When Linux Hangs or Completely Freezes

When Windows hangs itself we all know what to do right? Were just reaching for the combination [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[Del] (Control Alt Delete). But if you try this in Linux nothing happens (in some distributions, like Ubuntu, you actually get the menu for shutting down your system, but this don’t work when your system hags or freezes).

So what to do?

There is 3 keyboard combinations every Linux user should remember (or write down). But before we begin I want you to understand some of the signs I use: If a symbol is surrounded by [ ] means that it is a button or key on your keyboard. +means that you have to hold the keys down at once. And > means that you have to click the buttons one by one, remember that you have to press each key for 2-3 seconds. Now that you have learned this we can move on to the commands:

Fist you have the combination [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[BackSpace] (backspace is the [←] over[Enter]) that restarts X or GDM (you will be logged out), and you can kind of call it Linux’s Control Alt Delete equivalent. This command gives your programs time to make emergency backups of unsaved files (for example if you writing on a document in Open Office) and it  prevents that you get a file system error during the crash.If you use Ubuntu or a distribution based on Ubuntu you will have to use[Alt]+[PrtSc]+[K] (PrtSc = Print Screen) instead, but you should note that some Ubuntu based distros (like Linux Mint) still use the universal [Ctrl]+[Alt]+[BackSpace].

But what to do if this combination doesn’t work?

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Five Linux Cool Tricks

1. Download a website

Here is a simple way to download a whole website without actually visiting all the pages. First up all go into the directory you wish to download the whole website using the command line and type in the following

wget-r-p-k-E http://www.example.com/dir/

Note -E is to create .html extensions to XHTML or text files. Omit if not needed.It is however not possible for all type of sites :-)

2. Five ways to logout from bash

1.logout
2.exit
3.CTRL+d
4.export TMOUT=1
5 kill -9 $
Dont use the fifth one when you are the root since it will kill some essential processes.

3. To change the root password

The first step is to reboot the system. When grub loads up, move the arrow key up/down to highlight and select the Linux kernel and press e to edit the GRUB commands before booting.

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Recover Adobe PDF Documents Password

PDF cracker is an utility tool that removes all the security constrictions and rules on a PDF document. It can easily encrypt all the password protected PDF files without any hassles. This is one of the most vital tools used for sharing private and sensitive data only with the intended online users. This is best used by legitimate owner or the recipient who forgets the password to gain access through the file. Thus, in such times of urgency, this is the best tool to crack the password of any PDF document.

PDF cracker has been specially designed to serve the legitimate purpose. The internet today is loaded with countless PDF recovery or password cracking tools. There are numerous PDF recovery tools, which are designed for unlocking PDF documents. However, among them PDF cracker is the most feasible tools. This is the best binary version of free PDF crack utility tool compatible with Linux.

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Google Chrome for Linux - Available in Beta

Hello everybody out there using Linux -

Google Chrome is go for beta on Linux! Thanks to the many Chromium and WebKit developers who helped make Google Chrome a lean, mean browsing machine. Here are a few fun facts from us on the Google Chrome for Linux team:

60,000 lines of Linux-specific code written
23 developer builds
2,713 Linux-specific bugs fixed
12 external committers and bug editors to the Google Chrome for Linux code base, 48 external code contributors


Click here to download Google Chrome for Linux.

How to Flush DNS in Windows, Mac and Linux

When do you want flush DNS (Domain Name System)?

You visit one of the most frequently viewed websites in your list and find it’s not loading up, it could be very frustrating at times.

The site can be down for more than one reason, the most common one being, the remote server being down. To ensure if the server is up, ping the server directly, and the response tells you the status.

Let’s assume that the servers working fine, but still the site does not load up in your browser! DNS failure can be the cause. And this us a common case if server is relocated and/or the site is moved on to a new server, as DNS propagation normally takes anywhere from 24 – 72 hrs to propagate and work fine.

This scenario is also true when you set up new domain on a server.

If the site fails to show up even after 72 hrs, you may have to clear your DNS cache to ensure the request is not going to the old ips of the site you are trying to load.

Clearing DNS cache will ensure your PC does not have old records of bad DNS entries. If the bad entries are not flushed then you need to wait up to 24 hours for it to be dropped from the cache automatically, which is a scheduled activity in some computers.

The following list gives you the set of commands to flush DNS on different platforms:

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Liferea: RSS feed reader for Linux users

RSS feeds have been really very useful for me and I love to manage all the feeds which I follow via FeedDemon. Recently when I started using Ubuntu I was really missing my Feed manager. Then I found this cool feed reader. Liferea is a feed manager for Linux systems. There are many feed readers out there but all of them requires new libraries to be installed or the worse they do not support linux systems.

The best thing about this is you can easily add your Google feed reader feeds to this. So if you are already using FeedDemon and if it is synchronized with your Google Account then you can easily add all those feeds to Liferea also.

Liferea is the best feed reader available for the Linux systems. It’s fast, it’s simple and it’s easy to use.

Read this to know how to install it in your Linux.


