Posts Tagged ‘package’
Thursday, December 22nd, 2011 Do you remember the old arcade spaceship shooter Xenon 2 Megablast? I do 😉 For all those who are too young to remember, here are two screenshots:
![Xenon2 Main game Screen PC DOS ver](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/geki2-geki3-linux-screenshots/Xenon2_main_game_screen_pc.png)
![Xenon 2 megablast PC DOS level screenshot](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/geki2-geki3-linux-screenshots/xenon_2_-_megablast_pc_screenshot.png)
Even though Xenon 2 Megablast original can now be played using dosbox DOS emulator. Its interesting to mention I've found two Linux games that more or less can be qualitified to resemble Xenon 2.
The games are Native Free Software games and existing in package repositories of most Linux distributions and *BSD port trees.
Geki 2 and Geki 3 are of a less quality to Xenon but still, the game experience is nice and is among the Arcade shooter games to bring you fun in the boring days if you're on GNU / Linux or FreeBSD Free OS platforms.
Installing Geki2 and Geki3 on Debian and Ubuntu Linux is standard with apt:
debian:~# apt-get install geki2 geki3
...
On Debian GNU / Linux , after installed the games would not create GNOME Applications -> Games -> game startup shortcuts, however the game startups will get added in GNOME Applications Menu under:
Applications -> Debian -> Games -> Action -> Geki 2
and
Applications -> Debian -> Games -> Action -> Geki 3
The games can be launched also manually with commands:
geki2
![Geki 2 Linux Xenon 2 like game Main Menu](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/geki2-geki3-linux-screenshots/Geki2_Linux_Xenon_like_gameMain_Menu.png)
or
geki3
![Geki3 gameplay screenshot Debian Linux](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/geki2-geki3-linux-screenshots/geki3_gameplay_screenshot.png)
Geki 2 is a way closer to Xenon 2 as it has similar look and feel and the same vertical direction the spaceship is navigated.
In Geki 3 still the shoot 'em' up spaceship like arcade is present, however instead of penguin you have to fly a flying penguin, as well as the spaceship move direction is horizontal.
Both the games have the same sound and music effects. The game music and effects are not of top quality but are not bad. In general the games surely gives some of the arcade atmosphere.
![Geki 2 GNU Linux Xenon 2 like vertical shooter arcade](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/geki2-geki3-linux-screenshots/geki2_gnu_linux_level1_screenshot.png)
Geki 2 Xenon 2 Megablast like on Debian Linux
In the tradition of the arcade games at the end of each level in both games you face the Level Boss Enemy, you should destroy.
![Geki3 Level boss Debian Linux Screenshot](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/geki2-geki3-linux-screenshots/geki3_level1_boss_linux_screenshot.png)
As you can see in below's screenshot the overall graphics of GEKI 3 is poorer while compared to GEKI 2
still GEKI 2 gampley is fun and addictive and I would say not less enjoyable than GEKI 2.
At times I even think that Geki 3 is more fun because it is more dynamic.
Maybe other reason, why I enjoyed more Geki 3 is also the fact that Geki 2 is a way harder to play. Dying only 3 times in the game you get GAME OVER and the next game you're started from the beginning of the same level you died in …
![Geki2 Linux different shooting Screenshot](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/geki2-geki3-linux-screenshots/geki2_linux_screenshot.png)
Something really annoying that affects both the games; there is no option to play them in Fullscreen mode! ARGH!
Game controls for Geki2 and Geki3 are identical as follows:
Up - Arrow up key
Down - Down arrow key
Right - Right arrow key
left - Left arrow key
Shoot - z or Space
Pause - s
Geki2 and Geki3 are fun and can kill some time, but definitely aren't that (professional) as other spaceship shoot'em'up arcades for Linux and BSD. Games like Starfighter , Critical Mass or powermanga .
Lest that they are two worthy to install and play on your Free Software OS.
Tags: action gt, arcade shooter, atmosphere, boring days, BSD, debian gnu, Dying, Free, free software games, fun, game experience, game music, game startup, Geki, Gnome, gnome applications, gnu linux, gt games, key, level, linux games, megablast, menu, most linux distributions, move, music effects, nbsp, option, os platforms, package, penguin, reason, screenshot, shooter, shooter games, software, something, Space, spaceship, startup, time, Ubuntu, ubuntu linux, vertical direction, xenon 2
Posted in Entertainment, Games Linux, Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, December 14th, 2011 ![Abe's Amazing Adventure Game menu screenshot, A Dangerous Dave like Linux arcade game](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/abe_s_amazing_adventure_game_menu_screen_linux_arcade_screenshot.png)
While looking over the installable packages in System -> Administration -> Software Center on my my Debian powered notebook, I’ve accidently rolled over a game called Abe’s Amazing Adventure , as a big oldschool arcade game fan, I’ve immediately clicked on Install being impatient to see the overall game atmosphere and gameplay as well as storyline.
