Saidar - another system monitoring tool

I have written about several linux system monitoring tools that you can run on the terminal like htop and nmon. Today's article is about Saidar, another text-based tool that you can use to monitor your Linux system or your Linux dedicated server.

Saidar is a curses-based application to display system statistics. It use the libstatgrab library, which provides cross platform access to statistics about the system on which it's run. Reported statistics include CPU, load, processes, memory,swap, network input and output and disks activities along with their free space.

Here is the screenshot of Saidar in action:

To install Saidar in Ubuntu or other similar Debian-based distro, just run the following command:

 sudo apt-get install saidar  

To use Saidar, all you need is to open the terminal and type "saidar"

"NVIDIA: FUCK YOU!" - said Linus Torvalds

Linus Torvalds is always a pretty cool guy, he created an amazing Operating System, is marrying to a Karate champion and wasnt afraid of anything to raise the middle finger and say the "F" word in a public meeting.

Recently at the Aalto Center for Entrepreneurship in Otaniemi, Finland, when asked by one of the attendees about NVIDIA's hardware support and lack of open-source driver document, Linus called NVIDIA "the single worst company we have ever dealt with" and ended his comment with "NVIDIA: FUCK YOU!".

Here is this interesting video on youtube. If you dont have time to watch the whole video, skip to 49:00 to watch the coolest part.

Liberté Linux 2012.2

Maxim Kammerer has announced the release of Liberté Linux 2012.2, a secure, lightweight and easy-to-use Gentoo-based live medium with the primary purpose of enabling anyone to communicate safely and covertly in hostile environments: "Release: Liberté Linux 2012.2. A new release has been published on SourceForge. Summary of important changes since the previous release: no executables with PaX exceptions any more; better boot media support (including fixes for SD and USB 3.0); New microhttpd-based cables communication implementation (no protocol changes) - nginx / spawn-fcgi / fcgiwrap integration is gone; VIPS image manipulation toolkit (including nip2 GUI); fixed key retrieval in GNU Privacy Assistant; touchscreen calibration utility. In addition, many packages have been updated - e.g. LXPanel now has working thermal sensor support, and I2P has been upgraded to version 0.9." Here is the brief release announcement. Download: liberte-2012.2.iso (208MB), liberte-2012.2.zip (207MB).

Create your own Magic 8 Ball script

Magic 8 Ball is a toy you can use to seek advices when you are bored or need to make some tough decisions but you cannot ask anybody else, even your parents, siblings, friends or your cat. There are a lot of Magic 8 Ball tools out there, both online and offline, but you can create your own Magic 8 Ball script with your unique answers very easily.

Here is a simple Magic 8 Ball script in python, if you dont like these answer, just edit the script to add whatever answers you prefer:

#!/usr/bin/env python  
 # Magic 8 ball program  
 import random  
 answers = ["As I see it, yes","It is certain","It is decidedly so","Most likely","Outlook good","Signs point to yes","Without a doubt","Yes","Yes definitely","You may rely on it","Better not tell you now","Cannot predict now","Concentrate and ask again","Don't count on it","My reply is no","My sources say no","Outlook not so good","Very doubtful"]  
 raw_input("Hello candy-ass, what you need to know?\n")  
 response = random.choice(answers)  
 print response +'\n'  
 while (True):  
  raw_input("Any other question?\n")  
  print random.choice(answers) + '\n'  

To use this script, just copy paste the script into a text file and save it as a python script with the .py extension. For example, my script is m8.py and I saved it on the desktop. Next, you will need to make the script executable:

 sudo chmod +x m8.py  

After that you just need to double click on the file and choose to run it in the terminal:

And here is how the script works:

Upgrade PHP 5.1 to PHP 5.2

Here I will show you that, how to upgrade the standard PHP 5.1.x packages in CentOS 5.x 32-bit to the current development versions 5.2.x.

# rpm -qa |grep php

php-cli-5.1.6-27.el5_5.3
php-pdo-5.1.6-27.el5_5.3
php-5.1.6-27.el5_5.3
php-common-5.1.6-27.el5_5.3
php-mysql-5.1.6-27.el5_5.3

As long as you’re using the standard PHP packages on your CentOS server you won’t need to do anything extra. If you’re using extra PHP packages that aren’t part of the standard CentOS repositories (like php-mcrypt) you’ll have to remove them or find updated versions of them.

Now, add the development repository – CentOS-Testing.repo

# vim /etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Testing.repo

Copy/paste the following into this file:

[CentOS-testing]
name=CentOS-5 Testing
baseurl=http://dev.centos.org/centos/$releasever/testing/$basearch/
enabled=1
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=http://dev.centos.org/centos/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-testing
includepkgs=php*

Now you can use yum to update the PHP packages on your system:

# yum update

Once yum has completed restart Apache:

# service httpd restart

To verify the update is working create a simple testphp.php in your www directory with the following source code:

  phpinfo();
?>

and open it in a web browser. The new PHP version should be reflected at the top of the page.

Or

# php -v
PHP 5.2.10 (cli) (built: Nov 13 2009 11:24:03)
Copyright (c) 1997-2009 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2009 Zend Technologies

Download Nvidia GeForce 302.17 Driver for Linux

Nvidia proudly announced yesterday, June 15th, the immediate availability for download of the 302.17 version of its graphics driver for Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD operating systems.

Nvidia 302.17 video driver brings lots of changes, new features and many improvements over previous versions, which radically improves the overall performance of the driver for Linux systems.

There are too many changes to enumerate here, but if you’re interested in more details about this release, see the complete list of changes in the official changelog.


Download Nvidia Display Driver 302.17 for Linux 32-bit

Download Nvidia Display Driver 302.17 for Linux 64-bit


Download Nvidia Display Driver 302.17 for FreeBSD

Download Nvidia Display Driver 302.17 for FreeBSD 64


Download Nvidia Display Driver 302.17 for Solaris