Linux Blimp

Accessing a remote desktop computer is made possible by the remote desktop protocol (RDP), a proprietary protocol developed by Microsoft. It gives a user a graphical interface to connect to another/remote computer over a network connection. FreeRDP is a free implementation of the RDP.

RDP works in a client/server model, where the remote computer must have RDP server software installed and running, and a user employs RDP client software to connect to it, to manage the remote desktop computer.

In this article, we will share a list software for accessing a remote Linux desktop: the list starts off with VNC applications.

VNC (Virtual Network Computing) is a server-client protocol which allows user accounts to remotely connect and control a distant system by using the resources provided by the Graphical User Interface (GUI).

Zoho Assist

Zoho Assist is a free, fast, cross-platform remote support software that allows you to access and support Linux desktops or servers without remote connection protocols like RDP, VNC, or SSH. Remote connections can be established from your favorite browser or a desktop plugin, regardless of the remote computer’s network.

With a whole host of features like remote file transfer, multi-monitor navigation, and clipboard sharing to aid MSPs, IT support technicians, and helpdesk technicians, debugging a Linux remote desktop is easy sailing with Zoho Assist.

Zoho Assist is extremely secure with two-factor authentication, action log viewer, and antivirus compatability. SSL and 256-bit AES encryption ensures all session-related information is passed through an encrypted tunnel.

A clutter-free user interface makes working easy for first-timers. You can customize email templates, and rebrand the Linux remote desktop application to use your company’s name, logo, favicon, and portal URL.

With Zoho Assist, you can configure all major variations of Linux computers and servers like Ubuntu, Redhat, Cent, Debian Linux Mint, and Fedora for unattended access, and seamlessly access them anytime.

1. TigerVNC

TigerVNC is a free, open source, high-performance, platform-neutral VNC implementation. It is a client/server application that allows users to launch and interact with graphical applications on remote machines.

Unlike other VNC servers such as VNC X or Vino that connect directly to the runtime desktop, tigervnc-vncserver uses a different mechanism that configures a standalone virtual desktop for each user.

It is capable of running 3D and video applications, and it attempts to maintain consistent user interface and re-use components, where possible, across the various platforms that it supports. In addition, it offers security through a number of extensions that implement advanced authentication methods and TLS encryption.

Learn How to Install and Configure VNC Server in CentOS 7

2. RealVNC

RealVNC offers cross-platform, simple and secure remote access software. It develops VNC screen sharing technologies with products such as VNC Connect and VNC Viewer. VNC connect gives you the ability to access remote computers, provide remote support, administer unattended systems, share access to centralized resources and much more.

You can get VNC connect for free for home use, which is limited to five remote computers and three users. However, for any professional and enterprise use, requires a subscription fee.

3. TeamViewer

Teamviewer is a popular, powerful, secure and cross-platform remote access and control software that can connect to multiple devices simultaneously. It is free for personal use and there is a premium version for businesses users.

It is an all-in-one application for remote support used for remote desktop sharing, online meetings and file transfer between devices connected over the Internet. It supports more than 30 languages around the world.

4. Remmina

Remmina is a free and open-source, fully featured and powerful remote desktop client for Linux and other Unix-like systems. It is written in GTK+3 and intended for system administrators and travelers, who need to remotely access and work with many computers.

It is efficient, reliable and supports multiple network protocols such as RDP, VNC, NX, XDMCP and SSH. It also offers an integrated and consistent look and feel.

Remmina allows users to maintain a list of connection profiles, organized by groups, supports quick connections by users directly putting in the server address and it provides a tabbed interface, optionally managed by groups plus many more features.

5. NoMachine

NoMachine is a free, cross platform and high quality remote desktop software. It offers you a secure personal server. Nomachine allows you to access all your files, watch videos, play audio, edit documents, play games and move them around.

It has an interface that lets you concentrate on your work and is designed to work in a fast manner as if you are seated right in front of your remote computer. In addition, it has remarkable network transparency.

6. Apache Guacamole

Apache Guacamole is a free and open source client-less remote desktop gateway. It supports standard protocols like VNC, RDP, and SSH. It requires no plugins or client software; simply use an HTML5 web application such as a web browser.

This means that, use of your computers is not tied to any one device or location. Furthermore, if you want to employ it for business use, you can get dedicated commercial support via third-party companies.

7. XRDP

XRDP is a free and open source, simple remote desktop protocol server based on FreeRDP and rdesktop. It uses the remote desktop protocol to present a GUI to the user. It can be used to access Linux desktops in conjunction with x11vnc.

It greatly, integrates with LikwiseOPEN thus enabling you to login to a Ubuntu server via RDP using active directory username/password. Although, XRDP is good project, it needs a number of fixes such as taking over an existing desktop session, running on Red Hat-based Linux distributions and more. The developers also need to improve its documentation.

