Change Date and Time format for LinuxMint panel applet
Modern Linux distributions like LinuxMint provide a nice GUI which is highly configurable. There are so many options and possibilities that most users new to it cannot find where things are configured....
View ArticleGet vim to paste content without modification
When content is pasted into vim, it tries to automatically detect and re-indent the content. This works most of the time but sometimes it does not, and that can be annoying, but vim would not be so...
View ArticleHarden SSH server settings
Many Linux Administrators use ssh on a daily basis. Many of the ssh servers are in their default configuration. Not changing the default configuration puts the security of the server at risk. That is...
View ArticleAutomount a luks encrypted volume on system start
Linux supports encrypted volumes with luks. When a luks encrypted volume is set up during installation to be booted from, the volume is already configured and set up. When an encrypted volume is set up...
View ArticleDebug SSH Connection issue in key exchange
Securing a server means hardening the SSH server settings, but doing so can also cause issues with ssh clients. Finding the cipher or algorithm causing a failled connection can be tricky. Depending on...
View ArticleVerifying SSH configuration with a scan
Managing a number of Linux servers and keeping them secure can be a challenge. Certain tools can make the life of an admin a lot easier. To ensure an ssh daemon complies with a desired security...
View ArticleHow to get scrollbar arrows in Linux Mint 17
Linux Mint is missing the scrollbar arrow buttons at the end of the scrollbars. There are situations in which those buttons can be very useful. This how-to will explain how to get them back. Sadly I...
View ArticlePermanently reject a specific email sender address using postfix
Postfix generally accepts all sender addresses. It might be needed in some rare cases to reject one sender addresses for some reason. With postfix, there is the possibility to use the...
View ArticleIncrease the size of a LUKS encrypted partition
Even encrypted discs or partitions sometimes need to have their size increased. A LUKS encrypted volume consists of different layers which all need to be resized. To resize an encrypted volume,...
View Articleapt – install the package that contains a specific file
Sometimes a command that you execute complains about a dependency being missing on the system. From the file name in the error message it is often not possible to know exactly which package needs to be...
View ArticleLinux Mint – Mount an NFS share automatically
Linux Mint comes pre-installed with all components to mount Windows File sharing (SMB/CIFS) but does not support NFS out of the box. The following post will explain how to enable Linux Mint to mount a...
View ArticleCreate hardware raid on HP via hpacucli
Configuring a new hardware raid on a HP server can be done comfortably from the Linux command line without restarting the server. HP provides a small command line tool for this job. The following shows...
View ArticleTesting environment setup using Vagrant
Setting up a test environment with many different operating systems and versions can be a time consuming task. Installing the different operating systems and configuring them for tests or development...
View ArticleMount raw image of entire disc
Raw disc images are very common, they include things like images created using dd for backups and virtual machine disk images. To access the disc image content means the disk image needs to be mounted....
View ArticleAlign a partition on a hard disk
New disks need to be prepared for use. When using a hardware raid like explained in Create hardware raid on HP via hpacucli some partitioning tools even show an error message. To prepare a disk for...
View ArticleFind and extract one file from rpm package
Extracting a configuration file (or any other single file) from a package which is not installed is not a standard operation on rpm based systems, but with the following few steps, a file can be...
View ArticleManage SELinux boolean policies
Configuring a new service often means dealing with SELinux. The easiest way is most of the time to set an SELinux boolean. But what are SELiunx booleans and what exactly do they do? I will try to shed...
View ArticleExtend logrotate for additional log files
The Linux operating system consists of many different components. Many of them log their activity directly or indirectly into log files. Over time those log files grow and would eventually fill up the...
View ArticleSetup LVM and create logical volume
Creating an LVM on a disc / partition allows for a lot of flexibility in managing the storage. Managing a disc using LVM consists of a number of steps, from preparing the disc itself until mounting a...
View ArticleDocker container on RHEL fails to start without error
Recently a Docker container refused to start for me without any hint about why in the OS or Docker container’s logs. It turns out that SELinux jumped in and blocked access without logging its...
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