Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4 Beta

Red Hat, Inc. has announced the availability of the beta release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4: "Today, Red Hat announced the beta availability of the next minor release of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4. This release includes a broad set of updates to the existing feature set and provides rich new functionality in the areas of identity management, file system, virtualization, management, storage and productivity tools. System Security Services Daemon (SSSD) enhancements extend the interoperability experience with Microsoft Active Directory by providing centralized identity access control for Linux/Unix clients in a heterogeneous environment. pNFS client remains in technology preview, however, now delivers performance improvements with the addition of Direct I/O for faster data access." See the press release and the release notes for more details. RHEL customers wishing to test this release can download the installation DVD images from Red Hat's Software & Download Center.

Check for Bad Sectors on an Internal/External Hard Disk in Ubuntu/Linux Mint

In this tip, we will see how to use badblocks to scan/test your hard disk partitions (including USB hard drivers) for bad blocks (or bad sectors). Bad sectors are sectors that are damaged and cannot be used to store data on a hard drive. Badblocks will detect all bad blocks on your hard disk and store them in a text file so that you can use it with e2fsck to configure your OS to not store your data in these damaged sectors.

This tip can be run in the following Ubuntu/Linux Mint distributions:

• Ubuntu 12.10/12.04/11.10 or older
• Linux Mint 14/13/12 or older

WARNING: We are not liable for any mis-use of the commands given below. Use them at your own risk!

Getting Started

To know the names of mounted hard drives and USB devices on your system, run this command:

sudo fdisk -l

To scan your hard disk for damaged sectors, run this command:

sudo badblocks -v /dev/sda1 > bad-sectors.txt

Repalce /dev/sda1 with your own device name. The text file containing all bad blocks to be generated will be named bad-sectors.txt; it will be created in the current terminal location. When the scan is complete and if bad sectors are reported, you can use the generated text file with the e2fsck command line utility using this command (hard disk must be unmounted):

sudo e2fsck -l bad-sectors.txt  /dev/sda1

You system will now ignore all bad sectors detected by badblocks. For more help about badblocks and e2fsck, run one of these commands from the terminal:

man badblocks

or

man e2fsck

Tor Browser Bundle (2.3.25-1) Released - PPA Installation Available For Ubuntu/Linux Mint

Tor Browser Bundle for Linux has been updated recently to version 2.3.25-1 which brings more improvements and security updates. Here are the packages updated in this latest release:

• Tor 0.2.3.25 (with openssl-1.0.1c, zlib-1.2.7 and libevent-2.0.20-stable)

• Firefox 10.0.11esr

• Vidalia 0.2.21

• NoScript 2.6.2

• HTTPS-Everywhere 3.0.4

The PPA is available for the following Ubuntu/Linux Mint distributions:

• Ubuntu 12.10/12.04/11.10
• Linux Mint 14/13/12

Tor Browser Bundle Installation

Open the terminal and install Tor Browser Bundle 2.3.25-1 with these commands under a 32-bit system:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:upubuntu-com/tor 

sudo apt-get update 

sudo apt-get install tor-browser 

sudo chown $USER -R ~/.tor-browser/

Under a 64-bit system, run these commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:upubuntu-com/tor64 

sudo apt-get update 

sudo apt-get install tor-browser 

sudo chown $USER -R ~/.tor-browser/

You can start the application from the Unity dash:

Or start it from the terminal with this command:

tor-browser

Uninstalling Tor Browser Bundle

To remove Tor Browser Bundle from your system, run the following commands:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:upubuntu-com/tor

or

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:upubuntu-com/tor64

sudo apt-get remove tor-browser 

sudo apt-get update

For manual installation, you can download the appropriate package from here.

Keep Your Home Directory Clean With Mundus Under Ubuntu/Linux Mint

Mundus has been updated recently to version 2.2.0 and installation via PPA is available for users of Ubuntu/Linux Mint. Mundus is a tool with GUI that helps users clean up their home directory by removing configuration files left by uninstalled programs. You can also configure the tool to backup those files either manually or automatically if you need to store them for later use.

Here are some of the new features and changes in this latest release:

• Parallel downloads of modules

• Module verification with hash

• Many bug fixes

The PPA below supports the following Ubuntu/Linux Mint distributions:

• Ubuntu 12.10/12.04/11.10
• Linux Mint 14/13

Mundus 2.2.0 Installation

Open the terminal and run these commands:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:sebikul/mundus-stable 

sudo apt-get update 

sudo apt-get install mundus

Mundus 2.2.0 Removal

To uninstall Mundus 2.2.0, issue these commands:

sudo add-apt-repository --remove ppa:sebikul/mundus-stable 

sudo apt-get remove mundus 

sudo apt-get update

For any bug encountered, you may report it here.