Kmix not working on kde

You might encounter a problem that when you start the kmix sound mixer you would not see any thing happening. It happens because it runs as an hidden application, so to access it you would need to add the system tray widget.

To add the system tray widget to your panel perform the following steps:-

1. Right click on the panel that you want to add your widget to.

2. Select the system tray widget as shown in the figure below.

3. Now you will be able to access the all the hidden applications and kmix being one of them, you would get the sound control applet where you can control the volume functionality.

Note: In case the above solution does not work you may try upgrading the kmix package by executing the following command.

sudo apt-get upgrade kmix

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partprobe command: Update partition table without reboot

partprobe is a program that tells the operating system kernel about the partition table changes by requesting the operating system to re-read the partition table again so that you do not have to reboot for the changes to appear on the partition table. A reboot is what the system administrators just cannot do on the system running web server's so for them this command is of utmost importance.

The command and its option

partprobe [-d] [-s] [-h] [device]

-d : Don't update the partition table, it is what you normally don't intend to do when you change the partition tables

-s : for showing summary of the devices and their partitions

-h: To show summary of options

device: The hardware device /dev/hda , /dev/hdb etc

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Changing window manager in ubuntu

The problem that you might face when you install ubuntu is it's default window manager GNOME is quite heavy on resources and tends to be buggy (for my pc configuration at least) so to cope up with resource crunch you can shift to a light window manager like fluxbox, XFCE etc as they tend to provide better performance than GNOME or KDE but are a little un-user friendly.

To change the window manager follow these steps:-

1) Install MENU:- The precondition for changing to any new window manager is to install the program MENU that manages the application menus so that you can launch the applications without the need of Gnome or KDE launchers.

To install MENU

• Open terminal i.e Application->Accesories->Terminal or press ALT+F2 and choose run in terminal


• Then type the following command in the terminal :-
  
  sudo apt-get install menu
  you will be asked for your password, enter it and the package menu will be installed.

2) Install the window manager :- The next step is to install the window manager itself. I would be explaining about how to install the FLUXBOX window manager.

The fluxbox window manager provides tab options, styles menu from which you can change the theme and wallpapers, configuration menu for configuring window display (including transparency,icons etc), wsm (text browser) and by default comes with 4 workspaces that you can toggle between, more workspace windows can be added. The thing that i like about it is that it's very fast.

To install fluxbox execute the following command:-

sudo apt-get install fluxbox

3) Changing the window manager :- Now all you have to do is logout from ubuntu and then from the options on the login screen choose select session, choose Fluxbox and choose the window manager for current session only so that you can try it out before choosing to make it default.

The following is the snapshot of fluxbox:-

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Installing uTorrent on ubuntu

The installation is very easy just follow these steps:-

1. Installing Wine :- the wine package helps run windows executables on linux like systems. You can get any package with ease by using a single command or you can use synaptic package manager. I'll explain the procedure by using the command line (it's very easy).
   
   
   
   • Open the terminal :- Go to Applications->Accessories->Terminal
     
   
   
   
   
   
   • Then type the following command :-
     
     sudo apt-get install wine
     
     Then you will be asked for your password , enter it and press y when asked whether you want to install the package or not
   
   
   • Then type exit at the prompt to exit the terminal.



2. Installing uTorrent : Download the uTorrent package for windows-xp and after it is downloaded, right click on it and choose open with "wine windows program loader" and after that you can choose the location of install (let it be default) , this will complete the installation of uTorrent.



3. Launch the program : Now you can run the uTorrent program on ubuntu.
   
   

Note: If you have a dual boot os (windows-xp+ubuntu) then you should download torrent files using ubuntu which i feel utilises the maximum bandwidth available to you. Also if you receive a virus instead of the original intended file you will have no risk of it affecting your pc as linux based systems are generally virus safe and you can then transfer it to windows -xp by mounting it's partition on ubuntu.

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PHLAK:Professional Hacker's Linux Assault Kit

PHLAK is a modular security distribution. It is a derivative of Morphix, created by Alex de Landgraaf. It can be used as a live cd by security professionals to perform security analysis, penetration testing, forensics, and security auditing on a system to check whether it has been compromised in terms of security.

The thing i like the most about it is that it provides one with enough security documentation to be able to help him become a security expert. It has a file cabinet full of security related documentation for your reading/educational purposes.

This distribution comes with the best security tools like hping2, proxychains, lczroex, ettercap, kismet, hunt, achilies, brutus,nmap,nessus, snort, the coronor’s toolkit, ethereal and many others.

It also has standard features like apache, mysql ,iptables, programming compilers etc that come with the linux distributions.

