Linux Road

AFBackup Manager is a Webmin module that makes administration of system backup tasks easy. It is a commercial front-end for the free backup tool afbackup. AFBackup Manager targets SOHOs who want a reliable, dependable, and an easy to use backup system.

AFBackup Manager can be integrated into Webmin (a web-based interface for system administration for Unix), you can use AFBackup Manager to set-up both full and incremental automatic backups for your system. Backups can be started manually if desired.

Interface of AFBackup Manager is very simple and neat, you can edit configuration files even though it is not needed when using AFBackup Manager. The backup files can be restored in either the same of a different location depending on the users will.

Order

You can order AFBackup Manager full and update versions and at eSellerate: eSellerate Online Shop

System requirements

• afbackup from version 3.3.7pl6 upwards
• Linux kernel from version 2.4.20 upwards
• preinstalled Webmin from version 0.9.2 upwards
• Perl 5 with Proc::ProcessTable
• A programm to access the tape drive (mt or mtx)
• an installed, functioning SCSI tape drive (the purchase price does not include any support for the setup and installation of the tape drive)

Recommended Software (not mandatory):

• The timeout utility from the TCT toolkit. This is only necessary if you want to timeout tape status opertations because your tape/driver is too slow to respond.
• The glob manpage from the manpages repository. Supplements the AFBM documentation.

SpamAssassin is an open-source e-mail spam filtering software. SpamAssassin uses various text analysis methods, Bayesian filtering, DNS blocklists, and collaborative filtering databases to prevent spam mails from reaching mailbox.

SpamAssassin is an Apache Software Foundation project and is released under the Apache License. SpamAssassin was created by Justin Mason.

Primary Features

• Header tests
• Body phrase tests.
• Bayesian filtering
• Automatic address whitelist/blacklist
• Manual address whitelist/blacklist
• Collaborative spam identification databases (DCC, Pyzor, Razor2)
• DNS Blocklists, also known as "RBLs" or "Realtime Blackhole Lists".
• Character sets and locales

SpamAssassin can be integrated with mail

Awards

SpamAssassin was awarded the Linux New Media Award 2006 as the 'Best Linux-based Anti-spam Solution'.

Download

To download SpamAssassin visit: Download Page

AutoDNS is a console application that addition, deletion and listing of secondaried domains via email. It adds appropriate entries to the BIND configuration file in order to make the configuration of secondary DNS possible.

AutoDNS is distributed according to the GNU General Public Licence and was written by Jonathan McDowell. The current stable version of AutoDNS is 1.0.0.

Download

AutoDNS can be downloaded from the following locations:

• Source tarball (ftp) (16Kb)
• Source tarball (http) (16Kb)

Visit AutoDNS homepage for more details: Homepage.

Founder of GNU project Richard Stallman has said that Google's new cloud ChromeOS will push people to get involved in careless computing. Richard Stallman thinks that putting personal data on a cloud rather than a single machine decreases the control over it.

Richard Stallman, who is the advocate of free software (also creator of the free software foundation), said making extensive use of cloud computing was "worse than stupidity" two years back. Richard believes that by putting data over cloud you would lose control over it.

Richard Stallman says that putting data over Google's server rather than your personal machines might make people lose legal rights over their data. Stallman points out: "In the US, you even lose legal rights if you store your data in a company's machines instead of your own. The police need to present you with a search warrant to get your data from you; but if they are stored in a company's server, the police can get it without showing you anything. They may not even have to give the company a search warrant."

Stallman who is unimpressed of Google's ChromeOS says,"I think that marketers like "cloud computing" because it is devoid of substantive meaning. The term's meaning is not substance, it's an attitude: 'Let any Tom, Dick and Harry hold your data, let any Tom, Dick and Harry do your computing for you (and control it).' Perhaps the term 'careless computing' would suit it better."

He sees a creeping problem: "I suppose many people will continue moving towards careless computing, because there's a sucker born every minute. The US government may try to encourage people to place their data where the US government can seize it without showing them a search warrant, rather than in their own property. However, as long as enough of us continue keeping our data under our own control, we can still do so. And we had better do so, or the option may disappear."

