Category: Scripts

Install htop as a top Alternative

htop, an interactive process viewer for Linux. It is a text-mode application (for console or X terminals). It is a powerful alternative to using the top command. Here is a little script to install htop, which can easily be applied to any number of other simple installs too. After creating the script and making it an executable, run the script…

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Mozilla Thunderbird

Thunderbird Backup Automated [Resolved]

Mozilla Thunderbird is a free email application. MozBackup is a utility for creating backups of Thunderbird and other Mozilla applications. It can backup and restore everything from your bookmarks, history, plugins, mail, to contacts. MozBackup offers command line functionality which supposedly allows for command line backups, however, I have encountered it to loop repeatedly, and endlessly. Backing up a profile,…

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VMware Expand Hard Drive Size and Extend in CentOS Linux

One approach to adding space to an existing Linux hard drive that is using Linux LVM is to add space to the drive. This can easily be accomplished in VMware. This has been tested using VMware Workstation 9.0 for Windows with CentOS 6.5 (minimal install). To demonstrate a before and after, here are a few commands that can be used…

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How to increase yum download speeds

A method to increase the yum download speed is to install the yum-plugin-fastestmirror yum plugin. While this in itself increases the download speeds and decreases the download times, there is yet another plugin to be added. An article titled, Turbo Charge Yum with Fastest Mirror and AxelGet Plugins, provided the foundation for this script to simplify the installation and configuration…

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Create a service for JIRA for Linux

Atlassian JIRA is a bug and issue tracker. Atlassian JIRA lets you priorities, assign, track, report and audit issues from software bugs, helpdesk tickets, project tasks to change requests. On a CentOS 6.5 Linux install, an instance of JIRA was installed. Upon completion, a service to automate the start, stop, restart, and status needed to be created manually. One of…

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Configure sftp with /home chroot

While there are many resources dedicated to this very configuration, it was difficult to make any one of them work. The current configuration is CentOS 6.5. Here is the script to get a fully-functional sFTP server with chroot using the /home directories.

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Install Adobe Reader on CentOS 6.5

While perusing through the Internet, I found this site called iF !1 0 “If Not True then False“. I found this write-up on how to install Adobe Reader on one of many different flavors on Linux. I couldn’t pass up on this, since I was in the hunt for Adobe Reader. The process worked great, so here is my slight…

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The Easiest Method To Install Adobe Flash on CentOS/RHEL

This should be easy, install Adobe Flash on a Linux operating system to watch Youtube videos in Firefox. After an hour or so fighting with Adobe Flash, through every method I could find on the Internet, I finally found one that worked, the first time! There are many who write of downloading a compressed file and extracting the needed file…

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Convert a CentOS 6 install to a Scientific Linux 6 install

CentOS, Scientific Linux (“SL”), and Oracle Linux are all based on the Red Hat Enterprise Linux (“RHEL”) code base. Though there are differences between them, the similarities are more than not. For whatever the reason, there are documented processes that permit the conversion from one of the aforementioned Linux distros to another. This conversion will document another approach based on…

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Vsftpd FTP Server With Virtual Users ( MySQL + PAM )

vsftpd (“Very Secure FTP Daemon”) is an FTP server for Linux and supports PAM (“pluggable authentication modules”). A virtual user cannot login to the Linux system and is considered more secure than using a “real” user whom can login to a Linux system. This guide offers a script that demonstrates yet another way to setup a vsftpd server using PAM…

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Install JBoss on CentOS with Two Scripts

Several years ago, I wrote a set of instructions how to install JBoss on a RHEL / CentOS Linux operating system. Then, the procedure utilized the GUI, mouse clicks, and the terminal. Well, as my comfort level with Linux has grown, so has the instructions into a script. A prerequisite for JBoss is Java JDK. For JBoss 5.1.0.GA, I elected…

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mAh mWh Calculator

A little while ago, I wrote an article Convert mAh to mWh and mWh to mAh for Notebook Laptop Batteries that provided the calculations needed to convert from mAh to mWh and vice versa. The intent was to simplify the navigation in researching the purchase of a replacement battery. As many battery manufacturers present different pieces of information which makes…

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VMware – RHEL / CentOS 6.2 Network Issues

After installing CentOS 6.2 i386 minimal ISO as a VMware virtual machine, immediate attempts to perform a yum update failed. The virtual machine network is bridged to the host computer. Pings to the router were successful, however, after some Internet searches, a solution that remediated this situation was found. Before getting to the “fix”. An attempt to change the network…

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Use tar Extract files from an alternate directory

When decompressing a compressed tar file, generally, the approach is to change directory to the root and execute the tar command from there with a full path to the compressed tar. There is an easier method that will remove a line or two of code from each script. Down to a single command line. This is how to use tar…

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How to chkconfig off and on Multiple services with a bash script

This has more applications than with just the chkconfig command. However, I found this script to be useful and wanted to add it to my database of useful scripts. This script will chkconfig off the services listed in the services variable. By changing the off to on, the script will chkconfig on the services listed in the services variable. Here…

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Bash Script Execution Timer

Suppose you wanted to determine the length of time it took to complete the execution of a bash script. Rather than sitting in front of the computer and estimating the time elapsed by watching the script execute with a stopwatch, it can be done with a few lines of code. Near the top of the script add the following variable…

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Combine Linux Comands using && and ||

When using if then statements in your scripts, these statements will likely take up multiple lines. Sometimes, you may want a simple if then statement and would prefer to write only one line of code. This is a quick tip I picked up the other day. It is a simplification and explanation off how to combine multiple lines of code…

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