8. FreeNX

FreeNX is an open source, fast and versatile remote access system. It is a secure (SSH based) client /server system, and it’s core libraries are provided by NoMachine.

Unfortunately, at the time of this writing, the link to the FreeNX website did not work, but we have provided links to the distro-specific web pages:

1. Debian: https://wiki.debian.org/freenx
2. CentOS: https://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/FreeNX
3. Ubuntu: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FreeNX
4. Arch Linux: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/FreeNX

That’s all! In this article, we reviewed eight best tools to access remote Linux desktops. Feel free to share your thoughts with us via the comment form below.

Source

In our earlier articles on this blog, we used Wine program to install and run windows based applications on Ubuntu and other Red Hat based Linux distributions. There is another open source software available called PlayOnLinux that uses Wine as its base and gives a feature rich functions and a user friendly interface to install and run windows application on Linux. The purpose of this software is to simplify and automates the process of installing and running windows applications on Linux platforms. It has a list of applications where you can automates each installation process as much as you can.

What is PlayOnLinux?

PlayOnLinux (POL) is an open source gaming framework (software) based on Wine, that allows you to easily install any Windows based applications and games on Linux operating systems, via the use of Wine as front-end interface.

What are PlayOnLinux’s features?

The following are the list of some interesting features to know.

1. PlayOnLinux is license free, no need of Windows License.
2. PlayOnLinux uses base as Wine
3. PlayOnLinux is a open source and free software.
4. PlayOnLinux is written in Bash and Python.

In this article, I will guide you on how to install, setup and use PlayonLinux on RHEL/CentOS/Fedora and Ubuntu/Debian distributions. You can also use these instructions for Xubuntu and Linux Mint.

How to Install PlayOnLinux in Linux Distributions

PlayOnLinux is in Fedora’s software repositories, so you can add the repository and install the PlayonLinux software using the following commands.

For RHEL/CentOS/Fedora

vi /etc/yum.repos.d/playonlinux.repo

[playonlinux]
name=PlayOnLinux Official repository
baseurl=http://rpm.playonlinux.com/fedora/yum/base
enable=1
gpgcheck=0
gpgkey=http://rpm.playonlinux.com/public.gpg

yum install playonlinux

For Debian

With the Squeeze repository

wget -q "http://deb.playonlinux.com/public.gpg" -O- | apt-key add -
wget http://deb.playonlinux.com/playonlinux_squeeze.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/playonlinux.list
apt-get update
apt-get install playonlinux

With the Lenny repository

wget -q "http://deb.playonlinux.com/public.gpg" -O- | apt-key add -
wget http://deb.playonlinux.com/playonlinux_lenny.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/playonlinux.list
apt-get update
apt-get install playonlinux

With the Etch repository

wget -q "http://deb.playonlinux.com/public.gpg" -O- | apt-key add -
wget http://deb.playonlinux.com/playonlinux_etch.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/playonlinux.list
apt-get update
apt-get install playonlinux

For Ubuntu

For the Precise 12.04 version

wget -q "http://deb.playonlinux.com/public.gpg" -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo wget http://deb.playonlinux.com/playonlinux_precise.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/playonlinux.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install playonlinux

For the Oneiric 11.10 version

wget -q "http://deb.playonlinux.com/public.gpg" -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo wget http://deb.playonlinux.com/playonlinux_oneiric.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/playonlinux.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install playonlinux

For the Natty 11.04 version

wget -q "http://deb.playonlinux.com/public.gpg" -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo wget http://deb.playonlinux.com/playonlinux_natty.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/playonlinux.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install playonlinux

For the Maverick 10.10 version

wget -q "http://deb.playonlinux.com/public.gpg" -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo wget http://deb.playonlinux.com/playonlinux_maverick.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/playonlinux.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install playonlinux

For the Lucid 10.04 version

wget -q "http://deb.playonlinux.com/public.gpg" -O- | sudo apt-key add -
sudo wget http://deb.playonlinux.com/playonlinux_lucid.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/playonlinux.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install playonlinux

How do I Start PlayOnLinux

Once it’s installed, you can start the PlayOnLinux as normal user from the application menu or use the following command to start it.

# playonlinux

$ playonlinux

Once you start PlayOnLinux, it starts with wizard that automatically download and install required software’s such as Microsoft fonts. Go through the wizard as shown below.

How do I Install Applications?

Once it’s done, click on ‘Install‘ button to explore available software’s or search for software’s. PlayonLinuxprovides some supported games, you can search them using ‘Search’ tab as shown below.

This way, you can search and install as many as Windows supported applications and games in your Linux.

Source

The NetBeans is an open source and award-winning IDE (integrated development environment) application for Windows, Linux, Solaris and Mac. The NetBeans IDE provides a much powerful Java application framework platform that allows programmers to easily develop Java based web applications, mobile applications and desktops. It is one of the best IDEs for C/C++ programming, and also it provides vital tools for PHP programmers.

