Meta: The State Of Linux-Tips #20

Today’s article will just be a meta article, not a complicated article, and just the state of Linux-Tips. As you can tell by the numbering, I don’t remember to do this every month, but I try to. I figure it’s fun to share what’s going on behind the scenes.

The process of writing these articles can take as much time as it does to write a ‘regular’ article. They often take longer than that. That’s okay. I still try to write them.

Things are going well enough. The site continues to grow. The site attracts more and more attention. It is a slow growth, but it’s far more growth than I ever expected. Once upon a time, I was happy to see 20 visits (per day) in my logs. In the past month, we’ve had 4 days with over 1000 visits.

As you can imagine, this is expensive. It’s still well within the realm of affordable. The only two real expenses (I don’t count my time as an expense, though I probably should) are hosting and then paying for a CDN.

If you’ve donated in the past, thanks! You’re still invited to help pay for stuff – but, as I said, it’s still within the realm of affordable. There’s no chance I’ll close the site due to operating costs. Regardless of how large the site gets, I’ll keep the site up and running.

Hosting costs are up there. The server has been upgraded to 8x the RAM it had. I was running into resource limits and it was impacting the site’s public side. So, that had to be addressed.

How about some numbers?

Security:

I don’t talk about security much. I don’t want people to know a whole lot of what goes on behind the scenes, at least as far as security is concerned. What’s important is that I use a multi-layer approach. 

Spam is mostly eliminated. If it’s an automated bot, it’s going to have issues posting here. However, some people in low-wage countries have people who are willing to spam manually. It’s a nuisance as I have to go through and remove it manually. It never gets published.

How about some numbers… 

This is some automated spam protection:

automated spam protection
I do not need to manually remove that spam! So, that’s nice! (It should expand if you click on it.)

Oddly, these next numbers are low, they’re usually about 10x this amount. I suppose that means the site’s not under attack today. It could also be that other measures have stopped the attacks.

There are many varied attacks when you run a WordPress site.
Those numbers are usually much, much higher. The low numbers make me happy!

As you can see, the next numbers show that I’ve managed to block pretty much all brute force attacks. This is yet another layer of security.

WordPress gets lots of attacks.
Those numbers are pretty good too, which is nice. I do not pay for the premium subscription.

The next is one of the first layers of security – where I keep the login portion of the site secure. The image won’t make much sense, in part. I have no idea what the graphic is meant to represent – but the three successful attempts were all me. (I use 2FA, so ain’t nobody gonna access the ACP.)

You need to block brute force login attempts.
These are just people who tried to brute force or password guess to gain access.

I really could use a competent WordPress administrator to monitor all this for me. Then again, I don’t think I’d want to cede control.

Popular Stuff:

I’m just going to use Google for the next section. I won’t bother showing the numbers because they’re inaccurate. Google doesn’t seem to count those that block their scripts, meaning they’re useless for some analytic numbers. They’re still proportionately correct and easily visualized, so they’re not completely useless.

The vast majority of my traffic comes from Google. Like, 90% of my traffic comes from Google. People sometimes wonder why I deal with Google and the reason is that it’s worth it (to me) to do so.

These are the top 10 pages found by Google Search:

Top 10 pages found by Google Search.
Those are the top 10 pages that get the bulk of traffic from Google Search.

On the other hand, according to Google’s Analytics (again, these numbers are skewed but still sort of useful), different pages attract the bulk of my traffic. That’s a bit unusual but neat. 

Most active pages on the Linux-Tips site.
Those are (according to Google) the most active pages on the site.

So, there’s some new information for you.

Meta Article:

I suppose it wouldn’t be a meta article without some more numbers… Well, I have some more numbers! I love numbers and pay quite a bit of attention to numbers.

Also, I bought a new domain name and now I’m looking for motivation to write about being a WordPress admin. We’ll see how that goes, but I haven’t found much motivation yet.

