NE

 UBUNTU  LINUX MINT

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OVER
5 HOURS
OF VIDEO TUTORIALS PLUS
FREE SOFTWARE PACKAGES

VOLUME 3

UNLOCK THE POTENTIAL OF OPEN SOURCE OPERATING SYSTEMS

Welcome to

In this new volume of Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks, you will find everything you
need to bust open your Linux systems and start making them work the way you want
them to. The free and customisable philosophy of open source software means it is
perfect for anyone who wants to delve beneath the surface and start tinkering with the
way things work. In this book, well get started with 100 ways to master the command
line so youll never be daunted by the terminal screen again. Youll discover how to
build your best ever servers, with increased speeds and functionality, and find out all
about this years best distros and which free software to use with them. With all of
these and many more expert tips, tricks and hacks, plus reviews of some of the best
Linux software available, this is the perfect guide for everyone who wants to enhance
their Linux experience.

Imagine Publishing Ltd

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The publisher cannot accept responsibility for any unsolicited material lost or damaged in the
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This bookazine is fully independent and not affiliated in any way with the companies mentioned herein.
Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks Volume 3 2015 Imagine Publishing Ltd
ISBN 978 1785 460 869

Part of the

bookazine series

CONTENTS
Unlock the potential of open source software

TRICKS
deploy web
60 Continuously
apps

a visual
novel game
80 Make
with Python

complex
64 Generate
graphics

your Raspberry
84 Supercharge
Pi

CPU
your own
temperature
media gallery
68 Monitor
88 Host
a book in
audio
LaTeX
transcription
72 Write
92 Simplify
Secure your
agile project
Raspberry Pi
76 Implement
96
management
with Linux

08

Feature
Conquer the command
line with essential tips

TIPS
18

Build faster
and better
servers
Set up LVM
lesystems

60

a
caching DNS
38 Create
server
a
client-server
42 Program
application
network
clients and
46 Build
more

26
Switch to
control your
the btrfs le
30 Command-line
50
email with Mutt
system
your own
chat channel
34 Run

6 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Run Linux in the

cloud
54 AWS

72
96

APPS

102

distro & FOSS

136 Ultimate
guide

HACKS
Linux
security
102Total
your
own Qt5108 Build
powered
desktop

Android
apps in Linux
112 Run
Raspberry Pi
116 Tether
to an Android
device

Spin your own

Debian

118
a
WebKit
122 Build
browser

112

146 Tails 1.3

147 Ubuntu 15.04
8.0
Jessie
148 Debian
150 Fedora 22
OS 0.3 Freya
152 elementary
13.2
154 openSUSE
Mint
17.1
156 Linux

74

penetration
126 Network
testing with
Pentoo

130

Build your
own DEB
and RPM
packages

Find everything you need to bust open

your Linux systems and start making them
work the way you want them to
Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 7

100 Terminal tricks

Terminal

WAYS TO MASTER THE

COMMAND
Terminal

>_Conquer the
command line with
these essential
terminal tips for
controlling Linux
8 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

ong before desktop environments or

graphical interfaces, in the heady days
of the Seventies and Eighties, everything
was done on a command line. Computing
in the Nineties, while generally dominated by
graphical interfaces and mice, wasnt quite
separated from it and computer users of a certain
age will likely remember at the very least using the
infamous DOS prompt.
Now programming is well advanced and, even in
Linux, you can spend your entire time in the desktop
environment and never even touch the command
line or terminal if youre using the right distro. Thing
is, youd be doing yourself a disservice by not learning
how to make the most of the command line as it can
be an extremely powerful tool especially as a lot of
graphical software will have command line controls
that you can use as well. So put on your best Nineties
outt, give yourself a bad nickname and get ready to
look like a movie hacker.

100 Terminal tricks

NEED TO KNOW
>_001 ls

>_009 Up

You can use ls to list the les and folders that

are inside the directory you are in.

Up on the keyboard has the very simple task of

enabling you to pull up the last command that
was entered, to run it again or edit it.

>_002 cd

>_010 Copy text

The cd command enables you to move

between directories on your system. Like the
following, for example:

If youre in the terminal, you may want to copy

text output to use somewhere. To do this, you
can use: Ctrl+Alt+C.

$ cd /home/user/

>_003 cp
The copy command, or cp, can be used to
copy les from one location to another. To do
this use the command below:

$ cp file /home/user/Desktop/file

$ mv file /home/user/Desktop/file

Terminal

>_011 Paste text

If youve found a command online or need to
paste some text into nano, you can enter any
text on the clipboard with: Ctrl+Alt+V.

>_012 Open terminal

This trick works in a lot of desktop environments:
a shortcut for opening the terminal can be done
with: Ctrl+Alt+T.

>_004 mv
Similar to copy, mv instead moves the le to
the new location, deleting the original le:

>_Get to grips with the

terminal before you take
on the advanced tools

>_013 sudo
This lets you do commands as the super user.
The super user in this case is root and you just
need to add sudo to the start of any command.

>_017 Search for hidden

files and directories
The ls command can be used in more than
just the basic way of listing all the les in a
folder. To begin with, you can use it to list all
the hidden items along with the normal items
by using:

$ ls -a

>_005 rm

>_014 Access root

>_018 Home directory shortcut

The rm command is for removing or deleting

les and directories. You can use it like:

The super user, or root, can also be accessed by

logging in as it from the terminal by typing su.
You can enter the root user password and then
run every command as root without having to
use sudo at all.

The home directory is located at /home/user/

in the absolute lesystem, but you can use
the tilde (~) to signify the home directory when
moving between directories or copying, or doing
mostly anything else like with the following, for
example:

$ rm file

>_006 mkdir
You can create directories with the mkdir
command using something like:

$ mkdir folder

>_007 nano
Nano is one of the programs that enables you
to edit text in les its vital for working and
editing in the command line. You use it like so:

$ nano file

>_008 Tab
The Tab key lets you auto-complete
commands and le names. Double-tapping
will list all objects with a similar name. Autocompletion works for unambiguous le and
command names. For example, r gives you
refox as no other commands begin with
r. If you get multiple hits, keep typing to
narrow the selection, then hit Tab again

>_015 Stop processes

If you have run a command and either its
paused, taking too long to load, or its done its
job and you dont need to see the rest of it, you
can stop it forcefully by using either Ctrl+C or
Ctrl+Z. Remember, only do this if the process
is not writing any data, as it is not safe in this
instance and you could nd yourself in trouble.

>_016 Access root

without password
If your regular user is in the sudoers list (ie so
that they can use sudo in general to run things
as root), you can access the su account by using
sudo su. This uses your normal user password to
access root terminal functions.
To add a regular user to the sudoers list, you
would need to rst log in as the super user by
using su. Then, you would simply run adduser
username sudo (replacing username). Be
careful who you add to the sudoers list, though!

$ cd ~

>_019 Link commands together

If you want to do a series of commands one after
the other, like updating and then upgrading
software in Debian, for example, you can use
&& to have a command run right after the one
before. For example:

$ sudo apt-get update && sudo

apt-get install libreoffice

>_020 Long terminal input

Sometimes when using a list or anything else with
a long terminal output, you might not be able to
read it well. To make it easier to understand, you
can send the output to another command, less,
through the | pipe. It works like so:

$ ls | less

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 9

100 Terminal tricks

SYSTEM
ESSENTIALS

>_Go a step further and

learn how to control the
terminal that bit better
Terminal

Terminal

>_028 Display all information

As well as merely listing the les, we can use
ls to list all of the information relating to each
le, such as last date modied, permissions
and more. Do this by using:

>_021 Readable storage size

One of the details that ls -l displays is the size of the les that are located on the hard drive.
This is done in bytes though, which is not always that useful. You can have it parse this le to
become more legible simply by changing the -l to -lh, where the long-listing format option (-l)
is tweaked with the human-readable option (-h).

$ ls -l

>_029 Reboot from command line

>_022 Move to previous directory >_025 More with the pipe
If you want to move back to the directory that you
were working on before, there is a cd command
to do that easily. This one does not move up the
lesystem, but rather back to the last folder that
you were in:

$ cd -

>_023 Move up directory

The cd command can also be used to move up in
the lesystem. Do this with two full stops, like so:

The pipe (|) can be used to feed all outputs into

the next command, enabling you to call a piece
of data or string from one command and put it
straight into the next command. This works with
grep and other core Linux tools.

>_026 Delete directories

Using rm on a directory with objects within it
wont work, as it needs to also delete the les
inside. You can modify the rm command to delete
everything within a directory recursively using:

Back in the day, rebooting required a slightly more

complex shutdown command: shutdown -r. In
recent years its been replaced with a very simple:

$ sudo reboot

>_030 Timed shutdown

The timing function of the shutdown command
can be very useful if you need to wait for
a program or cron job to nish before the
shutdown occurs. You can use the time to do
a normal halt/shutdown, or even with -r for a
reboot after ten minutes, with something like:

$ sudo shutdown -h +10

$ cd ..

$ rm -r directory

>_031 Log out

>_024 General wildcards

>_027 Shutdown command

The asterisk (*) can be used as a wildcard in the

terminal to stand for anything. A typical use case
is copying or removing specic types of les. For
example, if you want to remove all PNG les from
a directory, you cd to it and type:

You can shut down the system from the terminal

using the shutdown command, the halt option
(-h), which stops all running programs at the
same time, and specifying a time of now so it
turns off immediately rather than in 60 seconds:

$ rm *.png

10 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

$ sudo shutdown -h now

Logging out from the x session is generally

advisable from the desktop environment, but if
you need to log back out to the login manager,
you can do this by restarting the display
manager. In the case of many Linux distros, you
use the command below:

$ sudo service lightdm restart

100 Terminal tricks

INSTALLATION

>_Managing your packages

and updating your system is a
key part of the command line

>_032 Debian: update repositories >_038 Debian: dependencies

>_044 Red Hat: uninstall software

Debian-based (and Ubuntu-based) distros use

apt-get as the command line package manager.
One of the quirks of apt-get as a package
manager is that before upgrading or installing
software, it does not check to see if theres a
newer version in the repositories. Before doing
any installation in Debian, use:

Yum can also be used to uninstall any package

you have on your system, whether you installed
it directly from yum or not. As long as you know
the package name you can uninstall with:

Compiling differs between software and theyll

each have a guide on how to go about it. One
problem you might face is that it will stop until
you can nd and install the right dependency.
You can get around this by installing auto-apt
and then using it during conguration with:

$ sudo auto-apt run ./configure

$ sudo apt-get update

>_039 Debian: force install

>_033 Debian: install software
Unlike a graphical package manager or software
centre, you cant quite search for the kind of
packages you want to install, so you need to
know the package name before installing. Once
you do though, try:

$ sudo apt-get install package

Sometimes when installing software, apt-get

will refuse to install if specic requirements
arent met (usually in terms of other packages
needing to be installed for the software to work
properly). You can force the package to install
even without the dependencies using:

$ sudo apt-get download package

$ sudo dpkg -i package

>_034 Debian: update software

You can upgrade the software in Debian from
the terminal by rst performing the repository
update command in Tip 32, followed by the
upgrade command below:

$ sudo apt-get upgrade

>_040 Debian: install binary

In Tip 39, we used dpkg -i to install the binary
installer package that we downloaded from the
repositories. This same command can be used
to install any downloaded binary, either from the
repos or from a website.

$ sudo yum remove package

>_045 Red Hat: force install

The force install function on Red Hat and
Fedora-based Linux distros requires that you
have a package downloaded and ready to install.
You can download things with yum and then
force the install with:

$ sudo yum install --downloadonly

--downloaddir=[directory] package
$ sudo rpm -ivh --force package

>_046 Red Hat: manual install

RPM is one of the package installers on Red Hat
distros and can be used to install downloaded
packages. You can either do something like in Tip
45 and download the package from the repos, or
download it from the Internet and install with:

$ sudo rpm -i package

>_035 Debian: uninstall software >_041 Debian: manual

As part of package management, apt-get force install package

>_047 Red Hat: force

manual installation

enables you to uninstall software as well. This

is simply done by replacing install with remove
in the same command that you would use to
install said package (Tip 33). You can also use
purge instead of remove if you want to delete any
cong les along with it.

If the advice in Tip 39 is still not working, you can

force install with dpkg. To do this you just need
to add the option --force-all to the installation
command to ignore any problems, like so:

As in Tip 45, you can use RPM to force install

packages if theres a dependency issue or
something else wrong with any other packages
that you have downloaded. The same command
should be used as in Tip 45, with the -ivh and
--force options present.

>_036 Debian: upgrade distro

>_042 Red Hat: update software

>_048 Fedora: distro upgrade

Debian systems can often update to a newer

version, especially when its rolling or if theres a
new Ubuntu. Sometimes the prompt wont show
up, so you can do it in the terminal with:

Unlike apt-get, the yum package manager for

Red Hat/Fedora-based distros does not need
you to specically update the repositories. You
can merely update all the software using:

Yum has its own distribution upgrade command,

but only in Fedora and they prefer you not to use
it unless you have to. Nonetheless, you can use
the fedora-upgrade package in yum with:

$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

$ sudo dpkg --force-all -i package

$ sudo yum update

>_037 Debian: multiple packages

>_043 Red Hat: install software

A very simple thing you can do while installing on

all platforms is list multiple packages to install
at once with the normal installation command.
So in Debian it would be:

Installing with yum is very simple, as long as you

know the package name. Yum does have some
search facilities though, if you really need to look
it up, but once you know what package you want,
use the following command:

$ sudo apt-get install package1

package2 package3

$ sudo yum install package

$ sudo yum install fedora-upgrade

You can force a

package to install
even without the
dependencies
Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 11

100 Terminal tricks

SEARCHING
WITH GREP
>_Search within
les using the grep
command to save time
and nd what you need
>_049 Search a file for a term
The basic use of grep is to search through a file
for a specific term. It will print out every line with
that term in, so its best to use it with system
files with readable content in. Use it with:

$ grep hello file

>_050 Check for lines

Looking for specic lines in a le is all well and
good, but when you then start to hunt them
down and you realise the le is hundreds
of lines long, you can save yourself a lot of
time by getting grep to also print out the line
number. You can do this with the -n option:

$ grep -n hello file

>_051 Regular expressions

If you need to make a more advanced search
with grep, you can use regular expressions.
You can replace the search term with ^hello
to look for lines that start with hello, or hello$
for lines ending in hello.

DEVELOPMENT
TIPS
>_Some terminal tricks for devs
to help your command line skills
become more efcient

>_054 Stop a system service

$ sudo service name stop

>_055 Start a service

You can start system services that have been
stopped by using the same service command
with a different operator. As long as you know the
service name, start it using:

$ sudo service name start

>_056 Restart a system service

This one is popular with setting up web servers
that use Apache, for which restarts may be
needed, along with other services that you
customise along the way. Instead of running both
the stop and start commands sequentially, you
can instead restart services by using:

$ sudo service name restart

>_057 Know the ID

>_052 Wildcards and grep
When searching for lines, you can use a
wildcard if you need to look for similar
terms. This is done by using a full stop in the
search string each full stop represents one
wildcard character. Searching for h...o will
return any ve-letter string with h at the start
of the string and o at the end. Use it like so:

$ grep \<h...o\> file

>_053 More wildcards

Youll also be using wildcards to nd
something ending or beginning with a
specic string but with no xed length. You
can do this in grep by using an asterisk (*)
along with the dot. In the above example, we
would have used h.*o instead.

The ID that you can get for the software with

top can be used to manipulate it, but a common
reason to know the ID is so that you can end the
process if its having trouble stopping itself or
using too many resources. With the ID in hand,
you can kill it with:

$ kill 1234

>_059 List connections

The standard command for listing your
network connections and details in the
terminal is merely ifcong this will list
all of your interfaces and their statuses. If
you just need to list a specic one, say for
the wireless interface, you can use:

$ ifconfig wlan0

>_060 List USB devices

You may need to know which USB and USBrelated devices are connected to a system,
or nd our their proper designation. Youll
need to install it rst, but once you have,
you can use lsusb in the terminal to list all of
the available devices.

>_061 List hard

drives and partitions
Whether you need to check the designation
of certain drives for working on them, or you
just need to get a general understanding of the
systems layout, you can use fdisk to list all the
hard drives. Do this in the terminal with:

>_058 Kill multiple IDs

Sometimes a process can be split up over
multiple IDs (this is usually the case with a
web browser Google Chrome is a notorious
example), and you need to kill multiple
processes at once. You can either try and quickly
kill all the IDs, or use the common name for the
process and kill it with:

$ killall -v process

12 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Terminal

A system service is the kind of background

software that launches at start up. These are
controlled by the system management daemons
like init or systemd, and can be controlled from
the terminal with the service command. First,
you can stop a service using:

$ sudo

-l

>_062 Check running software

Sometimes youll want to check whats running
on your system and from the terminal this can
be done simply with top. It lists all the relevant
information youll need on your currently running
software, such as CPU and memory usage, along
with the ID so you can control it.

100 Terminal tricks

>_063 Unpack a ZIP file

>_070 Create a new SSH key

If youve downloaded a ZIP le and you did it from

the terminal or youre working from it, you can to
unpack it using the unzip command. Use it like so:

When you need to generate a strong encryption

key, you can always have a go at creating it in
the terminal. You can do this using your email
address as identication by entering the
following into the terminal:

$ unzip file.zip

>_064 Unpack a TAR file

Sometimes Linux will have a compressed le that
is archived as a .tar.gz, or a tarball. You can use
the terminal to unpack these or similar TAR les
using the tar command, although you need the
right options. For the common .gz, its:

$ tar -zxvf file.tar.gz

>_065 Copy and write disks

Coming from UNIX is a powerful image tool called
dd, which weve been using a lot recently for
writing Raspberry Pi SD cards. Use it to create
images from discs and hard drives, and for writing
them back. The if is the input le or drive and the
of is the output le of the same. It works like so:

$ ssh-keygen -t rsa -C
[email protected]

>_071 System details

Sometimes you want to check what youre
running and you can do this with the simple
uname command, which you can use in the
terminal with the following:

$ uname

>_072 Kernel version

As part of uname, you also get the kernel version.
Knowing this can be useful for downloading the
right header les when compiling modules or
updating certain aspects. You can get purely the
kernel version by adding the -r option:

$ dd if=image.img of=/dev/sda bs=1M

$ uname -r

>_066 Create an empty file

Sometimes when coding or installing new
software, you need a file to write to. You could
create it manually with nano and then save it, but
the terminal has a command similar to mkdir that
enables you to create an empty file this is touch:

If youre on an unknown machine, you might

need to nd out what kind of architecture youre
running. Find out what the processor is with:

$ uname -p

>_074 Everything else

The terminal uses echo to print details from les
into the terminal, much like the C language. If
youre writing a Bash script and want to see the
output of the current section, you can use echo
to print out the relevant info straight into the
terminal output.

Uname enables you to display a lot of data that is

available from the system and you can look at all
of this information by simply using the -a option
with the command:

$ uname -a

>_075 Ubuntu version

>_068 Check an MD5 hash
When downloading certain les it can help a lot
to check to make sure its downloaded properly.
A lot of sites will offer the ability to check the
integrity of the downloaded le by comparing a
hash sum based on it. With that MD5 and the le
location at hand, you can compare it with:

$ md5sum file

>_069 Run commands to x

Sometimes you need to do something
concerning the x display, but the only way you
can enter the command line is by switching to an
alternate instance with Ctrl+Alt+F2 or similar. To
send a command to the main x display, preface it
with DISPLAY=:0 so it knows where to go.

>_Learn how you can

view le permissions
and get to grips with
how they should be
properly modied
>_076 List file permissions
You can check the file permissions of every
item, including hidden files and directories,
in the terminal using ls -la. It will print out the
file permissions as a ten-character string in
the first column of output. The first character
identifies the file type, with d indicating a
directory and - indicating a regular file. Were
interested in the last nine characters, which are
actually three sets of three and are interpreted
differently. For example:

>_073 CPU architecture

$ touch file

>_067 Print into the terminal

FILE
PERMISSIONS

With all the distro updates you do, it can be

tricky to keep track of which version of Ubuntu
you are on. You can check by using:

rwxr-xr-x
R stands for read, w stands for write and x
stands for execute. If theyre present instead of
a -, it means that it is present in that particular
block of permissions. Its split up over three
blocks: the first three being the user you are
currently using, the second being the group and
the third being for everyone else.

>_077 Change permissions

With the permissions ascertained, you
can start editing them if you want via the
chmod command. You edit each of the three
permissions set by assigning it a number
that treats the three-bit permissions set as a
binary. So youd do something like:

$ chmod 777 file

$ lsb-release -a

To send a
command to the
main x display,
preface it with
DISPLAY=:0

The rst number is for the user permissions,

the second is for the group and the third is for
everyone else. The numbers mean:

7:
6:
5:
4:
3:
2:
1:
0:

read, write and execute, 111/rwx

read and write, 110/rwread and execute, 101/r-x
read only, 100/r-write and execute, 011/-wx
write only, 010/-wexecute only, 001/--x
none, 000/---

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 13

100 Terminal tricks

MEDIA
CONTROLS

>_You can control your

tunes while working
inside the terminal

BEST OF THE
REST

>_All the other commands

that you might want to
know for future reference

>_082 Open files in terminal

>_087 Move back through pushd

If youve got a le you can see in a graphical le

manager, instead of opening a terminal and
navigating to and then executing the le or script,
you can usually run it directly from the terminal.
To do this you usually just need to right-click and
select a run in terminal option.

Following on from Tip 86, once you want to start

moving back up the stack to the rst directory,
you can use popd in the terminal. You can also
check which directories you have stacked up by
using the dirs command as well.

>_088 Process priorities

>_083 Find files in terminal
>_078 Pause music
Some audio players have command line
controls they can use. Rhythmbox has this
and its a cool thing to use when youre stuck
in the terminal and need to just pause your
music for a moment. You can do this by using:

You can search for specic les throughout

the lesystem by using the nd command. You
need to give nd a location to search in and a
parameter to search for. For simply searching for
a le from root with a specic name you can use:

$ find / -name file

>_089 Download via the terminal

$ rhythmbox-client --pause

>_084 Locate files in terminal

>_079 Skip music
The command line controls dont enable
as much as you can get in the interface,
however you can at least skip to the next
track. Try it with the command below:

CPU priority for processes can be seen as running

from -20 for highest priority or +20 for lowest.
Putting nice -n X in front of any command
enables you to change the priority from 0 to
whatever number X is standing in for. Only sudo
or root can elevate the priority of a process, but
anyone can set one down the priority chain.

Similar to nd is locate, a newer tool that works

slightly differently to nd. While nd also has
ways to search for les by age, size, owner and
so on, locate only really uses the name to locate,
however it can do it so much faster. Use it with:

$ locate file

If you need to download something via the

Internet in the terminal, youll want to use the
wget command. It will take any URL you specify
and download it directly into your current
location in the terminal (as long as you have
permission to do so). Use it like:

$ wget http://example.com/file.zip

$ rhythmbox-client --next

Terminal
>_080 Pause video

Terminal

You can use Mplayer to launch video from

the command line to watch. Its good for
testing a video with different settings
that you can afx to the video-playing
command. What you can also do is control
the playing video with keys specically,
you can pause by using the space bar.

>_081 More video control

>_085 Current location

>_086 Move directories

Mplayer gives you a few more controls

while playing in the command line. You can
use Enter to skip to the next item in a list,
and otherwise, you can stop playback by
using Ctrl+C to end the process entirely.

In the terminal you might nd yourself a

little lost in the lesystem, or want a quick
and easy way to pipe your current location
into something else. You can print out your
current absolute location using pwd.

When moving between directories you

might want to be able to quickly return to the
previous one that you were using. Instead
of using cd for moving to the directory, you
can instead use pushd to move and create a
stack of directories to move between.

14 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

100 Terminal tricks

>_090 Change image formats

Instead of loading up an image editor like GIMP,
you can actually change images in the terminal
using the convert command. You can very
simply use it to change the letype or even
change the size. Do it with:

TERMINAL JOKES

>_Easter eggs, gags and other attempts by

patterless software engineers to be funny

$ convert image.jpg image.png

Terminal
>_091 Alter image settings
As well as convert theres also mogrify, which is
part of the same software package. You can use it
scale, rotate and do more to an image more easily
than with some of the convert commands. To
resize you can use something like:

$ mogrify -resize 640x480! image.png

>_092 Send message to displays

This is an old school prank that can actually have
good uses when done right. Xmessage enables
you to send a message prompt to an x display on
the same system, as long as you know the display
you want to send it to. Try:

$ DISPLAY=:0 xmessage -center Hello

World!

>_096 Do the locomotion

The story behind this is that apparently after finding a lot of people misspelling the list
command ls as sl, this joke program was made to particularly hammer home that they were
indeed not using the correct command. It plays the animation of a steam locomotive; sl.

>_093 Rename files with cp

This is an extension of the way you can use
cp cp will copy a le and name it to whatever
you want, so you can either copy it to another
directory and give it a different name, or you can
just copy it into the same folder with a different
name and delete the original. This also works for
renaming with mv.

>_099 Whats in a date

You can actually write date into the terminal
and it will print out the actual date according
to its own internal clock for you, which is very
useful. What you can also do is use ddate to
create a discordian date that prints out an
almost dystopian date system.

>_094 Manual screenshots

This is something we have to do during Raspberry
Pi tutorials, but it works everywhere else. For
GNOME-based desktops you can do it in the
terminal by calling gnome-screenshot, in XFCE
its xfce-screenshooter, in LXDE its scrot and
so on. This will immediately take a screenshot of
what you can see.

>_097 What does the cow say

A Debian trick as part of apt-get, moo is an
easter egg wherein you type apt-get moo and
a cow asks you if you have mooed today. If you
have, in fact, not mooed today then you should
immediately nd a quiet room and let out a
single, loud moo to appease the terminal cow.

>_095 Delayed screenshots

With the functions above, you can add delay to
set up a screenshot. This is useful if you want
to show the contents of a drop-down menu, for
example. Screenshot tools allow you to delay by
adding the -d option and number of seconds, eg:

$ scrot -d 5

>_098 Let it snow

This one uses a Bash script to simulate snow
in the terminal. We have added the le you will
need to use to FileSilo.co.uk, so download it,
cd to the location of the le and then run it. Its
completely pointless, especially in the middle of
summer, but it can be relaxing.

>_100 Crystal terminal

Our last tip is fortune. Call it to get a hint at
what your day might involve. Hopefully its
something inspirational to get you started.
Remember though, its just a random output
from a string of code. Enjoy!

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 15

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Simple fixes to improve Linux systems

better servers
18 Faster
Up your power with a self-built server
up LVM lesystems
26 Set
Find an alternative to normal ext partitions
control your email
30 Command-line
Use Mutt to take control of your inbox
your own chat channel
34 Run
Let Scrollback help you communicate
a caching DNS server with BIND
38 Create
Reduce network trafc and boost speed

18

26

42
38

16 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

74

46

a client-server application
42 AProgram
simple solution to create chatty apps
Build network clients, servers and more
46 Use
Netcat to accomplish several tasks
Switch to the btrfs le system
50 Set
up the features of this next-gen system
Run Linux in the AWS cloud
54 Con
gure and run a virtual Linux instance

There are many parts of a

server to keep in mind, but
it boils down to appropriate
hardware and a good distro
for the task at hand

54

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 17

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

R
E
W
O
P
G
IN
T
U
P
M
O
UP YOUR C
R
O
D
E
D
A
R
G
P
U
WITH AN
T
A
H
T
R
E
V
R
E
S
W
BRAND NE
F
L
E
S
R
U
O
Y
D
IL
U
B
N
YOU CA
hile big business and big data may
be utilising mainframes more of
late, the concept of servers is not
going away any time soon. Servers
are an integral part of any system, however
large your IT infrastructure is. Whether its inside
the data centre or tucked away in your (wellventilated!) cupboard at home, there are still a
lot of uses for servers in 2015.
For the ofce you may want to save a bit of
money and create something perfect for your
needs that you know exactly how to maintain.
For home you may just want to enhance your
setup and make the entire network more
efcient. For both its a great way to separate

18 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

certain aspects of your network to control it in a

more efcient way.
There are many components of a server that
you need to keep in mind, but it boils down to
an appropriate hardware selection and a good
distro for the task at hand. In this tutorial, we
are going to concentrate on le and web servers,
two base server systems that can be expanded
and modied in multiple ways to best t the
situation you are in.
As were teaching you how to build a better
web server, we will rst take a quick detour
to tell you what you should know if you want
to upgrade your current server so that it can
compete with the new tech.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

A
O
T
G
N
I
D
A
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G
UP
R
E
V
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R
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T
T
BE
If you have a server, an upgrade
may be all it needs to run better

You may already have a server, in which case instead of actually building
a better server from scratch, you may want to just upgrade your server
to be more efficiently than it was before. There are several ways of doing
this depending on how you want to improve your server, and most of them
require a hardware upgrade. If you decide to go down the hardware upgrade
route, refer overleaf to see the kind of hardware that we recommend and
learn some quick tips on how to install it if youre new to system building.
The easiest upgrade is storage space, especially for file servers. For Linux
systems you can quite simply just add an extra hard drive into the case, as long
as you have room in terms of spare SATA cables and power. Once installed,
reboot your system and you can start adding the hard drive under /etc/fstab
so that it automatically mounts to a specific location in this case, the location
on the filesystem which needs a bit more storage. Otherwise, you can create
a clone of the system using Clonezilla (clonezilla.org) and then restore it to a
larger hard drive with almost no change in the way it works.

Above RAM is much more important in a server than a desktop PC,

as you need to serve several people

For other system hardware, you need to ask yourself which section is
slow and perhaps needs upgrading. If its a little slow for certain operations
and computational tasks, your rst port of call should be upgrading the
CPU. Depending on how forward-thinking you were when building or buying
the original system, the motherboard may support newer processors than
the one inside it. Find out the socket information and start a search for a
new CPU. While youll need enough RAM to support the CPU and whatever
the server is being used for, youll always need more for one handling web
services than le serving. You can easily replace these kind of parts without
having to reinstall Linux.
If youre doing heavy computational tasks and can use hardware
acceleration for it, look at getting a new video card to support it although
not many servers will even require one, let alone a good one.
If youve reached the limit of your current motherboard, its time to gut the
system and get a new mobo, CPU, RAM and GPU if you need it backing up
important les and settings is a good idea before you attempt this as Linux
may not be able to work with completely new hardware without a reinstall.
Otherwise, if you need a software upgrade then refer to whatever guide is
relevant to you in this feature on how to install and setup a new distro.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 19

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

E
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CHOOSIN
What kind of hardware will you require to build a better server?
The hardware in a server is a very important
consideration for building your system. Servers
handle different requests to a normal desktop
machine, often handling several peoples
requests at once. This means that the resource
priorities have changed and these can even be
different between various types of servers.
Software counts as well, of course, but
without a decent hardware base, it will be tricky
to have the server work as intended. Scalability
and peak loads need to be considered as a
future-proong method, so always try and
make sure that you have a bit more power than
you need. With all that said, lets start looking at
the individual components.
There are six main components you need to
put thought into, and the four most important
ones are the motherboard, the processor, RAM
and power supply the core components on any
computer. As we mentioned, you need to think
differently about what you need componentswise because resource usage is different.
A minor concern for some will be a graphics
card of some kind, whether its so you can
directly interface with the system or do
computational work that benets from multiple
different cores instead. Youll also need a good
storage solution for your server build.

Motherboard
Motherboards for servers come in various
styles. A lot of server boards will have two ports
to connect a CPU to, which is good for servers
used for small businesses or if you expect to get
a lot of requests on a regular basis. These are
more expensive than single-CPU systems, but
the benets in the long run for a big ofce server
are more than worth it.
For home use, a single slot for a processor will
do you ne for most cases, the main exception

being a web server where you plan to have a lot

of regular connections made to it. In this case,
you want to keep an eye out for motherboards
with plenty of storage and connection slots to
make it as exible and scalable as possible.

CPU
The most important thing for a server CPU is
the number of cores thats why dual-slots
can be quite useful. More cores allows for more
threads, essential if you plan to run VMs off
a le server or several sites at the same time.
Clock speed is not as important, but you should
at least get one that is not ridiculously slow and
comes with a decent cache.
With Intels Hyper Threading, each core can
work harder by creating multiple threads in
each core. Conversely, AMD processors will
offer more cores for a lower price, especially if
youre on a budget.

RAM
A larger amount of RAM is more important on
servers than it is on a desktop PC, enabling
you to run more operations at once. Speed and
latency is not so important, so gaming RAM
with tweaked timings will not grant you a better
system in fact, it may be slightly worse since

20 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

PSU
While its best practice to never skimp on
a power supply, its near essential when it
comes to server power. While you may need
1,000+ watts for your ridiculous 4K gaming rig
(electricity bills be damned), you can be a little
more reserved in the peak power for a home
server, depending on its intended use. Look
for power supplies with an 80 Plus rating, as
these ones have been through some level of
certication to ensure that they have a degree
of efciency this is a good idea for servers that
are on all the time as they will save on electricity
bills in the long run. Titanium and Platinum are
the highest ratings, meaning theyre at least
90 per cent efcient (95 per cent efcient for
server power supplies).

MOTHERBOARD
When we talk about slots and connections for a motherboard,
were talking about PCI slots and plenty of SATA drive slots. You
can add more SATA slots via a card, but youll need to take into
account anything else youd want to add a card for. You need
to make sure the motherboards chipset matches up with the
kind of CPU you want as well, and the CPU will also dictate the
type of RAM you get. Its a multi-layered balancing act that
may result in a sea of tabs while you compare and contrast

FIBRE CARD

Above You wont need a GPU if your mobo has onboard

graphics and you dont need multi-core processing

they dont have ECC. ECC xes single-byte errors

that make up the most common forms of data
corruption in the RAM.
While ECC RAM can be important, its more
important in web servers and generally much
more necessary in business and enterprise
servers. On every level though, a larger amount
of RAM is good.

Networking cards can be essential if your

server is also acting like a more traditional
network server, handling all your network
data and even being used as a modem and
rewall. There are plenty of different PCI
cards for these kinds of tasks, including this
bre card for a bit more serious Internet use

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

CASE
Storage
Depending on your storage requirements, there
are multiple solutions that you can use. At the
very least we recommend you split up your
storage with an SSD for the operating system
and associated settings les, and use standard
hard drives for storing everything else. This way,
when the general les are not being accessed,
the operating system can still run while drawing
much less power.
Otherwise, your actual mass storage can
be congured in multiple ways. You can have
straight drives connected with JBOD for
minimal complexity. Or you can start looking
down the RAID route mirroring in case of
drive failure, striping to more efciently use the
space of two hard drives, or even going
as far as RAID 5 and 6, which increases
complexity but enables you to create
one large, consistent storage space with
redundancy failures. The more complex
you go though, the more difcult it can be
to maintain and the more catastrophic a
major failure can be.

PSU

When picking a
PSU you need to keep in mind a
few things, such as what kind of
connectors you need. This can
depend on your motherboard, the
amount of hard drives youre using,
any extras like case fans and case
I/O panels. If you want a better idea
of what kind of wattage you will
need, you can use this tool to gure
it out: bit.ly/1pjcjns

For server cases,

you need to think of where youre
using your server. At home, a silent
case can be great, with padding
to keep the noise down while it
runs all the time. In the ofce,
and assuming it will be taxed a
bit more, youll need to take into
consideration proper cooling. Size
is also a factor, as you need to t
your parts in

DVD DRIVE
RAM

You dont need RAM

with heatsinks for server PCs, really
its usually reserved for gaming
RAM with tweaked timings. If you
are concerned with the heat of
your system and have a little more
budget to spend, get RAM with
some kind of heat dissipater

Theyre more rarely needed

these days, but it can
sometimes be handy to have
an optical drive for transferring
data or to have ISOs installed
to. If youre using your server to
serve les and media, you can
create redirects to be able to
play DVD or Blu-ray movies, or
even rip ones that dont come
with any DRM at all

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 21

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

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F
BUILD A
Store and serve les around your network or further
File servers are very useful for both home and
business environments. For home, its a good
way to have a more low-power, dedicated solution
to storing your media and backing up your
systems, without needing to specically turn on
your desktop machine to get the les a desktop
machine that may use more power idling than a
dedicated le server.
For enterprise, it can not only be useful for
backups, but also provides for off-machine
networked storage for individual users that
can be accessed from within and outside the
network. So, lets set a server up.
For a simple server type such as this, were
going to go ahead and use Ubuntu Server to
set up the system. This means that if you have
any experience with Linux, it should be easy
to maintain and install more software on if
you need to.
If youre doing the initial setup for a home
server then installing it with a monitor attached
will be much easier. Burn the ISO to an
installable medium or boot it over the network if
you have the facilities set up, then hit return on
Install Ubuntu Server to continue.

Installation
The installation for the server edition is different
from the usual graphical installer of Ubuntu
its a command line one, albeit with fairly
straightforward options. After setting up your
location, language and keyboard settings, it
will try and detect your hardware for you. Give
your server a name, set up your username
and password, and then continue with the
installation as directed.

Like the graphical Ubuntu, the server edition

comes with options to automatically set up the
partitions by default, using the whole disc
will create an install partition and a swap. If
you want it to use a specic set of partitions,
we recommend sorting them out with GParted
before trying to install, and then assigning the
partitions manually yourself.
During installation youll get some extra
questions about whether you need a proxy
or not; set that up as you wish and then it will
ask about other services to install. As were
using this as a le server, make sure OpenSSH
is installed so you can dial in from another
machine on the network and ensure that a
Samba server is installed, to make sharing
les and such over the network easier and
compatible with any Windows machines.
Finally, it will prompt you to install GRUB.
Assuming this is a dedicated le server, you can
let it overwrite the master boot record. Once
thats done you will restart the system, so make
sure you remove the live boot medium. After it
loads up, you will be dumped into the command
line to log in as this is a server distro, there is
no desktop environment.

First steps
Above Youll need to configure Samba in order to get
shared folders working

22 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Now youre into Ubuntu, well rst get set up to

SSH into the machine. For something like a home
server its best to set a static IP, and we can do
that in /etc/network/interfaces. Open it up with:

$ sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

and change the primary network interface to
be something like:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address [Desired IP]
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway [Router address]
If you are using a wireless connection, make sure
you switch it to wlan0 and then add in details for
the SSID and password.
With the IP youve set, or using ifcong to nd
out what the IP has been automatically set as,
you can now SSH into your machine using the
username and password that you set up. From a
machine on the same network, type:

$ ssh [username]@[IP address of server]

Entering the password will grant you access to
the same command line interface.

Shared folders
Now we can create a shared folder that the rest
of the network can see and modify. First, lets
create the folder that we want to use and put it in
the normal home directory, with a usual:

$ mkdir ~/networkshare

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

EXTRA FILE
SERVER USES
File servers can be useful for other
things as well

Its best if you dont use any spaces, to make the

sharing simpler. Once done, youll need to create
a password for Samba. Do this by entering:

$ sudo smbpasswd -a [username]

It will ask you to enter and then conrm the
password. Once thats done, and with the folder
created, we can add it to the Samba server.
Access the cong le using:

Above left For a

flexible, scalable
server, consider
trying MAAS: maas.
ubuntu.com/docs1.5
Above right Ubuntu
Server makes it easy
to grab the software
you need during
installation

VPN
Dialling in externally from a remote location to VPN into your server can have
added benets. Accessing your les remotely is one thing, but also being
able to use a more unrestricted Internet service (yours) can be handy if youre
stuck in a hotel or other location with strict browsing regulations.
Setting it up is not too difcult and requires the server to be connected to
the Internet wherever it stays. The more users you allow to VPN from it, the
more resources youll require (including RAM and processing power).

$ sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

Go to the very end of the le and add something
like the following to get the shared folder
recognised by Samba:

[NetworkShare]
path = /home/[username]/networkshare
available = yes
valid users = [username]
read only = no
browseable = yes
public = yes
writable = yes
Save the le and exit, then restart Samba:

$ sudo service smbd restart

And nish by testing the setup with testparm to
ensure everything runs okay.

Torrent server
With all the storage and possibly a connection to the Internet, you can set up
the le server to also be a torrent server. This will enable you to give back to
the community by seeding the latest distro torrents, as well as making sure
you have the latest version of certain distros for you to install and test with.
Just adding a torrent service will let you do this, and a good one for
command lines is rTorrent. Not only can you view a useful command line
interface with it, but you can also set a folder that it reads for new torrents.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 23

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

R
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BUILD
Host your web services on a dedicated server that you control
Your own web server can be a useful addition
to any system. If you dont have massive loads to
worry about you can install it to your own custombuilt server, or if you have a lot of scalable server
space then you can build it on there with a very
similar software setup.
We are going to use Ubuntu Server again for
this, so follow our advice on the previous pages
on how to get it set up and get to a point where
we can start adding Apache services. Feasibly,
you could have the server be both a le and web
server in this way.