The IDE is the only first editor, that provides support for many languages like PHP, C/C++, XML, HTML, Groovy, Grails, Ajax, Javadoc, JavaFX, and JSP, Ruby and Ruby on Rails.

The editor is feature-rich and provides an extensive range of tools, templates and samples; and it’s highly extensible using community developed plugins, thus making it well suited for software development.

This article guides you on how to install the latest version of NetBeans IDE 8.2 in Debian, Ubuntu and Linux Mintdistributions.

Requirements:

1. A Desktop machine with minimum 2GB of RAM.
2. The Java SE Development Kit (JDK) 8 is required to install NetBeans IDE (NetBeans 8.2 does not run on JDK9).

Read Also: How to Install NetBeans IDE in CentOS, RHEL and Fedora

Install Java JDK 8 in Debian, Ubuntu and Linux Mint

1. To install Java 8 JDK version, first add following webupd8team/java PPA to your system and update the repository package database as shown.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:webupd8team/java
$ sudo apt-get update

2. Once PPA has been added and updated, now search for the packages with name oracle-java8 and install it as shown.

$ apt-cache search oracle-java8
$ sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-installer

If you have more than one Java installed on your system, you can install oracle-java8-set-default package to set Java 8 as default as shown.

$ sudo apt-get install oracle-java8-set-default

Please note that the same webupd8team/java PPA also offers older and newer versions of Java packages like Java 7 and Java 9.

Install NetBeans IDE in Debian, Ubuntu and Linux Mint

3. Now oen a browser, navigate to NetBeans IDE download page and download the latest NetBeans IDE installer script for your installed Linux distribution.

Alternatively, you can also download NetBeans IDE installer script in your system via wget utility, by issuing the below command.

$ wget -c http://download.netbeans.org/netbeans/8.2/final/bundles/netbeans-8.2-linux.sh

4. After the download completes, navigate to the directory where the NetBeans IDE installer has been downloaded and issue the below command to make the installer script executable and start installing it.

$ chmod +x netbeans-8.2-linux.sh 
$ ./netbeans-8.2-linux.sh

5. After running the installer script above, the installer “Welcome page” will show up as follows, click Next to continue (or customize your installation by clicking on Customize) to follow the installation wizard.

6. Then read and accept the terms in the license agreement, and click on Next to continue.

7. Next, select the NetBeans IDE 8.2 installation folder from the following interface, then click Next to continue.

8. Also select the GlassFish server installation folder from the following interface, then click Next to proceed.

9. Next enable auto updates updates for installed plugins via the check box in the following screen which shows the installation summary, and click Install to install the NetBeans IDE and runtimes.

10. When the installation is complete, click on Finish and restart machine to enjoy NetBeans IDE.

Congratulations! You’ve successfully installed the latest version of NetBeans IDE 8.2 in your Debian/UbuntuLinux based system. If you have queries use the comment form below to ask any questions or share your thoughts with us.

Source

GraphicsMagick is a free open source, modern and powerful software suite for processing images. It was initially derived from ImageMagick, however, over the years, it has grown to be a fully independent project, with a number of improvements and additional features. It runs on all Unix-like operating system such as Linux, MacOS, and also runs on Windows.

It offers a useful and efficient assortment of tools as well as libraries that allow for reading, writing, and manipulating your images in more than 88 well known formats (such as GIF, JPEG, JPEG-2000, PNG, PDF, PNM, and TIFF).

It can create a composite image in grid format, from multiple images, and create images in web supported formats such as WEBP. It is also used to change image size, sharpen, color reduce, rotate or add special effects to images of various formats. Importantly, it can create a GIF animation from multiple images and much more.

How to Install GraphicsMagick on Linux Systems

On Debian and its derivative such as Ubuntu and Linux Mint, you can install it using APT-package manager as shown.

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install graphicsmagick

On Arch Linux and Fedora, you can install GraphicsMagick from the default system repositories using package manager as shown.

$ sudo pacman -S graphicsmagick    [On Arch Linux]
$ sudo dnf install GraphicsMagick  [On Fedora 25+]

On other Linux distributions such as RHEL, CentOS and Fedora (older releases), you can compile GraphicsMagick from source code as shown.

----------- Install GraphicsMagick on RHEL and CentOS ----------- 
# yum install libpng libjpeg libpng-devel libjpeg-devel ghostscript libtiff libtiff-devel freetype freetype-devel jasper jasper-devel
# wget -c https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/graphicsmagick/graphicsmagick/1.3.28/GraphicsMagick-1.3.28.tar.xz
# xz -c GraphicsMagick-1.3.28.tar.xz | tar -xvf -
$ cd GraphicsMagick-1.3.28/
$ ./configure 
$ make
$ make install

----------- Install GraphicsMagick on Fedora ----------- 
# dnf install libpng libjpeg libpng-devel libjpeg-devel ghostscript libtiff libtiff-devel freetype freetype-devel jasper jasper-devel
# wget -c https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/graphicsmagick/graphicsmagick/1.3.28/GraphicsMagick-1.3.28.tar.xz
# xz -c GraphicsMagick-1.3.28.tar.xz | tar -xvf -
$ cd GraphicsMagick-1.3.28/
$ ./configure 
$ make
$ make install

To access GraphicsMagick functions, use gm – a powerful command-line utility, which offers several sub-commands such as display, animate, concert, montage, compare, identify, composite and many more, for accessing the actual functions.

