Reset GRUB Default System After OS Installation
Filed under: command line, HowTo, linux, Linux Mint, Ubuntu
From time to time I like to test out a new Linux distribution or just an updated version of my current distribution. I've created extra partitions on my hard drive for these test installations. All of the distributions I've tried so far require a boot loader to be installed to the hard drive as part of the process. This creates the minor problem of the test installation taking over the boot process. I prefer to have my main Linux installation handle the booting process. The following steps will show how to hand boot control back to your main Linux installation with the GRUB 2 boot loader. Read more
Keeping Track of My IP Address
My main computer at home acts as a file and media server for the whole house, so it's pretty much turned on all the time. There are times when I'm away from home that I want to remotely access or download a file from my home computer. My home internet service uses a dynamic IP address and every once in a while we get a short interruption to our power that forces the modem to reset. Of course, when that happens, the modem pulls a new IP address. I thought it would be handy if I could come up with a script to keep track of my current IP address for me. Read more
Send Gmail from the Linux Command Line
In this post I'm going to show how to send an email from the Linux command line through your Gmail account. This can be handy if you're a command line junkie. The real power, however, is in being able to send an email automatically from a script. I'll be doing another post where I use this in a script to notify me when something has changed on my system. For now though, I'll just show the setup so you can send an email from the command line. This process has been tested on Ubuntu 12.04 and Linux Mint 13. Read more
Install SSH and SFTP on Ubuntu or Linux Mint
If you've been using Linux or Unix for a long time, then you're probably familiar remote technologies like rlogin, FTP, and Telnet. These are all wonderful technologies for using a computer remotely, but they are notoriously insecure due to your login credentials being transmitted over the Internet in plain text format. Read more
Fixing Variable Bit Rate MP3′s With vbrfix
Some MP3 encoders fail to create the proper file headers when encoding variable bit rate MP3 files. When that happens, the song length displayed will often be be incorrect when playing the song back. One of the ways this can be handled is by adding a Xing header to the MP3 file. One tool that's available on Linux to do this is vbrfix.
To install vbrfix in Ubuntu, first make sure that the universe repository is enabled in your software sources. Then you can install it through one of the graphical package managers, or from the command line with: Read more