Stallman says he only sees one positive aspect of ChromeOS: its GNU/Linux heritage. "In essence, Chrome OS is the GNU/Linux operating system. However, it is delivered without the usual applications, and rigged up to impede and discourage installing applications," he told the Guardian. "I'd say the problem is in the nature of the job ChromeOS is designed to do. Namely, encourage you to keep your data elsewhere, and do your computing elsewhere, instead of doing it in your own computer."

I somehow agree with Stallman. What do you think about concerns over cloud computing and ChromeOS?

Release of Opera 11 was announced a few days back, and this latest release of Opera comes bundled up with a lot of changes. Some of the most significant changes in Opera 11 are related to it's interface.

Opera, which is written in Qt toolkit and takes advantage of its own Presto engine, has been around for quite a long time now. Opera holds a respectable position in Linux community's selection of web browsers, holding third position just behind Chrome and Firefox.

Some new features in Opera 11 are listed below:

• Improved Address Field

  The address field is now able to hide lengthy links focusing instead of the main domain name. All web pages got a badge to the left to replace protocols like HTTP or HTTPS, also, there is a badge that indicated if Opera Turbo in on or off.


• Improved Opera auto-update System

  Auto-Update System checks updates for extensions and Opera Unite applications.

• Bookmarks Bar

  Bookmarks Bar is placed below the address bar but that can be changed using Appearance dialog.


• Improved Extensions System

  Extensions can be created using HTML, CSS and JavaScript

• Mail Panel

  Mail Panel has been turned around big time and has received several very notable improvements.

• Plug-ins

  Plug-ins can be loaded on demand.

• Presto Rendering Engine

  Presto Rendering Engine has been tweaked too with changes to the ways on handling HTML5 and CSS3.

• Google Search Predictions

  Google search predictions can now be integrated into Opera’s search field

• Tab Improvements

  Tabs can now be grouped separately locked tab feature is improved and renamed to 'pin tab'(wonder why is that).


• User JavaScript

  Improvements made to user JavaScript

• Visual Mouse Gestures

  Visual mouse gestures can be activated by holding down the right mouse button and moving the mouse cursor; Opera will show what gestures are available

Synapse is a quick launch application for Linux. It can search for applications, documents, pictures, videos, and other files on your local machine for quick access. Synapse make use of Zeitgeist engine.

Synapse is quite similar to GNOME Do, but is far more powerful. Search capabilities are good and normally shows relevant results. Synapse can be launched by using following short-cut key at anytime:

crtl + space

Once Synapse is launched simply type, search, and go.

Results are sorted per frequency of use. Means that the applications that you use more often will be displayed first.

Plugins are available to find other stuff as well:

• Applications - searches your desktop files
• Banshee - allows you to play/enqueue music files in Banshee
• Commands - runs any command (ie. "sudo apt-get update")
• Devhelp - search documentation using Devhelp
• Dictionary - find definitions of words
• Directory search - allows opening of commonly used directories
• Gnome session - log out, shut down, restart
• Hybrid search - complete Zeitgeist results by searching for similar files
• Rhytmbox - play/enqueue music files in Rhythmbox
• UPower - suspend & hibernate your computer
• Zeitgeist - search anything logged by Zeitgeist

Other than default theme, three more themes are available, shown as follow:

Mini

Virgilio

Dual

Get Synapse

Ubuntu users can get Synapse by using the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:synapse-core/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install synapse

For other distros follow the official link.

Being able to capture what is on your screen can be useful at time (one example can be this tutorial in which I had to use pictures of my screen). Taking a screenshot is fairly simple and straight-forward in GIMP. All you have to do is goto File > Create > Screenshot....

Following the menu as shown in the above picture will open the following window that will help you take the screenshot. From here on all you have to do is choose the right option.

The window shown in the above figure provide three options (all of them doing exactly what they say):

• Take a screenshot of a single window
• Take a screenshot of the entire screen
• Select a region to grab

Take a screenshot of a single window

If you want to capture only a single window just select this option and click snap. Doing so will allow you to capture any single window that in visible on the screen just by clicking on it.

