Ubuntu + Solid State Drive (SSD): managing or disabling the swap space / page file

There are mixed views on using SSDs for page files / swap space. A frequent view encountered is to avoid having a page file or swap space on an SSD to minimise R/W activity, since FLASH chips have a limited lifespan. Wear levelling helps manage the SSD life but eventually the SSD will degrade and to prolong life paging operations should be avoided. 

An increasingly popular contrasting view is that most modern SSDs will become outdated before they die, therefore worrying about paging to an SSD shouldn't be a priority since the SSD will likely be outdated with cheaper and larger alternatives available before the SSD dies.

Read on for a couple of options for managing an SSD within Ubuntu...

Ubuntu: XBMC with AirPlay enabled

As of XBMC v11 (Eden), XBMC supports being an AirPlay target, allowing any device/platform that can run XBMC to receive AirPlay content from an iOS or iTunes source (as well as other 3rd party AirPlay sources for desktops and even Android).

Here's how...

Linux (Ubuntu): Adobe Flash 11.2 problem experiencing blue tint / hue

Issue: Flash player video has a blue tint / hue under flash v11.2. This is caused by a bug in the new Flash version that Adobe refuses to fix. There also is a bug report on Launchpad that discusses this (LP: #967091). The bug only appears when you use the NVidia binary drivers and have libvdpau installed. A quick fix is adding some extra settings to the Flash configuration...

Ubuntu: Record 'What you hear' on Ubuntu with Audacity

How do I record what I hear in Ubuntu? here's how...
Audacity is a free, easy-to-use audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to:

• Record live audio.
• Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
• Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files.
• Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.
• Change the speed or pitch of a recording.

PulseAudio Volume Control (pavucontrol) is a simple mixer for the PulseAudio sound server. In contrast to classic mixer tools this one allows you to control both the volume of hardware devices and of each playback stream separately. 


Here's how to use both to record what you hear from your PC...

Gnome GUI context menu hash checker (md5, sha)

A Hash Checker for Linux/Unix is small and useful tool for checking your downloads and other files with MD5, SHA1 and/or SHA256 hash. This script adds the ability to check the hash of files simply from the context menu in Gnome shell. This script makes use of Zenity, a tool that allows you to display Gtk+ dialog boxes from the command line and through shell scripts.

Source: http://gnome-look.org/content/show.php?action=content&content=129309

Customise Ubuntu 12.04 and Gnome 3.x with Gnome Extensions

GNOME Shell extensions are small pieces of code written by third party developers that modify the way GNOME works. (If you are familiar with Chrome Extensions or Firefox Addons, GNOME Shell extensions are similar to them.) You can find and install GNOME Shell extensions using https://extensions.gnome.org/.


Support for installing extensions from the website was first added in GNOME 3.2, so if you are using GNOME 3.0, you'll need to upgrade to a newer Linux distribution. You can check what version of GNOME is installed on your system using the "System Information" panel of "System Settings". If you are using GNOME 3.2 or newer and installation still doesn't work, check to make sure that the "GNOME Shell Integration" plugin is installed and enabled in your browser preferences. Read on for my favourite extensions...

SSH & Screen: Cheat sheet & tips for use with the command line (CLI)

My cheat sheet for SSH and screen...

SSH is a network protocol for secure data communication, remote shell services or command execution and other secure network services between two networked computers.

Screen is an application that can be used to run multiple virtual terminal consoles. It allows a user to access multiple separate terminal sessions inside a single terminal window or remote (SSH) terminal session. 

Configure Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot & Gnome 3 to improve user experience

This is a collation of tips and tweaks I've gathered along the way to configure Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot and Gnome 3 to improve my experience:

Wireless on BackTrack5 and Samsung NC10

How to connect to a WPA encrypted access point in BackTrack5 using wpa_supplicant and a Samsung NC10. Read on...

Ubuntu: Sound-juicer enable missing MP3 codec profile

Sound-juicer on Ubuntu 10.04 does not have lame for gstreamer included as standard hence the MP3 profile is not available out of the box. The required gstreamer lame mp3 plug in does not exist as a dependency for sound-juicer or in the standard synaptic repository. To enable the MP3 profile in sound-juicer, the underlying gstreamer lame mp3 plug is required. To install the gstreamer lame mp3 plug in from the default synaptic repository use:

sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse

Ubuntu: Install makemkv and update simply

MakeMKV is software to convert blu-ray and dvd to mkv, whilst it is in development it is currently free as shareware for Linux. As a consequence it updates every other month and you have to install and update it manually. You will occasionally need grab a new licence key for the shareware version which is avaiable from the MakeMKV forums. I started to write my own script to download, install and keep up to date MakeMKV. However, after getting my own script to work I found this far more elegant solution that I wanted to share. All kudos to Jeff Bower at ebower.com...

FTPS Limit issues with TLS / SSL 3.X and PROT P (Filezilla error 534 and ProFTPd)

I use ProFTPd as my FTP server which I occasionally run externally to let friends grab files from my home server and to upload content to when I'm away from home. I opt to encrypt both the command and data channels using explicit FTP over TLS and posted about setting this up last year getting ProFTPd working with TLS / SSL. In trying to create a more limited user account with only read only access to a limited number of shared directories I hit a challenge in allowing the user to list the content of the directories when TLS was in place, receiving the error 534 Unwilling to accept security parameters. Here's my solution...

Ubuntu: Playing 1080i HD content with Nvidia hardware acceleration decoding

Playing HD content on Linux has not always been that easy to achieve. Firstly, you ideally need a supported graphics card and from my research it seems preferable to go with Nvidia over AMD/ATI for Linux supported drivers at the time of writing. Secondly, you will need to configure your system to make the best use of the hardware based decoder on the current generation of graphics cards. Here's how I configured Ubuntu 11.10, an Nvidia G210 / N210 and VLC to playback 720p and 1080i HD content on a lowly Intel Atom based system...

Fix no sound in Adobe Flash on Linux under Firefox, Chromium, Opera et al.

After moving to Ubuntu 11.10 I have been experiencing issues with Adobe Flash not playing sound at all through any brower on this PulseAudio equipped operating system. PulseAudio is a sound server which accepts sound input from one or more sources and redirects it to one or more sinks (E.g. sound cards). One of the goals of PulseAudio is to reroute all sound streams through it; common issues include programs locking the ALSA sound device which then prevents other applications from mixing and using the audio device. To correct the issue I experienced with Opera and Flash I followed the following method which routes ALSA apps directly through pulse:

Ubuntu: auto mount samba network shares on boot via smbfs & fstab

Increasingly all of my data is stored on a network server which allows me to access it from multiple devices/platforms and to reduce local storage for each device. Having migrated recently from Windows XP to Ubuntu 11.10 for my main desktop workstation I want to automatically mount my network based data currently hosted as a Windows share on a samba server when my Ubuntu system boots up. Here's how...