Category: Tips

Sync Mega.nz On Ubuntu 22.04

In today’s article, we’re going to learn how to sync Mega.nz on Ubuntu 22.04. It’s an easy enough article, one even a new user can follow. Read on, my dear readers!

It’s a holiday when/where I write this, largely ’cause I wasn’t ahead of schedule, so a nice and easy article sounds like a good idea. Many of my readers are from the United States, so they’ll be in a turkey coma today. Besides, my right wrist is a bit angry today, so it’s a good excuse for a simple article!

This article was prompted by a question on a forum I frequent. The user was asking about cloud storage solutions that work with Linux. Many of them do, but Mega.nz seemed like a good idea. They support various versions of Linux, but we’re going to concentrate on learning how to sync Mega.nz on Ubuntu 22.04.

You’re going to need an account with Mega.nz. Click that link and sign up. They’ll give you 20 GB of free cloud storage and they encrypt everything you store with them. The URL may redirect to a .io address, but it’s the same company.

The folks at Mega.nz say that not even they can recover your data, so you’ll want to backup your key and never forget your password. But, I’ve used them for a long time and had no problem with their services.

As near as I can tell, they’re telling the truth about the encryption. So, you get 20 GB of storage space for free (among a bunch of other features) but you also get some pretty rock solid privacy. That’s why I’m writing the article about Mega.nz and not some other cloud storage provider.

Sync Mega.nz On Ubuntu 22.04:

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.

With your terminal now open, you want to use wget to grab the .deb file needed to install Mega.nz’s sync application. We’ll start by moving to the ~/Downloads directory before initiating the download, and the command will look like:

Then, we’re going to install the Mega.nz sync application right there in the terminal. We’re not going to mess around with a GUI application like GDebi. So, that command would look like:

And that’d be all you need to do – from the installation side. The application will appear in your application menu and you can configure it from there. That’s all going to be straightforward and the help pages at Mega.nz will see you through to the end – but my readers are smart enough to not actually need the help pages.

Closure:

That’s it! That’s all there is to it. You install the Mega.nz sync application, set up folders to sync, let the application run in the background (or only when you start it), and you can now sync Mega.nz on Ubuntu 22.04! I told you that it wasn’t going to be all that hard.

It’s even easy to sign up for an account on Mega.nz. Best of all, it’s 20 GB of encrypted cloud storage for free. On top of that, you can EASILY adjust this article to fit with a number of distros and a number of releases. It’s not hard and I’m sure you can figure it out.

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.

Find The Boot Processes That Slow You Down

In today’s article, we’re going to show you how to find the boot processes that slow you down. What you do with this information is up to you. You can opt to tweak and try to speed up the boot process, or you can just learn to live with it. It shouldn’t be too long – or too hard.

Note: This article assumes you’re using systemd. If you’re not, get with the program!

With modern computers, even those a decade old, I don’t really understand the fascination with speeding up your boot process. This is especially true with Linux. After all, how often are you booting? People spend 3 hours improving the boot time by 3 seconds!

using uptime to show how long the system has been running
As you can see, I do not reboot all that often, pretty much only as needed.

Even if you reboot every day, unless your boot time is so slow that it’s indicative of a problem, you can always just press the power button as you walk by the computer to get your morning coffee.

This article is aimed towards those who have a slow boot problem. It’s aimed at you people who have slow boot times, boot processes that slow you down without good reason. People interested in optimizing their boot time can also benefit from this article, but that’s not the point.

Also, this article isn’t going to show you what to do next. This article will just be showing you how to find the boot processes that slow you down. The steps you take from there will vary based on your problems or your objectives.

Find The Boot Processes That Slow You Down:

Like oh so often, this is a trip down Terminal Lane. We do a lot in the terminal on Linux-Tips! It’s great to get new users to get comfortable with using the 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.

With your terminal now open, we can take a look at the boot process. To do so, let’s start with a basic command:

Picking one of the slower devices in my stable, you end up with an output similar to this picture:

output from systemd-analyze
That’s rather middle of the road, I would assume. You can get much faster and slower.

With that information, you can see how long it takes to reach ‘userspace’. For most folks, that’s going to be the number you’re interested in – as it’s when you can graphically interact with the system, usually to login to the system.

I should also mention that that’s not the total boot time. The computer has its own boot process. This time only includes what happens after POST, as the Linux operating system takes over. It doesn’t include how long you saw the original computer’s OEM logo/boot screens or anything like that. Your real-world boot time will be slightly longer.

So, let’s have some more details and see how that startup is actually working. Let’s see how long it takes for each step of the boot process. To do that, you’d want to look at the following command:

Yup, it’s a bit of clever naming. It’s systemd letting you know what process(es) to blame for a slow boot time. Pretty handy, huh?

If you want, you can even make a nifty picture of the boot process – a picture that includes showing  you the dependencies needed to complete the boot process. 

That’ll output an image that’s quite large, to large to bother including, but it’s easy enough to understand. If you’re having serious issues booting, that image might be something you can share with a forum when you’re asking for assistance.

