This is a long and detailed topic, and there’s plenty to read on the interweb, but you should definitely consider items such as….

• psad

• fail2ban

which dynamically update your firewall rules when your machine is attacked amongst other features.

For hardening, try Bastille Linux.  RTFM first, as this could be problematic if you screw up.

In Debian / Ubuntu, use avconv.


somebody@your-laptop:~$ avconv -i input.mp4 -b 64k -s hd720 -strict experimental output.mp4

This command uses avconv, where..

-i input.mp4 = the input file name
-b 64k = down sample the audio channel to 64k – should be fine.
-s hd720 = reduce the video from hd1020 to the 720 format
-strict experimental = Allows mp4 output
output.mp4 = the output file.

If you haven’t got avconv installed, use

somebody@your-laptop:~$ sudo apt-get install avconv

and follow instructions.

In Ubuntu, just open a terminal window and type

somebody@your-laptop:~$ sudo macchanger eth1 -r

This will change the wifi address, as your physical CAT 5 port is prolly eth0.  The command above will change the MAC address to a random MAC address.

Sweet!

In Ubuntu, just open a terminal window and type

somebody@your-laptop:~$ sudo dhclient -r

That should drop (release) the address.  To renew it…

somebody@your-laptop:~$ sudo dhclient


In Ubuntu, just open a terminal window and type


somebody@your-laptop:~$ cat /proc/cpuinfo


Compare it here.

Simples!

To copy data and a table structure in the same database, ay to backup a table, here’s the code…


CREATE TABLE new_tbl SELECT * FROM orig_tbl;


Simple as.

Good question, and an annoying one as I can never remember the command. It is..

somebody@your-laptop:~$ lsb_release -a

Sweet!

You need to know what hardware you’ve got in your Linux box?

Easy..

somebody@your-laptop:~$ sudo lshw

Job done.

One of the annoying things about MP3 apps on Linux is that, given it’s the most popular ripping format in the world (prolly), I can’t see why Linux tends not to include it as a default sound format.

I think the reason is summat to do with copyright or something?  Anyway, whatever.

The solution to get MP3 support into your machine is to open a terminal and issue this command..

somebody@your-laptop:~$ sudo apt-get install gstreamer0.10-plugins-ugly-multiverse

Once installed, the MP3 option in applications appears so Sound Juicer / Rhythmbox suddenly have MP3 available – sweet!

Network ports used in conjunction with IP addresses are used to define the TCPIP socket for network connections between hosts on an (inter)network so they can communicate with each other.  Some port numbers are classics and here are those used for electronic mail.

POP3 – port 110

IMAP – port 143

SMTP – port 25

HTTP – port 80

Secure SMTP (SSMTP) – port 465

Secure IMAP (IMAP4-SSL) – port 585

IMAP4 over SSL (IMAPS) – port 993

Secure POP3 (SSL-POP) – port 995