01

Install Apache

Once youve got your server set up and

can SSH in, its time to install the Apache web
server . Do that using the following:

$ sudo apt-get install apache2

It will automatically set the domain address to
the following: 127.0.0.1

Above Give your web server a test once youve installed Apache

02

Test server

If you have to install a GUI onto your

server, you can test out that Apache is working
by going to a browser in it and navigating to
127.0.0.1. Otherwise, from an external system,
navigate to the IP address of your system in
your browser and it should show the Apache
conrmation page on-screen.

With a web server you can now use it

to host your own website or to access
storage from the server remotely over
the Internet

03

Install FTP

04

With a web server you can now use it

to host a website or to access storage from the
server remotely over the Internet. We can set up
the latter using FTP, or in our case the secure
VSFTP. Install it to the system using:

$ sudo apt-get install vsftpd

24 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Congure FTP

We can access the conguration le

for FTP by using nano to open /etc/vsftpd.conf
(sudo nano /etc/vsftpd.conf). From here we
can congure it to match our uses, but rst it
is necessary that we increase the security just
slightly before using it properly as an FTP server,
just to be on the safe side.

05

Secure your FTP

The main change to make the FTP

secure is to turn off anonymous users. In the
cong le, look for the line with anonymous_
enable. We want to change this to NO if its not
already there, just to make sure that there is a
bit more security for the FTP server and that all
of your content is kept private.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

EXPAND YOUR
WEB SERVER
Tailor your web server to suit all of
your individual needs

06

Local use

07

Edit les

While it will be great to access these les externally, we might

as well have it so you can access the FTP internally too, just in case
you prefer that to a shared folder. Find the line local_enable and
change it to YES to make sure its accessible elsewhere.

As we are only letting people we want onto the server, we can

make it so anyone logged in has write access. To do this, go back into
the cong le, look for the line with write_enable and change it to
YES. You may also need to uncomment it by removing the hash.

08

FTP Folder

If you didnt create a shared folder for the previous server

tutorial, now is a good time to create a dedicated directory for this. In
the home folder, use mkdir to create a directory called whatever you
wish for the FTP server to be able to access it.

Mail server
Part of the benets of this being a web server is that it enables you to
also add your own mail server to it, or even host your own webmail client
as well. Having Apache congured is the rst step to this, and it is quite
straightforward to then set up a mail server on top of that.
As for a webmail client, we recommend using RainLoop, which looks nice
and modern and also lets you add other webmail services to it, along with
your own webmail server.

Nginx server

09

Restart server

Once the cong le has been fully edited and the folder is
created, it is now time to start using it. Restart the FTP server using
sudo service vsftpd restart and you will start to be able to access
the folder. Any changes that you make to the conguration will
require this restart to become active.

Instead of using Apache for the server, you can also look into and try out
Nginx. Nginx handles processes slightly differently than Apache and can
result in a lighter load on your web server. Its available in the repos of most
distros, much like Apache is, so it can be installed in mostly the same way.
For a more complete guide to setting up an Nginx server, you can always
refer back to one of our tutorials from Mihalis its inside issue 144, if you
have it to hand, and on our website: bit.ly/1AYKkx8.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 25

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Understand the limitations of

graphical partitioning when
dealing with LVM lesystems

Create, name and modify logical

volumes and volume groups that
contain all your data

Add more hard drives and partitions

to the LVM to keep expanding the
space forever by allocating it smartly

Set up LVM filesystems

Quite a different lesystem to your
normal ext partitions, but LVM might
just be the way for you to go
Resources
LVM 2 tools sourceware.org/lvm2
gparted gparted.org

26 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Youd be forgiven for not knowing what LVM

stands for, but its a useful thing to know.
Logical volume management, as its properly
designated, acts as a sort of container to
manage your data the benet of this is that
you can start adding and extending space
while the LVM is still online and working.
This is great for server farms because you
can swap out and add storage very quickly,

and on your desktop its particularly good for

managing the size of different partitions if
you werent sure how they should have been
during installation.
In this tutorial, well look at how you can
create an LVM lesystem and then how you
can go about maintaining and modifying it.
We will also look into how some distros install
using LVM.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

02

Graphical
partition editors

You can swap out and add storage

very quickly, and on your desktop its
particularly good for managing the size
of different partitions

01

04

Now the tools are installed, we can have

a peak at the LVs (logical volumes) on the system.
This will display the volume group, the name type
and size. Open up the terminal and use:

Install LVM

Many distros have the option to install

using an LVM lesystem. In our example, weve
left the LVM option checked when installing
Fedora 21. This will automatically create a boot
and storage partition within the logical volumes
for you to play about with later.

02

Graphical partition editors

General partition editors like gparted

have a bit of a tough time working with LVM
lesystems with the right tools installed you can
see the partition but you cant really do much to it.
For this tutorial, we will be working mostly within
the terminal.

View the LV

$ sudo lvdisplay

03

Use LVM tools

Although you can edit partitions live,

we suggest booting into a live disc or other distro
on the system instead. Once you have, install
the LVM2 tools if they havent been installed
already. The package is called lvm2 in the repos
and contains various tools for looking at and
manipulating LVM partitions, which is useful.

05

See the volume group

The LVM partitions are kept inside a

volume group, which in our case is called Fedora
but could be called anything. You can get more
accurate details on this by using the volume group
tools like so:

$ sudo vgdisplay

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 27

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

06

Make sure you know the designation

of the partition

06

Create an LVM

It takes multiple steps to make an LVM

lesystem. You need to create a physical volume
for the volume group to be in and then you can
create your logical volume inside that. First
though, create a new partition on the system in
your preferred method.

07

Make a physical volume

Once the partition is made, you can turn

it into a physical volume. Make sure you know
the designation of the partition (in our case /
dev/sda3), which you can nd out with fdisk -l.
Create the PV with:

$ sudo pvscreate /dev/sda3

08

Include a volume group

Now with a physical volume to play with,

we need to create a volume group with a name.

28 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Make sure you still remember the partition

designation and create it with something like:

$ sudo vgcreate LUDVG /dev/sda3

You can add several partitions and/or hard
drives like this as well.

09

Create a logical volume

The nal step is to include a logical

volume. Give it a name, tell it how much space
to use and which volume group it should belong
in. To ll up a 20 GB volume group, use:

$ sudo lvcreate --name root --size 20G

LUDVG

10

Extend the volume group

If you want to extend the space in

your original volume group, rst create a new

Create an
LVM

physical volume as before. Find out the name

of the volume group (vgdisplay) and use the
designation of the partition to extend with:

$ sudo vgextend /dev/fedora /dev/sda3

11

Alter the logical volume

Ensure that you know exactly how much

space you have to extend the partition by using
vgdisplay to nd the free PE (physical extent)
value, and also make sure you know the name
of the partition that you are extending. Once
you have both of those, then use:

$ sudo lvextend -l +4958 /dev/fedora/root

12

Resize the file system

To nish off the extension, we need to

let the entire LVM system know that it has had
some changes using the resize option on the LV
youve extended. The good thing is, this means
you dont need to have space next to it in the
hard drive to extend in this way. Do this with:

$ sudo resize2fs /dev/fedora/root

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

15

13

File system check

14

Test your new filesystems

18

Depending how the storage was created,

you may need to check the integrity of the
filesystem before the resize2fs. Here, it asked us to
perform an e2fsck command on the extended LV
before resizing just follow the instructions.

You can now see the extended space

in the LV, the volume group and see if you have
any spare space still to allocate using the
lvdisplay, vgdisplay and pvdisplay options. In
lvdisplay and vgdisplay, it wont show the extra
sda partition because its all part of the same
storage as far as its concerned.

15

More complicated setups

The beauty of LVM is that we can have

several partitions and hard drives, have them all
donate space to the volume group and then be
divided between different LVs. You can create
multiple LVs in any volume group, taking space
where you want it. Adding hard drives later will
let you extend the storage with little hassle. The
partitions you create traditionally will show up as
ext or whatever lesystem in the partition editors,
but theyll be inaccessible outside of the LV.

More complicated
set ups

Get rid of the physical volumes

If you want to remove the LV completely,

you can just delete the physical volume
designations and then start using a more
traditional partitioning system instead. Make
sure you know the original names of the partitions
and remove them:

$ sudo pvremove /dev/sda1 /dev/sda2 [etc]

16

Delete an LV

Want to completely rearrange the insides

of your volume group? Start by deleting LVs to
create them from scratch using the lvremove
command. Make sure you know the name of the
LV youre removing and do it like so:

$ sudo lvremove /dev/[volume group]/

[logical volume]

17

19

Shrink the logical volumes

20

Logical volume management

Like we did with the expanding, you can

also shrink the logical volumes and volume
groups. In each case, you would be reducing the
size of the logical volume or removing physical
volumes from the volume group, respectively
otherwise it works the same way.

Remove a volume group

Need to go a step further and delete the

entire volume group? This will delete all the LVs
within and free up some of the partitions that are
in the physical volume. Make sure you know the
name of the volume group and then do:

$ sudo vgremove [volume group]

There are more functions you can use

while creating and maintaining an LV, but these
are the basics. If you nd yourself running
through a lot of storage then this may be the
solution for you, as you can just keep adding with
little-to-no hassle and no RAIDs.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 29

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Take command-line control

of your email with Mutt
Email is one of the biggest time users, but Mutt
offers the tools to sort and process your inbox

Resources
Mutt
mutt.org

Fetchmail
(optional)
www.fetchmail.info

A few years ago, social media started to take up more of our

time and you may have felt that email was diminishing in
importance. However, we still spend hours each week wading
through emails, and have to sign up for all sorts of commercial
mailings just to complete the obligatory registration on many
new websites and services.
The other big change has been a near wholesale move to
webmail a contracting out by mail users of running both the
personal mail server and the client (and associated backups) to
Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft, worryingly at the cost of control
and privacy.
Webmail is convenient in the sense that we no longer have
to think about looking after our emails, but despite some lovely
interfaces, it remains at best a clunky and slow way of managing
a busy email life. Mutt offers you the chance to take back control
of your email and really speed up your workflow. Well show you
how to do this with one of the major webmail services.
Mutt is very powerful the manual takes hours to read but
dive in with our quick tour of a few of its powerful features and
youll be ready to explore more deeply.

Mutt manual
mutt.org/doc/manual.txt

30 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

01

Set up IMAP

Before Webmail became ubiquitous, users had to

decide between keeping their emails on the server to read
anywhere with IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol)
or downloading them to a mail client through POP, and
deleting them from the server.
Generous disk allowance means that many of us now
keep all of our mail archived with webmail providers.
However, youll still need to enable IMAP in Gmail if you want
to use it with a client like Mutt, yet still keep your emails
available on Googles capacious servers.
Choose Forwarding>POP/IMAP in the Gmail settings
menu and then select Enable IMAP. Yahoo! (and thus BT)
does not need this lengthy process, nor do AOL or Hotmail
Live either, which is useful.

Below Mutt shows you useful information about

your emails in the main list, such as their size,
and you can shortcuts to power through them all

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

04

02

Cong le

To get up and running quickly, having already installed

Mutt from your package manager, open ~/.muttrc in your
favourite text editor and ll in the basics:

You have
mail

Above Mutt has a

threaded mode that
adds functions for
long conversations

gpg -r [email protected] -e pwd

shred ./pwd
rm ./pwd
with ~/.mutt/pwd containing:

set
set
set
set
set
set
set
set

from = [email protected]
realname = You
imap_user = [email protected]
imap_pass = your-secret-password
folder = imaps://imap.gmail.com:993
spoolfile = +INBOX
smtp_url = smtp://[email protected]:587/
smtp_pass = your-secret-password

Other providers need similar settings, for example:

smtp://[email protected]@smtp.live.com:587/

03

Keep it a secret

Having your password(s) in a clear text file in your home

directory is a security risk, particularly on a portable machine.
Lets hide these passwords from the malicious or the merely
curious. You should already have GnuPG installed on your
system. Use it to encrypt a separate password file.

gpg --gen-key
cd ~/.mutt/
nano pwd

set my_pwd=your_password
Now replace .muttrcs password line with:

source gpg -d ~/.mutt/passwords.gpg |

set imap_pass = $my_pwd

04

Already
included

You have mail

A little more housekeeping and were ready:

mkdir ~/.mutt
mkdir ~/.mutt/cache
mkdir ~/.mutt/cache/bodies
nano ~/.mutt/sig
Now start Mutt, type mutt and hit Enter. If youve just set
up a GPG-encrypted password, youll be asked for the
passphrase gpg-agent will take care of it on subsequent
occasions. If youre not a Zen-like practitioner of the art
of inbox zero, youll need to wait a few seconds for the
thousands of messages youve enabled Gmail to hang on to,
then be presented with a long list of your inboxs contents.

While we recommend
getting Mutts
documentation
later in Step 12 or
better still, keeping
it open while using
this tutorial most
distros will install
plenty of the docs for
you in a folder under /
usr/share/doc/mutt/
examples, where
youll also nd some
great sample muttrc
congurations,
including useful
colour schemes.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 31

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Print a cheat sheet of the

navigation keys or keep a window
open on the Mutt manual

07
05

Keyed up

As you navigate around your email, K and J for

up and down inherited from the Pine and Elm mailers
means keeping your ngers on the home row. If you use a
Dvorak or Colemak keyboard, you will want to rebind the
navigation keys in .muttrc for your home row, using the
following for Colemak, for example:

bind generic n next-entry

bind generic e previous-entry

Mutt
in a hurry

Possibly replacing top-page (bound to H) and bottom-page

(L) as well. Print a cheat sheet of the navigation keys or keep
a window open on the Mutt manual until youve learnt the
most useful ones. Initially, you can get a long way with Enter,
Q (to quit) and the arrow keys.

Need to quickly
copy a le from your
server? Just issue
this at the command
line to send it to your
log le home:

Command line apps are amenable to automation in

a way that mouse-driven programs cant be. A macro saves
a series of keystrokes normally applied to Mutt interactively,
such as those to open a mail and then its attachment(s), all
bound to a keyboard shortcut.
Macros are dened in .muttrc with the form:

macro menu key sequence [ description ]

where menu is Mutt-speak for the part of Mutt youre
using the pager, index view, composer, attachment, etc.
In Step 5 we used generic as a meta-menu for all menus
where common navigation functions are available; you can
dene the same macro for each menu you need it in. Key
is your dened shortcut key \C is the Control key and \e
is Escape, so if you wanted to bind a sequence to Ctrl-x,
Ctrl-c, youd need \Cx\Cc. When using a sequence, you put
in the function names (rather than their common keyboard
shortcuts) within angle brackets.
If there is a space used anywhere, then the whole
sequence needs quoting:

macro index,pager <f1> <shell-escape>less /

usr/local/doc/mutt/manual.txt<enter> Show Mutt
documentation
The description at the end is optional, but makes life easier.
As with dot-les (including .muttrc), your favourite search
engine will nd you several examples, much like those
displayed in our screenshot.

mutt -s VPS Syslog

file -a /var/log/
syslog -- [email protected]
Press Enter to
conrm your choices
then Y to send.
Mutt enables many
attachments from
the command line, so
following them with
the double dash (--)
tells it that you have
nished attaching
and that it should
pay attention
for the address.

Macro power

06

Send an email

Test your cong by sending an email. Hit M to

compose, which will prompt you for recipient and subject,
then open up your default text editor (Mutt is a mailer;
composition is a text editors job). Saving the message returns
you to the send dialog, then hit Y to send or use various
options for cc, attachments and more.
You may now be in the Drafts folder of your email account.
Hit C to change mailbox, then ? to get a list of choices and
navigate back to your inbox. Having rushed through the
basics, lets see some of Mutts real power.

32 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

08

One tag to rule them all

Scrolling through your messages you notice half

a dozen that can all be treated the same way moved or
deleted, for example something that would be a pain if
navigating with a mouse. In Mutt, hit T on each message to
tag them and, when youve nished tagging, hit ; followed by D
to delete them all, or else use some macro on them.
After hitting delete, youll see that the asterisk which was
showing the message(s) as tagged has been replaced with
a D, indicating the message will be deleted when you leave
Mutt. Why not delete it straight away? Maybe it gives you
a chance to go back and change your mind perhaps you
tagged just one message too many.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

09

09

Conduct a search

To search your emails, hit / and then type your

search term or regular expression. Using T instead of / will
tag all of the messages matching the search term, allowing
for the same range of actions as the previous step.
Its worth reading the Mutt documentation for more on
search you can nd and select mails by properties such
as size or date, all of which are handy when your inbox has
grown as large as Gmail provides for.

name (if given) as well as the email address. If youve several

aliases collected, give them their own le and let .muttrc
know where it is:

set alias_file=~/.mutt/aliases

11

Conduct
a search

Above Filtering
emails by date
and searching for
keywords really
speeds things up

PDF

Your /etc/mailcap le tells your email clients how

to handle multimedia attachments. Hit V to read a PDF
attachment and the system default (probably Evince or
Okular) will open. If youre running Mutt in a command
line environment, youll need to make a custom mailcap in
~/.mutt/mailcap to specify piping pdftohtml through w3m.
Youll need to point to this in .muttrc with:

set mailcap_path=~/.mutt/mailcap
The output is not properly formatted, but at least the content
is now readable.

10

Create an alias

As you start typing an email address in your webmail,

all the likely completions will pop up. The Mutt equivalent is
to dene an alias for each person to whom you need to write
messages regularly:

alias bank Bank Manager [email protected]

The rst word after alias is your shortcut, everything else
between that and the actual address is the long-form name.
Typing the shortcut at the To: prompt, when youre
composing an email, will cause Mutt to substitute the long

12

The next step

While trying to cover useful tips for new Mutt users,

weve had to adopt a scattergun approach the idea being
to get you started, at least. However, weve missed out a lot of
deeper conguration and many powerful uses of this exible
mailer. Fortunately, the next step is easy: read the Mutt
documentation at http://dev.mutt.org/trac/wiki/MuttGuide,
as well as accompanying manual and wiki pages.
Theres a lot of it for someone whos never used Mutt before,
but you already have a working setup and know some power
user tricks, so youre ready to really go and tame your inbox.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 33

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Run your own chat

channel with Scrollback
Scrollback builds chatrooms that enable you to
communicate and engage new audiences

Resources
Scrollback
scrollback.io

GitHub repo
bit.ly/1GlTLfP

Communication is one of the most important aspects of

our lives. Whether you think of peer-to-peer communication
or a brand communicating to its audience, its important
to convey things effectively. The rules are simple: whoever
communicates well wins.
With the digital world now handling most of our
communications, its important to choose the right words and
have the right tools, because without these theres no way
that your audience can understand you. One of the common
communication tools is the chat application. Generally based
on a server-client model, such tools are available a dime a
dozen, but each tool has a problem some look ugly, some
dont support chatrooms, and some are based on the IRC
protocol only. There is rarely an application with everything
in one package. However, we will cover one here that can help
you do it all from chatrooms to embedding, websites to chat
archiving, everything youd expect from a chat application, with
a new UI. Scrollback, based on a server-client model, has a
web-based UI that opens in a browser with no need for a client
application. Well go through the installation and its features in
this tutorial. We have used Ubuntu 14.04 as the host system
and the latest source code from Scrollbacks GitHub repository.

34 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

01

Install the script

Installing Scrollback is pretty straightforward;

you can just go to their GitHub page and run a singleline command thats available there to instantly install
Scrollback on your server. The command basically invokes a
script where all the action happens. Now, we as open source
enthusiasts cant just let that happen so easily! This is one
of the most exciting parts of open source software. You can
view the code and take charge, rather than just clicking
things away. However, if you are just interested in running
Scrollback immediately, you can skip to Step 3.
Lets take a look at what happens when you run the script.
It starts with trapping signals and sanity checks, like a user
privilege check and supported distros check supported
distros are Ubuntu, Arch Linux and Fedora. If you are running
something else, you need to manually install Scrollback. In
the next step well take a look at the various dependencies of
Scrollback and their installation in the script.

Below Scrollback provides a neat, clean

interface to manage all your conversations

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

03

Create
chatrooms

In simple terms, the whole

chatroom is miniaturised and can
be accessed via a small window
on the website
Left Organise
your chatrooms by
giving them unique,
descriptive names

02

Behind the scenes

After a sanity check, the installation script shows the

list of items to be installed Git version control, Node.js and
Redis server. Click Install to grant permission. Once you grant
the permission, it checks for the sources list for Ubuntu using
sudo apt-get update. Then it goes through all the packages
and installs the ones related to Git, Node.js and Redis. Then,
Scrollback is cloned from the GitHub repository and the
dependencies, like gulp-bower, are installed. The Redis
daemon is started and local.scrollback.io is added to the
/etc/hosts le. This enables you to access Scrollback in your
browser using the address http://local.scrollback.io instead
of using an ip address.
Finally the conguration les are copied and Gulp is run
to generate miscellaneous les, followed by a notication
of successful Scrollback installation. Once the installation
nishes, run sudo npm start to start Scrollback. You can
access Scrollback in your browser now. Note that you may
see a New Relic-related failure when starting Scrollback, but
you can safely ignore that. Lets now take a look at some of the
features of Scrollback.

03

Social
accounts

Create chatrooms

The next step is to create a chatroom. To create one,

you will need to log in to Scrollback note that you will need to
use email login, since Facebook and Gmail login options dont
work out of the box. Once logged in, click on the Create Room
button in the bottom-left corner or the centre of the page.
You will be prompted to ll in the room name, so just enter
the name. Your chatroom will then be created and the page
redirects to the room settings.
Room settings in Scrollback include several options: IRC,
Twitter integration, spam control, search visibility options,
discussion settings, embedding and sharing settings and so on.
We will take a closer look at the various settings in the next steps.

To enable Google+
or Facebook login
for your Scrollback
installation, you
will need to create a
developer account
and generate the API
keys that enable an
application to access
the services. You will
then need to save the
keys in the server-side
conguration le.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 35

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

04

Embed to
websites

06
Above Embed a
small chat window
on your site using
ready-made code

04

Another great thing you can do with Scrollback is

embed the chat window directly in your website. In simple
terms, the whole chatroom is miniaturised and can be
accessed via a small window on the website. Embedding the
chatrooms on websites gives you an opportunity to engage
more people in an easy-to-manage manner. This is far
better than an email-based subscription because it allows
for instant communication and possibly a better experience
overall. Your website visitors can also take advantage of all
the information already available in your chatroom. They
just need to see the discussions list and click on the one
relevant to them in order to use it.
To embed your chatroom in a simple HTML-based
website, go to the Share & Embed tab in the Room Settings
page. Scroll down to view the embed code yes, it is
already there! Now copy and paste it in just before closing
the </head> tag in your website. Thats all it takes; your
visitors can now see a miniature version of your chatroom
on your website. There is also the option to add a whitelist
of domains where the room can be embedded. If you leave
that eld empty, you are implying that you will be enabling
embedding anywhere, which isnt ideal.

05
Index for
searching
You can also choose
if your chatroom is
available for room
search indexing.
To enable search
engine indexing, go
to the Room Settings
menus Search
Visibility tab and
enable the Allow
search engines to
index room option,
then click on the
Done button.

Embed to websites

WordPress websites

WordPress powers around 23 per cent of the whole

Internet. That is a very vast number, and with that comes
the opportunity for you to engage visitors in meaningful
conversations within a community, rather than just oneto-one chats. Scrollback does well to take advantage of
this medium you can very easily integrate your Scrollback
chatroom to a WordPress website, this time without even
touching a single line of code.
To use Scrollback with WordPress, log in to your
WordPress admin console and go to Plugins>Add New>
Search Plugins. Type Scrollback here and start the search.
You will then nd the Scrollback plugin, so just install
and activate it. Once its activated, ll in the name of your
chatroom (the room that you want to embed to your site),
and thats it! Go to your WordPress website and you will now
be able to see the Scrollback chat window in the bottomright corner of your website.

36 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Use Blogger

Several bloggers prefer Googles blogger.com

instead of taking the pain to host their own WordPress or
other CMS based websites. Lets see how to add Scrollback
rooms to a blogger.com-based website. As we did in Step 4,
you will rst need to copy the code snippet from ScrollBack.
Once you have your code snippet copied, go to your blogger.
com account, then Options>Layout>Add a Gadget. On the
next page, select HTML/JavaScript. Finally, just paste the
code to the content section and click Save. Your blogger.com
website is now integrated with Scrollback.

07

Link IRC channels to Scrollback rooms

IRC (Internet Relay Chat) remains a tried and

tested way to maintain a healthy communication among
community members. The process is simple people can
install IRC clients and connect to the server. They can then
follow relevant channels. However, IRC usage has been
falling recently. According to Wikipedia, IRC has lost 60 per
cent of its users and 50 per cent of its channels in the last
decade. Such decline may be attributed to the rise of various
other forms of community management, such as Facebook
groups, Twitter lists, Whatsapp groups and so on.
Scrollback aims to bridge this gap between IRC and nonIRC users. It enables you to link your existing IRC channel to
a Scrollback room and reach out to the non-IRC users, giving
them an easier entry point to your community. This also
enables you to make use of Scrollbacks logging features
and help track discussions easily. To link your chatroom to
an IRC server, go to Room Settings>IRC Integration. Fill in
the IRC server link (eg irc.mozilla.org) and the IRC channel
(eg #mozilla), then click Done to save the changes. The IRC
channel operator needs to type /invite scrollback #mozilla
in the IRC channel to complete the process, replacing
#mozilla with the channel name that you entered. Once this
is done, you can see the IRC messages in the chat window in
your chatroom.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

08

08

Twitter integration

Scrollback offers a tight integration with your Twitter

account. You can watch hashtags, tweet chat messages
directly from chat window and even share your chatroom
via tweets. So lets see how to achieve all this. First go to the
Twitter integration tab and enter the hashtags that youd like
to watch, separating hashtags with spaces, and click on the
Sign in to Twitter button. Then, in the Twitter window, log in
and review the privileges thats it. You can now see all of the
tweets that have the hashtags you want to watch right inside
your chatroom.
If there is a message in your chatroom that you want to
tweet, just hover on the message to reveal a menu icon on
the extreme right side of the page. Then click on this icon to
show the different options you can either choose to tweet
the message or hide it. To share your room via tweets, go to
the Share & Embed tab and click on the Twitter button under
Share your room.

09

Moderation features

You can set the room description under the General

settings tab. Since Scrollback is designed in a search enginefriendly way, it is very important to set the description
properly. The Permissions tab lets you decide on people who
can post in your chatroom. You can select anyone, or only the
logged-in users or followers of the chat room.
One of the major concerns a chatroom moderator faces
involve spammers and abusive behaviour. Scrollback
enables moderators to control such issues easily just
enable the Spam Control button under the Spam Control
tab, and Scrollback automatically blocks spammers from
posting to your group. In the same tab, you can also set
the blocked words list. If you enable the English abusive

Twitter
integration

It may happen that different

people discuss different things.
If you follow IRC channels, its a
really common scene in there
words option, only the predened words are blocked. You
can make additions to the block list by entering the abusive
words in the Custom blocked phrases/words text area.
Now even if people type abusive words into the chatroom,
they wont be visible to anyone else.

10

Above Add Twitter

hashtags to your
settings to view the
related tweets inside
your chatroom

Discussions

One of the prime issues in a chatroom is tracking the

discussion. A room generally has many people in different
time zones. It may happen that different people discuss
different things in parallel if you follow IRC channels, its a
common scene in there. In such scenarios, it becomes really
difcult to track or get meaningful information out. If you
have not noticed till now, Scrollback solves this problem in a
very simple yet effective way. Just go to the Discussions tab
and enable Automatically group text into discussions. Now,
Scrollback automatically segregates discussions based on
words in chat messages and the user who types them. At any
point, any user can create a discussion too simply by clicking
on Start a discussion in the chat window. All the discussions
are archived under the Discussion tab on left side. To view
one, simply click on the discussion name the chat window
shows all the messages under that discussion in a useful
colour-coded format.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 37

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Above Check out bit.ly/1tr9kbv for documention on BIND

Create a caching DNS server

for query requests using BIND
Reduce your network trafc and serve
DNS requests faster by running your very
own caching DNS server
Resources
BIND home page
www.isc.org/software/bind

RFC 1034, Domain Names

tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1034

RFC 5936, AXFR

tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5936

38 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

DNS (Domain Name System) is what converts

a human readable string to an IP address
(and vice versa) when it does not work
properly, you cannot browse the Internet or
get your email. Machines called DNS servers,
or simply name servers, support the Domain
Name System. These machines are nothing
extraordinary except the fact that they run
special server software to support DNS. A
network device must have at least one properly
congured DNS server in order to operate
normally, but for added redundancy you should

use more name servers to ensure that the

network device is operational regardless of
any problems. A name server should always
be stated with its IP address. A DNS zone is a
part of a domain name that its administration
has been delegated. So, the .co.uk domain
has many zones. It is very reasonable that the
.co.uk domain administrator delegates the
administration of all subdomains because
otherwise it would have to administer all the
.co.uk subdomains, which, as you can imagine,
are numerous.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

03

The host
utility

04
01

Install BIND

BIND stands for Berkeley Internet

Name Domain and is an implementation of the
DNS protocols. On a Debian 7 system you can
install the latest version of BIND by running the
following command:

# apt-get install bind9

To nd your version of BIND, execute the
following command:

# named -v
BIND 9.8.4-rpz2+rl005.12-P1

02

What is Cache DNS server?

A caching-only DNS server does not

contain information about a domain; it just
contains information based on the results of the
DNS queries it has already performed. The main
reason that DNS caching works well is because
DNS data does not change frequently.

03

The host utility

Host produces a clean output and that is

the main reason for liking it it can easily be used
inside shell scripts. Its last parameter, which is
optional, is the name of the DNS server to ask. If
not given, it uses the /etc/resolv.conf le to nd a
DNS server to ask.
Used with the -t mx parameters, host shows
the mail servers for a domain or a subdomain:

# host -t mx linuxuser.co.uk
linuxuser.co.uk mail is handled by 10
mail.imagine-publishing.co.uk.
linuxuser.co.uk mail is handled by 20
mail2.imagine-publishing.co.uk.
The numbers that you see after the handled
by are the preference values that indicate the
mail exchangers priority. A preference value by
itself is not important, what is important is its
relationship to the other values.
Mail servers should attempt to deliver to the
mail exchangers with the lowest values rst. If
the delivery fails for some reason, then the mail
exchanger with the next highest value will be
tried. If two or more mail exchangers have the
same preference value, it is up to the mail server
to decide which one to choose. The primary DNS
server is responsible for dening the email server
for a domain or a subdomain.
Used with the -t ns parameters, host shows
the DNS Servers for a domain.

The dig utility

The dig utility can show you the same

DNS related information as host, however, digs
output is more populated by default. In order to
nd the DNS servers of the co.uk domain with
the help of dig, you could do this by executing the
following command:

$ dig co.uk. ns
Trying to perform a AXFR query with dig
fails:
$ dig @localhost co.uk. axfr
; <<>> DiG 9.8.4-rpz2+rl005.12-P1 <<>> @
localhost co.uk. axfr
; (2 servers found)
;; global options: +cmd
; Transfer failed.
AXFR is a mechanism for replicating DNS data
across DNS servers, but it can also be used
for evil purposes. The DNS Administrator is
responsible for allowing the access to the AXFR
protocol to specic machines and restricting it
to the rest of the world.

05

The /etc/resolv.conf file

The quickest way to see your DNS

conguration is by looking at the /etc/resolv.conf
le, where you can see the IP address for each
DNS server used; each entry starts with the
nameserver keyword. There is no point in using
anything but an IP address for a DNS server.
Usually, the administrator deals with this le
when setting up a Linux machine; otherwise it
is populated when your Linux machine gets its
network conguration using DHCP.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 39

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

10

06

The conguration le
for the caching server

The rndc utility

The rndc executable is the name

server control utility. It controls the operation of
the name server and it communicates with the
named process using a TCP connection. The
rndc utility has a conguration le called rndc.
conf that has structure and syntax similar to
named.conf. You can type man rndc-confgen
and man rndc.conf for more information.

08

The /etc/bind directory

All conguration les related to BIND

are located inside the /etc/bind directory. You
will need root access to make changes to it and
you will have to restart the named process for
the changes to take effect.
BIND keeps some other les inside /var/
cache/bind:

07

Other types of DNS servers

There are three more types of DNS

servers: primary, secondary and forwarding.
Each domain should have at least one primary
and one secondary DNS server.
A primary DNS server (or Master) denes
one or more zone les for which this DNS
is authoritative. A zone has been assigned to a
DNS server using an NS Resource Record.
A secondary DNS server (or Slave) mainly acts
as the backup of the primary DNS server in case it
goes down for some reason.
A forwarding DNS server is almost identical to
a caching server from the perspective of a client.
Its difference is that it does not perform recursive
queries itself; it just forwards them to another
DNS server, gets the response back and then
caches the results.
It is not possible to nd out from a query result
whether it was answered from a zone master or
from a slave.

40 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

# ls -l /var/cache/bind/
total 24
-rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 698 Oct 15 09:46
managed-keys.bind
-rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 512 Oct 15 09:46
managed-keys.bind.jnl
-rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 9446 Oct 15 11:17
named_dump.db
-rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 1103 Oct 14 10:58
named.stats

10

The configuration file

The default BIND conguration is almost

ready to support a caching DNS server. You will
only need to explicitly turn recursion on and then
it will all be done. This action can be completed
by adding a line inside named.conf.options that
contains the recursion yes; text.
The next step then is to run the BIND server
process as follows:

# /etc/init.d/bind9 start
You will also need to add an access control list to
reduce trafc and increase security, and you will
learn about access control lists a little later on
in Step 14. The DNS service will usually listen to
port number 53, as you can clearly see from the
following output:

# telnet localhost 53
Trying ::1...
Connected to localhost.

11

Manage the caching DNS server

You already know how to start the DNS

server. The following command stops it:

# /etc/init.d/bind9 stop

09

The /etc/bind/db.root le

The db.root le holds the information

on root name servers, denoted by a single dot,
needed to initialise the cache of internet domain
name servers. You can manually generate it by
running the following command:

$ dig @a.root-servers.net . NS > db.root

And then this command restarts it:

# /etc/init.d/bind9 restart
[....] Stopping domain name service...:
bind9waiting for pid 24713 to die
. ok
[ ok ] Starting domain name service...:
bind9.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

14

Access control
lists (ACL)

All log messages from BIND are

stored in /var/log/syslog

12

Use the caching DNS server

A caching server is used like a regular

DNS server. If you want to reduce the DNS trafc
on your LAN, you should put the IP of the caching
server in the /etc/resolv.conf le and comment
out all other DNS servers. However, this can be
dangerous because if the caching DNS server
stops working for some reason, your network will
not be able to operate normally.

14

Access control lists (ACL)

For the purposes of this tutorial, the

most useful utility is named-checkconf
which checks the syntactical validity of your
conguration. If there are no syntax errors
in your current conguration, you will get no
output. No tool can catch logical DNS errors.

16

Test the cache DNS server

17

Advantages of a caching server

In order to test your DNS server, try

to query a domain that is not the DNS cache
and see how much time it takes to answer the
query. Next, ask the same DNS query and you
should see a way better response time.

An acl list denes which hosts can and

cannot access a DNS server. The following lines
dene a new access control list:

acl OTENET {
2.86/16;
localhost;
localnets;
};
The denition of the list does not automatically
make the list active. You should add the
following line to turn on the OTENET access
control list:

allow-query { OTENET; };
As soon as the DNS server starts running, many
unknown hosts will try to connect to it; so do
not delay generating as many access lists as
needed to protect your DNS server.

13

The log files of BIND

All log messages from BIND are stored in

the /var/log/syslog le. The named command can
produce a large amount of log messages, so you
might decide that you want to decrease the log
level using rndc after making sure that your DNS
server works without any problems.

15

Check your configuration

BIND comes with many tools that can

help you to check the correctness of your
current conguration. These tools include
named-checkconf, named-checkzone and
named-compilezone.

The advantages of using a cache DNS

server on your network are less LAN trafc
and less Internet trafc. You also get DNS
responses quicker for queries that have already
been answered by the caching server.
BIND has a handy command to dump all the
records of a DNS server to a single le. It can
then re-read this data when it starts again:

# rndc dumpdb -all

# ls -l /var/cache/bind/named_dump.db
-rw-r--r-- 1 bind bind 9446 Oct 15 11:15
/var/cache/bind/named_dump.db

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 41

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Program a
client-server
application
Each operating system provides its own set
of networking APIs, but Qt gives a solution
to simplify creating chatty applications
Modern computer networks are composed
of multiple protocols. Creating well-formed
packets by hand is almost impossible the
protocol stack and its underlying network
hardware affect the format.
Engineers working on Unix solved this problem
by introducing an abstraction layer so-called
sockets acting as endpoints between two
local or remote applications. Developers use
the standardised interface in order to provide
commands to the socket, which are then
translated to the network.
When dealing with sockets, a basic
understanding of networking is benecial. For
now, it shall sufce to dene that messages
can be transmitted by two high-level protocols.
TCP short for Transmission Control Protocol
provides conrmation when data has been
delivered successfully. This is accomplished by
a relatively complex sequence of packets which
add overhead to the communication process.
However, some applications dont require this.
For them, UDP provides a sleeker communication
protocol that forgoes delivery conrmation. On
a network, computers are identied by their IP
address. Individual services are then identied by
their port numbers consider them apartment
door numbers inside a high-rise building.
Developers working on communication
software tend to face a chicken-egg situation
if no server has been written, the client cant
connect. On the other hand, the lack of a client
means that the server cant be tested.
In practical projects you should start out by
creating a rough mock-up of the messages that
the client and server will exchange. You dont
need to get this 100 per cent right on the rst try;
most protocols change as they get implemented.

42 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Our nger exercise-level applications dont

require this level of sophistication. It will
sufce to begin by creating a command line
project called ImagineTCPServer. Qt Creator
does not add the networking module to newly
created applications. This can easily be
remedied by opening its .pro le and adjusting
the QT directive so that network gets included
at compile time:

QT += network
With that, it is time to create the server object.
Its declaration can be placed inside the main()
function responsible for program bring-up:

myServer=new QTcpServer();
if(myServer->listen(QHostAddress::Any,102
5)==false)
{
qDebug() << Server error <<
myServer->serverError();
return 0;
}
else
{
qDebug() << Server up <<
myServer->serverAddress() << <<
myServer->serverPort();
}
In classic Berkeley socket programming, server
and client logic are handled by instances of the
socket class. Qt provides a dedicated server
that contains helper methods for connectivity
management. After start-up, we invoke the
listen() method in order to make our QTcpServer
wait for incoming connections.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Below This is, essentially, what an operational

client-server network looks like

Passing in QHostAddress::Any makes the

class listen on any network interfaces you
can constrain the code to a specic IP address
by passing it in. Parameter number two is
responsible for selecting the port that needs
to be opened.
Accessing ports below the magic number
1024 requires root privileges on many Unix
systems simply running the program from the
IDE would result in an access error. Avoid this
problem by using port number 1025. Finally, the
exec() method of QCoreApplication is invoked to
start the main event loop.
Debugging and deploying network-related
programs can be quite complex. For example,
ImagineTCPServer will fail to start if another
application is already connected to the port in
question.
However, this can be remedied by
choosing a different port or by closing the
offending application, which can be found via
the netstat tool.

Signals and slots

Most network operations run asynchronously.
Methods like listen() return immediately,
delegating the actual work to a background
thread. With QTcpServer, incoming connections
are announced by the newConnection signal.

Signals can only be handled by

classes derived from Qobject
Signals can only be handled by classes derived
from Qobject. Click File>New File or Project
to open the creation wizard, then Select C++
C++ Class to start the class generator.
ImagineListenerClass.h looks as follows:

class ImagineListenerClass : public

QObject
{
Q_OBJECT
public:
explicit ImagineListenerClass(QObject
*parent = 0);
public slots:
void connectionIncoming();
};
Slots are implemented via normal member
functions. Add the following routine to
imaginelistenerclass.cpp:

void ImagineListenerClass::connectionIn
coming()
{

qDebug() << Client connection

attempt;
}
Signal-Slot connections are established via
the connect method. It requires pointers to the
sending and the receiving objects, the actual
signal and slot are to be specied via SIGNAL()
and SLOT() macros:

else
{
qDebug()
<< myServer>serverAddress() << << myServer>serverPort();
myListener=new
ImagineListenerClass();
QObject::connect(myServer,
SIGNAL(newConnection()), myListener,
SLOT(connectionIncoming()));
}

Client time
The work on the server is completed, but only
for now. Start it up by clicking the Play button

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 43

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

inside Qt Creator and then make sure that you

keep your console window open. You can now
check its functionality by opening a terminal
window and entering netstat -tlnp, and the
ImagineTCPServer will show up. Open a second
session of Qt Creator in order to develop the
client. Create another Qt Console Application
named ImagineTCPClient and modify its .pro le
to enable networking as outlined above.