This is the 450th article published on this site.
A new article is published every other day, so far without fail.
There are ​341,874 words.
It would take you 22 hours, and 47 minutes to read it all.
The longest article is How To: Ask A Good Support Question.
There have been 206 approved comments.
So far this month there have been 21,226​ visitors.
We’ve used 43 GB of traffic so far this month.

Closure:

Well, there are some numbers for you. I figured I’d spice it up a little bit and share some different information this time around. It’s just a meta article, after all. Taking, uploading, formatting, and filling in meta information for images can take a bit of time, so this article has taken me longer than normal. Imagine that!

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 site. If you scroll down, you can sign up for the newsletter, vote for the article, and comment.

How To: Kill A User Session

Today’s article won’t be useful for many of my regular readers because it’s about how to kill a user session. This is a skill worth learning, but really only applies to computers that have multiple people logged in at one time. If that’s describing you and your needs, this may be an article worth reading.

Of course, if that’s not something you do, you can still learn from this. It’s not all that complicated and is easy enough to follow. So, feel free to learn something – even if it isn’t something you’re likely to ever need.

There are times when you may have someone logged in and you want to log them out. For example, let’s say you’re getting ready to fire someone. You’re going to want to delete their account, make sure they’re logged out of their account, and then take them to HR where you can file paperwork and escort them (and their property) off the site.

You might also want to do stuff like log people out so that you can perform updates on the server. There are all sorts of reasons why you might want to kill a user session. Your reasons are your own. I’ll simply be showing you the tools.

Kill A User Session:

You’ll need an open terminal and to be connected to the computer you want to control. If you’re doing this, I’ll assume you’re aware of how to do those things. If you’re doing this on your own computer, you can usually press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open.

Once you’re connected (or have your own terminal) you can find the logged-in users with the following command:

Actually, you can just use this command:

The results are the same. So, either works.

You can now see the output which will show you every logged-in user on that device. Next, you’ll kill a user session with the following command:

If you wanted to use the kill command, you could find the associated processes (the PID) but there’s no reason to do so when you can just kill a user session with the username.

Closure:

There you go. I figured I’d do a nice, short, and easy article. It’s not very complicated and it’s not something many of you will need. However, if you’re managing a system with multiple people logged in, this is a very useful tool to have. You never know when someone’s going to come into your office and ask you to kill a user session. Well, now you know how…

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How To: Make A Linux Install USB

Today’s article is going to be a rather basic article, with worthwhile information, about how to make a Linux install USB. This won’t be too complicated, even if it looks complicated initially. It probably won’t even be a very long article.

If you want to install Linux, you will need some sort of install medium. That can be almost any sort of drive, including some distros that are still small enough to fit on a CD. Heck, if you can get your computer to boot to it, you could even use a MicroSD as your installation media.

We’ll be doing this in the terminal. Why? Well, because it’s not that hard and it’s a fairly universal process. You won’t even need to install anything new! But, if you don’t have any interest in doing this in the terminal (or if you’re not using Linux right now) you can always do this with a GUI. See the following article for more details:

balenaEtcher: A Tool To Turn Linux .ISO Files Into Bootable USB Drives

There’s also Rufus, should you be using a Windows computer. You have options outside of the terminal. Though, I haven’t done an article on using Rufus. I don’t have any Windows devices. (If you want to write said article, feel free to let me know. I love guest articles.)

What You Need:

These are the tools you’ll want to have available. It’s not a long list, so we won’t have too much to deal with.

  1. A blank USB drive, large enough to hold the data.
  2. Any distro with lsblk.
  3. The ability to unmount a disk.
  4. A distro with the dd command.

So, I’ll assume you have the first aspect covered. Everything else is software. They’re standard tools that are available on all but the tiniest of distros.

The first tool is lsblk, which the man page describes as:

lsblk – list block devices

Then you’ll need the obverse of mount, which is unmount. This is a part of the mount command. It doesn’t have a command of its own. That mount command is described as:

mount – mount a filesystem

And, finally, you’ll need the dd command. That’s simply described as:

dd – convert and copy a file

And that’ll be all you need. Well, you’ll need an open terminal, of course! So, let’s cover one way that you can…

Make A Linux Install USB:

Like I said, you’re going to need a USB drive. This drive must be big enough to hold the data. You’ll need to insert the drive and then open the terminal. To open the terminal, just press CTRL + ALT + T or open it from your application menu.

