Copy pasting clipboard to/from terminal

Can be done either via xsel or xclip. Xclip is part of most modern installations, so you it may be there in your installation already. The common usages are:

You copied something in an X window (browser or editor etc), you want to paste the content to the terminal. Unfortunately the terminal doesn’t have access to the clipboard. But you can do this on the terminal using

echo `xclip -selection clipboard -o`

That command will echo the contents of clipboard to the console. If you wanted to append the clipboard contents to a file, you can do

echo `xclip -selection clipboard -o` >> somefile.txt

and that will do the trick

If you need to copy the contents of a text file to the clipboard. This can be done by

cat somefile.txt | xclip -selection clipboard

Now you can paste that content using CTRL V

Typing xclip -selection clipboard is just way too many keystrokes. Put an alias to it. In ~/.bashrc, add the following

alias pbpaste="xclip -selection clipboard -o"
alias pbcopy="xclip -selection clipboard"

Now you can

echo `pbpaste` >> somefile.txt
cat somefile.txt | pbcopy

Find the version name

Find version name — the wonky names, not the kernel number — of Ubuntu, Lubuntu, Mint or any of its many derivatives.

lsb_release -a

Is my Linux 64 or 32 bit

uname -a

Does it contain X86_64? If it does, it is 64 bit

Find out how much disk space is left

df -h

Change the password for root

sudo passwd root

If you have an admin, ask for permission first if it is okay to do this. If it is just your own machine, go ahead and knock yourself off. You don’t need to do things as root — always. For that there is sudo

Divide your terminal screen and multiplex

sudo apt-get install tmux

You still need to configure tmux, but the basic idea is to launch tmux and do all your windowing there tmux new -s <session-name>

Secure Copy file from one machine to another

scp username@remotemachine:somefile.txt ~/somefile.txt

This will copy somefile.txt on remotemachine to the local machine

scp somefile.txt username@remotemachine:/somefile.txt

It will copy somefile.txt from the local machine to remotemachine

See if there is a CUPS configured printer

lynx http://localhost:631

You can use Chrome or Firefox if it better suits you

Find out RAM and CPU info

cat /proc/meminfo to find out how much RAM
cat /proc/cpuinfo to find out CPU information

Mess around with network interfaces

The file you want is in /etc/network/interfaces/

CLI browsing

sudo apt-get install lynx
lynx http://tldp.org

Display calendar

With week numbers etc

  • cal : displays the current month
  • cal 2014: displays the whole year
  • ncal -w : shows the week numbers
  • ncal -e: shows when Easter is

Rip YouTube videos

sudo apt-get install youtube-dl ffmpeg lame
cd ~/Videos
youtube-dl http:/youtubevideoaddress

The downloaded video is in .webm format, to convert to wav, do this

ffmpeg -i filename.webm filename.wav

To convert to mp3, do this further

lame filename.wav filename.mp3

RDP from Windows to Linux

sudo apt-get install xnest

Edit etc/gdm/gdm.conf then uncomment RemoteGreeter in the daemon section. Just delete the pound sign. Next, find the xdmcp section and change the value of the Enable Key, set it to true.

Log out so you can restart the GDM or you can execute this command

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart

After that, the box is ready to accept remote desktop connections from Windows clients

Get a download accelerator

sudo apt-get install axel
cd ~/Downloads
axel -n 10 http://wordpress.org/latest.zip

The int value of -n means the number of threads it will use to pull the file. Go easy on this one, don’t try to punish the web server by setting a very high number. 10 seems a bit excessive already.

Backup a MySQL database

sudo mysqldump -u YourUserName -p --all-databases > /path/to/dump/file.backup

The dumped file is basically text. They are SQL commands that has both structure and data of the dumped database. To restore the db from the dumped file, do this

mysql -u YourUserName -p

mysql> create database nameOfNewDatabase
mysql> use nameOfNewDatabase
mysql> .\file.backup

Manage the run level configuration

If you don’t want to always type /etc/init.d/processname restart get the run level config manager

sudo apt-get install sysv-rc-conf
sysv-rc-conf

Use the minus sign(-) to stop processes and plus(+) sign to restart them.

SSH to your Linux box

First, you need to make it an SSH server

sudo apt-get install ssh

Then from a remote host, connect to it

ssh yourusername@remotehost

yourusername has to be a defined account in the remotehost computer. You will be asked, the first time around, to store an entry inside ~/.ssh/known_hosts, say yes to this question

Connect Windows to a CUPS printer

  1. Ping the CUPS printer, make sure there are no network connectivity issues
  2. Go to Add Printers dialog window
  3. Choose Add network printer
  4. Choose My printer is not listed, because it might not be
  5. There will be a box provided, type http://ipofCUPSprinter:631/nameofQueue. The nameofQueue is something your sys admin would know, so ask him. Or you could simple open up a browser and go to http://ipofCUPSprinter:631, the name of the queue is usually listed in there under the Printers section
  6. Select a driver for the printer, most Windows 7/8 boxes can simply pull this from the internet

Install a print server

sudo apt-get install cupsys

Configure /etc/cups/cupsd.conf

Install Java RE and SDK from Oracle

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer
sudo update-alternatives --config java

Screen capture

 
sudo apt-get install imagemagick  
cd ~/Pictures
import -window root Image1.png`
Take the screenshot of the whole screen
import Image2.png
The mouse pointer will turn to a crosshair, click and drag the screen region you want to capture
import -frame Image3.png
Just like the command above but this one captures the frame of the window region

