Networking Archives • Page 11 of 16 • Linux Tips

Let’s Install Microsoft Edge

Today, we’re going to learn how to install Microsoft Edge. That’s the browser made by Microsoft that even has a Linux version. That’s right, it’s from Microsoft but has a Linux version – and a version packaged for pretty much everyone.

We’ll be installing on Linux Mint, just to mix things up a bit. It’s really not that much of a change, it’s still using apt. It just so happens that I’m sitting at a Linux Mint computer when I’m writing this. We might as well use GDebi while we’re at it.

Yes, I’m well aware that many of you hate Microsoft with a passion. That’s fine. If you don’t want to install Microsoft Edge, just move on and don’t bother those of us who are curious about the browser. You’ll have another article in a couple of days, and it quite likely won’t have anything to do with Microsoft.

If you don’t know, Microsoft Edge is based on Chromium – which is the opensource version of Chrome, more or less. Chromium doesn’t have feature parity with Chrome, so it’s not quite the same version. Chrome is mostly based on it.

There are many browsers based on Chromium. Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, etc.? They’re all based on Chromium. There are only so many browser engines out there, and Chromium being opensource means people are going to use it. Microsoft jumped on the bandwagon with their Edge and made it available for Linux users. So, we’re going to…

Install Microsoft Edge:

This article requires an open terminal, but only for a minute. If you don’t know how to open the terminal, you can do so with your keyboard – just press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open.

To keep things easy, we’re going to install GDebi. As we’re doing this on Mint, the command will work with any apt-using distro, the command to install GDebi is:

sudo apt install gdebi

1	sudo apt install gdebi

Follow any prompts to ensure you install GDebi properly.

Next, fire up your favorite browser and:

Click to download Microsoft Edge for Linux (make sure to get the right one for your distro). There are a number of choices, so pick the right version of Microsoft Edge for you.

Let it download, say to your Downloads directory. When your download is complete, right click on it and choose to open it with GDebi directly from the right click menu.

That part is easy, just let it do its preliminary checks and then you can click on the install button (upper right) when it’s ready to be installed. Later, if you don’t like it, you can open the .deb with GDebi again and opt to uninstall the package. See? It’s pretty handy.

Closure:

I actually wrote a review of Edge before, but it’s on the old site and not really very good. Even if you can’t stand Microsoft, it’s not a bad browser. It’s not one that I’m going to use in my day-to-day browsing, largely due to lethargy, but it’s still a viable browser.

Thanks for reading! If you want to help, or if the site has helped you, you can donate, register to help, write an article, or buy inexpensive hosting to start your own site. If you scroll down, you can sign up for the newsletter, vote for the article, and comment.

How To: Make ‘wget’ Ignore Certificate Errors

In today’s article, we’ll learn how to make ‘wget’ ignore certificate errors. It’s an easy thing to do and can be pretty useful if you want to download stuff from a server with a broken or missing security certificate. It’s a simple process, one which even a new Linux user can follow – but it’s not one that comes up all that often and so it’s worth including here.

I’d like to save some time and not duplicate work, so I’d appreciate it greatly if you at least read the intro section from when I wrote how to make ‘curl’ ignore certificate errors.

That’s right, I’ve already written this article – except it was for ‘curl‘ and not for ‘wget’. Well, this article is pretty much the same thing, except we’re talking about doing it with ‘wget’. So, read the intro to the curl article and you’ll be up to speed with regards to what a certificate is, why they’re important, and why you might want to ignore certificate errors.

That’ll save some time! Those of you who do not read the ‘curl’ article are on your own. Also, many of my readers will already know about security certificates and won’t need a tutorial or refresher course.

By the way, we use SSL here on Linux Tips. In fact, we use HSTS Preload, which means it’s hard coded in Chromium browsers (or at least Chrome) and the site will simply refuse to load without a proper certificate. So, there’s that… I take security pretty seriously, something important when you’re using WordPress.

Make ‘wget’ Ignore Certificate Errors:

This article requires ‘wget’ which requires an open terminal. If you don’t know how to open the terminal, you can do so with your keyboard – just press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open. If ‘wget’ isn’t installed, install it. I am pretty darned confident that it’s in your default repositories.

If you don’t know, ‘wget’ is used to download stuff from servers – while you’re using your terminal. It’s a basic concept, but the command can be pretty complicated. After all, there are some pretty complicated site structures out there, and of course your downloading needs will vary.

So, with that said, it’s really easy to do this. You’ll just use the “--no-check-certificate” flag, like so:

wget --no-check-certificate <web/server address>

1	wget --no-check-certificate <web/server address>

But wait, there’s more! You can actually make the ‘wget’ command ignore certificate errors all the time. If this is something you find yourself needing to add this to your ‘wget’ commands often, you can make it permanent. To do that, you just need to edit your ~/.wgetrc file (create it, if it doesn’t exist) with the following:

check-certificate = off

1	check-certificate = off

You won’t have to reload anything, that command should take effect the very next time you use the ‘wget’ command and you should now permanently be ignoring security certificate errors.

