMAGO (MAnager of Get Operations) is a KDE-based download manager. It features drag and drop operations, group management of transfers, control of multiple downloads with priority and selectable priority policy, resume capability check, full configurability, and the ability to choose different programs for use as a downloading backend.


Features:
 * drag and drop operations with applications (konqueror, Netscape, ...) and between KMago widgets
 * drop target and system tray icon with d'n'd capabilities
 * transfers grouping
 * multiple downloads control with priority and selectable priority policy
 * resume capability check
 * full configurable
 * enabled to manage many retriever commands
 * cookie and http related management offered by KDE I/O library

Gwget (http://www.gnome.org/projects/gwget/)

 

Gwget it's a download manager for the Gnome Desktop. The main features are:

    * Resume: By default, gwget tries to continue any download.
    * Notification: Gwget tries to use the Gnome notification area suppo dxrt, if available. You can close the main window and gwget runs in the background.
    * Recursivity: Gwget detects when you put a html, php, asp or a web page dir in the url to download, and ask you to only download certain files (multimedia, only the index, and so on).
    * Drag & Drop: You can d&d a url to the main gwget window or the notification area icon to add a new download.
    * Firefox Extension: Fireget 

QuickDownloader  (http://qdown.sourceforge.net/)


QuickDownloader is a download manager that accelerates downloads by between 200 and 300%. It provides a resume capability for resuming broken downloads. It supports both HTTP and FTP downloads.

features:

features of QuickDownloader
 * Support for multiple Downloads
 * Capability to carry out both downloads and Resume simultaneously
 * Better Handling of errors
 * Handling of 100 % of all possible errors that can be thrown
 * A Desktop button which can set the location to the users desktop
 * Resuming of All Downloads
 * Information on each Download that can be resumed
 * Buffer Resizing for optimum use
 * Proxy Configuration for systems behind firewalls
 * The viewing of System Resources and the resources in use by QD
 * Log and error handling support
 * Accelerates Downloads by upto 300%
 * Support for all types of Network connections such as Dial Up, Broadband T1 etc.
 * Ability to download from both http and ftp sites
 * 100 % Resume support on all downloads even if the server doesn't support it.
 * Downloads can be zipped up upon download to minimise the amount of space it takes
 * OS Independent
 * Uses Java JRE which runs on any machine such as Windows 2000, 98, Linux etc.
 * Integrity checker for all gui based components

octod (http://diozaka.org/octod/)


Octod is a "download manager daemon" -- a daemon that listens at the network interface for incoming download jobs and performs them (simultaneously) in the background. It is intended to run on desktop systems as a reliable and fast download manager without the overhead of a graphical user interface, but it can also be used as a centralized download station running in network environments with multiple users.

To control the daemon, an easy and self-explanatory network protocol has been defined, so cross-platform, cross-language graphical clients (based on ncurses, Qt, Gtk, or even HTML/PHP) can be implemented.

The libraries used for the daemon (libcURL and libboost) are highly portable, so there should not be any problem in compiling it within any POSIX-compliant operating system and even Microsoft Windows (with some adaption of the network functions), but this has not been tested yet. At the moment, it is running fine on Linux systems.

Claros Downloader (http://www.claros.org/old/products/downloader/download.html)


Claros Downloader is a highly customizable, multi-threaded, Web-based downloader manager. Users can download files to their desktop or corporate server, from wherever they are.
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Download videos from YouTube.com - youtube-dl

youtube-dl is a small command-line program to download videos from YouTube.com. It requires the Python interpreter, version 2.4 or later, and it's not platform specific. It should work in your Unix box, in Windows or in Mac OS X. The latest version is 2008.10.16

In Linux, download it, give it execution permission and copy it to one of the PATH directories (typically, /usr/local/bin).

After that, you should be able to call it from the command line as youtube-dl or youtube-dl.py. Usage instructions are easy. Use youtube-dl followed by a video URL or identifier. Example:

# youtube-dl "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foobar"

The video will be saved to the file foobar.flv in that example. As YouTube.com videos are in Flash Video format, their extension should be flv. In Linux and other unices, video players using a recent version of ffmpeg can play them. That includes MPlayer, VLC, etc.

Some videos require an account to be downloaded, mostly because they're flagged as mature content. You can pass the program a username and password for a YouTube.com account with the -u and -p options, like

# youtube-dl -u myusername -p mypassword "http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foobar"

Another useful options:
* For usage instructions, use youtube-dl -h or youtube-dl --help.
* youtube-dl can attempt to download the best quality version of a video by using the -b or --best-quality option.
* youtube-dl can attempt to download the mobile quality version of a video by using the -m or --mobile-version option.

Download: here
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Top Graphical Text Editors

A text editor is software used for editing plain text files. It has many different uses such as modifying system configuration files, writing programming language source code, etc ...

Gedit (http://www.gnome.org/projects/gedit/)

gedit is a small and lightweight text editor for the GNOME environment.

Complete GNOME integration is provided, with support for Drag and Drop (DnD) from Nautilus (the GNOME file manager), the use of the GNOME help system, the GNOME Virtual File System and the GNOME print framework.

gedit uses a Multiple Document Interface (MDI), which lets you edit more than one document at the same time.

gedit supports most standard editing features, plus several not found in your average text editor (plugins being the most notable of these).