It is user-friendly as it includes two fast, light-weight window managers, XFCE4 (the default) and Fluxbox.

One thing that this distribution lacks is that it is 3.5 years old and new version is nowhere to be seen whereas other penetration testing systems like backtrack are new and under active development.

Note:It's security documentation the one you'll definitely want to have.

It can be downloaded from the following link:-







Following are some of the snapshots of this os:-

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Shell Server

Shell servers are unix based systems that provide access to the user and user is given storage space and ability to execute commands and work on unix shell, so if you want to try out operating system like unix you can use shell servers. Also they provide a user with a text based browser like lynx to surf the internet with complete anonymity, but they generally will not let you telnet from them to another server for free (those accounts are paid).
Also if someone is working on windows and cannot install linux then he/she can work on these servers.
They also provide user a home directory but never try to get access to root files it wont be allowed or never try to use shell scripts that can get you root privilidges that wont work either.
Using them requires knowledge of linux commands.

List Of shell servers:

• http://freeshell.org/
• http://sdf-eu.or/
• http://www.grex.org/ : provides text based lynx browser, free webspace, pop3, email
• http://sdf.lonestar.org/
• http://polarhome.com/
• http://www.celebris.net/: provides services like php, mysql and apache 7mb quota on webspace, IRC access.

So if you want to see how unix works without the hassles of installing it go and create an account on one of these.

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what is a daemon on unix ?

Daemons are programs that continuously listen for other processes. Daemons loosely resemble terminate and stay resident (TSR) programs in the Microsoft platform.These programs remain alive at all times, constantly listening for a particular event. When that event finally occurs, the TSR or Daemon undertakes some action.

What is Inetd Daemon in unix ?

Inetd daemon is the main daemon that listens for all other networking related processes running on unix system.It listens for connection requests from the void and when it receives a request it starts the corresponding process.When it receives a request, it evaluates it. This evaluation seeks to determine one thing only: What service does the requesting machine want? For example, does it want Smtp? If so, inetd starts the SMTP server process.

The behavior of inetd is generally controlled from a file called inetd.conf, located in
the /etc directory in linux and unix platforms.The inetd.conf file is used to specify what
services will be called by inetd. Such services might include FTP, Telnet, SMTP, TFTP,
Finger, Systat, Netstat, or any other processes that you specify.

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Usb Mount Problem Linux

In case you have a problem in mounting the usb drive in linux and you have tried the conventional mount command and checked the HAL daemon(red hat) but to no avail then it is most likely that 2 drivers for the same device are installed and are interfering with each other.

You can always check that what drivers are loaded by using the dmesg command. It is likely that 2 drivers namely uhci_hcd and ehci_hcd both are installed and if that is the case then to get rid of the problem simply remove any one of the modules and usb will mount properly.


Type this command for removing the module uhci_hcd:

modprobe -r uhci_hcd (-r option for removing a module)
for more of the commands option and info type man modprobe.

after typing this command connect your usb drive and it will be mounted without hassles.

Do post your comments in case the post solved your problem.

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Usefull Man Page Commands

The man or manual page in linux is used for providing the documentation of the commands in linux There are 8 sections into which man pages are divided. They are as Listed below:

Section	Description
1	User commands
2	System calls
3	Library functions
4	Special files
5	File formats
6	Games
7	Conventions and miscellany
8	Administration and privileged commands

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But sometimes you don't know which command to execute and for that kind of situation you can use the following commands:

1.apropos "keyword": This command prints the command names matching the keyword you specify and you can then open man page and read about the command and hence can easily know which command to execute without knowing the exact command name.

For ex: apropos print

2. man -k "keyword": This command produces the list of all the pages that match the keyword specified. Prefer apropos it's name makes much more sense and perhaps that is why it was designed .

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To Print a man page use the following command

• man -t sudo | lpr : what this command does is it prints the man page for sudo because here a pipe is used to redirect the output of man page to the printer using lpr command.

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To convert a man page to pdf document use the following command

• man -t sudo | ps2pdf -sudo_man_page.pdf : Here the ps2pdf command converts the output of man page of sudo command to pdf version.
  

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Important commands of ubuntu

The following commands are very usefull for updating ubuntu packages, installing new packages, removing packages etc when Gnome package manager gets buggy.

Just open the terminal and try the following.

1. For updating ubuntu: sudo apt-get update (no need for typing sudo if you are super user)

2. For installing a new package: sudo apt-get install package_name (here it allows wildcards like *) this searches the ubuntu repository for the package name and if present installs the package.

3. For removing the package: sudo apt-get remove package_name. It removes the package from the directory that is dedicated for storing packages in ubuntu.

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