In this tutorial we will show how easy it is to enable Adobe Flash player to your Linux Mint 12 Live CD. As usual, please click each screenshot for a larger view.

Linux Mint 12 Live CD -no flash

First step is to boot up your Live Disc and open Firefox. This screenshot shows what will happen by default if you try to view content that relies on Adobe Flash to display.

Type mint-flashplugin-11 into Software Manager

Well, obviously that is going to severely limit the functionality of your Live CD, so the next step is install Flash the easiest way I’ve found. Click on Menu and choose the Software Manager (the yellow star). In the search box, type mint-flashplugin-11  then click on it in the list.

Click Install

Once you’ve clicked on the mint-flashplugin-11 that appears in the list, you’ll see the next window that will have the Install button. Click Install and the Flash player will install to the Live CD environment.

Now, once it’s installed, close the Software Manager and reload Firefox. Voila! Your Youtube page you were trying to watch earlier is now working!

Linux Mint running Firefox with Flash installed

That’s really all there is to it. If you follow these steps you will find installing Flash much easier than trying to click the “Missing Plugins” button that first appears.

©2012 Linux.Bihlman.com

post written using Firefox on the Linux Mint 12 Live CD!

By Clyde E. Boom

When you are a new user and trying to get Linux training, you need to learn how to use commands.

What you most often need is a clear, detailed example showing you exactly how to use a command.

And you’ll often hear seasoned Linux users say (over and over again) “just see the man page” for a command. This has become a quick and easy way out of really trying to explain how to use the command.

Linux man pages are useful if you already know how to use a command, but extremely frustrating if you are new to the OS (operating system).

Linux Training Tips: Linux man pages are practically useless for someone new. In fact, they’re almost as easy as trying to read hieroglyphics. Great for the ancient Egyptians – lots of really nice pictures, but really hard to read.

Here’s Why Man Pages Don’t Work for Someone New to Linux – And What You Can Do About It

“Man” stands for “manual”, as in “software documentation and you run the Linux man command to display the contents of a help page (file).

So, if you need help on a Linux command (or software program), you just run the man command to get instant online help.

Sounds great – but it’s not great for a new user.

And it would be great if the people that knew how to use Linux, didn’t expect the people that are new to understand man pages!

Linux Training Tips: The Linux System Administration concepts, commands and tasks covered here apply to ALL other Linux distributions, including: Red Hat, Fedora, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Edubuntu, Slackware, Debian, SUSE and openSUSE.

Here’s how to run the Linux man command and get help on the grep command:

$ man grep

This displays the contents of the help page (file) for the grep command.

Linux Training Tips: There are several options of this command that can be used to display information on multiple pages. But hey, how do I get help on this command? You guessed it – just run: man man

Now, the grep command is pretty amazing in what it can do. It has lots of options and different ways of getting tons of useful information from a Linux system – but you’d never know it from looking at the man page.

The man page for any Linux command just shows you: a vague description of the command, a cryptic statement showing how to run the command, and a long alphabetic listing of the options. There’s no way of knowing which options are the most useful and most commonly used.

And the worst part is that it’s almost impossible to find an example of a command.

In the thousands of man pages, there are almost never any examples of how to use a command. And seeing examples of a command (and then running the command) – is the best way to learn how to use Linux.

Instead of trying to decipher a cryptic man page, imagine watching a clearly narrated Linux training videos. Easy training at it’s best!

With this Linux training method you get to see and hear how to use a command – or learn a new concept.

You see every step in the process – and whenever you need to think about something, or want to try a command you’ve just seen, you just click pause and try it yourself!

And now I would like to offer you free access to my Linux Commands Training Mini-Course, a 7 Lesson, Daily Mini-Course, including the free Linux Commands ebook and Linux audio podcasts – showing you how to get started learning how to use Linux commands.

You can get your instant access at: http://www.LinuxCommandsTrainingCourse.com

From Clyde Boom – The Easy Linux Training Guy – Easy, self-paced Linux training – In Plain English!

5 Useful Unix DD Command Examples

By Erik Schweigert

dd is a common Unix program whose primary purpose is the low-level copying and conversion of raw data. You can backup whole hard drives, create a large file filled with only zeros, create and modify image files at specific points, and even do conversions to upper case.

To display dd‘s help simply enter:

$dd –help

Alright, lets get to the juicy stuff.

