Linux Road

Most of the times it happens that Ubuntu Netbook becomes agonizingly slow. Checking the RAM usage shows that only half of RAM is used (and quite obviously half is still free not being utilized) while SWAP memory usage is above 50%. This confuses many (including me) because SWAP memory is a lot slower than RAM and since RAM is available why Ubuntu even bother using SWAP.

What is SWAP?

Before moving to why this happens I will like to tell a few things about SWAP. SWAP is a portion of your hard disk dedicated to work as RAM. RAM is a fast piece of hardware and works more efficiently and so it is preferred that most of the process run in it. But, since RAM is very expensive, Linux makes use of SWAP that actually fakes to be a RAM and is used if RAM memory is not sufficient enough to hold the running processes.

Why Ubuntu uses SWAP when RAM is available

The problem here is RAM is available and Ubuntu is still using SWAP memory. This is due to the fact that the default value for swappiness is 60. Now what is swappiness? Swappiness is a parameter that controls the likelihood of the kernel to move the processes from RAM to the SWAP (a sort of virtuall ram). This value can be altered from 0 to 100. The higher the value the higher will be the chance of processes being moved to SWAP area and vice versa. So, here we are simple going to lower the swappiness value. A swappiness value of 10 is recommended but the default value is 60

How do I decrease swappiness value

To change the swappiness value just follow the following instructions. :

To see the current swappiness vaule type this in Terminal (to open terminal goto Application > Accessories > Terminal) and type the following command

cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

To temporarily change the swappiness value (lost on reboot) type:

sudo sysctl vm.swappiness=10

To change the swappiness value permanently type the following to open sysctl.conf in editor:

gksudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf

Now search for vm.swappiness and change it to vm.swappiness=10. If vm.swappiness is not found then add following at the end of the file:

vm.swappiness=10

Save and reboot your system, you will notice the increase in performance.

Source:

• Ubuntu Wiki

To give it a more neat look Computer, Home, Network, and Trash icons are hidden on Ubuntu desktop by default. Most Linux user prefer not to have these icons on the desktop as they are easily accessible from the Places menu from the top panel. But, a user coming from Windows background might like to have these on the desktop. There is an easy way to make them visible on the desktop, just follow the following simple steps:

First you have to open Ubuntu's Configuration Editor. To open configuration editor press Alt + F2 (hold alt button and press F2). This will open a Run Application windows, now type the following command in the input box:

gconf-editor

Now press the run button, it will open Configuration Editor's window.

From the tree menu on the left, click the plus button besides apps, and search for nautilus. Open nautilus and click on desktop.

On the right hand side you will see the options, computer_icon_visible, home_icon_visible, network_icon_visible, and trash_icon_visible, check all (or some) of them. Close the windows and you will see the icons on the desktop.

There are a lot of reasons why one would want to add new fonts (or may be even Windows fonts) to Ubuntu or other Linux distros. Sometimes some specific fonts are needed in some official document, or sometimes they are just too cool to miss. Whatever reason may be, but a newbie may find it difficult to do so. So, here is a small easy way to add new fonts to Ubuntu (or some other Linux distro).

Step 1

Open the terminal window, by clicking "Application" -> "Accessories" -> "Terminal". In other distros the Terminal may be present in some other directory, so do a little searching (or drop in a comment and mention specific distro).

Step 2

Once you have got you Terminal open, type following command in it (and press enter):

sudo apt-get install ttf-mscorefonts-installer

Once the package is installed type this command:

sudo nautilus

Note: Nautilus is the default file browser/organizer in GNOME desktop, if you use desktop other than GNOME type the name of the corresponding desktop after sudo (for example "sudo dolphin" in KDE desktop).

Step 3

One the above mentioned command is executed you will see nautilus open under root.

Step 4

Select "File System" from left pannel. One you are in "File System" open the folder "usr" then open "share". Now search for "font" you will find a folder named "font" open it.

Step 5

Now if you have followed the instructions correctly, you are in the "fonts" folder and you must be able to see the folders with default fonts. Here create a new directory, I have named it "Windows", because I was copying the windows font. ;)

Step 6

Open the newly created directory and copy all of your fonts into it. Now close the file browser.

Step 7

Just to check if the new fonts are now installed open any application (I opened OpenOffice.org Writer). and check if the new fonts are installed proper which are in this case.

Drop in comments if you have any question.

Monitorix is a free, open source, lightweight system monitoring tool designed to monitorize as many services as possible. At this time it monitors from the CPU load and temperatures to the users using the system. Network devices activity, network services demand and even the devices’ interrupt activity are also monitored, and more. The current status of any corporate server with Monitorix installed can be accessed via a web browser.

It has been designed to be used under production UNIX/Linux servers, but due its simplicity and small size you may also use it to monitor embedded devices.

All its development was initially created for monitoring Red Hat, Fedora and CentOS Linux systems, so this project was made keeping in mind these distributions. Today it runs on different Linux distributions and even in other UNIX systems like FreeBSD.

Monitorix Features

The monitorization includes:

• System core (CPU load and temperatures, active processes and memory allocation).
• Global or per-processor/core kernel usage (user, nice, system, idle and i/o wait).
• Temperatures (HP ProLiant IML Agent and LM-Sensors with HDDtemp support).
• Mounted filesystems and disk i/o.
• Activity of up to 5 network devices.
• Use of SMTP, SSH, FTP, Telnet, Samba, NetAtalk, VirusMail, FAX, POP3 and HTTP services.
• Complete MTA statistics including anti-spam, anti-virus and greylisting.
• Activity of up to 12 predefined network ports.
• Devices interrupt activity (APIC support with up to 256 different interrupts).
• Support for HP Insight Management Agents for ProLiant servers.
• Support for Samba v2 and v3, Sendmail, Postfix, NetAtalk, Qpopper and Hylafax status logs.
• Support for the Nginx web server statistics.
• Support for remote servers monitorization (Multihost feature).
• Silent mode to be able to retrieve the graphs from scripts or other programs.
• Traffic statistics are stored on disk into RRD format fixed-size databases.
• Possibility to view statistics per day, week, month or year.
• Possibility to view statistics with rendered graphs or in plain text.
• Each picture can be zoomed in to see the graph in more detail.
• Monthly traffic activity report via email can be sent to LAN users.
• It warns if some selected network port is not listening.
• Alert capability if CPU load average reaches or exceeds a threshold value for an specified amount of time.
• Web interface offers minimal learning, ubiquitous access.
• Configuration with only one text-plain file.
• Perl and Shell Script based (lightweight tool).
• Requires the RRDtool package and a CGI capable web server.

Install Monitorix in Ubuntu Server

Install ubuntu LAMP server follow these steps:

Preparing your system

Install the following packages

sudo apt-get install rrdtool librrds-perl libwww-perl

Now you need to download Monitorix source package from here or use the following command

$ wget http://www.monitorix.org/monitorix-1.5.0.tar.gz
$ tar -zxvf monitorix-1.5.0.tar.gz

Go to the Monitorix directory and execute the install script.

$ cd monitorix-1.5.0
$ sudo ./install.sh

Welcome to Monitorix v1.5.0 installation process.

The following is a list of the default paths where the Monitorix components
will be installed:

sudo service monitorix start

Now wait for a while and then go to http://localhost/monitorix/

Orignal Source