Juliet Kemp

The popular Linux desktop Gnome can run more efficiently with the help of Gnome-do, a configurable app launcher. Juliet Kemp provides the details. This week, I’ve been experimenting with gnome-do, the Gnome application launcher that also allows you to specify particular actions to take on whatever file or application you’ve found. Very much like Quicksilver […]

The current Xfce umbrella package in both Debian stable and Ubuntu 9.10 is xfce4 (version 4.4 in Debian, and 4.6 in Ubuntu). After you’ve installed it, log out of X. If you’re running gdm or a similar app as your login manager, check the bottom left of the screen for a “Sessions” option, and you […]

In July I got back to the UK after 10 months of wandering around the world: crossing Europe and SE Asia by train; some time in Australia, cycle-camping then living in Sydney for a while; and finally returning home on a cargo freighter (plus a train or two across the US). Having thrown in my […]

Modern mobile phones and PDAs have increasingly sophisticated data/internet connectivity. This is particularly great for browsing the web on the train, but it’s also good for keeping an eye on your servers while you’re out and about. (I once fixed my web server from the middle of a muddy field at the Glastonbury Festival, which […]

You can do more with httpd than just stop/start/reload Apache. Here are some command-line options that enable you to manipulate your configuration without changing httpd.conf. NB: Some distributions (e.g., Debian) use apache instead of httpd. The options should all be exactly the same. If in doubt, check the apachectl script to see what the HTTPD […]

less, the better-featured version of more, which among other things allows you to move backward through its output, is great for paging through text files. But it won’t automatically deal with compressed text files. This can be a nuisance, particularly when many of the files in /usr/share/doc are gzipped. A straightforward alternative is zless, which […]

LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) is basically a way of organizing information and providing access to it. It’s commonly used for user, service and machine information, and it’s incredibly useful. The Linux version is OpenLDAP. It will handle authentication as well as information (so the password aspect of login as well as looking up who […]

The Linux command-line can appear pretty complicated and occasionally even a little alarming. But it also offers a whole stack of helpful documentation which you can access directly from the command-line. Read on to learn how to help yourself when – or even before – you get stuck. apropos A question you may have quite […]

… other than what its name implies. kill is most often used without an argument or with -9, to kill a process off. But it can also be used to send various other signals to a process. Some are variations on process termination, but you can also get information about or out of processes. Here […]

Using PuTTY (the best Windows SSH client going) and Xming (a free X Window server for Windows) enables you to log in from a Windows box to your Unix box, and then run an X session remotely. There are other ways of doing this as well (e.g., Cygwin/X), but this one is both neat and […]