With your USB inserted, you need to identify where it is mounted. You can do that by running the following command:

You should be able to easily identify the USB drive by the size of the drive. The data you want will begin with “sd”, often something like “sdb” or “sdc” (enumerating as you increase mounted storage devices).

Take that information and run the following command:

The next command might look complicated, but just follow the directions and you shouldn’t have any trouble as you make a Linux install USB. The command looks like this:

For example, if the disk identifier was “sdc” and the path to the .iso was something like “~/Downloads/Lubuntu_22.04.iso” the command would look like this:

Then, just wait a few minutes. Let the dd command do its thing and you’ll end up with a bootable USB drive that will let you install Linux. (This also works for other image files, of course.)

Closure:

See? It’s not that complicated to make a Linux install USB. So long as you pay attention, you won’t have much to worry about. There are a few commands that you need to worry about, but those are basic commands in this instance.

I will warn you to be absolutely certain of the path for the dd command because it has the potential to make you have a really bad day. But, if you don’t want to deal with installing a GUI application, or you are in a position where you can’t install a GUI application, this is a way for you to make a Linux USB installation drive to get yourself out of a sticky situation.

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Update Flatpaks From The Terminal

Today’s article is just going to be nice and quick. It is just going to be about how you can update flatpaks from the terminal. This might be something you’re interested in learning. So, if you want to know how to update flatpaks from the terminal, this is the article for you!

Trust me, this shouldn’t take too long. That’s good because I’m not sure how long I have! I’m having some desktop computer issues. I have laptops, yes plural, available, but I hate typing on them. I could just hook up an external monitor and keyboard, but that’s a lot like work. If I was interested in doing work, I’d investigate why my desktop PCs keep dying.

What Is A Flatpak:

A flatpak is an application package format. To enable flatpaks, you’ll have to install some software first. That seems like a good article that hasn’t been written yet.

Anyhow, a flatpak comes with all the dependencies it needs to run. It is also run in a sandbox, meaning it is more secure as it runs independently of the operating system and other applications. As they run independently, they’re able to be installed (in theory) on any distro. You don’t need to make a flatpak for each distro’s package manager, you can just make the one flatpak and it should work everywhere.

If you have something like the Gnome Software Manager and you’ve installed the initial flatpak software (software that enables you to use these packages in the first place) then you’ll see that it integrates flatpaks into the system. In that case, flatpaks will update with the rest of the system and you don’t need to worry about updating flatpaks in the terminal.

On the other hand, this may not be true for you and you may not realize that you can update flatpaks from the terminal. Which means this is for you…

Update Flatpaks From The Terminal:

Of course, this means you need an open terminal. Just press CTRL + ALT + T and your default terminal should open. You may need to open the terminal from your application menu, but the above key bindings are fairly universal.

The command is really simple if you want to update flatpaks from the terminal. To do so, you simply run this command:

Notice that you do not need sudo or any elevated permissions. Many folks list this command as a sudo prefaced command and that’s not necessary. The flatpaks installed are installed in a way that the files belong to the user. As such, there’s no need to use elevated permissions.

While you’re there, there’s a lot that one might not know about the flatpak application. I highly suggest you check out the man page to learn more – as there’s quite a bit that you can do with the application.

Yeah, that should show you all the options you have. There are far too many options to cover in this short article about updating flatpaks from the terminal.

Closure:

So, yeah… I told you that this would be a nice and short article. There’s a way to update flatpaks from the terminal and this is how you do it. You might as well know how to do so. It’s not complicated and might come in handy someday, especially if you’re expected to update them manually.

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 site. If you scroll down, you can sign up for the newsletter, vote for the article, and comment.

Let’s Mount An .iso In Lubuntu

Today we’re going to discuss something you won’t need to do often, as we learn about how to mount an .iso in Lubuntu. That seems like a fun article to write and it’s something I just had to do. So, that seemed like a good idea to me.