Features include:
    * Complete support for internationalized text (UTF-8)
    * Configurable syntax highlighting for various languages (C, C++, Java, HTML, XML, Python, Perl and many others)
    * GNOME VFS support for remote files
    * Complete integration with the GNOME Environment
    * Search and Replace
    * Clipboard support
    * Text wrapping
    * Undo/Redo
    * File Revert
    * Editing files from remote locations
    * A complete preferences interface
    * Configurable Plugins system, with optional python support
    * Bracket matching
    * Backup files
    * Printing and Print Previewing Support
    * Complete online user manual

Kedit (http://kate-editor.org/)


Kate is a multi document editor which is part of the kdebase package of KDE, the K Desktop Environment.

With a multi-view editor like Kate you get a lot of advantages. You can view several instances of the same document and all instances are synced. Or you can view more files at the same time for easy reference or simultaneous editing. The terminal emulation and sidebar are docked windows that can be plugged out of the main window, or replaced therein according to your preference.
Features include:
    * Powerful syntax highlighting and bracket matching
    * MDI, window splitting, window tabbing
    * Spell checking
    * CR, CRLF, LF newline support
    * Encoding support (utf-8, utf-16, ascii etc.)
    * Encoding conversion
    * Search and replace text using regular expressions
    * Drag and drop text editing
    * Code and text folding
    * Infinite undo/redo support
    * Block selection mode
    * Auto indentation
    * Auto completion support
    * Integrated shell
    * Wide protocol support (http, ftp, ssh, webdav etc.)
    * Plugin architecture for the application and editor component
    * Customizable shortcuts
    * Integrated command line
    * Full DCOP scripting
    * Scriptable using JavaScript (KDE 3.5)

Scribes (http://scribes.sourceforge.net/)


Scribes is a text editor for GNOME that focuses on streamlining your workflow.

It does so by ensuring common and repetitive operations are intelligently automated, and also by eliminating factors that prevent the user from focusing on his or her tasks.

Scribes does not try to be a complicated integrated development environment (IDE), or a pseudo IDE. Instead, Scribes focuses exclusively on powerful text processing and manipulation.

Scribes is a spatial and document-centric application. Consequently, it is not designed to use tabbed windows.

Features include:
    * Extensible via Python plugins
    * Remote editing (ftp, sftp, ssh, samba, webdav, webdavs)
    * Snippets!
    * Automatic word completion
    * Automatic correction and replacement
    * Automatic pair character completion and smart insertion
    * Automatic indentation
    * Powerful text processing and manipulation functions
    * Bookmarks and smart navigation
    * Document Switcher
    * Syntax colors for over 30 languages

Cream (http://cream.sourceforge.net/)


Cream is billed as a modern configuration of the Vim text editor. Cream is a set of scripts and add-ons that sit on top of gVim.

Vim is a powerful and full-featured console based text editor. However, Vim is regarded as taking some time to master. Through common menus, keyboard shortcuts, and extensive editing functions, Cream makes Vim approachable for new users and adds powerful features for experienced users.

Cream shapes Vim into an interface you probably already know (sometimes called Common User Access). Whether you are writing emails or developing large software applications, Cream aims to save you time and get you up and running quickly.

The goal of the project is to provide an approachable text editing application with keyboard shortcut and menu access to Vim's full arsenal of functionality

Features include:
    * Edits and converts Microsoft, Unix and Apple format text documents
    * Supports editing of very large files, size is limited by diskspace
    * Encoding support for 38 varieties of 8-bit, 2-byte, and Unicode
    * A single editing mode. (Cream does not use Vim's modal editing unless turned on from the Preferences menu)
    * Tabbed document interface
    * Have multiple documents open at a time
    * User-selected font, window size/position and most other settings are retained and restored automatically
    * Standard and intuitive menus. All functionality is available through pull down menus which indicate available keyboard shortcuts
    * Syntax highlighting makes reading code easier for more than 350 programming languages
    * Unlimited Undo/Redo
    * Automatic text indention
    * Block indention or unindention (with selection, Tab and Shift+Tab)
    * Bookmarking with visible margin marks
    * Spell checking with alternative spelling suggestions and auto-correction. Many languages are supported
    * File explorer window
    * Programmer Features such as line golding, Template completion based on file types, Ctags navigation, and Expert mode
    * Additional functionality through add-ons, modules that can provide a vast library of functionality including converting text to HTML, Hex to ASCII, Email Prettyfier, Email Munge, Encrypt, and a Slide Generator
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One stop for up-to-date comparisons - WikiVS

WikiVS allows you to see how things compare directly with each other, instead of leaving you to arbitrary ratings, stars, and smiley faces.

You can see exactly what kind of benefits you can receive by using one product over the other before you invest your money into it. You can determine how much closer a project is to your interests than another before you invest your time. You can see what features a program has and lacks in comparison to another before you invest your effort into it.

Dare to Compare!
You have expertise! You know which products are more suitable than others for a specific purpose. You have experience in projects and know what details are useful in judging them. You use programs that help you to achieve your goals better than other programs.


