An IMAP Configuration for Mutt

Usually, I download all my email via fetchmail, sort it into folders using procmail and read the mails with mutt. This works reasonably well and I’ve been using this mail setup without major changes for about 10 years. Since I recently bought a netbook, I also wanted to read mails with it, but without touching [...]

Ubuntu: Changes in Python 2.6

Once in a while, I install Python packages from source using distutils. The distutils-powered setup.py script found in many packages installs software in /usr/local/ – quite useful because it doesn’t interfere with packages managed by your distribution. Since Ubuntu Jaunty and Python 2.6, this doesn’t work anymore.

Upgrading to Ubuntu Intrepid

Upgrading from Ubuntu “Hardy Heron” to “Intrepid Ibex” wasn’t the smooth ride I was used to. I’m a pretty happy Ubuntu user and my system (an old Acer Travelmate 291) has been running all Ubuntu releases since “Breezy Badger” without a single reinstall. This time, however, I experienced problems with WLAN, sound, battery status display, [...]

Rsync Backups For External Disks

Virtually everybody agrees that backups are a good idea, but few people actually do them. Backup software is often time consuming to set up or just overkill for a single-user system. In this article I’ll show how easy it is to build your own backup solution on Linux using rsync and an external disk drive.

Moving a Linux System

Recently, I decided to re-partition my hard disk because I needed a larger swap partition. In this article, I’ll describe the process of backing up an existing system and restore it somewhere else. I haven’t done anything like it in years, so I was up to some smaller surprises that I was fortunately able to [...]

Ubuntu Gutsy Hibernation Troubles

When I wanted to suspend my notebook today the hibernate button was gone from the menu. Running the /etc/acpi/hibernate.sh shell script as root still worked, but there was no way to get that silly button back.

Lightweight Package Management using Stow

Package management tools like apt-get make it very easy to install and remove software. The package manager takes care of downloading the package together with its dependencies if, of course, someone has taken the time to create a package and made it available to you. In some cases, you don’t want to interfere with your [...]

Printing RFCs and Internet Drafts

The a2ps command line utility converts text files to PostScript which can then be sent to a printer. The resulting output contains all kinds of boxes and additional information which limits the space on the printed page to make your own notes.