Zonet ZSR4174WE – Wireless Networking on the Go

⌚ June 27, 2012
We’ve all been there.

You and your buddies are enjoying a beautiful hiking expedition through the mountainous wilds of whatchamacallit away from the clutter of modern civilization.

Finding a suitable place to camp, you pitch your tents, and, later that night, you are all relaxed around the campfire roasting marshmallows in one hand and doodling on your laptops with the other. Gooey marshmallow trails streak across the keyboards.

Suddenly, one member of the group has a thought: “Wouldn’t it be great if we could network our computers together out here in the middle of nowhere?”

You grin like a Cheshire cat as you reach into your bag and pull out the Zonet ZSR4174WEportable access point (AP) and router.

“Always be prepared,” you boast. Minutes later, you and your buddies are swapping files and networking under the stars, and everyone thinks you are a genius.

What are PID and PPID?

⌚ June 25, 2012
If you have ever opened System Monitor or top you no doubt noticed a column named ID or PID containing a list of numbers. You might even see a value called PPID. What do these numbers mean?

Here is a short explanation of these Linux terms.

Relive the 80’s BurgerTime with BurgerSpace

⌚ June 20, 2012
The Ubuntu repository contains an interesting collection of games to pass the time. After all, a quick game is an excellent diversion for the mind after lengthy programming sessions.

One such game is BurgerSpace, a clone of the classic arcade game BurgerTime made in 1982 by Data East.

DBAN – Darik’s Boot and Nuke

⌚ June 15, 2012
No computer security arsenal is complete without Darik’s Boot and Nuke, or DBAN for short. This essential piece of software securely wipes hard drives in their entirety to prevent data recovery.

Suppose you have a hard drive you wish to sell, give away, or dispose of, but it contains personal files. What do you do? Format the drive? No, that will not work since formatted drive data can be recovered. Do you delete the files? No, deleted files can be recovered too. What about wiping the files with secure delete tools? No, no, even that is not good enough. Certainly, the wiped files will be unrecoverable, but what about the inaccessible areas of the hard drive? What about the swap space and other protected regions? Besides, wiping files and the swap space requires too much effort.

Isn’t there an easier way to securely wipe the entire drive including the protected areas? Yes, and DBAN performs marvelously.

Caution: DBAN destroys data from a hard drive, so backup any important files before use.

Secure Delete

📅 July 16, 2014
Merely deleting files is not good enough if you wish to cover your tracks and maintain your privacy. Files must be physically overwritten, a process known as wiping, in order to prevent their discovery and resurrection from recovery programs such as Recuva and Photorec.

The secure deletion toolkit is an essential set of command line tools that allow you to wipe files, memory, the swap space, and free space to physically destroy existing contents beyond recovery by forensics software.

How to Remove the 3.4.2 Quantal Kernel from an Incomplete Upgrade

Oops! I tried to install kernel 3.4.2 quantal but received the libc6 “Dependency is not satisfiable” error. How can I remove the incompletely installed kernel?

If you are running older versions of Ubuntu, such as 10.10, and wish to upgrade the kernel from the mainline kernel repository, you will quickly find out that the precise kernels work, but the quantal kernels do not.

Ejecter – A Convenient Way to Remove USB Media Devices

⌚ June 11, 2012
Ejecter is a small, free, open source program that makes it easy to eject USB media devices from the computer. When a USB or other external device is connected, an icon  appears in the panel. (The exact icon depends upon the installed icon theme.)

Clicking the panel shows a list of devices. To eject a device, simply click the device’s eject icon icon, and the device is unmounted.

Ejecter is available in the Ubuntu repository and can be installed from the Ubuntu Software Center.

Installing Kernel 3.4.0 in Ubuntu 10.10 on the Acer Aspire One 722

Linux kernel 3.4.0 was released a few days ago begging for installation on the Acer Aspire One 722 netbook. Does it work? How does it perform?

This project was more involving than expected because the AMD Catalyst 12.4 drivers needed for the netbook do not work with kernel 3.4.0. Installing kernel 3.4.0 was the easy part and went smoothly, but reinstalling the proprietary ATI video drivers required extra time and effort.

However, the result is an Aspire One 722 netbook running Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit with kernel 3.4.0 and fully working graphics using the Catalyst 12.4 proprietary drivers.

Fortune Fun

Do you need a joke to brighten your day? Maybe a word of wisdom to inspire creativity? Linux has you covered!

The fortune program (available in the Ubuntu repository) operates from the command line and offers a seemingly endless supply of wit and wisdom.