Ubuntu Xenial Xerus 16.04 Linux ISO image download with zsync

zsync is a very handy download tool if you would like to keep your Ubuntu Xenial Xerus ISO image up to date without the need to re-download and entire ISO image every time there was an update. This is especially true with a daily build Ubuntu Xenial Xerus ISO images or if you have a limited download speed or bandwidth. In this case thezsync will allow you to download only that part of the ISO image which has been changed since your last download.

Prerequisites

To get begin let’s start by installation of zsync package:

# apt-get install zsync

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Ubuntu – The headers for the current running kernel were not found. – Solution

Symptoms

The following message appears during the building stage of VirtualBox Guest Additions:

Building the VirtualBox Guest Additions kernel modules
The headers for the current running kernel were not found. If the following
module compilation fails then this could be the reason.

Solution

First check whether your system includes kernel headers matching your currently running kernel. For example:

# dpkg --get-selections | grep linux-headers
linux-headers-3.13.0-53                         install
linux-headers-3.13.0-53-generic                 install
linux-headers-generic                           install
# uname -r
3.13.0-53-generic

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How to install Wine on Ubuntu Linux 64bit

The following linux command procedure can be used to install Wine the Microsoft Windows Compatibility Layer (Binary Emulator and Library) on Ubuntu Linux amd64. If you are running 64bit Ubuntu Linux system in order to install Wine the i386 architecture needs to be enabled first. Otherwise any attempt to install Wine will result in:

Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 wine : Depends: wine1.6 but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

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A beginner’s introduction to snaps the universal Linux package format

Introduction

What are snaps and why you should use them? The Linux ecosystem has suffered from an old problem since the dawn of the concept of ‘distribution’, and that
problem is fragmentation. One of the biggest issues that cause this fragmentation is different package formats; I can’t run my .debs on my Fedora system or my .rpms on my
Ubuntu machine. Yes, we do have alien, which should allow the transition between the two formats, but there are two problems with this approach : there are other package
formats besides rpm and deb and besides, alien doesn’t always work as expected. So the issue is still there, or I should say, was there. Enter snap, the universal Linux
package format, which strives to offer users and developers a single packaging format and easiness when it comes to creating new packages with the applications and libraries
that are needed, ensuring that said packages are easily shareable between distributions. Dell, Samsung and the Linux Foundation are quoted as contributors, while among
supported distributions are Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch or OpenSUSE.

This article will detail how to use snaps as a simple user, as well as instructions for developers/packagers
on how to create snaps for others to use. The OS we’re gonna use is Ubuntu 16.04, but the instructions below shouldn’t be hard to adapt to other distributions.

Snaps as a simple user

This part will give you a tour of snap from a user perspective : how to install the necessary tools and how to use them for basic, day-to-day
usage. First, you need to install snapcraft, a package that provide snap, the go-to tool for aforementioned day-to-day operations :

 $ sudo apt install snapcraft

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Deployment of Kippo SSH Honeypot on Ubuntu Linux

Introduction

Do you feel that someone is attempting to access you server? To find out, you can deploy a honeypot within your system to help you ease your paranoia by either confirming or dismissing your initial believe. As an example you can start the Kippo SSH honeypot, which allows you to monitor brute-force attempts, collect up today exploits and malware. Kippo also automatically records hacker’s shell session, which you can replay to explore various hacking techniques and later use this gathered knowledge to harden your production server. Another reason why to install a honeypot is to take away an attention from your production server. In this tutorial we will show how to deploy a Kippo SSH honeypot on the Ubuntu server.

Prerequisites

Kippo SSH honeypot is a python based application. Therefore, we need to first install python libraries:

$ sudo apt-get install python-twisted

Normally you would run you sshd service listening on default port 22. It makes sense to use this port for your SSH honeypot and thus if you already run the SSH service we need to change the default port to some other number. I would suggest not to use alternative port 2222 as its use is already generally known and it could sabotage your disguise. Let’s pick some random 4-digit number like 4632. Open your SSH /etc/ssh/sshd_config configuration file and change the Port directive from:

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Windows 7 partitioning

Dual boot Ubuntu Linux and Windows 7

Introduction

You need Windows for a program you use for work, your favorite game runs only on Windows or you are a developer that works on some cross-platform project. And of course, you can’t even think about giving up your favorite OS. Whatever the reason, you need Windows and a virtual machine won’t cut it so all you’re left with, if you don’t have a spare machine, is dual-boot. I usually recommend against multiple-boot machines, but I can’t argue with the fact that here are situations when the idea is very useful. So this is what this article is about: making sure you need a dual-boot system, acknowledging the requirements, making backups if need be and proceed. You are expected to have some experience in installing Windows as well as Linux, at least Ubuntu in this case, and some courage. But first let’s make some concepts clear.

Concepts

We don’t want to lie to you: any task that involves advanced partitioning schemes isn’t for the faint of heart. But it isn’t rocket science either, and we’re here to help you. Various operating systems have various partitioning schemes but since the partitioning concepts of the PC are so “smart”, there are some things you should know. Every OS that I know of that is installable on the PC requests a primary partition to boot from. Linux is the most flexible in this respect, as you can have its’ /boot or / on a logical partition, but I’m not so sure if your BIOS will be able to boot from it. Windows, Solaris and the BSDs absolutely demand primary partitions, with Windows being the most “oppressive” in that respect. So whenever you install a dual-boot system with Windows involved, install it first, as it won’t ask you and overwrite the MBR. If you want to dual-boot Linux and BSD or Solaris, install Linux first. Now that we settled this, we will insist you make backups if you have other partitions on the target disk, and you still need them. Our setup will start with a blank drive, and we’ll show you how it’s done.