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/proc explained

This  filesystem (/proc) contains a huge set of numbered directories that come and go. Each and one of these numbered directories contains information pertaining to all of the currently active processes on the machine. When a new process is started, a new directory is created in the /proc filesystem for it, and a lot of data is created within it regarding the process, such as the commandline with which the program was started with, a link to the "current working directory", environment variables, where the executable is located, and so on

Most of the information in the files are rather "human readable", except a few of them. However, a few of them you should not touch, such as the kcore file. The kcore file contains debugging information regarding the kernel, and if you try to 'cat' it, your system may very well hang up and die. If you try to copy it to a real file on the harddrive, you will very soon have filled up your whole partition, and so on. What all of this tells you is to be very careful. Mostly, none of the variables or entries in the /proc filesystem is not dangerous to watch, but a few of them are. A brief walkthrough of the most important files:
  • cmdline - The command line issued when starting the kernel.
  • cpuinfo - Information about the Central Processing Unit, who made it, known bugs, flags etcetera.
  • dma - Contains information about all DMA channels available, and which driver is using it.
  • filesystems - Contains short information about every single filesystem that the kernel supports.
  • interrupts - Gives you a brief listing of all IRQ channels, how many interrupts they have seen and what driver is actually using it.
  • iomem - A brief file containing all IO memory mappings used by different drivers.
  • ioports - Contains a brief listing of all IO ports used by different drivers.
  • kcore - Contains a complete memory dump. Do not cat or anything like that, you may freeze your system. Mainly used to debug the system.
  • kmsg - Contains messages sent by kernel, is not and should not be readable by users since it may contain vital information. Main usage is to debug the system.
  • ksyms - This contains the kernel symbol table, which is mainly used to debug the kernel.
  • loadavg - Gives the load average of the system during the last 1, 5 and 15 minutes.
  • meminfo - Contains information about memory usage on the system.
  • modules - Contains information about all currently loaded modules in the kernel.
  • mounts - Symlink to another file in the /proc filesystem which contains information about all mounted filesystems.
  • partitions - Contains information about all partitions found on all drives in the system.
  • pci - Gives tons of hardware information about all PCI devices on the system, also includes AGP devices and built in devices which are connected to the PCI bus.
  • swaps - Contains information about all swap partitions mounted.
  • uptime - Gives you the uptime of the computer since it was last rebooted in seconds.
  • version - Gives the exact version string of the kernel currently running, including build date and gcc versions etcetera.
And here is a list of the main directories and what you can expect to find in there:
  • bus - Contains information about all the buses, hardware-wise, such as USB, PCI and ISA buses.
  • ide - Contains information about all of the IDE buses on systems that has IDE buses.
  • net - Some basic information and statistics about the different network systems compiled into the system.
  • scsi - This directory contains information about SCSI buses on SCSI systems.
  • sys - Contains lots of variables that may be changed, including the /proc/sys/net/ipv4 which will be deeply discussed in this document.
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Apache Configuration tool -- Rapache

Rapache is a simple tool for remotely managing and configuring an apache2 instance without having to hassle around through configuration files.

Rapache is a python + GTK tool that allows you to configure apache2 and all of its modules.
GPL'd, Its goal is to provide the user with a simple interface to facilitate the work to those who want to set up a web-server in a few clicks.


Current Features:
- Vhost managing
- Virtualhost normalization to conform Debian policy
- Module managing
- Syntax highliting when showing confs source

Soon to come:
- Config files backup and quick restore
- Plugin system
- SSL Plugin, Basic_Auth plugin, Mono plugin, Logging Plugin
- Apache start/stop and status

Future:
- SSH Handling
- Localization

Download : here
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Media Collection Manager

Griffith is a movie collection manager application. Adding items to the movie collection is as quick and easy as typing the film title and selecting a supported source. Griffith will then try to fetch all the related information from the Web.

Griffith is written in Python, making use of the pyGTK+ library, a GTK+ binding for Python.
 

Features include:
    * Fetches film information from the Internet based on your locale via a plug-in:
          o  Brazilian Portuguese: E-Pipoca
          o Czech: CSFD
          o English: IMDb, DVD Empire, AnimeDB, Moviefone, Mediadis
          o French: Allocine, Cinemovies
          o German: FilmeVonA-Z.de, Kino.de, OFDb
          o Italian: Cinematografo
          o Polish: Wirtualna Polska, FDb, Tanuki-Anime, Onet, Filmweb, Stopklatka
          o Portuguese: 7arte, PTGate, Clube MyDVD
    * Integrates well with a database (MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQLite3 used by default) to keep tabs on your library
    * Can backup/restore your database
    * Exports to CSV, PDF, XML and HTML files
    * Imports from CSV files
    * Generates PDF from cover art
    * Keeps track of your films that are out on loan
    * Enables you to sort/filter your library
    * Has built-in multi-language support
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Transcoding video and audio files

Transcode is a suite of tools, all of which are command line utilities, for transcoding various video, audio, and container formats, running on a platform that supports shared libraries and threads. Decoding and encoding is done by loaded modules that are responsible for feeding transcode with raw video/audio streams (import modules) and encoding the frames (export modules). It includes a variety of video and audio filters, including (but not limited to) video de-interlacing, audio resampling, framerate conversion, different video resizing algorithms, smoothing, sharpening, denoisifying, and cutting.

