Fast apt-get with apt-fast

Ever experience slow download even with 10Mbps++ internet? The author has written a very useful article to share how to speed everything up with apt-fast:

http://www.webupd8.org/2012/10/speed-up-apt-get-downloads-with-apt.html

[Ubuntu] iNotify-Tools: The Realtime File Monitoring Tool

I have been searching for a good real time file monitoring tools to save time on checking what directories or files has been updated by my colleagues. It seems the iNotify-Tools that built into Linux kernel has gained a lot of recommendation, and even IBM has an article on their website address for this little tool.

To setup inotify is fairly simple:

1. apt-get install inotify-tools
2. after install, it comes with two module:
• inotifywait - it runs and keep monitor for changes happen in the target folder/file, and the results can be output to an external file.
• inotifywatch - it outputs a summary count of the events received on each file or directory.
3. We will use inotifywait to monitor our folder and output a text file in the same folder.

inotifywait /targetFolder -mr -e create,delete,move --timefmt "%D_%a_%H:%M" --format "%T | %w%f | %e" -o /targetFolder/FolderReport.txt --exclude "FolderReport.txt"

• "-m" is used to continuously monitor the target. Without this, by default it will exit after the first event occurs.
• "-e" is to specify the event that we want to monitor. Full list can be viewed by execute inotifywait -h
• "--timefmt" is used to add date and time to the log. By default the result doesn't has such info.
• "--format" has to be specified if --timefmt is used. %T is the time, %w is the path of the folder being monitored, %f is the file name and %e is the event (action done to the folder/file). We can add any words in between the parameter, and it will be output as well. For example, %w the folder is %f %e will output = "/home/tecsun/folder the folder is TestFolder CREATE,ISDIR. (blue is the output specified by parameter) 
• "-o" is to output the result to file (else it would display on the terminal)
• "--exclude" is to exclude the result file being monitored, especially when modify event is triggered, so it won't get into infinity loops.

There is one more tools namely iwatch, which is based on inotify, would allow sending of email when event being triggered. Another one which I have not tested is gamin, if anyone of you happen to test this, please let me know how it works.

External links:

• http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-ubuntu-inotify/index.html
• A great article with more advanced setup and few other options: http://andries.filmer.nl/kb/Monitoring-file-system-events-with-inotify,-incron-and-authctl/129
• Advanced setup and installation under multiple distros: https://github.com/rvoicilas/inotify-tools/wiki
• http://linuxaria.com/article/introduction-inotify?lang=en

[Ubuntu] Chinese input in Ubuntu 10, 11, 12

I found a very nice article discuss about chinese input in Ubuntu:
http://www.pinyinjoe.com/linux/ubuntu-10-chinese-input-pinyin-chewing.htm

To me, Sun Pinyin layout looks the best to me due to its 9 displays per row, but it is really bad for laptop users that it use preset key of Page Up / Down for navigation.

I have not figure out how to change the preset key, and that force me to revert back to the first PinYin method, which is pretty nice to use and has same navigation keys as Google Pinyin and Unispim Pinyin that I used in Windows.

How to Fix Multi-boot - Lost of any OS installed before Ubuntu

Big thanks to Ryugamine Mikado from General Linux Discussion Malaysia for sharing such a nice option to fix the multi-boot!

@Tecsun Yeep hi there oh it actually scans the entire disk for all OS and it has been PROVEN to recover any type of OS (i myself used it once to recover my arch when I accidentally fuk'd up my grub.conf) plus many more options such as recovering partition tables , bootsectors and such but i think it only works with GRUB/GRUB2 ,so if you're using another type of bootloader such as LILO you would have to resort to something else

The GUI method of fixing the multi-boot - lost of any OS installed before Ubuntu is well documented here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair

Here's a screenshot of it:

[CentOS, Fedora] Yum for novice user

There are a lot to learn about Yum, for novice user below are a few very useful method to get you started with installation using Yum:

• # yum install XXXXX

This command is to install a known program. Normally a program would end with "x86_64" for 64-bit CentOS / Fedora.

• # yum search XXXXX

This is very useful when you know the name of the software, but do not know how the repo name it. Wildcard is not supported here, because no matter what you type, it will treat is a "contain", mean if I search for "fire", I could eventually get "Firefox".

• # yum list XXXXX

List is similar to search, but wildcard is not enabled by default. So if you wanna search for "Firefox", you have to type "fire*".

• # yum groupinstall XXXXX

Group install is very useful not only to resolve dependencies, but it also helps by installing other features that require by particular software. For example, Libre Office, by default installation, it would sometimes not appear in the Application Menu. By doing groupinstall all LibreOffice program will be added to the application menu automatically.

* I have not really dig into the groupinstall behaviour, so might explain wrongly here. To be precise, here's how yum.baseurl.org explained:

Despite their differing names both of these commands perform the same function. They will attempt to install/update all of the packages in the group that are of the types 'default' or 'mandatory' (by default). (To change this types of packages edit the value of the group_package_types option in yum.conf.) And they will install any additional dependencies needed by any of the installing/updating packages.

• # yum update

As the name suggest, this is use to update the system to the latest available patches. Worth to mention here, for those who use Ubuntu / Fedora / CentOS together might get confused a bit, as Ubuntu apt-get update is only to update the repository, but not to perform update to the system. Use apt-get upgrade instead.

I hope this will help many who just start playing around with Yum. Have fun!

[Fedora] HDD Benchmark with hdparm

To do a simple reading benchmark of Hdd, we can use hdparm. It may not install by default but we can easily get it by yum install hdparm.

After install, run hdparm -t -T /dev/sda (sdb, sdc, etc) and we can then see Cache Read and Buffered Disk Read speed.

My laptop has pretty poor performance with only 58.3MB/s for buffered disk reads, running on WD Scropio Blue 320GB.