Abe’s Amazing Adventure is available under the debian package name abe and can be installed by issuing:
debian:~# apt-get install abe
I was pleasently surprised to find out the gameplay and the overall game feels like the golden classical arcade game Dangerous Dave
For youngsters who never played the amazing absolute killing arcade ! as well as for people who feel nostalgic about Dangerous Dave 2 here is a nice gameplay screenshot:
![Dangerous Dave 2 screenshot](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/dangerous_dave2.gif)
Here is also a screenshot of Abe’s Amazing Adventure gameplay:
![Abes Amazing Adventure Dangerous Dave like Linux / BSD Arcade Game like screenshot](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/abes_amazing_adventure_arcade_game_screenshot.jpg)
You can see the great resemblense between the two games even by the screenshot; In both games you have to collect keys to open doors and diamonds which gives you points. Of course there are some differences as you can see Abe’s Amazing Adventure ‘s graphics has some additional items like Baloons with which your main character can fly over distances (for a limited time). There is also more diversity in the enemy types you face on the road to unlock the different doors. The game has also a red stars which while taken saves the game so if you quit the game on next game load up starting the game automatically starts you from the last save point.
![Abes Amazing Adventure Star gameplay Screenshot on Debian](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/abes_amazing_adventure_star_gameplay_screenshot_debian.png)
The ( 6 ) baloons seen in the screenshot on the left upper corner can be used occasionally to fly some distance by pressing Enter .
There are health recovery kits one can take to recover, some health damaged by hitting obstacles on the way.
The game story is short but entertaining, just like the general game feel:
The game music is relaxing and more or less in the spirit of arcade games, the keyboard interactivety is pretty good as well.One thing I see can be improved to make the game better are the graphics, they’re a bit childish and too cubical, where sometimes some more general characters and obstacles animation will give the game a better look. Anyways for the year 2003 and for a free software arcade the game is not bad. For children and growing kids the game is just perfect, even for big kids like me its good to spend an hour of jump and run fun 😉
Tags: Administration, Amazing, animation, arcade game, atmosphere, baloons, center, character, course, dangerous dave, debian package, distance, fan, freebsd, fun, game, game atmosphere, game fan, game load, game story, gnu linux, gt software, health, health recovery, img, Install, interactivety, jump, left, linux freebsd, name, oldschool, package, quot, red stars, resemblense, road, s graphics, screenshot, software, software center, story, storyline, substitute, system, time, two games, way, year, youngsters
Posted in Entertainment, Games Linux, Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, December 14th, 2011 ![Unetbootin Universal GNU / Linux and FreeBSD USB installer](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/unetbootin_universal_GNU_Linux_and_FreeBSD_usb_installer.png)
UNetbootin is a nice easy to use Free Software Universal mutli OS program that makes creation of Bootable USB Stick Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and other free operating systems a piece of cake
UNetbootin support the three major operating system architectures Windows, Mac OS X and GNU / Linux .
In Debian and Ubuntu based distributions Unetbootin is available as a deb binary package:
debian:~$ dpkg -l |grep -i 'usb' |grep -i 'install'
ii unetbootin 471-2
installer of Linux/BSD distributions to a partition or USB drive
To install it with apt:
debian:~# apt-get install unetbootin
...
debian:~# unetbootin
Alternatively for all those who prefer to run it via the GNOME Application menu follow to the menu path:
Applications -> System Tools -> Unetbootin
If the program is launched with non privileged account (like via GNOME Application menu), in order to to properly tamper with any connected USB Flash drive you will be asked about the super user password.
The shipped uniboot version in current Debian stable version Squeeze is 471-2 is a bit outdated. For everyone eager to use the latest version which as of time of writting is 565 check out UnetBootin’s Official Homepage on SourceForge
Installing the distributed binary of unetbootin downloadable from its website is a trivial one. Simply download the file from the Download (for Linux) link and run the binary unetbootin-linux-565:
debian:~$ ./unetbootin-linux-565
There is one annoying thing about the latest downloadable (static compiled) unetbootin version, it was built to run using KDE’s QT library and therefore the interface that poped up while trying it was KDE like, pitily did not take advantage of my native GNOME GTK2 library :
Though this little note, unetbootin developers has done a truly great job! I tried unetbootin and was more than pleasently surprised that it prepares bootable USB sticks with only 4 mouse clicks!!! 😉
The program worked out of the box without any external or additional hacks like many of the programs I daily use it just worked 😉
UNetbootin has a thoroughful list of Free Software operating system distributions in the distributions list. Many of the offered Open Source & Free Software distributions has even possibility of installing a multiple versions of the respective distro.
Here is a complete list of all the Free & Open Source Operating Systems, unetbootin program can burn and make bootable on USB stick.
- 1. Ubuntu
- 2. Debian
- 3. Fedora
- 4. PCLinuxOS
- 5. Linux Mint
- 6. Sabayon Linux
- 7. Gentoo
- 8. OpenSUSE
- 9. MEPIS
- 10. Zenwalk
- 11. Arch Linux
- 12. Slax
- 13. Dream Linux
- 14. Damn Small Linux
- 15. SliTaz
- 16. Elive
- 17. CentOS
- 18. Puppy Linux
- 19. Mandriva
- 20. FreeBSD
- 21. LinuxConsole
- 22. Frugalware Linux
- 23. NetBSD
- 24. xPUD
- 25. gNewSense
- 26. GeeXboX
- 27. Gujin
- 28. Kaspersky Rescue Disc
- 29. NimbleX
- 30. Sabayon Linux
- 31. Puppy Linux
- 32. Mandriva
- 33. SuperOS
- 34. Xubuntu
- 35. Parted Magic
- 36. Super Grub Disk
- 37. Smart Boot Manager
- 38. 0phcrack
- 40. FreeNAS
- 41. NetBootCD
- 42. FreeDOS
- 43. Dr. Web Antivirus
- 44. CloneZilla
- 45. Kubutun
- 46. BackTrack
To burn and make bootable on the USB flash drive any of the listed distributions, choose the distribution name and version number as well as the Drive: (which usually will be selected by default to the first sticked USB drive let’s say /dev/sdb1).
