Author Archives:
Full disk encryption for both Windows and Ubuntu on a dual-boot drive
I recently set up a dual-boot system with Windows 7 Professional and Ubuntu 11.10, both 64-bit, and I was looking to get full disk encryption for both of them, including the swap and hibernation files. It turns out that this is not too difficult, but does require a careful order of operations to get the [...]
Expanding an Ubuntu EC2 root volume
I have a VM on EC2 running Ubuntu 11.10 (which hosts this very blog). I was running out of space in my initial 8 GB and decided to expand to 20 GB. It took me a while to figure out how to do this, but it’s actually quite straightforward. Create a new volume of the [...]
Using Eclipse’s EGit with GitHub
Although most people seem to rely on the command-line git client, I recently tried to get Eclipse integration for Git going in order to help someone out who was not so command-line savvy. But I want them to also be able to store their public repositories on GitHub easily. So I figured out how to [...]
Flickr geofences and EXIF metadata
Flickr recently implemented geofences, a simple but neat mechanism to hide locations of photos taken near your home, your kid’s school, or any other place whose location you consider private. You set the center point, radius, and who should be able to see locations of those photos. There is one enormous problem with this: if [...]
Redirecting access log with .htaccess
I had an account on a seedbox server with a shared web server. The access logs were off limits to me, and the admins weren’t about to reconfigure the server for me. But I really wanted to see who was accessing my site. What to do? Turns out I do have .htaccess on this server. [...]
Installing Eclipse with PyDev for Python development in Ubuntu
The following instructions been tested with Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty Narwhal), Eclipse 3.5.2, Python 2.7.1+, and PyDev 2.2.1, all of which were current on 2011 August 22. They were later tested again with Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric Ocelot). Installation part based on this blog entry, with modifications. Installing Sun JDK First, assuming you want to use the Sun JDK, we [...]
Installing Ruby 1.9.2 and gems on Ubuntu 11.10
By default, the “ruby” package on Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric) refers to an older version of Ruby, 1.8.7 – probably for compatibility reasons. To use the newest version of Ruby and Gem, do: sudo apt-get install ruby1.9.1 update-alternatives –config ruby (select the option reading “/usr/bin/ruby1.9.1″) update-alternatives –config gem (select the option reading “/usr/bin/gem1.9.1″) Contrary to their [...]
Getting the ASUS USB-N13 working under FreeNAS
I set up a new FreeNAS system today that is dual-homed, with a wired connection to an isolated Gigabit LAN (for performance), and a wireless connection to the Internet (for updates, management, etc.). Since my HP ProLiant MicroServer did not come with built-in wireless, I got a USB wireless card, the ASUS-N13, that has a [...]
Running Ubuntu Server 11.10 Linux on the Thecus N7700 NAS
A couple years ago I bought the Thecus N7700, a low-end NAS with 7 hot swappable SATA disks. I wanted an affordable solution that would give me a lot of capacity at home for raw photos, videos, and ISOs/VMs, so I filled it with consumer-grade 2 TB disks in RAID 5 configuration. Unfortunately, I would [...]
What to do when there’s no MD5
I recent downloaded a large number of very large files (mostly Linux distribution ISOs), and wanted to verify that the downloads were successful. I also wanted to have a hash file on hand to re-verify the downloads later on, in case of disk corruption. Many distributions include MD5, SHA1, or SHA256 hash files with their [...]