Doing this might actually be a horrible idea. After all, you’re ignoring security warnings. That’s a bit like ignoring a ‘Bridge Closed’ sign and hoping for the best as you gun it to the tune of “Highway To The Danger Zone”. Or, it could be just fine ’cause not everything even needs a security certificate! It’s Linux. You get to decide.

Closure:

Whelp… You have a new article. In this one, I give you what could be horrible advice. You might not want to make ‘wget’ ignore certificate errors. I mean, they are security related. On the other hand, it’s likely just fine – assuming you do some basic verification. Ah well… I ain’t scared and it’s not my computer. I’ll happily teach you how to completely break your system. I ain’t scared.

Check Your SSH Server Configuration

Today, I’m going to show you how to check your SSH server configuration. It’s a simple process, but not one many people seem to know about. It’s also a pretty handy tool if you’re having SSH issues. Once again, this one isn’t all that complicated, I think… Read on!

So, why would you want to check your SSH server configuration?

Your SSH server might not be working. You may have made some changes and want to test it before moving it to production. An upgrade to the SSH application may have made some of the options different or even removed the options entirely.

There are all sorts of reasons why you’d want to check your SSH server configuration. Those are just a few of them. Not only will the article show you how to check your SSH configuration files – it’ll show you how to test alternative configurations. So, you can test your changes before making them – potentially saving you a physical trip to the server.

Check Your SSH Server Configuration:

This article requires an open terminal, like many other articles on this site. If you don’t know how to open the terminal, you can do so with your keyboard – just press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open.

By the way, I would test/learn this on a local system. You’re potentially going to break things. In fact, let’s start by breaking them! Well, let’s create a backup first, and then we’ll break stuff.

sudo cp /etc/ssh/sshd_config /etc/ssh/sshd_config.bak

1	sudo cp /etc/ssh/sshd_config /etc/ssh/sshd_config.bak

Okay. Now let’s break something! Run this command:

sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

1	sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config

Find a line that has a command and doesn’t start with a #. You can also remove the # from an option and it’ll be work. Find a one line option that has a “no” option field and change it to “oh_no” *sans quotes, though that probably won’t matter) and then save the file.

(Also, to save the file in nano, press CTRL + X, then Y, and then ENTER and that should do it.)

Now, let’s check that SSH server configuration with the following command:

sudo sshd -t

1	sudo sshd -t

If things go according to plan, it will tell you that you have an error. On top of that, it will tell you on which line you have the error. If it doesn’t throw an error, it means your configuration is fine – or that you may need to restart your SSH service for it to see the new configuration.

If you do somehow need to restart SSH server (you shouldn’t have to), restart it with the following command:

sudo systemctl restart ssh

1	sudo systemctl restart ssh

Run the command again and that should definitely show the error, which you can easily fix by simply undoing what you did in the steps above and saving it. You almost certainly shouldn’t need to restart SSH to show the error, though you may want to restart it after you’re done playing around in the config file. Of course, if you did have to restart the SSH server, you’ll need to do so again after fixing the error you intentionally introduced.

BONUS: If you want, you can list the path and check a configuration file that’s not actually in use. So, you can check the configuration file before putting it into production. That’s just:

sudo sshd -t /path/to/new_config

1	sudo sshd -t /path/to/new_config

Again, under normal circumstances, it won’t show any output if it finds no errors. It only outputs information if there’s actually an error. So, a null response is considered normal and good.

Closure:

See? Nice and easy. Now you can check your SSH server configuration for errors – even doing so before putting the config into production. It’s a pretty handy tool to have. Also, you’ll need SSH installed and running on the machine you’ll be testing with. I figure that’s obvious, but I better mention it somewhere or someone will point it out or ask about it. Then again, people seldom read this far down in an article.

Change Your Hostname

In today’s article, we’re going to learn how to change your hostname in Linux. It’s a pretty easy article to follow along with, so even if you’re a beginner you can follow along. If you’re an advanced user, you probably already know how to do this. If not, you will now.

So, what is your hostname? Basically, it’s the name of your computer (generally speaking). You login as <your_username> to a computer referred to by its <hostname>. So, in this case, I’m currently kgiii@kgiii-lmde. The ‘kgiii-lmde’ is the hostname. When you open your terminal, in all likelihood it shows you the <user>@<hostname> at the start of your regular prompt.

You can do some neat stuff with the hostname. For instance, and depending on the distro, it’s often local or localhost, you can connect to your LAN devices (without knowing the IP address) by connecting to <hostname>.local. This is handy for using SSH around the house, or even for using FTP or whatever.