At first, using
TCP/IP to connect
the processes
sounds like
overkill, but many
programs are
implemented in
this fashion
Connecting to servers requires the use of a
QTcpSocket. Its most basic implementation is
made up of but two lines:

QTcpSocket *mySocket;
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
QCoreApplication a(argc, argv);
mySocket=new QTcpSocket();
mySocket->connectToHost(QHostAddress
::LocalHost, 1025);
return a.exec();
}
ConnectToHost() is another asynchronous
method which takes two parameters. The rst
one designates the IP to use, while the second
species the port. Successful connections
will be indicated by the emission of a signal
which we will handle in the next step. For now,
a running instance of ImagineTCPServer will
display a connection attempted message when
our client is started.
At the rst glance, using TCP/IP to connect
two processes on the same machine sounds
like overkill. However, many programs are
implemented in this fashion handling interprocess communication via sockets provides a
safe and simple way to de-couple components
from one another.

44 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Streams of data
Real network applications exchange data, which
is accomplished by using the data streams
embedded into the socket instances. First,
modify the constructor of ImagineListenerClass
to provide the myServer instance to the method
responsible for handling the newConnection
signal. Then adjust its body as per Fig. 01.
QTcpServer can happily handle multiple
pending connections at the same time.
NextPendingConnection returns a socket
representing the connection to the selected
client. Well wire its disconnected signal to the
deleteLater slot to ensure unneeded sockets will
be eliminated automatically. In the next step a
byte array is populated and sent to the client.
Qts underlying DataStream class gets
improved as the framework evolves. Specifying
a data format ensures that binaries built with
later versions of Qt can interpret the data
provided in the socket. Many applications use
Qt 4.0s format. If your program is limited to Qt 5
and above due to other dependencies, you can
also dene this version as baseline.
The next step involves modications
to the client. Insert a class similar to the
ImagineListener to handle the signals emitted
from the socket class. Our application has to
deal with three events we need to notify the
user of successful and failed connections and
must receive data sent from the server.
Status messages are handled by emitting the
corresponding statements to the console via
qDebug() (see Fig 02).
Receiving data is more complex. Our simple
protocol doesnt inform the client in advance
about how much data is to be transmitted. Due
to that, we simply read whatever amount of data
has been received:

void ImagineReceiver::dataReady()
{
QDataStream in(mySocket);
in.setVersion(QDataStream::Qt_4_0);
QString thatsIt;
in >> thatsIt;
qDebug() << thatsIt;
}
Each of the slots must be connected to
the socket. This should be done before the
connectToHost method is invoked. On some
operating systems the connected signal is
emitted before connectToHost returns (Fig. 03).
Run the program in its current state to display

the greeting message from the server it will

show up in the clients window. ErrorOccurred
will be invoked to inform our program that the
server terminated its connection.

Further interaction
Our server currently kicks out clients after
providing them with a friendly greeting message.
A polite server would stick around and wait for
a response. Even though we could keep the
sockets in our current example, this would lead
to issues once more than one client is connected
we connect all signals to one slot which makes
keeping the different connections apart difcult.
A thread is a convenient solution for this
problem. Threads are subroutines that run in
parallel to the main application code spawning
threads permits your code to do multiple things
at the same time. Adding a thread is as easy as
adding a new class whose header looks like this:

class ImagineThread:public QThread

{
Q_OBJECT
public:
ImagineThread(QTcpSocket* _aSocket);
void run();
public:
QTcpSocket* mySocket;
};
The actual payload can be found in the
run() method which will be executed in the
background after the thread was spawned:

void ImagineThread::run()
{
exec(); //Start event loop
}
void ImagineThread::dataReady()
{
QDataStream in(mySocket);
in.setVersion(QDataStream::Qt_4_0);
QString thatsIt;
in >> thatsIt;
qDebug() << thatsIt;
exit();
}
ImagineThreads sole role involves staying until
a signal is emitted. We accomplish that by
invoking the exec() method which creates an
event loop. It keeps idling until exit is called from
the dataReady handler.
Our server must be modied in order to
start the thread when a new client connects
(Fig. 04).A classic beginners mistake involves

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

calling the run() method of a thread directly.

Background execution can be accomplished
only when start() is called it invokes the
thread-spawning logic and then proceeds to
executing the payload.
Finally, change the client so that it sends
some data to its master:

void ImagineListenerClass::connectionIncoming()
{
QTcpSocket *clientConnection = myServer>nextPendingConnection();
connect(clientConnection, SIGNAL(disconnected()),
clientConnection,
SLOT(deleteLater()));
QByteArray block;
QDataStream out(&block, QIODevice::WriteOnly);
out.setVersion(QDataStream::Qt_4_0);

void ImagineReceiver::dataReady()
{
. . .
QDataStream out(&block,
QIODevice::WriteOnly);
out.setVersion(QDataStream::Qt_4_0);
out << Qstring(Hello, server!");
mySocket->write(block);
}
Multithreaded programs can show all kinds
of odd behaviour due to a situation called race
condition. If two routines access a shared
element at the same time, havoc is guaranteed.
Qt provides a variety of methods, such as
mutexes, which can mitigate such problems.

Fig 01

out << QString(Hello, client!);

clientConnection->write(block);
clientConnection->disconnectFromHost();
}
void ImagineReceiver::amConnected()
{
qDebug() << Connection successful;
}
void ImagineReceiver::errorOccurred(QAbstractSocket::SocketError anError)
{
qDebug() << Error: << anError;
}

Fig 02

Advanced considerations
In the beginnings of the internet, every computer
had its own public IP address. Nowadays many,
if not most, systems nd themselves behind
layers of routers providing network address
translation and/or rewall services.
The image on page 43 shows a network made
up of two local networks connected to one
another via the Internet.
If a networked application on system A
wants to connect to system B, router B must be
congured to expose the port in question. This
can usually be accomplished in the backend of
the router since every manufacturer provides
a slightly different user interface, its best to
refer to your routers (online) manual.

Conclusion
Well-versed developers can implement the most
complex of protocols. Fortunately, Qt provides
ready-made classes that implement commonlyused protocols such as HTTP. Next time, we will
use one of these to create a small RSS reader.

Multithreaded
programs can
behave oddly

Fig 03
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
QCoreApplication a(argc, argv);
mySocket=new QTcpSocket();
ImagineReceiver *myListener=new ImagineReceiver(mySocket);
mySocket->connect(mySocket, SIGNAL(connected()),myListener,SLOT(amConnected()));
mySocket->connect(mySocket, SIGNAL(readyRead()),myListener,SLOT(dataReady()));
mySocket->connect(mySocket, SIGNAL(error(QAbstractSocket::SocketError)),
myListener,SLOT(errorOccurred(QAbstractSocket::SocketError)));
mySocket->connectToHost(QHostAddress::LocalHost, 1025);
return a.exec();
}
Fig 04
void ImagineListenerClass::connectionIncoming()
{
QTcpSocket *clientConnection = myServer->nextPendingConnection();
connect(clientConnection, SIGNAL(disconnected()), clientConnection,
SLOT(deleteLater()));
clientConnection->setParent(0);
ImagineThread* myThread=new ImagineThread(clientConnection);
connect(clientConnection,SIGNAL(readyRead()), myThread,SLOT(dataReady()));
myThread->start();
QByteArray block;
QDataStream out(&block, QIODevice::WriteOnly);
out.setVersion(QDataStream::Qt_4_0);
out << QString(Hello, client!);
clientConnection->write(block);
}

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 45

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Build network clients, servers

and more with Netcat
Learn how to use Netcat to accomplish tasks like
creating a web server and a chat server

Resources

Netcat is a simple but handy UNIX utility that reads and

writes data across network connections, using either TCP
or UDP. Although it is called Netcat, you can also run it as nc
usually, both commands point to the same binary le.
Most of the command line options of Netcat dont need
root privileges to operate. Nonetheless, depending on the port
number that you want to use when creating a TCP/IP server,
you may need administrative privileges to run Netcat because
port numbers 0-1024 are restricted, and can only be used by
the root user. As a general principle, it is better to avoid these
port numbers and choose something else, provided that it is
not already in use by another process.
Is Netcat a panacea? Of course not! No single tool can solve
every problem. Is Netcat useful? Yes, and thats the main
reason that you should learn how to use it.

Linux machine
with Netcat
Root
privileges

46 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

01

Install Netcat

You can easily install Netcat on a Debian system

with the following command:

# apt-get install netcat-traditional

You can also install Netcat using the netcat-openbsd
package. The OpenBSD version supports IPv6, proxies
and Unix sockets, which are missing from the traditional
implementation. In practice, if you dont need these
features then you wont notice any difference between
the two packages.

Below You can use the tcpdump utility to capture

network trafc to or from particular ports

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

02

Basic Netcat usage

01

The general form of a Netcat command looks

like the following:

Install
Netcat

$ netcat [options] host port

The default Netcat behaviour is similar to a simulated
network interaction that uses the telnet command, which
means that the network connection is not secure (ie
unencrypted) and that the default protocol is TCP.
If you want, you can also specify a range of ports using
the minus character between the two port numbers that
indicate the range.

Default Netcat
behaviour is similar
to a simulated
network interaction

03

Netcat as a client

The most common Netcat usage is acting as a client

for a server process. This is mostly used for troubleshooting
network servers because you can see the raw data of the
full interaction. The following command will interact with
an SMTP server:

$ nc linode 25
As you can guess, you can give either the host name or the IP
address of the remote host.

06

The UDP protocol

By default, all Netcat interactions work with the

TCP protocol. However, its also possible to use the UDP
protocol that is specied with the use of the -u option. This
is particularly valuable because Telnet can only test TCP
services. The following command tries to test a DNS server
that uses UDP:

$ netcat -vv -u 8.8.8.8 53

04

Use files for input and output

05

Netcat as a server

According to Unix philosophy, the input to a program

can be read from a le and the output can be captured into
a le. The input is dened as <lename and the output as
>lename. You can also use Unix pipes to get your input from
the output of other processes.

Not only you can use Netcat as a client, you can also
use it for creating a server! The next command makes Netcat
listen to port number 1234 for incoming TCP connections:

You can create a UDP server if you combine the -l option with
the -u option.

07

Use Netcat for port scanning

Netcat can be used for port scanning as a naive

version of Nmap. The next command scans the 192.168.2.1
IP address using a range of port numbers from 20 to 40:

$ netcat -z -v -n 192.168.2.1 20-40

$ netcat -l 1234
The job is done by the -l option because it tells Netcat to listen
for incoming connections. The port number is also provided in
the command line.

The -z option tells Netcat to send zero data. In other words,

Netcat closes the connection as soon as it opens it, without
any actual data exchange taking place. The -n option tells
Netcat to disable DNS lookup for the given IP address.

Above You can see

details on the Netcat
package right at the
top of this output

Finding
the problem
As you already know,
there are many
tools that can be
used for network
troubleshooting,
including netstat,
traceroute, wget,
ping, lost, nmap,
telnet, etc. If you
cannot nd and
solve the problem
you are experiencing
using this software,
you should always
have in mind that
an erroneous
network device can
sometimes cause
strange networking
problems, so you
might need to start
looking at your
hardware instead.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 47

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

08

File transfer

Netcat can also do things that other similar utilities

cant do at all. One of those rare things is le transferring.
First, you should start the server part as follows:

$ cat fileToTransfer | nc -l 4567

11

Verbose output

Netcat can generate richer output to help you when

troubleshooting. You should use the -v command line
parameter to make Netcat give more verbose output. Using
-vv instead of just -v gives a larger amount of verbose output,
which is very useful.

Next, get the le using the subsequent Netcat command:

$ nc localhost 4567 > fileToTransfer

As you can see, you should choose the le that you want to
transfer in advance.

Firewalls and routers can make 12 Troubleshoot a web server

Netcat misbehave when used for
creating a server
$ netcat www.linuxuser.co.uk 80

The HTTP service is just a TCP service, so Netcat can

be used to get data from a web server. This command initiates
a connection to a web server:

09

Make any process a server

Netcat enables you to make any process a server

with the -e parameter. Lets now make /bin/bash a server
process; the server part should start as follows:

In order to get some output, you should rst type in GET /

HTTP/1.1 and then press Enter two or three times to start
seeing the information. Alternatively, you can always use
the following single-line method, which doesnt require any
additional typing from you:

$ nc.traditional -vv -l -p 12345 -e /bin/bash

The client part should start as follows:

$ echo -en GET / HTTP/1.0\n\n\n | netcat www.

linuxuser.co.uk 80

$ nc -vv <remote_host> 12345

Picking
your tools
Knowing more
than one tool is
extremely useful
when a network
is misbehaving.
The ultimate
troubleshooting
tool is Wireshark
and its command
line version tshark.
Their disadvantages
are that they are not
easy to use, and will
sometimes make you
feel like youre trying
to hit a mosquito with
a nuclear bomb. The
best practice is to try
the simplest tool that
can do your job rst,
before heading over
to Wireshark, tshark
or tcpdump.

After the last command, you can start executing commands

as if you were working on the remote machine. Note that this
capability of Netcat can introduce security threats when used
improperly, so be very careful with it.

13

Create a chat server with Netcat

You can get two users from the same or different

machines talking to each other by creating a chat server. You
should start the server part as follows:

$ netcat -vv -l 1234

10

Use Netcat as a simple web server

Lets say that you want to serve a simple HTML page

from your machine that has the 192.168.2.4 IP address, but
you are not able to run a web server. This part will show how to
serve it using Netcat without the need for a web server. First,
you will need to create a simple HTML le called index.html.
Then you will need to start a Netcat server as follows:

$ netcat -l 4567
If you visit http://192.168.2.4:4567/ using your web browser,
you will see index.html.

48 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Each client that wants to connect to the server must execute

the following command:

$ netcat -vv localhost 1234

Only two machines can participate at the same time: the
server and only one client. If a second client tries to connect
while another one is already connected, the following error
message will appear to the second client:

netcat: connect to localhost port 1234 (tcp)

failed: Connection refused

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

14

Test network speed using Netcat

15

This is a relatively tricky use of Netcat, but it is very

handy when you dont have any other tool to test the network
speed between two machines. For this to work you'll have to
use the netcat-traditional package.
Now, on the server machine you will need to execute
the following command:

Transfer entire directories

using Netcat

$ time nc -D -vv -n -l 2222 >/dev/null

On the client machine, execute the next command and press
Ctrl+C after about 15 seconds to make it stop:

$ time yes | nc.traditional -vv -n 192.168.2.4

2222 >/dev/null
Using the bc utility, you can nd out that the network speed is
about 1,108,087 bytes per second, which is absolutely perfect
for a 10MB wireless network.

15

Transfer entire directories using Netcat

You have already learned how to transfer single les

using Netcat. Now, you are going to learn how to transfer
whole directories using Netcat and the help of the tar
command. The server part is the following:

$ tar -cvf - directory | nc -l 1234

The client part should be as follows:

$ nc localhost 1234 | tar -xvf -

16

If you give a wrong password after the -k parameters, the

connection will automatically terminate. If you want to make
sure that your data is actually encrypted, you can use a tool
such as Wireshark or Tcpdump to sniff it and see the results.

17

Firewall and router issues

18

Capture network data using tcpow

Above You dont

need Dropbox to
transfer folders over
your network

Firewalls and routers can make Netcat misbehave

when used for creating a server with the -l parameter.
Difculty lies in the fact that a router or a rewall may
not enable hairpin connections. The router or the rewall
would not make the connection when both the source and
destination are behind the NAT. As a result, the machine wont
listen to the specied port, using an arbitrary port instead.

Encrypt a Netcat connection using Cryptcat

Transferring data in plain text isnt secure and may

cause problems. If you need encryption, use Cryptcat,
a lightweight version of Netcat that includes Twosh
encryption. On an Ubuntu system, install as follows:

$ sudo apt-get install cryptcat

Now, you are ready to start using Cryptcat. The server part
looks like this:

If lots is happening and you cant nd out where the

actual problem is, ask Tcpow, Tcpdump and Wireshark
for help. Tcpow is a command line tool to help you inspect
network data. The following command displays network data
from or to port number 1234:

$ cryptcat -k passphrase -l -p 12345

$ sudo tcpflow -i any -c -J port 1234
The client part should run the following command:

$ cryptcat -k passphrase localhost 12345

If you cannot solve your problems with tcpow, capture your

data with tcpdump and process it with Wireshark.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 49

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Create multiple types of btrfs le

systems, from single hard drives
to RAID 10 arrays

Create subvolumes within

the original le system with
different mount options

Back up volumes with

snapshots that you can roll
back to with ease

Switch to the btrfs file system

Discover how to set up and use all the
great features of the next generation of
le system, btrfs
Resources
Gparted http://gparted.org
btrfs-tools

50 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

The ext3 and ext4 le systems have been

a mainstay of Linux for a long time very
standard, partition-based le systems that
have some neat defragmentation policies.
Theyre used all the time by desktop distros
and servers and such, even within LVMs that
some distributions like to create.
Theres always a new challenger though,
and for the past few years Fedora has been
desperately trying to get btrfs in as the default
le system of the distro. Its considered the

next step in Linux le systems and has some

excellent features that should make it a
perfect choice for the evolution of Linux.
With the ability to create subpartitions within itself that are easier to
manage than LVM, a degree of roll-back,
advanced compression and defragmentation
tools tailored to itself and more, btrfs will
revolutionise the way we use storage. Well
show you how you can get ahead of the curve
in this tutorial.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

02

Format a
partition

Dont forget, you can always check

the details of your btrfs partitions and
hard drives

01

Find the right tools

The very rst step is to install the

appropriate setup tools. While its supported
in the kernel, not every distro holds the right
packages to manage it by default. In Debian and
Ubuntu distros, install it with:

04

Create a RAID

One of the best uses for btrfs, due to the

way it stores data, is using a similar technique to
put a series of hard drives into RAID 0. For now, do
it in the terminal with:

$ mkfs.btrfs /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /

$ sudo apt-get install btrfs-tools

02

Format a partition

Now the tools are installed, you can set

up your btrfs partition on your system using
gparted if you want. Launch it and navigate to
the device that you want to format. You can either
reformat existing partitions or make a smaller
btrfs partition instead.

03

Go into the terminal

You can also do this in a terminal now

the tools are installed. Open it up and use fdisk -l
if you need to gure out the names of partitions
and hard drives on your system. Once thats
done, create your btrfs partition with:

$ mkfs.btrfs /dev/sda

05

Grab your file system details

Just in case youve forgotten, you can

always check the details of your btrfs partitions
and hard drives. This also works with individual
hard drives in an array, which is why we mentioned
RAID in the previous step. In a terminal, use:

07

Make a subvolume

You can create subvolumes within btrfs

that can have different mount options and
mount points, and only uses space when they
need it. Create one in the terminal using:

$ btrfs file system show /dev/sda

$ btrfs
subvolume1

06

08

Mount the file system

With most modern distros you can easily

mount the btrfs system with a click. However,
to do it manually and place it within a specic
section of your le system you can do it simply in
the terminal with something like:

$ mount -t btrfs /dev/sdb ~/btrfs

subvolume

create

btrfs/

Create a partition

Weve created hard drives, small RAIDs

and subvolumes, but you can also create btrfs
partitions using a similar method as before.
Convert a partition into btrfs by going into the
terminal and using something like:

$ mkfs.btrfs single /dev/sdb2

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 51

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

17

09

Give permission

The way the drives, partitions and subvolumes have been created means you need to
access them with a root account to use them
properly. We can give them normal permissions
with the following:

RAID 1

10

RAID 1
A1
A3
A5
A7

A2
A4
A6
A8

A2
A4
A6
A8

The RAID

You can use btrfs to create different types

of RAID setups by default it will do RAID 0, but it
also supports RAID 1, RAID 10 (1+0), RAID 5 and
RAID 6. Choosing which RAID to use comes down
to personal preference and how much effort you
put in to maintain your setup.

52 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

RAID 1

RAID 1, where data is duplicated across

drives for redundancy, can be created on btrfs
using a modied version of the command used
to create btrfs over a selection of drives. The -d
option refers to how the data will be used.

RAID 0

A1
A3
A5
A7

If youre doing a hardware RAID,

having the metadata be redundant
may be useful

11

$ sudo chown 777 btrfs/

Subvolume
backup

$ mkfs.btrfs -d raid1 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc

12

13

RAID 10

Basic mirroring and striping with RAID 10 is

good for large data repositories and redundancies.
We can use both options -m and -d to specify that
we want metadata and data to be properly made
redundant with:

$ mkfs.btrfs -m raid10 -d raid10/dev/sdb

/dev/sdc /dev/sdd /dev/sde

Have non-redundant metadata

If youre doing a hardware RAID, having

the metadata be redundant may be useful
otherwise you can lose your data if the
metadata gets corrupted. This requires the -m
option and can be used on a single hard drive
with single or RAID 0 with:

$ mkfs.btrfs -m raid0 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /

14

Look at the different options

The options for -m and -d allow you to do

some fancy setups. You can create a btrfs JBOD
(Just a Bunch Of Drives) by doing -d single /dev/
sdb /dev/sdc. You can also have metadata be
non-redundant while data is redundant with -m
raid0 -d raid1 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc /dev/sdd. There
are many more ways to do it as you see t.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

19

15

RAID 5 and 6

RAID 5 and RAID 6 are excellent concepts

using a mixture of striping and mirroring across
several drives so that up to 75 per cent can be
used for storage while still being safe from hard
drive failure. This offers more storage than a
standard RAID 10 with the same redundancies (in
theory), and RAID 6 increases the redundancy but
decreases the overall storage of ve drives to 60
per cent of their full capacity.
While its supported in btrfs there are still bugs,
and even at the best of times 5 and 6 can be a
hassle. For more details on RAID 5 and 6 in btrfs,
visit the documentation https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.
org/index.php/RAID56.

16

Create snapshots

The way btrfs writes data means that the

old version of modied data still exists as long
as theres free space this means you can roll
back les up to a certain point. However, you
can also create snapshots of subvolumes that
are more permanent.

to put it in a separate location to the original

subvolume1 to save confusion:

$ btrfs subvolume snapshot btrfs/

subvolume1 btrfs/snapshot-1

18

Include a roll back snapshot

The individual snapshots can be

mounted on their own and you can also replace
a newer version with an older version. First
of all you will need to list the snapshots that
exist for a subvolume, and you can do this in
the terminal with:

$ btrfs subvolume list btrfs/subvolume1

17

Add a subvolume backup

To create this snapshot, head back

into the terminal and make sure you know
where the subvolume lies. The snapshot will
be created in the btrfs partition, but it is best

19

Set default

Note down the id for the snapshot (in our

case, 258) and then set it as the default for the
subvolume1 by using:

Set
default

$ btrfs subvolume set-default 258 btrfs/

Then unmount and remount the subvolume to
make the changes occur.

20

Remedy defragmentation

Due to the way btrfs writes files,

which we outlined in an earlier step, this can
cause significant fragmentation. This is a wellknown issue though, so btrfs has an in-built
defragmentation tool that works even while the
volume is mounted. You can use it with:

$ btrfs file system defragment btrfs/

21

The future file system

With all these tools you should be well on

your way to working with btrfs as a replacement
for your other le systems. It is a truly excellent
concept for the next generations of fs and its a
great idea to get on board with it now.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 53

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

The AWS logo in the AWS

Management Console shows
the infrastructure services

If you want to run your own

Linux box in the cloud, look no
further than EC2

Reserve domain names and

DNS route to your Linux server
in the cloud with Route 53

Go to your cost management

services and billing information
via a menu with your username

Run Linux in the AWS cloud

Power up your own virtual Linux instance
on EC2 and run it free for a year

Resources
Web browser
Phone number
Email address
Credit card number
SSH client

(optional but recommended)

54 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

AWS, short for Amazon Web Services, is

the equivalent of an online retailer for
virtual infrastructure and cloud services,
complete with an automated self-service
checkout and rock-bottom prices. Amazons
pay-as-you-go rendition of enterprise-class
infrastructure services is welcomed by costconscious, performance-hungry users from
website owners who need to scale out on
demand, to software developers and Linux
administrators who only need a Linux box for
a few hours. On AWS, there are no long-term
commitments you only pay for actual use.
With cost savings of as much as 72 per cent
and more over a conventional data centre, it

is no wonder that AWS quickly became the

hot ticket in town. The research rm Gartner
estimates the total global market share of
AWS at a mind-bending 83 per cent. Arguably,
the most important feature of Amazons cloud
is not its sheer size but its affordability.
Amazon gives each new account owner a
Free Usage Tier for a full year after they rst
register: https://aws.amazon.com/free.
So, thanks to its low prices, no up-front
investment, its granular administrative
controls and the freedom to run your own
infrastructure in your own way, AWS has
turned into an open source stronghold where
Linux reigns supreme.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

01

01

Create a new AWS root account

To get started with AWS, navigate to

https://aws.amazon.com in a web browser and
click on Create a Free Account. At this point
you could sign in with your existing Amazon
credentials but this isnt always a good idea.
Should you ever need to terminate your AWS
account, you would also lose access to your
account with Amazon, the online retailer. For this
reason, most users prefer to register with another
email address just to be safe, in case anything
happens in the future.

02

Complete the registration process

During registration, AWS will ask you to

provide your contact details including an email
address, your phone number and a credit card
number. Amazon will then verify that you are
human via an automated phone call. Your credit
card number serves to conrm your identity as
the payer and Amazon will keep it on le. As long
as you only use services that are within your Free
Tier capacity allotment, your card will not be
charged at any point.
The registration process creates an AWS root
account, which grants you access to all AWS
infrastructure services. It has nothing to do with a
root account on a Linux system, even though the
underlying concept is very similar.
Never use your AWS root credentials for
administrative work on your account except
during your initial sign-in in the next step.

03

Sign in to your AWS root account

The browser-based administrative

interface on Amazon the AWS Management
Console is the main switchboard for your AWS
infrastructure and services. You can access
it at https://aws.amazon.com from the pulldown menu called My Account or directly at
this URL: https://console.aws.amazon.com.
In either case, use the credentials of your AWS
root account (your email address and your AWS
root password). Make sure you never do this on
a public network or public computer because
if your credentials were intercepted, you could
lose access to your entire infrastructure while
still footing the bill. For this reason, Amazon
recommends that after the initial sign-in, you
immediately create a less privileged IAM user
for your daily interactions with AWS and link it
to an MFA device for multifactor authentication
(which is a topic for another tutorial altogether).

04

Create a new
AWS root account

Navigate the AWS

Management Console

Quite predictably, the Console is peppered with

AWS lingo so pervasive that even the toughest
occasionally shake their heads in disbelief. To
re up a Linux box in the AWS cloud, you want to
navigate to EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud). For DNS
services and domain name registration, head
towards Route 53. If all you need is some storage
that should remain easily accessible, you dont

Private, public
and elastic IPs
Each EC2 instance has its own private IP
(Internet Protocol). If you want this to be
accessible from the wider Internet, it also
needs to have an assigned public IP. If you
enable the option named Auto-assign
Public IP during the instance setup,
Amazon will associate a randomly selected
public IP to your instance for as long as
the instance keeps on running. Should you
later terminate the instance or even shut
down Linux, you would automatically lose
use of this IP.
If you prefer to use a persistent IP
address that you can manage yourself,
use an Elastic IP address here (EIP)
instead. An EIP is designed for dynamic
cloud computing, and is a regular public IP
address that you can reserve for use with
your account, then assign and reassign
at will.
actually need a Linux box instead, go straight
to the S3 (Simple Storage Service) section of
the Console. The simplest way to get to your
destination is by using the AWS logo in the upper
left-hand corner of the Console, as this gives you
access to the list of available services.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 55

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

EBS Volumes

08

EBS volumes are slower than instance

storage but offer data persistence you
can attach and detach them even while
your Linux instance is running.
EBS volumes come in two different
avours: as magnetic hard drives or
ashy SSDs. Amazon offers SSDs in one
performance category General Purpose
or Provisioned IOPS, which deliver bursts of
I/O depending on the size of the drive and
other users activities within the shared
storage pool.
SSDs with provisioned IOPS will perform
at the specied I/O level, but they can
certainly be pricey. General Purpose SSDs
are more likely the way to go for the walletconscious. If youre budgeting and only
need infrequent access, Magnetic is an
adequate compromise.

05

Choose your AWS region

06

Launch a new EC2 instance

Some AWS services, particularly EC2,

require you to select an AWS region. A region
is a set of interconnected data centres, called
AWS zones, with a common tax jurisdiction and
identical pricing. You can utilise services in any
of the nine AWS regions, not just your default
one, and combine them to suit you. Typically, you
would pick the most cost-effective one or combine
several regions that are closest to the location of
your end users to minimise latency. Its important
to remember that your EC2 dashboard shows
infrastructure that you are paying for only in the
region currently selected. This is a common trick
of AWS: watching resource consumption in the
dashboard of a wrong region, so beware.

Navigate to the EC2 section of the AWS

Management Console. This part of the interface
grants you access to a variety of infrastructure
services which enable you to build and run your
own Linux box in the AWS cloud, a so-called EC2
instance of Linux.
Each EC2 instance represents a host that
runs in a virtualised environment in isolation
from other virtual machines, which makes it very
cost-effective and reasonably safe. In order to
start your own Linux server in the cloud, click
on Launch Instance in the EC2 Dashboard. You
can also click on the link Instance in the lefthand navigation pane of the AWS Management
Console and then on the button Launch Instance.

56 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Choose an
instance type

07

Select a Linux-based AMI

08

Choose an instance type

The instance type denes the

performance characteristics of your Linux box in
terms of its clock speed, available RAM, internal
storage and network capabilities. The only
instance type that qualies for the free usage
tier is t2.micro.
Make your choice and then click Next:
Congure Instance Details.

10

Attach storage

09

Congure instance details

11

Tag your Linux Instance

The storage conguration of an

instance is described using a machine
denition called an AMI (Amazon Machine
Image). An AMI species, among other things,
the contents of the boot volume. Select an AMI
based on a Linux distribution of your choice
from the list in section Quick Start (not a
database instance, an Amazon RDS instance
doesnt grant you superuser access at the OS
level). Instances labelled Free tier eligible do
not incur any costs so long as you remain within
the time allotment of up to 720 hours per month
throughout the rst 12 months after your
account is rst registered.

On the next screen, you can select how

many instances to start, whether you want
them to be persistent (leave the Purchasing
option check box deactivated), if they should
have their own privileges to access your AWS
services (IAM role>None), and congure

networking. It is best to launch an EC2 instance

in a virtual private cloud (VPC), which is a fancy
way of saying that Amazon will isolate it from
other users instances by means of smart
routing. Older AWS accounts may also offer an
option labelled EC2-Classic, which does not
have this protection, so if you see it, dont use it.
In the menu Auto-assign Public IP, select
Use subnet setting (Disable). Set the IAM role
to None and shutdown behaviour to Stop.
If you enable Termination protection, AWS
wont let you destroy the instance using the
Terminate command in the Console until you
remove this protection.
Leave the other options unchanged and click
on Next: Add Storage.

If you need additional volumes, you can

create and attach them now. Free Tier covers
up to 30GB of General Purpose (SSD) storage
giving you a maximum baseline performance
of slightly under 100 IOPS (see EBS Volumes
boxout for more information).
Now click on Next: Tag Instance.

Tags on AWS are key value pairs that store

information that can help you to organise your
AWS resources. Using tags is purely optional.
Dont sweat it you can always edit tags later if
you need to. If nothing comes to mind, click on
Next>Congure Security Groups.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

13

12

Configure security groups

Think of Security Groups as settings for

an AWS rewall that specify Enable rules for
inbound and outbound trafc. For each Linux
instance, you need to enable ingress access
(inbound trafc) on TCP port 22 for SSH from
at least one IP address (yours). Unless you are
on a static IP (or an IP range), you may have
to enable access from anywhere. If you need
other services, add the corresponding rules (eg
open port 80 for HTTP and 443 for HTTPS if you
want to run a web server). Then click Review
and Launch.

13

Create or select a key pair

Verify your settings and hit Launch. The

wizard will ask you to create or select a key.
Passwords are out, key pairs are in. A private key
is what authenticates you as the administrator of
your Linux instance. SSH will attempt to verify the
authenticity of your private key, based on a copy

Create or select
a key pair

of a corresponding public key that AWS is about

to save in the appropriate location of the Linux
system on your instance.
You could generate your key pair yourself and
upload the public key to the EC2 console, or you
can ask Amazon to create a key pair for you, which
is faster. Select Create a new key pair, give it a
name, download the private key to your computer
and correct access privileges on it:

You should be able to connect to it using any

stand-alone SSH client or the Java-based client
that Amazon provides. Navigate to the Instances
section of the Console, select your instance from
the list and click on the Connect button to view
instructions. Start an SSH client and enter this:

chmod 400 /path/to/yourPrivateKey.pem

The username is usually either ec2user or root,

but technically the creator of the AMI can set it
to whatever they want. If your initial username
is anything other than root, you can assume
superuser privileges using the command:

Once this is done, you can launch your instance. It

will show up in the section Instances of the AWS
Management Console for EC2.

14

Assign an EIP to your EC2 instance

Unless you chose to auto-assign a public

IP to your instance, it does not have a Public DNS
entry yet and is inaccessible from the outside. Click
on the link Elastic IPs in the left-hand navigation
pane of the EC2 console. Here you need to obtain
a new elastic IP address for your AWS account
(Allocate New Address) and associate it with your
instance (Associate Address).

15

Connect to your Linux instance

Wait until your instance passes both

health checks and reports its state as running.

ssh -i /path/to/yourPrivateKey.pem
[email protected]

sudo su
If you attached any additional volumes to your
instance (besides the volumes that came with the
AMI), now is the time to format them, mount them
and add them to /etc/fstab.

Passwords are
out and key pairs
are in
Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 57

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

TR CKS
Put Linux to work with expert tricks
Continuously deploy web apps
60 Transition
to deployment with Capistrano
Generate complex graphics in ggplot2
64 Create
impressive plots with R and ggplot2
Monitor CPU temperature with Dizmo
68 Turn
Raspberry Pi into an Internet of Things
Write a book in LaTeX
72 Typeset,
beautify and customise a full book
Agile project management with Taiga
76 Implement
an organised project

88

64

72

60
76

58 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

80

Its a relief to learn that several tools, tricks and methods

can be applied to keep your device and data away from
prying eyes
interviewing and transcription
92 Simplify
Use Audacity and VLC to make life easier
your Raspberry Pi
96 Secure
Protect your data with these tips
Make a visual novel game with Python
80 Create
and play a book-videogame hybrid
Supercharge your Raspberry Pi
84 Enhance
the performance of your Pi
Host a media gallery with MediaGoblin
88 Share
videos, photos, audio and more

92

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 59

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

No matter where you deploy your app, Capistrano makes it

easy to deploy Rails (and other platforms) to *nix servers

Built from Ruby, and originally for Rails, Capistrano 3 is a

great t for deploying other web platforms

Changes like adding a QA stage after production, with qa.rb,

are both possible and easy with its modular structure

Capistranos exibility and power can mean a lot of

cong, but its relatively straightforward

Continuously deploy web

apps with Capistrano
Move your web apps development versions
painlessly from staging and testing to
deployment on databases and web servers
Resources
Ruby >= 1.9
(RBENV makes it easier)
git www.git-scm.com
Capistrano 3 www.capistranorb.com

60 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Capistrano automates deploying web apps

to your servers, taking care of tiresome tasks
like running a series of remote commands
on any box on which you have SSH access.
Capistranos main recipe is deploy, containing
tasks such as rollback, which consists of groups
of commands. Servers are given roles: app
application servers, web web servers, and
db database servers. Within this (expandable)
framework, its easy to adjust Capistranos
conguration les for your particular app and
collection of servers. Basic set up is simple
enough, but Capistrano 3 is a exible framework

and you will need to go a long way beyond this

simple introduction if you want to begin to get
the full use of it.
We will need a recent Ruby, Git (plus a GitHub
account) and a Rails project youre working on.
Also rbenv makes working with Rails easier,
and capistrano-rbenv makes sure Capistrano
uses the correct rbenv version of Ruby for
deployment. It doesnt matter whether you run
Passenger, Unicorn or Puma as your app server,
but note that there are Capistrano plugins to
help with extra tasks on all of them. Search
rubygems.org for the full choice.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

03

01

On the
server

Install Capistrano

Essentially, Capistrano copies your app

from Git, over SSH, to your server and takes care
of all of the operations youd have to do if you were
to move the les by hand. Capistrano will deal
with any database migration, changes to les
and le names, restarting the web server and so
on. Installing Capistrano, and the extras package
which is nice to have, is a simple:

gem install capistrano

Any problems, check your Ruby installation. The
capistrano-ext gem you may see referred to
elsewhere is no longer essential, as features like
extra staging options have been integrated into
the main codebase.

03

On the server

On your servers, youll need a similar

environment of rbenv, Git and your choice of
Apache or Nginx. Use rbenv to grab the latest Ruby
(or an earlier one if appropriate to your app):

rbenv install --list

rbenv install 2.1.3

02

SSH Keys

If youve been logging into your web

server with a SSH password, its time to generate
keys. This is so that the login can be automated
for Capistrano (or any other scripts you want to
use its a good idea to do this on any server).
Youll also need it for your GitHub account if you
are going to be setting one up. Start generating
the keys with:

You wont need unnecessary packages like Ruby

documentation so when you come to install
bundler, specify no docs:

gem install bundler --no-ri --no-rdoc

Better yet, put:

gem: --no-rdoc --no-ri

include Capistrano and anything else you want.

Youll want more gems. In your projects Gemle:

gem capistrano, ~> 3.2.1

gem capistrano-rails, ~> 1.1.2
gem capistrano-bundler
# if you are using RBENV
gem capistrano-rbenv, ~> 2.0
# if youre using Unicorn app server
gem unicorn
# Otherwise gem passenger or puma
This will also integrate bundler with Capistrano.
bundle install downloads the gems specied
in your Gemle and installs them.
The ~> 3.2.1 means that while 3.2.2 will be
installed when its released, 3.3.0 will not to
avoid major version changes breaking your code.

ssh-keygen -t rsa
if youve not got one already in ~/.ssh/ and
copy the ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub to the server with:

ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub user@

remote-host
which works by substituting your username,
and servername or address.

in ~/.gemrc. Youll also need to set up the

database or separate database server - as
required by your setup. A typical Rails use case is
SQLite on the developers laptop and PostgreSQL
on the production servers.

04

Bundling gems

For a Rails project, you can skip the

install step and simply edit your Gemle to

Capistrano will
deal with any
changes to files
and file names
Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 61

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

08

05

Prepare
to deploy

Cong/deploy
bundle exec cap install creates

the necessary cong les and directories. It

is in these that we specify the actions that
Capistrano takes to deploy our app to staging or
to our production servers.
Note that staging and production are created
by default with les under cong/deploy, and
you can add a qa.rb le to that subdir if you
wish to add a third stage. Alternatively, you can
create all the extra stages at installation time:

cap install STAGES=staging,production,ci,qa

Note that staging and production are

created by default

08

Prepare to deploy

In deploy.rb, ahead of namespace

:deploy, you should add some lines relevant to
your project:

require bundler/capistrano
server 37.59.xx.xx, :web, :app, :db,
primary: true

06

Cong

The last step created the Caple,

tasks under lib/capistrano and deployed les
under cong/. Start with editing the Caple by
uncommenting the lines:

require capistrano/rbenv
require capistrano/bundler
require capistrano/rails/migrations

07

Secrets

Remember that everything in our app

is being shared with the team and anyone else
who has access to our Git repository, including
exposed passwords. Edit your .gitignore le to
add this line:

/config/database.yml
and make sure that the line starting Dir.glob at
the end of the above screenshot is present and
uncommented. This line ensures that all of the
RB les below lib/capistrano get loaded, including
any custom tasks in lib/capistrano/tasks that
youll want to later dene.