This option provides a sub-option as well: Include window decoration. You may or may not check it depending on what you want to do. The name is very self explanatory, if you want to include window borders while taking the screenshot select this option and vice versa.

Take a screenshot of the entire screen

Choosing this option will allow you to take the screenshot of the entire desktop. Using the sub-option: Include mouse pointer, you may or may not capture mouse arrow (if normally opt not to capture mouse arrow).

Select a region to grab

If you have to take screenshot of multiple windows or prefer not to capture the entire screen, you can can select this option. It allows the user to capture any portion of the screen. Simple click and drag across the screen and select an area to capture.

What is delay?

There is a sweet little option at the end of the window labeled as delay. Delay can be used to set the time between the moment you press the Snap button and the moment at which the screenshot is taken. Delay option is available while using the options: Take a screenshot of a single window, Take a screenshot of the entire screen

The announcement of beta version of Ubuntu 10.10 came with the news that Shotwell will be replacing the good old (and trusted) F-Spot as the default photo manager. This is when I first heard of Shotwell and since Ubuntu were showing so much trust in it, I thought it would be worth while to do a review on Shotwell. Even though most people are talking much about the F-Spot and Shotwell war, but I want to make a point that this is no Shotwell v/s F-Spot post. It is a simple review on Shotwell, talking about the strengths and weaknesses of it.

Shotwell can be found in the package repository of most of the distributions and can be installed directly from there. Just open your package manager search for "Shotwell" and install the package. But, if your distro doesn't have it in the package repository you can see the installation details on the official Shotwell install page (http://yorba.org/shotwell/install/) to install Shotwell.

Interface

First thing you will notice about Shotwell's interface will be that it is very simple (a bit too simple). The Shotwell windows contains two panes. A left pane showing photos and events, with photos containing all the pictures in the library and events having the photos arranged in according to the date on which they were taken. The right pane quite obviously shows the preview of images.

Below the right pane we have some very useful buttons and a small slider (to increase the size of the thumbnails). There are by default four buttons (I would prefer to have a few more) Rotate, Enhance, SlideShow, and Publish. Each doing exactly what it say. The image details are shown just below the left pane.

Editing

You can double click on an image to open it in the edit mode. The edit mode offers Red-eye Reduction, Cropping, Rotating, Image Enhance (corrects the image colors, brightness, and sharpness automatically), and Adjust button that allows the user to change attributes for exposure, saturation, tint, temperature, and shadows. Image editing is quite fair, not a lot of options and the ones that are present are quite handy according to my likings.

Publishing

This is a nice and handy mode that allows user to publish/upload photos to facebook, picasa, and flickr albums. There are just three options for now I hope to more will be added later on. just select an image and press the publish button to upload. You will have to put your login details before uploading.

Slideshow

When you click the Slideshow button under the right pane, you will see a full page preview of the image which will switch to the next one after a delay of 5 sec. (delay can be set manually too). Again the simplicity can be seen the Slideshow mode as well, with just five buttons visible: back, pause/play, next, setting, and exit mode. Setting button allow you to set the delay time before the next image is displayed.

Taging and Events

Tagging has become an important feature in any modern photo managing software and so did Shotwell included the feature of tagging the images. Simple select an image click on the tag option in the menu bar to add or modify a tag. Events that are by default present as dates can be renamed to represent an event for your own ease.

Final Words

Shotwell should get my full marks for its simplicity and ease of use. It might not be as attractive as F-Spot but that is a matter of choices. Some features need to be added and polished, I would like to have more places to publish images directly. Overall, it is a very handy tool and the project overall seem to be heading in a good direction. Most Ubuntu users will miss F-Spot but they can install it manually but I would certainly recommend giving Shorwell a try.

Both Windows and Mac OS X support exporting various file formats to PDF, by creating a virtual printer that actually exports files as PDFs. The same functionality can be achieved on Linux using a very useful package 'Cups-PDF'. Cups-PDF can be found in the repositories of most of the distributions, if not you can get it from the official website. I will be using Ubuntu 10.04 LTS - the Lucid Lynx in this demonstration.

