Monday 19 September 2011

Windows Update feature with out Microsoft Registration.


Would you like to use the Windows Update feature without being forced to register with Microsoft? OK then, this is what you can do:


Launch  Regedit.
Start .....> Run type regedit
Search for below key 
 HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion.
Look for a value named RegDone. If it isn't there create a new value with that name.
Right click the new value and choose Modify. Make the value 1.

Display Number of Processors on Linux


If you’ve just upgraded your Linux box, or you are wondering how many processors a remote server has, there’s a quick and dirty command you can use to display the number of processors.
On Linux, /proc/cpuinfo contains all of the processor information for all current processors in your computer. This will include the speed, the amount of on-chip cache, processor type, and how many cores.
Here’s the command:
cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep processor | wc -l
The command just looks in the /proc/cpuinfo file, pulls out the number of lines containing the word “processor” and passes them into wc (word count), which returns a count of the CPUs in the system.
Here’s what it returned on my remote server:
[root@root]# cat /proc/cpuinfo | grep processor | wc -l
4
Note that if you have a dual-core processor, it will return each core as a separate processor. You can look at the full output of cat /proc/cpuinfo to see if the chips are dual-core.

How To See the Processor Model Number/Speed on Linux

If you rely on somebody else for managed hosting of your Linux servers, you might not always know exactly what type of server you’re actually running on. There’s a quick and easy way to figure this out, however.
Simply type in the following command at the prompt:
cat /proc/cpuinfo
And then you’ll see a big long list of all the processor in the system, along with all the information about them, which should look something like this:
processor       : 0
vendor_id       : GenuineIntel
cpu family      : 6
model           : 26
model name      : Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU           L5520  @ 2.27GHz
stepping        : 5
cpu MHz         : 2267.545
cache size      : 8192 KB
physical id     : 0
siblings        : 4
core id         : 0
cpu cores       : 4
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 11
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge
 mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe
nx rdtscp lm constant_tsc pni monitor ds_cpl est tm2 xtpr popcnt
bogomips        : 4538.12
You’ll see in this example that we’re running on an Intel Xeon L5520 running at 2.27GHz… and if we had shown the full example you’d see that there are actually 4 cores on the machine.

How to Tell if Your Processor Supports VT in Linux

Virtualization Technology (VT) is a set of enhancements to newer processors that improve performance for running a virtual machine by offloading some of the work to the new cpu extensions. Both AMD and Intel have processors that support this technology, but how do you tell if your system can handle it?
It’s quite simple: We’ll need to take a peek inside the /proc/cpuinfo file and look at the flags section for one of two values, vmx or svm.
  • vmx – (intel)
  • svm – (amd)
You can use grep to quickly see if either value exists in the file by running the following command:
egrep ‘(vmx|svm)’ /proc/cpuinfo
If your system supports VT, then you’ll see vmx or svm in the list of flags. My system has two processors, so there are two separate sections:

flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm syscall nx lm constant_tsc pni monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr lahf_lm
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm syscall nx lm constant_tsc pni monitor ds_cpl vmx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr lahf_lm
VT technology can still be disabled in your computer’s BIOS, however, so you’ll want to check there to make sure that it hasn’t been disabled. The flags in cpuinfo simply mean that your processor supports it.
From my research, VT is required in order to run 64-bit guests under the free VMware server for linux… so it would logically follow that if you can do so, VT is enabled.
32-bit VT is not enabled by default under VMware server. If you want to enable it, you need to add the following line to your *.vmx file for your virtual machine:
monitor_control.vt32 = TRUE
VMware does not recommend that you use VT for 32-bit guests, because they say it will actually hurt performance.

Verify GPG Key For Package Update

How do I verify that the system using correct GPG keys to verify all patches, packages and update installed from RHN or repo under RHEL 5 or 6 server operating systems?     

All packages can be cryptographically verified using the rpm / yum and gpg command itself. You need to use /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-redhat-release file. All packages from RHN or 3rd party Fedora Linux repo are signed with a GPG signature. The yum command will verify these signatures and refuse to install any packages that are not signed or have bad signatures. This make sure that the packages from RHN was provided by the Red Hat, Inc and have not been modified by anyone else.

