HowtoMatrix

How to stitch two photos together with Hugin

suvi — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:25:51 +0000

hugin is a cross-platform open source panorama photo stitching program developed by Pablo d’Angelo and others. It is a GUI front-end for Helmut Dersch’s Panorama Tools and Andrew Mihal’s Enblend and Enfuse. Stitching is accomplished by using several overlapping photos taken from the same location, and using control points to align and transform the photos

Gentoo update (list of short commands)

suvi — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:24:27 +0000

I’m often looking for the right command when i start with Gentoo, so I’ve post here a shortlist of commands that i found on some sites. The first entire will recompile all ports, so keep in mind that will take a long time.

After update of ports who depending on gcc (usually i leave the “-a1″

Force a clean reboot when the system freezes

suvi — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:23:07 +0000

If you manage to freeze your system in such a way that even Ctrl+Alt+Del doesn’t work anymore, the mouse is stuck on the screen any none of the key combinations will work, don’t think of the reset button just yet.

Hold down the Alt and SysRq keys and press this sequence:

How to Install Skype API Plugin for Pidgin in Ubuntu

suvi — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:21:54 +0000

This is the Skype API Plugin for Pidgin/libpurple/Adium. If you’re already running Skype, you can have your Skype contacts displayed with your Pidgin/libpurple/Adium contacts. It is intended as a complete replacement for the Skype user interface, hopefully everything you can do in Skype you can do with this plugin.

Install Mplayer and Multimedia Codecs (libdvdcss2,w32codecs,w64codecs) in Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex)

suvi — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:20:57 +0000

MPlayer is a movie and animation player that supports a wide range of codecs and file formats, including MPEG 1/2/4,DivX 3/4/5, Windows Media 7/8/9, RealAudio/Video up to 9, Quicktime 5/6, and Vivo 1/2. It has many MX/SSE (2)/3Dnow(Ex) optimized native audio and video codecs, but allows using XAnim’s and RealPlayer’s binary codec plugins, and Win32 codec DLLs. It has basic VCD/DVD playback functionality, including DVD subtitles, but supports many text- based subtitle formats too. For video output, nearly every existing interface is supported. It’s also able to convert any supported files to raw/divx/mpeg4 AVI (pcm/mp3 audio), and even video grabbing from V4L devices.

How to Install VMware server 2.0 in Ubuntu Intrepid

suvi — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:19:36 +0000

In the past, whenever Ubuntu came out with a new release, the VMware installation will break. Surprisingly, when I installed VMware server 2.0 in Ubuntu Intrepid, it installed and run smoothly, without having to apply any patch. So if you are looking on installing VMware server 2.0 on your Ubuntu Intrepid, this is the way to do it:

1) Download VMware Server 2.0. You will have to register for a free account in order to download and get the license key. At the download page, select the tar image for Linux system. It is 539MB and will take about half an hour with a broadband connection

How To: Linux on a Pen Drive

suvi — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:18:34 +0000

There are many options with USB Flash drives now. Here is a tutorial on how to install Damn Small Linux on a Pen Drive. This is version 4.4.7, the newest version. Plugin your Pen Drive in to the USB slot. For DSL it is a great one to experiment with because

A Guide to System Backup and Restore in Ubuntu

suvi — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:16:23 +0000

This guest article was written by Vivek Kumar from TNerd.com, a blog focused on technology news, tricks and tips and Linux tutorials.

It’s a good idea to ensure that you have a backup and restore system in place. Today we’ll see how in a few very easy steps you can setup system backup and restore in Ubuntu. The good part is that there’s no rocket science involved.

In order to achieve this we are going to need software called SBackup. This is not installed by default in Ubuntu and hence we need to install it. First, let’s see a little bit about this wonderful software.

