- IceWM configuration file
- Useful Linux Commands
- Very Verbose ps command
- Blackbox Theme
- GNU/Linux CD Burning: (Updated! for Debian Linux 6.0.)
- CD Burning with Brasero
- Writing Ghost Images to CD
IceWM configuration file
My ICEWM preferences file. from $HOME/.icewm/preferences. This file has a
nice friendly time format and a good Win95 styled theme.
This IceWM configuration file will give you a familiar Windows 95 lookalike interface without the frustration that comes with the use of Windows et-al. I will be continuing to use Linux rather than Windows for programming and other serious tasks as Windows 1998 does not cut it at all for reliability. Windows 2000 and NT were the most reliable Windows releases, Windows XP has the god awful Active Desktop and Internet Explorer 8.0 that you can install. I hate this OS with a vengeance. I would rather use Windows NT rather than XP, as it can go all day without a reboot, making your day much smoother.
Sure Windows XP SP2 may have more security features, but how long will it take for the Spyware and Virus Authors to catch up and work around the new Firewall technology? Better off if you installed Zone Alarm and Mozilla Firefox or the Mozilla suite version 1.7 and used that instead of Internet Explorer, which is showing more and more security holes now and cannot offer the increased security offered by these aforementioned applications. Zone Alarm includes a popup window blocker and Banner advertisement blocking as well, which will help broadband users in Australia which have 3GB caps on downloads per bill. Banner advertisements are usually images and if you can block them before they are even downloaded, you will save an enormous amount of data downloads over a one month term. But running modern computers with Ublock Origin and Noscript is a better idea.
Useful Linux Commands
MS-DOS styled directory tree view.
bash $~ tree -A -s -p -f --dirsfirst |
Using this command you get this output. Directories are printed before the rest of the files and the permissions and filesizes are very verbose. Using the -H switch gives you HTML output, but this is cluttering in a Terminal. But also very useful for listing directories for a webserver maybe, by typing this command and redirecting it to a file then put it up with some files in a directory, then you would have a ready-made directory listing. e.g, -H . this sets the current directory you are in as the base HREF then the links will work fine.
. tqq [drwxrwxrwx 32768] ./images x mqq [-rwxrwxrwx 1107790] ./images/windows-xp-wallpaper.tar.gz tqq [drwxrwxrwx 32768] ./maps x tqq [-rwxrwxrwx 190192] ./maps/big_logo_title.png x tqq [-rwxrwxrwx 82040] ./maps/zdoom_bejiita.png x tqq [-rwxrwxrwx 77024] ./maps/zdoom_bejiita_2.png x tqq [-rwxrwxrwx 30899] ./maps/zdoom_bejiita_3.png x tqq [-rwxrwxrwx 63497] ./maps/zdoom_bejiita_4.png x mqq [-rwxrwxrwx 88768] ./maps/zdoom_cell.png tqq [-r-xr-xr-x 18738] ./Q1_Scourge_of_armagon_secrets.txt tqq [-r-xr-xr-x 13824] ./Q1_dissolution_of_eternity_secrets.txt tqq [-r-xr-xr-x 7491] ./Q2__ground_Zero_secrets.txt tqq [-r-xr-xr-x 12933] ./Q2_the_reckoning_secrets.txt tqq [-rwxrwxrwx 7324] ./blackbox.htm tqq [-rwxrwxrwx 9249] ./cgi_code.htm tqq [-rwxrwxrwx 6030] ./doom_level.htm tqq [-rwxrwxrwx 464773] ./limbo.tar.gz tqq [-rwxrwxrwx 21501] ./linux_configs.htm tqq [-rwxrwxrwx 239] ./menu2.htm tqq [-rwxrwxrwx 1663] ./time.cgi mqq [-rwxrwxrwx 5868] ./viewblog.cgi 2 directories, 19 files |
Very Verbose ps command
bash $~ ps u a x f g |
This command above gives this output. It uses ASCII art to dress up the presentation of the process listing. This is one of my favorite commands and very useful. This command shows _all_ processes running on the system and even daemons and root processes. This output is on my old Mandrake Linux machine and old Pentium II 350MMX that I did a lot of Linux learning on. And it ran Linux quite well too.