Afterwards press on the OK button and that’s it, lay down your back and wait until the distribution is downloaded from the Internet, burned into the USB pendrive and made bootable.
I’ve tested Unetbootin with two distributions;
1. Xubuntu 10_04_live and;
2. Fedora 13
Both of the distributions got burned properly to the USB drive usng the CD images and booted fine on a Packard Bell notebook on.
Having an USB drive with LiveCD GNU / Linux or BSD everywhere with you is hand and is a sort of substitute to the old linux boot floopy disk of Tomsrtbt linux distribution, I used to keep everywhere with me . Now I can move to any PC installed with Windows and use my preferred Free Software OS using an USB Stick.
Besides that, there are laptops whose CD-ROM / DVD-ROM drive is broken and therefore if one wants to re-install an improperly working Windows XP / Vista / 7 and substitute with Free operating system this task is only possible using USB Flash Disk or NetBoot Install.
Installing using USB has its advantageous as you don’t depend on the network as well as the installation from USB is in most of the cases few times faster.
There are plenty of other USB Linux installer programs, most of them however are only available with a Windows version.
Here are few prgrams which can be used to burn a number of Linux and *BSD installations using Microsoft Windows to create Linux / BSD liveUSB:
- Universal USB Installer – http://live.learnfree.eu/download
- YUMI – Your Universal Multiboot Installer – http://www.pendrivelinux.com/yumi-multiboot-usb-creator/
- xBOOT – http://sites.google.com/site/shamurxboot/
I was happy to find out ’bout the existence of Universal USB Installer (this proggie written in Python) is made by a Bulgarian mate! Proud to be Bulgarian 😉 Universal USB Installer is actually multiplatform since written in Python and therefore can be used to burn a LiveUSB on GNU / Linux and (possibly on FreeBSD?)I would be glad to get feedback from other people who had experience with programs to prepare LiveUSB bootable sticks on Free Software OSes. Does anybody tried that on who *BSDs? Cheers 😉
Tags: annoying thing, application menu, binary package, BSD, bsd distributions, cake, debian gnu, Disk, distribution, dpkg, drive, drive memory, Free, free operating systems, Gnome, gnome application, gnu linux, liveUSB, mac os x, menu, menu path, nbsp, NetBSD, number, Open, os program, package, package debian, partition, password, piece, privileged account, qt library, software, sourceforge, stable version, substitute, support, system architectures, Ubuntu, UnetbootinIf, uniboot, Universal, usb flash drive
Posted in FreeBSD, Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, Linux Audio & Video, System Administration, Various | 2 Comments »
Thursday, December 8th, 2011 The usual way that one is supposed to check a certain partition let’s say /dev/sda1 disk UUID (Universal Unique Identifier) label is through a command:
vol_id /dev/sda1
For reason however Debian does not include vol_id command. To check the UUID assigned disk labels on Debian one should use another command called blkid (part of util-linux deb package).
blkid will list all block device attributes so it doesn’t specifically, passing any partition as argument.
Here is an example output of blkid :
server:/root# blkid
/dev/sda1: UUID="cdb1836e-b7a2-4cc7-b666-8d2aa31b2da4" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/sda5: UUID="c67d6d43-a48f-43ff-9d65-7c707a57dfe6" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sdb1: UUID="e324ec28-cf04-4e2e-8953-b6a8e6482425" TYPE="ext2"
/dev/sdb5: UUID="1DWe0F-Of9d-Sl1J-8pXW-PLpy-Wf9s-SsyZfQ" TYPE="LVM2_member"
/dev/mapper/computer-root: UUID="fbdfc19e-6ec8-4000-af8a-cde62926e395" TYPE="ext3"
/dev/mapper/computer-swap_1: UUID="e69100ab-9ef4-45df-a6aa-886a981e5f26" TYPE="swap"
/dev/mapper/computer-home: UUID="2fe446da-242d-4cca-8b2c-d23c76fa27ec" TYPE="ext3"
Tags: cca, command, computer swap, deb, deb package, debian gnu, dev, Disk, disk labels, doesn, DWe, ext, ff, gnu linux, Linux, linux deb, LVM, mapper, package, partition, partition disk, quot dev, reason, root, sda, sdb, sec type, server root, Unique, UUID, vol, way
Posted in Linux, System Administration, Various | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 7th, 2011 ![SVG to PNG Convert on GNU / Linux FreeBSD using command and GUI](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/svg_to_png_convert_linux_freebsd_picture.png)
I’ve playing trying to learn InkScape – The Open Source vector graphic editor .By so far I’m quite impressed on how easy this program is learned and how easy graphical manipulation with this nifty program can be done.