Verify Installed Keys

To verify that the keys installed on your RHEL server system match the key listed here, use GnuPG to check that the fingerprint of the key matches:
# gpg --quiet --with-fingerprint /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-redhat-release
Sample outputs:
pub  4096R/FD431D51 2009-10-22 Red Hat, Inc. (release key 2) 
      Key fingerprint = 567E 347A D004 4ADE 55BA  8A5F 199E 2F91 FD43 1D51
pub  1024D/2FA658E0 2006-12-01 Red Hat, Inc. (auxiliary key) 
      Key fingerprint = 43A6 E49C 4A38 F4BE 9ABF  2A53 4568 9C88 2FA6 58E0
If you use Fedora Linux packages, see this page for more information. If you use CentOS Linux packages, go here for more information.

How Do I Make Sure That the System Has the Red Hat GPG Key Installed?

Type the following command:
# rpm -q --queryformat "%{SUMMARY}\n" gpg-pubkey
Sample outputs (should match as follows - taken from RHEL v6.1 - Santiago):
gpg(Red Hat, Inc. (release key 2) )
gpg(Red Hat, Inc. (auxiliary key) )

How To Harmonize Your Dual-Boot Setup for Windows and Ubuntu

Looking for some harmony between Windows 7 and Ubuntu in your dual-boot setup?  Here are a few ways you can make the tense OS situation a little more unified and copacetic.

Background


When we covered How to Choose a Partition Scheme for Your Linux PC, we noticed that some people were wondering how to use a third partition between Linux and Windows to act as a storage partition.

Why It’s Difficult

As a few commenters pointed out, you can’t use an NTFS-formatted partition for /home in Linux.  That’s because NTFS doesn’t preserve all of the properties and permissions used by Linux, and Windows doesn’t even read Linux file systems.  You can readily see this if you view a folder that’s hidden in Windows from within Linux, or a file that Linux sees as hidden in Windows.  What works for one doesn’t work for the other.  Furthermore, there isn’t an incredibly clean way to move the Users folder in Windows without messing with things.  This is why many people with nicer machines end up using virtualization software; it’s easier than forcing the two to co-operate side-by-side.

A Work-Around

There isn’t a way to run your /home directory from a FAT32 or NTFS partition, so your configuration files and scripts will have to remain there.  What you can do is redirect the other commonly used folders like Documents, Downloads, Music, etc. to another partition, one that can be read by Windows.  Then, you can add these folders to your Windows 7 Libraries and mark them as the default save location.

This isn’t a proper workaround.  Your program-associated configuration files and other user-related settings will not be in the same place for this setup.  If you have to reinstall either OS, you will have to perform a separate backup of your user settings.  That being said, however, most people are really just concerned about their documents, music, videos, and so forth.  This solves that issue by pointing both OSs to look in the same place for them.

Linux has come a long way with regards to reading and writing NTFS, and since it’s much better than FAT32 and tougher to configure this setup with, that’s what we’ll be covering in this guide.

Partition Scheme

For this to work, you’ll want your hard drive set up in a way similar to this:

  • Your Windows partition
  • Your Linux partition
  • A large partition (or second hard drive!) to store your files
  • A small swap partition

For later convenience, when you format your storage partition to NTFS, add an easily recognizable label to it.  It’ll be easier to find a drive called “storage” or “media” than by counting partition numbers.

Notice that we don’t have a separate /home partition this time around.  Since the vast majority of your important/large files will be on a separate partition, this negates the need for that.  You’re welcome to use a separate /home partition to make backing up the Linux-side of things easier, just remember that you can’t exceed four primary partitions per disk.

Auto-Mount Your Storage Partition (Linux)


Since we’re using NTFS, it’s a good idea to specifically tell your system to mount your storage partition or disk in the same place every time you boot.  To do this, we’ll be editing the /etc/fstab system file, which is the file system table used by Linux, but first, we have some preparations to make.  Open up terminal, and if this makes you nervous, just take a deep breath and relax.  It’ll be okay.

