Posted by suvi under
Hardware
New tutorial added to HowtoMatrix database.
MicroMiser – Power Saving Software for Ubuntu Laptops/Desktops/Servers
MiserWare MicroMiser is an intelligent software power management solution for x86 servers, laptops, and PCs running Linux. MicroMiser automatically optimizes a system to use energy more efficiently without compromising performance or availability. The MicroMiser Power Management Daemon (see below) when installed on a [...]
Posted by suvi under
Hardware
I’ve been using a small utility called eee-control on my Asus Eee PC 901 netbook with Ubuntu. eee-control lets you take control of the hardware on Eee PCs. Some of these controls, like the performance modes, were easily accessible in the default Asus Linux distribution but not from Ubuntu. It includes:
* [...]
Posted by suvi under
Hardware,
Networking
A diminishing few of us can still remember a time when you had to talk on a phone whose handset was tethered to the phone itself with a six foot cord. Forget about pacing around the house, let alone having a conversation while gardening in the backyard. It’s almost just as quaint now to think [...]
Posted by suvi under
Hardware,
Linux,
Monitoring
Hardware is getting amazingly fast. But sometimes it seems like software gets slower faster than hardware speeds up. So why do so many apps feel poky?
In this series, I’ll look at some of the ways you can examine your system to see what’s taking up resources, and offer some tips on slimming your system down [...]
Posted by suvi under
Hardware
iotop does for I/O usage what top does for CPU usage. It watches I/O usage information output by the Linux kernel (requires 2.6.20 or later) and displays a table of current I/O usage by processes on the system. Handy for answering the question “Why is my disk churning so much?”.
Read more at Debian Admin
Posted by suvi under
Hardware
I had to download a piece of software today for one of the servers which I haven’t used in a while. A question of confirming the 64bit CPU capability came up, and I realized that I never mentioned it here on Unix Tutorial.
Some of you probably remember the uname command which also shows you similar [...]
Posted by suvi under
Hardware,
Ubuntu
Needless to say, conserving your battery power is the most important task when you are on the move with your laptop. Other than disabling all unused programs by shutting down them during the startup, one of the great way to save battery power is to reduce the running frequency of your CPU. The slower frequency [...]
Posted by suvi under
Debian,
Hardware
This guide explains how you can set up an AoE target and an AoE initiator (client), both running Debian Lenny. AoE
stands for “ATA over Ethernet” and is a storage area network (SAN)
protocol which allows AoE initiators to use storage devices on the
(remote) AoE target using normal ethernet cabling. “Remote” in this
case means “inside the same [...]
Posted by suvi under
Hardware,
Multimedia,
Ubuntu
Unfortunately, I recently had to convert my last Windows box to Linux. I used the Windows (WinXP Pro) based box primarily for graphic editing and video creation. However, I got to the stage where I just could not turn it on anymore as it kept displaying the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) every time I
Read [...]
Posted by suvi under
Debian,
Hardware,
Ubuntu
This article shows how you can watch your hard drive activity with iotop on Ubuntu 8.10 and Debian Lenny. iotop watches I/O usage information output by the Linux kernel and displays a table of current I/O usage by processes or threads on
the system. iotop displays columns for the I/O bandwidth read and
written by each process/thread [...]
Posted by suvi under
Hardware
There are a lot of ways to find out information about your hardware in Linux. From the simplest free or lspci to a more detailed information like the one the follows.
Open up a console and type
Read more at Tips4Linux
Posted by suvi under
Hardware,
Linux
Ext4 is the evolution of the most used Linux filesystem, Ext3. In many ways, Ext4 is a deeper improvement over Ext3 than Ext3 was over Ext2. Ext3 was mostly about adding journaling to Ext2, but Ext4 modifies important data structures of the filesystem such as the ones destined to store the file data. The result
Read [...]
Posted by suvi under
Hardware,
Linux
So, the season of giving has just come and gone, and you’ve received a Linux-based netbook—the popular new class of ultra-cheap, ultra-portable computer. By definition, netbooks are very limited in what they can do; they’re primary meant for accessing the web as well as some moderate office and multimedia use. Their low-speed processor and minimal [...]
Posted by suvi under
Hardware,
Linux
This article describes how you can shrink and grow existing software RAID1 partitions with LVM on top.
I have tested this with logical volumes that use ext3 as the file
system. I will describe this procedure for an intact RAID array and
also a degraded RAID array.
Read more at HowtoForge
Posted by suvi under
Hardware,
Linux
This short guide explains how you can configure software RAID to
send you an email when something’s wrong with RAID, for example if a
hard drive fails. I’ve tested this on Debian Etch, but it should apply
to all other distributions with minor adjustments to paths, etc.
Read more at HowtoForge