One of the things that really bothered me about the GDM was no Compiz-Fusion Shadow around the login window. Compiz is obviously not present for good reason but it is possible to enable Compiz-Fusion on GDM if you can run Compiz. About 2 weeks ago I finally decided to mess with this a bit and [...]

This morning we had a DDOS attack on our mail server. Some @$$ trying to swamp our postfix service with hundreds of connections. SO, I did something I did not want to do, but, oh well. This following bit below will explain a few things and will allow you to limit the amount of active [...]

If you’re looking to customize your GDM login on Ubuntu 10.04, 10.10 and I’m sure in the near future 11.04, it’s pretty straight forward and easy to do. There are some important notes at the end of this. So read through or, I warned you. Typically, I logout first, then ctrl+alt+f1 and use that tty [...]

As much as this should be fixed by now, it is not. A real and true memory leak fix does not exist and probably won’t for quite some time. However, the bash script below will free memory in X every 60 seconds when using the proprietary fglrx driver. I am not sure if the memory [...]

It has been a looong time since I posted anything. But, there is finally something worth posting in the tech world. This is in regards to a cookie that is invulnerable unless you know what you are doing. It affects ALL browsers on ANY operating system. It uses many methods of storing cookies, such as [...]

When upgrading the fglrx driver, don’t get lazy about removing the previous version. Besides the old configuration possibly still in use after a reboot, you get serious memory leaks in Xorg caused by the ATI Catalyst driver that resemble the same leak you get when using the driver provided by envyng. Removal and installation is [...]

An issue I recently encountered with some mail servers was poor MTA reputation. Even though the servers were only used for corporate email, somehow their MTA is poor at senderbase, even though none of the IP’s are on a single RBL/SBL. This is partly due to Slicehost having bad IP blocks and the method they [...]

After switching from windoz to Linux, I immediately started using Evolution Mail after being an Outlook user for many years. Evolution in many ways is better than Outlook besides being free, but there is a small issue. Sometimes, somehow and someway the client loses sync with folders and this little bash script will fix the [...]

ATI has made a change in their fglrx catalyst drivers (9.5+) where setting the gamma in xorg.conf no longer works and is ignored when starting. In my previous post I went over setting and making these adjustments. The previous methods for Contrast and Brightness remain. However for gamma, the only way and previously existing method [...]

The following iptable entries will prevent and block repeat failed connections, but not permanently. This allows two new connections every 60 seconds. This is an effective way of blocking automated attacks you will see mostly from Chinese ISP’s. iptables -A INPUT -p tcp -m tcp -m state -m recent ! -s 10.0.0.0/24 -i eth0 --dport [...]

From terminal, execute the following; sudo modprobe ip_nat_ftp ports=21 sudo modprobe ip_conntrack_ftp sudo iptables -A FORWARD -m state --state ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT sudo iptables -A FORWARD -p tcp -m tcp -m state --dport 21 --state NEW -j ACCEPT sudo iptables -A FORWARD -p tcp -m tcp -m state --sport 20 --state RELATED -j ACCEPT sudo [...]

If you’re having issues with fullscreen video playback, this may help. The issues may range from hard lock’s and crashes to poor performance and flickering. The flickering issues may not go away with this tweak, but performance should be better and crashes should stop. For starters, GStreamer should be installed. There is two ways to [...]

This is a small script I wrote that automates creating a directory for the mount point and then mounts the nfs share on that diretory. It also accommodates removal when needed and unmount’s the nfs share and removes the directory that was created. Notes: Caution: The script assumes the nfs share is not an existing [...]

This is a quick guide to creating an ISO/Disk Image on Linux from your DVD or CDROM drive. Insert the dvd/cd into your optical reader drive (obviously ;p) If it is automatically mounted, you will need to unmount it. On my laptop, my dvd drive is /dev/sr0. To figure out what device it is, you [...]

On the latest build of AWN (0.3.2), the folder icon is broken. To fix this; do the following below; Line 60 of /usr/share/avant-window-navigator/applets/file-browser-launcher/file-browser-launcher.py Original: self.icon = self.set_awn_icon('file-browser-launcher', 'folder') Change to: self.icon = self.set_awn_icon('file-browser-launcher', 'stock_folder') restart AWN

Memory leak fixed on my sony vaio laptop with an HD3400 series. NOT completely, xorg will still leak over time (about 60mb over 8 hours and I think some of this memory is re-used for effects which will not increase the memory any further when opening, closing, etc). The change is DRASTIC compared to what [...]

After a few weeks, a patch has been released a few days ago that fixes the fglrx lag when minimizing, maximizing or opening a window on ubuntu jaunty 9.04. The lag was severe freezing the entire desktop for 1-3 seconds, almost making desktop effects unbearable to use. For those who would prefer to compile xorg; [...]

If you have the ati driver installed correctly and have xorg setup correctly, you can easily change the brightness, contrast and gamma on linux. I could not find anywhere on google a single search result except for setting gamma, so I post this here. To change brightness and contrast you do this through aticonfig. These [...]

To start off I am no expert. I am a windows convert about a week ago now. However, I’m grabbing Linux by the horns and loving it! The reason I am posting this is because it took me several hours to figure this out. I could not find in one place an organized concise approach. [...]

What is CSS Shorthand? CSS Shorthand is simply combining multiple property values into a single CSS property. This guide will help you improve your knowledge and understanding. Over time you will find yourself spending less time writing CSS and spending more time on actual style and page structure.