Nazaudy, a spark in your curious mind

Linux popular distributions common problems and solutions

In this article I discuss some of Linux popular distributions common problems and solutions that I've found when working with them.

References

 

 

For ALL

Disable the "beep" for VM Workstation

If you're running Linux VMs on your VMware Workstation application, like I do, go ahead and disable the yelling beep so save you stress; add this line to the .vmx file of the VM:

mks.noBeep = "TRUE"

These are some of the problems I found while dealing with Linux

 

couldn't mount as ext3 due to feature incompatibilities. Ext4-fs (sda6): couldn't mount as ext2 due to feature incompatibilities.

After an upgrade or a reboot you might find the above error message, to fix it edit the /etc/fstab and change the affected drive from "ex3" to "ex4"

vi /etc/fstab

 

To break a computer disk partitioning, do this to override the boot partition, then see if you can fix it!

dd if=/dev/zero of-/dev/sda1 bs=1M count=20

 

Ubuntu

Apps that are recommend to install on an Ubuntu machine:

sudo apt-get install tree
sudo apt-get install vim
sudo apt-get install openssh-server
sudo apt-get net-tools   #gives you the ifconfig commmand
sudo apt-get install screen   #type 'screen' to start a new session, then 'screen -dr' to retake that session if the console is closed
sudo apt install systat iotop #also use 'iostat' to check the system

#text editors
sudo apt install kate
sudo apt install plume
apt-get moo #that's is a funny one

#mail
sudo apt install postfix mailutils

#miscellaneous
sudo apt-get install gnome-tweak-tool

 

Find out how to do a mirror of your Ubuntu machine, so that you copy all the repos to your VM, follow this guide: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/rsynmirrow 

After you remove a package using 'sudo apt remove apache2' for example, always run 'sudo apt autoremove' to get rid as well of the dependencies that were installed

PPA (Personal Package Archive) ;sometimes it happens that applications have been releases on PPA repositories, and you need to install that repository on your Ubuntu machine. For example, to install the latest version of Mumble on your machine, do as follows using the add-apt-repository, adding the latest repo first

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mumble/release
sudo apt-get update

 

Ubuntu privilege access

If you are a bit tired or forget to put the 'sudo' in front of every command while working in Debian/Ubuntu, you can temporarily use the system as root by typing:

sudo su -

 

Ubuntu issues

If you get the error message "E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)
E: Unable to acquire the dpkg frontend lock (/var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend), is another process using it?" when trying to install an app, it is most likely that a previous installation did not finished successfully. to clear the process to as follows:

sudo lsof /var/lib/dpkg/lock  #this will show you the PID of the process
sudo kill -9 <PID>  #kill the affected process

 

 

Tips

To install SSH on an Ubuntu server:

sudo apt-get install openssh-server

If you get the error "E:  Unable to locate package openssh-server", run these two commands: sudo apt-get upgrade .Applications that I always install on my Linux systems: tree, synaptic,

 Install the development tools to compile a new kernel

sudo yum groupinstall "Development Tools"

To install Tiger-VNC on your CentOS

yum install tigervnc-server
#visit /usr/lib/systemd/system, then do:
cp vncserver@.service yourusername@.service #this is becuase we need a single configuration file per user
vncpasswd #set the vnc password for the current logon user
vim /usr/lib/systemd/system/This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
#once you open it with vim, execute %s/<USER>/username to update the username
systemctl daemon-reload #reload services after password change
firewall-cmd get-default-zone #to find out in what zone you are
firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=5901/tcp --permanent #open port 5902 if you're using display number 2
firewall-cmd --reload
systemctl start vncserver-username@:1.service #starts the service for username

Remember that if you are going to use display 2 (username@:2.service) you'd need to open port 5902 on the firewall. If you can't connect, look for *.lock files in /tmp and in /tmp/.X11-unix ; when using the client to connect, under VNC Server user IP-address:portnumber (192.168.0.21:5901)

If you install XRDP on your linux box, ensure to apply the SELinux security context

Install "serverauditor" on your IOS device if you'd like to access Linux CLI remotely, for your adroid toy use "Connectbot"

 

To 'recall' the good old Tux icon linux, on an old distribution visit /usr/src/linux/Documentation/logo.gif

Old Linux commands

On kerles 2.6 and below you can run these commands:

fgconsole   #tells you on which virtual console number you're logon

 

For CentOS

loaded plugins: fastestmirror

If during the installation of a package you get the error message "loaded plugins: fastestmirror", edit the following file and change enabled=1 to enabled=0 to disable the fastestmirror plugin

/etc/yum/pluginconf.d/fastestmirror.conf

 

Enable root account

sudo -i
passwd

#Then edit this file and ensure this line exit
/etc/ssh/sshd_config
PermitRootLogin yes

#If you change the SSH config file, reload it using this:
systemctl restart sshd

 

Install ftppro

yum install epel-release
yum install proftpd proftpd-utils
systemctl start proftpd
systemctl enable proftpd
firewall-cmd --zone=trusted --add-service=ftp --permanent
firewall-cmd --reload

 

Mount hard drive

These are useful command that will help you evaluate what you have attached to your linux box

lsblk
udisksctl mount -b /dev/sdb3

ls /dev/sd*
df -h
sudo fdisk -l

lsv
lshw -class disk -shortsfdf

pvscan
vgscan

cat /etc/fstab

 

Enable networking in Rescue Mode

Do these commands to have Internet access on Rescue Mode

ip link #identify the nic name
ip link set dev eth0 up
ip link #to verify
ip addr add 192.168.136.21 dev eth0
ipa a #to verify
ip route add default via 192.168.136.1
ip route #to verify

 

Secure your CentOS

To limit the number of connections/sessions that root that use to the machine, leave only "console" on the file /etc/securetty

 

User not in sudoers file

If you keep getting the error "User not in sudoers file. This incident will be reported" when trying to run a command with "sudo" at the front, thus borrowing root access in CentOS, open the sudoers file by typing:

sudo visudo

And then make an entry for the user, similar to the one of the root already there:

#the below allows user to run in ALL hosts, ALL commands
user    ALL=(ALL)       ALL
#the below allows user2 to run in ALL hosts but only ls, without password 
user2   ALL=(ALL)       NOPASSWD: /bin/ls

 

 

 

References