2011 | Linux Blog

Personal Full Text Search UI Application - Recoll

Recoll is a full text search application. Full text search applications let you find your data by content rather than by external attributes (like a file name). More specifically, they will let you specify words (terms) that should or should not appear in the text you are looking for, and return a list of matching documents, ordered so that the most relevant documents will appear first.

You do not need to remember in what file or email message you stored a given piece of information. You just ask for related terms, and Recoll will return a list of documents where those terms are prominent, in a similar way to Internet search engines.

Recoll uses the Xapian information retrieval library as its storage and retrieval engine. Xapian is a very mature package using a sophisticated probabilistic ranking model. Recoll provides the mechanisms and interface to get data into and out of the system.

Control your Android Device from a Web Browser Over-The-Air - Airdroid

AirDroid is a fast, free app that lets you wirelessly manage & control your Android devices (phone & tablet) from a web browser.

It’s designed with the vision to bridge the gap between your Android device and web browser, on desktop computers or tablet devices, on Windows or Mac.

AirDroid Features:
Files: Transfer files between Android devices and computers. Cut, copy, paste, search, rename or delete files on the SD card.
SMS: Read, send, forward or delete SMS messages.
Applications: Install, uninstall, backup, search apps and do batch processing.
Photos: Preview, delete, import, export, set as wallpaper and photos slide show from desktop.
Clipboard: Share clipboard text between desktop and device.
Contacts: Group, search, create contacts, check and delete call logs.
Ringtones: Search, preview, import, export, delete and customize ringtones for phone calls, notifications and alarms.
Music: Play, search, import, export, delete, or set as phone call, notification and alarm ringtones.

Install or Upgrade to Firefox 9 in Ubuntu

Firefox 9 was released on December 20, 2011; version 9.0.1 was released a day later and is currently the latest stable version in the "Release" channel.

The latest version of Firefox has the following changes:
* Added Type Inference, significantly improving JavaScript performance
* Improved theme integration for Mac OS X Lion
* Added two finger swipe navigation for Mac OS X Lion
* Added support for querying Do Not Track status via JavaScript
* Added support for font-stretch
* Improved support for text-overflow
* Improved standards support for HTML5, MathML, and CSS
* Fixed several stability issues
* Fixed several security issues

Listen Music from Cloud Music Services using Nuvola Player

Nuvola Player runs web interface of cloud music service in its own window and provides integration with a Linux desktop (system tray, Ubuntu sound menu, dock menu and notifications).

Nuvola Player currently supported services are
* Google Music
* Grooveshark
* Hype Machine
* 8tracks.

Nuvola Player Features:
* With Nuvola Player you will never accidentaly close web browser with playing music and window with your music is easily accesible from your dock/task bar instead of tab bar of your web browser.
* Nuvola Player shows notifications with currently playing song (Ubuntu, GNOME Fallback mode, GNOME Shell).
* Nuvola Player adds extra menu items to control playback (play/pause, previous/next song) or exit application.

MySQL Password Recovery and Auditing Software - MysqlPasswordAuditor

MysqlPasswordAuditor is the FREE MySQL password recovery and auditing software (for windows based systems). MySQL is one of the popular and powerful database software used by most of the web based and server side applications.

If you have ever lost or forgotten your MySQL database password then MysqlPasswordAuditor can help in recovering it easily. It can also help you to audit Mysql database server setup in an corporate environment by discovering the weak password configurations. This makes it one of the must have tool for IT administrators & Penetration Testers.

MysqlPasswordAuditor is very easy to use with the simple dictionary based password recovery method. By default it includes small password list file, however you can find more password dictionary files at OpenWall collection. You can also use tools like Crunch, Cupp to generate custom password list files on your own and then use it with MysqlPasswordAuditor.

Happy Merry Christmas To All Our Readers From Linuxpoison

Linuxpoison Author would like to wish all of you a very Merry Christmas. Thank you for reading this blog and we hope you enjoyed the posts this year.

Stay tune, we will be posting the top 10 post of year 2011.

Convert and Resize an Unlimited Number of Images - Converseen

Converseen is an open source project written in C++ with the powerful Qt4 libraries. Thanks to the Magick++ image libraries it supports more than 100 image formats. Converseen can convert and resize an unlimited number of images to any of the most popular formats: DPX, EXR, GIF, JPEG, JPEG-2000, PDF, PhotoCD, PNG, Postscript, SVG, and TIFF.

With Converseen you can save your time because it allows you to process more than one image with one mouse click!

Converseen is very simple: it features a very simple user interface without strange options.

With converseen you can:
* Carry out a single or a multiple conversion.
* Resize one or multiple images.
* Compress images for your web pages.

Flash Video (flv) Metadata / Cue Point Injector and Cutting Tool - Flvtool2

FLVTool2 calculates various meta data and inserts a onMetaData tag in the video. It cuts FLV files and adds cue Points (onCuePoint). A debug command shows the inside of a FLV file and the print command gives meta data information in XML or YAML format.

What is CuePoint:
A cue point is a point at which the video player dispatches a cuePoint event while a video file plays. You can add cue points to an FLV file at times that you want an action to occur for another element on the web page. Cue points allow you to receive control in your ActionScript code to synchronize points in your FLV file with other actions on the web page.

FLVTool2 Features
* Batch processing
* Directory recursion
* Command chaining
* FLV files cutting
* onCuePoint tag insertation via XML file
* Custom onMetaData key-value pairs
* Meta data printout in XML or YAML
* Simulation mode
* Runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OSX
* Ideal for serverside automatic meta data injection

Metadata Injector for FLV Video Files - Flvmeta

The information that composes an FLV file is the data, and the metadata is information about that video. The length of the video (duration), the number of frames per second that the video displays (frame rate), and the number of kilobytes of data transferred per second when the video plays (video and audio data rates, where applicable) are all examples of video metadata. Additionally, the codec used to encode the video is also available.

Importance of FLV Metadata
Most FLV players read the metadata first to know the duration of the video file. After that it initializes or synchronizes the video file with its timeline or seekbar. If there is no metadata the seekbar will not progress with the video. Secondly, for more intelligent FLV players that serve the video or rather buffer the video dynamically, depending on the user’s internet speed, the FLV players read the FLV video bitrate from the FLV metadata and then sets the buffer accordingly.

Shares Files Using HTTP Protocol - Qweborf

Transferring files from one computer to another on a network isn't always a straightforward task. Equipping networks with a file server or FTP server or common web server is one way to simplify the process of exchanging files, but if you need a simpler yet efficient method, try Qweborf, Qweborf is a small GUI based application that facilitates transfer of files across networks and only requires the recipient of the files have a Web browser.

Qweborf provides an easy to use interface to share local files using the HTTP protocol weborf as web-server. It can enable writing on the server, webdav and authentication.

Qweborf Installation:
Open the terminal and type following command to install Qweborf:

sudo apt-get install qweborf

Multiple GNOME Terminals in one Window - Terminator

Terminator, multiple terminals in one window. The goal of this project is to produce a useful tool for arranging terminals. It is inspired by programs such as gnome-multi-term, quadkonsole, etc. in that the main focus is arranging terminals in grids (tabs is the most common default method, which Terminator also supports).

Terminator gives the possibility of having multiples terminal within the same window. As such, it makes it easier to handle multiple terminal sessions as for instance, working in one console and monitoring another one without constantly switching from a window to another.

Terminator Features:
* Arrange terminals in a grid
* Tabs
* Drag and drop re-ordering of terminals
* Lots of keyboard shortcuts
* Save multiple layouts and profiles via GUI preferences editor
* Simultaneous typing to arbitrary groups of terminals

Secure Proxy to Surf the Web Anonymously on Linux - Anon-Proxy

Anon-Proxy contains the JAP client which acts as a local proxy between your browser and the insecure Internet. All requests for web pages are handled by JAP and are encrypted several times. The encrypted messages are sent through a chain of intermediate servers (named Mixes) to the final destination on the Internet.

Multiple layers of encryption protect all messages. A Mix collects messages in a batch, totally changes their appearance (removes one layer of encryption) and forwards them all at the same time, but in a different order. An adversary may observe all communication links, however he cannot determine a relation between incoming and outgoing packets. A surfer remains anonymous within the group of all users of the service.

Demonstrably, the Anon-Proxy protects your privacy as long as the Mix works correctly. Each message passes through several Mixes and the entire chain of Mixes has to be corrupt to successfully observe the user's activities. The chaining effectively prevents single Mixes from observing. This is the meaning of strong anonymity: Even the anonymity service itself cannot spy on its users.

