Linux Desktop

This chapter is a treasure house of information on administering and automating Linux tasks. These hacks make mundane tasks easy or automatic (such as keeping your clock synchronized), and they make seemingly impossible tasks possible (such as ...

Most of us would be bored senseless making database backups everyday, cleaning out disks, updating report files, and managing system logs. These activities are typically linear, mundane processes that are straightforward enough to require little i...

There is little doubt that time is an important part of your daily life. Everything from watching the latest episode of your favorite TV program to having a meeting with your boss is based around time, and your computer is no different. Inside y...

You might want to start a number of programs automatically as soon as you launch your window manager or desktop environment. For example, assume you set up your LinEAK keyboard utility so that you can use all the special keys on your Internet and...

Some programs behave contrary to our wishes and exit prematurely, either because they are designed to do so, or because they are flaky and prone to crashing. This hack provides a neat trick to restart such programs automatically every time they e...

Cloning is simply a method by which some data is copied exactly, from one medium to another. This can be a physical CD being copied into a CD image (such as an ISO image) or, in the case of this hack, copying a hard-disk partition into a file that...

In addition to providing remote shell access and command execution, OpenSSH can forward arbitrary TCP ports to the other end of your connection. This can be very handy for protecting email, web, or any other traffic you need to keep private (at le...

Whenever you create a new user for your system, Linux sets up the home directory with a slim pack of default files. These files are usually located in /etc/skel, the skeleton directory for all new user homes. This hack explains what you can and c...

In [Hack #27] you used X11 On-Screen Display (XOSD) to make system alerts (such as possible attempts to break into the system) as visible as possible. As effective as that approach can be, it doesn't work very well if you're not looking at you...

By far, the most common method of remotely logging in to Linux machines is by using the Secure SHell (SSH). This encrypted method of accessing far-flung computers is a popular choice for system administrators, but despite its popularity, repeatedl...

This hack is actually a utility called ifplugd, a daemon that watches your Ethernet connection to see if it is live or disconnected. Plug the wire into the network, and ifplugd configures the interface. Unplug the wire, and ifplugd disables the ...

CodeWeavers's (http://www.codeweavers.com) CrossOver Office and Wine enable you to run many Windows applications under Linux. In fact, they do such a good job of providing a Windows-like environment that they can be susceptible to some of the same...

As more and more computers are getting plugged into the Internet, the risk factor associated with an online presence has also risen. The increase in hours online combined with the propagation of always-on broadband and high-speed cable/DSL Interne...

When using Linux, the standard wireless tools provide a wealth of status information. These tools get their information from the standard kernel interface /proc/net/wireless. While ideal for providing pinpoint accuracy in measuring signal strengt...

Increasingly, people are buying many computers, networking them together, and using them for different purposes. For example, in my home are two Linux boxes, one Linux server, one Linux firewall, two Windows machines, and a Mac. With a large numbe...

We all make mistakes, but the worst accident on a Debian system (or any Debian-based system, such as Knoppix) is one that causes you to lose the contents of your /var/lib/dpkg directory. Once that directory is gone, you can no longer update or in...

One of the problems with software applications is that they depend on other software to run. In some cases, this dependency can be built into the application statically, but in most cases, the application accesses a range of special libraries for...

To the nonhacker, this random collection of phrases and letters appears to be gibberish, but to the hacker, this code makes perfect sense. To remain productive, it is essential that hackers maintain their code in a clean and useful state. Althoug...

And even though these compiles can take hours or days to complete, Gentooists still tout their distribution as being one of the fastest available. Because of their constant need to compile, Gentoo users have picked up a few tricks on making the p...