To confirm that the GraphicsMagick package has been installed on your system, you can run the following command.

$ gm display 

Then run the following series of commands to verify many aspects of the installed package.

$ gm convert -list formats	#check that the expected image formats are supported
$ gm convert -list fonts	#check if fonts are available
$ gm convert -list delegates	#check if delegates (external programs) are configured as expected
$ gm convert -list colors	#check if color definitions may be loaded
$ gm convert -list resources	#check that GraphicsMagick is properly identifying the resources of your machine

Learn How to Use GraphicsMagick in Linux

Following are some basic examples of how to use gm command with these options.

1. To display or view an image from the terminal, run following command.

$ gm display girlfriend.jpeg

2. To resize an image with new width, specify a width and height will auto scale proportionally as shown.

$ gm convert -resize 300 girlfriend-1.jpeg girlfriend-1-resize-300.jpeg
$ gm display girlfriend-1-resize-300.png

You can also define a width and a height, and the command will resize the image to that dimensions without altering the proportions.

$ gm convert -resize 300x150 girlfriend-1.jpeg girlfriend-1-resize-300x150.jpeg
$ gm display girlfriend-1-resize-300.png

3. To create an animated image of multiple images in the current working directory, you can use the following command.

$ gm animate *.png	

Note: The above animated image quality is poor, because we have optimized to lower the size of image.

4. To convert an image to one format to other, for example .jpeg to .png and vise-versa.

$ gm convert girlfriend.jpeg girlfriend.png

5. Next, you can create a visual image directory of all your .png images as shown.

$ gm convert 'vid:*.jpeg' all_png.miff
$ gm display all_png.miff

6. Additionally, it is possible to create a composite image (in a grid format) from separate images as shown.

$ gm montage girlfriend.jpeg girlfriend-1.jpeg girlfriend-2.jpeg composite_image.png
$ gm display composite_image.png 

There is a lot you can do with gm command, we have just covered a few basic examples in this article. You can see see all options for gm and its sub-command, for example, convert, type:

$ gm -help
$ gm help convert

For more information, visit GraphicsMagick Homepage: http://www.graphicsmagick.org/

GraphicsMagick is a powerful and feature-rich image processing system for Linux and other Unix-like systems. If you have any questions or thoughts to share, use the feedback form below.

Source

Screenlets is an application software released under GNU GPL. The same name screenlets refers to the engine as well as widget that runs on it. It was Originally Developed by ‘Rico Pfaus‘, ‘Helder Fraga‘ and ‘Natan Yellin‘ for Unix-like Operating System. Designed specially to run on X11-based compositing windows manager like compiz.

Screenlets are small pieces of application commonly called widget. They serves as eye candy besides improving overall system experience of modern Linux-desktop. Widgets represents virtual things on desktop viz., Clock, Sticky notes, weather, Calculator, Calendar,…

Features of Screenlets

1. Easy from End-user point as well as from Developer point of view.
2. A wide range of screenlets/widget to choose from.
3. Deploy Google gadgets on screenlets engine.
4. Full compositing Support.
5. Works with any composited X desktop as well as non-composited desktop
6. Fully Scalable
7. Embedded Drag & Drop
8. Highly Customizable
9. Automatic options saving.
10. Themes feature supported

Screenlets version <= 0.0.14 were written in Python later on the concept of web widgets were introduced which were typically written in HTML, JavaScript and CSS.

Installing Screenlets in Linux

1. You can download and install screenlets from the repository (if available), most of the modern Linux distribution includes screenlets to be downloaded from default repository.

$ sudo apt-get install screenlets screenlets-pack-all

The above command will install screenlets application and complete pack, which includes number of widgets/gadgets in it.

During installation, in my Debian 8.0 Jessie, I’ve got the following depnedency error message….

Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module"

To fix this, you need to install following package.

$ sudo apt-get install libcanberra-gtk-module

2. After installing Screenlets, start the application using user account only and not root.

$ screenlets

3. To add a widget to your screen double click it. You may add as many screenlets as you want. There is no limitation.

4. You can close all the running widgets at once, reset Screenlets Config, Install new theme, Restart All, Create Desktop Shortcut as well as Auto-Start at login using the options available in the left of Screenlets Manager.

5. You can also configure the options like Setting position of Specific Screenlets, scale it, control opacity as well as options like stick to desktop, Lock Position, Keep above/below and etc..