Block Brute-Force Attempts on Ubuntu Linux - Fail2Ban

Fail2ban operates by blocking selected IP addresses that may belong to hosts that are trying to breach the system's security. It determines the hosts to be blocked by monitoring log files (e.g. /var/log/pwdfail, /var/log/auth.log, etc.) and bans any host IP that makes too many login attempts or performs any other unwanted action within a time frame defined by the administrator.

Fail2ban is typically set up to unban a blocked host within a certain period, so as to not "lock out" any genuine connections that may have been temporarily misconfigured. However, an unban time of several minutes is usually enough to stop a network connection being flooded by malicious connections, as well as reducing the likelihood of a successful dictionary attack.

Fail2ban can perform multiple actions whenever an abusive IP is detected: update Netfilter/iptables firewall rules, or alternatively TCP Wrapper's hosts.deny table, to reject an abuser's IP address; email notifications; or any user-defined action that can be carried out by a Python script. The standard configuration ships with filters for Apache, Lighttpd, sshd, vsftpd, qmail, Postfix and Courier Mail Server.

Hardening Ubuntu Linux using Bastille Linux

The Bastille Hardening program "locks down" an operating system, proactively configuring the system for increased security and decreasing its susceptibility to compromise. Bastille can also assess a system's current state of hardening, granular reporting on each of the security settings with which it works.

Bastille currently supports the Red Hat (Fedora Core, Enterprise, and Numbered/Classic), SUSE, Debian, Gentoo, and Mandrake distributions, along with HP-UX. Bastille's focuses on letting the system's user/administrator choose exactly how to harden the operating system. In its default hardening mode, it interactively asks the user questions, explains the topics of those questions, and builds a policy based on the user's answers. It then applies the policy to the system. In its assessment mode, it builds a report intended to teach the user about available security settings as well as inform the user as to which settings have been tightened.

How to Change the Network MAC Address on Ubuntu Linux - macchanger

A Media Access Control address (MAC address) is a unique identifier assigned to network interfaces for communications on the physical network segment. MAC addresses are used for numerous network technologies. Logically, MAC addresses are used in the Media Access Control protocol sub-layer of the OSI reference model.

MAC addresses are most often assigned by the manufacturer of a network interface card (NIC) and are stored in its hardware, the card's read-only memory, or some other firmware mechanism. If assigned by the manufacturer, a MAC address usually encodes the manufacturer's registered identification number and may be referred to as the burned-in address. It may also be known as an Ethernet hardware address (EHA), hardware address or physical address. A network node may have multiple NICs and will then have one unique MAC address per NIC.

MACChanger is a GNU/Linux utility for viewing/manipulating the MAC addresses of network interfaces. It can set specific, random, vendor-based (with a 6600+ vendor list), and device-type-based MACs.

A Fast Web Server Log Analyzer - Visitors

Visitors is a very fast web log analyzer for Linux, Windows, and other Unix-like operating systems. It takes as input a web server log file, and outputs statistics in form of different reports. The design principles are very different compared to other software of the same type:

* Designed to be executed by the command line, output html and text reports. The text report can be used in pipe to less to check web stats from ssh.
* Support for real time statistics with the Visitors Stream Mode.
* To specify the log format is not needed at all. Works out of box with apache and most other web servers with a standard log format.
* It's a portable C program, can be compiled on many different systems.
* The produced html report doesn't contain images or external CSS, is self-contained, you can send it by email to users.
* Visitors is free software (and of course, freeware), under the terms of the GPL license.

Visitors Reports information
Visitors reports contain a number of useful information and statistics:
* Requested pages.
* Requested images.
* Referrers by hits and age.
* Unique visitors in each day.
* Page views per visit.
* Pages accessed by the Google crawler (and the date of google's last access on every page).
* Percentage of visits originated from Google searches for every day.
* User's navigation patterns (web trails).
* Key phrases used in Google searches.
* User agents.
* Weekdays and Hours distributions of accesses.
* Weekdays/Hours combined bidimentional map.
* Month/Year combined bidimentional map.
* Visual path analysis with Graphviz.
* Operating systems, browsers and domains popularity.
* 404 errors.

Automatic SQL Injection Exploitation Tool - TheMole

Author is not responsible for any damage or illegal actions caused by the use of this program.
Use on your own risk!

SQL injection is yet another common vulnerability that is the result of lax input validation. Unlike cross-site scripting vulnerabilities that are ultimately directed at your site’s visitors, SQL injection is an attack on the site itself—in particular its database. The goal of SQL injection is to insert arbitrary data, most often a database query, into a string that’s eventually executed by the database. The insidious query may attempt any number of actions, from retrieving alternate data, to modifying or removing information from the database.

TheMole is an automatic SQL Injection exploitation tool. Only by providing a vulnerable URL and a valid string on the site it can detect the injection and exploit it, either by using the union technique or a boolean query based technique.

TheMole Features
* Support for injections using Mysql, SQL Server, Postgres and Oracle databases.
* Command line interface. Different commands trigger different actions.
* Auto-completion for commands, command arguments and database, table and columns names.
* Support for query filters, in order to bypass certain IPS/IDS rules using generic filters, and the possibility of creating new ones easily.
* Developed in python 3.

Basic Ubuntu System Security Checks - CheckSecurity

The checksecurity command runs a small collection of simple system checks which are designed to catch a few common security issues.

The checksecurity command scans the mounted files systems (subject to the filter defined in /etc/checksecurity.conf) and compares the list of setuid programs to the list created on the previous run. Any changes are printed to standard output. Also, it generates a list of nfs and afs filesystems that are mounted insecurely (i.e. they are missing the nodev and either the noexec or nosuid flags).

checksecurity is run by cron on a daily basis, and the output stored in /var/log/setuid/setuid.changes.

Checksecurity Installation:
Under Ubuntu Linux, open the terminal and type following command to install checksecurity:

sudo apt-get install checksecurity

GUI Tool to build Firewall on Ubuntu Linux - Firestarter

Firestarter is a firewall tool for Linux, and uses GNOME. You can use the wizard to create a basic firewall, then streamline it further using the dynamic rules. You can open and close ports with a few clicks, or stealth your services giving access only to a select few. It features a real-time hit monitor which you can watch as attackers probe your machine for open ports.

Firestarter itself is not a firewall, rather, it is a frontend for configuring iptables, which is the firewall system built into the Linux kernel.

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
    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

Utilities to benchmark UNIX systems - Lmbench

Lmbench is a suite of simple, portable, ANSI/C microbenchmarks for UNIX/POSIX. In general, it measures two key features: latency and bandwidth. lmbench is intended to give system developers insight into basic costs of key operations.

There are two attributes that are critical for performance - latency and bandwidth, and lmbench timing harness makes it easy to measure and report results for both. Latency is usually important for frequently executed operations, and bandwidth is usually important when moving large chunks of data.

Bandwidth benchmarks
* Cached file read
* Memory copy (bcopy)
* Memory read
* Memory write
* Pipe
* TCP

Latency benchmarks
* Context switching.
* Networking: connection establishment, pipe, TCP, UDP, and RPC hot potato
* File system creates and deletes.
* Process creation.
* Signal handling
* System call overhead
* Memory read latency

Clone an Ubuntu Installation to Another Computer

dpkg is a tool to install, build, remove and manage Debian packages. dpkg itself is controlled entirely via command line parameters, which consist of exactly one action and zero or more options. The action parameter tells dpkg what to do and options control the behavior of the action in some way.

dpkg –get-selections:
First get list of package selections, and write it to a file. Without a pattern, non-installed packages (i.e. those which have been previously purged) will not be shown in the file.
Use following command:

dpkg --get-selections | tee package_names

How To Set the Disk IO Priority For a Process on Linux - ionice

ionice program sets or gets the io scheduling class and priority for a program. If no arguments or just -p is given, ionice will query the current io scheduling class and priority for that process.

A process can be in one of three scheduling classes:
Idle

A program running with idle io priority will only get disk time when no other program has asked for disk io for a defined grace period. The impact of idle io processes on normal system activity should be zero. This scheduling class does not take a priority argument. This scheduling class is permitted for an ordinary user (since kernel 2.6.25).

Best effort

This is the effective scheduling class for any process that has not asked for a specific io priority. This class takes a priority argument from 0-7, with lower number being higher priority. Programs running at the same best effort priority are served in a round-robin fashion.

Replicate the Installed Application Across Different Computers - OneConf

OneConf enables you to save and replicate some data in between all your computers like the list of installed applications and some settings. The goal is to enable your to continue your work between your workstation and your netbook, for instance, without having to do any complicated manipulation.

OneConf is a mechanism for recording software information in Ubuntu One, and synchronizing with other computers as needed. In Maverick, the list of installed software is stored. This may eventually expand to include some application settings and application state.