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND root 1 0.1 0.2 1580 516 ? S Aug22 0:04 init [5] root 2 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SWN Aug22 0:00 [ksoftirqd/0] root 3 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW< Aug22 0:00 [events/0] root 4 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW< Aug22 0:00 [kblockd/0] root 5 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Aug22 0:00 [kapmd] root 6 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Aug22 0:00 [pdflush] root 7 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Aug22 0:00 [pdflush] root 8 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Aug22 0:00 [kswapd0] root 9 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW< Aug22 0:00 [aio/0] root 11 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Aug22 0:00 [kseriod] root 15 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Aug22 0:00 [kjournald] root 113 0.0 0.6 2048 1176 ? S Aug22 0:01 devfsd /dev root 239 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Aug22 0:00 [khubd] root 375 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Aug22 0:00 [scsi_eh_0] rpc 879 0.0 0.3 1712 576 ? S Aug22 0:00 portmap root 903 0.0 0.3 1640 628 ? S Aug22 0:00 syslogd -m 0 root 911 0.0 0.8 2592 1540 ? S Aug22 0:00 klogd -2 xfs 1382 0.0 2.0 5552 3924 ? S Aug22 0:00 xfs -port -1 -daemon -droppriv -user xfs root 1457 0.0 0.5 3532 1124 ? S Aug22 0:00 /usr/X11R6/bin/xdm -nodaemon root 1531 1.3 9.8 22936 18700 ? R Aug22 0:47 \_ /etc/X11/X -deferglyphs 16 -auth /etc/X11/xdm/authdir/authfiles/A:0-0Azk6L root 1580 0.0 1.2 4468 2392 ? S Aug22 0:00 \_ -:0 kugai 1948 0.0 1.2 4432 2348 ? S Aug22 0:01 \_ /usr/X11R6/bin/blackbox kugai 2397 0.1 2.6 8184 5020 ? S Aug22 0:03 \_ /usr/bin/Eterm kugai 2400 0.0 0.8 2748 1628 pts0 S Aug22 0:00 | \_ -bash kugai 2535 0.0 0.4 2416 768 pts0 R 00:32 0:00 | \_ ps u a x f g kugai 2442 0.0 0.6 2528 1180 ? S Aug22 0:00 \_ /bin/sh /usr/bin/soundwrapper xmms kugai 2445 4.6 2.8 25288 5344 ? S Aug22 1:43 \_ xmms daemon 1482 0.0 0.2 1616 536 ? S Aug22 0:00 /usr/sbin/atd root 1536 0.0 0.4 2164 868 ? S Aug22 0:00 xinetd -stayalive -reuse -pidfile /var/run/xinetd.pid root 1660 0.0 0.3 1624 624 ? S Aug22 0:00 crond root 1784 0.0 0.2 1568 448 tty1 S Aug22 0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty1 root 1785 0.0 0.2 1568 448 tty2 S Aug22 0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty2 root 1786 0.0 0.2 1568 448 tty3 S Aug22 0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty3 root 1787 0.0 0.2 1568 448 tty4 S Aug22 0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty4 root 1788 0.0 0.2 1568 448 tty5 S Aug22 0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty5 root 1789 0.0 0.2 1568 448 tty6 S Aug22 0:00 /sbin/mingetty tty6 kugai 2076 0.0 1.9 6100 3800 ? S Aug22 0:00 /usr/lib/gconfd-2 13 kugai 2085 0.9 6.3 20072 12124 ? S Aug22 0:28 /usr/X11R6/bin/gvim root 2227 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Aug22 0:00 [usb-storage] root 2228 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SW Aug22 0:00 [scsi_eh_1] |
Blackbox Theme
Just thought I would put this up, I am looking through an old version of this site from about 2004 or something & I saw this and I thought someone might like it. Chernobyl Blackbox theme. This theme has a very good colour scheme and great use of theming features to create a very good theme for the Blackbox window manager. I created this theme to be very clear at very high resolutions on large monitors, I have tested it at 1152*864@65k and it is very good looking and very fast indeed. If you use it with the .blackboxrc config at bottom of page, there will also be a much better date and time format as well and this greatly enhances the user experience.