The screenlets application is quiet stable and mature project. If you are newbie to Linux, several GUI System monitor tool will help you to understand what’s going on. If you are developer you can write your own screenlets for the screenlets engine. As said above, these widgets are small and hence easy to develop.

That’s all for now. I’ll be here again with another interesting article. Till then stay tuned and connected to Tecmint. Don’t forget to provide us with your valuable feed back in the comments below. Like and share us and help us get spread.

Source

youtube-dl is a Python based small command-line tool that allows to download videos from YouTube.com, Dailymotion, Google Video, Photobucket, Facebook, Yahoo, Metacafe, Depositfiles and few more similar sites. It written in pygtk and requires Python interpreter to run this program, it’s not platform restricted. It should run on any Unix, Windows or in Mac OS X based systems.

Recently, youtube-dl added video download support for 17 new websites: brightcove.com, auengine.com, RingTV, instagram.com, Jukebox, 3sat, CSpan, Statigr.am, traileraddict.com, hotnewhiphop.com, wat.tv, tu.tv, gamespot.com, tudou.com, Wimp.com, archive.org and break.com

youtube-dl also allows to choose specific avialable video quality format to download or let the program itself automatically download higher quality video from the site. It also has supports for user specific playlistdownloads, options to add custom or original title to the downloaded video file. proxy support and many more.

Install YouTube-DL in RHEL/CentOS and Fedora

The youtube-dl program can be installed by enabling epel repository under your systems. Once enabled, you can install using ‘yum‘ package manager tool as shown.

# yum install youtube-dl

Update: If you don’t wish to add any third party repository, you can still install it right away using curl or wgetcommand as shown.

# curl https://yt-dl.org/latest/youtube-dl -o /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
OR
# wget https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl

Note: Your system must have curl or wget packages installed to fetch the recent version youtube-dl file. If you don’t have them, you may yum to get it.

After fetching the file, you need to set a executable permission on the script to execute properly.

chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl

Install YouTube-DL in Ubuntu/Linux Mint and Debian

Ubuntu users can download and install latest youtube-dl version from the webupd8 PPA as shown.

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install youtube-dl

Update: Similarly, instead using any third party PPA, you can use curl or wget command to install latest version of youtube-dl script as shown.

$ sudo curl https://yt-dl.org/latest/youtube-dl -o /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl
OR
sudo wget https://yt-dl.org/downloads/latest/youtube-dl -O /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl

After downloading the script, set the executable permission.

$ sudo chmod a+rx /usr/local/bin/youtube-dl

Update YouTube-DL

Youtube-dl itself can be updated to the latest version using the following command.

# youtube-dl -U

Sample Output

Updating to version 2015.09.03 ...
Updated youtube-dl. Restart youtube-dl to use the new version.

How to Use YouTube-DL to Download Videos

To download a video file, simply run the following command. Where “VIDEO_URL” is the url of the video that you want to download.

# youtube-dl https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRYvuS9OxdA

Sample Output

[youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Downloading webpage
[youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Extracting video information
[youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Downloading js player new-en_US-vflCeB3p5
[youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Downloading DASH manifest
[download] Destination: Amy Macdonald - This Is The Life-iRYvuS9OxdA.mp4
[download] 100% of 10.33MiB in 00:01

To list all available formats of video, use option “–list-formats” with the youtube-dl command.

# youtube-dl --list-formats https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRYvuS9OxdA

Sample Output

[youtube] vKtwZmhX0lw: Downloading webpage
[youtube] vKtwZmhX0lw: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] vKtwZmhX0lw: Extracting video information
[youtube] vKtwZmhX0lw: Downloading DASH manifest
[youtube] vKtwZmhX0lw: Downloading DASH manifest
[info] Available formats for vKtwZmhX0lw:
format code  extension  resolution note
171          webm       audio only DASH audio  113k , vorbis@128k (44100Hz), 1.86MiB
140          m4a        audio only DASH audio  128k , m4a_dash container, aac  @128k (44100Hz), 2.14MiB
141          m4a        audio only DASH audio  255k , m4a_dash container, aac  @256k (44100Hz), 4.30MiB
278          webm       180x144    DASH video   63k , webm container, vp9, 1fps, video only, 946.76KiB
160          mp4        180x144    DASH video  112k , avc1.4d400c, 15fps, video only, 1.86MiB
242          webm       300x240    DASH video  170k , vp9, 1fps, video only, 2.50MiB
133          mp4        300x240    DASH video  247k , avc1.4d400d, 25fps, video only, 4.11MiB
243          webm       400x320    DASH video  288k , vp9, 1fps, video only, 4.07MiB
13           3gp        unknown    small 
17           3gp        176x144    small ,  mp4a.40.2, mp4v.20.3
36           3gp        320x240    small ,  mp4a.40.2, mp4v.20.3
5            flv        400x240    small 
43           webm       640x360    medium ,  vorbis, vp8.0
18           mp4        640x360    medium ,  mp4a.40.2, avc1.42001E (best)

To download a preferred file format, use the option ‘-f’ (video format code). For example, I would like to download mp4 format, So I use format code as ‘18‘ as shown below.