Installing Oneconf:
Open the terminal and type following command to install oneconf:

sudo apt-get install oneconf

Sound Mixing Software for DJs, - Mixxx

Mixxx is free mixing software for DJs, providing everything needed to create live mixes. It allows you to beatmatch songs and crossfade them together, like you would with turntables and a mixer. Mixxx natively supports MP3, OGG, FLAC, WAVE, and AIFF playback (with plugins to support additional formats) and can be controlled by numerous DJ MIDI controllers.

The basic requirements for Mixxx are a desktop computer or laptop with a reasonable amount of storage space on the hard drive for your music, at least 1 audio card for outputting the sound and a way of controlling the software either by mouse, keyboard or hardware DJ Controller.

Mixxx will run on the Linux, Mac OS X and Windows operating systems.

Mixxx Features:
* Cross-platform (Windows XP/Vista/7, Mac OS X, Linux)
* Free and open source (GPL v2)
* Parallel waveform displays
* Waveform summaries
* MP3, OGG, WAVE, and FLAC playback
* Extra playback formats through plugins
* Fast, database-powered library
* Shoutcast and Icecast broadcasting
* Automatic crossfading with Auto DJ
* Crates and playlists
* Reads iTunes and Rhythmbox libraries
* Pitch-independent time stretch (key lock)
* Vinyl emulation
* Hot cues
* Looping
* Wave recording
* BPM detection and estimation
* Bulk BPM analysis
* Community Supported MIDI Controllers:

many many more ....

UI Application for ssh, telnet, sftp, rdesktop, vnc, cu, remote-tty, ftp, etc ... - PAC Manager

PAC Manager is a UI Application for replacement for SecureCRT/Putty/etc (linux ssh/telnet/... gui)... It provides a GUI to configure connections: users, passwords, EXPECT regular expressions, macros, etc.

PAC Manager Features
* Unique linux app to implement SecureCRT's functionality (more or less!)
* Remote and local macros
* Remotely send commands with EXPECT regexp
* Cluster connections!! Connections on same cluster share keystrokes!!
* Proxy support
* Serial/tty connection via cu/tip/remote-tty connections!!
* Pre/post connections local executions
* Wake On LAN capabilities
* Possibility to split terminals in the same TAB!
* Quick acces to configured connections via tray menu icon
* Best linux GUI for ssh, telnet, sftp, rdesktop, vnc, cu, remote-tty, ftp, etc
* DEB, RPM & .TAR.GZ packages available!!
* FREE (GNU GPLv3)

Download and Convert Videos from YouTube, Vimeo, Dailymotion and other online video sites - ClipGrab

ClipGrab is a free software for downloading and converting online videos from many sites like YouTube or Vimeo. ClipGrab can download from the following sites: YouTube, Clipfish, Collegehumor, Dailymotion, MyVideo, MySpass, Sevenload, Tudou, Vimeo.

Downloaded videos can be converted to the following file formats: WMV, MPEG4, OGG Theora, MP3 (audio only), OGG Vorbis (audio only).

ClipGrab isn’t limited to the sites listed above, because many more sites are supported "unofficially" through the automatic site-recognition of ClipGrab - just try it! ClipGrab can also download HD videos from sites that have support for high definition (e.g. YouTube or Vimeo).

Text Based Password Manager using the Blowfish Encryption - YAPET

YAPET is a text based password manager using the Blowfish encryption algorithm to store password and associated information encrypted on disk. Its primary aim is to provide a safe way to store passwords in a file on disk while having a small footprint, and compiling and running under today's most popular Unix Systems.

YAPET does not impose a limit of password records per file and the number of files the passwords are stored in, although YAPET is only able to display password records of one file at a time. For convenience, YAPET provides a search function for password records of the currently displayed password file.

The password records are protected by a master password. The master password is used to encrypt and decrypt the password records.

YAPET relies on OpenSSL for encrypting and decrypting password records. The cipher for encryption and decryption is Blowfish with a 448 bits key.

openSUSE 12.1 Released

openSUSE 12.1
This release represents more than eight months of work by international community.
Awesome improvements include the latest GNOME 3.2 desktop as well as the newest from KDE, XFCE and LXDE; your ownCloud made easy with mirall; Snapper-shots of your file system; and much, much more.

Desktops:
openSUSE 12.1 comes with the new GNOME Shell 3.2.
Notifications are much nicer, you can now configure your online accounts in one place and Shell handles multiple-screen setups better.

Among the features is color management, something GNOME shares with KDE where openSUSE is the first to integrate the Oyranos color management system. Also new from KDE is Apper, an easier-to-use PackageKit front end.

Cloud:
It is 2011, and most of us use ‘cloud’ technology like having our files on Dropbox, friends on Facebook and music on Spotify. But these technologies are arguably dangerous from a security and privacy point of view. While not solving all problems yet, ownCloud aims to bring these services back under your control.

Social Media Player for Linux, Windows and MAC OSX - Tomahawk

Tomahawk is a project dedicated to creating an audio player as an alternative Banshee, Amarok, and Rhytmbox. Tomahawk interface looks clean and fits perfectly on any desktop environment such as Gnome, KDE, Xfce, and LXDE. Tomahawk can be installed on MAC OSX, Linux and Windows

Tomahawk is build to solve below mentioned problems:
* Why can't I easily listen to all the music I have scattered across multiple computers, at multiple locations, from a single interface?
* Why can I stream my home iTunes library to my laptop when I am at home, but I can't when I am somewhere else?
* Conversely, how come I can stream my co-worker's iTunes library when we are both at the office, but only if we are on the same wireless network (or subnet)?
* When I am reading a website that talks about a song, and I own that song, why can't I play my copy directly from that page?
* Why can't I subscribe to, and import, playlist metadata from all over the web - and then have that resolve against any/all songs that I have access to?
* Why do I have to listen to songs I have on my hard drive, and songs from services I subscribe to, in totally different user experience silos?
* If I am a music subscription service provider, why do I need to incur the costs of streaming you content you already have locally?

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Find and Delete Duplicate files under Linux - Fdupes

fdupes is a program written by Adrian Lopez to scan directories for duplicate files, with options to list and delete them. It first compares file sizes and MD5 signatures, and then performs a byte-by-byte check for verification.
fdupes is written in C and is released under the MIT License.

fdupes installation:
Type the following command to install fdupes in Debian / Ubuntu Linux:

sudo apt-get install fdupes

Protects Networked Hosts from Brute Force Attacks - Sshguar

Sshguard is a small program that monitors services running on your machine from the log files. When it detects that someone is doing something bad to a service, sshguard blocks the IP address of the bad guy with a firewall rule.

Sshguard Log support:
Sshguard interprets log messages with several formats:
* syslog
* syslog-ng
* metalog
* multilog
* raw log
It can monitor multiple log files at once, and handles log rotation and temporary log files automatically. Its powerful grammar-based parser makes it straightforward to support several formats and services without increasing complexity.

Extracting Images from PDF files - Pdfimages

Pdfimages is an open source command-line utility for extracting images from PDF files. It is freely available as part of poppler-utils and xpdf-utils, and included by default with many Linux distributions.

Pdfimages saves images from a Portable Document Format (PDF) file as Portable Pixmap (PPM), Portable Bitmap (PBM), or JPEG files. Pdfimages reads the PDF file, scans one or more pages, PDF-file, and writes one PPM, PBM, or JPEG file for each image, image-root-nnn.xxx, where nnn is the image number and xxx is the image type (.ppm, .pbm,.jpg).

NB: pdfimages extracts the raw image data from the PDF file, without performing any additional transforms. Any rotation, clipping, color inversion, etc. done by the PDF content stream is ignored.

Install Latest Versions and New Applications using GetDeb under Ubuntu

GetDeb is an unofficial project with the mission to provide the latest open source and freeware applications for the current Ubuntu Linux release, in an easy to install manner.

The GetDeb repository extends the official repositories by providing latest versions and new applications. Unlike the official packages, GetDeb packages do not have a predefined release schedule - new software versions are provided as they become available from their authors. There is a short and limited testing phase instead of a full testing cycle to ensure packaging quality, however it is less strict than Ubuntu's official requirements.

You may also be interested on the UbuntuBackports project. It has a limited scope compared to GetDeb but the advantage of being an Ubuntu official project.

Visual Real-Time Apache Log Analyzer - GoAccess

GoAccess is an open source real-time Apache log analyzer and interactive viewer that runs in a terminal in *nix systems. It provides fast and valuable HTTP statistics for system administrators that require a visual server report on the fly.

