Installing & Using TimeVault in Ubuntu/Debian

Posted on July 14th, 2008 in Applications, Debian, Ubuntu by admin

TimeVault is a simple front-end for making snapshots of a set of directories. Snapshots are a copy of a directory structure or file at a certain point in time. Restore functionality is integrated into Nautilus - previous versions of a file or directory that has a snapshot can be accessed by examining the properties and selecting the ‘Previous Versions’ tab.

Snapshots are protected from accidental deletion or modification since they are read-only by default. The super-user can delete intermediate snapshots to save space, but files and directories that existed before or after the deletion will still be accessible.

A snapshot is a copy of a directory at a certain point in time. Snapshots don’t use space for the files that haven’t changed but instead simply increment the link count for them. On Linux, when a file is deleted, the link count is decremented, but it isn’t actually removed until the link count hits zero.

Only files are hard-linked this way. Directories have to be recreated for technical reasons (since a hard-link is actually the file it points to, you would find yourself in a completely different path if directories were hard-linked).

Preventing Debian Package Upgrades

Posted on May 12th, 2008 in Debian, Ubuntu by admin

The simple mechanism Debian has for performing package upgrades, apt-get, is often touted as a good thing and indeed it is. But sometimes you will have a package installed that you absolutely do not want to be upgraded.

There are two ways that you can achieve this, depending on what it is that you’re trying to achieve.

If you have a locally modified package which you don’t want to upgrade then you can put this on “hold”. This means that even if a newer version of that package is available it will not be upgraded. Ever.

This does mean that you run the risk of being behind the curve, and missing out on a security fix, but that’s something that you will have to deal with yourself.

Using fgetty instead of getty on Debian Etch

Posted on April 9th, 2008 in Debian by admin

Getty is known to be memory-hungry. Let’s replace it with something lighter, which works in most cases: fgetty On Debian Sarge and up, it is already packaged

What is fgetty?

fgetty is a small, efficient, console-only getty for Linux. It is derived from mingetty but hacked until it would link against diet libc to produce the smallest memory footprint possible for a simple yet complete getty.

fgetty includes a login program that supports the checkpassword authentication interface, and also a checkpassword program that uses the standard C library interface to passwd and shadow.

Use dpkg to install packages in Ubunt & Debian

Posted on March 6th, 2008 in Debian, Ubuntu by admin

I’ve written about using apt-get to install packages in Ubuntu and Debian. This function pulls mainly from repositories, but what to do with a package that’s already downloaded into your home directory or Desktop?

Using the apt-get application is the quickest way to find and install debian packages. The installation part is done by an application named dpkg. Dpkg doesn’t have to be used by apt-get, you can use it manually as well.

Installing an RPM file in Ubuntu/Debian

Posted on March 6th, 2008 in Debian, Ubuntu by admin

If you have an rpm file for a package you wish to install, and if you cannot find a .deb debian package in any of the Ubuntu repositories or elsewhere, you can use the alien package converter application to install the .rpm file.

Also see:How to install a deb file in openSuse

The basics of apt-get

Posted on March 5th, 2008 in Debian, Ubuntu by admin

apt-get’s commands are very easy and intuitive. These commands will be very useful in managing software in Debian and Ubuntu (based) systems.