A number of modules are included to enable import of DVDs on-the-fly, Video4Linux (including V4L2 video capturing), MPEG elementary streams (ES) or program streams (VOB), MPEG1/2/4 video, Digital Video (DV), YUV4MPEG streams, Nuppel Video (NUV), quicktime (MOV), MPEG audio layer-1/2/3, WAVE, DIVX, MJPEG, and raw or compressed (pass-through) video frames. A number of export modules for enable writing DivX ;-), DivX 4.02/5.xx, XviD, Digital Video, MPEG-1/2 or uncompressed AVI files with MPEG, AC3 (pass-through) or PCM audio. More file formats and codecs for audio/video import are supported by the MPlayer and avifile import modules (exporting with avifile is restricted to video codecs, with MPEG/PCM or AC3 (pass-through) audio provided by transcode). Limited DVD subtitle rendering is also available.

Its modular concept is intended to provide flexibility and easy user extensibility to include other video/audio codecs or file types. A set of tools is available to extract, demultiplex and decode the sources into raw video/audio streams for import, non AVI-file export modules for writing single frames (PPM) or YUV4MPEG streams, auto-probing and scanning your sources and to enable post-processing of AVI files, including header fixing, merging multiple files or splitting large AVI files to fit on a CD.

Transcode runs on UN*X like systems like Linux, BSD, and MacOSX.


Features include:
    * Video:
          o Cut out arbitray frame region for processing
          o De-interlace video frame
          o Fast enlarging of video width/height by a multiple of 32 rows/column up to 1024x768
          o Fast reduction of video width/height by a multiple of 32 rows/column
          o High-quality resizing with filter
          o Cut out arbitray frame region for encoding
          o Rescale (downsample) video width/height by a power of 2
          o Flip video frame upside down
          o Mirror image of video frame
          o Swap R and B bytes in video frame
          o Transform to b/w video frame
          o Apply gamma correction
          o Anti-alias video frame
    * Audio:
          o Change the volume of the audio stream
          o Resample audio stream
          o Swap byte order in audio stream
          o Sync video with audio frames (V=0|A=N, V=1|A=N+1,...)
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How to Convert videos to the Ipod format

thin liquid film (TLF) is an application which allows linux users to quickly and easily convert video files into a format suitable for playing on the video capable ipods (i.e. 5th and 6th generation ipods).

TLF uses the FFmpeg engine and allows batch processing of any number of files, displays detailed information about source video files, saves default settings for future sessions, has configurable output quality settings, and displays a progress bar.

It is written in pyqt, so it should work with a default KDE installation, and is very easy to install.


Features include:
    * Batch process any number of files
    * Display detailed information about source video files
    * Change output settings for one or many files
    * Save default settings for future sessions
    * Configure output quality settings
    * Choose between mpeg4 and h264 as output codec
    * Choose between 320 and 640 output video width, while maintaining aspect ratio
    * Choose between 1 or 2 pass encoding
    * Show a preview the encoded video
    * Progress bar to show encoding progress
    * Add pre-encoded files for transfer to the ipod
    * Uses ffmpeg as the encoding engine
    * Upload encoded files to your ipod directly
    * Set file information for upload to your ipod
    * Add files to existing or new video playlists on your ipod
    * Add files for encoding via the included servicemenu

Download : here

Requirement:
* pyqt - these are the python bindings for qt. These are now part of the standard kde modules, so if you've got kde, then you should have pyqt;   

* ffmpeg - this is a very standard linux package, and should be part of your distributions standard install, or at least in their repositories. However, you need to make sure that ffmpeg has been compiled with support for xvid and h264 codecs. See below for details on how to tell;

* libgpod python bindings - this is not essential for the enocoding part of the application. However, without it, you will not be able to upload to your ipod. These python bindings are part of the libgpod package, which is a dependency of both gtkpod and amarok. If you've got either of those installed, then you should have the python bindings. However, some distributions (like *ubuntu) keep the bindings in a second package, so you may have to install them separately;

* mplayer - this is not essential, but is a requirement for previewing the encoded video files;   

* a 5G ipod - although, you can use TLF without an ipod, I'm not sure why you would bother :), unless you want to convert your home videos for your friends :).

Installation:
 You will then need to untar the file. You can do that with this command:

    * tar -jxpf tlf-version.tar.bz2

You'll need to replace version with the correct version number of the tarball you downloaded. Then change to the resulting directory. TLF comes with an installation script called install.py. You need to run this script as root. To change to root, type:

    * su
    * Password:

You will be asked to enter your password, and then you should be root. If you use *ubuntu, there is no root account, so you'll need to run the script like this:

    * sudo ./install.py
    * Password:

The install script does not require any input. It installs all the files necessary for TLF to /usr/local/thinliquidfilm. It will create an executable file called thinliquidfilm in /usr/local/bin, which should be in your path, and will install a TLF servicemenu entry for konqueror. You will have to manually add a menu entry to TLF in kde or gnome.
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2

Top Video Players

VLC (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/)
VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.

