General Q&A about Linux and Unix-like operating systems
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When I enter the login password incorrectly 3 times, my computer locks me out from attempting a login for 10 minutes. How can I change the timeout?
$ echo "4c 6f 72 65 6d 20 69 70 73 75 6d 20 64 6f 6c 6f 72 20 73 69 74 20 61 6d 65 74 2c 20 63 6f 6e 73 65 63 74 65 74 75 72 20 61 64 69 70 69 73 63 69 6e 67 20 65 6c 69 74 2c" | xxd -r orem ipsum...
I want to have a local DNS server on my home LAN, say at 192.168.1.123. All of my machines will use 192.168.1.123 as their only DNS server when connected to my home network. By default, my DNS ser...
I got this message: Bad owner or permissions on /Users/rbiaa065/.ssh/config What should the permissions be to make ssh happy?
When I try to start MariaDB server (same problem with MySQL) on a fresh Debian 11 install in a Windows Subsystem Linux (WSL) I got the following error: $ sudo systemctl start mariadb System has n...
I have always found PulseAudio to be difficult to use and overcomplicated. Recently I also discovered that it is written by Lennart Poettering, whom I dislike. I am now very motivated to use someth...
I was told that an IPv6 link-local address — typically starting with fe80:: — is derived from the interface's MAC address. Here are some instruction on how to do the conversion. But the conversion...
I uninstalled PulseAudio and installed PipeWire. It seems like now, every application gets an independent audio configuration. When I go into pavucontrol I see "Spotify" where I configure the volu...
With Debian 12, it seems that mysql-server is not available in the "default" package distribution and thus, cannot be installed with sudo apt install mysql-server or sudo apt-get... (I know that ma...
SIGUSR1 and SIGUSR2 are user-defined signals. Imagine there is a tool designed to do something useful upon receiving one or the other. The problem is the default action for these signals is Term (...
This blog post describes a privilege escalation, exploiting tar's --checkpoint-action option. The privilege escalation is used to solve a TryHackMe challenge. The root user calls tar via cron whi...
Unix is very permissive with filenames, and this can sometimes lead to a bunch of annoying corner cases when printing files. A well known example is when you put a newline in a filename, and it bre...
I built Python 3.11 from source (from GitHub python/cpython branch "3.11"). Here is what I did (after downloading the repo as ZIP) cd Downloads 7z x cpython-3.11.zip cd cpython-3.11 chmod +x c...
If a Debian bug number is referenced in the changelog of an uploaded package, it is automatically closed with a generic message: We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest versi...
I noticed that downloading all the pacman packages for a full system install takes a lot of time, so I want to create a systemd time that will periodically download them for me. That way, most of t...
Whenever I do a big system update, OpenGL stops working until the next reboot. This also prevent OpenGL apps from launching. Example: $ glxgears X Error of failed request: BadValue (integer par...
I'm playing with NAT, and have a script now that, at startup of my little Linux machine, creates some DNAT rules, which take one incoming special port, and forward that to another interface with a ...
I want to remove all files with the ".part" extension in the current directory and its subdirectories, including files with the same name but different extension. Is this correct? find . -name '*...
I want the cd command to automatically change to the first directory that matches a fuzzy search, without prompting me to select between multiple options. This is what I've tried: cd() { loc...
I noticed in winetricks that it can install windows dlls to the wine folder. It even gives an option to install almost all of them at once. When should someone install these instead of staying with...
Suppose I have a command that takes filenames as arguments, like: diff foo.txt bar.txt What if instead of actual files, I want to use the results of a command in each? I can use temporary files: ...
How can I view font files, like .ttf, in Linux? I'd like to see a sample of the font (quick brown fox...) and metadata about it (like exact name).
I'm trying to help fix a Debian installation that has ended up with a mix of Debian release repositories, aka a "FrankenDebian". This one has the bullseye and unstable repositories listed in /etc/a...
I can easily run Windows games with wine by running: wine game.exe However, if I want to use Proton I have to run Steam, add the game as a non-Steam game, and run it that way. Since Proton is ...