This shouldn’t be a very long article. I’ll try to keep it simple and straight forward. I figure if you can follow simple directions, you’ve got this licked. It’s not exactly a challenging task. Anyone willing to try hard enough can manage to follow along with this article.

I suppose we should start at the beginning…

What Is An .iso file?

An .iso file is a standard that’s used for images of optical disks. If you’ve used CD/DVD burning applications, it’s what you’re doing when you ‘burn an image’, for example. It’s a single file, meant to be written as an image, and is a file that’s meant to be an optical disk.

You’ll run into .iso files in Linux often. Pretty much every single distro out there is released in .iso format. We don’t always use them for optical disks. You’ll find that a lot of hardware doesn’t even have an optical disk drive. As such, we use the image formats for other things – like USB drives.

We burn these .iso files to a USB so that we can install Linux in the first place. When you’re faced with installing Linux and want (or need) to do it with a USB thumb drive, you’ll want to use tools like balenaEtcher.

So, with Linux at least, you’re likely to run into .iso files. They’re a useful way of sharing a disk image. You’d originally write that disk image to a disk (like optical media) as a single file and then that disk would work. If you try to write an .iso to media as just a file, it’s not going to work as something you can boot from.

You can learn more about the .iso format at Wikipedia. There are other formats for disk images, just so you’re aware. Read the Wikipedia article for more information.

The Mount Command:

We’ll be using the terminal for this command and we’ll be using the mount command for this exercise. As we’re only addressing Lubuntu (though this will certainly work in other distros) we know that the command is already installed and there’s no work for you to do there.

If you check the man page, you’ll see that the mount command is exactly what we need. The man page describes it like this:

mount – mount a filesystem

See? Exactly what we need to mount an .iso in Lubuntu! It’s perfect for the purpose.

You probably mount things all the time. If a disk is usable in Linux, it has been mounted. (You may run checks against an unmounted disk, of course.) If you plug in a USB drive, Lubuntu will happily (assuming your settings are the default settings) mount the drive for you. It’s a handy thing, to have the system smart enough to mount devices when plugged in. It beats the old way of having to mount them yourself manually.

So, the mount application is already installed and you needn’t install anything, but we will be doing this in the terminal. Yes, you can probably manage to do this with some GUI trickery, but you might as well learn how to mount that .iso file in the terminal. It’ll be good for you!

Mount An .iso In Lubuntu:

As mentioned above, we’ll be doing this in the terminal, the way it has historically been done. This isn’t going to be all that challenging, but you first need to open the terminal. To open your terminal, just press CTRL + ALT + T. That should open your terminal.

With your terminal now open, you need a .iso file for this so feel free to download a distro (such as Lubuntu) to your Downloads directory – or wherever you want it to be. You start the mounting procedure by first setting a location for the file to be mounted. Like so:

In theory, you can probably make the directory anywhere, but we will be dealing with convention. If you’re using Lubuntu, things should be mounted as media, and so they go in that directory.

The next step is the actual mounting of the file. This isn’t difficult, you just need to know the path of the .iso and where you just made the directory. That command would look similar to this:

At this point, your .iso file is mounted. You can use the file manager (PCManFM-Qt) to navigate to the files included in the .iso file. You can also list the contents of that file with this command:

With the .iso mounted, you can browse, copy, and extract files from the .iso file. You could theoretically add files to the image, but that’s not always a wise decision. 

When you’re done with the mounted .iso, you can just unmount it with the following terminal command:

This is all you really need to know to mount an .iso in Lubuntu. Try it for yourself, you can’t really break anything.

Closure:

Well, if you ever need to mount an .iso in Lubuntu, you now know how to do so. As I told you near the start, it’s not that complicated. If you just think it through and follow directions, you’ll be all set. It’s not all that often that you need to mount an .iso, but the situation does happen. This is especially true if you’ve done a backup that was a disk image and you need to recover files from it because you’ve had something break.

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 site. If you scroll down, you can sign up for the newsletter, vote for the article, and comment.

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