62 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Now you can edit /cong/database.yml for

your database locally and in your staging and
production environments.
Restart your Rails server and check its working
properly at http://localhost:3000

set :application, myblog

set :user, richard
set :deploy_to, /var/
www/#{fetch(:application}
# set :deploy_via, :remote_cache
# set :use_sudo, false
## repo details
set :scm, git
set :repository, [email protected]:jsmith/
myblog.git
set :branch, master
default_run_options[:pty] = true
ssh_options[:forward_agent] = true
set :keep_releases, 5
Note that here were deploying to just one server.
You might also want to add some specics for
your Ruby environment:

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

set :rbenv_type, :system # or :user

set :rbenv_ruby, 2.1.2
set :rbenv_prefix, RBENV_
ROOT=#{fetch(:rbenv_path)} RBENV_
VERSION=#{fetch(:rbenv_ruby)}
#{fetch(:rbenv_path)}/bin/rbenv exec
set :rbenv_map_bins, %w{rake gem bundle
ruby rails}

11

Parallel lines

With the simple on/in/do syntax of the

Rake-derived DSL, exible splitting of tasks
across servers is easy. For example, to run
something on every server at once:

on :all, in: :parallel do

# parallel task here
end
Getting your servers to start a task in sequence,
perhaps to avoid hitting a shared database,
involves dening :sequence and then:

on :all, in: :sequence, wait: 15 do

# sequential code here
end
For a rolling restart of a large cluster, you can
group servers together to go in parallel:

09

Test and prepare

Setting tests will halt the deployment

should tests fail:

# tests under lib/capistrano/tasks/

run_tests.cap
set :tests, []
Now edit the set :server_name and server lines
in cong/deploy/production.rb to your servers
domain name.
Were about ready to deploy now. You could
add a task deploy:setup_cong to install the
server software, and that would be desirable with
a multiserver setup but were keeping things
simple in this introduction, hence the earlier
manual set up of the server.

10

Deploy

Now for deployment. Our cong wound

up the spring; to set the clockwork in motion we:

cap production deploy

For that to work rst time, youll have had to have
done a bit of work on the cong beyond what
weve specically outlined in the case of many
setups. Capistrano is designed to expand and
stretch to cover all sorts of circumstances, and
your app and server setup wont be exactly the
same as anyone elses. Although, that said, if you
deploy to a large cloud provider then they may
have Capistrano example congs you can copy.
Capistranos modularity and exibility means
theres a lot to explore to get it doing what you
need. It is essentially a utility for running tasks,
in parallel, across remote servers

on :all, in: :groups, limit: 3, wait: 5 do

# Your rolling restart...
end
You can see the parallel execution of code for
different groups of servers in the Capistrano
developers example over at bit.ly/1FuodCh
(look under Parallelism), which was developed
specifically to replace the previous versions more
hacky parallel do |session|.

12

Off the Rails

Theres plenty of documentation

available out there to go beyond the simple
introductions we give here. The Capistrano
website
(http://capistranorb.com)
should
be your rst port of call, but youll nd docs
elsewhere for integrating Capistrano with
everything from Jenkins to AngularJS
just double check to make sure that youre
reading something that has been updated
for Capistrano 3. Integrating Capistranos
scripts for continuous deployment into a larger
environment of a continuous integration server
like Jenkins is easy enough a job in Jenkins, as
an example, has cap deploy as its build step (and
your Git repository as its URL).
Away from Rails, gems do exist that can ease
deployment for most web platforms, from
Sinatra to Django. For Drupal (with Drush and
the CapDrupal gem) you can automate taking
the site ofine, backing up the database, cloning
your new code and pointing the site root there,
updating the database, and putting the site back
online as well as all of the advantages of cap
deploy:rollback.

SSHkit
The Capistrano 3 development process gave
birth to the SSHkit library developed by Lee
Hambley who did much of the great work of
making Capistrano 3 such an improvement
over an already pretty useful piece of code.
SSHKit is a lower level toolkit that
Capistrano uses for everything such as
logging, formatting, connection management
and pooling, parallelism, and batch execution.
You too can use it for running commands in a
structured way on one or more servers.
Within Capistrano, youll nd SSHkit called
upon most of the time you use on(). To use it
yourself, start with some of the examples on
the GitHub page and adapt for your site.
Here SSHkit will build a path from the
nested directories:

on hosts do
within /var do
puts capture(:pwd)
within :log do
puts capture(:pwd)
end
end
end
Behind the scenes File.join() is taking care of
the slashes for you to build the paths and it
should return:

/var/
/var/log

Above The numerous usage examples on

SSHkits GitHub page hint at its potential

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 63

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

This is a density plot

that is drawn on
top of a histogram.
Drawing using
layers has many
advantages

This is the full

R code of the
chrome.R script
used in step 11. The
produced image is
simply amazing

This plot combines

a scatter plot layer
with a smooth layer.
The shape of each
point depends on
the value of the
Linux variable found
in the LUD dataset

This is the format

and some of the
data from the
LUD dataset used
in this article for
illustrating the
varied capabilities
of ggplot2

Generate complex
graphics with ggplot2
Seen as the new version of S, learn how to
create truly impressive plots using R and
the ggplot2 package
Resources
R Project r-project.org
RStudio rstudio.com
ggplot2 ggplot2.org
Documentation
docs.ggplot2.org/current

RSQLite

bit.ly/1ArJvkc

64 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

R is a GNU project based on S, which is a

statistics-specic language and environment
developed at the famous AT&T Bell Labs. You
can think of R as the free version of S. Despite its
simple name, R is a powerful piece of software
for statistical computing with many capabilities
and an interpreted programming language.
R packages can greatly extend its
capabilities. Ggplot2 is an R package, written
by Hadley Wickham, that is used for producing
statistical and data graphics, working with plots
in layers. Despite being a powerful package,
it is reasonably easy to learn and produces
sophisticated and beautiful plots that are of
publication quality. Its main difference from

most other graphics packages is that it has a

deep principal grammar. Learning its grammar,
which is based on the book The Grammar Of
Graphics, will help you design better plots but
it is not required in order to follow this article.
In other words, the grammar tells that a plot is
a mapping from data to aesthetic properties of
geometric objects.
This article is full of practical examples that
demonstrate the use of ggplot2 for drawing
many different kinds of plots, including a plot of
the Chromes history le!
Feeling comfortable with mathematics
and statistics is helpful but not vital for
understanding this article.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

03

Use
quickplot()

Experiment with your data and the

various types of plots that R and
ggplot can generate

01

Install ggplot2

First run R. The ggplot2 R package isnt

installed by default, so check if you already
have it installed by running:

> require(ggplot2)
Loading required package: ggplot2
If its not installed, download and select:

> install.packages(ggplot2)
If you execute the library() function without
arguments, youll get a list of installed packages.
To get a detailed output, run the installed.
packages() command without any arguments.

02

About R and data visualisation

R is a command line application, which

is ne for plain text output but not for graphical
output. RStudio is a more preferable graphical
wrapper for R.
When visualising data, remember that not
every plot suits every data set. This knowledge
comes from experience, and experience
comes from experimentation, so dont forget to
experiment with your data and the various types
of plots that R and ggplot2 can generate.

03

Use quickplot()

The ggplot2 package offers two

main functions: quickplot() and ggplot(). The
quickplot() function, qplot(), is similar to the
plot() R function and is good for simple plots.
The quickplot() function hides what happens,
whereas ggplot() is harder to use but exible.
The following commands draw a plot using
columns V2 and V3 from the data variable:

> str(data)
data.frame: 16180 obs. of 3
variables:
$ V1: num 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.98 1 1.06 1 ...
$ V2: num 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.01 0.03 0.01
0.58 0.85 1.01 1.01 ...
$ V3: num 0.05 0.05 0.05 0.05 0.05 0.05
0.27 0.48 0.65 0.75 ...
> quickplot(data$V2, data$V2)

correlation, a technique that shows whether or

not two variables are related. As the coefcient
of correlation approaches zero there is less
of a relationship (no correlation), whereas
the closer the coefcient is to -1 or +1, the
stronger the correlation (positive or negative)
is. A positive correlation shows that if one
variable gets bigger then the other does as
well. Conversely, a negative correlation denotes
that if one variable gets bigger then the other
becomes smaller.
The presented plot was produced using the
following commands:

> data <-read.table(uptime.data,

header=TRUE)
> require(ggplot2)
> require(GGally)
> require(CCA)
> ggpairs(data)

05

Generate bar plots

Now use a sample dataset for

plotting. The LUD dataset, available from
FileSilo, is stored in a plain text le, named
Lud.data. The titles of the columns are named
to refer to their values. You can load the
dataset into R using the following command:

> LUD <- read.table(lud.data,

header=TRUE)
The bar plot is very simple. The following
command generates it:

> ggplot(LUD, aes(x=RAM, y=SSD)) + geom_

bar(stat=identity)

The following version adds colour to the output:

> quickplot(data$V2, data$V3, color=data$V1)

04

Work with ggpairs()

The ggpairs() command nds relations

between variables and then calculates the
coefcient of correlation value. The coefcient
of correlation is linked to the statistical

If you type ggplot(LUD, aes(x=RAM, y=SSD))

without specifying a plot, the command will
show the Error: No layers in plot message.
To change the colour of the bars, try the
following variation:

> ggplot(LUD, aes(x=RAM, y=SSD,

fill=Uptime)) + geom_bar(stat=identity)

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 65

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

11

06

Visualising Chromes
history le

Add titles and labels

Sooner or later, its likely that you will

want to add a title and labels to the output.
Adding a main title is simple you just need
to make use of the labs() function in order to
do so. The previously plotted bar plot can thus
be modied with inclusion of the the following
command at the end:

> ggplot(LUD, aes(x=RAM, y=SSD,

fill=Uptime)) + geom_bar(stat=identity)
+ labs(title=This is a Title)
Adding X and Y labels can be done by entering
the following:

> ggplot(LUD, aes(x=RAM, y=SSD,

fill=Uptime)) + geom_bar(stat=identity)
+ labs(title=This is a Title) + xlab(X
Label) + ylab(Y Label)

07

More about titles and labels

You can add or change the appearance,

size, font and colour of all the titles and labels.
The following command makes the title blue and
its size larger using the theme() function:

> ggplot(LUD, aes(x=RAM, y=SSD,

fill=Uptime)) + geom_bar(stat=identity)
+ labs(title=This is a Title) + xlab(X
Label) + ylab(Y Label) + theme(plot.
title = element_text(size = rel(2),
colour = blue))
To change the attributes of the X and Y axes, use
the axis.line function:

> ggplot(LUD, aes(x=RAM, y=SSD,

fill=Uptime)) + geom_bar(stat=identity)
+ labs(title=This is a Title) + xlab(X
Label) + ylab(Y Label) + theme(plot.
title = element_text(size = rel(2),
colour = blue), axis.line = element_
line(size = 3, colour = red, linetype
= dotted))

66 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

08

Create histograms

Generate histograms using the geom_

histogram() function, similar to the geom_bar()
function, and change the number of bars using
the binwidth argument. Plot a simple histogram
using the following command:

> ggplot(LUD, aes(Years)) + geom_

histogram(binwidth=1, color=gray)
Use geom_density() function for a density plot:

> ggplot(LUD, aes(Years)) + geom_

density(binwidth=1)

09

Add smooth layers

> ggplot(LUD) + geom_

histogram(aes(Years, ..density..),
binwidth=2, color=white) + geom_
density(aes(Years, ..density..),
binwidth=2, color=red)

Another type of layer is the smooth

layer. It doesnt display raw data, but rather a
statistical transformation of the data.
The (method=lm) parameter generates a
linear regression line instead of a LOESS (local
polynomial regression tting) curve, which is
the default for samples with less than 1000
observations. For bigger samples, the default
method is called GAM (generalised additive
model). The produced plot was generated with
the following commands:

If you put the geom_density() command rst,

the histogram will be on top of the density
plot and therefore the density plot will not be
completely visible.

> q <- ggplot(LUD, aes(x=RAM, y=SSD))

> q + geom_point() + geom_smooth()
> q + geom_point() + geom_
smooth(method=lm)

The following command draws a histogram and

a density plot on the same plot:

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

12

10

Work with shapes and facets

The following plot draws points using

different shapes depending on the value of the
non-continuous Linux variable:

> ggplot(LUD, aes(x=RAM, y=Uptime)) +

geom_point(aes(shape = Linux))
A facet allows you to split up your data by one
or more variables and then plot the subsets
of data together. Using facets is also a great
way of generating conditional plots. Try the
following point plot, which will generate two
plots depending on the two different values of
the Linux variable:

> ggplot(LUD, aes(x=RAM, y=Uptime)) +

geom_point() + facet_grid(Linux ~ .)
The facet_grid() function works ne when using
continuous variables.

11

Visualising Chromes history le

The history le of Chrome (simply called

History) stores its history of visited websites
in SQLite3 database format. Therefore, you
can use the RSQLite R package to read it. The
chrome.R script generates an impressive

output using RSQLite and ggplot2 with many

layers. It can be executed as follows:

$ ./chrome.R
Loading required package: methods
Loading required package: DBI
$ ls -l Rplots.pdf
-rw-r--r--@ 1 mtsouk staff 5089 Nov 27
09:42 Rplots.pdf
The produced result is automatically stored in a
le called Rplots.pdf le.

12

Use box plots

A box plot can give you information

regarding the shape, the variability and the
median of a data set, quickly and efciently.
The presented box plot was generated using the
following R command:

> ggplot(LUD, aes(Linux, Uptime)) +

geom_point() + geom_boxplot(colour =
red) + labs(title=A Box Plot)
Based on the two discrete values of the
Linux variable, the output is divided into two
subsets. For each subset, a separate box plot is
produced individually.

13

Box
plots

Create R Scripts

It is very useful to learn how to create

R scripts in order to use ggplot2 inside bigger
scripts that can run as cron jobs. A sample script
le, named ggplot.R shows you how:

$ chmod 755 ggplot.R

$ ./ggplot.R
$ ll
total 160
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 mtsouk staff
234 Nov
14 22:41 ggplot.R
-rw-r--r-- 1 mtsouk staff 73820 Nov
14 22:43 ggplot.png
$ file ggplot.png
ggplot.png: PNG image data, 1280 x 800,
8-bit/color RGBA, non-interlaced

14

Final thoughts

Before we wrap up this tutorial, here are

some things to keep in mind. The more you use
ggplot2 and the better you know your data, the
better the output youll achieve. Just make sure
that you dont forget that ggplot2 works using
layers! Also, to take full advantage of plotting
youll have to plot the right metrics, and nding
the right metrics is not always as simple as it
might seem.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 67

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Monitor CPU
temperature with Dizmo
Turn your Raspberry Pi into an Internet of Things with
this CPU temperature gauge tutorial

Full code
FileSilo.c
o.uk

The Raspberry Pi is an exciting

prospect for people interested in an
Internet of Things size, power and
exibility make it perfect for powering
any
Internet-connected
device
around the home or ofce. Setting up
a Raspberry Pi to be the brain of an IoT
network isnt exactly a case of selecting
the right software in Raspbian, though;
theres a lot of custom work you need to
do to get one going.
This is where Dizmo comes in,
enabling you to control IoT objects
using an online API that you can then
access remotely. To show you how it
works, were going to have it track the
Raspberry Pis core temperature. In this
tutorial we are going to work entirely
over SSH, but you can easily do this
straight on the Pi the benet of SSH
though is that for a real IoT, it will be
easier to maintain remotely.

68 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Above Dizmo is
designed to be
a multi-touch
interface

01

Dial into your Pi

Make sure your Raspberry Pi can connect to your

network, either via Wi-Fi or ethernet cable, and nd out the
IP address by using ifcong. Use this IP to dial into the Pi from
another system with:

$ ssh pi@[IP address]

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Left Builds are

available for various
distros on the
Download page, and
you can also check
the pricing plans

02

Install dizmoSpace

03

Launch issues?

If you havent already, head to www.dizmo.com, grab

dizmoSpace and install it to the system you plan for it to work
with. All you need to do is download the zip and unpack it, then
click the Dizmo icon or run it from the terminal.

If Dizmo is complaining about libraries when you try

to run it, youll need to install some extra software. Open the
terminal on the PC youre working from and install the extra
software with the following:

$ sudo apt-get install libavahi-compat-libdnssd-dev

$ sudo apt-get install libavahi-client-dev

04

Download node.js

Now, we need to grab the latest version of node.js for the

Raspberry Pi. Back in the SSH connection to your Raspberry Pi,
use the following:

$ sudo wget http://node-arm.herokuapp.com/

node_latest_armhf.deb
$ sudo dpkg -i node_latest_armhf.deb

A Dizmo widget is a HTML file,

packaging resources together to
create an interface or graphic.
Our HTML file uses jQuery

05

Add framework

Use node -v to check if its installed correctly it should

spit out a version number for you. Once thats done, install
express.js, which will be our web application framework:

$ sudo npm install -g express

$ sudo npm install -g express-generator

06

Install framework

Well create the folder www in var and create a symlink

for everything to run. Do this by moving to var, creating www and
making the symlink with:

$ cd /var
$ sudo mkdir www
$ cd www
$ sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/node_modules/
/node_modules

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 69

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Above As its
multi-touch, Dizmo
is perfect for
interactive table
displays in meetings

09
07

It will say its listening on *.3000. Start up a new terminal, ssh in,
and create the folder /public with mkdir /public to save all of the
CPU data in.

Package le
First, create the le package.json with sudo

nano

package.json, then enter:

{
name: ServeSysinfo,
version: 0.0.1,
dependencies: {express: 4.x}
}

Dizmo space walk

Enjoy some preinstalled projects
to see exactly
what Dizmo
can do
PiGauge Create
a custom app
to monitor the
temperature of
your Raspberry Pi,
and then go even
further
Browser Create
an entire custom
display using
a variety of
information that
can connect to
and through the Pi

You can now start the node server by typing in:

$ node app.js

Internet
of Things
Its not a very
descriptive term,
but the Internet
of Things can be
almost anything.
Any item that is or
can be connected
to the internet
or networks,
such as modern
automated lights,
can be connected
up to Dizmo and
the Raspberry Pi.

Start node.js

08

App node

10

CPU information

11

Make a cronjob

We are going to use the vcgencmd command to get the

CPU information from the Raspberry Pi. We will write a script that
will do this and then write the info to sysinfo.json. Download the
le grabsysinfo.sh from FileSilo and put it in /usr/local/bin.

Now, create a le called app.js and enter the following:

var express = require(express);

var app = express();
app.use(express.static(__dirname + /public));
app.listen(3000, function(){
console.log(listening on *.3000);
});

70 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

We will make it so that the temperature is updated every

ten minutes. You can make it update much faster if you want, but
have a play around with that. Open up cron with sudo crontab
-e and add this at the end:

*/10 * * * * /usr/local/bin/grabsysinfo.sh

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

With these building blocks,

you can now start doing
more interesting IoT things
controlling the GPIO ports,
getting more information

12

Start creating the widget

It is time to actually start building the widget. First of all,

create a folder on your local machine called Gauge and cd to it.
Now you need to download the rst le called info.plist into here
by using the following:

14

Style guide

Now well add the CSS style sheet for the Dizmo widget.
As usual, this styles up the display on the page that will become
our widget. Download it with:

Above Weve gone

for a simple CPU
temperature gauge,
but the possibilities
really are endless

wget x/style.css
$ wget x/info.plist

15

Final application

The nal step is to create the application.js le, which will

call the temperature from the Raspberry Pi using Ajax. You can
download it using:

wget x/application.js
Change the IP address to the one on your Pi.
Once thats done, you can test out the widget compress the
Gauge folder to a .zip and then change the .zip to a .dzm. Launch
dizmoSpace and drag the dzm le onto it for it to start.

13

Index le

A Dizmo widget is basically a HTML le, packaging

resources together to create an interface or graphic. Here, we
have the main HTML le that uses jQuery, which helps display
the temperature. Still in the Gauge folder, download it with:

$ wget x/index.html

16

Get coding

With these building blocks, you can now start doing more
interesting IoT things controlling the GPIO ports, getting more
information, having it connect to other objects to control them
as well. Check out the Dizmo website for more details on projects
that you can do.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 71

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

This is the main

website of the
LaTeX project where
you can nd further
useful information

Execute the
latexmk Perl script
in silent mode;
Latexmk is a
handy automatic
LaTeX document
generation routine
that saves you time

Create your own

table of contents,
list of gures or list
of tables easily

Write a book in LaTeX

Learn how to typeset, beautify and
customise a whole book using LaTeX and
its extensive packages
Resources
LaTeX project
www.latex-project.org

Comprehensive TeX
Archive Network
www.ctan.org

Latexmk
http://users.phys.psu.edu/~collins/software/
latexmk-jcc

The LaTeX Companion,

2nd Edition, Addison Wesley, 2004

72 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Donald Knuth created TeX in the 1970s as a

computer language for use in typesetting,
after wanting to write books on computer
algorithms and nding that no previous
typesetting system was acceptable for him.
Its origins resonate with the story of the C
programming language that was created in
order to write the UNIX operating system TeX
had many low-level commands and it was
difcult to use, so Leslie Lamport decided to
make it a little easier to digest. He programmed
many higher-level TeX commands and that
became LaTeX, which is widely used today.

Many people want to typeset a large body

of work or a book of around 350 pages, for
example, but the biggest concern can be the
choice between using LaTeX or Adobe InDesign.
LaTeX often proves itself to be the best option,
so this tutorial will go through the process and
some of the modications and additions that
can be made to a book LaTeX-style.
Although this article assumes that you are
already familiar with LaTeX, if you have never
heard of it and are wondering why its so popular,
you should know that it helps many book and
dissertation authors construct their work easily.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

01

Install LaTeX

First you need to install LaTeX. There is a

plethora of packages out in the wild that contain
the name LaTeX, so running apt-cache search
latex will return a lot of output. You can get a
more helpful output by simply executing the
following command:

04

Install the LaTeX

perl script

$ apt-cache search latex | grep ^latex

Your journey to using LaTeX will start by running
the following command:

$ sudo apt-get install latex209-base

latex209-bin

02

Use LaTeX

After installing the basic LaTeX packages

you should try to compile the consequent LaTeX
code to make sure that everything works exactly
as you expected:

\documentclass{article}
\title{The LaTeX version of the Hello
World program}
\author{Mihalis Tsoukalos}
\date{January 2015}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
Hello world!
\end{document}
You can compile the document using the
following command:

$ latexmk helloWorld.tex
The previous command produces a DVI le that
you can convert into PDF format as follows:

$ dvipdf helloWorld.dvi
If you view the generated le you can easily
understand that the default LaTeX styles
produce high quality output. The problem is that
if everyone is using the default styles, all books
produced using LaTeX will look exactly the same!

03

Pros and cons

LaTeX has its advantages. It comes with

many default styles and if they are sufcient for
you, then start writing immediately! Its also fast
to type and edit text, so you can use traditional
UNIX tools to make changes to your LaTeX code.
As a consequence, you dont need a very fast
computer to run LaTeX. Additionally, LaTeX les
are easily interchangeable between different
platforms. One of its biggest advantages is that
the output looks highly professional because
LaTeX is a pro tool.
However, you do have to compile the LaTeX
code to see its output, and LaTeX needs time and
experimentation to set up and change the default
document styles, which can be annoying.

04

Install the latexmk Perl script

This command installs a highly

recommended Perl script to improve the whole
book-building process:

$ sudo apt-get install latexmk

From now on you can translate your LaTeX code
into PDF format using the following command:

$ latexmk -pdf book.tex

Most of the packages you will need are installed
by default. Installing a new LaTeX package

can be tricky the best thing to do is read the

documentation and follow the instructions
before trying to install it. For this tutorial its also
worth installing the texlive-full, texlive-mathextra, texlive-extra-utils, texlive-generic-extra
and texlive-latex-extra packages.

05

Organise the files

Its time to start organising the les

for a more simplied process. The name of
the core LaTeX le will be book.tex. Instead of
using a big and unmanageable LaTeX le, you
can make it more overseeable and put the
book chapters and the appendices in separate
les using the include LaTeX command:

\include{ch1}
\include{apA}
Here, LaTeX will search for les named ch1.tex
and apA.tex in the current working directory.
This is the most important task of the whole
process because it allows you to edit smaller
and more manageable les.
We will use four chapters and two appendices
in order to make our example book, but you can
use more or less pages on future projects if you
wish. After creating the les for all the book
chapters and appendices, and referencing them
inside book.tex, you are completely ready to
start adding content.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 73

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

06

Create a bibliography

You can now use the MyCode style inside LaTeX

using the following command:

LaTeX offers BibTex for dealing with

bibliographic references. All BibTeX entries will
be located in a le called booklist.bib. Each
BibTeX entry has the following format:

@book{Kernighan84,
author = {Brian W. Kernighan and Robert
Pike},
title = {The UNIX Programming
Environment},
year = {1984},
isbn = {013937681X},
publisher = {Prentice Hall Professional
Technical Reference},
}
The following LaTeX commands are used for
beautifying and inserting the bibliography
into this project:

\bibliographystyle{alpha}
\addcontentsline{toc}{chapter}
{Bibliography}
\bibliography{booklist}

08

Mini table of contents

If your book chapters are on the

large side you may need to add a mini table of
contents at the beginning of each chapter. There
is a LaTeX package called minitoc that does the
job. The next LaTeX code adds support for the
mini TOC functionality:

If you change the \relsize value from -1 to +1, the

code size is going to get bigger.

\usepackage{minitoc}
\setcounter{minitocdepth}{1}
The previous commands should be combined
with the \dominitoc command that must be used
once to turn on the mini TOC functionality. Finally,
type \minitoc at the beginning of each chapter to
actually add the mini table of contents.

You can add a reference to the Kernighan84

book in your LaTeX code as follows:

\cite{Kernighan84}

07

\begin{MyCode}[fontsize=\relsize{-1}]
#include <stdio.h>
int main (int argc, const char * argv[])
{
printf(Hello, World!\n);
return 0;
}
\end{MyCode}

10

Include a header and footer

The following LaTeX code changes the

header and the footer of each book page. Right
pages (RO) have a different rule to left pages
(LE). Its also worth noting that the rst page of
each chapter (CO) has another rule that puts the
page number at the footer of it without adding
any header information.

Sort content

You can LaTex to sort and organise

content more easily. LaTeX generates pages with
table of contents, list of gures and list of tables.
You can create your own table of contents (TOC)
using this command:

\tableofcontents
If you only want to include entries for chapters
and sections, include the next command before
the previous command in Step 6:

\setcounter{tocdepth}{1}
In order to include the list of gures you might
have in your book you can do so by inserting the
following command:

\listoffigures
If you have tables in your book, you can generate
the list of tables as follows:

\listoftables

74 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

09

Format code

The book is going to contain multiple

blocks of code to showcase certain techniques,
therefore the code must be well formatted. Using
the following LaTeX code you can dene a new
style called MyCode for formatting code:

\usepackage{relsize, color, fancyvrb}

\CustomVerbatimEnvironment{MyCode}
{Verbatim}
{numbers=left,frame=lines,framerule=
1pt,rulecolor=\color{blue},framesep=4mm}
Creating a style saves you time. Additionally, if you
want to make a global change to the output format
of code in your book, all you have to do is go to its
definition, make the changes and recompile the
book. Also, if you want to create a new style similar
to an existing one, you can copy and paste the
existing style definition code, choose a different
name and make the modifications you want.

\renewcommand\headrule
{{%
\color[gray]{0.5} \hrule height 1pt
width\headwidth
\vspace{-4pt}}}
\fancyhead[RO]{%
{\bfseries\S\ \thesection\ \textbar\ \
LARGE\thepage\normalsize\ \textbar}
}
\fancyhead[LE]{%
{\bfseries\textbar\ \LARGE\thepage\
normalsize\ \textbar\ \S\ \
thesection\ \textbar\ \leftmark}
}
\fancypagestyle{plain}{%
\fancyhf{}
\fancyfoot[CO]{%
{\bfseries\LARGE\thepage}
}
\renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0pt}%
}

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

12

Generate
an index

14

Some other useful info

Producing
a
more
fancy
and
professional chapter heading can be done
easily using the fncychar package:

\usepackage[Bjornstrup]{fncychap}

15
You should rst insert the following code for the
modications to work:

\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\pagestyle{fancy}
\fancyhf{}
\renewcommand{\chaptermark}[1]{\
markboth{#1}{}}
The last command is for resetting the existing
denition of the header and the footer.

12

Generate an index

The following command helps you create

a book index:

Work with the NOTE style

Before talking about the NOTE style you

should rst download the picins.sty le and put
it where your LaTeX les are:

$ wget http://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive/
macros/latex209/contrib/picins/picins.sty

\usepackage{makeidx}
The NOTE style was dened as follows:
The next LaTeX command puts the index
information into the generated le:

\printindex

\usepackage{picins}
\usepackage{amsthm}
\newcommand\NOTE{\linethickness{1mm}\
parpic(14mm,5mm)[sl]{NOTE}\noindent}

This code adds the word Knuth to the index:

11

Format figures

You can easily alter the existing format

of a picture caption by using the following
LaTeX commands:

\usepackage{caption}
\DeclareCaptionLabelSeparator{par}{\par}
\DeclareCaptionFormat{dashedlabel}{\
textbf{---} #1 \textbf{---}#2#3}
\captionsetup{format=dashedlabel,margin=1
cm,singlelinecheck=true, font=small,labe
lfont={sc,bf,},textfont=it,justification=ce
nterlast,labelsep=par}
Now you will be able to add a specic gure in
your book as follows:

\begin{figure}[tb]
\centering
\fbox{\scalebox{0.45}{\
includegraphics{figures/ch1/f0101.
jpg}}}
\caption{Adding a figure}
\label{ch10:fig1}
\end{figure}

You can now add a note as follows:

\index{Knuth}
\NOTE A small note doesnt look very elegant

13

Add tables

This code produces an elegant table to

blend in with the rest of the book:

\begin{table}[t]
\centering
\setlength\extrarowheight{2.5pt}
\setlength\extrarowheight{2.5pt}
\begin{tabular}{cccc}
\hline \addlinespace
\textbf{Name} & \textbf{Size in Kbytes} &
\textbf{\# of files} & \textbf{\# of keys
in Info.plist} \\ \addlinespace \hline
amazonsearch.wdgt & 144 & 8
& 13 \\
Tags - HTML.wdgt & 88 & 17 & 11 \\
Temperature Monitor.wdgt & 416 & 50 & 10 \\
Wikipedia.wdgt & 696 & 125 & 12 \\ \
addlinespace \hline
\end{tabular}
\caption{Statistical Information.}
\label{ch3:stats}
\end{table}%

The only drawback of the style is that it

needs to have at least two lines of text to look
pleasant on the page.

16

How it worked

Our example book was built step-bystep: a minimal book.tex le was generated
rst, then chapter and appendix les without
any data were added to the project.
At this point it was time for us to write
the book by adding text, images, tables,
bibliography and index entries, while
experimenting with the look of the existing
LaTeX styles, making changes to them, adding
new ones and correcting errors.
This is denitely the safest procedure to
follow when writing your own book while using
LaTeX LaTeX was able to process all the les,
as well as the index and the bibliography,
without any difculties. So go on and make your
own creation!

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 75

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

All of the major options

like backlog, wiki, issue
and admin options are
available in this sidebar

This chart displays the

work left (in terms of
project points) versus
time (number of sprints)

You can add user stories one

by one or in bulk. Add stories
to the current sprint with the
Move to current sprint button

Click on the sprint task board

or sprint name to view the task
status. Add tasks related to a
user story in the task board

Implement agile project

management with Taiga
Software projects are hard to manage but
Taiga is a great alternative to old PM tools

Resources
Taiga home page taiga.io

76 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Software has found its application in almost

everything we use in our daily lives. But
software development has its problems, a major
one being measurement its intangible outputs
prove difcult to manage. A task may seem
easy but its hard to judge what issues you may
face when coding, especially if its a distributed
architecture with several components. So, how
can you overcome this?
This question was answered with the advent
of agile development methodology. Agile
methodology focuses on the end product, but

there is a dearth of good open source, agilefocussed tools most of them are old, simply
tweaked to support agile. That was until Taiga.
Taiga is an open source, agile-based PM tool.
Named after a forest biome, it aims to be at the
centre of an ecosystem your projects and your
team with its new UI and agile-based layout.
Lets start this tutorial with its installation on
Ubuntu 14.04 and then go on to see its internals.
The installation here is for a development
server. There is a different production server
installation process on the Taiga website.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

02

01

Installation

Taiga has three main components that

need to be installed separately.

Now set up the initial user and database. This

command will create a user called taiga and then
a database name taiga under the user taiga:

Taiga-back
installation

Create a new virtualenv called taiga using

the following command:

mkvirtualenv -p /usr/bin/python3.4 taiga

Taiga-back: The backend part (also supports
the APIs).
Taiga-front: The frontend part.
Taiga-events: Web sockets gateway. Completely
optional and not required for general project
management purposes. Well skip this section.
Before we get going with the web frontend, we
need the backend running. Taigas backend has
several dependencies like development headers,
C compiler and other packages. First, run the
below commands to install all the dependencies:

sudo apt-get install -y build-essential

binutils-doc autoconf flex bison libjpegdev
sudo apt-get install -y libfreetype6dev zlib1g-dev libzmq3-dev libgdbm-dev
libncurses5-dev
sudo apt-get install -y automake libtool
libffi-dev curl git tmux
Taiga uses PostgreSQL 9.3+ as the database, so
install the database:

sudo apt-get install -y postgresql-9.3

postgresql-contrib-9.3
sudo apt-get install -y postgresqldoc-9.3 postgresql-server-dev-9.3

sudo -u postgres createuser taiga

sudo -u postgres createdb taiga -O taiga

02

Taiga-back installation

Now lets set up the Python environment.

You also need to install virtualenvwrapper a set
of extensions that make sure your system isnt
clogged with third party libraries by running them
in an isolated virtual environment.
Run the following commands to install Python
and virtualenvwrapper. Then restart your shell
to reload the bash with the virtualenvwrapper
variables and functions.

sudo apt-get install -y python3 python3pip python-dev python3-dev python-pip

virtualenvwrapper
sudo apt-get install libxml2-dev libxsltdev

Then install dependencies for the backend:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Next, populate the database with some sample
data; this will also create a user admin with
password 123123:

python manage.py migrate --noinput

python manage.py loaddata initial_user
python manage.py loaddata initial_
project_templates
python manage.py loaddata initial_role
python manage.py collectstatic --noinput
python manage.py sample_data
Now you will be able to run the server. Remember,
however, that the workon command enables the
taiga virtualenv:

Download the Taiga backend code from GitHub

and run the commands below. The current
directory will change to taiga-back.

workon taiga
python manage.py runserver

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/taigaio/taigaback.git taiga-back
cd taiga-back
git checkout stable

Once youre done and have completed

this step correctly, you should be able
to view a JSON that will represent the
complete list of endpoints via this address:
http://localhost:8000/api/v1/.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 77

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

03

Taiga-front installation

For the next step, lets complete the

Taiga frontend installation. Taiga uses various
programming languages other than the usual
CSS/HTML/JavaScript in the frontend, so it
really needs to be built before your browser can
fully understand it.
Download Ruby and Gems. After setting the
path with the last command, restart the shell
with the following:

04

Create project
and user stories

sudo apt-get install -y ruby

gem install --user-install sass scss-lint
export PATH=~/.gem/ruby/1.9.1/bin:$PATH
Now complete the NodeJS installation with:

sudo apt-get install -y nodejs npm

Then you will have to run the node command to
check if the command is recognised. If this isnt
the case, you should run:

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/bin/node.

Now install gulp and bower:

Sprints have predefined time

slots, usually two to three weeks

sudo npm install -g gulp bower

To add a user story, just click Add a new user

story in the lower half of the page. On the next
page, ll in the details. Note that you can assign
project points to the user story via this page. You
can also add several stories at once using the
bulk insert button (next to the Add a new user
story button), and do not forget to change your
admin password to something memorable!

then get the code and compile taiga-front:

cd ~ git clone https://github.com/taigaio/

taiga-front.git taiga-front
cd taiga-front
git checkout stable

05

Compile using:

npm install
bower install
Now run gulp:

cd ~/taiga-front
gulp
If you nd that you have npm errors while
running gulp, clear the temp les and install all
dependencies again.

rm -rf ~/.npm; rm -rf node_modules

npm install
bower install
gulp
If it is successful, you should now be able to see
Taiga at http://localhost:9001.

78 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

04

Create project and user stories

With Taiga now running in your browser,

the next step is to create a project. We already
have the admin user created with the password
123123, so log in to Taiga with the credentials and
click on Create Project. Then select the Scrum
template and click Next. Finally, ll in the relevant
details (name and description) and click Create.
This will take you to the Project Backlog page. On
the upper half of the page you have the burn-down
chart and the lower half has the user story list. On
the right sidebar, you can see the Sprints section.
As is generally done, lets start with creating user
stories, since the uninitiated, agile development
methodology requires software features to be
broken down into smaller units based on a users
point of view. These units are called user stories
in agile jargon.

Create sprints

Now that the user stories are available,

lets plan the sprints. As you may be aware, sprints
are predefined time slots, usually two to three
weeks. Before a sprint starts, developers commit
a set of user stories to be finished by the end of the
sprint. When the sprint is over, scrum master takes
stock of the situation and decides the user stories
for the next sprint, and this cycle continues.
To create a sprint in Taiga, just click the New
Sprint button on the right sidebar. On the next
page, fill in the name and the duration of the sprint.
By default, sprints are of two weeks the start and
end date gets filled automatically. Since you have
already added user stories, just go to the backlog
page, select the relevant user stories and click the
Move to current sprint button. Thus you can have
stories assigned to the sprint and the rest of the
stories available as backlog. Once you have user
stories assigned to sprints, you can further break it
down to dependent tasks.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

09

07

06

Kanban template

Kanban has its roots in Japan. It uses a

work-in-progress system as the core mechanism
to expose system operation (or process) problems
and stimulate collaboration to continuously
improve the system. While traditionally used
in manufacturing, it is now widely used as a
variation of agile methodology.
With Taiga you can either create a project with
the kanban template or view the kanban template
inside the scrum template. To create a simple
kanban project, just select kanban during project
creation. If you want your project to be viewable
as both scrum and kanban, create the project
under a scrum template and then enable kanban
under Admin>Project Prole>Modules>Kanban.
Now you will have a kanban option on the lefthand sidebar. Click here to view your scrum
project in a kanban template.

Issue management

Another important aspect of software

development is the issue management. Taiga
offers a comprehensive issue management
system that includes bugs, questions and
enhancements. To raise an issue, click on the
Issues link on the left sidebar. Then click on the
New Issue button in the top-right corner. Fill in
the details like the type, priority, severity and so
on, and then click Create. You can now see the
issue in the Issues list but it is still not assigned
to anyone. Click on the Unassigned button to
assign it to a team member. Note that the left
sidebar has different lters available to use as
well. Click on a lter to view relevant bugs. You
can also search issues using the search box on
the top-left sidebar.

08

Wiki

With Taiga at the helm, software

documentation is taken care of as well. You
can see the Wiki link on the left sidebar below
the Issues link, so just click on the link to get
started. You can see the WYSIWYG interface
text editor. Add the text in the editor and once
done, click the Add Link button. Here you can
assign the name to the wiki page. Once the name
is assigned, you have your rst wiki page ready.
You can add other pages similarly and even link
pages among themselves as required.

09

Admin
options

Admin options

View the admin options (gear icon)

in the bottom-left corner. These settings are
specic to projects, so you can have different
settings for different projects. There are ve
major ones under the admin settings. Project
prole lets you set up project details, enable/
disable modules and more. Custom attributes
lets you create a custom status for issues,
priorities and statuses. Manage members and
Roles & permissions have options for user/
privilege management. Integrations merge the
project with GitHub, Bitbucket and GitLab, and
sync events with Webhooks.

10

Gamification

If you didnt notice at this point in the

tutorial, there is a fair amount of gamication
added to Taiga in a very subtle, unobtrusive
way. Take the iocaine dose, for example. While
you edit a task related to user story during
a sprint, you are able to click on the Iocaine
button to indicate to others that you are
stretching to nish the task.
There are other features planned too for
example, the poker planning module that lets
your professional team negotiate on the time
that could be required for the task at hand, and
the kudos badge to encourage some positive
communication amongst the team.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 79

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Make a visual novel

game with Python
Bridge the gap between books and videogames by creating an
interactive novel with Python and Pygame

QChange scenes to add more depth to the story, and allow the game to have decisions and routes

Resources
Python 2:
www.python.org/

Pygame:
pygame.org/download.shtml

IDLE Python IDE

Game assets
Code from FileSilo (optional)

80 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Most people look for a compelling story in

modern videogames, and those that dont
have one are appearing less and less. A great
way to tell a pure story is through the genre
of visual novels, and you can make one fairly
simply in Python. These interactive novels are
an extremely popular form of entertainment in
Japan, and usually work by having the player
click through a story and make decisions as they
go along in order to experience different plot
points and endings.