Other options

  1. sudo apt-get install shutter
  2. sudo apt-get install gimp
  3. sudo apt-get install gnome-screenshot if you don’t mind using gnome
  4. Just press PRT SC to get the whole screen
  5. Shift PRT SC to get just a portion of the screen
  6. scrot This will silently take a screenshot of the whole screen, and will create a file on the current directory

View an image

gpicview Image01.png

Mount an SMB or CIFS share

sudo apt-get install smbclient
sudo apt-get install cifs-utils
sudo mount -t cifs //servername/folder ~/mountFolder

If you don’t know the name of the folder that is shared, use the smbclient to discover it

sudo smbclient -L servername

If you don’t know the name of the server, although, you should, try to

arp -n

It should give you the list of servers that your machine already talked to. The problem is, what if you haven’t talked to that machine yet? You could try to

ping 255.255.255.255

Ping the whole network, try to see if you can recognize some servers in there

System time is wrong all the time

Edit /etc/default/rcS

UTC is enabled by default, set it to no

UTC=no

Reboot

Check battery

The ibam doesn’t seem to be applicable anymore. But instead there are two commands that might do the trick

upower -e
upower -i <power source>

The -e option gives only the power sources, namely the battery and plugged power. The -i option gives a detailed info about the power source. So use the commands like this

upower -i `upower -e`

Terminal color

Find out first how many colors does the terminal already have. The tput colors command will tell you the current number of colors

On the ~/.bashrc file, set the number of colors to 256

# ~/.bashrc

export TERM="xterm-256color"

If you do this, remove any setting from any tool e.g. tmux, emacs that will interfer with setting the TERM color.

HP LaserJet P1102W

You will need quite a couple of things. This printer requires the hplip package. That is not all, it also requires a proprietary plugin from HP for it to function properly.

sudo apt-get install hplip hplip-gui

Launch the HPLip Toolbox. If you are using Lubuntu with the default LXDE, it will be in the Preferences menu. If you are using gnome-do, it is so much easier to find, press the superkey + spacebar

After installation, if you have configured the P1102W properly, your workstation is on the same subnet as the printer, the HPLip Toolbox should have installed it already. In fact, if you check the line printer status, lpstat, you should be able to see the printer installed already.

You need to set a default printer. This can be done using lpoptions -d PrinterName. If the LinuxMachine is equipped with GUI, it can also be done there. In Lubuntu it’s under System tools - Printers. If you don’t set a default printer, you might not be able to use commands such as lpstat, lpr, lprm etc.

Format external drive to FAT32

sudo apt-install dosfstools

Find out the name of the actual device

sudo fdisk -l

If you simpy use fdisk without the sudo, you might not see all the disk

sudo mkdosfs -F -I /dev/sdb1

Substitute the actual device name to sdb1. The primary disk will be sda — sda1 is the first partition on the primary disk, sda2 is the second partition etc. If you have a second disk it will be sdb. If you have a USB external disk attached, it could be sdc. The disk has to be properly partitioned before you format it to FAT32.

You can use fdisk or cfdisk to created partitions. There are GUI tools to do this as well like gparted. Actually, it’s a lot easier to use gparted, so just go use that.

Hash Sum Mismatch Error

During a software update, you might encounter this error. Just remove the contents of apt/lists

sudo rm -fr /var/lib/apt/lists/*
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

nvPY

sudo apt-get install nvpy

Create a config file for nvpy

sudo touch ~/.nvpy.cfg

# .nvpy.cfg

[nvpy]
notes_as_txt = 1
txt_path = /home/thagos/Dropbox/notes

#disable simplenote syncing, use 1 to enable it
simplenote_sync = 0

# 0 value will sort in alphanumeric mode
sort_mode = 1

There is a detailed example and explanation of the cfg file in https://github.com/cpbotha/nvpy

cmd Line printing

cmd description
lpstat -d Find out if there is default printer configured
lpstat -p See all the printers configured
lpstat -p -d See all of the printers and the default printer
lpr <filename> Send file to the default printer
cat <filename\> | lpr does the same thing as lpr \<filename\>
lpadmin CLI command to configure cups printers, but it is really much easier to use the web interface. Use the browser and go to http://localhost:631. You can pretty much do everything there and without memorizing all the command line flags needed by lpadmin. If you have no choice but to do the admin on the command line, the
lpoptions -d printername Set a default printer
lpq See what print jobs are in progress and if there are ones on the queue
lprm \<job id> Cancel a print job. You need to know the job id, that is why you need to lpq first
lpoptions -p <printername> Show the settings of the printer

Either the lpr and lp command will send contents of a file to the configured printer. But before you can print, you need a properly configured printer. Use either lpadmin for that, or configure the printer via the web gui admin at http://printserverNameOrIpAddress:631.

The most basic usage is to send the contents of a file to the configured printer, like so

lpr filename.ext

Some options of the lpr command

  • **lpr -o landscape :** Print in landscape mode
  • **lpr -o fit-to-page :** Fit everything in 1 page
  • **lpr -o media=A4 :** Use A4 as paper
  • **lpr -o media=Letter :** Use letter size
  • **lpr -n 2 :** Print 2 copies
  • lpr -n 2 Collate=True: Print 2 copies and collate

Revision history

version date revised description
1 21.April.2014 First draft
1.1 20.October.2015 Rewrote some content, added some
1.2 15.December.2016 nvPY and printer notes