Essentially, the way GoAccess works is that it will parse the well-known Apache access log file, from there, GoAccess will collect data from the parsed log and it will display it to the console or the X terminal. The collected information or generated reports will be displayed to the user/sysadmin in a visual/interactive window. Reports include:
* General Statistics, bandwidth etc.
* Top Visitors
* Requested files
* Requested static files, images, swf, js, etc.
* Referrers URLs
* 404 or Not Found
* Operating Systems
* Browsers and Spiders
* Hosts, Reverse DNS, IP Location
* HTTP Status Codes
* Referring Sites
* Keyphrases
* Different Color Schemes
* Unlimited log file size

Multimedia (MP3, MPEG-4, AVI, DiVX, etc.) support in Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot)

Why doesn’t Ubuntu support MP3 ‘out of the box’?

Ubuntu cannot include support for MP3 or DVD video playback or recording. MP3 formats are patented, and the patent holders have not provided the necessary licenses. Ubuntu also excludes other multimedia software due to patent, copyright, or license restrictions, such as Adobe Flash Player and RealNetworks RealPlayer.

That doesn’t mean you can’t play .mp3 files in Ubuntu , it just takes a bit of work (not much).

Follow these instructions to get mp3 and other multimedia support on your Ubuntu 11.10.

Tool for Detecting Memory Management Problems in Programs - Valgrind

Valgrind is a powerful tool for detecting memory management problems in programs. The kinds of problems it can detect are often very difficult to find by other means and often cause difficult to diagnose crashes. Valgrind can be used with existing executables without recompiling or relinking, although the output it produces will be much more useful if you have compiled with the -g flag.

Valgrind Capabilities
Valgrind is basically an x86 emulator that checks all reads and writes of memory, intercepts all calls to allocate and deallocate memory. The memcheck tool of valgrind (which is the main tool and the only one covered in this chapter) can detect the following:

* Use of uninitialized memory
* Reading/writing memory after it has been free'd
* Reading/writing off the end of malloc'd blocks
* Reading/writing inappropriate areas below the stack.
* Memory leaks
* Mismatched use of malloc/new/new[] vs free/delete/delete[]
* Overlapping src and dst pointers in memcpy() and related functions
* Doubly freed memory
* Passing unaddressable bytes to a system call

Graphical CD/DVD Image (ISO file) Editor - ISO Master

ISO Master is an easy to use GUI CD image editor for Linux, BSD, and Windows. Basically, you can use this program to extract files from an ISO, add files to an ISO, and create bootable ISOs, all in a graphical user interface.

ISO Master can open both ISO and NRG files, but can only save as ISO. It is based on bkisofs, a library for reading, modifying, and writing ISO images.

ISO Master features:
* Display file/directory contents of the image and filesystem in two panels and be able to navigate them.
* Display file sizes for files on image/filesystem.
* Sort by name or by size
* Select any number of items in the file browsers.
* Extract selected from image to the filesystem
* Delete selected from image.

Windows FAT16 / FAT32 FileSystem Resizer - Fatresize

Fatresize is a command line tool for non-destructive resizing of MS Windows FAT16 / FAT32 file systems. It is based on the GNU Parted library. The main target of the project is to be used with the EVMS FAT plugin.

Fatresize Installation:
Open the terminal and type following command to install Fatresize:

sudo apt-get install fatresize

Using Fatresize:
Fatresize follow the usual GNU command line syntax, with long options starting with two dashes (`-'). A summary of options is included below.

Utilities for Making and Checking MS-DOS FAT Filesystems

The dosfstools package includes the mkdosfs (aka mkfs.dos and mkfs.vfat) and dosfsck (aka fsck.msdos and fsck.vfat) utilities, which respectively make and check MS-DOS FAT filesystems on hard drives or on floppies.

This version uses the enhanced boot sector/superblock format of DOS 3.3+ as well as provides a default dummy boot sector code.

mkdosfs:
mkdosfs is used to create an MS-DOS file system under Linux on a device (usually a disk partition). device is the special file corresponding to the device (e.g /dev/hdXX) block-count is the number of blocks on the device. If omitted, mkdosfs automatically determines the file system size.

How To Setup Streaming Music Server - Zeya

Zeya is a lightweight music streamer. It's written in Python and Javascript which means it does not require as much resources as Java based streamers would need. Zeya uses about 10-20MB ram idle. When there is music streamed from the server to you there is a trans-coding process which uses also a tad of ram, but don't expect it to hit above the 80MB ram.

To play music from your server you need a browser which supports HTML5. The browsers which are known to work with Zeya are:
* Mozilla Firefox 3.5 or later
* Google Chrome or Chromium
* Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8 on Windows with the Google Chrome Frame plugin

The client runs in any browser that supports a certain subset of the HTML 5 technologies— no Flash needed. No Silverlight, no applets, no plugins, no external players.

HTML Syntax Checker and Reformatter - Tidy

When editing HTML it's easy to make mistakes. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a simple way to fix these mistakes automatically and tidy up sloppy editing into nicely layed out markup? Well now there is! Dave Raggett's HTML TIDY is a free utility for doing just that. It also works great on the atrociously hard to read markup generated by specialized HTML editors and conversion tools, and can help you identify where you need to pay further attention on making your pages more accessible to people with disabilities.

Tidy is able to fix up a wide range of problems and to bring to your attention things that you need to work on yourself. Each item found is listed with the line number and column so that you can see where the problem lies in your markup. Tidy won't generate a cleaned up version when there are problems that it can't be sure of how to handle. These are logged as "errors" rather than "warnings".

Large-Scale File Distribution Application - Zsync

Zsync is a file transfer program. It allows you to download a file from a remote server, where you have a copy of an older version of the file on your computer already. zsync downloads only the new parts of the file. It uses the same algorithm as rsync. However, where rsync is designed for synchronizing data from one computer to another within an organization, zsync is designed for file distribution, with one file on a server to be distributed to thousands of down-loaders. zsync requires no special server software just a web server to host the files and imposes no extra load on the server, making it ideal for large scale file distribution.

Advantages of zsync
zsync fills a gap in the technology available for large-scale file distribution. Three key points explain why zsync provides a genuinely new technique for file distribution:

* Client-side rsync: zsync uses the rsync algorithm, but runs it on the client side, thus avoiding the high server load associated with rsync.
* Rsync over HTTP: zsync provides transfers that are nearly as efficient as rsync -z or cvsup, without the need to run a special server application. All that is needed is an HTTP/1.1-compliant web server. So it works through firewalls and on shared hosting accounts, and gives less security worries.
* Handling for compressed files: rsync is ineffective on compressed files, unless they are compressed with a patched version of gzip. zsync has special handling for gzipped files, which enables update transfers of files which are distributed in compressed form.

Load / Performance Testing Web Application - Httperf

Httperf is a tool for measuring web server performance. It provides a flexible facility for generating various HTTP workloads and for measuring server performance.

The focus of httperf is not on implementing one particular benchmark but on providing a robust, high-performance tool that facilitates the construction of both micro- and macro-level benchmarks. The three distinguishing characteristics of httperf are its ...
* Robustness, which includes the ability to generate and sustain server overload
* Support for the HTTP/1.1 and SSL protocols
* Extensibility to new workload generators and performance measurements.

The purpose of httperf is to help answer a number of complex or otherwise hard to investigate questions. For instance, it is usually desirable when designing and programming a website to be interested in how well it will perform under a variety of circumstances. When investigating whether or not to invest in faster equipment, many people want to know the limits to which their current hardware can perform. This is what httperf is designed to help answer.

Testing Cross Site Scripting Vulnerability - XSSer

Cross-site scripting (XSS) is a type of computer security vulnerability typically found in Web applications that enables attackers to inject client-side script into Web pages viewed by other users.

A cross-site scripting vulnerability may be used by attackers to bypass access controls such as the same origin policy. Cross-site scripting carried out on websites accounted for roughly 80% of all security vulnerabilities documented by Symantec as of 2007. Their effect may range from a petty nuisance to a significant security risk, depending on the sensitivity of the data handled by the vulnerable site and the nature of any security mitigation implemented by the site's owner.

XSSer is an open source penetration testing tool that automates the process of detecting and exploiting XSS injections against different applications.

It contains several options to try to bypass certain filters, and various special techniques of code injection.

XSSer Features
* Added “final remote injections” option
* Cross Flash Attack!
* Cross Frame Scripting
* Data Control Protocol Injections
* Base64 (rfc2397) PoC
* OnMouseMove PoC
* Browser launcher
* New options menu
* Pre-check system
* Crawler spidering clones
* More advanced statistics system
* “Mana” ouput results

Install Many Linux Distributions from one disk - NetbootCD

NetbootCD is a GNU/Linux live CD based on Tiny Core Linux. The live CD allows the user to download and run one of several Linux netboot installers, which can install a full GNU/Linux system with only a hard drive and Internet connection.