Features include:

    * Support for input media: UDP/RTP Unicast and Multicast, HTTP / FTP, MMS, File, DVD, VCD, SVCD, DVB, MPEG encoder, Video acquisition (V4L)
    * Input formats: MPEG, ID3 tags, AVI, ASF / WMV / WMA, MP4 / MOV / 3GP, OGG / OGM / Annodex, Matroska, WAV (including DTS), Raw Audio: DTS, AAC, AC3/A52, Raw DV, FLAC, FLV (Flash)

Video
    * Decoders: MPEG-1/2, DIVX, MPEG-4, XviD, 3ivX, H.264, Sorenson 1/3 (Quicktime), DV, Cinepak, Theora, H.263 / H.263i, MJPEG, WMV 1/2, WMV 3 WMV-9 / VC-1, Indeo Video v 3-5, Rado Video
    * Subtitles: DVD, SVCD / CVD, DVB, OGM, Matroska, Text files, Vobsub
    * Filters: Deinterlace, cropping, image wall, image adjust, rotate/mirror, logo overlay, magnification, image distortion, bluescreen, RSS/Aton feeds
    * Outputs: Native, X11, XVideo, SDL, Framebuffer, ASCII Art

Audio
    * Decoders: MPEG Layer 1/2, MP3, AC3 - A/52, DTS, LPCM, AAC, Vorbis, WMA 1/2, WMA 3, ADPCM, DV Audio, FLAC, QDM2/QDMC (Quicktime), MACE, Real Audio, Speex
    * Filters: Visualization effects, equalizer
    * Outputs: Native (OSS, ALSA), S/PDIF (OSS, ALSA), Multi-channel (OSS, ALSA), SDL, ESD, aRts, JACK

Streaming
    * UDP Unicast / Multicast, RTP Unicast / Multicast, File, HTTP, MMSH
    * Transcoding
    * Send DVD subtitles
    * Send SAP announces

Xine (http://xinehq.de/)
xine is a powerful multimedia program, specializing in video playback. In addition to functioning as a standalone product, it also serves as a library and engine for other software products.

It has excellent support for a large number of different file formats including physical media DVD, Video CD, and Audio CD.  Xine supports a large number of formats including .mpeg, .ts, .ogg, .ogm, .avi, .asf, .wmv, .wma, .mpv, .m2v, .mp2, .mp3, .cpk, .voc, .snd, and .au.  It also supports a wide variety of video and audio codecs.  Streaming formats include mpeg-2 and mpeg-1 system (audio + video multiplexed), mpeg elementary (audio/video only, e.g. mp3 files), AVI file with various video formats (some of them by using win32 dlls), Vorbis OGG, and quicktime.

Features include:

    * Support for OSS, ALSA, Irix Audio, Sun Audio, ARts, and ESD Audio drivers
    * Streaming playback support covering the following Webcasting/Streaming protocols: NMS, PNM, RTSP, HTTP, and raw TCP socket streaming
    * Supports DXR3, DVB tv cards, Video 4 Linux, and WinTV-PVR 250/350 pci with TV full screen support
    * Skinnable GUI
    * Download and installation of new skins from the internet
    * Navigation controls (seeking, pause, fast, slow, next chapter, etc)
    * Linux InfraRed Control support (LIRC)
    * On Screen Display features
    * DVD and external subtitles
    * DVD/VCD menus
    * Audio and subtitle channel selection
    * Closed Caption support
    * Brightness, contrast, audio volume, hue, saturation adjusting
    * Playlists
    * Mediamarks
    * Image snapshot
    * Audio resampling
    * Software deinterlacing algorithms
    * 2-3 pulldown detection (tvtime plugin)
    * Configuration dialog
    * Aspect ratio changing
    * Fullscreen display
    * DTS passthrough

Totem (http://www.gnome.org/projects/totem/)
Totem is the official movie player of the GNOME desktop environment. It features a playlist, a full-screen mode, seek and volume controls, as well as keyboard navigation.

Totem is included as the default media player in many Linux distributions including Ubuntu, Mandriva, and Fedora.

Features include:

    * Video thumbnailer for the file manager
    * Nautilus properties tab
    * Mozilla (Firefox) plugin to view movies inside your browser (in development)
    * Webcam utility (in development)
    * Play any xine or GStreamer supported file
    * LIRC support
    * Shoutcast, m3u, asx, SMIL and ra playlists support (also usable from a shipped LGPL library)
    * DVD (with menus), VCD playback, disc-type automatically detected
    * TV-Out configuration with optional resolution switching
    * 4.0, 4.1, 5.0, 5.1, stereo and AC3 Passthrough audio output
    * Full-screen mode (move your mouse and you get nice controls) with Xinerama, dual-head and Viewport support
    * Remote operation mode to control a running Totem
    * Seek and Volume controls
    * Aspect ratio changing, Scaling based on the video's original size
    * Full keyboard control
    * Playlist with Repeat and Shuffle modes, with saving feature and drag'n'drop reordering
    * GNOME and Nautilus integration (Totem registers the file-types, adds a menu item, uses the proxy configuration, saves sessions, and registers pnm, mms, uvox and rtsp schemes, removes playlist items from a disc that's getting ejected)
    * Properties window (information about the current movie)
    * Drag'n'drop and mousewheel actions
    * Screenshot feature
    * Brightness, Contrast, Hue and Saturation control
    * Visualisation plugin when playing audio-only files
    * Telestrator mode using Gromit
    * Video thumbnailer
    * Nautilus properties page
    * Works on remote displays
    * Automatic external subtitle load, or manual (only on the command-line, use like: totem file:///file.avi#subtitle:file.srt)
    * DVD, VCD and OGG/OGM subtitles and languages support
    * Dialog for more accurate seeking
    * Authentication dialogs when location requires it

MPlayer (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/design7/news.html)
MPlayer is a very popular movie player which runs on many systems including Linux. It has builtin support for the most common video and audio formats (see list below), as well as having a powerful filter system for video and audio manipulation.