1. Make an ISO of a your favourite CD just for backing up purposes with dd:

dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/home/erik/myCD.iso bs=2048 conv=sync

Breaking down the commands:

• if is “input file”, so in this case our cdrom drive at /dev/cdrom
• of is “output file”, in this case myCD.iso
• bs is “block size”, in this case 2048 bytes per block
• conv is for conversion, in this case we are using “sync” which tells DD to execute synchronized input and output, this is needed for the CD-ROM as we want to read a whole block to ensure no data loss occurs.

2. Duplicate one hard disk partition to another hard disk with dd:

dd if=/dev/sda1 of=/dev/sdb1 bs=4096 conv=noerror

In this case everything is the same as example 1 but our conversion methods states that noerror should be executed, this tells DD to continue after read errors.

3. Fill a file with 1MB of random bytes with dd:

erik@debian:~$dd if=/dev/urandom bs=1024 count=1000 of=fun.bin

1000+0 records in

1000+0 records out

1024000 bytes (1.0 MB) copied, 0.198349 s, 5.2 MB/s

This time I stated that our block size is 1024 bytes, and we are going to make 1000 of them sequentially. I also used the built-in kernel device urandom which provides random bytes.

4. Skip first 128K of input file then write remaining with dd:

dd if=/home/erik/fun.bin skip=128k bs=1 of=/home/erik/fun2.bin

The skip command tells DD to move passed the (in this case) 128k of data infun.bin then write the rest to fun2.bin. This can be handy if you have a large file that needs to be written across more than one partition. For instance, if you had 3 partitions each 128k. You wouldn’t want to write the same 128k to each partition, you would want to write the first 128k to partition 1, then from 128k-256k of the file to partition 2 and so on.

5. Using dd to convert a file to uppercase:

dd if=erik.txt of=erik_up.txt conv=ucase

Finally, we use conv again to do a conversion. In this case we convert with the specifier of ucase.

What is your favourite use of dd?

Erik is an avid Linux user and has experience with a wide variety of Linux/Unix based systems. In his spare time he likes writing software (C/C++/Perl/PHP/BASH/Python) and experimenting with different Linux distributions. He is starting to build a wide variety of articles Unix driven (what a surprise) that hope to inform those just getting into Linux on his website.

http://www.lainoox.com

GNU-Linux Tools – Regular Expressions Basics

By Rand Whitehall

A regular expression, (also known as regexp or regex) helps us match a string of text. They can also match specific words, groups of words or characters.

Now, by themselves, regexps don’t do much. But combined with Linux search tools, they are very powerful. Here we’ll use the grep tool with regexps.

Now let’s take a look at an example. Say you wanted to find all the lines in a text file that started with the word “Joe” in a text file called bob.txt. You really can’t do this kind of thing with a typical GUI search tool. But with grep and regexp, it’s easy. Well, easy once you get the hang of it!

Our file bob.txt contains six lines:

Bob is a great guy

Unlike his buddy, Joe.

Bob likes to work.

Joe is a real bum.

Joe likes to watch other people work.

Jim is my hero.

James is not.

Here’s the grep command:

grep ‘^Joe ‘* bob.txt

Output:

Joe is a real bum.

Joe likes to watch other people work.

Notice how only the lines that start with Joe are printed?

The ‘^Joe’* part is the regular expression.

The ^ means start at the beginning of the line.

“Joe” means search for the word Joe.

The * is a wildcard meaning anything can come after Joe.

What if we wanted to match all lines in which the second letter is “o”?

In this case we need to use the. (period), which tells grep to search for any single character.

grep ‘^.o’ bob.txt

Output:

Bob is a great guy.

Bob likes to work.

Joe is a real bum.

Joe likes to watch other people work.

The [] brackets, are used to match a range of characters. For example, we could search for any lines that start with a “J” then any letter between a-m.

grep ‘^J[a-m]‘ bob.txt

Output:

Jim is my hero.

James is not.

Now, even though Jim starts with a “J”, it is excluded because the second character is not between a-m.

I hope this gets you more familiar using regexps. Please be aware that there are several versions of grep and some use slightly different regexp expressions. If you find a great regexp on the internet and it doesn’t work on your system, it may be because it’s not compatible with your particular version of grep. We’ve only touched the surface here, but I hope this gives some understanding of regexps and a hint at how powerful they can be.

Rand’s Adjustable Safety Razor website is a fantastic resource for old-school double-edge razor fans. Check out the Merkur safety razor page for info on Merkur’s adjustable safety razors.

By Clyde E. Boom

Linux Commands – The great thing about Linux commands is that they are virtually identical from one Linux distribution (version) to another. So the way the real pros do Linux administration is to work at the Linux command line and run Linux commands.