Prep Work

We need to install ntfs-3g, the driver Linux will use to read and write to NTFS.  If you already have it installed, it’ll tell you, so don’t worry.

sudo apt-get install ntfs-3g

If you see “ntfs-3g is already the newest version” then you already have it installed, otherwise you’ll see it work, so wait for it to finish its thing.  Next, let’s create the directory where your partition will mount.  If you want the drive to appear in the “Places” menu by default, you’ll use:

sudo mkdir /media/storage

If you don’t want it to appear in “Places” and you want to manually browse to it for whatever reason, you can use this instead:

sudo mkdir /mnt/storage

This will create a “storage” directory in /media.  You can change this to something else if you like, but be sure it does not have any spaces.  Spaces will create a problem when we configure it to automatically mount in the next few steps.

fstab

Now, it’s time to edit the fstab file.  First, we’ll create a backup, just in case anything happens.

sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.backup

It’ll prompt you for your password, so go ahead and enter it.  If, for whatever reason, you need to restore the backup in the future, you would do this:

sudo cp /etc/fstab.backup /etc/fstab

Next, you need to find what the UUID of your storage partition is.  The UUID stands for “universally unique identifier” and acts as a proper serial number that will not change until the partition is reformatted.  Run the following command:

sudo blkid

Enter your password, and you’ll see some output resembling this:

/dev/sda1: UUID=”23A87DBF64597DF1″ TYPE=”ntfs”
/dev/sda2: UUID=”2479675e-2898-48c7-849f-132bb6d8f150″ TYPE=”ext4″
/dev/sda5: UUID=”66E53AEC54455DB2″ LABEL=”storage” TYPE=”ntfs”
/dev/sda6: UUID=”05bbf608-87fa-4473-9774-cf4b2602d8d6″ TYPE=”swap”

Find the line that has the correct label to your storage partition (makes things easy, doesn’t it?) and copy the UUID.

gksudo gedit /etc/fstab

You’ll see gedit open, like so:

fstab before

You may see an uglier theme on gedit than usual, but don’t worry it.  Add the following lines to the bottom of fstab, substituting your own UUID instead of mine:

# storage mount
UUID=66E53AEC54455DB2 /media/storage/    ntfs-3g        auto,user,rw 0 0

The first line is a comment, indicated by the leading hash tag.  The next line tells fstab to look for the partition with the specified UUID, mount it to /media/storage/, and to use the ntfs-3g driver.  Furthermore, it makes sure that it automatically mounts at boot, makes it accessible by users (not just root), gives both read and write privileges, and skip file-system checks (you’ll probably want to use Windows to do that).  Lastly, double-check, and triple-check to make sure you didn’t touch anything else, and that the UUID is correct.

fstab after

When you’re ready, click save and then reboot.  Don’t skip the reboot, as it’s necessary for the next step as well as to make sure things work.

You should be able to boot into Ubuntu as if nothing happened, but you’ll notice that you’ve got “storage” (or whatever you named it) under the Places menu now!  If not, check to make sure you got fstab correct.  See above to restore fstab from your backup, if you need to.

Configure Your Subfolders (Linux)


Open up terminal and enter the following command:

gedit .config/user-dirs.dirs

This is the file where your “special” folders in your home directory are defined. 

user-dirs before

You can edit this to your liking.  In place of where you see “$HOME/Downloads” you would put in an absolute folder location, like “/media/storage/Downloads”.  Go ahead and create those folders, or whatever folders you’d like to call them, and put the path down for each of these.  Here’s what the finished edit should look like:

user-dirs after

Click save, and we’re done the crux of the configuration.  You may need to reboot for these changes to take effect, but you can just boot into Windows to finish out the process in the next section.

Basically, now when you browse and put files in your “Downloads” folder, they’ll actually go to your storage drive’s “Downloads” folder.  Anything in your home folder itself will stay in /home/yourusername/, not on your storage drive.  A few of the folders, like “Desktop” and “Templates,” probably won’t benefit from this treatment, either.  Templates are rarely used, the desktop usually gets cluttered with shortcuts and the like, and the Windows desktop isn’t elegantly redirected, unfortunately.

Configure Your Subfolders (Windows)


Boot into Windows, and you’ll see that there’s another partition called “storage” under “My Computer.”  Windows 7 has the beautiful Libraries feature built-in, so take a look at our article “Understanding the Libraries Feature in Windows 7,” and you’ll see step-by-step directions on how to add your new storage folders to your libraries. 

libraries

As you can see, my storage drive folders are a part of my libraries.  My storage drive letter is E: because my network share is at D:.  Also, take a look at our “Change the Default Save Folder for Windows 7 Libraries…” article so that when you stick things in your libraries, they automatically get saved to your new storage folders as well.

setting as default save location

The last thing you’ll have to change is the default “Downloads” directory in your preferred web browser(s), which can point to your “Downloads” library.  All done!