# youtube-dl -f 18 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRYvuS9OxdA

Sample Output

[youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Downloading webpage
[youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Downloading video info webpage
[youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Extracting video information
[youtube] iRYvuS9OxdA: Downloading DASH manifest
[download] Amy Macdonald - This Is The Life-iRYvuS9OxdA.mp4 has already been downloaded
[download] 100% of 10.33MiB

To download a list of video files, create a file and place all the YouTube links that you wish to download.

# youtube-dl -a youtube_links.txt

Type the following command in a terminal to list all the avialable options.

# youtube-dl --help

For other distributions, youtube-dl can be downloaded from the youtube-dl download page.

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Key Logging is the process of storing keystrokes with/without the knowledge of user. Keylogging can be hardware based as well as software based. As clear from the name, a hardware based keylogger does not depends upon any software and keystroke logging is done at hardware level itself. Whereas a software based keylogger depends upon a special software for keylogging.

There are number of keylogger software applications for almost all the platforms be it Windows, Mac, Linux. Here we are throwing light on an application package called Logkeys.

What is Logkeys?

Logkeys is a Linux keylogger. It is more updated than any other available keylogger, Moreover logkeys don’t crash the X server, and appears to work in all the situations. Logkeys creates a log of all characters and function keys. Moreover logkeys are aware of Alt and Shift and works well with serial as well as USB keyboards.

There are a lot of keyloggers available for Windows but this is not the case with Linux. Logkeys is not better than any other keylogger application for Linux but certainly it is more updated than other.

Installation of Logkeys in Linux

If you’ve ever installed a Linux tarball packages from source, then you can easily install logkeys package. If you haven’t ever installed a package in Linux from source yet, then you need to install some missing packages like C++ compilers and gcc libraries before proceeding for installation from source.

$ sudo apt-get install build-essential		[on Debian based systems]

# yum install gcc make gcc-c++			[on RedHat based systems]

Let’s proceed for the installation, first grab the latest logkeys source package using wget command or use git to clone it as shown:

-------------------- Download Source Package -------------------- 
$ wget https://github.com/kernc/logkeys/archive/master.zip
$ unzip master.zip  
$ cd logkeys-master/   

OR

-------------------- Use Git to Clone -------------------- 
$ git clone https://github.com/kernc/logkeys.git
$ cd logkeys

Now build and install logkeys.

$ ./autogen.sh
$ cd build         
$ ../configure
$ make
$ sudo make install 

Now run the locale-gen.

$ sudo locale-­gen

Sample Output

Generating locales (this might take a while)...
  en_AG.UTF-8... done
  en_AU.UTF-8... done
  en_BW.UTF-8... done
  en_CA.UTF-8... done
  en_DK.UTF-8... done
  en_GB.UTF-8... done
  en_HK.UTF-8... done
  en_IE.UTF-8... done
  en_IN.UTF-8... done
  en_NG.UTF-8... done
  en_NZ.UTF-8... done
  en_PH.UTF-8... done
  en_SG.UTF-8... done
  en_US.UTF-8... done
  en_ZA.UTF-8... done
  en_ZM.UTF-8... done
  en_ZW.UTF-8... done
Generation complete.

Usages of logkeys

1. logkeys ­s : Start logging keypress.
2. logkeys ­k : Kill logkeys process.

For detailed information of logkeys usages option, you can always refer to.

# logkeys –help

or

# man logkeys

Starting the application logkeys using the following command.

$ sudo logkeys ­-s

Now running a lot of commands.

# ls
# pwd
# ss
# ifconfig

Terminate the process logkeys.

# logkeys -k

Check the log file which by default is ‘/var/log/logkeys.log‘.

# nano /var/log/logkeys.log

To uninstall logkeys, remove all scripts and manuals:

$ sudo make uninstall # in the same build dir

Future Developments Planned

1. To add support for sending logs via email
2. To add support for logging clipboard content
3. To add support for mouse event/mouse click event

References

https://github.com/kernc/logkeys

All the information provided is strictly for educational purpose, Tweaking this article by any means or using the above information to log others users machine is against law and punishable. That’s all for now.

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Many a times it happens that we accidentally or by mistakenly press ‘shift + delete‘ to files. By human nature you have an habit of using ‘shift + Del‘ instead of using only ‘Delete‘ option. I actually had this incident few days back. I was working on a project and saved my work file in a directory. There were many unwanted files in that directory and needs to be deleted permanently. So I started deleting them one by one. While deleting those files, I accidentally pressed ‘shift delete‘ to one of my important file. The file got deleted permanently from my directory. I was wondering how to recover deleted files and had no clue what to do. I almost spent much time restoring the file but no luck.

