Table of Contents

Commands

Useful tools / programs / options

Misc

Add manually installed version to update-alternatives

$ # update-alternatives --install <gen-name for (master) link> <symlink name in /etc/alt...> <program binary to be added> <priority (unused?)>
$ sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/x-www-browser x-www-browser /home/sfoo/firefox3.5/firefox 1
$ sudo update-alternatives --set x-www-browser /home/sfoo/firefox3.5/firefox
Using '/home/sfoo/firefox3.5/firefox' to provide 'x-www-browser'.

Convert scanned pdfs to low file size a4 pages

convert in.pdf -modulate 150,90 -scale 80% -page 842x595 -compress JPEG2000 -quality 85 -type optimize out.pdf

Test USB Drive

sudo badblocks -vsw -t random $DEVICE

Make bootable USB Drive

wget "http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/hardy/main/installer-i386/current/images/hd-media/boot.img.gz"
zcat boot.img.gz /dev/sda1
parted /dev/sda # resize file system to full size
mount /dev/sda1 /media/usb
cp ubuntu-8.04.iso /media/usb
install-mbr /dev/sda  #if necessary

Disable console beep

* To remove all console beeps whilst running X you should execute: xset b off This disables the console beep for all programs.

* To remove all console beeps whilst running from the system console execute: setterm -blength 0 This disables the console beep for all programs, by setting the “beep length” to zero.