Using linux' find command

Strangely enough I sometimes have a need to find a file which I don't know exactly where is. Even though I am sure I am the only one with this problem I will try to explain how to search for a file on my computer.

To make this a rather short how-to I will only give some pointers about using the find-command.

Getting stats from dd -command

While trying to move the contents of one partition to another I used the dd -command like this:
(DO NOT cut'n'paste this command)

dd if=/dev/sda7 of=/dev/sda1

Here's how to get the progress of a long dd-copy:

1. Open up a terminal (T1) and run your dd-command.
2. Open another terminal (T2) by pressing Ctrl+Shift +T
3. In terminal T2 type in: ps aux | grep dd
4. Find the Pid for the dd-command
5. In terminal T2 type: kill -USR1 <pid>
6. Go back to T1 to see the stats printed.

Repeat points 5 and 6 to keep getting an update.

Wordpress Permalinks not working?

When creating a local website on your own webserver running Apache2 and using Wordpress, you will see that the URL is created by referring to different kind of ID's. This could be Post ID's, Category ID's, Page ID's and so on. So I went into the Wordpress Administration Panel and told it to use permalinks instead. Hoping this would make the URL's a little prettier...

Remmina connection problem

After the latest update on my Ubuntu 14.04 Remmina would not connect to one of my Windows computers. I remembered having had this problem before, but was not able to remember the solution. (Even though I knew the solution was a very simple one.)

So I started googling and after a while I found the very simple solution to this problem.

LVM Snapshot example

If your Linux is using LVM (Logical Volume Management) testing out or setting up can be much safer if you take a snapshot of your root partition. Here's a small but helpful example to help you do this quickly.

SUM filtered rows in LibreOffice using SUBTOTAL

In Libre Office Calc you sometimes need to filter data using the Autofilter. And of course you would like to know the sum of the values filtered. This is where you'll want to use the SUBTOTAL() function. To get the subtotal of the filtered values you'll need to tell the subtotal function which function you would like to use on the filtered rows.

LibreOffice - using INDIRECT() for cell referencing

At times I need to summarize values from another sheet in Libre Office, and get an output that will group some values together. In my example I have a small table that could contain from 10 to 1000 rows. The table I want is to be grouped by date, and I want to know how much I have spent on a specific day.

Cleaning out linux-image-x.x.xx-xx-* files

I was suddenly denied access to my in-house web-server with a message telling me the disk is full. After a quick check with df -h I could confirm the root partition used 100%.
First I started to look for "user -files" I could remove, but found out there wasn't all that many of them. Most of the usage was in the folders /lib, /usr and /var. A quick question to my friend google took me in the direction that there could be some linux-image files no longer used that were spending my disk.
Some more searching gave me the following solution to removing these unused kernel files:

Personal emails - Mail Merge add-on

 About a year ago I added some info about this little add-on for thunderbird calle Merge Email. I then described how-to use the address-book to make merged emails. Since I am a bit of a fan of this add-on I'll describe using it with a csv-file.

Making or burning ISO images

I was given a burned CD from a friend and decided to make an ISO image of that particular CD. Currently I'm using Ubuntu 12.10 and decided to use the Linux-command: dd

But to my surprise; IT WOULDN'T WORK!!! I have always used that command to make an ISO image, so now I had to figure out why this is not working, and how I could make it work.

LibreOffice 4.1 Solver example

While going through my accounting I found some discrepancies. So I needed to go through a long list of numbers and check whether they have been included in the totals I was checking.
Of course I would like not having to spend hours doing this, so I decided to find out how I could do this using LibreOffice Calc an save myself a lot of time. The time spent making the calculation is now about 1 second. (The time spent figuring this out... Let's just say hours....)

Formatting phone numbers in LibreOffice

Every now and then I need to setup a list containing phone numbers in Libre Office Calc. When the phone numbers are listed I need to have them formatted in 3+2+3 digits. (Or else I'm unable to separate the digits when I am going to make the call.)

Here's the trick how to do this:
In the phone number column I'll select the entire column or the cells I need the formatting on.
Right click the selected area and click Format Cells
In the Numbers tab, I insert the following as Format Code:

###" "##" "###

Make sure to add the space between the " and ".

Correctly inserted phone numbers should now look like: 123 45 789
(A lot better for my ageing eyes.)


.

LibreOffice 4.1 password protected document

Another release of LibreOfice have been announced and I was quick to download

and install version 4.1. I must admit I have been a big fan of LibreOffice from their first release, but there are still a few bugs that I find annoying. Unfortunately I found a new bug in v.4.1, or at least I thought so...

Using netcat as a server

Just this morning I was checking out some piece of software and was trying to setup its mail configuration. But it would not function the way I thought it was supposed to so I had a look into my mail server logfile. With the tailf -command I would be seeing the messages to and from the mail server. But as I was looking at little to no action the logfile suddenly was filling my screen with messages.

Someone was trying to use my mailserver....

find files between two dates

Here's a quick tip for how you can find a file between two dates.
Suppose you are looking for a file you know you worked with last friday. At the time of writing this would be on december 7th. Using the find command you can go to your terminal and add the following code:

find . -type f -newerat "2012-12-07" -not -newerat "2012-12-08"

This would search for files acessed between dec. 7th and dec. 8th.
This code snippet also shows an example of how to use the -newerXY parameter of the find -command.

Vmware Server 2 - "Failed to initialize monitor device."

After rebooting the server my virtual machines would not start up again. Neither automatically nor manually. This problem had me confused for a while but I finally found a simple solution.

The problem was that kvm-intel module was loaded, so simply removing this, and restarting the vmware service was sufficient to restart my virtual machines.

sudo rmmod kvm-intel
sudo service vmware restart

After this my virtual machines had no problem starting.

Backup your images on JottaCloud

On JottaCloud you can easily backup your images or files. I use JottaCloud to save a backup of the images I take on my Android phone.

Scaling a pdf file from A3 to A4

This is just a quick tip for converting a pdf file from one pagesize to another.
By using the command convert this is easily achieved.

This is the quickest way I've found to do this:


convert -page a3 infile.pdf -page a4 outfile.pdf

The outfile.pdf should now be sized as an A4 page.
The command is as follows: convert [input file options] infile.pdf [output file options] outfile.pdf

Of course it is possible to convert to and from other sizes as well.

SSH without password prompting

Usually while working on different computers I am using SSH. Being prompted for a password is not a favourite of mine, so I set up my computers to connect without needing a password. It's easier than you think.

Free E-books

Just a quick tip for everyone who likes to learn more.
At BookBoon.com you'll find a few good pdf-books free to download.


As always there is a small cath; there are a few adverts in these books.