Features include:

    * Supported Input Formats: (S)VCD (Super Video CD), CDRwin's .bin image file, DVD, including encrypted DVD, MPEG-1/2 (ES/PS/PES/VOB), RIFF AVI file format, ASF/WMV/WMA format, QT/MOV/MP4 format, RealAudio/RealVideo format, Ogg/OGM files, Matroska, NUT, NSV (Nullsoft Streaming Video), VIVO format, FLI format, NuppelVideo format, yuv4mpeg format, FILM (.cpk) format, RoQ format, PVA format, streaming via HTTP/FTP, RTP/RTSP, MMS/MMST, MPST, SDP, and TV grabbing

    * Supported Video and Audio Codecs: MPEG-1 (VCD) and MPEG-2 (SVCD/DVD/DVB) video, MPEG-4 in all variants including DivX ;-), OpenDivX (DivX4), DivX 5 (Pro), XviD, Windows Media Video 7/8 (WMV1/2), Windows Media Video 9 (WMV3) (using x86 DLL), RealVideo 1.0, 2.0 (G2), RealVideo 3.0 (RP8), 4.0 (RP9) (using Real libraries), Sorenson v1/v3 (SVQ1/SVQ3), Cinepak, RPZA and other QuickTime codecs, DV video, 3ivx, Intel Indeo3 (3.1, 3.2), Intel Indeo 4.1 and 5.0 (using x86 DLL or XAnim codecs), VIVO 1.0, 2.0, I263 and other H.263(+) variants (using x86 DLL), MJPEG, AVID, VCR2, ASV2 and other hardware formats, FLI/FLC, HuffYUV, and various old simple RLE-like formats

    * Supported audio codecs: MPEG layer 1, 2, and 3 (MP3) audio, AC3/A52 (Dolby Digital) audio (software or SP/DIF), AAC (MPEG-4 audio), WMA (DivX Audio) v1, v2, WMA 9 (WMAv3), Voxware audio, ACELP.net etc (using x86 DLLs), RealAudio: COOK, SIPRO, ATRAC3 (using Real libraries), RealAudio: DNET and older codecs, QuickTime: Qclp, Q-Design QDMC/QDM2, MACE 3/6 (using QT libraries), ALAC, Ogg Vorbis audio, VIVO audio (g723, Vivo Siren) (using x86 DLL), alaw/ulaw, (ms)gsm, pcm, *adpcm and other simple old audio formats

    * Supported Video Output Devices: X11 with SHM extension, X11 using overlays with the Xvideo extension (hardware YUV & scaling), Xvideo Motion Compensation, VIDeo Interface for *niX, VIDIX in an X11 window, VIDIX on the console, X11 DGA extension (both v1.0 and v2.0), OpenGL renderer, gl2, framebuffer output, SVGAlib output (supports EGA displays), SDL >= v1.1.7 driver, GGI graphics output, text mode rendering, text mode rendering in color, display through the VESA BIOS (also needed for Radeon TV-out), and DirectFB support

    * Supported Audio Output Devices: OSS (Open Sound System), SDL (Simple Directmedia Layer), ALSA (Advanced Linux Sound Architecture),  NAS (Network Audio System), ESD (ESound Daemon), ARTS (KDE Sound System),and JACK (Jack Audio Connection Kit)   

* Streaming: Authentication for Real RTSP stream

Kaffeine (http://kaffeine.kde.org/)
Kaffeine is a simple, easy to use, full featured media player for the K Desktop Environment (KDE).

Currently, Kaffeine can use xine-lib, MPlayer, or GStreamer as a backend. It is therefore able to play almost all audio and video files.

Features include:

    * Multiple playlists
    * Play Audio CDs, DVDs and VCDs
    * Streaming
    * Rip and encode audio tracks to be stored on your hard disk
    * Supports Digital Video Broadcasting devices supported by linuxtv drivers
    * Electronic Program Guide
    * Can broadcast several DVB channels (being on the same multiplex) on a LAN
    * DCOP Interface
    * Supports Linux Infrared Remote Control (LIRC)
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Debian Package Creator - DebianPackageMaker

DebianPackageMaker is a simple user interface/tool to make a debian package easier and straightforward to use and deploy your linux application to any debian based distro.


You can build debian packages using two modes:

Target Mode
Manually specify the installation directory and the files to be installed in the target installation directory.

Source Mode
          o Debian Package Maker will configure the source for you, compile them and then build a package using the target rules.
          o configure/autogen scripts and Makefile/rules is required for DPM to automate the whole process for you.

Provides user interface for package information that will be used as control file to create a debian based package.

It also provides a different tabs for adding package dependencies:

    * Dependencies
    * Pre-dependencies
    * Recommends
    * Suggests
    * Breaks
    * Conflicts
    * Replaces
    * Provides

Can add scripts like postins,changelogs etc Straight forward to use
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Booting Linux in 5 seconds

At the Linux Plumbers Conference, Arjan van de Ven, Linux developer at Intel and author of PowerTOP, and Auke Kok, another Linux developer at Intel's Open Source Technology Center, demonstrated a Linux system booting in five seconds. The hardware was an Asus EEE PC, which has solid-state storage, and the two developers beat the five second mark with two software loads: one modified Fedora and one modified Moblin. They had to hold up the EEE PC for the audience, since the time required to finish booting was less than the time needed for the projector to sync.

