How to get a count of how much disk space your Linux installation is taking up.

Getting information about how much disk space your Linux installation is taking up is very easy. The du command can print disk usage. This example is used on my WSL2 Kali Linux installation. ┌──(john㉿DESKTOP-PF01IEE)-[~] └─$ sudo du -hl –exclude=/{proc,sys,dev,run,mnt} / | awk ‘END {print $1 " Space used on " $2}’ 6.5G Space used on … Read more

Get information about filesystem usage with the MATE Disk Usage Analyser.

The MATE Disk Usage Analyser is a very good way to get disk usage information in a graphical fashion. The above example, shows the usage on the whole Linux filesystem. MATE Disk Usage Analyser showing information about my home directory. The user can click each folder to view disk usage information about a certain folder, … Read more

A useful posting explaining why Linux does not need defragmenting.

If you are interested in how the Linux filesystem works, then this is a posting you really need to read: http://geekblog.oneandoneis2.org/index.php/2006/08/17/why_doesn_t_linux_need_defragmenting. This is a posting explaining how the Linux filesystem stores file and why it does not need to defragment the filesystem as it stores files more efficiently. I have never wanted to defragment a … Read more

Some very useful Powershell tricks.

Print the current date and time with Powershell. "{0:dddd – hh:mm:ss – d/M/yy}" -f (get-date)"{0:dddd – hh:mm:ss – d/M/yy}" -f (get-date) This is an example of what this will give you. PS C:\Users\jason> "{0:dddd – hh:mm:ss – d/M/yy}" -f (get-date) Tuesday – 08:42:05 – 30/1/18PS C:\Users\jason> "{0:dddd – hh:mm:ss – d/M/yy}" -f (get-date) Tuesday – … Read more

A few ways to list disk information in Linux Mint.

There are a few ways in Linux Mint to view disk information. The Disks utility found at Preferences->Hardware-Disks allows the viewing of hard disk information. This displays all of the partitions and their types on a selected physical disk. There are options for unmounting partitions, deleting a partition and even more options such as formatting … Read more

How to format a partition in Linux. This is very easy.

Formatting a partition in Linux is very easy when you use the mkfs command. In this example I am formatting a 35 gigabyte partition with an EXT4 file-system. I am intending to try out a Linux From Scratch build and I want to have a dedicated partition to build this on. jason@eyjafjallajkull:~/Documents$ sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb2 … Read more

Using the iostat command to keep track of disk usage on Linux.

This example shows the iostat command printing information about disk usage on my Ubuntu system. jason@jason-desktop:~$ iostat Linux 4.6.0-rc1-jason (jason-desktop) 01/05/16 _x86_64_ (4 CPU)   avg-cpu: %user %nice %system %iowait %steal %idle 2.50 0.43 1.28 24.37 0.00 71.42   Device: tps kB_read/s kB_wrtn/s kB_read kB_wrtn sda 1.49 147.22 0.00 64455 0 sdb 0.41 14.30 0.00 … Read more

How to use aliases with the bash shell and some other useful Linux tricks.

Are you wanting to create an alias and you want to see how they are done? Well a Linux distribution should come with some aliases that are already created for you and you can type the alias ls command to see how one is created. ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ alias ls alias ls=’ls –color=auto’ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ alias ls alias ls=’ls … Read more

Useful commands for getting information about your computers memory status and hard drives.

This command used with grep will return information about your computers memory. jason@jason-desktop:~/Documents$ cat /proc/meminfo | grep Total MemTotal: 12219468 kB SwapTotal: 70311928 kB VmallocTotal: 34359738367 kB CmaTotal: 0 kB HugePages_Total: 0jason@jason-desktop:~/Documents$ cat /proc/meminfo | grep Total MemTotal: 12219468 kB SwapTotal: 70311928 kB VmallocTotal: 34359738367 kB CmaTotal: 0 kB HugePages_Total: 0 If you want to … Read more

Keeping your data safe by backing up your data. A good hard disk and external housing for backups.

Backing up your precious data to protect your files is essential; the Seagate range of hard drives provide a reliable solution for backing up your data or a large capacity hard drive for installing Linux to. I remember I installed Mandrake Linux once onto a 80 Gigabyte hard disk and due to the large capacity … Read more

Ubuntu 12.10 to include full disk and LVM encryption and a unified disk image.

The Ubuntu 12.10 Linux distribution from Canonical is set to include a feature that the Fedora distribution has included for a long time; full disk encryption and Logical Volume Management encryption. This brings the Canonical distribution in line with Fedora. The ability to encrypt the / folder and not just the /home folder is a … Read more

Sandisk USB 3.0 64 Gigabyte flash drive. A huge capacity for a reasonable price indeed.

Computer floppy disks. a 8", 5 1/2" and a 3.5" floppy disk.

The Sandisk USB 3.0 flash disk offers a massive capacity for a reasonable price. With a transfer rate of 190 Megabytes per second, this drive will be able to copy large files to and fro with a minimum of waiting time. On Amazon, this drive retails for US$79.88, this is an incredible price for a … Read more