Posts about linux
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- How to upgrade from Debian 12 Bookworm to Debian 13 Trixie
4 min read
My old Dell Optiplex has been a great desktop PC for just minimal interneting and coding. I've been running Debian 12 Bookworm on it since it became available. Now that Debian 13 Trixie is available I upgraded to it, and it was a smooth and painless transition. Here's the process.
- Setup Apt-Cacher NG as a caching proxy server in your homelab and configure your other Linux hosts to use it
4 min read
If your homelab has more than a few servers or VMs running Debian-based distributions, it makes sense to set up a package caching proxy on one of your servers. This guide will show how to set that up, configure your other Linux hosts, and optionally how to use Ansible to automate configuring those other hosts.
- Quick guide to setting up SMB shares
3 min read
Setting up SMB shares is fairly easy, but I do it so infrequently I often forget the steps and need to look them up anyway. So I made myself two sets of smb config files for quickly setting up shares, either public or with a login required.
- Commands to turn off display in the Linux terminal
2 min read
Sometimes I use laptops in the home lab, and to save myself on a few watts of power usage I use these terminal commands to turn off the display, then just SSH into it from my PC.
- Autologin on Ubuntu and go straight to terminal
1 min read
Configure an Ubuntu machine to autologin and go straight into the terminal on boot.
- How to generate a GPG key and use it to sign git commits
3 min read
Generating and using a GPG key is not difficult, but every time I need to remember how to do it to sign my commits from a new machine, I need to go through several pages of explanation on GitHub. So I made myself a terse and concise one-page quick guide, here it is.
- Set up NFS Shares between Linux hosts
3 min read
Network File Share or NFS allows sharing directories between Linux hosts on the same network, similar to Samba though it has better performance with small and medium-sized files comparatively. Here's a quick guide on setting up an NFS share between Linux hosts.
- Setup auto-updates in Debian and Ubuntu with Unattended-Upgrades and NeedRestart
3 min read
If you want your Linux machine to stay up-to-date on important security updates, but you don't want to SSH into it all the time to run updates and would rather set it and forget it, this is the way.
- How to format and/or partition disks in Linux
2 min read
Just a quick guide to format and partition hard drives in Linux command line that I wrote for myself a long time ago, and recently had to reference again.
- Keeping a Linux laptop on when the lid is closed
1 min read
I sometimes use old laptops in my home lab when I want to test anything on Linux, and I prefer to keep them closed so they take up less space. A few quick commands will keep the laptop even on with the lid closed.
- Transferring files between hosts with SCP
2 min read
Using the Secure Copy (SCP) utility in Linux lets you securely copy files to and from remote hosts, and it's very easy to use.
- Linux Commands & Keyboard Shortcuts Cheat Sheet
3 min read
Just a quick cheat sheet of basic and slightly less basic Linux commands, as well as handy keyboard shortcuts, that I maintain for myself since I can't always remember them all.
- VIM Quick Guide
2 min read
Whenever I use Vim to edit files on Linux, I need to relearn how to use it. Years ago I found a thread on Stack Overflow with two simple and extremely useful answers that helped me make sense of Vim. So here it is.
- Bootstrapping a fresh Linux install with Ansible
5 min read
Ansible is an IT tool that enables Infrastructure as Code, letting you automate provisioning, configuration, management and deployment of services and applications. I like using it at a fraction of it's full power to bootstrap fresh installs of Linux for my homelab.
- Sudo without password
1 min read
How to use sudo command in Linux without the password prompt, by adding a line to the sudoers file.
- Quick guide to set up Zsh and Oh-My-Zsh with essential plugins and a theme
3 min read
I've been getting more and more comfortable working on the command line in Linux, and looked into ways to pretty it up and make it more user friendly. Enter Zsh, an alternative to Bash shell, and the Oh-My-Zsh framework used to customize the terminal experience to your heart's content. Here's my basic set up.
- Rsync - A Quick Guide
5 min read
Rsync is a very handy tool for doing high-speed file transfers between Linux hosts over a local network or remote hosts on the internet, such as EC2 instances on Amazon Web Services. You can pass options to Rsync to do things like recursive transfer (all files and sub-directories within the source directory are also transferred), ignore existing or newer files at the destination, and more.
- Mounting (either internal or external) hard drives in Linux
5 min read
When using Linux headless, such as via SSH or with no desktop environment, accessing a newly installed hard drive (not just external USB drives, but additional internal HDDs too) is not obvious, and most people end up having to Google it. I know I did. So let's have a quick and dirty guide on how.
- Setup a Samba share on Linux via command line
5 min read
A quick and dirty guide on how to easily set up a Samba share on Linux that can be accessed from Windows PCs on the same network.