This is the first in a line of tutorials I am working on for less experienced linux users to effectively use their VPS. I’ve been tinkering with a little script that some of you might find helpful, it’s designed to install LXDE and NoMachine on a fresh VPS installation.

EncFS provides an encrypted filesystem in user-space. It runs without any special permissions and uses the FUSE library and Linux kernel module to provide the filesystem interface. It is a pass-through filesystem, not an encrypted block device, which means it is created on top of an existing filesystem. This tutorial shows how you can use [...]

This post is my collection of notes on installing and configuring Kernel-based Virtual Machine virtualization on a Debian Squeeze (6) host. I control these VMs from my Ubuntu 12.04 desktop.

This tutorial explains how you can integrate ClamAV into PureFTPd for virus scanning on a Debian Squeeze system. In the end, whenever a file gets uploaded through PureFTPd, ClamAV will check the file and delete it if it is malware.

I bought some HTPC a few years ago to run XBMC, a neat media center solution. At the time, to avoid any problems, I installed it on top of a minimal Ubuntu Lucid installation with the official packages from the team XBMC. Recently, XBMC Eden has been released and XBMC has landed into Debian unstable. [...]

First, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has been working on porting the native Solaris ZFS source to the Linux kernel as a kernel module. So long as the project remains under contract by the Department of Defense in the United States, I’m confident there will be continuous updates.

sitecopy is a tool for copying locally stored web sites to a remote web server (using FTP or WebDAV). It helps you to keep the remote site synchronized with your local copy by uploading modified local files and deleting remote files that have been deleted on the local computer. This tutorial shows how you can [...]

This tutorial teaches you how to setup Gitlab on Debian 6, Ruby 1.9.3, Phusion Passenger and Nginx. It assumes that Gitlab and the git repositories are hosted on the same machine.

SPDY (pronounced “SPeeDY”) is a new networking protocol whose goal is to speed up the web. It is Google’s alternative to the HTTP protocol and a candidate for HTTP/2.0. SPDY augments HTTP with several speed-related features such as stream multiplexing and header compression. To use SPDY, you need a web server and a browser (like [...]

In the past I have written several howtos for remotely unlocking fully encrypted Debian installations. With the advent of Debian Squeeze, the developers have integrated a simple way to do so. Most stuff is provided directly by Debian itself – meaning you don’t need 3rd party scripts anymore. However it still involves a few steps [...]

This guide explains how you can configure DNSSEC on BIND9 (version 9.7.3 that comes with Debian Squeeze/Ubuntu 11.10) on Debian Squeeze and Ubuntu 11.10. It covers how to enable DNSSEC on authoritative nameservers (master and slave) and on resolving nameservers, creation of keys and much more..

This is a short HOWTO on setting up a backported Postgresql 9.1 database with streaming replication on Debian Squeeze.

Adding a PPA channel to your system is stupidly simple, but once you’ve done it and you’re not properly versed in Debian package management, you may have destroyed your system. I got this software from a PPA channel just so that I could try out the experimental Blu-Ray support. Little did I know (well, actually, [...]

Jitsi is a multi-protocol, multi-platform voice and video instant messenger client. It is mostly implemented in Java, and is Free/Open Source software licensed under the LGPL. Where other VoIP services and clients send data in the clear, Jitsi sets itself apart by making use of ZRTP to set up secure communication with SRTP, Secure Real-time [...]

Horde is a groupware suite that offers email, calendar, task, contact management and more things. It also offers SyncML and ActiveSync to synchronize with your cell phones or other software.

This is one of those things that doesn’t get explained much, because it’s almost too simple to document: it’s often useful to keep a few Debian package files (.deb files, used in Debian, Ubuntu, and Linux distributions derived from them) available for installation, either on your local host or on other computers on the same [...]

This guide explains how to set up WebDAV with lighttpd on a Debian Squeeze server. WebDAV stands for Web-based Distributed Authoring and Versioning and is a set of extensions to the HTTP protocol that allow users to directly edit files on the lighttpd server so that they do not need to be downloaded/uploaded via FTP. [...]

This guide explains how you can set up an AoE target and an AoE initiator (client), both running Debian Squeeze. AoE stands for “ATA over Ethernet” and is a storage area network (SAN) protocol which allows AoE initiators to use storage devices on the (remote) AoE target using normal ethernet cabling.

This tutorial describes how you can install Apache2 with mod_fcgid and PHP5 on Debian Squeeze. mod_fcgid is a compatible alternative to the older mod_fastcgi. It lets you execute PHP scripts with the permissions of their owners instead of the Apache user.

OpenShift is a free cloud-based application platform from RedHat. Of late I caught an interest in Cloud Computing and wanted to try out different stuff. Though I did extensive reading on Eucalyptus, Amazon EC2, Ubuntu Cloud, etc. I wanted to try something hands on and chose to experiment with OpenShift.

This tutorial shows how to prepare a Debian Squeeze (Debian 6.0) server for the installation of ISPConfig 3, and how to install ISPConfig 3. ISPConfig 3 is a webhosting control panel that allows you to configure the following services through a web browser: nginx or Apache web server, Postfix mail server, MySQL, BIND nameserver, PureFTPd, [...]

I couldn’t find an end-to-end document online about this just bits and pieces here and there. Let me describe how to install Debian testing (wheezy) without a keyboard using an USB flash drive and ssh.

I’m always wondering about people who forget to spring forward or fall back when daylight saving time begins or ends. Now I’m one of them.

Feng Office is a web-based software that integrates project management, client relationship management, billing, financing, among other features that help you efficiently run your professional services business. nginx is a HTTP server that uses much less resources than Apache and delivers pages a lot of faster, especially static files.

I’ve recently acquired an UMTS USB stick, a ZTE MF190 (USB ID 19d2:0117/19d2:2000, after and before mode switch, the second ID can be seen while the stick offers its data partition for Windows driver installation). Naturally I wanted to use the stick with Debian.

Raspberry Pi, a credit-card sized computer that retails for $35, finally has some operating systems ready to run on it. A remix of Fedora Linux is still the “official” operating system for Raspberry Pi, but it’s been delayed. In the meantime, versions of Arch and Debian Linux are ready to go.

This document presents the result of the rebuild of the Debian archive (the distribution) with clang, a new C/C++ compiler. clang is now ready to build software for production (either for C, C++ or Objective-C). This compiler is providing many more warnings and interesting errors than the gcc suite while not carrying the same legacy [...]

I recently installed Debian Testing on my ‘old’ Lenovo x200s. One part of my standard setup that was unexpectedly hard to migrate from Ubuntu was UbuntuOne, sadly. You can see my frustration via identi.ca here.

The flash player plug in can also be installed on Debian based computers which will make viewing of videos, content and applications better.The plug-in can be installed under this OS manually, or the user can add the required repositories which will complete the installation process.

For various reasons, having vmware running on my desktop would be kind of useful. VMware provide a Free (as in beer) version of their software called VMware Player. I downloaded the file VMware-Player-4.0.2-591240.x86_64.bundle off their website and tried to build it. It failed to build…