In Python, this is a relatively simple project

to create, but with the addition of the Pygame
module we can make it easier still, and even
more expandable for the future. Pygame adds
better support for positioning the images and
text, creating display windows and using mouse
and keyboard inputs, thereby simplifying the
coding process.
Well be coding this in standard Python 2, so
make sure to run it in IDLE 2 and not IDLE 3 while
you are writing, testing and coding.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

01

Get Pygame dependencies

The best way to install Pygame for your

system is to compile it. To do this you need to
rst install the right dependencies. Open up
the terminal and install the following packages,
which in Ubuntu looks like:

$ sudo apt-get install mercurial

python-dev python-numpy libav-tools
libsdl-image1.2-dev libsdl-mixer1.2dev libsdl-ttf2.0-dev libsmpegdev libsdl1.2-dev libportmidi-dev
libswscale-dev libavformat-dev
libavcodec-dev

02

Get the Pygame code

03

Build the Pygame module

To install it, we need to do it in two

steps. First we need to prepare the code to
install using the terminal with:

Next we need to download the code

for Pygame direct from the source. Still in the
terminal, you can do this by typing in:

$ python setup.py build

$ hg clone https://bitbucket.org/pygame/
pygame

Once thats nished you can then actually install

it with:

Which will download it to the folder pygame.

Move to that using CD pygame in the terminal so
we can continue building it.

$ sudo python setup.py install

This wont take too long.

04

Install in other ways

05

Get the visual novel les

06

Understand the script le

If the above doesnt work (or is a bit

daunting) you can check the website for binary
and executable les that will work on other
operating systems and Linux distros. Head to
http://pygame.org/download.shtml to get the
les you need for your specic system, including
Windows and OS X. The rest of the tutorial will
work in any OS.

Weve uploaded the code to FileSilo,

and here were going to walk you through what
weve done to make it work. Download the les
for the visual novel and unzip them. The two
les we care about for the moment are the
visualnovel.py and script.py python les this
is where all the important code is.

For the moment the script le is small

and literally just holds the script for the game.
Its made up of events for the visual novel to
move between, line by line, by splitting it up into
scenes. This includes the location of each line, the
character, the actual line itself and information on
how the game ows. These are matrices with the
information in, and are completely customisable.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 81

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

07

How the script relates

In our game, the code pulls in

elements from the script le as it goes. We'll
explain how that works later, but this also
allows us to implement decisions later on to
change which direction the game might take
you in.

08

Starting the main game

We dont need many modules for the

current state of the visual novel. Here weve
imported the new Pygame module, our script
as a module and the time module for aesthetic
reasons were going to have the code pause in
bits rather than just instantly change scenes to
the next line. We also initialise Pygame with a
simple pygame.init()

09

Add variables and assets

We add a mixture of information to run

the novel. Dene the size of the display (1000
pixels wide, 563 high), along with RGB colours
for the code to use. Were also telling Pygame
what font to use and how large for certain
sections and also loading images for the game.

82 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

10

Start the game

Create a display for the game. Pygame

works by constantly updating the display with
new information. To show how this works, the
menu function adds elements to the display
(which weve titled screen), such as lling it
with colour, adding shapes and using blit to add
images or in this case text. Once youve created
a buffer of changes to the screen, you update it
with the ip() function.

11

See the mouse

As weve created the button as a

rectangle and now an image on the menu, we
need to recognise when the mouse is hovering
over it to know when the button is clicked. First

we have to use event.get() to see the mouse

in general, then we look for the position with
get_pos(). After that, we wait for it to click, see
where it clicked (using the co-ordinates of the
rectangle) and make a decision after that.

12

Start the story

13

First screen

Our start_game function is called

when the mouse clicks the right position and
we prepare the game, getting the characters,
locations and progression through the game
script. The rest of this function uses this info to
pull in data from the script to make the game
ow properly.

The rst screen is handled differently,

and acts to get every element up on the
interface before we continue it makes the
code take a little less time to process as we

The code pulls in elements from the

script file as it goes

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

begin. The getattr allows us to use the string/

integer associated with our place in the story
and call upon the relevant scene function from
the script le. We then use an if statement
with an iterative function to successively add
screen element to give the illusion that its
building up the rst screen. We nish it by
advancing the progression value.

The code here is very expandable,

allowing you to add decisions that take
you to different scenes

15
14

Add variables and assets

Similarly to the way that our original

startup code works, our next if statement and
iteration checks to see what is different on the
next line, and if it moves to a different scene
function. It will also change anything that is
different without lling up the buffer more
than needed. Where weve made no change is
labelled with a 0 in the scripts.

The starting function

We nish our code bit with a simple

function that starts off the entire game. This is
just to encapsulate the entire code and allows us
to add different ways of turning it off in the future.
IDLE when running the le will load everything
up and then run the game() function at the end
this is similar to how you can add a __main__
function at the end which will start the code in the
command line.

16

Expand your code

The code written is very expandable,

allowing you to add decisions that are logged
to take you to different scenes (or routes, in
visual novel terminology) and make your game

feel even more interactive. This would not

require the addition of very much more code
than the if statements, and it would also be a
good opportunity for you to look into adding in
some graphical buttons to click and use the
collide function.

17

Move the assets

Currently the code has the scriptspecic assets stored in the main visualnovel
le. These can be moved over to the script,
which will allow you to make the visualnovel
le signicantly more modular. This means
that you can then have multiple scripts with
different assets that will load at startup. With
the basic game done, enjoy playing!

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 83

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Supercharge
your Raspberry Pi
Get the most out of your Raspberry Pi with these
performance-enhancing tips and tricks
Your Raspberry Pi is plugged in. Raspbian is installed on
the SD card and you are right in the middle of setting up a
wireless print server or building a robot to collect your mail
from your doormat.
But are you truly getting the most from your little
computer? Do the components youre using maximise the
potential of your Raspberry Pi or are they holding it back?
Perhaps you havent explored the full set of options in
Raspbian, or youre running the entire OS from SD card,
something that can reduce SD card lifespan.
Various tools and techniques can be employed to
improve performance, from choosing the right hardware
to overclocking the CPU. You might even maximise storage
space on the Raspberry Pis SD card or all but replace it with a
secondary device to help improve speed.
Use these tips and tricks to recongure your Raspberry Pi
setup and optimise software and hardware to ensure you get
the best performance for your projects.

84 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

01

Use better storage hardware

Your choice of storage media can have an impact on your

Raspberry Pis performance, regardless of the operating system.
A low capacity SD card with poor error correction, is going to be
slower than a larger card with greater resilience, so you need to
nd the right balance for your project and shop wisely.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

02

Choosing the best SD card

Various standards of SD card are available, with the

more expensive designed for better error correction. For the best
performance on your Raspberry Pi, choose an SDHC card with a
high rating. The same advice applies to MicroSD cards, which you
can use on your Raspberry Pi with an SD card adaptor or directly
insert into a Raspberry Pi B+.

03

05

Write data to RAM

Rather than reading and writing data to your SD card

something that will eventually result in a deterioration of
reliability and performance you can congure Raspbian to
write to the system RAM, which will speed things up slightly
and improve SD card performance.
This is achieved using fstab (le systems table), a system
conguration available in most Linux distros.

Make the most of your storage

Youll typically need 1-2GB of storage for your chosen

Raspberry Pi distro, so any remaining storage on your SD card will
be used for updates and data you create or save.
In Raspbian you can open a command line and run the
configuration utility to gain more space (only if your SD cards
greater than 2 GB):

06

Enable fstab in Raspbian

This is much like creating a RAM disk in Windows and

is almost as easy to setup. In the command line, enter:

sudo nano /etc/fstab

sudo raspi-config
Add the following line to mount a virtual le system:

04

Expand the Raspbian partition

Maximising the partition affords the full capacity of

your SD card, which will increase the medias lifespan (there
is more space to write too, so the same sectors arent being
overwritten as often).
With raspi-cong running, use the arrow keys to select
expand_rootfs in the menu. Then wait briey while the
partition is resized.

tmpfs /var/log tmpfs defaults,noatime,nosuid,mode=

0755,size=100m 0 0
Follow this by saving and exiting nano (Ctrl+X), then safely
restarting the Pi:

sudo shutdown -r now

Above Theres a
great guide to SD
cards at elinux.org/
RPi_SD_cards

Buy rated
SD cards
Its all too tempting
to boot up your
Raspberry Pi with
an image copied
to an SD card that
you just pulled
out of your DSLR
or phone. After
all, theyre all the
same, right? The
chances are that
your chosen SD
card was one that
you had lying about
when you bought
your Raspberry Pi.
It might be good
enough but if you
want the best
performance,
a high-rated
SDHC card with
plenty of space is
recommended.
Such media is
inexpensive and
can be bought
online or in
supermarkets.
Just make sure
youre buying a
known brand!

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 85

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Above Having your

lesystem on a USB
stick is great for
backups as well as
performance boosts

Picking
an external
USB drive
Speeding up your
Raspberry Pi by
migrating the
root lesystem to
an external USB
drive is a start,
but what sort of
device should you
use for the best
performance? With
a USB thumb drive
you can add ash
storage up to 16
GB without running
into any signicant
problems (the
larger the drive, the
greater the current
is required to read/
write). Anything
larger is expensive
and unnecessary.
If youre planning
to use an external
HDD, there are no
power issues as it
will have its own
power supply. As
ever, your choice
should suit your
project.

07

Configure fstab for fast performance

Upon restarting, the virtual le system will be

mounted and /var/log on the RAM disk. Other directories that
can be moved to RAM include:

10

Copy Raspbian to USB

Using a blank Ext4-formatted USB thumb drive (or

external HDD) as the destination drive, enter:

sudo dd bs=4M if=~/backup.img of=/dev/sdc

tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,nosuid,size=100m 0 0
tmpfs /var/tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,nosuid,size=30
m00
tmpfs /var/log tmpfs defaults,noatime,nosuid,mode=0755,
size=100m 0 0
tmpfs /var/run tmpfs defaults,noatime,nosuid,mode=0755
,size=2m 0 0
tmpfs /var/spool/mqueue tmpfs defaults,noatime,nosuid,m
ode=0700,gid=12,size=30m 0 0

Leave the backup on your computer, just in case something

goes wrong. With an SD card and USB storage device sharing
an identical disk image, its time to consider what youre going
to do next create a faster Raspberry Pi.

Add each to /etc/fstab in nano.

08

Move your OS to a HDD

09

Back up the SD card

If youre concerned about the lifespan of the SD card,

why not reduce your Raspberry Pis reliance on it? Instead of
using the SD card as a sort of budget SSD, change its role and
add a HDD or USB stick to run the operating system, leaving the
SD card for bootstrapping. This can give a marked performance
boost to the SD card.

Begin by creating a copy of your Raspberry Pis SD card.

Shut down, remove the card and insert it into your desktop
computer. In the command line, run:

sudo dd bs=4M if=/dev/sdb of=~/backup.img

The path /dev/sdb represents the SD card. Copying should take
5-10 minutes. When complete, remove the SD card and connect
your USB device.

86 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

11

Split the Raspbian partitions

Ideally, the boot partition should remain on the SD card

while the root lesystem is run from the external HDD or USB
thumb drive. Using your preferred partition manager (Disk Utility
is in most distros), unmount and delete the root lesystem from
the SD card, ensuring you have retained the boot partition. After
removing the SD card, connect your USB device and delete the
boot partition, taking care to leave the root lesystem intact.
Then resize the root lesystem on the USB device, making sure
that 10 MB remains.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

12

Identify the root lesystem

With this conguration youre going to have the SD card

and the external USB storage connected, so you need to tell
the Pi where the root lesystem is. Still on the desktop Linux
computer with your SD card inserted, run:

sudo nano /boot/cmdline.txt

15

Boost performance with overclocking

Need more from your Raspberry Pi? It is possible to

overclock the computer, although you should be aware of the
risks inherent with this activity. You should also ensure that
your Raspberry Pis processor is suitably cooled heatsinks
for the CPU, Ethernet controller and power regulator can be
purchased online.

Above Heat sinks

for the Pi are widely
available and usually
cost less than $10

Find root=/dev/mmcblk0p2 (or similar) and change that to

read root=/dev/sda2 which is your external USB storage. Save
and exit.

13

Add other USB devices

Overclock
with a
heatsink

You can now restart your Pi with the storage devices

attached, but as soon as you connect further USB media
youll suffer problems. Avoid this by installing gdisk:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install gdisk
Then run gdisk:

sudo gdisk /dev/sdb

Enter ? to display the options and select Recovery and
Transformation options (experts only), followed by Load MBR
and Build Fresh GPT. Tap ? one last time and select Write
Table to Disk and exit. Remove and replace the USB device
and run gdisk again. This time enter I and then 1 to display the
Partition Unique GUID.

14

16

Overclock your Raspberry Pi

Overclocking is available through raspi-cong. Launch

from the command line and arrow down to the overclock
option. Four further options are available: Modest, Medium,
High and Turbo. With your ideal clock speed selected, exit
raspi-cong and restart your Raspberry Pi to apply:

sudo shutdown -r now

Now you will need to perform tests to see how stable it is
overclocked. Raspberry Pi founder, Eben Upton, suggests
running Quake 3 as a good stress test. Should the Pi fail to
boot, hold Shift to boot without overclocking, run raspi-cong
and select a more modest overclock.

Make your Pi fast & reliable

Make a note of the GUID and then switch to the SD

card. Reopen cmdline.txt and change root=/dev/mmcblk0p2
to root=PARTUUID=XXXXXX, where the numerical string from
the partition unique GUID should replace the XXXXXX. When
youre done, save and exit. You can then start your Raspberry
Pi. Congratulations, your Raspberry Pi is now faster and more
reliable to use!

17

Run Raspbian without the GUI

Despite these changes, you may nd that the GUI

remains slow. If you nd yourself running a lot of commands in
bash, the best thing to do is disable launching into X. In raspicong, choose boot_behaviour and select the rst (default)
option to ensure your Pi boots to the command line. Should
you need the GUI, enter startx in Terminal.

Overclocking
is potentially
dangerous to
any computer
system, which
is why its
great that the
Raspberry Pi
developers
have included
the facility in
their approved
operating system
and allowed
its use under
warranty. If
youre using
this feature,
heatsinks and
water cooling
systems are
available for the
Raspberry Pi to
ensure you dont
bake the CPU
and RAM when
in use.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 87

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Here, you can add new les or create a collection of media les.
Files can be assigned to collections at any point of time

All creative commons licences are available here to assign

under an available media le

Update account settings here and track media les using the
Media processing panel, which shows details about uploads

This section lets you upload a media le and update the

relevant information regarding that le

Host your own media

gallery with MediaGoblin
MediaGoblin provides a way to share videos, photos or audio
recordings with your loved ones, without worrying about privacy

Resources
MediaGoblin home page
mediagoblin.org

88 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

YouTube is not only a website anymore, its

become a phenomenon. Millions of hours are
spent or wasted daily in watching videos of
cats, dogs and humans doing strange things.
With the predictive playlist appearing just after
you nish a video, it is sometimes very difcult
to close the window and you go on and on,
watching one video after the other. But YouTube
is a dangerous place for personal videos and
other media that you dont want strangers to
access. Though it has an option to make your
videos private, you dont really know how private
it is. So we need to nd a solution that has the
perfect match of convenience and privacy.

This is where MediaGoblin comes in. This

open source tool can help you organise, host
and stream media from your own PC without
having to worry about privacy. If you are a power
user, you can also have it run on a web server
and let other people add their media. There are
a range of other useful features available too,
like tags and collections to name just two.
In this tutorial, we will begin with the steps
to install MediaGoblin on Ubuntu and
then proceed to get it working and see it in
action. We have used Ubuntu 14.04 as the host
system and MediaGoblins clone from their
Gitorious repo.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

02

01

Sort out dependencies

MediaGoblin is a full-edged mediastreaming platform and therefore it has a few

software dependencies that you will need
to take care of before installing MediaGoblin.
Lets take a look at these dependencies and
how to install them.
Python 2.6 or 2.7 This interprets the MediaGoblin
source code.
Python-lxml Binds certain C libraries to Python.
Git For downloading and updating the repository.
SQLite/PostgreSQL This is where everything is
stored. SQLite is the default option and works
ne for small set-ups, but you need to use
PostgreSQL if you expect more users.
Python Imaging Library This adds imageprocessing capabilities to Python interpreter.
virtualenv This is used to create isolated Python
environments.
You can install all these on a Debian based
system, using the apt-get command. It can be
done with a single command:

sudo apt-get install git-core python

python-dev python-lxml python-imaging \
python-virtualenv

02

Set up the database

As we said before, the default SQLite

database doesnt perform well for deployments
involving more than two or three users. So, if you
are planning to have more than three users, its
recommended to use the PostgreSQL database.
To set it up for MediaGoblin, rst download and
install the packages using apt-get:

sudo apt-get install postgresql

postgresql-client python-psycopg2
It has other required packages too. The
installation process creates a user (postgres)
with sufcient privileges to handle the database,
but with security in mind we will create
a separate user for MediaGoblin. To do this, type:

sudo -u postgres createuser -A -D

mediagoblin
Once the user is created, create the database:

03

Set up the
database

MediaGoblin user

If you followed along with the previous

step properly, youll have noticed that we didnt add
in a password for the user named mediagoblin. So
how does the system authenticate the user? This
is done via the local Unix authentication. Local Unix
authentication allows a system user to connect to
any PostgreSQL database on the system without
a password. To enable this, you need to create a
system user with same name as the PostgreSQL
database user.
So, what we need to do now is to create an
unprivileged system user named mediagoblin.
Note that the user can be underprivileged because
MediaGoblin doesnt really need any special
privileges to run. This also helps to make the
system more secure. Run this command to create
the user:

adduser --system mediagoblin

Since it doesnt have password, you cant login to
this account but a switch is possible using:

sudo -u postgres createdb -E UNICODE -O

mediagoblin mediagoblin

sudo -u mediagoblin /bin/bash

Here the rst mediagoblin is the user name and

the second is the name of database.

Once created, you can then use this user account

for all further steps.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 89

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

04

Install MediaGoblin

To start the installation, you need to

create a working directory for MediaGoblin. This
is where the git repository will be downloaded.
Create the directory using:

06

Deploy
MediaGoblin

sudo mkdir -p /srv/mediagoblin.example.

org && sudo chown -hR mediagoblin /srv/
mediagoblin.example.org
As you can see, here we have created the
directory with elevated privileges (root) and
then change the owner to our underprivileged
mediagoblin user.
Lets now clone the MediaGoblin repo to this
folder. First, well switch to the mediagoblin
user and then change the directory over to the
working directory we have just created:

cd /srv/mediagoblin.example.org
Now start cloning:

git clone git://gitorious.org/mediagoblin/

mediagoblin.git
Then move to the mediagoblin folder created
cd mediagoblin. Initialise the repo and then
fetch the data:

git submodule init && git submodule update

Youll notice that we didnt take code from the
stable revision here but instead the master
branch of the git repository.
MediaGoblin is under rapid development so it
makes sense to use the master, at least until a
consistent release.

05

MediaGoblin doesnt need any

special privileges to run
This script sets up virtualenv and also helps you
keep it updated by running make update, but
as per the developers of MediaGoblin, this is still
under development and may break. To update the
codebase at a later point of time simply run:

git submodule update && ./bin/python

setup.py develop --upgrade && ./bin/gmg
dbupdate

Install Virtualenv & others

MediaGoblin uses virtualenv a tool

to help manage the dependencies by creating
isolated Python environments. Its already
available in the package, so set it up by using:

(virtualenv --python=python2 --systemsite-packages . || virtualenv

--python=python2 .) && ./bin/python
setup.py develop
If you are feeling adventurous, you can also try the
experimental deploy system (shell script) instead
of the earlier command:

./experimental-bootstrap.sh && ./configure

&& make

90 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Set email_sender_address as the ID you want

to use for sending system mails.
Uncomment the line sql_engine =
postgresql:///mediagoblin if you are using
PostgreSQL.
Edit direct_remote_path, base_dir
and base_url as per the root of virtual host.
Now update the database using ./bin/gmg
dbupdate. This populates the database with

You also need to install Flup before the setup

concludes. Install it using:

MediaGoblin data structures. Finally, test the

MediaGoblin server using:

./bin/easy_install https://pypi.python.org/
pypi/flup/1.0.3.dev-20110405

./lazyserver.sh --server-name=broadcast

We will see more on Flup and FastCGI in the

following sections.

06

Deploy MediaGoblin

Now that dependencies are set up

and MediaGoblin is installed, we will edit the
MediaGoblin conguration les specically
the mediagoblin.ini le located inside /srv/
mediagoblin.example.org/mediagoblin. Here are
the changes required:

You should now be able to connect on your

browser port 6543.

07

Flup and FastCGI

MediaGoblin
uses
FastCGI
for
deployment and FastCGI needs a server. So
we need Flup a FastCGI server. We already
installed Flup in step ve, so lets now see why
FastCGI is so important. Later you will learn a
FastCGI setup with an Nginx server to serve
MediaGoblin pages.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

FastCGI is a protocol to interface

interactive programs with a web server its
an improvement over CGI (common gateway
interface). CGI, while easy to implement, had
problems in scaling since separate processes
were created for each web request a huge
overhead for the host OS. FastCGI solves this
by using persistent processes to serve series of
web requests; moreover, these processes are
owned by FastCGI server (Flup in our case) and
not the web server. This de-couples webserver
and FastCGI server, allowing effective scaling.
Now any server that supports FastCGI can be
used for MediaGoblin. Nginx is a good option
because of easy conguration and setup.

08

08

Nginx
setup

Nginx setup

Nginx has been slowly rising in the

ranks of the web server of choice and is
currently one of the most used web servers. An
acronym for Engine X, it is a high-performance
HTTP server. It does support a lot of other
protocols too but those are out of scope for
us here. Lets go straight to the server set up.
Create a conguration le at /srv/mediagoblin.
example.org/nginx.conf and create a symbolic
link into a directory that will be included
in your nginx conguration with one of the
following commands (as the root user):

ln -s /srv/mediagoblin.example.org/nginx.
conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
This way, a change in one le automatically
reects in the other. You need to then add the
contents to the conguration le, as shown in
the screenshot below. Remember to change the
elds as per your local paths. Once done, restart
nginx using sudo /etc/rc.d/nginx restart. If
everything goes well, start MediaGoblin using:

cd /srv/mediagoblin.example.org/
mediagoblin/ ./lazyserver.sh --servername=fcgi fcgi_host=127.0.0.1 fcgi_
port=26543
Visit mediagoblin.com to see an example
MediaGoblin gallery in action.

09

MediaGoblin home

The setup process is a little lengthy,

and for the novice user it may seem a complex
task, but the steps are simple and you just
need to follow them one at a time. Once you
have successfully completed the process, you
can enjoy uninterrupted media streaming for
you and your loved ones.

The rst step after youre ready with your

own MediaGoblin instance is to create an
account. This is because you can browse
the collections anonymously but you need
an account to upload media. To create an
account click on the Log in button on the topright corner. In the log in page that appears
next, click on Create one here to open the
user registration page. Fill the details in the
registration page and you are good to go! Just
log in with the credentials and then click on
your user name to be redirected to your prole
page. Here you have the options to upload
media and manage your prole.

10

Add media

Adding a media le is a breeze, just

click on the Add media button on the right
side of your prole page. In the next page,
upload the le, set the title of the media, add a

description, add tags and set the license youd

like to assign to the media.
Finally click on the Add button to upload
the le. On the left-hand side of the page, you
may notice that there is a Browse Collections
link. This option lets you browse through the
collections that have been created by other
users (if you are on a multi-user environment).
A collection is a group of media les that are
logically bundled together, generally with the
intention of representing an event or other
such scenarios. Note that media les can
be added to these collections at any point
in time and not just during the initial upload,
so its worth checking them periodically.
To create a collection yourself, click on
the top-right icon to reveal the account
related options and then click on Create new
collection. You can then add in the title and
description to add your own collection.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 91

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Record your interviews and master

your audio using Audacity to make it
as easy to understand as possible

Congure playback to vastly improve

control of your audio and make
transcription slightly easier

Transcribe quicker and without leaving

the text document by using global
hotkeys to control the audio

Simplify interviewing and

audio transcription on Linux
Make transcribing easier by following our
guide through every stage
Resources
Audacity audacity.sourceforge.net
VLC videolan.org/vlc

92 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Transcribing is one of the most dull, joyless,

time-consuming activities that we writers
have to undertake. While we love to bring
you some of the great interview content that
can come out of it, the process of getting
these words onto a text document is not our
favourite thing.
Over the years, however, many of us in the
press have perfected methods to make the
job of transcription easier. On Linux, we can
nd some of the best and most customisable

software, so actually getting a setup going for

interviews can be really easy once you know
how to do it.
While what were talking about in this
tutorial is aimed more towards interviewing,
we have successfully adapted it for press
conference use and there is no reason to
see why you couldnt use it in lectures to
make note-taking easier while at college or
university. Are you ready? Okay, then let's go to
the rst Step.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

05

01

Choose an environment

The rst thing you need to do is select

your recording environment. Whether youre
recording on the phone, on VoIP or in an open
room, try and make sure youre in as quiet a place
as you can be. While not always possible, when
this can be controlled its best to keep it in mind.

02

Gather equipment

You need a dictaphone and Android

phone or a computer. The former are better
for open situations, whereas for VoIP convos a
dictaphone wont do much. We recommend to
use your smartphone, so that you can you move
the audio le to a PC for better transcription.

Not very stealthy but excellent if you need to

record an interview over the phone. These coils
end in a 3.5mm jack that can be plugged into
dictaphones or computers with a microphone in.

04

Record with VoIP

05

If all else fails

Depending on what kind of VoIP service

youre using, you may already have some kind
of recording function installed. Something like
Skype wont have one installed but you can grab
the Skype Call Recorder app instead.

If you need to record a call or audio on

your PC, then you can manually record the full
sound coming from your system using Audacity.
You will need to have Pulseaudio as your sound
server, select Pulse as the input in Audacity, start
recording then go to volume control and select
Monitor from the Capture drop-down menu.

06
03

Phone tap

We have a device colloquially called a

phone tap its a pick-up coil that attaches to
the back of a phone receiver via a suction cup.

Check equipment

Its a common mistake and it happens

to everyone, but always check your equipment
before doing the interview. One day the same
setup will not work as you expected for some
reason, and nding out after an hour-long
interview is never fun.

If all
else fails

Android apps
There are a few Android apps that will
record voice calls for you, however unless
youre using a rooted device you wont be
able to properly record the audio coming
down the line from the caller. What a lot of
them do is use the microphone to try and
pick up whats coming from the receiver
end of your phone. Experiment and nd
what is best for you, but otherwise you may
have to look into rooting a phone to get the
call recording to properly work.

07

In the interview

Taking notes on paper or with a notetaking application as you record can be useful
for transcribing at a later point. Make sure you
keep track of time stamps of interest so that
you can easily nd them when you are editing or
listening back later.
This enables you to fast-forward straight to
the parts of audio that you need when youre
writing your article or typing up your notes. You
can also do this in Audacity by hitting Ctrl+M
while you are recording.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 93

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

10

08

Transfer to PC

If you have recorded your interview on

an external device, now its time to move it to
your PC. While dictaphones and some apps will
have features that let you rewind and slow down
playback we can do it far better by having it
unied on one system.

10

Create a noise
prole

Create a noise profile

Before lopping off a quiet spot, you can

use this to create a noise prole for the locale
youre in. This can remove any background
noise and make the interviewee slightly clearer.
To select the quiet spot, go to Effect then Noise
Removal and hit Get Noise Prole.

12

Amplify and normalise

13

Mix down

You can look at trying to get a more

consistent volume by amplifying different
parts of the audio especially if one side is
consistently and noticeably more quiet than
the other. Amplify can be found in the Effects
menu. You may also have one side being far too
loud for this you can use Normalise to bring
the volume down.

09

Clean up the audio

Before we start transcribing, we can

do a few things to make the process slightly
easier for ourselves. Import the audio into
Audacity and, for now, trim the length and any
breaks that you might have, so that you can
gain a better understanding of how much there
is to transcribe.

94 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

11

Remove noise

Once the prole has been set, you can

start to experiment with removing it from the
track. Deselect the prole area and give it a
quick try for the whole track and the default
settings by going back to Noise Removal and
hitting OK. You can select areas to remove
noise from and change the settings to rene the
removal if it helps.

Some recorders will put interviewer and

interviewee on different sides of a stereo track.
This can be extremely annoying if you need to leave
one side of your earphones out, or if youre just
trying to pick up words. On the track itself theres
a drop-down menu where you can Split Stereo
Track and then turn each one into mono.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

16

14

Export the file

Once youre done with the le, export it to

your preferred le type. Well be using VLC for the
transcription stage, so you can use pretty much
any letype you can think of although lets not
try and test VLC at this stage, we want to make
the process easier not harder.

17

The most important ones we nd are

play/pause and very short jumps back and
forth. Double-click on the global key you want
to set and then perform the key combo that
you want to use. We like to use Ctrl+Space
for pause and Ctrl+Right/Left for skipping
make sure that what you use doesnt clash
with anything though.

18
15

Configure VLC

If you dont already have VLC, its time to

install it. We will make use of the global hotkeys
for this part, which will enable us to control it from
a different window. Once its installed, open it up.

16

Explore options

Go to Tools on the menu bar and continue

onto Preferences. At the Show Settings option,
go to All to get the advanced settings up. Scroll
down and look for the Hotkey settings option.
Heres where the global key settings are found.

Set the hotkeys

Get set up

The moment of truth is almost here get

your word processor or text editor up and get
ready to type. Close VLC, then open up the audio
le and have it play. Go back to your document
and try out your new global hotkeys if all goes
well, you can now skip backwards, forwards and
pause without leaving the transcription.

19

Time to transcribe

You can start transcribing right now if you

wish. One trick we use is to slow down the audio
just slightly in VLC you can do this by going to
Playback, Speed and then clicking Slower. This
reduces the speed down by about 25% and can
usefully give you just a bit of extra amount of time
to write something.

Explore
options

Machine
transcription
The state of voice recognition on Linux
is good there are APIs and workable
acoustic models that can actually parse
what youre saying into sounds and such.
The main issue right now is the lack of
open language models dictionaries
full of words and common grammatical
phrases. Unfortunately this means, for
the time being, that there are no real FOSS
solutions to machine transcribing that you
can then x later.

20

Transcribe better

With this setup, your transcriptions should

take a lot less time and generally be a little easier
to do. Hopefully, this will mean your final product,
whether its for your blog or a newspaper article,
or one of the many other text outlets out there,
turns out even better. Play about with some of the
things we have covered in this tutorial to make a
setup that perfectly suits your needs, and youll be
getting to the heart of your subject in no time.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 95

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Left Running a
private cloud? Make
sure no one can
break into it

Secure your Raspberry Pi

Concerned about the security of data stored on
your Raspberry Pi? Protect yourself with passwords,
rewalls and some physical security
There is a distinct security risk around
your Raspberry Pi. Storing anything
from passwords to rewalls, this
important saved data can be stolen
or pocketed with minimal effort if
someone knows how.
Therefore its a relief to learn that
several tools, tricks and methods
can be applied to keep your device
and data away from prying eyes. You
might, for example, be running a home
security cam with images uploaded to
a cloud account. These images would

96 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

be visible to anyone who possesses

your Raspberry Pis login details if
you havent bothered to change the
defaults. Such a project (and many
others) also demands that a rewall is
installed for further improved security
on a network.
Whether youre simply changing
passwords, keeping your Pi under lock
and key or installing a rewall, youll
be surprised at how easy it is to secure
your Raspberry Pi and protect all of your
important information and les.

What youll need

Q Velcro
Q Adhesive putty
Q Lockable cupboard,
strongbox, etc.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

With just a desktop computer

and SD card reader, there is a
way that you can recover
your password

01

Stop using the default password

Everyone who uses a Raspberry Pi knows that the

default Raspbian credentials are pi and raspberry. Naturally,
this means that anyone can sign into your computer if you
havent changed these defaults something youll need to do as
a matter of urgency. After signing in, open the terminal and set a
new password with:

passwd

04

Give the new account a password

With the new account set up, the next step is to set a
password. As youre not signed into the account at this stage,
you wont be using the passwd command. Instead, enter:

sudo passwd username

With the new account ready to use, you should be ready to
remove the default pi account from Raspbian altogether.

Use a
proximity
sensor

02

Change password with raspi-cong

If youre setting up a new installation of Raspbian,

changing the password is one of the rst things that you should
do. With a new install, the rst boot will automatically run the
raspi-cong screen.
Here, use the arrow keys to nd the second option, change
User Password and then follow the on-screen prompts to set
yourself a new passcode.

05

Delete the default Raspbian account

You no longer need the default user account, pi. Sign

out and login to your new account, and conrm it is correctly
set up by opening:

sudo visudo
and adding

username ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

to the nal line. Save and exit with Ctrl+X. Now thats done,
simply delete the old account with:

sudo deluser pi
Then remove the home directory:

sudo deluser -remove-home pi

03

Create a new user account

To completely baffle anyone attempting to gain access

using default credentials, take the most secure option and create
a new user account. In the command line, enter:

sudo useradd -m username -G sudo

The m switch creates a new home directory, while the second
sudo adds the new account to the superuser group.

06

Recover a lost password

If youve somehow forgotten your Raspberry Pi user

account password or suspect that someone has changed it,
what can you do?
With a desktop computer and SD card reader, there is a way
that you can recover your password. Begin by inserting the
Pis SD card into your PCs card reader.

If youre genuinely
concerned about
your Raspberry
Pis physical
security, you
may consider
employing
some additional
hardware to make
it less of
a target.
Your best option
here is probably a
proximity sensor
congured
to detect an
unauthorised
presence. When
coupled with
a buzzer, this
can detect the
presence of an
intruder and
alert you. Its
even possible to
congure such
an alert as an
email message if
youre likely to be
elsewhere, and it
makes for a great
side project.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 97

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Fwbuilder has a
great quick-start
guide that handily
annotates the
entire interface

Several rewall
templates are
available for the
most common
types of setup

The objects in
this panel can be
dragged out into
the rules panel on
the right-hand side

Hiding
hardware
Putting your
hardware out
of sight and/or
out of reach is a
good option for
security, and
for something
as small as the
Raspberry Pi and
an SD card you
have quite a few
options.
For instance,
using Velcro or
some adhesive
putty you
might attach
the computer
to the back of
a cupboard or
unit, kitchen
kickboards or
even under a car
seat. The SD card,
meanwhile, is so
compact that you
could easily place
it under a carpet
or even make a
home for it in a
cushion or shelf
just dont forget
where you put it!

07

Edit cmdline.txt

Find the le cmdline.txt and open it in your Linux

desktop text editor. Add the following to the end of the last line
of the le:

init=/bin/sh
As the Raspberry Pi boots, this command will be read,
enabling us to access a screen to reset the password. Save
and eject the card.

08

Change the lost password

Unfortunately you wont be able to use SSH to recover

the password, so instead connect a monitor and keyboard to
your Raspberry Pi. Boot the Pi and wait for the prompt, at which
point you should enter:

passwd username

10

Revert cmdline.txt

We are not done yet though. Safely shutdown your

Raspberry Pi with:

sudo shutdown -h now

With the Pi powered down, remove the SD card and insert it into
the card reader again. Open cmdline.txt in your text editor once
again and remove init=/bin/sh, then save and exit. This stops
anyone else from resetting your password.

Type the password, hit Enter and type it again to conrm.

09

Initialise the Raspbian boot

Thanks to the added code, we have changed the

standard Raspbian boot to display a new prompt that will let us
change the password.
When this is done, enter the following command to put things
back in order:

sync
exec /sbin/init
The Pi will now boot Raspbian normally, enabling you to sign in
with the new password.

98 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

11

Physically secure your Raspberry Pi

Keeping digital intruders out of your Raspberry Pi with

rewalls and secure account passwords is only part of the story.
To fully protect your Pi you need to think outside of the box.
Barely larger than a credit card, the Raspberry Pi computer
can easily be picked up and palmed. Physical security is
paramount, but a genuinely secure Raspberry Pi case for
example, one compatible with Kensington locks has yet to be
released. However the ProtoArmour aluminium case from www.
mobileappsystems.com can be screwed to a secure surface,
which is great for more permanent project setups.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Below If you tend to access your Pi

remotely via Wi-Fi, consider keeping
it locked away

12

Lock it in a drawer

13

Add a rewall

Probably the best way to keep your Raspberry Pi secure

is to make sure you keep it locked in a drawer or cabinet
particularly useful if you use the device as part of a security
cam system or as a cloud server storing valuable documents.
If no lockable storage is available and youre taking some
time away from home where it isnt practical to take the Pi with
you, another solution is needed. This might be to travel with
your Pis SD card in your wallet, perhaps leaving the computer
attached to the back of a wardrobe with Velcro.

A firewall is guaranteed to
improve your security

Regardless of which operating system youre using,

adding a rewall is a guaranteed way to improve your
computers security. While the Raspberry Pi has a built-in
rewall, it is tricky to congure.
Thankfully, some other people have noticed this too and
released fwbuilder, an interface to the otherwise complex
iptables rewall that comes with Raspbian.

14

Install fwbuilder in Raspbian

Because iptables is a bit ddly and errors can

leave you with no network connection, fwbuilder has been
developed to make rewall conguration quick and painless.
Well use the apt-get command to rst check for updates
and then install fwbuilder:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install fwbuilder
Follow the prompts to install and, once complete, switch to
the Raspberry Pi GUI by entering:

startx
In the Pis mouse-driven desktop, launch fwbuilder from
the Internet menu. Upon launching fwbuilder, follow the
given steps to set up your Raspeberry Pi rewall and save
the resulting script.
Were nearly done but some adjustments are still required
before your Pi fully connects to the network.

Pocket
your Pi

15

Complete rewall conguration

Launch the /etc/network/interfaces script in your text

editor and complete conguration by adding

pre-up /home/pi/fwbuilder/firewall.fw
Next, nd the section labelled Epilog and add

route add default gw [YOUR.ROUTER.IP.HERE] eth0

If youre using a wireless card, add the same line but switch
the last characters to wlan0:

route add default gw [YOUR.ROUTER.IP.HERE] wlan0

16

Consider Raspberry Pi theft

While losing your Raspberry Pi or the data on it, might

initially seem like a disaster, dont be disheartened. As long as
you have taken steps to backup data or clone your SD card,
you at least have continuity when you resume the project.
You can also check our boxouts for methods to help you deal
with physical theft.

