Tips, Tricks and Information for the Modern Technologist

Category: Ubuntu


How To Turn Off Your Monitor Via Command Line in Ubuntu

As previously written on this blog, I have set up a display in our lobby at work to display the day’s current events and meetings using Ubuntu and a tiny PC. Since this is a display which is on all day, the screensaver and monitor blanking (and other Energy Star features) are all turned off. [...]


Apt-get Update GPG Key Errors and Fix

Running sudo apt-get upgrade, I started getting this error: 1Reading package lists… Done 1W: GPG error: http://ppa.launchpad.net intrepid Release: The following signatures couldn’t be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 313D312748A22A95 1W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems Ah ha! But apt-get update is the command causing [...]


HOWTO: Installing ZFS and setting up a Raid-Z array on Ubuntu

Readers should note that this applies to Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex only! ZFS is a relatively new filesystem created by Sun. It is released under the CDDL License which is incompatible with Linux’s GPL License, meaning that it can not be installed natively in the kernel. Therefore, for not it is relegated to addon packages [...]


Using Ubuntu as a 24/7 Lobby Display Driver

I recently took upon the task of setting up a presentation display in the lobby of our building. This display had previously used an old computer running Windows 2000, and displayed a fairly simple PowerPoint presentation with a few frames, mostly a schedule for anyone coming into the building. We did a renovation and this [...]


4 Steps to Authenticate Ubuntu Logins with Active Directory

It is possible to install Active Directory authentication in Ubuntu 8.04 and later. The Likewise Open packages accomplish this task, and it is actually pretty easy. Just a note – when installing Ubuntu, do not add a user named “administrator” as I did. This makes it impossible to join the Ubuntu workstation to the domain [...]


Default Grub Boot Commands for Ubuntu 7.10

I recently formatted my laptop and installed Windows first, using half of the hard drive, and then installing Ubuntu 7.10 on the other half. It had been a while since I tried Ubuntu – it has a come a long way – but that is another story. The install worked fine, however at the end, [...]