Installing Ubuntu 8.10 on the Eee PC 901

suvi — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:15:38 +0000

The Eee PC 901 is an Intel Atom-based laptop, with 1 GB of RAM, a 20 GB SSD, and a 9 inch display. Since I bought mine, it’s been running Ubuntu 8.04 rather than the default Xandros-based OS. The laptop is surprisingly unfriendly to Ubuntu despite being preloaded with Linux. Ubuntu 8.10 has delivered some improvements for Eee PC laptops, but it still doesn’t work perfectly out of the box.

Read more at Tombuntu

Setting Up Master-Master Replication On Four Nodes With MySQL 5 On Debian Etch

suvi — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:14:47 +0000

This tutorial explains how you can set up MySQL master-master
replication on four MySQL nodes (running on Debian Etch). The
difference to a two node master-master replication
is that if you have more than two nodes, the replication goes in a
circle, i.e., with four nodes, the replication goes from node1 to
node2, from node2 to node3, from node3 to node4, and from node4 to
node1.

Read more at HowtoForge

NIC Bonding On Slackware 12.1

suvi — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:13:30 +0000

I was standing in front of a problem while I built a NFS Storage
Server. It is necessary for me to have redundancy in every point of
view. I solved all redundancy issues I had by using server hardware
with redundant power supplies, a Raid 1+ 0 Raid array and two UPS’s one
for each power supply. The only thing left in my mind was what about a
network failure? Well just use the two Gig NIC’s and hook each of them
up to its own switch. Great idea but how do I get them acting as one
unit speak one single IP? NIC Bonding was my solution. After a couple
of hours researching on the Internet stumbled upon the build in
solution by using ifenslave.

Read more at HowtoForge

Hardening The Linux Kernel With Grsecurity (Debian)

suvi — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:12:38 +0000

Security is based on three characteristics: prevention, protection
and detection. Grsecurity is a patch for Linux kernel that allows you
to increase each of these points. This howto was performed on a Debian Lenny system. Thus some tools
are Debian specific. However, tasks can be performed with other distro
specific tools or even with universal tools (make).

Read more at HowtoForge

Setting Up ProFTPd + TLS On Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex)

suvi — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 18:10:52 +0000

FTP is a very insecure protocol because all passwords and all data
are transferred in clear text. By using TLS, the whole communication
can be encrypted, thus making FTP much more secure. This article
explains how to set up ProFTPd with TLS on an Ubuntu 8.10 server.

Read more at HowtoForge

Metacity Compositing Effects in Ubuntu 8.10

suvi — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 05:55:43 +0000

Don’t have a graphics card capable of running desktop effects with Compiz on Ubuntu? By enabling compositing in GNOME’s default Metacity window manager, you get some eye candy and can run applications that require or benefit from a compositing window manager. Metacity uses your CPU instead of a graphics card, so it’ll work on anything - even a virtual machine.

I’ve written about compositing with Metacity in Ubuntu 8.04, but Metacity has received some updates since then so I though I’d try it again.

Metacity even with compositing turned on is still very light on the effects. Windows and menus are drawn with shadows, a bit more noticeable than the default ones in Compiz. The Alt-Tab switcher gains previews of the windows it’s switching. Noticeably missing is an animation for minimizing windows; all you get is the same old black boxes effect.

Virtual Users And Domains With Postfix, Courier, MySQL And SquirrelMail (Ubuntu 8.10)

suvi — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 05:47:30 +0000

This document describes how to install a mail server based on
Postfix that is based on virtual users and domains, i.e. users and
domains that are in a MySQL database. I’ll also demonstrate the
installation and configuration of Courier (Courier-POP3, Courier-IMAP),
so that Courier can authenticate against the same MySQL database
Postfix uses. The resulting Postfix server is capable of SMTP-AUTH and TLS and quota (quota is not built into Postfix by default, I’ll show how to patch your Postfix appropriately). Passwords are stored in encrypted
form in the database (most documents I found were dealing with plain
text passwords which is a security risk). In addition to that, this
tutorial covers the installation of Amavisd, SpamAssassin and ClamAV so that emails will be scanned for spam and viruses. I will also show how to install SquirrelMail as a webmail interface so that users can read and send emails and change their passwords.

Read more at HowtoForge