If youre still
concerned with
your Pis safety,
put yourself in
the place of a
potential thief.
Where would you
stash it? Probably
in your pocket.
The Raspberry Pi
is small enough
to take with you,
so why leave it
lying around?
Any security
questions
relating to your
Raspberry Pi can
be addressed
by keeping it
close whenever
necessary.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 99

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

KS
Lift the lid on Linux and get tinkering
Total Linux safety
102 Get
rock-solid defences for your systems
Build your own Qt5-powered desktop
108 Discover
apps to t an LxQt environment
Run Android apps in Linux
112 Enjoy
mobile apps on your Linux desktop
Tether Raspberry Pi to Android
116 Access
your Pi wirelessly on the go

102

The benefit of creating your

own spin is the ability to
include specific packages
that are particularly relevant
to your needs

108
112

100 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

126
Spin your own Debian
118 Make
a customised Debian system
Build a WebKit browser
122 Learn
how to get WebKit built and running
penetration testing
126 Network
A Gentoo-based utility to nd weak spots
Build your own DEB & RPM packages
130 Deliver
Linux software like a pro

116

118

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 101

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Get rock-solid defences

on your systems and
networks with this guide
to Linux safety

102 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Linux
has
a
well-deserved
reputation for being incredibly
secure in comparison to operating
systems like Windows and OS X.
However, that said, you cant simply
rest on your laurels and assume
that your computer is impervious
to attack especially in the wake
of security scare stories over the
course of the last few months such
as Heartbleed, Shellshock and the
Turla malware, as well as the everpresent threat of more direct system
and account intrusions.
This month were going to tackle
security on a number of fronts. First
up well go through good password
practice with a ne-tooth comb,
picking out everything that you

need to know and showing you how

to create super-safe passwords.
Well then take a look at client-side
security by running through the
optimal settings for your machine
and suggesting ways for you to
ensure everything important is
protected. Networks are next
well explain how to build rewalls
and properly set up and control
your ports, then go through the
principles of penetration testing.
Finally, well return to online matters
with a look at securing your various
accounts, including using two-factor
authentication, and then locking
down any information that could
potentially be used to hack your
accounts. Lets get started.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

PASSWORD SECURITY
One of the most important steps
in keeping anything secure is to
create a very strong password that
is difficult to crack. While movies will
tell you enterprising hackers just need
to look around your office to figure out
your password (its his sons name
easy), the most common method
of password cracking is a brute force
attack on the server and the username.
Under a brute force attack, short
passwords, unmodified dictionary
words and anything on top password
lists will succumb very quickly. In terms
of length of password versus time to
crack it, the hours and days needed
to successfully discover a password
are always going down thanks to
advancements in CPU speed and
bandwidth. Using simple alphanumeric
passwords are increasingly insecure,
even if theyre as long as ten characters.
Lets start with a password then
and modify it a non-dictionary word,
reasonably long. Plucked out of the air
we have:

Creating an invincible
password is the rst step to
securing everything

Above There are a few websites that will check your password, but make sure to use something similar

Time to crack: 15 hours

Doing a lot better! The password
is immediately exponentially more
secure, although 15 hours is still not
that long. We can do better by adding
a symbol to the mix in an easy-toremember location:

Seven is quite short. If youre using

it online, most websites require a
minimum of eight letters, a capital
letter and a number. This drastically
improves the quality of the password,
both offline and online. A basic
modification would be:

Eight characters, alphanumeric mixture

of lower and upper case

DO

Time to crack: 275 days

Use capitals, numbers and

basic symbols

Seven characters, lower case letters

Time to crack: two seconds

PASSWORD
DOS & DONTS

further increase the time to crack:

Eight characters, alphanumeric and

symbol mixture

Time to crack: 3 days

Another big jump to three days. In
theory, most people would give up
by now, but as were dealing with an
automated brute force, that wont
matter. Were at about as secure as
we can be with an eight-character
password in terms of brute force, and
the 1 at the end is a bit basic. By just
making it a two digit number we can

Reset online ones every

six months
Make sure its at least nine
characters long
Run something similar to
your password through a
password checker

DONT

Use dictionary words

Use phrases

275 days is quite a while, but its

still doable for persistent crackers.
Adding a symbol, letter or number
to the end of this password will
increase its lifespan to 58 years.
58 years is a massively long time
for someone to be trying to crack
your password without upgrading
their hardware and software or
simply forgetting about it. So heres
an example of an excellent starter
password idea:

Use personal information

Use consecutive numbers
Use numbers such as your
two-digit birth year
Use the same password
everywhere

Using simple alphanumeric

passwords is becoming
increasingly insecure

Nine characters, alphanumeric and

symbol mixture

Write them down

Make them too long

We say starter, as while this is an

excellent password, you shouldnt be
using it on every account that you have.
If a list of passwords is leaked due to
someone elses insecurity, it doesnt
matter how long your password will
take to brute-force if they already know
what it is. If you hear of a leak, change
your password immediately.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 103

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

ONLINE SECURITY
Now we have a basic password, its
time to start implementing it online.
Security experts say you should use a
different password for every account.
Services like LastPass can offer a
convenient way of doing this with
truly unique passwords per account,
but you might not be comfortable
with them. Human beings can only
remember so many passwords; as
you most denitely should not be
making a note of these passwords,
what we suggest is to modify the
password based on what website
youre using it on.
For example, lets take Amazon. It
has your credit card details so securing
the account is extremely important.
After the Dw@n of the dwanton
base we have three characters to play
with, so we could change them for our
Amazon password. Heres our working:
Take the middle three letters of the
sites name (as Amazon is six letters
long we will choose maz), and reverse
the letters to zam. Now insert it into
our password:

This still has the high level of security,

but will be different from, say, eBay
(Dw@nabe12*) or Github (Dw@
nhti12*), without being immediately
obvious to whatever cracking program
would then try and use that password
on other websites and accounts. A
smart enough human might crack the
code, but this is only an example of how
you can modify your password while
still making it memorable to yourself.

Security and Privacy

Last issue we touched upon how to
keep your details as private as possible.
As well as brute force attacks,
crackers can perform confidence
and social manipulation tricks with
phone support to deceive you, using
any information they can gather from
social accounts. Some of the privacy-

104 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Effectively use your

passwords online and employ
other security measures

TWO-FACTOR
AUTHENTICATION

Above LastPass won our password managers group test a couple of issues back
Below Controlling your visibility on platforms like Facebook is crucial to security

One of the best security

features of recent years is
two-factor authentication.
Google, Apple, Tumblr and
many other services and
websites with sensitive
information now include
two-factor authentication
to increase security.
Usually, a mobile number
is securely supplied to
the company, which then
sends you a message
including a special,
one-use code to work
in-conjunction with any
system youre trying to
log into the account with.
Other companies will send
it via email or allow you to
use a special app similar
to banking keypads.
Turning this on may be
slightly inconvenient to
some, but the peace of
mind and added security
is well worth it.

orientated recommendations can

help keep angles of attack secret from
malicious people.
Go through your social media
accounts Twitter and Facebook
mainly and look at your privacy
settings. Make sure nothing sensitive
is set to private, and even think of
removing items that you dont need on
your profile, such as phone numbers
on Facebook or location on Twitter.
Most importantly, keep your main
email address completely secret: never

share it on Twitter unless via a DM to

someone you trust and dont keep
it in your profile. For work email, use
a different address and link as few
accounts as possible to this email.
Lastly, while an extreme step, you
can always look at not using your real
name on your more public social media
accounts. Facebook wont truly allow it
for personal accounts, but everywhere
else you can its a good idea to use a
pseudonym if you want to be as secure
and private as possible.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

NETWORK SECURITY

Protect your local network

from the occurrence of
external or local intrusions
Below Some tools may be superfluous
depending on how you use your system
Left Changing settings in the router can
really improve your networks security

Now youve secured your online

life, its a good idea to look at your
actual physical network of home
or office PCs, laptops and other
devices. Having a strong password on
your Gmail account is one thing, but
if someone can see exactly the kind
of packets are going back and forth
they can likely gure out what youre
looking at. Securing your network is
an important step, but its also fraught
with problems you may never know
exist, especially when youre trying to
balance convenience with security on
a system provided by an ISP.
Shared folders, Samba servers and
SSH access are very common within
networks, allowing you access les
and folders remotely. Theyre also
excellent attack vectors by those who
can get into your network. Uninstalling
or deactivating networking services
you dont use is a great way to increase
security throughout your network. This
is another convenience versus security
debate some networked devices
(such as a Raspberry Pi or le server)
you may wish to SSH into. Thats ne,

just make sure that to access them,

you require a strong password. Same
with the Samba shares for distributing
music over your home network and the
like. VNC you can probably turn off and
on via SSH so you only access it when
you denitely need to. Theres a lot of
just thinking about how you interact
with other devices over the network
in terms of network security that can
help out.

Network monitoring
What if theres activity over your
network that you dont know of and
therefore cant immediately x? One
of the best tools in any sysadmin or
network security toolbox is Wireshark,
or more specically, the tshark
command line implementation.
Wireshark is a network package
sniffer and allows you to track all the
network trafc going on around your
LAN. This can be used to gure out
whats going on in your network that
you dont know about, stray services
and requests and data transfers that
either you didnt know about and

FIREWALLS
Your router will come with
a rewall built in and it will
be pretty good. If you have
a custom server on your
network, either at home
or around the ofce, then
you can probably make a
better one one that you
have far more control over
and that will do a better
job of protecting your
network overall.
You can do this simply
by using iptables, a
command line tool
available for any version
of Linux that lets you
set up custom rules for
IP addresses that can
access the server, custom
port forwarding and other
great changes that make
it a lot more useful to
certain people.
The Arch and Ubuntu wikis
have some great guides:
bit.ly/1yCwG4N (Arch) and
bit.ly/1gd18ul (Ubuntu).

simply turn off, to nding out some

program is transmitting data that it
most likely shouldnt be.

Router maintenance
Your router, as the creator and
guardian of your network, isnt
impervious to attacks either. As well
as updating any default passwords
that may exist for the admin user, you
should always make sure to update
your routers rmware as regularly as
possible. Updates will include security
xes for any vulnerabilities that are
present and should improve security
across the routers software overall.
If your router allows it, you can
also attempt to change the default
IP addresses and range. If youre
using DHCP, this wont matter to any
connected devices, but changing the
default network addresses from the
common 192.168.x.x structure will stop
other types of attacks on the network
that specically target the router.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 105

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

OFFLINE SECURITY
Online security and protection
from online attacks are excellent
deterrents for a large subsection of
people, but your point of access
your PC should be secure as well
unless you want to have people
snooping around your computer.
As before, a secure password is
essential for your user account. Its a
bit harder to brute-force this kind of
password, but its still doable. Weigh
up the importance of your files versus
your own convenience to come up with
a password that suits your needs, but
still use the password creation tips to
keep it as secure as possible.
The root password shouldnt be
the same as a normal user password.
Much like we suggested with emails,
you should most certainly have a
completely separate password for the
root account. While logged in as root (su
in the terminal) type passwd and it will
allow you to update and change your
current root password.
Some systems will also allow users
to gain root access via sudo su, using
sudoer privileges to just get into the
root. If youre serious about locking
down your system then a big priority
should be to modify sudoer access
on all accounts on your system that
can make use of it, especially for that
particular use case.

106 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Keep your desktop and

other ofine devices secure
from prying ngers

Malware

Linux distros are generally far more

secure than other operating systems,
but theyre not immune to viruses
and malware. In terms of security,
keyloggers and other snooping
software can be a big issue these will
help anyone figure out your passwords,
making even the most random
12-character monstrosities pointless
when it can just be copied and pasted
directly into the password field.
Asides from ClamAV, theres no
real anti-malware software for Linux
available; the best thing you can do is
just stay vigilant. Use a little common
sense when on the Internet and
check your logs and running services
frequently to make sure nothing
malicious has installed itself.

The root password

shouldnt be the same as a
user password

Protect your files

Even with a good password, someone
can just mount your hard drive or a user
with higher privileges can easily read
it. Encrypting a volume to specifically
keep sensitive data in is a great way to
make sure only you can access the files
when you need to. Since TrueCrypt has
become defunct, and was never really
open source in the first place, we highly
recommend using EncFS.
Its available in a few repos as encfs,
so installing it is not really a problem.

Above ClamAV is the best youll find in terms of anti-malware FOSS

KEEPASS X
While LastPass is a
password manager for
your online accounts,
KeePass X is a password
manager for the apps and
software on your system.
Not only does it keep your
systemwide passwords
more secure, it also allows
you to encrypt information
such as URLs, user
names, attachments and
clipboard items if needed.
It has a smart database
that you can search as
long as you have the right
password, otherwise its
completely encrypted. Its
currently in Alpha release
stage for version 2.0, but
a lot of Linux users are
already integrating it into
their system and workow
due to its quality.

Once thats done, you can then begin

setting up an encrypted location on
your system. Open the terminal and
then type:

$ encfs ~/encrypted ~/Private

This will create a folder called
encrypted in your home directory
that contains all the encrypted
files, and then another folder called
private which is where the files will
be accessible once decrypted. Follow
through with the little wizard that
follows the preconfigured security
mode is very good and good enough for
most people.
Now, when Private is mounted and
you have entered a password, youll
be able to access the encrypted files
straight from the encrypted folder.
When its unmounted, the files will
become encrypted once again; just
remember to unmount after use.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

SECURITY RESOURCES

Keep up to date on security

concerns and learn more ways
to keep your accounts safe

Privacy Fix privacyfix.com

As we mentioned earlier in the article, defending against a brute force
attack is only one method in keeping everything secure. Hackers and
crackers may also try social manipulation via telephone or email to get your
information from banks and account support teams. You can minimise this
risk significantly by keep more of your information private.
Privacy Fix from AVG helps you monitor your different social accounts
to figure out exactly what people can see and how easily they can see it. It
allows you to plug holes in your accounts and tighten up your privacy and
security in general.
The applications work across multiple platforms, so you can keep control
of these concerns on the go via mobile if something needs to be changed
immediately. It covers Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and many other
account types.

Linux Security

linuxsecurity.com
Linux Security is a news aggregate
for anything related to security
in Linux. Not only does it cover
vulnerabilities, bugs in security
software and other desktop and
server security concerns, it also
covers web security and think
pieces that will keep you informed on the latest security stories.
Keeping up with relevant issues in the security world can keep you ahead
of the game and enable you to lock down anything before a threat becomes
viable. Its not absolutely necessary for everyone, but even those slightly
interested in keeping secure would do well to keep up with some of the
current trends.
There are also some other resources on the site, such as a security
glossary for some of the more obscure terms and general security tips that
anyone can use.

Above PrivacyFix rounds up your online accounts into a single dashboard

Above Linux Security is a news aggregate for anything related to Linux

Random.org random.org/passwords
Coming up with a password or
password base can be difficult.
While we have the example in this
issue, we implore you not to use it.
However, if youre having trouble
coming up with your own base, or
want a completely random and
secure password for your email accounts, there are lots of websites that
will enable you to securely and anonymously generate passwords that you
could then slightly modify and use yourself.
Random.org is such a website, where you can create a list of passwords
of varying character length that are all very secure. Nothing is stored on
their servers and all passwords are sent securely via SSL. The random
algorithm uses ambient noise to create the password, which makes it
slightly more difficult to decrypt using high-level cryptographic techniques.

Above Random.org comes up with highly secure passwords

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 107

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Drag application launchers

from the menu to the start
menu and launcher pane

The LxQt conguration centre

even hosts third-party and
system-wide modules

LxQt already has a power

management tool where you
can specify different actions

The system tray supports the

embedding of Skype, Dropbox
and more, without sni-qt

Build your own

Qt5-powered desktop
Discover Qt5-based desktop applications
that could t an LxQt environment
Resources
Otter Browser otter-browser.org
PhotoQt Image Viewer photoqt.org
Albert Launcher bit.ly/1LGqmOj
Trojit Mail client trojita.aska.net
Drawpile drawpile.net
SMPlayer SMPlayer.sourceforge.net
FocusWriter gottcode.org/FocusWriter
Cool Retro Term bit.ly/1BSYWTz

108 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

LxQt is a great lightweight desktop

environment, but its still in the early stages
of development and lacks many vital
features. However, it is a very promising and
modern software built around the Qt5 graphic
library. For many, the best way to try out a
Qt5-powered desktop is the new Plasma 5
from the KDE project, but we will go a different
way. Well be purists and try to use only Qt5
applications in everyday life together with LxQt,
and entirely away from KDE. Whats the point?
This will reveal the general readiness of the Qt5
applications stack and its feature coverage.
With acceptable compromise in mind, we will
try to show you modern yet compact programs

for common desktop activities. The whole idea

is also a test ground for building a lightweight
Linux solution which could be useful on lowend machines. The LxQt desktop was chosen
just for test purposes thanks to its great
availability on Linux (BSD users would most
probably prefer Lumina).
So we are going to look at certain distros
to nd out which LxQt delivery is particularly
good, and then we will install and become
acquainted with the Otter browser, PhotoQT
image viewer, Trojit mail client, Albert
launcher,
DrawPile
collaboration
tool,
SMPlayer, FocusWriter and more. So if youre
ready, head to step one.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

03

01

Choose a distribution

There is an abundance of easy-to-use

Linux distros that could help you instantly get
started with a usable LxQt desktop it is up to
you to take your pick.
Lubuntu is a dedicated LxQt avour of Ubuntu
with a daily PPA containing the most recent
code (ppa:lubuntu-dev/lubuntu-daily). The PPA
is compatible with most Ubuntu 14.04 and 14.10
derivatives, including Kubuntu, LXLE, Mint and
many of the others. To get LxQt you will need
to possess lxqt-metapackage, lxqt-session
and lxsession packages.
An alternative way to install LxQt could
be Arch/Manjaro (LxQt is in AUR) or the
development version of OpenMandriva, which
is shipped with LxQt by default (Plasma 5 will
arrive at a later date).

02

What we have so far

The desktop occupies ~95 MBs of RAM.

It features a control centre, power management
applet, customisable bottom panel, look and feel
settings manager, window manager chooser,
QTerminal console and PCManFM le manager.
Keyboard layouts indicator and NetworkManager
applet are currently missing, but you can take
the XFCE applet and gorgeous CMST (frontend to
ConnMan) respectively.

Thumbnails in
PCManFM

[Thumbnailer Entry]
TryExec=convert
Exec=convert %i[0] -thumbnail %s %o
MimeType=application/pdf;application/xpdf;image/pdf;
Using this template you can add more types that
convert supports (its a part of ImageMagick).

04

Get Otter Browser

The Otter web browser is updated every

week so if youre interested in its progress, you
can track its development on the project website.
For Ubuntu-compatible Linux systems theres a
very handy PPA. So wuthout further ado, lets get
into it straight away:

By default, the windows decorations are

managed by OpenBox but you can change it to
Kwin or Emerald. PCManFM is quite modest, but
keep in mind that it is the only Qt5 le manager
for the day.

03

Thumbnails in PCManFM

We can tweak and add extra

functionality to the PCManFM le manager.
First, lets add thumbnails support for letypes
other than images. For example, for PDF create
a new le with the .thumbnail extension at /usr/
share/thumbnailers with the following content:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:otterbrowser/daily

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install otter-browser-git
The Otter Browser has a variety of lovely features,
such as tabs grouping, mouse gestures and a
highly customisable UI.
You can choose to set the browser as a default
web application if you want by selecting otterbrowser from the Web Browser menu in the
System Settings.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 109

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Living lightweight
Qt5 has been around for years and more
Qt applications are moving to use it.
Right now we can build a decent, highly
usable desktop around LxQt. Network
connections can be managed with
ConnMan and its CMST frontend, Dropbox
client is already using Qt5 and LxQt System
Settings work just as well as the samenamed KDE module. There is also a web
browser, email client and a versatile media
player available to access.
How does it compare to the KDE
desktop? Theres no easy answer. Firstly,
the hand-made LxQt desktop has less
features than either KDE4 or the new
Plasma 5 desktop, but its a lot lighter.
Pure LxQt needs less than 100 megabytes
of RAM and each extra Qt5 application
adds very few. Secondly, current Plasma
5 choices (like Kubuntu or Netrunner) are
forced to mix Qt4 and Qt5 parts so that
the resulting desktop is nonuniform and
consumes more resources.
Lastly, you have to remember that
Plasma 5 isnt quite mature yet. Though
its current state is denitely a lot nicer
than early KDE 4 releases in 2008-2009,
some core applications still remain in the
Qt4 world, unfortunately, so there will be
a transitional period from KDE4 to the
Plasma 5 desktop. However, if you stick
with it, your patience will be rewarded!

05

Get Drawpile

The latest Drawpile version (0.9.8) can

be installed via the Getdeb service here: www.
getdeb.net/app/DrawPile.
The program has several applications. Firstly,
it is an easy-to-understand drawing software
comparable with MS Paint, Kolourpaint
and Pinta simple, beautiful, good for kids.
Secondly, its UI is optimised for use in Web
projects (with brushes, colour palettes, alpha
handling). Finally, that black rectangle hosts a
chat window. Drawpile enables several people to
draw simultaneously on one canvas.

06

Use PhotoQt to view images

PhotoQT is offered via the PPA and

something like the following is entered:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:samrog131/ppa

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install photoqt

110 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

05

Get
drawpile

Trojit has a traditional layout

and features mail sorting
Then the progam can be selected in the Open
with menu in PCManFM. PhotoQT opens
images in fullscreen mode by default, with
image le name and its number in the top-left
corner. Additional actions are available via
the right-click menu on any part of the image.
You can surf through your images using the
respective keyboard arrows.

07

Launch apps and search with Albert

Again, theres a PPA for easy installation:

sudo add-apt-repository
ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install albert
The rst time you launch Albert youll see its
conguration window where you can change
certain settings and, whats more important,
assign a shortcut for invoking Albert. After you

close the window, Albert doesnt quit but simply

hides in the background. Press your shortcut
and youll see the search bar. Depending on
your input, Albert will offer either applications,
Chromium bookmarks, or search engines that
you can apply your string to.

08

Manage your mailbox

Trojit binaries are kindly offered by

the OBS system (bit.ly/1L9KV3L), but there
is only a Qt4 build. While Qt5 build does exist
for other Linix distros, in the case of Ubuntu
we will need to compile a Qt5 Trojit from the
source. Thankfully, the ofcial site offers a very
straightforward set of build instructions (http://
trojita.aska.net/download.html).
Launch the program and provide it with
details of your IMAP mailbox. Public services,
such as Gmail work just ne. Trojit has a
traditional layout and features mail sorting,
HTML support and efcient network usage.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

08

10

Write text with FocusWriter

FocusWriter is a simple typewriter-like

editor which hides away almost all controls in
order not to distract you from writing. Yet there
are many useful features such as auto-saving,
live statistics, spell checking, multi-document
support and many more. You can install it using
the ofcial PPA:

09

Enjoy music and

videos with SMPlayer

SMPlayer is a top-notch media beast, which

can play almost any media, both local and
remote, and even some Blu-ray discs. Theres a
PPA for Ubuntu family (ppa:rvm/SMPlayer), but
it offers SMPlayer with Qt4, while we need a Qt5
version. So issue the following:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:gottcode/

gcppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install focuswriter

11

Add fun with Cool Retro Term

sudo apt-get build-dep smplayer

LxQt already has a great QTerminal

application with tabs support, colour proles
and more, but we can go even further and install
Qt5 and OpenGL-powered old school terminal
called Cool Retro Term. The following application
mimics the historic cathode tubes of Amiga, IBM
and Apple workstations:

Then download the source tarball (bit.

ly/1Bl8gPT) and use instructions from the
Install.txt le there. The Qt5 switch is applied to
the make command this way:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:bugslaunchpad-net-falkensweb/cool-retro-term

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cool-retro-term

make QMAKE=/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/
qt5/bin/qmake

Once it is launched you can switch between

proles or change the effects manually. It is even
possible to scale up the whole screen so that
Cool Retro Term will be as usable as a regular
console application, which is handy.

Of course, you should have qt5-qmake and

other Qt5 dev packages installed beforehand.

Manage your
mailbox

Add more apps

If you stay with your custom LxQt desktop,
sooner or later you will inevitably want
more. The applications featured in this
tutorial are not all the Qt5 applications out
there, you can supercharge your system
with the following:
Voltair A fun little 2D platformer game built
on top of Qt Quick and Liquidfun libraries.
Getting the game compiled in Linux needs
skill, but theres a perfect guide: bit.
ly/1HlMB9P.
Friends This app features a neat QML
interface and is easy to install (sudo
apt-get install friends-app). To use it
you must refer to Unitys Online Accounts
section, so you need that DE or at least its
goa-daemon (stored in ~/.cong/goa-1.0/)
Rosa ImageWriter This is a Qt5 port of
famous SUSE Studio Imagewriter. The app
is improved for comfortable USB media
writing. See bit.ly/ZgurWL for applications
that are dependent on KDE Software
delivery and are difcult to use outside
of certain DEs.
Qt-apps.org The qt-apps.org website is a
vital bookmark if you want to keep track of
Qt5 applications. Most new and updated
titles appear there.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 111

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Run Android apps in Linux

Work, play and enjoy the plentiful range of Android
apps right inside your regular Linux desktop

Resources
Google Chrome
bit.ly/1tMrggU

Archon Runtime
bit.ly/1DPh5Tr

NodeJS server
with NPM
manager

Though Googles Android OS shares nearly the same kernel

as the desktop Linux, these systems still have major
differences. Linux applications cant be run on Android
without porting, and vice versa. But thanks to the commercial
success of smartphones and tablets running Android, plenty
of useful, cool and eye-catching software titles are available
in the ofcial Google Play store many of them are free, too.
Wouldnt it be great to run these apps on a desktop computer
that is running regular Linux distribution?
Well, not long ago a solution arrived: the Archon runtime
a technology that enables the running of Android apps after
converting them to browser extensions. It means that you can
run an unlimited number of Android APKs, after packaging
them with the chromeos-apk tool that is supported along the
Archon runtime itself.
Archon was initially developed as a solution to bring select
Android apps to Chrome OS, but later it was discovered
that running just the Chrome browser would be enough. Of
course, to make it happen on your machine some manual
effort, technical acumen and familiarity with command line
commands are required. However, if you follow these steps
then the whole procedure will be straightforward.

112 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

01

Install a proper web browser

In theory, not only should the Google-branded

Chrome browser work ne, but Chromium (Chromes open
source base) and many derivatives such as Opera or Vivaldi
should do too. But things are a little bit complicated. The
Chromium development pace is fast, so these browsers
can be based on different Chromium versions with
different patch sets, compile options and so on. In real life,
it will result in multiple failed attempts to start Archon, so
thats why we recommend using a totally stable version of
regular Google Chrome on Linux.
Go to the browsers ofcial site (google.com/chrome/
browser/desktop) and download the DEB or RPM for your
distribution and architecture. You can choose what really
matches your specs, as Archon offers various builds to
suit everybodys needs. Then install Chrome with your
standard package management tools usually, just a
double-click does the trick.

Below Archon turns Android apps into extensions

for the Google Chrome browser

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

03

02

Get Archon runtime

Since 2014, several versions of Archon runtime

have been released, from 1.0 to 2.1. Vlad Filippov, the main
developer, has been in a constant race for the latest and
greatest Chrome code, whilst xing Archon bugs at the same
time. As a result, different combinations of Chrome and
Archon versions may or may not work for you. The default
choice, however, is to try the latest Archon runtime build from
the projects brand new site (archon-runtime.github.io), with
the current stable Chrome version from Google. At the time of
writing, the latter software is up to version 41.0.x.

03

Prepare your browser

Archon is distributed in a form of unpacked Chrome

extension. When you download it, you a get a ZIP le with
an extension folder inside. To be able to install unpacked
extensions, go to chrome://extensions and tick the Developer
mode checkbox. You will immediately see the new buttons,
one of them will be the Load unpacked extension option.
Click it and navigate to the folder where you unzipped the
downloaded Archon package earlier. Once you click OK, it will
appear in the installed extensions list. Before you proceed
to the next step it is useful to check for WebGL support in
Chrome, which can make use of hardware acceleration for
graphics and help browser perform better. Go to chrome://
gpu and see if there are any software only strings. If so,
switch to chrome://ags and enable the Override software
rendering list parameter.

Prepare your
browser

Above Once you

obtain the Google
Play link of your
application, you can
easily retrieve
its APK le

Troubleshooting
Archon not working as its supposed to? Heres
how to nd out what the trouble is and x it
From a users perspective, Archon isn't stable, so you may
encounter errors and lockups. If things went wrong from
the start, ensure that youre using the Archon of the right
architecture. After that, ensure Google Native Client is enabled
in your browser (chrome://flags/#enable-nacl flag)
Some apps may not launch and complain of a missing
message element for extName. To x it, edit the le _locales/
en/messages.json inside the extension folder and add the
missing item there. It should now look like this:
{
appNotSupported: {...},
extName: {
description: Extension name,
message: Whatever you like
}
}
Another frequent warning message is about the key
parameter. Resolve this by removing that parameter inside
the extension directory.
More xes are available on the Issues page of the Archon
project: bit.ly/1F6ezDx. If nothing helps, change your Google
Chrome version nd the Linux binaries at bit.ly/1CewlCu.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 113

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

06

Above Chromeosapk shows which

NodeJS modules it
used to convert (or
unpack) the APK as
a Chrome extension,
and even displays
a brief manual

Package
apps yourself
Theres an app on
Google Play called
ARChon Packager
(bit.ly/1Id5kol)
that enables you to
generate Chrome
packages straight
from your phone.
Simply use this app to
browse through the
list of other apps on
your phone both the
apps youve installed
via Play and any that
you have manually
sideloaded onto
an SD card and
then select to zip
everything up into a
ChromeAPK folder on
your phones storage.
It helps speed things
up a little!

04

Choose and test an app

The Archon Chrome extensions itself doesnt

have any means to check if it is working correctly or not.
Instead, you should install at least one Android application
and test it. Of course, you cant use APK les directly you
need them to be converted to Chrome extensions. At this
stage, we only need to make sure that the runtime works,
so we can download the sample 2048 game by Ubersoft
(bit.ly/1APJkdn), which is already converted to extension.
Unpack the ZIP le and install the resulting folder as
another unpacked extension in chrome://extensions. Youll
notice the little Launch link, which is the power button for
this and every other Android application inside Chrome
that you might want to install in future. Theres a vast list
of pre-packed extensions which you can nd online (bit.
ly/1pwSU0h). Not every app works but dozens do just ne,
so youre encouraged to try your luck.

05

Obtain APK les

You might want to test and possibly use a custom

Android application that you were invited to try on the Web, or
already use on your Android device. In the old days there was
an abundance of sources from which you could download
APK les manually, but for the sake of order and security,
nearly all Android titles are now concentrated in Googles Play
Store. To retrieve an APK of your Play Store favourite app, use
the following method:
Open the app page on the Google Play website. Then copy
the link from the address bar of your browser to the clipboard;
the link should look like this: play.google.com/store/apps/
details?id=com.rovio.angrybirds.
Pass the link to any APK download service. One of the
simplest ones to use is APK Downloader (apps.evozi.com/
apk-downloader) this will instantly generate a download
link for the appropriate APK le, which you can then save onto
your hard drive.

114 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

06

Convert APK to
browser extension

Convert APK to browser extension

For this youll need the chromeos-apk tool, which is

supported along with Archon by the same project. The tool
is a NodeJS plugin, so the rst thing we need to do is install
NodeJS and its npm plugin manager. The package set and
naming differs across Linux distributions for Ubuntu and
its derivatives, sudo apt-get install nodejs, should
work. With npm we can now install chromeos-apk:

sudo npm install -g chromeos-apk@latest

After a short while the new module should be successfully
installed. So to convert an APK, you can now just use the
following simple syntax:

chromeos-apk /path/to/application.apk
The tool will create a folder, which can be installed in
Chrome as an unpacked extension. Use the Launch link to
launch it, cross your ngers and wait for a little while.

07

Test various other apps

Not every Android application will work but most will.

However, take note that if an app relies on camera, gyro or
other hardware module, which doesnt exist in a software
mode, the app will malfunction or wont start at all. For
this reason, benchmarking tools (eg AnTuTu), Instagram,
games like Asphalt and several others will not work. Google
Services and everything that depends on it will also fail to
work. Luckily, though, sound and microphone are supported
very decently, thus enabling you to enjoy Skype, various
games with talking buddies and many more.
It is also possible to launch an unlimited number of
Android apps in the Chrome browser, so explore and see
whats out there. However, remember to be aware of the
CPU load, which can often be extremely high.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

07

Android emulation
Why stop at running the apps when you can run
the whole operating system instead?
Archon isnt the only choice for running Android apps in Linux.
Why not deploy a whole Android OS inside your Linux host? If
that idea suits you, take a look at the Android-x86 project (www.
android-x86.org), which is an unofcial port of the Android OS
for Intel-based computers. It can run on your PC as a normal
system but its hardware support isnt perfect, so the best way
is to install it inside a virtual machine. Go ahead and prepare
the Virtualbox/QEMU/VMWare player, download the latest
Android-x86 ISO (4.4-r2 at the time of writing) and install it as
you would a regular Linux distribution.
Android-x86 shares many benets with Archon and boasts
many features. It supports OpenGL acceleration, external
storage access (SD cards and USB sticks) and can sync with
your Google account. Inside our test Virtualbox environment,
Android-x86 performed well most apps were responsive
and stable. The only minor discomfort was introduced by
applications that use landscape mode. Obviously you cant
rotate your desktop LCD screen each time you launch such an
app, so a workaround could help. Thats why well rotate the
hosts screen. Find out the name of your display output:

08

Tips to get around

Once you nally have your Android app running,

its time to have a play around with it. Use Ctrl+Escape to
emulate the Menu button. For the rest of the controls, use
your mouse and keyboard for example, to swipe across the
screen, simply click and drag your mouse. Touch display is not
supported on desktop PCs but does work on Chromebooks, if
you happen to have one.
Once its installed and run for the rst time, an extension
will create a menu entry and will soon display in your start
menu. Entries like this are perfectly supported by all desktop
environments in Linux. Doing a cold start of an application from
the menu does invoke a lot of Chrome stuff, but everything
runs quietly in the background without showing you any
browser windows, and it feels like youre using a desktop-class
application at the same time. Its a great solution for rescuing a
favourite app from your phone screen!

Test various
other apps

Above The upper

part of this table
(follow the link at
the end of Step
4) contains titles
proved to work.
Theyre already
packed for you

xrandr -q
Then use it to rotate to the left (HDMI1 used for the example):
xrandr --output HDMI1 --rotate left
and bring back to normal mode:
xrandr --output HDMI1 --rotate normal
For convenience, assign these commands to shortcuts and
manage your screen orientation as if you have a magic wand.

Left It seems there

are three ways to
run this game in
Linux: with Archon,
in the virtualised
Android-x86 or using
a PC version via Wine

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 115

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Tether Raspberry Pi to
an Android device
Need the internet on your Pi on the go? Try out a physical
tether to your Android device for instant online access
The portability of the Raspberry Pi is one of its most lauded
features and you can get many different accessories to help
aid this portability. Mini screens, mini wireless keyboard and
mouse combos, portable batteries and more can get you out
and about, but the Internet is a stumbling block that you cant
easily x with an accessory. What you do also usually have
with you is an Internet-connected magic pocket box called a
smartphone that, with a bit of know-how, you can connect the
Pi to and steal some Internet from. Over the next two pages
we will impart this know-how to get you using your Raspberry
Pi on the Internet when youre on the go.

01

The easy way

A lot of smartphones now have a Wi-Fi hotspot feature,

which the Raspberry Pi can easily attach to. First of all, turn the
hotspot on and then boot into the Pi. Connect a wireless dongle
and open up the wpa_gui in Preferences>Wi-Fi Conguration.

02

Scan for device

Click Scan to open up the scan window and then select

Scan again from inside there. It should pick up your device
connect it as you would to any Wi-Fi network and the Pi will
remember it for when it needs it next.

What youll need

Q Android device
Q USB cable

116 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

03

Above Its usually

easy to gure out
which device is your
phone set it right
next to the Pi and it
will be the one with
the best signal!

Set up tether

First connect your phone to your Raspberry Pi via a USB

cable depending on the amount of power your Pi has, it might
have trouble charging your phone but it will still let you tether. In
the tethering menu you can now activate USB tethering.

06

Test connection

07

Save the settings

Theres a few ways to test your connection. Wed usually

stay in the terminal and ping www.google.com, which you can
do, or you can click on the browser and see if it loads the page.

Once you reboot your Pi, it wont remember to

automatically connect to the phones tether. However, we can
add an entry to its cong so that it will try and do this in the
future. From the terminal use:

04

Check connection

Your Android device will create an interface known

as eth0 on the Raspberry Pi. You can check to make sure this
is happening, and that it will let you tether, by opening up a
terminal and typing the following:

$ ifconfig

05

$ sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

08

Interface settings

Here youll nd all the current network settings yours

might look different from ours depending on if you have added
any xed wireless settings or passthroughs. Using the same
syntax as the eth0 line, add:

Quick connect

You can connect from the terminal right now to

access the Internet. You should be able to do this by typing the
following into the terminal:

$ sudo dhclient usb0

This will automatically grab any available IP address that your
phone will give to it.

iface usb0 inet dhcp

09

Tether on the go

After a save and reboot, your Pi should now

automatically connect to your phone, whether its via Wi-Fi
hotspot or a physical connection. It may draw a little more
charge than usual while tethering, so be sure to keep an eye on
your battery level.

Mobile
data
Using your Pi
on your mobile
phone will eat up
data much faster
than browsing
on your phone
normally is. We
suggest not doing
a full software,
distribution or
rmware update
if you dont
want to spend
a fortune on
data. You can
also set limits
on the amount
of data used on
your phone to
save yourself any
problems, and a
physical tether
will allow you to
connect via the
phones Wi-Fi if
thats an option.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 117

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Spin your own Debian

Use Debian Live System tools to learn how to
spin a new Debian system customised for you

Resources
Debian Live
builder
live-systems.org

Debian 8.0 Jessie is out now. It is an impressive and useful

update, so now, you can either use it as your stable distro,
switch to 9.0 Stretch as your new rolling release or create
your own custom Debian.
Here, were going to look at creating a custom Debian ISO
using the Debian Live Systems project. With the project and
website, you can create your own custom version of the distro
to deploy as you wish around an ofce or in your own home.
The benet of creating your own spin is the ability to include
specic packages that are particularly relevant to your needs,
have it work on specic architectures, and generally make it
much more suited to your needs.
Well be using the online tools available to create this
custom image but theyre very similar to the ones that exist
within Debian, which will enable you to create your own spin
once you decide to go a little more hardcore and edit it from
the distro itself.

01

Find the builder

02

Start the build

For this tutorial we will be using the Debian Live

System builder. This is not only software that you can
actually use on Debian, but also it has been applied to a
web service. We are going to use the web version of this,
which makes the setup slightly easier to parse and generally
understand. You can have a look at it by heading over to the
following address: http://live-systems.org.

From this page you can read up on the range of

different uses for the software, including development info
and old versions of the build software and images used in it.
For now, we are actually interested in building a distro, so click
on the Build tab thats located on the top bar and select the
Debian option to get to the interface where we can customise
the build to our liking.

Above Easily create a custom Debian through your browser using the tools that are built into the distro

118 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

01

05

Default package choice

You can set the ISO to have certain packages

installed as part of the default package list using the
cgipackages.list.chroot eld. All you need to do is add the
package names to the list separated by a space ensure
you get the exact package names correct though, so perhaps
check the spelling in a standard live booting Debian before
you add it to the list. Theres a limit of 255 characters, so make
sure to add only the essentials.

03

Above Theres plenty

of documentation to
help you work with
the systems tools

Select an image type

After putting in your email address, you have a

selection of image types to use. ISO is a pure image of the
distro, able to be used for live booting from a CD or USB device
only. Netboot is the kind generally used in net booting, which
is over the network live boot/installation. Isohybrid combines
both CD ISO live booting with the ability to use it to live boot
off other live mediums (such as a USB stick), separate CD ISO
and HDD(/USB) images and a compressed version. Isohybrid
works for most situations.

04

Find the
builder

Type of Debian

You have a bit of choice on what kind of distro you

can create for the ISO. You can select between Debian
Testing (currently Stretch) and Sid for the image Sid is the
unstable image and you should probably stick with Testing.
Otherwise, you can also choose the desktop environment
to be used by default by the system theres a wide variety,
along with having the option for no desktop at all.

A more
manual
process

06

Architecture choice

Choosing whether to have a 32 or 64-bit ISO is

entirely dependant on the use cases you have planned. A
32-bit ISO (i386) will be more universal, working ne on older
systems as well. This can be good for general troubleshooting
or maintenance. For getting the most out of a system though,
a 64-bit ISO (amd64) is preferable. You can always go back
and create a second ISO with a different architecture if you
desire, though.

The live system

builder uses software
available in Debian
that can be used to
create your ISO using
your current setup
as a base. It uses the
same commands and
option as the web
version and builds
it locally on your
system. The package
is called live-build.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 119

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

10

Choose a
bootloader

Right You get ne

control over your
build, even down to
the bootloader

10

Other
distro builders
Debian isnt the
only distro you can
customise Fedora
and Ubuntu have
live builders that
you can use, albeit
in various states of
maintenance. Theres
also SUSE Studio,
which is another
online builder that
uses all of the SUSE
and openSUSE
distros as a base. You
can nd that here:
susestudio.com.

07

More architecture choices

As well as a basic architecture choice, you can drill

down into the sub-architectures to better optimise your distro
for the task you need it for within linux-avours. If youre doing
64-bit, the standard amd64 is all you really need to concern
yourself with. For 32-bit/x86 builds, there are many more
choices. For much older processors 486 will work, but wont be
able to make full use of their power. In addition, 686 wont work
on older tech, but it will work on all modern machines. Choose
686-pae if you want to properly use 4 GB of RAM as well.

08

Chroot lesystem

09

Extra boot options

The root lesystem that you actually boot from can

be modied in the chroot-lesystem option, right above the
linux-avours that we just talked about. Its set by default to
SquashFS, which is the current standard, but if you need it to
be another lesystem type for older or different machines,
you can choose ext2 or plain.

In the advanced binary options we can start adding

extra options for our specic use cases. You can mostly
keep these at their defaults, but there are a few options you
could feasibly change to get the most out of it. First of all is
the bootappend-live option: this enables you to add any
extra boot options to the distro youre creating. Setting a
resolution, running in software rendering and any other boot
option youd want can all be added here.

120 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Choose a bootloader

Live systems tend to use syslinux for live booting,

although it can depend on what kind of images are in the ISO.
Multiple arch or kernel versions are easier to launch via GRUB.
We wont be able to do that in this image, but if youre having
problems booting then you could always try building the image
with the different bootloader. For now, we recommend using
syslinux and then changing it to GRUB if its not working in your
specic use cases.