The default format in which InkScape saves its files is SVG (Scalable Vectors Graphics). For all those unfamiliar with SVG – SVG is an open (free format) format developed in 1999 which insetad of containing binary data like PNG or JPEG does contain plain XML content. SVG being consisted of plain XML has multiple advantageous, the most important one makes it easy for text and visual data to be displayed among different program svg readers in absolutely identical way. Besides that the format if read with plain text editor like vim or emacs can be altered directly via the source.
Being multi system interoperable makes SVG as a great format for text and visual data storage in HTML5, actually SVG is already a part of the HTML5 html coding standard. And most probably its adoption rate will raise up drastically as soon as HTML5 starts substitute HTML4 and lower web standards.
Anyways I’m slipping away from the aim of this post so I’ll stop blabbering on how great SVG is and let people check it out for themselves (if not already).
Going back to the aim of my article to show How to convert SVG to PNG graphical extension on GNU / Linux and FreeBSD
After producing a bunch of files with InkScape I realized the default format in which Inkscape stores its files is SVG , this was okay with me but since I wanted to have my experimental produced content in PNG I needed a way to convert SVG to
My first logical guess was that The Gimp will be able to handle the situation and after opening my SVG file with GIMP and used the gimp File -> Save As option and give the SVGfile an extension of PNG , Gimp succesfully converted the file to PNG.
However I wanted to dig further and check out what is the standard accepted way to convert SVG files using a plain command. This will possibly be handy to me if I had to do something online (let’s say a website) which will accept SVG and will require the SVG files to be converted and also stored in PNG or other Graphic file formats.
After checking online, I’ve found a post which pointed me to librsvg2 which contains RSVG – (Turn SVG files into raster images.)
librsvg is available as a package in most mainstream Linux distributions nowdays, Fedora, Debian etc., as well as contains a port inside the FreeBSD ports system. Since I’m using Debian on my notebook where I installed and tested the command line SVG to PNG convertion the way I did it is:
noah:/home/hipo/Desktop# apt-get --yes install librsvg2-bin
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
librsvg2-bin
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 16 not upgraded.
Need to get 72.5 kB of archives.
After this operation, 180 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Get:1 http://ftp.nl.debian.org/debian/ squeeze/main librsvg2-bin amd64 2.26.3-1 [72.5 kB]
Fetched 72.5 kB in 0s (184 kB/s)
Selecting previously deselected package librsvg2-bin.
(Reading database ... 376046 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking librsvg2-bin (from .../librsvg2-bin_2.26.3-1_amd64.deb) ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Setting up librsvg2-bin (2.26.3-1) ...
Afterwards the exact convertion of my Inscape SVG file drawing.svg to drawing.png using rsvg I’ve done like so:
hipo@noah:~/Desktop$ rsvg drawing.svg drawing.png
The convertion results for me was 100% uniqueness between the file converted and the output PNG. Some people might wonder why I didn’t used Inkscape’s Export to Bitmap function and then use convert command part of ImageMagick in order to convert the produced Inkscape bitmap to PNG.
One other thing worthy to mention is on Debian, librsvg2-bin contains 2 more executable besides rsvg. One is the rsvg-view command which allows one to view SVG files using command line or Graphic enviroment, the other one is rsvg-convert which supports again SVG convertion to PDF and to PNG
Before proceeding with the other described ways to convert SVG to PNG earlier in this article, I give a try to Inkscape’s Export to Bitmap embedded function but the produced bitmap did not resembled the original SVG file so I decided to completely abandon this method
Maybe there is some particular reason of the chaotic way I’ve tested Inkscape to place random images sometimes going out of the field of a paper etc. which influenced the improper generation of Bitmap using Inkscape, despite that it seems InkScape needs some more development until the bugs in Bitmap producing get fixed and it can be freely used to produce Bitmaps.
Maybe there is some particular reason for the failure of Inkscape to produce a good BMP file, like for example the chaotic way I’ve tested Inkscape to place random images sometimes going out of the field of a paper borders etc.This should have influenced the improper generation of Bitmap using Inkscape, anyhow it seems InkScape needs some more development until the bugs in Bitmap creation get fixed.