Several of the distributions supported by NetbootCD are prerelease distributions (such as Debian testing) or development distributions (openSUSE Factory, Fedora Rawhide, Debian sid.) Because NetbootCD downloads the latest installer, which in turn downloads the latest system components, you can install a fully up-to-date system without burning a new CD.

How to Hide data (Steganography) into MP3 file - mp3stego

Steganography is the art and science of writing hidden messages in such a way that no one, apart from the sender and intended recipient, suspects the existence of the message, a form of security through obscurity

MP3Stego will hide information in MP3 files during the compression process. The data is first compressed, encrypted and then hidden in the MP3 bit stream. Although MP3Stego has been written with steganographic applications in mind it might be used as a copyright marking system for MP3 files (weak but still much better than the MPEG copyright flag defined by the standard). Any opponent can uncompress the bit stream and recompress it; this will delete the hidden information – actually this is the only attack we know yet – but at the expense of severe quality loss.

Generate and/or Encrypt Passwords - makepasswd

makepasswd generates true random passwords by using the /dev/urandom feature of Linux, with the emphasis on security over pronounceability. It can also encrypt plaintext passwords given on the command line.

makepasswd Installation:
Open the terminal and type following command to install makepasswd:

sudo apt-get install makepasswd

After successful installation you can use the makepasswd using following command, here I am generating 10 diffferent passwd having character length 10

For more detail options type command makepasswd --help or check the man pages

Setting up SSH keys for Secure Password-less SSH Login

OpenSSH is a FREE version of the SSH connectivity tools that technical users of the Internet rely on. Users of telnet, rlogin, and ftp may not realize that their password is transmitted across the Internet unencrypted, but it is. OpenSSH encrypts all traffic (including passwords) to effectively eliminate eavesdropping, connection hijacking, and other attacks. Additionally, OpenSSH provides secure tunneling capabilities and several authentication methods, and supports all SSH protocol versions.

The OpenSSH suite replaces rlogin and telnet with the ssh program, rcp with scp, and ftp with sftp. Also included is sshd (the server side of the package), and the other utilities like ssh-add, ssh-agent, ssh-keysign, ssh-keyscan, ssh-keygen and sftp-server.

If you manage more than one or two hosts, you likely have to type the same password too often. This can get quite annoying. SSH allows you to setup a public and private keypair. Using these keys, you can connect to any host which has the public key, from any host which has the private key.

Graphical grub2 Configuration Manager - Grub Customizer

The goal of Grub Customizer is to create a complete and intuitive graphical grub2/burg configuration interface. The main feature is the boot entry list configuration - but not simply by modified the grub.cfg: to keep the dynamical configuration, this application will only edit the script order and generate proxies (script output filter), if required. To get more information about how it works, look here: https://answers.launchpad.net/grub-customizer/+faq/1355.
Version 2.0 introduces the ability to change the grub2/burg setting like the default entry, timeouts, menu visibility, screen resolution, background image and colors (grub2 only) and much more.

Since version 1.5 you can use it to repair and configure grub2/burg using a live cd (and Grub Customizer, which has to be installed as usual at the live system before using it). All the required partitions will be automatically mounted when choosing the root partition and some sub partitions on the "partition chooser" (a dialog which pops up, when you start Grub Customizer inside a live system).

Tool to Audit Web Application Security - Lilith

LiLith is a tool written in Perl to audit web applications. This tool analyses webpages and looks for html <form> tags , which often refer to dynamic pages that might be subject to SQL injection or other flaws.

How the entire "scanning" process works is different from so called "CGI scanners", such as nikto and n-stealth. This program will surf to a website and crawls through all the links, just as a user would to. On any possible input field, such as text boxes, page id's, ... LiLith will attempt to inject any characters that might have a special meaning for any underlying technology, such as SQL.

Any Web applications scanner can never perform a full 100% correct audit. Therefore, a manual re-check is necessary. Hence, be aware that Lilith might come up with several false positives.

Hack Into Wi-Fi (WEP and WPA Encrypted) Networks - Wifite

Author is NOT responsible for any damage or illegal actions caused by the use of this program.
Use on your own risk!

Wifite is made to attack multiple WEP and WPA encrypted networks at the same time. this tool is customizable to be automated with only a few arguments. wifite can be trusted to run without supervision.

Wifite features:
* Sorts targets by power (in dB); cracks closest access points first
* Automatically deauths clients of hidden networks to decloak SSIDs
* Numerous filters to specify exactly what to attack (wep/wpa/both, above certain signal strengths, channels, etc)
* Customizable settings (timeouts, packets/sec, channel, change mac address, ignore fake-auth, etc)
* "anonymous" feature; changes MAC to a random address before attacking, then changes back when attacks are complete
* all WPA handshakes are backed up to wifite.py's current directory
* Smart WPA deauthentication -- cycles between all clients and broadcast deauths
* Stop any attack with Ctrl+C -- options: continue, move onto next target, skip to cracking, or exit
* Switching WEP attack methods does not reset IVs
* Intel 4965 chipset fake-authentication support; uses wpa_supplicant workaround
* SKA support (untested)
* Displays session summary at exit; shows any cracked keys
* All passwords saved to log.txt
* built-in updater: ./wifite.py -upgrade

Create and Manage Encrypted Folder (EncFS) in Ubuntu with Cryptkeeper

EncFS creates a virtual encrypted filesystem which stores encrypted data in the rootdir directory and makes the unencrypted data visible at the mountPoint directory. The user must supply a password which is used to (indirectly) encrypt both filenames and file contents.

If EncFS is unable to find a supported filesystem at the specified rootdir, then the user will be asked if they wish to create a new encrypted filesystem at the specified location. Options will be presented to the user allowing some control over the algorithms to use. As EncFS matures, there may be an increasing number of choices.

EncFS offers several advantages over other disk encryption software simply because each file is stored individually as an encrypted file somewhere else in the host's directory tree.

Securing Service using TCP_WRAPPERS

Using TCP_WRAPPERS makes securing your servers against outside intrusion is a lot simpler and painless. TCP_WRAPPERS is controlled from two files:

/etc/hosts.allow
/etc/hosts.deny

hosts.allow is checked first, and the rules are checked from first to last. If it finds a rule that explicitly allows you in (i.e., a rule allowing your host, domain, subnet mask, etc.) it lets you connect to the service. If it fails to find any rules that pertain to you in hosts.allow, it then goes to check hosts.deny for a rule denying you entry.

Limiting Linux System Users - limits.conf

Almost all Linux distributions ship with PAM support making it universally available. PAM limits provide a single standardized interface to setting user limits, instead of having to write complex shell configuration files (such as /etc/profile) you simply edit the "limits.conf" file. As well applying limits selectively through the command shell is very difficult, whereas with PAM applying limits globally, on groups or on individual users is quite simple. To enable PAM limits you need to add a line such as:

session required /lib/security/pam_limits.so

to the appropriate Pam configuration file (/etc/pam.d/sshd). You can then define limits, typically these are in "/etc/security/limits.conf" or a similar location. Because most of these limits are enforced by the shell the system cannot log all violations of limits (you will be notified in syslog when a user exceeds the number of times they are allowed to login, however you will not receive a warning if the user tries to use more disk space then they are allowed to).

GUI Toolkit for Database Developers and Administrator - TOra

TOra is an open-source multi-platform database management GUI that supports accessing most of the common database platforms in use, including Oracle, MySQL, and Postgres, as well as limited support for any target that can be accessed through Qt's ODBC support. TOra has been built for various Linux distributions, Mac OS X, MS Windows, and UNIX platforms.

In addition to regular query and data browsing functionality, it includes several additional tools useful for database administrators and developers – which aims to help the DBA or developer of database application. Features PL/SQL debugger, SQL worksheet with syntax highlighting, DB browser and a comprehensive set of DBA tools.

Anonymous web surfing using TOR - Ubuntu Linux

Tor protects you by bouncing your communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world: it prevents somebody watching your Internet connection from learning what sites you visit, and it prevents the sites you visit from learning your physical location. Tor works with many of your existing applications, including web browsers, instant messaging clients, remote login, and other applications based on the TCP protocol.

Installing Tor under Ubuntu:
Add the following repositories to your /etc/apt/sources.list file

deb http://deb.torproject.org/torproject.org natty main

How to Prevent Package from Getting Upgraded - Ubuntu Linux

Synaptic is a graphical package management program for Debian based Linux distributions. It provides the same features as the apt-get command line utility with a GUI front-end based on Gtk+. The Synaptic package manager enables the user to install, to upgrade or to remove software packages. To install a package a user must search for the package they want and mark it for installation. Changes are not applied instantly; the user must first mark all changes and then apply them.

