The main reason for having a UPS is to protect against data loss due to power outages whether it be unsaved work, or corruption due to the computer not having enough time to write things to disk. I only really started to take this seriously when I got my Synology networked attached storage (NAS) which holds all my data. The UPS I chose is an APC model with 1300VA and a USB connection, which is powerful enough to power most of the critical equipment I have at home and to ensure they have enough time to shut down. One of Continue Reading
linux
Saving keystrokes with a SSH client config file
I regularly have to SSH into my servers, and on most of the ones I connect to the SSH server is running on a non-standard port for obvious security reasons. I used to include the port number manually in the SSH command, for example: [shell] ssh seymour.dennistt.com -p 922 [/shell] This worked… as long as I remembered to type the port number in, which was probably less than half the time on the first go. So I finally got tired of having to retype the command with the port number in it. Luckily you can create a SSH client configuration Continue Reading
XDMCP Login from Mac to Lubuntu 11.10
My old desktops run Lubuntu (Ubuntu but lightweight!) 11.10, which just became part of the official Ubuntu release. Life is a lot zippier in Lubuntu compared to Ubuntu when you’re on Pentium III and Celeron machines. I wanted to be able to login to these computers remotely with a GUI, sort of like Microsoft’s Remote Desktop but Linux style. I didn’t want VNC because I wanted to be able to create a new login session instead of using the main console. Luckily XDMCP does exactly that and most of it is built into Ubuntu. The Setup Following one question previously Continue Reading
htop – an improved “top”
htop is an interactive process viewer for Linux machines that runs in the console. It is a lot easier to use than the built in ‘top’ utility.