By the way if you’re wondering how to convert PNG to bitmap BMP after, once having converted SVG to PNG this is easily doable with convert command, like so:
hipo@noah:~/Desktop$ convert drawing.png drawing.bmp
Maybe in future releases it will be a good idea if InkScape developers integrate a convertion to other formats this will make it handy and make surely these nice program more popular among users. Hope this is helpful. Cheers and as RMS likes to say Happy Hacking 😉
Tags: adoption rate, binary data, bitmap, convertion, data storage, default format, Desktop, emacs, export, file, format, function, GIMP, gnu linux, graphic editor, graphic formats, graphical extension, graphical manipulation, Graphics, hipo, HTML, inkscape, interoperable, librsvg, nbsp, nifty program, noah, Open, package, png, Scalable, source vector, substitute, svg file, text, Vectors, vim, xml content
Posted in FreeBSD, Linux, Linux and FreeBSD Desktop, Linux Audio & Video, Various | 2 Comments »
Saturday, December 3rd, 2011 ![convert ps to pdf linux,Free as in Freedom book cover - Richard Stallman GNU and Free Software Father](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/Free_as_in_Freedom_covert_Richard_Stallman_GNU_and_free_software_father.jpeg)
I’m currently reading Free as in Freedom (2.0) R. Stallman and the Free Software Revolution
The book includes a reference to Eric S. Raymond ‘s famous The Cathedral and the Bazaar which does makes a point about the important of Open Source . I’ve read the The Cathedral and the Bazaar paper some very long time ago (in my young days so to say) and hence I couldn’t resemble much of the document so I jumped in after the footnote in the FAIF book and decided to take a quick look on The Cathedral and the Bazaar once again to bring up some memories. I was stunned to find the paper is available in many formats but officially not included in PDF . Since i’m a GNU / Linux user I’ve never managed to get into the habit to read postscript documents which from modern day stand point are also already a bit of obsolete and therefore I found it as a wise idea to convert and mirror the POSTSCRIPT (PS) version of the document to PDF on www.pc-freak.net
Happily the ps2pdf command to convert the ps to pdf on my debian gnu / linux is really easy:
ps2pdf cathedral-and-the-bazaar-Eric_Raymond.ps Cathedral-and-the-bazaar-Eric_Raymond.pdf
ps2pdf is part of the ghostscript deb package, so if you can’t find the program you will need to have it installed with apt-get first.
By the way the Postscript file is easily readable using my default gnome PDF reader evince , but anyways I converted and mirrored the paper for all those windows users who might like to take a look at the document in PDF.
I’ve also made a mirror of the original Cathedral and the Bazaaar postscript document here , for all those who want to check out The PDF version of the Cathedral and the Bazaaar is for download here
Even though the “open source” movement is an interesting idea and it had some major impact on the development of some free software the idiology of open source which was very much influenced by this document is very weak compared to the philosophy Richard Stallman indcuded as of the great need of the software to be free.
To be honest looking back in time for a long time being a Linux user I did not make any distinguishment between “Free Software” concept and “Open Source”, even worser I considered to evangelize on Open Source not realizing that initially what attracted me to free software was the idiology of open source and not the real values on which ground free software is built.
This kind of miss understanding between perception of “open source” and “free software” I got and spread for years now I fully realize and I seem like when I red back then The Cathedral and the Bazaar document I didn’t looked any critical at the document but it had a major, I would say “bad” impact on my idiology on software for a long time. So for all those who had not checked it it’s worthy checking but only in case if one fully understands Richard Stallman’s concept of Free Software, without this understanding one can easily slip into the wrong believe (just like me back in thme) that open source is the same as free software. Even though open source can be free software it is not presumably that an open source is free software and that it guarantees that the published source will be free. But I’ll stop now as I slept away from my goal of the article to just log here how a convertion of postscript to pdf on gnu / linux is done.
Just to close up this article I warmly recommend on all people interested into hacking and the history of Free operating systems and Free software as FreeBSD and GNU / Linux the Free as in Freedom (2.0) book ! Its truly a remarkable and great inspirational reading for all people like me involved into free software realm of ICT.
Tags: bazaar, bit, Cathedral, Cathedral-and-the-bazaar, deb package, debian gnu, download, eric s raymond, evangelize, evince, file, Free, free as in freedom, free software revolution, freedom 2, ghostscript, GNU, gnu linux, impact, Linux, linux user, movement, need, Open, open source movement, package, philosophy, Postscript, postscript document, postscript documents, postscript files, postscript ps, ps version, ps2pdf, quot, reading, software, Source, stallman, time, windows users, wise idea
Posted in Everyday Life, FreeBSD, Linux, Various | 1 Comment »
Thursday, November 24th, 2011 ![LogWatch logo picture check Logcheck Linux BSD look for irregularities in log files](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/logwatch_logo_picture_logcheck_linux_bsd_look_for_irregularities_in_logs.jpg)
As a System Administrator I need to check daily the log files produced on various GNU / Linux distributions or FreeBSD. This can sometimes take too much time if the old fashioned way using the normal system tools cat, less and tail etc. is used.
Reading logs one by one eats too much of my time and often as logs are reviewed in a hurry some crucial system irregularities, failed ssh or POP3 / Imap logins, filling disk spaces etc. are missed.
Therefore I decided to implement automated log parsing programs which will summary and give me an overview (helicopter view) on what were the system activities from the previous day (24h) until the moment I logged the system and issued the log analyzer program.
There are plenty of programs available out there that does “wide scale” log analysis, however there are two applications which on most GNU / Linux and BSD systems had become a de-facto standard programs to scan system log files for interesting lines.