Feel free to post comments. :)

Resetting a Forgotten Password in UBUNTU

It happens to everyone. You have so many usernames and passwords that you can't remember them all. Fortunately, Facebook, Gmail, and about a billion other online services have a "forgot password" link. Just click it and the web service will either email your password to you or allow you to reset it and enter a new one. But what happens when you forget the password for your operating system. While you might think the easiest thing to do is reinstall Ubuntu, (after all, this is a clean install so it's not like we'd be losing any data on our hypothetical system), you can save yourself 15-30 minutes by changing the password. It turns out you don't have login to change your password. As we discovered thanks to a useful post on the Ubuntu forums, you can do it from the bootloader screen. Check out the 5 easy steps after the jump. 1. Turn on your computer, and as soon as you the Press Esc to enter grub message, press the escape key. 2. Select the option that says (recovery mode). 3. Your PC will boot into a shell. Once you get a command prompt, type passwd username where the username is your username. If you can't remember this, then you can type ls /home which should bring it up. 4. Enter a new password when prompted, and again when prompted again 5. Type shutdown -r now to reboot your system. That's it. You should now be able to login with your shiny new password.

How to install KDE on Ubuntu

Ubuntu's default desktop environment is Gnome. Sometimes people using Ubuntu want to try out KDE as well, though.

Warning: having KDE and Gnome together means you'll have cluttered application menus full of KDE applications and Gnome applications. There may be other minor integration issues, but none should impact functionality, and you can find help for those on the Ubuntu Forums.

Even though these instructions are for KDE, the same principle applies for adding Gnome to Kubuntu or XFCE to Kubuntu or Ubuntu. Basically, you install the desktop environment, log out, and choose the desktop environment.

Go to System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager

Enter your password when prompted.

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To password protect a folder in Linux

Use the zip command: zip -e -r "name_of_the_new_zip_file" "path_of_the_folder_which_has_to_be_protected" Example: If you want to protect a folder named "old" in your desktop. Just do it... zip -e -r /home/gautam/Desktop/new /home/gautam/Desktop/old [gautam@gautam-home ~]$ zip -e -r /home/gautam/Desktop/new /home/gautam/Desktop/old Enter password: Verify password: This will create a zip file named "new.zip" in your desktop (new.zip). After that delete the folder "old".

10 ways to tweak your Linux Boot Process

Linux rarely needs to be rebooted. But when it does, it’s often slow to boot. Fortunately, there are ways to speed things up. Some of these methods are not terribly difficult. (although some, unfortunately, are). Let’s take a look.

#1: Disable unnecessary services

Depending upon the use of the machine, plenty of services won’t be needed. Using Linux just for a desktop? Then you won’t need sendmail, http, and many other services. If your server is only a web server, you can shut off many services as well. To do this, you can go to the Administration menu and take a look at the Services entry. Just deselect all of the services you don’t want to start.

#2: Disable unnecessary kernel modules

If your desktop is wired to the Ethernet, you don’t need to have a wireless kernel module loaded. This task is a bit more difficult and will require a kernel recompilation, which is not the easiest task to undertake. To do this, you will need the kernel sources. Then, follow the standard steps for compiling a kernel. The difference is that you’re going to go through your system and disable all of the modules you don’t need.

The best way to find out what kernel modules currently install and run on your system is to install Bootchart. Not only will this give you a good list of modules, it will illustrate for you what is happening during your system boot. You can also issue the command chkconfig –list | grep 3:on to find out what services are running. Once you know what loading modules you don’t need, you can remove them during a kernel recompilation. While you’re at it, compile the kernel to exactly match your architecture.

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Access (K) ubuntu console with a single key

Yakuake is a Quake-style terminal emulator based on KDE Konsole technology which makes the console more user friendly. If you need the ability to quickly pull down a console to run a few commands with a keystroke, and then make the console disappear again with another quick keystroke. YaKuake is exactly what you are looking for. The interface is highly customizable, you can adjust the height, the width, the horizontal position you can change the keyboard shortcuts and make it retract automatically when it looses focus. It uses the same terminal settings as Konsole and like Konsole it has multiple tabs so you can have more terminals running at the same time. If you exit KDE while YaKuake is still running in the background, it’ll start up automatically when you log back into KDE. YaKuake is a very simple application, but it’s also very useful. I use it all the time when I want quick access to a terminal to run one or two commands, such as doing an apt-get update; apt-get upgrade, checking a man page to find the proper syntax for a command, or moving a few files around. In ubuntu you can install YaKuake with a simple command sudo apt-get install yakuake YaKuake is released under GPL license and you can get it from the site: * http://www.kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=29153

Enabling the desktop cube in Ubuntu

To make Ubuntu more attractive to the end user, the Ubuntu developers have included some eye-candy 'desktop effects' with the recent versions of Ubuntu. These are actually done with external plugins, such as the Expo plugin. Ubuntu comes with some pre-installed visual effect plugins but only a few of them are active by default. A one feature that most people ask for but seems not available is the Desktop Cube. The Cube is also already installed but not enabled. This article will guide you to manage the plugins and enable the cube.

In this article I assume,
That you have a working Internet connection.
That you have a faster graphics card with at leaset 64 MB of memory.

We need to follow the steps below.

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