Knowing a bit of technical knowledge I knew about how file system and HDD works. When you delete a file accidentally, the content of the file does not get deleted from your computer. It is just removed from the database folder and you cannot see the file into the directory, but it still remains in somewhere in your hard drive. Basically the system has a list pointer to blocks on the storage device still has the data. The data is not deleted from the block storage device unless and until you overwrite with a new file. At this point of view I released that my deleted file may still remain somewhere in an unindexed area of the Hard disk. However it is recommended to immediately unmount a device as soon as you realize that you have deleted any important file. Unmount helps you to prevent the blocked files from overwritten with new file.

In this scenario I didn’t want to over write that data, hence I preferred to search in the hard drive without mounting it.

Normally in Windows we get tons of 3rd party tools to recovery lost data, but in Linux only few. However I use Ubuntu as an operating system and it is very difficult to find a tool that recovers lost file. During my research I got to know about ‘Scalpel‘ a tool that runs through entire hard drive and recovers a lost file. I installed and successfully recovered my lost file with the help of Scalpel tool. It’s really amazing tool I must say.

This can also happen with you as well. So I thought of sharing my experience with you. In this article I will show you how to recover deleted files with the help of scalpel tool. So here we go.

What is Scalpel Tool?

Scalpel is an open source file system recovery for Linux and Mac operation systems. The tool visits the block database storage and identifies the deleted files from it and recover them instantly. Apart from file recovery it is also useful for digital forensics investigation.

How to Install Scalpel in Debian/Ubuntu and Linux Mint

To Install Scalpel, open terminal by doing “CTrl+Alt+T” from desktop and run the following command.

$ sudo apt-get install scalpel

Sample Output

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  scalpel
0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 390 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/33.9 kB of archives.
After this operation, 118 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Selecting previously unselected package scalpel.
(Reading database ... 151082 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking scalpel (from .../scalpel_1.60-1build1_i386.deb) ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Setting up scalpel (1.60-1build1) ...
tecmint@tecmint-Latitude-D630:~$

Installing Scalpel in RHEL/CentOS and Fedora

To install scalpel recovery tool, you need to first enable epel repository. Once it enabled, you can do ‘yum‘ to install it as shown.

# yum install scalpel

Sample Output

Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
 * base: centos.01link.hk
 * epel: mirror.nus.edu.sg
 * epel-source: mirror.nus.edu.sg
Setting up Install Process
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package scalpel.i686 0:2.0-1.el6 will be installed
--> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

==========================================================================================================================================================
 Package		Arch		Version			Repository		Size
==========================================================================================================================================================
Installing:
 scalpel                i686            2.0-1.el6               epel                    50 k

Transaction Summary
==========================================================================================================================================================
Install       1 Package(s)

Total download size: 50 k
Installed size: 108 k
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
scalpel-2.0-1.el6.i686.rpm                                                           |  50 kB     00:00     
Running rpm_check_debug
Running Transaction Test
Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
  Installing : scalpel-2.0-1.el6.i686							1/1 
  Verifying  : scalpel-2.0-1.el6.i686                                                   1/1 

Installed:
  scalpel.i686 0:2.0-1.el6                                                                                                                                

Complete!

Once scalpel is installed you need to do text editing. By default scalpel utility has its own configuration file in ‘/etc‘ directory and full path is “/etc/scalpel/scalpel.conf” or “/etc/scalpel.conf“. You can notice that everything is commented out (#). So before running scalpel you need to uncomment the file format that you need to recover. However uncomment the entire file is time consuming and will generate a huge false results.

Let say for example I want to recover only ‘.jpg‘ files, so simply uncomment ‘.jpg‘ file section for the scalpel configuration file.

# GIF and JPG files (very common)
        gif     y       5000000         \x47\x49\x46\x38\x37\x61        \x00\x3b
        gif     y       5000000         \x47\x49\x46\x38\x39\x61        \x00\x3b
        jpg     y       200000000       \xff\xd8\xff\xe0\x00\x10        \xff\xd9

Go to terminal and type following syntax. The ‘/dev/sda1‘ is a location of a device from where the file is already deleted.

$ sudo scalpel /dev/sda1-o output

The ‘-o‘ switch indicates a output directory, where you want to restore your deleted files. Make sure that this directory is empty before running any command otherwise it will give you an error. The output of the above command is.

Scalpel version 1.60
Written by Golden G. Richard III, based on Foremost 0.69.

Opening target "/dev/sda1"

Image file pass 1/2.
/dev/sda1:   6.1% |***** 		|    6.6 GB    39:16 ETA

As you see, the scalpel is now performing its process and it will take time to recovery your deleted file depending upon the disk space that you are trying to scan and the speed of the machine.

I would recommend you all to have a habit of using only delete instead of “Shift + Delete“. Because as said prevention is always better than cure.

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Woof (short for Web Offer One File) is a simple application for sharing files between hosts on a small local network. It consists of a tiny HTTP server that can serve a specified file for a given number of times (default is once) and then terminates.