These are:
- 1. logwatch – system log analyzer and reporter
- 2. logcheck – program to scan system log files for interesting lines
1. logwatch is by default installed on most of the Redhat based Linux systems (Fedora, RHEL, CentOS etc.). On Debian distributions and as far as I know (Ubuntu) and the other deb based distros logwatch is not installed by default. Most of the servers I manage these days are running Debian GNU / Linux so, to use logwatch I needed to install it from the available repository package, e.g.:
debian:~# apt-get install logwatch
...
logwatch is written in perl and with some big files to analyze, parsing them might take hell a lot of time. It does use a bunch of configuration scripts which defines how logwatch should read and parse the various services logwatch support by default. These conf scripts are also easily extensible, so if one has to analyze some undefined service in the conf files he can easily come up with a new conf script that will support the service/daemon of choice.Using logwatch is very easy, to get an overview about server system activity invoke the logwatch command:
debian:~# logwatch
################### Logwatch 7.3.6+cvs20080702-debian (07/02/08) ####################
Processing Initiated: Thu Nov 24 05:22:07 2011
Date Range Processed: yesterday
( 2011-Nov-23 )
Period is day.
Detail Level of Output: 0
Type of Output/Format: stdout / text
Logfiles for Host: debian
#################################################
——————— dpkg status changes Begin ————-
Upgraded:
libfreetype6 2.3.7-2+lenny7 => 2.3.7-2+lenny8
libfreetype6-dev 2.3.7-2+lenny7 => 2.3.7-2+lenny8
———————- dpkg status changes End ————————-
——————— httpd Begin ————————
Requests with error response codes
400 Bad Request
HTTP/1.1: 2 Time(s)
admin/scripts/setup.php: 2 Time(s)
401 Unauthorized
…
…
———————- vpopmail End ————————-
——————— Disk Space Begin ————————
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/md0 222G 58G 154G 28% /
———————- Disk Space End ————————-
###################### Logwatch End #########################
The execution might take up from 10 to 20 seconds up to 10 or 20 minutes depending on the log files size and the CPU / RAM hardware on the machine where /var/log/… logs will be analyzed.
logwatch output can be easily mailed to a custom mail address using a crontab if the server runs a properly configured SMTP server. Using a cron like:
00 5 * * * /usr/sbin/logwatch | mail -s "$(hostname) log files for $(date)"
Here is time to make a note that logwatch is ported also to FreeBSD and is available from BSD’s port tree, from a port with path:
/usr/ports/security/logcheck
2. logcheck is another handy program, which does very similar job to logwatch . The “interesting” information it returns is a bit less than compared to logwatch
The good thing about logcheck is that by default it is made to mail every 1 hour a brief data summary which might be of an interest to the sys admin.
Logcheck is available for install on RedHat distros via yum and has existing package for Debian as well as a port for FreeBSD under the port location /usr/ports/security/logcheck
To install on logcheck on Debian:
debian:~# apt-get install logcheck
...
After installation I found it wise to change the default mailing time from each and every hour to just once per day to prevent my email from overfilling with “useless” mails.
This is done by editting the default cron tab installed by the package located in /etc/cron.d/logcheck
The default file looks like so:
# /etc/cron.d/logcheck: crontab entries for the logcheck package
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
MAILTO=root
@reboot logcheck if [ -x /usr/sbin/logcheck ]; then nice -n10 /usr/sbin/logcheck -R; fi
2 * * * * logcheck if [ -x /usr/sbin/logcheck ]; then nice -n10 /usr/sbin/logcheck; fi
# EOF
To change it run only once per day its content should looks something like:
# /etc/cron.d/logcheck: crontab entries for the logcheck package
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
MAILTO=root
@reboot logcheck if [ -x /usr/sbin/logcheck ]; then nice -n10 /usr/sbin/logcheck -R; fi
2 5 * * * logcheck if [ -x /usr/sbin/logcheck ]; then nice -n10 /usr/sbin/logcheck; fi
# EOF
Altering it that way the log summary interesting info analysis will be sent on mail every day in 05:02 a.m.
Changing the default email logcheck will ship its log analyzer report emails on deb based distros is done via editting the file:
/etc/logcheck/logcheck.conf
And changing the SENDMAILTO=”” variable to point to the appropriate admin email email addr.
Tags: Begin, bsd systems, CentOS, configuration scripts, cron, Date, deb, debian distributions, debian gnu, Disk, dpkg, end, fedora, freebsd, gnu linux, helicopter view, hurry, imap, irregularities, libfreetype, linux distributions, linux systems, logcheck, logwatch, nbsp, Output, package, quot, reading, reading log files, reading logs, reporter, repository, Space, ssh, summary, system administrator, system tools, time, Ubuntu
Posted in FreeBSD, Linux, System Administration, Various | 1 Comment »
Monday, November 21st, 2011 ![Vnstat GNU Linux console terminal traffic statistics logo](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/vnstat_gnu_linux_console_terminal_traffic_statistics_logo.png)
After installing vnstat to keep an eye on server IN and OUT traffic on a Debian Squeeze server. I used the usual:
debian:~# vnstat -u -i eth0
In order to generate the initial database for the ethernet interface used by vnstat to generate its statistics.
However even though /var/lib/vnstat/eth0 got generated with above command statistics were not further generated and trying to check them with command:
debian:~# vnstat --days
Returned the error message:
eth0: Not enough data available yet.
To solve the eth0: Not enough data available yet. message I tried completely removing vnstat package by purging the package e.g.:
debian:~# apt-get --yes remove vnstat
...
debian:~# dpkg --purge vnstat
...
Even though dpkg –purge was invoked /var/lib/vnstat/ refused to be removed since it contained vnstat’s db file eth0
Therefore I deleted by hand before installing again vnstat:
debian:~# rm -rf /var/lib/vnstat/
Tried installing once again vnstat “from scratch”:
debian:~# apt-get install vnstat
...