There are times where you don not want a particular package from getting upgraded, follow the steps below to prevent any package in your Ubuntu system from getting upgraded using Synaptic package manager with few clicks.

Open Source Antispyware Tool - Nixory

Nixory is a free and open source antispyware tool written in Python/PyGTK aimed at removing malicious tracking cookies from your browser. It currently supports Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Google Chrome. It runs on all OS, including Windows, Linux and MacOSX.

A cookie, in the internet terminology, is a piece of text which your browser stores on your computer when requested by a website you are visiting. Cookies can be used in different useful ways: for authentication, for storing site preferences, for shopping cart contents, but can be also used by companies in less useful places. For example, they can use cookies to track your computer data and IP address for marketing purposes, putting your privacy at risk.

Nixory will protect your browser from this kind of malicious tracking cookies.

Nixory Features include:
* Ice Eye heuristic system
* Update stats for number of scans, removed objects and more
* Customizable options
* Remove Tool for found data miner
* Enable to ignore selected data miner groups
* Enable to write a Scan Log with accurate details
* Multi-Language support (English, Italian, Dutch, Spanish, Spanish(AR), Catalan)
* Multi-profiles of Firefox support
* Flexible management of memory

Powerful Firewall Manager built on top of Iptables - Vuurmuur

Vuurmuur is a powerful firewall manager built on top of iptables that works with Linux kernels 2.4 and 2.6. It has a simple and easy to learn configuration that allows both simple and complex configurations.

The configuration can be fully configured through an Ncurses GUI, which allows secure remote administration through SSH or on the console.

Vuurmuur has powerful monitoring features, which allow the administrator to look at the logs, connections and bandwidth usage in realtime. It makes use of IPTrafficVolume for keeping track of the traffic volume per interface.

The program is divided into three part. One element (the middle-end) converts humanly-readable rules, hosts, groups, networks, zones, interfaces and services into a iptables ruleset (or optional into a bash-script). The second element is a small daemon that converts the Netfilter logs to easy readable logs. The final element is an Ncurses-based user interface (the front-end) to manage the firewall.

Configuring IP aliases under Ubuntu Linux

IP aliasing is the process of adding more than one IP address to a network interface. Typical uses of IP aliasing are virtual hosting of Web and FTP servers. It is fairly simple to set up an IP alias. You merely have to configure the network interface on the system to listen for the additional IP address.

Below are the steps for configuring IP alias under Ubuntu Linux:
If you want to put IP alias on an interface, first find the interface, use command

ifconfig

Automatic Software Installer for Ubuntu Linux - Bleeding Edge

Bleeding Edge Script for Ubuntu
* Bleeding Edge is a shell script designed for Ubuntu(32bit,64bit supported).
* Installs repositories, keys, and software like media players, codecs, drivers, etc.
* It can even clean up the system and save you some precious disk space.
* Popular supported applications include Google Earth, Google Chrome, CLI Companion, Y PPA Manager, Ubuntu Tweak among others.

Install and Run Bleeding Edge in Ubuntu
* Download Bleeding Edge Script from here

Getting Information about packages in Ubuntu Linux

Finding packages:
How do you find the package that's got the feature you're looking for? First, do

sudo apt-get update

so your package list is up-to-date, and then try something like

sudo apt-cache search tunnel
sudo apt-cache search 'php.*'

That is how you tell apt to search the packages using REGEX (regular expression, a pattern-matching 'language') -- if your pattern uses any keystrokes that mean something to your command shell (e.g. [|?*] ) you'll need to quote them so that apt-cache will be able to see them, instead of having the shell expand the term to a list of file names that mean something else entirely.

Multi-Tabbed PuTTY - MTPuTTY

PuTTY is the most popular SSH client for Windows. One, and probably the only one, of PuTTY drawbacks is that you need to start a new copy of PuTTY every time you open a new connection. So if you need e.g. 5 active connections you run 5 PuTTY instances and you have 5 PuTTY windows on the desktop.

MTPuTTY (Multi-Tabbed PuTTY) is a small *FREE* utility enabling you to wrap unlimited number of PuTTY applications in one tabbed GUI interface. You are still continue using your favorite SSH client, but you are no longer messing around with PuTTY windows - each window will be opened in a separate tab.

Console based Last.fm player - Shell-fm

Last.fm is a UK-based Internet radio and music community website, founded in 2002. It claims over 30 million active users based in more than 200 countries.

Using a music recommender system called "Audioscrobbler", Last.fm builds a detailed profile of each user's musical taste by recording details of all the songs the user listens to, either on the streamed radio stations, the user's computer or some portable music devices. This information is transferred to Last.fm's database ("scrobbled") via a plug in installed into the user's music player. The profile data is then displayed on the user's profile page. The site offers numerous social networking features and can recommend and play artists similar to the user's favorites.

shell-fm is a lightweight, console-based player for Last.FM radio streams. It’s pretty small (the binary is currently about 70K, or about 60K when stripped) and it has most features the official player has, if not even a few more. Additional features are, for example:

List of best Linux blogs - V2

LinuxHelp Good site with great stuff, frequently updated.
HowToGeek Great How to site, not only for Linux but its Linux section is great!.
LinuxScrew good site which is coming real popular these days, with great articles.
Fsckin Frequently updated Linux site, great tutorials, and good posts about games for Linux.
Ubuntu Geek All about Ubuntu, from a real Geek
BashCuresCancer Site devoted to command Line, unfortunately not too frequently updated
http://www.linux-gamers.net/ For Linux games, how tos, forums, etc. about Video
Ars Technica Open Ended section: http://arstechnica.com/journals/linux.ars
DesktopLinux: http://www.desktoplinux.com/
Phoronix: http://www.phoronix.com/ (lots of good Linux stories)
http://www.ubuntux.org Ubuntux
http://www.markshuttleworth.com mark shuttleworth's blog
http://ubuntuliving.blogspot.com ubuntu living
http://planet.gnome.org planet gnome [same as planet kde]
http://planetkde.org planet kde [links to TONS of other blogs]
http://happypenguin.org happy penguin linux gaming
http://www.linux-watch.com linux watch

Need Entry for Linux / Opensource Blogs

Hello LinuxPoison Readers,

Need your help ...

The all-time top post of linuxpoison is - List of best Linux blogs but there are lots of blogs in this list which are dead or non-functional, so I am thinking for building the new list of blogs dedicated to linux or/and open source ONLY.

I will put this list on the separate blog page for easy accessibility.

Please do send me your favouire blogs ONLY on Linux or Open source

Thanks,
Nikesh

Wallpaper Changer for Ubuntu Linux - Wally

Wally is a Qt4 wallpaper changer using multiple sources like ...
* Files, Folders, FTP remote folders
* Flickr, Yahoo!, Panoramio, Pikeo, Ipernity, Photobucket, Buzznet, Picasa, Smugmug, Bing, Google, Vladstudio, and deviantART images.

It is available in many languages. Supported Linux window managers are GNOME, KDE3, KDE4, XFCE4, BlackBox, FluxBox, Window Maker, and FVWM (experimental).

Wally Features
* Runs on Win32, Linux and MacOSX platforms
* History support
* Many wallpaper layouts available on all platforms
* EXIF data available over picture and in system tray tooltip
* Save downloaded photos
* Proxy support

How to Profile Applications under Linux - perf

The purpose of application profiling is to check whether an application, which is being developed, works as it is supposed to and to assist the developers in improving the application.

Profiling Prerequisites:
Profiling an application involves the following steps:
* Profiling applications on remote hosts requires the installation of the Agent Controller. Profiling local applications requires no additional install or setup.
* Launching an application
* Specifying profiling criteria
* Using profiling views to analyze data
* Save profiling data or resources if you expect to use them again

Perf is a profiler tool for Linux 2.6+ based systems that abstracts away CPU hardware differences in Linux performance measurements and presents a simple command-line interface. Perf is based on the perf_events interface exported by recent versions of the Linux kernel.

Opensource Application to Track Your Stolen Phone or Laptop - Prey

Prey is a lightweight opensource program that will help you track and find your laptop or your android phone if it ever gets stolen.

Prey comprises a shell script which calls out on a regular basis to either a server run by prey project, or a url nominated by the system administrator sends data regarding the current location of your missing device. The latest version of the application has the capability to even take pictures using the device's inbuilt webcam and send it to you upon request.