It’s also worth mentioning that if you have some know-how, you could even do this with a remotely shared drive on your network, though it may prove to be too slow for actual use.  A better idea is to turn your storage partition into a shared drive that can be accessed by other computers in your network.

How to Choose a Partition Scheme for Your Linux PC

Afraid of the dreaded “p” word?  You’re not alone.  Partitions can get complicated, so here’s an explanation of what they are, how they’re used, and a simple template to use for your own Linux installation.

What Are Partitions?

Partitions are divisions in the formatting of the hard disk.  It’s a logical – as opposed to a physical – division, so you can edit and manipulate them for various purposes.  Think breaking a disk into two configuration parts.  Partitions are really handy because they act as a sandbox.  If you have a 1 TB hard drive partitioned into a 250 GB partition and a 750 GB partition, what you have on the latter will not affect the other, and vice versa.  You can share one of those partitions on the network and never worry about people accessing information on the other.  One could have Windows installed, riddled with viruses and trojans.  The other could be running a very obsolete, security-hole addled Linux installation.  Never shall the two interfere, unless either you make them or the hard drive itself physically dies.
The other useful thing is that you can have multiple partitions, each formatted with a different “file system.”  A file system is a formatting of the disk into a table that the operating system can read, interpret, and write to.  Only have one hard drive?  That’s okay, because you can still install multiple operating systems on it without actually having another physical disk.
While there are tons of file system types, there are only three kinds of partitions: primary, extended, and logical.  Any given hard disk can only have a maximum of four primary partitions.  This limitation is due to something called the Master Boot Record which tells the computer which partitions it can boot from, and so primary partitions are usually reserved for operating systems.  But what if we want more than four?  That’s where the extended partition comes into play.  It serves as a hollow container for any number of smaller, logical partitions.  You can make as many as you like there, as well as make it home to your non-OS sections.
If extended partitions are so great, why not just use them?  That’s because you can’t directly boot from anywhere inside an extended partition.  There are ways to get around this, but the best thing to do is to plan properly beforehand with primary partitions.  In addition, the way partitions are numbered by the system depends on these types.  First, the machine will number based on all primary partitions, and then by logical ones.  This can cause changing drive letters if you switch between OSs or add or delete partitions later.

Mount Points in Linux

partition scheme (methoddan)
Image by MethodDan
On Windows, things are pretty clearly cut: it lives on your disk, usually on one partition, and that’s that.  If you have other drives, and they have a compatible file system, then it’ll read them as well.  If not, it’ll usually ignore them, or offer you the ability to reformat.  Linux – and anything resembling Unix, really – doesn’t quite work that way.
The way Linux works is that it puts everything onto a tree.  If you have another partition or disk, it gets “mounted” as a branch in a specific folder, usually /media or /mnt.  The directory that a partition gets mounted to is called a “mount point.”  This method works better with Linux’s tree structure, and you can mount partitions as folders nearly anywhere.  In Windows, this is not so easily done; new partitions generally show up as separate drives.  In addition, Linux can work with many more types of file systems natively than Windows.
Remember how there could only be four primary partitions?  If you want to boot 145 OSs like someone on the JustLinux forums did, you can set up a primary partition for /boot, which houses a boot-loader, like GRUB or LiLo, which handles initial functions and then continues booting into the extended partitions.

What Scheme Should I Use?

The standard partitions scheme for most home Linux installs is as follows:
  • A 12-20 GB partition for the OS, which gets mounted as / (called “root”)
  • A smaller partition used to augment your RAM, mounted and referred to as swap
  • A larger partition for personal use, mounted as /home
The exact size requirements change based on your needs, but in general you start with swap.  If you do a lot of multimedia editing, and/or have a smaller amount of RAM, you should use a larger amount of swap.  If you have plenty of memory, you can skimp on it, although some distributions of Linux have a problem going into standby or hibernating without much swap.  The rule of thumb is that you choose between 1.5 to 2 times the amount of RAM as the swap space, and you put this partition in a place that is quick to reach, like at the beginning or end of the disk.
Even if you install a ton software, a maximum of 20 GB for your root partition should be enough.  Most distributions of Linux use either ext3 or ext4 as their file system nowadays, which has a built-in “self-cleaning” mechanism so you don’t have to defrag.  In order for this to work best, though, there should be free space for between 25-35% of the partition.
Finally, whatever else you have should go to your /home partition.  This is where your personal stuff is stored. It is functionally the equivalent of the “Users” directory in Windows, housing your application settings, music, downloads, documents, etc, and those of any other users you have on your system.  It’s useful to have /home in a separate partition because when you upgrade or reinstall your OS, you don’t have to backup anything in this folder!  Isn’t that convenient?  To top it off, most of your program- and UI-related settings are saved as well!
Screenshot-Install
If you’re running a server with a lot of users and/or a lot of media, you could optimize performance by using two hard drives.  A small solid state drive would be perfect for the OS to live on, maybe 32 GB at most, and you could throw the swap partition on the beginning of a 1 or 2 TB “green” drive that’s mounted on /home.
If you’re into more tinkering, you can even set up different partitions for things like the temporary directory (/tmp), for your web server’s content (/var/www), for programs (/usr), or for log files (/var/log).