My Blackbox config file. $HOME/.blackboxrc This configuration file has a much more verbose display of time and date on the taskbar using strftime formatting. The only thing is the seconds do not count in real-time like with IceWM, but you could always use Xclock.
session.screen0.slit.placement: CenterRight session.screen0.slit.direction: Vertical session.screen0.slit.onTop: False session.screen0.slit.autoHide: False session.screen0.toolbar.onTop: False session.screen0.toolbar.autoHide: False session.screen0.toolbar.placement: BottomCenter session.screen0.toolbar.widthPercent: 66 session.screen0.workspaces: 2 session.screen0.focusLastWindow: False session.screen0.disableBindingsWithScrollLock: False session.screen0.workspaceNames: Workspace 1,Workspace 2 session.screen0.colPlacementDirection: TopToBottom session.screen0.fullMaximization: False session.screen0.rowPlacementDirection: LeftToRight session.screen0.focusModel: SloppyFocus AutoRaise session.screen0.focusNewWindows: False session.screen0.windowPlacement: RowSmartPlacement session.screen0.edgeSnapThreshold: 0 session.screen0.strftimeFormat: %a-%d-%b-%Y %H:%M:%S session.doubleClickInterval: 250 session.colorsPerChannel: 4 session.autoRaiseDelay: 400 session.cacheMax: 200 session.opaqueMove: False session.imageDither: True session.styleFile: /usr/share/blackbox/styles/Chernobyl session.menuFile: /etc/X11/blackbox/blackbox-menu session.cacheLife: 5 |
GNU/Linux CD Burning: (Updated! for Debian Linux 6.0.)
Creating an ISO image of files in a folder.
If you want to do this using the command line then you can just put all of your files into a directory and arrange them as required, then use this command to create a ISO image of the files ready to write to a CD. Do not do this if you have files with spaces in the filenames. Rename them first. Then type: mkisofs -l -r -J -v -V "Music" -o music.iso Music/ to create an ISO image, Then you can use wodim to write the ISO file to a CD. Below is the result of using the -scanbus command to look up our writer.
[Thu 11/03/17 14:04 EST][pts/1][x86_64/linux-gnu/2.6.37-2-amd64][4.3.11] bash $~ wodim -scanbus scsibus0: 0,0,0 0) * 0,1,0 1) 'ASUS ' 'DRW-22B1L ' '1.01' Removable CD-ROM 0,2,0 2) * 0,3,0 3) * 0,4,0 4) * 0,5,0 5) * 0,6,0 6) * 0,7,0 7) * |
The command below will write the ISO image to a CDR and using your CD
writer drive.
sudo wodim -v -speed 12 music.iso |
CD Burning with Brasero
This tutorial will give you some instructions for using the Brasero application for burning DATA DVD discs to backup your data and keep it safe. I am not displaying any help for the Xcdroast application as that has been superseded by newer applications.
The burning of CD and DVD discs with Brasero is much easier than the old Xcdroast program. Just select the files you want to burn with the Add option and then press the burn button at the bottom. This screenshot shows the dialog that is displayed once you have clicked the burn button, this gives you a chance to set the burning speed and other options before committing to the actual burn. Xcdroast is still available on the Debian repositories, but I will no longer be supporting that application as it needs cdrecord installed and that is not available anymore. It can be installed from source, but it is not really necessary anymore to use such an old program just for burning a data CD. Now that your CDR is complete, re-insert the CD, reboot, and your new CD should boot! There, you have burned a bootable ISO image. If you have downloaded multiple images, just repeat the process for all of the ISO images in turn to create all the CDs you require.
A note for those who are running Mandrake Linux 10.0, the first installation CD has a boot.iso file which is about 7.98MB. If you burn this file to a blank CD you will get a bootable rescue cd which is more useful than a 3.5 floppy disk that is for sure. I am sure that other distros have this feature as well in one form or another, it is much more reliable than an unreliable boot/rescue floppy and would have more features crammed into a larger ISO image. Although sometimes you can use the installation CD/DVD itself as a rescue disk. Especially Red Hat Linux. Or SUSE Linux 10.0.
Writing Ghost Images to CD
If you are wanting to burn a Symantec Ghost image to CD, e.g to backup your Windows partition, then you could use Linux to burn the CD. You will need to copy the ghost image onto a separate partition and then use a bootable ghost disk to load up the ghost program and restore the ghost image. If you make a ghost image of the partition this is better than making an image of just the data. You would not need any special options to write the image to CD, just copy it straight to the CD, so you will have a backup. Then as I said before, you can just copy it back to a separate partition and restore the image.
I have done this when I was running Windows 98 and it worked very well. Obviously you cannot have the ghost image on the same partition you are restoring to, but I have had not much luck restoring the image from the CD unless you made it a bootable DOS CD and included ghost on the disk as well. I have seen restore CDs for Windows XP that used this setup and very well too. If you made a FreeDOS CD with Ghost and your image, you could have a backup of your OS on a CD or DVD.