Checking hard drive and filesystem health

...wip... SMART Assuming the smartctl command (manual) is available (part of smartmontools package) and your drive is SMART1 capable and enabled. If it isn't, check this article. SMART tests and queries can be run on a hard drive that is in use. All smartctl commands require elevated privileges. Fir...

Where is the VLC log?

The VLC media player sometimes errors out with the message "Check the log for details": But where is the log? What you need to do: Type <Ctrl>-M or click Top Menu => Tools => Messages Increase the verbosity to "1 (warnings)": (You could increase the verbosity even more, but that mi...

Load bash builtin from file

A few years ago I noticed that sleep is not built into bash and instead calls an external command each time. I like to make my scripts responsive and unobtrusive by relying on bash builtins as much as possible; my reasoning: I am using one of the heaviest shells with all its bells and whistles, so a...

Bash: Test if a string is a web link

I sometimes need this in my scripts: if a string starts with either http:// or https://, it must be a web link. How can I test for that in a single query? Like this: $ restore="$(shopt -p extglob)" $ regex="http?(s)://" $ shopt -s extglob $ x="http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php" $ [[ "$x" == $regex...

Github Misidentifies my Project's Coding Languages and How To Fix that

I have a project on github that is 100% bash - yet github sees it as 70% shell and 30% CSS. Turns out one large file is seen as CSS only because of its extension .less. since this is really a help file, I created a .gitattributes file that marked it as documentation (which causes github's language i...

Is Kali Linux Right For You?

I got tired of opening this link & having to enable javascript, (it's working without js again) only to copy out this bit: Is Kali Linux Right For You? As the distribution’s developers, you might expect us to recommend that everyone should be using Kali Linux. The fact of the matter is, howeve...

Make all files in a directory accessible to a group

See this answer to a slightly different question: From what I understand, you want everyone in the users group to have write access to the data directory. That's accomplished by the following: setfacl -Rm g:users:rwX,d:g:users:rwX data/ I hope this will persist across user sessions & reboots? ...

Personas lock Firefox up for a full Minute or so

...whenever I open the about:addons page. But the fix is so simple: disable javascript for mozilla.net and mozilla.org. It's a bit hackish and might cause problems elsewhere. Maybe a more targeted approach is possible?...