Specifying Mount Points During Installation

In our example, we’ll be using showing the partition setup during an Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat installation.  When you get to where it says “Allocate drive space,” choose “Specify partitions manually (advanced).”
installation manual
Don’t panic just because you see “advanced”; it’s really not that difficult and you’ll be getting some real rewards from the process.  Click forward and you’ll see the partition table.
new partition
Click on the free space row in the table and then click on “Add…”  If you don’t have free space, click on your Windows partition, hit “Change…” and shrink it to a more palatable size.  This will give you some free space to work with.
Create partition
Here, you can see that I’ve created a Primary partition of about 11.5-odd GB at the beginning of the disk and I’ve specified it to use root as the mount point.  You will have to use a Linux-compatible file system, so I used the default ext4, although you can use ext2, ext3, ReiserFS, or whatever else.  Do some research online and you’ll be able to choose the best, but if you’re in doubt, stick to the default.  You can adjust yours to more space if you have it, but again, you probably won’t ever need more than 20 GB unless you’re installing/compiling a lot of software.  Click “OK” and you’re set to create another partition.
swap
This time, as you can see, I’ve chosen a logical partition (the partitioning program automatically creates an extended partition for this).  Since this machine has a 512 MB of RAM, I’ve approximated 1.5 times that, and designated it as “swap area.”  Also note that I’ve stuck this at the end of the disk, which will help keep disk seeking times at a minimum.  Click “OK,” and let’s create another partition.
home
I’ve selected all of the rest of the space in the middle to be my /home partition.  The compatible file system I’ve chosen is again ext4.  Now here is the gray area: should it be primary or logical?  I went with primary because I know that I won’t be installing another OS on here, otherwise I would have gone with logical.  If you don’t plan on installing more than three OSs, you can just make it primary for simplicity’s sake.
When you’re all finished, you can resume installation.  Here’s my resulting partition table:
finished!
If you get cold feet, you can quit the installation at this point without fearing any data loss.  Nothing is actually done to your disk until you hit “Install Now,” so you can go back and edit things as you wish.

HTG Explains: What is the Linux fstab and How Does It Work?

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If you’re running Linux, then it’s likely that you’ve needed to change some options for your file systems.  Getting acquainted with fstab can make the whole process a lot easier, and it’s much easier than you think.

What is Fstab?

Fstab is your operating system’s file system table.  If you want a review of file systems, be sure to check out our other article, HTG Explains: Which Linux File System Should You Choose? In the old days, it was the primary way that the system mounted files automatically.  Nowadays, you can plug in a USB drive of any kind and it’ll just pop up in Nautilus like it does in Windows and Mac OS, but once upon a time, you had to manually mount those disks to a specific folder using the “mount” command.  This held true for DVDs, CDs, and even floppies (remember those?).
Back then, your only alternative was the tell the computer that anytime a specific device was plugged in, it should be automatically mounted in a specific place.  This is where fstab came in, and it was awesome.  Suppose you swapped hard disks on your IDE or SCSI controller.  The computer could load the file systems in a different order, potentially messing things up.  Fstab is configured to look for specific file systems and mount them automatically in a desired way each and every time, preventing a myriad of disasters from occurring.