Installing Windows 7

As said, you need to install Windows first, and this is more than an advice, and it doesn’t apply only to Windows 7 either. We suggest you don’t try over-complicated setups, because your chances of having a system actually up and running in decent time are decreasing rapidly that way. Take note that this article is not a step-by-step how-to on installing Windows 7 and/or Ubuntu. We will only refer to the parts that involve partitioning for a successful dual-boot experience. So, when you will get to Windows’ partitioning screen, here’s a screenshot for you to get an idea:

Windows 7 partitioning

So, since Windows asks for a minimal primary partition size of more than 12 GB (!) , I gave it that, it auto-created it’s system one and left me the rest of the disk empty and blank. After installing finished successfully, I was prepared for the tricky part: installing Linux. No, I’m just kidding, it’s as simple as it can be.

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installation of spotify music client on on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Linux

Installation of Spotify client on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Linux

This short config will show you how to install Spotify client on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Linux. Let’s start by adding a spotify repository:

echo 'deb http://repository.spotify.com stable non-free' >> /etc/apt/sources.list
apt-key adv --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 --recv-keys 13B00F1FD2C19886
apt-get update

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Hubot basic commands

How to install and use Hubot on Ubuntu Linux

Introduction

If you ever wanted to have a personal robot then you are reading a correct article. This tutorial is a brief demonstration on how easily you can configure your personal or company robot, then soon after, connect it with one of available adapters like: shell, campfire, hipchat, irc, gtalk or skype. In this tutorial I’m going to teach you how to set up Hubot with its default adapter Shell. Although it’s the simplest option, it’s the solid foundation for your future modifications.
Correctly configured and connected Hubot can dramatically improve and reduce employee efficiency as well as give your company lots of fun. Additionally, It can provide your team with the newest rss feeds or send crucial notifications. Keep in mind, that Hubot is developed by Github team, so it’s next pros for spending a while on investigations.

So what is Hubot ?

Hubot is open source, written in CoffeeScript on Node.js. It can be easily deployed on PaaS platforms like Heroku. Hubot comes preinstalled with several core scripts like math, ping, help, translate or youtube.
Additionally you can visit community repository which provides tons of other interesting scripts (i.a: ascii, coin, deploy, dice or jenkins). If this list still doesn’t meet your expectations, feel free to write your own script using CoffeScript.
As a starter I wanted to present few examples which I hope will bring some light to this topic.

Hubot> hubot convert me 56MB KB
Hubot> 57 344 kilobytes
Hubot> hubot mustache me linuxconfig.org
Hubot> http://mustachify.me/2?src=http://img1.tuicool.com/aqi6r52.jpg#.png
Hubot> hubot translate me praktyczne
Hubot> "praktyczne" is Polish for " Practical "
Hubot> hubot image me niagara falls
Hubot> http://www.niagarafallslive.com/images/HorseshoefromSkylon.jpg#.png
Hubot> hubot convert me 5 years days
Hubot> 1 826.21099 days
Hubot> hubot math me 2(3+7)/4
Hubot> 5
Hubot> hubot die
Hubot> Goodbye, cruel world.

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Legacy Bios, UEFI and SecureBoot ready Ubuntu Live image customization

This article will provide you with a core information on how to create boot-able Ubuntu Live customized isohybrid image to get you started with your own Ubuntu distro spin-off. The output image will be amd64 customized Ubuntu live image, capable to boot in all three boot modes: Legacy Bios, UEFI and SecureBoot.

The article will not get into much detail about how to perform the actual squashfs system customization. However, instead it will concentrate on all the steps regarding unpacking the official Ubuntu Iso and putting all parts back together to produce bootable isohybrid image supporting Legacy Bios, UEFI and SecureBoot modes.

Prerequisites

As always we start by prerequisites and optional package installation:

$ sudo apt-get install dumpet xorriso squashfs-tools gddrescue

Downloading Ubuntu ISO image

The first part of creating your own customized Linux distro based on the Ubuntu Linux is to download the official Ubuntu ISO image. Create a new directory custom-ubuntu to hold all files required by this project. EFI and its SecureBoot feature is not supported on i386 architecture so download any amd64 version of the Ubuntu ISO image and store it within custom-ubuntu directory:

$ mkdir custom-ubuntu
$ cd custom-ubuntu/
$ wget http://url/to/ubuntu/image.iso

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How to Install Java on Ubuntu Linux

Introduction

How to install Java on Ubuntu Linux? Although, this topic is a quite self explanatory to an experienced Linux system administrator it still creates lots of confusion for beginners in terms what version of Java I need, how do I install it or how to change my system settings between multiple different types of Java versions. The aim of this short article is to shed some light on this topic as we will show how to install Java JDK for both Oracle and as well as OpenJDK.

What is Java

In short, Java is an object-oriented programming language. The current owner of the official implementation of the Java SE ( Standard Edition ) platform is Oracle Corporation. The free and open source implementation of the Java Platform SE is called OpenJDK and OpenJRE. There is also another Java version maintained by IBM. IBM provides also both JDK and JRE. Currently only OpenJDK and OpenJRE Java versions are available via standard Ubuntu repository.

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