11

Choose installer type

12

ISO options

13

Final binary options

There are three choices for the installer in the ISO.

First of all, you can have none and it just boots into a live
environment. Secondly, you can have it as an option other
than live-booting, so that you can go straight into installing
the image if you know its exactly what you want. Lastly, the
live option provides for a live install from the live environment.
Were choosing live, as it enables us to use the distro and then
install without rebooting.

The ISO labelled options are all for just labelling the ISO
in your own way. You can leave these be and it wont affect
anything, or change them if you plan to distribute your version
of Debian and want some extra info to be in there. The volume
will appear on the actual ISO name, with the application being
used as the name of the distro elsewhere.

Finally, you can set a few extra options such as whether

or not memtest is included in the ISO, and the location to look
for the Netboot ISOs for booting with the net-path and netserver is available to tweak. These last few you wont need
to change for a normal ISO, but if youre making a netbooting
distro then youll have to make sure you have the infrastructure
set up and know what needs to be added to these elds.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

16

14

Source les

If you also want a source version of the distro once it is

made, you can set the source option to true. By default, this
will create a TAR le with the source of the distro, but that can
be changed to a couple different options if you wish. For the
time being you can keep it set to false, but in the future if you
nd that you need the source separately, it is denitely a good
idea to keep this option in mind.

The process to build is supposed

to take up to an hour, but in our
tests it did take longer

16

Use your image

17

Install your image

18

Use your Debian!

Once you get notied that your image is ready,

download it and anything else that you want. Load it into a
virtual machine or onto a live-booting medium and then
check out your new distro. Make sure that any packages you
wanted have installed by looking in the menus, and that you
have the right architectures and options in the build itself.

15

Build your distro

Double-check everything one last time and then click

submit. Youll be presented with your options as a run-down,
so you can try to remember them, and two links that you can
use. One will let you check the process of the build, while the
other is the link to the actual ISO itself. The process to build
is supposed to take up to an hour, but in our tests it did take
longer. Remember to download all the les you want as soon
as possible because they will be deleted after 24 hours.

Use your
image

Above Keep note of

your exact setup so
that you can check
your distro once its
live booted

If you plan to install this distro on your system then you

can do so from inside the live environment, as we selected
that option during the build. If youre having problems with
it, try the other install options in the build until it works as
planned. You can also use a command line and graphical
installer from the boot menu if you want to skip live boot.

Once youve checked to make sure your new image is

working, you can start using it properly. As Debian updates,
so too will the system you have, and you can get zsync ISOs
to use in updating if you dont have access to the Internet.
You can also freely distribute it as you wish, as its also free
software licensed under the GPL.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 121

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Build a WebKit browser

Learn how to get WebKit built and running on a
Linux system to develop browsers
For a while a few years back, it seemed like every single
new browser was being made in WebKit. While Apples Safari
browser had been using it for years, Googles Chrome and the
Chromium project seemed to launch it into the spotlight and
result in desktop and mobile browsers built on the technology.
While the standard source is optimised for development on
OS X and Windows, there is a branch of it specically for Linux:
QtWebKit. With this source you can continue to develop the
engine for use on Linux or you can build your own browser using
WebKit as a lightweight rendering engine.
In this tutorial, we will show you how to get WebKit set up
on your system, along with some pointers on how to construct
a browser using the source so that you can then go ahead and
begin creating a custom project.

Resources
WebKit
webkit.org

Qt 5
bit.ly/1K5QTGD

Ubuntu 12.04
or higher

122 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

01

Grab the source code

We need to rst get the source code for QtWebKit,

which is part of the normal WebKit source tree. Open up
a terminal and cd to the place where you like to keep your
sources, or create a new directory for it with mkdir. Sync the
source locally in the terminal with:

$ git clone git://gitorious.org/webkit/webkit.git

The source will take up just over 4 GB of space, so make sure
you have space and perhaps something to do while you wait.

Below Create a browser like Chromium using the

WebKit browser engine, Chromiums original base

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

04

02

Get the staging branch

This step is optional, but you could also look at tracking

the staging branch specically for the Qt port. To do this you
need to rst cd into the WebKit directory that was just created.
From there, you can re off the following commands:

$ git remote add Qtwebkit git://gitorious.org/

webkit/Qtwebkit.git
$ git fetch Qtwebkit
However, the current release of the Qt port les is in the normal
WebKit source that we downloaded.

If youre using a more recent

version of Ubuntu, you may
encounter some problems when
working with Qt code
Remember to change the version on this line to be the one
you downloaded. When you have done that, you can install it
using the following:

./Qt-opensource-linux-x86-5.4.1.run

03

Get the Qt 5 source

We need to build Qt 5 properly so that our WebKit

can run and be developed in the correct way. We rst need
to download the les to install Qt 5, which can be found here:
www.qt.io/download-open-source. You can also download
the installer le in the terminal using something like:

$ wget http://download.Qt.io/official_releases/
Qt/5.4/5.4.1/Qt-opensource-linux-x86-5.4.1.run
Remember to take into account the latest version of Qt 5
before you download.

04

This will bring up a graphical installer follow the

instructions to install Qt 5.

05

Setup OpenGL

If you havent already installed the OpenGL libraries,

you should do so now. They can be installed using:

$ sudo apt-get install mesa-common-dev

If youre using a more recent version of Ubuntu, you may
encounter some problems properly working with Qt code, so it
can be prudent to install the following package as well:

Install Qt 5

Once its downloaded, we can get ready to install it.

First of all, elevate the le so you can execute it using:

$ chmod +x Qt-opensource-linux-x86-5.4.1.run

Install
Qt 5

$ sudo apt-get install libglu1-mesa-dev -y

If you start having problems with GL as part of this tutorial,
installing this package may x it.

Build
essentials
If youre on a
dedicated build
environment, you
probably already
have the G++
compiler that is
required for this
build. If you dont,
this can easily be
installed in Ubuntu
using the following:
$ sudo apt-get
install buildessentials
Youll need to do this
as soon as you can in
this tutorial to make
sure everything is
properly set up.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 123

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Qt Creator
While were building
this in a command
line environment, you
can also build it in the
graphical Qt Creator
software. It takes a
bit more to get it to
run in there, though
youll have to edit
bits of the source and
use a custom build
command for it to
actually start. You
can look into how to
do this here:
bit.ly/1IvzbM5.

06

Set the Qt paths

Before we can continue building WebKit, we need to

set the correct paths for the Qt development software. We
rst need to set QTDIR to the location of the Qt installation.
Do this by exporting the path with:

$ export QTDIR=[Install directory]

Then make sure that the Qt 5 qmake is the rst in the PATH.
Use the following to do this:

$ export PATH=$QTDIR/bin:$PATH

07

Get any extra dependencies

Depending on your development environment,

we may need to add extra dependencies to make sure
everything will run and compile correctly. Ensure that the
following packages are installed just to be certain that the
compiling goes smoothly.

$ sudo apt-get install bison gperf flex

libsqlite0-dev libicu-dev libxslt-dev ruby
There may be other packages you need and you can install
them as you go, but these seemed to be the common absent
packages in our tests.

10

WebKit use explained

There are some basic principles to the way WebKit

handles data to render. This is handled via the WebCore
engine and is made up of specic systems: the Document
Object Model (DOM) tree, the render tree and the style tree.
These three parts help to render each webpage efciently and
therefore we will break them down and discuss them in more
detail over the next few steps.

11

How the DOM tree works

12

Structure of the render tree

Each webpage is parsed into this DOM tree of nodes,

all referred to be the base class of Node.h. Of these nodes,
there are three that are relevant for actually rendering
data: Document.h/HTMLDocument.h, which is the root
of the tree; all of the tags from the HTML or XML are kept in
Elements.h, and can be queried whenever you need them;
nally, Text.h contains all the raw text that goes between
the elements in other words, the content on the page that
is actually readable.

The rendering nodes of the render tree mostly

correspond to the nodes in the DOM tree, albeit with a few
extra objects and nodes that dont exist in DOM. These are
kept in RenderObject.h. The RenderObject for a DOM node
can be obtained using:

RenderObject* renderer() const

which can be more usefully used as:

RenderObject*
RenderObject*
RenderObject*
RenderObject*

08

Start to build WebKit

Finally, we can begin to actually build the QtWebKit

source. Go to the directory that youve downloaded the
WebKit source to and build it using:

$ webkit/Tools/Scripts/build-webkit -Qt
This will take a while, depending on your system. If there are
any other errors or missing dependencies, it will stop and you
may have to hunt down the libraries that it needs.

09

Launch a test of WebKit

Once everything is compiled (and it will take a while

depending on your system), you can run this very basic
version of WebKit using the following:

13

firstChild() const;
lastChild() const;
previousSibling() const;
nextSibling() const;

Create the render tree

Renderers are created when a DOM node is attached

to a renderer. The information in the node will determine what
kind of renderer to use, including not creating it if certain
conditions are met. Its a top-down recursive operation
all descendants have renderer nodes created after their
parents. You can call the attach method with:

void attach()
on the DOM nodes to begin the rendering process and get it
fully underway.

14

Destroy the render tree

This is related to creating render trees by calling the

opposite command, detaching DOM nodes from the renderer:

$ Tools/Scripts/run-launcher -Qt
void detach()
This is the QtTestBrowser, which is a very quick
implementation of WebKit as a browser. You can look
through the les to get an idea of how it uses WebKit.

124 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

This destroys the render tree when a tab or window is closed,

and ends the need to see the info present in the DOM tree.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

18

15

Use style information

While attaching DOM information to a renderer,

the element is queried for CSS/style information and the
resultant data is kept in RenderStyle.h for when the webpage
requires this rendering. All supported style properties can
be queried via RenderStyle.h which then connects it to an
attached renderer with:

void setStyle(RenderStyle*)
This style can be changed on the renderer, but otherwise it will
stay the same until destroyed. Styles can be accessed using:

RenderStyle* style() const

17

Read relevant widths

To see the info from the object, call the raw data with:

int
int
int
int

marginTop() const;
marginBottom() const;
marginLeft() const;
marginRight() const;

int
int
int
int

paddingTop() const;
paddingBottom() const;
paddingLeft() const;
paddingRight() const;

int
int
int
int

borderTop() const;
borderBottom() const;
borderLeft() const;
borderRight() const;

Create your
custom browser

Above Heres one

of the example
browsers that we
worked up during our
tests for this tutorial

The rest of the style information is stored similar to this.

18
16

Work with RenderBox

This is the subclass that handles any objects that

use the CSS box model. This includes objects with borders,
padding, margins, width and height (a couple of non-box
model will subclass from RenderBox right now, but that will
be xed in the future). The diagram for this step illustrates
the parts and structure of the CSS box model.

Create your custom browser

With enough time and effort, your can use WebKit as

an engine for your own very powerful, very sleek browser.
It wont have the sync abilities of Chrome unless you own a
ridiculously far-reaching online infrastructure, but you can
easily make it so that settings of les can be synced between
systems using cloud storage.
There is a lot more to learn with WebKit, but we have
presented you with just the basic steps to understanding how
it works. No go forth and explore some more!

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 125

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

There are a range of excellent

pentesting apps that are all
installed by default

Use aircrack-ng to gure out

just how secure your wireless
network really is

Wireshark can keep track of the

trafc in your system so you can nd
out if there are any problems

Network penetration
testing with Pentoo
The Gentoo-based utility distro can nd
vulnerabilities in your network
Resources
Pentoo www.pentoo.ch

126 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Safety is a big preoccupation for all computer

users, not just those on Linux systems. Its
important to know how to shield yourself and
your systems from attacks, and now were going
to look at the problem from a slightly different
angle: how someone would attempt to attack
your system.
White hat or ethical hacking is an important
step in any security process, and were going
to take a quick look at probing your own local
network to try and gure out any problems you

might have. There are a few different tools and

distros that can aid you in this, but today we are
going to focus on Pentoo.
Pentoo is less known than Kali or Backtrack
Linux, but its by no means a poorer product.
Built on Gentoo, it can be used perfectly well
live and can be installed for a more permanent
testing rig. While it has a full suite of pentesting
software, well be concentrating on some of
the network testing apps for the purpose of
exposing any vulnerabilities in your network.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

02

01

Grab and load up Pentoo

02

Explore applications

04

More options

05

Capture basic data

Before we start looking at the data, we

can also make some more advanced settings on
what the capture will grab. The basic settings will
get a lot of data while it snoops the network, but
you can set where it stores the les and if they
should be split up. For now though, click Start.

Explore
applications

07

Save and retrieve

08

Find individual packets

Captures youve made can then be

saved to le as you would with any normal type
of le. The benet of this is that you can reopen
it in the future in the same capture window, to
then search through in case you need to either
compare something or remember a packet.

Get the ISO of Pentoo from the distros

website (www.pentoo.ch) and write it to disc
or USB. Reboot into the distro and either press
Enter if you use the Colonys English or type 40 for
the Queens variety. Use startx at the command
prompt to then launch the desktop.

All the analysis and pentesting packages

are kept in the Pentoo section of the main menu.
Pentoo can be used for all manner of testing from
computers to networks to websites and more. For
now, were interested in Wireshark, which is in the
Analyzer submenu.

03

Use the interface

Wireshark is presented on a web-like

interface as you interact with the backend of
the software. You can begin capturing the trafc
from any number of interface devices to see
what exactly can be seen within the network.

Youll start to see any data that crosses

the interfaces with plenty of information on the
packets, their origin and their destination. At a
basic level you can see if there are any untoward
packets being sent in or out good for checking
your own sites and LAN sites as well as the
system in general.

06

Filter your data

For basic capture data like this, there will

be a lot to sift through by default. You can lter it
while its running or stop it to inspect anything you
might have been trying to do during a test. Apply
regular expressions to narrow anything down.

Sent a very specic packet during or as

part of your test? Theres no need to worry, as
you can search for a known packet in the logs
using the Find Packet tool to look further into
the records. It requires accurate knowledge and
data about the packet in question though, so
youll need to be well aware of what you sent.
Its a good idea to always keep track of all the
relevant info just in case.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 127

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

11

09

Use VoIP tsracking

You can also see the VoIP trafc on a

system under the Telephony menu on the tool
bar. This will show the caller and receiver, what
protocol theyre using what kind of data is being
transmitted and more.

11

Decode differently

Sometimes odd packets and messages

may occur on a different port that Wireshark
has a problem translating. This is simple
to x, you just need to have a look at the
package using a different protocol with the
Decode As tool. It may just be a random
connection but it could be something else
which will denitely need sorting.

12

Endpoint detection

One of the weaknesses in a network can

be remote machines that access a network.
When going through a capture, you can see
what endpoints have been connecting to
the network and lter out which ones are
authorised or not. You can also set up a remote
attack and see if it registers.

128 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

13

Find an access point

Airmon will change your wlan to now be

mon0, which is what were going to use to try and
nd an access point. This is useful if youve tried
to make your Wi-Fi hidden but its also useful to
see just how powerful your network is around a
building. Start it with:

$ airodump-ng mon0

Wireless defence test

Pentoo has an excellent suite of

software called aircrack-ng that can attempt
to discover and break a wireless network. This
software tries to sniff packets on the network
to gure it out. To start we need to make out
wireless card able to see the packets, so we
need to use airmon-ng.

10

14

Decode
differently

Employ promiscuous mode

Open up the terminal to use airmon

-ng. Check ifconfig if you need to figure out the
interface name of your card, and then turn it to the
correct mode using something like:

$ airmon-ng start wlan0

15

Test your passwords

You can now try and use aircrack-ng to

brute-force your passwords and see if theyre
strong enough. The basic way of doing this is to
use something like:

$ aircrack-ng -b [MAC address/BSSID]

This will try and crack the password on the
access point. There are various options you

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

19

can use that will limit CPUs, focus on a specic

password types and even bring in a list of
dictionary words and common passwords. The
latter is useful if youre checking out someone
elses network for them. You can see more
options in the main le.

16

Pentoo has an excellent suite called

aircrack-ng that can attempt to
discover and break a wirelss network

Install Pentoo

Need a more permanent version of

Pentoo that you can plug into your system at a
moments notice? You can install the software to
your computer with the installer, however its not
quite as simple as something like Ubuntu. Click
on the installer to start.

17

Congure root
password

Set hard drive

Option one has you set the hard drive

options. Its a bit more involved as you directly
set the boot size, swap and the storage. Its
recommendations can be good but it wont
enable you to do any advanced partitioning.

18

Copy the distribution

Working on the hard drive is the rst

step to the installation of Pentoo. So once
the hard drive has been fully worked on, you
will be able to perform the automatic install.
Select option two and wait a while it will
unpack the les and install them and also ask
if you would like to transfer any settings from
your current setup.

19

Congure root password

Go to congure the system and

start adding users and conguring the root
password. Without the root password set,
you could have great difculty logging in once
the installation has nished. Go back to the
main menu, install GRUB as the bootload
and then reboot.

20

New Pentoo

When thats all done and dusted, you can

now boot into your fresh copy of Pentoo, able to
be used to find and diagnose issues with your own
networks and the networks of friends and family
with great efficiency. As its Gentoo, youll have to
understand how portage works to start updating,
but its very easy once you know how, and it doesnt
take long at all to learn. Youll soon feel far more
confident in the security of your network.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 129

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Build your own DEB

and RPM packages
Replace your make install habit and learn how to
deliver Linux software like a pro
If you count the most prominent and well-known Linux
distributions, youll notice that nearly all of them utilise
two software package types: DEB or RPM. The rst one
comes from the world of Debian and spreads on Ubuntu and
dozens of its derivatives, while the RPM, originally created
for Red Hat, is used in Fedora, Mageia, OpenSUSE and many
others. Both worlds share the same approach: every le in a
system must belong to a package, so the whole installation is
a collection of binary packages.
Maybe youre already familiar with building Linux
applications from source, or you just want to deliver a custom

Resources
Access to
your distros
official
repositories

Right The spec le

has an easy-toread structure and
a lot of systemwide macros, which
you are advised
to learn

130 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

set of les or a binary app in the right way neat, clean and
convenient. In this tutorial we will nd out what it takes to
create a custom DEB or RPM package and the ways in which
you can benet from maintaining everything in your system
by using packages.
The tutorial naturally breaks into two parts, as Debian
and Red Hat packaging systems are different and therefore
require learning different sets of commands. However, as
you will see a bit later, the procedure is really straightforward
and easy to follow once you have got your head around just a
few basic examples.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

From package to repository

If you decide to build your own packages, you may want to organise them into
local repositories to use with a graphical software management tool. In the
case of Ubuntu/Debian and their derivatives, you must complete four steps.
First, install the dpkg-dev package. Next, put your .deb les into a directory
of your choice. Then you will need a script to scan that directory and create/
maintain repository index les; it can be a three liner:
#! /bin/bash
cd /path/to/debs
dpkg-scanpackages . /dev/null | gzip -9c > Packages.gz
Finally add a line to your /etc/apt/sources.list pointing at your repository. The
line will look like this:

After that, create a .repo le in the /etc/yum.repos.d/ directory. The contents

of the le should comply with the simple template shown below:
[local]
name=<your_distribution>-$releasever - local packages for
$basearch
baseurl=file:///path/to/rpms
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0
protect=1
Yum repositories are also supported in OpenSUSE/Suse Linux Enterprise
Desktop as well, and you can add them either with the YaST GUI software or via
the command line using zypper, like this:

deb file:///path/to/debs ./
In Fedora/CentOS and various derivatives youll need to create a repo with your
RPM les. Start by installing the createrepo package (yum install createrepo)
and then create repository metadata in the directory containing your RPM
les:

01

createrepo /path/to/rpms && chmod -R o-w+r /path/to/rpms

zypper addrepo -t YUM /path/to/rpms

Its really simple to create your own packages once you know how!

Why you may need to do it

Let us rst list some common cases where packing

your les into a package is preferred. To start with, your
distribution may lack some packaged application that
you need, so you may try to build it from scratch (the hard
way) or adapt a similar package from another distribution
(generally, the preferred way). Next, not all software is open
source, so you may pack a binary-only application or even
a set of random les and make them installable with a few
clicks of your mouse. This is often needed to deliver some
proprietary, yet popular, software items such as the Vivaldi
browser or Skype VoIP application.

02

The inside of RPM

When you double-click an RPM le it will probably be

opened in a software installing tool, but you can always open
it as an ordinary archive. File Roller or Ark will open an RPM
just the same way as they would open a ZIP archive. However,
while youll see the le tree, theres more to RPM as it includes
scripts that enable extra actions with les, such as xing
permissions, copying and removing les, or any other custom
action in Bash.
Whatever architecture an RPM le is designed for, be
it x86_64, i586 or noarch, it is generated from a source
RPM, also known as SRPM. It contains the sources of the
application and a spec le, which denes all the commands
and routines that you will need to compile it into the target
RPM le. If you need to re-pack a proprietary application,
sometimes only a properly written spec le is required, as it
obtains the app les automatically.

03

Left Both DEB and

RPM packages are
easy to unpack
and explore. You
can always pull out
their contents with
standard archive
managers too

Compile RPM from a source RPM

For the impatient, the command is simply: rpmbuild

--rebuild /tmp/mypackage-1.0.0-1.src.rpm. Another way is
to install the source package as follows:

Alien vs
DEB/RPM

rpm -i /tmp/mypackage-1.0.0-1.src.rpm
and then address the spec file directly:

cd ~/rpmbuild/SPECS && rpmbuild -ba mypackage.spec

Take note that all commands should be issued under a
regular user account and not root, due to security reasons.
To make things work, youll need the rpm-build package
and all development libraries and compilers required to
build the sources of your application. If youre recompiling
something that is already present in your systems repositories,
you may try zypper si -d mypackage in OpenSUSE, urpmi
buildrequires mypackage in OpenMandriva/Mageia, or yumbuilddep mypackage in Fedora.
The contents of the src.rpm le is unpacked into the
rpmbuild directory in your home folder (~). The standard tree of
an RPM packager resides here, and a full set of subdirectories:
build, buildroot, rpms, source, specs, srpms.

Alien is a tool that

converts a Debian
package into an RPM
and vice versa. It
works great for many
niche and binary-only
packages. To convert
a DEB to RPM, issue
the following:
alien -r -c /path/
to/mypackage.deb
The reversed action is
even simpler:
alien /path/to/
mypackage.rpm

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 131

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Use checkinstall, not make

A brief look at handling the .deb format
06
install when you build an
application or library from source
Follow
policies
Whether you build
custom packages
solely for your
localhost or publish
them in public
repositories, the
essential thing to
do rst is to study
package building
policies for your
Linux distribution.
For Ubuntu, Debian,
Fedora, ROSA and
OpenSUSE, these
policies usually differ
in details but agree
in the main principle:
writing specs or
control les should
be done accurately to
make sure the evergrowing repositories
maintain trouble-free
performance.

04

Writing a dummy spec

The image on page 24 illustrates a simple dummy

spec le, which can be compiled into an RPM containing two
les: dummy.le and dummy.another.le. To make things
work before you launch rpmbuild, put these les into the
%{buildroot}/etc/dummy directory. During the build process
rpmbuild may complain on some minor issues, which sum
into the badness score. If the score surpasses a certain
threshold then the build will fail. Of course its best to x
problems rather than to override the score, but in case you
need the latter choice, use the setBadness command in your
spec. For example, to enable building a package that includes
an unauthorised permissions le, add the following line:

setBadness(permissions-unauthorized-file, 0).

05

132 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

07

Build DEB packages

First, get the essentials:

sudo apt-get install autoconf automake libtool

autotools-dev dpkg-dev fakeroot dh-make
Imagine, for example, youve got mypackage-0.0.2.tar.gz,
which you wish to compile into a DEB package. First, prepare
a build directory manually like this:

A simpler way: use checkinstall

Use checkinstall instead of make install when you

build an application or a library from source. Checkinstall
works in Debian and Red Hat, where it asks you for some
details (package name, version, description, etc) and
automatically produces a package. The main benet is that
you can keep your system clean and tidy. If you need to wipe
off the les, simply remove the package with your standard
package manager tool (urpme, zypper rm, yum remove). The
downside of checkinstall is its limited features. For example,
you cant include post-installation scripts with it and so it wont
work when packaging some proprietary apps, as it needs extra
hooks for many systems. However, checkinstall is perfect for
local installations or small OEM tasks, so try it.

Right This sample

debian/control
le illustrates the
required minimum
versions of other
packages it
depends on

Just like with RPM, DEB les can be opened

with archive managers so that you can see the two other
tarballs: data.tar.gz and control.tar.gz. They are pretty
self-explanatory the rst one contains package les, the
second one package metadata. Building DEB packages is
different from RPM but still straightforward. Its even more
standardised, as in Debian/Ubuntu and their clones there
is one dominating technology to handle deb packages
apt plus dpkg. Apt is a powerful tool for handling packages
and repositories and has various companions, like aptitude
for exible search queries, while dpkg is solely a package
management tool (like the rpm command).

mkdir -p ~/src/mypackage/0.0.2
Then put your tarball into that directory and unpack it (tar
xzf mypackage-0.0.2.tar.gz). Then you will need to compile
the program using classic commands:

./configure --prefix=/usr && make

If youre recompiling a program that already exists in
one of your repositories, you can ease the development
dependency resolution by issuing apt-get build-dep
mypackage beforehand in order to make the ./congure
script run more smoothly.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Left Debreate
lets you escape
the command line
and create your
DEB package with
friendly step-bystep wizard

Package maintainers
There are various tools that aid creating and maintaining highquality software packages. In the case of Ubuntu/Debian, the
ofcial policy says the synopsis line in debian/control must be
concise, not repeating the package name, but also informative.
Its also a good idea to write useful changelog entries to debian/
changelog each time you update a package.
After building the updated version of the package you may
want to nd out the difference between new and old version.
Use the debdiff command for that:
debdiff package_1-1_arch.deb package_2-1_arch.deb
Also keep in mind that both ispell and aspell have special
modes for checking debian/control les:

08

Debianise it

Run dh_make --createorig, answer a few questions

about the packages details and nally hit Enter. You will see
the newly created debian subdirectory added to the sources
tree. Edit the debian/control le and modify the package
description if necessary. Now, make sure youre currently in the
main sources directory and issue the command:

dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot
After a while, once the building process is over, move a level up
and enjoy your newly created DEB package. You can doubleclick it or use the dpkg -I mypackage-0.0.2*.deb command.
Notice the .dsc le, which can help you pull the application
sources in future. The syntax looks like this:

dpkg-source -x ./mypackage-0.0.2.dsc
ispell -d american -g debian/control
aspell -d en -D -c debian/control
In the RPM world, the most advanced helper tools have been
introduced in ROSA and OpenMandriva, where the latest RPM5
technology is being used. Install the spec-helper package
(urpmi spec-helper ) to access extra tools: spec-cleaner and
rediff_patch. The rst is useful for adapting a spec le from
different Linux distributions: it xes Buildroot and Packager
sections according to global variables, cleans the buildroot
tree, xes hard-coded %{name}, %{version} and %{release}
variable values and does minor xes. The syntax is simple:
spec-cleaner old.spec new.spec
Rediff_patch updates a patch le (.diff) to work with a new
version of a source tarball. Place the old patch, spec le and a
new tarball into a new directory and run:
rediff_patch <patch_ro_rediff> <tarball>

09

The graphical way

Debreate is graphical tool and step-by-step wizard

for those who want to avoid the command line fu. You can
download and install Debreate from its ofcial mirror (bit.
ly/1ItNSPQ) it is a universal .deb package itself and suitable
for nearly all systems.
On the Control tab you are supposed to ll in the info and
description elds, much like you would do if you were in the
debian/control le.
The Dependencies and Conicts tab enables you to specify
package requirements or conicts, including specic minimum
versions. After that, select the package contents on the Files
tab, include optional post-installation commands on the Script
tab, create a desktop menu entry on the Menu tab and nally
press the big green button on the Build tab to generate the DEB
package. With this tool, it should be both faster and easier to
create a Debian package.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 133

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Choose the best software for your system

Ultimate distro & FOSS guide
136 The
best free software for all uses
Tails 1.3
146 The
Tails team tightens security for 1.3
Ubuntu 15.04 Final Beta
147 Ubuntu
makes the switch to systemd
Debian 8.0 Jessie
148 The
new LTS release for Debian

An everyday distro is quite

broad: the kind of operating
system you can use for
anything and everything and
is easy to use

136

148

134 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

146

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

156

Fedora 22
150 How
did Fedora build on 21s
foundations?
elementary OS 0.3 Freya
152 An
update with over 1,1000 improvements
openSUSE 13.2
154 The
next step for all Linux users
Mint 17.1
156 Linux
Mints rst truly independent desktop

152

150

154

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 135

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

e
e
r
f
t
s
e
b
e
Discover th every category and
software in nes you should be using
see which o

136 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Linux Mint

Is this the year of Linux? Or is it the year we

stop claiming that? Either way, there are
already plenty of choices for your day-to-day

Q Elements like the dock and

window styling will look familiar

Ubuntu
Ubuntu is probably the
most popular distro in
the world, or at least the
most well-known, which
means a lot of software supports it and
not other distros. You can customise it
anyway you want off of its core base.

Elementary OS
An everyday distro is quite a broad
thing; in this context we mean
the kind of operating system you
can use for just about anything
and everything without really
specialising in one specific area.
Something thats easy to use and its supplied tools aid
your use of it.
This is exactly the point where elementaryOS comes
in. Aiming to be easy to use for people of all skill levels,
elementaryOS is a beautifully designed distro that
has had a lot of care put into it. Using an Ubuntu LTS
as a base and cribbing from a lot of existing design
decisions, elementaryOS is hardly a completely
original Linux distribution.
What makes elementaryOS unique is its use of
these design aspects and design decisions, putting
together a wholly new desktop and distro experience

Another rm favourite as
an everyday distro, Linux
Mint would have taken this
category by storm once
upon a time due to excellent design
over two fantastic desktops on top of
an excellent distro.

Mageia

 The simple, searchable applications menu

Q
takes design cues from mobile operating systems
that you cant nd anywhere else without some
serious customisations on the users part. Its the
best of every world for people who prefer using a fullyfeature graphical desktop, and it works extremely well
on new and modern systems.
The wording on the website is inclusive and friendly
to newcomers as well not once is there mention of
Linux or distribution, instead using wording familiar
to everyone and rightfully referring to elementaryOS
as a whole as an operating system. This kind of
friendliness and familiarity is translated to the
desktop, from a simple dock bar that grants access to
important programs from the moment you start using
it to an applications menu reminiscent of modern
smartphone design.
The stable Ubuntu base also grants access to an
unprecedented level of packages and other desktop
types if you want something a little different to
elementarys offering. Its a great rst distro for people
who want to make the switch to Linux as well.

Mageia is a very userfriendly spin on the

Mandriva family with
some excellent apps for
controlling just about every aspect
of the distro along with other smart
design choices. Its been brought back
into Mandriva but is still great.

9/10
7/10
6/10
8/10
10/10
9/10
9/10
7/10

LibreOffice

Firefox

Thunderbird

Cinnamon

Shotwell

The ofce suite

that has far
superseded
its originator,
LibreOfce can handle
all your word processing,
spreadsheeting and
presentation needs extremely
well with a selection of
excellent software.

Once again
the king of the
browsers, with
half a billion users
around the world, Firefox has
privacy and customisability
in mind with its design. Due to
some excellent cross-platform
tools, you can use it wherever
you want.

The email
counterpart
to Firefox has
remained a very
strong email client on any
operating system for a long
time. With a great range of addons and extensions, you can
have it work exactly as youd
want it to.

The desktop environment

originally made for Linux
Mint, Cinnamon uses a more
traditional desktop layout
and a lot of common sense
design choices and workow
methods that make the most
of modern tech and traditional
ideas. Its an improvement on
many default desktops.

Excellent photo
management
software used
by a lot of distros
by default, it even has some
basic support for RAWs. You
can perform batch operations
to tweak colours and lighting,
or just organise photos into
specic tags.

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wattOS

A lighter Linux distro can help you get the

most out of an older or underpowered system
by using relatively fewer resources

A very lightweight
and speedy operating
system that aims to
do two things: boot to
desktop very fast and also save you
electricity, either plugged in or on
the battery. It does both of these
exceedingly well.

Puppy Linux

Lubuntu
You can define lightweight in a
number of ways these days. While
the graphical software part of a
distro itself can be the one that is
most resource intensive, the core
kernel
and
behind-the-scenes
packages can also take power away from CPU
cycles. While Lubuntu and other normal Linux distros
running LXDE dont do much to the core of their
operation, merely running the desktop itself can be a
huge relief on some systems.
Thats why were awarding Lubuntu this prestigious
prize. While were not the biggest fans of Unity, the
distribution underneath the desktop environment is
an incredibly solid and relatively easy-to-use system
that a good desktop environment can really make

Q While minimal, the LXDE

desktop styling is very smart

Puppy Linux lets you teach

an old dog new tricks its
specically designed
for older systems and is
extremely resource friendly. It can live
in a very small amount of RAM yet still
includes a very functional system.

Porteus

Q Lubuntu has an excellent Software Centre to

make package downloads easier

A very fast live distro that

takes up only 300 MB of
space, and is optimised
to run from live media as
well. You can add modules for extra
software if needed, making it a very
customisable distro.

the most of. LXDE is not only extremely light it uses

78 MB of RAM compared to XFCEs 89 MB its also
(very importantly) as fully-featured as most modern
desktops. Add this to Ubuntus impressive software
and packages and youve got a lightweight distro that
doesnt sacrice any usability and still has access to all
your favourite software.
As for lightweight software, Lubuntu comes with
quite a different selection of default apps compared to
its vanilla counterpart. A smattering of the basics such
as Firefox, Pidgin and Abiword are all youre presented
with. Its enough to get you started and thanks to
access to the full Ubuntu repos you can then start
building up your system with some of the excellent and
lightweight apps that Linux is known for.
Its denitely not the lightest distro around but
its certainly the best distro that comes under the
lightweight banner.

8/10
7/10
9/10
6/10
10/10
10/10
9/10
9/10

Audacious

Midori

CMPlayer

Geany

Enlightenment

Very lightweight
and very fast,
Audacious is the
denitely the
best audio player for those on
a resource budget. It hooks
into notication centres
of most major desktops as
well, allowing you to control
it better.

Midori teeters
on the edge of
being just a bit
too lightweight
to be as useful as some of
its peers, but it managed
to maintain a number of
excellent features to make
browsing the Internet with it
acceptable in 2015.

A lightweight
video player that
still has a fairly
decent interface
and no need for mucking
around in the command
line, it will play all the media
you need as long as you
have the right codecs and
backends installed.

A text editor with

IDE features
that is popular
among those
with a few small projects on
the go. Its easy enough to
switch between the two types,
meaning you can use it for your
day-to-day text editing before
going full developer.

A window manager
or full desktop
environment,
Enlightenment
is an incredible exible and
lightweight framework loved
by hardcore users. Its rarely
used as a default desktop, but
give it a go if youre on the hunt
for something different.

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GeeXbox

Here are your best distros for making custom

systems to play all your media, either on a TV
or just for better navigation while at your desk

OpenELEC
When it comes to media and
other forms of entertainment
consumption via computers, one
of the most recognisable names
in existence is XBMC. Very likely
because of its quite redundant legacy
naming, its unfortunately dropping the well-known
branding in favour of new name Kodi. Whats this all
got to do with entertainment distros though?
Well the devs behind Kodi also make the excellent
OpenELEC, a Linux distro optimised for a number of
different hardware types to offer the best possible
Kodi experience.
Not only does it work on specialist hardware
such as the Raspberry Pi, Apple TV and some other
hardware ideal as HTPCs, but you can also get
generic PC builds for x86 and x64 systems.OpenELEC

takes up only a tiny amount of your le system while

still offering a full version of Kodi. This means you can
use any remaining storage to keep media local, such as
your party playlist, if thats your kind of thing, however
you can still stream your media from any other
computer set up to share it. Setting up these shared
folders in Kodi is a quick and simple exercise, and it
even scrapes together information on the les to make
navigation easier.
There are also plenty of add-ons available that allow
you to stream media for many online video sources,
as well as recently-added native Live TV viewing and
recording the latter being a better use for your hard
drive space.
For both TV and PC, this is an excellent way to
consume media in almost any situation, with plenty of
codecs and online features.

A direct alternative to
OpenELEC that gives you
a little more choice for
how you set up a HTPC. It
hasnt had any new development for
about a year now, but thats nothing to
worry about as its still excellent.

Ubuntu
When it comes to being
an entertainment distro,
Ubuntus strength is its
supreme list of packages.
You can set up XBMC/Kodi, Plex, Myth
or just plain video and music players on
Ubuntu of any type.

AVLinux
Not for playing back
your media per se, AV
Linux is an excellent
way for you to actually
create audio and video yourself,
thanks to a custom kernel and great
package selection on a live CD or live
USB stick.

10/10
8/10
4/10
8/10
3/10
10/10
9/10

Q OpenELEC claims to set up

your media box in 15 minutes

10/10

Q There are some customisations you can make,

as well as add-ons to install

Kodi

VLC

Clementine

Nuvola

GIMP

Previously
XBMC, Kodi
Entertainment
Center is the
premier media PC software
around. Its the software
behind OpenELEC and it can
be used for simple music and
video playback, or streaming
services and recording live TV.

An extremely
powerful yet small
piece of software
that can not only
play just about any form of
media, but also send, receive
and record network streams.
Its very customisable and easy
to use even if you dont want to
stream your desktop.

The most fullyfeatured audio

player around, with
incredible library
and playlist management and
an excellent interface to boot.
It also has a smart playlist
that will build itself on the y,
however it doesnt run well on
older systems.

One of the
problems we
have found with
browser-based
streaming is that we cannot
control playback with media
keys or hotkeys. Nuvola allows
you to keep all your streaming
audio in one place and, more
importantly, control it.

The powerful
image manipulator
that is probably
the best open
source has to offer, GIMP can
even challenge Photoshop
thanks to its array of excellent
features and tools it even has
a more straightforward naming
convention in places.

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CrunchBang

With Linux proving a popular platform for

development work, which is the best of the
bunch for getting your code on?

A Debian derivative,
CrunchBang uses the
lightweight Openbox
window manager to be
as distraction-free as possible and
offers a good balance between the
performance and exibility of Arch and
the shallow learning curve of Ubuntu.

Gentoo

Arch Linux
Arch has never been a distribution to
pander to the common denominator.
While its contemporaries add userfriendly wizards and hand-holding
installation packages, Arch dumps the
newcomer to a console session and
leaves them adrift with little more than a Wiki page for
company. For beginners, simply getting Arch installed
can seem like a major achievement but beginners are
most certainly not Archs target market.
Once its installed, Arch reveals its true potential.
It allows the more technical user to install only
the packages required for day-to-day work for

guaranteed zero bloat, with all the benets to

performance, stability and your ability to concentrate
that this implies. Tweaking your Arch install can
become obsessive, but once its set up to your liking
you can expect a smooth ride.
Arch is certainly not a distribution for beginners, but
those with Linux experience will find plenty to like about
it. It has an active community, albeit one which can be
unwelcoming to beginners, boasts a great package
selection for even some of the more esoteric tools in a
developers arsenal, and promises to provide an easilycustomised environment tailored specifically to your
individual needs.
A rolling-release development methodology means
that while installation may be painful its a one-off
experience, and users are guaranteed to be working on
the latest available tools and resources. Theres a good
reason Arch and its derivatives are popular among
Linux kernel developers as well as those who write
software for other platforms.
Finally, Arch has an ace up its sleeve for those
targeting Arch itself with their creations: the Arch Build
System. Designed specically for Linux developers,
the ABS offers the ability to create, customise and
distribute packages into Arch which are built directly
from source. Based heavily on the BSD ports system,
ABS offers automation for tasks other distributions
require developers to perform by hand.

Like Arch, Gentoo features

a BSD ports-like package
management system
dubbed Portage, and a
release system ensuring users install
the latest packages compiled from
source with per-distro optimisations.

Ubuntu
Often derided for
Canonicals treatment
of the wider opensource community,
Ubuntu nevertheless promises wide
compatibility backed by the option of
commercial support contracts.

2/10
5/10
10/10
6/10
8/10
9/10
2/10
9/10

Q You can install just the tools

you need for zero bloat

Eclipse

VirtualBox

Git

Vim/EMACS

GNU Debugger

It might lack
compatibility with
the GNU General
Public Licence, but
the Eclipse Public Licensed
Eclipse IDE is a powerful tool.
Based on IBMs Visual Age,
it supports most common
programming languages youll
be working with.