What steps you take next will depend on your individual situation. If you’re looking to speed up your boot process, you can mask services that you don’t need. If you’re having problematic services and/or dependencies, your situation will be different and require different fixes.

Closure:

And there you have it! You have another article. This article tells you how to find boot processes that slow you down, so it’s an article that could be helpful to all sorts of people. Once you have this information, you can start looking to make changes. It’s a handy way to get boot process information with systemd.

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: Show systemd Services

Today we’re going to have a quick and easy article, one where I show you how to show systemd services. We’ll explore a way to show all services and those services that are currently running. It’ll be nice and easy. 

At this point, systemd isn’t really all that controversial. It was for a while and there are still some people who work kinda hard to not use systemd. That’s their right and I support their choices, but I dare say that most of us now use systemd and that aiming articles at the majority is a good idea. So, I have no problem covering systemd stuff – and I have even less trouble treating it as though systemd is the default.

It’s kinda hard to pin down a definition for systemd. It’s far more than an init system, which it was replacing fairly early on. It has grown to encompass quite a bit more than that. So, let’s just look at how Wikipedia describes systemd.

systemd is a software suite that provides an array of system components for Linux[6] operating systems. Its main aim is to unify service configuration and behavior across Linux distributions;[7] Its primary component is a “system and service manager”—an init system used to bootstrap user space and manage user processes. It also provides replacements for various daemons and utilities, including device management, login management, network connection management, and event logging.

So, you can see it’s pretty expansive. For this article, we’ll be looking at the service manager aspect and how to show your systemd services. Let’s just jump into the article, so that we can keep it relatively brief.

Show systemd Services:

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. (I say this so very, very often…)

So, I said I wanted to keep this article brief – and there’s really no reason to make it longer, so this is how you show all the myriad systemd services:

Or you can try:

Either one or both of those commands should show you all the systemd services, regardless of what state they’re in. Though it should show you the state of the services listed.

A more useful command for most of us would be for us to show the various systemd services that are currently active. Of course you can do that! It’s Linux! You can do everything! It’s not even hard! Just try this command:

You can also try this command:

If you pay attention to the syntax, you can also opt to show those systemd services that are inactive. It’s probably pretty obvious, but try this:

Or you can try this one (’cause you have choices):

So, as you see, you can show the systemd services in total, show the active systemd services, or choose to show the systemd services that are inactive. It’s not a complicated task and there’s no reason to make it seem complicated. As the tag line says, we’re slowly but surely bringing you up to speed!

Closure:

And there you have it. You have a new article! This time you’ve learned how to show all of your assorted services – and to show the services in all their running states. Some folks like to make this sort of thing look complicated, but it’s really very easy. So, enjoy the new article and know that I appreciate your readership.

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.

Find And Remove Duplicate Files With rdfind

In today’s article, we’re going to find and remove duplicate files with rdfind. We’ll try to make this as safe as possible. I’d suggest newer  users not actually worry about duplicate files. Allocate enough space to your OS and don’t worry about it. Disk space is cheap these days.

Warning: Blindly removing duplicate files can be a risky operation. It can break things. You have been warned. Exercise caution!

If you’re interested in removing duplicate files, then the rdfind application is one solution you can try. There are others, but we’ll be using rdfind. We may cover other choices in the future.

You don’t have to run rdfind with it automatically deleting the duplicate files and that’s what I’m going to suggest you do – at least at first. It’s good to see what’ll be deleted before it is actually deleted.

If you check the rdfind man page, you’ll see it’s described as:

rdfind – finds duplicate files

It does what it says on the tin. It finds duplicate files. You can run the command in a manner that automatically removes the found duplicates, but that’s not something to take lightly.

Again, and I can’t stress this enough, some duplicates are there for a reason – they belong there. So, don’t run this on the root directory and expect a good outcome. Running this on the root directory and automatically removing duplicates is going to break stuff. Feel free to do so, ’cause it’s your computer. Just don’t blame me when it breaks.

There… I feel you’re safely and properly informed! Let’s get this article started…

Install rdfind:

We’ll just use the terminal to install rdfind. To open your default terminal emulator, press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open. You might as well leave it open, as rdfind also runs in the terminal and you’ll need an open terminal in the next step.

Debian/Ubuntu:
Arch/Derivatives:
RHEL/CentOS:
Fedora/Derivatives:

Now that you have installed rdfind, you should probably consult the man page. That’s an easy command:

With that knowledge fresh in your memory and rdfind installed, we can just jump into the article!

Find And Remove Duplicate Files With rdfind:

Your terminal should still be open from the previous step. If not, go ahead and open it now. You’ll need a terminal open to find and remove duplicate files with rdfind. It is not a graphical application.

So, I suppose you can start with this command:

That may look dangerous, but it’s not. If you run that command, it simply finds the duplicate files and then creates a text file for you. You then review the text file and manually remove the duplicate files. This is probably for the best. It’s also the same thing if you do a dry run, like so:

You can actually delete the files and replace the first one found with hard links. While not recommended by me, it’s at least safer.