Your Fstab File

The fstab file is located at:
/etc/fstab
Let’s take a look at my fstab file, shall we?
fstab file
You’ll definitely see differences, but if you want to follow along with your own fstab just pop this command into a terminal:
command without sudo
You can also use gedit if you’re not comfortable with nano.
The Obvious Options
UUIDs
You’ll notice all of the entries begin with UUIDs.  You may remember seeing this in one of our previous articles, How to Choose a Partition Scheme for Your Linux PC, but we’ll explain it again anyway.  Each file system, during formatting, gets assigned a Universally Unique Identifier, which it takes to the grave.  Since it cannot be changed, this is the ideal way to select file systems for mounting, especially for important ones.  Let’s say your /home partition is on a second hard drive and you end up moving it to an external hard drive; fstab will still find that partition and mount it correctly, avoiding a failed boot.  If you switch to (or are stuck using) the old method of using device identifiers to select partitions (i.e. /dev/sda1), this advantage disappears because hard drives and partitions are counted by their controllers, and can thus change.
Edit: Using UUIDs in your fstab file, while convenient for most home users, does have a few big caveats.  This doesn’t work when using things like “assembled” or “network-based” devices.  If you’re more of an advanced user, or plan on using things like software RAID in the future, you’re better off not using UUIDs.
mountpt
The next section of fstab, like all subsequent ones, is separated by either a space or a tab, or a combination of them.  Here, you’ll find the mount point.  As you can see, I have a root (/) mount point, a swap, and two that I manually added in for my shared network storage drives.  If you’re adding an entry to fstab, then you’ll have to manually create the mount point before you restart your computer (and the changes take effect).
type
Next is the section which identifies the type of file system on the partition.  Many, such as ext2/3/4, ReiserFS, jFS, etc. are natively read by Linux.  Your particular system may still need to have particular packages installed to be able to read and write to them.  The perfect examples are my NTFS partitions; you can see that I’m using the ntfs-3g driver to access them.
The Scarier Stuff
The next few sections are what usually scare away newcomers, but they’re really not so complicated.  There’s a large set of options available, but there’s a handful or so of very common ones.  Let’s take a look at them. (The default option is first, followed by alternatives, but as Linux distros can be very different, your mileage may vary.)
  • auto/noauto:  Specify whether the partition should be automatically mounted on boot.  You can block specific partitions from mounting at boot-up by using “noauto”.
  • exec/noexec:  Specifies whether the partition can execute binaries.  If you have a scratch partition that you compile on, then this would be useful, or maybe if you have /home on a separate file system.  If you’re concerned about security, change this to “noexec”.
  • ro/rw:  “ro” is read-only, and “rw” is read-write.  If you want to be able to write to a file-system as the user and not as root, you’ll need to have “rw” specified.
  • sync/async:  This one is interesting.  “sync” forces writing to occur immediately on execution of the command, which is ideal for floppies (how much of a geek are you?) and USB drives, but isn’t entirely necessary for internal hard disks.  What “async” does is allow the command to execute over an elapsed time period, perhaps when user activity dies down and the like.  Ever get a message asking to your “wait while changes are being written to the drive?”  This is usually why.
  • nouser/user:  This allows the user to have mounting and unmounting privileges.  An important note is that “user” automatically implies “noexec” so if you need to execute binaries and still mount as a user, be sure to explicitly use “exec” as an option.
These options are separated by a comma and no spaces, and can be put in any order.  If you’re not sure about the defaults, it’s okay to explicitly state your options.  Things that are mounted from temporary places (like USB) won’t follow this basic pattern unless you created entries for them (by UUID) in fstab.  It’s convenient when you want an external hard drive to always mount in a particular way, because normal thumb-drives and the like won’t be affected.
options
You can see that my two storage drives have user mounting privileges enabled, read-write access enabled, and auto-mounting is turned on.  I don’t compile much software, but when I do, I add the “exec” option at the end of the list.
Dumping and Fscking
dump
The next option is a binary value (“0” for false and “1” for true) for “dumping.”  This is a pretty much out-dated method of backup for cases when the system went down.  You should leave this as “0”.
pass
The last option is a numeric value for “passing.”  This tells the system the order in which to fsck (pronounce that however you like), or perform a file system check.  If a disk has an option of “0” it will be skipped, like my NTFS-formatted storage drives.  The root file system should always be “1” and other file systems can go afterward.  This works best for journaling file systems like ext3/4 and ReiserFS.  Older file systems like FAT16/32 and ext2 can take a while, so it’s better to turn their fscking off and do it periodically yourself.