While the
GPL-licensed
VirtualBox OSE
build only provides
virtualised USB 1.1 support, its
other features make it a great
way to run alternative operating
systems on top of userspace
Linux; ideal for testing your
code on other platforms.

Born of a copyright
confusion that
surrounded
BitKeeper, Git is
the distributed revision control
system of choice for kernel
developers. It allows for easy
collaborative working with
plenty of ways to track bugs
added in later code revisions.

Did you really think we were

going to get involved in this
debate? A good text editor
is the programmers best
tool, but were staying on the
fence with this one. Whether
youre an acolyte of Stallman
and Steele or a proselyte for
Moolenaar, use whichever of
these works for you.

The standard
debugger for
GNU/Linux, GDBs
capabilities
extend beyond the obvious
with support for programming
languages ranging from Free
Pascal and Ada through to
Objective-C and Java. We
recommend giving it a try.

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Red Hat Enterprise

For companies, Linux can signicantly reduce

the total cost of IT infrastructure, but which
distribution stands out?

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop/Server

When it comes to desktop Linux
distributions for the enterprise
crowd, there are two names that go
toe-to-toe: SUSE and Red Hat. Both
offer distributions for the desktop
and server specically marketed as
Enterprise Linux, and both back up their offerings with
a wealth of commercial support.
With customers as varied as the London Stock
Exchange and Ofce Depot, SUSE Linux Enterprise
is extremely popular. Features like SUSE Manager,
which provides automation of server management,
and SUSE Cloud, providing OpenStack-powered local
cloud infrastructure, make it easy to see why.
Enterprise users typically need support, which is
naturally where SUSE makes its money. As well
as direct commercial support, the company offers

various consultancy services including SUSE Assist.

SUSE Assist, the jewel in SUSEs support crown,
offers on-site services from a certied professional
for companies that cant afford to have a specialist on
their staff.
As well as its Desktop and Server variants, SUSE
Linux Enterprise comes with the option of add-on
extensions, including those that make it suitable
for use in point-of-sale environments and highavailability extensions where required along with
real-time and thin-client variants.
Stability and support do come at cost to exibility,
however: compared to the community-driven
OpenSUSE, SUSE Linux Enterprise has fewer
packages available by default, removing many
of the packages that arent well-suited to a more
professional environment.
The nal tick in the box for SUSE is its SUSE
Studio platform, which provides a means for users
Enterprise or otherwise to customise Linux
distributions and create everything from Live CD
images to VirtualBox images and even Amazon
Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances tailored to
their needs.
While SUSE is our pick at present, it continually
trades places with Red Hat as the two attempt to outdo each other; before committing to one, be sure to
check out what the others offering too.

Like SUSE, Red Hat offers

its Enterprise Linux variant
in server, desktop and
specialist variants, and
boasts a healthy client list including
ETH Zurich. Support is plentiful,
and the company operates training
facilities throughout the world.

OpenSUSE
OpenSUSE is the
community-driven,
fully-open variant of SUSE
Linux. Sponsored by
SUSE, OpenSUSE requires no support
contracts or licensing and often
provides newer features.

Ubuntu
Like SUSE and Red Hat,
the company behind the
software Canonical
offers varying support
contracts and training options,
while its software compatibility is
top-notch.

8/10
7/10
7/10
7/10
6/10
5/10
7/10
8/10

Q SUSE is a highly curated

distro, tailored to its needs

Puppet

Chef

Docker

Lynis

SUSE Studio

An open-source
configuration
management
utility designed
to support heterogeneous
networks of Unix-like and
Windows machines, Puppet is
a powerful automation tool for
sysadmins of Enterprise-class
infrastructures. Worth a look!

An alternative to
Puppet, the Rubyand Erlang-based
Chef integrates
well with commercial cloud
environments including
Amazons EC2 and Googles
Cloud Platform, and works as
a local install for managing
internal infrastructure.

Docker provides
the ability to
easily and
quickly deploy
applications inside isolated
software containers on Linux.
Compared to a traditional
virtual machine, a Docker
container has signicantly
lower overheads.

Designed for those who

take a proactive approach to
security but, it has to be said,
a handy tool for the black-hat
crowd as well Lynis provides
a means to audit Linux and
other Unix-like systems
for security vulnerabilities,
and can also check for
conguration errors.

While SUSE Studio

is most commonly
used by the SUSE
and OpenSUSE
teams, its ability to customise
and deploy operating system
images can be used with any
Linux distribution and can
make a system administrators
job signicantly easier.

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BackBox Linux

While the mainstream media worries its

readers over black-hats, security-focused
distributions are a vital tool for the good guys

For those who dont need

ARM support, the x86only BackBox is a great
alternative. Based on
Ubuntu and featuring the lightweight
Xfce window manager, BackBox is
powerful yet attractive and comes with
a selection of pre-installed utilities.

Wifislax

Kali Linux
For years, BackTrack Linux was
the king of Linux distributions
for those doing security audits
and penetration testing. In 2013,
however, the project was forked into
Kali Linux. Created and maintained
by Mati Aharoni and Devon Kearns of Offensive
Security, Kali is a ground-up rewrite of BackTrack
and a worthy successor to it.
Based on Debian, rather than the Ubuntu origins
of its predecessor, Kali includes pre-installed
copies of the most popular security utilities,
including network sniffer and analyser Wireshark,
port-scanning tool nmap, password cracker
John the Ripper and even the Aircrack-ng suite

for penetration testing of wireless networks. Its

repositories have plenty more choices available, in
addition to more sedate applications and utilities.
Where Kali differentiates itself from the
competition is in compatibility: as well as 32-bit
and 64-bit x86 hosts, the team behind it have
worked hard to bring Kali to the more popular
ARM-based platforms out there. Builds are already
available for devices as diverse as the Raspberry
Pi and Samsung Chromebook, with more builds
arriving on a regular basis. Considering the very
low cost of some of these devices, Kalis support
helps lower the barrier to entry considerably
over distributions which require more expensive
hardware to run.
Perhaps the most impressive compatibility
feature, however, is a Kali sub-project dubbed
NetHunter. Currently available exclusively for
Googles Nexus Android smartphones and
tablets, Kali NetHunter provides various wireless
penetration testing tools usable directly from the
device a great tool for discreet testing without
having to lug an all-too-obvious laptop around.
Combined with options to install to a hard drive
as well as run from memory and an attractive
desktop which lends itself well to every-day use,
Kali is the obvious choice for anyone with an
interest in network security despite its reputation
as a script-kiddies play-thing, its actually pretty
tight on the security front.

For penetration testing of

both wired and wireless
networks, the Slackwarebased Wislax is brilliant
thanks to integration of many unofcial
hardware drivers and rmwares not
normally part of the mainline kernel.

REMnux
REMnux specialises in
reverse-engineering
of malicious software.
Tools are provided for
memory investigation and analysis of
various executable formats as well as
documents and even web content.

6/10
7/10
5/10
5/10
9/10
9/10
6/10
9/10

Q Kali has everything you need

for full security testing

Lynis

nmap

OpenVAS

Wireshark

Metasploit

Created by Michael Boelen,

the author of Rootkit Hunter
(rkhunter), Lynis is a fully open
security audit tool. As well
as checking for vulnerabilities,
Lynis has the ability to nd
miscongurations with
reports that can prove to
be extremely useful when
hardening a system.

A tool so famous
it ended up with
screen time in The
Matrix Reloaded,
Fyodor Vaskovichs (real name
Gordon Lyon) nmap should
have a place on every system.
Its rapid network mapping is
incredibly exible and can be
individually tailored.

The Open
Vulnerability
Assessment
System (OpenVAS)
started life as a fork of Nessus
under the name GNessUs.
Now, its one of the leading
vulnerability scanning and
management tools and its
entirely free and open-source.

While Wireshark
formerly
Ethereal has
its competitors
in the packet-snifng arena,
its friendly user interface and
powerful analysis and ltering
tools are second to none.
Wireshark is useful for general
network diagnosis as well.

This framework
is invaluable
for penetration
testers. When
a scan has revealed a
vulnerability, Metasploit
can attempt to exploit said
vulnerability; proving or
disproving its existence quickly
and easily.

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iprediaOS

Stay private and keep your information safe

with these Linux distros specially built to put
your mind at ease when working online

Whonix
A very different private
distro, anonymously
connecting you online via
an anonymous terminal
and anonymous server, giving two
levels of security to maximise privacy
and stop any incoming attacks.

Tails
Privacy can be extremely important
on the Internet, and its only going
to become more of a concern as
time goes on. With more ways to
leave your trace on the Internet,
and more companies wanting your
details to sell you ads, it can be tricky to remain truly
anonymous. This can be essential for some people
whistleblowers, victims of stalking and people writing
unpopular opinions on Twitter. It can also be handy for
just buying a secret gift for your other half to avoid the
inevitable targeted ads popping up that an incognito
mode wont stop.
Tails can help you with all of this, and makes it
fairly easy to do in the process. It manages this
through many careful layers of security and privacy
considerations rstly, the entire system runs
in RAM and does not use any disk-bound swap

An alternative to Tails that

relies more on the I2P
network than Tor, yet still
provides an environment
where you can stay completely
anonymous. Its also live, so you can
test it out before committing to it.

Liberte

Q All traces of user activity are removed as part of

the shutdown process

A Gentoo-based
Tails alternative
thats not had much
development recently
but is still extremely private and
very secure. It uses Tor and other
software to keep the user safe from
prying eyes.

partition. The RAM is then completely written over

when Tails is shut down, leaving no trace of what you
were doing or using.
All of its networking is run through Tor, so your IP is
masked behind at least a dozen encrypted servers.
Failing that, the default is the Tor browser, which
also has the same software, meaning that whatever
youre looking for, it wont get traced back to you. You
can also use secure chat clients to keep your location
safe, theres PGP email support built-in so you can
send private mail and theres also just a full suite of
normal programs like LibreOfce and GIMP, so you
can use the distro in any other way.
You can install Tails, but its designed to be live
booted and that will guarantee maximum privacy at
the same time. Give it a go today to nd out just how
easy it is to remain anonymous.

8/10
7/10
6/10
10/10
6/10
10/10
4/10
7/10

Q Run Tails from a disc or memory

stick to get the best use

Tor

Tor browser

ClawsMail

KeePassX

In the movie
Sneakers, an
intrepid group of
Bay Area hackers
bounce their signal off multiple
servers and satellites to avoid
detection. Tor is essentially
this, sending your requests
through several secure and
encrypted servers.

Built using
Firefox and Tor,
using the Tor
browser is an
easy way to stay completely
anonymous online without the
need for booting into a private
distro. Its so good its used by
default in Tails to make sure
you stay private.

This is a PGP
encryption
for your email
clients, including
Thunderbird, that lets you send
messages in condence. It
also works on its own, just in
case you want to leave even
less trace of its existence on
your system.

Manage your
passwords with
KeePassX, the
cross-platform
password manager. It allows
you to store a lot of data in a
highly encrypted database that
can only be accessed via your
password once its accessed,
you can even search it.

Florence Virtual
Keyboard
A virtual keyboard
that avoids
any keylogging
programs to
make your computer just that
little more secure. It can also
be used if your keyboard is
missing and broken, and is
extensible and customisable.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 143

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Sabayon

For those who dont like to be beholden to

formal release schedules, rolling-release
distributions promise to never get out of date

A Gentoo variant,
Sabayon retains the
rolling-release ethos but
is a lot more welcoming.
Designed to work out-the-box,
Sabayon loses a little in exibility
compared to its upstream parent but
is still a powerful distribution.

Arch

Gentoo
Named for the speedy Gentoo
penguin, Gentoo and Arch have long
been rivals. Both offer a true rollingrelease development methodology,
meaning that the latest updates
are brought to the entire user base
simultaneously ensuring that no installation is ever
out of date, and that installation need only occur once
and both feature a BSD-inspired ports-like software
distribution platform.
For the Linux purist, the hands-off approach of Arch
is likely to appeal, but for the average user Gentoo is
a gentler introduction to the world of rolling releases.
First released back in 2002, the distribution has a
considerable fan base who appreciate the teams stillrare approach to development and software releases.
The other main advantage to running Gentoo is that
its software is compiled from source directly on the
users system via the Portage manager. This means no

Q Installation is slower but gives

you better-optimised apps

Arch can be unwelcoming

to newcomers; rst boot
drops the user at a console
session and installation is
a process of following the instructions
on the wiki. Once installed, though, its
lean, fast and extremely exible.

Aptosid

Q Support forums and an IRC channel are linked

right from the desktop

Aptosid offers a familiar

environment and rollingrelease development.
Taking Debians unstable
branch as its parent, Aptosid includes a
custom kernel and retains compatibility
with Debians Free Software guidelines.

waiting for package maintainers to build and upload

a package for your platform, and that the software
which gets installed can be optimised for your specific
processor architecture enabling performance boosts
where generic compilation would drain power from the
system. The trade-off, of course, is that compiling from
source typically takes longer than simply installing precompiled binaries from a package archive.
Like Arch, Gentoos installation process has been
tricky although plenty of community help is available
in documentation, IRC channels and mailing lists but
the relatively recent release of a Live USB variant makes
it far easier to try. While its popularity has waned in
recent years, Gentoo remains a great choice for anyone
who wants a highly customisable system, and while it
can be tricky to install its a process that in theory
should only ever have to happen once.

7/10
6/10
10/10
8/10
9/10
10/10
4/10
9/10

GIMP

Audacity

Firefox

LibreOffice

VLC

The opensource answer

to PhotoShop,
the GNU Image
Manipulation Program has
recently introduced a singlewindow mode to combat
criticisms of its unfriendly
userface, bringing its power to
a new audience.

Supporting
multi-track mixing
and with more
lters and utilities
than you could imagine using,
Audacity helps prove that Linux
is no slouch when it comes to
creative work and that it can
hold its head up there with the
proprietary platforms.

Although under
re for perceived
bloat ironic,
considering the
project was founded to deal
with perceived bloat in the
Netscape browser the
Firefox browser, now on
version 34, remains a popular
choice among users.

Created following
Sun Microsystems
acquisition of
OpenOfce.org,
The Document Foundations
LibreOfce is now the default
in many distributions, offering
features and compatibility
to please even the biggest
Microsoft Ofce fan.

The strength of
VLC lies in its
exibility. As well
as the ability to
play almost any audio or video
format, it supports streaming
over the network and the
ability to record from various
sources including capturing a
live view of your desktop.

144 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

The best live Linux distros you can boot up

from portable media without installation

8/10

Knoppix

7/10

Knoppix is still one of the premier

live distros, although competition
has become fierce with other distros
popping up that add something
different to the mix. Knoppix has
remained popular thanks to some core design choices,
while updating in other areas to keep with the times.
Knoppix positions itself as a showcase of everything
that open source has to offer, and depending on what
version of the distro you get, this can translate to having
access to just about every known FOSS available
on Linux without the need to install them it has
everything and the kitchen sink.

For having quite a lot of software, Knoppix boots and

runs fairly fast. This is due to the way all the software is
compressed and decompressed on the fly, allowing for
2 GB of the usual DVD to contain up to 9 GB of software
that can be used at any time. Knoppix also has several
custom boot options on a cheat sheet that will let you
boot with different sound or display options, and even
boot into the special ADRIANE interface for those who
are visually impaired. Knoppix can be very handy to have
installed onto a DVD or USB storage if youre regularly
needing to quickly boot into Linux for some reason on
various computers. Its not the best for sysadmin work,
but it can do many other Linux-only computing tasks.

5/10
7/10
10/10
9/10
4/10
9/10

WebConverger
Puppy Linux
A very special and tiny
distribution that, while
very light for normal
computers, is best
suited for giving ancient PCs some
usefulness. Its based on Ubuntu
usually, with a quite custom kernel
and a different set of packages.

WebConverger allows
you to set up a dedicated
web kiosk for something
like an Internet cafe,
running a modied version of Firefox.

Porteus
A very fast live distro that takes up only
300 MB of space, and is optimised
to run from live media. You can add
modules for extra software if needed.

Clonezilla

GParted

The best way to clone

your hard drive, Clonezilla
supports full hard drives as
well as partitions and can
then be used to restore disk images in
the future. It can be used on its own but
its best to use the live version.

Format, edit, resize and

basically do anything
you want with your hard
drive and partitions using
GParted. Its included on most live CDs
because its excellent at doing this task
and is also easy to use.

Wicd

TestDisk

An excellent and easy to

use networking utility
that can be used for both
wireless and wired, it
makes connecting to and managing
networks easy, in the past weve had it
win our network manager group test.

If your backups have

failed or something else
has gone horribly wrong,
TestDisk can recover your
data from a hard drive. It supports all
major le system types and works from
the terminal.

Q You can download Knoppix from www.knopper.net/knoppix

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 145

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Left Keep track of your

connections while you
browse privately

Tails 1.3

CPU
x86 compatible (IBM PC
compatible and others, but
not PowerPC or ARM)

RAM

Privacy is made better as the Tails team

works to improve and upgrade its eponymous
secure distribution
Over the past year, Tails has been going from strength
to strength, completing important updates to make it a
complete product. Version 1.1 in particular has updated
the codebase and some of the camouflage features to
make it more accessible and give it a longer lifespan.
Since then, a lot of the updates seem to revolve around
usability. Not just in the terms of workflow and privacy,
but also making private ways of performing day-to-day
activities easier. There have been bug fixes and package
updates along the way and while theyre important from
a security perspective, the ability to let people be private
when they need to be and not hold them back from their
life is the entire point of Tails to begin with.
Tails 1.3 is similar in this regard. On launch, youll get the
same excellent set of default options that immediately
connects you to Tor, enabling secure browsing. You can
also set the root passwords and activate the Windows

146 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

8 camouflage, along with advanced MAC spoofing and

other proxy settings before you even load into the desktop.
The desktop itself is more or less the same, although it
has cut down on the notifications about whats being set
up, for ones letting you know what is ready. For most this
is fine and we found the others fly past too fast to need to
be mentioned. The new additions are mainly the Bitcoin
wallet Electrum that lets you transfer money with minimal
setup for accessing your wallet, and Keyringer where you
can send secrets via text documents in PGP mail and Git.
Both work well and perfectly with Tails, although as the
devs like to point out, while Electrum makes it easier to
transfer Bitcoin it is still very traceable.
While they are the big new things, there are small
privacy and security increases that make the experience
better. Our only small gripe is that installation is still a bit
odd, but that can be worked on in the future.

1 GB recommended

Storage
Internal or external DVD reader, or
ability to boot from USB or SD card

Available
tails.boum.org/download

Summary
While its only minor
improvements and
additions, its still a very
secure and private distro.
It is now easier to be on
the Internet and remain
private using Tails, thanks
to Electrum and Keyringer
bringing a better way to
pay for things and securely
transmit messages

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Above Unity is back and with a slight

change people have been asking for

Ubuntu 15.04 Final Beta

Ubuntu nally makes the switch to systemd. Is it
the literal Devil or just a way to handle init?

CPU
1 GHz

RAM
512 MB minimum, 1 GB recommended

By the time youre reading this, the full version of

Ubuntu 15.04 will be out. This beta release of the distro
is more of a release candidate in some ways and all the
promised features are already intact and fully tested a
good sign for a new release of a distro. As a release midway
between two LTS versions, theres not a massive amount
of fanfare for the Vivid Vervet, but its got some interesting
new additions and changes nonetheless.
There are a few tweaks on Unity, which is now at version
seven. One of the gripes with the way it handled windows
before was how it always put the menu toolbar on the top
bar. While it made sense in full-screen, when you have a
few windows open it can take a moment to click that youre
looking for the tools in the wrong place, and it didnt save
much room at all. By default, it now has the tool menus
docked with the window when its not full-screened,
enabling for a traditional and natural workflow.
On the surface, aside from minor tweaks and package
updates, thats really the only main difference in the

way youll be using Ubuntu from the desktop. Go deeper

down and we find the big change for Ubuntu 15.04: the
switch to systemd for init. Upstart, the service it replaced,
was an Ubuntu-own daemon as it was. Systemd may
make it more universal in comparison, although with the
murmuring controversy surrounding systemd, this may
not be to everyones taste.
The change makes little difference to the normal user
experience. Unlike the days of weird security bugs that
would pop up in systemd when using Fedora, a lot of
those kinks have been ironed out and result in the same
performance. As for the developers, its stock systemd
without really any Ubuntu modifications outside whats
necessary for it to run in this case, it will be down to
where you fall on systemd.
Ubuntu 15.04 then is a pretty standard Ubuntu update
it looks prettier, it works a little better for the majority of
users and theres a little fix for one of the Unity complaints.
Otherwise, it may be time to learn how to use systemd.

Storage
7 GB minimum

Available from
releases.ubuntu.com/15.04

Summary
While not a necessary
upgrade from 14.10 and
really, if youre that against
systemd then its best to
stick to 14.04 it still offers
enough so that when you
do upgrade, youll notice a
slightly better selection of
features and apps.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 147

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Above Jessie gives you the option to install the Cinnamon desktop

Debian 8.0 Jessie

Jessie has gone stable, and this new LTS release for Debian
seems to have spent only a short time at the testing branch
CPU
1 GHz P4 or later

RAM
1 GB recommended
(for desktop)

Storage
10 GB (for desktop)

148 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

The Debian cycle seems to be extremely short this

time round. 7.0 Wheezy felt like it was in testing for a
long time, yet already weve had 8.0 Jessie supersede
it as the next stable. Its odd to think its been two
years since then, but here we are with 8.0 stable and
the latest LTS release for the venerable Debian distro.
With Stretch the next testing build, and probably the
one well see used most in desktop distros, what is the
actual stable release like?
First off, if youve been using Jessie over the last
few months for any extended period of time, you
will probably know what to expect. With the feature
freeze in November, the ve months leading to
release were mostly bug testing to make sure that
the nal product was worthy of the stable name. Its
denitely succeeded in this, being able to run well on

a variety of hardware types and in situations where

its using a slightly wrong kernel for the hardware,
such as with PAE support issues, for example.
Debian is very much a basic distro in that it offers
you a base, graphical distro with a good selection
of software installed and decent tools to expand
on it to make it anything you want. There are no
special, homegrown desktop environments, package
managers, software centres or external services and
such. It comes in a variety of avours to suit many
peoples needs, including the now standard 32- and
64-bit spins, a variety of desktop editions and a
command line version for those who want to start
basic. Debian 8.0 continues this trend, albeit now
giving you more up-to-date software packages and a
few more options such as Mints Cinnamon desktop.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Above Synaptic still takes care of your package management

Installation is straightforward, using a

simple graphical installer with the live
desktop versions that offer enough control
and options to create a very decent system
Installation is straightforward, using a simple
graphical installer with the live desktop versions that
offer enough control and options to create a very
decent system before you even log in for the rst time.
It takes a bit more babying than modern Ubuntus
and Fedoras, but the actual installation process is
not particularly time consuming on a medium-to-low
powered modern system.
Using Debian once its installed is as advertised:
stable. We had no issues using it in day-to-day
situations. By default theres a fair bit of software
installed on the distro, so you can quickly get started
with any work that you wanted to do. Package
management in the desktop environments is handled
by the old faithful Synaptic; this also includes any
software or other updates for the system, which youll
have to remember to do yourself rather than relying on
a pop-up notication.
Another addition to the stable branch thats
particularly notable over Wheezy is the switch to

systemd it looks as though this year will continue

the trend of distros adopting this as their new system
manager. From a general user perspective, it wont
matter to you at all. You can still continue to use
Debian as your operating system without everything
upending itself.
As for devs, Debian does at least offer users the
choice of rolling back to an init-based system, so if its
being that egregious, you do at least have the choice
for the next ve years of long-term support.
Right now, Jessie is great, it is light and offers a
range of options for every kind of user. Testing may still
be the preferred distro for some though, as software
inevitably becomes outdated over time, which can
be an inconvenience.
People who are looking for a stable distro to serve
them over the next few years will be more than happy
with this version of Debian 8. There is even more choice
available and a lot of the software is at an excellent upto-date state.

Pros
Stable, reliable, comes with a great
selection of software and is very
easy to customise to your
individual specications

Cons

Aside from security updates,

Jessie will remain at this level of
software for the duration of its
time as stable

Summary
Debian 8 is a ne new
stable in the Debian line of
distros, perfect for all kinds
of users for at least the
next six months, while still
excellent for those who like
ease of use, familiarity and
good security on one distro
for a more extended
period of time.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 149

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Left As well as see your

notications listed here,
you can interact with
them as they appear via
buttons on the banners

Fedora 22
Fedora branches into three distinct variants for its latest release,
building on the solid foundations laid in Fedora 21
CPU
1 GHz

RAM
1 GB

Storage
10 GB

150 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

In the words of the developers, If this release had a

human analogue, itd be Fedora 21 after itd been to
college, landed a good job, and kept its New Years
Resolution to go to the gym on a regular basis.
Fedora 22 isnt a huge departure, but it does introduce
some great features and expands on those brought in
for the previous release. There are now three separate
editions of the distro, each tailored with packages
to suit its purpose: Cloud, Server and Workstation.
Were focusing on the latter here, the desktop edition,
although there are some noteworthy features in the
other two, including Docker images and Vagrant Boxes
for Fedora Cloud and a default XFS lesystem on top
of LVM for Fedora Server.
Vagrant has also been added to Fedora 22
Workstation, continuing the focus on virtualisation for

this cycle, while the UI for Boxes has also been totally
revamped with a better box creation assistant, new
preferences, default display scaling and a new feature
that lets you send keyboard shortcuts through to a box.
In terms of software there are some other improvements
with Fedora. KDE Plasma 5 and LXQt have both been
packaged for this release, theres a brand new IDE for
GNOME called Builder, including features like splitpanel editing and a Markdown preview, and theres a
new Preupgrade Assistant that assesses your system to
ensure its ready for the next upgrade. At the back end,
Fedora is now a step closer to running on Wayland, with
the display server being used for the GNOME Display
Manager in this release (although the GNOME session
still uses X), and the Elasticsearch indexing server has
been integrated with the Fedora repos.

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Above For a full breakdown of Yum/DNF differences, check out http://dnf.readthedocs.org/en/latest/cli_vs_yum.html

DNF is an improvement over Yum, using

the dependency solver hawkey and then
librepo for repo operations and libcomps
for package groups
Perhaps the biggest change in Fedora 22 is the
replacement of its package manager Yum with DNF
(Dandied Yum). DNF is a real improvement over Yum,
using the dependency solver hawkey and then librepo
for repo operations and libcomps for package groups.
DNF will also skip over updates and repos that dont
work without halting the entire operation, it makes
the update and upgrade commands equivalent, and
it will also remove dependent packages that were not
installed by users. For now, Yum is still aliased and
youll see a reminder that it is now deprecated if you try
to run a Yum command, but then the DNF equivalent of
your operation will run, which is handy.
Some great changes have also been brought to
Fedora courtesy of GNOME 3.16 chiey, the new
notication system. Notications are now displayed
at the top-centre of the screen instead of the bottom,
and these have been integrated into the calendar
popover where you can clear them individually or
all at once. Another nice touch is that the terminal

noties you once long-running jobs are complete.

GNOME Shell and other themes have seen a number
of improvements too, from small touches like the
way that window resizing and placement works,
through to more integration between different
desktop environment themes, so apps from other
environments feel more like native apps.
Files has a new popover that enables you to set
the zoom level and sort order, and you can now send
les to the trash using the Delete key without having
to hold Control. Scrollbars have also been replaced
with a new overlaid scroll marker which is slimmer
and minimal, designed to keep out of your way until
you mouseover, at which point the full scrollbar
appears. You also have dotted lines along the top and
bottom of your windows to indicate further content,
and theres a pulse when you hit the top or bottom,
all of which are small, but very welcome touches
that enhance your user experience in a subtle but
signicant manner.

Pros
The new GNOME 3.16 features and the
DNF package manager are highlights,
and the three editions are well suited to
their purposes

Cons
Its hard to fault this release its a
solid improvement on Fedora 21 and
the switch to DNF has been very well
implemented

Summary
Virtualisation is now
easier across all editions
of Fedora 22 and DNF
should prove to be a
worthy successor to Yum.
Factoring in the subtle but
important design changes
and new features, this
release is an excellent
progression for the distro.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 151

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Above The Videos, Camera and Calculator are new additions for Freya

elementary OS 0.3 Freya

Over 1,100 improvements make Freya the biggest
elementary OS update yet
CPU
1 GHz

RAM
1 GB

Storage
15 GB

152 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

Elementary OS has continued to impress in the four

years since its rst release and almost two years
since Luna, its last major update at version 0.2.
The developers claim over three million downloads
and elementary OS has remained in the top ten most
searched-for distros for the last year, with a strong
community continuing to build behind this enduringly
popular distro. Freya, based on Linux 3.16 and the
Ubuntu 14.04 LTS, brings a host of visual changes that
are largely based around improvements and additions
to Pantheon, the Ubuntu-based operating systems
desktop environment that replaces Unity.
Much of the change is in the smaller details, with
work being done on things like the rounded corners of
dialogs and the lights and shadows of panels, reducing
gloss tones for a more matte look, and also in the

context-sensitive header bar that adapts its colour

and transparency depending on what you have open
in order to be non-intrusive. Slingshot, the application
menu, has also been improved with the capability for
simple calculations in the search bar and the ability to
drag-and-drop app icons from your searches.
One of the biggest changes is the redesigned
multitasking screen, which now has (like many aspects
of elementary OSs design) an even more GNOME 3 or
OS X feel to it. Its now right up front in the dock and as
well as select and close your open applications, you can
also switch to different workspaces using the buttons
along the bottom this entirely replaces the workspace
switcher that used to push up from beneath your dock,
making for a much tidier solution (though you can still
use your hot corners for switching workspaces).

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Above Photos has been redesigned since being forked from Shotwell

The developers claim over three million

downloads and elementary OS has
remained in the top ten most searchedfor distros for the last year, with a strong
community building behind it
Along with a new unied lock and login screen that
has a great clock widget, theres also an updated
notications system that comes with a do not disturb
mode. The notications are interactive and theyll also
show you alerts from things like terminal processes
that are running in the background. Regarding the
terminal itself, this now has labels for the tabs along
the top that each show the last command that youve
run and natural copying and pasting (ie Ctrl+C) now
works in the terminal too.
Another big change from Luna is the redesigned
Photos app. Forked from Shotwell earlier this year,
which is helpfully written in the Vala language also
used to write Pantheon, Pantheon Photos is now
being run by the elementary team and has been given
the same attention-to-detail treatment as the other
Pantheon programs to make it as intuitive as possible.
Joining Photos in Freyas line-up of core software is a
new Videos application, as well as a new Calculator
and a Camera application for webcams.

Look in the System Settings and there are a few

nal changes of note, including redesigns of the date
and time, user accounts, applications and displays
menus, again to simplify and visually improve the
options. The privacy settings page now has a toggle at
the top for a privacy mode, which you can enable if you
want to stop elementary OS itself from tracking your
usage data, and theres another new toggle switch
for a built-in rewall which supports custom rules for
enabling and denying trafc.
Altogether, these minor and major additions to
the operating system make for an incredibly strong
release that denitely adds to elementary OSs
reputation for clean, elegant simplicity in its user
experience while also modernising its design and
updating the software selection. Its as fast and
lightweight as it has ever been, making it suitable
for old machines, and Freya is a pleasure to use and
tinker with no matter which operating system you are
used to working with.

Pros
Design and menu improvements
throughout Pantheon, new and
overhauled software, notications,
rewall and privacy mode

Cons
May be just a bit too limiting for
users accustomed to greater
choice and customisation options
in their distro

Summary
Freyas host of updates
brings improvements
across the board, from
new core apps to a rewall
and simplied workspace
switching, making the new
release a clear progression
on an already brilliant
distro that has a lot to offer
to Linux newcomers.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 153

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

App selection in openSUSE

is very good, with a packed
selection of default apps and a
full repository

KDE and GNOME are still the

standard desktop environments,
and have been themed and
tweaked by the developers

There are a selection of

standard updates and
bug xes, but YaST is now
completely written in Ruby

openSUSE 13.2
A look at the release candidate for openSUSEs 13.2, the next
step in the Linux distribution for everyone to use
Pros
This version looks a lot nicer and
generally is much nicer, being right
back on track for openSUSE

Cons
Not as easy to use as others
for newcomers, and focus on
aesthetics may have taken away
from tech

154 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

After a year of more focused polishing under

new guidelines, OpenSUSE 13.2 is set to be the
most advanced and best looking version of the
distro yet. OpenSUSE has always been one of
the most unique distros on the market that has
maintained popularity for some time now. Of
course, as a testing platform for the technology
that will eventually nd its way to enterprise
SUSE, it does have that link to Fedora. However,
openSUSE tends to test these at the discretion of
SUSE, and is mostly its own independent distro.
Also, like Fedora, it concentrates on using only
purely free and open source software (FOSS) in
its repositories. Thats where any kind of minor
similarities end though, as the way openSUSE

works and functions is different still. Thats not to

say its a completely alien experience.
It still uses some of the standard desktop
environments that come with other Linux distros
so you should be ne making your way around the
distro. The main difference is the way it handles
package management, geared more towards
developing, and a unique way of installing via web.
Theres also an all-encompassing settings menu
that goes deeper than almost all other graphical
setting interfaces.

One-click installing
This interface, know as YaST, is one of the many
ways you can go about installing packages in

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Q System information is easily accessible,

allowing for system diagnostics on every level

Q Installation from the full DVD allows for a complete and

customisable install, while the live CDs offer a great preview

OpenSUSE is also about community,

and the changes to YaST and efforts
made with Btrfs are a great indicator
of how strong it currently is
openSUSE. Not only can you install, you can also
add repos, check package versions and metacontents, or even just enable or disable repos.
It can blend seamlessly into the YaST system,
however it does require getting into it to add
software in this way.
You also have the choice of zypper on the
command line, the alternative to yum or aptget that runs very smoothly and can be much
more readable than the other two. Finally, you
can also nd software you like online and click
an installation button from your browser. This is
similar to how you can remotely install apps to an
Android phone via the Play Store browser. Its a
very nice addition, and something that most other
distros dont include. Having three fully functioning
ways to install and manage your packages is
an excellent way to give extra choice, and in
openSUSEs case it doesnt bloat the system.

Future innovations
This release of openSUSE also brings with it two
new technologies that are quickly becoming Linux

standards: systemd and the btrfs lesystem.

Systemd is much more ubiquitous among the
various Linux systems, with btrfs slowly gaining
steam through kernel advancements, Fedora
support and now openSUSE.
The greater support for systemd here will be
seen as controversial for those that are invested in
the init system of Linux distros, however openSUSE
has gone to great lengths to try and wrangle it into
a more usable form via extra modules and settings
in YaST that can be used to customise it.
Btrfs on the other hand doesnt carry that extra
baggage, and you can choose between other le
systems if you wish. Btrfs does offer extra features
though, thanks to advanced version control, subvolumes and being able to back-up and roll-back
easily with ext lesystems. The implementation
in openSUSE is also excellent, especially in 13.2
where extra effort has been put into it.
As well this new general Linux tech, openSUSE
also includes a new piece of software called
dracut that has signicantly cut down the boot
time, and has made sleeping and resuming almost

instantaneous on some setups. Users can now

also access Plasma 5.1, the very latest release
in the KDE desktop line that is beginning to take
shape as an excellent next-gen desktop.

Usage scenario
Actually using openSUSE around all these
features and software seems like a renewed
experience. For the last couple of years,
somethings felt off with the distro, and it didnt
help that the community was having trouble
getting people in to help build and test it. Since
13.1s release, a styleguide has been introduced
and the last year has been spent bringing 13.2
up-to-scratch while still being able to showcase
some of the latest and great FOSS technology.
It can be a little intimidating for those that are
not used to the variety inherent in Linux, and its
denitely not something you could recommend
to a newcomer. However, for those with some
knowledge of Linux, openSUSE is an excellent
distro that makes desktop Linux use quite easy
once you learn the ins and outs.

Summary
This is a return to form for the distro
that has had some issues getting out
the door, let alone being stable, in the
last few years. The year of focus on
polish with the new guidelines have
worked wonders.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 155

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Slight changes to the transparency effects

and colours make navigating the already
great Mint Menu just that bit better

Edge tiling is improved with a new

lock feature that means windows
you wish to stay visible always will

Cinnamon 2.0 is very

stable, even with its own
brand new back-end

Linux Mint 17.1

The Cinnamon-flavoured revolution is here as Mint releases its
first truly independent desktop environment
Pros
Improvements allround and the addition
of the kernel selector
will be useful to some
of the specic users

Cons

A minor update in general

though, and barely worth
doing if youre already
running Mint 17 and are
happy with it

The Linux Mint teams latest version of the distro is their rst
long-term support release based on Ubuntu 14.04 17.1
comes with some much needed updates. For the rst time
ever, Linux Mint has received a full-on point release update
and in more unique is the fact that this 17.1 comes instead of
the Linux Mint team working on a Linux Mint 18. Linux Mint 17,
for the rst time in the distros history, is a long-term support
release based on Ubuntus own current LTS, 14.04 Trusty Tahr.
With no new numbered Linux Mint coming until 2016, its good
to see actual quantiable evidence that the Mint team not only
still exist, but are keeping with their LTS promise.
As such, on rst glance, theres not a massive difference
in 17.1 over 17. The core of the distro has received a series of
security and bug x updates, with all default software now
updated to their latest versions at the time of release as well.
In terms of the desktops, all versions have had tweaks to

156 Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks

the updaters and other settings the software updater now

allows you to try and streamline the list of updates, grouping
together sets of updates to supposedly make reading the
list easier. The main benet of this weve found is that you no
longer need to hunt down every single package thats part of a
piece of software if you want to delay updating it.

Choose your kernel

As the distro ages and receives kernel updates, it seems the
team has noticed the need for a way to choose between the
different kernels; this can be essential for people who need to
do development on different kernel types, or if you just need to
rollback for specic security or compatibility reasons.
The desktop environments, while not getting any specic
major new features, have been updated nonetheless.
Cinnamon 2.4 has had a focus on a smoother experience,

Tips | Tricks | Hacks | Apps

Q MATE is still at 1.6, but its a great

desktop and a solid choice for a Mint
install nonetheless

Q The Software Manager is one of the things that separates it from Ubuntu, with no ads or

paid apps. Its had a few minor updates, including the ability to show off more screenshots

Q MDM has come on in leaps and bounds

since its rst introduction, and this release is
the rst time its seemed truly modern

For those new to Mint, this is still one

of the best distros out there
which comes in the way Cinnamon handles itself
slightly more efciently. On the kind of modern
systems wed recommend Linux Mint with
Cinnamon for, its barely noticeable with normal
use, but on older systems there is a benet.
Along with further polish like handling the
system sounds better, adding the ability to open
the home directory any time by using the super(/
Windows) key plus e at any given point. Its a
minor improvement over the already excellent
desktop environment, but at the very least it
doesnt make the experience any worse.
On MATE, the other desktop that the Mint
team work on, theres a similar level of minor
updates, although theres now full support for
switching to Compiz over the standard window
manager out of the box.

Minor changes
It is a minor update over the original version of
Linux Mint 17, but its denitely a useful one for
those that like to keep their software up-to-date.
If youre already running Mint 17 you wont really

need the update, but its worthwhile for those

jumping into Mint (or Mint 17 at least) right now.
For those new to Mint and perhaps Linux
in general, this is still one of the best distros
out there. Using all the traditional desktop
metaphors and workow that people will have
learnt on every other type of computer helps
allow you to get straight into using and enjoying
the Linux experience. Cinnamon itself is probably
the best new desktop of the past few years,
taking modern parts of desktop environments
such as search and software integration and
giving an interface without compromise.
MATE on the other acts more as a continuation
of slightly older (and lighter) technology to see
it through. This one is aimed more at Linux
veterans who dont like the direction of some of
the more modern desktops, while still being able
to squeeze in whatever new tech might improve
the experience without getting in the way.
Linux Mints use of Ubuntu goes further than
just slapping a bit of branding and a different
desktop environment on top of it though; the Mint

team have a habit of completely overhauling

certain aspects of the distro. Theres a custom
login manager that is much more advanced than
lightdm or even gdm, allowing for better and
more elaborate theming if you want it. On the
desktop itself you have an excellent alternative
to the Ubuntu Software Centre, along with
better settings and generally more control and
less bloat on the distro. Even with the change to
LTS only, all this remains with 17.1.

Summary
Linux Mint 17.1 may only be a minor
update over 17, but it brings with it
enough improvements to warrant an
upgrade if youve not been keeping
your system up-to-date, or still on the
edge of whether or not to get 17 in the
rst place.

Linux Tips, Tricks, Apps & Hacks 157

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