After that I tried regenerating the vnstat db file eth0 once again with vnstat -u -i eth0 , hoping this should fix the error but it was no go and after that the error:
debian:~# vnstat --hours
eth0: Not enough data available yet.
persisted.
I checked in Debian bugs mailing lists and I found, some people complaining about the same issue with some suggsetions on how the error can be work arouned, anyways none of the suggestions worked for me.
Being irritated I further removed / purged once again vnstat and decided to give it a try by installing vnstat from source
As of time of writting this article, the latest stable vnstat version is 1.11 .
Therefore to install vnstat from source I issued:
debian:~# cd /usr/local/src
debian:/usr/local/src# wget http://humdi.net/vnstat/vnstat-1.11.tar.gz
...
debian:/usr/local/src# tar -zxvvf vnstat-1.11.tar.gz
debian:/usr/local/src# cd vnstat-1.11
debian:/usr/local/src/vnstat-1.11# make & make all & make install
debian:/usr/local/src/vnstat-1.11# cp examples/vnstat.cron /etc/cron.d/vnstat
debian:/usr/local/src/vnstat-1.11# vnstat -u -i eth0
Error: Unable to read database "/var/lib/vnstat/eth0".
Info: -> A new database has been created.
As a last step I put on root crontab to execute:
debian:~# crontab -u root -e
*/5 * * * * /usr/bin/vnstat -u >/dev/null 2>&1
This line updated vnstat db eth0 database, every 5 minutes. After the manual source install vnstat works, just fine 😉
Tags: amp, bin, bugs, cron, debian gnu, dpkg, error message, eth, ethernet interface, eye, file, GNU, gnu linux, hourseth, initial database, installdebian, lib, Linux, none, package, quot, Returned, rf, root, scratch, squeeze, statistics, tar, tar gz, time, traffic, vnstatdebian, wget, work, zxvvf
Posted in Linux, System Administration, Various | 6 Comments »
Monday, October 3rd, 2011 ![Gcompris Main entry Screen](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/gcompris_main_entry_screen.png)
Gcompris is a great piece of software to educate children in the age interval of 2 to 10 years old.
Gcompris is a tool of educative and funny interactive computer applications many of which has a form of games.
![Gcompris strategy games](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/gcompris_strategy_games.png)
Gcompris is teaching the children on the following fields of knowledge:
- understand the computer – keyboard, mouse etc.
- Algebra – Summing up numbers, enumarations, table memory, mirror image etc.
- Science – The Canal lock, the water cycle, how a submarine works, elementary electric simulation
- Geography – Find out about country locations, Place the country on the map
- Games – Learn how to play chess, improve memory and memorization, sudoku etc.
- Reading – Learning to read fluent, reading practice
- Learn to proerply tell time, solve puzzle games and learn famous paintings, basic cartoon making, vector drawing
![Gcompris reading activities](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/gcompris_reading_activities.png)
All the funny activities Gcompris educative kid tool offers 100+. Gcompris is in active development so with time more and more activities gets added.
Gcompris is a Free Software and among with its native GNU / Linux support it has ports for Windows and Mac OS X
The Free Software nature of Gcompris gives possibility to be easily adapted and further developed! Its really funny not only for kids, but even for adults. If you had a stressy day and you want to relax in a childish way and feel like a kid again, give it a try and you will be amazed how much light and happiness this computer program can bless you with 😉
Many of Gcompris activities has a little cute penguins and in general its capable of introducing the kids to the nice concept of the free software.
As a free software Gcompris is really great as among the rest of the so popular free software freedoms: to distribute and modify the software it comes absolutely free of charge (in money terms). This is great news for parents who are growing their kids in the “developing world”, the so called 2nd and 3rd world as well is a good alternative to the many available paid costly application and games aiming at kids brain development.
![Gcompris puzzle games](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/gcompris_puzzles.png)
The name Gcompris is also known in free software realm under the name I GOT IT .Gcompris has currently Sound and text support for 33 Country Languages, here is a completele list of languages currently supported:
Arabic, Asturian, Bulgarian, Breton, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, English, Esperanto, Spanish, Basque, Finnish, French, Hebrew, Indian, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Indian, Norwegian, Dutch, Norwegian, Punjabi, Portuguese, Portuguese, Russian, Somali, Serbian, Swedish, Turkish, Urdu, Chinese
Some of the languages supported still does not have a 100% translation but partially translated as its a question of time that enough translators are found to make the translations for all available major languages. The only 100% completed trasnlation as of time of writting is in French, Slovenian and Spanish
Gcompris is already included in almost all available moderm GNU / Linux distributions. A packaged version of it is part of Fedora, Debian and Ubuntu.
![Gcompris Mathematics](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/gcompris_mathematics.png)
For all those parents who wish to educate their children on Fedora Linux install it with the GUI installer or yum with cmd:
[root@fedora ~]# yum install gcompris
...
On Debian and Ubuntu Gcompris is installable via apt from repos:
debian:~# apt-get install gcompris
...