Learning how to run a Linux command can be very difficult for someone new to Linux, so here are some Linux tips that will help you to learn how to use Linux commands when working at the Linux command line prompt.

There are three main parts of a Linux command:

1. The Linux command name

2. Options that can be used with the Linux command

3. The “item(s)” that the Linux command is being run “on”

When you run a Linux command, spaces are used between: the Linux command name, the command options and the “item” the command is being run “on”. The “item” could be a Linux directory, file, user or some other Linux software component.

For example, you run the Linux command named ls (for list) “on” a Linux directory to see a list of files in the directory. You run the Linux command named rm (remove) “on” a Linux directory to remove the directory from the Linux file system.

To run a Linux command, you type in the name of the command, and any other parts of the command, such as options, and press the Enter key.

You can see an example of the Linux command that is used to create a new Linux user below. The useradd command is being run “on” the bthatcher user name to create this Linux user.

Linux Tips: Linux commands are run at the Linux command line prompt and this prompt is shown as ]# at the left of the command. You don’t type in the prompt, you type the Linux command at the right of the prompt.

Linux Tips: The Linux command prompt may also appear as: ]$ or as another symbol, instead of # or $.

]# useradd -c “Becky Thatcher” bthatcher

This Linux command creates a new Linux user named bthatcher with the full name of “Becky Thatcher”. The -c (for comment) option is used with this command to add the full name as a comment to the Linux user name of bthatcher.

One of the easiest and best ways to get Linux training is to see Linux commands being run in Linux video tutorials. With this method – you see, hear and do.

With a Linux video tutorial, you see and hear how to run a Linux command and see and hear a description of the output of the command. You can also pause the video so you can run the Linux command yourself!

Copyright ©  Clyde Boom

Clyde Boom, Author and Expert Trainer with 20+ Years of Training Successes. Explains intricate technical matters in an easy-to- understand, non-technical manner, with tens of thousands of software and hardware learners into masters.

You can watch Free Sample I Learn Linux Video Tutorials at http://www.iLearnLinux.com and get over the steep Linux learning curve.

Sign up for Free I Learn Linux News to receive technical tips, info on new video samples and important updates on Linux.

You need to learn Linux the easy way to get that new job, qualify for that next promotion, earn a hefty raise, get Linux certification, or keep your current job because your company is trying to save on software licensing fees (eza). Watch, do, and learn!

Best Beginners Linux Commands

By Dennis Frank Parker

There are many common Linux commands that will be to your benefit, if you ever even use your command line software in Linux. Many average users just use the graphical user interface instead which usually provides many tools and front-ends to Linux common commands. This Linux system tutorial on control commands will help the average user in the event X server accidents, fails, is not properly designed, etc. So stay with me for some of the more prevalent Linux bash instructions.

Some of the more Best free Linux tutorials. A Linux system Unix shell commands tend to be listed below for more information on each command you can always manage man [command] and this will bring up the manage for that command, you can also click on the requires listed for some frequent examples and format.

First before I list them virtually any syntax in [] will be needing some kind of input of your stuff normally, for example:

guy [command] you will want to actually change [command] with the shell order you want to read the guy page for: gentleman ls will give you the man page for the Linux covering command ls.

• linux ls command – is used to list files on the filesystem.

• File – command that will check the filetype, this will output to you what the file type is no matter what the extension is.

• Mkdir command – used to make directories on the filesystem.

• cd- is used for changing into a different directory in the Linux shell

• cp – is the Linux copy command, this shell command is used to copy files|directories from one location on the filesystem to another.

• Mv – the Linux terminal command to move files|directories. Like the cp command, but deletes the original source.

• rm- shell command in Linux to remove files|directories.

• Linux cat command- this command is used to print|view the contents of a file to the screen|terminal.

• Grep – command used to search|find contents of a file and print|view on your terminal|screen.

• Linux more and less – commands that will allow you to read output of files, unlike cat that will output the entire file at once, even if it is too large for your terminal more and less will output only as many lines as the shell you are in can output, and allow you to scroll through the file contents.

• Chown – Linux command to change ownership of a file|directory.

• Linux chmod – command that allows you to change mode of user access|permissions, basically set read, write, and execute permissions.

• Linux ps – lists the current running processes on your Linux system

• Linux kill and killall commands – used to kill|terminate running processes

We Provide Best free Linux tutorials and Cbt nuggets training.