How did they do it? Arjan said it starts with the right attitude. "It's not about booting faster, it's about booting in 5 seconds." Instead of saving a second here and there, set a time budget for the whole system, and make each step of the boot finish in its allotted time. And no cheating. "Done booting means CPU and disk idle," Arjan said. No fair putting up the desktop while still starting services behind the scenes. (An audience member pointed out that Microsoft does this.) The "done booting" time did not include bringing up the network, but did include starting NetworkManager. A system with a conventional hard disk will have to take longer to start up: Arjan said he has run the same load on a ThinkPad and achieved a 10-second boot time.

How they did it?
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Universal Linux Installer - UNetbootin

UNetbootin allows for the installation of various Linux/BSD distributions to a partition or USB drive, so it's no different from a standard install, only it doesn't need a CD. It can create a dual-boot install, or replace the existing OS entirely.

UNetbootin (Netboot Universal Installer) is an application platform that offers the possibility of installing some of the best-known Linux distributions in a simple manner and without the need to burn the CD image on a CD / DVD, you just have to point to ISO image.


UNetbootin uses a Windows or Linux-based installer to install a small modification to the bootloader (bootmgr and bcdedit on Vista, grldr and boot.ini for NT-based systems, grub.exe and config.sys for Win9x, grub on Linux, or syslinux when installing to a USB drive), uses the bootloader to boot the desired distribution's installer or to load the system utility, no CD required. After the distribution has been installed, or once done using the system utility, the modification to the bootloader is then undone.

UNetbootin can also be used to load various system utilities, including:

    * Parted Magic, a partition manager that can resize, repair, backup, and restore partitions.
    * Super Grub Disk, a boot utility that can restore and repair overwritten and misconfigured GRUB installs or directly boot various operating systems
    * Backtrack, a utility used for network analysis and penetration testing.
    * Ophcrack, a utility which can recover Windows passwords.
    * NTPasswd, a utility which can reset Windows passwords and edit the registry.
    * Gujin, a graphical bootloader that can also be used to boot various operating systems and media.
    * Smart Boot Manager (SBM), which can boot off CD-ROM and floppy drives on computers with a faulty BIOS.
    * FreeDOS, which can run BIOS flash and other legacy DOS utilities.

Download Unetbootin for Windows and for Linux
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Install everything on Ubuntu

Appnr is the Web-based tool and a service that install applications on Ubuntu.



The AptURL Protocol Handler and a Web browser support are required to install applications. The AptURL Protocol Handler is a program that handles special URLs to installing software on APT-based Linux systems. Ubuntu 7.10 or higher can use AptURL by default.

The page is divided into the following categories, Internet, P2P, Games, Media Player, Graphics, Office, Editor, Development, Desktop Tools, System Tools, Utilities, Emulator, Accessibility, Education, Additionals, codecs, Firefox Add-ons, GNOME, KDE, XFCE. It also has a search engine to help us find what we need.

You need to install apturl to use the service of this site
sudo apt-get install apturl
Download apturl: here
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Install and Run Linux application on Windows, Mac OS

LINA takes Linux a giant step closer to universal usability with its ability to run pre-compiled Linux applications on any operating system. Once LINA is installed on your machine, you can download and run Linux applications and application packages either from LINAforge or the LINA store. These applications are as easy to install and run as any application on your normal operating system. Although these applications run on LINA, they are completely integrated with your own operating system, allowing you full access to output and configuration files.



LINA is a complete virtual Linux operating system that runs silently and invisibly on top of your own operating system. As soon as you install LINA, you will be able to run the thousands of applications written for the Open Source Linux operating system. Just like any Linux user, you will be able to download, compile and run free Open Source applications.

Download Lina : here
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Free Gaming repository for Ubuntu - Playdeb

Originally known as Playbuntu (renamed for trademark reasons), Playdeb is a repository for Ubuntu (and it's derivatives) that will provide all games available on getdeb.net and more in a repository format - allowing you to receive updates for your favorite game via the Update Manager tool.

To install Playdeb, you can:

   1. Download and install updated apturl package.
   2. then,
          * install the playdeb package (if you'll get a dialog asking you for confirmation, press Y)
          * or add this line to System-Administration-Software Sources, Third-Party Software tab:

                deb mirror://www.getdeb.net/playdeb-mirror/hardy/// hardy/

      (three trailing slashes are intentional)

Once this is done. To install any game now only have to go to Add and Remove and set up ... "All available applications." Now we can install any application with two clicks.

See the available games section for those!
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Audio files Converter - Gnac

Gnac is an easy-to-use audio conversion program for the GNOME desktop. It is designed to be powerful but simple. It provides easy audio file conversion between all GStreamer supported audio formats.

 
Download gnac: here  
Installation:
Untar the source code: 
# bzip2 -d gnac-0.1.1.tar.bz2
# tar -xvf gnac-0.1.1.tar
Compile and install the package:
# ./configure
# make
# make install

Running:
After successful compilation and installation, you can now fire the command "gnac" to launch the application.
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Google Launches Linux Software Repositories

Google has just released the Google Linux Software Repositories, a centralized place where we can download and update the latest versions of all the tools that created by Google.
 
