Tag: Linux

Clonezilla as disk imager

I was always using partimage to make backups of the hard disks of workstations. When trying to restore one the other day, it just started giving CRC errors. After recreating the image and running a simulated restore, it gave CRC errors again. So, apparently, it's not incidental. It must be due to the experimental NTFS support. So, I set out to find a new tool. And that's how I found Clonezilla, which gives me a very good first impression. Read More »
By halfgaar, 3 years ago, on February 05, 2009, at 15:02 | No comments

Gentoo update: Portage configuration confusion

During the first gentoo update session for this machine, I didn't get very far. I already mentioned the problem I had with e2fsprogs, but this was not the first or the last problem that I had. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 3 years ago, on February 05, 2009, at 02:02 | No comments

Tracking /etc/ updates with Git

During my recent Gentoo update session, I was once again confronted with the inconvenience of not having my /etc/ directory under version management. This time, I thought I had the ideal SCM for this job: Git. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 3 years ago, on February 04, 2009, at 22:02 | 2 comments

ImageMagick can convert PDF to anything

I encountered one of those scans which was shared as a single-page PDF. I don't want it that way, because I want to include it in a web page. I want a simple bitmap image. ImageMagick comes to the rescue: Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 3 years ago, on February 03, 2009, at 21:02 | No comments

smbmnt user needs to own the mountpoint if you want to mount rw

I just found out that it's impossible on my system to mount /mnt/smb-docs as user bigsmoke, even with the following fstab: Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 3 years ago, on February 03, 2009, at 21:02 | No comments

Gentoo update: e2fsprogs blocks e2fsprogs

Yesterday evening, I dropped by at Wiebe's with my laptop to start updating our Gentoo systems together. I hadn't updated this machine since first installing it in spring last year, so I expected quite a few problems. The first blockage that we both had to solve was caused by e2fsprogs. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 3 years ago, on January 28, 2009, at 23:01 | 5 comments

XTerm is favorite

XTerm is know to most X-Windows users as that ugly terminal with the strange scrollbar and the unreadable font. And it doesn't even have tabs! But, I think it's the best damn terminal emulator in the world. It just doesn't appear that way at first. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 3 years ago, on November 27, 2008, at 23:11 | 1 comment

Getting my sister to forget the Google Desktop newsticker

My sister was so fond of the RSS feature that came with Google Desktop's sidebar that she kept it permanently visible at the right side of her screen. (What a news junkie!) Now that I got her stuck with Linux, she misses her precious Google Desktop and I'm trying to figure out an alternative for her. Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 3 years ago, on November 27, 2008, at 21:11 | No comments

The road through Ubuntu

My mom bought a new laptop because of a broken screen on the old Linux machine that she had inherited from me (which wasn't wasn't a laptop, so I'm sure that the Golden Arrow of Consumption can explain why she didn't just replace the screen, although the new boyfriend who is kind of Windows-but-not-Linux-literate qualifies as a more probable reason for getting a laptop that is needlessly dragged down by Vista). Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 3 years ago, on November 27, 2008, at 00:11 | 2 comments

Change ext3′s reserved block count and gain Gigabytes

Wiebe was looking over my shoulder while I was running df to check the disk space that was still available on my Lenovo ThinkPad: Read More »
By Rowan Rodrik, 3 years ago, on September 15, 2008, at 22:09 | 3 comments