Error when using old run/bin installers under Linux
I guess that every single *nix user, at least once, has run across files with the *.run or *.bin extensions. These scripts are usually software installers and are widely used to distribute, but not...
View ArticleHow to create a Windows bootable CD with mkisofs
Generally, the only reason for which you may need to create a bootable Windows CD is when you have updated the operating system installation files with the latest Service Pack (slipstream). Even in...
View ArticleCloneZilla instead of Partimage
Until now I have been creating partition images with Partimage, which has never failed. Another very popular tool nowadays is CloneZilla. This software, which happens to include partimage among various...
View ArticleChoosing a format for data backups – tar vs cpio
A few days ago, I had decided to revise my data backup methods, so to be able to easily recover as much data as possible after a partial corruption of the medium, a DVD that is, on which the data has...
View ArticleVeriTAR – Verify checksums of files within a TAR archive
In my opinion, the biggest problem of the tar format (‘ustar‘) is that it does not store the checksums of the files it contains. So, in order to be able to verify the contents of the tar archive, you...
View ArticleHow to extract RPM or DEB packages
RPM and DEB packages are both containers for other files. An RPM is some sort of cpio archive. On the other hand, a DEB file is a pure ar archive. So, it should be possible to unpack their contents...
View ArticleUsing a switch to prevent system shutdown/reboot/suspend
What I tried to accomplish today was to prevent a system shutdown or reboot or suspend, if a specific process was still running in the background. This might sound pretty useless, but having shut my PC...
View Articledelayed-shutdown initscript
delayed-shutdown is an initscript that delays the shutdown (runlevel 0) or reboot (runlevel 6) procedure as long as a pre-defined lock file exists. The goal is to create a mechanism, which can be used...
View ArticleThe importance of regular data backups
I still haven’t figured out whether it happened because of pure stupidity, temporary brain malfunction or low caffeine concentration in the blood, but a week ago, by mistake, I wiped the MBR of my...
View ArticleStarted using rdiff-backup on Windows
rdiff-backup is my favorite tool for keeping backups on Linux systems. Today, I started using it on a Windows 7 desktop as well. At first, I used rdiff-backup from the cygwin project, but I soon...
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