After installing the InconsolataGo font from the Arch package extra/ttf-inconsolata-go-nerd, I see there is an Inconsolata Nerd Font, Regular and an Inconsolata Nerd Font Mono, Regular. Both are mo...
I use Wine to play Windows games. As is well known: Wine is not a sandbox Windows games are proprietary blobs and can contain malware Windows malware can potentially harm Linux through Wine ...
I have a directory filled with Flac audio files and I would like to convert them all to Mp3. How do I go about this using FFmpeg? I am using the git FFmpeg and Slackware -current.
Question How can I view storage usage breakdown by media type? MWE Notes Commandline would be great, but open to anything.
Question What is the simplest way to change the cursor to indicate vim mode when using zsh? Notes I want it to show as a vertical line in insert mode and a block in normal mode. This is the cur...
Problem I want to set a global keyboard rate for both the X session and the console that persists for external keyboards, across plug-ins and removals. To my understanding, Xorg and console sett...
How can I grow a libvirtd VM's LVM-backed virtual disk online, without rebooting the vm. My host has an LVM VG for VMs. Each VM disk is an LV to the host. It's easy to grow the VG by adding a PV...
Problem I'd like to be able to decrease images, particularly jpg and png's, either to a percentage of the original file, or a specified size in bytes. MWE decrease --size=900KB -o image_small....
Suggest me the most security and privacy focused Linux distro within three of them given below. Fedora Qubes OS Whonix. Please help me to choose. Thank you.
How can I convert PDF to docx using the terminal or a Linux app? The output docx must be formatted with editable text. Some alternative solutions I've seen online using soffice and abiword output...
I am using Linux and Gnome. Using GDK, I would like to programmatically manipulate the Top Bar (i.e., the bar at the top of the screen with "Activities", the time, etc.). Here is a picture of it: ...
I have a GNU/Linux host that I use to aggregate syslog events from a few switches, printers, and generally less versatile hosts on my LAN. I set up rsyslog years ago to listen on UDP:514 and save ...
An article in the GTK blog explains the situation very well, but here is my go at it. In my keyboard layout, accents are handled as dead keys, so to insert "ë", first I type ¨ and then e. Nothing ...
My device is Thinkpad E40 with openSUSE Leap 15.4. I've use this device under this OS weeks ago and didn't happen this problem. After normally running, wlan0 device not show in nmcli and my wirele...
MWE startx && xrandr-invert-colors Problem It seems that anything after startx does not get issued in the resulting X session. I'd like to make a bash function that sets up my monito...
Question What partition type should I use for FAT partitions such that Linux and Windows systems both recognize the drive? Notes I am partitioning the drive with fdisk and making the filesystem ...
I have used printers before in Arch Linux, but I can't figure out how to print with a Canon PIXMA TR4522 printer. More specifically, I am having trouble finding the correct driver. I have installe...
I was installing Debian. But, I know that I have installed wireless connection system manually in Debian. are e needs non-free firmware files to operate. The firmware can be h as a USB stick o...
..$ rails s => Booting Puma => Rails 5.2.6 application starting in development => Run `rails server -h` for more startup options A server is already running. Check /home/istiak/ruby/q...
It takes a long time to build even the source package for a PPA of a huge project, and while the build isn't finished my computer is under heavy load so I can barely navigate a browser. The frustra...
For several days now, I've been getting a notification telling me that there's a pending update to the "snap-store", and to close the app to avoid disruption. I first got this notification while...
Assuming I have a running Linux system that has the /proc/config.gz file: Does the (unpacked) file always contain all of the options the particular kernel supports, including commented out like: ...
So I ran into that weird "packages being held back" problem while updating my system using apt. After some research, it appears to be the result of "phased updates". What are phased updates, any...
I have upgraded Xubuntu from 20.04 to 22.04 and my compose key, which defaulted to Shift + AltGr, was disabled. It is no longer available in the keyboard settings GUI either. How can I set the com...
Problem I can rotate output, but it does not fill screen. Instead it rotates in place so that the right side of the screen goes off the monitor. xrandr --output HDMI-2 --auto --mode 1920x1080 --...