Go to the package manager of your distribution and search for Cups-PDF and install it. In Ubuntu you can either use Synaptic Package Manger to download Cups-PDF or you can simple open terminal and type the following command:

sudo apt-get install cups-pdf

Once Cups-PDF is installed on your distribution, it will add a virtual printer to your operating system. Now to print a file to PDF, simply open your application software and click on the print option you will see a printer named PDF in the list along with your other printer (if any). Now, print the file using PDF printer it will put the generated PDF to the PDF folder present in your home.

Note: If the printer is not added in your distribution automatically after downloading the Cups-PDF you may need to add the printer manually. Add a printer via the add printer wizard, add a local printer select Generic under the Manufacturer field, and choose postscript color printer as Model.

F-Spot is photo manager designed to work on GNOME desktop. If you have got many personal photos or you are just into photography, then you got to use F-Spot. People tend to store photos in folders and try to manage them manually now that is alright for a few hundred images but once the number increase this becomes hard. Photos become hard to search and adding more photos becomes tough as well. So, if you have got lot many pictures or you don't want the labor work of managing them or simple you are just too lazy (like me), don't worry F-Spot will save the day for you.

My first impression of F-Spot was that the interface was really sweet. Sweet in terms of simplicity and ease of use, not much buttons not much confusion. There are two panes, the one on the left shows tags (by default) and can be switched to either one of metadata, Edit, and Folders (each one explained later), and the right pane shows the thumbnails to images. In addition to the two panes there is a very cool timeline, a tool-bar, and a standard menu-bar.

F-Spot currently supports 16 different image formats, so one expects not to have any trouble opening any image that a digital camera takes. It is the default picture manager in Ubuntu and is also available on the package repository of nearly all the major Linux distributions making it easily available to install if not preloaded.

Installing F-Spot

As mentioned above nearly all major linux distributions have got F-Spot on their repositories, so you can use your package manager to install F-Spot on your machine. But, if your linux distribution does not have it in its repository then you will have to do the installation manually.

I will advice you to first look into your package manager and search for F-Spot, in case you can't find it go to F-Spot website. Once you are on the website click on the download option on top bar or visit the download page directly. Under the release section you will see the link to download the package, click it and download the package. Once the package is downloaded extract it in a desired folder. Once extracted, open that folder in terminal and type the following commands in order.

./configure

make

make install

Note: if you are still unable to install, check the readme file or drop in a comment or mail me personally.

How to import photos in F-Spot

When you will run F-Spot for the first time you will be prompted for photo import by F-Spot itself, but if you manually want to import more photos in F-Spot later, like from a camera or some other device, you can do it by pressing the big import button just below the menu bar in the top left corner.

When you will press the import button a screen will pop up in front of you, the same screen comes up when you start F-Spot for the first time.

Once the above screen comes up, click on the import source to either select a folder or some external media to import images from once you have selected the folder that has the images press import button and the images will start to load.

Once the images are loaded into the window you can press the import button to import them into F-Spot. But, here are a few options you should consider of before importing images:

• Detect Duplicates (Select this option if you don't want to include duplicate photos.)
• Copy files to the Photo folder (If files are being imported from an external media like camera this option must be selected so that the photos are automatically imported to the hard disk.)
• Include Subfolders (I prefer this option so that all of the folders are scanned.)

Photo Editing with F-Spot

While in the browser mode double click a photo to enter into the edit mode here in the edit mode you can do some basic (yet useful editing to your photos). F-Spot allows you to do following editing to your image (we will discuss some in detail):

• Crop
• Straighten
• Adjust Colors
• AutoColor
• Desaturate
• Sepia
• Remove Red-Eye
• Soft Focus
• Sharpen
• Describe
• Adjust Time

Croping Photos in F-Spot

Croping a photo is like cutting a piece of it, it is good if you want to use the part of the picture only. Like in this whole post images have been cut into pieces just to show you the main parts.

