Sometimes when editing files in both Windows and UNIX environments, a CTRL-M character is visibly displayed at the end of each line as ^M in vi. This is how to remove those annoying characters:
Disclaimer:
The information below is the result of my researches in the Internet and of my experiences. It is solely used for my purpose and may not be suitable for others.
:%s/^V^M//g
(Ctrl-V)(Ctrl-M)
That's all!
-gibb
I've been using VirtualBox for a while on my slackware box. It's been working ok but I recently read a couple of blogs/articles recommending KVM. They said that KVM is rapidly becoming the de facto standard for open source visualization. Interesting. So, I gave a shot with qemu-kvm with libvirt (for GUI).
Disclaimer:
The information below is the result of my researches in the Internet and of my experiences. It is solely used for my purpose and may not be suitable for others.
The CPU needs to support virtualization in order to take advantage of qemu-kvm. To check, execute below command:
$ egrep -c '(vmx|svm)' /proc/cpuinfo
If the CPU supports virtualization, you should get a non-zero value.
Or, as Daniel Berrange suggested, virt-host-validate to validate host virtualization setup:
# virt-host-validate qemu
QEMU: Checking for hardware virtualization: PASS
QEMU: Checking for device /dev/kvm : PASS
QEMU: Checking for device /dev/whost-net : PASS
QEMU: Checking for device /dev/net/tun : PASS
Install qemu-kvm, libvirt, virt-manager and their dependencies from SlackBuilds.org.
There are a few notes for post-configuration:
# groupadd libvirt
# gpasswd -a USER libvirt
# vim /etc/libvirt/libvirt.conf
-----------------------------------------
unix_sock_group = "libvirt"
unix_sock_ro_perms = "0770"
unix_sock_rw_perms = "0770"# vim /etc/rc.d/rc.local
----------------------------------------
# Start libvirt:
if [ -x /etc/rc.d/rc.libvirt ]; then
/etc/rc.d/rc.libvirt start
fiNow Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) can be executed via:
$ virt-manager
That's all!
-gibb
rsync -av --progress [source] [destination]
Disclaimer:
The information below is the result of my researches in the Internet and of my experiences. It is solely used for my purpose and may not be suitable for others.
That's all!
-gibb
Yep. Long waited Slackware 14.0 was finally released on 09/28/2012! I immediately downloaded and installed on my system as a guest OS for VirtualBox. Since the installation and a bit of customization, I have not had enough time to play with it, but now, I tried some more configuration today.
Disclaimer:
The information below is the result of my researches in the Internet and of my experiences. It is solely used for my purpose and may not be suitable for others.
During Slackware installation, it uses "huge" kernel, which has every hardware driver built in. It's not necessary to switch to "generic" kernel, but it is said that with "generic" kernel, it uses less memory and runs faster since "generic" kernel has virtually no drivers built in and all drivers are loaded into RAM on demand.
Create an initial RAM
# /usr/share/mkinitrd/mkinitrd_command_generator.sh
This is an informational-only command which shows a next command (mkinitrd) to run to generate the initrd.gz image.
#
# mkinitrd_command_generator.sh revision 1.45
#
# This script will now make a recommendation about the command to use
# in case you require an initrd image to boot a kernel that does not
# have support for your storage or root filesystem built in
# (such as the Slackware 'generic' kernels').
# A suitable 'mkinitrd' command will be:
mkinitrd -c -k 3.2.29 -f ext4 -r /dev/sdb2 -m ohci-hcd:mbcache:jbd2:ext4 -u -o /boot/initrd.gz
Add a new section in /etc/lilo.conf to load a new image.
# vim /etc/lilo.conf
------------------------
image = /boot/vmlinuz-generic-3.2.29
initrd = /boot/initrd.gz # add this line so that lilo sees initrd.gz
root = /dev/sda1
label = Slackware
read-only
Also, put "lba32" in the global options in /etc/lilo.conf to avoid getting a warning message "lba32 addressing assumed"
# vim /etc/lilo.conf
------------------------
# Override dangerous defaults that rewrite the partition table:
change-rules
reset
lba32
# Normal VGA console
Save the file and run below command then reboot.
# lilo -v
That's all!
-gibb
IMPORTANT!!!
I now have updated version of Arch Linux with LVM on LUKS, Installing Arch Linux: LVM on top of an encrypted partition [[UPDATED]] with updated contents. Please visit that page!
I recently got a new notebook from my friend. I'm a slackware user but decided to give it a try on Arch Linux for this notebook. Ah... Arch Linux. I like its simplicity and user-centric philosophy. So I was reading up about Arch Linux and came across about encryption. Hmm... I could give it a try and make my notebook secure.
After reading, it looks like setting up LVM on top of the encrypted partition is the best method. So, I'll do that.
Disclaimer:
Information below is gathered mostly from the Arch Linux Wiki page and changed here and there for my liking. This information below is solely used for my purpose and may not be suitable for others.
Information (data) on a Hard Drive is written in chunk here and there. Re-partitioning or reformatting a disk does not really removes (erase) the data. It merely remove the system structure that used to identify where the original data was located. This leaves the actual data on a disk.
To securely erase a disk, you could either:
# dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/<drive> bs=1M
Just to be warned, this takes a long, long time.
Even though Arch Linux version that I'm using (2012.08.04) comes with GRUB2 and this supports having the /boot partition in LVM, the /boot directory has to reside on its own. If the /boot directory is encrytpted (with or without LVM), the bootloader cannot read it; thus, boot failure will occur.
# fdisk /dev/sda
Partition Layout:
/dev/sda1 -> /boot (bootable)
/dev/sda2 -> LVM (8e)
cryptsetup is used to interface with LUKS for formatting, mounting and unmounting encrypted partition.
First make sure the device mapper kernel module is installed:
# modprobe dm-mod
Then format it as an encrypted LUKS partition:
# cryptsetup -c aes-xts-plain -s 512 -yvh sha256 luksFormat /dev/sda2
It looks like AES cipher in XTS mode (XTS-AES) is most popular these days.
To access the encrypted volume, It needs to be unlocked.
# cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sda2 lvm
Create a physical volume (encrypted volume) and a group volume.
# lvm pvcreate /dev/mapper/lvm
# lvm vgcreate lvmvg /dev/mapper/lvm
Create logical volumes on this new volume group.
# lvm lvcreate -L 10G -n root lvmvg
# lvm lvcreate -L 500M -n swap lvmvg
# lvm lvcreate -l 100%FREE -n home lvmvg
Follow my blog entry, Installing Arch Linux on LVM, to install Arch Linux.
There are several configuration files that need to be modified.
/etc/rc.confChange USELVM="no" to USELVM="yes":
# vi /etc/rc.conf
--------------------
USELVM="yes"
Configure /etc/mkinitcpio.conf for encryption and LVM by adding encrypt lvm2 (in this order) in the HOOKS section before filesystems so that the kernel will find LVM volumes at boot time.
# vi /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
--------------------
HOOKS="...encrypt lvm2 filesystems..."
Add cryptdevice=/dev/sda2:lvmvg between root=... and ro in the line starts with linux. This needs to be done for "Arch Linux" and "Arch Linux Fallback".
# vi /boot/grub/grub.cfg
--------------------
linux /boot/vmlinuz-linux root=/dev/mapper/lvmvg-root cryptdevice=/dev/sda2:lvmvg ro quiet
Now reboot the system.
That's all!
-gibb