If you don’t know your hostname, you can use one of the following commands to figure it out:

hostname

hostname

Or you can try:

cat /etc/hostname

1	cat /etc/hostname

There are other ways to show the hostname, but those two should be enough to get you sorted out. Either of them will happily spit out the hostname. Now that you know your hostname, it’s time to learn how to …

Change Your Hostname:

Like so many other articles on this site, this one requires an open terminal to continue. So, just press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open.

With your terminal open, enter the following command:

sudo hostnamectl set-hostname <new_hostname>

1	sudo hostnamectl set-hostname <new_hostname>

That should permanently change your hostname to the new hostname you chose to use in the command. You can actually change it temporarily, it will not be persistent between reboots, with the hostname command. to do that you’d just sudo hostname <new_hostname> and it’ll change it for the current session only.

To verify that you’ve changed your hostname, run one of the commands listed in the preamble section of this article. (Just type hostname and to verify you know how to change your hostname.)

Anyhow, that’s all there is to it. You really don’t need anything more than that if you want to change your hostname in Linux. Anyone should be able to follow the few directions needed.

Closure:

There you have it, another article. To think, we’re over 200 articles now. This is just one more among many, and this one is easy enough to follow. If you ever wanted to change your hostname, now you know…

Turn Your Ubuntu Into A Wireless Hotspot

Have you ever wanted to use your Linux computer as a wireless hotspot? It’s actually pretty easy. Today’s article will get you started and it really isn’t all that difficult. We will actually be cribbing a bit of this article from the software’s homepage, but while some more, rather important, information added.

For many years, I used my own router that I had configured on my own hardware. It was built on Linux. The preceding version actually ran on BSD, but that’s not important for a site called Linux-Tips. Today, you can get a NUC or Pi for dirt cheap and so making a new router is back on my list of things to do. In other words, it’s a fun project that won’t take a lot of money to get into.

All of the varied software and hardware components are already there to make your own router, but I want to enable wireless connectivity. a wireless hotspot, and that’s what we’re going to look at today. The tool we’re going to use is called ‘linux-wifi-hotspot‘ That’s is a great tool, complete with GUI if wanted, written by lakinduakash. It has only been around for a few years, but it’s spoken of very highly – and it just works and works well.

At least it worked the last time I used it. This article is from the old site and I’m just moving it to this site. I actually haven’t bothered much with my own router for the past year or so. So, this information is a bit dated.

Turn Your Ubuntu Into A Wireless Hotspot:

The software is easy enough to install. If you’re using Debian/Ubuntu, just add the PPA and install the software. To add the PPA, you just run:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lakinduakash/lwh

1	sudo add-apt-repository ppa:lakinduakash/lwh

On a modern Ubuntu, you shouldn’t need to do this, but you might want to go ahead and run a quick update with:

sudo apt update

1	sudo apt update

Then you can install the software, starting to get your system into a workable wireless hotspot. To do that, it’s just:

sudo apt install linux-wifi-hotspot

1	sudo apt install linux-wifi-hotspot

If you want, you can visit the link above (in the preamble), click on releases, and download the .deb file for the current release and just install it with gdebi. In this case, I’d suggest installing with the PPA – just to make sure

Then, you can go ahead and start it. You can also go ahead and make it start at boot, which would be prudent if you intended to use this to make your own router. It’s really self-explanatory and without specific questions for using it, I’m just going to refer you to the man page and the information at the project page.

Caveats:

But, before you can even do all of this, you need to know that your wireless adapter actually supports doing this. To find out, you need to know if your wireless adapter supports “AP” mode. AP obviously meaning ‘Access Point’.

To check this, you need to run the following command:

iw list | grep AP

1	iw list \| grep AP

The project page is noticeably silent with this, but it’s a necessary step. See, you need to know if your hardware actually supports it before you even bother trying. Come to think of it, I probably should have put this closer to the top of the page! Ah well…

Anyhow, the output should contain one or both of the following lines:

Device supports AP scan.

And/Or:

Driver supports full state transitions for AP/GO clients.

So long as you see one or both of those, you should be all set to proceed. If you don’t see either of them, there’s no software solution and you’ll need to get hardware that supports AP mode. In many cases, that’ll mean doing a bunch of research and may even mean contacting the vendor or OEM.

Nobody appears to have compiled a list of hardware that supports AP mode and I don’t think I’ve ever bought wireless adapters that explicitly stated they do on the box. As near as I can tell, more modern adapters support it just fine, so you’ll probably be alright. Online specs are more thorough than what’s printed on the outside of the box, so maybe searching is okay.

Closure:

Alright, there’s your article for the day. I have no idea if you want to make a wireless hotspot for your Linux box, but now you know how. It’s pretty self-explanatory, and you shouldn’t have any questions. If you do, you know where to find me – or to find others who can help you – at Linux.org.