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Edit remote files over SSH / SCP using GVim

• July 13th, 2008

GVim, one of the graphical versions of vim for X11, has a handy feature … you can edit remote files over ssh. Launch GVim, and issue the command:

:e scp://username@someremotehost/./path/to/file

where username is your username on the remote server, someremote host is the hostname or ip of the server and /./path/to/file is just that … the path to the file on the remove server. Everytime you save with :w, the changes get transfered.

When used in combination with ssh-keys to avoid typing your password every time, this can make editing remote files really quick and easy.

This is a test of the TomboyBlogposter plugin

• June 25th, 2008

A visual guide to the crontab file

• June 19th, 2008

I sometimes need to remind myself how to edit that crontab file … today I found a great little graphic on the Linuxconfig wiki that sums it up nicely:

Sometimes, I also pipe the stdout and stderr somewhere (like “/usr/local/sbin/backup.sh >>/var/logs/backups.log 2>/var/logs/backups.err“) if I want to avoid getting emails with the output from cron … (although in the example above, which looks like a backup script, I’d probably rather be emailed with a warning that my backups were succeeding or failing).

Thanks Linuxconfig !

Update:

After some FriendFeed discussion, it was noted that the crontab above is a “system crontab”, not the typical “user crontab” you would edit by typing “crontab -e” at the command line. For the “user crontab”, you don’t specify the user (the blue field, “root” in the example above).

Ubuntu Hardy Heron 8.04 is officially out: a “pre-review”

• April 24th, 2008

There’s a good concise summary of Hardy Heron installation and upgrade options over at Tombuntu.

I’ve been running the beta version via upgrade from Gutsy 7.10, and continually receiving updates, for the last month or so. I guess with this last round of updates I’ll officially be running Hardy Heron 8.04 LTS.

On the surface the changes between Gutsy 7.10 and Hardy 8.04 don’t appear dramatic, which is a good thing since Gutsy really didn’t need dramatic changes in my opinion, just a little spit’n'polish. Since this is an Long Term Support (LTS), Hardy Desktop users can expect security updates for the next 3 years.

Here’s a few things I have noticed as a user, without digging too much “under the hood”.

Read the rest of this entry »

Serve files via scp or sftp, without giving full shell access to users

• March 1st, 2008

The scp and sftp commands, as part of the OpenSSH suite, are great secure ways to transfer files around … they generally make a great secure alternative to FTP. However, I’d often wondered if there was a way of allowing file transfer with scp or sftp without giving users a full SSH-accessible shell account on my machine. Who knows what they may run

Ubuntu Geek has the answer, with this quick writeup on how to install and configure scponly.

scponly runs in a chrooted environment (under /home/scponly by default), which in theory should stop users fiddling with your machine via ssh, but will still give them read/write access to the incoming directory within the chrooted directory tree.

I probably wouldn’t trust it for unrestricted public access (since I’m just paranoid about things like this, unless it’s a really well known tool on a properly secured server), but it certainly would be useful for friends, family, colleagues and collaborators.

Encrypt your laptop’s /home directory before Christmas

• December 11th, 2007

Command Line Warriors is running a campaign to get Linux users to encrypt at least their /home directory by Christmas 2008. It’s a really good idea, since if your laptop gets stolen, without encryption the thief may gain lots of personal data about you or others … possibly enough to steal your identity. And that would suck more than losing your laptop.

Before you get around to encrypting your /home (and other “data” partitions if you keep sensitive stuff outside /home), here’s a tip that is quick and easy to implement right now. If you use Firefox, turn off saving passwords and forms, or secure your saved passwords with a Master Password. You can do it by going to Edit-Preferences-Advanced-Encryption(tab), click on the “Security Devices” button and select “Software Security Device” from the tree-list and enable it, set a password. This way if your machine gets stolen, the thief won’t be able to simply start Firefox and retrieve the passwords to all your valuable online accounts.

read more | digg story

Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10 on a Dell Vostro 1500 laptop

• November 29th, 2007

What works, executive summary:

3D graphics (Nvidia GeForce 8600M GT) - yes (minor config required)

Sound output (Intel 82801H HDA controller, ICH8 chipset) - yes (more serious config required)

Sound input (mic, line-in) -untested

Wired network -yes

Wireless network -yes

Firewire (IEEE1394) -yes (more serious config required for MiniDV video camera usage)

SD card slot -yes

Integrated webcam (optional) -yes (but seems unsupported by some older software)

Touchpad pointing device -yes

External CRT video port - only in ‘text’ mode yes, enable with ‘nvidia-settings’ command

PCI Express slot -untested

Here’s the output of lspci so everyone can see exactly what hardware I have, since sometimes Dell changes components within models: Dell Vostro 1500 lspci output

What follows is a review of the hardware features of the laptop that worked out-of-the-box with Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon 7.10, and what I did to fix the few problems that I encountered. Overall, I’m extremely happy with the performance and hardware support of Ubuntu Linux on this notebook, and apart from a fix required for sound support, there were no show-stoppers that would prevent any computer user capable of installing Microsoft Windows or Apple OSX from installing and using Ubuntu happily on this machine.

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Hardware4Linux

• October 7th, 2007

Hey, just found this new hardware compatibility database for Linux. It’s still fairly young, but already has lots of data about hardware compatibility, including distro specific info.

Worth watching & checking before buying new hardware.