Install Prey:
Open up the terminal and type following command to install prey under Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install prey

UI Application for Encoding and Ripping DVDs in Linux - OGMRip

OGMRip rips and encodes DVD into very high quality AVI, OGM, MP4, or Matroska files. It supports a wide variety of video (XviD, Lavc, X264 and Ogg Theora) and audio (Ogg Vorbis, MP3, PCM, AC3, DTS and AAC) codecs and can extract SRT or VobSub subtitles. OGMRip tries as much as possible to automate most of the steps of the encoding: it computes the video bitrate for a given output file size, auto detects cropping and scaling parameters, ... It also allows to embed multiple audio and subtitle streams in a single file and to encode only a few chapters of a DVD title..

OGMRip Features
* Transcodes from DVD or files
* Outputs OGM, AVI, MP4, or Matroska files
* Supports a lot of codecs (Vorbis, MP3, PCM, AC3, DTS, AAC, XviD, LAVC, X264, Theora)
* Calculates video bitrate for a given file size
* Autodetects cropping parameters and scaling factors
* Supports multiple audio and subtitles streams encoding
* Extracts subtitles in SRT or VobSub format
* Uses maximum quality codecs switches
* Rips contiguous chapters
* Supports external audio (PCM, MP3, AC3, DTS, AAC, Vorbis) and subtitles (MicroDVD, SubRip, SRT, Sami, VPlayer, RT, SSA, PJS, MPSub, AQT, JacoSub, VobSub) files
* Provides customisable encoding profiles

Upload Pictures and Videos to Facebook directly from Nautilus - Nfuploader

Nfuploader is script is a small program which allows you to upload photos and videos to your facebook account with ease, right from your desktop. Originally a nautilus script, nfuploader can now be installed even without nautilus. It is a complete application now. Nfuploader is written in python.

Nfuploader features:
* Post photos to wall
* Added ability to set photo descriptions.
* Upload to any existing album
* Create an album
* Delay an upload
* Upload a video to Facebook

Open Source Cross-platform Load Testing Tool – loadUI

loadUI is a free and open source cross-platform Load Testing solution. With a visual, drag-and-drop interface, it allows you to create, configure and redistribute your Load Tests interactively and in real-time. In a single test environment, loadUI provides complete test coverage and supports all the standard protocols and technologies. And it’s so powerful, it generates scalable, high-volume and real-world load from any number of local and remote computers.

loadUI Features:
* Test Creation
* Statistics Workbench
* Distribution
* Analysis and Reporting
* Complete Testing
* Automation
* Technology Support

Test the Security and Vulnerability of Web-Application - Vega

Vega is an open source platform to test the Security and Vulnerability of web applications. Vega can help you find and validate SQL Injections, Cross-Site Scripting (XSS), inadvertently disclosed sensitive information, and other vulnerabilities. It is written in Java, GUI based, and runs on Linux, OS X, and Windows.

Vega includes an automated scanner for quick tests and an intercepting proxy for tactical inspection. Vega can be extended using a powerful API in the language of the web: Javascript.

Modules used in Vega:
* Cross Site Scripting (XSS)
* SQL Injection
* Directory Traversal
* URL Injection
* Error Detection
* File Uploads
* Sensitive Data Discover

How to Install Latest Kernel 3.0 on Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty)

It's been nearly twenty years since Linus Torvalds let loose Linux on an unsuspecting world, and on July 22 he finally updated the open source OS kernel to version 3.0.

Total Torvalds has integrated over 9,800 changes to Linux 3.0, the last of which 2200 were mainly corrections. As is usually two thirds of all new or updated driver changes.

Summary:
Besides a new version numbering scheme, Linux 3.0 also has several new features: Btrfs data scrubbing and automatic defragmentation, XEN Dom0 support, unprivileged ICMP_ECHO, wake on WLAN, Berkeley Packet Filter JIT filtering, a memcached-like system for the page cache, a sendmmsg() syscall that batches sendmsg() calls and setns(), a syscall that allows better handling of light virtualization systems such as containers. New hardware support has been added: for example, Microsoft Kinect, AMD Llano Fusion APUs, Intel iwlwifi 105 and 135, Intel C600 serial-attached-scsi controller, Ralink RT5370 USB, several Realtek RTL81xx devices or the Apple iSight webcam. Many other drivers and small improvements have been added.

Energy Saving Software for Windows / Linux - Granola

There are any number of great ways to help save the world. Recycling, eating locally, replacing your light bulbs, walking everywhere - these are all powerful ways to lower your cost to the environment, but they all cost YOU something in return, whether time or money. Furthermore, it can be difficult to visualize the effects of your actions. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a way to measurably reduce your environmental impact without a lot of cost or work?

Granola gives you a way to do just that. With Granola intelligent software power management, you can reduce the energy consumption of your laptops, PCs, and servers by 15-35% without any impact on the way you use these devices. Whether you use Granola as part of your own personal quest to save the world, or as a way to help conserve in your business, you can know that you are part of a thriving community of individuals and businesses worldwide all saving energy.

Allow Normal user to Install Software without root privileges - ZeroInstall Injector

The ZeroInstall Injector makes it easy for users to install software without needing root privileges. It takes the URL of a program and runs it (downloading it first if necessary). Any dependencies of the program are fetched in the same way. The user controls which version of the program and its dependencies to use.

Zero Install is a decentralised installation system (there is no central repository; all packages are identified by URLs), loosely-coupled (if different programs require different versions of a library then both versions are installed in parallel, without conflicts), and has an emphasis on security (all package descriptions are GPG-signed, and contain cryptographic hashes of the contents of each version). Each version of each program is stored in its own sub-directory within the Zero Install cache (nothing is installed to directories outside of the cache, such as /usr/bin) and no code from the package is run during install or uninstall. The system can automatically check for updates when software is run.

GUI Tool to dump (clone/image) Files, Disks, Partitions - Gdiskdump

dd is a common Unix program whose primary purpose is the low-level copying and conversion of raw data. dd is an application that will "convert and copy a file" dd can also be used to copy regions of raw device files, e.g. backing up the boot sector of a hard disk, or to read fixed amounts of data from special files like /dev/zero or /dev/random.

The dd utility copies the specified input file to the specified output with possible conversions. The standard input and output are used by default. The input and output block sizes may be specified to take advantage of raw physical I/O. Sizes are specified in bytes; a number may end with k, b, or w to specify multiplication by 1024, 512, or 2, respectively

There is a command line involved in using dd command and if you are afraid of using command line or you are just a normal desktop user you can use the GUI version of the dd command know as - Gdiskdump

Installation and Configuration of Apache Traffic Server under Ubuntu

Global data networking has become part of everyday life: internet users request billions of documents and terabytes of data, on a daily basis, to and from all parts of the world. Information is free, abundant, and accessible. Unfortunately, global data networking can also be a nightmare for IT professionals as they struggle with overloaded servers and congested networks. It can be challenging to consistently and reliably accommodate society’s growing data demands.

Traffic Server is a high-performance web proxy cache that improves network efficiency and performance by caching frequently-accessed information at the edge of the network. This brings content physically closer to end users, while enabling faster delivery and reduced bandwidth use. Traffic Server is designed to improve content delivery for enterprises, Internet service providers (ISPs), backbone providers, and large intranets by maximizing existing and available bandwidth.

Free and Open Source Web Browser based Security Framework - Mantra

Mantra is a collection of free and open source tools integrated into a web browser, which can become handy for students, penetration testers, web application developers, security professionals etc. It is portable, ready-to-run, compact and follows the true spirit of free and open source software.

Mantra is a security framework which can be very helpful in performing all the five phases of attacks including reconnaissance, scanning and enumeration, gaining access, escalation of privileges, maintaining access, and covering tracks. Apart from that Mantra also contains a set of tools targeted for web developers and code debuggers which makes it handy for both offensive security and defensive security related tasks.

Mantra is lite, flexible, portable and user friendly with a nice graphical user interface. You can carry it in memory cards, flash drives, CD/DVDs, etc. It can be run natively on Linux, Windows and Mac platforms. It can also be installed on to your system within minutes.

Share folder between Windows (Host) and Ubuntu (Guest) under Virtual Box

VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as home use. Not only is VirtualBox an extremely feature rich, high performance product for enterprise customers, it is also the only professional solution that is freely available as Open Source Software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2.

Presently, VirtualBox runs on Windows, Linux, Macintosh, and Solaris hosts and supports a large number of guest operating systems including but not limited to Windows (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista, Windows 7), DOS/Windows 3.x, Linux (2.4 and 2.6), Solaris and OpenSolaris, OS/2, and OpenBSD.

When you run two operating systems you may required to share files/folders between host and guests, virtual box comes with an option to share files and folders between host and guest, for this you need to install Virtual box guest additional software on your guest OS, you can do this by using virtual box menu (Devices → Install Guest additional), once this is done, do the following ....

Multimedia (MP3, MPEG-4, AVI, DiVX, etc.) support in Fedora 15

Why doesn’t Fedora support MP3 ‘out of the box’?

