Midspot

Encryption New to Ubuntu 8.10 is a nifty seamless encryption feature. It’s always been possible to encrypt individual files/folders in Ubuntu but it involved creating a key pair and then individually encrypting files. To view or edit the file, it was necessary to decrypt it and then re-encrypt it again if changes were made. Messy. […]

Firewall Builder (fwbuilder) is a graphical application that can help you to configure IP traffic filtering. It can compile the filtering policy you define into many specifications, including iptables and various languages used by Cisco and Linksys routers. Separating the actual policy you define and the implementation in this way should let you change what […]

Last night I attended my first meeting with the Bismarck Mandan Linux Users Group (BisManLUG). I have to admit, I didn’t even know we had a local users group until a couple of days ago. Top notch stuff. There was a demo on the Nokia N800 Internet Tablet PC that I have been lusting over […]

Jon Galloway rips on using virtualized machines as a way to get work done. His point is that we take fast PC’s and make slow machines of yesterday out of them by creating virtualized OS’s inside of/on top of them. In some ways I agree, but in other areas I think he is off base […]

I admit it. I have turned into a Linux zealot. But not without good cause. You see, there was a time when I though Windows was great, same for the Mac. I still think the Mac is a great platform but it is becoming Windows little by little. I recently gave Vista the boot on […]

When I bought my laptop in January, I wanted to make sure Ubuntu would have an easy time finding all the drivers for the hardware. What better way to do this than with a live cd? Anyway I figured they would be kind of weary of me booting a laptop with the Ubuntu live CD, […]

Great article on using rsync in linux: There are two types of backups that I do. The first is a backup of several key folders, not my entire system. This is in case I blow something away, or lose some data that I’d want to get back quickly. I use the rsync command for this. […]

If you are using Ubuntu Dapper Drake and would like to upgrade to Edgy Eft, this site has a great tutorial. I haven’t made the switch yet myself due to my upcoming Vegas trip (I don’t want to hose my laptop before I go) and at work I depend on some things that I am […]

A good how to article, although it is a pretty straight forward process. The point below may be the only problem on how to get the external drive available to format: To fix the problem System > Preferences > Removable Drives and Media and deselect the following options Mount removable drives when hot-plugged Mount Removable […]

I’m posting the following more for my own benefit and reference than anything else… Correct syntax for SSH and SFTP on Ubuntu on irregular ports: (replace items in < > with your stuff, without the < >) SSH: ssh -p <port number> <username>@<server name> SSH to accept socks 5 proxy on port you specify:ssh -p […]