To add a text and sound translation to Gcompris its also necessery to install the relevant gcompris-sound distribution package, for example to add the sound translations for my native Bulgarian language I had to install the package gcompris-sound-bg, e.g.:
debian:~# apt-get install gcompris-sound-bg
...
Gcompris is developed to use the Gnome’s GTK and is a perfect match for Linux users who already run a Gnome Desktop on their PCs.
Most of Gcompris versions should run without much hassle on Mac OS X and Windows so all mommies and daddies on Windows or Mac can install it and use it to educate their kids 😉
Here are few more screenshots of Gcompris
![Gcompris children intellect develop Experimental activities](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/gcompris_experimental_activities.png)
![Gcompris educational kids develop intellect Discovery activities](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/gcompris_discovery_activities.png)
![Gcompris various games for develop your kid intellect](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/gcompris_games_merged_screen.png)
Gcompris also fits well with Tux for Kids Linux / Windows ready games also suitable for kids development. Gcompris and Tux for Kids makes Linux and free software more “children mature” and is a perfect to be used on kids educational computers in kindergartens or any educational institutions aiming at children development.
To sum it up, if you want to make your children smarter or you’re bored to death and you need to have some rest by going back to your childhood years give gcompris a try 😉
Tags: active development, age, canal lock, cartoon, computer keyboard, cycle, developing world, famous paintings, Free, gcompris, Gnome, gnu linux, how to play chess, intellect, interactive computer applications, keyboard mouse, kid, Learn, linux support, linux windows, mac os x, memorization, mirror image, money terms, nbsp, package, piece, puzzle games, quality educational software, quot, reading, reading practice, software, software nature, Sound, submarine, support, text, time, tool, Ubuntu, water cycle
Posted in Entertainment, Games Linux, Linux, Various, Windows | 1 Comment »
Friday, September 30th, 2011 Just run across across a super nice top like, program for system administrators, its called nethogs and is definitely entering my “l337” admin outfit next to tools like iftop, nettop, ettercap, darkstat htop, iotop etc.
nethogs is ultra easy to use, to get immediately in console statistics about running processes UPLOAD and DOWNLOAD bandwidth consumption just run it:
linux:~# nethogs
![Nethogs screenshot on Linux Server with Nginx](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/nethogs_screenshot_on_server_with_nginx.png)
Nethogs running on Debian GNU/Linux serving static web content with Nginx
If you need to check what program is using what amount of network bandwidth, you will definitely love this tool. Having information of bandwidth consumption is also viewable partially with iftop, however iftop is unable to track the bandwidth consumption to each process using the network thus it seems nethogs is unique at what it does.
Nethogs supports IPv4 and IPv6 as well as supports network traffic over ppp. The tool is available via package repositories for Debian GNU/Lenny 5 and Debian Squeeze 6.
To install Nethogs on CentOS and Fedora distributions, you will have to install it from source. On CentOS 5.7, latest nethogs which as of time of writting this article is 0.8.0 compiles and installs fine with make && make install commands.
In the manner of thoughts of network bandwidth monitoring, another very handy tool to add extra understanding on what kind of traffic is crossing over a Linux server is jnettop
jnettop shows which hosts/ports is taking up the most network traffic.
It is available for install via apt in Debian 5/6).
Here is a screenshot on jnettop in action:
![Jnettop check network traffic in console](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/jnettop-check-network-in-console.png)
To install jnettop on latest Fedoras / CentOS / Slackware Linux it has to be download and compiled from source via jnettop’s official wiki page
I’ve tested jnettop install from source on CentOS release 5.7 and it seems to compile just fine using the usual compile commands:
[root@prizebg jnettop-0.13.0]# ./configure
...
[root@prizebg jnettop-0.13.0]# make
...
[root@prizebg jnettop-0.13.0]# make install
If you need to have an idea on the network traffic passing by your Linux server distringuished by tcp/udp/icmp network protocols and services like ssh / ftp / apache, then you will definitely want to take a look at nettop (if of course not familiar with it yet).
Nettop is not provided as a deb package in Debian and Ubuntu, where it is included as rpm for CentOS and presumably Fedora?
Here is a screenshot on nettop network utility in action:
![Nettop server traffic division by protocol screenshot](https://www.pc-freak.net/images/nettop_server_traffic_division_by_protocol_screenshot.png)
FreeBSD users should be happy to find out that jnettop and nettop are part of the ports tree and the two can be installed straight, however nethogs would not work on FreeBSD, I searched for a utility capable of what Nethogs can, but couldn’t find such.
It seems the only way on FreeBSD to track bandwidth back and from originating process is using a combination of iftop and sockstat utilities. Probably there are other tools which people use to track network traffic to the processes running on a hos and do general network monitoringt, if anyone knows some good tools, please share with me.
Tags: action, amount, bandwidth consumption, CentOS, centos 5, configure, consumption, darkstat, debian gnu, distributions, ettercap, fedora, gnu linux, handy tool, information, l337, Linux, linux server, Monitoring, nbsp, Nethogs, network bandwidth, network traffic, nginx, package, page, ppp, prizebg, quot, repositories, root, running processes, screenshot, slackware linux, squeeze, static web, system administrators, time, tool, upload, web content
Posted in FreeBSD, Linux, System Administration | No Comments »