the empty quarter

Steps to install Oracle Express Edition (XE) database 10g on Ubuntu 11.10 (Oneiric). Download the Oracle XE deb package (free registration is required). Double click the downloaded file and select to install it. In terminal run sudo /etc/init.d/oracle-xe configure. You will be prompted to enter the following parameters: HTTP port number, database listener port number, [...]

GNU/Linux includes many utilities for working with text files through the shell. In this post we take a quick look at accessing and manipulating text files in a “column-wise” mode. Suppose you have the following two files, each with two columns separated by the TAB character. $cat file1 Alice   Paris Bob     Tokyo Mary    London John    New York $cat file2 [...]

Sed can be used to strip out all HTML or XML tags from a file and get the plain text version. Suppose you have file gnulinux.html with the following contents: <p>The combination of <a href=“/gnu/linux-and-gnu.html“>GNU and Linux</a> is the <strong>GNU/Linux operating system</strong>, now used by millions and sometimes incorrectly called simply “Linux“.</p> Tempting but incorrect [...]

If you use TrueCrypt under Ubuntu 11.04 Natty you would have noticed an annoying behaviour. Under previous versions an icon is present in the system tray which remains there whilst a volume is mounted even if the TrueCrypt window is closed. Under Unity the tray icon is not shown. If you accidentally close the window [...]

After finally getting some time to fully read up on Mono (especially on the excellent The Source) I have decided it is best to remove it from my system. The Open Sourcerer has a nicely written up set of instructions for 10.04 Lucid Lynx and 10.10 Maverick Meerkat.

Here’s a quick way to remove empty lines from a file using the Linux command line: cat file1 | sed /^$/d > file2 Where file1 is the input file containing empty lines and file2 is a newly created file with empty lines removed.

Changing the port number of SSH daemon is a quick way of reducing the number of SSH brute force attacks your server might face (check the file /var/log/auth.log to see if there are many failed SSH login attempts). Just to be on the safe side, create a backup copy of the SSH daemon config file. [...]

Here’s how to disable the annoying Update Manager pop-up (technically a “pop-under”) and instead have the update icon displayed in the notification area. Hit Alt-F2 to open the “Run Application” dialog. Type in gconf-editor to run the GNOME Configuration Editor. Navigate to Apps > Update Notifier. Untick the auto_launch checkbox.

This post is an update on integrating Thunderbird with Ubuntu’s notification system. For Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx it supersedes my earlier post on the topic which was applicable previous versions of Ubuntu (Jaunty and Karmic). The big difference in Lucid Lynx is the Indicator Applet and the “Me Menu”, both of these incorporating features related [...]

Password proliferation is a serious problem on the web today. Most websites require users to register and create a username/password combination for future authentication. Unfortunately not many websites support reusable logins such as OpenID. The main problem is that of human memory. It is of course not reasonable to expect the user to remember 100+ [...]