To use woof, simply invoke it on a single file, and the recipient can access your shared file via a web browser or using a command-line web-client such as cURL, HTTPie, wget or kurly (a curl alternative) from the terminal.

One advantage of woof over other file sharing tools is that it shares files between a different operating system, or different devices (computers, smartphones, tablets etc.), provided the recipient has a web browser installed.

In this article, we will show how to install woof in Linux and use it to share files on a local network.

How to Install and Use Woof in Linux

On Debian and Ubuntu, you can easily install ‘woof‘ package from the distribution’s default repositories using aptor apt-get package manager as shown.

$ sudo apt install woof
OR
$ sudo apt-get install woof

On other Linux distributions, you can download the woof script using wget command and move it to a /usr/bindirectory as shown.

$ wget http://www.home.unix-ag.org/simon/woof
$ sudo cp woof /usr/bin/

To share a file, provide it as an argument as shown.

$ woof ./bin/bashscripts/getpubip.sh 

Then woof will generate a URL (http://192.168.43.31:8080/ in this case) which your partner can use to access the file.

Send the URL to the recipient. Once the recipient accesses the file, woof will shutdown (see the following screenshot).

Note: In the above example, we have used wget command line downloader to obtain the shared file, and it automatically assigns the downloaded file a different name (for instance index.html).

To specify a custom name, use the -O option as shown.

$ wget -O  custom_name http://192.168.43.31:8080

Alternatively, you can also access the shared file from the web browser as shown (click Save File to download it).

By default, woof shares the file once, and after the recipient downloads it, woof terminates. You can set the number of time woof shares a file before it shuts down, using the -c option.

The following command will terminate woof after three downloads.

$ woof -c 3 ./bin/bashscripts/getpubip.sh

To share a directory, you can create a tarball and compress it by using (-z for gzip compression, or -j for bzip2 compression, or -Z for ZIP compression). For example:

$ woof -c 2 -z ./bin/

Check out the download file name, it should be a Gzip archive as shown in the following screenshot.

In addition, you can use the -U flag to tell woof to provide an upload form, allowing file uploads. The file will be uploaded to the current directory where woof was launched from:

$ woof -U

Then your partner can use the generated URL to access the upload form from a browser as shown.

After browsing and selecting the file, click the Upload button to upload files.

You can verify, that the file should be uploaded to the same directory where woof was invoked.

You can see more usage options by running:

$ man woof 
OR
$ woof -h

Woof is a small, simple and easy-to-use HTTP server for sharing files on a local areas network. In this article, we showed how to install and use woof in Linux. Use the feedback form below to share your thoughts about this tool or ask questions.

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This tutorial describes how to find out whether your Linux system’s OS is 32-bit or 64-bit. This will be helpful if you wanted to download or install an application in your Linux system. As we all know, we can’t install 64-bitapplications into a 32-bit OS type. That’s why knowing your Linux system’s OS type is important.

Here are the five easy and simple methods to verify your Linux system’s OS type. It doesn’t matter whether you’re using a GUI or CLI type systems, the following commands will work on almost all Linux operating systems such as RHEL, CentOS, Fedora, Scientific Linux, Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, openSUSE etc.

1. uname Command

uname -a command will display your Linux system’s OS type. This is the universal command and it will work on almost all Linux/Unix operating systems.

To find out the system’s OS type, run:

$ uname -a

Linux tecmint.com 3.13.0-37-generic #64-Ubuntu SMP Mon Sep 22 21:28:38 UTC 2014 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

2. dpkg Command

dpkg command will also display whether your Debian/Ubuntu operating system is 32-bit or 64-bit. This command will work only on Debian and Ubuntu based distributions and it’s derivatives.

Open your Terminal, and run:

$ dpkg --print-architecture 

If your OS is 64-bit, you’ll get the following output:

amd64

If your OS is 32-bit, then the output will be:

i386

3. getconf Command

getconf command will also display the system configuration variables. Now, let me show you how to find out the Linux system arch using getconf command.

$ getconf LONG_BIT

64

For more details refer the man pages.

$ man getconf

4. arch Command

arch command will display your OS type. This command is similar to uname -m command. If its output is x86_64 then it’s 64-bit OS. If the output is i686 or i386, then it’s 32-bit OS.

$ arch

x86_64

5. file Command

file command with with a special argument /sbin/init will display the OS type.

$ file /sbin/init

/sbin/init: ELF 64-bit LSB  shared object, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), for GNU/Linux 2.6.24, BuildID[sha1]=7a4c688d009fc1f06ffc692f5f42ab09e68582b2, stripped

Conclusion

You now know the ways to find out your Linux operating system’s type. Of course, there are few other ways to find out the OS type, but these are the often and pragmatic methods so far. If you know any other commands or methods to display the OS type, feel free to let us know in the comments section below.

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