Finally, you can just go right ahead and just find and remove duplicate files! This is safer if you have both a recent backup and you’ve gone ahead and run one of the first two commands. Then, if you have run one of those two rdfind commands, you’ll know what’s going to be deleted.

Just don’t run rdfind on your root directory, and probably don’t run it directly on your home directory, and you should be more or less okay. Feel free to run it on your Downloads folder, on your Documents folder, or even your Pictures folder.

Running rdfind that way, on those types of directories, will be fine and at least should not break things. Rdfind pretty good at finding just duplicates, or I’d not recommend it. Be sure to backup first and make sure you give it a dry run before you start automatically removing stuff! Seriously, do not run this on your root directory.

Closure:

And there you have it… You have yet another article! This time, we’ve learned how to find and remove duplicate files with rdfind. You were given a clear warning, but you’re gonna do what you’re gonna do. Man, I really need to write that article about backing up properly!

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: Find Multiple Filenames By Extension

Today’s article will show you how to find multiple filenames by extension, using the find command in the terminal. It’s a pretty handy skill to have for when you need to know where files of a certain extension reside on your file system.

If you got a new article notification yesterday, that’s because I’m an idiot. Instead of hitting the schedule button, I hit the publish button. I’m not sure what I was thinking. It was fairly early in the afternoon and I wasn’t even sipping wine at the time! Sorry for disturbing you unnecessarily. I almost sent out an ‘oops’ newsletter, but then I’d have just disturbed you twice.

Anyhow, this will be another article that makes use of the find command. The find command is a rather robust command and can be somewhat daunting for new people. I feel more comfortable writing articles that let you learn it in chunks, rather than trying to cover the entire thing. I do find it hard to explain, but I’ll do my best.

What’s this useful for? Well, let’s say you want to find .deb, .zip, and .iso files in you ~/Downloads directory. That’s what this command is going to do for you. You can find multiple filenames by extension in the terminal and it’s not overly complex once you understand the basics of the command.

Instead of making the intro needlessly longer, and to make up for today’s scheduling gaff, I’ll keep the intro short and we’ll just run straight into the article…

Find Multiple Filenames By Extension:

In the intro, I mentioned that this was going to be done in the terminal. As such, we’re obviously going to need an open terminal for this exercise. To do so, press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open. Tada!

Warning: I do not explain this one as well as I’d hoped. So, I tried to explain by way of demonstrating. I’m hopeful that works.

Now, here’s the command I just ran in my terminal:

Now, if you want to run it in the current directory, you can specify the directory or you can change ~/Downloads to a . (period).

If you want to find just one file, you’d stop after "*.deb" and leave the closing \).  If you want to add additional files, you would include -o -name "*.<extension>" and make sure to keep the closing ).

It might be easier to show you. For formatting reasons, I’ll use the . (period) instead of specifying a directory. It’ll fit on your screen better than a longer command. So, “How To:”…

Find One File By Extension:
Find Two Files By Extension:
Find Three Files By Extension:

So, hopefully you can see how this find command works. I can’t think of a better way to explain the command than to show it to you in examples. I hope that works for people. Feel free to comment in either direction, as I think it might work for some but be less effective for others.

In theory, you could find all sorts of files by extension, just remember to include the -o -name and file type and noting that the asterisk is a wildcard in this instance, meaning all files with that extension will be found. So, .gz files would be "*.gz". You can make the command as long as your heart desires!

Well, no… There’s bound to be an upper limit somewhere. (Wait, I looked it up, the maximum number of characters in the terminal is 4096 characters. And now we know…)

EDIT: You have no idea how much of a pain in the butt this article turned out to be. Holy crap. For safety reasons, WordPress eats the backslash \. I did not know this. Nobody knows this. The solution is to escape the backslash by using it twice. This article is full of backslashes. I think I got them all. It eats them every time I save the draft, so hopefully they show up in publication. I can never edit this article again, so it is what it is. Well, I could edit it again, but it’d be a pain in the butt.

Closure:

So, yeah… Today we’ve learned to find multiple filenames by extension. At least I hope we have. It’s not so easy to explain, but I figured if I explained it by showing examples then you’d be able to pick it up in context. If you do have any questions, just drop ’em into the comment box below and I’m usually pretty speedy at getting back to people. As always, the man page is probably helpful.

Again, sorry about the fake article notification. That doesn’t happen often, but it does sometimes happen. In an ideal world, I’d have an awesome editor and I would just save everything as a draft. If you’re interested in volunteering for that role, let me know! It’d make my life so much easier, I think… I mean, I don’t really know… It just seems like something that’d help.

Also, I’m pretty excited to write this month’s meta article. I’ll probably wait and schedule it for the holiday or a weekend day. They’re not important articles, but I find it interesting. The site’s growing steadily.

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.

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