There are explanations for the installation of graphical environment for 
command line for 
APT (Debian, Ubuntu ...) 
YUM 
urpmi (Mandriva) 
YaST2 (SUSE) 
RPM (Red Hat). 
For more information and updates, you can join the Google Linux Repositories Help group
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Installation and Configuration - Jinzora Streaming Media Server on OpenSuse

Standard media players like iTunes, MusicMatch and Windows Media Player only allow you to manage your music and videos on a single computer.

Jinzora allows you to manage and access your media from any internet connected computer anywhere you are and provides a much richer set of tools to manage your collections.

Jinzora enables you to stream your digital media to any Internet connected computer, your home stereo set or a hardware jukebox device. Jinzora can organize and tag your music files and download album covers and reviews. More info: www.jinzora.com

Download and extract Jinzora
Download the latest version of Jinzora2 from http://en.jinzora.com/downloads and extract the contents using tar into your web directory.

# wget http://downloads.sourceforge.net/jinzora/jz275.tar.gz
# tar -zxvf jz275.tar.gz 
# mv jz275 jinora


Setting up Jinzora
In the jinzora directory run

# sh configure.sh
# chown -R wwwrun.www ../jinzora

Run the installer
The installer will automatically configure jinzora, and create the database. Open up your webbrowser and go to http://localhost/jinzora/index.php and follow the instructions



Pay attentions to these setup steps:

Page 4 - Installation Type : Change from 'Streaming' to 'Streaming & Jukebox' if you wish to listen to the music on the computer you're installing Jinzora2 on (it's primarily a streaming application to allow remote access to, and control of, a streaming server running it).


Page 5 - Main Settings : If you hover over the boxes here, they explain the settings, so choose whatever you want. It's best to choose 'Database' for Backend Type. I'd also suggest using the 'Tag Data' option for 'Data Structure', unless your music is organized on your filesystem exactly the way you want it to be.


Page 6 - Backend Setup : Unless you've used Jinzora before, or for some reason wish to manually create a MySQL database for it to use, then select 'True' under 'Create Database'.


Page 7 - Import Media : This step may take a few minutes if you've got a few gigs of music; simply enter into the box the directory where your music is stored. When the installer's finished importing the music from this directory, you'll have the option to import as many other directories as you want, one after the other.


You can also import more files from the Settings interface when Jinzora is up and running. You don't have to do it while installing.

Running:
Open up your webbrowser and go to http://localhost/jinzora/index.php and you should see something like ...


Jinzora supports streaming of the following audio and video formats

Audio Types
MP3, Ogg, WMA, Midi, AAC,  MP4, RM (RealAudio), M4A, WMA Lossless (via transcoding), WAV (via transcoding), Flac(via transcoding), MPC (via transcoding), WV (via transcoding), SHN (via transcoding)

Video Types
AVI, WMV, MPEG MOV
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OpenX adserver Installation and Configuration on openSuSe

OpenX is Open source software that helps publishers make more capital from online advertise. It is the most popular ad server key that puts control over online advertise back in the hands of publishers which is a open source software written in PHP using the Mysql database.

OpenX has 30,000 publishers using the software on 100,000 sites in 140 different cou"ntries and in 20 languages. The product enables web site administrators to rotate banners from both in-house advertisement campaigns as well as from paid or third-party sources, such as Google’s AdSense. Since OpenX is published under the GPL license, there is no cost to use the software. It is freely downloadable

Installation:
1) Download the OpenX from here
2) Unzip the package into your web directory : /src/www/htdocs
4) change the permission of the directory: 

chown -R wwwrun.www ./openx/

3) Create a new mysql database 'openx'

# mysql> create database openx;

4) Now go to -- http://server/openx, you should see something  like ...

 
Click on "continue" and make sure you don't get any errors for PHP and Permissions

Database Configuration section:


Administration Configuration Section: Click on "continue" to set the administrator password



And Finally you should see:


Running: Finally login to your opnx system and start creating the campaign, advertiser, banners, user accounts, etc ...



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Setting up 2 IP address on "One" NIC (Redhat/Fedora)

STEP 1 (The settings for the initial IP address)
$ cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=static
BROADCAST=192.168.99.255
IPADDR=192.168.1.1

NETMASK=255.255.255.0
NETWORK=192.168.1.0
ONBOOT=yes


STEP 2 (2nd IP address: )
$ cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0:1

DEVICE=eth0:1
BOOTPROTO=static
BROADCAST=192.168.99.255
IPADDR=192.168.1.2
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
NETWORK=192.168.1.0
ONBOOT=yes


Note, in STEP 1 the filename is “ifcfg-eth0″, whereas in STEP 2 it’s “ifcfg-eth0:1″ and also not the matching entries for “DEVICE=…”. Also, obviously, the “IPADDR” is different as well.
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Differences between Packet and Statefull Firewalls

Packet firewall: A packet firewall only checks for source and destination IP addresses and port numbers.

Stateful Firewall: A stateful firewall not only checks for source and destination IP addresses and port numbers, but it also LISTENS to all TCP/IP communications to make sure that all of the "communications" are following all procedures.
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