Fedora cannot include support for MP3 or DVD video playback or recording. MP3 formats are patented, and the patent holders have not provided the necessary licenses. Fedora also excludes other multimedia software due to patent, copyright, or license restrictions, such as Adobe Flash Player and RealNetworks RealPlayer.

That doesn’t mean you can’t play .mp3 files in Fedora, it just takes a bit of work (not much).

Follow these instructions to get mp3 and other multimedia support on your Fedora 15.
Open a terminal and run this command:

Earth wallpapers for Ubuntu Linux - xplanetFX

xplanet (by Hari Nair) is a great piece of software capable of creating renderings inside our solar system. To raise the quality of it’s output adding some graphical effects, it was a great candidate to link with imagemagick.

The result is xplanetFX, a user-friendly piece of software to configure, run or daemonize xplanet with h/q capabilities to create wallpapers of mother earth on your desktop.

More realistic maps and backgrounds and a sophisticated graphics handling produce nearly photo realistic images of our mothership. It’s GTK GUI makes it really easy to use and provides a lot of settings and a user friendly access to xplanetFX. And even the templating capabilities give xplanetFX an individual and stylish touch.

The features of xplanetFX
* Fluffy clouds with bumps and shadows floating above the earth
* High quality earth map with bump, color corrections and subtle sea levels
* Corona with realistic lighting
* Atmospheric gleam towards the lit edge
* Specular reflection of the sun on water, ice and clouds
* Templates with online pool to download from
* Post processing with contras and color correction and a subtle “washed out” effect
* Seamless wallpaper change in GNOME, FLUXBOX, KDE < 4.3, XFCE and XFCE4, Fluxbox and feh wallpaper changer
* Option to render to a specific file and invoke a command afterwards (change wallpaper of any other envrionment)
* Startup delay to load desktop first
* Creating single renderings for use in shell scripts
* detailed logging
* CLI Setup with customization depending on actual config (reconfigurable)
* Small Toggle window for placing a starter in the panel
* Daemon with nice value (less aggressive)
* GTK user interface (english, russian, italian, french, spanish, japanese, dutch, czech, greek and german by now)
* Different list views
* Online theme pool
* Extensive functionality in customization
* Previews

Suite of educational games for children - Childsplay

Childsplay is a collection of educational activities for young children and runs on Windows, OSX, and Linux.
Childsplay can be used at home, kindergartens and pre-schools. Childsplay is a fun and save way to let young children use the computer and at the same time teach them a little math, letters of the alphabets, spelling, eye-hand coordination etc.

Childsplay is part of the schoolsplay.org project

Childsplay includes the following games:
* Numbers - Put the correct operator between two numbers.
* SoundNpic - A toy for young children with pictures and sounds.
* Packid - A pac-man game, try to catch the letters.
* Soundmemory - The classic memory game, with sounds.
* Fallingletter - Type them before the reach the ground.
* Findsound - Listen to a sound and find the image to which it belongs
* Findsound2 - The same as findsound, now with numbers and letters.
* Pong - The classic game, play alone or against another child.
* Billiards - Try to shoot the balls into the hole.

Video Transcoder for Linux and Unix systems built using GStreamer - Transmageddon

Transmageddon supports almost any format as its input and can generate a very large host of output files. The goal of the application was to help people to create the files they need to be able to play on their mobile devices and for people not hugely experienced with multimedia to generate a multimedia file without having to resort to command line tools with ungainly syntaxes.

The currently supported codecs are:
* Containers:
- Ogg
- Matroska
- AVI
- MPEG TS
- flv
- QuickTime
- MPEG4
- 3GPP
- MXT
* Audio encoders:
- Vorbis
- FLAC
- MP3
- AAC
- AC3
- Speex
- Celt
* Video encoders:
- Theora
- Dirac
- H264
- MPEG2
- MPEG4/DivX5
- xvid
- DNxHD

Utility for automatic management and monitoring of Information Technology Systems - Monit

Monit can start a process if it does not run, restart a process if it does not respond and stop a process if it uses too much resources. You can use Monit to monitor files, directories and filesystems for changes, such as timestamps changes, check-sum changes or size changes. You can also monitor remote hosts; Monit can ping a remote host and can check TCP/IP port connections and server protocols. Monit is controlled via an easy to use control file based on a free-format, token-oriented syntax. Monit logs to syslog or to its own log file and notifies you about error conditions and recovery status via customizable alert.

Monit Features
* Daemon mode - poll programs at a specified interval
* Monitoring modes - active, passive or manual
* Start, stop and restart of programs
* Group and manage groups of programs
* Process dependency definition
* Logging to syslog or own log file
* Configuration - comprehensive control file
* Run-time and TCP/IP port checking (tcp and udp)
* SSL support for port checking
* Unix domain socket checking
* Process status and process timeout
* Process cpu usage
* Process memory usage
* Process zombie check
* Check the systems load average
* Check a file or directory timestamp
* Alert, stop or restart a process based on its characteristics
* MD5 checksum for programs started and stopped by monit
* Alert notification for program timeout, restart, checksum, stop resource and timestamp error
* Flexible and customizable email alert messages
* Protocol verification. HTTP, FTP, SMTP, POP, IMAP, NNTP, SSH, DWP,LDAPv2 and LDAPv3
* An http interface with optional SSL support to make monit accessible from a web browser

Download or Stream Video/Audio files from Youtube - Gmediafinder

Gmediafinder is a software to search stream an/or download audio or video files form YouTube and other similar sites and you also don't required browser or flash player, Gmediastreamer support full screen mode (double click on the video), visualizations, you can also select the preferred resolution for the playing the video files.

In addition to YouTube, Gmediastreamer supports the following search engines:
Dilandau: A European-run MP3 search engine that allows you to “Download music for FREE”, though with a limited catalogue.
MP3Realm: Now pointing to azmp3s.com, another slightly shady looking MP3 search engine that offers streaming, downloading and a lyrics lookup service. I’ve noticed not all files will stream, for some unknown reason.
Skreemr: An MP3 search engine that claims to deliver music, remixes, podcasts and ringtones and works well.
Tagoo: A Russian MP3 search engine, quite possibly legal in Russia but probably not anywhere else. Some adverts on the site are probably NSFW (not safe for work) but accessing via Gmediafinder gets rid of those anyway!
Imusicz: Another questionable search engine that comes with its own status page that you can check if your results aren’t showing up.

How to Install Gnome 3 on Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal)

Unity is a shell interface for the GNOME desktop environment developed by Canonical for its Ubuntu operating system. Unity debuted in the netbook edition of Ubuntu 10.10. It is designed to make more efficient use of space given the limited screen size of netbooks, including, for example, a vertical application switcher called the launcher. Unlike GNOME, KDE Software Compilation, or Xfce, Unity is not a collection of applications but designed to be used with existing GTK+ programs.

Ubuntu has traditionally used the full GNOME desktop environment; founder Mark Shuttleworth cited philosophical differences with the GNOME team over the user experience to explain why Ubuntu would use Unity as the default desktop instead of GNOME Shell, beginning April 2011, with Ubuntu Natty Narwhal (11.04).

Recover deleted files using Foremost

Foremost is a console program to recover files based on their headers, footers, and internal data structures. This process is commonly referred to as data carving. Foremost can work on image files, such as those generated by dd, Safeback, Encase, etc, or directly on a drive. The headers and footers can be specified by a configuration file or you can use command line switches to specify built-in file types. These built-in types look at the data structures of a given file format allowing for a more reliable and faster recovery.

Originally developed by the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigations and The Center for Information Systems Security Studies and Research and now foremost has been opened to the general public.

Keed track of Configuration file changes under /etc - etckeeper

etckeeper is a collection of tools to let /etc be stored in a git, mercurial, darcs, or bzr repository. It hooks into apt (and other package managers including yum and pacman-g2) to automatically commit changes made to /etc during package upgrades. It tracks file metadata that revison control systems do not normally support, but that is important for /etc, such as the permissions of /etc/shadow. It's quite modular and configurable, while also being simple to use if you understand the basics of working with revision control.

etckeeper installation:
Open your terminal and type following command to install etckeeper:

sudo apt-get install etckeeper

How to reinstall GRUB 2 in Ubuntu using Live Distribution CD

GRUB 2 introduces many new changes. GRUB 2 has better portability and modularity, supports non-ASCII characters, dynamic loading of modules, real memory management, and more and is totally different from its predecessor, menu.lst doesn't even exist, it is replaced by grub.cfg which have little resemblance with menu.lst.

Using a Live distribution
The first thing to do is start the live-cd and open a terminal type the following command to see the partitions on different hard disks:

$ sudo fdisk-l

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