Category: Linux

Make live bootable flash drive or SD card disks easily with Etcher

NOTE: The article referenced below is about the Linux version, but the program itself is cross-platform, with Linux, Mac, and Windows versions available.

Making live USB disks on Linux has always been hit or miss. You could use dd and the command line, and it’s mostly a good tool, but a lot of times the dd tool can destroy a drive. Other GUI tools like Unetbootin or Gnome disks are good too, but they’re mostly hit or miss, and sometimes the flashing gets messed up.

This is why Etcher is such a great tool. It’s elegant, so anyone can use it easily, and it doesn’t mess up when you flash an image. There is no more making a bootable flash drive with Unetbootin only to find out that a .c32 menu file is missing or some other error.

Source: Make Linux Live Disks Easily with Etcher (Make Tech Easier)
Software web site: http://www.etcher.io/

The thing we like most about this software, besides the fact that it’s free, is that it is smart enough to try to prevent you from accidentally overwriting one of your hard drives by mistake! And also, we like the fact that the Linux version is packaged as an AppImage, which means it should just run on whatever Linux distribution you use, once you have set permissions. At the worst you may need to install FUSE, if it’s not already installed in your distribution. That only applies to the Linux version; the OS X and Windows versions are installed just like any normal software package for those platforms.

We can think of several other Linux applications that we wish were packaged like this, particularly ones that have a higher than usual risk of breakage any time you apply an update. But, that’s a whole other article for another time.

How to use systemd timers

I was setting up some scripts to run backups recently, and decided I would try to set them up to use systemd timers rather than the more familiar to me cron jobs.

As I went about trying to set them up, I had the hardest time, since it seems like the required information is spread around in various places. I wanted to record what I did so firstly, I can remember, but also so that others don’t have to go searching as far and wide as I did.

Source: How to use systemd timers – Jason’s Blog

How to Backup or Clone a Disk in Linux by using Clonezilla

Disk cloning or Clone a Disk is the process of copying data from a hard disk to another one, in fact you can do this process by copy & paste but you won’t be able to copy the hidden files and folders or the in-use files, that’s why you need a cloning software to do the job, also you may need the cloning process to save a backup image from your files and folders.

Source: How to Backup or Clone a Disk in Linux by using Clonezilla | Unixmen

Install Webmin On Ubuntu 14 15 and 16

Webmin is an open source, web based system administration tool for Unix/Linux. Using Webmin, you can setup and configure all services such as DNS, DHCP, Apache, NFS, and Samba etc via any modern web browsers. So, you don’t have to remember all commands or edit any configuration files manually.

Source: Install Webmin On Ubuntu 14 15 and 16 | Unixmen (Unixmen)

Get Weather Information From A Terminal Using Nothing But cURL

wttr.in is a web frontent for Wego, a weather app for the terminal. Using nothing but cURL and wttr.in, you can get weather information from a terminal, without having to install anything (well, except for cURL).

Source: Get Weather Information From A Terminal Using Nothing But cURL ~ Web Upd8: Ubuntu / Linux blog (Web Upd8)

How to Run or Repeat a Linux Command Every X Seconds Forever

A system administrator often needs to run a command repeatedly in a certain periods of time. Often such tasks can be easily completed with simple cron commands. In most of the cases this should work, but the shortest period which you can run cron command is every 1 minute. Believe it or not, in many cases this is too slow.

Source: How to Run or Repeat a Linux Command Every X Seconds Forever (Tecmint)