How to Auto Mount Partitions at Linux Startup the Easy Way

Usually making Ubuntu mount a partition at startup would require fiddling with the “fstab” which is confusing. The easiest way to mount your partitions automatically when you turn on your computer is by reading this article. So let’s get started!

We are going to install the program that will make the process easy is called “Storage Device Manager”. Enter this command in a terminal window to install it:
sudo apt-get install pysdm
Or search for it in Ubuntu Software Center
Now fire it up from System > Administration > Storage Device Manager. Once running, from the left hand side panel choose the partition you want to be mounted on startup (expand the hard drives list first). Then click on “Assistant” on the right side.
Now you are presented with the options window. Just check the “The file system is mounted at boot time” and uncheck the “Mount file system in read-only mode”.
You can edit the other options if you want but be careful, it might damage your system. When done click the “OK” button then hit “Apply”. Close the program and restart to see the effect. That’s it!

Mount USB Devices in Virtualbox with Ubuntu

Mounting a USB device inside a virtual machine is often a tool that you cannot go without. If you are using Virtualbox in Ubuntu however, you need to take a few extra steps to make it work.

Install Virtualbox

The first thing you need to do is install Virtualbox from Oracle’s website. It is different than Virtualbox OSE which is included in the Ubuntu repositories because the Virtualbox from Oracle includes proprietary software which allows you to mount USB devices inside you VM among other things. If you already have Virtualbox OSE installed from the Ubuntu repositories, uninstall it before installing the .deb file from Oracle’s website.
Note: Any VMs you made with Virtualbox OSE will still work with the standard version of Virtualbox. Uninstall Virtualbox OSE before installing virtualbox from Oracle.

Set up Your Virtual Machine

Install your virtual machine and once the installation is complete install the Virtualbox guest additions into the guest OS from the devices menu.
Turn the virtual machine off and go to the settings for the VM. Click on USB on the left and check the top two boxes in the window shown.
Along the right hand side there will be a few icons to set up USB filters. These filters are where you can tell Virtualbox what USB devices you want to have available to your guest OS. Plug in your USB device and click on the second icon to view available USB devices that can be mounted into the guest OS.
Select any devices you would like to mount in the guest OS and then close out of the settings window.

Set Up Your User Account

The next thing you need to do is add your user to the vboxusers group on your system. Navigate to the System -> Administration -> Users and Groups option and click on manage groups on the left side.
Scroll down in the group settings and highlight the vboxusers group and then click properties on the right.
In most cases you probably will only have one user so check the box to include your user in the group; put in your admin password when prompted, and then restart your computer.

Mount Your USB Device

Once your computer restarts, log in and start your virtual machine. In the devices menu of the VM, select the USB device you want to mount.
Your device should show up automatically in the VM and you can use it the same way you would be able to on the host operating system.

How To Run Chrome OS in VirtualBox

Recently a build of Google’s Chrome OS was released for testing. Though it’s not ready for prime time, you might want to test it out in a virtual machine. Today we take a look at how to setup and run it in VirtualBox.
Note: In this example we are using VirtualBox 3.0.12 running on a 32-bit version of Windows 7 Ultimate.
Setup VirtualBox
The first thing to do is click on New to create a new machine in VirtualBox.
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The New Virtual Machine wizard opens where you just want to click Next.
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Type in a name for the machine and for OS Type you want to select Linux and the default version will be Ubuntu…you can leave that and click Next.
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Now you want to select the amount of memory to allocate for the machine. In our test we used 512MB which seems adequate, but you can experiment with different amounts.
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In the next step, select Use existing hard disk…
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Then add the VMDK file you downloaded to Virtual Media Manager and select it.
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You’re brought back to the wizard where the screen should look similar to this.
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Then you’re presented with the summary of the new VM and if everything looks correct click Finish.
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Now you will see the Chrome OS in the list of your virtual machines and you can start it up.
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The Chrome OS will start up and the first screen you’re presented with is the log on. You need to enter in your Google account name and password to begin a session.
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That is all there is to it. Now you can start playing around with the new OS from Google.
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Conclusion
For those of you who like to try out the newest technology, this is a good option for testing out the Chrome OS. At this time don’t expect a whole lot of awesomeness with this build of Chrome OS. At least you can geek out on it and see what the hype is all about. Of course you can run it in VMware Player as well, but if you’re partial to VirtualBox, this will get you going.
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