By carlaschroder  | 24 August 2009 - 01:29 PM

If you can't use GRUB's command shell, for whatever reason, use GRUB's built-in installation script, grub-install. First, install GRUB, or upgrade to the latest version. To get the vers...

By carlaschroder  | 24 August 2009 - 11:57 AM

If you would like to install GRUB, but your system does not have a floppy drive. Or you have a floppy drive but can't find a usable floppy disk, use GRUB's own command shell to set it up. Fir...

By carlaschroder  | 24 August 2009 - 11:47 AM

Your CD-writing program (whether it's cdrecord or one of the good graphical programs such as X-CD-Roast or K3b) reports that it cannot find any drives on your system, or it sees your CD-R/RW drive...

By carlaschroder  | 24 August 2009 - 11:37 AM

If you're using a 2.4 kernel and want to write a CD or DVD you'll need to know the SCSI bus address, or dev= number, for your CD/DVD writer. cdrecord -scanbus will find it for you. This is wh...

By carlaschroder  | 24 August 2009 - 11:13 AM

If you've applied a patch and now you'd like to get rid of it, for whatever reason, just use the same command you used to unpack and apply it, adding the -R option: $ bzip2 -dc .....

By carlaschroder  | 24 August 2009 - 11:03 AM

Download and apply the patch to the kernel sources, then compile and build the new kernel. In this example, we are upgrading the 2.6.3 kernel to 2.6.4. The patch must be in the next-highest directory...

By carlaschroder  | 24 August 2009 - 10:53 AM

If you have changed or added some hardware, such as a NIC card, sound card, or USB device, you'll need to install a new kernel module (driver) for the device. The steps are the same for 2.4 and 2...

By carlaschroder  | 24 August 2009 - 09:59 AM

If you would like to try the 2.6 kernel, you'll need to know the new build commands, which are different from those for the 2.4 kernel. In this example, our new kernel is version 2.6.3. Back up...

By carlaschroder  | 24 August 2009 - 09:53 AM

You can use chown to change ownership of directories and their contents, or just the contents of directories, a list of files, or change ownership of files from one UID to another. chown supports som...

By carlaschroder  | 24 August 2009 - 09:37 AM

Use chown (change owner) to change the file owner, the file and group owner, or the group owner: # chown user filename # chown user:group filename # chown :group filename For example: $ chown ...

By carlaschroder  | 24 August 2009 - 09:29 AM

The following will help you change specific permission bits rather than using the all-or-nothing approach of chmod's numeric notation. The most common use for symbolic notation is to add the ...

By carlaschroder  | 21 August 2009 - 10:26 AM

You need to control who can access whatfile. Either you need to keep prying eyes away from the recipe forthe secret sauce, or you have some other secure information thatneeds protection. Or (more like...

By carlaschroder  | 21 August 2009 - 09:08 AM

You can reset a password, or put an expiration date on it, or set a limit on failed login attempts. Resetting a password is the solution to the perennial "I forgot my password" problem; many...

By carlaschroder  | 20 August 2009 - 04:31 PM

Use adduser instead of useradd, because it walks you through a complete new user setup—password, GECOS fields, and all. To add a user, simply run adduser newusername and follow the prompts: ...

By carlaschroder  | 20 August 2009 - 04:02 PM

If you need to add new users to a Linux system, use useradd -m to create a login name, home directory, and other environment variables, and use the passwd -e command to set the new password. The accou...

By carlaschroder  | 20 August 2009 - 03:21 PM

It's easy as pie, thanks to cron. Add this line to /etc/crontab to automatically shut down your machine every night at 11p.m.:# m h dom mon dow user command 00 23 ...

By carlaschroder  | 20 August 2009 - 03:15 PM

If you want to upgrade to a newer release; for example, from Lenny to Squeeze:First, edit /etc/apt/sources.list so that it has only Squeeze entries. Then do the following: ...

By carlaschroder  | 20 August 2009 - 01:29 PM

If you want to upgrade a Debian package use apt-get install :# apt-get install gltron Reading Package Lists... Done Building Dependency Tree... Done The following packages will be upgraded: ...

By carlaschroder  | 20 August 2009 - 12:44 PM

If you want to remove a package, or several packages, from your Debian systems use apt-get remove : # apt-get remove tuxpaint Reading Package Lists... Done Building Dependency Tree......

By carlaschroder  | 20 August 2009 - 12:26 PM

All these software archives, CDs, and so on are meaningless if you can't install the software. So: you need to know how to install packages on Debian.Use apt-get install: ...