To crop a photo first double click a photo to go into edit mode, and then click on the crop button on in the left pane. Now just click on the photo and keep clicking to select an area that you want to crop. You may also select constraints from the left pane if you prefer.

Straighten Photos in F-Spot

If you took an image that is not straight dont worry F-Spot will correct it. Straighten effect is a tool to level a photo, quite helpful for landscapes taken without a tripod. This tool rotates an image by a specified angle and automagically crops the resulted image, so that you always see a perfect rectangle and a straight photo.

to Straighten a photo just select straighten from left pane (in edit mode). and move the bar to select the number of degrees to straighten the image.

Adjust Colors of Photos in F-Spot

It is another useful option, you can do color correction and even change the white balance. So, if you think the image colors are not good and need a but of adjustment go for this option. If you are creative enough you can make the image look artistic.

AutoColor, Desaturate, Sepia Tone in F-Spot

These are basic option not much selection to make just select them from the left pane in the edit mode and click on the button to apply them. Auto Color will adjust the color of the image. Desaturate will wash the colors away, Sepia Tone will add Sepia effect to it.

Sharpen a Photo in F-Spot

To sharpen a photo first open picture in edit mode. Then, click 'edit' in the menu bar and select sharpen

Now you will see a preview of the image and a small window through which you can adjust the values to modify the image.

Shortcuts in F-Spot

Global Shortcuts

Browse Mode Shortcuts

Tag Shortcuts

Edit Mode Shortcuts

Too busy to open the email client, or you are just too lazy to make some clicks. Both ways you will find this tip useful to send emails without making a lot of effort. This method works for both KDE and GNOME, just press "alt + F2" and in the dialog box that appears just type in the following command:

mailto:address@host.com 

Once you have added your desired address press enter and you will be directed to your email client either KMail (on KDE Desktop) or Evolution (in case of GNOME). Now simply speak your mind out and you are ready to press the big send button.

F-Spot is the default picture manager that come with Ubuntu, a very useful software that can help manage you photos, tagging them, import from a device, and many more. F-Spot can also be used to upload photos directly to your Facebook albums.

The Facebook upload feature is not activated by default (for some unknown reason). To upload your photos via F-Spot, open F-Spot. Go to "Edit -> Manage Extensions". Click on the '+' beside "Export" option, then click on the "Facebook export" option and click Enable.

Go beck to the F-Spot gallery select the photos that you would like to upload to Facebook. Go to "File -> Export to -> Facebook".

Now hit the big login button to login to your Facebook account.

Once login via F-Spot you will be able to create albums, manage photos, add photos to existing albums etc.

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

If you are of the many people who think the response time of Firefox is less or consider it to be slow then you might want to try the following:

• Open Firefox and in the address bar type about:config.
• Click on "I’ll be careful, I promise".
• Use the search bar above to look for network.http.pipelining and double click on it to set it’s value to True.
• Create a new boolean value named network.http.pipelining.firstrequest and set that to True, as well.
• Find network.http.pipelining.maxrequests, double click on it, and change its value to 8.
• Look for network.http.proxy.pipelining and set it to True.
• Create two new integers named nglayout.initialpaint.delay and content.notify.interval, set them to 0.
• Restart your browser.

Once you are done. You will see the speed of Firefox would have increased to a greater extent

Suppose you have brought home an Amazone Kindle or a Barnes and Noble Nook, or may be someone gifted it to you (your lucky day, who knows?). Now the problem is you would need to convert you ebooks to .EPUB or .MOBI format, No panic readers because all you have to do is to install Calibre. With this little piece of software you can actually convert between EPUB, FB2, LIT, LRF, MOBI, OEB, PDB, PDF, PML, RB, RTF, TCR, TXT, HTML and more. Even CBR and CBZ (comic book formats) are supported.

The syntax to the command is fairly simple.

For example, if you want to convert a comic book archive to something readable on an e-ink screen, use

or

Not only will ebook-convert convert the file, but it will also trim the white spaces around the page so they will better fit the small screen of an electronic eBook reader.